Please click for Part I and Part III.
PART II – The “hockey stick” graph inadvertently incites a new camp of “lukewarmer” skeptics. Climategate files make first appearance on the internet, but were in the hands of one person days before they were made public.
If history tells us anything, it shows us that inciting an audience is an extremely precarious undertaking. Inspiring one group of followers with a call-to-action can just as easily unleash the furor of another. Arousing a community to attack an indisputable villain can surprisingly lead to a circling of the wagons by the scoundrel’s close associates. Inciting is an unpredictable endeavor, best left for those with an innate ability to read a situation or an army on-the-ready to quickly take advantage of an opening.
So is the story of the hockey stick – just as quickly as it was used as a rallying call for warmists, it also inadvertently gave birth to a camp of skeptics.
Enter Steve McIntyre, stage right. A retired mineral explorer and math scholar from Toronto, McIntyre became interested in climate science and the hockey stick due to its seeming inconsistencies. A Medieval Warming Period (seen above) had been a well-documented event in which the earth’s temperature increased considerably sometime between 1000 and 1300 AD, followed by a cooling trend known as the Little Ice Age. A graph of this cycle was even included in the IPCC First Assessment Report in 1990. These events were, however, absent from the Mann et al hockey stick graph. McIntyre was curious about how the graph was made and as chance would have it, the discipline of temperature reconstructions, largely an exercise in statistics, fit right within his mathematics wheelhouse.
Steve McIntyre
On investigating the hockey stick, McIntyre happened upon what he viewed as some errors in the application of his field of expertise along with some misuses of data. He contacted Ross McKitrick, an environmental economist with a PhD in economics, and the two worked on a paper that would highlight the errors in the original hockey stick article.
The article, entitled Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series, was published in the journal Energy and Environment in 2003.
In addition to their MM paper, as it came to be known, they performed other investigations into the work of climate scientists. To McIntyre and McKitrick’s surprise, it didn’t appear that there was much review of the work on which so much government policy was being derived. They claimed that, in addition to Mann et al adding in temperatures where there were holes in the data through a guessing method called extrapolation, they also found improper duplication of data sets and a strong cherry-picking effect that would result in a hockey stick formation no matter what type of temperature data was entered into the climate models. They input what is called “red noise”, or random data, into the model and out popped a hockey stick graph.
Eventually, the MM paper led to Mann et al publishing a modification to provide more detail to their original article. However, the scientists did not change any of their underlying results. The MM Paper also led to a congressional hearing and multiple counter studies were published, with one known as Wahl and Ammann (2006) supporting Mann et al’s position and another, known as The Wegman Report, supporting the MM paper.
To journalize his investigations into climate science, McIntyre created a blog called ClimateAudit – and this is when the peer-to-peer review network first took solid form.
Others followed suit. Anthony Watts, a weather specialist, created WattsUpWithThat, Lucia Liljegren created The Blackboard, and Jeff “Id” Condon created the Air Vent. Both the contributors and commenters at these sites meticulously picked apart the work of the scientists featured in the Climategate emails – that’s how this community works.
When I asked Gavin Schmidt about whether this group has had any impact on the science, he responded, “On the science? No.” He continued, “There is an old joke about a professor reading over one of his not-so-promising student’s work: ‘This paper contains much that is novel and correct.’ [the professor] continues, ‘Unfortunately, that which is novel is not correct, and that which is correct is not novel.’ It fits the bill here.”
In response to Schmidt’s claim that the group had no impact on the science, Steve McIntyre told me that the then-Chairman of the National Academy of Science Committee on Statistics “endorsed our findings on [Mann et al].”
One of the main contention points of the peer-to-peer reviewers has been a concept termed divergence.
Some climate scientists noticed a problem with tree ring temperature reconstructions beginning around 1960. What they found was that the tree rings showed a downward trend in temperatures starting at this time while the actual thermometer readings showed a temperature increase. This is termed a divergence because the reconstructions didn’t match the actual temperature. So what the climate scientists did in some of the hockey stick graphs, according to the skeptics, was delete the tree ring data starting in 1960, replacing them with the actual temperatures. The climate scientist’s rationale was that tree-rings had a change in response to the environment over recent decades. The peer-to-peer group claimed that the climate scientists were participating in bad science. Why? Because the divergence raises the question that if the tree-ring reconstructions could not read the higher temperatures of today, how could the scientists be sure that there weren’t higher temperatures throughout the last thousand years that have also gone undetected by the tree-rings.
The spike in temperatures that are there today could also have been there one thousand years ago – inferring that the earth is just going through a natural cycle. This divergence problem appeared to show a serious problem with the science that was the underpinning of the hockey stick graphs.
It was this concern, continually highlighted by the peer-to-peer reviewers, that has brought so much perspective to the now infamous Climategate email of “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” sent by Phil Jones. Several of the hockey stick graphs appeared to be underpinned by data that mixed apples with oranges. Even in graphs where the actual temperatures were not added, the divergence appears to be artfully hidden as seen in a hockey stick graph included in the IPCC Third Assessment Report.
Detail of above
As can be seen, the Briffa et al reconstructions (in green) come to a halt at 1960 and the end of the graph, which is trending downwards, is hidden behind others that trend up – thus providing a strong rhetorical impression of a scientific consensus of unprecedented temperature increase. The pressure applied to climate scientists to reach this consensus would be later revealed in the Climategate emails.
Another complaint by these skeptics was the lack of transparency and access to data used by the climate establishment. In repeated attempts, Steve McIntyre attempted to acquire the computational code from Michael Mann and data from Keith Briffa and Phil Jones that were used to build the hockey stick graphs. Like the US, the UK has Freedom of Information legislation that allows for individuals to request information related to government-funded projects. The peer-to-peer network requested the data directly from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and McIntyre even approached the peer review journals that the global warming establishment used to legitimize their research, in hopes for access to the underlying data and code that the scientists were using – but all were continually met with some form of resistance.
