Climate cuttings 40

There are quite a few interesting links and snippets around this morning, so here, without further ado, is the latest instalment of Climate Cuttings.

Ars Technica uses CRU data difficulties to kick off an article about the problems academics have in storing their raw materials. I'm not sure that this excuses CRU, who of course had access to plenty of data repositories.

Also on the subject of openness, John Graham-Cumming returns to the subject of code availability, knocking back some of the arguments that are made against such transparency.

Justin Loew looks at the Cuccinelli's demands to see Michael Mann's emails and concludes that the great man should just bite the bullet.

If I had to guess, I would say the emails contain similar comments to what was found in the Climagate emails. Thinking that their emails were secure, Mann and a few coleagues “talked like people talk” when they are in private, discussing their problems, their enemies, their true feelings. I doubt there is any other major evidence of fraud, manipulation of data, or supression of alternate theories over and above what was found through the Climategate release. It would most likely be a personal embarassment for the researchers involved – which would be emotionally painful. My advice: release the emails now and get it overwith. Prolonging the fight will only prolong the agony and fuel the skeptics. Mann can prove he is a better person (than his critics) and a honorable scientist by letting the world see – warts and all.

Interesting to see interest in the subject of Climategate from the Philosophy of Science Association Biennial Meeting. They seem to be struggling with the facts rather, with one participant claiming that "It was not that the scientists feared that bad science would be revealed if the data were shared". The same speaker also claims that the most serious charges were over lack of openness. Given that there were allegations of fraud and fabrication, this idea seems to be somewhat divorced from reality. The report on the PSA meeting is very interesting, although there is much to take issue with.

Hans Labohm has an article in the Washington Times looking at the change in public opinion on climate change among Europeans.

And how else could I leave you except with the latest from Minnesotans for Global Warming? Have a nice weekend.

Comments

[Jerry]

It was a very amusing video Minnesotans etc. I especially liked the Michael Mann look-alike.

I noticed (only because I just trekked from the relevant wikipedia page) that they are using auto-tune.

For reference sake, are these just some extremely cold-sensitive Minnesotans, or are they part of the global denier conspiracy funded by big oil?

[JerryM]

Start the day with a laugh thanks to the Minnesotans 4GW.

Mikey a drummer? Don't give up your day job.

Although ... on second thoughts ...

[Pete Hayes]

OT but has anyone seen Judiths follow up to the feedback thing?

I sometime think the world runs ahead of her. She defends Mann etc saying they were only just out of Grad school when they joined the IPCC and maybe not ready for the pressures of politicians. (Well thats how I read it! ) Okay, your young and you know how easy it is to let your gang lead you, forget the billions involved and the bad science, you will learn and the taxpayers of the world will forgive you!

She makes no mention of the people who had the balls to resign.....

[Richard Brown]

If 10:10 had used this style of satire with a few subtle changes they would have been much more effective

[John Silver]

Mike the drummer makes windmill impersonations, and they set the flamingos free.

[steveta_uk]

The Hans Labohm article in the Washington Times contains just the sort of misinformation that we're always accusing the warmists of propagating - it makes me cross because some of it is so obviously wrong if just fuels the other side.

For example, this repeated claim that "even Phil Jones ... acknowledges that there has been no measurable warming since 1995" simply isn't true and I'm sure Labohm must know it isn't true. Jones actually said that warming since then isn't statistically significant, but that of course means nothing, as they've always said that the minimum baseline is 30 years, so how could it be?

So once you put such obvious mistakes in the article, the AGW brigade can reject the whole thing, so it ends up as just more hot air in the debate.

[Luis Dias]

steveta, the statistical significance issue is indepedent from the 30-year climate definition. It is not a mistake, but it is a cherry picked little snippet of gotcha marketing.

[Don Pablo de la Sierra]

The MM look alike was wonderful -- or has he seen the light? Hummm

[Foxgoose]

bit OT - but OK for a bits'bobs thread I guess:-

Is anybody else as p*ssed off as I am about Google's endless hypocritical green posturing.

i.e Funding the fight against Prop 23 while driving their Toyota Pious's to their corporate 767?

I'm trying the new Blekko "slashtag" search engine. You can use slashes to reduce irrelevancy and introduce dates etc - and, best of all, everytime you use it you're draining a nanolitre of aviation fuel from the Googlejet

[Shub]

In the 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'

Michael Mann: A scientist in the crosshairs of climate change denial

Firstly, a few choice mind-blowing quotes:

By any objective reading, Mann's credibility - and that of the science - withstood the onslaught.

