Sci Tech Committee Again

Jan 24, 2011 – 7:11 PM

New report from the UK Sci Tech Committee. (I’m traveling – see Bishop Hill for link.) My take is that the Committee was annoyed with the University of East Anglia, being quite critical of the inquiries in the running text, but have decided that there are other more pressing priorities and that it’s time to “move on”.
In some cases, they seem to have gritted their teeth and accepted untrue statements at face value. Graham Stringer, by far the most knowledgeable member of the Committee on matters UEA, moved a critical amendment to the conclusions that is an honest appraisal of the situation.

Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (50)

Jeff Id

Jan 22, 2011 – 9:13 PM

I’m sorry to learn that Jeff Id has suspended operation of his blog in order to properly carry out his obligations to his business and his young family.

Jeff introduced himself to Climate Audit soon after he started his blog (here)>. He began with a variety of interesting technical analyses of Mann et al 2008 – technical analyses of the type that interested me and CA readers here. My first mention of the blog was here.

I was a regular reader and will miss my daily visit to his blog. Jeff plans to stay in touch.

I don’t know how he managed to balance the responsibilities of a business and a young family with blog activity as long as he did, but am grateful that he managed as long as he did.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (25)

Was Phil Jones an IPCC Virgin?

Jan 20, 2011 – 9:47 AM

A few days ago, I challenged Trenberth’s claim that “AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC Assessment.”

Earlier this year, Real Climate stated that AR4 had been “written by over 450 lead authors and 800 contributing authors”. In my challenge to Trenberth’s claim, I observed that Jones had been a Contributing Author to the 2001 and 1995 IPCC Assessment Reports (Pielke Jr later adding that Jones had been a Contributing Author to the 1990 Assessment Report.) Ergo, Trenberth’s claim that AR4 was the “first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC Assessment” was untrue.

To most people, that would end the discussion about whether AR4 had been Jones’ first time or not.

However, Dave Clarke aka Deep Climate has now argued that “contributing authors are not on the [IPCC] writing team” and that

Trenberth makes it crystal clear that he is means that Jones was a “first time” lead author.

Clarke’s idea that contributing authors are not part of the IPCC writing team will no doubt come as a surprise to realclimate – who are, no doubt, scrambling as we speak to correct their previous mis-statements on this point.

In addition, Jones was not merely a “Contributing Author” to AR3. Jones was part of the writing team for AR3 Chapter 3 – described in IPCC email as a “Key Contributor”. The term “Key Contributor” is not used in IPCC documents, but was used to describe the role of Jones and several others in the preparation of AR3 Chapter 2, where Jones was assigned responsibility for writing part of AR3 Chapter 2. The term was used in an IPCC email of June 21, 1999 (929985154.txt in the Climategate dossier) with Jones an addressee (but not Trenberth). (In the eventual listing of Chapter 2 authors, the Key Contributors are listed ahead of “ordinary” Contributors Authors.)

The online version of this Climategate email is truncated for some reason. It shows only the following:

Below is the text and attached is a file in MSWord regarding a plan of
action for Chapter 2 leading up to the IPCC Meeting in Arusha, Tanzania.

June 21, 1999

Dear Lead Authors and Key Contributors,

This note is to outline a plan of action for Chapter 2 leading up to the
IPCC meeting in Arusha, Tanzania to take place 1-3 September. As you know,
we are now in the midst of a

The complete email clearly shows Jones’ involvement in the writing process:

From: sdecotii@
To: christy@, clarkea@, @cabel.net, pfrich@, pgroisma@, jwhurrell@,
m.hulme@, p.jones@, Jouzel@, mann@, j.oerlemans@, deparker@,tpeterso@, drind@, drobins@,j.salinger@, walsh@, swwang@

Subject: Plan of action for Chapter 2
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 13:12:34 -0400
Below is the text and attached is a file in MSWord regarding a plan of
action for Chapter 2 leading up to the IPCC Meeting in Arusha, Tanzania.

