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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since he is part of the GW Advocacy Industry.
The GW advocates have much too lose...which is why Dr Master's is spending the time and effort to defend these fraudsters.
I think there may be a RICO case here for an enterprising prosecutor.
:)
Amen! not any easy thing to do but we can all try.
When I look around at the junk we buy, especially at Christmas, it is gross and at the expense of American jobs and at the same time enriching China!
j/k :)
Easier said than done.
I work in the maritime shipping industry, and based on what I handle for imports from China, it will be very hard to completely avoid Chinese products. Computer monitors, computer parts (CPUs, hard drives, video cards, motherboards, etc.), blenders, grills, cleaning products, humidifiers, cameras... all are from China.
...showing us the spots they DON'T include in the "global" readings...
A Simple Proof that Global Warming is not Man-made
Written by Dr. David Evans
Wednesday, 02 December 2009
Analysis of Climategate info/data
Man chill out, Your getting worse than JFV. These are peoples opinions, hold on lets say that again slowly O P I N I O N S, these will not hurt you. The bigger man would have just left it alone and P451 is the bigger man. =)
22.6 degrees in Montana
Yikes, more stress & strife in the blog...may have to amble over to my own blog and start a snowball fight to ease the tension. In the meantime, I posted a brief Floodman update and funny video for anyone who needs a break from the debate.
:)
On the other hand -- Maybe I should be proud it wasn't in my vocabulary?
is that a random tidbit or do you live in Montana?
Single digit temperatures, 8 inches of snow and wind chill factors approachich -40F. AHHHH, yes! Fi=ond memories of what it was like to live in Buffalo, NY.
That was the main reason I uprooted my young family and wife and moved to the Dallas-Ft Worth, TX area. I enjoy my 78F November afternoon's, where I can sit out in the sun and get a sun tan.
Dallas-Ft Worth, TX has 2 seasons:
SEASON 1: From Mid-May through Mid September. Hazy, hot, humid. Highs 90-110F, Lows 68-84F. Rain, oh maybe, once every 14 days, IF your lucky.
SEASON 2: From Late September through Early May. I call it "choose a season"! It may be anyone of the 4 seasons, especially Early Nov-Mid April
In both of those cases you evaluated the information yourself and made a decision. What Dr. Masters implies is that I shouldn't evaluate the information, but should just blindly follow what is being told to me.
His statement basically says that I'm too stupid to come to my own conclusion and should just become a sheep following along with no critical thought. At least that's how it comes across to me.
Global warming is the latest move by the Globalists to redistribute wealth on the grandest scale ever. Kyoto agreements, Carbon dioxide redefined as a pollutant, Cap and trade - they are all predicated on Anthropogenic Global Warming. The goal is to scare people so they will accept more taxes and government regulation. The larger the governments and the larger their debts - the more influence the bankers and the beaurocrats have on everyone's lives - while they skim off the profits from every new transfer of wealth scheme. Beware everything you hear in the media. "Scientists" do not operate in a vacummn - they are human and they have opinions that they want to see validated. The only way to guard against bias is to demand raw data availability. Also the raw data itself needs to be carefully scrutenized for problems - such as all the airports around the world which constitute a majority of weather data sites used to be rural - now they are surrounded by urban warming zones as population sprawl has encroached on them. This produces a huge skew in the data over the last 100 years.
Friday Night...Mostly cloudy. Light rain...snow and light sleet likely in the evening...then snow and light sleet likely after midnight. Lows in the lower 30s. North winds 10 to 20 mph. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.
No, my brother lives there, so I watch him freeze his butt off and there starting to see below zero's now, which he just moved from orlando Florida to Billings Montana. So hes got to be feeling Jack Frost biting at him.
LOL
Yes, that does sound like an accurate description of TX weather!!!
So true, Pearland! Whoever first said "Don't like the weather? Just give it minute...", must have been talking about Texas.
LOL
wu-Snow Ski party in Jackson.We need a sponsor,fast.
545
fxus64 kjan 031723 aaa
afdjan
Area forecast discussion...updated
National Weather Service Jackson MS
1123 am CST Thursday Dec 3 2009
..early season snow expected Friday night...
