Data Comparisons

DOE “litigation hold notice” regarding CRU?!

67 Comments

Update: Anthony phoned and confirmed.

Has anyone confirmed Anthony’s report that employees at Savannah River were sent a DOE “litigation hold notice”? Anyone know anyone at Savannah River? Supposedly, everyone got this letter. So, did they?

If they did get the letter, I can’t help wondering, “Why SRS?” And if SRS got the letter, what about Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia, Argonne, Pacific Northwest & etc. To my knowledge, staff at Argonne have not gotten letters. But I don’t know anyone at Savanna River, so I can’t easily check. (Well… I guess I could call “Michael L. Wamsted, Associate General Council” and ask. But that seems a bit obnoxious. )

Anyone know?

67 thoughts on “DOE “litigation hold notice” regarding CRU?!”

  2. Zeke–
    I might actually expect the letters to go to the labs not HQ or the field offices. But still… why SRS? I’d say “of all places” but that’s not quite fair. But SRS doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the epicenter of Climategate.

  3. Bear in mind this is an email notice to employees, not the actual order. Different divisions may handle it differently (such as send a paper memo) and respond with different levels of expediency.

  6. I called SRS Legal office just now and spoke with Madeline Screven, who is listed as a paralegal in the letter I posted. I found her telephone number via the DOE phonebook.

    http://phonebook.doe.gov/

    When I called, she fully identified herself in her greeting to me, I explained who I was, giving my full name. She asked if I was “on or off site” referring to SRS. I explained I’m off-site.

    My question: “Do you have A litigation hold notice related to the Climate Research Unit?”

    Her answer: “Yes we do”

    Confirmed.

  8. There are references to using USDOE grants in the CRU emails. But I assume those were issued through the CO2 Info Analysis Center which is run out of Oak Ridge not Savannah. Curious.

  9. I would suspect that Savannah River National Laboratory, which SRNS manages for DOE, performs and funds climate science research of one kind or another as part of its basic mission, in which case this notice is a fairly routine and not unprecedented directive made in response to the possibility that a litigation action of some kind might be initiated that directly affects SRS and its national laboratory.
    In my opinion, SRNS is doing nothing more than taking simple and appropriate precautions to preserve information that might eventually become the target of a litigant action, in accordance with DOE’s own published policies and procedures. It does not mean that such litigant action is pending, it just means that SRNS management is choosing to be very proactive in preserving whatever information their staff might have in their possession.

  12. when I heard this yesterday my immediate question was also about the other DOE labs/facilities. I’m relatively certain LANL was not issued the same email from HQ.

  13. S. Geiger-
    SRS getting a directive and LANL not getting one surprises me. (That doesn’t make it unlikely… just a surprise!)

  14. I’ve complained on occasion that people, especially skeptics, do not read the published literature related to global warming and is the reason that we do not hear good arguments from the skeptics on this issue. The post and much of the discussion above proves that point. Didn’t you folks know that the Department of Energy has been one of the largest funding mechanisms for American Climate research in the past 25 years? Almost every study that I have read lists the funding sources. At some point, will you folks start thoroughly reading these studies? You would be amazed at the lack of competence and accuracy in these studies.

  15. MikeC–
    Huh?

    You are seriously jumping to conclusions if you think this post proves that I don’t know the DOE funds climate research. If you search through comments, you will discover that
    a) I have often mentioned that DOE funds climate research.
    b) For more than a decade husband worked on the DOE funded climate change program “ARM” (and also SHEBA”.) He performed the work while employed at DOE national laboratories.
    c) I once knit a sweater for the dog who lived at the SGP site for the DOE funded climate change program ARM. You can see him to the right:
    and
    d) I know loads and loads of scientists who have worked on DOE funded climate change projects.

    The fact that I am wonder why SRS and not Los Alamos, Livermore, ANL or PNNL, does not stem from being unaware that DOE funds climate research.