It wasn’t until the Climategate files were leaked that we would understand the significance of these efforts.
**
Jeff “Id” Condon moderates a small blog called the Air Vent which is frequented by lukewarmers – a group of global warming enthusiasts that believe that CO2 does trap energy and could be warming the planet, but questions the magnitude of the problem and the certainty of climate science. Moderates is actually a loose descriptor for what Jeff does to posted comments because it was actually his lack of moderation that put his blog at ground zero of Climategate.
On Tuesday November 17th, Jeff was hunting deer, as he puts it, “unsuccessfully” in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. On his return he had one hundred or so emails and comments that needed to be moderated before they would go live. Jeff was at his parent’s house at the time and didn’t pay much attention to the all-important comment. “What I did was read in a huge hurry, [because] I was at my folks‘ house and kept being interrupted, and I read the email and posted the link. There was no cussing, it seemed to be about climate so I investigated nothing.”
Jeff then jumped on the road for the five-hour drive home.
Unknown to Jeff though, was that one of the comments was the morsel of information that would validate the peer-to-peer review network and provide clear perspective to their efforts.
The comment was from a user named FOIA, posted to the blog from a computer with a Saudi Arabian IP address. “We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.” The comment linked to a file named FOI2009.zip on a Russian server.
By the time Jeff got home he noticed an email from Steven Mosher bringing attention to the content of the link. “Steve Mosher is as smart a guy as any of us will ever meet so I quickly opened and looked at a couple of [the FOI2009.zip] emails.” Understanding the implications of the files, Jeff immediately pulled down the link.
Not knowing exactly what to do next, Jeff returned to the trusty peer-to-peer review network. He emailed Steven Mosher, Lucia, Anthony Watts, and Steve McIntyre questioning what they should do about the files. Little did he know that most of this group had already downloaded them and begun investigating the content.
An hour had passed with no response, but he didn’t let the hour go to waste. With his jaw on the floor, Jeff read “one damning email after another,” getting more acclimated with the content of the files.
Now Jeff is not a lawyer, he’s an aeronautical engineer by trade, but he was concerned about the legal implications of posting personal emails. What he did notice, however, was that both Anthony Watts’ blog and Lucia had posted several of the emails. With two from the network opening the door, Jeff thought to himself, “the others have already posted on this, what is wrong with you, put it up.” He posted the article Leaked FOIA files 62 mb of gold.
The Air Vent was the little blog that could – it was not, however, the first place that the files turned up on the internet. The first place they turned up was on the very site moderated by those implicated in the Climategate files.
**
It was Tuesday November 17th at 6:20am EST when the Climategate files made their first known poke onto the internet. An unknown user logged into RealClimate.org, the climate science blog of co-founders Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt, disabled all legitimate users, then uploaded from an IP address in Turkey a zip file with the title FOIA.zip containing the Climategate documents. Michael Mann is, of course, the father of the hockey stick graph and Gavin Schmidt is one of the top climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). This unknown user then attempted to create a draft post identical to that posted on the Air Vent, but the RealClimate admin stopped the foreign user before the post could go live.
A short while later, another user, likely the same RealClimate foreign user, posted a comment to an article on the blog of Steve McIntyre (ClimateAudit) at 7:24am EST from a Russian IP address. The comment was much more subtle than the one that would later be posted on the Air Vent. It read only, “A miracle just happened.” The user was listed as RC, and linked to the FOIA.zip file on RealClimate. Four downloads occurred from this post before the link was made inactive by the admin. This comment had apparently gone unnoticed by Steve McIntyre, who wasn’t made aware of it until Gavin Schmidt highlighted it’s existence in a post on November 23rd.
The post on ClimateAudit was not exactly the grand announcement that was seen on the Air Vent and didn’t lead initially to an explosion of the story. Why did the promoter of the Climategate files choose such a subtle post? Did the leaker know anything about the ClimateAudit server that made him or her avoid making a stronger proclamation and drawing more traffic to the site?
The closest that you can currently get to the leaker is, intriguingly, someone from within the peer-to-peer review network.
**
As anyone who really researches Climategate will learn, the name Steven Mosher continues to pop up. When the story broke, it was Mosher who drew attention to the comment at the Air Vent. He was also the man that alerted Lucia of The Blackboard blog to the files. And he was the first to alert followers of ClimateAudit with a series of posts that included some of the emails.
Steven Mosher
Why was Steven Mosher so ubiquitous when it came to the breaking of the Climategate story? Because Steven Mosher had the files several days before they reached the internet.
**
Watch for Part Three, which concludes this series, coming soon on Big Journalism.
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100 Comments
Thank You Steven Mosher for your fortitude to make sure this Information became public
Excellent work, Patrick. You are quite the horror genre author! Much gratitude to you, Andrew, and the Bigs.
Wow you guys know how to open up a new site.
What a great article depicting the incredible history of deception at a global level and how the truth always seems to find the light of day…..somehow.
True to any story some hero's and villains emerge. Swinging from story to a historical perspective we discover to ALMOST everyone's amazement the roles are actually reversed. These old villainous deniers have become the young fresh hero's of the scientific community. They saved science and the world from evil scientist hell bent on dictating every facet of our lives.
Can't wait for the next article keep up the great work.
Thanks Deniers you're hero's in my book.
Thanks again to all of Solders in the Army of Davids finghting the get the truth out to the world.
Fascinating. A true tribute to the protection of real scientific thought and debate.
No kidding.
I love the amazing rise in importance of truth in the past year (amazing because it wasn't important for a while.)
Now that we are officially a part of history where not one, not two but three bi- or tricentennial events will be the inspiration for generations of children's rhymes.
Humpty Dumpty and Ponzi are quickly fading from our vernacular. And why not? Liars Loans. Global Warming. Madoff. And hardly last and certainly not least I give you….the US Congress.