BAS: Was it disappointing that the president didn’t step up to defend you and the credibility of climate science, weighing in personally as he did, say, on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his Cambridge home, and the consequent “beer summit” on race relations? The White House called that a “teachable moment.”

MANN: I’m not going to second-guess the administration. The president and the administration—I can understand their inclination to not want to get into the mud with climate-change deniers. That having been said, the administration could have been more out in front on this issue. But I recognize that administration officials need to weigh all factors in deciding how to move forward on issues like climate change.

Mann appears to descend to slander and libel (unfortunate words I never want to use again) in this passage:

Other editors at the journal felt (Monastersky, 2003) that the editor who had handled the Soon and Baliunas paper had been gaming the system to allow through substandard papers simply because they expressed a contrarian viewpoint regarding climate change.

Monastersky does not quote anyone saying de Frietas was "gaming the system to allow substandard papers", "simply for expressing a contrarian viewpoint" or anything equivalent in meaning. Mann is ascribing motive here, which is unsubstantiated by the article he quotes.

Monastersky 2003 here

Secondly, Mann says:

As the Wall Street Journal reported (Regalado, 2003) this fossil fuel industry-funded study was heavily criticized by a large number of other scientists

He forgets to mention that this large number is 13 and he was one of them, and the 'heavy criticism' was a comment put together by none other than lead author Michael Mann.

It was the same Michael Mann who wrote this in his email to Jim Salinger:

Hans Von Storch's resignation as chief editor of CR, which I think took a lot of guts, couldn't have come at a better time. It was on the night before before the notorious "James Inhofe", Chair of the Senate "Environment and Public Works Committee" attempted to provide a public stage for Willie Soon and David Legates to peddle their garbage (the Soon & Baliunas junk of course, but also the usual myths about the satellite record, 1940s-1970s cooling, "co2 is good for us" and "but water
vapor is the primary greenhouse gas!").

Fortunately, these two are clowns, neither remotely as sharp as Lindzen or as slick as Michaels, and it wasn't too difficult to deal with them. Suffice it to say, the event did *not* go the way Inhofe and the republicans had hoped. The democrats, conveniently, had received word of Hans' resignation, but the Republicans and Soon/Legates had not. So when, quite fittingly, Jim Jeffords (you may remember--he's the U.S. senator who was in the news a couple years ago for tilting the balance of power back to the democrats when he left the republican party in protest) hit them with this news at the hearing, they were caught completely off guard. The "Wall Street Journal" article you cited was icing on the cake.
Inhofe, who rails against the liberal media, will have a difficult time doing so against the WSJ!

It was Jim Jeffords who contacted Hans von Storch about Baliunas and Soon at Climate Research, prompting him to change procedures at the journal which were then not accepted by Otto Kinne, precipitating the resignation.

From the Wall Street journal article:

Then, last week Dr. von Storch was contacted by Sen. Jeffords's staff, which was looking into the paper in preparation for Tuesday's hearing, where Dr. Soon and Dr. Mann were scheduled to appear. After hearing from Sen. Jeffords, Dr. von Storch says he decided to speed an editorial into print criticizing publication of the paper.

But publisher Otto Kinne blocked the move, saying that while he favored publication of the editorial, Dr. von Storch's proposals were still opposed by some of the other editors. "I asked Hans not to rush the editorial," Mr. Kinne said in an e-mail.

That is when Dr. von Storch resigned, followed by two other editors.

Who else was copied in on his abjectly political email exchange:

pachauri@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Could Hans von Storch inform us the nature and form of communication he recieved from Jim Jeffords' staffers about Soon and Baliunas?

Who gave an US senator's office the idea to contact a newly appointed editor-in-chief of an obscure climate journal?

[nemesis]

Totally O/T
Just looked at Autonomous Mind Blog & saw this:
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/is-this-nasas-climategate/
Forgive me if Im behind the curve on this.

[Josh]

Such a great video! Wonderful.

[JohnH]

Guardian, knickers and twist come to mind

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/07/david-cameron-china-climate-change

[JohnH]

Remember Bishops post about how often Greenpeace etc were meeting ministers on a very regular basis.

Well funny you should remember that because they are now complaining the Nuclear industry is getting favouritism from the same ministers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/07/ministers-nuclear-lobby-concerns-favouritism

Pot calling Kettle black