  16. bugs (Comment#28134) December 15th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    “Ian Plimer the master of reframing and lying.”

    Thanks for the link. Plimer is not lying, he just does not know how to respond to aggressive journalists. On the last question asked, about the temperatures being in stasis this century, of course he is not lying, if you are following Lucia’s analysis. Temperatures are certainly not rising.

    The other ridiculous journalistic statement :” we are in the hottest decade since the last century”. Suppose you are climbing the Himalayas, and you reach the top. For a few days you will be at the highest point of the world. Does that mean that you are climbing Jacob’s Ladder? Poor Plimer did not know how to give a good reply to that, wading with explanations on variations over the centuries.

    Also the volcano business, which is geologists against volcanologists . Geologists measure chemical compositions, volcanologists outputs from volcanoes, a legitimate disagreement that I think hinges on the number of undiscovered yet volcanoes: we continually hear of new ones, as the recent ones under the arctic and some years ago there was a 200.000 estimate of undiscovered volcanoes in the science news.

    Scientists are at a disadvantage with journalists because they need graphs, and no graphs are provided, because journalists do not understand graphs.

  17. Lucia, I suppose you mean search through comments on other posts because there is little above in commnets or the post that support your comment… so are ya saying you actually read these studies? Because based on the comments above, not too many peeps commenting on this topic seem to be aware that DOE funds a lot of climate research. By the way, climate and weather are pretty important to the development of nuclear weapons because part of tactical nuclear strikes involves where all that residual radiation will fall.

  18. anna v (Comment#28214)

    Plimer is not lying, he just does not know how to respond to aggressive journalists. On the last question asked, about the temperatures being in stasis this century…

    The last question asked was actually about his diametric misrepresentation of a paper he referenced. He didn’t lie in response to the question as to whether he stood by his assertion, he simply avoided answering the question.

    Earlier, he certainly didn’t tell the truth about the assessment of volcanic emissions which he references in his book.

    As for him needing graphs, have you looked at his book? In it he uses fabricated graphs, mislabelled and misrepresented graphs. For example, he uses the famously fabricated graph from “The Great Global Warming Swindle” and he pulls the familiar ruse of misrepresenting the US temperature record as if it were global. Are these the sort of deceptions which you think “journalists do not understand”? The book is packed with egregious errors which can only be explained by ignorance or by deliberate misrepresentation. I’d be happy to talk through them one by one if you wish to challenge that statement, though it would take a long time, since there are so many of them.

  19. Simon Evans (Comment#28230) December 16th, 2009 at 10:47 am

    No need to clog the blog with out of topic discussion. Suffice it to say that I do know the science behind the general statements, and I can defend them. I have not read the book so cannot defend the author: whether he misrepresents references and quotes inappropriate plots.

    On the topic of temperature, the exact same plots where Lucia derives “flatness” consistent with statistics are used by warmers to draw trends that go up and up. ( the mountain paradox, aka the wiggles paradox: a wiggle before it descends will always give the highest values). So Plimer seemed to me flustered by the bullying reporter tactics in this video and not able to gather his wits to respond to the point.

  20. anna v (Comment#28240) December 16th, 2009 at 11:21 am

    No need to clog the blog with out of topic discussion. Suffice it to say that I do know the science behind the general statements, and I can defend them. I have not read the book so cannot defend the author: whether he misrepresents references and quotes inappropriate plots.

    I have, and it’s packed with falsehoods, so I don’t know what you mean by defending the “general statements”.

    But as you, say, no need to clog the blog with discussing the falsehoods of those who contradict AGW analysis, let’s just stay on the general topic of discussing the alleged faults of a few of those engaged in presenting AGW analysis.

  21. Mike

    Lucia, I suppose you mean search through comments on other posts because there is little above in commnets or the post that support your comment

    Of course. There is a search function in the upper right corner. Enter “DOE”. The second result you’ll find has me saying “lucia (Comment#6555) … It could be done at a DOE lab — possibly inside the DOE-ARM program.”