We are embracing the labels of Deniers and Flat Earthers with pride…to continue U2Daves thought about role reversal and the 'nuclear' irony. And Stone wants to do a story on Hiroshima? With the mushroom clouds that have now suffocated the most important asset class in the world – US housing – and the fraud known as 'Climate Science' (with DNC fingerprints at every scene) Oliver would rather distract America with Hugo Chavez's script "How The USA Started WWII At Hiroshima."
Thankfully we have men like Patrick that can help us prove to future generations that we all were not insane. A little crazy. But not completely insane – or corrupt.
BigScience should be Andrews next site..
.Next to the BigMedia corrupters the Science fraudsters gaul me the most, I used to trust them, and politics in Science? Get out…….
Followed by the BigUnion scammers, who have ruined California. Not far behind and bringing up the fraudulent rear is BigUniversity, attached at the hip to BigScience. See where this is going? One corrupt group giving cover to the other, in an endless circle of lies and fraud.
In fact, forming a Pentagram of Corruption…
Fantastic journalism!! I had no idea that there was such a story behind the story. Thank you Patrick for such great sleuthing (and from those you cite). Thank you Andrew for including such great reporting on Big J.
Big Climate … sounds like just the job for Andrew
The greatest observable feedback from which we can make climatic deductions is the creation of what we now call Glacier Bay, Alaska. This was not a bay in 1790, it was a massive glacier, and one would expect that since this massive glacier melted and became a bay during the pre-industrial era that it would be coincidental that this warming era should be expected to end during the 1900s since climatic eras tend to span many centuries. The “news” would be that this warming has ended and we changed to an era of cooling.
This continues to be an astonishingly competent, well written piece because the author has investigated the facts, read emails, interviewed individuals and therefore knows whereof he speaks.
)
(On the other hand, Andrew needs to make up for starting Huffington on blog. That marked the decline of the internet from which it has a long way to go to recover. It’s nice to know where to lay the blame, though.
Great article. But I think that the photo that you have captioned as Steven Mosher is actually Steve McIntyre.
The photo you have labeled as Steven Mosher is actually Steve McIntyre. Wow nipped at the post by marks.
The picture of the man you have captioned "Steven Mosher" is Steve McIntyre.
The caption has been corrected.
We need to thank God for pissing all over Al Gores global warming propaganda. Now their new droll will be unsafe CO2 levels. They will never stop, their like militant islamists, with out guns at least for now.
Thanks for supplying REAL journalism, rather than the MSM's "journalism" of distraction, disinformation and entertainment.
For any true believers in man-made climate change who are brave and open enough to read Patrick's piece, and then ask: So why would so many be involved in corrupting science? Answer: money and power. Lots of money and insane amounts of power (via carbon taxes, regulation, policing).
I have plenty of links to open eyes further, in that regard:
http://aprilbaby.typepad.com/a_california_life/
My site was never political – just goofy stories about my life in California – until this climategate scandal, when I realized the media is working overtime to keep us blind. Good job Big Journalism! We need you… desperately.
One minor addition to the timeline.
My mail to JeffID and my Post on Lucia was around noon of November 19th. The Link was posted there
On the 17th, but apparently no body saw it. I didnt see it until the 19th, when I alerted Jeff and Lucia to the
existence of the file. As Patrick notes I had the file before that date.
Thank you Steven for your efforts (before, during and after the leak). The damage you may have helped us to avoid for ourselves and our children is mind-boggling. Hopefully someday history will agree with that sentiment, although I fear the MSM will either ignore the incident or try to find fault with yourself and the others involved. You at least have our gratitude.
Patrick, this is a wonderful series of articles. It's the best I've ever seen the information laid out and is amazingly informative. I can remember having debates with Liberals who would bring up things that were debunked at the time, but I didn't fully understand the issue or all the facts, so couldn't refute their arguments. With the help of all the information that's been getting out over the last six months or so, I'm seeing more and more people armed with the truth taking on the fanatics and winning, hands down. I'll be posting links to all three parts for the GW brainwashed masses, as well as the GW skeptics (or as I like to call them, those cursed with common-sense).
It's amazing how these COCKROACHS continue to thrive. Ice age after ice age, asteroid hits, super volcanoes, government failures, and wars,
Ditto!
How ironic that Al Gore's Internet should facilitate the destruction of Al Gore's global warming gravy train.
Need pictures of Megan Fox here to emulate Huffington Post!
This series should be required reading for all. Thanks Patrick. This is an intriguing piece of reporting.
Absolutely, this is wonderful reporting. Of course, it took astronomers thousands of years to accept that the sun was the center of the solar system; no doubt we will be forced to deal with global warming apologists for centuries, as well.
All that ClimateGate did was to show that there has been a conspiracy among Glowarmers. The vast majority of what was "revealed" has been in various skeptic blogs for a few years now.
When Roger Pielke Sr's blog was very active, a few years ago, and he had time to keep up with it, Glowarmers would come on to debate and constantly & consistently leave with their tails between their legs.
Sadly, funding on climate research overwhelming comes from government grants. Thus, a majority of the actual Global Climate Scientists (there are only about 200 worldwide) have remained mute in order not to have their funding cut off.
The beauty of this whole sordid mess is that the 'Global Warmers' cannot simply 'Wait for this to blow over.' It will NEVER 'blow over.' Imagine the millions of man-hours these people spent in building their 'scientific' house-of-cards, now to see it literally flattened. They can say, 'Pay-no-attention-to-those-e-mails-behind-the-curtain' all they want; the damage has been done. Happily so, I will declare.
Excellent series!! Will wait impatiently for Part 3…
No matter what their discipline, all students in doctoral programs should be required to read this article — not to mention, as well, the members of their dissertation committees who serve as journal reviewers.
Excellent!
