De sceptische blogger Tallbloke van tallbloke.wordpress.com heeft een gratis PR boost gekregen van de Britse politie: die hebben namelijk zijn computers geconfisceerd en inmiddels laten weten dat alles netjes terugkomt zodra de harde schijven zijn gekloond. Cartoonist Josh maakte er bovenstaande plaat bij (trouwens: welke Nederlandse catoonist wil pro bono bij ons aan de slag?). Tallbloke was de eerste blogger die Climategate 2.0 – een nieuwe batch e-mails van de mysterieuze FOIA – bekend maakte.

Hieronder ten overvloede wellicht nog eens de “poverty is a death sentence” READ ME van FOIA:

Message to ‘FOIA’

 

Thank you, whoever you are, freedom of information is a principle worth upholding.

 

Here’s the README contents:

 

/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///

 

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

 

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

 

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

 

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

 

“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.

 

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few

remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

 

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning

to publicly release the passphrase.

 

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such

as…

 

 

/// The IPCC Process ///

 

<1939> Thorne/MetO:

 

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. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these

further if necessary […]

<3066> Thorne:

 

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.

<1611> 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.

<2884> Wigley:

 

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive […] there have been a number of

dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC […]

<4755> Overpeck:

 

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s

included and what is left out.

<3456> Overpeck:

 

I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about

“Subsequent evidence” […] Need to convince readers that there really has been

an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?

<1104> Wanner/NCCR:

 

In my [IPCC-TAR] review […] I crit[i]cized […] the Mann hockey[s]tick […]

My review was classified “unsignificant” even I inquired several times. Now the

internationally well known newspaper SPIEGEL got the information about these

early statements because I expressed my opinion in several talks, mainly in

Germany, in 2002 and 2003. I just refused to give an exclusive interview to

SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.

<0414> Coe:

 

Hence the AR4 Section 2.7.1.1.2 dismissal of the ACRIM composite to be

instrumental rather than solar in origin is a bit controversial. Similarly IPCC

in their discussion on solar RF since the Maunder Minimum are very dependent on

the paper by Wang et al (which I have been unable to access) in the decision to

reduce the solar RF significantly despite the many papers to the contrary in

the ISSI workshop. All this leaves the IPCC almost entirely dependent on CO2

for the explanation of current global temperatures as in Fig 2.23. since

methane CFCs and aerosols are not increasing.

 

<2009> 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!

<2775> Jones:

 

I too don’t see why the schemes should be symmetrical. The temperature ones

certainly will not as we’re choosing the periods to show warming.

<1219> Trenberth:

 

[…] opposing some things said by people like Chris Landsea who has said all the

stuff going on is natural variability. In addition to the 4 hurricanes hitting

Florida, there has been a record number hit Japan 10?? and I saw a report

saying Japanese scientists had linked this to global warming. […] I am leaning

toward the idea of getting a box on changes in hurricanes, perhaps written by a

Japanese.

<0890> Jones:

 

We can put a note in that something will be there in the next draft, or Kevin

or I will write something – it depends on whether and what we get from Japan.

<0170> Jones:

 

Kevin, Seems that this potential Nature paper may be worth citing, if it does

say that GW is having an effect on TC activity.

<0714> Jones:

 

Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about

the tornadoes group.

<3205> Jones:

 

Useful ones [for IPCC] 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 ?)

<4923> Stott/MetO:

 

My most immediate concern is to whether to leave this statement [“probably the

warmest of the last millennium”] in or whether I should remove it in the

anticipation that by the time of the 4th Assessment Report we’ll have withdrawn

this statement – Chris Folland at least seems to think this is possible.

 

/// Communicating Climate Change ///

 

<2495> Humphrey/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.

<0813> Fox/Environment Agency:

 

if we loose the chance to make climate change a reality to people in the

regions we will have missed a major trick in REGIS.

<4716> Adams:

 

Somehow we have to leave the[m] thinking OK, climate change is extremely

complicated, BUT I accept the dominant view that people are affecting it, and

that impacts produces risk that needs careful and urgent attention.

<1790> Lorenzoni:

 

I agree with the importance of extreme events as foci for public and

governmental opinion […] ‘climate change’ needs to be present in people’s

daily lives. They should be reminded that it is a continuously occurring and

evolving phenomenon

<3062> Jones:

 

We don’t really want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that Michael has written

[…] We’ll have to cut out some of his stuff.

<1485> Mann:

 

the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what

the site [Real Climate] is about.

<2428> Ashton/co2.org:

 

Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn

this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions – bad politics – to

one about the value of a stable climate – much better politics. […] the most

valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as

possible

<3332> Kelly:

 

the current commitments, even with some strengthening, are little different

from what would have happened without a climate treaty.

