This article (surprisingly enough from the usually right-leaning Times newspaper) is striking in it’s honesty. I’m not condoning Jones’s actions regarding the FOI, but given the following response, it’s understandable (back of the envelope calculations: 60 FOI requests in a single month, at 18hrs per request is 1080hrs, or 27 weeks of work of work. With a staff of 13, over half of that month would be dedicated to responding to FOI requests alone – that’s alot of time not doing science. Wait, maybe that’s the point?):

Photographs of Professor Phil Jones show a handsome, smiling, confident-looking man. Not chubby exactly, but in blooming good health. The man who meets me at the University of East Anglia (UEA) looks grey-skinned and gaunt, as if he has been kept in prison.

In a way, he has. Since November last year he has been a prisoner of public opprobrium and a target of such vilification that was he was almost persuaded to comply with the wishes of those who wanted him dead.

In bare outline, the story of the Climatic Research Unit emails — “Climategate” — is well known.

Unidentified hackers broke into the UEA website and made off with more than a thousand emails, plus some data and program files dating back over 13 years. The thieves’ eureka moment came when they found messages from Jones, the unit’s director, and others apparently encouraging climate scientists to refuse freedom of information (FoI) requests from known climate sceptics, and even to destroy data rather than surrender them to anyone they feared might misuse them.

At the worst possible time, in the days immediately before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, it enabled sceptics across the globe to claim that climate science was fatally flawed and its practitioners a shifty gang who twisted the facts to suit their agenda and shut out anyone who disagreed with them.

Jones insists that is not the way it was, but concedes it was the way it may have looked. He now accepts that he did not treat the FoI requests as seriously as he should have done. “I regret that I did not deal with them in the right way,” he told The Sunday Times. “In a way, I misjudged the situation.”

But he pleads provocation. Last year in July alone the unit received 60 FoI requests from across the world. With a staff of only 13 to cope with them, the demands were accumulating faster than they could be dealt with. “According to the rules,” says Jones, “you have to do 18 hours’ work on each one before you’re allowed to turn it down.” It meant that the scientists would have had a lot of their time diverted from research.

A further irritation was that most of the data was available online, making the FoI requests, in Jones’s view, needless and a vexatious waste of his time. In the circumstances, he says, he thought it reasonable to refer the applicants to the website of the Historical Climatology Network in the US.

He also suspected that the CRU was the target of a co-ordinated attempt to interfere with its work — a suspicion that hardened into certainty when, over a matter of days, it received 40 similar FoI requests. Each applicant asked for data from five different countries, 200 in all, which would have been a daunting task even for someone with nothing else to do. It was clear to Jones that the attack originated from an old adversary, the sceptical website Climate Audit, run by Steve McIntyre, a former minerals prospector and arch climate sceptic.

“We were clearly being targeted,” says Jones. “Only 22% of the FoI enquiries were identifiably from within the UK, 39% were from abroad and 39% were untraceable.” What irked him was that the foreign applicants would all have had sources closer to hand in their own countries.

“I think they just wanted to waste our time,” he says. “They wanted to slow us down.”

It was pure irritation, he says, that provoked him and others to write the notorious emails apparently conspiring to destroy or withhold data. “It was just frustration. I thought the requests were just distractions. It was taking us away from our day jobs. It was written in anger.”

But he insists that no data were destroyed. “We have no data to delete. It comes to us from institutions around the world. We interpret data. We don’t create or collect it. It’s all available from other sources.”

If the leak itself was bad, the aftermath was the stuff of nightmares. Even now, weeks later, Jones seems rigid with shock. “There were death threats,” he says. “People said I should go and kill myself. They said they knew where I lived.” Two more death threats came last week after the deputy information commissioner delivered his verdict, making more work for Norfolk police, who are already investigating the theft of the emails.

The effect on Jones was devastating. The worldwide outcry plunged him into the snakepit of international politics. It was, he agrees, “a David Kelly moment”.

“I did think about it, yes. About suicide. I thought about it several times, but I think I’ve got past that stage now.” With the support of his family, and particularly the love of his five-year-old granddaughter, he began to look forward again. He is still unwell, getting through the day on beta-blockers and the night on sleeping pills, and he has lost a stone in weight. But at last there is optimism.

Until the inquiry is over, he will stand aside from his directorship of the CRU. On the question of the science, however, he remains bristlingly defiant. He may have tripped up over the FoI requests, but nobody has laid a glove on the science. To prove his point, he spreads the table with graphs, tracing the outlines with his fingertip. He shows how the warming trend plotted by the CRU precisely matches the plots from two independent sources in America. “There, you see!” The three coloured lines precisely overlay each other, proof positive of scientific probity.

