Wednesday
Dec022009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Has Nature overstepped the mark?
Dec 2, 2009 Climate: CRU Climate: Russell Journals I just had this comment on the previous thread about Nature's disgusting editorial on the Climategate emails:
As an active palaeoclimate scientist and also someone who has published in Nature I am deeply disturbed by this editorial. I have written to the editor and cancelled my subscription. There is no room in science for such closed minds. I fear that the editorial is now running behind the pack. By all accounts there is every chance the UEA investigation will be thorough and watching the Vice-Chancellor on television this evening he certainly was very careful to not defend CRU.
Update on Dec 3, 2009 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Pielke Jnr also thinks they may have overstepped the mark. His commenters are pretty appalled too.
Reader Comments (29)
No one who has read the GISStemp series by Chiefio can deny that there are serious, serious problems with the databases. No one has read WUWT can fail to realize that there are some really serious problems. Same for Climate Audit. And of course, the code for CRU is obvious crap. Even a true believer, as long as he maintains even a tenuous relationship with truth and the scientific method, has to acknowledge that these issues are significant. Maybe answers will emerge. Maybe they can salvage their religion. But to completely whitewash all the problems is just pathetic. In any event, it sure isn't science.
Good riddance. Paleoclimate scientists have polluted Nature and have been treating it as if it's just another paleo journal. How about leaving Nature to established groundbreaking research?
The Nature Editorial did something: It closed my door. How can an editor of a distinghuished journal like Nature affiliate with this climate crap? The raw data are not publicly available, only "value added data". During my scientific career, the raw data were holy and have been protected from erasure by administrators due to space limitations. And these were not data with trillions of dollars consequences. Shame on you, Nature editor!
I posted this earlier on another blog. Worth reposting:
There is no global warming.
It was all made up.
It's being pushed because there is so much money in the carbon credit trading hoax.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, the only thing people can do to save the fortunes they sunk into this lie is to keep lying.
There is no global warming.
Oh, and perhaps Nature can't see with their heads up their collective asses but the Australians proved today that they sure could. They've bailed out on this nonsense. Hopefully never to return. You can bet some big boys at the top had a lot of money riding on all the money Australia was going to bring to the carbon trading futures.
Where is the link to the Nature's editorial?
Only slightly off topic, but I think the Tom Wigley emails and the 1940's
'blip' are the strongest evidence of falsifying data. There is one email from Tom Wigley at UCAR that discusses fudging Sea Surface Temperatures to try and hide the warm period spanning the 1930's and 1940's. When combined with CRU data from 2005/2008 which shows these warm 'blips' all over the world, and the CRU code which lowers land data (ground stations) in this period while raising current temps, you have plenty of evidence of falsifying data.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11685
The editorial?
"We know there is a 'God'. Our models prove there is a 'God'. 'God' has just not yet showed in physical form to the 'great unwashed', but trust us 'God' will . To question the logic of this statement is denial and is therefore irrational."
And this is a Science journal?
In the Internet age, a reputation is difficult to build. It can be lost in a second it takes to hit the Publish button.
I've smelled the rat and cancel my subscription to Nature years ago. It wasn't without sadness that I did it.
I read this editorial about half an hour ago. I must see if I can dig up a Pravda editorial circa 1950 and compare them for objectivity.
I wrote this to the VC of UEA
I would like to bring to your attention the following from the leaked emails from the Climate Research Group that have been leaked by a whistle blower.
The main concerns is that people have been making FOI requests, and the CRU has been deliberately evading the FOI requests. There is also
information in the emails that they have been deleting the data. This is a criminal offence and puts the reputation of UEA at great risk.
In particular one of the emails relates directly to you.
"When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions - one at a screen,
to convince them otherwise showing them what CA [a popular "sceptic" website] was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were
dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school - the head of school and a few others) became very supportive.
I've got to know the FOI person quite well and the Chief Librarian - who deals with appeals.
The VC [Vice Chancellor] is also aware of what is going on - at least for one of the requests, but probably doesn't know the number we're dealing with."
From reading this, it looks like you've been the subject of some deception.
I suspect that we might get a reasonable investigation. The VC has been decieved, and the reputation of UEA depends on what they do with the CRU. I suspect the CRU might be sacraficed
Nick
Re: Pravda
Some of the techniques used to push AGW and to belittle, dismiss and destroy critics of AGW look a lot like Marxist "critical theory" <url>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory<url>
The behaviour of the hockey team also looks like that of Marxists.
While I want the scientific method to win out here, the question of what motivated and held the hockey team and their allies together will inevitably be asked.
I hope that the answer is as simple as they didn't dare to get off the tiger they created, but, Collectivists (Marxists, fascists, Nazis) have always searched for the "moral equivalent of war" to justify their policies and have settled on various crises (often generated for the purpose) as pretexts for their policies and actions.
