Windmills along the lake

[jrc]

OK, this is the easiest piece:

"There is more than one "official" surface temperature record, based on actual land station records. There is the one we have developed in CRU, but there are also the series developed at NCDC and GISS. Although we all use very similar station datasets, we each employ different ways of assessing the quality of the individual series and different ways of developing gridded products. The GISS data and their program are freely available for people to experiment with. The agreement between the three series is very good."

Dr Jones' findings are not based on the actual land station records. It's based on data he modified from the real data. He freely admits he changed the actual land record to generate his "official" surface temperature record. That's cooking the books.

Their has never been an independent review of the real data. As a matter of fact if you check a few other sources, you will find that Dr. Jones claims that much of the real data is lost cannot be verified.

Reading further you see that there are three different datasets all derived from the lost real data. All different and only GISS allows anyone to see their data. If this is science and there is a scientific method of converting actual land station data to "official" surface temperature records, then this process would be open and repeatable.

So Dr Jones is 100% sure that we have global warming, he bases this on data that he won't show us, he admits it was changed from the original data using a method he won't tell us, and he claims he lost the original data.

[jrc]

here's another spot:

"The phrase 'hide the decline' was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were."


Confronted with differing data, tree rings vs instument data, he chose to use tree rings when that data supported his theory and instrument data when that supported his theory and a "trick" to hide the differences when they didn't agree. In science, when your data doesn't agree, you can't pick the data you like and use a "trick" to hide the data you don't. That's cooking the books.

[Rose]

Originally Posted by jrc

here's another spot:

"The phrase 'hide the decline' was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were."

This bit did make me uncomfortable, but it's difficult to make a complete assessment from a few lines of explanation. I wish I had time to search for peer-reviewed articles which might explain in full why the tree ring data is discarded during this period.

As for your other example, that doesn't bother me as much since their results are in agreement with those from two other organizations. There can be several paths to the same answer in science. More transparency in the methodology would be nice, however.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

[jrc]

Originally Posted by Rose

This bit did make me uncomfortable, but it's difficult to make a complete assessment from a few lines of explanation. I wish I had time to search for peer-reviewed articles which might explain in full why the tree ring data is discarded during this period.

As for your other example, that doesn't bother me as much since their results are in agreement with those from two other organizations. There can be several paths to the same answer in science. More transparency in the methodology would be nice, however.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Unfortunately Rose peer review is not to be for "poor" papers, we have to guess what makes a paper "poor".

"I do not accept that I was trying to subvert the peer-review process and unfairly influence editors in their decisions. I undertook all the reviews I made in good faith and sent them back to the editors. In some e-mails I questioned the peer-review process with respect to what I believed were poor papers that had appeared. Isn't this called freedom of speech?"

The first part is the most damning. Some people believe that AGW means the end of the world as we know it, a tipping point that we cannot come back from, and yet the leading scientist will not show his work, will not tell us how he changed the raw data to make his charts and conclusions. The lives of 6 billion people are at stake. Does this sound credible? Remember he says he's 100% certain there is warming, he has zero doubt.