Ok, the little blog is running about 9 times higher volume than my old record. This means there are a lot of new people who are interested in understanding this issue. Believe me that as a technical blogger, the replies and emails read differently than if you’re checking this out for the first time. So one of the things I do is try to explain the issues the best way possible so not everyone has to be a climate scientist to figure this stuff out. It doesn’t always work but here we go.

Despite what RC says, there are several glaring problems in these emails which Gavin Schmidt is working feverishly to gloss over. Here are the items I have a problem with.

Discussion of interference with IPCC procedures to block low-warming reasonable and published papers.

Discussion of removal of climate reviewers who are open minded to low-warming papers. The fact that in GRL this apparently occurred after these discussions is a problem.

Discussion with the government about denial of FOIA to any climate audit blogger. FOIA is not meant to be for non-controversial topics it’s SPECIFICALLY for the contriversial ones. Free speech doesn’t protect nice words, it protects strong words.

Data manipulation discussions. These are mostly hinted at except for a few instances but they are real and directed only toward strong warming.

So now I have to provide evidence of these problems. Let’s look at RC’s reply which provides a nice foundation for our discussion.

This is a paragraph from Gavin’s post:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Gavin has done a nice job declaring that there is no conspiracy but how true is it. I don’t know what people expected a conspiracy to look like but in my experience they are typically very simple structures by friends with a common goal or incentive. First, before you claim what incentive, I have this link posted by Lubos demonstrating 22 million US dollars were distributed to phil jones since 1990. Twenty TWO million!! I’ve got to say, I could do a lot with that money and that sort of number will incent people to not mess up the story the money handlers want. Also, we shouldn’t skip the fact that these emails are chock full of expenses paid travel to exotic places, Bejing, Shanghai, Tahiti on and on.

So let’s look at some of the emails. It’s way too difficult to go through all of them but I’ve read most. This article will get insanely long if I put the whole email in so I’ll give a reference number and enough to take the comments in context.

-1089318616.txt

Phil

To: “Michael

Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004 Mike,

[snip personal] [snip off topic] The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it. I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !

Cheers

Phil

Obviously this is a simple conspiracy of two to keep a paper from participation in the IPCC. What’s more, they apparently have the power to do it! The paper is likely MM04 which was quite accurate in my view but that’s beyond the scope of this article. The boys are not concerned with the suppression of low warming views in the least. It never crosses their minds ‘what if we’re wrong’?

A long email with some evidence for collusion to remove an editor from GRL. The full email can be downloaded if youre interested and the file name is 1106322460.txt:

Michael wrote: Hi Malcolm, [snip] I’m not sure that GRL can be seen as an honest broker in these debates anymore, and it is probably best to do an end run around GRL now where possible. They have published far too many deeply flawed contrarian papers in the past year or so. There is no possible excuse for them publishing all 3 Douglass papers and the Soon et al paper. These were all pure crap. There appears to be a more fundamental problem w/ GRL now, unfortunately… Mike [snip-irrelevant] Thanks Tom, Yeah, basically this is just a heads up to people that something might be up here. What a shame that would be. It’s one thing to lose “Climate Research”. We can’t afford to lose GRL. I think it would be useful if people begin to record their experiences w/ both Saiers and potentially Mackwell (I don’t know him–he would seem to be complicit w/what is going on here). If there is a clear body of evidence that something is amiss, it could be taken through the proper channels. I don’t that the entire AGU hierarchy has yet been compromised! [snip]

mike At 04:30 PM 1/20/2005, Tom wrote. Mike,

This is truly awful. GRL has gone downhill rapidly in recent years.

[snip] Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted. Even this would be difficult. [snip] Tom. Michael wrote: Dear All, Just a heads up. Apparently, the contrarians now have an “in” with GRL. This guy Saiers has a prior connection w/ the University of Virginia Dept. of Environmental Sciences that causes m some unease. I think we now know how the various Douglass et al papers w/ Michaels and Singer, the Soon et al paper, and now this one have gotten published in GRL, Mike

It makes one wonder, how can the AGU community be “compromised” by people with different opinions? This can go on forever but let’s conclude it with this beautiful piece email from Mike.

At 15:29 15/11/2005, Michael wrote: [snip] The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership there, but these guys always have “Climate

Research” and “Energy and Environment”, and will go there if necessary. They are telegraphing quite clearly where they are going w/ all of this… Mike

So how does this evidence of an active wish to remove an editor of Geophysics Research pan out? Gavin laid it out for us in a manner which is apparently supposed to allay concern of conspiracy in his latest thread.

[Response: This is a typical over-reaction. Perhaps you are unaware that almost all journals demand that you submit names of potential reviewers as part of the submission? Perhaps you are unaware that 6 editors of Climate Research resigned because of the way the Soon and Baliunas paper was handled? Or aren’t scientists allowed to give their opinions to colleagues? – gavin]

So lessee, do 6 editors resigning in concert give confidence that no collusion to replace other editors is involved? Ain’t buyin’ it. In my opinion there is clear evidence in these and many other emails for collusion to force consensus. It’s been a standard point of the Air Vent that consensus is an unnatural state for any group. Put 5 people in a room and ask the wall color! In this case the ring leader appears to be Mike (coach). He was working very hard to insure that the ‘team’ pull in the same direction. I encourage readers to find other examples of collusion to maintain consensus in this pile of emails and post below. Last names removed.