    In this post you’ll find “FOI does apply to DOE national labs; Santer himself works at one of these. ”

    which should suggest to you that I am perfectly aware that A) DOE funds climate research and B) The entire lab Santer works at is funded by the DOE.

    I also don’t know which comments above made you suspect of being unaware that DOE funds climate research based on what they wrote. Did George saying “There are references to using USDOE grants in the CRU emails.” make you think he did not know DOE funds climate research?

    Or was it Scott Brim’s “I would suspect that Savannah River National Laboratory, which SRNS manages for DOE, performs and funds climate science research of one kind or another as part of its basic mission,” that made you think his saying DOE funds this climate research as part of it’s basic mission means he thinks DOE does not fund climate research?!

    My guess is that you want to believe people you consider “skeptics” don’t know DOE funds climate research.

  22. Not at all Lucia, my point is that too many people in this debate do not read the studies, because if tey did they would understand right off the bat that DOE funds a great deal of climate research, there would have been no questions about it. So les not try to debate that point because its not debatable. The fact is that so many people want to debate this whole area of science without reading the published literature and all that accomplishes is depriving them of the proper knowledge to debate the issues.

  23. MikeC–
    Why the heck do you think anyone in comments here didn’t understand DOE funds climate studies right off the bat? You are jumping to that conclusion with no evidence whatsoever to support it but even despite obvious contrary evidence in the comments!

    You appear to be trying to concoct evidence for your theory that people don’t read the literature out of thin air!

  25. Try reading the literature, Lucia, You’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about when I say too many people do not read it. You’ll be amazed and will probably have many more topics to cover.

  26. Nick Stokes,

    “Sen Inhofe. Just mischief”

    Same cause/effect relationship would apply to Al Gore.

    Big Al. Just opportunsim.

    Andrew

  27. MikeC–
    I read peer reviewed literature in climate change.

    I have no idea what you are talking about. Based on what you’ve posted in comments, it appears you are probably a chat bot that assembles sentences by pulling phrases out of a database using some sort of “rand()” function.

  28. “opportunsim.”

    I predicted on these very pages, one day in the not too distant past, that typos were somehow going to be involved in my demise…

    A giant meteor is going to be hurling at the earth, and we’ll be in the middle of a evacuation into space via a large Interstellar Transport, and I’ll get to the ticket taker and she’ll say:

    “What’s your name?”

    “Andrew_KY”

    “I’m sorry sir, this ticket is for Andrew_KX, I can’t let you on.”

    “D’oh!” 😉

    Andrew

  30. I, for one, can attest, and hereby do attest, that Lucia a) is a darn good weeney dog sweater knitter, and 2) knows one heck of a lot about the DOE & climate research funding, and 3) is dearly missed by her fuddyduddies in the FACE group 🙂

  31. On a related note, I finally got around to writing up my thoughts on the whole CRU brouhaha: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/12/cru-emails-whats-really-there/

    I figure I’ll manage to somewhat piss off both sides with likes like:

    “Some climate scientists have an unfortunate habit of dismissing arguments on blogs and other media as not being worth responding to because they are not published in peer-reviewed journals.

    While it is true that the signal-to-noise ratio for many discussions on the internet is painfully low, there are important arguments that have been raised by Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre, among others, that cannot be dismissed offhand simply because they are not published in the peer-reviewed literature.

    Furthermore, the constant refrain by climate scientists for skeptics to “put up or shut up” by publishing is undermined by their own comments in some of the e-mails that show some scientists putting in quite a bit of effort to try and ensure that papers they deem flawed are not published.”

    But I’ll take that as a sign that I’m doing something right :-p

  33. lucia (Comment#28589) December 18th, 2009 at 8:15 am

    Zeke– Good going!

    So I take it the ‘hide the decline’ coffee mug is going to be withdrawn from sale?

