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Post by sigurdur on Nov 21, 2009 13:58:29 GMT
An FOI is you are using US dollars is to be answered with the information. It is that simple, there is now way around it.
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 21, 2009 14:25:39 GMT
As far as Briffa.....his paper is junk. The overwhelming evidence shows that there was a MWP....even in the Southern Hemisphere. Briffa's paper shows there was a MWP. It can take a long time to collate work together for a 3rd party, even if it's all digital. You often have to convert it from a load of disjointed personal notes into something portable and documented for an end user. Well iirc someone (was it briffa?) did try something like that to satisfy one of CA's requests, but CA then complains that no metadata or description is provided! One of the emails complains that the FOI will not stop they'll just keep asking for more and more. First they ask for the code, then they want old versions of the code, then they want the intermediate steps, every rough note, a description for all steps, and then they ask for explanations. As a scientists working on research why would they want to waste time fulfilling such requests if they perceive the FOI requesters as timewasters who are just trying to find nitpicking errors to exagerate and spin which will finally cause the scientists ins question to be accused of fraud? If scientists believe the demands are for scientific reasons they will hand the data over even with an FOI. CA is a public blog, not an independent auditing company. The scientists simply don't believe the data requests are for scientific reasons. Note that no published paper has come out of the Briffa CA work, so they were right. Editted: language was too confrontational...I keep doing that "It can take a long time to collate work together for a 3rd party, even if it's all digital. You often have to convert it from a load of disjointed personal notes into something portable and documented for an end user."I totally disagree with you here SoCold Having done a fair amount of government funded research I can tell you that professional scientists collate all the data used in the research and make it available as part of the deliverables however large it is. Once you have taken the Government dime - or the Queens shilling - then ownership of all that you do in regard to what you are paid for is vested in the government. It was not 'CRU data' it was the government customers' data. It MUST be made available both contractually and for good science. There can be IP issues -but they are NOT YOUR PROBLEM they are the government's problem as they own the data and all the work that you have done using their money, not you. Therefore, if there really were IP issues from an FOI request I would have expected a response referring FOI requesters to the appropriate government agency for access or perhaps to the providers of the raw data. I would not expect obfuscation and deletion. Format is not really a relevant issue as long as it has not been deliberately encrypted. In most government labs your 'day book' is also a formal public document so you would have to supply certified copies of its pages doodles and all. Even if/when this blows over the people involved in these emails may find it difficult to obtain government funding when their names are on a research proposal.
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 21, 2009 14:30:18 GMT
Just a thought? Are the FOI laws different in Britian than in the US? Those of us in the US are making assumptions based on OUR FOI laws. Maybe in Britian, there is not any freedom left....so in effect the law is worthless? I don't know....but am curious. Not a lot different: "Your rights, responsibilities and obligations to freedom of informationThe Freedom of Information Act gives you the right to obtain information held by public authorities unless there are good reasons to keep it confidential.
. The basics The Freedom of Information Act deals with access to official information and gives individuals or organisations the right to request information from any public authority.
Your right to know The Freedom of Information Act gives you the right to request information held by public authorities, companies wholly owned by public authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and non-devolved public bodies in Scotland.
Your legal obligations All public authorities and companies wholly owned by public authorities have obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. When responding to requests, they have to follow a number of set procedures.
Guidance The ICO publishes detailed guidance notes that provide organisations and individuals with all the information they need to know about the Freedom of Information Act.
Decision notices A Decision Notice outlines the ICO's final assessment, following a complaint, as to whether or not a public authority has complied with the Act. These are catalogued and available online.
Enforcement Enforcement action will be taken against public authorities that repeatedly fail to meet their responsibilities under the act.
Model publication scheme A publication scheme is a commitment by a public authority to make certain information available, and a guide to how that information can be obtained."
www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/freedom_of_information.aspxCRU is in the position that it is probably under both US and UK FOI as the funding was from the USA and UK governments.
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Post by sigurdur on Nov 21, 2009 14:33:11 GMT
Ya know what is so funny? The tree ring data doesn't work after 1960, so they just put a different set of data at the end of the string. I think we need to do this with TI. There are lots of signals from the sun that go up and down after 1985....heck....we will just cut and paste them......and viola....we have proof!
(just trick the data to hide the results)
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Post by sigurdur on Nov 21, 2009 14:38:43 GMT
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Post by jimcripwell on Nov 21, 2009 14:43:50 GMT
The most three things, to me, are as follows
1. What is the official reaction of the mian people concerned; e.g. Phil Jones and Vicky Pope. Unti we know what they say, officially, we dont know how much effect this affair has.
