Climategate 2, more unethical Team behavior

The second batch of e-mails, (Climategate 2)(you have to register) documenting the “behind the scenes” activities of the scientists that have been some of the stronger advocates for the uniqueness of current global warming over the last two millennia have been released. They have now been perused in running series of posts at various blog sites, and, while there is no immediately obvious major new revelation, the contemptible behavior of these purportedly exemplary individuals is getting an increasing amount of sunlight. It also shows how thick the whitewash was in the “enquiries” into scientific misconduct that followed the release of the original, Climategate 1, e-mails.

As an example, New Zealand Climate Change has shown in two posts ( here and here) how “reputable” scientists (Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Jim Salinger, Tom Wigley, Barrie Pittock, Mike Hulme and others – i.e. "the Team") worked to get Chris de Freitas, then editor of the journal Climate Research fired from that position, and also worked to try and get him fired from his academic position. His “crime” was to allow, following peer review, a paper that challenged the validity of the initial Mann “hockey stick” paper and its conclusions that the late 20th century was the warmest of the last millennium. (That particular conclusion was later changed, by Dr Mann, though much later than these events).

To explain the heinous nature of this particular activity requires some background, and also some information that has only since emerged. And, for the sake of brevity I am only going to summarize the story, though adding some detail not in the NZ post.
At the beginning of the story, back in 1997, the state of historical climate science thinking was that between AD 900 and AD 1300 (roughly) the world was going through a warming period, roughly akin to that we are currently seeing, and known as the Medieval Warming Period (MWP). This was followed by a much colder period that lasted from AD 1400 to AD 1800, known as the Little Ice Age (LIA). Evidence for this can, for example, be found in a study that was carried out looking at the sediments laid down in lakes in Finland. In 2005 Mia Tiljander submitted her thesis on these sediments in which she found, in concurrence with earlier studies of sediments in other lakes in the region that:

During the Roman period there was in AD 140-220 an 80-year-long period in the Lake Korttajärvi area when organic matter deposition and the sedimentation was similar to that during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), interpreted as milder climate condition. After this period, a clear mineral matter – organic matter varve structure existed, until the beginning of the MWP.

The MWP, AD 980-1250, was an exceptional period. The MWP is characterized by thinly laminated varves rich in organic matter, almost lacking the mineral pulses (i.e. spring floods), indicating mild climatic conditions. This period was interrupted by a colder period from AD 1115- 1145, dominated by mineral-matter-rich varves. The sediment deposited during the MWP was highly organic and dark brownish in colour. Based on pollen and diatom studies (Kauppila 2002), the MWP was a two-stage event. AD 980-1100 was warm and dry, a cold spell (AD 1115-1145) interrupted the warm trend and the following period AD 1145-1220 was again warm and even drier than the first stage.

In light of subsequent discussion of her work (which comes later) it should be noted that the disturbance of the annual sediment layers (the varves) by human activity only occurred in sediments after AD 1720, i.e. towards the end of the LIA. The picture of the historic climate can thus be outlined, as it was understood, by a plot from the first IPCC report.

Global Temperature plot from the first IPCC report (IPCC via John Daly )

This picture was challenged with the publication by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes of a paper in Nature in 1998 (MBH 1998) that introduced the “Hockey Stick” plot to the world. Contrary to the prevailing opinion this paper suggested that there was a steady decline in temperatures from 1000 AD to around 1850 AD (the handle of the hockey stick), following which temperatures rose steadily to their present high levels (the blade).

The original “Hockey Stick” from MBH 1998 (MBH via John Daly ) (Note the thickness of the green error bars).

This plot made it easier to argue that current temperatures were a direct cause of industrial activity, due to the generation of increasing levels of carbon dioxide as the world used more fossil fuel. And, as a result, MBH concluded:

Our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990's was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.

This conclusion and the elimination of the MWP and LIA, despite the fact that the curve and conclusion over-rode the combined papers of hundreds of scientists who had worked to validate their existence, was seized upon by the Global Warming community and used without further discussion, as the “New Bible.” It was, for example, prominently featured in the 2000 Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. I have seen it used by the current Secretary of Energy as the valid plot of temperatures over the past millennium and thus as justification for the programs he espouses. And this despite the torrent of valid criticism of the curve, and that the original plot only referred to the Northern Hemisphere.

To sustain the credibility of this plot, the warming of the MWP, and the cooling of the LIA, had to be minimized. Both the initial set of e-mails and the new set document that the Team recognized and worked to do this. One immediate challenge was to respond to a paper published in 2003 in the journal Climate Research by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas which had looked at some of the previous data (which MBH 1998 had neither considered nor shown invalid) to conclude that:

Furthermore, the individual proxies can be used to address the question of whether the 20th century is the warmest of the 2nd millennium locally. Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.

Such effrontery and direct challenge to the authority of the team could not go unanswered, and the Team swung into action, (e-mail 31 ). It is interesting to note that in that correspondence Phil Jones recognizes the work of Jean Grove, an early climate scientist, (who reviewed the data validating the presence of The Little Ice Age in an excellent seminal book), but who died in 2001).

What we want to write is NOT the scholarly review a la Jean Grove (bless her soul) that just reviews but doesn't come to anything firm. We want a critical review that enables agendas to be set.

