Memorandum submitted by David Holland
(UEA Reviews 01)
THE INDEPENDENT
CLIMATE CHANGE
EMAIL REVIEW
(ICCER)
I note that your Select Committee is proposing
to invite Sir Muir Russell to give evidence before you next month
and am writing to you and your colleagues to ask that you look
at the disgraceful and deceitful way my submission[1]
to the ICCER has been treated. I attach a copy of a letter of
complaint that I have sent to Sir Muir Russell.
Despite his assurances and the clear views that your
predecessor Committee expressed in relation to the enquiries initiated
by the University of East Anglia, the ICCER has been a sham, refusing
to openly publish my submission which is a more detailed version
of that published[2]
by your predecessor Committee (HC 387-II pages EV 115-119).
After advising me that "there would be a
significant risk of legal action if your submission is published
in whole or in part on the Review website", the Review
has surreptitiously published a speciously edited "version"
of it in an Annex to a rebuttal statement[3]
by Professor Briffa and Dr Osborn. This is incorrectly indexed
on one of the Review's 16 byzantine evidence pages. It is not
possible to determine from the ICCER website when this document
was added but its "file properties" indicate it was
last modified on the same day as the Final Report of the Review
was published, 7 July 2010. Should it be of assistance to you,
I have produced an Excel sheet[4]
of the ICCER evidence with document dates.
Paragraphs 17 to 33 of the evidence that I presented,
with copious documentation, to your predecessor Committee point
to a determined effort by climate scientists to suppress information
on the IPCC assessment process which the British and other governments
has agreed was to be open and transparent.
The plain fact is that information, which the
Information Commissioner has ruled[5]
should have been disclosed, was wrongly refused by the public
authority employers of Professors Mitchell, Hoskins, Allen, Jones
and Briffa, who with many other IPCC participants had been advised
by the American Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group One, Dr Susan Solomon,
to disclose nothing that was not already in the public domain
concerning the disputed inclusion of the Wahl and Ammann 2007
paper in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
Despite his assurance to your predecessor Committee,
it appears that Sir Muir Russell delegated the overwhelming majority
of the evidence gathering to Professor Geoffrey Boulton, who had
worked for UEA for 18 years and has made public presentations
of his alarming views on anthropogenic global warming. No one
at the UEA appears to have been interviewed individually on the
record by the Review team as a whole, or even by more than two
of the team, let alone in public. The most serious of all the
allegations received by the ICCER, which I made, were pared down
to eight paragraphs referred to on page 77 to 79 of the Review
Report[6]
simply as "The Allegations" and "Evidence in Support
of the Allegations". No submission was cited as the source
of "The Allegations".
"The Allegations" were rebutted by
Briffa and Osborn's evidence, together with Boulton's hearsay
evidence of what Mitchell and Hoskins said to him in telephone
conversations. Briffa and Osborn's evidence was a written reply
to a one page letter from Boulton asking just two specific questions,
to which was attached my submission, or part of it. In addition
to their "version" of my submission, Briffa and Osborn
attached to their evidence an unsigned and unattributed document
purporting to be statements provided by IPCC AR5 WGI TSU, prepared
in consultation with the former Co-Chair, Susan Solomon and TSU
of WGI for the AR4.
Remarkably, this AR5 document confirms for the
first time that Jones was directly involved in the improper decision
to change the IPCC "in press" deadline and allow the
citation of the Wahl and Amman 2007 paper, the validity of which
had been disputed by the Reviewer for the United States of America
and other Expert Reviewers. This information, and also that contained
on the final page of Briffa and Osborn's evidence, was a significant
part of the information that I originally requested two days before
Jones asked Professor Mann to delete any AR4 emails he had with
Briffa.
Thus, without openly publishing my evidence
and using "show trial" standards for the rebuttal evidence,
Sir Muir Russell's Review concluded:
On the specific allegations made against the
behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and
honesty as scientists are not in doubt.
In the 3,000 word limit of my submission to
your predecessor Committee, I had been unable to include the full
detail that I submitted to Russell's ICCER and I particularly
wish to draw your attention to paragraphs 62 and 63 of that submission.
With two pieces of evidence disclosed by the ICCER these paragraphs
explain the extraordinary efforts made by a group of scientists
to keep secret matters which the Principles Governing IPCC Work
as well as the Environmental Information Regulation requires to
be disclosed.
The email sent by the Technical Support Unit
of IPCC Working Group One on 3 July 2006 contained a fabricated
reason for changing the deadline by which papers that were to
be cited had to be at least "in press" with a "final
preprint" available for Expert Reviewers to consider. The
original deadline was, quite logically, before the review process
started and the guidelines sent out were clear that citations
of papers that missed the deadline would be deleted from the text
sent out for review. The change to the deadline that allowed Wahl
and Amman 2007 to be cited, allowed any paper "in press"
two months after the end of the review process to be cited, and
many were. This made a nonsense of peer review.
In their evidence to the ICCER Professors Briffa,
Osborn Mitchell Hoskins, Jones and AR5 WGI with Dr Susan Solomon
all defend the decision and their entitlement to have made it.
This is besides the point. What was being concealed by the concerted
refusal of UEA, the Met Office, Reading and Oxford Universities
was the fabrication in the email that "many" Expert
Reviewers had asked for the change. With the release of all the
Reviewers' comments and Lead Authors' responses in electronic
form, it is possible to search all 11,289 of them and I found
that only one actually suggested a change and that request was
rejected.
