IPCC rejected a proposal for anonymous peer review – see document here (page 12 on).

We haven’t discussed this topic previously (in an IPCC context). On reflection, the adoption of a form of anonymous peer review by IPCC seems to me to be a very good idea and might somewhat mitigate some problems. There is no doubt in my mind that review responses are strongly conditioned by who is making the suggestion. The experiences of Ross and myself are vivid examples.

In the IPCC’s Special report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage of WG III of the Fourth Assessment Report, reviews were anonymous. The review document described the results of anonymous review as being entirely positive:

The TSU prepared a list of Review comments with numbers. The TSU had a conversion table linking the numbers to the Reviewer’s names. During the treatment at the lead author meetings and the formulation of the authors’ responses the authors only saw the numbers. The authors knew that in case they would need to consult an Expert Reviewer for getting some clarifications about his comments, the anonymity could be lifted and the coordinates of the Expert Reviewer would have been made available to the authors. In practice it turned out they did not need to use this provision. The anonymity was continued until finalization of the final draft report.

The Reviewers and authors have been informed beforehand about this procedure. The number of comments was normal compared to other special reports. No Reviewer used improper or inappropriate language. The WG III co chairs and TSU held an enquiry among the authors and Review Editors. They considered the anonymity an improvement, because it made them concentrate fully on the content of the matter, disregarding the persons and their background, which was more time efficient.

The review document summarized the advantages of anonymous review as follows:

• Authors will concentrate on the content of the matter, excluding (subconscious) biases.
• There is positive experience in WG III AR4 – also the Task Force on the Greenhouse Gas Inventory Program (TFI) has practiced anonymous reviews with a positive judgment of the authors and Review Editors.
• Authors cannot be criticized anymore of ignoring comments of specific individuals or representatives of scientific schools or interest groups, as happened in the past.
• It remains possible for authors to contact Expert Reviewers if there is a need for clarification.

These seem pretty convincing arguments. Here are the arguments against:

• The Task Group on Procedures was installed in order to consider the recommendations of the InterAcademy Council (IAC). The IAC did not recommend anonymous Reviews, so there is no compelling reason to address this.
• There is a risk that Exper Reviewers could take advantage of their anonymity by burdening authors with unprofessional or inappropriate comments.
• Measures against biases are already sufficiently taken by having Review Editors and by having a authors working as a group.
• Transparency is crucial to the IPCC process. There would be an imbalance in transparency when authors are known by name and Reviewers are not.
• IPCC needs a consistent approach with regard to its Expert Reviews. Changing the approach to require anonymous Review comments would imply that there is a problem with the named Reviewer approach, which is not the case.
• Named Expert Review is more efficient as it allows writing teams to liaise with Reviewers when there is a need for clarification.

In my opinion, none of these reasons stands up.

The Task Group on Procedures was installed in order to consider the recommendations of the InterAcademy Council (IAC). The IAC did not recommend anonymous Reviews, so there is no compelling reason to address this.

The first argument starkly shows the hypocrisy and opportunism of IPCC. IAC did not recommend (or even consider) Jones-Stocker enhanced confidentiality. This was not not mentioned in the briefing documents for the Jones-Stocker amendment. Worse, they represented the changes as addressing issues raised by the IAC.

There is a risk that Exper Reviewers could take advantage of their anonymity by burdening authors with unprofessional or inappropriate comments.

The IPCC’s own experience with the Carbon Dioxide Task Group was reported to be the opposite. To the extent that accountability was an issue, the reviewer names could be removed from the version given to authors for comment, but restored in the final publication of review comments, thereby ensuring accountability.

Measures against biases are already sufficiently taken by having Review Editors and by having authors working as a group.

Neither of these measures had the slightest deterrent to AR4 author responses. In practice, authors seem to have divided up responsibilities in their chapter and to have been busy handling their own sections without worrying too much about how, for example, Briffa handled review comments in his section.

Transparency is crucial to the IPCC process. There would be an imbalance in transparency when authors are known by name and Reviewers are not.

I agree that transparency is “crucial” to the IPCC process. As discussed elsewhere, IPCC has opposed transparency in favour of confidentiality, with the situation getting worse with the furtive adoption of the Jones-Stocker amendment. In addition, it would be easy enough to add back the reviewer name when the review comments were published. The present system is designed not for transparency, but to enable authors to decide how to respond, depending on who the reviewer was.

IPCC needs a consistent approach with regard to its Expert Reviews. Changing the approach to require anonymous Review comments would imply that there is a problem with the named Reviewer approach, which is not the case.

This is perhaps the stupidest argument – even by IPCC standards. Once again, the pretence of infallibility. There are problems with the named reviewer approach. I can understand an argument that, after considering a balance of problems, an institution might choose one method rather than another. But worrying about the impact on infallibility is not a valid reason.

Named Expert Review is more efficient as it allows writing teams to liaise with Reviewers when there is a need for clarification.

Again, this is a fatuous argument. Their own experience with the Carbon Dioxide Capture Task Group permitted authors to locate reviewers for follow-up if necessary. In addition, there is little evidence from the Climategate emails that AR4 reviewers bothered to do this. Briffa, for example, didn’t try to clarify things with me or Ross.

Jones was interviewed by the Muir Russell panel (actually just Boulton and Peter Clarke) on April 9, 2010.

On April 15, Boulton sent follow-up questions to Jones about his handling of McKitrick and Michaels 2004, an issue that had attracted notoriety as a result of IPCC Coordinating Lead Author Jones’ email saying:

The other paper by MM [McKitrick and Michaels] is just garbage. [...] I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

Despite Muir Russell’s promises at his opening press conference and despite requests
from the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee, for the most part, the Muir Russell panel failed to create a useful record of questions and answers. Boulton’s questions about McKitrick and Michaels 2004 are a rare exception.

In apparent compliance with Jones’ 2004 threat, the chapter of which Jones and Trenberth were Coordinating Lead Authors contained no mention of McKitrick and Michaels 2004 in the two drafts sent to reviewers (First Order Draft and Second Order Draft). In the final AR4 report, IPCC grudgingly mentioned McKitrick and Michaels 2004 (and the related de Laat and Maurellis 2006), adding the adverse editorial assertion that they ceased to have “statistical significance” when atmospheric circulation was considered – a comment which, according to McKitrick’s strongly worded submission to Muir Russell, was both untrue and which had no support in the peer reviewed literature that IPCC was supposed to draw on.

Boulton’s follow-up questions on April 15, 2010 asked Jones about the basis for the IPCC claim that the McKitrick and Michaels 2004 had no “statistical significance” as follows:

When the final IPCC FAR was published in May 2007, it included a new paragraph in Chapter 3, on page 244, that referred to the McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and De Laat and Maurellis (2006) papers, and that had not been included in either of the drafts shown to reviewers. It is assumed that this was either written by you, or in consultation with Trenberth, but in any case, the two of you, as Coordinating Lead Authors, bear responsibility for its inclusion. It reads:

“McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and De Laat and Maurellis (2006) attempted to demonstrate that geographical patterns of warming trends over land are strongly correlated with geographical patterns of industrial and socioeconomic development, implying that urbanisation and related land surface changes have caused much of the observed warming. However, the locations of greatest socioeconomic development are also those that have been most warmed by atmospheric circulation changes (Sections 3.2.2.7 and 3.6.4), which exhibit largescale coherence. Hence, the correlation of warming with industrial and socioeconomic development ceases to be statistically significant (highlighting added). In addition, observed warming has been, and transient greenhouse-induced warming is expected to be, greater over land than over the oceans (Chapter 10), owing to the smaller thermal capacity of the land”.

Q1: What is the justification for what appears as an ad hoc conclusion not based on published research that summarily dismisses an argument that is based on peer-reviewed research?

Q2: Why were these conclusions not shown to or discussed with expert reviewers during the IPCC Report preparation?

Q3: The references to sections 3.2.2.7 and 3.6.4 of the IPCC Report are misleading since neither section presents evidence that warming due to atmospheric
circulation changes occurs in the regions of greatest socioeconomic
development. Neither section even mentions industrialization, socioeconomic
development, urbanization or any related term. How can they therefore be
used to justify the stance of the above quotation?

Q4: No justification is given for the claim of statistical insignificance, which has a precise meaning. Do you have a p value that justifies this statement, and if not,
what does it mean?

I will not discuss all the answers in this note and urge interested readers to consult the original here.

Let me start this quick review with the fourth question of Issue 2, since “statistical significance” is a technical term and IPCC made very specific assertions on this point.

As McKitrick had alleged, Jones did not have a p-value that justified his claim, but argued that “there is no need to calculate a p value for a statement that is based on the laws of physics”.

The pattern of atmospheric-circulation-related warming appears similar to the geographical distribution of socioeconomic development. Such similarity makes it impossible to use purely statistical methods to ascribe patterns of warming trends to patterns of socioeconomic development. It remains possible, however, to ascribe patterns of warming trends to atmospheric circulation because its influence is in accord with the laws of physics and can be detected in day-to-day weather variations, on which timescales socioeconomic trends are infinitesimal. As stated, it is essential to extract the known and understood influences first and then look at the residuals. There is no need to calculate a p value for a statement that is based on the laws of physics.

The latter statement surely raises epistemological issues on which Phil Jones hardly stands as an authority. (For example, I am unaware of any publications by Jones in epistemological literature.) But even if Jones were a qualified epistemological authority (which he isn’t), the statement in question was not “based on the laws of physics”. The IPCC statement in question was “the correlation of warming with industrial and socioeconomic development ceases to be statistically significant” – this statement may be based on an argument from physics, but it is a statistical statement and was not itself based on the laws of physics. Boulton should not have accepted such flannel.

In response to the related first question, Jones denied that the IPCC assertion about the lack of statistical significance was “ad hoc”, but, instead of evidence, merely presented a whinging complaint about too many academic papers:

The fact that MM2004 is in the peer-review literature does not mean it is good science. There are examples of poor science across all areas of science in the peer-review literature. Occasionally scientists submit comments on poor or incorrect papers, but this sadly is something of a rarity. With the plethora of journals it is becoming harder and harder to read and respond to all the literature. One could make a full time job of publishing criticisms of poor or incorrect papers.

Any competent inquiry would have seen through Jones’ flannel, but not Muir Russell. Although Boulton asked supplementary questions, none addressed these issues. Nor did the final report contain anything but flannel on the topic.

By the way, there’s an interesting development on this front in IPCC AR5 (First Draft) which admitted (with surprising candour) that AR4 “provided no explicit evidence” for the claim that the McKitrick and Michaels 2004 (and de Laat and Maurellis 2006) results had no statistical significance as follows (more on this on another occasion):

McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and de Laat and Maurellis (2006) analysed surface air temperature trend fields and assessed potential for biases in terms of national socioeconomic and geographical indicators. Both studies concluded that urbanisation and related land surface changes have caused much of the observed warming. According to the AR4, the correlation of warming with industrial and socioeconomic development ceases to be statistically significant if one takes into account the fact that the locations of greatest socioeconomic development are also those that have been most warmed by atmospheric circulation changes. AR4 provided no explicit evidence for this overall assessment result.

Returning to Boulton’s (sensible) second question – a question that remains relevant with IPCC’s recent efforts to extinguish public discussion of draft documents in real time:

Why were these conclusions not shown to or discussed with expert reviewers during the IPCC Report preparation?

Why indeed?

Jones explained to Boulton (and one can sense an almost Gavinesque sigh) that IPCC reviewers don’t get to see author responses to their comments at each stage (First Draft or Second Draft), that they only saw the author responses long after publication of the final report, that this was an IPCC system and that reviewers “were aware” of and accepted this system as a condition of submitting review comments. Jones:

The comment/response files for each stage were not released after each review, but only released together when the final report was published in May 2007. You seem to be under the impression that expert reviewers saw responses to their
comments at each stage. This has never been the case in any IPCC Report. This was an IPCC decision and all reviewers were aware of this when they made their reviews.