June 21, 1999
Dear Lead Authors and Key Contributors,
This note is to outline a plan of action for Chapter 2 leading up to the
IPCC meeting in Arusha, Tanzania to take place 1-3 September. As you know,
we are now in the midst of a
“friendly review” from our colleagues of the
strawman draft of our chapter. We expect to receive comments from these
reviews through middle or even late July. These reviews will include some
from people other than our nominated reviewers, like Sir John Houghton,
from whom we have just had a brief review. Please check regularly with the
Tar02.meto.gov.uk email site to cover this aspect.

Accordingly we ask each of the individuals listed below to revise the draft
section as suggested below, and to indicate their response to reviewer’s
comments. The first person listed is to take the lead, and individuals
with an asterisk by his name are to prepare the material for presentation
in Arusha. We would ask that a provisionally revised part of your chapter
be completed by 20 August and emailed to Tom Karl or placed on the web-site
so that Sylvia Decotiis can create a new version of Chapter 2 for Tom to
bring to Tanzania. Tom will bring one paper copy of the provisional new
“Arusha” version of chapter 2 to Tanzania, and a complete series of
electronic files which can be input to PCs via 1.4MB floppy disks. It would
be a considerable advantage for attendees to bring portable PCs, though we
expect some IPCC PCs to be available at the Arusha International Conference
Centre.

Chris Folland will be leaving for Tanzania early (24 Aug) whereas Tom Karl
will still be available until 29 Aug for urgent interactions. We will
decide later as to whom, and how many of us, should actually make
presentations, noting that Hans Oerlemans is not likely to be present. But
all attendees be prepared, and bring appropriate visual material and of
course, further suggestions. We have listed assignments next to each
section.

Section 2 —– Tom Karl* and Chris Folland* Executive Summary — total
revision and update
Section 2.1 —- Chris Folland* Changes needed regarding uncertainty
guidelines
Section 2.2.1 —- Chris Folland* Okay for now
Section 2.2.2 —- David Parker, Phil Jones, Tom Peterson, Chris Folland*
Length okay, but reduce number of figures.
Section 2.2.3 —- John Christy* Check for accuracy
Section 2.2.4 —- John Christy* Check for accuracy
Section 2.2.5 to 2.2.6 —- Oelermans*, Nick Rayner, John Walsh, David
Robinson, Tom Karl and Chris Folland. Glacier section needs to be updated
Section 2.2.7 —- Oelermans, Tom Karl* Check for accuracy
Sections 2.3 through Section 2.3.5—- Mike Mann*, Phil Jones Reduce in
size by about 10%
Section 2.4 through Section 2.4.5 —-Jean Jouzel* Reduce in size about 10%
Section 2.5 through 2.5.4 —- Jim Salinger*, Pasha Groisman, Mike Hulme,
Wang. Provide a better context for why this section is important, more on
upper tropospheric water vapor if possible
Section 2.5.5 —- Steve Warren, Dale Kaiser, Tom Karl* Add new analyses of
cloud amount
Section 2.5.6 —-Jim Salinger*
Section 2.6 through 2.6.6 —-Jim Salinger*, George Gruza, Alynn Clarke,
Wang. Reduce in size by at least 50%. Identify a rationale section at the
beginning. IPCC 1995 will help here. Some material may go elsewhere. May
need to consult Mike Mann or Jean Jouzel. Please send revised section to
Chris Folland to finally review (even if not complete) by 16 August. Chris
will feed back changes to Jim by 23 August. Jim Salinger should interact
with Chris during this work too. Jim should prepare presentational material
Section 2.7 through 2.7.4 —-David Easterling, Pasha Groisman, Tom Karl*

Review for accuracy
Povl Frich: please interact and be prepared to present extremes parts. Jim
Salinger: you may have more material on extremes in the South Pacific.
Please feed this to Tom Karl and Povl Frich.
Section 2.8 —- Tom Karl, Chris Folland* Develop a summary, including
strawman cartoon
In addition we have about twice the number of figures that will be allowed
so everyone should identify figures that can be removed or combined to
reduce the size. The latter can sometimes be very effective. At the
present time we are about 1/3 over our word limit so everyone will have to
respond to the reviewers (often requesting more), and yet being more
judicious in the words we use. Please consult the 1995 IPCC Report as a
guide.

