[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Chasing more stuff...:

The CRU hack: Context
— gavin @ 23 November 2009

****************************************EXCERPT*******************************************

This is a continuation of the last thread which is getting a little unwieldy. The emails cover a 13 year period in which many things happened, and very few people are up to speed on some of the long-buried issues. So to save some time, I’ve pulled a few bits out of the comment thread that shed some light on some of the context which is missing in some of the discussion of various emails.

• Trenberth: You need to read his recent paper on quantifying the current changes in the Earth’s energy budget to realise why he is concerned about our inability currently to track small year-to-year variations in the radiative fluxes.
• Wigley: The concern with sea surface temperatures in the 1940s stems from the paper by Thompson et al (2007) which identified a spurious discontinuity in ocean temperatures. The impact of this has not yet been fully corrected for in the HadSST data set, but people still want to assess what impact it might have on any work that used the original data.
• Climate Research and peer-review: You should read about the issues from the editors (Claire Goodess, Hans von Storch) who resigned because of a breakdown of the peer review process at that journal, that came to light with the particularly egregious (and well-publicised) paper by Soon and Baliunas (2003). The publisher’s assessment is here.

I can update this if there is a demand. Please let me know in the comments, which, as always, should be substantive, non-insulting on on topic.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From comments at link see #52:

********************************************

17

Chris Byrne says:

23 November 2009 at 1:54 AM

Gavin,

Have you had a look through the coding comments in Harry_Read_Me.txt? There’s a lot of speculation in the blogosphere about this. I have to admit I had a chuckle.

http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/data-horribilis-harryreadmetxt-file.html

[Response: That file is obviously just a notebook for someone piecing together work legacy code made by other people. Messy for sure, but certainly not the 'final version' of the code. It was probably produced in moving from the CRU TS 2.1 to 3.0 version (which is a completely separate data set from the standard HadCRUT numbers by the way) and involves a lot more interpolation. See here: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg.htm (when their server comes back up), also Mitchell and Jones (2005). - gavin]

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Further into the comments see Link at #52:

**************************************************************

34

Ms Hansen says:

23 November 2009 at 4:11 AM

I see a lot of contradiction right here (see below). I am by no means a sceptic, but I do question just how much of the climate change we are experiencing is natural vs AGW? More importantly, I’m keen to know more about CRUs refusal to provide info in a FOIA request. Science should always be open – the moment it gets conducted behind closed doors is the moment you open yourself up to scepticism!!

Your responses to the below interest me – one moment you know, and then another you’re not sure.

Jay says:
20 November 2009 at 1:54 PM
Again, I write to the moderator. What did I write that was so inflammatory that you would not post it? I have not attempted to stir anything up? I would like to know the truth. Thats all. The truth needs no moderation nor to be covered up. What is wrong with my saying that? Maybe you can post this and a response as I don’t see what could possibly be wrong with this post.

My only questions now is…

I hear a lot about the FOIA and data that was being withheld that is now lost or destroyed. Is there an explanation or a reference to that which would answer what I have been hearing on the other end?

[Response: No data has been lost or destroyed. - gavin]

John Masher says:
20 November 2009 at 2:12 PM
Can you explain the multiple references in the emails to evading FOIA responses, for example as in “delete all email [on certain topic] and I will do the same”?

[Response: No. But I am not party either to those FOIA requests, nor the timing and nor do I know what happened or what the scope was. - gavin]