The release of thousands of email messages from Britain’s Climate Research Unit has stirred up a hornet’s nest of debate about whether or not the scientists in the emails were doing anything untoward. The scientists involved read like a veritable ‘who’s who’ in climate science research and include scientists from across the globe and reveal a great deal into the inner-workings of climate change science.
The scientists claim the interpretations of the emails being bantered about are being ‘taken out of context’. Doubters of the manmade climate change theory though feel the meaning of the messages is quite clear and are evidence of collusion among the scientists to falsify and hide data.
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Here is a quick look at those involved in writing the messages and a brief synopsis of what they said:
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Phil Jones Director, Climate Research Unit - University of East Anglia Jones features most prominently in many of the emails, oftentimes discussing how to stymie FOIA requests from skeptical scientists. In one message he says, “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” Jones also exhorts his colleagues to delete email discussions saying in an email to Michael Mann, “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?” In another email exchange, he tells colleagues to change the date on a report so they “Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with.” |
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Kevin Trenberth Head of the Climate Analysis Section - National Center for Atmospheric Research Trenberth comes across in some of the messages as perhaps a bit of a skeptic and was particularly frustrated by computer models that failed to predict the cooling. He said, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” In a subsequent email he continues saying, “The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not!” |
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Michael Mann |
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Tom Wigley Senior scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division – NCAR Like Mann, Wigley was concerned about GRL and said that there were avenues to have problem editors removed. He said, “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.” Wigley also felt it was important to address the urban heat island effect that has corrupted land surface temperature records. “Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming -- and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.” |
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Mick Kelly Reader with the Climatic Research Unit CSERGE - University of East Anglia Kelly was not in many of the emails but one particular exchange was enlightening. Kelly discussed giving a presentation and rather than include the cooling experienced in the last decade he said, “I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.” |
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Gavin Schmidt Climate modeler - NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies While Schmidt received many of the emails in the archive, he did not figure prominently in them. However, Tom Wigley took great exception to a chart Schmidt had prepared and also seemed to accuse the IPCC of inaccurate representations. Wigley said, “The Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical runs with PCM look as though they match observations -- but the match is a fluke. PCM has no indirect aerosol forcing and a low climate sensitivity -- compensating errors. In my (perhaps too harsh) view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC.” Schmidt had used this same chart on RealClimate to dispute Lord Christopher Monckton’s contention that the IPCC projections were wrong. |
Comments
Thanks for publishing that rogues' gallery. I might build a link list to key summary articles on this controversy. If I do, then this article will be on it. Care to recommend any more?
Yes, Terry:
o Talk about how the rogues found fraud in the Douglass paper and didn't reveal it.
You know where the files are. Can we hear it?
o What about the POS Baliunas and Soon paper that was the subject of some of the e-mails? You know the one - six editors quit over its publication.
o What about the rogues' time being wasted by patently obvious multiple FOIA requests for data, and their getting tired of their time being wasted? Can you give some context behind that?
I'm sure you can. Your readers await this context so they can have the full story, not just part of it.
After all, that is REPORTING, right? Right?
Best,
D
The taxpayers paid for the data and its generation - they have a right to see it. If the scientists don't like that and don't want to comply with FOIA requests - TOUGH.
These yahoos don't want to be scrutinized for fear of anyone finding out exactly what the emails showed - that they cooked the data. Rather than working to come up with a theory that fit the science, they chose to fit the science to the theory.
Obama and Rahm Emmanuel need this global warming crisis to restructure the American economy.
It seems many of this information was garnered through the British Freedom of Information Act and held for quite some time.
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/24/hiding-evidence-of-global-cooling/
It seems that ALL GW information must now be taken with a grain of salt.
Dr. James E. Hansen may be someone to include on the list.
The Weasels are in the Hen house or should I say in the Scientific community. Money Talks and BS walks and now there's a panic is SciFi land.
Allan,
Most of these names will become topical again once the Mike Mann e-mails held by the
University of Viriginia become public under the court-ordered FOI release in progress.
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