New Climategate Emails

New climategate dossier here. [Update – try here]

See notice from “FOIA” here and subsequent comments as well as discussion at Jeff Id here.

I’ll comment later after I have a chance to look at things.

[Update /Jean S : Searchable database here.  h/t phil]

362 Comments

  1. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:06 AM | Permalink

    It’s like welcome home FOIA. And thanks.

    • MikeN
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:46 AM | Permalink

      Lubos Motl posted a link to all emails as one big 65MB text file. BUt it does not have individual file numbers.

  2. pax
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:10 AM | Permalink

    Here we go again. Popcorn time!

  3. Stephen Richards
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:34 AM | Permalink

    Unbelievable. Never in all my years as a scientist have I seen such blatant dishonesty so openly displayed. How on earth do they get away with this stuff.

    • ll
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:08 PM | Permalink

      But… is that science?

  4. kim
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:37 AM | Permalink

    This turkey is thankful.
    ========

  5. Latimer Alder
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:52 AM | Permalink

    I’m sure these will add an extra interesting dimension to the discussions at Durban next week. Immaculate timing (if verifiably genuine)

  6. Barry Woods
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:53 AM | Permalink

    This one perhaps worth picking out….

    “I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I
    could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.

    […] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is
    precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.
    Bradley: “

    • Barry Woods
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:55 AM | Permalink

      Lost it’s format – txt 3373

      Also…

      Bradley:

      I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.

      Cook:

      I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly cannot be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.

      Barnett:

      [IPCC AR5 models] clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer

      Jones:

      Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low level clouds.

      Jones:

      I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process

  7. Dave Dardinger
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:59 AM | Permalink

    #3148 is a bit interesting in terms of the team feeling for this blog:

    Hi Phil,

    Looking forward to the new TS 3.0(!!!!) and the new scPDSI calculated from it. How will
    Gerard determine where it is rubbish? From my own perspective, I would prefer to determine
    that myself. Will I send the paper to Climate Audit? Have I gone senile or insane? Since
    not yet on both accounts, nah! I agree that Venus is better than Mars for those bastards.
    It is more hell-like by all accounts. The audit folks might want to debate the existence of
    greenhouse warming there as well. Not even Bush would recommend sending astronauts to
    Venus. Mars after being bathed in cosmic rays for months to get there is okay by his logic.

    Cheers,

    Ed

  8. Barry Woods
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:05 AM | Permalink

    😉 😉 😉

    Mann:

    the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what
    the site [Real Climate] is about.

  9. Dave Dardinger
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:10 AM | Permalink

    BTW, are all of the emails in this cache different from the ones in the last batch?

  10. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:11 AM | Permalink

    They’re going to need a lot more whitewash. The only possible conclusion is that the CRU was created up to bring down the CAGW myth.

    • jorgekafkazar
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:03 PM | Permalink

      But who will whitewash the whitewashers from last time?

  11. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:26 AM | Permalink

    Here’s a short script that I wrote to organize the files into an R-list so that they are quickly searchable.

    	K=5349
    	alias=c("000","00","0","")
    	numbertochar=function(j) { n=nchar(j); paste(alias[n],j,sep="") }
    
    	cru=rep(list(NA),K)
    	for(i in 1074:K) {
    	 handle=try(unz("d:/foi/FOIA2011.zip", paste( "FOIA/mail/",numbertochar(i),".txt",sep=""),"r"))
    	 if(! class(handle)=="try-error") {cru[[i]]=scan(handle,sep="\n",what=""); close(handle)}
    	}
    	# save(cru,file="d:/climate/data/cru/cru2.tab")
    

    Here is a search function

    ##disinformation
    search=function(word,A=cru) {
    	Data=NULL
    	for(i in 1:K) {
    	  index=grep(word,A[[i]])
    	  N=length(index)
     	  if(N>0) {dummy=data.frame(num=rep(i,N),line=index,comment= substr(A[[i]][index],1,80))
    	  Data=rbind(Data,dummy)}
    	}
    	return(Data)
    }
    
    

    I did a quick search of my own name and found 941 mentions (of which quite a few are repeats in email threads.

    test = search(word="McIntyre")
    
    • rc
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:36 AM | Permalink

      Re: Steve McIntyre (Nov 22 09:26),

      also 9 MacIntyres.

      • JJ
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:42 PM | Permalink

        And a couple of ‘the Macs’.

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:30 AM | Permalink

      Steve, please let us know if you can confirm any of these emails. Do any include forwarded replies from skeptics in the thread so we know they are real?
      Jo

      • Steve McIntyre
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:37 AM | Permalink

        these are from the same dossier.

        The original dossier typically had vignettes from ongoing correspondence. It was like the curtain being lifted to give a glimpse, but the curtain would then close. The present dossier looks like a much more complete version.

        The new dossier is not in calendar order either. I’ve spent time this morning trying to place the emails in order.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:59 PM | Permalink

          The present dossier looks like a much more complete version.

          That’s great to hear. Sorry for making a link with Durban in my excitement earlier, by the way. I should have let foia’s stated motivation stand as it is. Whatever they’re playing at there’s style and substance. Respect.

        • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:42 AM | Permalink

          Thank you Steve!

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:56 AM | Permalink

      Now the converstaions with switfhack make more sense

      • Steve McIntyre
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:06 PM | Permalink

        how so?

        • steven mosher
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:04 PM | Permalink

          it seemed to me that swifthack and RC had talked.. and swifthack was askinghim “what do you want

          as if there was a deal on the table.

          pure speculation

        • Gary
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:53 PM | Permalink

          Can we presume CRUtape Vol 2 is on the way?

        • steven mosher
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:22 PM | Permalink

          no. Im busy on other stuff.

          unless the press gets it horribly wrong ( which was my first motivation) I am not inclined
          to dumpster dive

    • HaroldW
      Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 5:31 PM | Permalink

      One of those McIntyre references is #1017 from Tom Wigley to Keith Briffa:
      “Keith,

      See the last item. Why don’t you just give these people the raw data?
      Are you hiding something — your apparent refusal to be forthcoming sure
      makes it look as though you are.

      Tom.”

      The “last item” is
      (10) AND FINALLY: SCIENCE SHENANGIGANS GO ON
      Steve McIntyre, 9 May 2006
      presumably referring to this post.

  12. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:46 AM | Permalink

    ‘foia’ also left the link on the talkshop at 09.28GMT today, soon after posting here on CA. Making sure it wasn’t missed this time. 🙂

    • Jason
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:31 PM | Permalink

      What’s ‘the talkshop’?

      • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 3:01 AM | Permalink

        My blog. tallbloke.wordpress.com

        So far as I know, ‘foia’ left the link at five sites: CA, Wattsup, the talkshop, jo-nova’s and Jeff ID’s.

        Why ‘foia’ chose my site in the UK raher than one of the higher profile, more ‘politics’ orientated sites like Bishop Hill, I don’t know.

        Maybe (s)he’s a regular lurker. 🙂

        • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 4:38 AM | Permalink

          I will always be grateful that you rudely interrupted the flow at Judith Curry’s to alert me to FOIA2001 in the morning London time, shortly after it had ‘gone live’ Roger. (I ended up as downloader number 22 on the original .ru site.) Getting the link and spotting it will remain a great feather in the talkshop’s hat – though I decided to focus here on Climate Audit as we tried to figure out what exactly it contained. Of all places, this seems the spiritual home for ‘foia’. As I suggested the whistleblower might be saying on The Mosher Timeline on 15 Jan 10:

          Dear Steve, I’m afraid it’s the best I can do. Till next time.

          It turned out this was the next time – and we’re very grateful.

  13. TheBigYinJames
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:47 AM | Permalink

    Warming to see that they managed to duplicate YOUR results, Steve 🙂

  14. dearieme
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:03 AM | Permalink

    ” Crowley:

    I am not convinced that the “truth” is always worth reaching if it is at the
    cost of damaged personal relationships”.”

    That’s where you and I differ, bub.

  15. EJD
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:32 AM | Permalink

    I can only assume that Steig is referring to Steve here:

    Steig:

    He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he
    thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the
    supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.

    • TerryMN
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:40 AM | Permalink

      No, he’s referring to David Bromwich. 2095.txt

  16. EJD
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:36 AM | Permalink

    Does this make Mitchell a denier?

    3994 Mitchell/MetO

    Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no

  17. TheBigYinJames
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:39 AM | Permalink

    As I noted at Bishophill, A lot of the “MetO” comments seem level-headed and genuinely sceptical (by comparison with the rest of the hysterical bunch) – shows them in a relatively better light. A clue perhaps….

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:07 PM | Permalink

      Except that they won’t say any of those things in public, so no, it doesn’t show them in a better light.

  18. Harriet Harridan
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:46 AM | Permalink

    Boy, am I looking forward to Steve’s next article! [Must stop hitting ‘refresh’ and let the man think..]

  19. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:54 AM | Permalink

    He is still posting the link. I saw the link on Joanne Nova’s site pop up about an hour ago.

  20. TerryMN
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:00 AM | Permalink

    2509.txt is an interesting continuance of the “Travesty” thread.

    Synopsis:

    Wigley: Mike, the Figure you sent is very deceptive…

    Mann: Well, ok…[snip]…but you should talk to Gavin, it’s his plot, after all.

    Schmidt: The kind of things we are hearing “no model showed a cooling”, the “data is outside the range of the models” need to be addressed directly.

    Heh.

  21. rep49
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:01 AM | Permalink

    Steve:

    Do a search on the word “Oxburgh”.

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:03 PM | Permalink

      FYI, a simple text search turned up the following 7 files with “Oxburgh” in them – none of which was after Nov 19, 2009:

      0619.txt
      0652.txt
      1085.txt
      1191.txt
      2593.txt
      5118.txt
      5349.txt

      A reasonable idea, but nothing of importance.

      • rep49
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:12 PM | Permalink

        Steve, no, there wouldn’t have been anything after that date. The significance lies in the term “undependent inquiry”. Thanks for the list, though, as I’ve been unable to set up a search facility on my own…. yet.

        • P. Solar
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 2:51 AM | Permalink

          Having found them, you should look at the content of those messages.

          They don’t seem to be either to him or from him or even concerning him in any way other than he may be speaking somewhere.

          If you find something like “I’ve spoken to our buddy Oxburgh and he agrees”. It may be worth looking at.

          I don’t think that is the case. This is a non event.

        • Steve Garcia
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 9:27 PM | Permalink

          I saw that. That is why I said “This is a non event.”

  22. Bob Koss
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:25 AM | Permalink

    My download at 10.22am EST was #965.

    Checked just now and I get an error “can’t connect to the remote server.” Either it is overloaded or has been taken off line.

  23. Punksta
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:25 AM | Permalink

    The first link seems to be broken 😦
    (the “here” in “New climategate dossier here”).

  24. Tom
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:32 AM | Permalink

    Are these authentic?

  25. Craig Loehle
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:33 AM | Permalink

    Those defending the IPCC team seem to be taking the stance that these emails are no big deal, and nothing illegal. Here is why I think it matters:
    1) Actively subverting FOIA intent
    2) Admitting a) Hockey stick flawed & Steve is right, b) hide decline was dishonest, c) climate models are pretty bad, and d) cherry picking results like Japan hurricanes to emphasize a pre-ordained message
    3) Trying to manipulate (and probably succeeding) who gets to be IPCC author
    4) Trying to manage the message (PR concern)
    5) Viewing science results as helping or hurting “the cause” — Mann especially
    All the above subverts the official messages of “overwhelming consencus” and “science is settled”, world’s best scientists just doing their science, and that it would be “absurd” to see a conspiracy.

  26. BarryW
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:36 AM | Permalink

    I’m not sure I believe that these are real yet. How do we verify that they haven’t been faked?

    • Sean Peake
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:43 AM | Permalink

      @ BarryW: Mann seems to think so
      http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2011/11/fresh-round-of-hacked-climate-science.html

      • Tom
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:36 PM | Permalink

        Thanks. I hope Leo Hickman/The Guardian or someone gets a few more confirmations. Eventually, UEA should confirm or deny.
        The last time this happened, it impressed me that Mosher first made an effort to confirm that the emails were authentic.
        That’s probably the right approach for the second batch of emails.
        Confirm the authenticity of the emails.

        • Mark F
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:39 PM | Permalink

          Mann has already done that, while claiming that they contain nothing of importance.

    • Jason
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:44 PM | Permalink

      Do you know how much work would have to go into faking 5000 emails? Cui bono?

  27. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:49 AM | Permalink

    Recall what I said the other day

    • ChE
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM | Permalink

      Yes, I remember. A little birdie showed up at your window?

      • steven mosher
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:47 PM | Permalink

        premonition

  28. Craig Loehle
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:50 AM | Permalink

    My favorite one so far is where they admit tuning the models to 20th Century climate, which in debates (e.g., one I had in person with Michael Schlesinger and others at Judith’s) is strenuously denied.

  29. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:00 PM | Permalink

    Someone calling themselves ‘Joe Public’ has put a torrent link on my blog.

  30. Sean Inglis
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:01 PM | Permalink

    1527.txt

    “There has been criticism by Macintyre of Mann’s sole reliance on RE, and I am now starting to believe the accusations”

  31. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:03 PM | Permalink

    Always right before climate talks…the timing of these e-mails is rather suspicious.

    • Mark F
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:06 PM | Permalink

      As though the barrage of alarmist releases isn’t? A little biased are you?

      • Sean Inglis
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:08 PM | Permalink

        From my comment at Bishop Hill:

        =====

        As we coast into COP17 on 28th November, BBC R4’s “The Infinite Monkey Cage” will be looking a “balance” with Brian Cox and a special guest appearance from Paul Nurse on that same day.

        According to the trailer at the end of this weeks episode

        http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017cb0w/The_Infinite_Monkey_Cage_Series_5_Whats_the_North_Ever_Done_for_Us/

        “…is it only fair to give everyone a platform however wrong they are?”

        (at 27:30 onwards)

        I expect the fact that these two events are happening at the same time is the purest coincidence, and we won’t be hearing phrases involving the words “denier”, “consensus”, “robust” etc. etc. etc.

        =====

        Also a marked increase in tweets from various team members.

      • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:12 PM | Permalink

        What ‘alarmist releases’ (specifically those with some connection to working scientists, rather than random journalists)?

        I won’t deny that people exaggerate issues on both sides, I was just mentioning the timing. You can pretty much guarantee some sort of nonsense will come out before big climate events- the swindle video, climategate, etc.

        • Craig Loehle
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:18 PM | Permalink

          So, Chris, you think climategate was “nonsense”? I seem to remember that it clarified the “hide the decline” history, as only one example of what it showed.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:22 PM | Permalink

          Yes, I thought the post-gate “spin” on much the e-mails was “nonsense.” It showed in some cases irresponsibility but nothing more. And everyone knows that “hide the decline” referred to a well-known divergence issue that was justified in the literature- the ClimateAudit twist has no weight and was indefensible.

        • pax
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:51 PM | Permalink

          Hand -> face

        • Jeff Norman
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:00 PM | Permalink

          LOL pax LOL

        • John F. Pittman
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:59 PM | Permalink

          No, Chris, what the divergence in each case has been written in the literature is that it is assumed to be a problem that can be ignored, not shown to be justified in removal and/or replacement of different schemes, not shown that it can be ignored.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:10 PM | Permalink

          It might be an assumption, and the cause of the phenomenon may not well be understood. That is irrelevant. The authors made a choice to take out data that is known to be wrong, and that choice was documented. You don’t need to like the choice, but the conspiracies and accusations don’t at all follow, and it’s precisely the reason why everyone outside of two or three blogs does not take CA’s generous host seriously. Yet everyone wonders…

        • Craig Loehle
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:19 PM | Permalink

          Wow, Chris. “data known to be wrong”–and how does anyone know this? The tree ring data in some series, but not others, goes down not up in recent decades. I explained in
          Loehle, C. 2009. A Mathematical Analysis of the Divergence Problem in Dendroclimatology. Climatic Change 94:233-245
          that this implies that the tree ring data make a dubious proxy. There is no “proof” that there is something “wrong” with the post-1960 data. No justification for dropping it from graphs. They just dropped it because it did not give an answer they liked. Do your homework.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:28 PM | Permalink

          Craig, I really have no desire to respond to you, but everyone who studies this subject knows the data is wrong (anyone can look at the instrumental record and see this trivially). The problem is also known to apply primarily to only a particular subset of tree rings, and trees in different regions are known to respond differently to various factors. This is not my field, but to be blunt I’d trust a dendroclimatologist to tell me more about the limitations and current understanding than anyone here.

          Of course, I didn’t say that the pre-divergence data is “right,” but again, that is irrelevant to the accusations related to climategate. Personally, I agree there is a lot of progress to be made in tree ring science, and whether tree rings are dubious or not, and what they may have the potential to tell us, is largely irrelevant to what I focus on. It’s also of tiny importance to the whole issue of AGW, and almost entirely irrelevant to the physics, sensitivity, or attribution issues.

        • Craig Loehle
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:42 PM | Permalink

          Well Chris, I actually AM a forester, so trees are my thing. If trees respond sometimes + and sometimes – to temperature (see Wilmking’s work, for example), then they are not very good treemometers.
          As far as “it doesn’t matter”–remember the key place of the hockey stick graph in AR3 and the spagetti graph in AR4, as well as the attribution studies (attribution including climate sensitivity) based on Moberg or Mann’s work for a pre-instrumental test of climate models (and used to dismiss the importance of solar activity). So, not so unimportant to the debate.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:52 PM | Permalink

          Well, we clearly disagree regarding its importance and its relevance to future climate change.

        • John F. Pittman
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:42 PM | Permalink

          Chris, it warms my heart to see you throw out IPCC AR4 with your response to me and Craig. It just makes me wonder where your support for stating it is “”almost entirely irrelevant to the physics, sensitivity, or attribution issues”” which is not what IPCC AR4 stated in chapters 9 and 10.

          Though it does tickle me to see you disagree with AR4.

          Keep up the good work.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:03 PM | Permalink

          Instead of trying to point score, try to be serious. Certainly, some people see the value in using the last millennia as a good target for climate sensitivity estimates, but it is only a very weak constraint (see e.g., Knutti and Hegerl, 2008 for a review) and while there a few papers on it, they aren’t highly influential; other paleoclimates such as the LGM are usually held in higher regard, because they are well approximated as an equilibrium state, and with a much larger forcing/temperature signal.

