A Climatology Conspiracy? (The plot thickens!)

American Thinker ^ | December 20, 2009 | David H. Douglass and John R. Christy

[neverdem]

The CRU emails have revealed how the normal conventions of the peer review process appear to have been compromised by a team* of global warming scientists, with the willing cooperation of the editor of the International Journal of Climatology (IJC), Glenn McGregor. The team spent nearly a year preparing and publishing a paper that attempted to rebut a previously published paper in IJC by Douglass, Christy, Pearson and Singer (DCPS). The DCPS paper, reviewed and accepted in the traditional manner, had shown that the IPCC models that predicted significant "global warming" in fact largely disagreed with the observational data.

We will let the reader judge whether this team effort, revealed in dozens of emails and taking nearly a year, involves inappropriate behavior including (a) unusual cooperation between authors and editor, (b) misstatement of known facts, (c) character assassination, (d) avoidance of traditional scientific give-and-take, (e) using confidential information, (f) misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the scientific question posed by DCPS, (g) withholding data, and more.

* The team is group of a number of climate scientists who frequently collaborate and publish papers which often supports the hypothesis of human-caused global warming. For this essay, the leading team members include Ben Santer, Phil Jones, Timothy Osborn, and Tom Wigley, with lesser roles for several others.

 

Introduction

This story involves the publication of:

Douglass et al. 2007 (DCPS)

31 May 2007. submitted to IJC

11 Oct            accepted

1 Nov             page proofs accepted

5 Dec 2007     published online

15 Nov 2008   print version (11+ months after on-line publication)

[reference in appendix B]

and the subsequent publication of

Santer and 17 team members

25 Mar 2008 submitted to IJC

18 July revised

20 July accepted

10 Oct published on-line

15 Nov print version (36 days after on-line publication)

[reference in appendix B]

This story uses various "CRU emails" and our own personal knowledge of events and issues. References will be made to items in an appendix that are arranged chronologically. The emails have an index # which comes from a compilation at http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php

2. The story

Our record of this story begins when Andrew Revkin, a reporter for the New York Times, sends three team members an email [30 Nov 2007] with the page proofs of the DCPS paper. This is a week before the online publication. The subject of Revkin's email:

"sorry to take your time up, but really do need a scrub of singer/christy/etc effort"

implies prior correspondence.

Team member Mears quickly responds with an email to fellow team members Jones, Santer, Thorne, Sherwood, Lanzante, Taylor, Seidel, Free and Wentz [4 Dec 2007]. Santer replies to all:

"I'm forwarding this to you in confidence. We all knew that some journal, somewhere, would eventually publish this stuff. Turns out that it was the International Journal of Climatology."

Santer knows this because he had reviewed and rejected the DCPS paper when it had been previously submitted to another journal. Phil Jones responds to Santer:

"It sure does! Have read briefly -- the surface arguments are wrong. I know editors have difficulty finding reviewers, but letting this one pass is awful -- and IJC was improving."

This exchange provides the first reference to the International Journal of Climatology.

The next day [5 Dec 2007 - the day the DCPS paper appeared on-line] Santer sends a email to Peter Thorne with copies to Carl Mears , Leopold Haimberger, Karl Taylor, Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, Steve Sherwood, John Lanzante, Dian Seidel, Melissa Free, Frank Wentz , Steve Klein. Santer says,

"Peter, I think you've done a nice job in capturing some of my concerns about the Douglass et al. paper... . I don't think it's a good strategy to submit a response to the Douglass et al. paper to the International Journal of Climatology (IJC). As Phil [Jones] pointed out, IJC has a large backlog, so it might take some time to get a response published. Furthermore, Douglass et al. probably would be given the final word.[TL1] "

The most critical point throughout these emails is the goal of preventing DCPS from providing what is considered normal in the peer-reviewed literature: an opportunity to respond to their critique, or as they put it, "be given the final word."  One wonders if there is ever a "final word" in science as the authors here seem to imply.