“I am obviously going to be much more careful about my emails in future. I will write every email as if it is for publication. But I stand 100% behind the science. I did not manipulate or fabricate any data, and I look forward to proving that to the Sir Muir Russell inquiry [the UEA’s independent review into allegations against the unit].”

Then, he believes, at the age of 57 he will be ready to resume his career and get on quietly and invisibly with what he does best. His hope for the future? “I wish people would read my scientific papers rather than my emails.”

Dr Andrew Glick is an earth and paleoclimate scientist from the Australian National University.

“We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.”  (Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute, advisor to the German government).

The release of more than 320 billion tons of carbon (GtC) from buried early biospheres, adding more than one half of the original carbon inventory of the atmosphere (~590 GtC) to the atmosphere-ocean system, has triggered a fundamental shift in the state of the atmosphere at a rate of 2 ppm CO2/year, a pace unprecedented in the geological record with the exception of the effects of CO2 released from craters excavated by large asteroid impacts.

Recent paleoclimate studies, using multiple proxies (soil carbonate δ13C, boron/calcium, stomata leaf pores), indicate that the current CO2 level of 388 ppm and CO2-equivalent level of 460 ppm (which includes the methane factor), commits warming above pre-industrial levels to 3 to 4 degrees C in the tropics and 10 degrees C in polar regions [1], leading to an ice-free Earth.

Such conditions existed in the early Pliocene (5.2 Ma) and mid-Pliocene (2.8 Ma) Pliocene, about the time Australopithecine bipeds were emerging from tropical forests [2]. Pliocene climates changed gradually and pre-historic humans responded through migration. There is nowhere the 6.5 billion of contemporary humans can go, not even the barren planets into the study of which space agencies have been pouring more funding than governments allocated for environmental mitigation to date [3].

It appears difficult to explain to the public and politicians that, at 460 ppm CO2-equivalent, the climate is tracking close to the upper stability limit of the Antarctic ice sheet, defined at approximately 500 ppm [4]. Once transcended, mitigation measures would hardly be able to re-form the cryosphere, which serves as the Earth’s thermostat, from which cold ocean and wind current emanate – keeping lower latitudes cool. Once the ice melts the atmosphere-ocean system shifts to greenhouse Earth conditions such as existed about 15 Ma (mid-Miocene), before 40 Ma (Eocene), and much of the Cretaceous (141 – 65 Ma), when only small burrowing mammals could live on land.

About 2.8 Ma, the mid-Pliocene, temperatures rose by at least 3 degrees C above pre-industrial and sea levels rose by 25+/-12 meters [5]. About 15 million years ago the rise of CO2 to near~500 ppm resulted in global temperatures about 4 degrees C above pre-industrial level and sea level by about 40 meters. Since the early 20^th century the rate of sea level rise increased from about 1 mm/year to about 3.5 mm/year [6] (1993 – 2009 mean rate 3.2+/-0.4 mm/year (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Sea level changes 1993 – 2009 scanned by the Topex and Jason satellites. University of Colorado, 2009 (http://sealevel.colorado.edu/)

The world is in a lag period, when the consequences of human greenhouse gas emissions and land clearing are increasingly manifest, including atmospheric energy levels which drive hurricanes and is shifting climate zones toward the poles, with consequent desertification of temperate zones, i.e. southern Europe, southern Australia, southern Africa. The desiccated forests become prey to firestorms, such as in Victoria and California.

Global warming is modulated by the ENSO cycle, including relatively cool La-Nina phases (Figure 2). Studiously ignorant climate change deniers, who would like to call themselves “sceptics”, use these cycles to claim “global cooling” [7]. In contravention of basic laws of thermodynamics (Stefan-Boltzmann law, Kirchoff law) which underlie the infrared absorption/emission resonance effect of greenhouse molecules, they invoke the role of short-lived (9 days average atmospheric residence) water vapour but neglect the long-term effects (centuries to millennia) of the well-mixed CO2 and nitric oxides. The increased frequency of the El-Nino is tracking toward conditions of permanent El-Nino, free from the effects of polar-derived currents (Humboldt Current, California Current). Such conditions existed about 2.8 Ma ago [8] (Figure 3).

Figure 2: Mean global temperature trend 1975 – 2009 and the ENSO cycle, representing the superposition of the El-Nino – La Nina cycles on the global warming trend."

Climate change is appropriately described as a global oxygenation event affecting geological carbon deposits as well as the present biosphere. At 2 ppm/year the scale of carbon oxidation exceeds the highest recorded geological rate of 0.4 ppm/year, recorded at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary at 55 Ma when about 2000 GtC were burnt, triggering an extinction of species [4].