Please do not hesitate to comment on these plans, preferably as soon as
possible, so that holiday arrangements etc do not cause problems.
Cheers and thanks,
Chris and Tom

(See attached file: ARUSHA INSTR LEAD AUTHORS.doc)
Attachment Converted: “c:\eudora\attach\ARUSHA INSTR LEAD AUTHORS.doc”

The document “Arusha Instr[uctions?] Lead Authors.doc” is not in the Climategate documents. However, Jones received this document, which presumably set out the duties of Lead Authors (and Key Contributors).

And, of course, following the Arusha meeting, Jones was intimately involved in correspondence with Mann, Briffa and Folland about what to do about the Briffa reconstruction – correspondence that led on the one hand to the deletion of post-1960 data in the IPCC graphic and on the other hand to the notorious ‘hide the decline’ email about the WMO graphic.

Clarke also consulted Trenberth’s CV and observes that Trenberth’s offices in previous IPCC reports had been senior than Jones’. Be that as it may, that doesn’t make Jones an IPCC virgin.

In IPCC’s public face, Contributing Authors are regularly counted as part of the IPCC writing team. Plus, in Jones’ individual case, although he was “only” an AR3 contributing author, he was nonetheless considered a “Key Contributor” and had been actively involved as part of the Chapter 2 writing team. Trenberth’s statement that AR4 was the “first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC Assessment” was untrue on either count.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (143)

Team Policy on Acknowledgements

Jan 17, 2011 – 9:11 AM

After CA reported Trenberth’s lifting of text from Hasselmann 2010 verbatim or near-verbatim either without citation or, in the one citation, a citation that was inadequate given the lengthy near-verbatim quotation, Trenberth moved quickly to cooper up his presentation against plagiarism allegations by inserting citations to Hasselmann 2010, responding to each of the incidents reported at CA. Trenberth did not acknowledge Climate Audit.

Question: given that Trenberth considered the problems sufficient to justify making changes, should Trenberth have acknowledged Climate Audit for drawing the problem to his attention? Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (39)

Trenberth and Lifting Text Verbatim #2

Jan 16, 2011 – 4:15 PM

On January 14, 2011, I reported here that Trenberth’s AMS presentation had lifted text verbatim or near-verbatim from Hasselmann 2010 with no citation in most cases and, in the one case where Hasselmann 2010 was cited, the citation was insufficient under standard academic practices given the lengthy near-quotation. Trenberth’s original presentation is here.

This post has obviously been brought to Trenberth and/or AMS’s attention, as they have deleted the original version of Trenberth’s presentation and replaced it with an amended version, without a change notice.

The amended version picks up most of the problems raised in the previous CA post. Here are the points raised in the CA post and Trenberth’s changes:

Trenberth originally stated:

Scientists make mistakes and often make assumptions that limit the validity of their results. They regularly argue with colleagues who arrive at different conclusions. These debates follow the normal procedure of scientific inquiry.

The amended version:

Hasselmann (2010) further notes that scientists make mistakes and often make assumptions that limit the validity of their results. They regularly argue with colleagues who arrive at different conclusions. These debates follow the normal procedure of scientific inquiry.

Trenberth’s originally statement about tactics to use against “deniers”:

It is important that climate scientists learn how to counter the distracting strategies of deniers. Debating them about the science is not an approach that is recommended.

The amended version:

It is important that climate scientists learn how to counter the distracting strategies of deniers (Hasselmann 2010). Debating them about the science is not an approach that is recommended.

Trenberth originally stated:

The main societal motivation of climate scientists is to understand the dynamics of the climate system (both natural and human induced), and to communicate this understanding to the public and governments.

