La noticia de El Mundo que daba una visión distorsionada del impacto del climategate en la ciencia climática estaba basada en el diario británico The Guardian, así que me he ido a la fuente para comprobar que The Guardian fue mucho más riguroso, dejando claro en todo momento que la discusión tenía escasa relevancia a efectos de la ciencia del cambio climático. Aún así, como quiera que invitan a hacer comentarios en una especie de peer review de su investigación sobre los e-mails hackeados, me he tomado la libertad de enviarles estas sugerencias (no lo voy a traducir porque no aporta gran cosa a lo ya comentado).
Here[
1]:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/dispute-weather-fraud
You suggest that Jones et al 2008[2] undermines Jones et al 1990[3, pdf]. Specifically, you say:
The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming [...]
what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed. [...]
In 2008, Jones prepared a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research re-examining temperatures in eastern China. It found that, far from being negligible, the urban heat phenomenon was responsible for 40% of the warming seen in eastern China between 1951 and 2004. [...]
This dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanisation on temperatures in China [...]
I do not have acces to the later Jones et al 2008 paper[2], but I think your assessment[1] of this paper[2] is wrong based on a number of indirect sources:
(1) John Cook (in SkepticalScience blog) had a brief summary on that paper (previous to this controversy) as a support to the negligible effect of urbanization[4]. John shows a graph (taken from the paper) showing nearly identical trends in rural and urban areas in China, both in the 1990 and the current paper (see section “Comparing rural and urban networks in China”):

(2) An article published in The Guardian[5]:
“Professor Phil Jones [...] said a 20-year-old study questioned by sceptics “stands up to scrutiny” and was corroborated by more recent work”
“a study he published in 2008, using improved data from the China Meteorological Administration from sites used in the 1990 research adjusted to take into account any movements of stations, had almost exactly the same results as the original, he said.”
(3) The summary of Jones et al 2008 by Wang[6], coauthor of the Jones et al 1990 paper:
comparing the 42‐rural station data used in the 1990 GRL and Nature papers with those adjusted for homogeneity of a 728‐station network yield very much the same results, implying that the station moves, if any, really did not matter when a representative set of stations (here 42‐stations) was used.
These three indirect but credible sources suggest that the old paper was backed up by the new one, rather than causing a “dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanisation on temperatures in china” or suggesting that the old paper “was fundamentally flawed”.
———-
Appart from that, I think that there are some other issues regarding your article[1], that I quote below:
The paper became a key reference source for the conclusions of succeeding reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
it raises serious new questions about one of the most widely referenced papers on global warming, and about the IPCC’s reliance on its conclusions.
There are many other papers on the subject using different data and reaching pretty much the same conclusion that urbanization has a negligible effect on global temperature records (Hansen 2001[7], Peterson 2003[8], Parker 2006[9]…), some of them specificaly quoted in the relevant chapter of the IPCC report[10].
As it always happens when there is a scientific consensus, the notion that urbanisation has little impact on global temperature records is not underpinned on a single paper, but on different approaches yielding the same conclusion.
But many climate sceptics did not believe the claim. They were convinced that the urban effect was much bigger
Indeed! This is exactly what climate skeptics do: believing and being convinced without actual evidence. This sentence, however, (wrongly) implies that AGW skeptics are normal people and must have some real evidence to believe that.
By then, Keenan had published his charges in Energy & Environment, a peer-reviewed journal edited by a Hull University geographer, Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.
This sounds like E&E still had some credibility, in spite of the fact that they have conclusively shown that they are willing to publish whatever crap, provided that it attacks the scientific consensus on climate change. Some comments regarding E&E:
(1) Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann[11]:
““Energy and Environment”, is not actually a scientific journal at all but a social science journal. The editor, Sonja Boehmer-Christensen, in defending the publication of the Soon et al study, was quoted by science journalist Richard Monastersky in the Chronicle of Higher Education somewhat remarkably confessing “I’m following my political agenda — a bit, anyway. But isn’t that the right of the editor?”.
