Sensitive Documents Lifted from Hadley Climate Center

[DontSayBanana]

Or the WSJ blogger does.  This smells of bullshit; "officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have apparently confirmed to an Australian a Kiwi publication that the documents are genuine" just reeks of "USS Make Shit Up."  That statement is less credible than a Hansmeister statistic.

It's the Internet equivalent of "A friend told me they heard this; I'm not making this up."  Sure, the blogger might not be making it up, but "an Australian a Kiwi publication" has got a lot of credibility to verify British emails that were forwarded by Russian hackers.

[Admiral Yi]

Or the WSJ blogger does.  This smells of bullshit; "officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have apparently confirmed to an Australian a Kiwi publication that the documents are genuine" just reeks of "USS Make Shit Up."  That statement is less credible than a Hansmeister statistic.

If the documents are all faked then the whole issue is resolved by a simple statement from Hadley.

[PDH]

I woulf flunk all of these russian guys for not properly citing sources, making up stuff, and generally poor essay writing.

[Sheilbh]

Is this the Hadley Centre?

The reports I've said don't have it as the Hadley Climate Centre which is part of the Met Office, but the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit - which possibly feeds data into the Hadley Centre.

Here's the only UEA statement so far:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRU-update

Edit:  Looked around a bit more apparently the CRU and Hadley Centre are more or less totally separate and it doesn't like they've collaborate much so yeah, it's just the CRU

[Jaron]

Put the tinfoil away, Tamas. Its all over.

[DontSayBanana]

The volume of material published and its piecemeal nature makes it impossible to confirm what proportion is genuine.  We took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation  and have involved the police in  what we consider to be a criminal investigation.

Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed).  Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.

[grumbler]

The volume of material published and its piecemeal nature makes it impossible to confirm what proportion is genuine.  We took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation  and have involved the police in  what we consider to be a criminal investigation.

Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed).  Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.

I think it is far too early to conclude that.  Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

[Admiral Yi]

Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed).  Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.

I draw the opposite conclusion.  They've looked through at least some of the emails and have not found any fakes, otherwise they would have mentioned it.

As long as Dr. Phil was going to debunk this particular email, I wish he would have explained what he meant by "hide the decline."

[Neil]

and give me cold fusion.

No such thing.

[Neil]

I rather imagine that the emails are legitimate.  However, I haven't seen anything damning in them, so I'll file this away as a non-issue.

[grumbler]

Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed).  Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.

I draw the opposite conclusion.  They've looked through at least some of the emails and have not found any fakes, otherwise they would have mentioned it.

As long as Dr. Phil was going to debunk this particular email, I wish he would have explained what he meant by "hide the decline."

My guess would be that this refers to the apparent decline in the very most recent (1999) data from "April-Sept for NH land N of 20N" which disagreed with the (projections using actual pre-'99?) temps from both land and sea in "Mike's data."

Agree, though, that this phrase is key and ignoring it is just asking people to see his message as a Potemkin debunking.

[Hansmeister]

Here is a short summary of all the questionable stuff so far, the list will surely grow as people pour through more and more of this:

■Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
■Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
■Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
■Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as "cheering news".
■Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
■Phil Jones says he has use Mann's "Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series"...to hide the decline". Real Climate says "hiding" was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
■Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)
■Mann thinks he will contact BBC's Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)
■Kevin Trenberth says they can't account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can't.(1255352257)
■Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi's paper is crap.(1257532857)
■Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn't matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
■Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he's "tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap" out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)
■Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to '"contain" the putative Medieval Warm Period'. (1054736277)
■Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)
■Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it's insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre's sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many "good" scientists condemn it.(1254756944)
■Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)
■Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)
■Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
■Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be "hiding behind them".(1106338806)
■Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)
■Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)
■Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)
■Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)
■Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the "increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage" he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
■Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman's admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)
■Jones calls Pielke Snr a prat.(1233249393)
■Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)
■Reaction to McIntyre's 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper's editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]
■Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
■Jones says he's found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)
■Wigley says Keenan's fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)
■Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)
■Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)
■Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn't be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don't want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)
■Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of "apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data". [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)
■Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
■Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)
■Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)
■Funkhouser says he's pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn't think it's productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)
■Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)
■Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
■Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
■Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
■David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn't be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)
■Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
■Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr "I'm not entirely there in the head" will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)
■Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)

Nothing to see here, move along. 

[Hansmeister]

Powerlineblog has an analysis of a series of exchanges:

A fascinating, hot-off-the-presses story emerges from the emails that were hacked yesterday from the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre. It is one of many exchanges that shed light on the priority that the global warming alarmists give to politics and career advancement over science.

