Catholicism and Climate Change

[kimmielittle]

• Suspecting the scientists of conspiracy / yet not seeing same in those who profit from maintaining the status quo

 

[JasonSB]

Since when does FOI apply only to the AGW camp?

Sorry, that doesn’t even make sense to me.

Go back and look again at the question you asked. If you wanted to know if I thought that Jones et al chose not to share their code and data with certain people then you should have simply asked that, although it’s obviously true so hardly worth asking.

That isn’t what the emails say.

That’s precisely what they say. You even highlighted an instance of it:

“Think I’ve managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit”

They persuaded UEA’s FOI officer that the requests were not legitimate by showing them additional background info.

Here is what the ICO said:

I know what he said. I also know ICO’s subsequent clarification on the reporting of the issue.

The thing about living under the rule of law with a trial system is that we don’t automatically assume someone is guilty just because the regulatory authority responsible announces that they think someone might be guilty. There is a reason we have a court system.

In this particular case, the ICO said that they thought there was evidence of an infringement. The next step would be to actually investigate and see if an infringement had actually occurred, which they never bothered proceeding to. After that, they would then need to lay charges, and then, win a court conviction.

What you have here is a prosecutor saying “I think they did something wrong but I’m not going to investigate because even if I did I wouldn’t be able to lay charges due to the statute of limitations”. You can’t claim people are guilty on that basis.

We don’t know if they broke any laws by refusing to disclose information to certain people. What we do know is that refusing to share information with certain people does not in any way change the science.

The big problem, to me, is the use of FOIA as a weapon by the “skeptics”.

If there is any doubt about their motives, they should be dispelled by the fact that despite having full access to the GISS data and source code for years now, they still haven’t published a single paper on their findings. There’s no evidence that they even used it. Instead, once they had access to one, they simply shifted to a different target.

You could argue that they’re doing a service simply by forcing each team of researchers to release everything they’ve got, but that would be similar to “doing a service” by forcing all patent holders to give up their patents and all copyright holders to give up their copy rights. It might seem really good in the short term, but changing the rules like that might have a really detrimental effect on future researchers putting in the necessary effort. It’s not as if the researchers aren’t publishing their results (and I’ve seen nothing in the leaks to suggest a disagreement behind-the-scenes with what they publish publicly), which is all that’s normally required.

I think this email shows how the repeated FOIA requests are actually perceived by the scientists who are subject to them:

di2.nu/foia/1226451442.txt

Note that they aren’t “scared” of any scam being uncovered or cheats being exposed. He even points out that to audit the results properly McIntyre should be starting from scratch, and that’s exactly what was already done by Douglass et al:

“If Mr. McIntyre wishes to audit us, and determine whether the conclusions reached in our paper are sound, he has all the information necessary to conduct such an audit. Providing Mr. McIntyre with the quantities that I derived from the raw model data (spatially-averaged time series of surface temperatures and synthetic Microwave Sounding Unit [MSU] temperatures) would defeat the very purpose of an audit.”

He goes on to note that McIntyre is very selective about who he chooses to “audit”, completely ignoring papers with “seriously flawed statistical tests” that happen to dispute the consensus.

From di2.nu/foia/1228330629.txt:

"The inadvertent email I sent last month has led to a Data Protection Act request sent by a certain Canadian, saying that the email maligned his scientific credibility with his peers!

If he pays 10 pounds (which he hasn’t yet) I am supposed to go through my emails and he can get anything I’ve written about him. About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little - if anything at all. This legislation is different from the FOI - it is supposed to be used to find put why you might have a poor credit rating !"

This seems to have very little to do with making sure the science is good, and it was this kind of information that convinced the FOI officer that the requests could be ignored.

Ironically, in over a decade’s worth of email, the thing that’s most notable is the lack of any smoking guns that would support the conspiracy theorists!

desmogblog.com/another-look-stolen-emails

As far as I’m concerned - You started with your Hypothesis and fed your models based upon that hypothesis.

Clearly your statement is self-referential.

As far as if it’s warming or cooling…I have seen nothing supported by IPCC that would mitigate 1C of temperature OR save the environment

And you will continue to see nothing as long as you keep your eyes closed.

 

[kimmielittle]

Sorry, that doesn’t even make sense to me.

Go back and look again at the question you asked. If you wanted to know if I thought that Jones et al chose not to share their code and data with certain people then you should have simply asked that, although it’s obviously true so hardly worth asking.

That’s precisely what they say. You even highlighted an instance of it:

Actually, you stated this:

And the emails clearly reveal that they held discussions with the **Information Commissioner ** and UAE’s FOI officer to ensure that they complied with the law and refused to release information on the advice that they received.