The next day [6 Dec 2007], Melissa Free responds with a cautious note, evidently because she had presented a  paper with Lanzante and Seidel  at an American Meteorological Society conference (18^th Conference on Climate Variability and Change)  acknowledging the existence of the discrepancy between observations and models -- the basic conclusion of the  DCPS paper.

What about the implications of a real model-observation difference for upper-air trends? Is this really so dire?

Santer responds [6 Dec 2007] that the key reason for attacking DCPS:

What is dire is Douglass et al.'s willful neglect of any observational datasets that do not support their arguments.

This "willful neglect" of "observational datasets" refers to the absence of two balloon datasets RAOBCORE v1.3 and v1.4.  (DCPS explain in an addendum that these data sets are faulty. See below.)

A further email from Jones [6 Dec 2007] discusses options to beat DCPS into print.  =Wigley enters [10 Dec 2007] to accuse DCPS of "fraud" and that under "normal circumstances" this would "cause him [Douglass] to lose his job."  We remind the reader that DCPS went through traditional, anonymous peer-review with iterations to satisfy the reviewers and without communicating outside proper channels with the editor and reviewers.

Tim Osborn, a colleague of Jones at CRU and a member of the editorial board of IJC, inserts himself into the process, declaring a bias on the issue, stating Douglass's previous papers "appear to have serious problems."  Santer responds with gratitude for the "heads up", again making the claim DCPS ignored certain balloon datasets.  As noted below DCPS did not use these datasets because they were known to be faulty.

On this day, an unsigned report appeared on RealClimate.org attacking DCPS especially about not using RAOBCORE 1.4. [12 Dec 2007] This prompted the DCPS authors to submit an Addendum to IJC on 3 Jan 2008 to explain in one page two issues (1) the reason for not using RAOBCORE 1.4 and (2) explaining the experimental design to show why using the full spread of model results to compare with observations (as Santer et al. would do) would lead to wrong conclusions about the relationship between trends in the upper air temperature vs. the surface - see Appendix A. (A copy of the addendum may be found at http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/.)

Osborn [10 Jan 2008] writing to Santer and Jones then discusses the "downside" of the normal comment-reply process in which DCPS would be given an "opportunity to have a response."  He explains that he has contacted the editor, Glenn McGregor, to "see what he can do."  According to Osborn, McGregor "promises to do everything he can to achieve a quick turn-around."  He also says:

(and please treat this in confidence, which is why I emailed to you and Phil only) that he [McGregor] may be able to hold back the hardcopy (i.e. the print/paper version) appearance of Douglass et al., possibly so that any accepted Santer et al. comment could appear alongside it.

He [McGregor] also intends to "correct the scientific record" and to identify in "advance reviewers who are both suitable and available", perhaps including "someone on the email list you've been using."  Given the bias of Osborn and McGregor as expressed in the emails, one could wonder what it means to be a "suitable" reviewer of the Santer paper.

Santer responds with his conditions, highlighting the intent that he must have the "last word".

1) Our paper should be regarded as an independent contribution, not as a
comment on Douglass et al. ...
2) If IJC agrees to 1), then Douglass et al. should have the opportunity
to respond to our contribution, and we should be given the chance to
reply. Any response and reply should be published side-by-side, in the
same issue of IJC.

I'd be grateful if you and Phil could provide me with some guidance on
1) and 2), and on whether you think we should submit to IJC. Feel free
to forward my email to Glenn McGregor.

This Osborn email and response by Santer essentially lay out the publication strategy apparently agreed to by Santer, Jones, Osborn and editor McGregor.  Santer accepts Osborn as a conduit and defines the conditions (having "last word"). This is exactly what he seeks to deny for DCPS, who published the original paper in this sequence in IJC. 

