More heat, less light in CRU hacking ‘scandal’
Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
The fallout from the hacking of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia continues this week, with huge attention still focused on the controversial content of leaked emails between leading climate scientists.
The university said on Saturday that 95% of the CRU climate data set concerning land surface temperatures has been made available to the public for “several years” and that all data will be released as soon as they are clear of non-publication agreements. A key complaint of climate change sceptics is that the unit has been withholding information and the leaked emails show a conspiracy to keep raw data hidden.
Another twist on this complaint appeared yesterday in the Sunday Times. The paper declared:
Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
There have been previous claims that CRU destroyed data. At the start of last month – before the emails leaked – the Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank claimed that the unit “destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space”. The Competitive Enterprise Institute describes itself as “dedicated to free enterprise and limited government”. Its funders have included automotive industries and oil companies.
That claim from the CEI was refuted by the CRU. Greenwire reported on this shortly after the CEI press release:
Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit, said that the vast majority of the station data was not altered at all, and the small amount that was changed was adjusted for consistency. The research unit has deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities or were affected by urbanization trends, Jones said.
Refuting CEI's claims of data-destruction, Jones said, "We haven't destroyed anything. The data is still there -- you can still get these stations from the [NOAA] National Climatic Data Center."
We’ve asked the university that hosts the CRU for a response to the Sunday Times article.
In other CRU-news, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the unit’s scientists couldn’t have biased the IPCC even if they wanted too.
“The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report,” he said (Guardian).
“Every single comment that an expert reviewer provides has to be answered either by acceptance of the comment, or if it is not accepted, the reasons have to be clearly specified. So I think it is a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which insures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening.”
Comments
This is a poorly written and misleading post. The newspaper reported the CRU admitted it had lost/destroyed climate data. This admission came after the leak of CRU emails became public. This post attempts to debunk the newspaper report by quoting a statement made by Phil Jones prior to the email leak. Do you not see a problem with this?
If you put these statements together in the proper timeline, you see the statement made by Phil Jones attempting to debunk the report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute was untrue.
This report should not have gone to press without getting a response from the university first. It would have saved you some embarrassment.
Posted by: Ron Cram | November 30, 2009 04:48 PM
Mr. Cressey,
Given the political importance of this issue, I would recommend you get your facts straight before writing a blog post like this. UEA THEMSELVES claimed to have destroyed original data. They, in fact, put up a web page on their server saying just that. The link used to be here:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/
The information contained on this link (repeated verbatim) is the following:
"We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."
Emphasis is mine.
CRU also admitted to deleting data after a series of FOI exchanges with Willis Eschenbach, which is archived here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/correspondence/cru.correspondence.pdf
Pages 7 and 16 of the document contain admission by CRU that data was deleted, and that the station network used by Jones et al., 1990, was unknown.
Perhaps you ought to ask Phil Jones why, after posting a web page saying the data was deleted, he would then claim that they "haven't destroyed anything."
Posted by: Ryan O | November 30, 2009 11:31 PM
Phil:
"Kevin and I will keep
them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !"
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=419&filename=1089318616.txt
Posted by: Ralph Doncaster | December 1, 2009 01:52 AM
Pachauri's comment is unbelievable for anyone who has followed the actual IPCC comment process as documented at Climate Audit. See, for instance, here,
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2960
or this more comprehensive summary of the IPCC,
http://mclean.ch/climate/IPCC.htm
Monbiot is one of the few credible AGW believers left; at least he has the integrity to take this issue seriously.
Posted by: Michael Strong | December 1, 2009 04:49 AM
I think you will find that your stature, readership base will be plummeting I certainly would not even consider submitting anywork to your journal much less subscribe. Advice: get rid of your global warming fetish
Posted by: VG | December 1, 2009 05:32 AM