          Clearly, the causes of climate change over the last millennium have very little to do with attribution of modern warming, or for future prediction. Attribution is very much like playing detective, and you can’t say someone is innocent of arson just because fires have happened naturally due to lightning in the past. This post seems too obvious to require justification, and I don’t see how the IPCC says otherwise.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:04 PM | Permalink

          This point**

        • Niels A Nielsen
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:47 PM | Permalink

          “The problem is also known to apply primarily to only a particular subset of tree rings”

          Is that known? Really? One more reason to discard recent work of Michael Mann who shows that the problem extends to even non-dendro proxies:

        • juanslayton
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:33 PM | Permalink

          Unless you are referring to sloppy measurement, data can not be wrong. This data was not discarded because it was wrong, but because the researchers either did not understand or were not willing to accept what it implied.

        • Neil Fisher
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 8:57 PM | Permalink

          Craig, I really have no desire to respond to you, but everyone who studies this subject knows the data is wrong (anyone can look at the instrumental record and see this trivially).

          This is where you are wrong Chris – the data is not demonstrably “wrong”. Can you point to where the data is wrong? No, you can only suggest that by using the data as a proxy for temperature, the resultant proxy record does not match the instrumental record. This does not mean the data is wrong, it means your interpretation of it as a proxy for temperature is wrong. Further, since no-one appears to be able to show convincingly exactly why and how this divergence occurs, this taints the entire record – at least in terms of it’s use as a proxy for temperature.

        • Steve Garcia
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:36 PM | Permalink

          Craig –

          For mush less academic reasons, I agree that tree rings are not good proxies for temperature, since tree rings are also used as proxies for precipitation. I can’t see how they can be proxies for both, especially in the pre-1900 (pre-thermometer) period.

          In reading your referenced paper, this stood out:

          The fact that divergence has been so widely observed across tree species and regions indicates that choosing positive responders (or responsive sites) does not guarantee linearity of response.

          It seems terribly unlikely that the various positive responder tree species would all have their divergence threshold within the same narrow temperature/anomaly range.

          Also, this:

          The results of a study by Wilson et al. (2007) are also relevant. In this study, tree ring series were selected for model development that extended into the 1990s (more recent than in past studies) and only sites showing a strong temperature response at the local scale were chosen. In this case much less divergence was found, suggesting that there is nothing unique about recent decades.

          How is this not cheating or fudging? To pick only those sites? Doesn’t that give an artificially high – and misleading – responding rate?

          In addition, I agree with this:

          One unique factor of the late twentieth century is rising carbon dioxide levels, but this should cause positive divergence (increased growth relative to warming), not negative (e.g. Idso 1989).

          But this means there should be less divergence. And the fact that a couple of more recent studies show less divergence should not sway the discussion unless those same studies both go back to the early 1900 period, plus show some convincing argument is made as to why previous studies have wrong methodology.

        • RDCII
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:12 PM | Permalink

          Chris, the data isn’t “wrong”. That’s a Wonderland-worthy inversion of the meanings of the words.

          The data could be wrong if it was gathered improperly…if, for instance, the rings were mismeasured. But no one has ever claimed that.

          The data is what the data is. What can be WRONG is the theory that tree-ring data accurately and predictably shows what the world temp is.

          “The problem is also known to apply primarily to only a particular subset of tree rings”…if true, it means NONE of the data from that this set of tree-rings should have been on the graph in the first place.

          Understand that if you are accurately portraying their determinations, then everything below follows logically from BELIEVING them. You don’t have to believe me; this is what follows if that set of tree-rings is known to be an exception to the theory.

          The graph was intended to show that multiple proxies all showed the same story. So, if this subset of tree-rings is known to be an exception to the theory, then the deceit was including the portion that was known to have ACCIDENTALLY told the same story, as if it were further evidence of the agreement of the proxies.

          From the climategate letters, I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of what actually happened. Trenberth wanted this proxy on the graph, but it was problematic for the story…so they “hid” the decline. But, if what you’re saying is true, it was deceitful to show any portion of that data on the graph.

        • stan
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:23 PM | Permalink

          Counsel has no further questions for the witness. Further impeachment of his credibility isn’t necessary.

        • ChE
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:52 PM | Permalink

          Oh, really.

        • MikeN
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:42 AM | Permalink

          So the Copenhagen Diagnosis wasn’t timed to set up the Copenhagen conference?

      • Stephen Richards
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:08 PM | Permalink

        No Colose is NOT a little biased; He is VERY biased. A frequent contributer to RC.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:11 PM | Permalink

          which of course makes me “biased!”

        • stan
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:26 PM | Permalink

          Given what Mann says about the purpose of RC, that certainly is a logical conclusion.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:33 PM | Permalink

          I have no affiliation with RC other than a commenter (and guest contributed a few times), and on several occasions have expressed disagreement with an RC author. I’ve done the same at various other blogs, including Judith Curry’s (where I’ve also done a guest post).

          Part of the good thing of an atmospheric science education is that you can actually judge other blog comments on issues you have been trained in without being spoon fed information on stuff you aren’t in a position to judge. I say that without comment or implications about this site….

        • Bruce
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:22 PM | Permalink

          Why not release all your emails to RC?

        • john f pittman
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:41 PM | Permalink

          Chris you make a claim about your ability to judge without being spoonfed information and yet do not acknowledge what was stated in AR4 9 and 10 with respect to models and paleo reconstructions, ignoring about 25 pages of AR4 and how it was attributed. Your detective story is just that a story. It is not what is stated in the chapters. I am not scoring points except as that you will not read, or will not comprehend. The AR4 is quite specific in how the agreement of paleo and models with and without CO2 forcing raised their confidence in their conclusions. In fact the ability to do centenial and even multidecadal model runs depend on the efficacy of the paleo work per AR4. Your statement is nonsense wrt AR4. The emails already put out on the net wrt to models are already showing that this was discussed in their emails as part of AR4.

        • Gerald Machnee
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:30 PM | Permalink

          No, the content of your comments such as this one do.

    • Sean Inglis
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:07 PM | Permalink

      Why suspicious? It’s totally obvious the timing is deliberate. Why shouldn’t it be?

      • ChE
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:56 PM | Permalink

        Precisely. This was intended to have an impact. And water is still wet.

    • Steve McIntyre
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:09 PM | Permalink

      maybe so, maybe not. there’s usually some sort of climate event on the horizon. Why wouldnt it have been released before Cancun?

    • glacierman
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:17 PM | Permalink

      Tough. Afraid it might slow down the funding pipeline?

      • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:20 PM | Permalink

        No. I don’t think NSF or people interested in science really care much about the conspiracies. I’m quote sure my funding over the next two years will be just fine, regardless of what a few scientists have said in their personal e-mails.

        • glacierman
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:37 PM | Permalink

          Then why are you bringing up the timing? Is exposure of gaming the system supposed to only happen when no climate conferences are scheduled? What is the proper timing to show the system is being gamed? Glad your funding is sound by the way. I am sure you will keep working “for the cause”.

        • don monfort
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:22 PM | Permalink

          Your funding won’t be safe, post 2012 election. Sorry.

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:41 PM | Permalink

          We can hope.

        • glacierman
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:12 PM | Permalink

          It’s a lot harder to earn a living when you have to produce more than a consensus.

  32. Sean Inglis
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:05 PM | Permalink

    4241.txt

    “The [[synthetic]] reconstructions show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that MacIntyre has been going on about. ….. It is certainly worrying…”

  33. Mac
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:07 PM | Permalink

    1680.txt

    date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:03:05 -0400
    from: “Michael E. Mann”
    subject: Re: Something not to pass on
    to: Phil Jones

    Phil,

    I would not respond to this. They will misrepresent and take out of
    context anything you give them. This is a set up. They will certainly
    publish this, and will ignore any evidence to the contrary that you
    provide. s They are going after Wei-Chyung because he’s U.S. and there
    is a higher threshold for establishing libel. Nonetheless, he should
    consider filing a defamation lawsuit, perhaps you too.

    I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an
    investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his
    thusfar unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests.Perhaps the
    same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.

    I believe that the only way to stop these people is by exposing them and
    discrediting them.

    Do you mind if I send this on to Gavin Schmidt (w/ a request to respect
    the confidentiality with which you have provided it) for his additional
    advice/thoughts? He usually has thoughtful insights wiith respect to
    such matters,

    mike

    • Jason
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:59 PM | Permalink

      C’mon Steve, save them the trouble – which gas brand do you fill up with?

  34. Duke C.
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:13 PM | Permalink

    Looks like the person claiming to be “RC” (who posted in August) was right.

    Indeed, there was no deal made.

  35. Sean Inglis
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:13 PM | Permalink

    4868.txt

    “I think this is an abuse of McIntyre’s position as an IPCC reviewer…”

    “Phil has agreed to forward these messages to Susan Solomon and Michael Manning…”

    WRT attempting to review the papers he’s been asked to review by means of seeing supporting data and methods.

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:55 PM | Permalink

      From what I read, all Steve M was doing was suggesting that JGR make d’Arrigo comply with the journal’s requirements. He was not arguing that the paper not be published, only that the authors be required to follow the rules.

      This, as opposed to the Team wanting to redefine peer review itself (Climategate I).

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:58 PM | Permalink

      Actually, it DOES look like Steve may have overstepped, but it was done simply in the interests of getting data archived in a way that those wishing to follow up on the work could find the data.

      It always amazes me how many times Steve is able to point to specific sites and work out which are the correct/applicable ones being used. Certainly, most of the people following up on d’Arrigo’s work would have difficulty replicating.

  36. Matt Skaggs
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:42 PM | Permalink

    Steve Mosher,
    Why the drive-by obscurantism? Do you have a point to make?

    • John F. Pittman
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:02 PM | Permalink

      Mosher did post something and I remember it and have waited for it. He even mentioned the other guy when he did.

    • ChE
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:03 PM | Permalink

      That’s just the way of the Mosh, may the Schwartz be with him.

    • steven mosher
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:51 PM | Permalink

      Matt,

      I read a comment. It was obscure. I put 2 and 2 together and figured that there was another release coming. Call it speculation. call it esp. call it luck. I’ll never know. Im ok with that.

      • Steve Garcia
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:43 PM | Permalink

        Steven –

        Yeah, I also knew there was another shoe to drop. I just thought that whoever did the original release would have held some back in reserve. I’ve been wondering when it would come. At the 2nd anniversary, why not?

      • Dishman
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 2:57 AM | Permalink

        Very curious timing.

        At the same time FOIA was releasing this shoe, I was hitting a major milestone towards releasing mine.

        Mine is still under NDA, and will take a lot longer to land, but it’s a lot bigger. The events were roughly equivalent.

  37. Jason
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:44 PM | Permalink

    “I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an
    investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his
    thusfar unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests.Perhaps the
    same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.

    I believe that the only way to stop these people is by exposing them and
    discrediting them.”

    Wonder how Steve will react to the fact Mann looked into hiring people to destroy him?

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:49 PM | Permalink

      Mann has to pay his own legal bills first. He is challenging the Virginia FOIA.

      • Mark F
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:51 PM | Permalink

        You can bet that his costs are being covered.

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 12:53 PM | Permalink

      My guess is that more than one journalist has tried to do that for free.

  38. JonasM
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:01 PM | Permalink

    Email 3021:
    …..
    I’m sure you are aware of the drivel posted on climateaudit –
    …..
    I have posted there under the name of thefordprefect. For a year or so.
    …..

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:18 PM | Permalink

      Who wrote that one? I always wonder who TFP was.

      • Niklas
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:21 PM | Permalink

        The same person who made an FOI request for Paul Dennis’s emails.

        • Ed_B
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:46 PM | Permalink

          Is this he, as such a request was made and is on Google:

          Dear Mr Tuppen,

          Please find attached a letter acknowledging your appeal received 24 August 2011 of our refusal notice also sent on 23 August 2011.
          The letter also contains further information regarding the handling of this request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
          We will be in contact with you further in due course.

          Kind regards,
          Bob Heath

          (On behalf of Dave Palmer)

        • Niklas
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:49 PM | Permalink

          Yup. Mike Tuppen is thefordprefect.

        • Squanto McButterpants
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:35 AM | Permalink

          For some reason this revelation made me laugh more than all the others.

  39. TerryMN
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:09 PM | Permalink

    To get a better insight into what “FOIA” searched for, read, and thought was interesting enough to redact personal chat from, search for:

    [[[redacted:

    or just

    [[[

    Interesting e-mails in that little collection. Briffa isn’t going to like 0058.txt

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:41 PM | Permalink

      In the context shown, there does not seem to be any reason or need to delete that email. The thread is pretty innocuous.

  40. Michael Parrish
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:19 PM | Permalink

    date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:18:38 +0100
    from: Olive Heffernan
    subject: Re: Piece for CRU web site
    to: “P.Jones@uea.ac.uk”

    Hi Phil,

    Ok, thanks for clarifying that. When will the url to the agreements go online?

    Best
    Olive

    On 09/08/2009, P.Jones@uea.ac.uk wrote:
    > Olive,
    > I did send some of the data to a person working
    > with Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. The email wasn’t to
    > PW, but he was in the CC list. I don’t know how
    > McIntyre found out, but I thought this was a personal
    > email. This was one of the first times I’d sent
    > some data to a fellow scientist who wasn’t at the
    > Hadley Centre. As I said I have taken pity on African
    > and Asian PhD students who wanted some temperature and precipitation
    > data for their country. The email has only gotten me grief,
    > so this is another reason for being much less helpful to
    > people emailing CRU. This goes against my nature, but
    > I’ve been driven to it. You’d better not say this, otherwise
    > McIntyre will request the emails where to prove I’ve been
    > unhelpful!
    >
    > I should have just said to the GA person – use GHCN, like I do to
    > everyone else.
    >
    > I also don’t see why I should help people, I don’t want to work
    > with and who spend most of their time critisising me.
    >
    > Years ago I did send much paleo data to McIntyre but have also
    > had nothing but criticism on his blog ever since. As I said,
    > this criticism on blog sites is not the way to do science.
    > If they want to engage, they have to converse in civil tones,
    > and if people don’t want to work with them, they have to respect
    > that and live with it.
    >
    > Cheers
    > Phil
    >
    > > Hi Phil,
    > >
    > > Thanks so much for that. I have one other question: McIntyre claims
    > > that you sent data to Peter Webstre at Georgia Tech, but that you
    > > would not supply him with the same data. Is that true, and if so, what
    > > was the reasoning?
    > >
    > > Best,
    > > Olive
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > > On 07/08/2009, Phil Jones wrote:
    > >> Here it is. There will be a link to the agreements – which are
    > >> attached.
    > >> Files won’t go up with these names. You should recognize one of these
    > >> – the data agreement between the Met Office and NERC.
    > >>
    > >> Met Services appear want to be able to sell data commercially.
    > >> As I said some has more value than other types of data. Most
    > >> put in clauses separating academic from commercial use.
    > >>
    > >> Cheers
    > >>
    > >> Phil
    > >>
    > >>
    > >> Prof. Phil Jones
    > >> Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
    > >> School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
    > >> University of East Anglia
    > >> Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
    > >> NR4 7TJ
    > >> UK
    > >> —————————————————————————-
    > >>
    > >>
    > >>
    > >
    >
    >
    >

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:24 PM | Permalink

      Good question, Olive! She never did make it to our meetings to discuss climate openness in London – but I felt her interest was genuine. It seems so.

    • jorgekafkazar
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:40 PM | Permalink

      > >> Met Services appear want to be able to sell data commercially.
      > >> As I said some has more value than other types of data. Most
      > >> put in clauses separating academic from commercial use.

      It appears that MetOff was providing public forecasts that differed from their commercial forecasts. Selling “more real” forecasts to private parties smells like conflict of interest, doesn’t it?

  41. John
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:27 PM | Permalink

    Wilson:

    I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I
    could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.
    […] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is
    precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.

  42. Willis Eschenbach
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:41 PM | Permalink

    Link no workee, can’t download, just gives a “404” error.

    w.

  43. Stacey
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:42 PM | Permalink

    I thought I would leave a message of support with our Gav and his friends. They seem to have a problem so I thought I would post it here?

    You guys are very quiet at the moment but don’t worry it is obvious that your remarks in the newly released emails have been taken out of context.

    Now what type of person normally says their words have been taken out of context?

    Of course someone who is completely honest like for instance politicians.

    The middle game was Climategate 1 which your mates managed to help you out with we are now into the end game and unfortunately you have no credible pieces on the board.

    Three cheers for the “cause”.

  44. Nicholas Hallam
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:47 PM | Permalink

    Here’s an interesting one:

    1680.txt

    date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:03:05 -0400
    from: “Michael E. Mann”
    subject: Re: Something not to pass on
    to: Phil Jones

    Phil,

    I would not respond to this. They will misrepresent and take out of
    context anything you give them. This is a set up. They will certainly
    publish this, and will ignore any evidence to the contrary that you
    provide. s They are going after Wei-Chyung because he’s U.S. and there
    is a higher threshold for establishing libel. Nonetheless, he should
    consider filing a defamation lawsuit, perhaps you too.

    I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an
    investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his
    thusfar unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests.Perhaps the
    same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.

    I believe that the only way to stop these people is by exposing them and
    discrediting them.

    Do you mind if I send this on to Gavin Schmidt (w/ a request to respect
    the confidentiality with which you have provided it) for his additional
    advice/thoughts? He usually has thoughtful insights wiith respect to
    such matters,

    mike

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:32 PM | Permalink

      Hahaha – Mann is big on threats of libel suits.

  45. Jit
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 1:58 PM | Permalink

    Search “paleoloonies”

  46. Gary
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:00 PM | Permalink

    http://files.sinwt.ru/download.php?file=25FOIA2011.zip

    Error 404 – Not Found!

    No longer available?

    • Willis Eschenbach
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:29 PM | Permalink

      See Bobs posting above.

      w.

  47. Steve Garcia
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:08 PM | Permalink

    I am happy as a clam.

