Mar
Climategate Professor perjures himself to Parliamentary Select Committee
Professor Phil Jones, disgraced British climategate scientist has been caught out making contradictory and false statements to the UK’s Parliamentary Select Committee. The committee was asked to go easy on Jones and did not ask him about several of the most damaging e-mails he had sent, including one in which he asked a colleague to delete information that had been requested.
Jones’s conduct has already been formally condemned by almost 80,000 scientists from the Royal Insitute of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics who submitted their own reports to Parliament last week.
In his testimony Jones admitted to unlawfully concealing data.
The former chief of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia (CRU) looked bedraggled and forlorn as he testified that it was “standard practice” to refuse submitting data to other scientists who sought to check climate research. Climate skeptics have been quick to pick apart the apparent contradictions in his testimony which contraverts Jones’ conduct prior to 2002, when he first dealt with data sharing requests from McIntyre.
Labour MP Graham Stringer asked Jones why he refused to comply with requests to share data to which Jones answered:
“Because all he [a skeptic] wants to do is find something wrong with it.”
To which Mr. Stringer again challenged Jones:
“But scientists make a name by proving and disproving things, don’t they? The statement seems to be anti-scientific. It is an absolutely clear denial of the man’s attempt to get at what you were doing. He wanted your information and you refused to give it to him? Why?”
Jones’ answer:
“Because we had invested a lot of work and resources in it, and this was before FOI started.”
Despite his damning claim that crucial climate data disproving the theory of man made global warming was withheld due to ‘standard’ practice’ Jones can be shown to have freely obeyed data sharing requests up until 2002.
By examination of revealing correspondence with independent climate analyst, Canadian Steve McIntyre we can reveal that Jones freely submitted data upon all such requests. This was despite Jones’s awareness of confidentiality agreements which he later used as his reason for not releasing data.
In stating to Parliament that it was ‘standard practice’ not to release climate data Jones may have perjured himself as per the following facts.
Respected unpaid auditor, McIntyre has spent much of the last decade investigating the claims of climate scientists and is noted for spotting an error in NASA’s climate data whereby NASA wrongly attributed the warmest year of the 20th Century to 1998 when, in fact, it was proven that 1934 was the warmest year in the American records. NASA grudgingly corrected their facts. Climate skeptics have since exposed other government climate data as false and global warming advocates, such as Jones have been circling the wagons against further public scrutiny.
McIntyre recounts the former openness of Jones that disproves his testimony from yesterday:
“At that time, I was surprised by the promptness of the response and the extra effort that Jones had put into the response. (I think that I noted Jones’ courtesy as a correspondent from time to time in the first years of the blog.)”
Jones had helpfully released to McIntyre temperature data for 5,159 global weather stations, a most revealing act never since repeated. Thus this contraverts Jones’ testimony to Parliament that it was ‘standard practice’ to withhold data. Such ‘practice’ only began after 2002 when skeptics began to uncover climate data irregularities.
McIntyre cites the correspondence he received from Jones on this issue. Jones replied to the Canadian making the following statement that was never honored:
“Once the paper comes out in the Journal of Climate, I will be putting the station temperature and all the gridded databases onto our web site.”
In 2007, when Willis Eschenbach, another independent analyst, also sought station data he, too, was refused under various pretexts. After three or four further FOIA requests Jones partially relented and gave access to just 4,138 of the stations, placing them on the CRU website.
The question not yet asked of Jones is why was there a change of policy that was blatantly contradictory to the Freedom of Information laws, after 2002. The ‘standard practice’ Jones refers to can only be proven to have occurred between 2002 and 2009.
Jones has repeatedly defended his unlawful conduct by alluding to problems created by various countries refusing to make their data freely available. Yet Jones refuses to point the finger at any such countries that continue to stymie FOIA requests.
Skeptics will claim this is proof of willful criminal conduct, or ‘trick’ committed by Jones in a self-serving fashion to ‘hide the decline’ in the standard practice of climate science perfomed at CRU. I would suggest that Jones would be more forthcoming on this issue if he faced stern cross-examination in a court of law, a place where this scandal will surely now be finally determined.
Possibly related posts:
- UK Parliament Select Committee was asked to go easy on Phil Jones
- Phil Jones admits withholding scientific data
- Complete, unedited video of UK Parliament’s Select Committee Hearing, with Phil Jones and others
- Swedegate: Climate professor’s lies exposed By Swedish meteorologists
- Climategate Professor Phil Jones could face ten years on fraud charges
Jones cheated and changed the data. He also cherry picked the data. This is what dishonest people do. Honest people do not need to hid data.
Dishonest people like Jones offer contradictions in their stories. At one point they don’t release data and a previous point they did.
Labour MP Graham Stringer asked Jones why he refused to comply with requests to share data to which Jones answered:
“Because all he [a skeptic] wants to do is find something wrong with it.”
.and Jones knows exactly what is wrong with it.
Isn’t the use of the phraseology “crucial climate data disproving the theory of man made global warming” just a little intemperate?
Nothing Jones has in his possession could actually disprove AGW theory – evidence, maybe, but it ain’t ‘proof’ of anything.
Jim, I beg to differ. Simply refer to Kar Popper’s excellent philosophy of science and how scientific theories are formulated and then validated. Jones fraudulently sought to hide or dispose of the proof that the temp record invalidated the correlation between rising levels of co2 and global temps.Based on direct measurement, AGW’s fundamental prediction that an increase in CO2 levels causes an increase in temperature is false, therefore AGW is a false theory. QED
I watched the hearings. For all his trickery, I feel sorry for the man. Jones has nobody else to blame for the situation he is in, but he clearly is close to total mental breakdown. His every gesture signalled total submission. His hands were shaking and at moments he looked like he would start to cry.
I’m sorry that we can’t just leave him alone. If only there wasn’t so much at stake. If only he wasn’t the key to discrediting the entire alarmist movement.
Too bad someone doesn’t follow him around with a spy camera. I’d bet the minute he’s off camera the hands stop shaking. He has no credibility with me whatsoever, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this is an act. He his a master scammer.
He could admit to what he has done and accept the consequences, then there would be no more questions, no more hand shaking.
He obviously isn’t in “total submission” while he is still making stuff up to try and get out of it.
Dr Tim Ball’s latest article How They Distort Global Temperatures at http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/20528
refers to a study by Warwick Hughes of Australian sites; Warwick Hughes is an earth scientist who currently lives in Perth and his blog site is http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/
Warwick Hughes is the person who received the following email from Jones when he asked for his data in February 2005, “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”
Great post and links Val.