BTW – obviously your taking heat on behalf of a lot of other folks and presumably you don’t feel that all of this stuff is completely defensible. Thanks for allowing this open discussion to continue. I primarily stopped reading this site a while back for the express reason that individuals with very pertinent, on topic information were having their posts screened. That alone is so damaging to (what should be, IMO) the purpose of this site. Thanks for allowing to post this.

Steve G.

[Response: Eeek! I should take a break. I meant 'yes' then - it is illegal to delete relevant files that are possibly subject to an FOI request. My confusion, sorry. - gavin]

Is this THE Ray Ladbury? The scientist? Words fail me? Lets just cut out the insults shall we? Just because someone doesn’t agree with you, whats with the name calling? I would hope your IQ is better than this!

I agree, a final battle was overdue.
One single question: Is there one open source model provided by the sceptics which can be computed and explain the undisputed rise in global temperature over the past decades using the datasets? Yes or no?

“But really, you think anyone would really delete their data? That would be ridiculous. – gavin”

“If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”

You seem a sound guy Gavin, I struggle to understand why you try to defend this kind of behaviour. I understand you are thinking of the bigger picture here but you are shooting yourself in the foot by not just admitting some things went terribly wrong here when it comes to sharing data for scrutiny and having the proper scientific attitude. You only make people suspicious by witholding data and software/methods.
The fact that journals allow us to pick or refuse certain reviewers already shows how messed up the whole system has become. Which is why I always must smile when people insist on peer review in these discussions.
A dark day for science indeed, but hopefully some good will come out of it by exposing the very human and sometimes base emotions that underly the system.

Who cares if it’s illegal? This isn’t a court of law, this the court of opinion. As for, “taken out of context”, you could argue that with a few emails, but I don’t see how you can be serious with the rest.

Someone who distorts data to support a claim is not a scientist.

[Response: Who did this? And what claim do you think it was supporting? - gavin]

Imagine this fictional scenario: Emails are discovered indicating that in late 2001, the TSA knowingly provided falsified data to the Patriot Act subcommittee in an effort to persuade the panel to add additional language to the act, providing security measures that were not supported by the evidence at hand, but which would serve the TSA’s interests. One who opposed the Patriot Act might call this scandalous, and rightly so. And they would also be correct in rolling their eyes when some right-wing outlet responded with, “More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. No mention of Bush having prior knowledge of 9/11…” and so forth. Your attempt at diversion is no less laughable.

Maybe what is not contained in the emails is more interesting to someone with a vested interest in a thriving GW industry, like yourselves. But not to the average individual. We find the actual contents of the emails interesting, and damning, enough.

[Response: You think I'm having fun today? Hmmm... - gavin]

You didn’t start this blog today…

From reading the stolen e-mails and “analysis” over at WTF, I actually believe that an enormous amount of good can come out of this. What is very apparant in the e-mails is the overwhelming exasperation of scientists at having to continually endure the petty vindictiveness and wing-nuttery of the “troofers” and disciples of pseudoscience. The enemies of reason are currently engineering a spectacular own-goal.

Someone above asks if emails can be deleted after FOI requests….Gavin answers: Yes. However, one of the emails indicated that, yes, you *could* delete emails in such a case….”if it were part of normal file maintenance” (i.e., hint hint wink wink). Very damning IMO. Absolutely shameful and the very essence of ‘anti science’

Steve G., PhD

[Response: Huh? I said "No". Please don't put words into my mouth. - gavin]

Thank you for your sterling efforts in responding to everybody’s questions. The one email that continues to bother me is the much discussed email of Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15, from Phil Jones to Bradley, Mann and Hughes. Your relevant response to #441 was…

[Response: The graph in question (from a WMO report made ten years ago) was made to show the paleo-reconstructions in context with the recent instrumental record, smoothed in order to show the long term trends. These graphs have been produced hundreds of times, with small variations in how the data is presented or processed and are for the most part, completely interchangeable. What do you think is being hidden? - gavin]

The glaring issue for me is rather that – unless I have the wrong end of the stick (no pun intended) – the graphed lines are mislabelled, and knowingly so. The green line, for example, is labelled “Apr-Sep from Briffa (1999) Quaternary Science Reviews 19, 87.” whereas in reality it is a composite of tree ring data from that paper and, for the final 40 years, data from elsewhere that has been obtained from the met. stations. The effect of adding the met. station data is to add a good part of the ‘blade of the hockey stick’ that you yourself has said does not appear in Briffa’s data.

I would emphasise that I am not in the field and may well have misunderstood something. However, if my understanding is instead correct then this is a clear example of scientific misconduct, by Dr Jones in 1999. [edit] You should not defend it. Please let me know if my understanding is mistaken and, if so, how it is mistaken. Thanks, s. wing.

[Response: An uninformative or incomplete caption in a WMO brochure is not 'scientific misconduct' by any stretch of the imagination. If I had seen it beforehand, I would have suggested making the caption more informative about the treatment of the instrumental data and I doubt there would have been any hesitation in doing so. But this isn't the peer reviewed literature, and so there is no way of correcting the brochure after the fact. This has nothing to do with Mann since no figure in any of his papers did the same thing. - gavin]