Tuesday
Oct262010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill S&TC to grill Russell, Davies, Acton
Oct 26, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Parliament Climate: Russell The big news of tomorrow is likely to be the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee interviewing UEA bigwigs Acton and Davies, together with Sir Muir Russell. The three of them are going to have to explain some of the oddities over the inquiries into the Climategate affair.
The hearings start at 9:20 am and video should be available here.
This should be compelling viewing for climate geeks. As ever, I'll be liveblogging events here.
Reader Comments (56)
BH when you say "grilled" do you actually mean 'tickled with a feather' by MPs whose understanding of the world stretches no further than their expense forms.
The S&TC will believe every word uttered Russell, Davies and Acton, because these are honourable men just like them.
Mac +1, after the last one were Oxburgh was allowed to waffle piffle with no searching backup questions tickling may be too strong a word.
It needs a well-briefed QC to do a proper grilling, not MPs who generally have little knowledge of the issues or how to carry out a cross-examination. Let's hope Graham Stringer is full briefed, has read the questions he should be asking and won't be put off from pursuing his questions untill he gets a full answer.
Any chance that the MP's could be persuaded to read J Curry's latest piece at Climate etc before they meet those charming people?
The sea change is happening, in more ways than one, but probably not enough to affect tomorrow's predictable rubber stamp exercise. But you never know, both Stringer and Willis have shown public displeasure at Acton's machinations.
PS, Anybody heard anything from Norfolk's Finest?
GC - Can we have less of the Judith Curry nonsense - it seems to me she has become a legend in her own lunch time.
Yes, GS, what did happen to the police investigation? We'll be back into the Ice Age by the time plod reports.
I'd guess that the Boys in Blue know they're handling sour dynamite. Even looking at it too hard could make it go bang. Anything they say will be scrutinised closely and if they come out with a conclusion which doesn't match the official line of stolen emails, they'll feel repercussions. Better to keep quiet and hope it all goes away, or that other events overtake their investigation and make their eventual statement uncontroversial.
However, I'm tempted to believe that if they could have credibly produced the conclusion that it was blood curdling Russian hackers, they would have done so.
Mac, not quite sure where you are cooing from with regards to Judy Curry. I do think her latest post is worth reading. Me, I'm with the heretics, and in very good company.
Josh, agreed Dr Curry's latest piece should be read, all of it.
Dr Curry is acting as a catalyst, some of the reactions will be exo and some will be endo. But there will be reactions, this can only be good.
Is there a time period in which the police investigation will cease due to lack of progression? And if so, does that then mean any information discovered during that period will not be released because the case is closed or shelved?
It does seem odd that nothing has come of it (so far).
It would be entirely humerous if the cuts in the police funding affected the style or content of any report that came out. Some of the higher ranking officers must be fuming under the collar by now and an adverse, in the face of government rhetoric, outcome may provide a means of quelling dissent in the ranks. Still we can only hope that the truth will out from our glorious police force.
Is anyone else sceptical of the Wiki definition of heresy as a change to dogma or belief system? I had thought from my reading that a group of beliefs needed only to be different, not a "change from" and that the dogma to which it was heretical might have evolved away from it instead.
Surely the gnostic view was not a change to accepted dogma but had evolved in parallel.
"legend in her own lunch time" is really good, Mac although I think it misapplied in this instance.
I trust they will not be interviewed together, that surely is just asking for collusion.
I bet they've sent a few Civil Servants around to B&Q already, to load up on paint & brushes!
Many years ago a very wise man said "If you want to see what someone is going to do, look at what they have done in the past." [Since there is no official neuter third person singular personal pronoun, I am using the unofficial "they" in the plural -- must be politically correct, you know.]
Since we have the same "someones" still in place, I expect a polite conversation over tea and biscuits and an even politer press release saying that everyone is an honest, hardworking, brilliant scientist saving the world from [ fill in this week's mantra ].
"Move along, nothing here."
Remember Tipp-ex? Do you think a bottle will be available for touching up the whitewash where the weather's got at it?