Which was not how I remembered the text at all, and so I re-read the beginning of that book, and it shows that he was wrong in that statement. Dr. Grove wrote:

Historical evidence of Little Ice Age events is much more plentiful in Europe than elsewhere but the documentation from other continents though scantier, is supported by a great volume of field evidence (e.g. Hope et al 1976, Hastenrath 1984) which is presented in Chapters 7, 8 and 9. It emerges that the Little Ice Age was a global phenomenon and it is shown in Chapter 10 that it was not unique to the Holocene.

But it was not just enough to write a rebuttal paper (which would be normal scientific practice). Although a rebuttal paper was written, with Tom Crowley suggesting that it be in EOS, this was not considered sufficient. Beginning with an e-mail from Mike Hulme (e-mail 2272) ) the Team began to focus on the editor, Chris de Freitas, who had accepted the paper.

Whilst we do not know who reviewed the Soon/Baliunas manuscript, there is sufficient evidence in my view to justify a "loss of confidence" in the peer review process operated by the journal and hence a mass resignation of review editors may be warranted. This is by no means a one-off - I could do the analysis of de Freitas's manuscripts if need be.

I am contacting the seven of you since I know you well and believe you may also have similar concerns to me about the quality of climate change science and how that science is communicated to the public. I would be interested in your views on this course of action - which was suggested in the first place my me, once I knew the strength of feeling amongst people like Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Mike Mann, Ray Bradley, Tom Crowley, etc. CSIRO and Tyndall communication managers would then think that a mass resignation would draw attention to the way such poor science gets into mainstream journals.

Pressure was brought to bear, initially forcing changes in the editorial practices at the Climate Research journal, and then leading to the resignations of the editor in Chief (Hans von Storch) as well the one who accepted the paper (Chris de Freitas), and two others (Clare Goodess – who was at the University of East Anglia with the CRU group and Mitsuru Ando) who protested the publication, and who were encouraged to resign by the Team (e-mail 4808). It led to an editorial by the publisher, explaining why they could not allow the publication of papers in the journal to be governed by individuals outside the peer-review process (i.e. Team members).

The lack of objectivity of the editors of the journals in which the Team publish(such as Science, for example) is shown by theTeam being solicited by the journals to write opposing articles for them, as a counter to the Soon/Balianas paper. (e-mail 2469).

Phil Jones and I are in the process of writing a review article for Reviews of Geophysics which will, among other things, dispel the most severe of the myths that some of these folks are perpetuating regarding past climate change in past centuries. My understanding is that Ray Bradley, Malcolm Hughes, and Henry Diaz are working, independently, on a solicited piece for Science on the "Medieval Warm Period".

Of course, since then, Mann among others, has admitted to the presence of an MWP and an LIA, but it is a little late . . .

The Team were still not satisfied, and as the New Zealand post points out, they suggested that a letter be sent to the head of the University at which Dr de Freitas works, (e-mail 3052)

I have had thoughts also on a further course of action. The present Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland, Professor John Hood (comes from an engineering background) is very concerned that Auckland should be seen as New Zealand's premier research university, and one with an excellent reputation internationally. He is concerned to the extent that he is monitoring the performance of ALL his senior staff, from Associate Professor upwards, including interviews with them. My suggestion is that a band of you review editors write directly to Professor Hood with your concerns. In it you should point out that you are all globally recognized top climate scientist. It is best that such a letter come from outside NZ and is signed by more than one person.

The e-mail goes on to suggest the form of the letter that should be sent:

Instead we have discovered that this person has been using his position to promote ‘fringe’ views of various groups with which they are associated around the world. It perhaps would have been less disturbing if the ‘science’ that was being passed through the system was sound. However, a recent incident has alerted us to the fact that poorly constructed and uncritical work has been allowed to enter the pages of the journal.

A recent example has caused outrage amongst leading climate scientists around the world and has resulted in the journal dismissing (??).. from the editorial board. We bring this to your attention since we consider it brings the name of your university and New Zealand into some disrepute. We leave it to your discretion what use you make of this information.

The strength of the punishment that the Team inflicted on the journal and those associated with the story kept the peer reviewed papers “in line” for some time, and so it has only this last September (after some 8 years) that it has been necessary to force the resignation of another editor, Wolfgang Wagner, to remind the scientific press as to who is in charge here.

Let me, however, end this rather lengthy post with another piece of Team dishonesty. You may remember that I began by quoting Mia Tiljander’s work on Finnish lake sediments. Well due to an odd circumstance, when this was examined by the Team the results were inverted. As a result, instead of showing the MWP that actually existed, her results were included as showing that it did not.

This was admitted in the first Climategate release (e-mail 3511) where Darrell Kaufman wrote

Regarding the "upside down man", as Nick's plot shows, when flipped, the Korttajarvi series has little impact on the overall reconstructions. Also, the series was not included in the calibration. Nonetheless, it's unfortunate that I flipped the Korttajarvi data.

In fact that is not a completely true statement either, since, as Mia Tiljander noted, the original data clearly showed an MWP, and if the data was good enough to use inverted to disprove that it existed, surely it should also be used to prove its presence when turned the right way around. But as Steve McIntyre has noted on the subject, while the original perpetrator may have submitted a correction the good Dr Mann has yet to admit that he used data improperly.

Courtesy of Climate Audit, you can judge for yourselves, comparing perhaps to the top figure, as to whether inverting the data made any difference.

