With all the wild accusations flying around over the illegally obtained email correspondence from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, I thought I would ask one of the scientists in the middle of the issue to provide someย context.
Penn State University climate scientist, Dr. Michael Mann, whose name appears in some of the stolen emails, provided me with a run-down of the emails that involve him. His responses provide some much needed context and give you an idea of just how wildly some people have blown this story out ofย proportion.
What follows is quotes taken directly from the stolen emails, followed by Dr. Mannโsย response:
1. โIโve just completed Mikeโs Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i. e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keithโs to hide the decline.โ (from Phil Jones).
Phil Jones has publicly gone on record indicating that he was using the term โtrickโ in the sense often used by people, as in โbag of tricksโ, or โa trick to solving this problem โฆโ, or โtrick of theย tradeโ.
In referring to our 1998 Nature article, he was pointing out simply the following: our proxy record ended in 1980 (when the proxy data set we were using terminates) so, it didnโt include the warming of the past twoย decades.
In our Nature-article we therefore also showed the post-1980 instrumental data that was then available through 1995, so that the reconstruction could be viewed in the context of recent instrumental temperatures. The separate curves for the reconstructed temperature series and for the instrumental data were clearly labeled.
The reference to โhide the declineโ is referring to work that I am not directly associated with, but instead work by Keith Briffa andย colleagues.
The โdeclineโ refers to a well-known decline in the response of only a certain type of tree-ring data (high-latitude tree-ring density measurements collected by Briffa and colleagues) to temperatures after aboutย 1960.
In their original article in Nature in 1998, Briffa and colleagues are very clear that the post-1960 data in their tree-ring dataset should not be used in reconstructing temperatures due to a problem known as the โdivergence problemโ where their tree-ring data decline in their response to warming temperatures after aboutย 1960.
โHideโ was therefore a poor word choice, since the existence of this decline, and the reason not to use the post 1960 data because of it, was not only known, but was indeed the point emphasized in the original Briffa et al Nature article. There is a summary of that article available on thisย NOAAย site.
There have been many articles since then trying to understand the reason for this problem, which applies largely to only one very specific type of proxy data (tree-ring wood density data from higherย latitudes).
As for my research in this area more generally, there was a study commissioned by the National Academies of Science back in 2006 to assess the validity of paleoclimate reconstructions in general, and my own work in specific. A summary of that report, and link to it, is availableย here.
The New York Timesย ย (6/22/06), in an article about the report entitled โScience Panel Backs Study on Warming Climateโ had the following things toย say:
โA controversial paper asserting that recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere was probably unrivaled for 1,000 years was endorsed today, with a few reservations, by a panel convened by the nationโs preeminent scientific bodyโฆAt a news conference at the headquarters of the National Academies, several members of the panel reviewing the study said they saw no sign that its authors had intentionally chosen data sets or methods to get a desired result. โI saw nothing that spoke to me of any manipulation,โ said one member, Peter Bloomfield, a statistics professor at North Carolina State University. He added that his impression was the study was โan honest attempt to construct a data analysisย procedure.โ
ย
2. โPerhaps weโll do a simple update to the Yamal post. As we all know, this isnโt about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.โ (fromย me)
ย
This refers to a particular tree-ring reconstruction of Keithย Briffaโs.
These tree-ring data are just one of numerous tree-ring records used to reconstruct past climate.ย Briffa and collaborators were criticized (unfairly in the view of many of my colleagues and me) by a contrarian climate change website based on what we felt to be a misrepresentation of theirย work.
A further discussion can be found on the site โRealClimate.orgโ that I co-founded and help run. It is quite clear from the context of my comments that what I was saying was that the attacks against Briffa and colleagues were not about truth but instead about making plausibly deniable accusations against him and hisย colleagues.
We attempted to correct the misrepresentations of Keithโs work in the RealClimate article mentioned above, and we invited him and his co-author Tim Osborn to participate actively in responding to any issues raised in the comment thread of the article which he did. ย
ย
3. โCan you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. Heโs not in at the moment -minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I donโt have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.โ (from Philย Jones)
ย
This was simply an email that was sent to me, and can in no way be taken to indicate approval of, let alone compliance with, the request. I did not delete any such emailย correspondences.
ย
4. โI think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journalโ (fromย me)
ย
This comment was in response to a very specific incident regarding a paper by Soon and Baliunas published in the journal โClimateย Researchโ.
An editor of the journal, with rather contrarian views on climate change, appeared to several of us to be gaming the system to let through papers that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal. The chief editor (Hans von Storch), and half of the editorial board, resigned in protest of the publication of the paper, after the publisher refused to allow von Storch the opportunity to write an editorial about how the peer review process had failed in this instance. [editor note: DeSmogBlog has a full rundown of this story here]
Please see e.g. this post at RealClimate. (3rd bullet itemโsee the various links, which lead to letters from chief editor Von Storch, and an article by the journalist Chris Mooney about theย incident).
Scientists all choose journals in which we publish and we all recommend to each other and our students which journals they should publishย in.
People are free to publish wherever they can and are free to recommend some journals overย others.
For an example of this behavior in daily life, people make choices and recommendations all the time in their purchasing habits. It is highly unusual for a chief editor and half of an editorial board to resign and that indicates a journal in turmoil that should possibly be avoided. Similarly, authors are allowed to cite any papers they want, although usually the editor will note incorrect or insufficientย citing.
I support the publication of โskepticalโ papers that meet the basic standards of scientific quality andย merit.
I myself have published scientific work that has been considered by some as representing a skeptical point of view on matters relating to climate changeย (for example, my work demonstrating the importance of natural oscillations of the climate on multidecadalย timescales).ย
Skepticism in the truest scientific sense of the word is good and is indeed essential to science.ย Skepticism should not be confused, however, with contrarianism that does not meet the basic standards of scientificย inquiry.
ย
5 โโโIt would be nice to try to contain the putative โMWPโ (fromย me)
ย
In this email, I was discussing the importance of extending paleoclimate reconstructions far enough back in time that we could determine the onset and duration of the putative โMedieval Warmย Periodโ.
Since this describes an interval in time, it has to have both a beginning and end. But reconstructions that only go back 1000 years, as most reconstructions did at the time, didnโt reach far enough back to isolate the beginning of this period, i.e. they are not long enough to โcontainโ the interval inย question.
In more recent work, such as the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007, the paleoclimate reconstructions stretch nearly 2000 years back in time, which is indeed far enough back in time to โcontainโ or โisolateโ this period inย time.
โโ
For political and financial reasons, a handful of very vocal critics have been using these e-mails to create the impression that they somehow refute the decades of research by thousands of scientists finding that climate change is a serious issue caused by our over reliance on fossil fuels like oil andย coal.
Thatโs an unfair claim, as many of the more rational media outlets have pointedย out.
From the context Dr. Mann has provided above, it is clear that these emails are being used as political weapons in a last ditch effort to stop the world from taking the necessary action to reduce fossil fuel dependency and minimize the devastating effects of climateย change.
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