Stalin had endless purges against largely imaginary enemies of the revolution, and claimed Poland and Finland had attacked the Soviets
Hitler had his Reichstag Fire and a war on Jewish and communist terrorists (all either Nazis or victims of agent provocateur operations), oh yes, and the Czechs were oppressing sudetan Germans, and the Poles attacked a German radio station...
AGW certainly seems to have become a Reichstag fire style crisis to scare electorates with.
When we get the science straight, someone needs to ask what these characters political affiliations are.
Keith
BBC "science correspondent" Harrabin has a new post up on the nature of the UAE inquiry.
Very focussed on the US political process, so perhaps influenced by this Nature ed?
In effect however its the first explicit admission by Harrabin that climategate has become a core issue and that the UAE inquiry could derail follow up from the Copenhagen process.
The Nature editorial underlines the nature of the crisis confronting us. Maybe I am too pessimistic but I would have thought it starkly obvious that those of us sceptical of AGW will, as we approach the date for Copenhagen and beyond, continue to be sidelined into obscurity. Aside from a few minor reactions to ClimateGate (maybe the odd sacking) the bandwagon will roll on with its massive economic effects being felt across the planet and certainly by everyone in the West.
Isn't it time for those sceptical of the AGW thesis to consider a focused strategy with as centrepiece, one well publicised single web location detailing at various technical levels every argument ever put forward for the AGW position together with an authoritative and exhaustive rebuttal? It would have to be backed by the big (sceptical) guns though.
One suggestion: arguments about temperature trends, glaciers and polar bears will surely go on and on but AGW depends critically on the alleged positive feedback effect of CO2. If there is no positive feedback, as suggested by Lindzen, then the whole AGW movement comes to nothing because the physics does not work. Thus: if the increase in CO2 is down to man and continues at around +1.7ppm per year (current increase), we will reach 2 * 388 (current) ppm by 2237 which, by general agreement gives us about one degree C rise in temperature excluding positive feedback. No big deal. It is vital therefore that the difficult question of feedback takes centre stage.
Muslims were furious about the publication of cartoons and the folks at Nature are furious about the leaking of CRU documents. Same reactions for the same reasons.
I'm nearly speechless. This morning typing climategate into google gave just over 20 million results.
A couple of hours later the same search shows 223 million results. Who is responsible for this treachery? They must be found and dealt with!
Interview with von Storch in Spektrumdirekt: Original
Interview with von Storch in Spektrumdirekt: Translation
If you want to see 'A journey through the Earth's climate history' done the BBC way, then I can thoroughly recommend link
Note the appearance of the precise instrument record. ;)
I've a good mind to subscribe to Nature, just so I can cancel my subscription.
Sir Muir Russell to head up UEA enquiry. Full terms are here:
www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/dec/homepagenews/CRUreview
Oops...I meant inquiry.......
I hadn't even noticed...you might have got away with that.
I always notice...but usually too late! I remember my first published paper in Journal of Geophyisical Research. 1984 and we had to prepare camera ready copy using an IBM golf ball typewriter. I proof read the paper over and over again and then sent it off. To my horror when seeing the printed paper in the journal I could see I hadn't spelt the name of another scientist correctly!!!
Joe Romm at Climateprogress.org sent this comment on Mike Hulme's piece and my coverage:
Hulme's argument has two major flaws,
I'd urge people to read the Nature editorial (which I've posted) and the statement by the Met Office and The Royal Academy.
http://climateprogress.org...
This is the guy who have posted the denial story in nature
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=409382
this is interesting, because it is published in the Times Higher Education- the journal for academics. A professor of computing, no less, calling for the code to be released :-)
Arnold
I don't think Romm means that he wrote the Nature editorial himself. (Although it is certainly in his style.)
alleagra wrote:
"Isn't it time for those sceptical of the AGW thesis to consider a focused strategy with as centrepiece, one well publicised single web location detailing at various technical levels every argument ever put forward for the AGW position together with an authoritative and exhaustive rebuttal? It would have to be backed by the big (sceptical) guns though."
You are talking about something like the Stockholm Initiative:
http://stockholmsinitiativet.se/
Big guns are Nils-Axel Mörner, the founder of sea level studies, and Wibjörn Karlén, known from the CRU emails:
http://stockholmsinitiativet.se/vetenskap/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=Wibjorn+Karlen
Time for the London Initiative, the Washington Initiative?
Has anyone impartial reviewed the Soon & Baliunas paper referred to in the Nature article? I read it last night & it seemed quite reasonable, tho' I am a metallurgist & nothing to do with climate studies. I noticed that the paper advocated great caution when using palaeo proxies & this may have anooyed Mann. Sallie Baliunas's Wiki entry says that the paper was repudiated by the authors of some of the references S & B used, but this was Mann & the UEA crowd.
Let me guess: an unsigned editorial. Nobody wanted to put their name to the diatribe.
Interview with Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature:
http://english.cri.cn/7146/2009/12/03/1901s533264.htm
He has few words about Climategate ... I wonder if he was behind the editorial.