Not just the e-mails - by Richard... Sunday, December 06, 2009

Not just the e-mails - by Richard... Sunday, December 06, 2009

The code was just as important. We did know that, but two interesting pieces here and hereexplain (in part) what was going on - written by an IT specialist.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Dale rejected (again) - by Richard...

The Independent on Sunday notes that "A constant complaint of people who blog is that what they think is important is different from what is reported in the mass media." It continues:

"Climategate", the 1,000 or more emails and documents stolen by hackers from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and posted on the internet last month, already merits an incredible 30 million hits on Google, but only the occasional appearance in the newspapers or on television or radio. People who do not believe that human activity causes global warming regard those emails as very important.

Richard North, who writes a blog called EUReferendum, has done a calculation that shows there is one blogosphere obsession that is even more underreported. It is Tory blogger Iain Dale, who is mentioned 25,429 times on the blogs for every time his name appears in the mass media.

With that rebuke in mind, it is our sad task to report, belatedly, that Mr Dale was not shortlisted for the safe Tory seat of Beckenham. That's three Tory associations who could have had the nation's number one political blogger as their candidate, but chose not to. Surely this cannot go on.

We couldn't possibly comment, other than to remark that, of all the things we've written on EUREF, it should be this that gets in The Independent.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

A lack of trust - by Richard...

The [Climategate] scandal has shaken trust in researchers ahead of this week's Copenhagen summit, according to a poll for The Sunday Times.

YouGov asked more than 2,000 people whether they trusted scientists to tell the truth about climate change. The poll showed that 41 percent did so, while 44 percent did not.

Here are 13.7 million reasons why you should not.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

The most influential tree in the world - by Richard...

Booker returns to "Climategate" with a vengeance today, retailing the bizarre story of a single tree in Siberia dubbed "the most influential tree in the world".

This is right at the heart of the sound and fury of "Climategate" and has been largely overlooked by the media. The story starts with the "hockey stick" graph produced by Michael Mann in 1999, which instantly became the chief icon of the IPCC and the global warming lobby all over the world, its essential features being to exaggerate the modern warming and to hide the Medieval Warming Period.

But in 2003 Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, showed how the graph had been fabricated by a computer model that produced "hockey stick" graphs whatever random data were fed into it. A wholly unrepresentative sample of tree rings from bristlecone pines in the western USA had been made to stand as "proxies" to give the desired effect.

Although McIntyre's exposure of the "hockey stick" was upheld in 2006 by two expert panels commissioned by the US Congress, the small group of scientists at the top of the IPCC brushed this aside by pointing at a hugely influential series of graphs originating from the CRU, from Phil Jones and Keith Briffa.

These appeared to confirm the rewriting of climate history in the "hockey stick", by using quite different tree ring data from Siberia. Briffa was put in charge of the key chapter of the IPCC's fourth report, in 2007, which dismissed all McIntyre's criticisms.

At the forefront of those who found suspicious the graphs based on tree rings from the Yamal peninsula in Siberia was McIntyre himself, not least because for years the CRU refused to disclose the data used to construct them. This breached a basic rule of scientific procedure.

But last summer the Royal Society insisted on the rule being obeyed, and two months ago Briffa accordingly published on his website some of the data McIntyre had been after.

This was startling enough, as McIntyre demonstrated in an explosive series of posts on hisClimate Audit blog, because it showed that the CRU studies were based on cherry-picking hundreds of Siberian samples only to leave those that showed the picture that was wanted.

Other studies based on similar data had clearly shown the Medieval Warm Period as hotter than today. Indeed only the evidence from one tree, YADO61, seemed to show a "hockey stick" pattern, and it was this, in light of the extraordinary reverence given to the CRU's studies, which led McIntyre to dub it "the most influential tree in the world".

But more dramatic still has been the new evidence from the CRU's leaked documents, showing just how the evidence was finally rigged. The most quoted remark in those emails has been one from Prof Jones in 1999, reporting that he had used "Mike [Mann]'s Nature trick of adding in the real temps" to "Keith's" graph, in order to "hide the decline".

Invariably this has been quoted out of context. Its true significance, we can now see, is that what they intended to hide was the awkward fact that, apart from that one tree, the Yamal data showed temperatures not having risen in the late 20th century but declining.

