Now that the main charges of scientific misconduct arising from the hacking of the University of East Anglia email system have been proven false, it’s possible to get a reasonably clear idea of what actually happened here. For once the widely used “X-gate” terminology is appropriate. As with Watergate, the central incident was a “third-rate burglary” conducted as part of a campaign of overt and covert harassment directed against political opponents and rewarded (at least in the short run) with political success.
The core of the campaign is a network of professional lobbyists, rightwing activists and politicians, tame journalists and a handful of scientists (including some at the University of East Anglia itself) who present themselves as independent seekers after truth, but are actually in regular contact to co-ordinate their actions and talking points. The main mechanism of harassment was the misuse of Freedom of Information requests in an effort to disrupt the work of scientists, trap them into failures of compliance, and extract information that could be misrepresented as evidence of scientific misconduct. This is a long-standing tactic in the rightwing War on Science, reflected in such Orwellian pieces of legislation as the US “Data Quality Act”.
The hacking was almost certainly done by someone within the campaign, but in a way that maintained (in Watergate terminology) “plausible deniability” for the principals. Regardless of what they knew (and when they knew it) about the actual theft, the leading figures in the campaign worked together to maximize the impact of the stolen emails, and to co-ordinate the bogus claims of scientific misconduct based on the sinister interpretations placed on such phrases as “trick” and “hide the decline”.
The final group of actors in all this were the mass audience of self-described “sceptics”. With few exceptions (in fact, none of whom I am aware), members of this group have lost their moral bearings sufficiently that they were not worried at all by the crime of dishonesty involved in the hacking attack. Equally importantly, they have lost their intellectual bearings to the point where they did not reflect that the kind of person who would mount such an attack, or seek to benefit from it, would not scruple to deceive a gullible audience as to the content of the material they had stolen. The members of this group swallowed and regurgitated the claims of fraud centred on words like “trick”. By the time the imposture was exposed, they had moved on to the next spurious talking point fed to them by the rightwing spin machine.
To keep all this short and comprehensible, I haven’t given lots of links. Most of the points above are have been on the public record for some time (there’s a timeline here), but a few have only come to light more recently. These Guardian story brings us up to date, and names quite a few of the key players (see also here). For the role of allegedly independent journalists in all this, see Tim Lambert’s Deltoid site (search for “Rosegate” and “Leakegate”).
Update I should have mentioned that much the same team had their first outing in the controversy over the Mann et al “hockey stick” graph. All the same elements were there – supposedly disinterested citizen researchers who were in fact paid rightwing operatives, misuse of accountability procedures, and exceptional gullibility on the part of the “sceptical” mass audience. Details are here (h/t John Mashey). Note in particular the role of Edward Wegman, who had the great appeal of being an apparent cleanskin without the kind of paper trail associated with the majority of delusionist “experts”. Here are my comments on Wegman’s silly and dishonest critique of Mann.. It was obvious at the time that Wegman had agreed in advance to do a hatchet job, a fact confirmed by his later appearance on delusionist petitions. But until now we didn’t have the details of the connection.
John Quiggin 
@Donald Oats
Donald, I think there is a link to the data in the “secret” post I linked to. If not, look on his main page and there is a data link on the side.
@Ernestine Gross
Sorry, I was laughing too much.
I’m not accusing him of anything. Why should I?
@Tony G
1) That reply of yours is exactly what I expected from a delusionist like your good self. To quote myself first:
And to quote your reply in full (because it is so off-world):
My bolding of text in the above. ’nuff said on denier tactic talking point.
2) I’m stunned; They don’t measure air temperature high up in the stratosphere for global surface temperature, because they are reporting surface temperature!
It may surprise you to learn that we don’t actually need to measure the temperature at each and every point in the spacetime continuum if all we want is a statistical mean called the global (surface) temperature (anomaly). In fact, because temperature at the Earth’s surface is not generally discontinuous, and certainly a thermometer reading is already a local average temperature, we can exploit the continuity of the surface temperature field to interpolate the surface temperature using statistical methods. In fact, it is possible to determine the local and global errors in doing this. As Hansen did empirically by examining the robustness of results when a random subset of the temperature measurement “stations” are removed from the sample.
3) I’ve already noted the fairly obvious point that whole of atmosphere temperature measurements are rather unnecessary if you just want a surface temperature; nevertheless, I’ll walk the extra mile with you Tony, and note that beside balloon measurements and aircraft measurements – every commercial airliner routinely measures temperature – satellites are capable of measuring radiation at specific wavelengths, and from that a mathematical reconstruction of the temperature distribution with altitude may be performed.
