Assange on Climategate

Nov 30, 2010 – 9:48 AM

Jeff Id links to a YouTube video of WikiLeaks’ Assange making a variety of untrue or inflated claims about Climategate and WikiLeaks’ role.

Assange falsely claimed that the Climategate emails were broken by WikiLeaks. This is obviously untrue as CA readers know. I can date WikiLeaks’ entry by contemporary comments. The first notice of the emails at WikiLeaks was 2009/11/21 at 2.50 AM Eastern (12:50 AM blog time). The emails had been downloaded by many people (including me) from a Russian server on Nov 19 and had been downloaded by WUWT moderators on Nov 17. A contemporary comment in a CA thread says that WikiLeaks was down and refers people to megauploads. WikiLeaks has not even been a major reference for Climategate – that belongs to eastangliaemails.com (originally anelegantchaos.org) which was up on Nov 20 and provided a searchable database.

Assange adopted Gavin Schmidt’s disinformation about the “trick… to hide the decline”. While the term “trick” can be used to denote a sophisticated mathematical method, it can also denote something as simple and unscrupulous as deleting adverse data. It is necessary to investigate the facts of the matter and the context. In the example of interest, the Climategate correspondents did not use a sophisticated mathematical method; they simply deleted data that didn’t accord with their expectations. The “investigations” ought to have denounced/renounced such methods and their failure to do so is to their shame.

Given the remarkable lack of speculation about foreign intelligence services hacking into the present WikiLeaks dossier, Assange made some remarkably unsubstantiated fantasies about Russian intelligence, that are almost wild enough for Raymond Pierrehumbert whose similar fantasies were reported on by the NY Times last year.

Assange asserted that UK newspapers had close involvement with UK intelligence, that he had supposedly been told by UK reporters that they had received the dossier from the FSB (presumably FSB, the Russian intelligence) just three days before the Copenhagen conference. Assange then proclaimed that the UK intelligence tried to “frame us as a conduit for the FSB – absolutely outrageous”.

The dates of the Copenhagen conference were Dec 7 to 18, 2009 (see here for example). Gertting the Climategate emails three days before Copenhagen (Dec 4,2009) was hardly a scoop. By that time, even Jon Stewart had done a comedy segment and Minnesotans for Global Warming had issued the Hide the Decline video.

Assange’s lieutenant then observed that the UEA had observed that the Climategate dossier had been selected and that statements had been taken out of context and that the university had promised to “publish the rest of the material to correct the full picture.” In fact, as CA readers know, Acton of the UEA intervened to prevent the panel charged with examining the rest of the material from doing so and the rest of the material remains unexamined and unavailable.

http://www.youtube.com/v/W17dW_aJEwU?version=3

Update: Ross writes in in his usual forceful style:

What a pair of blowhards. They were obviously unnerved by the question. They evidently like leaks that embarrass their political opponents, but in this case they found themselves tagged with a leak that had damaged the side they like; and since it seems to be more about political warfare against governments they dislike than some impartial ideal of transparency and freedom of information, they were stuck scrambling to make up a story about how it really served some nobler purpose. Of course they should simply have said that they weren’t the source of the leak, that it was in full circulation long before anyone looked to them for a copy and they didn’t know much about the details of what followed. But that would have been too humble, especially in front of a room full of simpering hero-worshippers. So they pretended to be insiders and proceeded to deliver a few minutes of sheer drivel.

While I was in the UK last fall, there was brief interest by the UK tabloids in the Russian angle, and an article appeared in the Daily Mail speculating that Russian intelligence officials had hacked the UEA and stolen the emails. But nobody took that line seriously and the story died within 48 hours. If Assange has a shred of evidence to support his lunatic theory he should release it. What’s with these secret communications between him and UK intelligence: out with it, Mr Wikileaks! Bloody poser.

On this issue at least they are nothing but fakes and cretins. Saying that UEA released all the background emails and whatnot to provide the full context is beyond idiocy; and Assange’s discussion of the “trick” is just painful to watch.

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

Just Doing Their Jobs – “Robustly”

Nov 29, 2010 – 4:56 PM

In the NYT this year:

While declining to comment on the details of the cables, Mrs. Clinton said the disclosures painted a picture of American diplomats doing their jobs: collecting information and impressions and communicating them in an unvarnished way to policy-makers in Washington.