The emails, I’ve seen, do not support the bolded.

The thing about living under the rule of law with a trial system is that we don’t automatically assume someone is guilty just because the regulatory authority responsible announces that they think someone might be guilty. There is a reason we have a court system.

Quite true, But that doesn’t change the damaging, self admittedly written emails, from what was also, SELF ADMITTEDLY, done to thwart FOI For any reason ]???..Just because a Court of law doesn’t prosecute doesn’t mean a person are innocent, does it?

In this particular case, the ICO said that they thought there was evidence of an infringement. The next step would be to actually investigate and see if an infringement had actually occurred, which they never bothered proceeding to.

The FOI Statute of limitations expired - Is why ICO never proceeded - however, Conspiracy intent is under British Criminal Law…And they still could be charged under it. Whether they are charged or not - is a different matter. If they are charged…,…Well, They already have admitted to group thwarting of FOI requests.

.

What you have here is a prosecutor saying “I think they did something wrong but I’m not going to investigate because even if I did I wouldn’t be able to lay charges due to the statute of limitations”. You can’t claim people are guilty on that basis.

The statute of limitations apply only to the FOI Legislation - not to conspiracy to thwart, FOI requests.

We don’t know if they broke any laws by refusing to disclose information to certain people.

Conspiring to thwart FOI is a Criminal Law. Not honoring FOI is a Civial Law — The Civil Law Statute of Limitations ran out.

The big problem, to me, is the use of FOIA as a weapon by the “skeptics”.

Agreed.

If there is any doubt about their motives,

I have no doubt about some peoples motives.

You could argue that they’re doing a service simply by forcing each team of researchers to release everything they’ve got, but that would be similar to “doing a service” by forcing all patent holders to give up their patents and all copyright holders to give up their copy rights. It might seem really good in the short term, but changing the rules like that might have a really detrimental effect on future researchers putting in the necessary effort. It’s not as if the researchers aren’t publishing their results (and I’ve seen nothing in the leaks to suggest a disagreement behind-the-scenes with what they publish publicly), which is all that’s normally required.

Science that asks so much from the earths inhabitants, demands transparency IMHO.

About the leaked emails…you wouldn’t be able to make this statement **"(and I’ve seen nothing in the leaks to suggest a disagreement behind-the-scenes with what they publish publicly)"**without them being leaked. So maybe that too, was a service to AGWer’s?

This seems to have very little to do with making sure the science is good, and it was this kind of information that convinced the FOI officer that the requests could be ignored.

AND we know this FOI officer at UEA was wrong according to ICO.

Ironically, in over a decade’s worth of email, the thing that’s most notable is the lack of any smoking guns that would support the conspiracy theorists!

Except the self admitted conspiracy to thwart FOI requests For whatever reasons ]

Clearly your statement is self-referential.

And Clearly, it doesn’t prove my assessment wrong.

And you will continue to see nothing as long as you keep your eyes closed.

Maybe better put, would be - I will continue to see nothing, UNTIL IPCC separates itself from subjective speculations.?

 

[Ender]

Was [Landsea’s] objection that the use of the word “likely” was unjustified on the evidence at the time? How does that falsify AGW?

False statements in one area don’t falsify the entire theory but an accumulation of false statements tends to justify the belief that the theory is rather reliant on them. Nor is this an isolated incident as the release of opinions not supported by science goes back at least to the 1995 Executive Summary of the Second Assessment Report which made assertions not backed up by the science in their own report.

Do you have any experience in software development?

In fact, yes, a great deal.

And complaining about the fact that everyone is using different file formats and he has to somehow figure everything out is part of the research effort – a pretty tedious and uninteresting part of it, but not exactly technically difficult.

That wasn’t his concern. He was complaining about the nature of the data, not the format of the files containing it, and what his comments showed was the arbitrariness of the selections and modifications used to create the adjusted data.

For you to claim that it’s farcical in the face of the obvious fact that they did is just bizarre:

It seems less bizarre than assuming that a couple of people could do in two days what a CRU programmer had been unable to complete in three years.

Those comments are taken from the source code of the operating system used by the computer that hosts this forum. Based on your logic I can now show that operating systems cannot possibly work and this forum cannot possibly exist.

That’s it? Your rebuttal to the chaotic and arbitrary nature of temperature adjustments is … an obscenity laced file with comments purportedly from Linux programmers gathered by an anonymous poster? I’ll point out that bad code is not the same thing as “code that doesn’t work” while bad data falls into the “garbage in, garbage out” category.