    I’ve been wondering if and when the other shoe would drop. Not surprising that it came almost exactly on the anniversary of the original release. Also, just before Durban, similar to the pre-Copenhagen timing of the first release.

    Seeing as what is in these, Mann et all must have been quaking in their boots. wondering when this would happen. Even if merely more of the same (I have no idea at this time…), it just bolsters the arguments Craig Loehle makes at 11:33 AM above. Mann quaking in his boots is almost certainly the reason he is fighting tooth and nail the UVA email release.

    • JohnH
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:37 PM | Permalink

      Imagine the thought of one year ago when nothing new appeared, the Team must have been thinking they had got away with it.

      The 2 year gap was a great idea, long enough for the Team to feel less under pressure but close enough that the fire was restoked easily.

  48. windansea
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:31 PM | Permalink

    Gavin has a new thread up at RC on this.

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/11/two-year-old-turkey/

    • bernie
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:55 PM | Permalink

      It is hard to interpret Gavin’s post as anything but … denial.

    • KnR
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:38 PM | Permalink

      Its rather desperately trying to avoid the question of why he was seen as the ‘gone to man ‘ when it came to smearing others . Oddly his actual got a defense , its clear when he cannot control the debate through the use of sink holes or edited, has he does on RC, is actual rubbish at it .

  49. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:51 PM | Permalink

    Ed Cook 4509 after publication of our first article:

    I know that you and Tim have worked with Mike’s data as well. Did you find the same things? I’m just curious. I don’t plan on weighing in on this mess other than to suggest that Mike, Ray, and
    Malcolm are living in glass houses when they criticize the Esper work in the way they do. One needs to be very careful about criticizing the analyses of others because turn-around is fair play and payback is a bitch. That is all I have to say.
    Cheers,
    Ed

    • Willis Eschenbach
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:03 PM | Permalink

      I have said many times that the reason that the AGW supporters never criticize another AGW supporter’s work is that they might (gasp) return the favor. Ed Cook lays out my claim very clearly

      One needs to be very careful about criticizing the analyses of others because turn-around is fair play and payback is a bitch.

      This ranks up there with Phil Jones’ statement to Warwick for the “I Don’t Understand Science” prize. Don’t criticize another scientist’s work, they might actually find fault with your work, and the whole edifice would be in danger.

      The mind boggles …

      w.

  50. Willis Eschenbach
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 2:52 PM | Permalink

    #4230. Dave Palmer

    At 09:51 25/11/2008, you wrote:

    Gents,
    Please note the below. I am not in a position to deal with the substance of Mr.
    McIntyre’s comments but now have to handle his request under DPA (which means a troll
    through your files for material that identifies Mr. McIntyre). Please note that under
    the DPA, comments about an individual are the personal data of that individual and
    subject to access under a DPA subject access request. Ergo, I would strongly advise all
    to be careful in what you put in your correspondence.
    As to this specific DPA request, I will require proof of identity, £10, and a form
    before we proceed but I do assume that all will be forthcoming upon request. We then
    have 40 calendar days to respond.

    Cheers, Dave

    Dave is the man who is supposed to be on the side of the FOI request, but is working as hard as he can to figure out a way to ignore the FOI request. Note that Dave tells Phil to be careful about what he puts in his correspondence.

    From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
    Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 1:31 PM
    To: Palmer Dave Mr (LIB)
    Subject: Re: FW: FOI_08-50 ; EIR_08-01

    Dave,
    Do I understand it correctly – if he doesn’t pay the £10 we don’t have to respond?

    With the earlier FOI requests re David Holland, I wasted a part of a day deleting
    numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have
    virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent.
    There might be some bits of pieces of paper, but I’m not wasting my time
    going through these.

    Cheers
    Phil

    Phil’s response to being told to be careful about his emails is to delete them.

    Typical.

    w.

    • Craig Loehle
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:06 PM | Permalink

      The undoing of Arthur Anderson was that in response to a hint of trouble one of their offices went on a clean-up spree. That undid their credibility and their client list unraveled in weeks. Rats don’t abandon sinking ships as fast. And the deletion of emails in response to FOIA is actually illegal (as if it were enforced).

      • Glenn
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:18 PM | Permalink

        Email 3791.txt from Tim Osborn seems to be the “wink wink” reply on how to “legally” delete emails:

        3791.txt

        date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 19:49:18 -0000 (GMT)
        from: “Tim Osborn”
        subject: RE: FW: FOI_08-50 ; EIR_08-01
        to: “Jones Philip Prof”

        Hi Phil!

        re. your email to Dave Palmer [which he copied in his response to you and
        cc’d to me, Keith & Michael McGarvie, and which has hence already been
        multiply copied within the UEA system, and therefore will probably exist
        for a number of months and possibly years, and could be released under FOI
        if a request is made for it during that time!]… I assume that you didn’t
        delete any emails that David Holland has requested (because that would be
        illegal) but that instead his request merely prompted you to do a spring
        clean of various other emails that hadn’t been requested, as part of your
        regular routine of deleting old emails. If that is what you meant, then
        it might be a good idea to clarify your previous email to Dave Palmer, to
        avoid it being misunderstood. 🙂

        The way things seem to be going, I think it best if we discuss all FOI,
        EIR, Data Protection requests in person wherever possible, rather than via
        email. It’s such a shame that the skeptics’ vexatious use of this
        legislation may prevent us from using such an efficient modern technology
        as email, but it seems that if we want to have confidential discussions
        then we may need to avoid it.

        I shall delete this email and those related to it as part of my regular
        routine of deleting old emails!

        Cheers

        Tim

        • bernie
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:31 PM | Permalink

          I cannot imagine a company like say Solyandra getting away with this type of tactic. It just reeks of cover-up. Surely a formal written data retention and deletion policy needs to be in place and in force? Moreover, if the emails are stored centrally wouldn’t these exist in perpetuity?

        • steven mosher
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:56 PM | Permalink

          wow,

          so when I speculated about this and people criticized me.. ahh what does the addition context
          show?

          doh! worse in context

    • Robinson
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:44 PM | Permalink

      Forgive me for asking, but isn’t deleting email subject to FOI against the law here in the UK?

    • ChE
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:10 PM | Permalink

      Phil still hasn’t figured out that deleted emails aren’t. This is hilarious.

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:54 PM | Permalink

      With the earlier FOI requests re David Holland, I wasted a part of a day deleting
      numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have
      virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent.
      There might be some bits of pieces of paper, but I’m not wasting my time
      going through these.

      Cheers
      Phil

      Oh, goodness. This is the same Phil Jones who told the “inquiries” that no emails had been deleted? Or do I recall that wrong? But didn’t these people know that deleting emails off one’s PC does not delete them from the server?

      Which brings up the question if these and the Climategate I emails were taken from the server… Is there any way to tell?

  51. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:00 PM | Permalink

    3333. 2003-11-21
    ______________________________________________________
    date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 12:00:27 +0000
    from: Ian Harris
    subject: Mann’s Proxies
    to: Keith Briffa

    Hi Keith,
    Phil asked me to access Mann’s MBH98 predictors from the ftp server in Virginia.
    Apparently there are 159. However, with no guidance I’m unable to identify a set of 159 data series from the thousands of files in the ‘MBH98’ directory structure.
    Furthermore, attempts to download the entire directory hierarchy for examination (it’s only about 20Mb in total) have been fraught with failures – 3 hours on Wednesday afternoon and all this morning, and still incomplete.

    If Steve McIntyre’s having the same difficulties, no wonder he’s pissed off!
    Anyway I should have a complete file listing this afternoon; we can
    look over it then and hopefully identify the predictors.

    By the way – what does this have to do with HOLSMEER? *grin*
    Cheers
    Harry

    • Stephen Richards
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:37 PM | Permalink

      Yeh Steve, but you had already guessed that. They just didn’t think you were clever enough to decipher their ‘filing system’ he he . well done, well done. Boy did you piss them off too.

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:57 PM | Permalink

      Steve –

      Based on the fact that this “Harry” here is looking for data files, I am wondering if this is THE Harry of HARRY_READ_ME fame. From the cheerful, open tone, I’d guess it is.

    • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 3:52 PM | Permalink

      pissed off:

      4101, “If Mike said that my calibration procedure is “flawed”, I will be extremely pissed off.”

  52. Andy
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:23 PM | Permalink

    3890 is quit funny

    • Bebben
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:05 PM | Permalink

      #3890
      date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:51:05 -0700

      Ammann to Wigley and Trenberth, cc Jerry Meehl, Jonathan Overpeck, Phil Jones

      “… Trying to interpret a priority list from my personal feeling of this guy. I do this based on a google-cash because his site is down or something. So here is my hunch/speculation. I’ll see if I can get the document somewhere but I’m not very optimistic about this. By the way,
      I’m also going to forward this to Susan an few others that might have heard the rumor. Before I do send it to Susan, you might chip in on
      this list for “internal and IPCC use”:

      (…)

      – sneaking in papers into AR4 that were past deadline”

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:11 PM | Permalink

      Well, if I recall right the most recent ‘venting’ on climateaudit did go
      towards the hurricanes and sea level. Currently their site is not
      responding, and it might just be strategic…

      Ah yes, I remember those late nights “strategically” bringing Climate Audit down…just to annoy Realclimateers.

  53. Stephen Richards
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:43 PM | Permalink

    I keep saying it sorry steve but, I can’t believe what I’m reading in the emails. We all had our suspicions after climategate but they were easily batted away by whitewash but these ar something else again. And what about the remaining “220.000”. That is an unbelievable amount of traffic.

    This is all down to you Steve and also Watts. Thanks.

    • tomdesabla
      Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 12:37 AM | Permalink

      That’s exactly what I keep thinking – I just can’t believe this. I’m waiting to see how my warmist friends mange to spin/ignore these new emails.

  54. Nullius in Verba
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:47 PM | Permalink

    Interesting bit of history in Tim Osborn comments on Mann’s response to MM03 (3702.txt) – he seems to have spotted a number of the issues too.

    “(b) The mention of ftp sites and excel files is contradicted by their email record on their website, which shows no mention of excel files (they say an ASCII file was sent) and also no record that they knew the ftp address.
    This doesn’t matter really, since the reason for them using a corrupted data file is not relevant – the relevant thing is that it was corrupt and had you been involved in reviewing the paper then it could have been found prior to publication. But they will use the email record if the ftp sites and excel files are mentioned.”

    “The time series of PC1 you sent is certainly different from your standard one – but on the other hand I’d hardly say you “get a similar result” to them, the time series look very different (see their fig 6d). So the dismal RE applies only to your calculation, not to their reconstruction.”

  55. Jean S
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 3:56 PM | Permalink

    Wow, they had “hide the decline” t-shirts already 11 years ago 😉 (see 3880)

  56. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:05 PM | Permalink

    1897. Dec 2008.

    Phil, you must be very careful about deleting material, more particularly when
    you delete
    it. Section 77 of the FOIA state as follows:
    77. (1) Where
    (a) a request for information has been made to a public authority, and
    (b) under section 1 of this Act or section 7 of the [1988 c. 29.] Data
    Protection Act 1998,
    the applicant would have been entitled (subject to payment of any fee) to
    communication of
    any information in accordance with that section,
    any person to whom this subsection applies is guilty of an offence if he alters,
    defaces,
    blocks, erases, destroys or conceals any record held by the public authority,
    with the
    intention of preventing the disclosure by that authority of all, or any part, of
    the
    information to the communication of which the applicant would have been
    entitled.
    (2) Subsection (1) applies to the public authority and to any person who is
    employed by, is
    an officer of, or is subject to the direction of, the public authority.
    (3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary
    conviction to a
    fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.
    If information is deleted as part of an ongoing records management retention
    schedule, then
    it can and should proceed. Deleting information in response to a request is an
    offence as
    noted above.
    Cheers, Dave

    • bernie
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:23 PM | Permalink

      Steve:
      Presumably “an ongoing record management retention schedule” would be formerly documented and an actual schedule exist. If so, can the deletion of emails not directly relevant to an FOI request but more generally associated with the same subject matter and deleted to thwart any subsequent FOI requests be seen as an offense?

      • Eric Anderson
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:12 PM | Permalink

        bernie: “Presumably “an ongoing record management retention schedule” would be formerly documented and an actual schedule exist.”

        Yes, but in this case we don’t even have to go there. Jones is quite clear in the emails that he is deleting stuff *in response to* the FOI requests, which is a violation. Hence, Dave’s warning above.

      • Craig Loehle
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 10:26 AM | Permalink

        Most universities do not have a formal retention/destruction schedule for profs’ emails, research, or reports. They are independent entities.

  57. Andre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:12 PM | Permalink

    Did anybody try the “All.7z” compressed file. It contains 220247 files which are password protected. Is the password known? Do we have hackers who can figure it out?

    • Robert S.
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:17 PM | Permalink

      I have a few computers running a brute-force attack on it right now. A hopeless task but I’ll give them a month or two and see if anything happens.

      • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:46 PM | Permalink

        Let me know if you find the key.

      • ChE
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:07 PM | Permalink

        You must be feeling lucky.

        • Robert S.
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:34 PM | Permalink

          🙂

        • steven mosher
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:48 PM | Permalink

          code and data please. haha

        • Scott Basinger
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:22 PM | Permalink

          Yeah, time to fire up the botnet.

        • Willis Eschenbach
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:24 PM | Permalink

          Mosh, have you made the same “code and data” request to Richard Muller, and if so, what was the reply?

          Thanks,

          w.

        • Scott Basinger
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:08 PM | Permalink

          Hmm, maybe pw = h1d3th3d3cl1n3

        • TerryMN
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 9:20 PM | Permalink

          h4 h4! 🙂

        • Sean
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:31 AM | Permalink

          try “FOIA”!

        • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:40 AM | Permalink

          Of course. The answer was essentially similar to the one anthony gave when I asked him for his data prior to acceptance and publication of his paper.
          I play no favorites.

          The release of code and data for this is actually ahead of the kind of release that others make before acceptance and publication, but as with Anthony I await the final publication. That after all is when the paper actually has a scientific claim.

        • Willis Eschenbach
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:00 AM | Permalink

          Thanks, Mosh. As far as I know, Muller has still not released the code for three of the four papers, and he has not released the raw data for any of them. As a result, it’s not clear what you mean when you say:

          The release of code and data for this is actually ahead of the kind of release that others make before acceptance and publication …

          Since the papers were released to great fanfare and a full-court PR press complete with media interviews, and despite that most of the code and the raw data have not been released, what do you mean by “actually ahead”? In my world that’s “actually behind”, to “pre-publish” the papers like that but conceal the data and code.

          w.

      • TerryS
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:10 PM | Permalink

        What are you using to generate and test passwords?

        • Timothy
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:06 PM | Permalink

          Let’s get some coder to write a distributed brute force attack and write a nice screen saver. It could show flying toasters popping out index cards saying: Cracking Climategate 3.0. I bet a LOT of us with download the screen saver to crack it.

      • Sean Inglis
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:28 AM | Permalink

  58. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:17 PM | Permalink

    1111

    3. Work on the land station data has been funded by the US Dept of Energy, and I have their agreement that the data needn’t be passed on. I got this in 2007.

    Why would the DOE enter into such an agreement with Jones in 2007 after issues had been raised?

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:52 PM | Permalink

      It is probably a good-ol-boy wink-wink with a buddy of Jones in DOE–good luck finding any paper trail.

    • TerryS
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:12 PM | Permalink

      Isn’t US DOE is subject to FOI requests? Maybe they still have the correspondence from Jones.

  59. Nullius in Verba
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:35 PM | Permalink

    3755.txt
    “It is really important that you don’t just copy or reproduce any bits because it is not my proposal and it would be a court case in theory if a similarity was noticed.”

    “but for GODS SAKE please respect the sensitivity here and destroy the file immediately when finished and please do not tell ANYBODY I sent this. Cheers Keith”

    Oh dear. Oops!

  60. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:38 PM | Permalink

    A brief note on authenticity: 4003.txt looks esentially identical to a copy of an email I was sent by Dave Palmer in response to a data protection request (my original copy was partially redacted and formatted, not plain text).

  61. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM | Permalink

    David Appell had interesting take – see here.

    • Stephen Richards
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 8:40 AM | Permalink

      Can’t say I agree with his analysis; The red are certainly red but the rest seem to be dependent on the baggage you are carrying.

  62. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:13 PM | Permalink

    1939.txt,

    Thorne to Jones, Feb 2, 2005, referring to the AR4 draft on tropospheric trends:

    It seems that a decision has been made that RSS and the Fu et al. method are “right” or at least “most right” and this is what we will put forward as gospel truth almost. Other datasets are given a cursory once over almost. This completely ignores legitimate concerns that “structural uncertainty” is large aloft – seemingly reasonable choices made as to how you homogenise and then analyse the data can have very large effects. This is not at all clearly communicated in the current draft. The essential distilled message that I think the analysis of UA temperatures has left us since the TAR, and what this chapter should say, is:

    “Independent efforts to create climate records from satellite and radiosonde records since the TAR have served to illuminate previously unrecognised uncertainties in temperature evolution aloft (Seidel et al., 2004, Thorne et al., 2005). Further, choices in post-processing (e.g. Fu et al., 2004) may help to clarify satellite retrievals, but legitimate concerns remain (Thorne and Tett, 2004, Spencer et al., 2005) and other equally plausible approaches should be actively considered. Our increased understanding of trend uncertainty aloft means that we can no longer dismiss warming aloft of similar or greater magnitude than at the surface over the satellite record. Nor can we discount a relative cooling aloft. Uncertainties are largest in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere high latitudes where radiosonde coverage is poorest. Obviously, the climate has only evolved along a single pathway. Therefore a major challenge to the climate community is to refine our range of estimates.”

    This is what CCSP effectively says. What, rightly or wrongly, I get out of the current draft on an initial read is:

    “We don’t like UAH. We don’t believe radiosondes over the satellite period, but do over the longer period (paradox). We believe Fu et al. is correct. There is no longer any problem whatsoever.”