@Tony G
To quote you Tony:
WTF?? You’re the arch-sceptic Tony; if it can’t be observed by your own eye it isn’t good enough as evidence.
Happy trails,
Don.
@Colin Webb
Colin, if you were a climate change denier you would have substituted your own diagnosis and probably asked for your money back and the medicare payment on top! What would these experts know that a conceited Tory Lord wouldn’t know by birth right.
@Paul Williams
.Thank you for your answer.
You are saying you are not accusing Dr Michael Mann of anything.
Given that you are not accusing Dr Michael Mann of anything, there is nothing that needs to be whitewashed concerning Dr Mann.
You wrote: “In fact the inquiry report reads like a whitewash”.
What is it that might have required a report that reads ‘in fact’ like a whitewash?
It appears that there are many delusionists who are happy to take the moral high ground but without any need to worry about their own integrity. This is not a new phenomena which is described in common language as taking a speck out of the eye of another whilst ignoring the log in one’s own.
@Ernestine Gross
Apparently some people complained to Penn State about the good doctor.
You’re not really keeping up with this, are you?
It’s a victory for Deny, Doubt, Delay. The science of climate hasn’t shifted an iota because of these emails but politics and public perceptions have – which is still a significant, if Pyhrric, victory.
It’s enough to help delay policy action, which will see the world continue to entrench even greater reliance on fossil fuels. The lag time between emissions and climate impacts is going to be the real killer; the economic impacts are likely to be severe before we even begin to see serious bipartisan efforts and by then the economic costs of urgent action will be even greater. Which means those efforts will continue to be sapped by the urgency of short term economic imperatives.
May the people who advocate Doubt, Denial and Delay enjoy their little victories now, because AGW isn’t going to go away and I expect that they will end up being vilified for their misguided efforts. As, I suppose, will the nation that is the world’s biggest exporter of coal and gas and which steadfastly stands by it’s right to continue expanding it’s exports of GHG’s no matter that we know that it’s wrong.
1. “Apparently some people complained to Penn State about the good doctor”
As I said in my first response to your post, the original Penn State uni report had been posted on this blog-site some time ago. For your information, here is an excerpt:
“Beginning on and about November 22, 2009, The Pennsylvania State University began to receive numerous communications (emails, phone calls and letters) accusing Dr. Michael E. Mann of having engaged in acts that included manipulating data, destroying records and colluding to hamper the progress of scientific discourse around the issue of anthropogenic global warming from approximately 1998. These accusations were based on perceptions of the content of the widely reported theft of emails from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain.
Given the sheer volume of the communications to Penn State, the similarity of their content and their sources, which included University alumni, federal and state politicians, and others, many of whom had had no relationship with Penn State, it was concluded that the matter required examination by the cognizant University official, namely Dr. Eva J. Pell, then Senior Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School. The reason for having Dr. Pell examine the matter was that the accusations, when placed in an academic context, could be construed as allegations of research misconduct, which would constitute a violation of Penn State policy.”
“At the time of initiation of the inquiry, and in the ensuing days during the inquiry, no formal allegations accusing Dr. Mann of research misconduct were submitted to any University official. As a result, the emails and other communications were reviewed by Dr. Pell and from these she synthesized the following four formal allegations. To be clear, these were not allegations that Dr. Pell put forth, or leveled against Dr. Mann, but rather were her best effort to reduce to allegation form the many different accusations that were received from parties outside of the University. The four synthesized allegations were as follows
Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?
2 | P a g eRA-10 Inquiry Report: Case of Dr. Michael E. Mann February 3, 2010
1. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
1. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?
1. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities? ”
Dr Michael Mann has been cleared of the allegations (ie put the questions in the form of a statement of claim and you get the conclusion that the allegations are dismissed because of lack of evidence. In a system where a person is assumed innocent until proven guilty this is the best possible outcome to ‘prove’ that the allegations are false.). Term in brackets added.
Source: http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/Findings_Mann_Inquiry.pdf
I do not wish to be disrespectful when I ask: Are you contributing anything except what looks like rumour mongering?
2. “You’re not really keeping up with this, are you?”
I am possibly one of the worst subjects for communications strategists and media management people. The rumour is that such experts get close to tearing their hair out because of my resistance to having my head managed by their messages. (Now you have a reason to have a giggle.)
