On Feb 19, 7:34*am, "Leroy N. Soetoro"
wrote:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...gate-U-turn-As...
shment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.ht
ml

Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
There has been no global warming since 1995
Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data
is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has
trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom
of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant
papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the
observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that
his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping
is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate
change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer
in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a
man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically
significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that
there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change
and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as
director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after
the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were
manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the
world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster
efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of
‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information
and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin
said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him
that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not
record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the
professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from
around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.
That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is
relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office
is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of
thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took
in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper
go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to
account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the
lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to
share data with critics, which he regretted.

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the
scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises
were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There
is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations
have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of
everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on
their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We
have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar
warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could
be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no
‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip
rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even
warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of
high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer
between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high
temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only
applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is
much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent
or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the
North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in
more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere.
There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or
warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not
be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less
warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with
the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming
Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been
hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his
data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly
available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled
‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the
controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the
majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made. But
Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy
Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share
data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it
to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change
advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were
‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the
science was not settled.

Comments:

Has anyone else noticed that those who fervently believe that AGW is
real science and that the world needs to do something to combat it, do
nothing about it. If one believes in this nonsense, then they ought to
install solar panels and wind generators on their houses, drive electric
cars (or at least a Prius), and lead by example. What really happens
though, is like the retired global warming proponent in my area who
drives a pickup everywhere he goes using the tailgate as a billboard to
espouse his views. Maybe not so bad if he needed the pickup to haul
lumber or some such and only drove it occasionally, but he never hauls
anything with his pickup and drives thousands of miles per month. -
Todd, 4 Corners, US, 17/2/2010 05:12 Click to rate * * Rating * 55
Report abuse

I hope to assure readers in other parts of the world that not all
Americans are as ignorant or mean spirited as the first 6 commenters.

There is very little doubt that the world as a whole is warming. The
most logical explanation for this is human activity. You simply cannot
release stored energy as quickly as we are doing now and expect it to
have no effect. Most of our current energy conversion technologies are
very inefficient and "leak" energy in the form of heat.

Even if global warming were not occurring employing conservation
technology is the correct way to move forward. Doing so will extend the
run of our species on this planet. Of course if the run of our species
will be dominated by the attitudes of the 6 posters above maybe we don't
deserve to live on a planet as nice as this. - A Reader, KY USA,
17/2/2010 04:55 Click to rate * * Rating * 246 Report abuse

We're all happy to use alternate energy sources, recycle, etc.

Just don't lie or t try to scare us into to doing it simply to advance
Gore Inc.'s monetary objectives. Give us real, good reasons to change
over, and common sense will move us to other sources of energy.

Gore's fear/lie campaign has only set back movement towards more 'green'
technologies. Had he simply made a financial case, or shown how green
tech would make our lives better (without fear/lies), his progress would
be slower, but it would have been sustainable. - faceinthecrowd,
Holiday, Cambodia, 17/2/2010 02:00 Click to rate * * Rating * 170 Report
abuse

The unflattering truth is that man is too stupid and/or ignorant to make
much sense of climate data from around the world over many decades.
Meteorologists have a hard time predicting the weather from one day to
the next. The claims that not only was the earth warming, but that
climatologists could predict future warming accurately enough to know
that we have 5 years to act before we're doomed made for great headlines
but didn't make much sense. A statement like "Pouring all these gasses
into the atmosphere might do some damage somewhere down the road and
should be discouraged with a gradually increasing carbon tax." would
have been more honest. Of course it wouldn't have done as much for the
careers of those making it or for the private fortunes of companies ...

read more »

Has this ridiculous cross-poster ever seen the data in any of the 5
main global climate series? Go read the charter of UK.sci.weather
before you cross-post here again. Same with Crunchy. Same with any of
these other completely ridiculous cross-posters who want attention
from a newsgroup to which they never bother to visit.

Really. Read the charter - then actually post on here instead of
typing "uk.sci.weather" alongside the political newsgroups that you
normally inhabit. I'm just fed up with you all. Should you cross-post
here again. I'll reply with this kind of message; OK?

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.sc.../month/1996-04