A system in which reviewers do not see author responses or review comments from other reviewers until after (and some months after) the final report surely warrants some introspection even if IPCC reviewers have acquiesced in such a system in the past. Nor does such a system appear to me to comply with (reasonable) public expectations that IPCC procedures be “open” and “transparent” – as IPCC officials like to proclaim.

In addition, I would be surprised if this sort of system is compliant with, for example, US federal standards for “influential scientific assessments”, a failure which may well create problems down the road for US agencies seeking to rely on IPCC reports without triggering fresh public comment and peer review.

IPCC’s most recent request was as follows:

From: IPCC WGI TSU On Behalf Of Pauline Midgley
Sent: January-24-12 8:54 AM
To: Stephen McIntyre
Cc: ‘IPCC WGI TSU’
Subject: WGI AR5 FOD

Dear Mr McIntyre,

In a recent thread on the blog that you host, Climate Audit, you quote text and a figure directly from the WGI AR5 First Order Draft. We would remind you that each page of this document is clearly marked “Do not cite, quote or distribute”. Therefore, we kindly request you to remove this text and figure from your blog and refrain from such actions, which do not respect the terms of the IPCC review process.

Scientific comments and criticisms on the WGI AR5 FOD are encouraged and welcomed from experts in the topics being assessed. In order for the authors of the chapters to take into account, and respond to, these comments in drafting the Second Order Draft, they must be made through the appropriate channel. This requires registration as an expert reviewer and uploading the review comments on the WGI AR5 FOD before 10 February 2012.

Please refer to the WGI web site for more information about the WGI AR5 FOD review: https://fod.ipcc.unibe.ch/registration.

All review comments and the author responses will be published on an IPCC web site as soon as possible following the completion of the WGI AR5. For more information about the AR5 review in general, please see the IPCC web site: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/review_of_wg_contributions.pdf.

As mentioned in our email to you of 16 December 2011, in order to have access to the Chapters and to submit review comments for consideration by the authors, all prospective expert reviewers of the WGI AR5 FOD are required to agree to the terms of the review, which specify that all materials provided for the review, including the chapter drafts, are considered confidential and shall not be cited, quoted or distributed. This is the standard IPCC practice in the preparation of its reports.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Yours sincerely,

IPCC WG1 TSU

I responded today as follows:

Dear Ms Midgley,

This is to acknowledge your email of January 24, 2012 in which you “kindly requested” that I remove a discussion of IPCC from Climate Audit. In order for me to properly consider your request, I would appreciate it if you would clarify the legal basis, if any, of this request.

For many years, IPCC policies have stated that the review process should be “open” and “transparent” and my comments were very much in that spirit.

The recent review of IPCC policies and procedures by the InterAcademy Council did not contain any recommendations that the review process be less open or less transparent. I realize that Thomas Stocker, following suggestions of Phil Jones, sought changes to IPCC policies to authorize confidentiality, rather than openness, and that the minutes of the IPCC plenary session in Abu Dhabi state that the following language was approved:

IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.

However, this change was deceptively included in a package described as “addressing” IAC recommendations, even though this language had nothing to do with IAC recommendations, but was designed to implement changes sought by Phil Jones and Thomas Stocker long before the IAC review. (See discussion at Climate Audit entitled Stocker’s Earmarks http://climateaudit.org/2012/01/12/stockers-earmarks/ .) Because IPCC officials seem to have misled the IPCC plenary session on the purpose of this language, it seems to me that you lack any moral authority to insist that reviewers comply with your request.

Nor am I aware of any legal authority or case law under Canadian or international law that entitles you to require me to remove the discussion at Climate Audit. Although I registered as a reviewer of the First Draft, I have not downloaded any documents from IPCC in that capacity and did not agree to any confidentiality terms in order to download documents. Nor do I intend to agree to any confidentiality terms as a condition of downloading.

Nor, as I understand matters, does IPCC’s adoption of the resolution saying that “IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation” create an obligation under Canadian or international law that requires me to comply with your request to remove discussion of IPCC drafts from Climate Audit.

It is my understanding that your email only asked politely that I remove the discussion and did not constitute a formal legal demand that I do so. Unless I am obligated under either Canadian or international law to remove the discussion from Climate Audit, I would prefer not to remove the discussion.

If I am incorrect in my interpretation of your email and it is your view that I am obligated under either Canadian or international law to comply with your request, I would appreciate it if you would explain the basis of your legal theory. I will promptly consider your explanation. Please do not consider this email as an unconditional refusal of your request, but an invitation to you to explain the legal basis of your request under Canadian or international law so that I can take the matter up with my own legal counsel.

While I understand that you are not obliged to take notice of articles posted at Climate Audit, I am very familiar with issues involved in proxy reconstructions. My hope is that the discussion at Climate Audit will contribute to a better understanding of proxy reconstructions, even by IPCC contributors. As I understand it, there are no IPCC rules that prohibit IPCC contributors from taking note of articles at Climate Audit nor any authority for you to discourage IPCC contributors from doing so, should they be so inclined.

Regards,
Stephen McIntyre

Jan 30 Update:
IPCC sent me the following response:

Dear Mr McIntyre

Thank you for your email of 26 January addressed to Dr. Midgley. As has been standard practice and is stated in the Procedures of IPCC, to which we have to adhere in our work for the WGI contribution to AR5, IPCC draft reports that are made available for expert review are done so under the conditions marked on every page: “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute”.

In order to be sure that the authors see, consider and respond to your valuable comments on these drafts, they must be submitted through the mechanism provided at the WGI web site. This site will be used by all expert reviewers, over 1500 of whom have duly registered.

Thank you for your attention and your interest in IPCC WGI AR5.

Yours sincerely,

IPCC WGI TSU

As happens far too often in climate science, rather than answering my question, they simply re-iterated their original demand.

The article reports on Keiller’s appeal to the First-Tier Tribunal (Case No. EA/2011/0152) in the General Regulatory Chamber – Information Rights. The appeal related to the second part of Keiller’s original FOI – instructions sent by CRU to Georgia Tech on their use of CRUTEM. CRU had argued that they didn’t have the information because Jones had deleted the email and they did not have access to the server in police possession. All arguments by the university were dismissed, with the judge being more than somewhat acid in some of his comments.

The University of East Anglia’s argument was hampered by their failure to present direct evidence from Phil Jones. (Assertions by Jones were presented by what Don Keiller described as “third-hand hearsay” – a conversation between Jones and David Palmer, passed on to Jonathan COlam-French, passed on to the UEA solicitor. Keiller and Montford observe:

It appears that UEA were keen that Jones should not appear on the witness stand, where he would be required to give evidence under oath. In fact it is noteworthy that, despite all the official “investigations”, Jones has never been required to answer questions under oath or provide a signed declaration.

Most of the non-publicly available records were provided to us for use within the PAGES LOTRED-SA initiative only

Neukom’s website lists a set of multiproxy data, many of the series said to be “available on request for LOTRED-SA contributors”.

Despite Neukom’s “excuse” that the data had been provided to him for use “within the PAGES LOTRED-SA initiative only“, Neukom et al 2011 has been prominently used in the IPCC AR5 draft assessment report. The Neukom reconstruction is used to compare the performance of models to paleoclimate reconstruction in South America in FOD Figure 5.9 as shown below:

Figure 1. Neukom et al 2011 south South American temperature reconstruction (heavy black). Colored lines show results from various climate models.

Unless you are a climate scientist, you would probably not describe the paleoclimate reconstruction as cohering particularly well with the various models, but that’s a story for another day.

In the running text of the draft AR5, Neukom et al is cited on several occasions, including as authority for the observation that SH summer temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period (you know, the one that is supposedly regionally restricted to Greenland and a few counties in England) were “mostly warmer than the 20th century climatology”:

Progress has been made in the SH since AR4, where new tree ring records from the Andes, northern and southern Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, New Zealand and Tasmania (Boninsegna et al., 2009; Cook et al., 2006; Villalba et al., 2009), ice cores, lake sediments and documentary evidence from southern South America (Neukom et al., 2011; Prieto and García Herrera, 2009; Tierney et al., 2010a; Vimeux et al., 2009; von Gunten et al., 2009) and terrestrial and shallow marine geological records from eastern Antarctica (Verleyen et al., 2011) allow a better understanding of past temperature variations (Neukom et al., 2011). A multi-proxy reconstruction for southern South American (Neukom et al., 2011) finds austral summer temperatures between 900 CE and 1350 CE that are mostly warmer than the 20th century climatology (though associated with large uncertainties), with a sharp transition after 1350 CE to colder conditions that last until approximately 1700 CE.

Citation of Neukom et al 2011 by IPCC clearly takes its use outside the realm of LOTRED-SA associates, but Neukom has thus far taken no steps to ensure that proxy data of Neukom et al 2011 (now used by IPCC) is available to anyone outside his circle of cronies.

Neukom (together with Joelle Gergis) has also published a recent survey of Southern Hemisphere proxies Neukom and Gergis 2011, one of the objectives of which was to report on the “availability” of SH proxies. Unfortunately, with the sort of blindness all too familiar from Climategate, Neukom and Gergis conflate availability of data to cronies with public availability – a situation that I am presently testing with a long-unarchived Eric Steig data set.

Neukom and Gergis 2011 is one of a number of recent multiproxy articles appearing more or less on the eve of AR5, as they themselves note:

Given the importance of global circulation features like ENSO, IOD, SAM and the IPO, a concerted effort is now underway to consolidate existing high-resolution palaeoclimate records from these regions in time for the IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5) (Gergis et al., 2011; Neukom et al., 2010, 2011).

They provide a list of 174 proxies (expanded from the list on Neukom’s website) that supposedly meet the following criteria:

- extend prior to 1900
- are calendar dated or have at least 70 age estimates in the 20th century
- extend beyond 1970 to allow sufficient overlap with instrumental records
- are accessible through public data bases or upon request from the original authors

Series said to be available “upon request from the original owners” are, for the most part, the same series that had previously been described as only “available on request for LOTRED-SA contributors”. Neukom and Gergis report that there were only 14 records extending back to 1000 AD that met the above criteria. Somewhat surprisingly, although IPCC had claimed “progress since AR4″ in the development of SH proxy data, only one of the 14 series appears to have been developed since AR4 (with most of the series being developed prior to AR3.)

Many of these records are listed by Neukom and Gergis as only “available upon request”. The most intriguing such example is Eric Steig’s Siple Dome dD (and d18O) series – see excerpt below – which Neukom obtained as a “personal communications”.

The Siple Dome core was drilled in 1993-4: the data was publicly funded. Even by Lonnie Thompson standards, this is a long time for the data to remain both unpublished and unarchived, particularly given the scarcity of long SH proxies. One cannot help but think that the data set would have been promptly published if it had HS shape and, ergo, my prediction is that, if and when, the data ever is made “available”, it will not have a Hockey Stick shape.

As a test of Neukom and Gergis’ statement that the data sets are “available upon request”, I submitted a request for this data to Eric Steig (cc Neukom) a couple of days ago, thus far, without acknowledgement from either.

Dear Dr Steig,
Neukom and Gergis 2011 stated that the datasets listed in their tables were accessible “upon request from the original authors”. Among their series are Siple Dome delD (1000-1993) and d18O (1654-1994) series said to have been sent to Neukom as a “pers comm.” In 2010. Could you please provide me with a copy of the series that you provided to Dr Neukom.

Thank you for your attention,
Stephen McIntyre

My early line on the over/under for getting the data is the publication date of AR5.

Six more of the 14 long series were obtained by Neukom and Gergis from crony contact (rather than public archives) including: Law Dome (Curran); ocean sediment series 106KL (Rein); four South American tree ring series: Central cluster 3A/CAN Composite 20; Central Cluster 3C/CAN Composite 25 and Central Cluster 3B/CAN Composite 23 (all said at Neukom’s website were said to be “unpublished” and to be only “available on request for LOTRED-SA contributors” and Lenca was said to be “Not public”.) The Aculeo temperature reconstruction from pigments is only available in a smoothed version of the regression product – the underlying data has not been archived. In the case of the South American tree ring series, there are public archives of measurement data that appear to overlap the versions used here. The existence of different versions makes the need for careful archiving of versions as used all the more important.