Ender

 

[Ender]

it continues to baffle me that when the Church leadership (Holy Father and the Bishops) has spoken in such a consistent way on what we need to do - keep the needs of the poor at the heart of the discussion and decisions many Catholics are willing to say, “well the Church is just giving an opinion” …

We are - as an objective - to “keep the needs of the poor” in mind. What this shows is a complete lack of specificity; we are each of us to do what we think will best aid the poor but the determination of what those actions are is left entirely to the individual to discern. It isn’t a question of the difference between opinion or doctrine, it is a question of the difference between ends and means. The Church properly specifies the ends to which we should direct our efforts, but they just as properly do not specify the particular means we should employ to achieve those ends.

So - yes, I do wish the Church’s teaching on what we need to do as individuals in terms of individual actions, and support specific policies, to mitigate climate change would be more often spoken of and more widely accepted.

“Specific policies” cannot be spoken of more since … there aren’t any. There is no Church teaching that includes a mandate for any specific action with regard to global warming for the simple reason that the determination of the validity of competing scientific positions is not a moral concern.

Ender

 

[lynnvinc]

…these emails show a conspiracy to thwart FOI

You know, if I were in their shoes I’d mount a much larger conspiracy to thwart FOI from the avalanche of denialists’ requests. So I guess that would be another sin I’d be guilty of .

Luckily God only gives us crosses we can bear.

 

[kimmielittle]

You know, if I were in their shoes I’d mount a much larger conspiracy to thwart FOI from the avalanche of denialists’ requests. So I guess that would be another sin I’d be guilty of .

Luckily God only gives us crosses we can bear.

ABSOLUTELY illuminating!

Maybe, this is why you might find it hard to convince some people of your sincerity?

“Johnny is not nice to me - so I’ll get others to help me break the laws to keep him getting what he’s legally entitled.”

But you aren’t alone, you share the same mindset of some of the most prominent of the AGW camp scientists

 

[kimmielittle]

False statements in one area don’t falsify the entire theory but an accumulation of false statements tends to justify the belief that the theory is rather reliant on them. Nor is this an isolated incident as the release of opinions not supported by science goes back at least to the 1995 Executive Summary of the Second Assessment Report which made assertions not backed up by the science in their own report.
In fact, yes, a great deal.
That wasn’t his concern. He was complaining about the nature of the data, not the format of the files containing it, and what his comments showed was the arbitrariness of the selections and modifications used to create the adjusted data.
It seems less bizarre than assuming that a couple of people could do in two days what a CRU programmer had been unable to complete in three years.
That’s it? Your rebuttal to the chaotic and arbitrary nature of temperature adjustments is … an obscenity laced file with comments purportedly from Linux programmers gathered by an anonymous poster? I’ll point out that bad code is not the same thing as “code that doesn’t work” while bad data falls into the “garbage in, garbage out” category.

Ender

Do you have any experience in software development?

**

In fact, yes, a great deal.

**

We also have Physicist and Meteorologists and other Sciences reading and at times, contributing here.

It’s always amazed me: that only the AGW’ers Scientists are held in such esteem by a couple of people, here.

Selective to speculation?

 

[kimmielittle]

It’s not as if the researchers aren’t publishing their results ** (and I’ve seen nothing in the leaks to suggest a disagreement behind-the-scenes with what they publish publicly)**, which is all that’s normally required.

Here is one; Referring to the Published Jones - Wang 1990 papers.

informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm
You know the one after the SUNY review of Mr. Wang…Mr.Wigley said this to Mr Jones

From Prof Tom Wigley to Jones – 4 May 2009
“I have always thought W-C W [Wang] was a rather sloppy scientist. I therefore would not be surprised if he screwed up here … Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it’s not too late? I realise that Keenan is just a troublemaker and out to waste time, so I apologize for continuing to waste your time on this, Phil. However, I am concerned because all this happened under my watch as director of CRU and, although this is unlikely, the buck eventually should stop with me.”

So we know that there is at least one instance of disagreement about published papers.

 

[kimmielittle]

Here would be another disagreement:

*Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:57:57 -0600
From: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones Subject: Re: [geo] Re: CCNet: A Scientific Scandal Unfolds… * 139.222.131.184
*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… *
*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?
Of course, I don’t know how often Yamal-12 has really been used in
recent, post-1995, work. I suspect from what you say it is much less
often that M&M [McIntyre and fellow sceptic Professor Ross McKitrick] say—but where did they get their information? I
presume they went thru papers to see if Yamal was cited, a pretty foolproof method if
you ask me. 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.
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. *

More

Two months ago Wigley rebuked Climategate’s Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann for sending a deceptive graph with a “fluke” result to back up Wigley’s contention that the recent cooling was still consistent with overall warming. He also claimed the IPCC and warmist scientists had made too many “dishonest presentations”.