Update...
low pressure system that affected the arklamiss yesterday has been
pulled well northeast of the County Warning Area. However...latest visible satellite
imagery indicates low clouds still linger across much of eastern
Mississippi this morning. Further into this afternoon...models depict
additional moisture around 925 mb affecting much of the region.
Therefore...sky cover was increased across the central and east
through this afternoon. Winds were increased slightly across area
lakes with weak cold air advection persisting. Temperatures were on track with
cooler temperatures east resulting from residual cloud deck and
warmer west with more sun. Potential snow event for Friday night is
being evaluated and additional updates will be provided with the
afternoon package. /Ja/cohen/
&&
Previous discussion... /issued 440 am CST Thursday Dec 3 2009/
Short term...well...forecast is not any easier than last night as
focus for the next 48 hours remains on the potential snow event Friday
night. The question with the previous forecasts was: will it snow? If
so...then the amounts were going to be light. Now...confidence is
much higher on the fact that it will snow. The challenge now is how
much. More on the potential snow event below.
Currently...we have surface high pressure steadily building into the
area as yesterdays storm system continues to lift across the NE.
What is left in the wake of that system is a quite large and deep
central Continental U.S. Trough with mean middle level heights some 2-3 Standard dev
below normal values which extends from the Dakotas down through S
Texas. With cooler/drier air steadily building into the region and no
appreciable lift occurring across the area...look for today into the
first 1/2 or 1/3 of Friday to be precipitation free. Conditions will be on the
chilly side and run some 10-13 degrees below the norms. Clouds today
will be a bit tricky. A good portion of the region continues to have
a stratus deck between 1700-3000 feet. However...there are multiple
breaks in that deck as it is far from continuous. This variable
nature will make it difficult to pinpoint the broken/overcast areas. What I
expect today is a more homogeneous cloud deck to develop as surface
heating occurs and mixing allows for some sort of scattered/broken deck.
Variations on partly to MO cloudy sky condition looks to fit best.
Guidance high temperatures looked good and have followed.
For tonight...the low clouds look to dissipate with just some high
stuff spreading over and becoming thicker Friday morning. Guidance temperatures
were generally in the middle 30s. The GFS ensemble and NAM have been
offering cooler lows and I have decided to cut the GFS temperatures some
2-3 degrees.
For Friday...we will begin to see the effects of the strong short wave trough
which will round the base of the long wave feature. As this
occurs...decent lift will occur aloft and develop...then spread
quite a bit of middle/high clouds over the region. At the same
time...the surface low over the northwest/north Gulf will begin to take shape as
height falls occur across Texas. Due to thickening cloud cover...steady
cold air advection from north/NE low levels winds responding to the developing surface
low...I expect temperatures to remain on the cool side and stay some 3-6
degrees below GFS MOS guidance. As for any onset of precipitation...I have
lowered probability of precipitation from the most recent guidance for Friday afternoon and stayed
with the previous forecast. It appears there will be a good deal of
virga falling but that will mainly serve to cool the lower levels
due to evaporation and set the stage for the wintry weather later Friday
night.
As for the potential snow event Friday night. The latest guidance has
strong support and continuity from all models in developing snow
across the County Warning Area. The main question now is...how much? The various
members of the sref and GFS ensemble all point to solid potential
for a 1/2 to 1 inch type accumulations with some members offering
2-4 inches. While there does exist the potential for some stripe of
the County Warning Area to see >2 inches...not enough confidence exists in that at
the moment to run with such a solution. That will have to be watched
closely as 2 inches is our local threshold for issuing heavy snow
watches/warnings. Right now...confidence is high in it snowing with
light 1 inch or less accumulations for areas along I-20 and south.
