ClimateGate 2.0: This is a very large pile of "smoking guns"

Breaking news: FOIA 2011 has arrived ! « tallbloke's talkshop

Here’s the README contents: ...This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning to publicly release the passphrase.

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such as…

<1939> Thorne/MetO:
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary [...]

<3066> Thorne:
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

<1611> Carter:
It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group.

<2884> Wigley:
Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]
<4755> Overpeck:
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.

<3456> Overpeck:

I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about “Subsequent evidence” [...] Need to convince readers that there really has been an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it? ...

<2009> Briffa:

I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!
<2775> Jones:

I too don’t see why the schemes should be symmetrical. The temperature ones certainly will not as we’re choosing the periods to show warming.
...

<0714> Jones:

Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about the tornadoes group.

... <4923> Stott/MetO:

My most immediate concern is to whether to leave this statement ["probably the warmest of the last millennium"] in or whether I should remove it in the anticipation that by the time of the 4th Assessment Report we’ll have withdrawn this statement – Chris Folland at least seems to think this is possible.

/// Communicating Climate Change ///

<2495> Humphrey/DEFRA:

I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.
...
<3062> Jones:

We don’t really want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that Michael has written [...] We’ll have to cut out some of his stuff.

<1485> Mann:

the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what the site [Real Climate] is about.

... <4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:

In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media

Kjellen:

I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming ...

<5111> Pollack:

But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland. ...

<0310> Warren:

The results for 400 ppm stabilization look odd in many cases [...] As it stands we’ll have to delete the results from the paper if it is to be published.

<1682> Wils:

[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably [...]

<2267> Wilson:

Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models, surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.

[...] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from the sun alone.

<5289> Hoskins:

If the tropical near surface specific humidity over tropical land has not gone up (Fig 5) presumably that could explain why the expected amplification of the warming in the tropics with height has not really been detected.

<5315> Jenkins/MetO:

would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?

<2292> Jones:

[tropical glaciers] There is a small problem though with their retreat. They have retreated a lot in the last 20 years yet the MSU2LT data would suggest that temperatures haven’t increased at these levels.

<1788> Jones:

There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from "recent extreme weather is due to global warming"] – at least not a climatologist.

<4693> Crowley:

I am not convinced that the “truth” is always worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships

<2967> Briffa:

Also there is much published evidence for Europe (and France in particular) of increasing net primary productivity in natural and managed woodlands that may be associated either with nitrogen or increasing CO2 or both. Contrast this with the still controversial question of large-scale acid-rain-related forest decline? To what extent is this issue now generally considered urgent, or even real?

<2733> Crowley:

Phil, thanks for your thoughts – guarantee there will be no dirty laundry in the open.

<2095> Steig:

He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.

<0953> Jones:

This will reduce the 1940-1970 cooling in NH temps. Explaining the cooling with sulphates won’t be quite as necessary.
...

<4470> Norwegian Meteorological Institute:

In Norway and Spitsbergen, it is possible to explain most of the warming after the 1960s by changes in the atmospheric circulation. The warming prior to 1940 cannot be explained in this way. ...

<0896> Jones:

I think the urban-related warming should be smaller than this, but I can’t think of a good way to argue this. I am hopeful of finding something in the data that makes by their Figure 3.

<0044> Rean:

[...] we found the [urban warming] effect is pretty big in the areas we analyzed. This is a little different from the result you obtained in 1990. [...] We have published a few of papers on this topic in Chinese. Unfortunately, when we sent our comments to the IPCC AR4, they were mostly rejected.

<4789> Wigley:

there are some nitpicky jerks who have criticized the Jones et al. data sets – we don’t want one of those [EPRI/California Energy Commission meeting].

Jones:
The jerk you mention was called Good(e)rich who found urban warming at all Californian sites.

... <3373> Bradley:

I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.

<4758> Osborn:

Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data ‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it!
...

<4369> Cook:

I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.

... <4394> Houghton [MetO, IPCC co-chair]

[...] we dont take seriously enough our God-given responsibility to care for the
Earth [...] 500 million people are expected to watch The Day After Tomorrow. We must pray that they pick up that message.

<0999> Hulme:

My work is as Director of the national centre for climate change research, a job which requires me to translate my Christian belief about stewardship of God’s planet into research and action. ...

<3111> Watson/UEA:

I’d agree probably 10 years away to go from weather forecasting to ~ annual scale. But the “big climate picture” includes ocean feedbacks on all time scales, carbon and other elemental cycles, etc. and it has to be several decades before that is sorted out I would think. So I would guess that it will not be models or theory, but observation that will provide the answer to the question of how the climate will change in many decades time.

<5131> Shukla/IGES:

["Future of the IPCC", 2008] It is inconceivable that policymakers will be willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.

... <0850> Barnett:

[IPCC AR5 models] clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer
<5066> Hegerl:

[IPCC AR5 models]

So using the 20th c for tuning is just doing what some people have long suspected us of doing [...] and what the nonpublished diagram from NCAR showing correlation between aerosol forcing and sensitivity also suggested.

<4443> Jones:

Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low level clouds. ...

/// The Cause ///

<3115> Mann:

By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

<3940> Mann:

They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a bit.

<0810> Mann:

I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s doing, but its not helping the cause

<3594> Berger:

Phil,

Many thanks for your paper and congratulations for reviving the global warming.
...

<5294> Schneider:

Even though I am virtually certain we shall lose on McCain-Lieberman, they are forcing Senators to go on record for for against sensible climate policy

/// Freedom of Information ///

<2440> Jones:

I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process

<2094> Briffa:

UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails] anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC task.

... <1577> Jones:

[FOI, temperature data]

Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.