The End for the Global Warming Hoaxsters?

[midnightblackrx]

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of days have uncovered some shocking revelations about the baloney practices that pass as sound science about climate change.

It was announced Thursday afternoon that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. Those e-mails involved communication among many scientific researchers and policy advocates with similar ideological positions all across the world. Those purported authorities were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global-warming claims.

Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny. Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the "trick of adding in the real temps to each series ... to hide the decline [in temperature]."

Mr. Mann admitted that he was party to this conversation and lamely explained to the New York Times that "scientists often used the word 'trick' to refer to a good way to solve a problem 'and not something secret.' " Though the liberal New York newspaper apparently buys this explanation, we have seen no benign explanation that justifies efforts by researchers to skew data on so-called global-warming "to hide the decline." Given the controversies over the accuracy of Mr. Mann's past research, it is surprising his current explanations are accepted so readily.

There is a lot of damning evidence about these researchers concealing information that counters their bias. In another exchange, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann: "If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone" and, "We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind." Mr. Jones further urged Mr. Mann to join him in deleting e-mail exchanges about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) controversial assessment report (ARA): "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re [the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]?"

In another e-mail, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann, professor Malcolm K. Hughes of the University of Arizona and professor Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst: "I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!"

At one point, Mr. Jones complained to another academic, "I did get an email from the [Freedom of Information] person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn't be deleting emails." He also offered up more dubious tricks of his trade, specifically that "IPCC is an international organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on." Another professor at the Climate Research Unit, Tim Osborn, discussed in e-mails how truncating a data series can hide a cooling trend that otherwise would be seen in the results. Mr. Mann sent Mr. Osborn an e-mail saying that the results he was sending shouldn't be shown to others because the data support critics of global warming.

Repeatedly throughout the e-mails that have been made public, proponents of global-warming theories refer to data that has been hidden or destroyed. Only e-mails from Mr. Jones' institution have been made public, and with his obvious approach to deleting sensitive files, it's difficult to determine exactly how much more information has been lost that could be damaging to the global-warming theocracy and its doomsday forecasts.

We don't condone e-mail theft by hackers, though these e-mails were covered by Britain's Freedom of Information Act and should have been released. The content of these e-mails raises extremely serious questions that could end the academic careers of many prominent professors. Academics who have purposely hidden data, destroyed information and doctored their results have committed scientific fraud. We can only hope respected academic institutions such as Pennsylvania State University, the University of Arizona and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst conduct proper investigative inquiries.

Most important, however, these revelations of fudged science should have a cooling effect on global-warming hysteria and the panicked policies that are being pushed forward to address the unproven theory.

[midnightblackrx]

With all due respect, the flat earth mentality has been clearly shown by your response to the facts staring directly at you and looking the other way.  When so called scientists are given the job of giving facts are corrupt to push a political agenda, the world has to take a close look. Even if it means facing reality.

[willydenn]

Lol.  nice attempt.

The Moonie Times is notoriously rightwing and usually factually incorrect.

But publishing an editorial column about a bogus story is pretty hilarious.

Thanks for giving it a college try though.

I hear the Flat Earthers have proof that the moon landing was a fake as well.

Seriously?......and the Huffington Post, which you frequently site, it not an ultra left wing site?

How about we see what comes of this first?  I'm sure we are just scratching the surface!

[Captain Zissou]

It may just be poorly written, but I don't see this article as being credible evidence.

I will say that I am not a believer in global warming.

I do agree that our current exploitation of our environment is unsustainable and will have extreme negative effects on our planet if we do not change. Everyone should embrace a more sustainable way of life whether or not they think we're heating up. 

[trigger]

The 'right wing' Washington Times isn't the only media outlet carrying the story. See CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/23/hacker.climate/index.html and the UK's Daily Telegraph at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/.

Senator Dan Iouye of Hawaii, a Democrat, has already called for a Congressional investigation into the matter.

Personally, knowing how the university research system works, I don't have any problem believing the academic community is capable of this. There has been a decline in scientific standards and method in the academic community for two generations now due to systemic structural problems in the hiring and retaining of professors, especially in the USA, i.e. the current system promotes mediocrity.

[thebrokenforum]

It may just be poorly written, but I don't see this article as being credible evidence.

I will say that I am not a believer in global warming.