[…] the way to pitch the analysis is to argue that precautionary action must be

taken now to protect reserves etc against the inevitable

<3655> Singer/WWF:

 

we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the

public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and

b) in order to get into the media the context between climate

extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and

energy

<0445> 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

<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:

 

In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public

relations problem with the media

 

Kjellen:

 

I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global

warming

 

Pierrehumbert:

 

What kind of circulation change could lock Europe into deadly summer heat waves

like that of last summer? That’s the sort of thing we need to think about.

 

/// The Medieval Warm Period ///

 

<5111> Pollack:

 

But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland.

<5039> Rahmstorf:

 

You chose to depict the one based on C14 solar data, which kind of stands out

in Medieval times. It would be much nicer to show the version driven by Be10

solar forcing

<5096> Cook:

 

A growing body of evidence clearly shows [2008] that hydroclimatic variability

during the putative MWP (more appropriately and inclusively called the

“Medieval Climate Anomaly” or MCA period) was more regionally extreme (mainly

in terms of the frequency and duration of megadroughts) than anything we have

seen in the 20th century, except perhaps for the Sahel. So in certain ways the

MCA period may have been more climatically extreme than in modern times.

 

/// The Settled Science ///

 

<0310> Warren:

 

The results for 400 ppm stabilization look odd in many cases […] As it stands

we’ll have to delete the results from the paper if it is to be published.

<1682> Wils:

 

[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural

fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably […]

<2267> Wilson:

 

Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially

since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models,

surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.

[…] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the

models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from

the sun alone.

<5289> Hoskins:

 

If the tropical near surface specific humidity over tropical land has not gone

up (Fig 5) presumably that could explain why the expected amplification of the

warming in the tropics with height has not really been detected.

<5315> Jenkins/MetO:

 

would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier

melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?

<2292> Jones:

 

[tropical glaciers] There is a small problem though with their retreat. They

have retreated a lot in the last 20 years yet the MSU2LT data would suggest

that temperatures haven’t increased at these levels.

<1788> Jones:

 

There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from “recent

extreme weather is due to global warming”] – at least not a climatologist.

<4693> Crowley:

 

I am not convinced that the “truth” is always worth reaching if it is at the

cost of damaged personal relationships

<2967> Briffa:

 

Also there is much published evidence for Europe (and France in particular) of

increasing net primary productivity in natural and managed woodlands that may

be associated either with nitrogen or increasing CO2 or both. Contrast this

with the still controversial question of large-scale acid-rain-related forest

decline? To what extent is this issue now generally considered urgent, or even

real?

<2733> Crowley:

 

Phil, thanks for your thoughts – guarantee there will be no dirty laundry in

the open.

<2095> Steig:

 

He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he

thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the

supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.

<0953> Jones:

 

This will reduce the 1940-1970 cooling in NH temps. Explaining the cooling with

sulphates won’t be quite as necessary.

<4944> Haimberger:

 

It is interesting to see the lower tropospheric warming minimum in the tropics

in all three plots, which I cannot explain. I believe it is spurious but it is

remarkably robust against my adjustment efforts.

<4262> Klein/LLNL:

 

Does anybody have an explanation why there is a relative minimum (and some

negative trends) between 500 and 700 hPa? No models with significant surface

warming do this

<2461> Osborn:

 

This is an excellent idea, Mike, IN PRINCIPLE at least. In practise, however,

it raises some interesting results […] the analysis will not likely lie near to

the middle of the cloud of published series and explaining the reasons behind

this etc. will obscure the message of a short EOS piece.

<4470> Norwegian Meteorological Institute:

 

In Norway and Spitsbergen, it is possible to explain most of the warming after

the 1960s by changes in the atmospheric circulation. The warming prior to 1940

cannot be explained in this way.

 

/// The Urban Heat Effect ///

 

<4938> Jenkins/MetO:

 

By coincidence I also got recently a paper from Rob which says “London’s UHI

has indeed become more intense since the 1960s esp during spring and summer”.

<0896> Jones:

 

I think the urban-related warming should be smaller than this, but I can’t

think of a good way to argue this. I am hopeful of finding something in the

data that makes by their Figure 3.

<0044> Rean:

 

[…] we found the [urban warming] effect is pretty big in the areas we analyzed.

This is a little different from the result you obtained in 1990.

[…] We have published a few of papers on this topic in Chinese. Unfortunately,

when we sent our comments to the IPCC AR4, they were mostly rejected.

<4789> Wigley:

 

there are some nitpicky jerks who have criticized the Jones et al. data sets –

we don’t want one of those [EPRI/California Energy Commission meeting].

 

Jones:

 

The jerk you mention was called Good(e)rich who found urban warming at

all Californian sites.

<1601> Jones:

 

I think China is one of the few places that are affected [urban heat]. The

paper shows that London and Vienna (and also New York) are not affected in the

20th century.