DCPS are never informed of this process which specifically addresses our paper, nor are we contacted for an explanation on any point raised in these negotiations.  Santer's allegations regarding DCPS and his conditions for publication are simply accepted. One wonders that if the results of DCPS were so obviously and demonstrably in error, why would anyone fear a response by DCPS?  See Appendix A.

A new development occurs on this day as Jones [10 Jan 2008] tells the team (Wigley, K. Taylor, Lanzante, Mears, Bader, Zwiers, Wentz, Haimberger, Free, MacCracken, Jones, Sherwood, Klein, Solomon, Thorne, Osborn, Schmidt, and Hack) a "secret" he learns from Osborn: that one of the recipients on the Santer email list is one of the original reviewers of DCPS who did not reject the article.

The problem !! The person who said they would leave it to the editor's discretion is on your email list! I don't know who it is - Tim does - maybe they have told you? I don't want to put pressure on Tim. He doesn't know I'm sending this. It isn't me by the way - nor Tim ! Tim said it was someone who hasn't contributed to the discussion - which does narrow the possibilities down!

Does Santer start wondering who the original reviewer is?  Does Osborn reveal this part of McGregor's secret? 

Then, on the matter of paying for expensive color plots, Jones adds, "I'm sure I can lean on Glenn [McGregor]" to evidently deal with the costs.  Obviously, this was not offered to DCPS.

The final approval of the strategy (Santer's conditions) to deny DCPS an opportunity to respond in the normal way is acknowledged by Osborn to Santer and Jones [11 Jan 2008] in that Osborn writes that McGregor, as editor is "prepared to treat it as a new submission rather than a comment on Douglass et al." and "my [McGregor's] offer of a quick turn around time etc. still stands."  Osborn also reminds Santer and Jones of the potential impropriety of this situation

 ... the only thing I didn't want to make more generally known was the suggestion that print publication of Douglass et al. might be delayed... all other aspects of this discussion are unrestricted

Santer now informs the team that the strategy has been agreed to [11 Jan 2008].  DCPS were never notified of these machinations, and it is clear that Santer's story of the situation was never investigated independently.  In this long email, the issues of radiosonde errors is discussed and the fact one dataset, RAOBCORE v1.4, is missing from DCPS.  To explain briefly, Sakamoto and Christy (SC09, accepted in 2008 and appearing in 2009) looked closely at the ERA-40 Reanlayses on which RAOBCORE v1.3 and v1.4 were based.  SC09 demonstrated that a spurious warming shift occurred in 1991 (a problem with a satellite channel: HIRS 11) which was then assimilated into RAOBCORE, producing spurious positive trends in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.  SC09 had been working on this since 2006 when they first met, and so were aware of the problems at that time.  Sherwood later comments [27 May 2008] on this evidence during the deliberations of Santer's publication, so the team was aware of the problem too.  Even though Santer had seen the DCPS addendum (sent to him by McGregor) with the explanation of the RAOBCORE problems as early as 10 Apr 2008 their published paper contains the statement:

Although DCPS07 had access to all three RAOBCORE versions, they presented results from v1.2 only

Another interesting comment here is that Santer does "NOT" want to "show the most recent radiosonde [balloon] results" from Hadley Center and Sherwood's IUK (i.e. withholding data that does not support his view).  The reason is likely that these two datasets, extended out in time, provide even stronger evidence in favor of DCPS.  The final paper cuts off these datasets in 1999.

Douglass becomes concerned that he has not heard a response from McGregor on the Addendum sent on 3 Jan 2008.  He writes on 1 Apr 2008 as to the status of the Addendum.  On 10 April 2008 McGregor responds that he has "great difficulty locating your addendum".  Douglass responds with the file number sent back to Douglass from IJC defining the event on 3 Jan, but attaches the Addendum again.  This was obviously successful because that very day, [10 Apr 2008], McGregor sends the Addendum to Santer to "learn your views."  Santer is afforded the opportunity to comment on the DCPS Addendum.  DCPS never hear from McGregor again concerning the Addendum.

