Embattled UK climate scientist steps down
The embattled director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), Dr. Phil Jones, announced that he will be temporarily standing aside as director. An independent review of his conduct in light of the emails illegally hacked from his computers last month is in progress. In a press release, Professor Jones said: "What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director's role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support".
The University and the police are investigating the break-in, and it is currently unknown if this was the act of an insider or an external break-in. I think it is highly unlikely this was the work of an insider in a whistle-blower type of action, since a computer at realclimate.org was hacked into the same week (via a computer in Turkey), and the criminal attempted to upload the emails stolen from CRU to the realclimate.org server. This is not the sort of action a whistleblower would do. Dr. Gavin Schmidt of realclimate.org said in a comment yesterday that the CRU break-in appeared to have been done from the outside, into a backup mail server. It is unlikely the hacker acted alone, since hackers aren't typically intimately familiar with the details of the climate change science debate. The emails and code stolen were selectively culled by someone who appeared to have considerable expertise in climate science.
What did Dr. Jones do wrong?
So, what did Dr. Jones do wrong? For starters, he should have confronted the allegations raised by his critics immediately and talked candidly to the press about some of the specific accusations being made. For example, one of the emails contained the statement that he would like to "redefine what the peer-reviewed literature is" to exclude two questionable papers from the IPCC report. Well, that's not something a good scientist should seriously advocate, and is an impossibility, in any case. No one can redefine the peer-reviewed literature, since the rules for this are well-established an not subject to change. When I read the comment in the context it was made, it reads as a joke. There is no discussion in the hacked emails about how to go about redefining the peer-reviewed literature. In the end, the two papers Jones was referring to with this comment, McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and Kalnay and Cai (2003), ended up being cited and discussed in Chapter 2 of the IPCC AR4 report. Those intent on discrediting the science of human-caused global warming are spinning the comment differently, creating a controversy about something that is impossible to do, and was not being seriously suggested. Jones should have immediately spoken up to quash the hype on this comment.
The "trick" to "hide the decline"
Another area of concern is over a graph Dr. Jones helped construct in 1999 showing the "hockey stick" of Earth's surface temperature going back 1,000 years. This graph combined instrumental measurements made since the 1800s with older paleoclimate data (including data from tree rings) to show a continuous 1,000 year record of Earth's temperatures. The paleoclimate data after 1960 show a bogus decline in Earth's temperatures that does not agree with what modern thermometers have been measuring, due to a well-known variation in tree ring thickness as a function of time, referred to as "the decline". Thus, Jones elected to toss out the bogus paleoclimate data (using a "trick" to "hide the decline") rather than present it in the graph. The graph was not properly labeled to show this was done, so viewers of the graph would have had needed to be familiar with a 1998 paper published in Nature or the 1999 paper referenced in the caption on the graph, which explained this well-known data issue. The graph that Jones used his "trick" on was put into a 1999 report called the "WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate". The report was given to policy makers, but was never published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. No reputable climate scientist believes that the paleoclimate data since 1960 is of higher quality than the instrumental record (this is discussed in detail in Chapter 6 of the 2007 IPCC report). In order to make the "hokey stick" graph less confusing, removing "the decline" from the tree ring data is a reasonable thing to do--provided one labels the graph properly. The graph was not properly labeled. Does Jones' "trick" and failure to properly label the graph constitute data falsification, or was it merely sloppy science? The hacked emails contain no suggestions that the "trick" was done to intentionally fool people, and the "trick" never appeared in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, including the IPCC reports. In Dr. Jones' words, "This is well-known and is called the "decline" or "divergence". The use of the term "hiding the decline" was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. Indeed, CRU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure".
Figure 1. The WMO 1999 "hockey stick" figure (top) with climate reconstructions and instrumental temperatures merged, and a version (bottom) with the climate reconstructions (coloured) and instrumental temperatures (annual & summer in black) shown separately. Note "the decline" in the temperature obtained from tree ring data (green curve) in the bottom curve. Image credit: University of East Anglia.
