www.informath.org … the on-running web site of Dougls Keenan has some interesting articles including one on C14 dating and tree rings. Douglas Keenan has also been in the news of late in a dispute with Queens University Belfast over access to tree ring data. He wants this data specifically for global warming purposes which is not exactly what it was compiled for – or indeed used in the past. Queens have refused access, for whatever reason, one being that the tree ring unit closed down when Mike Baillie retired a few years ago. Keenan is probably right when he says the data is still there but finding somebody prepared to dig it out is a problem he has to overcome.
Keenan also figures in the Climategate emails from HADCru, as they reveal his research was thwarted by a cartel of climate scientists in the UK and US. Keenan is highly critical of climate scientist Wang (of University of Albany in NY State) who he says misrepresented weather station data from China. Many of these had been overwhelmed by urban growth in the rapid industrialisation of China and therefore were liable to give higher temperature readings which thus added to the upward trend claimed by global warming supporters. Keenan went so far as to accuse Wang of ‘fabricating the evidence’ but Wang was cleared after an internal inquiry by his university. Keenan said it amounted to scientific misconduct. In the 2007 IPCC report, authored by Phil Jones (at the centre of Climategate) and co-authored by Wang, data from China, Russia and Australia was supplied by Wang, but reading the article one is left thinking that this was a deliberate choice by Jones who was desperately in search of evidence of AGW.