The story began when Steve McIntyre, the same researcher who was largely responsible for destroying Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph purporting to show unprecedented warming in the 20th century, turned his attention to a famous article published by Keith Briffa of East Anglia's CRU in 2000. This article analyzed the diameters of tree rings, including rings from an area called Yamal in Siberia, and conveniently generated another hockey-stick shaped graph. You can read an account of the ensuing controversy here. McIntyre's work appeared to show that Briffa had cherry-picked trees in order to get the result he was looking for. One fact that this story highlights is that global warming alarmists publish their results in scientific journals, but refuse to make the underlying data publicly available so that the validity of their analyses can be checked.

McIntyre's revelations caused a firestorm of controversy, in response to which the alarmist community circled its wagons to fend off the threat from an outsider. This process can be clearly seen in the East Anglia emails.

The alarmists' effort to respond to McIntyre was complicated by the fact that Briffa had been ill and undergone surgery, and was then recuperating. So several of them wrote to Briffa's co-author, Tim Osborn, for advice on how to respond to McIntyre's critique. Osborn replied on September 29, 2009:

Hi Mike and Gavin, thanks for your emails re McIntyre, Yamal and Keith. I'll pass on your best wishes for his recovery when I next speak to Keith. He's been off almost 4 months now and won't be back for at least another month ....

Regarding Yamal, I'm afraid I know very little about the whole thing -- other than that I am 100% confident that "The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result" is complete crap. Having one's integrity questioned like this must make your blood boil....

Apart from Keith, I think Tom Melvin here is the only person who could shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal. But he can be a rather loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted about this....

So: these scientists don't really have any idea whether McIntyre's critique of Briffa's work is correct or not. Even Briffa's co-author professes ignorance. There is one person they could approach who could "shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal." But they don't do it. Why? Because "he can be rather a loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted...." In other words, his loyalty to the cause of climate alarmism may not be absolute. This is much like the case noted here where Michael Mann, one of the recipients of the above email, warns against sharing information with a scientist named Andy because he is "not as predictable as we'd like."

Despite having no idea what the facts are, the alarmists don't hesitate to formulate a position. Thus, on the next day, September 30, Osborn writes:

Keith's temporarily come in to get a handle on all this, but it will take time. Likely outcome is (1) brief holding note that no cherry-picking was done and demonstrating data selection is defendable by our time tomorrow; (2) longer piece with more evaluation etc. in around a week. No point is posting something that turns out to be wrong.

That's good enough for Osborn's fellow alarmists. Michael Mann replies:

great--thanks Tim, sounds like we have a plan. in our post, which we'll target for tomorrow as well, we'll simply link to whatever CRU puts up and re-iterate the sentiment of the temporary short response (i.e. that there was no cherry-picking, a careful and defensible selection procedure was used) and we'll mostly focus on the broader issues, i.e. that any impact of this one series in the vast array of paleoclimate reconstructions (and the importance of the paleoclimate reconstructions themselves) has been over-stated, why these sorts of attacks are not legitimate science, etc.

Note that the alarmists are willing to denounce McIntyre's work as "not legitimate science" even though, at this point, they still have no idea whether his analysis was right or wrong. That is not, however, what they tell the outside world. On September 29, Andrew Revkin, environmental reporter for the New York Times, wrote to Mann asking about McIntyre's critique:

needless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements about Yamal data-set selectivity.

Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he's seeking journal publication for his deconstruct?

Mann, ignorant of the facts, responds by slandering McIntyre:

Hi Andy, I'm fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.

It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I'm fairly certain the versions of these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method), let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context.

So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn't matter as far as the key conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don't think there is any problem with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual information content of these data.

Given what is said in the other emails, that last attack on McIntyre appears to be simply fabricated out of whole cloth. Mann concludes by buttering up Revkin:

Fortunately, the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, right?

mike

Of course not! Revkin replies, "Thanks heaps."

At the same time they were issuing these assurances to outsiders, however, the alarmists' internal communications were much more equivocal. On September 30, the day after he corresponded with Revkin, Mann asked Tim Osborn to confirm that a key 2006 paper co-authored by Osborn and Briffa was untainted by what is implicitly acknowledged to be Briffa's bad Yamal data:

And Osborn and Briffa '06 is also immune to this issue, as it eliminated any combination of up to 3 of the proxies and showed the result was essentially the same (fair to say this Tim?).

Osborn's reply is hedged at best, and includes a rather insouciant admission that he is "amazed" that the journal Science agreed to publish his paper in the first place:

Mike,

yes, you're right: figs S4-S6 in our supplementary information do indeed show results leaving out individual, groups of two, and groups of three proxies, respectively. It's attached.

I wouldn't say we were immune to the issue -- results are similar for these leave 1, 2 or 3 out cases, but they certainly are not as strong as the case with all 14 proxies.

