date: Mon Jan  7 13:40:23 2008
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Fwd: Re: FW: Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
to: chris.folland@metoffice.gov.uk

    Misspelt   Office !
    Chris  - Bob is OK. Used to be the press person for the Royal Society
    Works for Risk Management Solutions now - but blogs in his spare time.
     How anyone can misinterpret what we said is beyond me !
    Cheers
    Phil

     Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:37:43 +0000
     To: "Bob Ward" <Bob.Ward@rms.com>
     From: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
     Subject: Re: FW: Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
     Cc: David Parker <david.parker@metoffice.gov.uk>, "Kennedy, John"
     <john.kennedy@metoffice.gov.uk>, chris.folland@metoffcie.gov.uk
      Bob,
         I'm cc'ing the reply to David Parker and John Kennedy. The numbers for each
      year are on this web page.
      [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt
      The final number on every other line is what you want. 1998 is 0.526 for example.
      I don't have the error ranges for each year, but I think David or John can easily send
     you these.
      Use their values if they disagree slightly with those on the CRU web site.
      When you get them you will see the errors are larger the further back in time you go.
       Some years stand out from others (El Nino years).
         I spent about 15 minutes working on that one sentence quote. As you know it doesn't
      mean that global warming has stopped. The whole point of it was to show that 2001-2007
      is 0.21 warmer than 1991-2000.   The rate of warming should be about 0.2 per decade
      and it is bang on.
       If the world were warming faster than this - then I'd be worried!
      What you could do is to take all 7 years averages and compare with the previous
      10 year average., so start in 1861.  Then build up a distribution of these values.  You
      need to allow for the overlapping years, as all the values you get aren't independent.
      This aspect will be lost on Whitehouse, though !
      David, John and Chris might also be able to advise.
      Cheers
      Phil
     At 12:54 07/01/2008, you wrote:

     Dear Phil,
     Happy New Year!
     I am forwarding an exchange of e-mails I had with David Whitehouse last week about the
     Met Office's press release on 2008 global temperatures. You will see that he is
     persisting with his stupid argument that global warming ended in 2001 - he is still
     managing to sway people with his argument, and it is the same as Christopher Booker is
     using virtually every week in 'The Sunday Telegraph'.
     So I am planning to go public over my argument with Whitehouse and to take Booker to the
     Press Complaints Commission. To do this, I need to be able to scotch their argument. I
     think the best way in which I might be able to do this is by showing that if you take
     virtually any consecutive seven-year period since 1850 you find that the uncertainties
     overlap, making them "statistically indistinguishable", but this does not mean that
     temperatures haven't changed since 1850. So, do you know how I might be able to obtain a
     version of the attached graph, but with the years in chronological order?
     Best wishes,
     Bob
     Bob Ward
     Director, Global Science Networks

     Risk Management Solutions Ltd
     Peninsular House
     30 Monument Street
     London
     EC3R 8NB

     Tel. +44 (0) 20 7444 7741
     Blackberry +44 (0) 7710 333687

     [2]www.rms.com

     -----Original Message-----
     From: Association of British Science Writers [[3]mailto:ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK] On
     Behalf Of David Whitehouse
     Sent: 04 January 2008 12:30
     To: ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK
     Subject: Re: Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
     You are missing the point as usual and don't address criticisms, we are going round in
     circles. The Met Office Press release could just as easily be titled "UK scientists
     predict global temperature standstill to continue for 8th year." Didn't you read it and
     see that the Met Office has admitted that global warming ended in 2001? Statistically
     indistinguishable they said. It is an observational fact. Whether it will pick up again
     remains to be seen.
     It's not an unimportant question and it's not diminished by talking about longer term
     trends. Dismiss the 2001-7 standstill and you must have less faith in the significance
     of the 1980-1998 warming period.
     -----Original Message-----
     From: Association of British Science Writers [[4]mailto:ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK] On
     Behalf Of Bob Ward
     Sent: 04 January 2008 11:17
     To: ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK
     Subject: Re: [ABSW-L] Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
     You are right that Profs Folland and Jones, who are quoted in the media release, are
     well known for spin! If only they would admit that global warming ended in 2001!
     But congratulations on moving the end of global warming three years forward from 1998 -
     I guess that represents some sort of progress.
     Bob Ward
     Director, Global Science Networks

     Risk Management Solutions Ltd
     Peninsular House
     30 Monument Street
     London
     EC3R 8NB