The amended version:

The main societal motivation of climate scientists is to understand the dynamics of the climate system (both natural and human induced), and to communicate this understanding to the public and governments (Hasselmann 2010).

Trenberth did not feel obligated to restate everything that Hasselmann had stated. For example, Trenberth did not repeat Hasselmann’s observation that:

Individually, most climate scientists have the goal of establishing a scientific reputation and, if possible, attaining more public funding for climate research.

Trenberth originally stated:

They [climate scientists] have faith in the scientific method and the efficacy of the established peer-review process in separating verifiable scientific results from baseless assertions.

The amended version:

As Hasselmann (2010) further notes, they have faith in the scientific method and the established peer-review process in separating verifiable scientific results from baseless assertions.

As to the lengthy introductory paragraph which was lifted near-verbatim from Hasselmann, but with no indication that large sections were verbatim: the original Trenberth version was:

Three investigations of the alleged scientific misconduct of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — one by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, a second by the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Royal Society, chaired by Lord Oxburgh, and the latest by the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review, chaired by Sir Muir Russell — have confirmed what climate scientists have never seriously doubted: established scientists depend on their credibility and have no motivation in purposely misleading the public and their colleagues. Moreover, they are unlikely to make false claims that other colleagues can readily show to be incorrect. They are also understandably (but inadvisably) reluctant to share complex data sets with non-experts that they perceive as charlatans (Hasselman 2010)

The amended version is:

As noted by Hasselmann (2010), three investigations of the alleged scientific misconduct of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and by the Lord Oxburgh and Sir Muir Russell reviews — have confirmed that established scientists depend on their credibility and have no motivation in purposely misleading the public and their colleagues. Moreover, they are unlikely to make false claims that other colleagues can readily show to be incorrect. They are also understandably (but inadvisably) reluctant to share complex data sets with non-experts that they perceive as charlatans (Hasselman 2010).

Note here that Trenberth removed the absurd Hasselmann characterization of the Oxburgh inquiry that had passed muster with the editors of Nature Geoscience – that it was the “Scientific Assessment Panel of the Royal Society”. A point also raised in comments in the CA post.

Trenberth did not submit a comment to Climate Audit thanking us for enabling him to mitigate the problem prior to the actual formal presentation of his speech or otherwise thank us at the AMS webpage at which the changes were made.

Even as amended, Trenberth’s use of extended near-quotations without quotation marks must surely still be at the edge of acceptable practice, if not over it.

In appraising whether inadequate citation rises to being academic misconduct, it seems to me that one needs to consider whether there is a claim or implied claim of originality and how such incidents are handled in the field. Trenberth’s speech was not the same thing as a master’s thesis. Trenberth had lifted text, but AMS appears to have decided that the situation could be more or less coopered up by providing more citations to Hasselmann; that the inadequacy of the citations did not entail that the entire speech be withdrawn; or that AMS was obliged to file a complaint against Trenberth for academic misconduct.

It’s also interesting what Trenberth chose to change and not to change. Plagiarism is an issue that is uniquely central to the academic world and Trenberth moved quickly to erase any evidence of plagiarism. The non-academic world would be less concerned about plagiarism and more concerned about Trenberth’s use of the offensive term “denier” and whether Trenberth’s Empire Strikes Back attitudes are a useful contribution to the post-Climategate debate. Although Trenberth was also criticized on these counts, Trenberth made no concessions or changes to this aspect of his speech.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (56)

Trenberth and Lifting Text Verbatim

Jan 14, 2011 – 10:19 AM

In case readers think that Trenberth’s outburst discussed yesterday represents an isolated and unfortunate climate scientist incident, this is not the case. In fact, some of Trenberth’s most objectionable language was lifted verbatim from an article in Nature Geoscience earlier this year. Trenberth here; Hasselmann here.