McGregor informs Santer that he has received one set of comments [24 Apr 2008] and though he,

... would normally wait for all comments to come in before providing them to you, I thought in this case I would give you a head start in your preparation of revisions.

Santer informs the team of the situation [24 Apr 2008]. One wonders if there was any possibility that Santer's paper could have been rejected given the many favors already extended to this submission.  McGregor now knows in the Addendum what the core response to Santer et al. might be, yet evidently drops it from consideration.  At this point, DCPS are unaware of a response by Santer as they were dealing with the RealClimate.org blog with this matter.

Santer is worried about the lack of "urgency" in receiving the remaining reviews and complains to McGregor [5 May 2008].  He reminds McGregor that Osborn had agreed to the strategy that the "process would be handled as expeditiously as possible." McGregor hopes that the further comments will come within "2 weeks" or so.  Osborn writes to McGregor on the next day [6 May 2008] that Santer's 90-page article was much more than anticipated, implying that Santer is being rather demanding considering how much has been done to aid him.  One wonders why it should take 10 months and 90 pages to show that any paper contained a "serious flaw" and why Santer et al. needed to be protected from a response.

A paper by Thorne now appears in Nature Geosciences which referenced the as-yet-unpublished paper by Santer et al.(including Thorne).  Douglass writes to Thorne [26 May 2008] asking for a copy and is told [27 May 2008_A] that he can not do so because Santer is the first author. Douglass [27 May 2008_B] points out to Thorne Nature's ethics policy

          NATURE JOURNALS' POLICIES ON PUBLICATION ETHICS

Availability of data and materials

"An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build    upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols available .."

and asks again for a copy of the paper. At the same time Douglass asks Santer for a copy [27 May 2008_C]. Santer responds by saying "I see no conceivable reason why I should now send you an advance copy of my IJoC paper."  From the emails, we now know that the Santer et al. manucsript had not been accepted at this point, though it was cited in a Nature Geosciences article.  What is very curious is that in the email Santer claims Douglass did

... not have the professional courtesy to provide me with any advance information about your 2007 IJoC paper ...

In fact, Santer had been a reviewer of this paper when it had been submitted earlier, so he was in possession of the material (only slightly changed) for at least a year.  Additionally, Santer received a copy of the DCPS page proofs about a week before it even appeared on-line. 

In further email exchanges the next day [28 May 2008] the author team discusses this uncomfortable situation of having a citation in Nature Geosciences and being unable to provide the paper to the public before "a final decision on the paper has been reached."  Santer states they should "resubmit our revised manuscript to IJoC as soon as possible" which implies that Douglass's point about the ethics policies of Nature, which likely requires the availability of cited literature, may put them in jeopardy.

Santer writes to Jones [10 July 2008] that the two subsequent reviews are in but reviewer 2 was "somewhat crankier." Santer indicates that McGregor has told him that he will not resend the coming revised manuscript to the "crankier" reviewer in another apparent effort by McGregor to accommodate Santer.

Conclusion

On 21 July 2008 Santer hears that his paper is formally accepted and expresses his sincere gratitude to Osborn for "all your help with the tricky job of brokering the submission of the paper to IJoC." Osborn responds that "I'm not sure that I did all that much."

On 10 Oct 2008 the Santer et al. paper is published on-line.  Thirty-six days later Santer et al. appears in print immediately following DCPS who have waited now over eleven months for their paper to appear in print.  The strategy of delaying DCPS and not allowing DCPS to have a simultaneous response to Santer et al. has been achieved.

David H. Douglass is Professor of Physics, University of Rochester; John R. Christy is Distinguished Professor, Atmospheric Science, the University of Alabama in Huntsville

Appendix A  A scientific discussion of the DCPS paper

Appendix B   Email chronology.

[allmost]

I’m still waiting for the redefining of basic thermodynamics as we know it.