Here is an update. In terms of media messages, the alternative to IPCC introduced in Australia in the recent past, is Emeritus Professor Ian Plimer (who refused to answer questions about his book on national television) and a Lord Christopher Monckton. The said Lord has a BA in classics. The said Lord is listed in the reference list in JQ’s post. Monckton’s conspiracy theory has been torn to shreds in a few lines (ie elegantly) by our host JQ, in an article published in the Australian Financial Review.
The news is that Lord Christopher Monckton has or still is under the weather in South Australia. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the good Lord is suspected to have suffered a heat stroke.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-diary/climate-denier-under-weather-20100210-nsd3.html
Paul Williams @47: I demonstrated the stupidity of your claim by reductio ad absurdum. I’m sorry you find that level of debate too sophisticated for you, and are unable to answer it. Perhaps if you refrained from making unsupportable statements, you wouldn’t get upset when people pointed out how nonsensical they are.
Don;
They do not measure the actual surface (ground) temperature. According to ‘the GW theory’ they get their average ‘surface temperature’ by averaging the temperature primarily for the troposphere, which goes up from the surface between 6 to 20ks. Also , 70% of the surface area doesn’t have hardly any stations on it as it is water. So the measurements a skewed to what is happening over land.
If we use the top of the troposphere as our boundary. that still gives us 10,200,000,000,000,000,000 cubic meters of which only a few hundred cubic metres are measured and the rest is made up, interpolated, extrapolated or guessed. i.e they still don’t measure 99.999999999999999999999% of the atmosphere; which ever way you care to look at it, 99.999999999999999999999% is interpolated (guessed)
WIKI
“Deriving a reliable global temperature from the instrument data is not easy because the instruments are not evenly distributed across the planet, the hardware and observing locations have changed over the years, and there has been extensive land use change (such as urbanization) around some of the sites.
The calculation needs to filter out the changes that have occurred over time that are not climate related (eg urban heat islands), then interpolate across regions where instrument data has historically been sparse (eg in the southern hemisphere and at sea), before an average can be taken.
There are two main global temperature datasets, both developed since the late 1970s: that maintained by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia [3] and that maintained by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies “
Considering the recent events @ UEA it would be safe to conclude their 50% of the data set is either tainted or doctored.
All I am putting to you Don is that there is a lot of uncertainty in the assumption that Global temperatures are actually rising. If you are going to ban cheap coal derived power to third world countries, thus condemning billions to poverty and death, you need a bit more proof than fancy extrapolated guesses.
Your last comment ignores the fact that billions in the third world are facing extreme poverty at the moment and assumes that effective development for many people requires the standard high carbon path of industrialisation.
I am bemused at the sudden concern with the poor by people arguing your case.
Many of these people are already facing the impact of climate change. The ecological impacts of climate change are already real and pressing. Most development agencies are already documenting these changes in communities with whom they are working across the globe.
@Ernestine Gross
We seem to be talking at cross purposes.
I did get that you were upset that I didn’t give Mann his honorific. Just so you know, I often call the Prime Minister “KRudd”, so Mann didn’t do too badly!
@Tim Macknay
Tim, why not quit before you dig your hole any deeper? Unless English is your second language, in which case I congratulate you on your mastery, but suggest you hire a lawyer before entering into any legally binding contracts.
Paul, you have in no way countered my demolition of your ludicrous assertion. Why is that, I wonder?
Considering your demonstrated lack of understanding of the notion of the burden of proof, it’s a little rich for you to be bringing lawyers into it. Your resort to insults is an admission of failure.
“Many of these people are already facing the impact of climate change”
Dougie that is alarmist propaganda. The climate is always changing and there is no
proof that people can control the weather or climate. It is also yet to be proven that humanity can either increase or decrease the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
“I am bemused at the sudden concern with the poor by people arguing your case. ”
What bemuses me is spiritually bankrupt urban environmentalists, who have never gone without a high standard of carbonised industrialised life style, forcing billions into poverty and death, by denying them the same technology and resources they enjoy.
Tony G
Wrong and Wrong again – it is the documented experience of people across the globe. I have talked to numbers of people from the ppcfici Islands and southe east Asia who have first had knowledge of what is happening.
Your display of concern for the poor has all the conviction of crocodile tears and displays a patronising tone which carries no conviction.
The people you refer to are not being force into extreme poverty – they are already there.
“The people you refer to are not being force into extreme poverty – they are already there.”