Despite IPCC’s puff about “progress”, a more objective assessment of actual progress in the field would be to inform readers from other fields that there has actually been negligible progress since AR4 in the development of new long proxies.

Tree rings: the Lenca series ends in 1987; the three long Central Cluster/CAN Composite series are Fitzroya cupressoides (FICU) series that end between 1990 and 1995. One of these series is almost certainly a version of the Rio Alerce FICU series used in the AR3 reconstructions Jones et al 1998 and Mann et al 1998-99. At most, the Neukom and Gergis versions appear to be re-processing of data collected in the early 1990s.

Ice cores: the “14″ series of Neukom and Gergis appear to include five ice core series, none of which are new since AR4 (and again, most are older than that.) Two series from the 1993 Siple Dome core appear to be included (Na- Mayewski et al 2004; and dD – Steig and White, unpublished and unarchived); a Law Dome series (presumably related to the series illustrated in Jones and Mann 2004); a series from Berkner Island (Mulvaney et al 2002); and Quelccaya, Peru (Thompson 1983, updated 2003). The Law Dome series was definitely available for AR4. As an AR4 reviewer, I had asked that it be included in the illustration of actual SH proxies. IPCC correspondence about the decision not to show this proxy (which has an elevated MWP) is in the Climategate dossier. CRU’s Tim Osborn (also Lead Author in AR5), knowing that the proxy showed an elevated MWP (and that I knew this and that I knew that they knew that I knew…), proposed that they cover themselves by mentioning the proxy in the running text but not show it in the diagram, a device readily agreed to by IPCC authors reluctant to show a SH series with an elevated MWP.

Coral: the discontinuous Palmyra series of Cobb et al (2003). See 2006 CA discussion here.

Sediments: ocean sediment 106KL was already available in Rein (2004), not Rein (2007) as shown by Neukom and Gergis. The Aculeo pigment reflectance series of von Gunten et al 2009 is new.

As I presently understand the matter, only one of the 14 data sets is “new” since AR4: the Aculeo pigment reflectance series. And while the development of novel proxies is a good idea, until the pigment reflectance methodology is replicated in other lakes, little weight should be placed on this result (particularly without the underlying data being available for analysis.)

In my opinion, a candid assessment of progress in the field by IPCC would clearly state that (1) Neukom and Gergis’ list shows that there has been essentially no development since AR4 of SH proxies that permit comparison of the medieval and modern periods; and (2) that much (far too much) of the limited data still remains unarchived. Unfortunately, WG1 Co-Chair Stocker seems more concerned with ensuring confidentiality of IPCC drafts and internal correspondence.

It has come to our attention that several Chapters of the Zero Order Draft (ZOD) of WGI AR5 are being cited, quoted and discussed on the blog that you host, Climate Audit, despite the fact that each of these chapters is clearly marked “Do not cite, quote or distribute”. We would respectfully request that you remove the relevant parts with discussions of the ZOD from your blog and, furthermore, that this does not happen with the FOD.

I’ve been mulling over how to respond. I was not a reviewer of the Zero Draft and had not made any personal agreements with IPCC as a condition of receipt. I had registered as a First Draft reviewer but have not downloaded any documents in this capacity as yet.

In preparing a response, I’d been wondering what authority, if any, was possessed by WG1 or its TSU that entitled it to require or request removal of this discussion from Climate Audit. I’d looked at IPCC Policies and Procedures in connection with previous CRU requests. The procedures used in AR4 (see here) had said that the “review process should be objective, open and transparent” and did not contain any language that specifically granted authority to the TSU of a Working Group to prohibit discussion in public of its draft reports. If anything, the overriding objectives of openness and transparency would seem to support such discussion – a process that seems entirely healthy to me and one that would actually enhance the IPCC.

It turns out that Phil Jones and Thomas Stocker, Co-Chair of AR5 WG1, both agreed with my interpretation of IPCC rules on this point i.e. that the Working Groups lacked specific IPCC authority to insist on confidentiality of their drafts, and that they had, behind the scenes, taken steps to change IPCC rules to authorize Working Groups to do so. Jones’ initial contacts with Stocker on this matter are documented in Climategate 2 and arose from Jones’ reading of Climate Audit posts advocating openness and transparency by IPCC – efforts that both Jones and Stocker opposed.

I only became aware of their actions recently as a result of an IPCC cease-and-desist letter to Galloping Camel, which had posted an excellent collection of WG1 and WG2 sources. To my considerable surprise, the IPCC letter to Galloping Camel contained a quotation from IPCC Policies and Procedures here (bolded below) that contained an endorsement of confidentiality that was absent in the AR4 polices. They wrote:

The IPCC Procedures in Article 4.2 of the Principles Governing IPCC Work state that “The IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.” (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a-final.pdf). We therefore request the immediate removal of the ZOD chapters from your website.

This language was definitely not in the AR4 version. Indeed the document linked in the Galloping Camel letter was time stamped January 10, 2012(!). When had the new language been introduced? And by what authority? Tracing the language led to a remarkable story.

The language was almost singlehandedly introduced by Stocker (after being involved by Phil Jones.) Complicating Stocker’s efforts to obtain official sanction for enhanced confidentiality was the lack of interest in this topic by the Interacademy Panel, which had been commissioned by IPCC to review its policies and procedures. Not only did its report not contain the recommendations sought by Stocker and Phil Jones, it re-iterated the importance of openness and transparency. Nor had the language sought by Stocker been recommended in any of the numerous documents on IPCC procedures up to the second week of April 2011, less than four weeks before Stocker’s language was adopted at the Abu Dhabi IPCC meeting in May 2011.

Despite these obstacles, Stocker emerged from the IPCC plenary with his objective. It’s a long story.

Prequel

On May 11, 2009, I reported my request for CRUTEM station data from the Met Office. In a comment, David Holland noted that the AR5 Working Group 1 TSU was in Switzerland and that Switzerland was in the process of adopting the Aarhus Convention on freedom of information.

Jones read this comment and became worried about the prospect of IPCC being subject to the Aarhus Convention. Jones immediately emailed Stocker (May 12 – 4778)

subject: Data access and IPCC
Dear Thomas,
I hope you are enjoying your new job! Apologies in advance for upsetting your morning! Below there is a link to Climate Audit and their new thread with another attempt to gain access to the CRU station temperature data. I wouldn’t normally bother about this – but will deal with the FOI requests when they come. Despite WMO Resolution 40, I’ve signed agreements not to pass on some parts of the CRU land station data to third parties.

If you click on the link below and then on comments, look at # 17. [here] This refers to a number of appeals a Brit has made to the Information Commissioner in the UK. You can see various UK Universities and MOHC listed. For UEA these relate to who changed what and why in Ch 6 of AR4. We are dealing with these, but I wanted to alert you to few sentences about Switzerland, your University and AR5.

Having been through numerous of these as a result of AR4, I suspect thatsomeone will have a go at you at some point. What I think they might try later is the same issue:
Who changed what and why in various chapters of AR5?
and
When drafts of chapters come for AR5, we can’t review the chapter as we can’t get access to the data, or, the authors can’t refer to these papers as the data haven’t been made available for audit.

Neither of these is what I would call Environmental Information,as defined by the Aarhus Convention. You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. 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. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember to do it.

I also suspect that as national measures to reduce emissions begin to affect people’s lives, we are all going to get more of this. We can cope with op-ed pieces, but these FOI requests take time, as the whole process of how we all work has to be explained to FOI-responsible people at each institution.
Keep up the good work with AR5!
Cheers
Phil

Jones also notified Peter Thorne of the Met Office that he had alerted Stocker to Holland’s comment.

The next day, Stocker (May 13 – 4378) replied, telling Jones (cc Pauline Midgeley) that allowing access to climate data under laws prescribing “open access to environmental data” would be a “perversion” (Stocker would have been an interesting witness in the EPA case, where an opposite position was taken by IPCC supporters):

subject: Re: Data access and IPCC
Dear Phil (cc to Pauline Midgley, Head TSU WGI)
Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I knew about this when the first requests were placed on John Mitchell and Keith Briffa and they informed us. What I did not know is that they have already placed their focus on Bern (# 17)!

At that time I argued that in principle there are two interests to balance: (i) FOI, and (ii) your own privacy when it comes to opening emails or other mail. Obviously, I am not in the position to judge which one obtains and in fact I think a court would be needed to establish
exactly that balance.

However, the Arhus Resolution, it seems to me, had another motivation: open access to environmental data associated with damage, spills, pollution; the latter word is mentioned twice – “climate” never. So to take this convention and turn it around appears to me like a perversion. One important point to consider is whether Arhus really applies to the IPCC activities. In no way are we involved in decision making. We assess and provide scientific information. The decision makers are elsewhere.

More than ever need we be aware of this separation! We will discuss this in the TSU but then, this should be brought to the level of the Secretariat, at least, since it affects the very basis of our assessment work.
Thanks again and best regards,
Thomas

A couple of weeks later, Jones wrote Santer and Wigley (May 22 – 2135)

They have found out that Switzerland has agreed to but not yet ratified some Environmental Information Regulations (Aarhus Convention), so are probably looking to have a go at the University of Bern and Thomas Stocker at somepoint. Never thought I would know so much about the Law!

Climate Audit Submission to EPA

On June 23, 2009, I posted up my submission to EPA. (Re-reading this submission, I thought that it has held up well.) The submission observed that neither EPA peer review procedures in the Endangerment Study nor IPCC peer review procedures complied with US federal standards for “highly influential scientific assessments or with EPA’s own procedures and policies. (Last year, the EPA Inspector General reported on part of this topic – EPA made the embarrassing argument that the Endangerment Study was not a “highly influential scientific assessment” and therefore did not have to comply with these federal standards. In their defence, EPA argued that it was IPCC that was the “highly influential scientific assessment” – an argument which made it all the more important for IPCC to exceed US standards if IPCC reports were to be used as authority for important policies.)

In my EPA submission, I documented various forms of non-compliance by IPCC, commenting at CA as follows”

Indeed, the various discussions that we’ve had over the past months over IPCC’s amorphous legal status – i.e. IPCC participants having dual status as government employees, with their IPCC affiliation being applied to yield a cone of darkness over activities which would be subject to FOI if they were “merely” government employees.

Evasion of transparency has been a long-running concern of this site and I’ve used this comment opportunity to place this and related concerns on the record.

The following day (June 24 – 2440), Jones sent a copy of my submission to Stocker and Midgeley. Jones did not suggest to Stocker that this was a carefully reasoned submission and that they should look closely at criticisms of IPCC transparency and reflect on whether they might be able to improve its processes so that they exceeded US standards:

subject: Re: Data access and IPCC
to: Thomas Stocker , wg1
Dear Thomas,
Attached is a document that you should only bother to look at it you have time to spare – stuck on a train or long flight. It is a submission by a skeptic to EPA in the USA. [http://climateaudit.org/2009/06/23/climate-audit-submission-to-epa/] I’m sending it only for background. I wouldn’t want this issue to be raised at the Venice meeting, but I think you’ll likely to become more aware these people as AR5 advances. I was in Boulder last week and I spoke to Susan. We agreed that the only way IPCC can work is the collegiate way it did with AR4.
These people know they are losing (or have lost) on the science. They are now going for the process. All you need to do is to make sure all in AR5 are aware of the process and that they adhere to it. We all did with AR4, but these people read much more into the IPCC procedures.
See you in Venice
Phil

Stocker’s acknowledgement (June 24 – 4899) said that he was working on the problem:

subject: Re: Data access and IPCC
to: Phil Jones

Thanks Phil. We have not be inactive here at the TSU. I have approached a number of colleagues with the problem and expect more indications in the next few weeks to come. I hope that I will be able to have a clear view on the way forward by the time we think of nominations and when we like to inform our potential LAs and CLAs. Thanks and best regards and ’till Venice,
Thomas

On July 15 (1526), Tim Osborn of CRU wrote to Stocker seeking support from IPCC against David Holland’s assertions that IPCC policies required them to be “open” and “transparent”.