[pepsionice]

Twenty years ago...before the widespread use of internet...no one could have taken apart this story...even the media. Today...there are thousands of folks sitting around and analyzing things...just on their own time. This whole email pot of honey...is begging for massive analysis...which the press simply can’t do, or won’t do.

As for the guys who controlled this peer review process...I think these guys better start looking for employment with Piggly Wiggly or Woolworths....because you obviously can’t be fair and honest in the manner you run the peer review business. As a scientist...that pretty much ends your career and your educational job potential.

[GVnana]

Wow. Wow. Wow. What is dire is Douglass et al.'s willful neglect of any observational datasets that do not support their arguments.

Arrogant posers, aren't they?

[Enchante]

considering the totally unethical and unprofessional (not to mention anti-scientific) behaviors revealed in these emails, I’d say the word “team” is far too generous for these scumbags.

The correct word is “cabal”......

1. A conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers:
2. A secret scheme or plot.
intr.v. ca·balled, ca·bal·ling, ca·bals
To form a cabal; conspire.

[Paleo Conservative]

As for the guys who controlled this peer review process...I think these guys better start looking for employment with Piggly Wiggly or Woolworths....because you obviously can’t be fair and honest in the manner you run the peer review business. As a scientist...that pretty much ends your career and your educational job potential.

I think they should be busting rocks wearing striped clothes.

[TChad]

The strategy of delaying DCPS and not allowing DCPS to have a simultaneous response to Santer et al. has been achieved.

Sickening.

[MarkL]

The thing that pisses me off the most is the fact that while I'm NOT by any means a scientist, back in school (grade school science, high school science and chemistry, college chemistry and physics) one thing that was drilled into my head at every level was that the data must be pristine. Any "fudging" of the data, or of experimental conditions that might effect the data collected was not only unacceptable, it was downright immoral.

In a chemistry class, the professor actually distributed a couple of "bad" samples, in order to see if the student testing the sample would be honest enough to report that his experiments had failed and he would need to start over from the beginning for unknown and unexplainable reasons. He treated 2 of the students to this game, and only one of them came to that conclusion. The other one "faked it." He was made an example to the class, and only after that did the professor made it clear that this first experiment would not count towards the grade, but if anyone did something like that again (fudging the data or results), they would fail the class. And that was freshman chemistry! Plus you had to make all of your raw data available for review, even if it was scribbled on a scrap of paper. None of this "the dog ate my data" that we're hearing from these so-called "climatologists."

You know, so called journalists like Dan Rather might get a pass from other journalists with his "Just because the evidence was faked doesn't mean it didn't happen" nonsense against President Bush, but scientists should NEVER give other scientists a pass on faked or fudged data.

Mark

[Always Right]

Ben Santer - Research Scientist, Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Peter Thorne - expert on the weather balloon data at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Britain

Carl Mears - constructed and maintained a climate-quality data record of atmospheric temperatures from MSU and AMSU

Leopold Haimberger - Department of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Vienna

Karl Taylor - Program for Climate Model Diagnosis & Intercomparison (PCMDI), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Livermore, CA

Tom Wigley - senior scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Bolder, CO

Phil Jones - director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit

Steve Sherwood
John Lanzante
Dian Seidel
Melissa Free
Frank Wentz
Steve Klein

[PGalt]

WOW! Thanks for posting. Thanks to all posters. The machinations of anti-truth criminals and the methods they use to destroy opposition.

[Rocky]

They should all be fired and never allowed to work in climatology again, including the editor, McGregor, who held up the Douglass paper for 11 months to give time for Santer, et al, to publish. The whole episode is absolutely unethical, and considering the huge amounts of government money at stake, it is also criminal.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[grey_whiskers]

They should all be fired and never allowed to work in climatology again, including the editor, McGregor, who held up the Douglass paper for 11 months to give time for Santer, et al, to publish. The whole episode is absolutely unethical, and considering the huge amounts of government money at stake, it is also criminal.

No, they should be stripped of their degrees and removed from all science or journalism related to science altogether.