     Tel. +44 (0) 20 7444 7741
     Blackberry +44 (0) 7710 333687

     [5]www.rms.com


     -----Original Message-----
     From: Association of British Science Writers [[6]mailto:ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK] On
     Behalf Of David Whitehouse
     Sent: 04 January 2008 10:35
     To: ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK
     Subject: Re: Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
     Short time series! The latest current global warming period began in 1980.
     It was the early 1990's when we realised it was a definite warming trend and for half of
     the period since then the global average temperature has been at a standstill - it's ALL
     short time series but there is detail in it and curiously the static last few years are
     the least noisy section of this particular data series. You are seeing what you want to
     see in the figures, like the spin from Met Office Press dept. Of course 2001-7 is warmer
     than previous years, by how much depends upon over what timescale you calculate the
     average but, as the Met office says, it's the underlying rate of warming that is
     important and they say that since 2001 it is ZERO. That's what they say which you said
     was inaccurate and misleading. Confused yes.
     If you go by facts and data and not hearsay you will see that the Met Office, NASA, NOAA
     and the NCDC all agree that the global average temperature has been static since 2001.
     They just don't say so in headlines but in the data or in 'notes to editors' like the
     latest Met Office Press release.
     -----Original Message-----
     From: Association of British Science Writers [[7]mailto:ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK] On
     Behalf Of Bob Ward
     Sent: 04 January 2008 10:13
     To: ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK
     Subject: Re: [ABSW-L] Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
     Happy New Year to David Whitehouse and other ABSW list subscribers!
     I thought that there was a sentiment before New Year that debates about trivia, like
     climate change science, should be relegated to a web forum so that e-mail exchanges
     could focus on more weighty issues, like best broadband deals, etc.
     Anyway, I am grateful to David for demonstrating how it is still possible to confuse
     people about basic climate change science, like global temperature records, by using a
     short time series and large uncertainties to ensure that noisy data obscures any
     possible signal.
     David could perhaps have quoted this from the same media release:
     "What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007 with an average
     of 0.44 C above the 1961-90 average was 0.21 C warmer than corresponding values for
     the period 1991-2000."
     It is a scandal that the Met Office, the Climatic Research Unit, NOAA, NASA, WMO etc
     aren't willing to tell us that global warming has stopped! Thank heavens there are still
     a few science writers around to expose this global conspiracy within the research
     community!
     Bob Ward
     Director, Global Science Networks

     Risk Management Solutions Ltd
     Peninsular House
     30 Monument Street
     London
     EC3R 8NB

     Tel. +44 (0) 20 7444 7741
     Blackberry +44 (0) 7710 333687

     [8]www.rms.com


     -----Original Message-----
     From: Association of British Science Writers [[9]mailto:ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK] On
     Behalf Of David Whitehouse
     Sent: 04 January 2008 01:10
     To: ABSW-L@LISTSERV.CCLRC.AC.UK
     Subject: Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
     Greetings folks,
     I hesitate to enter the fray on this topic but last week it was said on this list;
     "It is a sad reflection on the state of science journalism in the UK in 2007 that we are
     still seeing misleading and inaccurate articles in the media that, for instance, claim
     global average temperatures stopped rising in 1998, or that changes in solar activity
     explain the recent change in temperature. It would be good if 2008 saw some of the
     so-called scepticism that has been expressed about climate change science applied to
     some of these alternative claims which, frankly, have little or no evidence supporting
     them."
     Misleading, inaccurate, little or no evidence?
     This week the Met Office said;
     "The forecast value for 2008 mean temperature is considered indistinguishable from any
     of the years 2001-7, given the uncertainties in the data."
     [10]http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html
     They say 2008 will have a strong la Nina cooling. The Met Office has commented before on
     the 2001-7 data set being statistically indistinguishable.
     The same thing has also been said many times by the US National Climatic Data Center.
     Note that 1998 was a record warm year (El Nino) followed by two relatively cool years.
     Whatever your 'sceptical' viewpoint, if you have one, or whatever the reason or the
     eventual duration, this is what the data says.
     Both the US and the UK's guardians of annual global average temperature data say that
     the data for 2001-2007 are statistically indistinguishable - it's warmer than it used to
     be but the annual average global temperatures have, er frankly, stopped rising.
     Regards,
     David.
     [11]http://www.newstatesman.com/200712190004
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     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
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     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


   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
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