How using the Tiljander data properly (New) reveals the MWP and LIA (Tiljander via Climate Audit), while the Team use (Old) hides them.

In further discussion the more recent sediments (which Tiljander noted were disturbed) which upticked in the “OLD” incorrect use, continued to be used by the team. As Andrew Montford noted in "The Hockey Stick Illusion", however:

The big selling point of Mann’s new paper was that you could get a hockey stick shape without tree rings. However, this claim turned out to rest on a circular argument. Mann had shown that the Tiljander proxies were valid by removing them from the database and showing that you still got a hockey stick. However, when he did this test, the hockey stick shape of the final reconstruction came from the bristlecones. Then he argued that he could remove the tree ring proxies (including the bristlecones) and still get a hockey stick – and of course he could, because in this case the hockey stick shape came from the Tiljander proxies. His arguments therefore rested on having two sets of flawed proxies in the database, but only removing one at a time. He could then argue that he still got a hockey stick either way.

And a short P.S. Steve McIntyre has just posted that the Team tried the same nasty tricks to try and discredit Willie Soon at Harvard.

Reading the Climategate books

The ongoing turmoil from the release of the Climategate papers continues. With the Guardian catching up with the rest of the British media and having finally got around to reading the e-mails, it begins to look as though the chances of this being swept under the rug, at least in the UK is becoming less likely. In the United States the administrators that were looking into the case against Professor Mann at Penn State have rendered an initial opinion. The fact that they did not completely exonerate him, but instead referred his conduct to a faculty committee is not quite as good a result for him as he appears to pretend. The quality of the judges means that they will be more disinterested in him personally, and likely more certain to consider the evidence. But it really depends on the individuals, and a couple of strong opinions either way can have quite an impact on the final outcome.

Were they wise they could do considerably worse than to read some of the books and articles that have now come out to explain both the background and some of the issues that have been revealed by the release of information. I was fortunate to get a copy of A.W. Montford’s book on “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” (not easily accessible yet in the USA) as well as Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller’s "Climategate: The CRUtape Letters.” Prior to reading these two I had just finished Christopher Booker’s “The Real Global Warming Disaster,” and after reading that I read the “Climategate Analysis,” by John Costella . Then I read Climategate, and finished with Hockey Stick.


Now you might think that I oversaturated on information, but in fact each takes a somewhat different focus to the information, and two of them are more directed at events before Climategate, than the e-mails and programs themselves. So, as it happens, I was lucky in getting the books and reading them in the order that I did, because it gave a much better picture of some of the issues that are not all that evident in the day-to-day exchanges and comments that one see on the blogs and in the press. And, if you have the chance, I would recommend that you read them in a slightly different order to the one that I did. (And slightly guilty confession, both Booker’s and Montford’s books kept me reading far later in the night than I intended, until they were done). But start with Chris Booker’s.

One of the irritating habits of those who espouse the arguments of the AGW leading us to imminent catastrophe is that they claim that the issues are complex, and that you really have to be a climate scientist to understand them. Well, on a matter of fact, if you read these books you don’t have to have that pre-existing knowledge. For in reporting the stories, and explaining their impact and relevance, the information is clear, concisely given and explained in context. (On the other hand, to be mischievous, the critical papers on which much of the AGW crowd has fixated– the Mann, Bradley and Hughes paper in Nature of April 1998, and that in Geophysical Research Letters in 1999, which introduced the “Hockey Stick” shape to the historic global climate community– have been described as “obscure” in the Wegman Report, among other places).

Booker goes into some detail on the origins of the IPCC, and those who have moved it to the prominent place that it now holds in so many discussions relating to the global future. He goes through the operations of the IPCC, and their successive reports to the nations on the “state of the climate.” And he has some uncomfortable conclusions about the path that the British Government is following in its commitment to reducing the generation of greenhouse gases.

It is important that this issue be raised, because this is not some academic exercise, where a couple of faculty have been caught doing naughty things behind the potting shed. It is difficult to over-emphasize the impact that this topic has had on national governments around the world. And Europe has been in the forefront of modifying plans for its future, based on the predictions that have been presented, largely unchallenged, on the impact of the greenhouse gases. (And as a side note it is only this week that Ofgem, has warned that the planned future supply of energy to the United Kingdom is going to come up short, and sooner rather than later.)

One of the key pieces of information that has been used to justify the “precautionary principle” argument for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the MBH papers and their generation of the infamous “hockey stick” where global temperatures were shown to have declined since the year 1,000 AD until around 1900, when they suddenly started to rise at an ever increasing pace. This shape is not dissimilar to that of a hockey stick, with the shank being the slow decline over nine centuries, and the blade being the rising temperature. And it was assembled from a number of different proxies, one of which, a feature that the Penn State Review panel apparently missed, suddenly stopped working, but which was quickly hidden and glossed over in the formation of the telling image. A.W. Montford explains the criticality of this graph to the global warming argument.

As some of you may have noted from earlier posts, I am convinced that there was a Medieval Warming Period (WMP), and that it was warmer than the present. It was followed by a Little Ice Age, which we have been leaving, as the globe has warmed for the last 150 – 200 years. But that is an embarrassment to the AGW argument, and thus the adulatory reception (obscure language non-besides) for the MBH papers, since they did away with the MWP and the need to explain why this warming was remarkable. As I said Montford’s book was the second to keep me awake into the wee hours (and this is not as though I hadn’t earlier spent time at both Climate Audit and RealClimate web sites reading a lot of the background information that is covered here). Chronologizing the events that led to the widespread acceptance of the curve (few of whose acolytes likely understand how it was derived) and explaining its problems while interweaving the story of how Steve McIntyre fought to get the data to show that it was in error, it is, as others have said, a fascinating detective story.

