Climategate 2 (2011)
On 22 November 2011, a second tranche of 'climategate' emails was released.
As with the first release, a link was placed on six sceptic web sites, including Climate Audit, Joanne Nova, the Air Vent and Tallbloke's talkshop (see here for full details and timings).
The link led to a 182MB file FOIA2011.zip on a Russian server, which contained a README file, which reveals the leaker's concern with poverty and has extracts from some of the emails, a folder 'mail', containing 5292 email messages, a folder 'documents', containing documents in .pdf and .doc format, and a 140MB file 'all.7z', which was encrypted and apparently contains 220000 emails. The README file says "We are not planning to publicly release the passphrase."
The emails only go up to November 2009, so it seems that this is a second release of emails that were either hacked or leaked at that time.
The climategate 2 files are numbered 0001.txt to 5349.txt (the system behind the numbering is not clear), but some numbers early in the list are missing, for example there is no 0009.txt. The last missing numbers are 0196 and 0197. This suggests that whoever created the archive started to go through the list and deleted some of them for some reason, but stopped doing this around number 200. Similarly, there is a statement in the README file that "A few remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets." These redactions are for reasons such as "[[[redacted: health, family]]]".
However, searching for the triple brackets in the emails, these redactions only occur in 18 emails up to number 160 plus email 5111. Again this suggests that the process of redacting personal information was started but then abandoned.
A number of themes emerge from the emails:
Climate scientists were aware that the 'hockey stick' reconstruction was wrong and that criticism of it by Steve McIntyre and others was valid
2490.txt: Keith Briffa expresses doubts about paleoclimatology back in 1998: " Many in the palaeo-community understand these issues , but perhaps there has been some reluctance to air them in sufficient depth ... This carries the danger of a backlash as they undertake simple assessments of the palaeo-series and conclude that they are all of very little use. " Briffa's warnings went unheeded and his concerns about a backlash were prophetic.
3272.txt: Another warning from Briffa, in 1999 as the IPCC 2001 TAR was being prepared, that was ignored: " I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. "
0207.txt: Ray Bradley expresses his doubts about his own paper with Mann: " But there are real questions to be asked of the paleo reconstruction...things fall apart in recent decades... This makes criticisms of the "antis" difficult to respond to (they have not yet risen to this level of sophistication, but they are "on the scent"). Furthermore, it may be that Mann et al simply don't have the long-term trend right, due to underestimation of low frequency info. Whether we have the 1000 year trend right is far less certain (& one reason why I hedge my bets on whether there were any periods in Medieval times that might have been "warm", to the irritation of my co-authors!). "
3373.txt: Ray Bradley: " Furthermore, the model output is very much determined by the time series of forcing that is selected, and the model sensitivity which essentially scales the range. Mike only likes these because they seem to match his idea of what went on in the last millennium, whereas he would savage them if they did not. Also--& I'm sure you agree--the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don't want to be associated with that 2000 year "reconstruction". " This refers to a 2003 paper "Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia" by Mann and Jones, that shows 'hockey stick' temperature graphs and was used by the IPCC in its 2007 report.
0435.txt: Ed Cook, on the same Mann & Jones paper: " I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in - Bradley hates it as well), "
1527.txt: Dendrochronologist Rob Wilson writes: " There has been criticism by Macintyre of Mann's sole reliance on RE, and I am now starting to believe the accusations. "
4241.txt: Rob Wilson again: " The whole Macintyre issue got me thinking...I first generated 1000 random time-series in Excel ... The reconstructions clearly show a 'hockey-stick' trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about. "
1238.txt: Briffa and Cook exchange views about the 'MBH camp': " Of course he [Bradley] and other members of the MBH camp have a fundamental dislike for the very concept of the MWP, so I tend to view their evaluations as starting out from a somewhat biased perspective, "
3259.txt: Tom Wigley, in 2004: " I have just read the M&M stuff critcizing MBH. A lot of it seems valid to me. At the very least MBH is a very sloppy piece of work -- an opinion I have held for some time. "
4369.txt: Tim Osborn says " This completely removes most of Mike's arguments... " and Ed Cook replies "I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead."