Figure 3: Evolution of the ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) cycles from the Pliocene (5.2 – 1.8 million years ago) to the present, showing the divergence of ocean temperatures in the east Pacific Ocean (blue line) from the west Pacific Ocean (red line).

Hopes for a meaningful binding agreement in Copenhagen, described as “the most important meeting in the history of the human species.” (Joachim Schellnhuber), and for a supposed presidential “Messiah” to wave the magic wand, collapsed in December, 2009, in the sorry mess of vested and tribal interests.

The international system required to protect the lives of the young and future generation is failing. According to the Global Carbon Project “Carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and land use changes reached almost 10 billion tonnes in 2007” [9]. Those who deny the reality of climate change around the globe seek uncertainties in future climate projections, cf. dates of Himalayan glacier melt or Amazon deforestation. This ignores the evidence for dangerous climate trajectories even where the precise dates of future events can not be determined, namely, Himalayan glaciers melt may precede or postdate 2035. Presumably the claims of “conspiracy” on the part of the scientific world include the pioneers of atmospheric physics (Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius and Guy Chalendar), as well as those who defined the basic thermodynamic laws of the greenhouse process (Stefan, Bolzmann, Kirschner)?

Most of all those who criticise the IPCC ignore the fact that, to date, the IPCC reports have UNDERESTIMATED ice melt rates, sea level rise, feedback effects and the proximity of tipping points, not least the looming release of hundreds of GtC as methane from permafrost, lake sediments and bogs.

Governments continue to pour the planet’s dwindling resources into wars (US$1.4 trillion in 2008) and bank bailouts (US$0.7 trillion).  Entertainment and media are projected to cost US$2 trillion in 2011. Between 1958 and 2009 the US (NASA) spent US$823 billion on space exploration searching among other for water and microbes on other planets [10]. Now they have found water on Mars and the Moon, while pH of the terrestrial oceans has declined between 1751 and 1994 by 0.075 (8.179 to 8.104) [11], threatening the marine food chain.

1. Pagani M. et al. 2010.   http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n1/abs/ngeo724.html
2. deMenocal P.B. 1995. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/270/5233/53
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA Budget#Annual _budget.2C_1958-2008;
4. Zachos J.C. et al. 2008 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7176/full/nature06588.html
5. Haywood M. and Williams M. 2005. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118652116/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
6. Rahmstorf S. 2007. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1135456 http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
7. Easterling D.R. and Wehner M.F. 2009. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL037810.shtml
8. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;312/5779/1485
9. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/26/2374776.htm
10. http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/24/nasa-finds-water-ice-in-mars-craters/ http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/24/new-evidence-of-water-on-the-moon/
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

Whilst Dr Roy Spencer cautions that these data are “hot off the satellite” and hence are still being analyzed (and may be revised), they indicate that January may be the warmest within the 32 year record of the UAH global temperature record (a stunning +.13C warmer than the previous warmest January on record).

The Australian newspaper ran with a typical sensationalist headline this morning, titled “Report undercuts Kevin Rudd’s Great Barrier Reef wipeout“. The journalist in question might sound familiar – he is the same same journalist who penned the deliberately misleading “How the reef became blue again” article (see here for our response at Climate Shifts: “Why the Great Barrier Reef isn’t magically blue again“). So continues The Australian’s ongoing war against science, creating contention and deliberately clouding issues to sell newspapers. “Report undercuts Kevin Rudd’s Great Barrier Reef wipeout” – sorry Jamie, there is no undercutting here.

KEVIN Rudd’s insistence that the Great Barrier Reef could be “destroyed beyond recognition” by global warming grates with new science suggesting it will again escape temperature-related coral bleaching.

One of the main issues in the article is that there is no ‘new science’ to be reported. Hugh and his team at the Australian Institute of Marine Science have been surveying these reefs annually since the early 1990’s. The ‘spin’ here is completely misleading, as there is no ‘new science’ or even a report to base the article on! The article continues:

Going head-to-head with Tony Abbott for the first time since he became Opposition Leader, Mr Rudd said the reef would be destroyed if global temperatures increased by 4C.

“I noticed the other day, by the way, that the Leader of the Opposition said that, if the worst-case scenario put out by scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were to come to pass and we were to see global temperature increases of the order of 4 degrees centigrade, it did not represent any big moral challenge for the future,” Mr Rudd said. “Can I say that, if we saw temperature increases like that, as far as the Barrier Reef is concerned, frankly, it would be destroyed beyond recognition.”

