Motivations

Boy, there are a lot of files in the Hadley/CRU archive. A very interesting one is 1254751382.txt, which contains the following email exchange:

*From:* geoengineering@xxxxx
*On Behalf Of *David Schnare
*Sent:* Sunday, October 04, 2009 10:49 AM
*Cc:* Alan White; geoengineering@xxxxx
*Subject:* [geo] Re: CCNet: A Scientific Scandal Unfolds

Gene:

I've been following this issue closely and this is what I take
away from it:

1) Tree ring-based temperature reconstructions are fraught with
so much uncertainty, they have no value whatever. It is
impossible to tease out the relative contributions of rainfall,
nutrients, temperature and access to sunlight. Indeed a single
tree can, and apparently has, skewed the entire 20th century
temperature reconstruction.

2) The IPCC peer review process is fundamentally flawed if a
lead author is able to both disregard and ignore criticisms of
his own work, where that work is the critical core of the
chapter. It not only destroys the credibility of the core
assumptions and data, it destroys the credibility of the larger
work - in this case, the IPCC summary report and the underlying
technical reports. It also destroys the utility and credibility
of the modeling efforts that use assumptions on the relationship
of CO2 to temperature that are based on Britta's work, which is,
of course, the majority of such analyses.

As Corcoran points out, "the IPCC has depended on 1) computer
models, 2) data collection, 3) long-range temperature
forecasting and 4) communication. None of these efforts are
sitting on firm ground."

Nonetheless, and even if the UNEP thinks it appropriate to rely
on Wikipedia as their scientific source of choice, greenhouse
gases may (at an ever diminishing probability) cause a
significant increase in global temperature. Thus, research,
including field trials, on the leading geoengineering techniques
are appropriate as a backstop in case our children find out that
the current alarmism is justified.

David Schnare

Background on Schnare here. More on tree ring analysis here.

The "Gene" in Schnare's email is Eugene Gordon, who had posted this:

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Eugene I. Gordon [euggordon@xxxx] wrote:
Alan:

Thanks for the extensive and detailed e-mail. This is terrible
but not surprising. Obviously I do not know what gives with
these guys. However, I have my own suspicions and hypothesis. I
dont think they are scientifically inadequate or stupid. I
think they are dishonest and members of a club that has much to
gain by practicing and perpetuating global warming scare
tactics. That is not to say that global warming is not occurring
to some extent since it would be even without CO2 emissions. The
CO2 emissions only accelerate the warming and there are other
factors controlling climate. As a result, the entire process may
be going slower than the powers that be would like. Hence, (I
postulate) the global warming contingent has substantial
motivation to be dishonest or seriously biased, and to be loyal
to their equally dishonest club members. Among the motivations
are increased and continued grant funding, university
advancement, job advancement, profits and payoffs from carbon
control advocates such as Gore, being in the limelight, and
other motivating factors I am too inexperienced to identify.

Alan, this is nothing new. You and I experienced similar
behavior from some of our colleagues down the hall, the Bell
Labs research people, in the good old days. Humans are hardly
perfect creations. I am never surprised at what they can do. _I
am perpetually grateful for those who are honest and fair and
thankfully there is a goodly share of those._

-gene

And who is the Eugene Gordon fellow? Former Director of the Lightwave Devices Laboratory at Bell Labs, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), founder of the Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, founder of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and the IEEE Electron Device Letters publications, and was associate editor of various IEEE publications.