4758.txt: Tim Osborn: " Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the middle of his calibration, when we're throwing out all post-1960 data 'cos the MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data 'cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it! "
2346.txt: Osborn: " Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures - another way of "correcting" for the decline, though may be not defensible! "
2009.txt: Keith Briffa: " I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here! "
3994.txt: John Mitchell (Met Office) commenting on draft IPCC report: " Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no. "
1104.txt: Heinz Wanner: " I was a reviewer of the IPCC-TAR report 2001. In my review which I can not find again in its precise wording I critcized the fact that the whole Mann hockeytick is being printed in its full length in the IPCC-TAR report. In 1999 I made the following comments:
1. The spatial, temporal (tree-ring data in the midlatitudes mainly contain "summer information") and spectral coverage and behaviour of the data is questionable, mainly before 1500-1600 AD.
2. It is in my opinion not appropriate already to make statements for the southern hemisphere and for the period prior to 1500 AD.
My review was classified "unsignificant" "
0497.txt: Jones to Mann in 1999: " Keith didn't mention in his Science piece but both of us think that you're on very dodgy ground with this long-term decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale. What the real world has done over the last 6000 years and what it ought to have done given our understandding of Milankovic forcing are two very different things. "
0562.txt: Simon Tett (Met Office), discussing revising a paper: " No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don't think we can say we didn't do Mann et al because we think it is crap!) ".
2383.txt: Tim Barnett in 2004: " maybe someone(s) ought to have another look at Mann's paper. His statistics were suspect as i remember... "
1656.txt: Douglas Maraun (UEA): " I think, that "our" reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann's work were not especially honest. "
4101.txt: Ed Cook: " In all candor now, I think that Mike is becoming a serious enemy in the way that he bends the ears of people like Tom with words like "flawed" when describing my work and probably your and Keith's as well. This is in part a vindictive response to the Esper et al. paper. "
4382.txt: Tom Wigley to Mann: " I would be careful about using other, independent paleo reconstruction work as supporting the MBH reconstructions. I am attaching my version of a comparison of the bulk of these other reconstructions. Although these all show the hockey stick shape, the differences between them prior to 1850 make me very nervous. If I were on the greenhouse deniers' side, I would be inclined to focus on the wide range of paleo results and the differences between them as an argument for dismissing them all. "
1055.txt: Richard Alley, referring to the 2006 NRC report on the hockey stick: " I fear that the tree-ring reconstructions really are in bad shape, and that the IPCC and chapter 6 have a big problem coming up "
3234.txt: Richard Alley: " Unless the "divergence problem" can be confidently ascribed to some cause that was not active a millennium ago, then the comparison between tree rings from a millennium ago and instrumental records from the last decades does not seem to be justified, and the confidence level in the anomalous nature of the recent warmth is lowered. "
4990.txt: Richard Alley again: " I do think that the tree-ring workers (and by association, all of us who do climate change) have a serious problem, and have not answered it very well yet. "
4005.txt: Osborn: " Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were "
1911.txt: Osborn reporting from a meeting held at the Swiss Alpine holiday resort of Wengen: " In general, most people accepted that the MBH method could, in some situations, result in biased reconstructions with too little low-frequency.
I'm not sure how much Mike Mann accepted this, but it was reinforced by findings shown by Eugene Wahl that indicated some bias in their CSM pseudo-proxy studies, and particularly by Francis Zwiers who looked to have almost completely replicated the von Storch et al. results with respect to the MBH method. "
4133.txt: David Rind (NASA GISS): " what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm) the globe actually got. "
3937.txt: Myles Allen (Oxford) on Mann's massaged data: " Thanks for checking that -- doing the same thing with Mann et al would obviously be interesting, but without subsampling and processing the controls in the same way the observations have been massaged in his reconstruction, I'm not sure how meaningful the results would be. "
1667.txt: David Ritson (Stanford) raises a list of criticisms of MBH to Osborn and Briffa and adds " My context is a belief that the climate field is losing and has lost a great deal of credibility over the years as to whether it is serious science. ... In the MBH instance virtually all the simple internal consistency checks one should expect to find, are missing. "
1738.txt: Tree expert Rod Savidge writes: " What troubles me even more than the inexactness attending chronological estimates is how much absolute nonsense -- really nothing but imaginative speculation -- about the environment of the past is being deduced from tree rings and published in dendrochronology journals. "
3219.txt: Savidge again: " As a tree physiologist who has devoted his career to understanding how trees make wood, I have made sufficient observations on tree rings and cambial growth to know that dendrochronology is not at all an exact science. Indeed, its activities include subjective interpretations of what does and what does not constitute an annual ring, statistical manipulation of data to fulfill subjective expectations, and discarding of perfectly good data sets when they contradict other data sets that have already been accepted. "
See also Climategate 1 email 1024334440.txt where Briffa describes Mann's work as 'crap' and Cook agrees.
See also Jeff's post on this topic.
The hatchet job on Soon and Baliunas
The following sequence of emails relate to an EOS Forum piece 'The Team' are preparing to respond to a paper by Soon & Baliunas (2003). See Climategate 1 emails for the initial hysterical response to S&B. The article is commissioned, written and accepted in 15 days. The authors know that much of the material in their own paper is wrong. See here for more detail.
3323.txt: Judy Jacobs to Mann, 3/6/03: " I am the managing editor for Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union. Late last week, the Eos editor for atmospheric sciences, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, asked me if Eos would publish what she called "a position paper" by you, Phillip Bradley, et al that would, in effect, be a refutation to a paper by Soon et al. "
0682.txt: Wigley to Mann, 5/6/03: " By chance SB03 may have got some of these precip things right, but we don't want to give them any way to claim credit. " " There is much other evidence that it is precip that is the driver ".
0285.txt: Mann to Jones, 10/6/03: " We also don't show it after 1940. I agree this has to be made very clear in the caption ". This data deletion never was made clear in the caption, leading to a repetition of the notorious "hide the decline" trick.
2670.txt: Mosley-Thompson to Mann, 18/6/03: " I am pleased to accept "On Past Temperatures and Anomalous late-20th Century Warmth" for publication in Eos "
4207.txt: Bradley to Jones: " You commented that the Chinese series of Yang et al (GRL 2002) looked weird. Well, that's because it's crap--no further comment on what stuff gets into GRL! You appear to have used their so-called "complete" China record. You really should consider what went into this --2 ice core delta 18O records of dubious relationship to temperature ... You just shouldn't grab anything that's in print and just use it 'cos it's there---that just perpetuates rubbish. This series needs to be removed from Figure 2 in the EOS forum piece " (the suspect paper was not removed).
5027.txt: Briffa to Bradley: " I find it somewhat ironic that it should be replaced with the latest (Mann and Jones) series that contains the same three series plus a mixture of other far more dubious (not to say bad ) series ... I am of the opinion that the points made in the piece still stand - and by signing on , we are not individually sanctioning all the curves or data used in the illustrations (There are genuine problems with ALL of them)."
2023.txt: Briffa to Wigley, 24/6/03: " Signing on to this letter , in my mind. implies agreement with the text and not individual endorsement of all curves by each author... I also believe some of the series that make up the Chinese record are dubious or obscure , but the same is true of other records Mann and Jones have used ... There are problems (and limitations ) with ALL series used. "
4712.txt: Wigley to Briffa, 25/6/03: " I suggest adding the following to the end of the Figure 2 caption: "..... Note that individual series are weighted according to their quality in forming a composite hemispheric-scale time series." The word 'quality' here has been chosen carefully -- as something that is deliberately a bit ambiguous. " (this was not done).
0539.txt: Wigley to Briffa, 25/6/03: " IT IS A DIFFICULT CALL -- WHETHER TO DUMP SERIES THAT HAVE NO SIGNIFICANT LINK TO TEMPERATURE AND WHICH ARE, AS WELL, DUBIOUS ON A PRIORI GROUNDS "
Exaggerations, bias and distortion in the IPCC report
4578.txt: Jones and Trenberth, Coordinating Lead Authors CLA) of IPCC AR4 chapter 3, discuss how to make the temperature trend look as large as possible: "Even without smoothing it is possible to get a trend of nearer 0.75 if the trend starts around 1920 (especially if the cold year of 1917 is at the start)."