Gavin Schmidt on the Climategate correspondents:

People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions;

Gavin Schmidt’s term “robust”, right up to the quotation mark, was also used by Hilary Clinton:

She even used the occasion to plug the “robust” diplomacy of the Obama administration, noting that it assembled an international front to react to Iran’s nuclear program.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (28)

The Hypocrisy of the New York Times

Nov 29, 2010 – 4:35 PM

The New York Times is making quite a meal of the WikiLeaks documents.

As others have observed, they refused to print Climategate emails involving senior IPCC Lead Authors, Coordinating Lead Authors. While their hypocrisy on this score was rightly criticized last year, it is being revisited this year in light of WikiLeaks. And rightly so.

While criticism has focused on Andy Revkin – for whom, as CA readers know, I have considerable personal respect, attention should really be directed to the policies of the New York Times itself, as articulated by editor Clarke Hoyt on Dec 6, 2009 last year.

Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (55)

Was there an actual legal opinion?

Nov 29, 2010 – 11:28 AM

In today’s post, I discuss the following statement by the Muir Russell “inquiry” – a topic previously discussed here with further information provided today.

Muir Russell stated:

in the opinion of UEA‘s legal advisers, unconstrained access to the contents of e-mails on the server by the Review would raise potential privacy and data protection issues.

This sounds sort of impressive. But imagine the difference if they had said:

in the opinion of UEA Vice Chancellor Acton, unconstrained access to the contents of e-mails on the server by the Review would raise potential privacy and data protection issues.

That would have made quite a difference. Documents obtained subsequent to the publication of the Muir Russell report show that the latter is almost certainly what happened. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (24)

The IPCC Doctrine of Implicit Confidentiality

Nov 28, 2010 – 10:36 AM

In their most refusal of David Holland’s FOI request for IPCC review comments, the U of East Anglia relied on a supposed IPCC doctrine of implicit confidentiality – a doctrine that is more or less equivalent to “omerta”. Even for the University of East Anglia, the provenance of this doctrine is remarkable. Acton and Trevor Davies must have sniggered.

In their refusal, UEA stated:

The fact that the IPCC has clear protocols for what information is to be in the public domain also points to the implicit assumption that, as the requested information is outside those protocols, it has never been intended to be publicly available.

They apply the alleged doctrine of IPCC implied confidentiality to impute confidentiality to Annex C1 authors who did not claim it when requested. For example, they say of John Fyfe, Lead Author of a different chapter:

John Fyfe LA for Chap 8 of WG1: Did not clarify his position regarding confidentiality, but this is implicitly assumed following IPCC procedure

The doctrine of implied confidentiality in the running text is derived from the statement in Annex C2, which stated:

By explicitly indicating what materials should be openly archived, the IPCC implicitly indicated that other materials should not be disclosed.

If anyone is to speak on behalf of IPCC, it is the IPCC secretariat. However, in the 32nd meeting in Busan in October 2010, only a few weeks prior to the UEA refusal, the IPCC secretariat stated that, while the rights and responsibilities of IPCC cadres under national FOI and the Aarhus Convention needs to be clarified, the IPCC itself cannot provide individual legal advice:

E2. The rights and responsibilities of all those involved in IPCC activities under the Aarhus Convention and in relation to requests under national Freedom of Information legislation needs to be clarified for the various groups: elected officials (Bureau), staff of the Secretariat, TSU staff, and experts involved in IPCC activities. However, IPCC cannot provide individual legal advice.

I’ll discuss the merit (or rather lack of merit) of the doctrine of “implied” confidentiality on another occasion. Today, I’ll answer a smaller question: if the IPCC declined to interpret its procedures for FOI requests, who was the authority for the novel doctrine of “implied” confidentiality? The remarkable answer: Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (51)

East Anglia: More Sucking and Blowing

Nov 26, 2010 – 1:07 PM

David Holland’s well-known FOI 08-31 included the following request:

1. The IPCC stated on July 1, 2006:

“We are very grateful to the many reviewers of the second draft of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report for suggestions received on issues of balance and citation of additional scientific literature.”

Did the IPCC receive any such “suggestions” in a written form other than those reported in the documents for each chapter entitled “IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment Report: Expert and Government Review Comments on the Second-Order Draft”2? If so, please provide them.