Anytime scientists do not show their data, buyer beware! That the scientific community did not demand open access to the raw data tells us just how deep the corruption went. I just wonder when the administration will stop with the crap and tax, er, I mean cap and trade propoganda. Has Obama read any of this stuff? Seems he is hell-bent on proceeding to cram cap and trade down our throats just like he is doing with his healthcare fiasco.
Steven, please accept the thanks of a grateful skeptic. Climategate was the high point of an otherwise terrible year!
Anyone seen the Goracle lately? He must be out there somewhere because the "Gore Effect" is still in full spate. Brrrr!
a bunch of historical temperature charts can be found at this web page below……I use these in my science class to counter Al Gore film we are required to show.
http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-his...
Patrick, you are doing a fabulous job telling this story.
But please don't forget to mention that the Climategate files- or most of them- had been sent to the BBC a *month* before they broke on the Internet.
The Beeb, needless to say, sat on it: the biggest scientific scandal since Piltdown Man was squelched.
The VERY Convenient Lie
An agent walks into a Big Hollywood studio maven's office and begins to pitch an idea for a blockbuster movie that contains intrigue, drama, comedy and current events pizazz
Agent: Ok, so the story starts out with two very understated heroes, McIntyre and McKitrick…discovering a dirty secret that poses a threat to our national economy, hell, the world economy…and they begin to dig for more answers.
Studio Maven. Mcintyre and McKitrick come up with a McSolution from the Great White North to save the world? What are they, the Golden Archers? Where are the people of color in this thing?
Agent: No, well…you see…it starts out with these guys in academia who attempt to pull a worldwide scam and they recruit a very prominent politician to play the front man and they get big journalism to protect their flanks and their rear.
Studio Maven: Ok, so this is a southern religious Christian school and some Republican has ties to a corrupt Fox News like network…then what?
Agent: Well, I was thinking we might go the OTHER direction this time…you know, it's an East Coast University and maybe a UK University, with a Democratic politician, and the entirety of the entrenched media is hiding the information from the public. Something completely different, right? Why are you laughing so hard, get up off the floor…I'm serious.
Studio Maven: (wiping tears from his eyes and shuddering from laughter) And where are we going to find three actors to portray the two Golden Archers and the corrupt leftist Democrat? This is a comedy, right?
Agent: No, this is a drama. It's called The Very Inconvenient Lie. There is this guy, Jeff "Id" Condon, who runs a relatively small blog, he's an aeronautical engineer…who gets sent a secret set of emails that unveils the whole plot to waste trillions of dollars on a junk science scam worldwide, to be led by the politician who winds up getting a Nobel Prize and is nominated for an Oscar.
Studio Maven: Look, kid…your character named "Id" is supposed to offset this blowhard politician named Ego, right?
Agent: Well, no…Jeff's name is Condon and the politician is named Gore.
Studio Maven: Condom…protection…I like that. Gore…well, that speaks for itself on a number of levels.
Agent: Condon…not condom, you pervert.
Studio Maven: Look, kid…I like this story. Here's how we are going to play it. The Golden Archers have got to go…nobody is going to sit around and listen to them spout the Valerie Bertanouli principle on screen for 20 minutes.
The Democratic guy is going to be a hero who is going to save the world from Global Warming…which is caused by predominantly white, greedy capitalists. This will negatively affect people of color in all sorts of third world countries. The whistle blowers will be saintly academic types who are out to save the world. The media will eat this up. THAT'S how you get your Oscar and Nobel Prize, kid.
Agent: Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Hollywood join forces to tell the Big Lie?
Studio Agent: And you will never find a hero big enough to take them all on kid, bank on it.
[...] Read the whole thing at Big Journalism. [...]
Fascinating article. Thank you and I look forward to more! I am especially astounded by the "hidden" downward trend of the green line in that graph.
Finally, hard fact journalism- Finally, a journalist who knows what the words "SCRUTINY", "Validation," Fact-checking, and "HOMEWORK" means. Our mass media outlets have committed what amounts to a breach of a fiduciary duty to the public to investigate and report the facts, fully, and to document the basis of their findings. When these types of fundamental journalistic practices are applied to Man Made Global Warming theories, they simply fall apart. The same disciplines need to be systematically applied to cap and trade, the illegal immigration issue, health care legislation, and every other major debate of our times- and let the chips fall where they may. I welcome any investigative story that challanges my own opinions and beliefs, so long as it is the product of a thorough and proper investigation and full disclosure. This website is going to the top of my list of favorites for online journalism links!!!!
Bears repeating: MSM "journalist" is quickly taking on the same, rightfully malodorous, connotation as AGW or climate change "scientist." Some day people will laugh at anyone posing as either. A pox on both their houses!
if humans are native to the earth then anything we do is a natural process.therefore the earths natural evolution will take care of any supposed damage done by man.
Anytime carbon futures are trading at 10 cents a share or lower (down from about $8), you know the MSM aren't able to counter the exposure Climategate has focused on bogus AGW "science". And it will get worse as more investigation goes into the impact such fraud has had on foodstuff prices and disruptions to the worldwide economy. Add to that the shift research science has away from "global warming" or "climate change" and you'll find the landslide will bury this bogus theory. But let's keep on the offensive so they don't counter with even more idiocy.
You nailed it.
BigEducation and BigEnvironmentalism get my vote!
Steven Mosher… ARRGH!
Your note on the timeline is just confusing enough to require one or maybe more clarifications (without spilling the beans).
1. What date did you receive the files?
2. Did you receive them in the form of the FOIA.zip file?
3. Did the data come from the server in Turkey?
4. Are these answers revealed in your book?
Well thank you. The record would not be complete or accurate without thanking a whole host of other people. I'll do that when it's appropriate and if they allow me to
This is wrong. The files were not sent to the BBC. One of the mails in the stack was sent.
The mails continued to be collected until 2Pm Nov 12th.
On November 19th around 11:33 Am I found the comment on Jeffids site.
I didnt download the file pointed to in the comment.