On July 29 (Climategate 1- 991. 1248902393.txt), Jones wrote Peterson of NOAA saying that he had persuaded Stocker and the IPCC Secretariat to raise FOI issues with the IPCC Plenary in the next IPCC meeting (Bali):

I have got the IPCC Secretariat and Thomas to raise the FOI issues with the full IPCC Plenary, which meets in Bali in September or October. Thomas [Stocker] is fully aware of all the issues we’ve had here wrt Ch 6 last time, and others in the US have

Despite Jones’ optimism about Bali, the Bali IPCC Plenary session doesn’t appear to have done anything to implement Jones and Stocker’s secrecy ambitions.

The Interacademy Report
In March 2010, in response to Climategate, the IPCC commissioned a report from the Interacademy Council, the terms of reference of which specifically included a “review IPCC procedures for preparing reports”.

This was the forum that Stocker should have submitted his concerns about enhancing confidentiality in the Working Groups. Did he do so? At present, I don’t know. If he didn’t, he should have. If he did, the IAC disregarded his recommendations as, in the final IAC report, which appeared in late August 2010, there is nothing that comes close to a recommendation along the lines that Stocker sought.

On the contrary, the IAC Report re-iterated the position that processes and procedures be “as transparent as possible”:

it is essential that the processes and procedures used to produce assessment reports be as transparent as possible.

Transparency is an important principle for promoting trust by the public, the scientific community, and governments. Interviews and responses to the Committee’s questionnaire revealed a lack of transparency in several stages of the IPCC assessment process, including scoping and the selection of authors and reviewers, as well as in the selection of scientific and technical information considered in the chapters.

Nowhere did the IAC report recommend the sort of additional confidentiality sought by Stocker and Phil Jones.

Busan IPCC Meeting, October 2010

At the first IPCC meeting after the IAC report (Busan, October 2010) (see here), the IPCC stated that it “agreed to implement many of the recommendations immediately. On others, the Panel decided to form four Task Groups to undertake further work intersessionally, with a view to completing work on the IAC recommendations at the Panel’s next session.”

One of the four Task Groups was the Task Group on Procedures, the terms of reference of which were to examine the IAC recommendations and, for each of the issues, propose implementation, including amendments to the IPCC Policies and Procedures (Appendix A):

The Task Group should address the issues listed below as mentioned in the IAC recommendations (Chapters 2 and 3), IPCC responses at its 32nd Session and IPCCXXXII/Doc. 22. For each of the issues the Task Group should establish a timetable for action, consider resource implications and identify responsibilities for implementation. It should propose amendments to the Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work and relevant guidance documents if needed taking into account decisions made at IPCC-XXXII.

Geneva, February 2011

The IPCC Task Groups met in Geneva in February 2011 to review progress. The provisional report of the Task Group on Procedures is available here, included in an April 2011 document.

Sections 2-10 of this report discussed issues within their terms of reference i.e. arising from recommendations of the IAC panel. In addition, they included an “Addendum” discussing issues that did not arise from the IAC panel – an initiative that appears to have been opposed by some members, introduced as follows:

To some extent the Task Group also discussed some suggestions that were related to the IAC report recommendations but may be viewed as being not strictly within the mandate given by the 32nd session of the IPCC. The Task Group considered these suggestions useful for further discussion and includes them in this document under the Addendum “Issues for further discussion on Procedures” (section 11 of this document).. Please note that this addendum does not reflect any consensus by the Task Group.

The introduction to the Addendum (see page 10) re-iterated that the issues in the Addendum fell outside the mandate of the Task Group and did not reflect a consensus:

11. Addendum: Issues for further discussion on Procedures page 10
11.1 Introduction
The Task Group noted that a number of issues were raised by Task Group members that maybe viewed as being not strictly within the mandate given by the 32nd session of the IPCC. However, the Task Group considered these issues useful for further discussion as part of an effort to further improving clarity of the Procedures, and the transparency and quality of the assessment process.

Please note that this Addendum does not reflect any consensus from the Task Group discussions at their meeting in Geneva 1-4 February 2011. The reviewers of this document may wish to give their viewpoints on the issues and thoughts below.

Section 11.3 of the Addendum contained a comment on confidentiality that was the first small wedge for the Jones-Stocker secrecy language. It stated that saying that guidance “may be needed” on citation of draft reports and “other documentation” “without contradicting the needed transparency and openness”. (Watch as this language morphs.)

11.3 Review process (sections 4.1 and 4.2 of the Procedures)
…
Confidentiality
Clear guidance may be needed on what the rules are for citation/publication of draft reports and other documentation during drafting and review and how the draft report need to be kept confidential without contradicting the needed transparency and openness, while different versions of the draft should be accessible after the completion of the report.
….

On February 9, 2011, this draft (with this very vague and buried reference to confidentiality) was circulated to governments with a four week period for review (see here). Invitations to the forthcoming meeting in Abu Dhabi were sent on Feb 23 by IPCC to governments and NGOs, together with a provisional agenda, item 5 of which was “Review of IPCC Processes and Procedures”.

Review comments on the “Geneva Draft” report are here, presumably dating from early March as scheduled. They include comments from both governments and Thomas Stocker (whose input is described as authorized under “P-32″).

No government commented that the TSUs needed greater powers to restrict discussion of draft reports. However, Stocker complained (see page 145; repeated on page 163 for good measure) that the Task Group took a “rather strict” view of its mandate and “missed the opportunity” to tighten up secrecy provisions. Stocker’s comments in this document are the first appearance of the language later used in the letter to Galloping Camel.

(2) The TG Procedures took a rather strict view of its mandate and did not make recommendations on topics that were not raised by the IAC Review. This means that some necessary adjustments to the Principles and Procedures to address other important issues such as confidentiality were not properly developed. This is potentially a missed opportunity.

(3) The draft makes an exception for Topic 10 Guidance Notes, a topic not raised by the IAC Review. WGI proposes that another exception should be made for confidentiality, which is a topic of great importance that was also discussed by the TG during its meeting in Geneva in February 2011. It is mentioned in the Addendum under the review process but clear guidance on confidentiality is needed in a broader context. It is part of the basic way in which IPCC goes about its work and is a necessary requirement for authors to be able to have a free and frank exchange of views. Interim discussions and communications during the preparation and finalisation of the assessment are *pre-decisional* information. As such, these remain confidential and related documents are not public, nor should they be cited, quoted or distributed, as is standard IPCC practice to indicate this on all documents under review. The ability of the WGs to produce an independent and unbiased assessment would be threatened if
material that is in the nature of a draft and/or incomplete information to be further developed were to be released prematurely. It is increasingly clear that this needs to be specified in the Procedures, also showing that it does not contradict the current Principles of IPCC, which state that the assessment is carried out on a “comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis”.

Therefore WGI proposes moving this topic into the first part of the TG report, between Topics 3 and 4. The preceding text in this comment can serve as the basis for the TG consideration and the recommendation would be as follows:
“Section 4 of the Procedures should be amended to discuss the notion of the confidentiality of drafts and other interim documentation. Suggested text could be the following: “Drafts of the reports, interim discussions and communications, and other documentation created during the drafting and review process are considered pre-decisional materials and as such are confidential. Drafts and other documentation may not be cited, quoted or distributed. “”

(4) The Addendum is not very helpful as presented because it is not clear to a reader who was not part of the discussions in February 2011 in Geneva whether all these suggestions have a similar status in terms of degree of support, depth of discussion, etc. They are in fact highly variable and most of these suggestions will need to be discussed properly by the TG first. [Thomas Stocker, Cochair,WG I]

Stocker’s Earmark

As of early April 2011, a month before the IPCC was due to meet, the language long sought by Stocker and Phil Jones had not been recommended in any of the documents. It appears for the first time in a Report of the Task Group on Procedures included as Document 12 in the agenda for the Abu Dhabi meeting scheduled to begin on May 10.

Uniquely among the documents for the Abu Dhabi meeting, the online version of this document bears a time-stamp of May 12 (after the meeting); other documents linked from the agenda are dated April or earlier. It asked for government comments by May 5. This document was accompanied by a IPCC-XXXIII/INF. 1 , Review of the IPCC Processes and Procedures – Comments from Governments and IPCC Office Holders on the initial draft recommendations prepared by the Task Groups”.

Despite earlier concerns on the part of some members of the Task Group that they comply with their mandate to respond to IAC recommendations (which is what it was represented as having done to the IPCC plenary), in their revised report, the Task Group distinguished two classes of decision:

The Task Group on Procedures has dealt with two categories of proposed decisions:
I. Direct responses to IAC recommendations,
II. Indirect responses as a result of the IAC recommendations following the above mentioned
‘addendum’.

The language sought by Stocker was in section 6 bis4, the Task Group stated:

6bis 4 Confidentiality of draft reports
This issue was raised by the WG I co-chairs. Given the upcoming finalization of two Special Reports The Task Group deemed this issue important for consideration.

6bis 4.1 Task Group consideration
The Task Group noted that clear guidance is needed on what the rules are for the confidentiality of draft reports and other documentation during drafting and review. On one hand, there is a need for transparency and openness of the assessment process. On the other hand, publicizing drafts have serious drawbacks. There is a risk that drafts contain errors or statements that are still unbalanced and that have to be corrected at a later stage. These could prematurely circulate in the public domain, creating confusion, and that would be a bad service of IPCC to society. Therefore, the Task Group believes that drafts should be kept confidential until acceptance of the full report.

All drafts of IPCC assessment reports (including the final draft) will be considered to be confidential material, not for public distribution quotation, or citation until acceptance by the Panel of the final IPCC report. The first order draft, second order draft and the final draft, the expert and government review comments, and the author responses to those comments on both drafts will be made available on the IPCC open website on a clearly visible place, within xx weeks after the acceptance of the report by the Panel.

As always, one has to watch the pea. Stocker’s language was not an “indirect response” to IAC recommendations. Nor did it have anything to do with IAC. Stocker and Jones had sought to beef up rights of the Working Groups to demand confidentiality prior to the IAC report. Representing enhanced confidentiality as addressing an IAC recommendation was, so to speak, a “trick” (TM- climate science.)

Although the revised report of the Task Force (dated circa April 11) was distributed for comment, the distribution was very late in the process, less than a month before the IPCC meeting, and only one government (Netherlands) commented (in passing) on the language introduced by Stocker. See XXXIII/INF. 4 – Comments received from Governments and IPCC Office Holders by 6/05/2011 on the proposals by the Tasks Groups.

The only entity to comment at length on the language was Stocker himself. Stocker observed (accurately) that, despite its stated mandate of openness and transparency, “confidentiality is part of the basic way in which IPCC goes about its work”:

We are pleased that many of our comments on the draft in March were implemented in this proposal and in particular that the important point about confidentiality is now treated explicitly in section 6. Whilst this is clearly related to the review process, guidance on confidentiality is needed in a broader context, given that requests occur for access to working papers, emails, etc. Confidentiality is part of the basic way in which IPCC goes about its work and is a necessary requirement for authors to be able to have a free and frank exchange of views. Interim discussions and communications during the preparation and finalisation of the assessment are “pre-decisional” information. As such, these remain confidential and related documents are not public, nor should they be cited, quoted or distributed. It is standard IPCC practice to indicate this on all documents under review. The ability of the WGs to produce an independent and unbiased assessment would be jeopardised if material that is in the nature of a draft or incomplete information to be further developed were to be released prematurely. It is increasingly clear that this concept needs to be specified in the IPCC Procedures, also showing that this is not a contradiction of the current Principles of IPCC, which state that the assessment is carried out on a “comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis”.