Crucially, though, the "Climategate" e-mails show evidence of collusion and premeditation, involving Michael Mann himself. The month before the "hide the decline" e-mail, Mann had. e-mailed Jones to express his concern that there were discrepancies between his and Briffa's work, both of which were to be published in the IPCC report.

Then, Mann had in mind the famous "consensus", the need for which he emphasised in that e-mail. Past climate estimates had to be "robust" among "a number of quasi-independent and truly independent estimates", he said. Briffa's work had to be "fixed" – and fixed it was.

What Jones suggested, emulating Mann's procedure for the "hockey stick" (originally published in Nature), was that tree-ring data after 1960 should be eliminated, and substituted – without explanation – with a line based on the quite different data of measured global temperatures, to convey that temperatures after 1960 had shot up.

A further devastating blow has now been dealt to the CRU graphs by an expert contributor toWatts Up With That, known only as "Lucy Skywalker". She has cross-checked with the actual temperature records for that part of Siberia, showing that in the past 50 years temperatures have not risen at all.

In other words, what has become arguably the most influential set of evidence used to support the case that the world faces unprecedented global warming, developed, copied and promoted hundreds of times, has now been as definitively kicked into touch as was Mann's "hockey stick" before it.

Booker adds a few footnotes to the story, which you can read online, with the flood of comments that are already posted.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

TWI update - by Richard...

The Tiger Woods Index (TWI) for "Climategate" at 23:00 hrs Saturday evening was 6292 (31,200,000 - 4,958). In the morning at 11:00 hrs it was 6572 (31,100,000 - 4,732), compared with 9137 (29,400,000 – 3218) at 11:00 hrs Friday morning.

"Climategate" is, therefore, most definitely moving up the media agenda and catching up with the level of public interest, but it has a long way to go. The TWI for Tiger Woods on Saturday morning stood at 502 (26,600,000 - 52,937) – barely changed from Thursday night when it was 489 (22,500,000 - 46,025).

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

One born every minute - by Richard... Saturday, December 05, 2009

It just had to be Patrick Hennessy, political editor of The Sunday Telegraph who put it into print:

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice chairman of the IPCC, said it was possible Russian hackers had been paid as part of a global conspiracy to cast doubt on the science of global warming. "I do not think this is a coincidence," he added.

Mind you, he wasn't the only one who fell for it. Sean Gabb writes:

... This is only a conspiracy theory. But it is interesting that the stolen data surfaced on a Russian server. Of course, Russia is beyond the reach of the British courts. But it is an interesting fact even so. I think this operation has gone so smoothly that only an efficient security service can be behind it ... That leaves us with the Russians. They got the information. They packaged it. They have delivered it to maximum effect.

And, of course, The Independent on Sunday buys into the "conspiracy":

Russian computer hackers are suspected of being behind the stolen emails used by climate sceptics to discredit the science of global warming in advance of tomorrow's Copenhagen climate negotiations, the United Nations' deputy climate chief said yesterday.

"This was not a job for amateurs," said Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), referring to the theft of the emails from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (UEA).

It is fascinating how the warmists – so quick to brand the "deniers" as conspiracy theorists – are so keen to adopt their own conspiracies when it suits them.

The fact that the idea emanates from the IPCC tells you everything you need to know. More sanguine commentators believe that this cannot have been a random hack, as the material is too focused and relevant. The view is that this had to be an insider – a whistleblower.

That it was uploaded onto a Russian server is precisely what someone would do if they wanted to ensure anonymity.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Mockery - by Richard...

They really are going to have a hard time living this one down. My Spanish is zilch ... but "los charlatanes del cambio climático" has a certain ring to it – and the English caption helps (now nicked).

Mind you, it is interesting to see that "free sex copenhagen" now has 65,900 Google listings, with the Mail on Sunday doing it big. There is a twist to the story here. Apparently Copenhagen's Lord Mayor has written to all 500 climate change delegates pleading with them to abstain from using services of the city's "unsustainable" prostitutes.

And how are prostitutes "unsustainable"? I thought they were a renewable resource. Or perhaps she wants the delegates only to use sustainable prostitutes ... how would you know the difference? Is there a difference? I'm confused.