Bishop Hill Mike Hulme at Dot Earth
Nov 28, 2009 Climate Mike Hulme has sent some comments on Climategate to the Andy Revkin's Dot Earth column at the New York Times.
The key lesson to be learned is that not only must scientific knowledge about climate change be publicly owned — the IPCC does a fairly good job of this according to its own terms — but the very practices of scientific enquiry must also be publicly owned, in the sense of being open and trusted. From outside, and even to the neutral, the attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. To those with bigger axes to grind it is just what they wanted to find.
This is a surprising statement from Hulme, who is heavily implicated in the CRU emails.
1. He was part of a group that organised a letter to the Times, ostensibly written by climatologists but actually drafted by Greenpeace (0872202064).
2. He appears to have changed confidence intervals in a presentation at the behest of WWF.(0933254004)
3. He appears to have been instrumental in the plot to oust von Storch from Climate Research (1051190249)
See this email from Michael Mann on the affair (1057941657):
I think that the community should, as Mike H has previously suggested ... terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels -- reviewing, editing, and submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute,
Reader Comments (8)
Have you noticed that Holdren (Obama's climate change advisor) is involved? There is one in which Holdren is engaged in an exchange, where he is defending Mann's assertion that the current trend is the warmest in a 1000 years. The convolutions this involves him in suggests a less than disinterested position. This was October 2003.
Read about Mike Hulme and his views on "post-normal science!" amongst other things; by Lubos Motl at http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/03/mike-hulme-and-post-normal-science.html
Mr Rat, meet Mr Sinking Ship.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6673792/Satellites-to-monitor-countries-for-climate-change-under-Gordon-Brown-plan.html
Getting pretty desperate here for headlines, given there's no way some countries are going to allow this. Or is it that he feels the rest of the world is lagging Britain in entering the Big Brother Is Watching You society?
In fact, IIRC forests are actually carbon neutral whereas grasslands and crops are major carbon sinks. So anyone who was really worried about CO2 would surely be encouraging deforestation? (Fortunately I'm not worried about CO2 so I don't!)
Steve Hayes
No, I hadn't seen that. I'll check it out.
Mike Hume is one of a number of Janus faced individuals in this business. That would include the Piekle family and their associates. They have a conscience, but they also have a career and a mortgage.
Piekle Junior is a 100% believer in the IPCC canon and a 100% sceptic in his blog (except when he is claiming to be a 100% believer). That's why RC hate him.
"Piekle Junior is a 100% believer in the IPCC canon and a 100% sceptic in his blog (except when he is claiming to be a 100% believer). That's why RC hate him."
My impression from his blog would be that he's somewhere in the middle - he doesn't see himself as a total AGW sceptic, because he does believe there is some man-made climate effect, but nor does he find himself a comfortable part of the "we're all going to fry" alarmist "climate establishment". So as you say RC hate him because he refuses to suppress inconvenient doubts to stay on message, whilst at the same time he himself isn't entirely comfortable in the sceptic community lest it be seen as total denial.
Which is a shame, because I suspect the proportion of sceptics who totally deny any man-made effect on climate is fairly small. Most of us agree there's probably some there but doubt it's significant and totally disbelieve - based on the appalling scientific practice of those who push it - that it will be catastrophic.
"I suspect the proportion of sceptics who totally deny any man-made effect on climate is fairly small. Most of us agree there's probably some there but doubt it's significant and totally disbelieve - based on the appalling scientific practice of those who push it - that it will be catastrophic."
You dare to inject reason and balance into this debate?