Buoyed by his April success, Stocker proposed that the policy be expanded to include other documentation (a recommendation not adopted in the final resolution):

As well as discussing confidentiality of the report drafts, WGI proposes adding wording that discusses the confidentiality of other interim documentation, e.g., “Drafts of the reports, interim discussions and communications, and other documentation created during the drafting and review process are considered pre-decisional materials and as such are confidential. Drafts and other documentation may not be cited, quoted or distributed.”
…

Please find below our other comments for consideration in finalising the proposal:
1. Introduction
The distinction between category I and category II proposals may require more explanation by the TG Co-Chairs. Priority should be given to the key decisions that were well supported by a
consensus in the TG, and those that immediately affect the next stages of the AR5 process.
…

6bis4. Confidentiality of draft reports: for the reasons described in our introductory comments, we very much welcome this new section and proposed decision in 6bis4.2. We again stress that the first sentence of the proposed decision text needs some editing in order to include the key term “pre-decisional” and to capture the other kinds of material in addition to the draft reports.
…

Stocker’s comments are worth reading in full as they touch on other interesting topics as well.

The IPCC meeting was held from May 10-13 following the revised agenda here . During that meeting, Stocker’s language was approved at a Plenary session. See minutes here.

Although Stocker’s recommended language in no way “addressed” recommendations of the IAC Panel (and arguably was even antithetical to their reiterated support for openness and transparency) and although the Task Group had been well aware that these issues were outside the mandate set by the 32nd IPCC plenary, the resolution represented this (and other) recommendations as addressing recommendations of the IAC Panel:

The document presented here contains the decisions by the Panel based on consideration of the report of the IPCC Task Group on Procedures to the IPCC 33rd Session and building on the decisions of IPCC 32nd Session. The Task Group addressed the InterAcademy Council (IAC) recommendations as presented in the IAC report, chapter 2, “Evaluation of IPCC assessment process”…

8. Confidentiality of draft reports
The Panel noted that issues related to confidentiality of draft reports is important and that clear guidance is needed on what the rules for the confidentiality of draft reports during drafting and review.

At its 33rd Session, the Panel decided that the drafts of IPCC Reports and Technical Papers which have been submitted for formal expert and/or government review, the expert and government review comments, and the author responses to those comments will be made available on the IPCC website as soon as possible after the acceptance by the Panel and the finalization of the report.

IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.

A long story indeed. But Stocker (and Phil Jones) had gone to a lot of trouble to obtain the language used in the Galloping Camel letter.

They show that Jones had candidly admitted to Heffernan that his real reason for refusing data was simply to obstruct potential critics – a position essentially unchanged from his notorious 2005 refusal on the grounds that “we have 25 years invested in this”. Instead of reporting Jones’ admission, Nature attributed Jones’ data obstruction to an imaginary “inundation” of data requests following an initial supply of data in 2002.

In today’s post, I’ll review the development of the legend and Heffernan’s role in the process.

The curtain rises for today’s post on Aug 7, 2009 about two weeks after the FOIA/Mole incidents discussed in the past few posts. Heffernan asked Jones (721) whether Jones had sent supposed confidential data to Webster, but refused to send it to me. And, if so, on what grounds.

… 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

This was one of the important questions that Muir Russell negligently failed to examine.

Jones’ reply to Heffernan (Aug 9 – 3497) was a pastiche of disinformation and unresponsiveness, none of which should have been accepted by a responsible reporter, but which passed unchallenged by Heffernan.

Jones commenced:

Olive,
I did send some of the data to a person working with Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. The email wasn’t to PW [Webster], but he was in the CC list. I don’t know how McIntyre found out, but I thought this was a personal email.

As we’ve already seen, Jones knew precisely how I had found out as, a few weeks earlier, he had quoted (4531) in full a comment at Climate Audit by Peter Webster reporting that CRU had sent station data to Georgia Tech:

I also see from looking at Climate Audit that this request results from Peter saying on CA that he’s not had any difficulty getting data from CRU (see what he said below on June 24).

In that earlier email, Jones had also argued that he had provided data to Webster in a “personal” email, a claim that Palmer had rejected (1320). Despite Palmer’s explicit rejection of the email being “personal”, Jones stubbornly continued to take this line in his correspondence with Nature.

Jones then made the completely untrue claim that this was “one of the first times” that CRU station data had been sent to a third party:

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.

In fact, CRU’s original collection of station data was financed by the US Department of Energy under a contract that obliged CRU to deliver station data to the US Department of Energy, which then placed the data online (where it remains online to this day). CRU itself had placed CRUTEM1 station data online in 1996 (which remained online until July 29-30, 2009). Jones had sent station data to Mann and Rutherford and even, in 2002, to me.

Jones then segued into characteristic self-pity, falsely claiming that he’d been “driven” into being “less helpful”:

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.

The idea that Jones had “been driven” to being obstructive was a legend that was readily adopted by the climate establishment. But it was untrue. Somewhere along the way – perhaps in response to Mann’s encouragement, as Mosher and Fuller argue, or perhaps on his own – Jones chose , using his own free will, to withhold data from potential critics, – a decision notoriously explained in his Feb 2005 email to Warwick Hughes (shortly after the publication of McIntyre and McKitrick 2005) as follows:

We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

Jones’ next sentence in his email to Heffernan shows that no change from the attitude in his 2005 refusal to Warwick Hughes:

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.

Here Jones candidly admitted the real reason why he had sent data to Georgia Tech and to Mann and Rutherford, but had refused to send the data to Warwick Hughes, Willis Eschenbach or me. It had nothing to do with confidentiality agreements from the 1980s that had been mysteriously “lost” during an office move. It had everything to do with Jones’ belief that he had the right to send data to pals and to refuse data to critics.

Jones’ failure to appreciate that publication of scientific articles entailed an obligation to provide data to potential critics, as well as to pals is exemplified in his subsequent whinging complaint:

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.

There are multiple problems with this paragraph. Yes, Jones had sent me some paleo data, but it was untrue that he had “nothing but criticism” at Climate Audit ever since. On a number of occasions, I had complimented Jones for being somewhat responsive to requests.

A more serious issue is Jones’ view that merely providing data that had been used in an article relied upon by IPCC was a special favor that placed me under an obligation to refrain from criticism of the article. It was my view then (and remains my view) that archiving of supporting data was an obligation of the author, rather than an act of grace.

Nor do I accept Jones’ premise that asking for data constitutes a request to “work with” the originators of the data. It is no such thing. A request for data is simply a request for data. While much emphasis has been placed on FOI, FOI is really a last resort. An obligation to produce supporting scientific data arises on a number of grounds: journal policies; policies of funding agencies; policies of the institution of employment (including FOI); and, most notably, as an obligation of the scientific method.

Jones was criticized not because offence had been taken about Jones not wanting to “work with” the person requesting the data, but because Jones’ failure to provide data (particularly in the context of the repugnant explanation to Warwick Hughes) was not in compliance with any or all of the above obligations to provide data, a problem exacerbated by fabricated and untrue excuses by CRU and the University of East Anglia to FOI requests.

In his email exchange with Heffernan, Jones did not mention the supposed confidentiality agreements that he had long ago planned to “hide behind” – a strategy set out within a few weeks of the introduction of the FOI act in 2005 (see Climategate 1.0 email 490. 1107454306.txt).

Heffernan sent her planned quotes to Jones (Aug 10 – 3497) telling Jones to “shout asap if you see any problems” – a courtesy not extended to me, though I was also featured in the interview.

On Aug 12, Heffernan published an article and associated blog post that were instrumental in the creation of the FOI Inundation Myth, casting Jones as a heroic modern-day Noah.

Heffernan’s article and blog post conspicuously omitted Jones’ petulant desire not to be criticized. Instead, Heffernan attributed Jones’ refusal to an imaginary inundation of requests commencing in 2002:

Why won’t Jones give McIntyre the data?

Jones says that he tried to help when he first received data requests from McIntyre back in 2002, but says that he soon became inundated with requests that he could not fulfill, or that he did not have the time to respond to.

This claim was a total fabrication. After my (successful) 2002 request, I had no further contact with Jones until 2004, when I requested some unavailable data used in Jones et al 1998 (a legitimate, unobtrusive and successful request.) In the Climategate correspondence between Jones and Heffernan (thus far), Jones himself did not advance the “inundation” legend. Perhaps Jones himself introduced the legend in a presently unavailable email or in a telephone interview and the legend was uncritically accepted by Heffernan. It also seems possible that Heffernan herself contributed to the development of an explanation of Jones’ conduct that was more dignified than Jones’ petulance. Although there wasn’t a shred of evidence for Heffernan’s “inundation” story, it quickly became a widely accepted legend in the climate “community”.

Nature re-iterated Jones’ untrue claim that CRU had entered into confidentiality agreements that prohibited sending data to non-academics – a claim that East Anglia itself later abandoned – (see e.g. their response to my appeal here).

He [Jones] says that, in some cases, he simply couldn’t hand over entire data sets because of long-standing confidentiality agreements with other nations that restrict their use… Although these data are made available in a processed format that shows the global trend, access to the raw data is restricted to academics…

Nature also regurgitated Jones’ untrue claim that their ability to provide data was restricted by confidentiality agreements “mislaid” during an office move in the late 1980s – a claim also later abandoned by the University of East Anglia:

Jones says he can’t fulfil the requests because of confidentiality agreements signed in the 1990s with some nations, including Spain, Germany, Bahrain and Norway, that restrict the data to academic use. In some cases, says Jones, the agreements were made verbally, and in others the written records were mislaid during a move.

Nature falsely claimed that I was “especially aggrieved” that Jones had sent the data to Peter Webster and, in a remarkable conflation of cause-and-effect, fostered the legend that “as a result of this” [in the context, the July 2009 FOI requests], Jones had become “markedly less responsive”:

The dispute is likely to continue for some time. McIntyre is especially aggrieved that Peter Webster, a hurricane expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, was recently provided with data that had been refused to him. Webster says his team was given the station data for a very specific request that will result in a joint publication with Jones. “Reasonable requests should be fulfilled because making data available advances science,” says Webster, “but it has to be an authentic request because otherwise you’d be swamped.”

Indeed, Jones says he has become “markedly less responsive to the public over the past few years as a result of this”.

More disinformation. I wasn’t “aggrieved” in the least that Jones had sent station data to Peter Webster. My sentiment was almost exactly the opposite. Jones’ action provided an opportunity to test CRU’s so-called confidentiality agreements.

Heffernan’s final sentence (which had been cleared with Jones) created a confusion between cause and effect that was quickly adopted by the climate community. In context, “this” (in the phrase “as a result of this”) could only be construed as the July 2009 FOI campaign seeking the mysterious confidentiality agreements. These requests were made in late July 2009 and were the result of Jones’ unresponsiveness “over the past few years”, rather than the cause of his prior unresponsiveness.

This non-sequitur appears to have originated with Heffernan rather than Jones, as the phrase occurred first in Heffernan’s email 3497 but not in Jones’ prior email interview (797).

In conclusion, the role of both Nature and Nature reporter Olive Heffernan is disquieting. Nature suppressed Jones’ candid admission that he simply didn’t see why he should provide data to people that wanted to criticize him and substituted a fabricated explanation more suitable to a hero of the revolution. Had Nature placed Jones’ actual answers on the record, the evolution of events might have been different. In this episode, Nature news reporting unfortunately seems more concerned about hagiography of its principal constituency (institutional scientists) than with accurate reporting.

Ross McKitrick, in his non-climate life, writes from time to time on particulate matter pollution in Ontario. The Toronto Globe and Mail ran a a story a few days ago about Toronto in 1912, showing the picture at left in its print edition. The amount of pollution looks like some present-day images of Chinese cities. It is also a challenge to those who think that pollution in Toronto (or similar cities) is at “unprecedented” levels.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Toronto’s primary form of home heating was coal. There was a substantial changeover to oil heating in the mid-20th century. The trans-Canada natural gas line reached Toronto in the 1950s and Toronto’s home heating is now mostly natural gas. Ontario’s history on this issue is probably similar to many North American (and perhaps European) jurisdictions.