*

On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Tom Wigley wrote:

Mike,

The Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical
runs with PCM look as though they match observations—but the
match is a fluke. PCM has no indirect aerosol forcing and a low
climate sensitivity—compensating errors. In my (perhaps too
harsh)
view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model
results by individual authors and by IPCC*. This is why I still use
results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least
here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and
forcing assumptions/uncertainties.

Tom.

+++++++++++++++++++

Michael Mann wrote:

thanks Tom,
I’ve taken the liberty of attaching a figure that Gavin put
together the other day (its an update from a similar figure he
prepared for an earlier RealClimate post. see:
realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009… It is indeed worth a thousand words, and drives home Tom’s point below. We’re planning on doing a post on this shortly, but would be nice to see the Sep. HadCRU numbers first,
mike
On Oct 14, 2009, at 3:01 AM, Tom Wigley wrote:

Dear all,
At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the
recent
lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to
look at
the difference between the observed and expected anthropogenic
trend relative to the pdf for unforced variability. The second
is to remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations from the
observed data.
Both methods show that what we are seeing is not unusual. The
second
method leaves a significant warming over the past decade.
These sums complement Kevin’s energy work.
Kevin says … “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack
of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”. I
do not
agree with this.
Tom.

*​

 

[kimmielittle]

Continued

Now to Wigley’s emails. He had been the director of CRU at the time, and knew the charges against Wang were actually true, and that the failure to answer and address them was wrong. He hints to Jones that Jones could have known the data was wrong, too, and participated in a coverup. He accuses the university of “asking for trouble” with its seeming coverup, too…
*Tom Wigley to Phil Jones: *
*(1188557698.txt) *
*Phil, *
*Seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (WCW [Wang] at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect. *
*Whether or not this makes a difference is not the issue here. *
Tom.
Again from Tom Wigley to Phil Jones, just seven months ago:

(1241415427.txt) *
*Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 *
*Phil, *
*Do you know where this stands? The key things from the Peiser items are … *
*“Wang had been claiming the existence of such exonerating documents for nearly a year, but he has not been able to produce them. Additionally, there was a report published in 1991 (with a second version in 1997) explicitly stating that no such documents exist. Moreover, the report was published as part of the Department of Energy Carbon Dioxide Research Program, and Wang was the Chief Scientist of that program.” *
*and *
*“Wang had a co-worker in Britain. In Britain, the Freedom of Information Act requires that data from publicly-funded research be made available. *
*I was able to get the data by requiring Wang’s co-worker to release it, under British law. It was only then that I was able to confirm that Wang had committed fraud.” *
*You are the co-worker, so you must have done something like provide Keenan with the DOE report that shows that there are no station records for 49 of the 84 stations. I presume Keenan therefore thinks that it was not possible to select stations on the basis of … *
*“… station histories: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times” *
*[THIS IS ITEM “X"] *
*Of course, if the only stations used were ones from the 35 stations that did have station histories, then all could be OK. However, if some of the stations used were from the remaining 49, then the above selection method could not have been applied (but see below) — unless there are other “hard copy” station history data not in the DOE report (but in China) that were used. From what Wang has said, if what he says is true, the second possibility appears to be the case. *
*What is the answer here? *
*The next puzzle is why Wei-Chyung didn’t make the hard copy information available. Either it does not exist, or he thought it was too much trouble to access and copy. My guess is that it does not exist — if it did then why was it not in the DOE report? In support of this, it seems that there are other papers from 1991 and 1997 that show that the datado not exist. What are these papers? Do they really show this? *
*Now my views. (1) I have always thought W-C W was a rather sloppy scientist. I therefore would not be surprised if he screwed up here. But ITEM X is in both the W-C W and Jones et al. papers — so where does it come from first? Were you taking W-C W on trust? *
*(2) It also seems to me that the University at Albany has screwed up. To accept a complaint from Keenan and not refer directly to the complaint and the complainant in its report really is asking for trouble. *
*(3) At the very start it seems this could have been easily dispatched. *
*ITEM X really should have been … *
*“Where possible, stations were chosen on the basis of station histories and/or local knowledge: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times” *
*Of course the real get out is the final “or”. A station could be selected if either it had relatively few “changes in instrumentation” *
*OR “changes in location” OR “changes in observation times”. Not all three, simply any one of the three. One could argue about the science here — it would be better to have all three — but this is not what the statement says. *
*Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? *
*Perhaps it’s not too late? *
*—– *
*I realise that Keenan is just a trouble maker and out to waste time, so I apologize for continuing to waste your time on this, Phil. However, I am concerned because all this happened under my watch as Director of CRU and, although this is unlikely, the buck eventually should stop with me.” *

 

[JasonSB]

The emails, I’ve seen, do not support the bolded.

