The global warming conspiracy: how it massaged data and hid truth

Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun
Nov. 23, 2009

Phil Jones, IPCC author and head of Britain’s influential Climatic Research Unit, has given us the most obvious example of the massaging of evidence, but his is far from the only example from members of The Team - this conspiracy of global warming scientists.

Jones’ email you’ve already no doubt read:

From: Phil Jones

To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX

Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000

Cc: @XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers

Phil

Prof. Phil Jones

Climate Audit has explained just how that “trick” worked, and just what it so handily hid.

(updated)

But here’s two now three other examples - one involving an extraordinary collusion to hide clear errors in a temperature reconstruction produced by Keith Briffa which allegedly showed today’s temperature was higher than anything in the past.

(updated)

First, another example - this shameless email from Mick Kelly, of Jones’ CRU:

Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer "“ 10 year "“ period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.

Second, this, from Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann to Jones and others, explaining the need to get rid of evidence that the Medieval Warm Period 1000 years ago was actually warmer than now:

Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back"“I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back....

In fact, activists such as Adam Markham, head of the Clean Cool Air Planet, which sells global warming “solutions”, somehow got the impression they could trust these guys to beef up scarey predictions to order.

Here’s Markham’s email to Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia and founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (who’se actually since backed away from the catastrophists):

From: Adam Markham

To: m.hulme@XXXX, n.sheard@XXXX

Subject: WWF Australia

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 09:43:09 -0400

Cc: mrae@XXXX

Hi Mike,

I’m sure you will get some comments direct from Mike Rae in WWF Australia, but I wanted to pass on the gist of what they’ve said to me so far.

They are worried that this may present a slightly more conservative approach to the risks than they are hearing from CSIRO. In particular, they would like to see the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible. They regard an increased likelihood of even 50% of drought or extreme weather as a significant risk. Drought is also a particularly important issue for Australia, as are tropical storms.

I guess the bottom line is that if they are going to go with a big public splash on this they need something that will get good support from CSIRO scientists (who will certainly be asked to comment by the press).

One paper they referred me to, which you probably know well is: “The Question of Significance” by Barrie in Nature Vol 397, 25 Feb 1999, p 657

Let me know what you think.

Adam

Inside The Team, the debates seemed often to be about how much alarmism they could get away with without being seen through, Jonathan Overpeck on having to back off the claim that 1998 was the hottest year in at least 1000 years - an IPCC claim the media still regurgitates, but which the leading alarmist scientists knew was false :

I don’t think our team feels it is valid to say, as they did in [the IPCC’s] TAR, that “It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere,… 1998 was the warmest year” in the last 1000 years. But, it you think about it for a while, Keith [Briffa] has come up with a clever 2nd sentence (when you insert “Northern Hemisphere” language as I suggest below). At first, my reaction was< leave it out, but it grows on you, especially if you acknowledge that many readers will want more explicit prose on the 1998 (2005) issue.

Greater uncertainty associated with proxy-based temperature estimates for individual years means that it is more difficult to gauge the significance, or precedence, of the extreme warm years observed in the recent instrumental record. However, there is no new evidence to challenge the statement made in the TAR that 1998 (or the subsequent near-equivalent 2005) was likely the warmest of Northern Hemisphere year over the last 1000 years.

David Rind replied:

Now getting back to the resolution issue: given what we know about the ability to reconstruct global or NH temperatures in the past - could we really in good conscience say we have the precision from tree rings and the very sparse other data to make any definitive statement of this nature (let alone accuracy)?

While I appreciate the cleverness of the second sentence, the problem is everybody will recognize that we are ‘being clever’ - at what point does one come out looking aggressively defensive?

I agree that leaving the first sentence as the only sentence suggests that one is somehow doubting the significance of the recent warm years, which is probably not something we want to do.

Now to another example, brilliantly analysed on Power Line (read it in full there).

This started with the revelation by Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit that Jones’ colleague Keith Briffa had used a unscientifically tiny sample of tree rings to claim an unprecedented rise in global warming over the last century. Further, McIntyre revealed that Briffa actually ignored a much larger sample he actually knew about that would have shown no warming at all.