"Definition ... insanity .... same thing ... expect ... different result"
They've been
whitewashedexonerated several times already, this will be no different.Also in other news
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-11626680
A wind turbine manufacturer which received £10m from the Scottish government to safeguard jobs has gone bust.
Whatever they may get away with tomorrow, I am guessing that at least one of them, Acton? will not be in post at UEA, for the 2nd anniversary of Climategate.
Mac. "Time is an illusion, lunch time especially so" Douglas Adams. Whilst J Curry's time on the sceptical side of the debate is brief, when compared to her career, she has crossed the rubicon and declared war with the IPCC. She came into the blogs seeking debate, and got attacked for admitting reading HSI. Another own goal by the Team
Her timing, just before US elections will prove significant, and attempts to oust her will not be easy. Will she become the knight in shining armour as portrayed by Josh, and prove the rallying point for disaffected scientists? I have no idea, but I hope so.
One smart lady
Quantity not quality it would seem.
More walls a crumbling ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-11626680
Ross H
"Is there a time period in which the police investigation will cease due to lack of progression? And if so, does that then mean any information discovered during that period will not be released because the case is closed or shelved?"
I don't think there's a specific time limit. They are investigating a crime and there are unsolved murder cases which remain open for decades although they may not do much work on them. I suppose it depends on what you mean by the investigation ceasing. Sometimes new evidence turns up, e.g. DNA analysis, and they nab someone and close the case.
A lot comes down to their discretion, especially if the crime isn't a serious one. In this case it's quite conceivable that they got to the bottom of it very quickly but they are in no rush to refer the matter to the CPS or otherwise reveal their findings.
Look Judith Curry believes that sceptics are fundamentally wrong and are "cranks" (her words). Her blog is all about taking "the high ground" (again her words) to explain and persuade, but certainly not to listen to what we have to say. That is the level of her engagement with sceptics. We are being talked down to.
To hear her now talk about her concerns over the rise of dogma in climate science, as though this was new issue, and to see her attempt to rewrite history of the part she played in maintaining the consensus proves that "the high ground" has become a muddy, very muddy place to be.
But let us be clear in the climate religion Judith Curry is a heretic.
Cosmic. If it was a Russian hacker, for example, without Russian co-operation how can an investigation proceed? UK and Russian crime investigators do not have a good relationship. Litvienko anyone?
If it was an inside job, with revenge as the motive, would UEA want a court case? What else might come out in court.?
Thanks for the reminder, dear Bish.
I'll clear the decks so I can watch the proceedings, not for some enlightenment, but in the hope of seeing at least one of the big climate wig slipping on a banana skin.
One can always hope, no?
O/T
Your Grace has received a free plug here from Leo Hickman, with obligatory smear linking YG with Big Oil and creationism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/oct/25/climate-fools-day-sceptics-parliament
Note that Acton, Davies and Russell are described as witnesses. One problem with climate change advocacy is that it is exactly that – advocacy.
Politicians, bureaucrats and journalists are familiar with legal advocacy and seem to view carbon dioxide as the ‘accused’ and climate scientists as ‘expert witnesses’ for the prosecution. Of course science doesn’t work like that, and if it did, some climate ‘expert witnesses’ might be guilty of collusion, intimidation and vested interest.
Legal advocacy is familiar to many non-scientists and it seems to have been conflated with the more exacting experimental and permanently ‘not proven’ status of scientific theory. Even the Royal Society seems to have had so much contact with politicians and bureaucrats that it tacitly accepts a kind of bogus advocacy as climate science rather than the scientific method it once represented.
Mac, everything you have said about Judy covers what I think about her. To her, I am a "Crank" and thats how she views us all. The fact that she is embarrassed by the actions of her peers does not reduce her belief in her religion. She still harps on about carbon!
Lets be kind and say she was the first to see the the end of the gravy train and is attempting to get off.
The scientists are not the problem as grant funded ramblings are successfully deconstructed here and elsewhere. The problem is their ethos. Judith Curry has removed herself from the herd on that one: but will there be a similar conversion for the likes of Acton et al? The ethos of communism pervaded all Russian life and the ethos of warmism pervades all (climate) science. Curry will be sent to the gulag for her statement unless tomorrow brings a Berlin wall moment.