You must have somehow overlooked the following in your extensive research, then:

“Keith/Tim still getting FOI requests as well as MOHC and Reading. All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions not to respond - advice they got from the Information Commissioner.”

“IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI - the skeptics have been told this. Even though we (MOHC, CRU/UEA) possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don’t have an obligation to pass it on.”

“According to the FOI Commissioner’s Office, IPCC is an international organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on, unless it has anything to do with our core business – and it doesn’t!”

It is a strange criminal conspiracy indeed where they conspire to thwart legitimate FOIA requests by seeking advice from the relevant authorities and then acting on it!

Just because a Court of law doesn’t prosecute doesn’t mean a person are innocent, does it?

No, it doesn’t – but it certainly does mean that you cannot go around claiming they are guilty.

The FOI Statute of limitations expired - Is why ICO never proceeded

Actually, they initially claimed that they were going to investigate it anyway and use it as evidence that the statute of limitations should be changed. A couple of months later they quietly dropped it. Why? Perhaps because when they did dig deeper they found that actually there was nothing to investigate. Perhaps when they realised that UEA was acting under their advice it would look a bit silly. I don’t know. Neither do you. If you want to claim to know then you’re going to have to provide some evidence.

Well, They already have admitted to group thwarting of FOI requests.

Under advice that they did not have to respond to them.

Science that asks so much from the earths inhabitants, demands transparency IMHO.

That is an argument that can be made, but there’s no escaping the fact that this is an evolving view. It wasn’t normal in the past, and still isn’t normal now – witness the fact that UAH still hasn’t released code or data.

Personally, it doesn’t bother me in the least. It is actually better for different groups to implement the ideas presented in the papers independently, because if they still get the same result then it tells you the result is robust. If they use the same source code and the same data then of course they’re going to get the same result, which tells you absolutely nothing.

The fact that it took just two days for the Russell report researchers to whip up their own version using nothing but published information proves that the necessary information was already available. The fact that many others have also created their own temperature reconstructions in the past year with essentially the same results reconfirms it.

To be perfectly honest, this isn’t even terribly complicated, and any decent programmer would be able to do the same.

About the leaked emails…you wouldn’t be able to make this statement **"(and I’ve seen nothing in the leaks to suggest a disagreement behind-the-scenes with what they publish publicly)"**without them being leaked. So maybe that too, was a service to AGWer’s?

This is true – in fact, if people stopped misrepresenting the emails and read them for what they actually say it would stop all this nonsense of AGW being a “conspiracy” right away.

The best use of them, for me, has been to make it really easy for me to identify at a glance how honest and how diligent someone is about trying to find out the truth.

AND we know this FOI officer at UEA was wrong according to ICO.

You may want to read what the ICO actually said very carefully.

“Meanwhile, the ICO has been alerted by the complainant and by information already in the public domain via the media, to a potential offence under section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act. The prima facie evidence from the published emails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information… The fact that elements of a section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter.”

I agree they thought there was evidence that an offence may have been committed, and I agree that the reason they were not acting on it was due to the statute of limitations. But this is a long way from saying an office was committed and that the only reason they weren’t convicted was due to the statute of limitations. Note the use of the words “potential”, “indicate”, and “may”. The emails themselves show the scientists actively trying to work within the law, and refuse requests only after being advised that they are allowed to. If you ask the tax office for advice and you act on that advice, people can’t claim that you are a criminal or involved in a conspiracy even if you pass that advice on to others.

And Clearly, it doesn’t prove my assessment wrong.

I suspect that, in your eyes, nothing will.

 

[kimmielittle]

You must have somehow overlooked the following in your extensive research, then:

“Keith/Tim still getting FOI requests as well as MOHC and Reading. All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are ** now using ** the same exceptions not to respond - advice they got from the Information Commissioner.”

Selective parsing?

"Now using " Dated Aug 20 2008
Note: Mr Jones to Mr Gavin Schmidt.