The Hockey Stick Illusion explains the underlying science and what principal components are, and a bit about their use and misuse as it relates to the MBH plots. These are the useful things to know, and not difficult to follow, and because the world has yet to recognize how critical these issues are in the proper understanding of the use and mis-use of climate proxies, it really helps to have it explained. (Ed note – I know a bit about this, and would have explained it slightly differently, but this way may be the best for the layman). The Climategate e-mails were released almost as this book went to press, and so there is only one chapter on their impact, at the end, that points out how much of the conjecture in the earlier chapters was validated, once the e-mails were available.

The CRUtape letters is more of a detailed analysis of those e-mails. It puts them into contextual relevance, with short “cheat sheets” at the beginning of the Chapters, so that you are prepared to understand the ramifications of the selected quotations from the individual e-mails, and thus gives a greater grasp of their meaning. There is a considerable amount of background information given in the book, that gives a contextual understanding of why some of the e-mails have the importance that they have. This is certainly true about the way that the rules were manipulated to allow unpublished papers to be cited in the IPCC reports, which they were not supposed to be. It is a fascinating story of collusion and the ways that the small cabal that controls the climate science debate work to exclude contrary opinions. (And then, of course, they claim that they are the victims of unprecedented PR campaigns against them, when their position has dominated the debate for years).

The alternate approach to that used in the CRUtape letters is to rely on the e-mails themselves to tell the story. That is much more the way in which John Costella tells the story. He also includes more on the Tiljander story ( a pet peeve of mine) without actually using her name, but gives the most complete recounting of that little episode. (Oh, and that summary is free).

Both ways are informative, and there is a lot to be gained by reading both. The machinations behind the scene are somewhat disappointing to read, you realize that there are qualified folk out there who, as a result of this bunch of . . (well the ICO in the UK did say that there have been crimes committed) have had their careers blighted. And sadly the way that the processes, which rely on trust, were blatantly misused with the compliance of journal editors as well as paper authors is a damning record of a shameful period in the history of this young science.

If there is one e-mail that puts this in context, it is this one from Ben Santer

There has been some additional fallout from the publication of our paper in the International Journal of Climatology. After reading Steven McIntyre’s discussion of our paper on climateaudit.com (and reading about my failure to provide McIntyre with the data he requested), an official at DOE headquarters has written to Cherry Murray at LLNL, claiming that my behavior is bringing LLNL’s good name into disrepute. Cherry is the Principal Associate Director for Science and Technology at LLNL, and reports to LLNL’s Director (George Miller).

Pity that there weren’t more folk with that sort of a concern.

The full stories are still a long way from being told, but reading these books will give you the understanding to follow, as the issues continue to play out. The Guardian stories, for example, have not yet got around to grasping the implications of the way in which the data, the press, the public and the science, were manipulated and the impact that this will have on the overall message. Unfortunately the e-mails also show the complicity of several of the main media reporters in selling the story that the cabal were promoting. And while the British press are now in active pursuit of the story, that hasn’t happened in the United States – yet!

The IPCC mess - like a smoldering coal fire

The computer models used to project future temperatures also don't include this feature because it remains poorly understood.

The feature is upper atmosphere water vapor, and as an article in the Houston Chronicle from which the quote comes notes, recent work reported in Science shows:

” Water vapor in this narrow region really packs a wallop, and has a much bigger impact on climate than if you were to increase water vapor levels at a level higher up,” said the study's lead author, Susan Solomon, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.

During the 1980s and 1990s, levels of water vapor in the stratosphere rose quite dramatically, but in 2000 they suddenly dropped.

The effect of this change is reported to be a change of some 25% to 30% on global surface warming. Now the argument is apparently that had the water vapor level not dropped, then the increasing levels of carbon dioxide would have continued to raise global temperatures. What that argument fails to do is read the abstract, let alone the paper, – which says that:

More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% compared to estimates neglecting this change.

In other words the increase in water vapor before 2000 was causing more warming than would have been the case without it. But the quote at the top is the most pertinent – this is just one of the factors that appear to influence climate that are not in the models. Which leaves one wondering, yet again, why the models have been given such credence when they are obviously not predicting what is happening.


On the other side of the Atlantic the Times has caught the IPCC chief in a lie apparently, and sentiment seems to be growing over not only the pecuniary advantage he seems to have taken of his position but also the lack of scrutiny of sources of information for the last report.

Taking Dr. Pachauri’s lie first, it appears that he was told in November that the IPCC report on glaciers in the Himalayas – which reported on their likely disappearance by 2035, was wrong, and not, as he claimed, in the last few days. What is equally of concern is that there was an investigation of the melting of the glaciers in 2004, headed by Gwyn Rees, which was then published in Hydrological Processes. He has since, on several occasions, had to rebut Syed Hasnain, who was responsible for the glacier melting claim in the IPCC report, but who had signed off on the conclusions of the report, at the time it was written. Specifically:

In 2004, Rees had assumed the rapid-melt claims would not be repeated, but in May that year Hasnain gave an interview to New Scientist suggesting the UK-funded study had confirmed his claims of rapid glacier melt.