Actually the best area for accumulating snow appears to extend SW to
NE along a line from Natchez to Newton with in a swath some 30-40
miles either side of the defined axis. That area offers the best
combination of moisture...dynamic cooling and ascent. Recent events
over the past two yrs have given US trouble in pinpointing the
heaviest locations b/c they have occurred in what appeared to be the
warmer areas. However...dynamic cooling has always won out and the
greatest snow amounts have fallen S/southeast of the initial axis...closer
to the moisture source. Taking all that into account...I am leaning
more to the S this go round for the primary accumulation axis. As
for now...no watches will be issued due to the uncertainty in
getting to that 2 inch threshold. However...as more model data
arrives and confidence increases in location/amounts...we will have
to decide on if we need a advisory/watch and ultimately a warning.
At this time...a advisory would fit this situation and would likely
be need by this shift tomorrow night. However...the day shift may
decide to get things going if confidence increases with respect to
amounts.
As for the timing...Friday night is the time with some onset starting
during the evening. Light snow will be the dominate type with some
light rain mixing in at the start. However...once cooling get the
boundary layer temperature close to 34/35 degrees then it will become all
snow. I left light snow wording for the onset and then for areas north
of I-20. Between 04-12z...areas along and S of I-20 I went with moderate
snow to cover the potential for the 1 inch type accumulation. /Cme/
Long term...Saturday through next Thursday...some light snow could
linger across far eastern portions of the forecast area early
Saturday morning...but will quickly taper off and shift east as
temperatures rise and high pressure builds east into the region.
Clouds will also gradually clear through the day from west to east
as temperatures remain on the cool side and only climb into the middle
40s. Clouds will likely hang on a little later into the afternoon
in the east...thus temperatures will be a little cooler in this
area. Then with mostly clear skies expected Saturday night with a
down right cold and dry airmass over the region...lows temperatures
will bottom out in the middle 20s area wide.
The active/wet pattern looks to continue from Sunday evening right
on through into the middle of the upcoming work week. Clouds will
build back into the forecast area through the day Sunday and rain
chances increase Sunday night as a weak cold front approaches the
region from the west. Temperatures also moderate up during this
time...as well as through the rest of the period...with highs Sunday
afternoon generally climbing back up into the low to middle 50s and
lows Sunday night ranging from the middle 30s to the middle 40s.
The front looks to briefly meander across the southeast half of the
County Warning Area Monday night. As this happens...an upper level shortwave will
swing east across the nation's middle-section on Tuesday. This will
cause the front to lift back to the north while a surface low
develops west of the region and approaches the forecast on
Wednesday. Decent rain chances will exist across the entire County Warning Area
during this time...before finally coming to an end Thursday. As the
low pressure system exits the region to the east...strong high
pressure builds southeast into the lower Mississippi River valley
Thursday filtering in yet another colder drier airmass into the
forecast area. /19/
well...last year I was diagnosed with melanoma...and I can assure you I am way too stupid to evaluate the data which contributed to that diagnosis...as I am way too stupid to evaluate climate change data...
..so I look to those smarter than me...and one of the reasons Jeff Masters is a credible source to me is that his income is not predicated upon him espousing a particular view...he works nfor (and owns part of) a private, for profit weather information service...and is umencumebered by constraints of academia and/or government...
Wow! Snow in Houston area sounds fun...except for we are supposed to be outside in a parade at 6:30pm! Ugh!!!
Pensacola hasn't had a decent snow in years....
This'll be Nola's third in 5 years? Thats just not fair! Assuming it does occur, that is.
Stay tuned..
Friday Night...Mostly cloudy. Snow likely in the evening...then slight chance of snow after midnight. Snow accumulation of 2 to 3 inches. Lows in the upper 20s. North winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation 70 percent in the evening decreasing to 20 percent after midnight.
Im Jealious.. I want snow.
I guess the authors of the article have forgotten about December 1st, 2006.
That day was easily 10 degrees warmer...
74°F was that high on 12/1/06 at Harrisburgh, PA!
Not yet, but since my brother lives there, ill be going in the spring sometime for hiking, snowboarding,and of course yellow stone, everybody tells me its an amazing place. My dads boss owns 40 miles by 40 miles of land in Bozeman, Montana.
Getting excited for some snow! It has been almost exactly a year since our snow day last Decemeber. Hopefully it sticks as well as last year but our local meteorologist doesnt think it will. We shall see. :))
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