From: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
To: Gavin Schmidt gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: Revised version the Wengen paper
Date: Wed Aug 20 09:32:52 2008
Cc: Michael Mann mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Gavin,
    Almost all have gone in. Have sent an email to Janice re the regional freshening.
On the boreholes I've used mostly Mike's revised text, with bits of
yours making it read a little better.
   Thinking about the final bit for the Appendix. Keith should be in later, so
I'll check with him - and look at that vineyard book.  I did rephrase the bit
about the 'evidence' as Lamb refers to it. I wanted to use his phrasing - he
used this word several times in these various papers. What he means is his
mind and its inherent bias(es).
   Your final sentence though about improvements in reviewing and
traceability is a bit of a hostage to fortune. The skeptics will try to hang on to
something, but I don't want to give them something clearly tangible.
    Keith/Tim still getting FOI requests as well as MOHC and Reading. All our
FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions
not to respond - advice they got from the Information Commissioner. As an
aside and just between us, it seems that Brian Hoskins has withdrawn himself
from the WG1 Lead nominations. It seems he doesn't want to have to deal with
this hassle.
    The FOI line we're all using is this. IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI - the

skeptics
have been told this. Even though we (MOHC, CRU/UEA) possibly hold relevant info
the IPCC is not part our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don’t
have an obligation to pass it on.
Cheers
Phil

They Mr Jones ] sought out the UEA FOI Officer - who supposedly got information from and ICO…BUT according to ICO…The UEA FOI Officer was wrong.

This was because of Mr. Hollands FOI requests included IPCC -

BUT Mr Jones et al have been conspiring to thwart FOI way back in 2005 Or earlier…With no advice from anyone

It is a strange criminal conspiracy indeed where they conspire to thwart legitimate FOIA requests by seeking advice from the relevant authorities and then acting on it!

You have no evidence of this. It is referred to as hearsay evidence. “Well, Johnny told me he talked to…” I have seen no email, or other correspondence, directly addressed to any ICO Official.

AND no email from an ICO or UEA FOI Officer, telliing them “they could thwart FOI requests”.

What we DO have evidence of is: their actual emails calling to thwart FOI requests. Emails acknowledged, to be authenticate.

No, it doesn’t – but it certainly does mean that you cannot go around claiming they are guilty.

Did I say they were? Your false accusations are getting a bit tiresome.

I said their emails showed conspiracy intent. That they self admittedly, qualify their own guilt in this matter.

Who said they were going to thwart FOI? - THEY DID Who asked others to delete emails…etc etc? - THEY DID

If you want to claim to know then you’re going to have to provide some evidence.

This might have been a true and logical statement - had they not incriminated themselves prior to contacting IOC. But as email dates show…It was in April or May of 2008…that they were able to get UEA FOI Officer - who might - or might not - have contacted a ICO Office, to help them with Mr. Hollands requests.

From: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
To: “Michael E. Mann” mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, “raymond s. bradley” rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: A couple of things
Date: Fri May 9 09:53:41 2008
Cc: “Caspar Ammann” ammann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

  Mike, Ray, Caspar,

1. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but
   this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim
   have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we’ve found a way
   around this.

 

[kimmielittle]

continued

The fact that it took just two days for the Russell report researchers to whip up their own version using nothing but published information proves that the necessary information was already available. The fact that many others have also created their own temperature reconstructions in the past year with essentially the same results reconfirms it.

Actually, no it doesn’t confirm anything EXCEPT someone can copy what is fed them. I can mimic a Dove’s Coo…

This is true – in fact, if people stopped misrepresenting the emails and read them for what they actually say it would stop all this nonsense of AGW being a “conspiracy” right away.

Yeppers!! Delete these emails…Don’t tell anyone we have FOI…Hide behind…etc etc. Should be read as Honest Sincere Scientific attributes.

I agree they thought there was evidence that an offence may have been committed, and I agree that the reason they were not acting on it was due to the statute of limitations. But this is a long way from saying an office was committed and that the only reason they weren’t convicted was due to the statute of limitations. Note the use of the words “potential”, “indicate”, and “may”. The emails themselves show the scientists actively trying to work within the law, and refuse requests only after being advised that they are allowed to.

These aren’t little boys and I think AGWers who don’t require them to wear their big boy pants - do them a diservice.

If you ask the tax office for advice and you act on that advice, people can’t claim that you are a criminal or involved in a conspiracy even if you pass that advice on to others.

Hmmmm…Do you mean the “Johnny told me to do it Or I could do it ], Mommy” excuse? Just how can I get that to work here at my home, please? The older I get and closer to voting age - The harder it is to even think about using it.

OH, you might mean the “I Didn’t know” excuse? That’s when I get the " Ignorance of the rules, is no excuse" sermon.

I suspect that, in your eyes, nothing will.

Maybe, you shouldn’t try to think when you feel that way?

 

[JasonSB]

False statements in one area don’t falsify the entire theory but an accumulation of false statements tends to justify the belief that the theory is rather reliant on them.