In it he said: “Global warming has already increased glacier melting by up to 30%. After 40 years, most glaciers will be wiped out and we will have severe water problems.”

A furious Rees made the magazine publish a retraction in its letters page, describing Hasnain’s comments as a “gross misrepresentation”.

In fact the report said that suggestions that the glaciers would melt soon would seem unfounded. Yet Syed Hasnain has helped Dr Pachauri’s company now get millions of dollars to study a problem that he knew did not exist, and now works for the company.

Sadly as the blinkers fall off the eyes of a press that has, for too long, assumed the climate change distorters could do no wrong, more evidence is coming to the fore that what the report was based on was drawn much more from involved sources, such as the WWF, rather than the peer-reviewed scientific articles that were the claim.

Donna Laframboise has found eight references in the IPCC text to Greenpeace literature being used, in some cases as the sole reference for the global impacts caused by greenhouse gases. She had earlier shown the influence of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on the document.

For example, a WWF report is cited twice on this page as the only supporting proof of IPCC statements about coastal developments in Latin America. A WWF report is referenced twice by the IPCC's Working Group II in its concluding statements. There, the IPCC depends on the WWF to define what the global average per capita "ecological footprint" is compared to the ecological footprint of central and Eastern Europe.

The fact that some of the activities of the CRU are viewed as criminal is now being faced by the University of East Anglia. The spreading impact of this will continue to rebound, and well-meaning comments are non-helpful at best, whether by the Prince of Wales (who is the patron of the School of Environmental Science) or the President of the United States who, in his state-of-the-Union address said about the climate and energy:

We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities -- (applause) -- and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. . . . . . They're (Germany and India) making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.

which is non-controversial, and then

Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history -– (applause) -- an investment that could lead to the world's cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched*. And no area is more ripe for such innovation than energy. You can see the results of last year's investments in clean energy -– in the North Carolina company that will create 1,200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries; or in the California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels.

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.) It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. (Applause.) It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. (Applause.) And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America. (Applause.)

I am grateful to the House for passing such a bill last year. (Applause.) And this year I'm eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate. (Applause.)

I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy. I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing -- even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation. (Applause.)

Well perhaps if we relied a bit more on the scientific experts and less on Greenpeace, and let opposing points of view have better access to the journals, and perhaps some funding, rather than trying to suppress and obliterate them, we might be closer to the truth on these issues.

The main press in the UK is slowly swinging around to the position that there is something rotten in the climate science house, it is surprising how little dent the story has made yet in the American press. But that may change.

End note: I sat down to write a book review of “Climategate – the CRUtape letters” (which I recommend highly) but somehow the above captured my fingers. I’ll have the book review later, and one on “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, that I just got today (harder to get in the US since it is only published, to date, in the UK).

* Wow! We have a patent (U.S. Patent 5,037,431, 1990) on that. (but I bet it wasn't our technique he meant).

Climategate repercussions, the story grows

When the FOIA files that have since become Climategate first appeared on the scene, the forces that were marshaled against the full appreciation of their meaning and implications were, it appeared, overwhelming. The initial response of the media was either to ignore the information, or to follow the lead of folks such as the editors of Nature, and write it off as “much ado about nothing.” It has now acquired a much greater head of steam on both sides of the Atlantic. To the point, perhaps, where it will be no longer possible for the inquiries to be merely “formal whitewashes.”

In the weeks since the files were first released, as the information within the e-mails and the questions about the accuracy of the code have become clearer, the matter has begun to acquire a certain momentum. The initial questions about the release of the data from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) were intended by the University to focus on how this might have happened, rather than the content of the file. However that was quickly overcome by the nature of the material.
Thus, as described by the Parliamentary Committee on Science and Technology:

On 1 December 2009 Phil Willis, Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, wrote to Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor of UEA following the considerable press coverage of the data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The coverage alleged that data may have been manipulated or deleted in order to produce evidence on global warming. On 3 December the UEA announced an Independent Review into the allegations to be headed by Sir Muir Russell.

The Independent Review will:
1. Examine the hacked e-mail exchanges, other relevant e-mail exchanges and any other information held at CRU to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.
2. Review CRU's policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice.
3. Review CRU's compliance or otherwise with the University's policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act ('the FOIA') and the Environmental Information Regulations ('the EIR') for the release of data.
4. Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds

Now, however, there is sufficient concern that the committee itself is becoming involved in the inquiry. Now the inquiry is not only going to have to perform, but the evidence will also be going to the House Committee which has set up its own inquiry to address three questions.

—What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?
—Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate (see below)?
—How independent are the other two international data sets?

And suddenly the entire situation rachets up a notch. And, for what it is worth, since there must be a General Election this year and the results of the inquiry could well be available for it, the initial “shove it under the rug” attitude may now be something of the past.

The same can be true in the United States. When the matters first came to hand Penn State set up an inquiry as to whether Professor Mann had been involved in distorting data. Faculty matters of this sort are usually handled behind closed doors (for all sorts of good reasons), but the implications of this particular situation were too large for that to be simply allowed to pass. Thus, on the one hand, Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate raised questions about ensuring an honest result.

Senate Education Chairman Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, wrote a letter to Penn State President Graham Spanier asking him to keep Piccola informed about the results of the inquiry.