    Something immediately stands out that should put to rest fears that climatologists are conspiring to hide recent cooling: namely the reference to the real temps line — “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline” [emphasis added].

    Indeed, using “real temps” to hide a decline in recent temperature makes no sense at all.

    To understand the context of this quote, realize that the scientists here aren’t talking about recent global temperatures from thermometers at all. Rather, the e-mail is discussing the creation of a diagram showing a proxy reconstruction of northern hemispheric temperatures over the past 1,000 years based on tree rings. Jones is essentially replacing the data from tree rings post-1960 with real global temperature data from thermometers worldwide; temperature data, it is worth noting, that is independently validated by satellite measurements.

    Still, it might seem odd to arbitrarily discard declining proxy data in favor of thermometer data known to be accurate for the recent past. It is quite reasonable to ask how, if tree ring proxies are not reliable for the past 40 years, can they possibly be used to reconstruct temperature over the past 1,000 years?

    It is true that there is considerable uncertainty associated with tree ring proxies, and scientists can reliably reconstruct global temperature records for the past 600 years using non-tree ring proxy data. However, tree ring width is strongly correlated with temperature over the past 200 years or so for which there are instrumental records, and there is reason to believe that the decrease in tree ring width post-1960 is caused by something other than declining temperatures (since the temperatures where these trees are located are, by and large, not declining).

    Indeed, this phenomenon is well known as the “divergence problem” (pdf) in the dendroclimatology literature. Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers have been written on the subject. Prime suspects for the cause of divergence include reduced insolation (global dimming) as the result of aerosols; temperature-induced drought stress; or other anthropogenic factors that would cause the historical relationship between tree ring width and temperature to break down in recent years in the locations where they are being measured.

    So by “hide the decline,” Jones was referring to obscuring the divergence problem in the resulting chart by replacing tree ring proxy data with global temperature data. This may be somewhat dubious in that it gives the impression that proxy reconstructions match the observed temperature record better than they otherwise would. However, it is likely that Jones sincerely concludes that the divergence problem is indeed an exogenous anomaly in the record, and that replacing the recent divergent proxy record with real temperatures for the recent past creates a more accurate impression of the real global temperature than leaving in the proxy reconstruction post-divergence. Hardly the stuff that conspiracies are made of.

    As further proof that scientists make poor conspirators, they follow the lead of Trenberth (albeit anachronistically) in describing what they did in the peer reviewed literature. Indeed, Jones’ reference to “Mike’s Nature trick” refers to a Nature [http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/mbh98.pdf] paper by Michael Mann (and others) where the real temperature record was appended to proxy data, and this process is described in detail in the supporting documentation. It is worth noting, however, that the Mann et al paper in question did not drop any divergent data, though other subsequent publications (including the IPCC assessment reports [http://climateaudit.org/2007/06/26/ipcc-and-the-briffa-deletions/]) have described the reason for doing so and Briffa’s original paper on the subject was quite frank [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0.html] about divergence issues.*

    There has also been a lot of focus on the use of the word “trick” as somehow indicating intentional malfeasance, but the term trick is commonly used to refer to clever mathematical operations in numerous papers and should not offhand imply bad faith.

  34. Most of us understand already what “hide the decline” relates too, and why it’s problematic. Apparently bugs and the author of this screed do not. That or it’s “build a straw man time” again.

    Bugs use <a href=”http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/12/cru-emails-whats-really-there/”l>link</a> to provide the link next time.

  37. Re: Zeke Hausfather (Comment#28552) December 17th, 2009 at 10:29 pm

    On a related note, I finally got around to writing up my thoughts on the whole CRU brouhaha: http://www.yaleclimatemediafor…..lly-there/
    I figure I’ll manage to somewhat piss off both sides …

    You sure that’s wise? 😛

  38. Carrick (Comment#28669) December 19th, 2009 at 12:47 am

    Because bugs doesn’t understand what “hide the decline” refers to. Neither apparently does Zeke.