And they will stay there as long as there are people like you Dougie, people that value the lives of flora and other fauna over their own species.
And for the gory detail on the Wegman Report, in context, with a lot of reference material, see : plagiarism-conspiracies-felonies-breaking-out-wegman-file, and look at the latest attachment at the bottom, which is V1.0.1.
Climate change has changed the weather pattern. This has reduced the age old six seasons into three. The summer is becoming longer and hotter every year. The monsoon period is becoming shorter and more intense. The streams, rivers and canals are drying up – which are the source of irrigation, agriculture and drinking water… These changes were gradual during the early eighties and have taken a fast and visible stride over the last decade. The brunt of the climate change can be felt very distinctly now, as this has affected crop production, food security and the rural economy. There is great internal migration into the cities, as people go in search of sustainable income and livelihood that has become unpredictable and risky in the rural agricultural economy.
Case study Bangaldesh
Dealing with the reality of climate change offers the only way forward for sustainable development.
The rest of the rhetoric about my valuing the lives of flora and othe rfauna over my fellow human beings is nonsense.
Deal with the issues – not implying views to bpeople that they do not have.
Doug- hmm it is strange to hear AGW denialists fret about poverty. As they are numerous and almost exclusively on the political right I suspect that they also favour tax cuts for the rich, reductions in public/welfare spending, cuts in aid/transfers to poorer countries (except under the guise of war) etc…
Tony G – when you measure the temperature of a room the thermometer only occupies a tiny percentage of the room. Yet we accept the reading. I think there are difficulties in measuring global temperature reliably over time but I don’t think this is due to anything inheriently wrong with the theory of sampling. Indeed there is a point at which extra sampling will provide little in the way of improved accuracy. Also in terms of surface temperatures across the oceans we have 1000s of robotic samplers now in operation. They sample temperatures at the surface as well as at depth. They also monitor currents, salinaty, pressure and the like. To be sure the historical data isn’t as rich but we do have a lot of data these days.
Tony G, I realise it’s entirely fruitless debating you, facts glide over your arguments, but we are 100% certain that the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is anthropogenically sourced, due to isotopic signatures.
This from J Bowers on the Guardian Thread:
“How many read ClimateAudit?
Steve McIntyre
Posted Jul 24, 2009 at 10:59 AM
I suggest that interested readers can participate by choosing 5 countries and sending the following FOI request to david.palmer at uea.ac.uk:
Steve McIntyre
Posted Jul 24, 2009 at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Reply
A CA reader notified me offline that he requested agreements involving Russia, China, India. I already requested Canada, United States, Australia, U.K., and Brazil.
Please keep adding to the inventory of FOI requests to CRU.
Here’s the form letter he wrote for everyone to use:
Dear Mr Palmer,
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested]
1. the date of any applicable confidentiality agreements;
2. the parties to such confidentiality agreement, including the full name of any organization;
3. a copy of the section of the confidentiality agreement that ?prevents further transmission to non-academics?.
4. a copy of the entire confidentiality agreement,
I am requesting this information for the purposes of academic research.
Thank you for your attention.
Yours truly,
yourname
Note the line:
I am requesting this information for the purposes of academic research.
Was it for academic research? Is that true?
EAU got just under 60 FOIA requests in less than a week!”
This shows how McIntyre at Climate Audit set up the deluge of spam FOI requests, knowing that CRU wouldn’t be able to deal with them, and that, with a bit of luck, communications from the Unit would reveal their desperate attempts to handle this flood of bogus requests. And then, of course, hack the emails, and cherry picking words, use the FOI response generated to pretend that Phil Jones and crew were trying to cover up, hide things. This has been a very clever Black Ops scam.
@Tony G
Apart cfrom the direct sampling we currently NASA has measured the radiative balance — the patterns’ of incoming and outgoing radiation at the stratosphere. When these are in balance, temperature is maintained. When outgoing exceeds incoming, then we cool and when incoming exceeds outgoing, we warm. It’s actually called an energy budget.
Examination of that budget affirms that we are indeed warming. Not only that, an examination of the spectra of outgoing longwave radiation changes maps exactly to the changes in atmospheric CO2 inventory over the last 40 years providing us with an exact fingerprint of the drivers of the climate anomaly. We don’t need to guess, and so we don’t.
oops! my first line above should read …
TonyG
You are being boring. All thermometer readings are samples.
Rain gauges are samples too.
Ultraviolet radiation readings are mere samples too.