"Anything short of the pursuit of absolute science cannot be accepted or tolerated," Piccola wrote in the letter.
Aaron Shenck, deputy director of the Senate Education Committee and an aide to Piccola, said Mann's inquiry is very serious and that the university must make every effort to complete the investigation.

"Senator Piccola believes the seriousness of the allegations that have been made against Dr. Mann require thorough examination by Penn State and its fullest investigatory resources," he said.

Shenck also said that although it is not within the senator's "jurisdiction or desire" to decide whether Mann is guilty or innocent, it is within the Senate Education Committee's jurisdiction to monitor the investigations.

On the other the Governor recognizes that there are also other issues.

"The governor believes that climate change is real, that it is caused by man," said Gary Tuma, the governor's press secretary. "We have proposals here on the state level to address climate change and we have no reaction to the letters, publicly or privately."

And thus the issue of money, and who stands to gain from the decisions as to whether sins have been committed may play a significant part in the results of the inquiry.

However the political ramifications on a national scale now are beginning to reach the point where the Administration’s support for global warming legislation and rules, is being increasingly challenged, with Senator Murkowski having now stepped in to use a “disapproval resolution” to restrict the ability of the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. What is interesting is that she has drawn support from at least 3 Democratic Senators as well as most Republicans.

Well as the momentum continues to grow on this issue, the first books and more comprehensive reports on what the release of the files have started to come out. I am currently reading both the “Climategate – the Crutape letters” book and the (pdf) analysis of the files by John Costella. Both of these are very readable, and I will try and have a comment/review on both next Saturday. And we will see what further developments the next week brings.
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Can we take a clean page and start over?

I have worked in a branch of science/engineering where we talk almost all the time to each other about what we do, and share information with folk that ask for it. We also have argued about points, and have the luxury, if we doubt someone’s conclusions that we can try and repeat their experiment to see what else we can glean from the results. This is much harder to do in the disciplines that feed into the climate change debate, since there are many different facets to the overall situation, and there are very few folk that publish over more than small parts of the whole. Yet without some trust and honesty in the process of developing those small parts, the integrity of the whole is challenged. Increasingly it seems as though that trust has been misplaced.

The Big Meeting in Copenhagen is over, and with some final negotiation at the end, there is just enough “progress” from the various talks, that the issue of climate change will continue to dominate the policies of governments around the world over the next few years. Whether this meeting really did that much is still in question. However, while heat waves etc are just about always claimed as signs of climate change, the current cold spell in Europe is just localized bad weather, so we are told. Five trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel starting Friday and trapped 2,000 passengers for up to 16 hours in an “unprecedented” cold spell in Northern France.

"What was unprecedented was the weather conditions particularly in northern France with heavy snowfall and very, very cold temperatures outside of the tunnel."

The situation has not improved and trains have now been cancelled through Monday. The trains that shuttle cars through the tunnels were not apparently affected. And to think I always thought that trains were more reliable than planes or cars in that sort of bad weather! (Incidentally Washington D.C. just set a new record for snowfall in December. )

Those who have led the world’s opinion into the knowledge of Global Warming, are now increasingly on the defensive, as the questions arising from Climategate become more pointed. Newspapers who had not previously spent much time on it, now run headlines. Thus Michael Mann was given op-ed space in the Washington Post in which he sought to deflect questions about the seriousness of that case. Sadly he seemed to do this by misdirection and some mis-statements of fact. For example he says that there were no deletions of e-mails regarding the topic, yet in one of the e-mails that remains, Phil Jones comments about deleting “loads of e-mails.” One would hope that the two inquiries that are now proceeding in the UK and the US become thorough investigations and not whitewashes of those involved. (But I am not hopeful. There are too many who have too much invested in this and who control too many of the leverages of power and publication that will work against the truth ever coming out).

In that regard the story (via Climate Audit) of the control that some climate distorters have over the pages of Wikipedia, reported in the National Post should also start to cause legislators to worry. When the articles that cover a topic (and so far there are apparently some 5,428 of them relating to climate change) are manipulated by one individual, William Connolley in this case, to reflect his opinions, rather than scientific fact, and that this is not known by the general public, then there is something seriously wrong. Apparently the manipulation is most focused on the Medieval Warming Period, and the Little Ice Age. The site comments

Thus current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this timeframe, and the conventional terms of "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period" appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries... [Viewed] hemispherically, the "Little Ice Age" can only be considered as a modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during this period of less than 1°C relative to late 20th century levels.

Bear in mind that it was just this past week that the EPA did recognize the existence of the MWP, although still disinclined to read the evidence of the temperatures that then existed.

Evidence from the e-mails contained in the Climategate folders show that, in fact there was some agreement among them that the MWP existed, and was warmer than today, and I have commented a number of times on the hundreds of scientific papers that attest to the global extent of the Little Ice Age. But where there is one person with the power to deny that, as these articles do, and further to have the full support of the Wikipedia management in manipulating this information, then the integrity of the whole program is shown to be rotten, and the goals of the whole endeavor a masquerade hiding an attempt at manipulation.