“False statement”? You haven’t disagreed with my assessment that his objection was to the use of the word “likely” based on the evidence at the time. Subsequent research appears to have led him to conclude that increased frequency of the strongest cyclones is now “more likely than not — a higher confidence level than possible at our previous assessment”. So he objected to a figure of 66% three years ago, but is now using “>50%” himself.

Based on his objections and subsequent events you could conclude that the IPCC may have been premature in making that declaration, but that is not the same thing as saying the statement was false. And when you read what it actually says, it’s clear that we’re not talking about a fundamental tenant of the theory of AGW – they’re making a rather wishy-washy statement about what they expect based on what appears to be the case so far.

To take one statement, mischaracterise it as “false”, then assume there are others, and then use that assumption to justify a belief that the theory is “rather reliant on them” is a little odd, don’t you think? Perhaps you should actually show that it relies on things that are false rather than a difference of opinion over how likely a single consequence is.

Nor is this an isolated incident as the release of opinions not supported by science goes back at least to the 1995 Executive Summary of the Second Assessment Report which made assertions not backed up by the science in their own report.

Such as?

In fact, yes, a great deal.

Really? In what capacity?

I have fourteen years’ experience writing and selling very expensive commercial scientific software that is used by the world’s largest mining companies, as well as the US Army, the DoE, the DTRA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the USBR, the DoA, and the BLM. (I’ve been Managing Director for the past six years but I still do a lot of programming.)

Before that I was in academia, so I know both sides of the coin, and I know the difference between a program that a researcher whips up as a tool to test out an idea and commercial software that must be maintained and be idiot-proof.

You?

That wasn’t his concern. He was complaining about the nature of the data, not the format of the files containing it, and what his comments showed was the arbitrariness of the selections and modifications used to create the adjusted data.

The selections and modifications are hardly arbitrary. They’ve been documented and described in the literature for many, many years, and recent efforts by independent investigators have used similar techniques. If you’ve been reading the links I’ve provided you will already be fully aware of this. The Russell Report also described the technique they used.

If you can create much the same result using the raw data from just 61 rural stations around the world it should come as no great surprise that the results are not particularly sensitive to these choices.

It seems less bizarre than assuming that a couple of people could do in two days what a CRU programmer had been unable to complete in three years.

It seems bizarre that you would think they would need to do what the CRU programmer spent three years doing. Did you read the report? Did you understand what they said?

That’s it? Your rebuttal to the chaotic and arbitrary nature of temperature adjustments is … an obscenity laced file with comments purportedly from Linux programmers gathered by an anonymous poster?

Actually, I would expect someone with “a great deal” of experience in the software industry to know how to obtain the Linux kernel source and grep it without needing to cast doubt on what it contains. The fact you thought it was a file rather than comments extracted from throughout the source tree is telling.

The point, of course, is that programmers routinely describe things as “hacks” or “kludges” or worse. You shouldn’t read into that anything about whether the software is actually correct or not. Generally a hack or a kludge is an inelegant solution specifically to make it work, and any design decisions that programmers disagree with often earn an obscenity, with the intensity often proportional to the level of surprise at the decision made.

I’ll point out that bad code is not the same thing as “code that doesn’t work”

Precisely. And I’ll point out that the software industry has well-documented studies that show the difference in effort required between writing a program (a tool written by a programmer to do a particular task that works if treated just right) and a product (something that is intended for use by others, with a nice user interface and correct behaviour in the presence of unexpected (name removed by moderator)uts) is between three and nine to one. It is a waste of effort for researchers to make products when all they need are tools to help them conduct their research. I still write quick little tools all the time even now for exactly the same reason.

while bad data falls into the “garbage in, garbage out” category.

No. Extracting the wheat from the chaff is a very common problem. In scientific computing we are always right on the edge of what’s possible. Nobody wants to take the easy route and throw away good information just because it’s buried in a pile of horse manure. If you don’t put the extra effort in, somebody else will and steal your thunder.

To dismiss the possibility of that with a trite cliche and no attempt to understand what’s actually being done says more about you than it does about their work.

 

[JasonSB]

Selective parsing?

Not from me, no.

BUT Mr Jones et al have been conspiring to thwart FOI way back in 2005 Or earlier…With no advice from anyone

Sorry but you can’t assume that from the evidence at hand, because:

You have no evidence of this. It is referred to as hearsay evidence. “Well, Johnny told me he talked to…” I have seen no email, or other correspondence, directly addressed to any ICO Official.

AND no email from an ICO or UEA FOI Officer, telliing them “they could thwart FOI requests”.

… which is a consequence of the fact that the emails released so far represent just a tiny fraction of what actually existed over that period of time.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of its absence, especially when the evidence we have at hand was selectively chosen by those who stole the email in the first place!

