But let's be clear: Jones is talking to his colleagues about making a prettier picture out of his data, and not about manipulating the data itself. Again, I'm not trying to excuse what he did -- we make a lot of charts here and 538 and make every effort to ensure that they fairly and accurately reflect the underlying data (in addition to being aesthetically appealing.) I wish everybody would abide by that standard.

General Comments
The idea that climate without human intervention can only undergo “natural variability”, and that “climate change” can only result from human activity is false and fallacious. It is in conflict with all that we know of evolution and geology. It is simply wrong to assume that “ climate change” automatically implies human influence on the climate.
This fallacy is embraced by the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but the IPCC (Footnote to “Summary for Policymakers. Page 1) claim that they are prepared to accept “natural variability” as “climate change”. They are, however, unwilling to accept the truth, which is that climate can change without human intervention.

This fallacy renders worthless several conclusions of the Report, notably, that “there has been a discernible human influence on the climate”. The surface temperature rise, however “unprecedented” could be “natural”, and the entire Chapter 12 “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes” should be rejected as based on a false premise.

An additional fallacy adopted by the IPCC is the claim that it is possible to “attribute” cause and effect from a correlation. Science can assign probability levels of the likelihood of a cause and effect relationship, but it can never attribute a cause and effect relationship with certainty. This Report does not assign any quantitative probability levels to correlations.

The statistical treatment of data, and of model simulation is inadequate throughout the Report. The conventional use of 95% confidence limits for estimates is followed only for surface temperatures, but ignored elsewhere, where a single standard deviation (60% confidence) is preferred, or no indication of the level of confidence is stated. For example, in Figure 2.11 (Chapter 2, page 101) showing ocean heat, error bars are only one standard error. They should be doubled.

Linear regression is used throughout the Report without the necessary checks for linearity and autocorrelation corrections.

Models are particularly lacking in adequate statistical information of uncertainty or correlation. It is just not good enough to use qualitative and subjective estimates of “consistency”. “Goodness of fit” should be quantified. Projections from carbon cycle and climate models never have the necessary uncertainty information, and are therefore wholly unreliable.

I would like to suggest that the whole Report is checked over by a specialist in the statistical treatment of data and of correlation procedures with a view to more scientific and uniform treatment of data, and the overall provision of the standard quantitative measures of correlation and accuracy.

There is undue emphasis throughout on the importance of surface temperature trends measured by weather stations. Chapter 2 has 10 diagrams showing these data, but only one thoroughly confusing diagram (Figure 2.12) for other methods of global temperature measurement. The fact that satellite and weather balloon measurements in the lower troposphere do not show a warming for the past 21 years suggests strongly that the surface data are influenced by proximity to human habitation, rather than by greenhouse warming. There is insufficient attention paid to the evidence that this is so, which is

This proves conclusively frag's a piss-take artist.
The guy who denies Nasa and the Scientific American (and even Llloyds list who are insurance boys, which in some ways trumps the science dudes) and quotes Fox news and whackjob denial sites as his primary sources is demanding peer review.