2. What is the reac tion of the "scientific community". I have seen the comment that this does not affect the "science" behind AGW. So far as I am concerned, there is NO physics to support AGW; all there is , is some data which correlates CO2 and climate. To the extent that such data is discredited, this may affect members of the scientific community.
3. What "legs" this affair has, if any, in the mainstream media.
When we know a little more on these three items, we will be in a better position to know what affect, if any, this will have on Copenhagen and beyond.
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 21, 2009 14:50:03 GMT
Socold, FOIA recognizes that work paid for by the taxpayers should be available to the taxpayers. The work wasn't paid by the taxpayers. The data belonged to the russians, Briffa couldn't give it away. There are also lots of things that aren't covered by FOI. Intellectual property is a big one. If there was no intellectual property rights then a rival research center could simply demand the source code from a rival, steal their hard work and publish results before them. Like in industry there has to be some guarantee of intellectual property protection, either that or no competition. If UK law simply dissolved that concept of intellectual property in science then many countries would refuse to supply UK academics with data they didn't want to be public. It's similar to the case for releasing that intelligence info about the iraq war, which included information from foreign intelligence agencies. The argument was that if the UK released it, other countries would not trust giving us information again. Intellectual property rights is what enabled Briffa to use the russian data under agreement that he wouldn't publish it. The russians were still working on a publication for it. One thing noticeable in the emails is the competitiveness between different climate research teams and between different authors. Some of the emails contain heated arguments. I don't see evidence of fabrication and fraud, rather people working hard on this area of science and trying to further it, disagreeing sometimes. Some of the FOI requests were for emails, which as private correspondence are not covered by the FOIA. And for good reason - if someone sends you an email in confidence they don't expect a UK law to require that email be released to the public at some arbitary date in the future. If they knew that might happen, they might just make a phone call instead..or not bother at all. Climate audit is not a licensed or even independent auditor. For a start I would say a necessary requirement for auditing is not to base it on a public blog as that conjures up certain pressure to produce entertaining stories rather than actual auditing. I don't know what losing the records refers to, but as far as I am aware the temperature reconstructions, and the instrumental records can all be reproduced from available data. Frankly climate audit isn't auditing in a scientific way. In science you try to reproduce the result using your own means (an independent method). You don't try to replicate the result using the exact same means. I don't think anything will happen. What happened to Briffa? we were promised he would be fired, etc. And how is Coleman getting on suing Al Gore along with 30,000 scientists? Has that happened yet? I am curious to see as global temperatures continue rising over coming decades whether skeptics will quietly disappear or if they will continue accusing Briffa, etc of fraud (or perhaps the next generation of scientists) "There are also lots of things that aren't covered by FOI. Intellectual property is a big one. If there was no intellectual property rights then a rival research center could simply demand the source code from a rival, steal their hard work and publish results before them. Like in industry there has to be some guarantee of intellectual property protection, either that or no competition."Unless CRU was 'self funded' - which is obviously not the case, the IP rights were the customers' not CRU's. In the case of government customers as already pointed out - the requirement is usually that the research and all data and code is totally open public domain as it has been paid for by the public and the public own it. If a researcher does not like that - then don't work with government funding. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with commercial IP so stop handwaving in that area. The FOIs in the US and UK have no force on a commercial entity.
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Post by sigurdur on Nov 21, 2009 14:58:06 GMT
I will put it simply.
IF BP funds a study, that study is theirs and FOI will not apply.
IF the US Government funds a study, that is public domain. ALL OF IT is public domain.
It is just that simple. I expect the US Justice Dept to get involved in this as the law seems to have been broken.
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 21, 2009 15:05:11 GMT
BTW, according to Bishop Hill, there may be more to come. I am waiting for the other shoe to drop too. If someone had access to the data 'leaked' so far, then they had access to a lot more than the original 150Mb or so.
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Post by steve on Nov 21, 2009 15:15:29 GMT
I'm not that bothered about whether scientists sought to evade intrusive FOIs or Russian tax (I'm sure everyone here pays every cent due, and follows all the laws of the land to the fullest extent). I'm interested in knowing if the science is moving in the right direction.
Reading the emails, what comes across to me is that:
1. The individual scientists think they are going about the science in the right way. 2. There is a lot of disagreement and discussion over quite controversial issues. 3. The scientists genuinely think that the sceptic science is ropey - and in the case of Douglass, either beyond incompetent or potentially as fraudulent as that S Korean gene scientist.
We already knew that a lot of climate scientists viewed various sceptics as dishonest and disingenuous denialists who are prepared to risk the planet to make a name for themselves or for a few bucks from oil and industry, and we already knew that they considered FOI requests to be an unjustified interruption on their time.
The bad case scenario would have been that their private reactions suggested that there were real major flaws in the conduct of the science *which would have major impacts on results*.