Mr Rudd’s warning reflects the findings of the 2007 report of the IPCC that is under intensifying fire for exaggerating the threat to Himalayan glaciers and the Amazon rainforest. The IPCC predicted the reef would be subject to annual bleaching by 2030 if climate change continued unchecked, destroying much of its coral cover.

But after scouring 14 sites at the vulnerable southern end of the GBR last month, the team from Townsville-based AIMS found only a only a handful of “slightly stressed reefs”.

It seems to me that Kevin Rudd has managed to hit the nail squarely on the head, only for The Australian to then get it completely wrong. It appears that the article has managed to mix up the AIMS projections for this summers coral bleaching outlook with the long-term projections of coral bleaching in the region (30-50 year outlook). The ‘handful’ of slightly stressed reefs doesn’t negate the findings of the IPCC or Rudd’s claims that the reef will be destroyed if global temperatures increased by 4C. As Hugh rightly points out,

Dr Sweatman said a deep monsoonal trough, reinforced by tropical cyclones Olga and Neville, had averted “doldrums” conditions associated with coral bleaching on the reef.

Which is exactly what happened in 2006. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the GBR region experienced its eighth warmest year on record in 2009, and the warming trend is unmistakable.

Finally, the article strives to convince the general public that as scientists, we “fear” that mass bleaching events will become more frequent due to global warming, and our ‘fears’ have been substantially allayed. Although it makes for great sensational journalism, this simply isn’t the issue – this isn’t a “fear” but a scientific fact. Next time, let’s stick to fact over fearmongering and keep the science objective.

The consistent attempts by a well organised and well funded denialist movement have recently focused on the sources of information used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Through an transparent set of guidelines to how to deal with literature (the next set of guidelines are about to be published in preparation for AR5), the IPCC has referenced the thousands of scientific papers to gain the latest consensus view on climate and related sciences.  This stands in contrast to the lack of scrutiny, credibility or honesty of the principal champions of denialist viewpoint.  In that case, when one looks at Carter, Bolt, Minchin, Lehr, Joyce, Monckton and Plimer, we see a series of individuals pushing crazy ideas about scientific conspiracy and a Communist world takeover.

Several denialists have focused on a report that came out of a research contract that I undertook for the international conservation group, Greenpeace (click here to download the report).  This relatively short report brought together a number of experts to examine how changes to the health of coral reefs as result of coral bleaching might affect coastal people in 13 Pacific countries. It was written by a series of experts with years of experience, high credibility and tons of peer reviewed publications in the area.  Peer review of the report involved be following appropriate Pacific experts:

·         Dr Mahendra Reddy, Lecturer in Development Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva.
·         Mr Lionel Gibson, Geography Department, University of the South Pacific, Suva.
·         Mr Joeli Veitayaki, Coordinator, Marine Affairs Programme University of the South Pacific, Suva.

Two individuals (one from Greenpeace) read the report for consistency and to ensure we had fulfilled the contract.

Our report was referenced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in chapter 4 of the Working Group II report for the fourth assessment.  While Greenpeace was the contracting organisation, they had no influence over the analysis or conclusions.  And just like any other organisations that I undertake expert contracts with (which includes partnerships with Rio Tinto, the Australian government, and many others) the analysis and conclusions are those of the research team, and those alone.   Given that the report had been independently peer-reviewed, then it would be appropriate to the IPCC to use it, if it contains useful information.

So, once again it seems we have yet another case of desperation from the denialist movement – cherry picking around the edges and ignoring the hundreds if not thousands lines of evidence that support the notion that our climate is changing and the impacts are likely to be considerable and vast.

It is very flattering that Andrew Bolt takes a special interest in my scientific research.  In his latest posting, his whipped his fan club into a frenzy over some graphics from my 1999 paper.  I gave a copy of this paper to him when I met him last year hoping that he would understand it.

But, surprise surprise, my good friend Andrew Bolt has stuffed up again.  I guess he stuffs up when it comes to political predictions, his understanding of complex issues like the stolen generation, as well as his ability to understand science.  Whilst I don’t hold the above against him (pedalling disinformation seems to be quite profitable for him!), but I do think we need to clarify the details:

Andrew has made a meal out of the fact that we have not seen bleaching every second year, as might be predicted from this figure.  The predictions were made by taking the known thresholds to coral bleaching (which are hard and fast, and are the basis for very successful satellite tools that can predict coral bleaching) and combining it with the best climate modelling available at the time.  The net conclusion is that mass coral bleaching will increase over the next few decades until it becomes a yearly event (well, as long as coral lasts!). This is a logical conclusion of the two data sets.

