We’ve lost count of how many ways the Climategaters have tried to deceive the public.
From the Climategate 2.0 collection, Tom Wigley suggests to Ben Santer that NOAA’s Tom KARL be used as a “front” author in a Science/Nature commentary complaining about efforts to get raw data through Freedom of Information.
Also, note how skeptics like McIntyre, Fred Singer, John Christy and David Douglas have simply driven the alarmists crazy.
The e-mail exchange is below.
—————————–
date: Wed Dec 3 16:01:24 2008
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: Schles suggestion
to: Gavin Schmidt
Gavin,
I’m trying – but we’ve not got to bother unless he pays his £10!
It would probably be counter productive, but it would be good if
all that is going on behind the scenes re FOI, research fraud allegations etc
were to come out.
If I decide to do IPCC again, I’ll certainly flag it up with Thomas Stocker.
Cheers
Phil
Page 23107 of 33101
PS I found out from Tom Peterson what probably happened re October. A part
of Russia sent September’s data as October. This went in. They quickly sent
the correct data, but it didn’t get changed. This is because their (GHCN) software
was wrong. When ‘corrected’ data come in many countries just send the ‘new’
number with the other fields missing. What we do is always replace ‘old’
with ‘new’, but if the ‘new’ is missing in some fields we don’t replace ‘old’.
The if statement should be on each piece of data – not on the whole set of
data from an entire country – or in this case a part of Russia.
As usual – there is no substitute for experience!
At 15:34 03/12/2008, you wrote:
Using the DPA is surely an abuse of the process. A comment in an email
about someone doesn’t count as ‘data’ – it’s just opinion. The only
‘data’ you have is his email address. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to get
that.
Can’t you invoke the vexatious litigant clause? 😉
Gavin
On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 08:57, Phil Jones wrote:
> Ben,
> When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide
> by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a
> screen, to convince them otherwise
> showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the
> types of people we were
> dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the
> Environmental Sciences school
> – the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. I’ve
> got to know the FOI
> person quite well and the Chief Librarian – who deals with appeals.
> The VC is also
> aware of what is going on – at least for one of the requests, but
> probably doesn’t know
> the number we’re dealing with. We are in double figures.
>
> One issue is that these requests aren’t that widely known within
> the School. So
> I don’t know who else at UEA may be getting them. CRU is moving up
> the ladder of
> requests at UEA though – we’re way behind computing though. We’re away of
> requests going to others in the UK – MOHC, Reading, DEFRA and
> Imperial College.
>
> So spelling out all the detail to the LLNL management should be
> the first thing
> you do. I hope that Dave is being supportive at PCMDI.
>
> 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
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 !
>
> In response to FOI and EIR requests, we’ve put up some data –
> mainly paleo data.
> Each request generally leads to more – to explain what we’ve put
> up. Every time, so
> far, that hasn’t led to anything being added – instead just
> statements saying read
> what is in the papers and what is on the web site! Tim Osborn sent one such
> response (via the FOI person) earlier this week. We’ve never sent
> programs, any codes
> and manuals.
>
> In the UK, the Research Assessment Exercise results will be out
> in 2 weeks time.
> These are expensive to produce and take too much time, so from next
> year we’ll
> be moving onto a metric based system. The metrics will be # and
> amounts of grants,
> papers and citations etc. I did flippantly suggest that the # of
> FOI requests you get
> should be another.
>
> When you look at CA, they only look papers from a handful of
> people. They will start on another coming out in The Holocene early
> next year. Gavin
> and Mike are on this with loads of others. I’ve told both exactly
> what will appear on
> CA once they get access to it!
>
> Cheers
> Phil
>
>
> At 01:17 03/12/2008, Ben Santer wrote:
> >Dear Tom,
> >
> >I think that the idea of a Commentary in Science or Nature is a good
> >one. Steve Sherwood made a similar suggestion. I’d be perfectly
> >happy NOT to be involved in such a Commentary. My involvement would
> >look too self-serving.
> >
> >One of the problems is that I’m caught in a real Catch-22 situation.
> >At present, I’m damned and publicly vilified because I refused to
> >provide McIntyre with the data he requested. But had I acceded to
> >McIntyre’s initial request for climate model data, I’m convinced
> >(based on the past experiences of Mike Mann, Phil, and Gavin) that I
Page 23109 of 33101
> >would have spent years of my scientific career dealing with demands
> >for further explanations, additional data, Fortran code, etc. (Phil
> >has been complying with FOIA requests from McIntyre and his cronies
> >for over two years). And if I ever denied a single request for
> >further information, McIntyre would have rubbed his hands gleefully
> >and written: “You see – he’s guilty as charged!” on his website.
> >
> >You and I have spent over a decade of our scientific careers on the
> >MSU issue, Tom. During much of that time, we’ve had to do science in
> >”reactive mode”, responding to the latest outrageous claims and
> >inept science by John Christy, David Douglass, or S. Fred Singer.
> >For the remainder of my scientific career, I’d like to dictate my
> >own research agenda. I don’t want that agenda driven by the constant
> >need to respond to Christy, Douglass, and Singer. And I certainly
> >don’t want to spend years of my life interacting with the likes of
> >Steven McIntyre.
> >
> >I hope LLNL management will provide me with their full support. If
> >they do not, I’m fully prepared to seek employment elsewhere.
> >
> >With best regards,
> >
> >Ben
> >
> >Tom Wigley wrote:
> >>Ben,
> >>Re the idea Michael sent around (to Revkin et al.)
> >>this is something that Nature or Science might like
> >>as a Commentary. It might even be possible to include
> >>some indirect reference to the Mc audit issue. The
> >>notes I sent could be a starting point. One problem
> >>is that you could not be first author as this would
> >>look like garnering publicity for your own work (as
> >>the 2 key papers are both Santer et al.) Even having
> >>me as the first author may not work. An ideal person
> >>would be Tom Karl, who sent me a response saying “nice
> >>summary”.
> >>What do you think?
> >>Tom.
> >
> >
> >–
> >—————————————————————————-
> >Benjamin D. Santer
> >Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
> >Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
> >P.O. Box 808, Mail Stop L-103
> >Livermore, CA 94550, U.S.A.
> >Tel: (925) 422-3840
> >FAX: (925) 422-7675
> >email: santer1@llnl.gov
> >—————————————————————————-