date: Tue May 12 09:08:46 2009
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Data access and IPCC
to: Thomas Stocker <stocker@climate.unibe.ch>

      Dear Thomas,

          I hope you are enjoying your new job!  Apologies in advance
    for upsetting your morning!
       Below there is a link to Climate Audit and their new thread with another
    attempt to gain access to the CRU station temperature data. I wouldn't
    normally bother about this - but will deal with the FOI requests when they
    come.  Despite WMO Resolution 40, I've signed agreements not to pass on
    some parts of the CRU land station data to third parties.
       If you click on the link below and then on comments, look at # 17. This
    refers to a number of appeals a Brit has made to the Information Commissioner
    in the UK. You can see various UK Universities and MOHC listed. For UEA these
    relate to who changed what and why in Ch 6 of AR4. We are dealing with these,
    but I wanted to alert you to few sentences about Switzerland, your University
    and AR5.
        Having been through numerous of these as a result of AR4, I suspect that
    someone will have a go at you at some point. What I think they might try later
    is the same issue:
      Who changed what and why in various chapters of AR5?

      and
      When drafts of chapters come for AR5, we can't review the chapter as we
    can't get access to the data, or, the authors can't refer to these papers as the data
    haven't been made available for audit.
      Neither of these is what I would call Environmental Information,as defined by the Aarhus
   Convention.
      You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I've been told that IPCC is
    above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5
    would be to delete all emails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody
    will remember to do it.
      I also suspect that as national measures to reduce emissions begin to affect people's
    lives, we are all going to get more of this. We can cope with op-ed pieces, but these
    FOI requests take time, as the whole process of how we all work has to be explained
    to FOI-responsible people at each institution.
      Keep up the good work with AR5!
    Cheers
    Phil

     Dear Mr Jones
     As a UK tax payer from the productive economy, could you please explain why you restrict
     access to data sets that are gathered using tax payer funds e.g. CRUTEM3. Can you
     believe how embarassing this is to a UK TAX PAYER, putting up with your amateurish non
     disclosure of enviromental information.
     For reference [1]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5962 refers to your absymal attitude to
     public data, although this is just the latest in an embarassing set of reasonable
     requests from  CRU, who the hell do you think you are? There will of course be an FOI on
     the back of this
     Regards
     Ian

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
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