    I don’t think this simple message is actually remotely supported by the science. Therefore at the very least efforts are required to balance the text so that this is not the message communicated. I don’t think we should be scared of admitting that we just don’t know, if indeed we just don’t know (which I believe is a fair reflection of the state of the science)…I do not believe that Fu et al. weightings is some panacea nor that the “cancellation” works on all space and timescales (the statement needs to be *proved* it cannot be accepted as an article of faith – that is not the way science works). I’d be amazed if it did. The reservations raised in the peer reviewed literature need to be better articulated here for the document to be fair and balanced….I particularly dislike the use on line 30 of “when the stratospheric influence is properly taken into account (Fu et al., 2004a)”. How can we say it is properly taken into account that way? There are a very large population of plausible approaches that could be taken and to date we have two – a “physical” 2LT and a statistical T850-300. That is grossly insufficient to make bold statements regarding one of them properly taking the effect into account. Again, this needs balance and caveats on the Fu et al. technique until we resolve unanswered questions. Likewise, T2LT has not been proven to be untenable in the peer reviewed press – so you cannot make this statement. My feeling is that we are missing a significant opportunity here to outline the considerable uncertainty in evolution aloft in favour of deciding one subset of approaches is right and presenting this as gospel truth. I am very uncomfortable with this…
    For HadAT (at least, but as they are so highly correlated, also highly likely LKS) the long-term trend in the tropics is entirely an artifact of the regime shift – if you split time periods then pre- and post-1979 have negative trends and the whole period has a strong positive trend. So to state boldly that trends agree and therefore all is well is again our living in a fools paradise. It is true, but it just shows that trend metrics are very dangerous beasties and should be handled with care. The Seidel and lanzante paper should also be quoted here.
    …This is painting a light fuzzy grey as black when I don’t believe the science to date supports such an interpretation.
    …You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I think this paints too rosy a picture of our understanding the vertical structure of temperature changes. Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary either in Chicago or when I visit in March (has a date been decided yet?).

    Jones to Thorne, Feb 4, 2005:

    Kevin is the CLA for Section 3.4 and David and Brian Soden the LAs who put most of it together. See what Kevin says in response. You have summarised his views on the issue very succinctly in your take home message from the section ! He is very pro Fu.

    AR4 Chapter 3 Executive Summary as published:

    Lower-tropospheric temperatures have slightly greater warming rates than those at the surface over the period 1958 to 2005. The radiosonde record is markedly less spatially complete than the surface record and increasing evidence suggests that it is very likely that a number of records have a cooling bias, especially in the tropics. While there remain disparities among different tropospheric temperature trends estimated from satellite Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU and advanced MSU) measurements since 1979, and all likely still contain residual errors, estimates have been substantially improved (and data set differences reduced) through adjustments for issues of changing satellites, orbit decay and drift in local crossing time (i.e., diurnal cycle effects). It appears that the satellite tropospheric temperature record is broadly consistent with surface temperature trends provided that the stratospheric influence on MSU channel 2 is accounted for. The range (due to different data sets) of global surface warming since 1979 is 0.16°C to 0.18°C per decade compared to 0.12°C to 0.19°C per decade for MSU estimates of tropospheric temperatures. It is likely, however, that there is slightly greater warming in the troposphere than at the surface, and a higher tropopause, with the latter due also to pronounced cooling in the stratosphere.

  63. Paul Linsay
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:15 PM | Permalink

    The following from regarding dendrochronology is amusing, in particular the concluding statement: “It would be a major step forward if dendrochronology could embrace the scientific method.”

    date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 09:55:08 -0500
    from: Ed Cook
    subject: Re: Fwd: History and trees
    to: ITRDBFOR@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU

    Rod’s comments are remarkably ignorant and insulting. I suggest that
    he stick to what he knows best and not claim that he understands
    dendrochronology and its methods. That way he would not sound so
    stupid. To suggest that dendrochronology does not embrace the
    scientific method and is as biased as he claims verges on libel. Of
    course, Rod has the right to his opinion. It is just a shame that he
    chooses to expose his ignorance of dendrochronology in such a
    negative way.

    >To the Editor, New York Times
    >
    >Further to the message below, I want to assure you that not everyone agrees
    >with the representations by David Lawrence. As a tree physiologist who has
    >devoted his career to understanding how trees make wood, I have made
    >sufficient observations on tree rings and cambial growth to know that
    >dendrochronology is not at all an exact science. Indeed, its activities
    >include subjective interpretations of what does and what does not
    >constitute an annual ring, statistical manipulation of data to fulfill
    >subjective expectations, and discarding of perfectly good data sets when
    >they contradict other data sets that have already been accepted. Such
    >massaging of data cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered
    >science; it merely demonstrates a total lack of rigor attending so-called
    >dendrochronology “research”.
    >
    >I would add that it is the exceptionally rare dendrochronologist who has
    >ever shown any inclination to understand the fundamental biology of wood
    >formation, either as regulated intrinsically or influenced by extrinsic
    >factors. The science of tree physiology will readily admit that our
    >understanding of how trees make wood remains at quite a rudimentary state
    >(despite several centuries of research). On the other hand, there are many
    >hundreds, if not thousands, of publications by dendrochronologists
    >implicitly claiming that they do understand the biology of wood formation,
    >as they have used their data to imagine when past regimes of water,
    >temperature, pollutants, CO2, soil nutrients, and so forth existed. Note
    >that all of the counts and measurements on tree rings in the world cannot
    >substantiate anything unequivocally; they are merely observations. It
    >would be a major step forward if dendrochronology could embrace the
    >scientific method.
    >
    >sincerely,
    >RA Savidge, PhD
    >Professor, Tree Physiology/Biochemistry
    >Forestry & Environmental Management
    >University of New Brunswick
    >Fredericton, NB E3B 6C2

    • Pat Frank
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:27 PM | Permalink

      I can’t speak to the dendrochronology, but can say with confidence that dendrothermometry does not follow the scientific method. Dendrothermometry is pure correlation = causation. It’s a total crock.

      • JamesG
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:46 PM | Permalink

        What I find comical is the way the IPCC left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. You wouldn’t think they can simultaneously claim that higher growth comes from higher temperature in the dendro sections and then argue in the impacts sections that high temperature is automatically bad for agriculture. But they manage to do exactly that…

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:44 PM | Permalink

      This is the same Ed Cook who admitted in the first dossier that we know “f*** all” about climate variability >100 years based on dendro. He sounds a bit conflicted.

  64. Paul Linsay
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:16 PM | Permalink

    Whoops, the dendro comment is from 3219.txt

  65. RayG
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:53 PM | Permalink

    From Bishop Hill:

    “I cracked the passcode for the rest of the emails:

    “4x00y312dym!231@4″

    Enjoy!
    Nov 22, 2011 at 9:49 PM | Unregistered Commenterh4x0r”

    Please post whether or not it works.

    Tks.

    • Mark F
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:58 PM | Permalink

      nope

    • Anthony Watts
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:07 PM | Permalink

      The 7zip archiver in which this is stored uses 256 bit AES encryption.

      “FOIA” chose this most likely because there are no effective tools for 7zip, while there seem to be many for standard .zip and .RAR files.

      From their website:

      “7-Zip also supports encryption with AES-256 algorithm. This algorithm uses cipher key with length of 256 bits. To create that key 7-Zip uses derivation function based on SHA-256 hash algorithm. A key derivation function produces a derived key from text password defined by user. For increasing the cost of exhaustive search for passwords 7-Zip uses big number of iterations to produce cipher key from text password.”

      The password can be 2047 or 8191 characters long, depending on your operating system.

      Doubtful this password will be cracked anytime soon, maybe DoD could do it.

      “FOIA” is holding this in reserve, making it known that it is there, ready to pull the firing pin. I expect we’ll see it sooner than later as the reaction so far from RC and the Team is continued arrogance.

      • Scott Basinger
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:37 PM | Permalink

        “The first key-recovery attacks on full AES due to Andrey Bogdanov, Dmitry Khovratovich, and Christian Rechberger were published in 2011.[22] The attack is based on bicliques and is faster than brute force by a factor of about four. The key is recovered from AES-128 in 2^126.1 operations. For AES-192 and AES-256, 2^189.7 and 2^254.4 operations are needed, respectively.”

        Probably not in my lifetime.

        • Sean
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:50 AM | Permalink

          “I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, “In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.”

          – John F. Kennedy

  66. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:18 PM | Permalink

    Three of the 5000+ emails are by me. (I of course forgot to write down the numbers.) These three are genuine.

  67. Ivan
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:19 PM | Permalink

    Loook at this gem

    2440> Jones:
    I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself
    and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
    process.

  68. Ivan
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:27 PM | Permalink

    Mann:
    the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what
    the site [Real Climate] is about.

    Steve already called Gavin Schmidt a “NASA blogger”. I think he could call his comrade Mann “an IPCC PR manager”. 🙂

  69. EdeF
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:37 PM | Permalink

    Drudgereport has link to Guardian whitewash. Just out.

  70. Stacey
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 6:59 PM | Permalink

    Steve
    Richard Blacks spin and propaganda can be viewed here.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15846886#dna-comments
    Absolutely disgraceful but no surprise there.

  71. Arthur Dent
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:13 PM | Permalink

    In his evidence to the second ClimateGate enquiry by the HoC Select Committee on Science and Technology Professor Acton gave the following reply:

    Q94 Graham Stringer: Right. I shall look at that. Professor Acton, are you satisfied that these questions weren’t asked, that people in your university were sending out e-mails suggesting that e-mails should be deleted and that hasn’t been investigated?
    Professor Edward Acton: It has been investigated. I have asked them and they have assured me that they have never knowingly deleted e-mails subject to a request.

    Thanks to FOIA2011 we now have access to 2368

    Dave,
    Do I understand it correctly – if he doesn’t pay the £10 we don’t have to respond?

    With the earlier FOI requests re David Holland, I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent. There might be some bits of pieces of paper, but I’m not wasting my time
    going through these.

    Cheers
    Phil

    This seems to imply that someone is being economical with the truth

  72. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:16 PM | Permalink

    http://climategate2011.blogspot.com/2011/11/3021txt.html

    Ford, I think that this is called ‘leading the witness…!

  73. genealogymaster
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:22 PM | Permalink

    Not being a computer wiz would this work on unzipping the last lot? http://file.org/extension/7z It says its a free to try file. I wonder if the person who released these wasn’t really concerned about conferences but just released them when they wanted to. The first batch opened the door a crack and is hoping this second batch will fully open the door.

  74. DGH
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:26 PM | Permalink

    I read the originals so long ago I can’t recall if these are repeats…

    #76
    “Of course, Trenberth will go nuts because his name is on the publications associated with the data.”

    #37
    “Advocating a piece of work of known error is not in the best interest of climate research community in general and RealClimate in particular.” Shaopeng Huang

  75. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:33 PM | Permalink

    2713.txt:

    David Parker to Phil Jones, regarding Steve’s query about how they ascertained that there was no residual autocorrelation in their trend calculations for the IPCC Report, April 2007

    > >Phil
    > >
    > >The DW statistic was done on the residuals after removing the AR1
    > >persistence as modelled by the restricted maximum likelihood software.
    > >That is why the values were close to 2. This procedure is correct
    > >because the restricted maximum likelihood software widens the error-bars
    > >to take account of AR1; the DW is a test to see whether any further
    > >widening is needed, and the results show that it isn’t. Steve McIntyre
    > >probably used the residuals unadjusted for AR1.
    > >
    > >I attach our software and 2 sample series. I don’t think “R” is used
    > >widely here. The DW coding is at lines 78-91 of the plot routine
    > >(p_plot_glm_out_annual.pro).
    > >
    > >I hope this helps
    > >
    > >Regards
    > >
    > >David

    Nice to see the world’s top experts at work. The DW statistic is invalid when applied to a model that has had an AR1 correction applied to it. You need to use an alternative test score since the DW statistic is strongly biased towards 2 (i.e. indicating no AR is present). This is in any textbook treatment of the subject.

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:44 PM | Permalink

      The textbooks of the future will have exercises full of this stuff.

      • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 4:36 AM | Permalink

        Only if they written by Ross I suspect.

    • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 3:36 PM | Permalink

      Not long ago I wrote ( http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/response-to-keenan/#comment-85060 ):

      I don’t know how this was calculated, but it seems to be a claim that “AR1+ linear trend” is valid. This is at odds with the Beran’s example discussed in another thread. Thus, it would interesting to verify this result.

      Beran’s textbook: http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Long-Memory-Processes-Monographs-Probability/dp/0412049015

      • Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 8:56 AM | Permalink

        UC, I have Beran’s text, and find it to be extremely good. For some comments related to that, see this post:
        http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/6/6/koutsoyiannis-2011.html
        Please note that fractional Gaussian noise is called “Hurst-Kolmogorov” there.

        (About RankExploits, I gave up trying to find a way to communicate, and so prefer to not comment there.)

        • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 2:21 PM | Permalink

          This is something simpler than the discussion at Lucia’s blog (pure statistics 🙂 ),

          2713

          DW statistic was done on the residuals after removing the AR1 persistence…DW is a test to see whether any further widening is needed, and the results show that it isn’t

          vs.

          Beran

          H appears to be clearly above 1/2… As a consequence of long-range dependence, we may no longer reject the null hypothesis of no trend.

          The data set is not exactly the same, but there is a clear disagreement. Who is right?

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 6:07 AM | Permalink

          Beran is wrong: he is using seasonal data (in this case, monthly), and not accounting for that. It would be the same if we were using non-fractional ARIMA; we would have to either aggregate the data (into annual values) or use SARIMA.

          David Parker, and Phil Jones, and Ross McKitrick, are not doing things properly either. The DW statistic is based on assumptions that virtually never truly hold with real data. It is a relic from an earlier era, and deserves no place in modern statistical analysis. Use AICc etc.

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 6:12 AM | Permalink

          Presume you mean AIC or Akaike Information Criterion, without the trailing c. I remember the hedge fund that followed your advice. Those were good years.

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 7:11 AM | Permalink

          AICc:
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion#AICc
          Also note the “etc.”.

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 7:18 AM | Permalink

          Cool, thanks. No doubt I implemented the correction in C++ in 95 but that didn’t make me aware of it! I did at once think AIC and BIC when you first spoke. 24 characters to go?

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 4:53 PM | Permalink

          Gents

          Max Beran has been commenting on another thread. How about asking him directly?

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 4:55 PM | Permalink

          to make it clear beran has been commenting on the “Phil stumped” thread

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 3:08 PM | Permalink

          Beran is wrong: he is using seasonal data (in this case, monthly), and not accounting for that. It would be the same if we were using non-fractional ARIMA; we would have to either aggregate the data (into annual values) or use SARIMA.

          Do you mean that the anomaly method used by Jones makes the conclusion invalid?

          Use AICc etc.

          On page 11 Beran shows that AIC doesn’t work well for the Nile River data. For GMT we’ll have to wait and see.

        • Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 4:33 PM | Permalink

          No, seasonality is essentially unrelated to the anomaly method.

          Your interpretation of Beran’s page 11 is incorrect. For more on AIC, the standard reference is Model Selection and Multimodel Inference by Burnham & Anderson (2002).

        • Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 4:52 PM | Permalink

          Your interpretation of Beran’s page 11 is incorrect.

          Can you briefly explain? I’m here to learn.

          BTW, Thomson, “Jackknifing Multitaper Spectrum Estimates”, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine 2007 about the Nile data:

          Thus, the evidence for long memory seems to be insignificant
          relative to that for Newtonian dynamics and Solar influences
          on climate.

          I need to read that as well. To get back to the topic, Thomson seems to mention you (+ Exxon and oil and coal 🙂 ), in the mails (3474.txt).

        • steven mosher
          Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 7:54 PM | Permalink

          Doug. its called a comments section. you go to lucias blog and use the comments section

          at the bottom of the page. there is a box.

          you enter your words.

          you hit post

        • Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 6:21 AM | Permalink

          With comments like that, you will not achieve your objectives.

        • Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 11:15 AM | Permalink

          Doug/Steven Mosher,

          Examining the database for my blog, “Douglas J. Keenan” has posted 3 times. The comments are on a post from 2009:
          http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/petr-chylek/#comment-27591 which discusses /Wei-Chyung Wang: Jones et al. [Nature, 1990] and Wang et al. [GRL, 1990].’

          The other two are
          http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/climograms-hurst-no-hurst-trend-no-trend/#comment-76808

          http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/climograms-hurst-no-hurst-trend-no-trend/#comment-76921

          Which appear on a post about Hurst phenomena.

          Unless he has posted other comments under a different name, I think those are the only comments by Keenan at my blog.

          I leave it to others to read his comments and to judge the cause of Doug’s communication difficulties and also to decide whether Doug has tried very hard to discuss his ideas at my blog.

          As for me, it’s long been my impression that Doug would rather send me long winded private emails. My impression is that he wishes to spend a lot of time privately conveying his thoughts while pretty much ignoring questions, points or any substantive criticism what so ever. The communication goes nowhere. But that’s just my view.

          To spare myself the time sink involved in these private emails, I have made it clear that I am willing to discuss whatever points he is willing to make in public. Having switched to my policy of responding to him in public rather than private, I responded to the email he sent to me privately, and which, on my prompting, he posted in comments at TAV. My response is here:
          http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/response-to-keenan/

          I should also note that while in comments at TAV, Doug decreed Judy and Tamino’s criticisms of his points invalid. I requested post his evaluation these criticism in public. As far as I can tell, he has declined to engage their criticisms in public either.

          Steve Mc–Sorry for the OT. But Doug’s complaint is bleeding over to my blog.

        • steven mosher
          Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 4:04 PM | Permalink

          Look like I did achieve my objective.

          snip –

  76. Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:41 PM | Permalink

    I thought you guys might be interested in this one…..#5267

    date: Fri Jul 31 11:32:00 2009
    from: Tim Osborn t.osborn@xxxxxxxx
    subject: Re: FTP server
    to: CRU Computing Support cru.support@xxxxxxx
    Hi Mike,
    in looking further afield than just my files, I see some other files that are no longer
    needed. Please can you delete:
    [1]ftp://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/people/craigwallace/ folder and its content (an old word doc) as I know these aren’t needed any more. I’d also guess that
    [2]ftp://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/people/davidviner/ folder and its contents can go (files all
    dated >8 years ago). Effie’s folder is also empty.
    mickkelly contains only holiday snaps!
    Cheers
    Tim
    At 10:10 31/07/2009, you wrote:
    Dear all,
    After the recent problems with ClimateAudit, Phil has asked for all
    unnecessary files to be purged from the FTP server. You have a directory in /cru/ftp1/people. Please could you take a look to see what files need to remain there?
    If you would like assistance with this, let me know. Please confirm by email when you’ve done it, so I can cross you off the list.
    thanks
    Mike

    Cheers! 🙂

    • Keith W.
      Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:59 PM | Permalink

      Wow! I remember after Steve revealed the “mole” going through some of those files and folders on that server, and then they were gone the next day. Now we know who ordered their erasure.

