In other words, whatever there is blameworthy in the ill effects these FOI requests had on their work should largely be laid at the feet of CRU principals.

Steve: All of the 61 requests resulted from prior obstruction – they were not for data, but for confidentiality agreements that supposedly contained a clause prohibiting distribution of station data to “non-academics”. As has been discussed at length, there were no such agreements and all the 61 requests were refused with form letters and a short webpage put up. Climate scientists have spread much disinformation about this.

My request was:

I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect of the surviving raw data
for the CRUTEM project.

Based on the webpage http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/
and in particular the following statement

> Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun
> new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an
> individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant
> that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series
> after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data
> but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.

it seems like CRU have discarded some, but not all, raw data and that
in addition some, but not all, of the raw data they have may be
covered by a confidentiality agreement.

I therefore request
1) such raw data as exists and is not subject to a confidentiality agreement
2) a list of stations (and dates if partial data exists) where such
raw data is known to be lost
and
3) a list of stations and data providers (ie. national meterological
organizations) for such data that exists but is under a
confidentiality agreement.

I am requesting this information for the purposes of academic research.

The catch was that, as we now know, there was no policy of data retention, archiving or record keeping and hence this request was impossible to fulfill.

Had there been some reasonable data retention policy, and indeed had there been some data retained, meeting my request would have been the work of perhaps an hour by a secretary of perhaps an IT technician. As it was though it would seem likely that the only person who really knew where the data might have been was Phil Jones himself (though maybe ‘Harry’ could have dug up some of it) and putting it together would have been a non trivial task because it would have been scattered all over the place.

Assuming such a list exists it is entirely besides the point. The point is this. CRU are obligated to keep good records. CRU refused to supply the temperature data under false pretenses. We could have done any number of things. We chose to exercise our rights under law and request the information. What we COULD HAVE DONE has no bearing on what we are allowed to do under law and what CRU obligations are under law. The Sad fact is that CRU got themselves MORE WORK by choosing the path they chose. You should see the effort they had to go through to put out the requests to the various METS. I have some of that correspondence, under FOIA of course

the simple fact is the effort cost jones less than 18 hours. I know because my request was denied because they thought it would take more than 18 hours to comply with it. Jones kept shitty records. he claims this as an excuse. Fine. If that cost him some time, perhaps he should have stayed in the office the afternoon of Nov 12th instead of leaving early. maybe he would have caught the whistleblower

1228330629.txt

From: Phil Jones
To: santer1@llnl.gov, Tom Wigley
Subject: Re: Schles suggestion
Date: Wed Dec 3 13:57:09 2008
Cc: mann , Gavin Schmidt , Karl Taylor , peter gleckler

Ben,
When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide
by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince
them otherwise showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school – the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. I’ve got to know the FOI person quite well and the Chief Librarian – who deals with appeals. The VC is also aware of what is going on – at least for one of the requests, but probably doesn’t know the number we’re dealing with. We are in double figures.

ALREADY IN DOUBLE FIGURES BY DEC 2008.

Here is a response from UEA to me, with Q and A alternating. (I have shorthened it here).

“David Palmer
Information Policy & Compliance Manager
University of East Anglia
Response to Freedom of Information request (FOI_09-137)
I have two questions which relate to copyright in particular and the sharing of information in general.
Does the University of East Anglia, or any of its employees, or Parties sensibly related to the University, have a primary agreement to share data with the BOM?
No, we do not have any such agreements with the Bureau of Meteorology
Does the University of East Anglia, or any of its employees, or Parties sensibly related to the University, have a secondary agreement to share data from the BOM with third parties, beyond fair use provisions?
No, we do not have any such agreements with the Bureau of Meteorology.”

No science needed, not very demanding as you note.

I’m more worried when CRU knowingly uses info that it should not.

Part of Climategate 1237496573.txt from P Jones as an aside to “Paul” in an email to Ben Santer date 19 March 2009.

“Another issue that should be considered as well is this.
With many papers, we’re using Met Office observations. We’ve abstracted these
from BADC to use them in the papers. We’re not allowed to make these available
to others. We’d need to get the Met Office’s permission in all cases.”