4972.txt: J & T decide not to refer to a paper by Pielke et al (which said that claims of a link between warming and hurricanes are premature): Phil: " Presumably we'll get forced to refer to it. " Kevin: " Don't see why we should refer to the Pielke piece. It is [n]ot yet published. It is very political and an opinion. " Phil: " Read the article on the new patio at home with a glass of wine. I thoroughly agree that we don't need to refer to it. Wrote that on it last night. It is very political. Several sentences and references shouldn't be there. "
0714.txt: J & T discuss getting the right people in to write the report: " Getting people we know and trust is vital ... Rossow also? But I don't trust him. Norris has done a lot but I don't trust him either. "
3205.txt: More of the same: "Useful ones might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on the solar/cloud issue - on the right side, i.e anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be have to involve him ?), ... There are a few I would want nothing to do with - Gerstengarbe, Michaels, Schoenwiese. Also like to avoid Grassl and Gruza and probably Ogallo. "
1939.txt: Peter Thorne of the Met Office writes a stinging criticism of IPCC chapter 3, to Phil Jones who was largely responsible for writing it: " There is little effective communication in the main text of the uncertainty that is inherent in these measures due to the poor quality of the underlying data...This completely ignores legitimate concerns...this paints too rosy a picture of our understanding the vertical structure of temperature changes. Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. "
3456.txt: Jonathan Overpeck (CLA of chapter 6) asks: " Need to convince readers that there really has been an increase in knowledge - more evidence. What is it? ". Getting no answer, he has to ask again: " but what about being more specific (at least a little) about what the "subsequent evidence" is. Is there really anything new that gives us more confidence? "
1611.txt: Tim Carter: " It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group. "
3066.txt: Peter Thorne again, commenting on a draft of the IPCC report: " I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run. "
0555.txt: Hans von Storch: " (Stupid, politicized action by IPCC, not MBH's responsbilkity. IPCC did one more of these silly oversellings - by showing the damage curve by Munich Re without proper caveat in the fig caption). "
3419.txt, von Storch again, to coauthors on the TAR 2001 report: " First, I don't think that John Houghton is particularly qualified in saying anything about regional assessments. So far as I know he has no relevant official capacity in the process, and he has not been particulaly helpful in SAR. Actually, I consider him a politially intersted activitst and not as a scientist. " (John Houghton was the co-chair of IPCC WG1).
0890.txt: Chris Landsea complains about exaggerated claims about hurricanes to Trenberth, shortly before his resignation from the IPCC: " My concerns are: Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know there are none.... he and his fellow panel members decided to forego the peer review scientific process and abuse science in pursuit of a political agenda. "
0778.txt: even Phil Jones acknowledges bias in the IPCC SPM: " I sent it. He says he'll read the IPCC Chapters! He hadn't as he said he thought they were politically biased. I assured him they were not. The SPM may be, but not the chapters. "
2432.txt: Brian Hoskins, to Trenberth and Jones: " I certainly defend the use of the 25, 50,100, 150 year trend lines on the temperature curve as in the TS and Chapter 3 as being better than the alternatives. " Hoskins is supporting this misleading graph used by the IPCC to create the false impression that warming is accelerating.
1170.txt: Phil Jones on his IPCC role: " I didn't succeed in getting some of Dick Lindzen's comments removed. "
Breaking the IPCC (and other) rules
0790.txt: Eugene Wahl, on the miraculous acceptance of his paper into the IPCC report well after the Dec 2005 deadline: " I had thought that we had passed all chance for citation in the next IPCC report back in December, but Peck has made it known to me this is not so. "
1468.txt: from: Keith Briffa
subject: confidential
to: "Wahl, Eugene R"
Gene, I am taking the liberty (confidentially) to send you a copy of the reviewers comments (please keep these to yourself) of the last IPCC draft chapter.