      • KnR
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 7:03 AM | Permalink

        I think its fair to say Phil is serial abuser of ‘delete ‘ the e-mail approach , its been clear for long time he does not like the FOI and considers he can ignore it at will , remember two things , one he planned to avoid FOI requests before he got any ,two his claimed his ‘unaware’ of FOI requirements despite the fact he done FOI training and the university has FOI policy which he signed up to.

  77. little polyp
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:43 PM | Permalink

    very juicy

    especially all the NGO addresses, so much for impartiality

  78. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 7:53 PM | Permalink

    1566

    At 11:14 19/10/2003 -0400, Michael E. Mann wrote:
    FYI–thought you guys should have this (below). This guy “McIntyre” appears to be yet another shill for industry–he appears to be the one who forwarded the the scurrilous “climateskeptic” criticisms of the recent Bradley et al Science paper.

    Here is an email I sent him a few weeks ago in response to an inquiry. It appears, by the way, that he has been trying to break into our machine (“multiproxy”).

    I dont recall forwarding such criticism. Not the sort of thing that I normally do. The second point is interesting. A few weeks later (after MM2003) was published, Mann deleted the version of data that I had been given access to and a new version materialized – with Mann saying that it had been there all along and I should have located it. (Though as readers may recall, I had asked him about this topic before.) It is my very strong belief that the data that was made public in November 2003 was in a non-public directory in October and that mann’s statements on this point at the time – and, more recent;y, to the Penn State Investigation Committee – were untrue.

  79. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:00 PM | Permalink

    Re Jean S and UC’s discussion of the Mannkovitch bodge: – 1283 –

    The Mann et al ’99 paper was clear that the results were sensitive to a small number of skillful predictors prior to AD1400, and that non-climate biases had to be corrected for in some of the longer series to get a skillfully cross-validated reconstruction.

    The paper certainly did not ‘say clearly” that the data had to be bodged to get a “skillfully cross-validated” reconstruction. See the Mannkovitch post.

    • Jean S
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 3:58 AM | Permalink

      Steve McIntyre (Nov 22 20:00),

      Interesting, he is essentially admitting mining for good verification statistics. As we now know, it took at least three attempts to find such a “correction”. IMO, that is clearly “manipulating data to serve a given predetermined outcome“.

      • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 4:43 AM | Permalink

        Mining for good verification statistics – that’s real expertise for you.

      • Craig Loehle
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 10:31 AM | Permalink

        I believe someone would say that is a “foolish” thing to do and he would never do it (blank stare as to what you are saying)

    • Jean S
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 5:49 AM | Permalink

      Steve McIntyre (Nov 22 20:00),

      this was already in ClimateGate 1.0 files, but I had not noticed it: – 3584 –

      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.

      Reasonably trusting a trend that is substantially different for every “fix” he tried? I’d sure like to know more about those “uncertainties in”!

      • stan
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 11:06 AM | Permalink

        Someone should teach these folks how to spell “lose”. And explain the difference with “loose”. Lose is what they do with data they don’t want anyone to see. Loose is what they play with the facts and their quality control.

        Every time I read this basic error, I feel like ‘loosing’ my lunch. And that would be a real loss.

        • Punksta
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 11:09 AM | Permalink

          You’re such a looser.

  80. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:12 PM | Permalink

    1666. the start of the fabricated story about the “Excel” request (which even CRU recognized as a concoction):

    So whose fault is this? Well, the full, raw ascii proxy
    > > data set has been
    > > > available on our anonymous ftp site
    > > > ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/
    > > > and the authors were informed of this in email
    > > correspondence. But they
    > > > specifically requested that the data be provided to them in
    > > excel format.
    > > > And Scott prepared it for them in that format, in good
    > > faith–but
    > > > overlooked the fact that all of the required information
    > > couldn’t
    > > > possibly be fit into a 112 column format. So the file Scott
    > > produced was
    > > > a complete corruption of the actual Mann et al proxy data
    > > set, and
    > > > essentially useless, transcription errors, etc. aside. The
    > > authors had
    > > > full access to the uncorrupted data set. We therefore take
    > > no
    > > > reasonability for their use of corrupted data.

    • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:52 PM | Permalink

      Look at 4742.txt. It’s written 48 hours after MM2003 came out and contains a surreal re-telling of the excel spreadsheet tale.

      And I thought, gee, what if Scott (sorry Scott), had *happened* to do this in preparing
      the excel file that the authors used. Well it would mean that, progressively in earlier
      centuries, one would be reconstructing an apple, based on calibration against an
      orange. It would yield completely meaningless results more than a few centuries ago. And
      then came the true epiphany–ahhh, this could lead to the kind of result the authors
      produced. In fact, it seemed to me that this would almost *insure* the result that the
      authors get–an increasing divergence back in time, and total nonsense prior to 1500 or
      so. At this point, I knew that’s what Scott must have done. But I had to confirm.
      I simply had to contact Scott, and ask him: Scott, when you prepared that excel file for
      these guys, you don’t suppose by any chance that you might have….
      And, well, I think you know the answer.

      …So whose fault is this? Well, the full, raw ascii proxy data set has been available on
      our anonymous ftp site [1]ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/
      and the authors were informed of this in email correspondence. But they specifically
      requested that the data be provided to them in excel format. And Scott prepared it for
      them in that format, in good faith–but overlooked the fact that all of the required
      information couldn’t possibly be fit into a 112 column format. So the file Scott
      produced was a complete corruption of the actual Mann et al proxy data set, and
      essentially useless, transcription errors, etc. aside. The authors had full access to
      the uncorrupted data set. We therefore take no reasonability for their use of corrupted
      data.

      As we’ve pointed out many times, we never asked for an excel spreadsheet and we were never given one. I read the text file into a spreadsheet so I could colour code the columns. The data file we used was called pcproxy.txt. I wonder if Rutherford actually told Mann he prepared the excel spreadsheet, and why he’d have said that?

      • Brandon Shollenberger
        Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:10 PM | Permalink

        I have to say, the whole Excel spreadsheet issue is one of the most dumbfounding things I’ve seen. I cannot imagine any way Michael Mann would have genuinely believed what he says about what you guys supposedly did, nor that Scott Rutherford would have confirmed anything like it, yet 4742 clearly indicates both. The only explanation that makes sense to me is Mann is simply lying in an extremely blatant manner, but that is hard to believe.

        It seems like he truly believes what he says, but I don’t see how that would be possible.

        • Steve McIntyre
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:16 PM | Permalink

          Although the Penn State “investigation” committee didn’t actually investigate the Climategate issues, the “wrong” data was asked about and, amazingly, Mann gave the same false answer to the Investigation COmmitee. (Needless to say, Penn State didn’t bother checking whether the answer was true.)

          The next question for Dr. Mann was posed as follows: “What is your reply to the email statements of Dr. McIntyre (a) that he had been referred to an incorrect version of your data at your FTP site (b) that this incorrect version was posted prior to his request and was not formulated expressly for him and (c) that to date, no source code or other evidence has been provided to fully demonstrate that the incorrect version, now deleted, did not infect some of Mann’s and Rutherford’s other work?” Dr. Mann responded by stating that neither he, nor many of his colleagues, put much reliability in the various accusations that Dr. McIntyre has made, and that, moreover, there is “no merit whatsoever to Mr. McIntyre’s claims here.” Specifically, Dr. Mann repeated that all data, as well as the source codes requested by Dr. McIntyre, were in fact made available to him. All data were listed on Dr. Mann’s FTP site in 2000, and the source codes were made available to Dr. McIntyre about a year after his request was made, in spite of the fact that the National Science Foundation had ruled that scientists were not required to do so. The issue of an “incorrect version” of the data came about because Dr. McIntyre had requested the data (which were already available on the FTP site) in spreadsheet format, and Dr. Rutherford, early on, had unintentionally sent an incorrectly formatted spreadsheet.

        • Brandon Shollenberger
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:57 PM | Permalink

          I remember being shocked when I saw that. I couldn’t believe Michael Mann would repeat that story, much less that anyone would accept it. It’s flabbergasting to think “investigations” like that are enough to “clear” Mann.

          I have to wonder, is there anything he could say which would actually provoke outrage?

        • tomdesabla
          Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 1:08 AM | Permalink

          It takes a lot to provoke outrage at Penn State

        • Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:30 PM | Permalink

          I wonder if Rutherford was in a panic because he’d used pcproxy.txt for another paper already and he told Mann he prepared it specially for us to cover things up, and Mann ran with that claim. Yet why would he still be repeating it 7 years later, to the Penn State investigators?

          Specifically, Dr. Mann repeated that all data, as well as the source codes requested by Dr. McIntyre, were in fact made available to him. All data were listed on Dr. Mann’s FTP site in 2000, and the source codes were made available to Dr. McIntyre about a year after his request was made, in spite of the fact that the National Science Foundation had ruled that scientists were not required to do so. The issue of an “incorrect version” of the data came about because Dr. McIntyre had requested the data (which were already available on the FTP site) in spreadsheet format, and Dr. Rutherford, early on, had unintentionally sent an incorrectly formatted spreadsheet.

          And why would Penn State investigators accept such an obviously false answer and rush to exonerate one of their faculty members? Well, never mind.

        • Steve McIntyre
          Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 10:55 PM | Permalink

          Could be. I’m pretty sure that pcproxy was used in the version of Rutherford et al 2005 that they were working on at the time. I saw a reference to this file in a contemporary graphic – see an early chronology on this.

        • stan
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 11:21 AM | Permalink

          Brandon,

          Lawyers see it all the time. Parties to a lawsuit start with the notion that they know themselves to be good people with proper morals and motives. They really deserve to win. As they become aware of the facts and law relevant to their case, they review and replay their memories and the key parts of their testimony. If the case takes years, by the time they testify at trial they are far more certain of what happened than they were earlier. And their testimony can be far more favorable to their own cause. And they believe every word of it to be true.

          My purely speculative take based on his emails, letters to the editor, and his quotes in stories is that Mann’s starting point is that he ‘knows’ he is right and good and moral. And is convinced that he is on a quest to save the world and engaged in a mighty struggle against evil people. It would not surprise me a bit that he truly believes everything he says, even if some of it were to contradict other things he says or clearly established fact.

    • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 4:39 AM | Permalink

      “No reasonability” eh. Sounds about right.

      • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 10:20 AM | Permalink

        Some of these guys are pretty illiterate, that’s for sure. Worrying, really!

  81. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:36 PM | Permalink

    421. After telling everyone that Rutherford had prepared an Excel file at our request, we wrote back to Mann telling him that the file which we had downloaded from the ftp location to which we had been directed was dated long before our request. Mann asks Rutherford to explain. (I wonder what the answer was.)

    421. 2003-11-12
    ______________________________________________________
    cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk, rbradley@geo.umass.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu, Phil
    Jones

    , keith Briffa
    date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 00:01:46 -0500
    from: “Michael E. Mann”
    subject: Fwd: MBH98
    to: Scott Rutherford
    Scott,
    Take a look at this. You need to explain to us (don’t email this guy anything!)
    the
    various versions of the data. I’m really confused, and we need to know the
    precise history
    of when the individual MBH98 records were posted, and when the various matlab
    format files
    were posted, and in response to what requests, and these latest changes that
    were made on
    Oct 29, 2003??
    Obviously, we don’t need to provide these guys with *anything* and we needn’t
    respond to
    any of their emails–the raw data are available on the ftp sites, and have been
    for some
    time. But we really now need to know exactly when the data were made available.
    They claim
    that the matrix versions of the data files were posted on the ftp site before
    their request
    for the data. I’m really confused by this.
    You need to draft a clear explanation of all of this, so we can provide this to
    people. Can
    you draft an explanation of what was posted when for our internal purposes, and
    then we can
    decide what information to send on…
    thanks,
    mike

  82. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 8:41 PM | Permalink

    Wigley 2003:

    I still don’t think that hard-earned data needs to be made freely available.

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 3:27 AM | Permalink

      When it is under FOIA, it does.

      But the data itself wasn’t/isn’t CRU’s anyway. They themselves didn’t earn it the hard way – they got it from others.

      Pathetic hubris.

      At the same time, it was Wigley who did bring some moments of sanity to the Team, so he isn’t a complete jerk. He did try to get them to change the way they were doing some things.

  83. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:45 PM | Permalink

    Maybe someone can check back on what East Anglia said about Boulton not havinghad contact with UEA for nearly 2 decades. here’s an email from Phil Jones to Boulton in 2004. I’ve placed a pdf with all Boulton references online here. http://www.climateaudit.info/correspondence/climategate2/boulton.pdf. (This was produced in a few lines). I’ve placed an R version of the emails online in the same directory as cru.tab.

    1327. 2004-08-09
    ______________________________________________________
    date: Mon Aug 9 08:21:19 2004
    from: Phil Jones

    subject: Re: Fwd: EGU Division and Section Medals 2005
    to: Jean Jouzel , berger@astr.ucl.ac.be, gang@geo.vu.nl, Geoff Boulton
    Jean,
    I have no objections to Laurent.
    Phil
    At 15:00 07/08/2004 -0700, Jean Jouzel wrote:
    Dear all,
    Up to now, we are 3 (Gerald, André and myself) going to “vote” for Laurent
    Labeyrie (if I’am correct). Before sending the name of Laurent, I would be happy to have
    your reaction, Phil and Geoff. Can we go ahead with the name of Laurent Labeyrie ?
    Thanks for your reaction Jean

    Also

    702. 1998-06-08
    ______________________________________________________
    cc: g.boulton@ed.ac.uk, NTH@WPO.NERC.AC.UK, RCPAD@WPO.NERC.AC.UK
    date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 16:16:48 +0100
    from: Geraint Webber
    subject: PALAEOCLIMATE WORKING GROUP MEETING – WED 17 JUNE
    to: NJS5@cam.ac.uk, plg1@cus.cam.ac.uk, rbattarb@geog.ucl.ac.uk, P.J.Valdes@reading.ac.uk, j.lowe@rhbnc.ac.uk, k.briffa@uea.ac.uk
    Dear colleague
    I can now confirm that the Palaeoclimate Working Group
    meeting will take place on the morning of Wednesday 17
    June, at Henrietta Street, London. It is anticipated that the
    meeting will finnish with lunch.
    Those available to attend are:
    Professor R Battarbee, UCL
    Dr K Briffa, UEA
    Dr P Gibbard, Cambridge
    Professor N Shackleton, Cambridge
    Dr N Hollingworth and/or Dr R Padgham of ESTB.
    Professor J Lowe, RHUL and Dr P Valdes, Reading are
    both unavailable, but are willing to be involved.
    Professor Boulton (Chair of ESTB) and a member of
    ASTB may also possibly be attending, if available.
    Should your availability change please inform me as soon
    as possible. Papers will follow shortly. Any queries should
    be addressed to Dr Neville Hollingworth (01793 411527,
    nth@wpo.nerc.ac.uk).
    Yours sincerely
    Geraint Webber

    • compguy77
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:00 AM | Permalink

      Steve,

      This posting:

      Boulton’s 18 Years at UEA

      quotes Boulton

      ‘Prof Boulton said he had been open about having worked at the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA between 1968 and 1986. “Since then, I have had no professional contact with the University of East Anglia or the Climatic Research Unit,” he said. ‘

      You have a link there to the Scotsman for that quote, but the link doesn’t work anymore.

      • compguy77
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:05 AM | Permalink

        Steve,

        Further, your posting of 2010/02/15 explores the connection in some detail.

        More Tricks from Boulton and the Hapless Muir Russell

        I can’t find a record yet of UAE commenting on their relationship with Boulton. I’ll look some more.

      • David S
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 8:48 AM | Permalink

        Guess that’s true. Boulton has had no professional contact with UEA/CRU, only unprofessional contact.

  84. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:52 PM | Permalink

    40. 2000-04-28
    ______________________________________________________
    date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 08:56:29 +0100
    from: Trevor Davies
    subject: Re: R Director
    to: Mike Hulme
    Mike,
    It would be worth consulting Peter (in US at the moment) & Martin. I would
    also suggest consulting Tim O’R who knows many in big business & Andy
    Watson who is well-connected. Characteristics are a good starting point. We
    may have to consider special arrangements , but I would regard based in
    London as a real downer – OK for say 2 days per week.
    Names – Gell-man is how it’s spelt, I think. Grubb – I am very anti (but I
    wonder if the RCs have him in mind? Hunt – I am less anti after the TSUNAMI
    meeting – he is making a genuine attempt to ‘open out’. Additional name –
    Bob Watson. Another long-shot (& I find myself surprised that I am
    suggesting this) – Geoff Boulton (I’ll update on what he’s been up to).
    I’ll sound out Martin. Tim etc in time for your return on Tuesday.
    Trevor

  85. Steve McIntyre
    Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 11:57 PM | Permalink

    A 2006 meeting between Boulton, UEA reps and the Met Office regarding briefing Stern:

    Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:02:51 +0000
    >From: Julia Slingo
    >User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (Windows/20041103)
    >X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
    >To: A.Watkinson@uea.ac.uk, balakrishnan.bhaskaran@metoffice.gov.uk,
    > C.Goodess@uea.ac.uk, David Anderson ,
    > “e.maltby” ,
    > Geoff Boulton ,
    > Chris Gordon ,
    > richard.graham@metoffice.gov.uk, venkata.jogireddy@metoffice.gov.uk,
    > richard harding ,
    > Sari Kovats ,
    > tim wheeler ,
    > Andy Deacon ,
    > Loraine McFadden
    >Subject: Indo-UK Collaboration
    >X-Scan-Signature: bcd9f88e6814cab8f8bb4d3ed0f7edb6
    >X-UEA-Spam-Score: 0.0
    >X-UEA-Spam-Level: /
    >X-UEA-Spam-Flag: NO
    >
    >Dear All,
    >
    >First of all, thank you for your participation in last week’s
    >meeting which I felt had been a great success. I hope you all had an
    >uneventful journey home.
    >
    >Following the meeting, I have produced a draft summary of the
    >proposed collaboration, which is attached. This draft was sent to
    >Nick Stern at the Treasury yesterday in preparation for his visit to
    >India later this week. I’d be grateful for any comments/corrections.
    >
    >The next step, I think, is to ask the RS (via Sir Martin Rees) to
    >feed this into Government to investigate possible funding routes.
    >Anything you can do to help this process would be welcome. At this
    >stage I’m not sure whether it’s worth producing a more detailed
    >proposal with costings but would welcome your advice.
    >
    >Best regards,
    >
    >Julia
    >

    • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 3:50 AM | Permalink

      A snapshot among other things of how non-Western governments like that of India are made to ‘buy in’ to the consensus, giving rise to the astonishment of Richard Black yesterday that our friend FOIA dared to intimate in his README that the trillions diverted by climate politicking may not be ideal for the poorest. Indeed, you can see the concern for those without – or at least those who feel they do not yet have enough – oozing out of every sentence here. Leading to what the outsider Nigel Lawson generously described in the Wall Street Journal in October 2009 as:

      The 2006 Stern Review, quite the shoddiest pseudo-scientific and pseudo-economic document any British Government has ever produced …

      ‘Geoff’ showing his gift for impartiality throughout, as he did four years later on being chosen by Muir Russell to investigate UEA after Climategate 1, without seeing fit to mention such prior involvement seeking to steer a major report on climate change commissioned by the highest level of the British government, working with UEA experts. Presumably it was Clare Goodess (not Goddess) of CRU and Andrew Watkinson of the Tyndall Centre around the table with the great man on this occasion. Slingo herself later being wheeled out as an independent expert to say all was well with CRU and consensus science to the Commons select committee investigating Climategate 1 in March 2010, with no visible grasp of detailed concerns raised by the emails, familiar to CA readers, about CRU paleo temperature reconstructions and their use by the IPCC. Tiny world.

    • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 5:55 AM | Permalink

      Sari Kovats has only just completed her PhD. I wonder why she was chosen to brief Stern in 2006.

      The Strange Case of Sari Kovats

      • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 8:35 AM | Permalink

        Because she had the right opinion Bish. Expertise is no substitute for that.

  86. Punch My Ticket
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:35 AM | Permalink

    The apparently random order is driving me crazy.

    I have renamed all the released emails with date stamps. (One is a duplicate of another: 4698 == 5053.) Anybody else want a copy?

  87. MikeN
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:07 AM | Permalink

    When the initial release came out, Bender, myself, and others thought it was a hoax based on the ‘hide the decline’ e-mail.
    Noone has given a reaction like that, but I am wondering if this were the original release, would any of these e-mails have led you to believe it’s a hoax?

  88. Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 2:25 AM | Permalink

    I like email “451”….

    from: Stephen H Schneider
    subject: Re: [Fwd: data request]
    to: santer1@xxx.govv

    “Thanks” Ben for this, hi all and happy new year. I had a similar experience–but not FOIA since we at Climatic Change are a private institution–with Stephen McIntyre demanding that I have the Mann et al cohort publish all their computer codes for papers published in Climatic Change. I put the question to the editorial board who debated it for weeks. The vast majority opinion was that scientists should give enough information on their data sources and methods so others who are scientifically capable can do their own brand of replication work, but that this does not extend to personal computer codes with all their undocumented sub routines etc. It would be odious requirement to have scientists document every line of code so outsiders could then just apply them instantly. Not only is this an intellectual property issue, but it would dramatically reduce our productivity since we are not in the business of producing software products for general consumption and have no resources to do so. The NSF, which funded the studies I published, concurred–so that ended that issue with Climatic Change at the time a few years ago.

    Read the rest — it gets better…

  89. Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 2:36 AM | Permalink

    On “The Consensus”…

    from: “Malcolm Hughes”
    subject: Re: Your letter to Science
    to: Edward Cook , “Michael E. Mann”

    Dear Ed and Mike and others,

    All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale
    temperatures for the period around 1000 years ago are
    based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None
    of the datasets used so far has anything like the
    geographical distribution that experience with recent
    centuries indicates we need, and no-one has yet found a
    convincing way of validating the lower-frequency
    components of them against independent data. As Ed
    wrote, in the tree-ring records that form the backbone of
    most of the published estimates, the problem of poor
    replication near the beginnings of records is particularly
    acute, and ubiquitous. I would suggest that this problem
    probably cuts in closer to 1600 than 1400 in the several
    published series. Therefore, I accept that everything we
    are doing is preliminary, and should be treated with
    considerable caution. I differ from Ed, and his co-authors,
    in believing that these problems have a special
    significance for the particular implementation of RCS
    they used, in the light of one of their conclusions that
    depends heavily on that implementation.

    As I understand what Ed, Keith and Hal Fritts have
    written at various times about RCS, and from my own
    limited experience with the method, it is extremely
    important to have strong replication, and I don’t see 50-70
    samples probably from 25-35 trees as a big sample. For
    reference, most chronologies used in dendroclimatology
    are based on 10-40 trees, that is 20-80 samples at 2 cores
    per tree for a single “site”, usually a few hectares
    .

    etc.

    Must be read in full to be appreciated…

    It gets better, really…

    • Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 2:39 AM | Permalink

      That was “0209.txt” sorry about that.

  90. Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 5:41 AM | Permalink

    I’ve just had a look in my local newsagents to get an idea of how the London papers have treated this. Only The Independent has a link on the front page – prominent at the top centre

    Climategate 2: Scientists’ emails leaked again on eve of summit

    with a picture of parched ground and a link to page 7, which is devoted to the story. Nicely laid out and not a bad selection of pictures of errant climate researchers – Jones, Thorne, Jenkins, Wigley, Houghton, Hansen – and their errant (or honest) emails centre stage. But the normal stuff in the report and a Comment which says “These leaks do nothing to undermine the case for man-made global warming”. No doubt you can find the words on the web but the dead tree version somehow seemed important to me this morning. Quaint, I know.

  91. phil
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 5:48 AM | Permalink

    Mike’s Nature Trick and Hide The Decline explained by Phil Jones, Tue, 16 Nov 1999:

    http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=8693

    cc: REDACTED,REDACTED
    date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
    from: Phil Jones
    subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
    to: ray bradley ,REDACTED, REDACTED

    Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
    Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
    first thing tomorrow.
    I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
    to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
    1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
    land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
    N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
    for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
    data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
    Thanks for the comments, Ray.

    Cheers
    Phil

    • Jean S
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 5:59 AM | Permalink

      phil (Nov 23 05:48),

      thanks for the link! The e-mail is the original trick-email. Has anyone cross-checked how much overlap there is between these two releases?

      • Salamano
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:40 AM | Permalink

        I wonder if the “Redacted” is to hide a potential mole..?

        Obviously whoever is redacted can be researched by the original holders of those emails…and they can do what they want with that information to inquire as to why whoever released these redacted those names.

        • phil
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:55 AM | Permalink

          No, this is just how the database search was setup by the programmer, as a courtesy to those named in the emails.

          http://foia2011.org/

      • phil
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 9:45 AM | Permalink

        Jean, hat tip should go to WUWT blog, saw the link there.

    • SeanNY
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:49 PM | Permalink

      Can someone elxplain what’s with all the redactions? Were there redactions in the original batch of emails?

      • SeanNY
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:51 PM | Permalink

        Sorry — please ignore my comment. The question was already answered.

  92. Corey S.
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:03 AM | Permalink

    This would be interesting to Mosher since it was in response to his request:
    http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/2/FOIA/mail/2274.txt
    From: Hume Matthew Mr (ACAD)
    Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 3:16 PM
    To: Palmer Dave Mr (LIB)
    Cc: Walker Alan Dr (ACAD)
    Subject: RE: FOI/EIR request [FOI_09-69]
    Hi Dave,
    We all just had a very good laugh at Phil’s comment “We do sometime ignore the
    Registry advice”… If this is going to have the kind of publicity that you
    suggest, I would prefer if you do not quote ANY of his answer to question 1.
    The UEA actually has a very strict policy on entering into confidentiality
    agreements, however as Phil so blithely admits, a handful of academics take it
    upon themselves to foul things up!
    As you will note from points 1 & 2 of our policy; no UEA employee, except
    members of our office, has the right to sign anything on behalf of the
    university – the problem is that funders/other parties can be sneaky by
    sending the agreement in the name of the academic.

    Our policy is:-
    Someone from the Commercialisation & Enterprise Team should approve and sign
    all Confidentiality Agreements:
    only our staff have the legal authority to sign agreements on behalf of the
    University
    all agreements should be between the University of East Anglia and the party
    requesting the agreement (not an individual academic or school)
    we will negotiate with the other party on any issues within the document that
    may be contentious
    by doing this we will ensure you the best protection of your IP rights
    (In special circumstances, authorisation may be obtained from the
    Commercialisation & Enterprise Team allowing you to sign the agreement
    yourself. Such authorisation must always be obtained in advance, will only be
    valid for a specific instance, and the standard university agreement must be
    used without amendment – unless we have authorised an amendment)
    In all cases, a copy of the fully signed confidentiality agreement must be
    retained in our office.
    FYI – we are currently finishing off the final touches to our new intranet
    pages – there will be a page on CDA’s with this info on it.
    Also, I am away on holiday next week (10th -14th), so if you do any more info
    on our policy regarding agreements etc, please contact Anne Donaldson, one of
    our Commercialisation Managers ([3]a.donaldson@uea.ac.uk).
    Thanks
    Matt.

    • KnR
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 7:05 AM | Permalink

      To date despite requests they still mostly failed to produce any documents that prove these Confidentiality Agreements even existed . Odd that given they claimed these stopped them fro realizing date , another issues the ‘reviews ‘ passed by.

  93. Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:08 AM | Permalink

    Forgive me it this isn’t new.

    The email files are numbered 001-5349, but I can only un-zip 5292, leaving 57 numbers or files missing. Has anyone else managed to get all 5349?

    And has anyone produced a chronological set yet?

    • JonasM
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:14 PM | Permalink

      There are only 5292 files. For some reason, not all numbers are in the archive. There is no 0009.txt, for example. Maybe these were purely personal emails (witness how FOIA redacted family info, health issues, etc out of the published emails. Very classy, IMO.

  94. phil
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:29 AM | Permalink

    http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=4182

    date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:18:02 +0100
    from: Phil Jones
    subject: Tomorrow’s EDP
    to: REDACTED

    FYI – might be worth looking at tomorrow’s EDP
    Ian McEwan’s next novel will be on climate change deniers
    Phil

    From: “Ogden Annie Ms (MAC)”
    To: “Jones Philip Prof (ENV)”
    Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:51:13 +0100
    Subject: Today’s EDP
    Thread-Topic: Today’s EDP
    Thread-Index: AcoR1TRLi82IJwxgT0GHSJYUs5Da1g==
    Accept-Language: en-US, en-GB
    X-MS-Has-Attach:
    X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
    acceptlanguage: en-US, en-GB
    X-OriginalArrivalTime: 31 Jul 2009 11:51:REDACTEDUTC) FILETIME=[35253EA0:01CA11D5]
    On a lighter note, nice interview with Ian McEwan in today’s EDP which you might find
    interesting. His latest book, Solar, is about climate change. Here’s the taster:
    [1]http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=News&tB
    rand=EDPOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=NOED30%20JulREDACTED%3A16%3A23%3A913
    Best, Annie
    REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED
    Annie Ogden, Head of Communications,
    University of East Anglia,
    Norwich, NR4 7TJ.
    Tel:REDACTED592764
    [2]www.uea.ac.uk/comm
    REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED.

    Prof. Phil Jones
    Climatic Research Unit TelephoneREDACTED3 592090
    School of Environmental Sciences FaxREDACTED3 507784
    University of East Anglia
    NorwichREDACTEDREDACTED Email REDACTED
    NR4 7TJ
    UK
    REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED——-

  95. phil
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 6:50 AM | Permalink

    Why was Phil Jones sending out this email about carbon trading in 2000? See who got the email.

    http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=65

    date: Mon, 03 Jul 2000 08:12:39 +0100
    from: Phil Jones
    subject: The Carbon Trader – 12th Edition – “GORE’S US$79Billion GREEN POLICY”
    to: REDACTED

    >Reply-To: “Alistair R G Paton”
    >From: “Alistair R G Paton”
    >To:
    >Cc: “Gary R Stewart” ,
    >REDACTEDMartin G Green” ,
    >REDACTEDMax Kaplan” ,
    >REDACTEDGary Wilson” ,
    >REDACTEDPublic Relations Division” ,
    >REDACTEDRisk Management Division” ,
    >REDACTEDLegal Services Division” ,
    >REDACTEDFinancial Services Division”
    ,
    >REDACTEDEvaluations Division” ,
    >REDACTEDAuditing and Verification Division”
    >Subject: The Carbon Trader – 12th Edition – “GORE’S US$79Billion GREEN POLICY”
    >Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2000 16:58:26 +1000
    >Organization: thecarbontrader.com
    >X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
    >X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE VREDACTED0
    >
    >REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED
    >REDACTEDREDACTEDth Edition of The Carbon Trader – weekly “the
    >worlds leading reporter, library and commercial services intermediary
    >within the emerging carbon trading market” was published this morning 3
    >JulyREDACTEDth Edition free of charge via:www.thecarbontrader.com
    >edition we report on: Al Gore’s US$79b Green Policy, World Bank’s Green
    >loans to Poland ($93m) and India ($130m), Concerns over Chinese Aluminium
    >markets, Nuclear Power to be phased out by 2020, Norway’s Energy Minister
    >announces green agency, Senator Robert Hill press releases and many more
    >must read articles. contact: REDACTED contact:
    > REDACTED contact: REDACTED I hope
    >you all enjoy the 12th Edition of http://www.thecarbontrader.com and I again look
    >forward to all your responses. Sincerely, Alistair R G Paton
    >Chairman
    >The Carbon Trader
    >Level 4, 379 Pitt Street
    >Sydney NSW Australia 2000
    >e-mail: REDACTED
    >REDACTED089 fax:REDACTED066 Attachment Converted:
    >”c:eudoraattachAlistair R G Paton.vcf”
    Prof. Phil Jones
    Climatic Research Unit TelephoneREDACTEDREDACTED
    School of Environmental Sciences FaxREDACTEDREDACTED
    University of East AngliaREDACTEDREDACTED
    NorwichREDACTEDREDACTED Email REDACTED
    NR4 7TJ
    UK

    REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED—-

  96. Ben
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 8:05 AM | Permalink

    http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=136
    to: Phil Jones , ray bradley
    from: “Michael E. Mann”

    To refresh your memory, we used the ’61-90 base period for the absolute anomaly scale, but we aligned the series based on an earlier interval of the
    instrumental record, which pre-dates (largely) the recent decline in the
    Briffa et al series. I think this leads to a similar picture, but if you
    think there are any significant discrepancies w/ what Tim is preparing, we
    should discuss.

    • Craig Loehle
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 10:41 AM | Permalink

      They could not use 1961-1990 to align because it looked bad. Using the earlier period after chopping Briffa’s data is a phony way of making agreement look much better. Key part of “hide the decline”.

      • Ben
        Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 11:16 AM | Permalink

        I know.

        It’s Mike’s Nature trick described by Mann himslef this time 😉

        • Steve Garcia
          Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:16 PM | Permalink

          God forbid they let the data speak for itself. That would be. . . what IS the word? Lemme see… Oh yeah, SCIENCE.

  97. Peter Dunford
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 8:26 AM | Permalink

    If this is copied from the UEA server, why are there 315 emails that do not contain a UEA email address? Even if these were recieved by UEA personell and saved down onto their server, there still ought to be forwarding information in the header. I can’t see a common theme for them, they just seem to be background so far.

    • JonasM
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 10:01 AM | Permalink

      That’s interesting. The first email without a UAE address is 0011.txt, and that one has no headers or anything, just some text signed ‘Joel’. No date, To/From information, etc.

      The next one, 0036.txt, has headers but not any UEA emails. Curious.

  98. Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 9:14 AM | Permalink

    I’ve added these emails (and docs) to my original foia archive. You can now search both together at http://di2.nu/foia/foia.pl

  99. Amused
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 11:10 AM | Permalink

    This was interesting.

    ————————————–
    date: Tue Nov 16 08:57:47 1999
    from: Tim Osborn
    subject: time series for WMO diagram
    to: p.jones@uea

    The age-banded density Briffa et al. series can be got from:
    /cru/u2/f055/tree6/NHtemp_agebandbriffa.dat
    It is ready calibrated in deg C wrt. 1961-90, against the average Apr-Sep land temperature north of 20N. It goes from 1402 to 1994 – but you really ought to replace the values from 1961 onwards with observed temperatures due to the decline.

    Rather than give you a new file of your reconstruction (Jones et al.) that is re-calibrated, I thought it was easier to just give you the coefficients. Your original normalised file should be multiplied by 0.3856, and then subtract 0.1112 to give the calibrated time series, i.e.:
    CAL = (X*0.3856) – 0.1112

    Cheers

    Tim

    • stan
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 11:44 AM | Permalink

      “you really ought to replace the values from 1961 onwards with observed temperatures due to the decline.”

      This is just good scientific practice. How are people ever going to be able to understand what public policies to adopt, if the scientists confuse them with data that trends the wrong way?

    • Steve Garcia
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:42 PM | Permalink

      So, they normalize the data, then they delete the inconvenient trends, and THEN they calibrate them. Fudge, fudge, and fudge.

      The CAL = (X*0.3856) – 0.1112 is a simple linear-regressed trend line with a slope of 0.3856.

      But can you apply a trend line BEFORE you insert the data into whatever process you are analyzing? Is this part of the homogenization of proxies? That might seem reasonable, but I don’t know. If so, though, why are they excluding Briffa’s proxies? Apparently because the trend line is inconvenient, having the decline and all. Best to just pretend it doesn’t exist.

      And that is the real problem for them with “hide the decline” when it first was outed, the fact that everybody understood from the first reading: They were simply ignoring facts that they didn’t like. They were cheating, in other words.