    I know exactly what it refers to, a problem with proxy temperatures that started to occur after 1960, for reasons that are still being investigated.

  39. Oh, I’m well aware of the whole debate surrounding divergence in the Briffa proxies. Unfortunately, outside a few climate blogs, the term “hide the decline” has been associated with a much different (and incorrect) meaning, and I was attempting to tackle that.

    Divergence does reduce our confidence in tree ring proxies (even if there may well be a good explanation or anthropogenic cause for divergence). Truncating the Briffa reconstruction in that diagram and the AR4 gives a somewhat misleading impression of the reliability of that particular dendro series.

    That said, you have to agree that the difference between:
    1) Manipulating temperature data to cover up recent cooling
    and
    2) Truncating a proxy record due to divergence (which the authors sincerely believe is related to factors other than temps)
    Are night and day. I’m not saying truncating Briffa is appropriate, but rather that it is not that significant in the grand scheme of things.

  41. Zeke,

    “I’m not saying truncating Briffa is appropriate, but rather that it is not that significant in the grand scheme of things.”

    I’m over-commenting, I know, but this statement prompts the question:

    If the recon was never really significant… why did he bother with it to begin with?

    Andrew

  42. Zeke–

    …in the grand scheme of things

    Oppp! There you’ve gone and done it!

    What constitutes “the grand scheme of things”?

    Is the grand scheme of things whether or not AGW is true? Or is the grand scheme of things whether a politically well connected scientists (i.e. to core of IPCC group, journal editors etc.) may have exaggerated the strength of the case for AGW? Possibly by behaving in a way that can amplify confirmation bias among themselves and in the field? Is the grand scheme that there might be a tendency among some close to the center of the IPCC process to squelch scientific information they prefer the public did not know?

    One of the difficulties with the whole “climate gate” issue is that some group seems to want to decide that whatever they think is “the grand scheme of things” is the “the grand scheme of things”– and how that is defined, who knows?

    I’m not so sure there is one true grand scheme of thing. Certainly, I’m not going to buy into someone decreeing that something doesn’t matter in some vague unstated grand scheme of things that we are all supposed to accept their vision of “the grand scheme of things” as “THE” grand scheme of things.

    I suspect lots of people are more upset at some group trying to decree themselves as the arbiters of what is or is not “the grand scheme of things” as they are by any other issue in the whole debate!”

    Anyway, returning to the mug which bothers bug: the mug shows “hide the decline” correctly, as the an issue with the divergence problem. If Bugs thinks the fact that the mug is based on “it is what it is” means I should pull the mug, well, I disagree.

  43. Zeke

    Plus, no one (I hope) reasonably believes the Briffa reconstruction is a better measure of global temps from 1960-1980 than GISS/CRU/UAH/RSS/NCDC/etc.

    As far as I can tell, people agree that “hide the decline” has to do with giving a false impression of our confidence in the reconstruction of pre-thermometer record temperatures.

    The arguments explaining that it has nothing to do with the recent records are a strawman. Yes… that’s true. But who thinks it does? Few. And those few are inconsequential.

  44. Lucia,

    “Certainly, I’m not going to buy into someone decreeing that something doesn’t matter in some vague unstated grand scheme of things that we are all supposed to accept their vision of “the grand scheme of things” as “THE” grand scheme of things.”

    Perfect, just perfect.

    I hope Zeke actually thinks about it… but I doubt he will.

  45. Mia culpa, poor wording on my part with the “grand scheme of things” line.

    That said, of the ~500 million people on the planet who have heard the words “hide the decline” on the tele, I’d be willing to wager that the vast majority of them don’t have any inkling that it dealt with dendro proxies and not actual surface temps.

    So while we should lambast CRU for not showing the post-1960 Briffa series (or, at the very least, provide a more prominent explanation of why they decided that divergence was grounds to truncate the series), I just want to ensure that we are punishing Jones for the crime he did commit, rather than the crime (manipulating the surface temp record) that folks in some quarters wish he had committed :-p

  46. Zeke Hausfather (Comment#28716)
    December 19th, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    Your zeal to set the record straight on “hide the decline” is laudable.