Global warming contrarians are spinning the "trick" as reason to discredit the "hockey stick", claiming that the data was falsified to hide the fact that tree rings were telling the real story. Since the hockey stick was falsified, some claim, the entire science behind human-caused global warming needs to be questioned. This is plain ludicrous. The graph was never published in a scientific journal. Several updated versions of the "hockey stick" graph have been published in the ten years since the disputed graph was produced, and the "hockey stick" can be reproduced in essentially the same form excluding the controversial tree rings, using other paleoclimate data such as boreholes (See Mann et al., 2008, Figure 2). Furthermore, the peer-reviewed science supporting human-caused global warming is not based solely upon the "hockey stick" and the CRU data used for the last 150 years of the hockey stick graph. There are three separate data sets of global temperatures maintained by NASA, the CRU, and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, that all show essentially the same global warming. We also have evidence from nature herself in the form of plants and animals expanding their ranges poleward, the record loss of Arctic sea ice in 2007 and record loss of multi-year Arctic sea ice this year, the shrinking of mountain glaciers, reductions in the length of freeze season in many Northern Hemisphere lakes and rivers, the shifting of spring blooms earlier in most regions of the world, and on and on and on. Again, Jones should have spoken up immediately to kill the ridiculous hype being pushed by global warming contrarians about the importance of a 10-year old graph that is now scientifically irrelevant, and was never published.
Figure 2. The "hockey stick" of global temperature anomalies since 300 A.D., as published in a 2008 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Mann et al.. Even if one excludes tree rings (blue curve), the hockey stick looks the same.
Resistance to releasing data to other researchers
The hacked emails also show that Dr. Jones resisted releasing his data to contrarians and urged others to delete emails regarding Freedom Of Information (FOI) related requests. Many countries protect their weather data under an international agreement called World Meteorological Organization Resolution 40, which prohibits the data from being made public (this is why wunderground can't give out the UKMET model forecasts on our web site, for example). About 5% of the CRU data fell in that category, making release illegal. However, deleting emails related to FOI requests is inadvisable and implies one has something to hide. The investigation should certainly pursue the issue of whether Dr. Jones properly handled the requests to turn over his data to outside researchers. Ideally, weather data documenting Earth's climate history should be free to everyone on the planet (I am not a big fan of WMO Resolution 40). However, another aspect to this issue is the time it takes for the scientists involved to prepare the data for release. Large, complicated data sets require extensive documentation and access to related computer codes in order to process them, and making the data available to every amateur investigator interested in the data puts an unfair burden on the scientists who maintain the data sets. In particular, an amateur climate science investigator named Stephen McIntyre, who runs the web site Climate Audit, has created such an issue. McIntyre, a retired mining executive and an investor, is not a professional scientist, but has been successful identifying several technical errors made in the published literature. He has also generated a huge amount of misleading and incorrect information over the years, and has done a tremendous amount of damage to the understanding of climate science. McIntyre is intent on discrediting the science of human-caused global warming--presumably for ideological reasons, since he has no obvious ties to the fossil fuel industry--and has generated a large number of Freedom of Information requests to further his cause. One of the hacked emails, from Dr. Ben Santer, complained that McIntyre's FOI requests were intrusive and unreasonable with no scientific justification or explanation given, and appeared to be a calculated strategy to divert Santer's attention and focus away from research. It's worth reading Santer's reaction to the hacked email affair to learn more. Given such tactics by McIntyre, Dr. Jones' resistance to FOI requests from McIntyre is understandable, but appears to have been poorly handled.