      Yet, at the same time the emails repeatedly show them discussing among themselves about the divergence problem. And their approach was never – and still is not – to research WHY, but to bury it. Best not look into it too deeply, because it may then become something they can’t hide.

      ‘Hide the decline’ is really ‘hide the evidence’ – and how low IS that, anyway?

      It is certainly something every man on the street can comprehend (regardless of Richard Black and his “Stupid people on the street, what would they understand, anyway?” attitude). Thanks be to Mr/Ms FOIA, for having outed this two years ago, and for presently providing much more background and evidence of tampering.

    • Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 8:23 AM | Permalink

      Yes, this is particularly interesting. Look at the timings.

      1645.txt: date: Tue Nov 16 08:57:47 1999
      Osborne to Jones: “you really ought to replace the values from 1961 onwards with observed temperatures due to the decline.”

      Then less than 5 hours later,

      3451.txt: date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
      The famous “hide the decline” email

      [Note that Osborn is a lead author for the AR5 paleo chapter]

  100. Craig Loehle
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 12:01 PM | Permalink

    Some discoveries:
    1) I am not mentioned much, but did find that for my Divergence paper in Climatic Change, it was initially sent to Briffa and he declined for reasons of “conflict of interest”. That is one point for the Team, but why would he have a conflict of interest? Just because I have cooties?
    2) there is detailed (gory gory details) evidence of how they waged campaigns to get rid of editors they didn’t like and to recruit people they did like to IPCC.

  101. patrioticduo
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:04 PM | Permalink

    I don’t post on RC very often at all because the moderation is more like gatekeeping but today I had to say well something. Note Gavin’s response.

    “Gavin, the RC welcome page specifically states “Thus we will not get involved in political or economic issues that arise when discussing climate change.”

    But here you are with an entire thread dedicated to discussing the release of emails where little if any actual science is discussed.

    So if I take your actions here and put them together with Michael Mann’s email that specifically refers to the idea that Real Climate is in fact waging a “PR battle”. I come to the conclusion that you are indeed discussing political issues and Real Climate is in fact exactly what Michael Mann says this website is.

    A PR machine for climate scientists. Which means that Real Climate is NOT about just the science at all – now is it?”

    [Response: Would you like a pretzel with that logic? – gavin]

    So now I am left thinking that my formulation failed. Or is it something else I said?

    • Mark F
      Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:40 PM | Permalink

      that’s about as (dis)respectful reply as one might expect. Were you hoping for some kind of acknowledgement?

  102. JCM
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 1:30 PM | Permalink

    Carrington in The Guardian : ” The police inquiry, led by Norfolk Constabulary, has spent nothing on the investigation since March this year, and only £6,000 in the six months before that, according to Freedom of Information responses. That is not good enough. “

  103. Matt Skaggs
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 2:10 PM | Permalink

    Excerpt from 0237, Tim Osborn, March 2006:

    “I have co-authored a paper in Nature on the reduced response to
    warming as seen in tree-ring densitometric data at high-latitude
    sites around the Northern Hemisphere, increasingly apparent in the
    last 30 years or so.
    First, it is important to note that the phenomena is complicated
    because it is not clearly identifiable as a ubiquitous problem.
    Rather it is a mix of possible regionally distinct indications, a
    possible mix of phenomena that is almost certainly in part due to the
    methodological aspects of the way tree-ring series are produced. This
    applies to my own work, but also very likely to other work.
    The implications at this stage for the ‘hockey stick’ and other
    reconstructions are not great. That is because virtually all long
    tree-ring reconstructions that contribute to the various
    reconstructions, are NOT affected by this. Most show good coherence
    with temperature at local levels in recent decades. This is not true
    for one series (based on the density data). As these are our data, I
    am able to say that initial unpublished work will show that the
    “problem” can be mitigated with the use of new, and again
    unpublished, chronology construction methods.”

    If I am interpreting this correctly, Osborn is saying that the “divergence problem” with the hockey stick arose primarily from “methodological aspects,” and had little or nothing to do with actual tree rings. I, and many others I’m sure, have suspected this ever since MM03.

  104. R.S.Brown
    Posted Nov 23, 2011 at 3:26 PM | Permalink

    I’m intrigued that Mike Mann (via e-mail to AP), UAE/CRU (via press release), and Gavin
    Schmidt (through Real Climate) have all joined in a chorus of:

    “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for…”with the refrain, “Move along, move along.”

    However, none of the e-mails circulated exclusively among the North American side of the “CAUSE”
    would show up in the DOIA’s Climategate 2.0 or 7zip files.

    Since Mike Mann has a penchant for flailing out with snarky insults at anyone who questions
    anything he says, writes, or does, the really juicy and libelous stuff he shared with the
    rest of the Team trioika (i.e. Handen and Bradley) is probably hiding among those University
    of Virginia e-mails he’s so desparate to claim as his very private and very personal correspondence.

  105. MikeN
    Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 1:54 AM | Permalink

    “This will likely not be possible with the current data set. It may be
    crucial to add in to your proposal an update section as well. I understand that it is not
    possible to update all 400 sites, but from the current data that are available, it is
    possible to identify those sites with the strongest climate signal. Surely the project
    could be greatly strengthened if some of these keys sites could be updated to present.”

    ROb Wilson to Keith Briffa. #3719

  106. MikeN
    Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 2:10 AM | Permalink

    #1025, Melvin to Hantemirov, the Yamal chronology WAS based on a selected subset of available cores. Was this known 2 years ago?

  107. MikeN
    Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 2:25 AM | Permalink

    3123 has Juckes and Moberg with a lengthy discussion of MM2003, how their critique doesn’t match up with what is written in MM. Not clear what paper they are referring to.

  108. MikeN
    Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 3:06 AM | Permalink

    711
    Steve McIntyre had his comment to Nature reduced in word count and finally rejected, but we see that Wahl, Ammann, and Ritson had a request from Science that their comment critiquing Van Storch be lengthened to 1000 words.

  109. Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 4:59 AM | Permalink

    Damian Carrington:

    There is a scandal behind the latest release of emails written by climate scientists but is not about climate science. The true scandal is how, two years on, no one still has a clue who obtained the emails and why they so carefully timed their release for just before the UN’s annual climate change negotiations.

    So now we know: PC Plod’s the culprit. Go back to your workstations, it was a false alarm.

    • Punksta
      Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 5:08 AM | Permalink

      Yes, hiding data and declines are only false scandals. It is the revealing such activities that is a scandal.

  110. Jean S
    Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 5:42 AM | Permalink

    1553
    Hantemirov reporting Yamal work to Briffa in October 1998.

    According to reconsructions most favorable conditions for tree growth
    have been marked during 5000-1700 BC. At that time position of tree
    line was far northward of recent one.

    [Unfortunately, region of our research don’t include the whole area
    where trees grew during the Holocene. We can maintain that before 1700
    BC tree line was northward of our research area. We have only 3 dated
    remnants of trees from Yuribey River sampled by our colleagues (70 km
    to the north from recent polar tree line) that grew during 4200-4016
    and 3330-2986 BC.]
    This period is pointed out by low interannual variability of tree
    growth and high trees abundance discontinued, however, by several
    short (50-100 years) unfavorable periods, most significant of them
    dated about 4060-3990 BC. Since about 2800 BC gradual worsening of
    tree growth condition has begun. Significant shift of the polar tree
    line to the south have been fixed between 1700 and 1600 BC. At the
    same time interannual tree growth variability increased appreciably.
    During last 3600 years most of reconstructed indices have been varying
    not so very significant. Tree line has been shifting within 3-5 km
    near recent one
    . Low abundance of trees has been fixed during
    1410-1250 BC and 500-350 BC. Relatively high number of trees has been
    noted during 750-1450 AD.
    There are no evidences of moving polar timberline to the north during
    last century.

  111. DavidD
    Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 5:52 AM | Permalink

    The only scandal about this is that “climategate” is allowed to be presented as news.
    Out of thousands of ILLEGALLY obtained emails, all that has been found if a few sentences that are then taken entirely out of context.

    • Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 6:20 AM | Permalink

      There are three problems with the argument that the latest batch of emails are being taken “out of context”:

      1. Nobody says this when other kinds of whistleblower expose wrongdoing, often through the evidence of a one email. For example the email obtained by the Financial Times in Sep 05 written by an executive of chemical company Bayer misusing his position on the board of Roll Back Malaria to argue for further EU restrictions on DDT, in which he said “DDT use is for us a commercial threat.” Whatever context we don’t have (and we always lack context of some sort), that was not considered good of the image of Bayer and rightly so. There’s plenty of such material lying on the surface of the 5292 emails of Climategate 2.

      2. Steve McIntyre has been providing context for Climategate 1 emails for the last two years and, as he says, they normally make the motives of the authors in question seem a lot worse. If people were really concerned about lack of context they’d take a keen interest in such discussions. Instead, before and after context is provided, all they say is “Nothing to see here, please move on.” Why?

      3. The second batch of emails provides an enormous amount of context for the first batch. Isn’t that worthy of the attention of the world’s press? Why do you not point this out, given your legitimate concerns about context?

      • Punksta
        Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 6:24 AM | Permalink

        Alleged concerns about missing context

        Solution : provide the context then.

    • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 9:41 AM | Permalink

      A false assumption of this type of defense is that since lots of the emails show nothing, it is all nothing. That is absurd. It is the subset of emails that show the removal of editors, hide the decline, etc that are important. The entire batch is often necessary to provide “context” as well as background info outside the emails. The real problem with the defenders of the Team is that they don’t see these things as wrong, and shame on them.

  112. jjthoms
    Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 1:29 PM | Permalink

    Its funny how people criticised the news of the world for infringing on peoples privacy by tapping phone line and reading letters obtained from the garbage bin.
    Then illegal (yes it is illegal to remove/use computer data unless given permission – whistle blowing is NOT relevant according to high court judges) emails are published and all of a sudden it is OK to peruse PREIVATE communications from many people. Remember FOI in UK occurred in 2005 it is wrong to expect University lecturers to have prescience and realise their university funded career suddenly become public property 7 years later.

    • Punksta
      Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 1:34 PM | Permalink

      It’s funny how apologists for corrupt science try and compare prying into private lives, with getting publicly funded employees to account for what they done with public’s money, especially when it involves trying to dupe the public.

    • Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 2:18 PM | Permalink

      It was always public property. You don’t seem to realize that.

    • Martin A
      Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 3:30 PM | Permalink

      jjthoms – to correct what you said: In England, it is not illegal for someone with authorised access to a computer system to make public information on the system. (It may well be a disciplinary matter with their employer but that’s a different matter.)

      No doubt at UEA there were(in 2009) a good number of IT staff with root logon to their servers.

    • Willis Eschenbach
      Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 3:30 PM | Permalink

      jjthoms, you seem to be under the illusion that the people working for UEA have some kind of ‘privacy rights’ regarding their email. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like most university employees and indeed most employees worldwide, what they produce on company time (including their emails) belongs to the university.

      In addition, since the University is publicly funded, all of their bases are belong to the public, and thus subject to FOI. So they are not what you curiously refer to as “PREIVATE” communications. They are the public communications of public employees doing business on the taxpayer’s dime.

      Finally, if they had simply answered the FOIs, instead of flat out lying about them, their emails might never have been released. They spent months lying to me about the data, when as David Palmer points out in the emails, it was simply in too screwed up a shape to release. As Dave said, “we don’t know which data belongs to which station, correct?”

      And that makes it kinda hard to release, correct?

      But being unwilling to admit that ugly reality, instead they went on a long trail of conceal, deny, deceive, avoid the FOI by any means foul or fair, and meanwhile lie to Willis about what’s really happening.

      Given that string of actions, your passion about not using “illegal emails” strikes me as both highly self-serving and awfully convenient. I’m curious … did you make the same claim about the Wikileaks emails?

      w.

      • Steve McIntyre
        Posted Nov 24, 2011 at 3:54 PM | Permalink

        Harvard-Smithsonian, when presented with a FOI for Willie Soon’s emails, told Soon that the “documents requested by Greenpeace are the property of the SMithsonian Institute, not the employee’s personal property” and told Soon that they planned to turn the documents over to Greenpeace (which they did):

        To the best of my knowledge, no academic society objected to Willie Soon’s emails being turned over to Greenpeace.

  113. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 2:37 AM | Permalink

    Here is an interesting one about you Steve, some of your original emails are in this one.

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/1737.txt

    I would immediately delete anything you receive from this fraud.
    You’ve probably seen now the paper by Wahl and Ammann which independently exposes
    McIntyre and McKitrick for what it is–pure crap. Of course, we’ve already done this on
    “RealClimate”, but Wahl and Ammann is peer-reviewed and independent of us. I’ve attached
    it in case you haven’t seen (please don’t pass it along to others yet). It should be in
    press shortly. Meanwhile, I would NOT RESPOND to this guy. As you know, only bad things
    can come of that. The last thing this guy cares about is honest debate–he is funded by
    the same people as Singer, Michaels, etc…
    Other than this distraction, I hope you’re enjoying the holidays too…
    talk to you soon,
    mike

  114. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 3:21 AM | Permalink

    This one is Mike Mann admitting to deleting Steve’s posts on RealClimate

    date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:33:06 -0400
    from: Michael Mann
    subject: attacks against Keith
    to: Phil Jones , Tim Osborn

    Phil, Tim,

    …..

    Meanwhile, I suspect you’ve both seen the latest attack against his Yamal work by McIntyre.
    Gavin and I (having consulted also w/ Malcolm) are wondering what to make of this, and
    what sort of response—if any—is necessary and appropriate. So far, we’ve simply deleted
    all of the attempts by McIntyre and his minions to draw attention to this at RealClimate.

    • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 4:11 AM | Permalink

      McIntyre and his minions

      Love the alliteration – in fact, love everything about this phrase. But how does one know that one has become a minion. I mean, really made the grade?

      • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 9:44 AM | Permalink

        You get a decoder ring and a secret handshake.

        • Jean S
          Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 10:26 AM | Permalink

          Yes, but only after you have retired. All minions are retired and have therefore infinite time. #4986 (Phil Jones –> Bruce Tofield):

          They are mostly people who correspond on the Climate Audit blog site. They all seem to have infinite time as they are all retired.

  115. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 3:38 AM | Permalink

    A funny one, seems that Steve is high on their list of subjects.

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/3079.txt

    Hey Phil,
    Please see the below–any update on the Wengen paper? It appears that McIntyre is trying to
    scoop us, must have somehow learned that we’ve tracked this down.
    It would be nice for the paper to be officially ‘accepted’ before he figures the story out,
    mike
    ——– Original Message ——–

    Subject: Re: [Fwd: Blog Swap with Solve Climate]
    Date: 09 May 2008 19:01:30 -0400
    From: Gavin Schmidt [1]
    To: Michael E. Mann [2]
    CC: Stefan Rahmstorf [3]
    References: [4]
    [5]

    I saw… but I think we’ll weather the storm. the followup post needs to
    be soon though.

    On another subject, McIntyre has worked out where IPCC 1990 fig 7.2 has
    came from (almost). We are being scooped! (More to the point, what is
    the status of the Wengen paper and can we do the origin post at some
    point? Not too soon obviously!)

    Gavin

  116. phil
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 8:20 AM | Permalink

    UEA”s ”strategic alliance” with Goldman-Sachs:

    http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=4092.txt&search=Goldman-Sachs

    date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:00:38 +010 ???
    from: Trevor Davies ???@uea.ac.uk
    subject: goldman-sachs
    to: ???@uea,???@uea,???@uea

    Jean,

    We (Mike H) have done a modest amount of work on degree-days for G-S. They
    now want to extend this. They are involved in dealing in the developing
    energy futures market.

    G-S is the sort of company that we might be looking for a ”strategic
    alliance” with. I suggest the four of us meet with ?? (forgotten his name)
    for an hour on the afternoon of Friday 12 June (best guess for Phil & Jean
    – he needs a date from us). Thanks.

    Trevor

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Professor Trevor D. Davies
    Climatic Research Unit
    University of East Anglia
    Norwich NR4 7TJ
    United Kingdom

    Tel. +44 ???
    Fax. +44 ???
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 10:56 AM | Permalink

      So when they say it’s not about the Benjamins, it really is.

  117. AntonyIndia
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 8:33 AM | Permalink

    I think a new thread should be started about scientists contacting media. One example:

    From: Michael E. Mann ???@meteo.psu.edu
    > Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:17:33 -0500
    > To: ???@zetnet.co.uk
    > Subject: info about upcoming documentary
    >
    > Dear Mr. Monbiot,
    >
    > My previous attempts to reach you (through the Guardian and your monbiot.com email) have failed, so I’m hoping this email address (courtesy of George Marshall) does make it through.
    >
    > This has to do with a denialist-leaning documentary being filmed by Martin Durkin for Channel 4 TV in Britain. I saw that you had written about Durkin before in the Guardian, and was hoping that you might potentially have some interest in exposing this latest disinformation effort.
    >
    > I am forwarding messages from Durkin and his assistant, which I’m forwarding separately.
    >
    > I hope to hear back from you.
    >
    > best regards,
    >
    > Mike Mann

    • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 9:06 AM | Permalink

      I second the idea of a thread for contacts with the media.

      • kim
        Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 10:00 AM | Permalink

        Many of you over at the Bish’s are making a rock solid case for the corruption of the BBC.
        ============

    • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 9:47 AM | Permalink

      “Contacting” the media indeed–they think they own them.

  118. py
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 8:33 AM | Permalink

    5053 is interesting. See Phil asking Amman and Wahl to change the received date on a paper. I’m assuming this is the infamous Jesus paper of 2007?

    • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 8:49 PM | Permalink

      Isn’t this a long-sought indemnifying statement from Jones?

      Re: py (Nov 25 08:33),

      Ammann/Wahl – try and change the Received date! Don’t give those
      skeptics something to amuse themselves with.
      Cheers
      Phil

  119. justbeau
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 9:17 AM | Permalink

    It seems like this second deluge of emails reveals more “cc” addressees. Its as if the provider of the emails is pulling back the curtain at a deliberate, unhurried pace.

    • Punksta
      Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 9:23 AM | Permalink

      Re: emails is being released a deliberate, unhurried pace

      ‘fraid so … for the next installment we’ll just have to wait for the next big UN/IPCC alarmism rah-rah-rah. Probably another two years ….