The details of exactly when and where this occurs, is associated by a huge amount of variability which is otherwise known as the weather.  In response to him on his Blog, I wrote to him (I don’t think he is going to post it because it runs counter to the opinions of his sycophantic fan club!):

“At this point in the research, we know that coral bleaching will occur at a particular temperature within a particular region.  We also have the predictions of how the sea temperature will change, and hence the only at this point is that, round about 2015 or so (give or take 5-10 years), we will start to see the risk of coral bleaching increase until every second year as a bleaching event and so on.

I suspect because of the variability that an unambiguous resolution of this will not occur until you and I are celebrating our 61st birthdays on September 26, 2020.  I personally do not look forward to that day because all of the evidence suggests that the scientific community is correct in this assessment and conclusion.  At that point, we will be mourning the significant features of the Great Barrier Reef.”

A few days ago a journalist from one of the major British newspapers contacted me for my opinion on the IPCC review process, and I thought that i’d post my response here for a bit of clarity:

1.      Do you have concerns about science, data or claims presented in the final draft of the IPCC AR4 report? If so, please detail.

I do not have any major concerns except to point out that the IPCC AR4 is probably a little behind the latest science due to its careful review process and it requires the consensus of the wide array of experts involved.   The other major reason for saying this lies in the fact that the assessment reports of the IPCC are only published every 5 years or so.  The science of climate change is continuously and rapidly changing, hence reports get out of date very quickly.

Perhaps the best example of the fact that the IPCC is conservative in its predictions with the fact that AR4 failed to predict the sudden and precipitous drop of the Arctic summer sea ice.  This was not the fault of the highly qualified scientists involved, but a consequence of the fact that predictions like this are often highly controversial and, despite being true, require greater scientific investigation before all members of the IPCC expert teams involved are willing to sign on to them.  Hence, the IPCC process is an inherently conservative one, which has enormous significance to our understanding of the risk of a rapidly changing climate.

2.      Clearly the recent revelations and apology have dented public confidence in the IPCC’s process, what can the IPCC do to restore confidence in its findings for future reports?

Whereas the recent cherry-picking by a well supported denialist movement may have dented the public’s confidence in the IPCC process, the scientific community still stands behind the IPCC process.   I think that it would be very useful for journalists such as yourself to outline the process of coming to a conclusion on both sides of the debate.  On one side, you have well supported consensus science while on the other, you have non-peer-reviewed conclusions, bias and conjecture. Personally, if the public did actually see this, I don’t think they would be so much confusion.

One of the last points that make in response to your question, is that the IPCC is continuously reviewing the way that it goes about its processes.  This is a good strategy, whether you are making aircraft, manufacturing kitchen equipment or reviewing the latest science from the IPCC.  In the next few months, there are a number of documents that will be released from the IPCC (the result of review committees since AR4) that will recommend improvements to the IPCC process as we move towards AR5.  Clearly an organisation that is serious about quality and excellence undergoes such adaptive self improving reviews and procedures on a regular basis – the result being consistent with the IPCC’s mission statement of transparency, objectivity and honesty in reporting the latest science.

3.      Do you still have confidence in the chair and vice-chairs of the IPCC or should they stand down from their positions? Please also give a short explanation for your answer?

Personally, I have the utmost confidence in Dr Rajendra Pachauri and the IPCC vice chairs.  The sustained attack by the denialist movement have done nothing to demonstrate that Dr. Pachauri or the vice chairs have not fulfilled their IPCC duties to a high level of excellence. Attempts to undermine a couple of statements within the AR4 of the IPCC do not constitute reasons for not taking the other 99.99% of the carefully reviewed and supported science extremely seriously.

Perhaps it is useful to look at the standards on the other side of the ‘debate’.  The recent book by the denialist Ian Plimer from the University of Adelaide (“Heaven and Earth) had so many errors and falsely supported references that one university professor commented that the book would fail outright if it had been submitted as a Ph.D. thesis.

4.       Should the AR4 be reviewed in detail to check for other errors, particularly given that it is a document designed to help governments and officials make policy decisions that can impact both the environment and on people’s lives?

It is important to already realise that the IPCC is already a review document – its role already is to bring together the conclusions of thousands of scientific studies.  It also has a clear and transparent process and a excellent track record of reporting the latest scientific consensus accurately (see above).  This is unparalleled by any other source of information (compare it to the convicted felon and chief scientist Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute for example).   In my opinion, as someone who knows the IPCC process and its outputs well, I don’t think a detailed review would find more than vanishingly small number of poorly supported or erroneous statements, among thousands of scientific statements that are robustly supported.

However, given the extreme importance of climate change to government decision-making, it would be important in my opinion for any government or decision-making body using the IPCC process to apply due diligence – to explore it and be satisfied with its accuracy, objectivity and thoroughness.