Having looked through some of the email, I was struck by the following dialog, which transpired among a few people apparently trying to coordinate figures for some publication or other. I'll present it in chronological order, which is the reverse of how it was presented in a single message found here:
No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=710&filename= 1153254016.txt
Tim Osborn writes:
I've drafted two versions of the new fig 6.14, comprising a new panel showing the forcing used in the EMIC runs, plus the old fig 6.13e panel showing the EMIC simulated NH temperatures. Keith has seen them already. First you should know what I did, so that you (especially Fortunat) can check that what I did was appropriate:
(1) For the volcanic forcing, I simply took the volcanic RF forcing from Fortunat's file and applied the 30-year smoothing before plotting it.
...
Fortunat Joos writes:
1) Volcanic panel: I strongly believe that we should show what was used by the model and not some 40 year smoothed curves for volcanic forcing or any other forcing. So please use the original data file. Scientific honesty demands to show what was used and not something post-processed.
...
Tim Osborn writes:
... I also appreciate the points raised by Fortunat...
One thing that I am particularly perturbed about is Fortunat's implication that to show smoothed forcings would be scientifically dishonest. I disagree (and I was also upset by your choice of wording). If it were dishonest to show smoothed data, then presumably the same holds for 6.13 ... Most climate models, even GCMs, respond in a quasi-linear way, such that the smoothed response to unsmooth forcing is very similar to the response to smooth forcing. So if we are interested in the temperature response on time scales of 30 years and longer, it seems entirely appropriate ... to show the forcings on this time scale too, because the forcing variations on those time scales are the ones that are driving the temperature response ... The choice of smoothing / no smoothing is not, therefore, anything to do with honesty/dishonesty, but is purely a presentational choice that can made accordingly to what the purpose of the figure is. Here our purpose seems to be long-term climate changes, rather than response to individual volcanoes or to the 11-yr solar cycle.
So the position is:
(1) smoothing or no smoothing: there are arguments for both choices, though clearly I prefer smoothing and Fortunat prefers no smoothing. I could make a figure which kept the smooth lines but put the raw annual histogram volcanic spikes underneath in pale grey, as Peck requested anyway ...
Fortunat Joos writes:
Sorry, that was a very careless and a totally inappropriate choice of words. I seriously apologize. Of course smoothing is not dishonest (I do it also all the time). To the contrary, I very much apreciate all your hard work to do these figures. I know that it is very time consuming from own experience ... (that is perhaps why I did not reflect on my wording when writing the e-mail). What I wanted to say is that if one has the opportunity to show directly what forcing was used by the model than I very much prefer to do so. I hope there remains no misunderstanding. I realize now that I should have used more modest wording at various places.
Well, how's that for conspiratorial schemers carrying out their behind-the-scenes chicanery? They even use the actual word "dishonest" -- a veritable mother-lode for quote miners!
I've been seeing similar dialogs elsewhere in this stolen archive -- for instance the infamous Phil Jones himself mentioning that he omitted 38 weather-station sites from actual 1986 data because the sites were in urban areas (in "Urban Heat Islands) and thus were abnormally warm relative to the 2666 sites that were retained; he even quotes one David Parker, writing to one Geoff Jenkins:
David Parker writes:
It is correct that Phil Jones removes stations that appear to have urban warming, unlike Hansen et al. who correct them. I don't know the percentage of stations that Phil removes; details were probably originally given in the Jones et al 1985 and 1986 USDoE reports (see references given in Jones and Moberg, 2003...
Can you imagine? A global-warming believer omitting data samples because they were unreasonably warm! What nerve! What utter hubris!! If political discourse were carried out this way, what sort of world would this be??
Now that these facts are out, I have no doubt Buzzsaw will cite the biblical prophesy that predicted this very behavior as part of the inexorable emergence of the Satan's New World Order, and this new evidence may even lead him to finally work out the particular date and time of the coming rapture. {AbE: How fortunate for our Biblical Prophecy folks that these emails have finally been made public, for until now there was no way for them to know what had to be predicted.} (Wow-- data from 2666 weather stations used in a 1986 paper! That tells you something deeply prophetic right there, for sure!)
Edited by Otto Tellick, : Improved the explication about prophecy in last paragraph.
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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