It is tragic that this whole debate has long passed beyond seeking answers to the fundamental questions of what is truly going on with the climate. Politicians in under developed countries are now using the issue to demand recompense from the developed world and for payment to protect them from the fallouts of the global warming. Yet the results from the rising populations in those countries, and their need for rural electrification, is being hidden in the clamor to be given supportive dollars. Forget that the most effective power source in many of these countries comes from coal. There is a potential for Western money to be fed, perhaps via the UN, into the coffers of those countries – and sadly in many cases, I suspect, into the pockets of those clamoring loudest in the debate.

Droughts may threaten the water supply of places such as Las Vegas but as much of the problem is caused by creating a city in a desert, and having it steadily grow, as might be caused by a changes in the rainfall pattern. Although, if one goes back to the MWP these areas have a history of severe droughts, that should not have been unexpected. But there was no-one to blame (and pay) back in the MWP.

Climategate becomes more visible, data is analyzed

Slowly but surely greater attention is being given to the potential scandal that has acquired the “Climategate” label. There are 28.5 million results when I just typed that key word into Google. While the story was first carried in such news sources as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the British Daily Telegraph it has only been much more recently that it has been recognized by others in the MSM. And while CNN is carrying the topic it appears to be slanting the coverage towards the AGW crowd.

This is not uncommon. For example on Friday there was a short mention of the topic on NBC though still doubting its significance. And analysis of the code by an expert was showing the existence of problems that has finally caught the BBC’s attention. Should you watch the BBC piece you might note that while the programmer highlights the words “fudge factor” on the screen, the reporter does not really cover what that means. Yet magazines such as Newsweek continue to offer apologia, rather than asking hard questions, and Nature, instead of explaining exactly how many folks reviewed papers on climate change topics, and whether the cartel really had the power the e-mails claimed to restrict papers, also defended their position editorially, raising the clear possibility that the reputation and integrity of one of the greater journals in science has been compromised.

And after being caught by Jon Stewart it has now reached the front page of the Washington Post (though it seemed to fall off the front page of the Internet edition rather fast).

Interestingly, however, one can pick up by the focus of the comments where the writers of the pieces are coming from. For example, with the Washington Post piece, it is accompanied by a side bar that shows the following graph:

The WAPO comment above the curve was “However, nine of the world’s hottest years have occurred this decade,” which the graph then illustrates.


Unfortunately this statement while obviously absolutely untrue, (there are a number of periods in the geological past that were significantly warmer) even in the context meant (likely that of the last say 2,000 years) is almost certainly wrong, and one of the underlying points revealed in the e-mails is that folk such as Dr Michael Mann appear to have known this. (It was apparently he who first came up with the trick of replacing the data from tree rings, which were starting to show an apparent decline in temperature, while the temperature was actually going up, with real temperature data.) Now there are several issues with this change that folk need to be aware of.

The first, and obvious one, is that if the proxy that is being relied on to predict temperature is not correctly recording temperature change, then the use of the proxy has to be questioned. If the folk who used it do not publically admit to this, then it is reasonable to raise a question both concerning their personal integrity and that of the published papers that they have generated. (Given the cross-exchange of e-mails it also brings others into this collusion to conceal information).

The second point is the one that scientists get fascinated with, and that is why did the proxy data stop being accurate? And one possible answer has been provided by Craig Loehle. To simplify his argument, he points out that the width of tree rings – assumed to be linearly related to temperature – will also be affected by other factors. For example it is not unreasonable to assume that, as temperatures rise above a certain point, that there will be less moisture in the soil, and thus the tree will increasingly suffer, rather than increasing to prosper. If such a case is so, above a certain temperature, then (as the data being used by Briffa showed the tree rings would start to shrink.

Proxy temperatures as predicted by tree-ring data as plotted by Steve McInyre from Briffa data.

Notice that, for the first time in the record the temperature rises above the zero line in about 1930. And then crosses it again in 1960, with the onset of the red part of the curve – which is the decline that has been deleted from the plot). If one looks at a recent Met Office plot of temperature for this period:

Met Office Plot of temperatures. (Sorry I could not get through to the site for a current reference. At present the popularity of the site is causing it to redirect traffic to the UEA announcement page).

One can see that temperatures have risen, at around that time, to lie above the baseline, where Dr. Loehle believes the inflection starts to occur. So that, in his projection, while the temperature continues to rise, the proxy (tree ring) data will fall:

Projection of variation in tree ring data, showing a projected false value for temperature, as increased temperature reduces soil moisture, and thus ring growth (according to Loehle).

The change from the debate about recent temperatures has some relevance, but it becomes much more relevant to the debate over the condition during the Medieval Warming Period. NOAA currently shows this chart, which comes from the 2007 IPCC report.



However what is worth a passing comment is that if one looks at the model predictions of temperature before about 1850 they clearly show that the models overestimate the actual temperatures, and that while the actual instrumented temperatures were showing a Little Ice Age back to 1500, the models and proxy data do not. And if one were to apply the Loehle logic to the data between 1000 and 1150 where some of the models show the temperature crossing the zero line, then one could project that within that period the temperature could be higher than projected.

The tree ring data came from the Western United States for that time period has been a critical part of the debate on the validity of the original Mann, Bradley and Hughes paper. But we know from Scott Stein’s work that the western United States went through two severe drought periods :

“We now have compelling proof,” says Stine, “that Owens Lake dried up and became a desert playa in the early medieval period. The finding has ominous implications for the future security of Los Angeles' water supply.”