It appears that it is the accusers and their fellow travellers who are guilty of political misconduct.
here is the latest exoneration: Climate Scientist Innocent
And so the process continues http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/climate-change-climategate-nature-global-warming – Editor of Nature forced to resign from panel looking at the emails because he had dared to express the opinion that there clearly wasn’t a problem. The Editor of Nature “forced to resign after sceptics questioned his impartiality”.
@Paul Williams
1. You are making an assumption about what upsets me, which, if you had asked me, I could have told you it is wrong. Moreover, you have no evidence to the contrary.
The Prime Minister has staff. I assume if you calling the PM KRudd would upset the Prime Minister then they would let you know. It is not my business.
2. Please note I have asked you a question about the purpose of your posts on this thread. In the absence of an answer I assume the answer is ‘no’
Terje,
A room is a bit different to the variables of the troposphere, you can control the temperature in a room and physically monitor nearly 100% of it. Where as only a micro of the troposphere can be monitored and its dimensions are huge. You also have nearly an infinite number of variables that effect the temperature, like the changes in pressure, water content and the movement of large volumes of air constantly changing temperature with height differentials, all of which need to be evaluated and these variables can not be controlled. Anyway you guys can ‘believe’ that they can accurately measure it and deduce a warming from the highly interpolated time series provided, but sorry I don’t share your faith.
It is agreed they are collecting a lot more data now days, but if they do not have similar calibre of data going back for the last 50 years, it is hard to draw a categorical conclusion that it is warming or cooling.
Wilful;
When volcanic eruptions occur and parts of the crust become molten, fossil fuels are burned. How are you a 100% certain the fossil fuel isotopic signatures you allude to are 100% anthropologically sourced?
Fran’
“Examination of that budget affirms that we are indeed warming”
no it just means they can not account for some of the radiation; prove it is evidence of warming or anything else for that matter.
“xamination of the spectra of outgoing longwave radiation changes maps exactly to the changes in atmospheric CO2 inventory over the last 40”
Fran, exactly how long have they been doing this type of monitoring?
Tony G, you couldn’t buy a clue. WHAT THE F*CK do you think all of the coal and oil that has been burned has turned into? Here, learn something.
@Tim Macknay
“Paul, you have in no way countered my demolition of your ludicrous assertion. Why is that, I wonder?”
I realise some of the kiddies who follow John Quiggin think every word he writes is infallible, but you should know that when he says the charges against Mann have been “proven false”, he’s possibly indulging in wishful thinking.
“Proven false” is more stringent than “lack of evidence”. Outside of this blog, most people accept that. I’m sure you wouldn’t consider a lack of evidence for AGW as being proof that AGW is false?
The Penn State inquiry finds a lack of evidence, and as far as I can see, it asks us to take their word for that. Do you imagine John would have used the words “proven false” if the charges were against John Christy, and the only outside interviewees were Ian Plimer and Bob Carter? Try reading the findings substituting those names, and see what you think.
@wilful
The link is not working? at least for me.
What is the url?
Paul Williams, I realise you are wilfully misunderstanding what I wrote, and I admit I don’t expect you to conduct yourself in an intellectually honest manner. Nonetheless, I’ll reiterate my point.
John Quiggin’s choice of words was and is irrelevant to my point, which is the absurdity of your implication that a finding that no credible evidence exists to support an allegation of wrongdoing is somehow not an exoneration of the accusee. In any fair tribunal, a finding that no credible evidence exists for the accusation is a claim that the accusation is groundless. The absurdity is highlighted by substituting the parties and the facts for some other scenario, which I did in my original comment.
Your statement would be equally absurd if the investigation was into an allegation against Christy and was judged by Plimer and Carter as you suggest (although the comparison doesn’t make sense, since they are all from different universities). The words John Quiggin would choose to use are irrelevant to this point, as is the question whether or not the inquiry’s findings (which I have actually read, I might add) are honest.
Feel free to debase yourself further by throwing in some more irrelevant insults.
@wilful
Wilful- please read the discussion policy and stop using the F word with three stars after it.
Proven false – wheres the proof – nothing was proven false but the facts are there to see – FOI were withheld, data was adjusted, etc etc you lose your credibility by making baseless claims
More on dodgy temps
http://www.climategate.com/australiagate-now-nasa-caught-in-trick-over-aussie-climate-data#more-3821
Tim, when you argue with the sociopath, you’re giving positive stimulus, so the behavior will continue.
Andrew Lacis, a physicist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and colleague of James Hansen.