I do agree that our current exploitation of our environment is unsustainable and will have extreme negative effects on our planet if we do not change. Everyone should embrace a more sustainable way of life whether or not they think we're heating up. 

That's the thing that gets me. Whether you believe in GW or not...what is so horrible about treating the environment better? Clean air, clean water and less trash etc. benefit everyone. It's like some people want to trash the environment just to try and prove a point.

Or is it being told to clean up after yourself and not destroy natural resources is the horrible thing? Just seems goofy to the nth degree.

[Sigma]

It may just be poorly written, but I don't see this article as being credible evidence.

I will say that I am not a believer in global warming.

I do agree that our current exploitation of our environment is unsustainable and will have extreme negative effects on our planet if we do not change. Everyone should embrace a more sustainable way of life whether or not they think we're heating up. 

That's the thing that gets me. Whether you believe in GW or not...what is so horrible about treating the environment better? Clean air, clean water and less trash etc. benefit everyone. It's like some people want to trash the environment just to try and prove a point.

Or is it being told to clean up after yourself and not destroy natural resources is the horrible thing? Just seems goofy to the nth degree.

Well said brokenforum.  Everyone should try their best to take care of your environment.  However, I've said many times that the global warming hysteria is all political designed for control and wealth (example, looters such as Al Gore).

Global warming rigged? Here's the email I'd need to see
The leaked exchanges are disturbing, but it would take a conspiracy of a very different order to justify sceptics' claims

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk,    Monday 23 November 2009 21.00 GMT

It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

But do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is "the final nail in the coffin" of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed. Luckily for the sceptics, and to my intense disappointment, I have now been passed the damning email that confirms that the entire science of global warming is indeed a scam. Had I known that it was this easy to rig the evidence, I wouldn't have wasted years of my life promoting a bogus discipline. In the interests of open discourse, I feel obliged to reproduce it here.

From: ernst.kattweizel@redcar.ac.uk

Sent: 29 October 2009

To: The Knights Carbonic

Gentlemen, the culmination of our great plan approaches fast. What the Master called "the ordering of men's affairs by a transcendent world state, ordained by God and answerable to no man", which we now know as Communist World Government, advances towards its climax at Copenhagen. For 185 years since the Master, known to the laity as Joseph Fourier, launched his scheme for world domination, the entire physical science community has been working towards this moment.

The early phases of the plan worked magnificently. First the Master's initial thesis â€" that the release of infrared radiation is delayed by the atmosphere â€" had to be accepted by the scientific establishment. I will not bother you with details of the gold paid, the threats made and the blood spilt to achieve this end. But the result was the elimination of the naysayers and the disgrace or incarceration of the Master's rivals. Within 35 years the 3rd Warden of the Grand Temple of the Knights Carbonic (our revered prophet John Tyndall) was able to "demonstrate" the Master's thesis. Our control of physical science was by then so tight that no major objections were sustained.

More resistance was encountered (and swiftly dispatched) when we sought to install the 6th Warden (Svante Arrhenius) first as professor of physics at Stockholm University, then as rector. From this position he was able to project the Master's second grand law â€" that the infrared radiation trapped in a planet's atmosphere increases in line with the quantity of carbon dioxide the atmosphere contains. He and his followers (led by the Junior Warden Max Planck) were then able to adapt the entire canon of physical and chemical science to sustain the second law.

Then began the most hazardous task of all: our attempt to control the instrumental record. Securing the consent of the scientific establishment was a simple matter. But thermometers had by then become widely available, and amateur meteorologists were making their own readings. We needed to show a steady rise as industrialisation proceeded, but some of these unfortunates had other ideas. The global co-option of police and coroners required unprecedented resources, but so far we have been able to cover our tracks.

The over-enthusiasm of certain of the Knights Carbonic in 1998 was most regrettable. The high reading in that year has proved impossibly costly to sustain. Those of our enemies who have yet to be silenced maintain that the lower temperatures after that date provide evidence of global cooling, even though we have ensured that eight of the 10 warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 2001. From now on we will engineer a smoother progression.

Our co-option of the physical world has been just as successful. The thinning of the Arctic ice cap was a masterstroke. The ring of secret nuclear power stations around the Arctic circle, attached to giant immersion heaters, remains undetected, as do the space-based lasers dissolving the world's glaciers.