Two years ago, Stine caused a sensation in the science press with his claim that California had endured two epic droughts in the Middle Ages, one of 220 years (from 892 to 1112) and the other of 140 years (from 1209 to 1350). By contrast, the most severe recent drought— which created an unprecedented statewide water emergency— lasted only six years, from 1987 to 1992.

Stine's primary evidence, now broadly accepted, consists of ancient tree stumps that were exposed to view when the 1980s drought and DWP greed reduced water levels by more than 50 feet in Mono Lake (the northernmost catchment of the Los Angeles Aqueduct) and other Sierran lakes and streams.

I would guess that the severity of a drought of that duration would, as Dr. Loehle has pointed out, be enough to narrow the tree rings of the time. Perhaps now we might get a little more investigation of this point?

The point is now being caught by some of the reporters that are actually bothering to dig into the data, and so, for example, Christopher Booker who brings a different interpretation to the story that I have tried to tell in the above. But it goes back to the reliance of the Global Climate Models (GCM) on too little data as I explained in an earlier post back in October.

It is also sad to note a comment in the London Times coverage of the decision of the British Met Office to re-create all the data.

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

But

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.

They have got to be kidding !! Even Al Gore knows when he has a problem.

ClimateGate - and Dr Mann's changing story

The main stream media are still largely hiding the scope of the revelations from Climategate – it is much more important to them, for example, to discuss the couple that gatecrashed a dinner (the Washington Post); that Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent $102 million being re-elected (New York Times); that Tiger Woods crashed his car – but wasn’t hurt (LA Times); or that Pandas got a warm welcome when they moved to Australia for ten years (BBC News).

Commentators have largely tiptoed around the issue. It is interesting to note that Andrew Freedman at WaPo claims to be willing to view both sides, yet puts up interviews with two apologists for the “disinformation” side and promises to put up a skeptical viewpoint “in coming days.” (Perhaps by then the furor will have died down and it won’t have to be too strong a skeptic). And Eugene Robinson is willing to continue the insults:

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate-change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week -- portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories -- does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

But unfortunately does not recognize some of the implications to the revelations.

It would be great if this were all a big misunderstanding. But we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago. The skeptics might have convinced one another, but so far they haven't gotten through to the vanishing polar ice.

Well, apart from the fact that the total sum of Arctic and Antarctic Ice hasn’t been changing much – in fact Antarctic ice sheet size has been growing – this fails to grasp an underlying change that is happening among the warmers. (It is perhaps a little early to start to find the same sort of pejorative title for folk that manipulate and hide data to promote their point of view, as has been given to those skeptics such as myself that question some of the data).

In the e-mails that were “released” from the University of East Anglia it is clear that the reliance on tree-ring data, one of the fundamental legs to the data that went into the development of the Mann, Bradley, and Hughes “hockey stick” paper, is unreliable. Those putting out the papers (and judging whether other papers should be published) clearly knew this, but went on using it anyway. As proof thereof Dr Michael Mann and his group have just issued another paper. - but now there is a change. Whereas for the past few years those of us who brought up the existence of the Medieval Warming Period were subject to abuse and ad hominem attacks, it now appears that perhaps the "Power That Is" has changed his mind. In the new paper, the faithful are called to a new recognition:

Mann and his colleagues reproduced the relatively cool interval from the 1400s to the 1800s known as the "Little Ice Age" and the relatively mild conditions of the 900s to 1300s sometimes termed the "Medieval Warm Period."

Of course the paper notes that it wasn’t really that hot back then (though actually there is an e-mail or two that seems to contradict this). So does this mean that those of us who objected to the linear nature of the “hockey stick” line through both this periods will get some admission that we were right. Don’t rush to hold your breath. Nope they don’t have to get that honest! And for those who will head out to Copenhagen waving the original figure – do I anticipate that folk such as Energy Secretary Steven Chu will change his talks – well not really, at that level admitting error almost never happens.

Interestingly one of the things that the “new” review of data that has Dr Mann “discovering” the MWP is that his models now project:

The researchers note that, if the thermostat response holds for the future human-caused climate change, it could have profound impacts on particular regions. It would, for example, make the projected tendency for increased drought in the Southwestern U.S. worse.

Now, and see my cynical nature come through here, I don’t suppose that this has anything to do with the historic record for what happened in those regions a thousand years ago when there were severe droughts that lasted up to a couple of hundred years. (There are tree remnants in the bottoms of lakes as proof I am not making this up).

All those folk who have been saying that the models had shown that there were no major impact due to solar changes are going to have to do a little backpeddling now that the High Priest has spoken:

The warmer conditions of the medieval era were tied to higher solar output and few volcanic eruptions, while the cooler conditions of the Little Ice Age resulted from lower solar output and frequent explosive volcanic eruptions.

It used to be so much easier to make these changes in doctrine, when the vast majority of the populace couldn’t read. But of course there is reading and also there is understanding, and so I anticipate that we will continue to see obfustication and data manipulation for some time to come. And those within the press will take a while to realize that some of the cardinal points that have been used to secure their belief are not, in fact, likely going to prove true.

Unfortunately, at that time, I suspect that folk such as Mr Robinson, will continue to think of those of who demurred earlier as still being evil and wrong, but will just conclude that the scientists that they believed in were also wrong and conclude that scientists as a whole behave this way. It will be difficult to convince them that they are wrong – even as it has proved in the last week, where denial of the meaning of these revelations has remained quite widespread. So what to call those who remain in that state?