What we DO have evidence of is: their actual emails calling to thwart FOI requests. Emails acknowledged, to be authenticate.

What we do have is emails talking about discussions with FIO officers and the ICO. You believe what the emails say when it supports your belief, but you dismiss it as hearsay when those exact same emails do not.

Why don’t you go away and think about that for a second.

Did I say they were? Your false accusations are getting a bit tiresome.

I said their emails showed conspiracy intent. That they self admittedly, qualify their own guilt in this matter.

(Emphasis mine.)

Your disingenuousness is getting a bit tiresome.

Using the word “conspiracy” presupposes guilt. Nobody accuses another of “conspiracy” when they are discussing lunch plans with their friends.

To make it worse, you complain when I characterise you as going around claiming they are guilty and then in your very next paragraph claim that they are by their own admission.

Who said they were going to thwart FOI? - THEY DID Who asked others to delete emails…etc etc? - THEY DID

And who said it’s illegal? You did. Yet you haven’t shown that the emails in question were even legitimately subject to FOIA requests, nor that, if they deleted them, it was actually illegal. (Hint: have a look at the advice they received on that matter.)

This might have been a true and logical statement - had they not incriminated themselves prior to contacting IOC. But as email dates show…It was in April or May of 2008…that they were able to get UEA FOI Officer - who might - or might not - have contacted a ICO Office, to help them with Mr. Hollands requests.

You read too much into the information you have at hand while dismissing anything contrary to your preconceptions. It’s remarkable the conclusions you can draw on a tiny bit of evidence when you like those conclusions, while at the same time ignoring all the evidence for AGW so you don’t have to accept it.

 

[JasonSB]

Actually, no it doesn’t confirm anything EXCEPT someone can copy what is fed them. I can mimic a Dove’s Coo…

Anybody who Googled a few keywords from your posts would already know that.

 

[JasonSB]

So we know that there is at least one instance of disagreement about published papers.

There are plenty of disagreements about published papers.

What we’re looking for are instances where scientists said one thing in public (as part of the hypothesised Global Warming Conspiracy to create One World Government and Raise Kimmielittle’s Taxes) while in private the same scientists were saying the opposite.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

Kimmie, Ender, and Jason:

Perhaps I’m stepping into the crossfire – or perhaps I’m just playing the obligatory “can’t we all just get along” patsy in every internet argument – but it seems to me that two things are at play here:

1. Very smart and very well-meaning people on both sides of the debate continue to disagree. In fact, Jason and Ender continually had me waffling on what I thought as I read their (somewhat challenging) posts.
2. This thread was supposed to be a discussion of what a Catholic’s obligations are with regard to AGW, not a debate about the validity of that theory.

I, personally, must defer to people who are much smarter than I when it comes to the science. I am, thus, somewhat on the fence on the issue – though leaning away from the anthropogenic hypothesis. The important thing is, though, that a Catholic ought to make his/her choice in good faith based on his/her best understanding.

In either case, we are all called to be good financial stewards, good earthly stewards, and good citizens. That said, from a moral standpoint, whether AGW is correct is irrelevant, because we should take common-sense steps to preserve our planet and to care for the poor anyway. These steps should be a reasonable combination of governmental programs, corporate enterprises, and individual acts of charity – because there is no reasonable way for any of these avenues to be the only effectual one.

Peace,
Dante

 

[kimmielittle]

Kimmie, Ender, and Jason:

Perhaps I’m stepping into the crossfire – or perhaps I’m just playing the obligatory “can’t we all just get along” patsy in every internet argument – but it seems to me that two things are at play here:

1. Very smart and very well-meaning people on both sides of the debate continue to disagree. In fact, Jason and Ender continually had me waffling on what I thought as I read their (somewhat challenging) posts.
2. This thread was supposed to be a discussion of what a Catholic’s obligations are with regard to AGW, not a debate about the validity of that theory.

I, personally, must defer to people who are much smarter than I when it comes to the science. I am, thus, somewhat on the fence on the issue – though leaning away from the anthropogenic hypothesis. The important thing is, though, that a Catholic ought to make his/her choice in good faith based on his/her best understanding.

In either case, we are all called to be good financial stewards, good earthly stewards, and good citizens. That said, from a moral standpoint, whether AGW is correct is irrelevant, because we should take common-sense steps to preserve our planet and to care for the poor anyway. These steps should be a reasonable combination of governmental programs, corporate enterprises, and individual acts of charity – because there is no reasonable way for any of these avenues to be the only effectual one.

Peace,
Dante

:clapping::clapping: