One Climategate Email Trumps All the Denials

Despite clear evidence of corruption in the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia denial is underway
One Climategate Email Trumps All the Denials
By Dr. Tim Ball Thursday, December 17, 2009
Despite clear evidence of corruption in the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia denial is underway. But they cannot deny the contents of one email.

It was from Tom Wigley, CRU, to Michael Mann on June 25, 2009. Mann was worried about a call to testify at a Congressional hearing organized by the Chairs of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s (M&M) challenge to the hockey stick science.

My editorial comments are inserted in the original text in red italics. Other quotations are in black italics.

Mike,

There are broader implications of this, so it is important to respond well. This is serious. They are on to us and you are batting for the team. It is a pity you have to be the guinea pig after what you have gone through already, but you have many supporters. Earlier emails determine McIntyre is a liar with an agenda and his attacks are wrong and unfair. They consistently portray themselves as victims. I would not advise a legal route. Wise, because AGW claims don’t bear legal scrutiny. It also implies guilt. I think you need to consider this as just another set of referees’ comments and respond simply, clearly and directly. But now they were not selecting the referees. These comments are unnecessary if you’re telling the truth. They are also parental in their tone, but Wigley is the grandfather of CRU, the IPCC and the entire climate science manipulation.

On the science side the key point is that the M&M criticisms are unfounded. It was clear they did not understand McIntyre and McKitrick’s challenge as this confirms. Although this may be difficult, remember that this is not really a criticism of you personally, but one aspect of a criticism of the foundations of global warming science by people both inside and outside of Congress who have ulterior motives. Wigley reassures, but he can’t accept there are legitimate scientific questions. A scientist believing the science is settled is troubling. There may, in fact, be an opportunity here. As you know, we suspect that there has been an abuse of the scientific review process at the journal editor level. The method is to choose reviewers who are sympathetic to the anti-greenhouse view. These last two comments are incredible. He is accusing others illegality, but it is precisely what they were doing. Recent papers in GRL (including the M&M paper) have clearly not been reviewed by appropriate people. Who are “appropriate people”? The ones they choose. Wigley ultimately got the GRL editor James Saiers fired.

Concerns about Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) were firmly entrenched and their ability to block other publications well established. Mar 31, 2004 Jones wrote to Mann, “Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.”

We have a strong suspicion that this is the case, but, of course, no proof because we do not know *who* the reviewers of these papers have been. This was the charge made against those editors who published the articles the CRU gang produced. They refused to disclose the reviewers. The emails detail how they made sure “appropriate” reviewers were provided, knowing they would not be revealed. Perhaps now is the time to make this a direct accusation and request (or demand) that this information be made available. They don’t seem to realize this would expose their malfeasance. In order to properly defend the good science it is essential that the reasons for bad science appearing in the literature be investigated. Frightening comment, because only they know what is “good science” and you bully “bad science” by personal attacks. The lever here is that the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is suggesting that your papers are bad science and asking (their point 8e) for the identity of people who reviewed your work. The Committee is investigating the charge they were peer reviewing each other’s work, which was confirmed by the Wegman report. In response, it is completely fair and justifiable to point out that it is the papers that criticize your and related work that are bad science, and that, through the Subcommittee you can request the identities of the reviewers of all of these critical papers—starting with M&M. Amazing! When you respond, there are a number of items that require a direct response from you alone. There are also a number of scientific points where you could give a multi-authored response. Safety in numbers and whose names should appear as authors is a game documented in the emails. Multiple authors appear on many of their articles. There are many people who have expertise in this area and familiarity with the scientific issues who I am sure would be willing to join you (I would be happy to do so). At this stage, however, I would keep the group small. This appears to indicate an awareness of keeping control of the issue. A few others could be added to the original email list nevertheless. I took the liberty of copying your plea and the Subcommittee’s letter to Caspar Ammann, primarily because I think he can help with the scientific aspects better than most people. Amman later tried to ‘help’ but ended up right in McIntyre’s sights and likely regretted getting involved.

After all, he has been able to follow your method and reproduce your results, he has shown the flaws in M&M’s work, he has investigated the bristlecone pine issue, and he has made all his software available on the web. The others who could be added at this early stage are Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes, your ‘co-conspirators’—and perhaps Phil Jones, Keith Briffa and Tim Osborn. All are members of the CRU gang. I do not know how ‘powerful’ these alien opinions may be in the present parochial context, but I note that the instigators of all this are Canadians and that the science has no national boundaries. Does this mean he thinks the concerns are restricted to Canada and it may not be of concern because the rest of the world doesn’t know? He thinks the concern may be contained. Phil, Keith and Tim are useful because they have demonstrated the flaws in the von Storch work—which is, I assume, the Science paper that the Subcommittee’s letter referes (sic) to. A word of warning. I would be careful about using other, independent paleo reconstruction work as supporting the MBH reconstructions. Of course he would because he knows they will show a very different result. I am attaching my version of a comparison of the bulk of these other reconstructions. Although these all show the hockey stick shape, the differences between them prior to 1850 make me very nervous. Yes, because they show the Medieval Warm Period that the hockey stick was designed to eliminate. If I were on the greenhouse deniers’ side, I would be inclined to focus on the wide range of paleo results and the differences between them as an argument for dismissing them all. Who are these people? There never were any who denied the greenhouse effect. Consider the illogic of this. Here he is playing Devils advocate and using the same illogic in all his other suggested defenses. He is saying, although all the other paleo constructions generally agree he would argue that they are all wrong. Amazing. I attach also a run with MAGICC using central-estimate climate nmodel parameters (DT2x = 2.6 degC, etc.—see the TAR), and forcings used by Caspar in the runs with paleo-CSM. I have another Figure somewhere that compares MAGICC with paleo-CSM. The agreement is nearly perfect (given that CSM has internally generated noise while MAGICC is pure signal). The support for the hockey stick is not just the paleo reconstructions, but also the model results. They ignore the failure of models to recreate past climate conditions (validation). In several instances they accept model results over real data. As Dr Roy Spencer wrote, ”But most of the talks presented followed the recipe that has become all too common in recent years: analyze the output of climate models that predict substantial global warming, and simply assume the models are somewhere near correct.” If one takes the best estimates of past forcing off the shelf, then the model results show the hockey stick shape.

But these are models that don’t include major forcings such as the Milankovitch Effect of changing Sun/Earth relationships. No tuning or fudging here; this is a totally independent analysis, and critics of the paleo data, if they disbelieve these data, have to explain why models get the same result. Because they’re programmed the same and leave out most forcings. Of course, von Storch’s model results do not show such good century timescale agreement, but this is because he uses silly forcing and has failed to account for the fact that his model was not in equilibrium at the start of the run (the subject of Tim Osborn et al.‘s submitted paper). This is a pain in the but (sic), but it will all work out well in the end (unintentional pun - sorry). How dare they ask questions? Good science will prevail. Finally an accurate comment, but as with all Wigley’s introverted expectations not as he anticipated. Best wishes. No comment.