Altering the migratory and reproductive patterns of the world's wildlife has proved more challenging. Though we have now asserted control over the world's biologists, there is no accounting for the unauthorised observations of farmers, gardeners, birdwatchers and other troublemakers. We have therefore been forced to drive migrating birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to release several million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering and fruiting. None of this is cheap, and ever more public money, secretly diverted from national accounts by compliant governments, is required to sustain it.

The co-operation of these governments requires unflagging effort. The capture of George W Bush, a late convert to the cause of Communist World Government, was made possible only by the threatened release of footage filmed by a knight at Yale, showing the future president engaged in coitus with a Ford Mustang. Most ostensibly capitalist governments remain apprised of where their real interests lie, though I note with disappointment that we have so far failed to eliminate Vaclav Klaus. Through the offices of compliant states, the Master's third grand law has been established: world government will be established under the guise of controlling man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

Keeping the scientific community in line remains a challenge. The national academies are becoming ever more querulous and greedy, and require higher pay-offs each year. The inexplicable events of the past month, in which the windows of all the leading scientific institutions were broken and a horse's head turned up in James Hansen's bed, appear to have staved off the immediate crisis, but for how much longer can we maintain the consensus? Knights Carbonic, now that the hour of our triumph is at hand, I urge you all to redouble your efforts. In the name of the Master, go forth and terrify.

Professor Ernst Kattweizel, University of Redcar. 21st Grand Warden of the Temple of the Knights Carbonic.

This is the kind of conspiracy the deniers need to reveal to show that man-made climate change is a con. The hacked emails are a hard knock, but the science of global warming withstands much more than that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists

[Sigma]

Stephen, if you find some more of the emails, will you post?

[trigger]

There's nothing wrong with good stewardship of the planet, no one is arguing with that. There is something wrong with spending billions across the world on bandwagon science which is often based on suspect scientific method and evidence. Or are you saying the academic community is incapable of fudging evidence by jumping on a bandwagon to pursue millions or billions (if you include the EU programs) in research grants on which their very jobs is dependent? If you think the climate change bandwagon IS NOT about money, then you are naive. Just how much money has Al Gore made on the climate change debate in books sold, government grants, lecture fees, stock shares in 'green' industry companies, etc? And this is the guy whose administration (the Clinton administration) destroyed MPG standards in the 90s as a pay-out to the automobile labor unions/auto industry and gave us the SUV culture we're now paying the price for. Thanks, Al!

[Sigma]

There's nothing wrong with good stewardship of the planet, no one is arguing with that. There is something wrong with spending billions across the world on bandwagon science which is often based on suspect scientific method and evidence. Or are you saying the academic community is incapable of fudging evidence by jumping on a bandwagon to pursue millions or billions (if you include the EU programs) in research grants on which their very jobs is dependent? If you think the climate change bandwagon IS NOT about money, then you are naive. Just how much money has Al Gore made on the climate change debate in books sold, government grants, lecture fees, stock shares in 'green' industry companies, etc? And this is the guy whose administration (the Clinton administration) destroyed MPG standards in the 90s as a pay-out to the automobile labor unions/auto industry and gave us the SUV culture we're now paying the price for. Thanks, Al!

^Have you seen the movie 'Not Evil, Just Wrong'?

[Sigma]

Stephen, let's stick to the subject matter shall we? If you want to start slinging mud we can discuss your team's bed-wetting 9/11 conspiracy theories as well. 

[thebrokenforum]

There's nothing wrong with good stewardship of the planet, no one is arguing with that. There is something wrong with spending billions across the world on bandwagon science which is often based on suspect scientific method and evidence. Or are you saying the academic community is incapable of fudging evidence by jumping on a bandwagon to pursue millions or billions (if you include the EU programs) in research grants on which their very jobs is dependent? If you think the climate change bandwagon IS NOT about money, then you are naive. Just how much money has Al Gore made on the climate change debate in books sold, government grants, lecture fees, stock shares in 'green' industry companies, etc? And this is the guy whose administration (the Clinton administration) destroyed MPG standards in the 90s as a pay-out to the automobile labor unions/auto industry and gave us the SUV culture we're now paying the price for. Thanks, Al!

Why do you care how much $$ Gore has made on a book? Lots of people get rich writing books with ridiculous and false things in them (visit orange park today) and no one cares.

Good stewardship of the planet isn't free. Spending $$ on finding ways to better the planet is still better than spending $$ on jingoism and war.

I agree with Stephen in that science leads to discovery. Research is important and necessary. Research costs $$ and that' ok with me. To argue otherwise would say that funding things like the space program etc. is a bad thing because current evidence does not support the possibility of other life in the universe. 

[Sigma]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704779704574553652849094482.html

Climate Science and Candor
Editor's note: The following are emails we've selected from more than 3,000 emails and documents that were hacked last week from computers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom. The CRU is the data repository for much of the world's climate research and is a major source for the judgments reached by the U.N.'s climate reports. A nearby editorial ("Global Warming With the Lid Off") puts the emails in their political and scientific context, but readers may want to browse for themselves to get a flavor of the thinking of scientists who are the leading advocates for the belief that global warming is man-made and that nations must re-order the world economy to stop it. We've removed the email addresses and phone numbers, and we've inserted paragraph breaks in some places. The emails are otherwise unedited. The ellipses are the authors' own.

On freedom of information rules and deleting files:

From: Phil Jones

To: "Michael E. Mann"

Subject: IPCC & FOI

Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil

Prof. Phil Jones

Climatic Research Unit

School of Environmental Sciences

University of East Anglia

Norwich

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Phil Jones

Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:30 AM

To: Wahl, Eugene R; Caspar Ammann

Subject: Wahl/Ammann

Gene/Caspar,

Good to see these two out. Wahl/Ammann doesn't appear to be in CC's online first, but comes up if you search. You likely know that McIntyre will check this one to make sure it hasn't changed since the IPCC close-off date July 2006! Hard copies of the WG1 report from CUP have arrived here today. Ammann/Wahl - try and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with.

Cheers

Phil

At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:

Mike,

I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days?â€"our does! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it!

Are you planning a complete reworking of your paleo series? Like to be involved if you are. Had a quick look at Ch 6 on paleo of AR4. The MWP side bar references Briffa, Bradley, Mann, Jones, Crowley, Hughes, Diaz - oh and Lamb ! Looks OK, but I can't see it getting past all the stages in its present form. MM and SB get dismissed. All the right emphasis is there, but the wording on occasions will be crucial. I expect this to be the main contentious issue in AR4. I expect (hope) that the MSU one will fade away. It seems the more the CCSP (the thing Tom Karl is organizing) looks into Christy and Spencer's series, the more problems/issues they are finding. I might be on the NRC review panel, so will keep you informed.

Rob van Dorland is an LA on the Radiative Forcing chapter, so he's a paleo expert by GRL statndards.

Cheers

Phil

From: Phil Jones

To: Gavin Schmidt

Subject: Re: Revised version the Wengen paper

Date: Wed Aug 20 09:32:52 2008

Cc: Michael Mann

Gavin,

Almost all have gone in. Have sent an email to Janice re the regional freshening. On the boreholes I've used mostly Mike's revised text, with bits of yours making it read a little better. Thinking about the final bit for the Appendix. Keith should be in later, so I'll check with him - and look at that vineyard book. I did rephrase the bit about the 'evidence' as Lamb refers to it. I wanted to use his phrasingâ€"he used this word several times in these various papers. What he means is his mind and its inherent bias(es).

Your final sentence though about improvements in reviewing and traceability is a bit of a hostage to fortune. The skeptics will try to hang on to something, but I don't want to give them something clearly tangible. Keith/Tim still getting FOI requests as well as MOHC and Reading. All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions not to respond â€"advice they got from the Information Commissioner. As an aside and just between us, it seems that Brian Hoskins has withdrawn himself from the WG1 Lead nominations. It seems he doesn't want to have to deal with this hassle.

The FOI line we're all using is this. IPCC is exempt from any countries FOIâ€"the skeptics have been told this. Even though we (MOHC, CRU/UEA) possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on.

Cheers

Phil

[Sigma]

On opposing views and their appearance in science journals or reviews:

From: "Michael E. Mann"

To: Phil Jones, Ray Bradley, Malcolm Hughes, S. Rutherford

Subject: Re: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas

Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 08:14:49 -0500

Cc: Keith Briffa, Jonathan Overpeck, Keith Alverson, Michael C. MacCracken

Thanks Phil,

(Tom: Congrats again!)

The Soon & Baliunas paper couldn't have cleared a 'legitimate' peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibilityâ€"that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board. And it isn't just De Frietas, unfortunately I think this group also includes a member of my own department...

The skeptics appear to have staged a 'coup' at "Climate Research" (it was a mediocre journal to begin with, but now its a mediocre journal with a definite 'purpose').

Folks might want to check out the editors and review editors:

[1]http://www.int-res.com/journals/cr/crEditors.html

In fact, Mike McCracken first pointed out this article to me, and he and I have discussed this a bit. I've cc'd Mike in on this as well, and I've included Peck too. I told Mike that I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wantedâ€"the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper, which will be ignored by the community on the whole...

It is pretty clear that thee skeptics here have staged a bit of a coup, even in the presence of a number of reasonable folks on the editorial board (Whetton, Goodess, ...). My guess is that Von Storch is actually with them (frankly, he's an odd individual, and I'm not sure he isn't himself somewhat of a skeptic himself), and without Von Storch on their side, they would have a very forceful personality promoting their new vision.

There have been several papers by Pat Michaels, as well as the Soon & Baliunas paper, that couldn't get published in a reputable journal. This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal!

So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...

What do others think?

mike

From: Tom Wigley

To: Timothy Carter

Subject: Re: Java climate model

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 09:17:29 -0600

Cc: Mike Hulme, Phil Jones

Tim,

I know about what Matthews has done. He did so without contacting Sarah or me. He uses a statistical emulation method that can never account for the full range of uncertainties. I would not trust it outside the calibration zone -- so I doubt that it can work well for (e.g.) stabilization cases. As far as I know it has not been peer reviewed. Furthermore, unless he has illegally got hold of the TAR version of the model, what he has done can only be an emulation of the SAR version.

Personally, I regard this as junk science (i.e., not science at all). Matthews is doing the community a considerable disservice.

Tom.

PS Re CR, I do not know the best way to handle the specifics of the editoring. Hans von Storch is partly to blameâ€"he encourages the publication of crap science 'in order to stimulate debate'. One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work. I use the word 'perceived' here, since whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care aboutâ€"it is how the journal is seen by the community that counts.

I think we could get a large group of highly credentialed scientists to sign such a letter -- 50+ people. Note that I am copying this view only to Mike Hulme and Phil Jones. Mike's idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not workâ€"must get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually fill up with people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, etc. I have heard that the publishers are not happy with von Storch, so the above approach might remove that hurdle too.

From: Phil Jones

To: Ben Santer

Subject: Re: See the link below

Date: Thu Mar 19 17:02:53 2009

Ben,

I don't know whether they even had a meeting yet - but I did say I would send something to their Chief Exec. In my 2 slides worth at Bethesda I will be showing London's UHI and the effect that it hasn't got any bigger since 1900. It's easy to do with 3 long time series. It is only one urban site (St James Park), but that is where the measurements are from. Heathrow has a bit of a UHI and it has go bigger. I'm having a dispute with the new editor of Weather. I've complained about him to the RMS Chief Exec. If I don't get him to back down, I won't be sending any more papers to any RMS journals and I'll be resigning from the RMS. The paper is about London and its UHI!

Cheers

Phil

[Sigma]

On disputes over data and how to handle such disagreements:

From: "Michael E. Mann"

To: Tim Osborn

Subject: Re: reconstruction errors

Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 11:18:24 -0400

Tim,

Attached are the calibration residual series for experiments based on available networks

back to:

AD 1000

AD 1400

AD 1600

I can't find the one for the network back to 1820! But basically, you'll see that the residuals are pretty red for the first 2 cases, and then not significantly red for the 3rd case--its even a bit better for the AD 1700 and 1820 cases, but I can't seem to dig them up.In any case, the incremental changes are modest after 1600--its pretty clear that key predictors drop out before AD 1600, hence the redness of the residuals, and the notably larger uncertainties farther back...

You only want to look at the first column (year) and second column (residual) of the files. I can't even remember what the other columns are!

Let me know if that helps. Thanks,

mike

p.s. I know I probably don't need to mention this, but just to insure absolutely clarify on this, I'm providing these for your own personal use, since you're a trusted colleague. So please don't pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of "dirty laundry" one doesn't want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things...

From: Ben Santer

To: Leopold Haimberger

Subject: Re: Update on response to Douglass et al., Dian, something like this?

Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:07:03 -0800

Cc: Peter Thorne , Dian Seidel, Tom Wigley, Karl Taylor, Thomas R Karl, John Lanzante, Carl Mears, David C. Bader, Francis W. Zwiers, Frank Wentz, Melissa Free , Michael C. MacCracken, Phil Jones, Steve Sherwood, Steve Klein, Susan Solomon, Tim Osborn, Gavin Schmidt, James J. Hack

Dear Leo,

Thanks very much for your email. I can easily make the observations a bit more prominent in Figure 1. As you can see from today's (voluminous!) email traffic, I've received lots of helpful suggestions regarding improvements to the Figures. I'll try to produce revised versions of the Figures tomorrow. On the autocorrelation issue: The models have a much larger range of lag-1 autocorrelation coefficients (0.66 to 0.95 for T2LT, and 0.69 to 0.95 for T2) than the UAH or RSS data (which range from 0.87 to 0.89). I was concerned that if we used the model lag-1 autocorrelations to guide the choice of AR-1 parameter in the synthetic data analysis, Douglass and colleagues would have an easy opening for criticising us ("Aha! Santer et al. are using model results to guide them in their selection of the coefficients for their AR-1 model!") I felt that it was much more difficult for Douglass et al. to criticize what we've done if we used UAH data to dictate our choice of the AR-1 parameter and the "scaling factor" for the amplitude of the temporal variability. As you know, my personal preference would be to include in our response to Douglass et al. something like the Figure 4 that Peter has produced. While inclusion of a Figure 4 is not essential for the purpose of illuminating the statistical flaws in the Douglass et al. "consistency test", such a Figure would clearly show the (currently large) structural uncertainties in radiosonde-based estimates of the vertical profile of atmospheric temperature changes. I think this is an important point, particularly in view of the fact that Douglass et al. failed to discuss versions 1.3 and 1.4 of your RAOBCORE data - even though they had information from those datasets in their possession.

However, I fully agree with Tom's comment that we don't want to do anything to "steal the thunder" from ongoing efforts to improve sonde-based estimates of atmospheric temperature change, and to better quantify structural uncertainties in those estimates.Your group, together with the groups at the Hadley Centre, Yale, NOAA ARL and NOAA GFDL, deserve great credit for making significant progress on a difficult, time-consuming, yet important problem.

I guess the best solution is to leave this decision up to all of you (the radiosonde dataset developers). I'm perfectly happy to include a version of Figure 4 in our response to Douglass et al. If we do go with inclusion of a Figure 4, you, Peter, Dian, Melissa, Steve Sherwood and John should decide whether you feel comfortable providing radiosonde data for such a Figure. I will gladly abide by your decisions. As you note in your email, our use of a Figure 4 would not preclude a more detailed and thorough comparison of simulated and observed amplification in some later publication. Once again, thanks for all your help with this project, Leo.

With best regards,

Ben

From: Tom Wigley

To: Phil Jones

Subject: 1940s

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600

Cc: Ben Santer

Phil,

Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global meanâ€"but we'd still have to explain the land blip. I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blipsâ€"higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.

Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with "why the blip". Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NHâ€"just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. noteâ€"from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not)â€"but not really enough.

So ... why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I'd appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have.

Tom.

From: Gary Funkhouser

To: Keith Briffa

Subject: kyrgyzstan and siberian data

Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 15:37:09 -0700

Keith,

Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I'll send it to you.

I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. It was pretty funny though - I told Malcolm what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating the response functionsâ€"he laughed and said that's what he thought at first also. The data's tempting but there's too much variation even within stands. I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already haveâ€"they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I'll have to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is. Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I'd be optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations. Yeah, I doubt I'll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I'd like to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably someday though.

Cheers, Gary

Gary Funkhouser

Lab. of Tree-Ring Research

The University of Arizona

From: Michael Mann

To: Phil Jones

Subject: Re: Straight to the Point

Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 13:09:36 -0400 (EDT)

Cc: Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes, Ray Bradley, Tim Osborn

Hi Phil,

SOrry that you have taken such a negative spin from this. I had hoped it was all resolved pretty amicably, and emphasized to Keith and Tim that I was being perhaps overly picky this time PRECISELY to avoid the misunderstanding that happened last time around w/ Science.

Trust that I'm certainly on board w/ you that we're all working towards a common goal. That is what is distressing about commentarys (yours from last year, and potentially, without us having had approprimate input, Keith and Tim's now) that appear to "divide and conquer". The skeptics happily took your commentary last year as reason to doubt our results! In fact, your piece was references in several commentaries (mostly on the WEB, not published) attacking our work. So THAT is what this is all about. It is in the NAME of the common effort we're all engaged in, that I have voiced concerns about language and details in this latest commentary--so as to avoid precisely that scenario. Please understand the above to be a complete and honest statement about the source of my concerns. It really doesn't have anything to do about who did what first, etc. I trust that history will give us all proper credit for what we're doing here.

The millennial-scale trend issue appears to be a source of contention. Malcolm can address the replication issue better than any of us--it's not a problem w/ our reconstruction. Furthermore, WE HAVE EXPLICITLY TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT THE LOSS OF LOW-FREQUENCY VARIANCE IN OUR ESTIMATES OF UNCERTAINTY. I don't know how many times I need to stress this. It is of fundamental importance in framing our conclusions. Our own analysis convinces me that things are already quite uncertain a millennium back in time. With regard to longer timescale variations, the evidence is all over the place. At EGS I saw some convincing evidence that many new paleo proxies indicate steadily decline at least over several millennia, and so do, in large part, the available long borehole estimates (though we should all take that w/ a good dose of NaCl). So I'm skeptical of estimates more than a millennium back in time until we have multiple proxies we can trust at that timescale, and can verify somehow the DC component of the estimates, or at least replicate them. This was my concern about the latest 2000 year recon that was shown. You are right, the Milankovitch forcing argument is ONLY A NULL HYPOTHESIS. I hope I haven't argued anything more than that. That our millennial scale trend, which we reasonably trust, and have some idea of the uncertainties in, is in line w/ that null hypothesis is information that cannot be ignored. That Kutzbach, Berger, and others are showing increasingly convincing model integrations over several millennia suggesting this, is more evidence.In the real word, anything *could* have happened. But lets not loose site of the appropriate null hypothesis here.

I hope the above clears things up somewhat. I'm sorry things have been construed in more negative light than I had ever intended. Call me anytime to discuss, here at the office (not sure how well our schedules overlap though).

Thanks, and sorry for the miscommunication here,

mike

_______________________________________________________________________

From: Phil Jones

To: Tom Wigley

Subject: Re: MBH

Date: Fri Oct 22 15:13:20 2004

Cc: Ben Santer

Tom,

Just got the Science attachments for the von Storch et al. paper for Tim and Keith, so I thought you might like to see them. I've just sent a reply to von Storch as he claims his model is a better representation of reality than MBH. How a model that is only given past forcing histories can be better than some proxy data is beyond me, but Hans seems to believe this. The ERA-40 report and JGR paper are relevant here. ERA-40 is not of climate quality. There are differences and trends with CRU data before the late 1970s and again around the mid-1960s that should include other variables that are calculated. It is so bad in the Antarctic that ERA-40 rejects most of the surface obs (because they get little weight) and they don't begin to get accepted until the late 1970s. Conclusion is that you can't consider ERA-40 for climate purposes. Maybe the next generation, with a considerable efforts in getting all the missing back data in and changes to weights given to surface data might mean the 3rd generation is better. I shouldn't rabbit on about this as I have to go home to drive with Ruth to Gatwick for our week in Florence. A lot of people criticise MBH and other papers Mike has been involved in, but how many people read them fully - or just read bits like the attached. The attached is a complete distortion of the facts. M&M are completely wrong in virtually everything they say or do. I have sent them countless data series that were used in the Jones/Mann Reviews of Geophysics papers. I got scant thanks from them for doing thisâ€"only an email saying I had some of the data series wrong, associated with the wrong year/decade.