I traced the image to a recent blog article here, which had other remarkable images. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that one of the commenters at the blog mentioned a story about his Aunt Molly ( I also have an Aunt Molly). He went on to mention the delivery of a coal stoker to his grandmother’s house on Cornish Road (where my grandmother McIntyre lived). (The commenter was one of my cousins.)

Even in the 1950s when I was a boy, there was still so much particulate matter in the air that your collars would get black after a day at school. “Ring around the collar” was the slogan of a popular detergent of the day. The blog showed the following interesting comparison of the amount of grime on Toronto buildings in the 1950s and 1960s versus today.

Confederation Life Building, Toronto. left -then; right – now.

A couple of other pictures that interested me from another blog thread.

This thread also has pictures of winter skating in Toronto in the early 20th century on the Don River and Toronto Harbour – activities that are presently as inconceivable as winter skating on the Thames.

In East Anglia’s response to July 2009 FOI requests for alleged confidentiality agreements (here) , CRU stated that, since the 1980s, they had entered into confidentiality agrements that prohibited them from providing station data to third parties, but were unable to “locate” any such agreements noting that they had “moved offices several times during the 1980s”:

Since the early 1980s, some NMSs, other organizations and individual scientists have given or sold us (see Hulme, 1994, for a summary of European data collection efforts) additional data for inclusion in the gridded datasets, often on the understanding that the data are only used for academic purposes with the full permission of the NMSs, organizations and scientists and the original station data are not passed onto third parties. Below we list the agreements that we still hold. We know that there were others, but cannot locate them, possibly as we’ve moved offices several times during the 1980s. Some date back at least 20 years. Additional agreements are unwritten and relate to partnerships we’ve made with scientists around the world and visitors to the CRU over this period. In some of the examples given, it can be clearly seen that our requests for data from NMSs have always stated that we would not make the data available to third parties. We included such statements as standard from the 1980s, as that is what many NMSs requested.

In East Anglia’s submission opposing appeals by Jonathan Jones and Don Keiller (e.g. here), they made the even stronger claim that national meteorological services(NMSs) “invariably” released information only under licences that prohibited transfer to third parties:

It was invariably the case that most NMSs only released information under licences, both written and verbal, that prohibited the further transfer of the information. There was no standard form for such licences but they were all similar in that they prohibit the onward transmission of the data to third parties.

CRU’s longstanding relationship with the US Department of Energy and its transmission of station data to the US Department of Energy (which placed CRU’s station data online (e.g. here) is inconsistent with their claims that they entered into binding confidentiality agreements in the 1980s. In my 2009 appeal, I confronted East Anglia with this relationship (a matter that they discussed in email 2929).

Their refusal of my appeal was dated Nov 12, 2009 (one day before the last email in the Climategate dossier) and was sent to me on Nov 18, 2009. While the dates of these refusals have attracted some commentary, relatively little attention has been paid to the content of the refusal (reported at CA on Nov 21, 2009 here) in which East Anglia stated that the “restrictions” applying to the station data only arose after CRU provided data to the US Department of Energy (along the lines of a scenario that I contemplated in a CA post of Aug 4, 2009 entitled Dr Phil, Confidential Agent):

In regards the information provided to the US Department of Energy, my investigation has revealed that this was done in the early 1990s prior to the imposition of the restrictions now pertaining to the data pursuant to a contractual obligation at the time. Therefore, the analogy you are drawing does not apply to the data that is the subject of this request.

Despite this explicit admission, CRU’s claims that they have been subject to longstanding confidentiality agreements have been accepted by Nature and the climate science community, which has, in turn, denounced CRU critics for not believing in the existence of actionable CRU confidentiality agreements from the 1980s.

In preparing today’s post, I considered not merely the (limited but relevant) new information from Climategate 2.0, but also re-examined contemporary (1980s, 1990s) statements about provenance of station data. Prior to 2004, there is little to no evidence of the commitment to secrecy said by East Anglia to have been “invariably the case”. Quite the contrary. Prior to 2004, there is considerable evidence of a longstanding practice of making station data publicly available (both by GHCN and CRU).

World Weather Records
World Weather Records was (and is) a longstanding international effort in which station data (and metadata) have been published and, when the technology became available, digitally archived.

TD9644 , published in 1991, described its origin as follows:

In 1923, the International Meteorological Conference Committee, convened in Utrecht, Netherlands offered initial justification for the creation of WWR:

“…the conference thinks that publication of long and homogeneous series of observations in the form of monthly means of pressure, temperature and rainfall would be of the highest importance for the study of the general circulation of the atmosphere.”

In response to the Conference’s findings, the Smithsonian Institution of the United States sponsored the first series of WWR, edited by H. Helm Clayton and published in a single volume (1196 pages) in 1927. The publication included full period of record through 1920 of monthly means of temperature, pressure (station and sea-level) and precipitation for selected global stations.

According to TD9644, data was publicly available in 1991:

All available data are both published in the volume sets and digitally archived through NCDC’s tape library under DSI-9644.

Original World Weather Records report (some of which have been scanned and are available online) commendably describe the provenance of each record (something later said by CRU to be impracticable), e.g. the following:

The station names, elevations, and coordinates given in the table headings were supplied by the General Directory of Meteorology of Uruguay and were in use at the end of 1970.

World Weather Records continue to be published and are online at UCAR here.

Jones et al 1985-1991 and CRUTEM1 (1994)

Jones’ original compilation of station data, funded by the US Department of Energy, was described in three technical reports: Bradley et al 1985 (out of print and not online other than an excerpt here), TR022 (Northern Hemisphere) online here and TR027 Southern Hemisphere (online here), and two less-informative academic articles. The original version of NH data (ndp012) is no longer online, but a 1991 update is online here.

These documents indicate almost total reliance on prior World Weather Records compilations, plus archives at the UK Met Office, all of which had been made publicly available (contradicting later CRU claims of a longstanding practice of confidentiality agerements.) Jones et al 1985 (TR022) described the provenance of Northern Hemisphere station data as follows:

Most studies of global or hemispheric temperature fluctuations have relied upon the compilations of station data in World Weather Records… Bradley et al (1985) have added considerably to the WWR data using material available in published and manuscript form in meteorological archives, particularly those of the UK Meteorological Office… Full details of these improvements in station coverage are given in Bradley et al 1985. The most important improvements in coverage occur over parts of the Soviet Union and northern Europe particularly before 1881…Further improvements in coverage have also been made for the twentieth century particularly over northern Africa before 1940 and over the Peoples Republic of China…Details of each of the 2666 stations in the data bank are documented in Appendices using the formats described in Goodess et al 1985 and Bradley et al 1985.

TR027 provided similar statements about Southern Hemisphere data. It reported the compilation of 610 station records of which 293 were used in the grid. Only one meteorological service (Peru) was mentioned. In passing, two of the authors cited (Pittock 1980; Salinger 1981) turn up many years later as leaders of the campaign to censure Climate Research for the publication of Soon and Baliunas 2003.

The basic source of station air temperature data for the Southern Hemisphere land masses is the set of volumes of World Weather Records (WWR) (Smithsonian Institution, 1927, 1934, 1947, and U.S Weather Bureau, 1959–1982; available in digitized form from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Jenne, 1975). A considerable amount of additional temperature data for Argentina and Chile for the years 1931-60 has recently been added to this set. In WWR, these countries only have data available from 1951 (see Pittock, 1980, for further details).

Searches for data in archives as part of the present project yielded additional data for Indonesia and Australia and for some Pacific Islands, particularly Tahiti. Additional data for New Zealand was found in Salinger (1981). For Peru, the Peruvian Meteorological Service supplied information for about 10 stations covering the 1940s and 1950s. Additional data for Australia was provided by their Bureau of Meteorology. All of these sources are gratefully acknowledged.

In 1991, an update to the gridded data set (ndp020r1) re-iterated this description of provenance of station data, noting that all station data was available online.

The primary sources of these data are the World Weather Records (WWR), published by the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Weather Bureau, the archives of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office, and the Monthly Climatic Data for the World, published by the National Climatic Data Center (Asheville, North Carolina). Additional sources are described in Bradley et al. (1985) and in Jones et al. (1985 – TR022, 1986a – JCAM, 1986c – TR027, 1986d – JACM). The present updated version of this data set is identical to the earlier version (Jones et al. 1986b) for all records from 1851 through 1978. For the period 1979-1984, the present data set corrects erroneous data using satellite data for some sites and appends data for other sites by adding previously unavailable station data (Jones et al. 1988). The present package also adds monthly surface air temperature anomalies for the period 1985-1990, Antarctic monthly surface air temperature anomalies for the period 1957-1990, as well as the monthly mean temperature records for individual stations (Antarctic stations excluded) that were used to generate the set of gridded anomalies. Individual station data for the Antarctic (stations south of 62.5S) are not presented in this package but are given in Jones and Limbert (1989 -NDP032) and may be obtained free of charge from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.

In Climategate 2.0 email 2929 (Sept 8, 2009), Jones said that it was a “requirement” of CRU’s contract with DOE that the data be placed online:

I don’t recall all the facts from that long ago. There is or was a version on a US Dept of Energy website from about 1990. This was a contract requirement at the time.

In 1994, Jones expanded the 1873-station data set to 2891 stations, described in Jones et al 1994 (later CRUTEM1), ascribing the provenance of new data primarily to the projects described in Karl et al 1993 (all of which had been placed online.)

In 1996, CRU placed the CRUTEM1 station data online (/projects/advance10k/cruwlda2.zip), where it remained online until CRU’s removal of the data from its website on or about July 29-30, 2009 (4270). Peterson and Vose (1997), in an article introducing the second version of GHCN, described the 2891-station CRUTEM1 dataset as “widely used”. Doug Hoyt reported that he had downloaded the file in 1999. Simister (2002) and Simister and van de Vliert (2005) report that they downloaded the data in November 2001. I downloaded the file cruwlda2 as late as July 25, 2009 (an event discussed by CRU in Climategate 2.0 4270). In 2002, Jones sent me (then unknown) the cruwlda2 dataset, mentioning that an updated dataset would be published early in 2003.

Jones et al 1999 continued use of CRUTEM1:

Here we use the land station data set developed by Jones [1994]. All 2891 station time series used have been assessed for homogeneity by subjective interstation comparisons performed on a local basis. Many stations were adjusted and some omitted because of anomalous warming trends and/or numerous nonclimatic jumps (complete details are given by Jones et al. [1985, 1986c]).

In 2009, Jones told (2929) East Anglia administrators that the cruwlda2 version wasn’t “complete” and that it was placed on an ftp site because it was “easier” to do this than to send out disks. (Jones did not explain how this related to compliance with supposed “confidentiality” agreements.)

The 1996 version (cruwlda2) wasn’t a complete version and was something we developed for a number of people in EU projects to use. We made these available to people on these projects via our ftp site, as it was easier to do this than sending disks at that time (email attachments were smaller then).

Whether the data was provided by email or ftp was obviously irrelevant to compliance with alleged confidentiality agreements. In addition, contrary to Jones’ claim to his administration, the 1996 version (CRUTEM1 or cruwlda2) was complete.

GHCN
Important light is shed on practices of the period in articles introducing the two GHCN versions.

GHCN-v1 was introduced in 1992 and was described in Vose et al 1992 NDP041. Interestingly, the 1891-station Jones network (ndp020r1) was incorporated as one of the sources for GHCN. ( The “raw” GHCN dataset lists several scribal versions. I’ve looked at a few stations in GHCN-2 and can trace one of the scribal versions to the CRU version. There’s an interesting twist here that I’ll discuss on another occasion.)

