climategate.tv
arrest the crimatologists
Weather Action review/forecast for Apr/May 2010
May 2nd
Weather Action review and Forecast for April/May 2010 & Piers Corbyn’s comments on “The Future of Climate Wars”
AR4 on “1998 was the warmest year”
May 2nd
via ClimateAudit
May 2, 2010
As most CA readers know, a few years ago, I wondered how they knew that 1998 was the warmest year in a millennium – a claim that you don’t see in AR4. Nor, at first (second or even fifth) glance does the assertion, once so prominent, even seem to be addressed in AR4.
The Climategate letters offer an interesting vignette. Chapter 6 authors were not unaware of the matter and worked over language on the issue like New York or London lawyers, eventually inserting a clause deep in the chapter that gave them cover, intentionally leaving the issue out of the chapter Executive Summary.
On July 28, 2006, Chapter 6 Coordinating Lead Author Overpeck (1154090231.txt) wrote to Briffa (copy Jansen) passing along a question from WG1 Chairman Susan Solomon, asking the reasonable question about what happened to claimes that 1998 was the warmest year, 1990s the warmest decade.
Hi Keith – in our TS/SPM discussions, Susan has raised this question:
“In the TAR they spoke of 1998 being the warmest year in the
millennium and the 1990s the warmest decade. I don’t see that
chapter 6 addresses any of these time scales. I am not saying you
should do so – but are you planning to say anything about it and why
you aren’t doing so? and if you’re not planning to say anything at
all, can you please tell me what you think about it, just for my own
info?”Would you please give me your feedback on this, with enough
thoughtful detail to hopefully make me/Susan fully informed (a para
should be enough).
Thanks, Peck
On Aug 1, 2006, Briffa replied (728. 1154484340.txt) with a comment that would not be out of place at Climate Audit (one of the interesting things about Climategate letters is how often they express views in private that are expressed publicly at CA). Briffa:
Peck,
The TAR was, in my opinion, wrong to say anything about the precedence (or lack thereof) of the warmth of the individual year 1998. The reason is that all reconstructions have very wide uncertainty ranges bracketing individual-year estimates of part temperature.Given this, it is hard to dismiss the possibility that individual years in the past did exceed the measured 1998 value. These errors on the individual years are so wide as to make any comparison with the 1998 measured value very problematic, especially when you consider that most reconstructions do not include it in their calibration range (curtailed predictor network in recent times) and the usual estimates of uncertainty calculated from calibration (or verification) residual variances would not provide a good estimate of the likely error associated with it even if data did exist.
Virginia AG Goes After Michael Mann
Apr 30th
via ReadTheHook.com
April 29, 2010
Show him the papers— or else.
CUCCINELLI CAMPAIGN
CUCCINELLI CAMPAIGN
No one can accuse Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of shying from controversy. In his first four months in office, Cuccinelli directed public universities to remove sexual orientation from their anti-discrimination policies, attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and filed a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Now, it appears, he may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.
In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
If Cuccinelli succeeds in finding a smoking gun like the purloined emails that led to the international scandal dubbed Climategate, Cuccinelli could seek the return of all the research money, legal fees, and trebled damages.
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