“I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.” – Douglas Maraun, UEA.
Today is the tenth anniversary of “Climategate 2”.
On 22 November 2011, about two years after the first Climategate event, a link was placed by FOIA on six climate sceptic blogs. One of the blog owners, Verity Jones, wrote a blog post The Chosen Few with all the links and timings.
As mentioned in my previous post, one of those bloggers, Roger Tattersall, subsequently had his computers confiscated by the Police. You can hear his full interview with Gordon Corera here (only a short excerpt made it into the Radio 4 programme).
The zip file at the link contained over 5000 emails, many more than the first tranche, but they were all from the same original batch downloaded in 2009.
As well as the emails, there was a README.txt file in which Mr FOIA sets out his motivation (“FOIA 2011 — Background and Context”) and then summarises some of the issues raised by the content of the emails. It’s given in full here.
FOIA expresses concern over poverty and the amount of money being wasted on climate action, that could be better spent. He clearly has left-wing views. As I discussed in the post about the BBC’s “Hack That Changed The World”, this ought to dispose of the delusion that Climategate was organised by a free market lobby group or “Big oil”. Presumably those in the echo chamber who still believe this myth haven’t bothered to read it.
“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”
“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”
Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline.
The text file then highlights certain issues, with some quotes from relevant emails.
One issue is how the IPCC AR4 is being written in a misleading way by Phil Jones and others. For example, in email 1939, Peter Thorne criticises Jones for not accurately representing uncertainties, and in email 3066 he says that “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.”
In email 2884, Tom Wigley tells Michael Mann that a figure he sent is “very deceptive” and that in his opinion “there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC.“
FOIA gives numerous example of politicisation and spin and “The Cause”, a phrase used by Mann in email 3115 and email 3940.
On the technical side, FOIA highlights the temperature reconstructions, the medieval warm period, and private admissions of the poor quality of climate models.
The first issue is particularly devastating. It’s clear from the emails that most of the climate scientists in the emails regard Michael Mann’s notorious hockey stick as, to use their technical term, “crap”, and some of them acknowledge that Steve McIntyre’s criticism of Mann’s work is valid.
I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!
the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published.
That’s just the tip of the Climategate 2 iceberg. There are more links and summaries here, here and here.
Climate Scepticism 
From the last big link, this jumped out at me (Phil Jones to Tom Wigley):
“Bottom line – their [sic] is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility. [sic]”
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from your Mr FOIA README.txt link –
” Torok/CSIRO:
[…] idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed
“global icons” […] One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef […]
It also became apparent that there was always a local “reason” for the
destruction – cyclones, starfish, fertilizers […] A perception of an
“unchanging” environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral
loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of
systematic damage from long-term climatic/environmental change […] Such a
project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate
change”
wonder when “the Great Barrier Reef is dying caused by MMGW” papers & news started ?
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I have to give credit to Gordan Correra’s producer, Sally. When she initially rang me to ask if I’d take part, she got a 45min earful off me, including an injunction that if I took part, I expected to be more than just colour to the story. Of course, that’s exactly what they used me for.
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another gem – Shukla/IGES:
“Future of the IPCC”, 2008] It is inconceivable that policymakers will be
willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the
projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and
simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.”
how wrong Shukla was (in some nations anyway)
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ok – final quote at end of .txt link –
” Jones:
[FOI, temperature data]
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we
get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main Dept of Energy in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”
say no more Phil & US Dept of Energy- you helped change the world (UK anyway) with your research.
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Roger handled his unsought part in what turned out to be the last chance to avoid the climate consensus sociopathology with integrity and class. That the climate consensus was a worldwide manipulation by many players exercising “motivated reasoning” is obvious, if one actually looks at the data.
I wonder if the players realized that by getting people to believe lies about the weather they would unleash on the world lies about gender? Or that overt censorship and anti-democratic governing would spread like an acute leukemia?
The consequences of demanding a fear mongering lie about climate have not stopped at climate.
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