“Swedes call out Jones on data availability“. Anthony Watts wants us to think that The Stockholm Initiative is an objective scientific institution commenting honestly, and of course critically, on the Climategate false controversy.
In fact, The Stockholm Initiative is simply a collection of Swedish denialist cranks. They claim “For more than 20 years, a few dozen researchers, but above all, politicians and media, have spread the notion that carbon dioxide emissions will cause a global climate catastrophe.” (Their website was down while writing this, the quote is from Google’s cache.)
Ah, cranks with Photoshop and a poor grasp of English.
Their accusation is that Dr. Phil Jones was lying when he said that Sweden had refused to allow their climate data to be released. According to The Stockholm Initiative, it is actually already in the public domain.
This leads to some interesting questions. If this claim is true, why were the denialists demanding the Swedish data from Dr. Jones? Why did they never contact the original data holders? Why was their Freedom of Information demand necessary?
My answer is that they weren’t really interested in the data, they simply wanted to harass a researcher whose conclusions didn’t suit their agenda.
2010-03-17 Update: There’s a good look at this deception on Stoat. He draws attention to the fact that The Stockholm Initiative’s legal submission about the availability of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute’s data is false. The data was not publicly available until a few days ago. Sadly, The Stockholm Initiative is out of reach of the British legal system.
Wott's Up With That? 
William Connelly also addressed this here:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/03/weird_stuff_from_the_swedes.php
Good and useful site, ben. If I can make a suggestion, you might add Open Mind, Stoat and Deep Climate to the blogroll. I would also suggest updating your posts with posts from other sites that also address the topic (and maybe even highlights from the comments at WUWT). The trackbacks wouldn’t hurt.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll add those suggestions to my blogroll. I do visit them and find them enlightening. I’ve added some updates to draw attention to good responses to WUWT posts in a few posts, but it’s hard to keep up.
As for watching the comments at WUWT for good insights by scientifically-minded readers, the signal to noise ratio is so low there that I can rarely work up the energy to give it a try. It’s like trying to think while in the middle of the Monty Python “Spam!” sketch.
Here’s a comment I made at CA which, last I looked, was still going through moderation. [Don’t hold your breath! – Ben]
_________________________________________________
The license on Dataserier 1961-2008 from SMHI clearly states that data may not be distributed (3.2)
November 30th 2009
Request made by UEA to make data more widely available.
December 21st 2009
Request rejected.
“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.”
March 1st 2010
Parliamentary hearing.
March 4th 2010
Clarification by SMHI.
“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.”
Jones isn’t psychic. Even the SMHI recognised that they have given the wrong impression.
[Don’t hold your breath! – Ben]
Yep, I’m going blue.
Ben, what I usually do is search for some names like Joel Shore, Svaalgard (sp?) and some others or see whether there are a lot of people responding to a given poster. You are right that wading through the posts for an enlightening comment is like looking for the proverbial needle.
Ben, this issue is also being discussed, amongst others, over at Policy Lass: http://shewonk.wordpress.com/
I guess she’s to CA what you are to WUWT ;)
As a Canadian and a geologist by training, I find Steve McIntyre’s behaviour disgusting. I stay as far away from him as possible. It’s good that someone’s over there, turning over the rocks to reveal the skittering bugs.
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