Here’s how the conspiracy reacted:

The ill Briffa’s co-author Tim Osborn responds to colleagues’ request for advice on how to respond:

Hi Mike and Gavin,

thanks for your emails re McIntyre, Yamal and Keith.... Regarding Yamal, I’m afraid I know very little about the whole thing—other than that I am 100% confident that “The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result” is complete crap…

Apart from Keith, I think Tom Melvin here is the only person who could shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal. But he can be a rather loose cannon and shouldn’t be directly contacted about this....

The next day, Osborn writes:

Keith’s temporarily come in to get a handle on all this, but it will take time. Likely outcome is (1) brief holding note that no cherry-picking was done and demonstrating data selection is defendable by our time tomorrow; (2) longer piece with more evaluation etc. in around a week. No point is posting something that turns out to be wrong.

Michael Mann replies:

great--thanks Tim, sounds like we have a plan. in our post [on the Real Climate blog], which we’ll target for tomorrow as well, we’ll simply link to whatever CRU puts up and re-iterate the sentiment of the temporary short response (i.e. that there was no cherry-picking, a careful and defensible selection procedure was used) and we’ll mostly focus on the broader issues, i.e. that any impact of this one series in the vast array of paleoclimate reconstructions (and the importance of the paleoclimate reconstructions themselves) has been over-stated, why these sorts of attacks are not legitimate science, etc.

So McIntyre’s work is to be denounced as “not legitimate science” even before anyone knows where he was right or wrong

Mann then briefs a New York Times reporter that McIntyre’s claims are “bogus” - without knowing if they are or are not::

Hi Andy, I’m fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.

It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I’m fairly certain the versions of these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method), let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context.

So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn’t matter as far as the key conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don’t think there is any problem with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual information content of these data.

But privately, the conspiracy doubts. The day after he spoke to the reporter, Mann asked Tim Osborn whether a 2006 paper co-authored by Osborn and Briffa was untainted by Briffa’s bad Yamal data:

And Osborn and Briffa ‘06 is also immune to this issue, as it eliminated any combination of up to 3 of the proxies and showed the result was essentially the same (fair to say this Tim?).

Osborn actually can’t agree completely, unfortunately, and is even amazed Science published his stuff:

Mike,

yes, you’re right: figs S4-S6 in our supplementary information do indeed show results leaving out individual, groups of two, and groups of three proxies, respectively. It’s attached.

I wouldn’t say we were immune to the issue—results are similar for these leave 1, 2 or 3 out cases, but they certainly are not as strong as the case with all 14 proxies.

Certainly in figure S6, there are some cases with 3 omitted (i.e. some sets of 11) where modern results are comparable with intermittent periods between 800 and 1100. Plus there is the additional uncertainty, discussed on the final page of the supplementary information, associated with linking the proxy records to real temperatures (remember we have no formal calibration, we’re just counting proxies—I’m still amazed that Science agreed to publish something where the main analysis only involves counting from 1 to 14!

).

But this is fine, since the IPCC AR4 and other assessments are not saying the evidence is 100% conclusive (or even 90% conclusive) but just “likely” that modern is warmer than M[edieval] W[arm] P[eriod]. ...

So, this Yamal thing doesn’t damage Osborn & Briffa (2006), but important to note that O&B (2006) and others support the “likely” statement rather than being conclusive.

Cheers

Tim

But Tom Wigley, another member of the “Team”, is privately blunter about Briffa’s errors, which his colleagues are busily defending publicly:

Phil,

It is distressing to read that American Stinker item. But Keith does seem to have got himself into a mess. As I pointed out in emails, Yamal is insignificant. And you say that (contrary to what M&M say) Yamal is *not* used in MBH, etc. ...

But, more generally, (even if it *is* irrelevant) how does Keith explain the McIntyre plot that compares Yamal-12 with Yamal-all? And how does he explain the apparent “selection” of the less well-replicated chronology rather that the later (better replicated) chronology?..... Perhaps these things can be explained clearly and concisely—but I am not sure Keith is able to do this as he is too close to the issue and probably quite pissed of[f].

And the issue of with-holding data is still a hot potato, one that affects both you and Keith (and Mann). Yes, there are reasons—but many *good* scientists appear to be unsympathetic to these. The trouble here is that with-holding data looks like hiding something, and hiding means (in some eyes) that it is bogus science that is being hidden.

I think Keith needs to be very, very careful in how he handles this. I’d be willing to check over anything he puts together.

Tom.

Is this science or a scandal, disclosure or coverup, the seeking of truth or the hiding of it?