    Some day I’ll have to do the same wrt to the billion or so tele-watchers that are firmly convinced by Al Gore and others that Polar Bears are routinely drowning, all based on a single observation after a severe storm in 2005.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article767459.ece

    BTW, is it true you censored Bishop Hill’s comment?

    http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/12/19/in-which-i-go-beyond-the-pale.html#comments

  47. John M: Not sure what happened to Bishop Hill’s comment; just shot an email to my editor asking about it.

    I’m not a polar bear biologist, but the ones I have talked to are sure worried about the impact of arctic ice cap loss on polar bear populations. I’m not sure about Gore’s depiction or any specific drownings.

  48. Zeke–

    That said, of the ~500 million people on the planet who have heard the words “hide the decline” on the tele, I’d be willing to wager that the vast majority of them don’t have any inkling that it dealt with dendro proxies and not actual surface temps.

    Hmmm… I doubt this number! Still, sure, some have heard it without anyone saying what it refers to. I see little reason to believe any significant number thought it meant the surface temperatures. (Although, I admit the rather hilareous Minnesottan’s for Global Warming video does give that impression. Unfortunately for those in the emails, it’s really hard to debate comedy. )

  49. Hey, it was in my parents local newspaper, on Glen Beck, Rush, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, etc. Maybe not 500m globally, but still a fairly large amount. And in most (non-print) coverage I’ve seen, there is no discussion of what the “decline” refers to.

  50. Zeke #28716

    So while we should lambast CRU for not showing the post-1960 Briffa series (or, at the very least, provide a more prominent explanation of why they decided that divergence was grounds to truncate the series),

    I agree about the proper attribution of sins. And this isn’t it either. It’s not often noted that Jones was not talking here about a research publication, but about a cover picture for a WMO report. There isn’t much room for explanation there.
    My understanding of the sin was not the truncation (frequently done and explained), but the joining of the proxy and instrumental. And I agree that’s bad, although in context it could be argued that the purpose of the diagram was illustrative. But Briffa and co are innocent; they mostly did provide a prominent explanation for truncation, and were leading the world in discussing the divergence issue. Here’s a para from the 2004 review paper:

    The above facts seem to support an inference that some slowly varying factor began to exert a very widespread negative influence on the trend of these MXD data from around the middle of the 20th century, with effects at higher frequency also becoming noticeable in some high-latitude regions. For the time being, we circumvent this problem by restricting the calibration of the density data to the period before 1960. This reduces the potential overlap between temperature observations and density measurements and means that less data can be reserved for independent tests of the validity of predictive equations. This situation is far from ideal, but the alternative, using data after 1960 and thus incorporating non-temperature- related bias when fitting regression equations as a function of density variability, would invariability produce earlier estimates of past temperature that, to some extent, too warm.

  52. Lucia,

    If you were to catch a news report that mentioned a scandal among climate scientists involving an email about “hiding the decline”, what would you think it refers to? Certainly Beck, Palin, and others have all assumed it meant instrumental temps in their commentary :-p

  53. Zeke–
    I honestly have no idea what people who watched Beck would take home. I don’t watch Beck.

    But if I heard something like that phrase and didn’t hear the back story, I would say “Decline in what?” If the newscasters didn’t say, I would say “I don’t know what declined but was hidden.”

    I imagine I’m not the only person who would think this. And yes, I would think it in any context. When people don’t finish sentences or leave them ambiguous, I notice.

  54. Zeke –

    You ought to stop trying to apologize for these unscrupulous climate scientists and call for a few heads to roll (starting with Jones and Mann). Credibility, for you or for the scientists who wrote the damning email messages, depends on an honest evaluation of reality. You seem to be running away from the reality that these folks behaved far beyond the pale. You could do yourself a favor by condemning absolutely horrid behavior and suggesting appropriate retribution.