Trenberth’s copying from Hasselmann came in two forms:
– Trenberth copied one long paragraph verbatim mostly verbatim without quotation marks. While Hasselmann was cited at the end of the paragraph, the fact that the text was lifted [mostly] verbatim was not shown – something that John Mashey will no doubt weigh in on.
– second, Trenberth copied multiple sections of Hasselmann either verbatim or with negligible paraphrase without any citation whatever. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (76)

Trenberth’s Bile

Jan 13, 2011 – 7:53 PM

Anthony draws attention to a bilious diatribe by Trenberth against “deniers”.

I have some back-history with Trenberth. In 2005, Trenberth was interviewed by Paul Thacker of ES&T about the MM articles (discussed here) where he stated:

There have been several examples of people who have come into the field of climate change and done incredibly stupid things by applying statistics in ways that are inappropriate for the data, [Trenberth] says.

I wrote back and forth with Trenberth a number of times in respect to his earlier comments about me – the correspondence is online here. After several attempts to get Trenberth to justify his allegations, Trenberth challenged me to respond to the criticism at realclimate. When I did so, Trenberth discontinued the correspondence without justifying his comment.

In his most recent outburst, Trenberth says:

Debating them [“deniers”] about the science is not an approach that is recommended. In a debate it is impossible to counter lies, and caveated statements show up poorly against loudly proclaimed confident statements that often have little or no basis. Scientific facts are not open to debate and opinion because they are evidence and/or physically based. Moreover a debate actually gives alternative views credibility.

Trenberth described his recommended tactic in a Climategate email as follows:

So my feeble suggestion is to indeed cast aspersions on their motives and throw in some counter rhetoric. Labeling them as lazy with nothing better to do seems like a good thing to do.

Trenberth now complains that the supposedly “false claims” of critics have not been “scrutinized or criticized” enough:

But their critics are another matter entirely, and their false claims have not been scrutinized or criticized anything like enough!

However, Trenberth himself advocated the strategy of casting aspersions on critics instead of scrutinizing their arguments and, as one of the architects of this strategy, is hardly in a position to complain.

The way to counter lies is obvious – show evidence that statements are lies. For example, when Mann said that I had asked for an Excel spreadsheet and that they had inadvertently introduced errors in the process of tailoring the data for this special request, the way to counter it is to produce the original email showing that we had not asked for an Excel spreadsheet but an FTP location and that the dataset that we were directed to at Mann’s FTP site was dated long prior to my inquiry. (The data set was deleted by Mann shortly after this incident, thereby removing this evidence.) Or when Mann told the NAS panel that he hadn’t calculated a verification r2 statistic as this would be a “foolish and incorrect” thing to do, the way to counter this was to examine his original article which showed the verification r2 statistic for the AD1820 step and, when code became available for this step, to show that the code calculated the verification r2 statistic in the same step as the RE statistic that was reported.

Trenberth also purports to justify Jones’ successful effort to keep McKitrick Michaels 2004 out of the two AR4 drafts sent to reviewers on the basis (this incident has been discussed at length on other occasions) that:

AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC Assessment.

while noting that Trenberth himself, as a “veteran”, was aware of the obligations:

As a veteran of 3 previous IPCC assessments I was well aware that we do not keep any papers out, and none were kept out.

Trenberth goes on to add that:

[climate scientists] are unlikely to make false claims that other colleagues can readily show to be incorrect.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many incidents where climate scientists make false claims that are readily shown to be incorrect. We need think back no further than Jones’ claim that CRU had confidentiality agreements that contained language prohibiting the distribution of data sent to Peter Webster to “non-academics”.

Trenberth’s very claim that AR4 was the first time that Jones had been on a writing team is itself another example of an untrue statement that can be “readily” demonstrated to be untrue (although his “colleagues” have thus far not called him on it.)

Both Jones and Trenberth are listed as contributing authors of AR3. (Indeed, Jones’ correspondence about the Briffa reconstruction in the wake of the 1999 Lead Authors meeting in Arusha, Tanzania was important in the setting of the notorious “hide the decline” memo.) See the list of AR3 chapter 2 authors below, where both Trenberth and Jones are listed as Contributing Authors.