3535.txt: Jones: " These are figures 3.14 and 3.15. I'm not supposed to send these out, so you got them from Albert. Don't pass on to anyone else. "
3614.txt: Jones: " Ben, ... I'm not supposed to be contacting you ! "
5256.txt: Jones again: " Tom [Wigley], ... I'm not supposed to be talking to anyone of your group except through Tom K... I'm not supposed to talk to anyone of the report authors ! "
5053.txt: ITMA: " You likely know that McIntyre will check this one to make sure it hasn't changed since the IPCC close-off date July 2006! Hard copies of the WG1 report from CUP have arrived here today.
Ammann/Wahl - try and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with. "
3498.txt: " Tom, Off tomorrow and not back in CRU till March 10. I'm not supposed to talk to anyone of the report authors! ... Remember I didn't tell you all this. Lots of details to come - not sure when. Seems a long-winded process. Cheers Phil "
Doubts about the models
0850.txt: Tim Barnett: " right now we have some famous models that all agree surprisely well with 20th obs, but whose forcing is really different. clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer. "
4443.txt: Phil Jones: " Basic problem is that all models are wrong - not got enough middle and low level clouds. Problem will be with us for years, according to Richard Jones. "
0419.txt: Mike Hulme: " I am increasingly unconvinced by the majority of climate impact studies - including some of those I am involved in "
4933.txt: Rik Leemans to Mike Hulme: " In the new IMAGE 2.2 release, we discovered very strange behavior of the climate module. At higher C02 concentrations the climate sensitivity tents to be much less than expected. This is probably a result of our new parameterization of the oceanic carbon uptake, which also directly influences the heat uptake. Unfortunately, no-one in the IMAGE team is familiar with the code, the changes that are made over the last years in order to implement the regional aerosol effect. "
2208.txt: Phil Jones: " Bottom line - the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried. "
Politics, spin, activism and "the cause"
2495.txt: Kathryn Humphrey (Scientific advisor at DEFRA): " I can't overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don't want to be made to look foolish. "
3655.txt: The WWF offers money to climate scientists and economists to write a scaremongering paper: " WWF has assured some money - a few thousand EUROS what is not much to be honest but at least a start - to ask an economist with climate policy understanding to assess in a short but fleshy paper [max 10 pages] the economic costs of these weather extremes in europe. "
3115.txt: Mann refers to "the cause" - scientist or activist? " By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc... ". Also 3940.txt: " so that should help the cause a bit. " and 0810.txt: " I don't know what she think's she's doing, but its not helping the cause "
5286.txt: Hans von Storch, while preparing the IPCC TAR in 2000: " Climate research has become a postnormal science, with the intrusion of political demands and significant influence by activists driven by ideological (well meant) concerns. "
1812.txt: Phil Jones, quoting Head of Geography Department at Hull: " Since Sonja retired I am a lot more free to push my environmental interests without ongoing critique of my motives and supposed misguidedness - I've signed my department up to 10:10 campaign and have a taskforce of staff and students involved in it. "
0059.txt: David Viner (famous for "Children just aren’t going to know what snow is"): " We would like to invite proposals from activists working on climate campaigning. " This was an email from EYFA that Viner forwarded to everyone at CRU.
4239.txt: Noam Bergman (UEA): " The next BIG anti-globalisation activity will be in Genoa, protesting at the G8 conference in Genoa, July 20-22. UK activists are hoping to get 40,000 people from the UK to Italy for it. Locally, UEA activist are planning to get a large number of people from Norwich going, hopefully hiring a few coaches for the trip. "
4826.txt: Dr. Andrew Boswell and Dr. Rupert Read (UEA) write a hyped-up letter to the Green Party, of which they are both members: " Richard Lindzen's attacks on Kyoto receive about the same level of esteem among serious climatologists, for example our colleagues in the Tyndall Centre at Norwich's own UEA, as flat-earthers received from their 'scientific colleagues', a few centuries back. "....
3895.txt: Mike Hulme chastises them for misquoting him " Sexing-up evidence is so easy to do, isn't it? " for which they apologise " On behalf of Rupert and myself, first, we would like to apologise. "
see also 0555.txt 3419.txt 0890.txt, 0778.txt and 3066.txt above.