The science of human-caused global warming remains unaffected
None of the hacked emails reveal any conspiracy to publish falsified or "fudged" material in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The science of human-caused global warming will require no revision as a result of this affair. Baseless accusations of fraud, data manipulation, and conspiracy against climate change scientists stemming from the hacked emails are being massively hyped by the Manufactured Doubt industry in an effort to discredit climate scientists, since no flaw with the science can be found. Most of the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad, so if you can create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion, you can win--or at least buy time, lots of it. The hacked email affair is all about politics, not science. Dr. Jones is an excellent scientist, but unfortunately was over-matched as a politician. It was hardly a fair fight--one scientist against the political might of the mightiest PR campaign against science ever waged, armed with some selectively culled stolen emails taken out of context.
Other posts in this series
The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
Is more CO2 beneficial for Earth's ecosystems?
Next post
I'm working on a post called, "Don't shoot the messenger", and plan to run this Sunday or Monday.
Our Climate Change expert, Dr. Ricky Rood, will be in Copenhagen for Monday's start to the crucial COP15 climate change treaty negotiations. Be sure to tune into his blog for updates on the talks. Wunderground has provided financial support for several University of Michigan students to attend the talks, and I may be featuring portions of their blogs over the coming weeks.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Area forecast discussion
National Weather Service Lake Charles la
1112 am CST Friday Dec 4 2009
Update...
Historic snowfall event has begun with accumulating snow already
occurring in the Houston area...and a rain/snow mix here at weather forecast office
Lake Charles. 12z klch sounding shows a very favorable profile for
snow...as any precipitation falling through the atmospheric column
will cool the profile to completely below freezing except near the
surface. Rain has already spread across much of the southern zones
this morning...and snow should begin mixing with the rain soon
across most of southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. A complete
changeover to snow is expected in the western half of the County Warning Area
during the afternoon...and eastern areas by later in the afternoon
and evening.
Based on current observation...have adjusted winter hazards to begin 3
hours earlier for all areas. Also concerned that southern zones
may need an upgrade to a Winter Storm Warning...as heaviest
precipitation may set up in a corridor further south than
previously anticipated. However... this is dependent on when the
complete changeover to snow occurs and how quickly accumulations
can begin. At this time...our current forecast snow totals of 1 to
3 inches in northern zones and up to 2 inches in southern zones
still appears reasonable.
Made adjustments to temperatures to show temperatures falling into the 30s
into the afternoon. Much drier air to the north with dewpoints in
the teens and 20s continues to filter southward. Temperatures may reach
freezing sooner than originally anticipated this evening and
tonight...and may need to start freeze warnings sooner for the
area. Thus hazardous travel conditions are possible as early as
this evening on bridges and overpasses. Will address this more
with the afternoon package depending on how conditions pan out.
Shamburger
From all the images im seeing it looks like it may end up being a south west/central LA snow event. You and I may get a little but Im expecting mostly the nasty mix. Last year here in Ascension we got more snow then Central LA and even Baton Rouge. You just never know with these storms.
Based on current observation...have adjusted winter hazards to begin 3
hours earlier for all areas. Also concerned that southern zones
may need an upgrade to a Winter Storm Warning...as heaviest
precipitation may set up in a corridor further south than
previously anticipated. However... this is dependent on when the
complete changeover to snow occurs and how quickly accumulations
can begin. At this time...our current forecast snow totals of 1 to
3 inches in northern zones and up to 2 inches in southern zones
still appears reasonable.
No, what I'm saying is those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Snow in Pensacola? heh as Aerosmith says "DREAM ON!!!"
Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Airport)
Updated: 7 min 5 sec ago
Mostly Cloudy
46 °F
Mostly Cloudy
Windchill: 42 °F
Humidity: 63%
Dew Point: 34 °F
Wind: 7 mph from the North
Pressure: 30.16 in (Falling)
Visibility: 10.0 miles
In 79 I think it was,went diving at Morrison Springs in the Fla. Panhandle.
Went down for 30 minutes,came up..was snowing and sleeting.
Mardi Gras time.
As we we went to Fla on Vacation.
Musta been Jan or Feb.