I didnt have to, I already had the files
1. what date did I get them? date and time revealed in the book. Human source as well.
2. in the form of the FOIAzip? yes.
3. Server in turkey? Nope.
4. answers in the book? yes.
people who like this sort of thing love Climateaudit. they like figuring things out for themselves. Some people will just wait for the whole thing to be revealed, others will join in and take a shot at figuring it out.
Then all your team and the ones who have to hide in the shadows great work the others people that have had their work hi-jacked by a junk belief.
Green is the New Red
Thanks Mosh, at least for a little taste of Turkey.
I will take a stab at it:
It was Proffessor Plum,
In the Library,
With the Candlestick.
QED
.
These hoaxsters are committing crimes against humanity because people are already dying because of higher food prices based on their fraud.
Prosecute all of them, start with Al Gore. Gore needs to hand his Nobel Prize to McIntyre for his service to humanity.
.
if there were any justice in the world, you'd get a pulitzer for this, along with steve and the gang.
Great article and the Peer-to-Peer Review moniker is a good one. I've been reading the various blogs you mention for about a year now and the release of the Climategate files along with a subsequent discussion I saw on one of the blogs regarding the appropriate release of code and data caused me to draw an analogy with the Open Source movement in the software industry. In the early days of Open Source software, many software professionals shuddered at the thought of the release of their code for anyone to see and modify but the movement has caught on – any many people, including myself, have become believers in the overall benefits. Similarly, with Climategate we see climate scientists trying to maintain tight control of their work and shuddering at the thought of releasing the details for view by the proletariate. I like to think of the work of the blogs as supporting the concept of Open Source Science…
Open science is the only science …
[...] Peer-to-Peer Review (Part II): How ‘Climategate’ Marks the Maturing of a New Science Movement [...]
I'm leanin' toward "BigAcademia" and big environmentalism will be rolled into the BIG SCIENCE, If it's more then 5BIGS, it's not a PENTAGRAM, the symbol of EVIL….But you're on the right path….
Mosher is right. The BBC journalist was just asked to corroborate an email to help authenticate the Climategate files. He did not receive the entire 61mb zip file. This is a meme that has persisted out there.
There you go. As a young undergrad, the pressure in university science was for research, to "Publish or Perish" and no one with any self respect went into Private Industry. Grant money. Government Grant Money. Make no mistake, Algore et al, are planning to get very rich using Government Money. Thank God for scientists who will continue to pester and poke and find the truth of a thing, And say what they find. Making obscene amounts of money isn't a bad thing. It's a commendable goal. As long as the money is fruit from honest labor, and not some fraudulent giant theft of other people's money.
Thank you Patrick for the excellent work you've done here and previously with the Obama NEA propaganda initiative. You apparently have what it takes to be an excellent journalist. Courage, and that special personal quality "there's no Quit in him".
Steven, we are indebted to, you on a planet wide scale for your efforts, and those of your colleagues. I'll be sure to explain to my children that yes, one person CAN make a difference. That there are more good people than bad people, trying very hard to make it a better world. I'll be using this series as the blueprint proof.
An extremely impressive and succinct pictorial indictment of the tragic way we have been bamboozled by the manipulations of the misguided media, politicians and sadly fanatic warmistas. Well done. That must have taken considerable time and effort but worth every moment.
to Mosher's conndrum – Briffa. He has revealed moments of clarity in the emails and is a torn man, who has had an illness.
It was more than one person, and some who are not known. I have to say that my role, while unique, was not absolutely required. Whoever wanted this file out was bound and determined to get it out, even if I wasn't dragged into it to play a small roll. My larger hope is that I can get people to focus on what the real issues: open access to the data and methods of climate science and open healthy debate, where people put aside the fighting words. I am committed to the truth, whereever that may lie, but at present the closed nature of the bigscience establishment precludes that.
Hide the decline. This is one of the stories that sound bite journalism cannot cover. It's detailed and confusing.
That's a good one. Unforntunately I dont see a time stamp during the day for this.
The clip, i believe is a standard clip that has been used in many joke you tube things.
As someone who posted a lot of youtube videos in my comments my hats are off to the creator of this,
but I know nothing about it.
1. There is one episode in particular where the third reviewer turns out to be a pain in the Butt for McIntyre, and that reviwer is Jones.
2. You have to have a pretty wide knowledge of the mails to even find the ones on peer review.
3. It turns out ( I found out just today ) that the link I found on JeffId on the 19th was posted several other places. Places not heavily trafficed. a blog by RomanM, climateskeptic as well. Those links went up the 17th, but only one person has come forward
to say he clicked on one of those links. That person is bender. and bender claims that he clicked on the hidden link at CA. bender also claims that once he saw it was a zip file, he aborted.
This begins to solve one of the big mysteries. On Nov 17th, A link to the zip file was hidden on CA.
I steve mcintyre was reading ( 1 hour after the post) I was reading and bender was reading.
According to gavin the hidden link was hit 4 times. Bender now admits he was one of those, but
he didnt download the file. That leaves three people who could have grabbed the file as early as 6:30 Am PSt on nov. 17th.
before people go all conspiritorial, bender and I are good blog friends since 2007. I believe him when he says he didnt download the file. so No, I am not bender, I don't know bender personally, and he didnt send
me the file. And no he doesnt clean my pool, thats just a joke between him and I.
"Because the divergence raises the question that if the tree-ring reconstructions could not read the higher temperatures of today, how could the scientists be sure that there weren’t higher temperatures throughout the last thousand years that have also gone undetected by the tree-rings. "
That's probably the clearest explanation I've seen of the significance of "divergence" — which led to the need to "hide the decline."
Well done, Patrick.
One question has always puzzled me is, How did “indusieumgresium” get to post the video clip “ Peer Review-1945.ca” on YouTube on the 19 November. Given what has been said here, there seems to me to be no time available to source the original video clip, install the sub titles, which refer directly to the goings on in the UEA-CRU, and get it posted. Unless “indusieumgresium” was the “whistleblower”.