In my FoIA request, of 27 May 2008, to which
UEA gave the reference FOI_08-31, and which by two days preceded
Jones email request that Mann delete any AR4 emails, I specifically
asked to be informed of which Expert Reviewers had asked for the
"new guidelines". This request is missing from ICCER
evidence item 116.[7]
The same question was asked of the Met Office, Reading and Oxford.
Page 26 of the ICCER evidence of Briffa disclosed
that the decision to send the email of 3 and 4 July 2006 was made
by the Coordinating Lead Authors, one of whom was his boss, Jones,
who sought to delete "any emails re AR4" two days after
I asked for them. In ICCER evidence item 122[8]
Mitchell discloses that he missed the start of the meeting at
which the decision to change the "in press" deadline
was made and was "not aware of the debate about whether the
Wahl and Amman paper had or had not met the deadline for the 2nd
order draft for chapter 6 until after the event." This may
explain the unusual way in which he dealt with my request for
information.
Accordingly I am hoping that you might consider
some of the appended questions for Sir Muir Russell when he next
attends your Committee hearing. I should also add that I will,
of course, be willing to appear before you if asked.
David Holland
3 September 2010
APPENDIX
QUESTIONS FOR
SIR MUIR
RUSSELL
(a) What was the "legal advice" you
received that precluded the Review from publishing in whole or
in part on the Review website the evidence you received from Mr
Holland? (b) To whom did you distribute Holland's submission,
and was any of it redacted before distribution? (c) Did UEA, any
employee of UEA, or anyone else indicate to you that they would
take legal action if you published the submission.
(d) Given that you had advised Holland that you
would not publish his submission in whole or in part, and that
on page 125 of your Report you state that you have not published
it, how do you account for and justify its selective unattributed
publication in the Annex to Briffa and Osborn's evidence?
(e) Briffa and Osborn's evidence, item 120, posted
on the ICCER website, has electronic document properties that
state it was last modified on 07/07/2010. When was it first put
on your evidence pages and, if it was subsequently modified, why?
(f) In paragraph 108 of Holland's submission
he refers to his request of 27 May 2008, which was made two days
before Professor Jones asked Professor Mann by email to assist
him in deleting the AR4 emails Holland had requested. This was
given the reference FOI_08_31 in UEA's acknowledgement letter
of 3 June 2008 but is not mentioned in your Report or listed in
your written evidence item 116, "A list of all FOI and EIR
requests received relating to the Climatic Research Unit since
2005". Why is this?
(g) The electronic document properties of the
"list of all FOI and EIR requests" also that state it
was last modified on 07/07/2010. When was it first put on your
evidence pages and, if it was subsequently modified, why?
(h) On what date did you activate the auto answer
email at the ICCER website advising "we will no longer be
accepting submissions or responding to questions raised?"
(i) How can you conclude that the "rigour
and honesty as scientist is not in doubt" for individuals
that planned to delete lawfully requested information that they
now seek to claim concealed no improper breach of the IPCC review
process?
(j) In your Report, why do you not even give
the Internet references of the IPCC Principles and Procedures,
which regulate the IPCC assessment process?
(k) Why did you take the evidence from the individuals,
accused by Holland and others of breaching the IPCC Principles
and Procedures under which the IPCC assessments should be carried
out, on how to interpret these rules instead of the officials
at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, who on behalf
of HMG and in conjunction with other governments, wrote and agreed
them?
(l) Why did Mitchell, Hoskins, Jones, Osborn
and Allen, as is described in paragraphs 94 to 117 of Holland's
submission, all act in concert and defy the Environmental Information
Regulations 2004 in order to avoid the disclosure of the emailed
instruction from WGI TSU that Holland reproduces in paragraphs
60 and 61 and which set out the "new guidelines" for
"in press" papers? If, as Jones, Briffa, Osborn, Mitchell
and Hoskins now claim, this was not a breach of IPCC Principles
and Procedures, why on earth did they spend so much time and effort
to suppress it?
(m) Given the documentary evidence that exists
that Jones, Briffa, Mitchell and Hoskins were collaborating to
"resist" Holland's FoIA requests, how can you justify,
in terms of natural justice, using their evidence against Holland
without publishing his evidence or giving him the opportunity
to respond?
(n) What was UEA's case for using the Ministerial
veto in Section 36 of the FoIA to refuse disclosure of what Briffa
and Osborn now claim to be entirely proper instructions from the
WGI TSU?
(o) Why have you not investigated and reported
on who or what persuaded UEA's Information Officer, David Palmer,
to reverse his original decision to treat Holland's original request
under the EIR as he had underlined in his first reply that he
"must" do?
(p) Why were the eight emails that Holland identified
in his paragraph 118 together with the email to, and the one from,
Briffa, which were appended to Holland's submission, not disclosed
under the subject access request he made under the Data Protection
Act?
1 http://tinyurl.com/2656ppl Back
2
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387ii.pdf Back
3
http://www.cce-review.org/evidence/6%20May%20Briffa%20Osborn%20response.pdf Back
4
http://tinyurl.com/3x6u4cf Back
5
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/decisionnotices/2010/fer_0238017.pdf Back
6
Page 78. Back
7
http://www.ccereview.org/evidence/02%20July%20CRU%20FOI%20&%20EIR%20requests.pdf Back
8
http://www.ccereview.org/evidence/02%20July%20IPCC%20fourth%20assessment%20report.pdf Back
|