(2) Furthermore, its peer review process has been widely criticised for allowing the publication of substandard papers and, in fact, it is not carried in the ISI listing of peer-reviewed journals[12, 13].
(3) See also this article published in Environmental Science and Tecnology (a journal of the American Chemical Society) regarding E&E[14].
Wang’s defence to the university inquiry says that he had got the Chinese temperature data from a Chinese colleague, although she is not an author on the 1990 Nature paper
But Wang was co-author with Jones, and Wang was working with his Chinese colleague on another paper regarding urban heat islands in China the very same year[15 - pdf], so it is perfectly plausible that Wang used those same data in his paper with Jones (with Zeng’s permission, of course).
Kind regards.
[Actualizacion 15-01-10: I've seen that
Nature has just published an interview with Phil Jones along the same lines as I commented before regarding his paper on urban heat island effect in China:
"A follow-up study2 verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant. "They are trying to pick out minor things in the data and blow them out of all proportion,""
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100215/full/news.2010.71.html
"In a subsequent paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2008, Jones verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant to the outcome."
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2010/02/climatologist_phil_jones_fight.html]
[Actualización 17-02-2010: la Universidad de East Anglia también
informó (el 2 de febrero) de que el estudio posterior de Jones corroboraba el anterior y de que el efecto detectado de la urbanización era fundamentalmente posterior al periodo estudiado por Jones
]
Referencias:
[1] Fred Pearce (2010), “Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siege”, guardian.co.uk (1 February 2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/dispute-weather-fraud
[2] Jones, P. D., D. H. Lister, and Q. Li (2008), Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China, J. Geophys. Res., 113, D16122, doi:10.1029/2008JD009916
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml
[3] Jones P.D., Groisman P.Y., Coughlan M., Plummer N., Wang W.-C., Karl T.R. (1990), “Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land”, Nature, 347: 169–172.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v347/n6289/abs/347169a0.html
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b90.pdf
[4] John Cook (2008), “Does Urban Heat Island effect exaggerate global warming trends?”, SkepticalScience (2008)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm
[5] Press Association (2010), “Climate scientist at centre of email row defends his research”, guardian.co.uk (02 February 2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/phil-jones-climate-scientist-hacked-email
[6] Wei-Chyung Wang (2008), “Documentations and Inputs from Professor Zhaomei Zeng on the selection of the 84 (42-pairs of urban-rural) stations used in the 1990 GRL and 1990 Nature papers” (2/22/2008)
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b080222.pdf
[7] Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl (2001), A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change, J. Geophys. Res., 106(D20), 23,947–23,963.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf
[8] Thomas C. Peterson (2003), “Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found”, Journal of Climate, Vol. 16, Issue 18 (September 2003) pp. 2941–2959
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442(2003)016%3C2941%3AAOUVRI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf
[9] David E. Parker (2006), “A Demonstration That Large-Scale Warming Is Not Urban”, Journal of Climate Vol. 19, Issue 12 (June 2006) pp. 2882–2895
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI3730.1
[10] Trenberth, K.E., P.D. Jones, P. Ambenje, R. Bojariu, D. Easterling, A. Klein Tank, D. Parker, F. Rahimzadeh, J.A. Renwick, M. Rusticucci, B. Soden and P. Zhai, 2007: Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Section 3.2.2.2. Urban Heat Islands and Land Use Effects
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-2-2-2.html
[11] Michael Mann & Gavin Schmidt (2005), “Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition”, www.realclimate.org
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/peer-review-a-necessary-but-not-sufficient-condition/
[12] “Energy and Environment”, www.sourcewatch.org
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Energy_and_Environment
[13] ISI Web of Knowledge Master Journal List:
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/
[14] Paul D. Thacker (2005), “Skeptics get a journal”, Environmental Science & Technology (American Chemical Society), August 31, 2005
http://www.realclimate.org/docs/thacker/skeptics.pdf
[15] Wang W.-C., Zeng Z., Karl T.R. (1990),“Urban heat islands in China”, Geophysical Research Letters, 17: 2377–2380.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1990/GL017i013p02377.shtml
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b23.pdf