  120. genealogymaster
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 10:08 AM | Permalink

    Does anyone think anything will happen this time?

    • kim
      Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 10:15 AM | Permalink

      Yep. A corrupt BBC in a cold Great Britain is too much to ignore. Also, the corruption of the science and peer review is now demonstrated as so egregious that the mass of honest scientists will gradually come to their senses.

      It’s like a glacier melting, but melting it is. The sad thing is that were the globe warming, the hoax would persist.
      ==============

      • genealogymaster
        Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 11:38 AM | Permalink

        I hope so, in my field we would not be allowed to get away with something like that we would reprimanded or fired.

  121. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 3:37 PM | Permalink

    Here is what they think Steve’s agenda and attack will be.

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/3890.txt

    Well, if I recall right the most recent ‘venting’ on climateaudit did go
    towards the hurricanes and sea level. Currently their site is not
    responding, and it might just be strategic… I would assume that
    they are going to launch a multi-pronged approach trying to undermine a
    string of arguments that are currently either in the chain to link to
    GHG forcing and/or that have one of the biggest impacts in the popular
    perception. Its going to be in their usual fashion: Stir up a lot of dust
    and move to the next thing before anybody can answer. In the end there is
    little left…

    Trying to interpret a priority list from my personal feeling of this
    guy. I do this based on a google-cash because his site is down or
    something. So here is my hunch/speculation. I’ll see if I can get the
    document somewhere but I’m not very optimistic about this. By the way,
    I’m also going to forward this to Susan an few others that might have
    heard the rumor. Before I do send it to Susan, you might chip in on
    this list for “internal and IPCC use”:

  122. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 3:48 PM | Permalink

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4142.txt

    date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 08:34:16 -0500
    from: “Michael E. Mann”
    subject: [Fwd: Re: British documentary about global warming]
    to: Gavin Schmidt , Caspar Ammann , Phil Jones

    as I suspected, this is being done by a right wing hack, his name is
    Martin Durkin. He appears to be the British version of our John Stossel.

    Monbiot’s all over him:
    http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/03/16/modified-truth/
    http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1997/12/18/the-revolution-has-been-televised/
    http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=39

    I think it would be good to contact some folks like Geoerge Monbiot to
    let them no that this charlatan is up to it again.

    anyone have contact info for Monbiot?

    thanks,

    mike

  123. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 4:06 PM | Permalink

    Part of an interesting email thread, all of it needs to be read.

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4341.txt

    At 13:43 16/03/2007, Alan Kendall wrote:

    Phil, I’m sorry you take exception to my contacting David Palmer about this matter. I
    felt that, since the University was being “slagged off” on a much read website and
    people were advancing possible legal ways in which the information they request could be
    obtained from the university, it was important to warn David Palmer about this
    development. I assumed that you would be aware of what might be being said on that
    website, whereas David Palmer would not be expected to be so informed. In fact he was
    not, and thanked me for the information

    I’m not exactly sure what you are complaining about and if the same situation arose
    again I think I would act in exactly the same way again.

    What you do with your data is not my concern, nor was it ever. I would not presume to
    interfere in this area, nor have I done so. I am, however, concerned that UEA will be
    beset by possible legal challanges and I consider it only prudent to warn those
    involved. Here ends any further envolvement.

    Also please don’t you presume to lecture me about what particular website I should or
    should not be consulting. I’ll make my own mind up. In actual fact , I read both
    ClimateAudit and RealClimate.

    AlanK

  124. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 4:09 PM | Permalink

    The genesis of realclimate.org

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4349.txt

    Gavin Schmidt

    on behalf of the RealClimate.org team:
    – Gavin Schmidt
    – Mike Mann
    – Eric Steig
    – William Connolley
    – Stefan Rahmstorf
    – Ray Bradley
    – Amy Clement
    – Rasmus Benestad
    – William Connolley
    – Caspar Ammann

    • Tony Hansen
      Posted Nov 28, 2011 at 2:15 AM | Permalink

      Connelley gets two mentions.

  125. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 5:17 PM | Permalink

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4739.txt

    date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:54:02 +0100
    from: Rob Wilson
    subject: Re: [ITRDBFOR] should we, as a discipline, respond to Climate Audit
    to: ITRDBFOR@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU

    Dear All,

    I have read your replies to my post with interest and have also received quite a few e-mails privately.

    Firstly, I do not think we need to get into any debate out how science affects policy and vise verse. This is simply a discussion about addressing issues raised on CA. Some of the comments are valid (e.g. data archiving) and we should take them to heart. Some are simply wrong. It is these latter set of comments that we need worry about.

    The overall consensus view is that we should ignore CA. I can understand why people would choose this option but it could be dangerous to leave Steve McIntyre unchecked. After all, his auditing work had great influence in dragging Mann, Bradley and Hughes to the US Senate.

    Other options proposed to me were:

    1. A one off ‘guest’ thread to RealClimate, carefully describing the basics dendroclimatology (e.g. see Andy Baker’s spiel on speleothems).

    2. Create our own Dendro Blog similar to RealClimate.

    3. A new dendro FAQ, but addressing issues raised in CA.

    4. A wiki style webpage that is continually updated by individuals within the community.

    Personally I think that a one off thread on RealClimate would not really gain us, as a discipline, anything. Such a posting would soon get lost and we would be back to the present status quo. Developing our own Blog would be a huge amount of work and would only open up yet another avenue for active criticism and may in fact undermine what we actually set out to do. I think it would be better to address comments directly on CA.

    The Blog approach also seems to me to be a bit too proactive and I would rather spend my time doing science and ensuring that it is done as robustly as possible. Perhaps the answer is a more passive, but continually updated web presence. 10 years ago, Rob Argent and I edited the Tree-Ring FAQ which was superseded by Henri’s far superior web pages. A new FAQ could address quite easily specific issues raised in CA.

    However, I actually quite like the idea of the wiki style editing approach mentioned by Peter Brown. This could be continually updated and edited when specific issues are raised, but would really focus on the dendro basics – i.e. basic theory, sampling strategies, data processing methods and commonly used statistical methods used for reconstruction etc etc – with reference to specific papers for further reading.

    So – the $1,000,000 question – what do we do now? We are all busy, and I do not think anyone wants to take on a huge burden of extra work which may be arguably a wasted effort. Whatever is decided – if anything – will only be successful if the work is spread out amongst many individuals.

    Whatever we do, this should not be seen as a personal attack on Steve McIntyre. I met him last December at the AGU and we had a very civil chat over lunch. On the whole, I think he is well informed and his primary motivation is to see that palaeo science is done in an honest and open way. Many of the misinformed comments on CA are from participants, not from him.

    So we need to think in terms of outreach and providing basic information to those who are generally interested in find out more about our discipline. We cannot hope to persuade those who have already ‘decided’ that tree-rings are worthless as a climate-proxy. Steve McIntyre is not in this latter category, but many of his followers are.

    So – my 10 pence worth.

    As I started this, I put my hand up as the first volunteer to whatever we end up doing.

    Comments and volunteers welcome

    Rob

  126. Duke C.
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 7:19 PM | Permalink

    Here’s some initial forensics on FOIA2011.ZIP-

    FOIA/

    offset of local header from start of archive: 0
    (0000000000000000h) bytes
    file system or operating system of origin: Unix
    version of encoding software: 2.0
    minimum file system compatibility required: Unix
    minimum software version required to extract: 1.0
    compression method: none (stored)
    file security status: not encrypted
    extended local header: no
    file last modified on (DOS date/time): 2011 Jan 1 12:00:00
    32-bit CRC value (hex): 00000000
    compressed size: 0 bytes
    uncompressed size: 0 bytes
    length of filename: 5 characters
    length of extra field: 0 bytes
    length of file comment: 0 characters
    disk number on which file begins: disk 1
    apparent file type: binary
    Unix file attributes (040755 octal): drwxr-xr-x
    MS-DOS file attributes (10 hex): dir

    There is a local extra field with ID 0x5855 (old Info-ZIP Unix/OS2/NT) and
    8 data bytes (GMT modification/access times only).

    Comments-

    The leaker(s) used an older ZIP version (2.0 as opposed to 2.3) this time around.

    There are no local time attributes in the header, other than the 8 additional bytes that my version of Info-zip (Linux) doesn’t translate.

    Running “all.7z” in test mode reveals some interesting results. Apparently, the passphrase isn’t required for this function.

    There are 220247 email files and 1 readme.txt file. There are no subfolders, so no additional tranches requiring different passphrases. This is the Full Monty.

    The email file names are 9 or 10 digit Unix timestamps.

    Oldest email is 636048969.txt dated 26 Feb 1990 16:16:09 GMT. Interestingly, The next email in the sequence is dated Mar 08 1996 8:02:01 GMT- 6 years later.

    Newest email is 1258124051.txt dated 13 Nov. 2009 14:54:11 GMT. This moves the dossier acquisition up one day, from 12 Nov 2009.

    It doesn’t appear that the 1000+ emails contained in foi2009.zip are included in this release. I’ll have to take a closer look, however.

    If anyone knows how to direct the test output from 7z file manager to a text file, please post!

    • Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 7:35 PM | Permalink

      Interesting, thanks. I’d also moved ‘the dossier acquisition up one day’ to 13th Nov 2009 from my first 15 minutes with emails on Tuesday, using regex under TextMate on the Mac.

    • Reg. Blank
      Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 11:00 PM | Permalink

      The only useful information in all.7z that can be extracted are the file names, file sizes and CRC checksum value.

      I have a csv file containing these, and have made an attempt to automatically match up the file list in all.7z with the actual email text files from both the “2009” and “2011” releases.

      The “2009” files need a simple transformation on them to get them to produce a CRC value and file size that matches the all.7z listing. All but 8 of the “2009” files appear to be in all.7z

      The 8 “2009” files not automatically matched are:

      1084625760.txt
      1057011929.txt
      1057166231.txt
      1062189235.txt
      1056986548.txt
      1056478635.txt
      0939844657.txt
      1211040378.txt

      Some of those are in the “2011” set (searching by hand for the content) where the difference is that the “2011” version has an attachment but the “2009” file does not. There is at least one “2009” email that does not appear in the “2011” files, but could still be in all.7z where the difference is an attachment.

      The “2011” files are a bit more problematic. Many of them (2891) directly match an all.7z file, and a couple of hundred (249) match an all.7z file and a “2009” file. There are 2152 files that don’t match an existing size/CRC pair but manually looking at a dozen or so similarly sized files from the “2009” set it seems that many of the non-matching “2011” files have either marked redactions in them, or have the reply-to header field removed–the removal of headers makes it impossible to match the files by CRC value and I’m considering other methods of automatically matching these with the “2009” files.

      So, at least some of the provided “2011” mail files appear to be slightly slightly “cut down” versions of the files in all.7z (as compared with an existing “2009” version mail file).

      Would anyone be interested in the CSV file?

      Or a zip of the Maildir format directory structure I’m using to browse folders of the emails via IMAP and Thunderbird? (if you don’t know what Maildir is, I would guess not).

      • Duke C.
        Posted Nov 25, 2011 at 11:40 PM | Permalink

        Reg. Blank,
        That’s some good detective work. Can you zip the CSV file and post it at Dropbox? Or, maybe Steve can put it here, under “Links”…

        • Reg. Blank
          Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 12:16 AM | Permalink

          I’ve added column headers to the CSV file, sorted it, and put it up at

          http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51011516/FOIA_stuff/FOIA-map-20111126.zip

          It is 222408 rows so will make a spreadsheet app creak a bit.

          The columns should be mostly self explanatory. I’ve added a “matches” column that can be used to help filtering.

          If I get time to try to match up some of the non matching stuff (and have any kind of success) I’ll upload another version.

        • Duke C.
          Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 12:57 AM | Permalink

          Got it. Thanks!

      • Reg. Blank
        Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 12:33 PM | Permalink

        More on this. New zip file available.

        http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51011516/FOIA_stuff/FOIA-map-matched-20111226.zip

        I’ve added another column containing the 2011 email matched up by other means to the corresponding 2009 email. There seems to be 449 distinct emails common to both releases (of which 249 are identical). Of the 200 matched files that are not identical, the differences are relatively trivial — those differences (less a couple for “redacted” emails) have been filtered into differences.txt.

        There are two versions of the map CSV file, a full file with “everything” (220,000+ rows), and a cut down file with about 6000 rows which omits the “all.7z only” matches.

        • Duke C.
          Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 10:39 AM | Permalink

          This spreadsheet file lists the emails contained in the “all.7z” directory with file size, file name and the (imputed) last modified date:

          http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18009262/all7zEmailDirectory.zip

          It may be useful in determining the flow of email during contemporaneous events. I.E., on Monday 07/20/2009 (during the CA foia request campaign) there were 270 emails generated, substantially higher than the average daily volume.

  127. Dennis Wingo
    Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 10:46 PM | Permalink

    Steve is going to love this one.

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/1285.txt

    date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 16:57:51 -0000
    from: “Richard Starkey”
    subject: RE: Will Hutton’s A-level essay
    to: “‘Mike Hulme'”

    Hi Mike

    Thanks a lot for the info – extremely interesting.

    I know that SBC is editor of EE and I know she is a CC sceptic. Is his the “hidden agenda”
    of EE too? Do you think WH was briefed by SBC? If I get round to replying to WH, would it
    be legitimate to mention the contentious (non-neutral?!?!) nature of MMO3 or would this do
    more harm than good?

    Any draft reply, I would of course be happy to run by you and Asher.

    Richard

    PS Copying to Kevin for his interest. (He might also help me draft a reply!)

    —–Original Message—–
    From: Mike Hulme []
    Sent: 08 December 2003 14:10
    To: Richard Starkey
    Cc:
    Subject: Re: Will Hutton’s A-level essay

    Richard,
    The McIntyre and McKitrick paper (MM03) has got a hidden agenda behind it. Check out this
    web site for some commentary on it. As with the contentious Soon and Baliunas paper, MM03
    has been published by Energy & Environment and is part of Sonja Christriansen-Boehmer’s
    on-going campaign.
    [1]http://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/Mann/EEReply.html
    So while not endorsing this attempt at undermining our basis for current exceptional global
    warming, I must say I find myself in sympathy with much of what Will Hutton writes. In
    particular his conclusion that the debate around climate change is fundamentally about
    power and politics rather than the environment seems undeniable. There are not that many
    “facts” about (the meaning of) climate change which science can unequivocally reveal.
    I am copying this to Asher Minns, since Asher has been giving the issue of “sound science”
    and Tyndall’s reaction to it some thought recently.
    Mike
    At 11:37 08/12/2003 +0000, you wrote:

    Dear Mike

    Did you see Will Hutton s article in the Observer yesterday. See

    [2]http://observer.guardian.co.uk/columnists/story/0,12877,1101658,00.html

    An appalling article in my view. One of the key paras is

    An important and neutral paper by Canadians Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick suggests
    that the best guess is that, while temperatures are currently rising, they probably lie
    within the range for the past 600 years. Environmentalists, just as in a battle over a new
    runway, are being as partisan in their use of science as their opponents.

    Do you know of these (neutral!!!!!!!!!) guys and their paper. Do they have credibility?
    Is Hutton s interpretation correct?

    I d like to do a reply but could do with some insight into the science.

    Richard
    _____________
    Richard Starkey
    Researcher
    Tyndall Centre for Climate Research
    UMIST
    PO Box 88
    Manchester M60 1QD

    Tel:
    _____________

  128. AntonyIndia
    Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 2:38 AM | Permalink

    1207.txt

    About trying to circumvent FOI requests, even for the ICO

    cc: Tom Wigley
    date: Fri Apr 3 09:39:50 2009
    from: Phil Jones
    subject: Re: Final version of agenda?
    to: REDACTED

    Ben,
    UEA is being very supportive. We need a meeting to respond – it just takes time. We are now going to have to write a 2 page context letter to go to the Information
    Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to explain what IPCC is, how it works, the drafts and their comments and responses – and where these can be accessed. This will all go them once we have an officer assigned.
    We have emails from all on Ch 6 saying they don’t want their emails to Keith/Tim sent on, so this should be enough. The detail that Holland wants is in some
    of these emails and the attachments, which are parts (or the whole) of Ch 6 in word documents. If we’re forced to send these, then we’ll send hard copies, so he can’t see who changed what – which you can in tracker.
    One odd thing with the ICO is that in order for them to assess the complaint, they need to see all. We’re trying the above with a few examples to circumvent this.
    If they want to see everything, then they decide to uphold the original UEA decision, the ICO can then be asked for the material by Holland! Seems a bizarre situation. We’re claiming we can’t comply on several issues. One of these is that if we do, then we’ll be ignored by IPCC when it comes to future IPCC CLA/LA assignments.It wouldn’t just be UEA, but would then apply to anyone working in the UK. The clause relates to compliance affecting international relations! The whole FOI was set up by government principally for government depts. The ICO generally finds for the complainant, but there are numerous cases where the government dept ignores the decision. The new department of Justice is
    the principal dept to ignore FOI decisions!

  129. theduke
    Posted Nov 27, 2011 at 10:22 AM | Permalink

    Good summation of what the new emails mean for climate science and why the ship AGW will continue to take on water.

    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b8bfa07e-1692-11e1-be1d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1euGaJ0yE

  130. AntonyIndia
    Posted Nov 29, 2011 at 10:35 PM | Permalink

    Being the arch skeptic I wonder why our source FOIA was sitting on this information for 2 years without ordering it (like Jeff ID) before releasing it. Also s/he could have released more in the first batch to deliver a fatal punch to the Team. I do understand that a big bunch is kept in reserve to hatch against repercussions.

  131. DGH
    Posted Dec 2, 2011 at 1:10 PM | Permalink

    How does #0226 get into the mix?

    The email is between Rahmstorf and David Rind. No UEA addresses appear. BCC perhaps?

    Steve: It was copied to the “Wg1-ar4-ch06 mailing list” which included Briffa

20 Trackbacks

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  8. By Climategate 2.0? « The Enterprise Blog on Nov 22, 2011 at 3:06 PM

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  18. […] for more on the Climategate 2.0 email scandal, check out: Steve McIntyre, James Delingpole, Anthony Watts, and Steve Milloy. The emails can be downloaded from FOIA.org. […]

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