In 1997, Peterson and Vose released a second version of GHCN (the one in use until recently). Contrary to the regime of secrecy described by CRU, Peterson and Vose (1997) said that national meteorological organizations were “cooperative and enthusiastic” about contributing data to GHCN:

Because numerous institutions operate weather stations and because no single repository archives all of the data for all stations, we employed five acquisition strategies to maximize the available pool of data: 1) contacting data centers, 2) exploiting personal contacts, 3) tapping related projects, 4) conducting literature searches, and 5) distributing miscellaneous requests. In general, most parties were cooperative and enthusiastic about donating their data to the GHCN initiative, particularly since GHCN is a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Baseline Data Set. As a result, GHCN version 2 contains data from 31 diverse sources (Table 1).

Whereas “personal contacts” between CRU and meteorological organizations were said to be fraught with secrecy, Peterson and Vose (1997) reported that their “personal contacts” had resulted in fresh contributions to public archives:

We also exploited personal contacts by contacting colleagues in the search for potential data sources. For example, scientists who visit or work in conjunction with the authors’ respective institutions often either have data themselves or are able to facilitate the acquisition of data from another party (e.g., by putting the authors in contact with potential sources). This was another extremely productive means of acquiring data, which yielded approximately 10 new datasets.

They reported that these efforts had yielded a much larger data set than the “widely used Jones (1994 “2961-station” dataset (a comment that further confirms the non-secrecy of the Jones 1994 station dataset.

With 7280 stations, GHCN is over twice as large as the widely used Jones (1994) 2961-station mean temperature dataset.

CRUTEM2 (Jones and Moberg 2003)

As noted above, in East Anglia’s rejection of my appeal in November 2009, they said that “restrictions” applying to the data arose after the data had been sent to the US Department of Energy. Here East Anglia was attempting to rationalize Jones’ admission (2929), in which, after admitting that he had sent station data to the US Department of Energy under a “contractual requirement”, claimed that the “restrictions” arose in the mid-to-late 1990s:

There is or was a version on a US Dept of Energy website from about 1990. This was a contract requirement at the time. Much extra data has been added since then, and this is what the restrictions refer to from the mid-to-late 1990s.

Needless to say, this position is totally inconsistent with their previous claim that they had entered into agreements in the 1980s and had lost the agreements during office moves during the 1980s.

It also raises other interesting issues that have not been examined to date: if the only relevant “restrictions” arose in the mid-to-late 1990s, this is well after the “office moves” of the 1980s. It is implausible, to say the least, that CRU should have no record of any communications with NMSs in the late 1990s relating to the confidentiality of station data. It’s hard to believe that data arising from such agreements would not have been transmitted electronically.

Jones and Moberg 2003, which introduced CRUTEM2, briefly discussed CRU’s contact with NMSs (discussed in a prescient August 4, 2009 CA post Dr Phil, Confidential Agent). Jones and Moberg 2003 gave no indication of that it had commenced a new practice of using confidential data. It complimented meteorological organizations for improvements in the quality and quantity of data exchanged and made available “for all to use”:

The majority of the world’s countries have endorsed the initiatives of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) to improve the quality and quantity of monthly climate data routinely exchanged. …

The second reason is that several national and other initiatives have also dramatically improved the quantity and quality of monthly mean temperature data available. Several countries have extensively homogenized their entire national holdings, releasing the results for all to use. CRU over the last eight years has also received several national and other temperature datasets.

Jones and Moberg 2003 listed these other datasets without mentioning any confidentiality issues. Whereas earlier editions of CRUTEM had not mentioned direct CRU contact with NMSs, Jones and Moberg reported that CRU had obtained station data through direct contact with some difficult or then pariah regimes: Algeria, Croatia, Iran, Israel, South Africa, Syria, and Taiwan.

CRU has collected a number of temperature records through direct contacts with the NMSs in Algeria, Croatia, Iran, Israel, South Africa, Syria, and Taiwan. Many of these records cover only the period 1961–90, but others extend over the entire twentieth century.

Jones and Moberg (2003) also reported the acquisition of data from less colorful regimes (that presumably attorned to WMO Resolution 40): NORDKLIM data from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK itself, as well as additional data from Canada and Australia.

Accordingly, despite the elaborate charade by CRU and the UK Met Office purporting to seek consent from every NMS in the world, there were only a relatively small number of countries (Algeria, Croatia, Iran, Israel, South Africa, Syria and Taiwan) from which “restrictions” from the “mid-to-late 1990s” could have arisen.

2005
Mosher and Fuller (CRUTape Letters) concluded that Jones’ attitude towards provision of data was transformed by Mann’s unrelenting “animus”. They state:

Jones, guided by Mann’s example of animus toward McIntyre and others who question the work of climate scientists, and guided by Mann’s relentless appeals to motive is transformed from a researcher who once promised to share data even in cases where it appeared there might be legal cause to withhold it, to a researcher who cares first about motive, and second about his own reputation and who in the end will use every legal and bureaucratic means to obstruct the release of temperature data and threaten its destruction.

Climategate 1.0 (and especially) 2.0 emails contain an enormous dossier of spite following the publication of MMM2003 in October 2003, exacerbated by the publication of our MM2005a,b in late January 2005. Jones’ emails, as Mosher and Fuller observed, now become even more partisan. In an email in which Jones reported the sending of station data to Mann and Rutherford (despite supposed prohibitions on sending the data to third parties), Jones threatened to delete station data rather than provide it to us.

Just sent loads of station data to Scott [Rutherford]. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [McIntyre and Mckitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

Mann replied (apparently alluding to my finding the CENSORED directory):

Yes, we’ve learned our lesson about FTP. We’re going to be very careful in the future what gets put there. Scott really screwed up big time when he established that directory so that Tim could access the data

A few weeks later, Jones made his notorious email to Warwick Hughes (not in the Climategate 1.0 dossier, but known long before Climategate):

Hans Teunisson will reply. He’ll tell you which other people should reply. Hans is “Hans Teunissen” . I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed top pass on to others. We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider.

The email is included as a trailer to a Climategate 2.0 email from Jones to Teunissen (1299- Feb 21, 2005) in which Jones poisoned the well with Teunissen (who never replied to Hughes)

Hans,
This guy pesters me from time to time. I’ve given him your name at WMO/GCOS as someone who’ll reply. We can discuss the merits of my stance in April ! He wants to find fault with some of our station data and by default that the world isn’t warming. If you can just tell him some wmo email addresses that might respond. Why I’m helping him with emails is beyond me ! He wants to discredit what I’ve done. Why the gridded data isn’t good enough is beyond me.
Cheers
Phil

To the extent that Climategate 2.0 emails clarify the issue, in my opinion, they somewhat support Mosher and Fuller’s contention that Jones’ attitude towards data availability changed in response to Mann’s “animus” following publication of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003), though other factors are hardly precluded.

2009
Briefly re-capping 2009 events in light of the above.

In Dr Phil Confidential Agent on August 4, 2009, I had surmised that any governing “restrictions” – if they existed – arose in Jones’ dealings with Algeria, Croatia, Iran, Israel, South Africa, Syria, and Taiwan, and were very limited in application. From the Climategate emails, we know that CRU was closely monitoring Climate Audit and thus were aware of the questions raised in this post.

Nonetheless, in their “small” webpage purporting to respond to FOI requests for confidentiality agreements, East Anglia made the claim (reported above) that they were bound by confidentiality agreements from the 1980s that had been lost during office moves in the late 1980s, a claim that East Anglia resiled from in their November 2009 ruling on my appeal.

A point not discussed at the time, but a loose end: CRU’s misdirection towards the 1980s diverted attention from their unresponsiveness in respect to their communications with Algeria, Croatia, Iran, Israel, South Africa, Syria, and Taiwan in the “mid-to-late 1990s” – communications that would not have been lost in “office moves in the 1980s” and which can hardly have been entirely “verbal”. (The transmission of data, for example, must have been digital.)

On Sep 2, 2009, in my appeal of CRU’s rejection of my FOI request, as noted above, I confronted East Anglia with the inconsistency of their supplying data to the US Department of Energy with their claims that they had entered into binding confidentiality agreements in the 1980s (as well as CRU’s later online publication of CRUTEM1 “cruwlda2″). Jones’ answer in email 2929, as noted above, was both incoherent and unresponsiveness, but did introduce the new claim that the supposed restrictions arose subsequent to the supply of data to DOE i.e. in the mid-to-late 1990s. The latter position was adopted in East Anglia’s refusal of my appeal in November 2009.

Despite all of the above, East Anglia’s representations to the ICO in connection with appeals by Don Keiller and Jonathan Jones reverted to the claim that supply of station data “invariably” was accompanied by a restriction prohibiting the data being sent to a third party. The ICO decision did not address East Anglia’s inconsistent stories, deciding the issue on alternate grounds (that East Anglia had failed to demonstrate an “adverse impact” as set out in the FOI/EIR regulations.)

At this time, CRU and East Anglia have made so many different and inconsistent stories that it is impossible to draw any conclusions on the existence and language of their confidential agreements without a competent investigation to clear the air. It’s too bad that there hasn’t been one.

Finally, although East Anglia conceded to me that there were no “restrictions” arising from agreements from the 1980s and early 1990s, its webpage on data availability stated (and continues to state) the opposite. These untrue statements by the university have contributed to widespread misunderstanding within the climate science “community” of the role of the alleged (and still unseen) “confidentiality agreements” in Jones’ obstruction of both ordinary requests for data and of requests for data under FOI.

In response to CRU’s initial refusal (reviewed yesterday here), Mosher sent an FOI request (see July 24 – 3069) that, in addition to requesting confidentiality agreements for five countries, asked for policies and procedures governing East Anglia employees entering into confidentiality agreements:

Dear Mr. Palmer:
Pursuant to the Environmental Information Regulations, I hereby request
the following information …

In addition, I hereby request the following information:
1. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding entering into confidentiality agreements.
2. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding the preservation of written agreements.
3. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employees entering into verbal agreements.
4. A copy of instructions to staff regarding compliance with FOI requests.
I am requesting this information as part of my academic research.
Thank you for your attention,
Steven M. Mosher

About two weeks later (Aug 5 10:39 – 3069), Palmer drew this request to the attention of his most regular correspondents (Jones, Mcgarvie), but also Jonathan Colam-French (who was responsible for hearing FOI appeals), Annie Ogden, Head of Communications (copied on numerous emails), Andrew Mee (presently a “Learning Technologist in Information Services”) and Steve Whitehead (presently an Assistant Purchasing Officer). Palmer requested assistance:

Folks,
The next ‘other’ request relating the the CRU agreements & data.

The first part of the query will be answered in line with the answer given to other requesters for the agreements.

In regards the second part, I will need some assistance as noted below

1. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding entering into confidentiality agreements.

Steve, do we have any contracting policy on this? Phil – anything with CRU on
responsibilities regarding entering agreements on behalf of CRU? I don’t think we wish to state that we don’t have any policies or procedures in place, but I’m not sure what to actually put here…

2. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding the preservation of written agreements.

Ah, records management rears it’s head….We have a general statement on our website regarding our responsibilities for RM but we do lack any overarching records retention schedule or policy – Phil, does CRU have anything in-house?

3. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employees entering into verbal agreements.
See question 1; same issue here although more likely to have a `nil’ response here – consequences of that?

4. A copy of instructions to staff regarding compliance with FOI requests.

We have web guidance that can be referred to, and a brochure that I distribute that could go here…. and a statement regarding the training on offer
Cheers, Dave

Jones, with his characteristic promptness, responded two hours later (Aug 5 12:15 – 856) to all of the parties on the original email. Jones said that the “Registry” went through their agreements, but that they “sometimes ignored” Registry advice. Palmer had noted that there were responsive brochures and documents, but Jones warned him that he “wasn’t sure that [Palmer] should go down that route” i.e. provide Mosher with responsive documents, a direction that Palmer heeded.

(Jones inline answers are italicized below).