<2939> Jones:

 

[…] every effort has been made to use data that are either rural and/or where

the urbanization effect has been removed as well as possible by statistical

means. There are 3 groups that have done this independently (CRU, NOAA and

GISS), and they end up with essentially the same results.

[…] Furthermore, the oceans have warmed at a rate consistent with the land.

There is no urban effect there.

 

/// Temperature Reconstructions ///

 

<1583> Wilson:

 

any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will

undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently

have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model

comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think.

<4165> Jones:

 

what he [Zwiers] has done comes to a different conclusion than Caspar and Gene!

I reckon this can be saved by careful wording.

<3994> Mitchell/MetO

 

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

<4241> Wilson:

 

I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I

could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.

[…] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is

precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.

<3373> Bradley:

 

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”.

<4758> 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!

<0886> Esper:

 

Now, you Keith complain about the way we introduced our result, while saying it

is an important one. […] the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to

missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by

dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together. So, why

don’t you want to let the result into science?

<4369> Cook:

 

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.

<5055> Cook:

 

One problem is that he [Mann] will be using the RegEM method, which provides no

better diagnostics (e.g. betas) than his original method. So we will still not

know where his estimates are coming from.

 

/// Science and Religion ///

 

<2132> Wigley:

 

I heard that Zichichi has links with the Vatican. A number of other greenhouse

skeptics have extreme religious views.

<4394> Houghton [MetO, IPCC co-chair]

 

[…] we dont take seriously enough our God-given responsibility to care for the

Earth […] 500 million people are expected to watch The Day After Tomorrow. We

must pray that they pick up that message.

<0999> Hulme:

 

My work is as Director of the national centre for climate change research, a

job which requires me to translate my Christian belief about stewardship of

God’s planet into research and action.

<3653> Hulme:

 

He [another Met scientist] is a Christian and would talk authoritatively about

the state of climate science from the sort of standpoint you are wanting.

 

/// Climate Models ///

 

<3111> Watson/UEA:

 

I’d agree probably 10 years away to go from weather forecasting to ~ annual

scale. But the “big climate picture” includes ocean feedbacks on all time

scales, carbon and other elemental cycles, etc. and it has to be several

decades before that is sorted out I would think. So I would guess that it will

not be models or theory, but observation that will provide the answer to the

question of how the climate will change in many decades time.

<5131> 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.

<2423> Lanzante/NOAA:

 

While perhaps one could designate some subset of models as being poorer in a

lot of areas, there probably never will be a single universally superior model

or set of models. We should keep in mind that the climate system is complex, so

that it is difficult, if not impossible to define a metric that captures the

breath of physical processes relevant to even a narrow area of focus.

<1982> Santer:

 

there is no individual model that does well in all of the SST and water vapor

tests we’ve applied.

<0850> Barnett:

 

[IPCC AR5 models] clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the

modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer

<5066> Hegerl:

 

[IPCC AR5 models]

So using the 20th c for tuning is just doing what some people have long

suspected us of doing […] and what the nonpublished diagram from NCAR showing

correlation between aerosol forcing and sensitivity also suggested.

<4443> Jones:

 

Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low

level clouds.

<4085> Jones:

 

GKSS is just one model and it is a model, so there is no need for it to be

correct.

 

/// The Cause ///

 

<3115> Mann:

 

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.

<3940> Mann:

 

They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic

example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted

upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a

bit.

<0810> Mann:

 

I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s

doing, but its not helping the cause

<3594> Berger:

 

Phil,

Many thanks for your paper and congratulations for reviving the global warming.

<0121> Jones:

 

[on temperature data adjustments] Upshot is that their trend will increase

<4184> Jones:

 

[to Hansen] Keep up the good work! […] Even though it’s been a mild winter in

the UK, much of the rest of the world seems coolish – expected though given the

La Nina. Roll on the next El Nino!

<5294> Schneider:

 

Even though I am virtually certain we shall lose on McCain-Lieberman, they are

forcing Senators to go on record for for against sensible climate policy

 

/// Freedom of Information ///

 

<2440> Jones:

 

I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself

and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the

process

<2094> Briffa:

 

UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails]

anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC

task.

<2459> Osborn:

 

Keith and I have just searched through our emails for anything containing

“David Holland”. Everything we found was cc’d to you and/or Dave Palmer, which

you’ll already have.

<1473> McGarvie/UEA Director of Faculty Administration:

 

As we are testing EIR with the other climate audit org request relating to

communications with other academic colleagues, I think that we would weaken

that case if we supplied the information in this case. So I would suggest that

we decline this one (at the very end of the time period)

<1577> 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 funder (US

Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original

station data.

Als reactie op de belachelijke politieactie is Lord Monckton is inmiddels bezig met aangifte wegens wetenschappelijke en economische fraude door klimaatwetenschappers (zie artikel).

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