But none of the examples that have come out bear this out to me. Even the out of context statement about it being terrible that we can't explain current lack of warming is already in the public domain with various publications referring to it.
So it's not pretty to see, but I don't yet see anything substantive enough to impact on the actual science - there are no examples of duck houses, moat cleaning, house flipping and wisteria chopping.
Then, I've been spending my time reading the emails, and not seeing what other people have found. So I'll come back to this if anything more interesting crops up.
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Post by daffyduck on Nov 21, 2009 15:17:20 GMT
Did (or are) Mann and three other Americans help scientists in the U.K. break the law by destroying emails require under the U.K. Freedom of Information Law? Here is the sequence of emails[ I appolgize if itl 'double spaces everthing']:
Cast of Caracter: Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia Michael Mann, Penn State Ray Bradley, U. Mass Caspar Ammann, NCAR Tim Osborn, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia David Palmer, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia Gene Wahl, NOAA
From: Phil Jones p.jones@xxx
To: "Michael E. Mann" mann@xxx, "raymond s. bradley" rbradley@xxxx
Subject: A couple of things
Date: Fri May 9 09:53:41 2008
Cc: "Caspar Ammann" ammann@xxxx
Mike, Ray, Caspar,
…<snip>…
2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this.
………………………………………………
From: Phil Jones p.jones@xxx
To: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk,"Palmer Dave Mr (LIB)" David.Palmer@xxxx
Subject: Re: FW: Your Ref: FOI_08-23 - IPCC, 2007 WGI Chapter 6 Assessment Process [FOI_08-23]
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 17:13:35 +0100
Cc: "Briffa Keith Prof " k.briffa@xxxx, "Mcgarvie Michael Mr " m.mcgarvie@xxx
Dave,
Although requests (1) and (2) are for the IPCC, so irrelevant to UEA, Keith (or you Dave) could say that for (1) Keith didn't get any additional comments in the drafts other than those supplied by IPCC. On (2) Keith should say that he didn't get any papers through the IPCC process.either.
I was doing a different chapter from Keith and I didn't get any. What we did get were papers sent to us directly - so not through IPCC, asking us to refer to them in the IPCC chapters. If only Holland knew how the process really worked!! Every faculty member in ENV and all the post docs and most PhDs do, but seemingly not Holland.
So the answers to both (1) and (2) should be directed to IPCC, but Keith should say that he didn't get anything extra that wasn't in the IPCC comments.
As for (3) Tim has asked Caspar, but Caspar is one of the worse responders to emails known. I doubt either he emailed Keith or Keith emailed him related to IPCC.
<snip>
…………………………………………….
From: Phil Jones p.jones@x
To: "Michael E. Mann" mann@xxx
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
…………
From: Michael Mann mann@xxx
To: Phil Jones p.jones@xx
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400
Reply-to: mann@psu.edu
<x-flowed>
Hi Phil,
laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true.
I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxx
talk to you later,
mike
.....................
Micahel Mann acted on the request to destroy the FOI emails!!!!
Phil Jones asked Keith (or you Dave) to lie!!!!
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Post by poitsplace on Nov 21, 2009 15:40:04 GMT
How the heck can anyone defend the FOI evasion??? In a digital age there is NO EXCUSE! They MUST have the relevant data stored in some sort of semi-organized manner to have used it in the first place or archive it. We have internet connections. Look how quickly the data spread around the world WITHOUT their help. Gee, I sure wish I could get access to the emails...oh, here they are... www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zipOh, you want one too? www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zip and you? www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zipand you too??? www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zipThis is NOT rocket science. Its simple data transfer. Are they HONESTLY saying it's prohibitively difficult to email an attachment? To paste a link into an email? To buy the domain take_my_motherf!cking_data.com and point it at the files? I mean look, I just did it 4 times! You can get a web hosting account with a one TERABYTE per month download limit for $10 a month or so. Answer one request and its answered FOREVER. By the way...just for those of you that didn't get that terabyte figure, an account like that could serve up the leaked files (61meg) over 16000 times per month!
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Post by sigurdur on Nov 21, 2009 15:50:47 GMT
I think a favorite quote of mine says it all in this case.
"Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character."
