Keep your eye on the ball

[This post got extensively re-written (you can tell that, cos it has a title that doesn’t fit its URL 🙂 after I realised that I, too, had been fooled by the septic FUD. Oh dear. I’ve stopped now: you can read on without fear that the words will change under you.]

The septics are trying to pretend that there is a spat between the Swedes (SMHI) and CRU, but this is just smoke-n-mirrors. Lets quote the final letter first:

With reference to the current debate regarding, amongst other things, access to climate data we have found that our letter to you dated 21 December 2009 unfortunately have rendered bad publicity both to SMHI and to the climate research community. We understand now that our response to your request forwarded by UK MetOffice 30 November 2009 may have been misinterpreted, maybe due to the fact that the formulations may have been a bit harsh. Our response was based on your information that it was likely that the version held by you would most likely differ from our current holdings. It has never been our intention to withhold any data but we feel that it is paramount that data that has undergone, for instance, homogenisation by anyone other than SMHI is not presented as SMHI data. We see no problem with publication of the data set together with a reference stating that the data included in the dataset is based on observations made by SMHI but it has undergone processing made by your research unit. We would also prefer a link to SMHI or to our web site where the original data can be obtained.

That is from SMHI and is dated 4th March. So: Jones asks SMHI if he can release their data (via the UKMO, 30th Nov 2009; apologies for dodgy source). They say no (21st Dec 2009). He tells people that SMHI has said no. This looks bad, so SMHI changes their mind, as long as the data gets a disclaimer as to its source and processing. All is well, perhaps.

[Update: apparently some Swedish folk are watching GA, but they are doing it in Swedish :-). This one I lke, though.

There is More from Max Andersson. He makes an interesting point – that if you actually *read* the transcript, most of the quotes attributed to Jones come from Acton:

Professor Acton: Unfortunately, several of these countries impose conditions and say you are not allowed to pass it on, so there has just been an attempt to get these answers. Seven countries have said “No, you cannot”, half the countries have not yet answered, Canada and Poland are amongst those who have said, “No you cannot publish it” and also Sweden. Russia is very hesitant. We are under a commercial promise, as it were, not to; we are longing to publish it because what science needs is the most openness.

Some license agreements here.

Also ClimateWTF.

Just to make it clear: despite what misc septic blogs are saying it is *not* true that Dr. Jones asserted that the weather services of several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland, had refused to allow their data to be released – see the transcript. I think Max A is the first to notice this. The lesson, again, is not to actually believe anything the skeptics say without verifying it first.

Yet more update (thanks C): OK, so while the above certainly is true, and the septics clearly have mistaken Acton’s words for Jones’s, Jones does touch on the same subject: he says (Q113) Professor Jones: It is not that sensitive. Canada, for example, says they would rather we sent requests for Canadian data to their website; they do not want us to put their data on our website. and (Q146) Professor Jones: Not in that way. We did, with the help of the Met Office, approach all the countries of the world and asked them whether we could release their data. We have had 59 replies of which 52 have been positive, so that has led to the release of 80% of the data, but we have had these seven negative responses which we talked about earlier, including Canada. That all seems entirely reasonable to me; it all rather fits with the NMS’s usual paranoia.

-W]

Except in the denialosphere, where nonsense abounds. So CA repeats

PRESS RELEASE Stockholm March 5, 2010 Climate scientist delivers false statement in parliament enquiry It has come to our attention, that last Monday (March 1), Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU), in a hearing with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee made a statement in regards to the alleged non-availability for disclosure of Swedish climate data. Dr. Jones asserted that the weather services of several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland, had refused to allow their data to be released, to explain his reluctance to comply with Freedom of Information requests. This statement is false and misleading in regards to the Swedish data. All Swedish climate data are available in the public domain. As is demonstrated in the attached correspondence between SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), the UK Met Office and Dr. Jones (the last correspondence dated yesterday March 4), this has been clearly explained to Dr. Jones. What is also clear is that SMHI is reluctant to be connected to data that has undergone “processing” by the East Anglia research unit. STOCKHOLM INITIATIVE
Göran Ahlgren, secretary general

So this is great FUD. GA is nothing to do with SMHI, he is just stirring up trouble (and if you looked at early versions of this post, you’ll have seen that it took me a while to work that out).

In fact, SMHI say:

SMHI are developing its own web site where you can find data from a number of stations, including the stations in the list enclosed with your letter, downloadable for non-commercial purposes, please see http://data.smhi.se/met/climate/time_series/html/essential20.html and http://data.smhi.se/met/climate/time_series/html/vov20.html. The datasets are for a shorter period, but the web site is under development and more data will be available for download in the near future.

which doesn’t sound like “all data available” in fact it sound like “not all data are available”. So as expected GA is talking nonsense. Who *is* GA even? I don’t know; judging from this he is just another std.septic (We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines… is the usual danger flag; and yes, when you look, GA is a professor of organic chemistry); and the other usual suspects are there Timothy F. Ball, PhD, environmental consultant and former climatology professor (no he wasn’t).

The SMHI also say, in their response to Jones’s original request:

Given the information that the version of the data from the SMHI stations that you hold are likely to differ from the data we hold, SMHI do not want the data to be released on your web site.

which is a bit odd, ah, but is explained by this other letter (again, dodgy source, sorry): the data has been homogenised and QC’d. Err, as you’d expect, really.

The site their letter points to – http://data.smhi.se/ looks very amateur. They haven’t even turned off auto-indexing, go there and you get:

[DIR] hyd/                    04-Feb-2010 07:54    -   
[DIR] met/                    03-Feb-2009 11:34    -   
[DIR] oce/                    22-Jul-2009 08:45    -   
[   ] fil.zip                 05-Feb-2010 10:15  158M  

[IOP update: today’s blog links to RKP in the Grauniad -W]