I have asked this question many times on the blogs and have never had any interest shown, even though the word “indusieumgresium” as made up of 2 Latin words used in botany. (trees, tree rings etc.)
The video is still available on YouTube with the time stamp in the top right corner of the YouTube page.
Further down in the thread "Open Letter On Climate Legislation" on "the Air Vent", there was another posting at slot 19, FOIA data mirror said:- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XD050VKY. Time stamp was:- November 20, 2009 at 12:59 am (November 19 + 59 min. Who made that post ??
I don't want to pre-empt anything here, but check the translations of "indusieum" and "gresium". I have found many meanings but come back to some which suggest a grey protective layer. Also a layer to protect the sorus eg “In fungi and lichens, the sorus is surrounded by an external layer” (indusieumgresium ). (George Soros) ???
CLIMATEGATE
THE TRACK RECORD OVER FOUR DECADES
a.n.ditchfield
My environmental awareness was aroused in mid 1971, when I was invited to a meeting of the Club of Rome in Rio de Janeiro. It first struck me as a constructive publicity move of FIAT, the sponsor. At intervals of a few months the Club of Rome invited noted scientists and intellectuals to meetings at tourist attractions like Rio de Janeiro, with all expenses paid. They were asked to meditate about the predicament of mankind and to listen to progress reports of a team of young MIT engineers who were using a computer model to project the impact on the planet of expanding economic activity. The results of the study were stated in the 1972 book, Limits to Growth, of which some 12 million copies were printed. The launching of the book was a masterpiece by editorial standards and its contents still remain central to such thought, including that of John Holdren, science adviser of Obama.
One of the new tools used in the study was the feed-back algorithm developed by Prof. Jay Forrester, of MIT, to portray the unfolding of complex systems over long timelines. All relevant factors are displayed in elaborate flowcharts and their interplay shown in a succession of stages like snapshots, in which the end of one stage is the beginning of the next. The idea is much like that of cinema, in which the rapid display of successive photos creates the optical illusion of movement. Forrester used his feedback innovation to the study of location problems of industry (Industrial Dynamics) and to explain the decay of metropolitan cities in America (Urban Dynamics). The new effort applied Forrester’s technique to demonstrate the Club of Rome proposition that a finite planet cannot support growth of population and economic activity at the pace seen for two decades after World War II. The conclusion was ready; it needed rationalization with a computer model to give a scientific look to what was the belief of the sponsors, FIAT chairman Aurelio Peccei and the renowned scientist Alexander King.
Limits to Growth had a large number of gloomy forecasts, speculative thought as such, but not science, and time rejected their validity. The earliest of the kind, the Malthus Essay on the Principle of Population published in 1798, foretold a grim 19th century. The population of Britain, stable at 5 million until the middle of the 18th century, had grown to 8 million and was expanding at a geometrical rate, while the supply of food expanded at a lower arithmetical rate. As Malthus saw it, population was bound to collapse to a sustainable level through famine, disease and war. But during the 19th century the population of Britain became four times larger and the economy sixteen times greater, an expansion supported by the Industrial Revolution. Most Britons entered the 20th century well fed, clothed and healthy, housed in cities with good sanitation. Gone were the days of the “dark satanic mills” of the early 19th century. The technology that had expanded industrial output also provided the means to end squalor.
Malthusian thought was discredited but remained dormant until the 1968, when resurrected by Paul Erlich with his equally grim Population Bomb. This time world population was bound to collapse on a planet that was running out of arable land to feed it; he reckoned that over the next two decades hundreds of millions would die of famine. The reasoning was crude and was superseded by the more sophisticated approach of the Club of Rome that put in motion the PAT idea, a formula that summarizes the impact of human activity on the environment I = P×A×T. In words: Human Impact (I) on the environment equals the product of population (P), affluence (A): consumption per capita; and technology (T): environmental impact per unit of consumption. Population was still at the root of coming doomsday, and its impact on the planet is multiplied by growing demand for non-renewable resources (fuel and minerals) to sustain better living standards. Food scarcity was only one factor among many driving mankind to destruction.
I made three objections to the assumptions underpinning the Club of Rome study.
• Population forecasts are uncertain. What had come about in mid 20th century was the dramatic fall of mortality while fertility remained the same. I held this to be exceptional. Nothing warranted the assumption that this imbalance would persist indefinitely as projected in the study. Indeed, UN world population forecasts now show stability to be reached in the 21st century.
• Given the vast land area of the planet the idea of an excessive population is farfetched. Overcrowding is a local problem. It is evil in Calcutta and has been successfully coped with in many metropolitan cites.
• The concept of non-renewable resources was untenable. Most of the crust of the earth remains unknown. The Club of Rome assumption was that mineral reserves stated in sources like the Minerals Yearbook of the U.S, Bureau of Mines were all that remained and, given the naïve arithmetic, most would be depleted by the end of the 20th century.
Dennis Meadows, the project team leader, conceded that simplifications were made to make the World Model fit into the humble IBM 1130 computer, but these did not invalidate the axiomatic idea that a finite planet cannot support infinite growth. I challenged the axiom too. If Meadows reasoned at limits, I had equal right. I claim that all human consumption does not subtract one ounce from the mass of a planet subject to the Law of Conservation of Mass. Theoretically, everything can be recycled. The limitation is one of energy, and fusion energy reactors will make it available in practically unlimited quantities. It may be argued that we cannot count on technology not yet developed, but we must not discount it either. That is the flaw of Malthusian thought: the assumption that technological development will cease and stagnate forever at current levels.
What amazed me was the sight of the elderly sages of the Club of Rome accepting the computer printouts and graphs as sayings of a pagan oracle. To my mind they just illustrated the truth of the adage: [garbage in] = [garage out]. I know the content of the Forrester programs in the intimacy of FORTRAN statements, so I was not awed by the mathematics or by the computer of the MIT team. As an engineer, I had a professional interest in the Forrester programs because I was then engaged in location studies for large industries.