Anyone who doesn't agree with us should be fired
2151.txt: Tom Wigley says to Mann, regarding the editor of GRL, James Saiers: " 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 "
3946.txt: Kevin Trenberth writes about Chris Landsea, who resigned from the IPCC over Trenberth's hyping of the link between hyrricanes and warming: " I understand he has resigned from CA of our chapter. I responded to his earlier message in a fairly low key fashion. I think he has behaved irresponsibly and ought to be fired by NOAA ... "
4697.txt: Less than a week later, Trenberth's story has changed: " Landsea (who was fired by Susan Solomon) ".
5159.txt: C G Kilsby (Newcastle) to Jones, Oct 2009: " Hull Uni may be interested to know what their "Reader Emeritus" is up to... "
1812.txt: Later in Oct 2009, Phil Jones is furious that two academics (Jonathan Jones and Don Keiller) dared to ask him for data. " I have had a thought about Keiller and the Oxford Professor. I may have mentioned to you a malicious email that was sent somewhere in the UK pointing to all these awful right wing web sites. The email was passed on to me and it came from an Emeritus Reader at Hull (first name Sonja). I was incensed by this and sent a response to the head of department of Geography at Hull... The thought is whether we should follow the same course with these two at Anglia Ruskin and Oxford? " He is talked out of taking action by UEA's head of communications.
3052.txt: Jim Salinger is upset that Chris de Freitas accepted for publication a paper that questioned the hockey stick, and writes to a large group of climate scientists: " I have had thoughts also on a further course of action. The present Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland, Professor John Hood (comes from an engineering background) is very concerned that Auckland should be seen as New Zealand's premier research university, ...My suggestion is that a band of you review editors write directly to Professor Hood with your concerns... See suggested text below... " See this blog for a detailed investigation of this story. (Ironically, it was Salinger who was fired from his job a few years later, not de Freitas).
Corruption of peer review
0525.txt: Briffa thanks Bradley for writing a nice reference for him and promises a glowing review of Bradley's book: " thanks a million for the reference...It is of course comforting to know that I will be able to give it the rich praise that I know it will deserve. "
4235.txt: Tim Osborn (ab)uses his position on the editorial board of a journal to get a paper by his friend Santer accelerated, and another paper held up: " Hi Ben and Phil, as you may know, I'm on the editorial board of IJC ... I just contacted the editor, Glenn McGregor, to see what he can do. He promises to do everything he can to achieve a quick turn-around time. He also said (and please treat this in confidence, which is why I emailed to you and Phil only) that he may be able to hold back the hardcopy (i.e. the print/paper version) appearance of Douglass et al.,... ". See 4483.txt for the email where McGregor says " I will hold back the print version of the douglas et al paper until I have the santer et al one ".
3003.txt: Jones: " By the way, I have got the paper - review will be friendly though! "
4951.txt: Briffa to Kelly: " I need you to review a couple of papers for me as soon as possible ( to get me out of a muddle) . I believe I gave you one some time ago ( by Ogurtsov et al ( on solar influence on climate ) which I think will be a rejection but I need hard justification . "
5271.txt: In 2007, Jones is asked about reviewing a proposal by Bradley, and whether there is a conflict of interest because of joint work. The requester says: " If you haven't collaborated within the last 5-7 years, then it'd be OK for you to review. " Jones replies claiming " Not written a paper with Ray or Henry since the mid-1990s. " In fact, Jones's own web page shows joint publications between Jones and Bradley in 2005 and 2003.
BBC Bias
1683.txt: Briffa is coached in what to say in a BBC documentary by producer Jonathan Renouf: " Your essential job is to "prove" to Paul that what we're experiencing now is NOT just another of those natural fluctuations we've seen in the past. The hockey stick curve is a crucial piece of evidence because it shows how abnormal the present period is - the present warming is unprecedented in speed and amplitude, something like that. "
3757.txt: Roger Harrabin (BBC) asks Mike Hulme " What should the BBC be doing this time in terms of news, current affairs, drama, documentaries, game shows, music etc? " (see also this news story).
2496.txt: Mike Hulme (UEA): " This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source. " (the CMEP was run by Roger Harrabin).