Here is an possibly important issue with the Russell report which as far as I know has not been aired anywhere else. The Russell inquiry was not charged with assessing whether CRU had adhered to FOI/EIR law: it was charged with assessing whether CRU had adhered to UEA's "policies and practices regarding requests under" those laws.
This is an important distinction. For example, it seems that (IANAL) in itself UK FOI law only forbids destruction of records after an FOI request relating to those records has already come in and is under consideration. But an institution's internal FOI policy might require certain records to be routinely preserved in anticipation of future FOI requests - or at least, the policy might forbid the destruction of specific records for the purpose of frustrating anticipated future FOI requests.
In fact, there is some indication that such a requirement may have been in place at CRU during the Climategate era: "I did get an email from the FOI person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting emails – unless this was ‘normal’ deleting to keep emails manageable!" Either the FOI person had the FOI law badly wrong, and falsely believed that inbox management was an acceptable reason to delete emails subject to an active FOI request - or the FOI person was not referring to CRU's policy for handling specific, already-received requests, but to a standing retention/deletion policy applying to all UEA email.
For instance, this would mean that in the Russell report's well-known statement
, the attempted defence is not merely false, but actually irrelevant. :) If UEA had a policy forbidding the deletion of emails in anticipation of future requests, then Jones etc. would have been in breach of UEA's FOI/EIR policy anyway.
Unfortunately, the Russell report is very uninformative on this topic. It doesn't seem to outline what UEA's actual document-retention policy was, let alone make a clear judgement on how CRU complied with it. The report talks quite a bit about the provisions of the EIR and FOI laws, and about the roles of FOI and departmental staff in dealing with requests, but these are not the same thing. It duly mentions UEA’s master FOIA-compliance document during Climategate, its Code of Practice for Responding to Requests for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, but it fails to pay much attention to what the Code of Practise stipulates. In particular, it fails to mention that the Code of Practise demands compliance with the parallel Guidelines for the Management of Records under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; in fact it fails to mention the Guidelines at all.
By the way, you should put down your coffee before you click that last link.
I see sad little Leo is having trouble again at joining up words to make a coherent sentence on the Guardian blogs.
Mind you he must be an ace at texting, that 'Recommend' button has been given an absolute hammering.
So much for him being an ethical man.
By the way, the Committee's written evidence page has now moved. It's unfortunate that apparently there's still no mention of McIntyre's latest Russell-report discoveries on the record of the Committee, just before Russell himself returns to give evidence.
Muir Russell just made a change to his webpage, amending his list of FOI requests to include the David Holland request left out on the previous list.
The Hon Edward David Joseph Lyon-Dalberg-Acton FRHistS. This biographical article about an academic administrator is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
History in the first person for Acton: no pressure. Connelley is banned. May I suggest that the Bishop accepts the Wikipedia invitation if a sequel to THSI is not in the pipeline.
At this point it is safe to assume that all of the "witnessess" about to appear in front of the Committee are well briefed and fully aware of the controversial issues. Ignorance of key facts or "I haven't read any of the e-mails" type of excuse would appear lame and simply incredible.
The same presumption of knowledge applies to the parliamentarians, Stringer in particular.
If the right questions aren't asked in the right way, we can safely assume that the "fix is in" and also that the committee members are willing participants in the cover-up.
Last time UEA fielded Jones who was clearly out of his depth...like a pathetic rabbit blinking in the headlights. I almost felt sorry for him as he finally realised that his playground games in his closed little private world had had serious real-world consequences.
Accompanying him was the unctuous Acton....for whom I could never feel sorry. A truly slimy individual...a natural for Uriah Heep in the UEA Christmas pantomime...he presented as the worst sort of politician...an unprincipled and mendacious creep.
But for tomorrow, Jones is not invited (it may be that his mental health is still unrecovered). Acton has a new minder ...or fall guy... Trevor Davies! On the one occasion I have seen him in action, he seemed to share all Acton;s characteristics apart from the guile..and the charm. I can only imagine that he is there to make Acton look good. And for Russell and Acton to publicly dump on if necessary.
It should be fascinating watching if the committee does a thorough job.