The U of East Anglia rejected a refreshed request in respect to the Wahl emails on the basis that the email to Briffa (acting here in his capacity as an IPCC author) was “not provided to the IPCC, only to Prof. Briffa and therefore is outside the remit of question 1”

Appendix F (08-31)

There is no question that a suggestion was received by Prof. Briffa from Eugene Wahl and this material is publicly available and has been widely commented upon. This ‘suggestion’ was not provided to the IPCC, only to Prof. Briffa and therefore is outside the remit of question 1.

Now let’s turn to their position refusing Holland’s related FOI request 08-23. In that case they argue that emails from IPCC authors are communications “received from the IPCC as an organisation”.

I believe that we have shown that the IPCC qualifies as an international organisation covered by the exception, and that, given the nature of the IPCC structure, information received from convening authors and authors of the Working Group, in effect, is communication received from the IPCC as an organisation.

I.e. they argue that communications sent from IPCC authors to IPCC Lead Author Briffa are communications sent by IPCC as an organization, but communications received by IPCC Lead Author from IPCC authors are not received by IPCC as an organization.

I wonder if they snickered when they wrote this.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (23)

UEA: IPCC Requires Secrecy, Not Openness

Nov 25, 2010 – 3:39 PM

In the recent U of East Anglia refusal of David Holland’s renewed request for IPCC review comments, held out of the IPCC archive through conduct described by Fred Pearce as a “subversion” of IPCC principles of openness and transparency, East Anglia stated:

recent guidance given to IPCC lead authors has clearly indicated that communication between lead authors is to remain confidential, and that emails and preliminary versions of work are not made public, cited, quoted nor distributed. We believe that this is persuasive evidence that the IPCC feels that the release of such material would adversely affect their interests.

Has anyone seen a copy of this alleged “guidance”? I quickly looked at documents presented at the IPCC October 2010 meeting in Busan and didn’t see anything responsive.

Pachauri’s July 5, 2010 memo on the media, that caused some controversy at the time, doesn’t contain such instructions. Hoggan’s comments at desmog about that particular botch seem to apply to CRU as well:

Andy Revkin’s revelations over the weekend about the botched media relations strategy deployed by the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, demonstrate that the IPCC has failed to learn from its recent missteps in managing public communications.

If you don’t have anything to hide, don’t act as if you do.

Words that CRU would do well to heed.

Again, has anyone seen this document? I wonder if the University of East Anglia will claim that it’s confidential if someone FOIs it.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (45)

David Walker, Muir Russell Project Manager

Nov 24, 2010 – 9:44 PM

The Muir Russell report thanks a “David Walker” for serving as Project Manager without identifying him. Despite Walker’s importance as Project Manager, Muir Russell did not provide a bio at the Inquiry website. David Walker is a common name. So who is this David Walker?
Andrew Montford also wondered about this at one time, but did not arrive at any conclusions or even hypotheses.
Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (32)

Another Stupid UEA Trick

Nov 24, 2010 – 5:11 PM

On October 22, 2010, David Holland re-iterated his FOI requests 08-23 and 08-31. Once again, the University of East Anglia has refused 08-31, this time using an excuse the obtuseness of which is remarkable even for the University of East Anglia. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (68)

Boultonizing Holland’s Submission

Nov 24, 2010 – 11:19 AM

Interesting new light on the Boultonization of Holland’s submission to Muir Russell at Bishop Hill (here).

Muir Russell’s first statement upon being appointed to look into CRU was:

Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the University or the Climate Science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.

Instead, Muir Russell delegated the critical aspects of the inquiry to Geoffrey Boulton, who had worked for 18 years at the University of East Anglia in Environmental Sciences, overlapping Phil Jones, Tom Wigley, Ben Santer among others. In addition, Boulton has campaigned actively on climate issues and even signed the Met Office petition in December last year supporting CRU. His appointment to the panel was opposed by many submissions.

Muir Russell didn’t even bother attending any interviews with CRU scientists following his press conference, leaving the one interview of Jones and Briffa to the most conflicted panelist, Geoffrey Boulton.

In his press conference, Muir Russell was asked whether communications between the panel and the university would be public and promised that they would be. At about minute 26 in February, Muir Russell was asked (approx transcript follows):

Given that openness is the only weapon you have against allegations about lack of independence, will you do interviews? Will they publish those in some way or will they be public in some way? Will you publish communications that you will have and have had with the university?