Special alert for GOM coast Tx, La, Ms, Al, FlPh;
It has been discovered by agore that what you are seeing is not snow. It is ionized volcanic ash captured after the Redoubt volcanic venting this summer. It was impregnated with synthetic stem cell polymers and incubated in uranium enriched caves in Uzbekistan. It was then flown by a captured and rebuilt SR-71 to be dropped at this time to simulate snow. This was funded by Fox News to farther exploit the AGW hacking. LOL and haven't even started on the egg nog yet......
LOL I like fox news, but that is some funny stuff!!
CNN (not the headlines news channel) is actually trying to become unbiased atm, i.e. dropping Lou Dobbs. Its quite hard to explain but starting in January you will definatly see a difference in style then from july.
Also im my opinon both and Fox and MSNBC are equally as biased to me. Both essentially have the same style of programming. If you will notice,there is little on both channels dealing with headline news. Most is opinion.
Anyway back to the SNOW.
Check out the Regional radar of the South
Well, I agree. HOWEVER, those with $$$$ who "run things" around the world are deluding themselves!!
there's some pretty heavy precipitation of the coast of Texas
My condolences...
LOL, that's pretty good. Did you write that yourself? You know we've also gotten slammed here for not citing sources, or linking to mainstream media (oh my God, Popular Science or National Geo. or AP...you know how dangerous THEY are) and not academic/technical sources (because of course us unprincipled, ignorant masses should trust what very few even understand)!
uh oh, a mini-rant. Sorry, thought your post was funny/cute!
On January 19, 1977, Miami received its first and only recorded snowfall. It only consisted of extremely light flurries, but this Blizzard of 1977 is the only snowfall our fair city has ever seen.
Nice image. Pat you think that nasty line along the TX gulf coast is headed for you?
LOL I didnt say I bow down to them and proclaim their supremacy over other news(?) sources :P
Can you sent some of that purple stuff to the panahandle Pat, we've had enough with normal ol boring rain.
I know man, I was just razzing ya! It's all good...
For all my friends in SE TX and LA, this song is for you!!
It's hard for parents; don't blame them, LOL.
My own son hid a Wall Street Journal under his crib.
Besides, T-Dude watches mostly Sports and Weather on Fox. Don't you, dear (Nana AIM is looking for HER Mom's "Board of Education").
I know a few people who remember it. Some of my elementry school teachers, remember taking their kids outside to see those few precious mintues of snow flurries.
haha no worries, we all need a good razzing every now and then! (although some of us need it more than others) LOL
Of course, during the six months I lived outside of FL in my life it snowed in Miami! Fortunately during that time I was in Oklahoma so I got to experience snow there.. Interesting bit of history!
LOL yup, you nailed it!
and I'm ashamed to admit this.... but I am currently watching the channel formerly known as the weather channel :O
Now THAT's funny and TRUE! John Hope is rolling over in his grave!
Comcast buys NBC!
And we thought the Weather Channel couldn't get any worse?
ME TOO! Blush! OH NO, I'm missing Friday's "All My Children"! Gotta' catch the cliffhanger!
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should it have a symbol...say, something like this?
Other news... USA have Algeria, Slovenia.. and England in the World Cup. USA v England will be a fun game. ;)
Who cares? Soccer sucks! Just my opinion...
hahahahahaha, LOL. Somebody had to say it.
ROFL
LOL!! oh my, too much good stuff on the blog today
O I hope not. But being outside bringing in the Plants..I took a gander at the Sky and the Northerly Upper air is coming in and the winds have gone round to Due North and its dropping for sure.
Think that means NBC, the Weather Channel, and all its affiliates will become Premium Channels or Pay-Per-View? If so, see ya', wouldn't want to be ya'. I'll miss Brian Williams visiting Leno and Conan, he's funny!
That's FutBol, you parochial narrow-minded Bushie! HoHo, now I'm having fun at HJ's expense -- I'm SO going to get payback...duck!
I agree. I think that line is going to come in more around Central LA. We may get the tail of it. Either way, we are going to have some nasty weather. You sure yall want to drive to BR today? LOL.
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