date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:46:44 +0100 from: "Bob Ward" subject: RE: Lamb to: "Phil Jones" Dear Phil, Many thanks for this, it's very helpful to see this - I will of course keep it confidential. I was interested to see that the graph appeared at the Wegman hearings - presumably from McKittrick? I think this is how Durkin got his hands on the graph (McKittrick is acknowledged in the credits as a contributor to the programme). What would be interesting to know is at what stage the figure became labelled as temperature record for the world rather than just Central England - presumably Lamb's 1982 figure still refers to Central England? I have copied below the relevant section from my most recent exchange with Durkin - I'm not sure I need to go any further. You may also be interested to know that the Overview of the NRC report last year on 'Surface temperature reconstructions' also reproduced the figure and stated that it represents global temperature up to 1975 - but does not refer to the 1975 NRC report from which it was reproduced, according to the Wikipedia entry. Also, the figure in my copy of Lamb's collection appears in a paper that is apparently based on a lecture he gave at the British Association for the Advancement of Science on 2 September 1964 - he may have shown a copy of the figure during his lecture. Best wishes, Bob Misrepresentation 1: Global average temperature today is not as high as it was during other times in recent history, such as the Medieval Warm Period, indicating that the recent warming trend is a natural phenomenon. The DVD version of the programme presents a graph that is labelled "Temp - 1000 Years", which is attributed to the "IPCC" [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. This graph purports to show global average temperature between 900 AD and "now", with the highest values recorded between about 1100 and 1300 (labelled as "Medieval Warm Period"). The label "now" on the far right side gives the impression that the graph shows temperature up to the present day. As Martin Durkin, the programme's producer, admitted in an exchange of e-mail messages in April (the text of which are accessible at [1]www.climateofdenial.net), the graph appearing in the DVD version of the programme is based on a figure that was originally published by Hubert Lamb in 1966, and which was subsequently reproduced in a 1975 report by the United States National Research Council (NRC), and in the First Assessment Report of the IPCC in 1990. It is obvious that a schematic diagram that was originally published in 1966 cannot possibly show global average temperature over the last 40 years, and so the label "now" appearing on the graph in the DVD version of the programme is a false and inaccurate modification. The figure produced by Lamb also pre-dates all of the research on the global temperature record that has taken place since 1966. It has been superseded by a number of more up-to-date temperature reconstructions for the last millennium, which were reviewed in a report published last year by the NRC for the United States Congress, in response to the so-called `hockey stick' controversy. The report concluded that "none of the large-scale surface temperature reconstructions show medieval temperatures as warm as the last few decades of the 20^th century". It acknowledged that parts of the Earth may have been warmer at points over the past 1000 years, but that these regional trends were not global in extent. The report also included a reproduction of Lamb's 1966 figure as it appears in the IPCC First Assessment Report, and noted that "[t]he pronounced warming trend that began around 1975 was not indicated in the graphic". The NRC report also pointed out: "Surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence". In summary, the DVD version misrepresents an out-of-date figure, published originally in 1966, to make it appear as if it records global average temperature up to the present day. The claim made in the DVD version of the programme that the recent warming of the Earth is a natural trend that has been seen before in the last 1000 years is not supported by the scientific evidence. Bob Ward Director, Global Science Networks Risk Management Solutions Ltd Peninsular House 30 Monument Street London EC3R 8NB Tel. +44 (0) 20 7444 7741 Blackberry +44 (0) 7710 333687 [2]www.rms.com ______________________________________________________________________________________ From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk] Sent: 27 September 2007 09:46 To: Bob Ward Subject: Re: Lamb Bob, I'm not the author of the helpful wikipedia entry. I'm attaching the draft paper that many of us are planning to submit at some stage fairly soon. It is terribly late, but we will submit it. So the attached is just for you !! I know you'll respect this plea. All you need to look at is the abstract, the Appendix and the final Figure. This text has chapter and verse of where it comes from and where IPCC got it from (very likley the UK DETR document from around 1989). I've a good idea who used it in the 1990 IPCC Report, but this isn't that important. As Durkin is an idiot, the easiest thing for you to do is just point to the caption with the original IPCC diagram from 1990 - the word schematic is the first in the caption! The pre-instrumental part of Ch 7 of the 1990 report was added at the very last minute. There were hardly any paleo people involved in the chapter writing team. I was but I didn't know as much now as I did then! Maybe you could add that the first 'true' NH average (to the extent of the data available then) was the paper by Bradley and Jones (1993). Everything else up to that time was just based on 'scientific understanding of the time' and curves were free drawn (not based on any numbers). The NRC publication from 1975 does have a curve, but I think that is based on a Greenland Ice Core. I do have the 1989 DETR publication. It doesn't say much more. I'm away next week. Just for my own piece of mind, if you could send me any text you plan to send to Durkin that would be useful. By the way, it didn't take a few of us long to find out where the diagram came from. There were only about 4 possibilities in 1990. We just scanned the plots and hey presto. We have all Lamb publications here and scanned the other versions, which are essentially the same - so the 1990 diagram wasn't even the 'view' in 1989/90, but it goes back to the early 1960s. Also, even for Central England it is wrong the years before 1659 (when the Manley record starts). There is a new Dutch winter and summer record which shows what CET might have been like - and this isn't what Lamb thought! Cheers Phil At 13:12 26/09/2007, you wrote: Dear Phil, In a previous correspondence, I think you mentioned that you were planning to publish something about the provenance of the figure in the IPCC First Assessment Report showing global temperature over the last 1000 years (and which featured in 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'). I assume you must also be the author of the helpful Wikipedia entry on this, which suggests it was taken from the 1975 NRC report, which in turn references Lamb 1966. I've managed to get hold of a copy of Lamb's 1966 volume of selected papers and have found a similar figure (on page 186) - except it shows 50-year averages of "prevailing" temperatures in central England. I was wondering whether you know if this is the original source of the IPCC figure, and if so, how it became transformed into a graph of global temperature? The reason that I am interested is that I am planning to tackle martin Durkin again about his use of the graph. Any light you might be able to shed on this issue would be very helpful. Best wishes, Bob Bob Ward Director, Global Science Networks Risk Management Solutions Ltd Peninsular House 30 Monument Street London EC3R 8NB Tel. +44 (0) 20 7444 7741 Blackberry +44 (0) 7710 333687 [3]www.rms.com This message and any attachments contain information that may be RMS Inc. confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive for the intended recipient), and have received this message in error, any use, disclosure or distribution is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to the e-mail and permanently deleting the message from your computer and/or storage system. Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message and any attachments contain information that may be RMS Inc. confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive for the intended recipient), and have received this message in error, any use, disclosure or distribution is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to the e-mail and permanently deleting the message from your computer and/or storage system.