Likewise with AR2 – both Trenberth and Jones had precisely the same standing as AR2 Contributing Authors. See here.

Trenberth’s assertion that Phil Jones had not previous been on an IPCC writing team is, to borrow a phrase, a “travesty”. It turns out that Phil Jones had been involved in all three previous IPCC reports.

Update: Pielke Jr observes:

FYI, Phil Jones was also listed as a “Contributor” to IPCC FAR (1990) Sections 6, 7 and 8 pp. 348-349. (Later this role was called ‘Contributing Author”).

[Update Jan 20] Trenberth’s CV (as pointed out by Dave Clarke) shows that Trenberth had also been a Lead Author in 1995 and 2001. However, as discussed here, Jones had not merely been a Contributing Author to IPCC 2001, he had been a Key Contributor who had been part of the Chapter 2 “writing team”.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (88)

The Hockey Stick in Art and Literature

Jan 7, 2011 – 8:45 PM

One of Josh’s finest graphic flourishes: (h/t Bishop Hill and WUWT)

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (19)

UC on Mannian Smoothing

Jan 7, 2011 – 8:03 PM

Two comments from UC on smoothing CET using Mannian smoothing, a technique peer reviewed by real climate scientists (though not statisticians).

I think these coldish years do matter, maybe now there will be some advance in smoothing methods. mike writes (1062784268.txt) ( I think this is somewhat related to CET smoothing (?) )

The second, which he calls “reflecting the data across the endpoints”, is the constraint I have been employing which, again, is mathematically equivalent to insuring a point of inflection at the boundary. This is the preferable constraint for non-stationary mean processes, and we are, I assert, on very solid ground (preferable ground in fact) in employing this boundary constraint for series with trends…
mike

I assert that a preferable alternative, when there is a trend in the series extending through the boundary is to reflect both about the time axis and the amplitude axis (where the reflection is with respect to the y value of the final data point). This insures a point of inflection to the smooth at the boundary, and is essentially what the method I’m employing does (I simply reflect the trend but not the variability about the trend–they are almost the same)…

And now this leads to following figure:

mr2010

Jones also mentions CET:

Normal people in the UK think the weather is cold and the summer is lousy, but the CET is on course for another very warm year. Warmth in spring doesn’t seem to count in most people’s minds when it comes to warming.

And later here:

Yes, extrapolations are problematic if someone bothers to check those later:

c1

Can’t understand what Mann means by ‘preferable constraint for non-stationary mean
processes’.. I’d prefer no smoothing at all if there is no statistical model for the process itself, something like this maybe:

c2

Update (UC, 8 Jan 2011)

Code in here .

For CA readers it is clear why Minimum Roughness acts this way, see for example RomanM’s comment in here (some figures are missing there, will try to update). But to me it seems that the methods used in climate science evolve whenever temperatures turn down (Rahmstorf example is here somewhere, and you can ask JeanS what has happened in Finnish mean temperature smooths lately).

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (76)

More Data Refusal – Nothing Changes

Jan 6, 2011 – 8:10 PM

Phil Jones and his coauthors in the recent multiproxy study (Neukom et al 2011, (Climate Dynamics) Multiproxy summer and winter surface air temperature field reconstructions for southern South America covering the past centuries) did not archive proxy data in the Supplementary Information. Many proxy series used in the study are not otherwise publicly archived.

I wrote to lead author Raphael Neukom as follows:

Dear Dr Neukom,
I notice that your recent multiproxy article uses a number of proxies that aren’t publicly archived. Do you plan to provide an archive of the data as used in your study? If not, could you please send me a copy of the data as used. Thanks for your attention.
Regards, Steve McIntyre

I received the following answer refusing the data:

Dear Steve,

Thanks for your interest in our work. Most of the non-publicly available records were provided to us for use within the PAGES LOTRED-SA initiative only and I am not authorized to further distribute them. You would need to directly contact the authors. I am sorry for that.

If you are interested in a particular record, let me know and I can provide the contact details.

Cheers,
Raphael

Every inquiry into paleoclimate controversies, no matter how much whitewash was applied, concluded that climate scientists should archive data. If Neukom, Jones and their coauthors publish a multiproxy article, that means the multiproxy data, not just the output. If the contributing authors are not willing to archive their data, then it shouldn’t be used in a study in a climate journal. End of story.

Nor is it sufficient for the author to provide the addresses of the various contributors and force an interested reader to obtain data from each of them individually. There’s no guarantee that they will cooperate. The obligation rests with the publishing authors.

Making matters even worse in the present case is that many of the unarchived series were published by named Neukom coauthors. If they aren’t prepared to have their data see the light of day, don’t sign on as a coauthor and don’t allow Neukom to use your data.

While Phil Jones was not lead author of the study, he was a coauthor. As someone with recent adverse experience in data archiving issues, Jones should have insisted that the Neukom coauthors provide an exemplary data archive and, if they were unwilling to do so, Jones should have withdrawn as a coauthor. Similarly, the University of East Anglia should have adopted policies that require its authors to ensure that proper data archiving practices are mandatory in publications in which UEA employees are coauthors. Either UEA has failed to adopt such a policy or, if they have, Jones has ignored it.

PAGES, the organization that has sponsored or acquiesced in this latest secrecy, has the following mission:

PAGES is a core project of IGBP [International Geosphere=Biosphere Program] and is funded by the U.S. and Swiss National Science Foundations and NOAA

Climate scientists, rather than learning anything from Climategate, have, if anything, become more stubborn than ever. That international programs sponsored by funds from the Swiss NSF, US NSF and NOAA should sponsor and/or acquiesce in non-archiving was bad enough before Climategate, but totally unacceptable after Climategate.

The sending of Swiss and/or US federal funds to climate institutions and programs which do not adhere to data archiving policies seems a practical and useful topic for an oversight committee and I hope that one of them takes up the issue. If nothing else will change the archiving practices of climate scientists, maybe the funding agencies can.

And by the way, as I’ve said on many occasions, I don’t believe that new data policies are needed. If policies enunciated in the 1990s were applied to paleoclimate by NSF, I believe that that would deal with 95% of the problem in paleoclimate. However, in my opinion, NSF (paleoclimate) has become a cheerleader for the small paleoclimate industry and abdicated its obligations to ensure compliance with US federal data archiving policies.

I replied to Neukom as follows:

Thank you for your reply, which, unfortunately I do not accept. If you publish a multiproxy article using non-archived proxy data, you should obtain the consent of the contributors for archiving the data when the study is published or otherwise not use this data. It is your responsibility to obtain these consents, not the responsibility of the interested reader to try to obtain the data from potentially uncooperative contributors after the fact.

I’ve posted on this incident at Climate Audit here https://climateaudit.org/2011/01/06/more-data-refusal-nothing-changes/ and if you wish to present your side of the story, please feel free to do so,

Regards, Steve McIntyre

Update: Lucia observes in a comment below:

http://www.pages-igbp.org/science/databases.html

data management

Future progress in understanding climate history will depend increasingly on the provision of well-documented data. Therefore, in addition to providing a set of useful data links, PAGES has initiated the PAGES Databoard. This service is intended to ensure the compatibility and accessibility of available paleo-databases.

http://www.pages.unibe.ch/cgi-bin/WebObjects/metadb.woa/wa/group?group=lsa
Raphael Neukom is the contact for learning how to contrinbute data to Page.

Lucia asked whether the requested series were there. Many of the requested series appear to be on that list or to be composites constructed in some fashion. Some of the inputs to Neukom et al are identified as “Clusters” of tree ring data. The clusters appear to be composites of individual tree ring chronologies listed in the PAGES series.

PAGES in effect is using public funds to archive pubicly funded data for private use. It reminds me in a way of the password-protected archive at SO&P (SOAP) which rebuffed all my efforts to get access to their data in 2005. The gatekeeper for the program in that instance was none other than Climategate’s own Keith Briffa.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (150)