Wouldn't it be great of Andrew Neill got to interview one or all of them on The Daily Politics afterwards? Neill is one of the few TV broadcasters who is not a card-carrying warmist. And despite his own colourful past does not take any prisoners when his bullshit detector registers a hit.
Steve Mc has just pointed out that the Muir Russell site has been updated to include the FOI request from David Holland (sent immediately prior to the request to delete emails from Jones.)
This desperately needs to be brought to the attention of Stringer et al prior to tomorrow.
@Political Junkie
I agree that it ought to apply, but that's not how the game is played. It's much more difficult to convince a casual observer - or to firmly establish before, say, another inquiry - that the Committee members should be expected to have been reading this or that weblog on their own initiative, than that they should be expected to pay attention to evidence explicitly presented to the Committee and put on its record.
Might Muir Russell's belated correction of the record suggest one of the lines of inquiry for tomorrow?
Slow Joe
I have just emailed Graham Stringer with your comment.
Regards
The committee needs to go in hard.
They need to establish:
1. the reason for the error in the list of FOI requests. (Funny that the most damaging was missing...)
2. the point in time when the error was discovered, and explain any gap between discovery and correction
3. the impact of the error on the proceeding for the committee. Do all members of the team agree that this FOI request would have had no impact on the report?
Slow Joe
Graham Stringer's email address published on the parliament website is: stringerg@parliament.uk
I suggest you email him yourself.
Regards
Ok, sent an email with edited version of the 3 questions.
Thanks for the kick, Mike.
Phillip Bratby,
"It needs a well-briefed QC to do a proper grilling, not MPs who generally have little knowledge of the issues or how to carry out a cross-examination."
-------------------------------
"You stated X in answer to my question, yet previously you have stated Y in answer to the same question"
"Errr, I might have."
"Then let me refresh your memory quoting from these statements you have made previously, which are completely incompatible with what you are saying now.....".
"Errr, I might have been reported as saying that, but you are taking it out of context".
"Out of context? The context is as plain as day, as plain as the difference between truth and lies. Is it not the case that you are deliberately attempting to deceive us? I suggest that your whole testimony is a threadbare fabric of falsehood, a feast of dissimulation, a complete pack of barefaced lies".
A nice thought, but I don't see Mr. Rottweiler-Pitbull Q.C. being set loose.
cosmic: I'm afraid you're right. I know a QC who would take these witnesses apart in just the way you described.
Adam Gallon : I bet they've sent a few Civil Servants around to B&Q already, to load up on paint & brushes!
I hope they don't buy Dulux vinyl brilliant white. It used to be great stuff. But about 9 months back a friend and I found ourselves making a second coat and still not getting covereage - with a can of Dulux we had bought at B&Q.
Had we forgotten to stir it? But you don't stir Dulux vinyl! (we thought). Then we compared the thin runny contents with the thick, almost solid, gel from an older can of Dulux - it was like the difference between skim milk and clotted cream.
We looked on the can of the new stuff and it said (tucked away in a corner) "New formula with 25% less carbon footprint".
What rubbish. What they meant was "25% less useful ingredients - for the same price and without warning that more than two coats are now needed where one would formerly have been needed".
It's amazing the number of micro-scams riding like flees on the back of the mighty Global Warming Scam.
"Is there a time period in which the police investigation will cease due to lack of progression?"
You'd think so, given that the statutory requirement to respond to FOI requests evaporates after 6 months!
anonym writes: In particular, it fails to mention that the Code of Practise demands compliance with the parallel Guidelines for the Management of Records under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; in fact it fails to mention the Guidelines at all.
This latter link is now protected by a password. Do you have a copy?
The Select Committee each and all have a tough task in addition to picking their way across the Climategate whitewash minefield, while resolving demons from their individual conflicting political prospects versus moral ethics. Shakespearian, tomorrow morning.
Steve McIntyre
The guidelines seem to be behind a UAE login, but googling the title brings up a lot of references to this:
"Guidelines for the Management of Records under the Freedom of Information Act 2000"
a copy of which is here:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/docs/foi-section-46-code-of-practice.pdf
Not sure if it's the same document, but it could well be.