Education:
B.A., Physics, 1963, University of Iowa
M.S., Astronomy, 1964, University of Iowa
Ph.D., Physics, 1970, University of Iowa
Publications, Go to bibliography
RE, Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Which basically says Global Warming is Madmade.
here is Andrew Lacis’s comment on the Executive Summary of Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s AR4.
WHICH WERE CONVENIENTLY DELETED.
There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community—instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.
Hows that SOLID 3000 year temp.record coming on btw, I am still waiting to see one.
@Sean Morris
So Lacis’s call for a huge deletion (the executive summary) was itself deleted. Seems fair.
Anyway it was a unscholarly, politicised rant and deserved to be deleted.
Chris Warren, apologies, no idea what happened to that link. Here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
@Tim Macknay
A bit unkind to say that John’s choice of words is irrelevant. I hope he’s not offended. I imagine he prides himself on his choice of words. (“Delusionist” seems a particular favourite.)
It was John’s choice of words I was commenting on, had he said there was no basis for further investigation, it would be nearer the mark. What the inquiry stated was that it did not find any credible evidence to substantiate the first three allegations. (Or to use John’s carefully considered word, “charges”, but don’t tell Ernestine.)
How hard did the Committee look for evidence? Maybe they really did consider all the evidence, but it is difficult to tell from the report. They should release the actual information they used to reach their decisions, otherwise there will likely be allegations of a whitewash.
John also said the “main charges” have been proven false. The fourth “synthesized allegation” has been referred to the investigatory phase of the process. This fourth allegation is not exactly chicken feed. The aspect of it that may cause some problem for him relates to data presentation and replication of results, the issue at the heart of the controversy.
@Paul Williams
This is another trivial sideshow. I’d like to see some credible evidence that people like you would change your mind if all your current objections were satisfied.
@Paul Williams
@8, p2, I wrote to you:
“I do not wish to be disrespectful when I ask: Are you contributing anything except what looks like rumour mongering?”
@27, p2 I wrote to you:
Please note I have asked you a question about the purpose of your posts on this thread. In the absence of an answer I assume the answer is ‘no’”
Nothing has changed.
Congratulations, John Quiggan!
Will being quoted in Quadrant increase your credibility?
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/02/climategate-in-the-twilight-zone
@Paul Williams
Whether being quoted in Quadrant increases your credibility depends on whether you are quoted approvingly or not. If you are quoted approvingly your credibility may tend to be shot. Disapproval, however, does your credibility no damage at all and may be considered a badge of merit.
@Freelander
I think they were having a shot at the conspiracy theory tenor of John’s post.
Wilful;
Re your link @ 39 isotopes;
Fossil fuel emissions of CO2 are not the only 13C depleted sources that enrich the atmosphere in 12C. Volcanic CO2 emissions, being 13C depleted also enrich the atmosphere in 12C. This makes the CO2 emissions of volcanic origin isotopically identical to those of fossil fuel emissions. It is therefore unsurprising to find that Segalstad (1998) points out that 96% of atmospheric CO2 is isotopically indistinguishable from volcanic degassing. If you believe we know enough about volcanic gas compositions to distinguish them chemically from fossil fuel combustion, you have indeed been mislead. The number of active volcanoes is unknown, never mind a tally of gas signatures belonging to every active volcano. We have barely scratched the surface and as such, there is no magic fingerprint that can distinguish between anthropogenic and volcanogenic sources of CO2.
that’s right Tony G, the directly observed increases in CO2 concentrations are mere happenstance, purely coincidental to the fact of our consumption of fossil fuels. Good grief man, give up.
@wilful
All the CO2 comes, miraculously, from under the ocean. I have that on very good authority (Pilmer). Miraculously, because it comes from undiscovered volcanoes and it does not appear to touch the water on its way to the surface, as the water shows no sign of these quantities of CO2 being bubbled through them. Clearly, Scully and Mulder gave up just when we needed them most!
The following is somewhat off-topic, but is there going to be a Weekend reflections section for this weekend, as there usually is?
Apparently Phil Jones is a bit of a sceptic.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?ITO=1490
“The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.”
That’s not very reassuring when the world is spending billions of dollars of public money based, to a large extent, on Phil’s work.
Then there’s this.
“Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.”
And it just gets better.
“Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.
But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.
Professor Jones departed from this consensus…”
WHAT THE..!!
Did they just say “Professor Jones departed from this consensus…”?
He must be some kind of delusionist.