  55. Lucia, Zeke-

    The mainstream media coverage on this issue has been abysmal. You can’t expect more from people who are best at discussing trivial matters (like a certain athlete’s infidelity). I remember seeing Brian Williams open a broadcast asking whether the CRU was “massaging the data” to make the case for global warming. When he read the “hide the decline” quote there was absolutely no mention that it was referring to reconstructed temperature. On CBS, which is supposedly a communist-warmist-marxist network, they explicitly linked the post-1998 temperatures to ‘hide the decline’. Here’s the kicker: right after making this false link, they then mentioned the splicing of the reconstruction with the instrumental record to “get the answer they wanted.” Breathtaking! It’s as if the reported had no clue what she was talking about. Then they showed Kevin Trenberth saying that information is being cherry-picked and taken out of context. In other words: he said/she said. Where’s that liberal media bias when you need it!

  56. Zeke:

    That said, you have to agree that the difference between:
    1) Manipulating temperature data to cover up recent cooling
    and
    2) Truncating a proxy record due to divergence (which the authors sincerely believe is related to factors other than temps)
    Are night and day. I’m not saying truncating Briffa is appropriate, but rather that it is not that significant in the grand scheme of things.

    Not night and day at all.

    The divergence post 1960 calls into question whether these proxies would not have also diverged during the MWP,
    and the fact they hid this decline in their figures (both via the substitute & filter method Briffa is discussing or Mann’s truncate and overlay method) is simply unscrupulous.

    I also object to your reframing the question into what amounts to a strawman because it doesn’t address what Briffa actually did.. That itself is not an intellectually honest way to discuss this issue.

    I have no problems with trashing Limbaugh or Beck when they get this wrong, but that isn’t the debate that is ongoing here. Nor are their viewers likely to see your blog or your comment, so addressing a disinterested audience isn’t likely to be a productive use of your time. Just saying.

  57. Nick Stokes:

    I agree about the proper attribution of sins. And this isn’t it either. It’s not often noted that Jones was not talking here about a research publication, but about a cover picture for a WMO report.

    Of course that makes what Jones did worse, not better. Because first the WMO report was to be used as the basis for future policy decisions, and secondly because it wasn’t going to be peer reviewed he was “on his honor” to act appropriately.

  58. Nick Stokes:

    The quote you offer as the definitive defensive of dropping the post-1960 data is not very convincing. Doesn’t the mysterious appearance of a “slowly varying factor” after 1960 raise the immediate question as to whether the entire data set is similarly unreliable?

    If the reason for the disparity were known, that would be one thing but to drop data because it conflicts with the preferred interpretive narrative is weak. The excuse that it would make the past appear too warm seems to indicate that the decision as to the Correctness of the Narrative ultimately determined whether the data got reported.

    Also the claim that this is nothing new, it’s all been out there is also not exactly true. We did not hear that there was a “trick” to “hide the decline” which means that there were some distinctly non-scientific considerations involved.

    Lastly, I find the argument that it’s merely about some decorative chart unrelated to the science disingenuous. The hockey stick and it’s kin now infect millions of textbooks, brought special status to its creators and is the single-most popular alleged piece of evidence about “unprecedented” nature of current warming. To say it all doesn’t matter because it has been warm recently doesn’t cut it. The fierce multi-year rear guard action against McIntyre and McItrick also belies the minimalist claim.

    And it is lovely that Zeke H. believes that work such that by M&M should not be dismissed out of hand but I would find such appeals to even-handedness more impressive if they were written pre-Climategate when the risk of incurring PC wrath were greater.

  59. Carrick (Comment#28747)–
    I agree with your view that the fact that the decline was hidden on a figure for policy makers and the public, which was to be consumed without surrounding text makes hiding the decline worse not better.

