Phil Jones
illconsidered | November 18, 2010November 17 marked the one year anniversary of the hacking of CRU mail servers and the release of thousands of emails between climate scientists.
Though irrelevant to the scientific case for anthropogenic climate change, the event was significant in the public relations sphere. I have not found the time to do a proper memorial write up though I think it is important to reassess and reframe the controversy with the benefit of hindsight. But as luck would have it, a young climate blogger named Kate at Climate Sight has written a piece as well laid out and written as I could ever have hoped to…
illconsidered | August 23, 2010Via a new blog started up this summer, Fool me Once (sounds like wishful thinking ;-), proprieter Alden has graciously permitted me to embed a most excellent video he has produced on arctic sea ice.
He is covering a standard denialist talking point, that arctic sea ice has/is recovering, so the concepts will not be unfamiliar to any regulars here, but the very clear trains of argument and great use of data and graphics make this well worth watching.
The original posting is here.
His other post from about a month ago, is similarily clear and compelling. (Warning: video starts automatically,…
illconsidered | May 22, 2010Roy Spencer, darling of the climate skeptic community, says he is not very organized, as Phil Jones said of himself, and that
"if you asked me to find original data from 20 years ago I'd have great difficulty too. We just didn't realise in those days how important and controversial this would all become - now it would just all be stored on computer."
This is quoted in a BBC article on the recent Heartland climate conference in New York.
Spencer goes on to say:
"Phil Jones has been looking at climate records for a very long time. Frankly our data set agrees with his, so unless we are all…
tlambert | April 14, 2010The International Panel set up to examine the work of the Climate Research Unit has cleared the CRU of all charges of misconduct:
We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work
of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely
that we would have detected it.
They also point the finger at who is to blame for the failure to release all the weather station data. The UK government:
It was not the immediate concern of the Panel, but we observed that there were
important and unresolved questions that related to the availability of…
illconsidered | April 2, 2010One thing the blogosphere is good for is spirited discussion and fast dissemination of news stories. One thing it is not good for is the old addage "where there's smoke, there's fire".
The recent "swifthacking" of CRU email (aka "climategate") is a great example of tremendous amounts of smoke being created out of something statistically indistinguishable from bupkus.
The UK's House of Commons has released a report after weeks of careful investigation into the details and implications of the illegally obtained and distributed emails to and from a handful of East Anglia University climate…
tlambert | April 1, 2010The House of Commons report on the emails stolen from CRU has vindicated Phil Jones -- he has "no case to answer":
The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones's refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should…
tlambert | February 26, 2010The Economist tells it like it is
This led to a Daily Mail headline reading: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995."
Since I've advocated a more explicit use of the word "lie", I'll go ahead and follow my own advice: that Daily Mail headline is a lie. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995; he said the opposite. He said the world had been warming at 0.12°C per decade since 1995. However, over that time frame, he could not quite rule out at the traditional 95% confidence level that the warming since…
tlambert | February 13, 2010Following the heels of the Rosegate scandal where journalist David Rose was exposed as a serial quote fabricator, the credibility of Rose's newspaper, the Daily Mail, has taken another body blow with the paper publishing a false story claiming that Phil Jones had admitted that there had been no global warming since 1995.
This is false (see graph below) and Jones made no such admission. Michael Tobis has the details on the Daily Mail's dishonesty.
Ever gullible Tim Blair, of course, swallowed the lie, hook, line and sinker. Andrew Bolt will do doubt follow if he gets his voice back.
Update…
illconsidered | February 11, 2010For most of us, the F in FOI stands for "freedom". It seems for Steve McIntyre, it stands for "form letter".
Via Eli Rabett we learn that the Freedom of Information requests (FOI) that are central to the only potentially damnng aspect of the CRU "swifthacking" incident have been released. They can be found here[PDF].
I have not looked at them yet, but Eli points out a very interesting one that begins thus (and we are quoting):
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…