Siberian temperatures are an interesting case study in CRU gatekeeping. As reported a few days ago here, in an email of Mar 31, 2004, Jones advised Climategate correspondent Michael Mann that he had “gone to town” in his rejection reviews of submissions criticizing CRU’s handling of Siberian temperatures.
Today, in a Climate Audit exclusive, we provide you with the rejected paper (by Lars Kamél), one which seems like it would have been a useful contribution to the peerreviewedlitchurchur. Continue reading →
Fox News is running a one-hour special on climate tonight at 9 p.m. (which is being re-aired on Wednesday, I think.)
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was interviewed in Toronto by Fox News when they were in Toronto for the Munk Debates (Dec 1) – Nigel Lawson and Bjorn Lomborg v George Monbiot and Elizabeth May (Green Party of Canada leader). It’s my understanding that they will be using some of this footage in one of the segments of the program tonight.
They were extremely well prepared for the interview to say the least, even being acquainted with as small a nuance of the debate as the Starbucks Hypothesis. I suspect that I’m going to look pretty weary in the interview – I was in the process of going through the Climategate Letters, which are discourging even for third party readers.
I think that the producers are trying to make the show more nuanced than the usual effort in this field (on either side). Not an easy task.
Update2 – Youtube versions on longer online. Try
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Here is the Fox News Special on Youtube (h/t reader below):
As a CA reader observed in another thread, the more interesting aspect of the editorial is the overwhelming opposition to Mann’s editorial in the comment thread. Readers were not distracted by Mann’s efforts to deflect attention to Sarah Palin.
Lawrence Solomon has an interesting column in the National Post today on William Connolley’s climategatekeeping role at Wikipedia. See also an article last year.
Connolley was one of the nine realclimate founders, but posted little at realclimate. This has notoriously not been the case at Wikipedia. Solomon reports that Connolley “created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles” and that Connolley was granted a senior editorial and administrative status at Wikipedia that enabled him to delete “over 500 articles” and “barred” more than 2000 Wikipedia contributors who “ran afoul of him”.
Particular areas of interest for Connolley were the Hockey Stick debate e.g. here,
Pete Holzmann has written an excellent Firefox-Greasemonkey add-on that provides comment capability from the old site for Firefox users (which I use BTW). Go to https://climateaudit.org/ca-assistant/ and try. It will make commenting easier. Thanks, Pete.
[You’re welcome!–MrPete]
Update: the CA Assistant page has been updated with hints on enabling/disabling GreaseMonkey, enabling the script for other WordPress sites, and more.
One of the Climategate texts that has attracted considerable commentary is:
The other paper by MM 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 !
The “community”‘s response to this has been: move along, there’s nothing to see. A typical defence is that of Ronald Prinn of MIT (e.g. here around minute 48) and others) : that improper peer review activities by CRU and their associates didn’t “matter” because McIntyre and McKitrick were discussed by IPCC after all:
“Five papers by McIntyre and McKitrick were published and then referenced and discussed in the IPCC.”
In yesterday’s post, I showed that the Climategate letters showed gatekeeping incidents that had nothing to do with McIntyre and McKitrick – even preceding our entry onto the scene. In today’s post, I’m going to place the money quote in context, showing that Jones and Trenberth did in fact live up to their threats, breaching other IPCC rules along the way. Continue reading →
On Mar 31, 2004 Jones wrote to to Mann as follows:
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Climategate emails show that Phil Jones of CRU, acting as a reviewer of the CRU data used in the HadCRU gridded temperature, “went to town” to block the publication of criticisms of his handling of Russian data.
On Dec 15, 2009, it was reported that the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report “claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.” (h’t Jeff Id) There is an online technical report dated Dec 15, 2009, which states that it considered data released by the UK Met Office on Dec 8, 2009 in response to “increasing public pressure”. The Google translation needs volunteers. [Update: here iea1]
Russian version here. (h/t Anastassia) [Note: The Institute for Economic Analysis is not the Russian equivalent of the UK Met Office; the Russian Met Office may have a different view.] [Further note: maybe even akin to Cato Institute or CEI. Comments on data need to be cross-examined before relying on them.]
In the MIT Climategate Forum, Ronald Prinn trotted out what has become one of the standard “move along” memes in the climate science community: that while the “tone” of the Climategate emails was “unprofessional”, they did not succeed in their “endeavour” to prevent publication of articles in journals or mentions in IPCC. Prinn at around minute 48 says:
Number 2. Were the people successful in their endeavour to preventing publication in journals or mentions in IPCC ? This is a very important question. Could one successfully do that? Five papers by McIntyre and McKitrick were published and then referenced and discussed in the IPCC… But were the people successful in their endeavour to preventing publication in journals or mentions in IPCC ? The answer is no. They were not successful. [elision does not seem germane to this particular]
As so often in climate science, Prinn is talking without apparently doing any due diligence. The Climategate Letters provide many examples of CRU and their associates successfully preventing publication of articles in journals. Most of these examples do not pertain to the Mc-Mc articles and, indeed, some of the most egregious examples precede our entry onto the scene in late 2003.
Today, I’ll provide two 2003 and two 2004 examples where, contrary to Prinn’s soporific “move-along”, CRU and their associates successfully prevented publications of four articles (the identity of which is presently unknown.) There are other examples in the Climategate Letters which I’ll discuss on other occasions. Continue reading →
Anthony reports that DOE has sends a “litigation hold notice” regarding CRU to employees – asking to “preserve documents”. DOE funded Phi Jones at CRU for 25 years. I think that I recall Jones saying somewhere in the Climategate Letters that he hopes no one finds out.
See details at Anthony’s.
Update: As mentioned by a reader below, in email 1120676865.txt, Jones says:.
“Neville,
Mike’s response could do with a little work, but as you say he’s got the tone
almost dead on. I hope I don’t get a call from congress ! I’m hoping that no-one
there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last 25
years. I’ll send on one other email received for interest.
Cheers
Phil”
Update2 Dec 15 9 am: As pointed out by another reader, the litigation hold notice appears related to a letter sent by Inhofe to the DOE asking them to secure their files.
In my opinion, this substantially reduces the drama of this notice.
Absent the context of Inhofe’s letter, one might interpret the letter as evidencing an intent by the administration; however, if it’s in response to Inhofe’s letter, it’s likely that there is no such intent, only a minimum response. I’m less interested in this now.
For OT links and non-topical points. Editorially, I prefer that readers stick to short points and not try to solve all the problems of the world in 3 paragraphs or prove or disprove the entire apparatus of climate science in 4 sentences. Try to avoid using adjectives. A whole lot of comments containing adjectives end up making a very uninteresting thread for readers. At present, I’m deleting many comments that do not comply with blog policies requiring politeness, avoiding angriness, venting and editorializing.
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