Muir Russell answered:

we’ll put all that material on the website. It will come on at different times depending on its relevance to the stages that we’re at.

As with many other undertakings, Muir Russell breached this undertaking and did not place all communications with the University on the website – or even the majority of them. People who wish to see the communications promised by Muir Russell have had to use FOI on the University – with the University refusing many requests.

Muir Russell’s website shows Briffa’s response to some issues raised by David Holland. Boulton did not seek comments on Briffa’s response – the Briffa letter was posted up at the website only after the report was published (despite Muir Russell’s promise to post documents at their website as they were received.)

The response includes a May 6 letter by Geoffrey Boulton which refers to an “annex”, but the original letter together with the annex was not at the website. David Holland submitted an FOI for the original letter together with its annex, shedding some interesting light on how Boulton Boultonized the events described in Holland’s chronology.

The Annex is based on paragraphs 42-53 of Holland’s submission. (Muir Russell refused to place Holland’s full submission on their website.) Boulton’s annex is nearly word for word from Holland’s submission. Boulton removed Holland’s paragraph numbering (though his removal failed at one point and the number for paragraph 50 is embedded in his annex.)

However, Boulton removed some key portions of Holland’s chronology. Boulton removed the following from paragraph 42:

The above instruction imposed additional strict conditions necessary to ensure that Government and Expert Reviewers were reviewing the actual paper, as it would be published. It might be argued that it extended the “in press” deadline to any time in December 2005, although it did not specifically state that. It did make it absolutely clear, however, that a final preprint copy had to be held by the TSU by late February 2006 and that failure meant that citations must be removed.

Boulton removed the following sentence from paragraph 43:

As the writing team began work on the second order draft, Overpeck became concerned at not having the “final preprint” of some papers as the end of February 2006 approached.

Boulton removed all of paragraph 44 which read:

44. On 11 February 2006 in email 1141180962, Wahl tries to secure the acceptance of Wahl and Ammann writing to the editor, Stephen Schneider, of the journal Climatic Change:

“Hello Steve:
Caspar and I expect to have the final manuscript to you in 7-10 days
with all the revisions you requested in December. I have recently had
some correspondance with Jonathan Overpeck about this, in his IPCC
role. He says that the paper needs to be in press by the end of February
to be acceptable to be cited in the SOD. [I had thought that we had
passed all chance for citation in the next IPCC report back in December,
but Peck has made it known to me this is not so.] He and I have communicated re: what “in press” means for Climatic Change, and I agreed to contact you to have a clear definition. What I have understood from our conversations before is that if you receive the mss and move it from “provisionally accepted” status to “accepted”, then this can be considered in press, in light of CC being a journal of record.
Peace, Gene”

The deletion of paragraph 44 led to a non-sequitur in what would have been Holland’s paragraph 45, which stated:

45. The sentence, that Wahl put in parentheses above, shows that he had understood the clear TSU instruction that the paper had to be “in press” by 16 December and was not expecting his paper, written with Caspar Ammann, to be acceptable to the IPCC WGI TSU. Overpeck was overlooking this and a major effort was evidently underway to squeeze this critical paper into the IPCC report. Schneider eventually replied from Australia, accepting the paper in email 1141145428, received by Wahl at 9:33 PM on 28 February 2006.

Briffa’s “rebuttal” seized on the Boultonized omission, pointing out:

No text from Wahl is quoted above and therefore this statement is in error.

The statement in parenthesis was from Wahl’s original email:

I had thought that we had passed all chance for citation in the next IPCC report back in December, but Peck has made it known to me this is not so.

As David Holland observed, Briffa’s response shows that he was in possession of Holland’s submission (contrary to UEA’s original statement that they did not possess a copy of his submission – a point that they conceded a day or two ago.) Briffa’s “rebuttal” applied only to the Boultonized version. Boulton’s reasons for Boultonizing the chronology have thus far not been explained.

More of the “small inaccuracies” that are traditional in British inquiries.

The new documents also show that Muir Russell moved his email contact from the public sector Judicial Appointments Board (which would be subject to FOI) to a generic address and that staffer William Hardie, (who is presumably will_50), seconded from the Royal Society of Edinburgh – an affiliation referred to by Muir Russell at the press conference – also set up a a generic email address distinct from his Royal Society of Edinburgh email (the RSE voluntarily complies with FOI).

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (38)