Klimaatgekte: 'Hockey stick'-alarmist Phil Jones bekent: klimaatsceptici hebben gelijk - 'Hockey stick' data zijn zoek

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Bron:   Daily Mail
Datum:  14 februari 2010
Auteur: Jonathan Petre
URL:     
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html


Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has
been no global warming since 1995
------------------------------------------------------------------
   * Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
   * There has been no global warming since 1995
   * Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made
     changes

The academic at the centre of the 'Climategate? affair, whose raw
data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that
he has trouble 'keeping track' of the information. Colleagues say
that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of
Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant
papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the
observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills,
that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record
keeping is 'not as good as it should be'. The data is crucial to the
famous 'hockey stick graph' used by climate change advocates to
support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was
warmer in medieval times than now ? suggesting global warming may
not be a man-made phenomenon. And he said that for the past 15 years
there has been no 'statistically significant' warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that
there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change
and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-
made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as
director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit
after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were
manipulating data. The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather
stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used
for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide
emissions.

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of
'scientific fraud' for allegedly deliberately suppressing information
and refusing to share vital data with critics. Discussing the interview,
the BBC's environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to
colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths
included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office
tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC's website, said
the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data
from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature
change. That material has been used to produce the 'hockey stick
graph' which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply
in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said 'his
office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens
of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was
he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces
of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would
be held to account over them'.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the
lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance
to share data with critics, which he regretted.

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the
scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature
rises were predominantly man-made. Asked about whether he lost track
of data, Professor Jones said: 'There is some truth in that. We do
have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it's
probably not as good as it should be. There?s a continual updating of
the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries
will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so
it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve
more.'

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced
similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said
these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent
warming could not. He further admitted that in the last 15 years there
had been no 'statistically significant' warming, although he argued
this was a blip rather than the long-term trend. And he said that the
debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now
during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high
temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer
between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high
temperatures in northern countries. But climate change advocates
have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part
of the world. Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he
said: 'There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period
was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in
parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of
Asia. 'For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen
clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern
hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these
latter two regions. Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in
extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late
20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand,
if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the
current warmth would be unprecedented.'

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working
with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval
Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could
have been hotter then than now. Professor Jones criticised those who
complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could
always collate their own from publicly available material in the US.
And he said the climate had not cooled 'until recently ? and then
barely at all. The trend is a warming trend'.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4's Today programme that, despite the
controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in
the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-
made. But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming
Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones's 'excuses' for his failure
to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and
'mates'. He said that until all the data was released, sceptics
could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by
climate change advocates. He added that the professor's concessions
over medieval warming were 'significant' because they were his first
public admission that the science was not settled.

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(c) 2010 Associated Newspapers Ltd

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