    It is precisely constructing figures so as to misrepresent the uncertainties in the proxy reconstruction to the public that constitutes the very bad behavior.

  60. I agree with Zeke regarding the public perception of “hide the decline.” Lucia, when you say very few people misunderstand it, which people are you referring to? Most people still watch TV news (or streaming video, which is the same thing), and there’s approximately zero chance of understanding the issue from the coverage in those staged shouting matches. Next, of the people who read articles, I don’t know about liberal coverage, but Walter Williams and Ann Coulter, conservative pundits, both misrepresent the issue.

    http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=343

    http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams120909.php3

    What I’m sure of is that those people have a much wider readership than any of the climate blogs that have managed to explain “hide the decline” correctly. I happen to be among their readership, Coulter because she’s hilarious and Williams because he’s good on economics.

    Is “hide the decline” still bad? Oh yes. But the substance of its badness has been obscured and represented as something different than it is.

  61. Alarmists have been playing on the public’s ignorance of science for years by conflating Co2 with air pollution. I have lost track of the number of TV news reports on global warming with pictures of smoke stacks/smog used as a backdrop.

  62. Danny–
    I skimmed Ann Coulter’s post and didn’t find anything to suggest she thought “hide the decline” had to do with the thermometer record. WalterWilliams — who I have never heard have– writing at Jewish Review .com– which I have also never heard of — seems to be confused.
    Do you really think Walter is widely read?

  63. No wonder there is confusion.

    First, there is the whole temperature record/graph presented, which masses of the public have no idea that it’s derived with some of it thermometer-based and some of it proxy-based.

    Then the Warmers get mad that “hide the decline” is mistaken for something that happened to the entire record not just the proxy reconstruction.

    Well, it was presented as a whole record, so what do you expect?

    Andrew

  64. Danny:

    But the substance of its badness has been obscured and represented as something different than it is.

    And as Lucia and I both pointed out, in the context of a policy making document, it was a much more serious infraction, I’m not sure Ann Coulter or any of the other critics have glommed onto the implications of that yet.

  65. A poetic follow-up to my own comment:

    The two become one romantically
    Apples followed oranges magically
    With my Hide The Decline Mug in front of me
    One Blue Line Squggles persistently

    Andrew

  66. Carrick: Yes, you’re right.

    Raven: You also are right, but I think the only relevant part is that we shouldn’t be surprised the media isn’t representing the issue correctly. Whether it’s to support alarmism or skepticism, I’d prefer the information be accurate, if not also precise.

    Lucia: I don’t know how to do block quotes, I think. Here’s my attempt with a quote from the Ann Coulter article:

    [quote]Recently leaked e-mails from the “scientists” at CRU show that, when talking among themselves, they forthrightly admit to using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in the Earth’s temperature since 1960[/quote]

    (Edit: I obviously failed on the quote. Do you have a link to where I can find proper procedure here?)

    I think Ann is also confused, seeing as how they were using a trick to hide the decline in the proxy series which diverged from the temperature record, which didn’t decline.

    As for Walter’s readership, I don’t have hard data. I’ve always thought it was pretty wide. He and Thomas Sowell quote each other frequently, and he’s been a syndicated columnist for a rather long time (decades?). I gave the Jewish World Review link because it’s the first one that comes up besides his George Mason page in a google search. His articles appear in Townhall, and I’ve seen friends cite his articles on facebook from time to time. But perhaps the purpose of the example backfired if you haven’t heard of him. 🙂

    I have to admit I don’t have much more to support my disagreement with you on this point than my impressions, from what I’ve seen outside of the blogosphere. So here’s your grain of salt you can take with my opinion.

  67. Nope… never heard of him!

    The decline is in proxy reconstructions of earth’s surface temperatures.

    But I agree we can’t know whether the general public understands what was hidden. I suspect not. The point is rather arcane, isn’t it? Anyway, I think those who care know. Many don’t care. Let’s face it, a lot of people just don’t care about this issue one way or the other.

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