I wasted a few hours checking what I'd done and got no thanks for pointing their mistake out

to them. If you think M&M are correct and believable then go to this web site

[1]http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/

It will take a while to get around these web pages and you've got to be a bit of nerd and know the jargon, but it lists all the mistakes McKittrick has made in various papers. I bet there isn't a link to this on his web site. The final attachment is a comment on a truly awful paper by McKittirck and Michaels. I can't find the original, but it's reference is in this. The paper didn't consider spatial autocorrelation at all. Fortunately a longer version of the paper did get rejected by IJCâ€"it seems a few papers are rejected! Point I'm trying to make is you cannot trust anything that M&M write. MBH is as good a way of putting all the data together as others.We get similar results in the work in the Holocene in 1998 (Jones et al) and so does Tom Crowley in a paper in 1999. Keith's reconstruction is strikingly similar in his paper from JGR in 2001. Mike's may have slightly less variability on decadal scales than the others (especially cf Esper et al), but he is using a lot more data than the others. I reckon they are all biased a little to the summer and none are truly annual â€"I say all this in the Reviews of Geophysics paper!

Bottom line - their is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility. Must got to Florence now. Back in Nov 1.

Cheers

Phil

From: Tom Wigley

To: Doug Martinson

Subject: Re: Your help, please?

Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 10:07:42 -0600 (MDT)

Cc: Kevin Trenberth, Byron Boville, Grant Branstator, Jeff Kiehl, FP Bretherton, Ralph Cicerone, C. Covey, Tom Crowley, J Curry, pdadd@xxxx.xxx, Larry Gates, Lisa Graumlich, Dennis Hartmann, barafu@xxxx.xxx, Thomas Karl, Richard Lindzen, W. Timothy Liu, Joel Sloman, Jerry Marks, Robert Malone , Gerald Meehl, Berrien Moore, Dick Moritz, J. David Neelin, Reginald Newell, Gerald North, James J. O'Brien, W. R. Peltier, Raymond Pierrehumbert, V. Ramanathan, Dave Randall, Eugene M. Rasmusson, David Rind, Alan Cohn, njrosenberg@xxx.gov, Ed Sarachik, Michael E. Schlesinger, Edwin Schneider, Jagadish Shukla, Eric Smith, rsomervi@xxx.edu, Richard Turco, Duane Waliser, Mike Wallace, John Walsh, Wei-Chyung Wang, "P.D. Jones" , Edward Cook, Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes, Ray Bradley, Tim Barnett, Jay Fein, Ben Santer ,

Dear Doug,

In response to Jay Fein's e-mail re den-cen, here are some points (which may merely echo where you are already).

(1) Why study den-cen? Reason is: improve understanding of climate system to aid in detection and prediction. You should read Ch. 8 (detection) of IPCC WGI SAR in this regard.

(2) How to study den-cen? Models and observed data are equally important. Models (coupled O/AGCMs) can only give the internal component of variability, instrumental and paleodata give internal-plus-external.

(3) How useful are paleodata?I support the continued collection of such data, but I am disturbed by how some people in the paleo community try to oversell their product. A specific example is the ice core isotope record, which correlates very poorly with temperature on the annual to decadal timescale (and possibly also on the century timescale)---question, how do we ever demonstrate the usefulness or otherwise of ice core isotopes on this timescale?

There are other well known proxy data issues that need careful thought...

(a) Sedimentary records---dating. Are 14C-dated records of any value at all (unless wiggle matched)?

(b) Seasonal specificity---how useful is a proxy record that tells us about a single season (or only part of the year)?

(c) Climate variance explained by the proxy variable--close to zero for ice core isotopes, up to 50% for tree rings, somewhere in between for most other indicators. How valuable are such partially explained records in helping explain the past?

(d) Signal-to-noise problems---a key issue is, what role has external forcing had on climate over the past 10,000 years. There is a tendency to interpret observed changes as evidence of external forcingâ€"usually unjustifiably. Few workers in the area realize that paleo interpretation has a detection aspect, just like interpreting the past 100+ years---only much more difficult. More work is needed on this.

(e) Frequency dependence of explained variance---the classic example here is tree rings, where it is exceedingly difficult to get out a credible low frequency (50+ year time scale) message. Work in this area could reap useful rewards.

(f) Coverage---what about den-cen data from the oceans? We need much more of this, especially in regions that might provide insights into mechanisms (like NADW changes).

(4) Causes. Here, ice cores are more valuable (CO2, CH4 and volcanic aerosol changes). But the main external candidate is solar, and more work is required to improve the "paleo" solar forcing record and to understand how the climate system responds both globally and regionally to solar forcing.

I hope these very hasty ramblings are helpful

Cheers,

Tom

P.S. I've added Ben Santer, Tim Barnett, Ed Cook, Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes, Ray Bradley and Phil Jones to your mailing list.