Subject: Re: FW: FOI/EIR request [FOI_09-69]
Dave,
A few responses inline
Cheers
Phil

At 11:52 05/08/2009, Palmer Dave Mr (LIB) wrote:
Folks,
The next ‘other’ request relating the the CRU agreements & data.
The first part of the query will be answered in line with the answer given to other requesters for the agreements.

In regards the second part, I will need some assistance as noted below

1. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding entering into confidentiality agreements.
Steve, do we have any contracting policy on this? Phil – anything with CRU on responsibilities regarding entering agreements on behalf of CRU? I don’t think we wish to state that we don’t have any policies or procedures in place, but I’m not sure what to actually put here…

I don’t think there is anything – if there is I’ve never seen it. People in
CRU (not just me) enter into agreements about data and/or writing papers and getting involved in projects. UEA signs research contracts for us. UEA employees do the work, but UEA administers the grant. The various agreements that UEA signs may say things about data access, but it will vary depending on the funding body. Some are more stringent than others. The Registry goes through these. They mostly help the researchers by not letting ourselves sign away any rights and IPR. We do sometime ignore the Registry advice, preferring to fall back on the verbal agreements we have with the funders (their project officer). If we ever have a problem, we probably wouldn’t work with them again. This has happened with some scientists I have collaborated with in the past.

2. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding the preservation of written agreements.
Ah, records management rears its head. We have a general statement on our website regarding our responsibilities for RM but we do lack any overarching records retention schedule or policy Phil, does CRU have anything in-house?

CRU has nothing in this regard.

3. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employees entering into verbal agreements.
See question 1; same issue here although more likely to have a nil response here -consequences of that?

As said in the 2 pager we’re working on, we put some of the agreements in the letters we wrote to Met Services requesting data (some of which we paid for). There has been a lot of time and effort gone into making these contacts. It seems as though this counts for nothing. Again – unlikely to be anything. People agree things with other academics at meetings. This is how science works.

4. A copy of instructions to staff regarding compliance with FOI requests.
We have web guidance that can be referred to, and a brochure that I distribute
that could go here. and a statement regarding the training on offer

I’m not sure you want to go down this route!

Palmer immediately forwarded the email thread with Jones’ troubling answer to two other UEA officials, Matthew Hume, (presently Commercialisation & Patents Administrator) and Alan Walker, Research Services Manager (see Research Enterprise and Engagement organization chart here.)

Subject: FW: FOI/EIR request [FOI_09-69]
Importance: High
Matt,
Please note Phil Jones’ response to question 1 below [about "ignoring" Registry advice] – would REE [Research Enterprise & Engagement] have anything that would be relevant to this request?

A bit of context – in response to a rejection of a request for data, we have received over 50 requests for agreements, data and a combination thereof in relation to data sets that CRU maintains/holds. This is pretty high profile and has been noted in blogs in the Guardian and Telegraph as well as in the source of all of this (see: [2]http://www.climateaudit.org). Be assure that whatever we state in response to this request is likely to be on the web, shared and very public within hours of sending….

We have a request from another individual exactly the same as below so there will be multiple recipients of the answer we give. Our deadline for a response is 21 August but as I’m on hols commencing 17 August, the ‘effective’ deadline is 14 August.
Cheers, Dave

Hume wrote back to Palmer immediately cc Walker (Aug 5 15:16 – 856) saying that they had had a “good laugh” at Jones’ answer and recommended that Palmer withhold this information from Mosher. Hume told Palmer that the University had clear policies that prohibited staff from entering into confidentiality agreements and which required all confidentiality agreements to be signed and kept on file:

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 Manages
Thanks
Matt.

Within minutes, Palmer responded (Aug 5 15:23 856) telling Hume and Walker that Hume had presented Palmer with a “conundrum”.

Subject: RE: FOI/EIR request [FOI_09-69]
Matt,
Thanks very much for this… You have given me a bit of a conundrum on how to respond but we do at least have something to work with….

What policy are you actually quoting from and is it publicly available? As the request was for the entire policy, is there any issue with making the policy publicly available? If the policy in regards confidentiality agreements is within a larger document with unrelated material, I am happy to quote but I do think we will need to provide a proper citation…
Cheers, Dave

Palmer immediately (Aug 05 15:32 856.) wrote to his original correspondents (Jones, Colam-French, Mcgarvie, Ogden) explaining the conundrum, wondering whether the policy had been in effect when the original “agreements” had been entered into:

Subject: FW: FOI/EIR request [FOI_09-69]

Folks,
In response to one of Phil’s earlier emails regarding any policies regarding entering into confidentiality agreements etc, I sent a query to REE to determine what relevant information they might have… and received the below response to which I have responded as you can see…

This does present something of a ‘issue’ in terms of drafting a response and dealing with any potential follow up request/query regarding our practices in this regard. I wonder if whether said policy was in force at the time the agreements were entered into would be a way around this… the request is for current policies clearly…. I will enquire further with Matt Hume….
Cheers, Dave

Jones then wrote to Matthew Hume (Aug 5 16:58 856). Jones told Hume that his comments had been “tongue in cheek” and that the agreements in question were “not really confidentiality agreements” – an astonishing statement given the line taken with respect to FOI requesters. Jones went on to say that “there is never any obligation on CRU or UEA” arising from these agreements which are “generally about agreeing to work together on something”:

subject: My earlier comments
Hi Matt,
My comments were tongue in cheek! The agreements that we’re talking about are not really confidentiality agreements that you’re talking about. Lots are unwritten agreements that we make scientist to scientist. Where there are written agreements they are signed between me (or previous Director’s of CRU) with other academic institutions, which were not with their central administration (but again a sub part). CRU doesn’t initiate these, but if the other side wants it and it will help us do some work then we go ahead and sign. There is never any obligation on CRU or UEA. They are generally about agreeing to work together on something.

The agreements Dave is talking about are ones that relate to us not making climate data available to third parties, which we have got from a National Met Service.

Jones went on to complain that the problem was not CRU’s disregard for university and public policy, bu that “blogsites” have alloed “climate change deniers” to find one another:

FOI is causing us a lot of problems in CRU and even more for Dave, as he has to respond to them all.

It would be good if UEA went along with any other Universities who might be lobbying to remove academic research activities from FOI. FOI is having an impact on my research productivity. I also write references for people leaving CRU, students and others. If I have to write a poor one, I make sure I get the truth to the recipient in a phone call. I’m also much less helpful responding to members of the public who email CRU regularly than I was 2-3 years ago. I’ve seen some of what I considered private and frank emails appear on websites.

Issue here is blogsites have allowed these climate change deniers to find one another around the world.

Hume responded the next morning (Aug 06 09:24 2274.), suggested that Jones would be able to deflect criticism about the confidentiality agreements by showing that university policies “removed” the decision to enter the agreements from Jones’ control. Hume noted to Jones that a term of the university’s employment contract with staff prevented staff from entering into contracts without approval, observing that he had passed this information on to Palmer (this email is not in the Climategate dossier so far):

Hi Phil,
My apologies – no offence meant – your comment amused us.

I know both you & Dave have been coming under a lot of flack from these people, and I agree the FOI rules are a pain – unfortunately they are rules we have chosen to abide by…

Myself, and the REE office, totally support you and your right to protect your research – especially when it is questioned by people who’s intentions are so antagonistic and destructive. And I surmised that these people are trying to gather information that you/the university has agreed to keep confidential. Maybe by showing these people that we remove that responsibility for this out of your control – i.e. that you were not the person who signed these agreements; but they were signed on behalf of the University; then they will have to re-think about contesting them?

I passed another paragraph onto Dave last night. This is from the employment contracts that all staff agree to when working here:

“Members of the ATR/ATS Staff shall not, in connection with any invention, patent, process or manufacture, have authority to make representations on behalf of the University, or to enter into any contract or to be concerned in any transactions on behalf of the University whatsoever without the express consent of the Council.”

It may or may not be appropriate to answer the question posed; but hopefully Dave will be able to make something with it. If I can be of any more help, please feel free to ask.
Regards
Matt.

Jones wrote back to Hume (Aug 6 10:27 2274.) warning that if Palmer goes down the route suggested by Hume (i.e. informing Mosher of the policies and procedures that prohibited Jones from entering into the alleged confidentiality agreements without university approval), this would open the university up to further criticism. Jones also worried about David Holland’s pending appeal for off-balance-sheet IPCC review comments and correspondence:

Subject: RE: My earlier comments
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the thoughts. These people don’t have logic as their strong suit. If Dave goes down the route you suggest, I think they will come back on UEA for not supervising me properly!

There is another FOI/EIR that has gone to the FOI Commissioner. This one is potentially more important as it relates to email correspondence between the authors of a chapter in the last IPCC (Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change) Report.

I think people shouldn’t be able to request my emails just because I happen to work for a government funded University. Perhaps UEA needs a ruling on requests for our emails. …
Cheers
Phil

Presumably the matter continued to be discussed among the parties, but the Climategate 2.0 curtain goes down on this topic.

Nonetheless, Palmer indeed had a conundrum: the university had clear policies prohibiting confidentiality agreements without approval and requiring retention of such agreements; staff contracts even included this requirement as a term of employment.

What to do? What to do?

Palmer’s manouevre was straight out of Sir Humphrey’s playbook and succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation. Although Palmer had all the materials on hand to respond to Mosher’s question, he pretended that he didn’t understand and sent out a “Clarification Request”.

Subject: Freedom of Information Act request (FOI_09-69) – Clarification request

Mr. Mosher,

Attached please find information on the handling of your request received 24 July 2009 for your review and action.

Cheers, Dave Palmer

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 – INFORMATION REQUEST
(Our Ref: FOI_09-69)
Further to your request for information received on 24 July 2009, I have consulted relevant units within the University and, pursuant to my obligations under section 16 of the Act to provide advice and guidance, I am writing to request clarification of several aspects of your request. Apologies for the delay in responding to you on this matter, but as you may know, we have received a large number of requests for information under the Act recently and it is taking some time to deal with each request.

In your request, you have asked for a copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding entering into confidentiality agreements and verbal agreements, and for a copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding the preservation of written agreements.

The University does not have one, overarching policy or procedure regarding entering into confidentiality or verbal agreements. Each division within the University has policies and procedures specific to their area of work. This also applies to the preservation of written agreements. In order to answer your question for all of the University, it is highly likely that we would exceed the statutory appropriate limit of 18 person hours to locate, retrieve & review the requested information.

In order to avoid this situation, I would therefore ask you to clarify what aspect of the University’s work would be the focus of your request for such policies and procedures. For example, given the nature of the other components of your request, are you simply interested in policies in relation to research activities?

Please note that the statutory timescale of 20 working days as defined by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 will be ‘suspended’ until such time as we receive clarification of your request. Once that is received, the ‘clock’ will recommence, your request considered, and you will receive the information requested within the statutory timescale, subject to the information not being exempt or containing a reference to a third party. You will be informed of any exemptions or references to third parties.

I trust this is to your satisfaction and look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely
David Palmer
Information Policy & Compliance Manager
University of East Anglia

Some assertions in Palmer’s letter seem untrue on their face. Palmer told Mosher that “the University does not have one, overarching policy or procedure regarding entering into confidentiality or verbal agreements. Each division within the University has policies and procedures specific to their area of work. This also applies to the preservation of written agreements. In order to answer your question for all of the University, it is highly likely that we would exceed the statutory appropriate limit of 18 person hours to locate, retrieve & review the requested information.”

However, Matthew Hume’s emails clearly state the opposite – that the University did have “overarching” policies and procedures governing confidentiality and verbal agreements. And governing the “preservation of written agreements”. However, rather than providing this information to Mosher, Palmer pretended that he required “clarification”. Palmer’s manouevre succeeded. Mosher didn’t provide the requested “clarification” and the FOI request remains pending to his day.

Maybe Mosher should send Palmer the “clarification” that he requested.