Mr. Albert Einstein
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Post by sigurdur on Nov 21, 2009 15:52:13 GMT
How the heck can anyone defend the FOI evasion??? In a digital age there is NO EXCUSE! They MUST have the relevant data stored in some sort of semi-organized manner to have used it in the first place or archive it. We have internet connections. Look how quickly the data spread around the world WITHOUT their help. Gee, I sure wish I could get access to the emails...oh, here they are... www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zipOh, you want one too? www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zip and you? www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zipand you too??? www.poitsplace.com/temp/bigmail.zipThis is NOT rocket science. Its simple data transfer. Are they HONESTLY saying it's prohibitively difficult to email an attachment? To paste a link into an email? To buy the domain take_my_motherf!cking_data.com and point it at the files? I mean look, I just did it 4 times! You can get a web hosting account with a one TERABYTE per month download limit for $10 a month or so. Answer one request and its answered FOREVER. By the way...just for those of you that didn't get that terabyte figure, an account like that could serve up the leaked files (61meg) over 16000 times per month! It is obvious that the fellows know little about computers. Or file transfer etc. Maybe that is why there are so many "missing links" in the AGW hypothosis. Hot spot anyone? Or..is it that old pipeline again.
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Post by socold on Nov 21, 2009 16:25:47 GMT
In one respect Socold you are right. Thats the way science has been done. But as science becomes more and more justification for laws to limit the freedom of others that model may no longer be appropriate. You are right that skeptics are essentially demanding the process of science to change. In my opinion there are both benefits and disadvantages to such a change. But the way I see it a lot of skeptics are not realizing that they are demanding a change to the process, it's as if they think the process already works how they think it should work, and that therefore these scientists are failing to follow some scientific process by not releasing intermediate steps and source code. The scientists in question have been publishing work and challenging the work of others as they always have done through the peer reviewed literature. The introduction of blogs making demands and FOI requests does not fit into this scientific process. Whether it should be fit in is another question, but that affects the future not the present or the past. Often there is one scientist saying one thing and another saying something else. The only way to resolve these issues is for them to publish results and challenges to peer review. Take for example Santer's challenge ofn Douglass's paper on observations vs model results. Santer didn't do that by requesting all the source code and intermediate data from Douglass and scrutinizing his methods, he did it by performing the same analysis himself, finding a different result and publishing that different result. If McIntyre thinks the results are wrong because the methods are wrong, all he has to do imo is publish different results using a method he thinks is correct to demonstrate that. The emails between the scientists raise a similar point when they ask why doesn't McIntyre take the raw data and do the analysis himself, why is he sending all these FOI requests for data he doesn't need to reproduce the results. It looks to me that the scientists simply don't understand what McIntyre is trying to achieve. If he wants to try to reproduce their results, he has the data available to do that. They don't understand why he wants their exact steps, and rightly or wrongly they end up concluding that he's trying to waste their time or discredit by finding minor code errors irrespective of the significance of those to the results. In short they don't see any scientific benefit to giving McIntyre what he asks for and they instead think it will harm their reputations and/or waste their time. So naturally they start getting annoyed and trying to dodge his requests. The FOI requests for personal communications really didn't help and only made them more annoyed. In the end I suspect they simply didn't want to provide anything to McIntyre, even if they should have done under the rules they started stonewalling as much as they could. A bit childish perhaps. One thing that is confusing this issue (well confuses me) with regard to FOI requests is what they did and didn't respond do. In my mind there were three kinds of FOI requests made 1) requests for raw data 2) requests for intermediate working, source code 3) requests for personal communications, eg email I think request type #3, for personal communications, was rightfully rejected to be honest. I don't think FOI would (or even should) cover personal communications. More importantly and to the point though I don't think #3 and #1 are completely different beasts. #3 to me seems more of a harassing pointless request whereas #1 seems totally justified to me. #2 is middle ground. I think there is lots of confusion on the internet concerning the leaded emails with regard to them stonewalling type 3 requests for personal communication. Some people seem to be reading these emails as if they are stonewalling type #1 requests. In fact I saw one account which cited the Briffa "delete all your emails" message with Jones not providing a request for #1 concerning raw station data. Jones says the data is lost, but the implication on the site was that he deleted it according to Briffa's email, even though that was about email correspondence concerning the IPCC. So there is a lot of confusion going on, which definitely doesn't help me. Certainly in regards to FOI requests for #1 I know of only two examples (there may be more, I am not an expert on the history of this stuff): 1) The Yamal raw data. The FOI request was turned down in my opinion justifiably because Briffa didn't own the data to give away. The communication between Briffa and McIntyre but by that point relations had well and truly broken down. 2) Jones station data which he says he lost. He says the raw data in question (not all the station data - just a subset) was processed in the 1980s and since then the raw data is lost but the processed results from the first step is still around. Of course people will ask did he really lose it, but it's not unfeasible that he did. I've looked through a lot of the emails and allegations now and I am finding the skeptic claims of the significance of these emails to be very exaggerated. Not that the skeptics have nothing at all though. There is one email that is suspicious to me and I would like to hear an explanation. Is the one about the "trick" to sort out "declining". That in my mind is the only suspicious email and I eagerly hope Jones will remember the context he wrote it in and provide an explanation. Gavin's explanation for that email made no sense to me.
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