Certainly in figure S6, there are some cases with 3 omitted (i.e. some sets of 11) where modern results are comparable with intermittent periods between 800 and 1100. Plus there is the additional uncertainty, discussed on the final page of the supplementary information, associated with linking the proxy records to real temperatures (remember we have no formal calibration, we're just counting proxies -- I'm still amazed that Science agreed to publish something where the main analysis only involves counting from 1 to 14!

:-)).

But this is fine, since the IPCC AR4 and other assessments are not saying the evidence is 100% conclusive (or even 90% conclusive) but just "likely" that modern is warmer than M[edieval] W[arm] P[eriod]. ...

So, this Yamal thing doesn't damage Osborn & Briffa (2006), but important to note that O&B (2006) and others support the "likely" statement rather than being conclusive.

Cheers
Tim

This strikes me as a damning commentary on the entire alarmist enterprise. Meanwhile, not only are Briffa's data flawed and seemingly cherry-picked, the assumptions on which the tree-ring studies are based may be bogus in the first place. The email collection includes these two messages from a plant scientist, both within the last 60 days:

Dear Professor Briffa, my apologies for contacting you directly, particularly since I hear that you are unwell. However the recent release of tree ring data by CRU has prompted much discussion and indeed disquiet about the methodology and conclusions of a number of key papers by you and co-workers.

As an environmental plant physiologist, I have followed the long debate starting with Mann et al (1998) and through to Kaufman et al (2009). As time has progressed I have found myself more concerned with the whole scientific basis of dendroclimatology. In particular;

1) The appropriateness of the statistical analyses employed
2) The reliance on the same small datasets in these multiple studies
3) The concept of "teleconnection" by which certain trees respond to the "Global Temperature Field", rather than local climate
4) The assumption that tree ring width and density are related to temperature in a linear manner.

Whilst I would not describe myself as an expert statistician, I do use inferential statistics routinely for both research and teaching and find difficulty in understanding the statistical rationale in these papers. As a plant physiologist I can say without hesitation that points 3 and 4 do not agree with the accepted science.

There is a saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Given the scientific, political and economic importance of these papers, further detailed explanation is urgently required.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Don Keiller.

Tree ring studies are vitally important to the conclusions reached by the U.N.'s IPCC report, which is the main foundation for the claim that anthropogenic global warming has been "proved." That being the case, one would think that Briffa, one of the two or three primary authors of the tree ring studies, would have a ready response to these very basic questions. But no: he did not reply to Dr. Keiller's email. That prompted this second inquiry from Dr. Keiller:

Dear Professor Briffa, I am pleased to hear that you appear to have recovered from your recent illness sufficiently to post a response to the controversy surrounding the use of the Yamal chronology; ([5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/cautious/cautious.htm) and the chronology itself; ([6]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/)

Unfortunately I find your explanations lacking in scientific rigour and I am more inclined to believe the analysis of McIntyre ([7]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588) Can I have a straightforward answer to the following questions

1) Are the reconstructions sensitive to the removal of either the Yamal data and Strip pine bristlecones, either when present singly or in combination?

2) Why these series, when incorporated with white noise as a background, can still produce a Hockey-Stick shaped graph if they have, as you suggest, a low individual weighting?

And once you have done this, please do me the courtesy of answering my initial email.
Dr. D.R. Keiller

Again, one might assume that if the science surrounding global warming is settled, the alarmists would have good answers to such basic questions, and certainly would be willing to engage in debate in a spirit of open-minded inquiry. Such, however, is not the case. Phil Jones of East Anglia advised Briffa against trying to respond to the plant scientist on October 20:

Keith,

There is a lot more there on CA now. [I'm pretty sure CA is Climate Audit, a web site where McIntyre posts.] I would be very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up.

You and Tim talked about Yamal. Why have the bristlecones come in now. [1]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588#comments

This is what happens - they just keep moving the goalposts. Maybe get Tim to redo OB2006 without a few more series.

Cheers
Phil

As far as I can tell from the email archive, Briffa never did respond to the plant scientist. Jones's email warning Briffa to be "very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up" was written just three weeks ago. It, along with the rest of the email archive, makes an utter mockery of the alarmists' claim that the science of global warming is settled in their favor.

On the contrary, the conclusion an observer is likely to draw from the CRU archive is that the climate alarmists are making up the science as they go along and are fitting facts to reach a predetermined conclusion rather than objectively seeking after truth. What they are doing is politics, not science. When I was in law school, this story was told about accountants: A CEO is going to hire a new accountant and summons a series of candidates. He asks each applicant, "What is two plus two?" The first two candidates answer, "Four." They don't get the job. The third responds, "What do you want it to be?" He gets hired. The climate alarmists' attitude toward data appears to me much the same as that fictional accountant's attitude toward arithmetic.


Nothing to see here, move along.   

[garbon]

Nothing to see here, move along.  

Ok

[Sheilbh]

Again the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia's CRU are totally separate bodies