Eight weeks after the Rio de Janeiro Club of Rome meeting I traveled to New York on a business mission, after an absence of five years, and felt that I had landed on a different planet. On the ride from airport to Manhattan I was surprised by the sight of leafless trees in full summer. The cab driver explained that a pest was killing the trees and a court order had banned the use of pesticides; New Yorkers were exchanging their trees for a collection of insects. I found fleas in the subway, cockroaches in my hotel room and flies galore everywhere. I learned that the new Environmental Protection Agency, in one of its first acts, had banned the use of DDT with no scientific evidence to back the claim that it was harmful to human health. Over the previous decade the Silent Spring book of Rachel Carson had demonized it to the American public until it became politically correct to curse all chemical products used by modern farming. The anti-scientific ban was to have consequences beyond the discomfort I was experiencing. It stopped a world wide drive to eradicate malaria, as was done with polio and smallpox. Over four decades 40 to 50 million preventable deaths can be laid at the door of the promoters of this environmental cause. One of them was Alexander King, leader of the scientific team at the time of World War II that gave the world large scale availability of DDT, and the hope of eradicating insect-transmitted diseases. In his memoirs King let slip a senile remark: “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.”
I realized the strength of the grip of this new misanthropic attitude when I strolled down Lexington Avenue and stopped at a grocery that displayed boxes of worm-infested peaches on the sidewalk – sold at premium price! I entered for a word with the grocer. He claimed that he sold what the customers wanted: the presence of worms was taken as proof of legitimate “natural” fruit. To me it proved that fruit flies had sat on the peaches. I laughed. Someone with the wits to sell rotten peaches at high prices has the talent to sell anything at any price. I advised him to sell the grocery and move a few blocks west, to Madison Avenue, the hub of the advertising business, where he would earn a fortune as a gifted liar.
The mindset of America, and indeed of the Western world, was being shaken by a tectonic shift. For two centuries the Industrial Revolution had bestowed bounty on much of the world and was fast banishing the specter of dire want everywhere. Industrialization was fostered everywhere, and a national steel mill and national airline were emblematic of newly independent countries. Progress, once a universal aspiration, was now being challenged by contrarians of a new breed, not by the reactionaries of some failed Ancien Regime, of which the world still has plenty. The picturesque hippies of San Francisco who rejected progress and aspired to a life of idleness and poverty were only an echo of a wider movement that was engulfing the academic sphere and especially social studies. It was postmodern doctrine with its rejection of science, progress and of rational thought itself.
Prof. Alan Sokal, a physicist of New York University saw through it and concluded that there ain’t no thing called a social science. Anything goes, provided it is well written, scholarly-looking, in tune with the prejudices of the editor, and proved his point with publication of his paper, titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”. The paper would have been perceived as a hoax by an engineering student, but was published as serious in Social Text. In one statement the number PI had a value of 3.141592… because it was arbitrated by the current social context; future generations in a different context would give it another value, because all is relative. Sokal didn’t invent such postmodernist nonsense; it is supported by more than 100 references to what had been published about hard science by social “scientists”. Engineers and scientists stopped being pinup boys and were vilified as robots mindlessly herding mankind to the cliff edge. It was claimed that the higher knowledge of postmodernist government was needed to avert disaster.
During the decades dominated by Thatcher and Reagan a limit was put to the politics of envy that exploited the cynical saying that “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul”. This was laid to rest by market economy reforms that returned power to Victorian values that rewarded hard work, enterprise and ingenuity instead of political craftiness. Neither Blair nor Clinton dared tamper with reforms that worked well. The market economy was accepted all over the world because it was more efficient in meeting the needs of mankind than any alternative.
In the shadow of that time Environmentalism became a big business with a myriad of non-governmental organizations that evolved into a huge extortion racket, protected by law and supported by ample funds and publicity. With the turn of the political tide the racket is out for its own grab for power.
• Its objective is to place energy production under control of governments, and ultimately of an international body. Energy consumption would be rationed. Taxing the air you breathe will no longer be a figure of speech; it will be world wide policy to submit the acts of every human being to central control.
• Its technique is the one of the Club of Rome: rationalization with computer models to give a scientific look to what is an unproved and non provable belief: that anthropogenic global warming would end civilization (no longer attributed to overcrowding and exhausted resources). One finds the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change In the old role of the Club of Rome, with vastly expanded propaganda resources.
• Its instrument is the postmodern Precautionary Principle: where there is a deadlock in understanding, bureaucratic whim trumps science.
The instrument carries the threat of being lethal to democratic institutions. Its first notable use was ushered in by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the tenure of Carol Browner, during the Clinton years, to implement her anti-tobacco project with the justification that second hand smoke caused cancer in non-smokers. Numerous medical studies commissioned by the Agency failed to deliver the justification. The studies had been done under the stern rules of Food and Drug Administration with double-blind reviews. Big Tobacco hired lawyers to state their case and these resorted to expert testimony of scientists – exactly what the other side did. The pot called the kettle black. One cannot expect advances in science to emerge from such partisan conflict. Carol Browner circumvented the deadlock with a legal dodge of the Precautionary Principle: “if an action or policy has suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.” This opened the gates to endless mischief. On December 7th 2009, the day that lives in infamy, Obama decreed that carbon dioxide a pollutant dangerous to health, when it is the nutrient that sustains the food chain of all that lives on the planet. EPA rulings, not acts of Congress, are now the law of the land. America was turned into a Bobama Republic ruled by decree. Carol Browner is now energy adviser to Obama, not for her knowledge of the field but for her expertise in chicanery. Her achievement in the field was banning the drilling for oil on the continental shelf of Florida.