4894.txt: Alex Kirby (BBC): " But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. "
Refusing to release data under FOI
1249.txt: Following a 2008 FOI request from David Holland, UEA's FOI Officer David Palmer says he wants do things 'by the book'. But Jones suggests that " Keith (or you Dave) could say that for (1) Keith didn't get any additional comments in the drafts other than those supplied by IPCC. On (2) Keith should say that he didn't get any papers through the IPCC process either. "
The following sequence relates to Steve Mcintyre's request on 26 June 2009 for data that CRU had sent to Peter Webster. The request itself is in 4531.txt. See Climate Audit post for much more detail.
4531.txt: Phil Jones shows his lack of understanding of FOIA: " McIntyre has no right to request the data in a personal email. I only sent a small part of the dataset anyway. They asked for a specific set and said what they were going to do with the data. " (what anyone is going to do with the data is not relevant).
1320.txt: David Palmer (UEA's FOI expert) explains to Jones that this is not an excuse: " The fact that information is within an email that you consider 'personal' does not render the information itself personal. In order to not disclose information under EIR, we need to have a valid exception, and then also pass a public interest test that shows that the public interest is better served by non-disclosure than disclosure.
I will have a think about what exceptions are available to us, but, at this moment I am having difficulty making a case for any that would apply here. "
2663.txt: David Palmer again, a few days later: " I can understand your reluctance to deal with Mr. McIntyre's request but we do need to have justifiable grounds for claiming an exception under the EIR in order to do so... "
1473.txt: Jones claims that " Some of the data was supplied to CRU on the grounds that we didn't pass it on. " Palmer replies: " We would have to overcome the obvious fact that some data was passed to a fellow academic so therefore would need to draw a distinction between that type of disclosure and that requested by the applicant. "
CRU then sent a reply to McIntyre saying that "the information requested was received by the University on terms that prevent further transmission to non-academics" which turned out to be untrue. This bogus claim lead to two academics asking for the data (see 1812.txt above).
Deleting emails requested under FOI
1031.txt: Jones, 29 May 2008
" subject: IPCC & FOI
to: Michael E. Mann
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. "
1014.txt: Mann, same day: " I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. "
2526.txt: Jones, 4 June 2008: " John Mitchell did respond to a request from Holland. John had conveniently lost many emails, but he did reply with a few. Keith and Tim have moved all their emails from all the named people off their PCs and they are all on a memory stick. "
1897.txt: Jones, Dec 2008: " With the earlier FOI requests re David Holland, I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. "
3791.txt: Osborn, same day: " I assume that you didn't delete any emails that David Holland has requested (because that would be illegal) but that instead his request merely prompted you to do a spring clean of various other emails that hadn't been requested, as part of your regular routine of deleting old emails. If that is what you meant, then it might be a good idea to clarify your previous email to Dave Palmer, to avoid it being misunderstood. :-) "
Odds and ends
4027.txt: Tom Wigley describes the papers of Naomi Oreskes as useless, in a discussion about numbers of citations:
" Analyses like these by people who don't know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes work. "
0798.txt: Ed Cook to Keith Briffa, discussing a talk by Tom Wigley: " It was a pathetically poor paper that had Mark Cane, Yochanan Kushnir, Upmanu Lall, Balaji Rajagoplan (all good maths/stats people), and me just shaking our collective heads wondering what the fuck Wigley was trying to do. Needless to say, Singer quite easily showed how hopelessly flawed and ridiculous the analysis was, and everyone agreed with him for once. "
1680.txt: Mann to Jones: " I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. "
Climategate 2 links
Tom Nelson's 250 climategate posts
Police investigation
The Norfolk Police investigation into climate was known as 'Operation Cabin', lead by DS Julian Gregory.
On 15 December 2011, six policemen turned up at the home of "Tallbloke", one of the bloggers who received the link to the second round of emails, and took some of his computers. This followed a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice sent to three of the bloggers.
The police investigation was closed in July 2012. The Final Report shows that no progress was made by the investigation, but the police believe that Climategate was a "sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack".
Some files relating to the investigation were obtained by the BBC under FOI as part of research for a BBC Radio 4 programme into Climategate in October 2012.
Climategate 3
An email containing more information about the Climategate leaker plus the password to the all.7z file was sent to several bloggers in March 2013, in what became known as Climategate 3.