Meanwhile in New Zealand.

Niwa principal climate scientist James Renwick told the New Zealand Herald that:

"There is no cover-up going on.
"When you've got 100MB worth of emails from somebody's personal files, no doubt you can find sentences that taken purely out of context can sound really bad,"

Well OK. Here's an e-mail from Phil Jones to Kevin Treberth on which Renwick was copied. This is the whole thing so nothing was taken out of context, and it sures looks like the climate change cabal is trying to cover up the sloppiness and inexactitude of their underlying data.

Kevin,
I will be around tomorrow (so Dec 21) until Dec 23 inclusive. Then again from Jan 3.
I will be checking email during the break from Dec 28 onwards. Are you in control of the glossary additions and modifications?As to change of base period - this seems like a decision for the whole of WGI. To redo the global temperature average, I can just move the series up/down, but this isn't the correct way to do it. I should talk out a new base period from all the individual stations and recalculate anomalies for the oceans. For the oceans this isn't a problem, but the land it is a serious problem. Many stations have good (i.e. near complete base periods for 1961-90) but I'll lose hundreds, maybe over a thousand, stations if I went to 1981-2000.
For both surface temperature and precipitation we don't have spatially complete datasets(like models) so it will be quite difficult. For the circulation indices(like SOI and NAO) based on station pairs there is a variance term(SD).Some of the character of the series will change. We could easily adjust all these series by simple offsetting but it isn't doing it properly. I'm in the throws of a project with the HC checking all the 61-90 normals we have for series that are incomplete, to ensure we don't have any biases. This has taken quite a time and I don't want to waste the effort.
The arguments of Albert and Dave make a lot of sense-continuity with the TAR etc.These sort of things can be explained,but then the FOD will not be compatible with all the papers we are referring to. This will lead to lots of confusion. I would like to stick with 1961-90.I don't want to change this until 1981-2010 is complete, for 3 reasons : 1) We need 30 years and 81-10 will get all the MSU in nicely, and 2) I will be near retirement! 3)is one of perception.As climatologists we are often changing base periods and have done for years.I remember getting a number of comments when I changed from 1951-80 to 1961-90. If we go to a more recent one the anomalies will seem less warm-I know this makes no sense scientifically, but it gives the skeptics something to go on about!If we do the simple way, they will say we aren't doing it properly. Best idea might be to show some maps of 1981-2000 minus 1961-90 to show spatially where it makes a difference for temp and precip. Showing it is quite small and likely within the intermodel differences for years which are only nominally 1981-2000. This might keep both sides happy.
We also probably need to consider WGII.Also the paleo chapter will find 1981-2000 impossible.1961-90 is difficult for them but not insurmountable.
Cheers
Phil

Climate Fraud

The revelation of the CRU e-mails should have prompted politicains everywhere to a WTF moment. Pull at random nearly any one of these e-mail strings, and you will find a tale of dishonesty, incompetence, arrogrance, greed and occasional, casual criminal behavior. The entire warmenist enterprise is based on lies and fraud...and that's before people who are wiser than I in the ways of the digerati start tearing apart the computer code. Can you imagine what would happen if this sort of information should emerge from leading research facilities on genetic engineering, vaccine development or HIV studies?

Yet from Wellington to Copenhagen, Canberra to Washington, duplicitous and craven politicians are deperately pushing emisions trading schemes, vast new regulatory regimes and crushing taxation even though they know full well that it's all a fraud. The only sane conclusion is that it was never about climate at all, but about the extension of state power.

Tame Iti and Terrorism?

I haven't commented yet on the raids and arrests around New Zealand and the cries of terrorism. That's because no one except the police and the suspects knows what really went on, and they aren't saying. A few things strike me immediately about this:
1. Terrorism? I can't find where anyone in the police actually said anything about terrorism or terrorists or the Suppression of Terrorism Act, nor where anyone in the police has referred to Tame Iti or anyone else as a terrorist. That seems to have come exclusively from the media and politicians responding to something that the police never said.
2. The "Just Minding Our Business" Defense. Sorry, but if you're stockpiling weapons, ammunition and Molotov cocktails, we want to know why.
3. Biculturalism Strikes Again: State mandated biculturalism has never worked anywhere that it's ever been tried and it won't work in New Zealand. Once a "culture" (and just how does one decide what is Maori culture and what is not?)is designated as separate and immiscible, the next logical step is cultural separatism followed by political separatism. That way lies Balkanization in the literal sense of the word.
4. Just how far do Maori want to wind back the clock? Again the logical progression of the grievance culture is that iwi start feuding about who did what to whom in pre-European days. Shall Ngai Tahu be required to pack up and move back north?
5. Pita Sharples (as opposed to many of his colleagues) rarely says anything grossly stupid. However saying that the arrests have set back race relations 100 years is nonsense. Why isn't it Tame Iti's seditious conduct that has set back race relations 100 years? Further, does Dr. Sharples mean to imply that Maori that get a pass on serious criminal conduct because of historical grievances? Again, that way lies real terrorism.