Let’s move on to FOIA. Again, it’s a small simple conspiracy. I’ve read all the FOIA emails by searching the email directory from the zip file.

Active blocking of freedom of information requests. Now keep in mind that freedom of information is the same as freedom of speech. The rules are provided to force controversial information to be allowed. There IS NO REASON for FOIA protection to non-controversial data. Yet the AGW guys worked closely with the local government to insure that NO FOIA from CA or any CA readers get proper attention!! None.

No conspiracy gavin? Here’s the FREEDOM of information requests email. 1228330629.txt

Ben,

When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school – the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. I’ve got to know the FOI person quite well and the Chief Librarian – who deals with appeals. The VC is also aware of what is going on – at least for one of the requests, but probably doesn’t know the number we’re dealing with. We are in double figures.

So if you have an unquestioned warmist viewpoint or you feel that questioning a science that desperately hopes to add trillions in taxes is too troublesome, you can ignore FOIA. The FOIA only applies to people who want to ‘actually understand’ not leftists. This is exactly what I would expect from a third world country. This is what you get in Cuba or Venezuela. The FOIA isn’t created protect easy government questions, it protects hard ones. Please forgive us for wanting to know why we’re giving millions of dollars to these people for undisclosed papers?

Sorry, lost my temper. How can a person be convinced to ignore the law from a FEW HALF HOUR SESSIONS!! Gavin.. this IS a problem!

Again, I would encourage others to locate other examples of FOIA corruption and post them – last names removed – in the comments.

I’ll finish this post which has taken too much time with the manipulation of data. Gavin did a particularly good job of stepping in the poodo on this one. Here Gavin describes a poor choice of words.

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

However, Gavin’s claim of out of context doesn’t hold water. Hiding the decline has been one of the key points at the Air Vent since it’s inception. In Mann 08 this well known problem with non warming data was addressed as shown in the following plot.

Ya see, they took the inconvenient purple curve and chopped the data back to the yellow line which had very poor correlation to tempareature – no consistent warming. Through some Mathemagic Michael Mann pasted on information from other upsloping proxies. — Instant warming. See hockey stick posts above.

This procedure is very well known and blindly accepted amongst the advocates WRT Briffa MXD. The same people who we now can demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt have taken over paleoclimatology. After replacing open minded people, the advocate editors don’t even question the lopping of data, who knows what horrors it would do for their careers. If you pulled this garbage in ANY other science it would be laughed out of the building but from these emails Mann, Briffa and Jones are in charge of this situation.

So, my point this morning HERE was – this problem is known by 100% of all paleoclimatologists. Really everyone knows. So having the foreknowledge that everyone does this to Briffa MXD and other series, why would Jones make the following comments at TGIF with respect to his knowledge of this email:

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while theother two got April-Sept for NH land N of

20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers, Phil

And his comment was:

Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”. “That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”

Well before the real climate post, my point was that EVERY PALEOCLIMATOLOGIST KNOWS DAMN WELL WHAT CONEXT THE COMMENT WAS MADE IN. Nobody’s speaking out because they are all on the team. Unfortunately for them, RC doesn’t read here often enough. Here’s what I said before the RC post:

These ‘divergence’ issues are widely widely widely known and discussed in paleo literature and the SOB Phil Jones knows exactly what he meant!!! He was just too honest in his email.

How many “widely”‘s a re required is personal taste but remember Gavin just flatly agreed with my point.

it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682).

and this

so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight)

That is exactly the point Gavin. The inconvenient data has been chopped off (in plain sight), the data has been replaced (in plain sight), with the components of a hockey stick (in plain sight). Now don’t you think it’s um…..interesting that a brilliant guy like Gavin seems to miss this point?!!!

It’s flat, proven, in your face, no question…… advocacy. Climate science is corrupt, Gavin, Mann, Briffa, Osborne and Jones are complicit in my opinion. How can a reasonable minded individual conclude otherwise.

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck my guess- -a duck.

The evidence is endless in these emails, I haven’t begun to scratch the surface here. Here is another goofy response by Gavin to the weight of the evidence.

But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.

To which I answer, what if they are ” in context”.

Now the police are involved and this comment has been added to RC.

“We are aware that information from a server used for research information

in one area of the university has been made available on public websites,”

the spokesman stated. “Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm

that all of this material is genuine. “This information has been obtained and published without our permission

and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from

operation.

What would you say if you were in damage control? The emails are genuine or they cannot be verified?

Collusion, corruption, manipulation, and obstruction are the climate standards.



To: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@virginia.edu>

Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004 From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann” Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIALDate: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004 Mike,

Only have it in the pdf form. FYI ONLY – don’t pass on. Relevant paras are the last

2 in section 4 on p13. As I said it is worded carefully due to Adrian knowing Eugenia

for years. He knows the’re wrong, but he succumbed to her almost pleading with him

to tone it down as it might affect her proposals in the future !

I didn’t say any of this, so be careful how you use it – if at all. Keep quiet also

that you have the pdf.

The attachment is a very good paper – I’ve been pushing Adrian over the last weeks

to get it submitted to JGR or J. Climate. The main results are great for CRU and also

for ERA-40. The basic message is clear – you have to put enough surface and sonde

obs into a model to produce Reanalyses. The jumps when the data input change stand

out so clearly. NCEP does many odd things also around sea ice and over snow and ice.

The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also

losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see

it.

I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep

them

out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !

Cheers

Phil