Some of Santer's other emails within the email dump have incensed me to the point that I cannot see straight.

Cheers!

[ALPAPilot]

And that was freshman chemistry! Plus you had to make all of your raw data available for review, even if it was scribbled on a scrap of paper. None of this "the dog ate my data" that we're hearing from these so-called "climatologists."

I remember teachers being very clear about lab books. You were NEVER allowed to erase anything. If you made a mistake, it had to have a single line through it.

The other thing about science: it was the data that DID NOT fit the hypothesis that was most important. For example, when Rutherford did his gold foil experiment. Most of his alpha particles went through the foil and a few bounced strait back. It was his analysis of the unintended information that led to a much revised model of the atom. Apparently the folks at CRU are uninterested in revising hypotheses to fit the observation. Hence, they are no longer scientist.

[saganite]

I recall some threads here from a few years ago discussing how NASA was massaging their upper air temp data by including the effect of shear in the data which served to increase the temperature of the upper atmosphere. The discussion at the time was that it was a fraudulent manipulation of the data but the accusation didn’t go beyond the blogosphere.

[libstripper]

I'm a lawyer who graduated as an undergraduate from the Univesity of Illinois in 1965 with a BA and a major in history. Getting that BA required taking 16 crdit hours of science courses, the second 8 hours of which were geology. I took biology, chemistry, and physics while in high school. From the chemistry and physics courses I got the mistaken idea that science was a basically exact enterprise where there was little dispute about much of the basic material.

Taking 10 hours of geology, which consisted of 8 hours of regular class and a 2 credit hour field trip, knocked my intellectual socks off. I discovered that, when it came to the earth sciences, like geology, cliamtology, and meterology, powerful dispute was the rule, not the exception, and that all of the most fundamental theories were constantly being argued over, debated, and refined.

Then there came the anthropogenic global warming "scientists" and their ignorant, self-inflatged acolytes, like Al Gore (distinguished by D and C+ grades in the only two rinky dink colledge science courses he ever took) to tell us that this extraordinary hypothesis was revealed truth immediately after it had been conceived. I choked on that idea since it ran counter to basic photosynthesis chemistry and all I knew about the inherently disputatious nature of earth sciences. In adition, it seemed to be a conviently developed superstition designed to enable communists to establish an all-powerful anti-American and anti-cpaitalist world government, because everything humans do, we being a carbon based life form, involves consumption of carbon, processing carbon, and emission of carbon dioxide. Climategate, IMHO, has totally vindicated all my prior views.

[Ditto]

The lefties have trashed the Constitution... why not the scientific process as well?

Turns out 'peer review' is about as honest and open as a Chicago city council meeting.

[MarkL]

Turns out 'peer review' is about as honest and open as a Chicago city council meeting.

You're right, of course. However "Peer Review" used to mean submitting your results for review before disinterested parties, or those with differing beliefs. I can't imagine a time in the past where presenting results to an "amen chorus" was considered to be legitimate. Certainly no different than Hitler's or Stalin's show trials.

I'm serious here... I realize that there's no way it will ever happen, given the makeup of the so-called "Justice Department," but I want a RICO investigation of all these parties, including Algore! Given how much money he stands to make from this fraud! And I want every damned one of them indicted for FRAUD as well! The scope of this dwarfs Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Global Crossing, and Madoff COMBINED!!!

Mark

[browardchad]

What is it that "the team" keeps repeating about the CRU emails? Oh, yes, "They've been taken out of context."

Well, Douglass and Christy just put quite a few of them in context over the course of almost a year's span (Appendix B is jaw-dropping), and the results are damning.

And Tom Wigley thinks Douglass should lose his job? No, every active and passive participant in the warming fraud should be summarily dismissed.

[20 years too late]

I think we need to engrave the names of the “scientists”, journalists(?), politicians, universities and businesses who have paticipated in this fraud in a granite monument placed somewhere in Washington, D.C.