At the Copenhagen Climate Conference Hugo Chavez blamed global warming on capitalism and got a standing ovation from delegates of 191 sovereign states. Evo Morales blames Americans for the summer floods of Bolivia. They have the support of the Castro brothers, Amhadinejad, Kim Jong-il and of Osama Bin Laden. With friends like these, does Obama really need enemies?
In November 2009, three thousand documents with FORTRAN source codes and one thousand private e-mails were placed in the public domain, revealing peer-reviewed climate science as a joke on which rests the proposed expenditure of trillions of dollars. Climategate may come to rank with the climacteric events of World War II, as an event that changed the course of world history.
Waiter! I'll have what Paul has.
Patrick — I hope you see this and respond to it. In your narrative, you reveal that someone attacked the RealClimate blog, "…disabled all legitimate users, then uploaded from an IP address in Turkey a zip file with the title FOIA.zip containing the Climategate documents…This unknown user then attempted to create a draft post identical to that posted on the Air Vent, but the RealClimate admin stopped the foreign user before the post could go live."
Where is the evidence for this tale? Gavin Schmidt has put out variations of this story for quite a few weeks now. Other blogsters have asked him to prove that this happened. This is easily proved, but he has chosen not to do so.
Why would you report this as truth, when it's been such a bone of contention? Where did you get this information?
If you think this is a story, you should read Bishop Hill’s book “The Hockey Stick Illusion” It’s out this month.
The forthcoming No 1 bestseller of the year 2010.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/1/11/how-did-mosher-get-the-climategate-files.html
See if you can explain this: you say above "As can be seen, the Briffa et al reconstructions (in green) come to a halt at 1960 and the end of the graph, which is trending downwards, is hidden behind others that trend up – thus providing a strong rhetorical impression of a scientific consensus of unprecedented temperature increase. The pressure applied to climate scientists to reach this consensus would be later revealed in the Climategate emails."
The plot you show also has reconstructions that dip below where Briffa stops. Why leave them in if the message given by Briffa had to be suppressed? And of course, how can a trend that dips down be hidden behind others that trend up?
Patrick, it would be more correct to say that Wahl & Amman 2006 reproduced Mann et als 1998 results using the same methodology and data. However it also includes a few snippets of additional information including the r2 results for the earlier steps, data that was purposefully omitted from the original 1998 paper. Why was it omitted originally (although it was indeed calculated according to the code released by Mann) ? It was omitted because it shows that the early step results have no statistical significance, which critically undermines the conclusions of MBH1998. W&A therefore does replicate the results, something that M&M don't dispute, however it provides no support against the criticism of the validity of the data, methods, or statistical significance; indeed the publication of the r2 not only undermines the original conclusions but also raises the issue of scientific fraud because of the original exclusion of such information. That Michael Mann was aware of these issues is clear from some of the released emails where he mentions the residuals from his reconstruction and cautions against their public release.
[...] Peer-to-Peer Review (Part II): How ‘Climategate’ Marks the Maturing of a New Science Movement [...]
[...] Patrick Courrielche has done an interesting timeline on the outing of the Climategate emails here, here, here in which Mosher’s busy November 17-19 has been publicized for the first [...]
Yeah, they just keep getting elected, don't they?
[...] as described in Patrick Courrielche’s work on the outing of the Climategate emails here, here, here. and one of the key points Steve makes is that of course if the link was placed on CA, tAV [...]
Patrick,
Another correction. You said:
"To journalize his investigations into climate science, McIntyre created a blog called ClimateAudit – and this is when the peer-to-peer review network first took solid form."
Steve created ClimateAudit in order to respond to the articles and comments being made by Mann et al on their RealClimate web page. Steve attempted to respond to their comments at RealClimate but found his comments to be heavily moderated. The supression of any comments critical to the work of the RealClimate moderators is a well known characteristic of their web site. In fact the nature of the e-mails revealed in the Climategate release were very much in character with the behaviour on RealClimate.
An additional point. John Daly was one of the very first web page moderators who allowed and encouraged comments and criticisms of the Hockey Stick graph when it was first published. This was the very same John Daly referred to pejoratively in the Climategate e-mails after it had been announced that he had died suddenly.
[...] Courrielche has done an interesting timeline on the outing of the Climategate emails here, here, here in which Mosher’s busy November 17-19 has been publicized for the first [...]
[...] Peer-to-Peer Review: How ‘Climategate’ Marks the Maturing of a New Science Movement, Part II: [...]
The concerted efforts of all the skeptics already had the wobbly science of AGW on the run before Climategate. The public was slowly turning away from belief in global warming because their real life experience was showing something different. When the e-mails were released it created the major turning point where even the mainstream media had to finally say something, even though it tried to be dismissive. However, in my personal experience, there are noticeably more people talking openly of their skepticism on human-driven global warming. And of course, the bloggers have gained a whole new credibility and exposure that has even small town newspapers taking notice.
[...] een zeer lezenswaardige drieluik geschreven over climategate. De drie delen staan hier: deel I, deel II en deel III. Hoewel er veel thema’s aan de orde komen is het centrale punt dat hij wil maken [...]
[...] and defund the liars where ever we can, no matter how much and how loudly they scream…. » Peer-to-Peer Review (Part II): How ‘Climategate’ Marks the Maturing of a New Sci… – January 10th, 2010 at 6:32 [...]
Why would a teacher be required to show AlGore's propaganda piece in science class instead of political science class as a grand example of dis-information?
Mann famous hockey stick graph is perfect scientific proof that thermometers are superior to tree rings in measuring temperature. The next big multibillion dollar study will try to correlate Earthquakes to Anthropogenic mining and drilling activity. Just wait.
WYATT
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[...] 12, 2010 — a concise and fascinating history of Climategate can be found at these links: Part 1, Part 2, and Part [...]
[...] http://bigjournalism.com/pcourrielche/2010/01/10/peer-to-peer-review-part-ii-how-climategate-marks-t... [...]
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