Bishop Hill It's in the Nature of the beast
Feb 15, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Russell A couple of interesting climategate postings over at Nature's website - some more statements from Phil Jones, the most startling of which is this:
I don't think we should be taking much notice of what's on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process.
Golly. I can't imagine for a minute which journals have had their peer review process hijacked by us motley band of sceptics.
Then there's this piece by Daniel Cressey, who does a reasonable job of rounding up the developments on the Russell Review and the latest errors from the IPCC. He then blows it unfortunately by suggesting that readers head over to RealClimate to get a good dose of truth, which looks slightly foolish given that these are the guys who are being investigated.
Unless Daniel Cressey, like his boss Philip Campbell, knows something about the outcome of the review already.
Reader Comments (31)
Why bother with these second raters when you can get Der Fuhrer's views?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-PI2vCA9ck&feature=player_embedded
(H/T Tom Nelson)
The process of moving away from the levels of confidence that AGW believers held only three or four months ago is rapid, in terms of other collapsing popular myths, but too slow for those who are being vindicated after years of this.
That the apologists would call for victims of the AGW fraud to go to the primary source of the fraud to get 'good info', is at once irony of the higest order and frustrating. The main goal of the AGW apologists still seems to be to save the apocalypse, not to find the truth.
Can someone advise me?
I am confused.
How can Phil Jones claim the conclusions of his 1990 paper are the same as his 2008 paper?
I looked up the 1990 paper.
It claimed an urban heat affect of 0.1°C rise in 30 years
(i.e 0.16°C IN 50 YEARS).
Phil Jones 2008 paper states:-
"Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C per decade (i.e. 0.5°C IN 50 YEARS) over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period."
0.5°C in 0.81°C is a significant contribution from the urban heat effect.
The two different papers show a significant difference in conclusions!
Hopefully this CRU/HT spin machine is only a toilet...somebody flush this $hit down.
New Harrabin article "Climate 'Armistice'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8516905.stm
I already responded to 'Climate scientists under pressure round-up', by suggesting that rather than take the RealClimate medicine, readers of Nature might be expected to understand search engines and might wish to examine the debate from all sides. Seems the print media's moderation machine turns slower than the ones in the interwebs.
"I don't think we should be taking much notice of what's on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process."
Whatever Kool_Aide Dr. Jones is drinking has obviously been spiked with some kind of raw spirits that makes his common sense go to la la land.
Bishop,
Ad hominem - and a sleazy, false, smear against the majority at RC who are not being 'investigated', to boot.
Still, since that ad hom is your best and indeed only argument here, I suppose that means you couldn't find anything wrong with what 'those guys' wrote about the IPCC errors and so you'd prefer nobody looked at it, huh?
In that case, here's that link you want to distract from again.
Frank,
I know a number of science students at Russell group university departments who are directed to Real Climate by their tutors. The site is a joke amongst them, They can see what's going on there. Climate Audit is pretty much the site of choice, whatever their masters tell them.
So Jones said " I don't think we should be taking much notice of what's on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process."
A bit rich coming from a central member of The Team that well and truly hijacked the peer review process.
I think what was probably in his mind was "we should not take too much notice of blogs, because they only want to find errors in stuff that has got through the peer review process"
Cumbrian Lad,
Thanks for the anecdote. It's still ad hom. I guess you couldn't find anything wrong with what RC wrote on the IPCC stuff either.
Surely there must be one 'sceptic' here who is actually able to address the content instead of the source?
Frank O'Dwyer, if you're interested in letting people see all perspectives if this particular debate, maybe you should point them to this link too...
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-mistake-to-lie.html
Looks to me like the folks over at ReaClimate are not quite as 'open' as you seem to imply.
Frank
You are sounding shrill again.
There is a question mark over the integrity of some of the authors at RC - this is not disputed. Cressey was therefore foolish to point them as a source of reliable information while the investigations are ongoing.
This was my point as I made it. It was not ad hominem since I didn't seek to disprove anything said at RC by alluding to the various climategate investigations.
You make yourself look foolish by accusing me of trying to distract attention from the RC post in one breath, while accusing me of trying to knock it down with ad hominems in the next.
Frank
Try and "address the content" at RC and you get dumped on by RL et al on the first occasion and moderated out of existence after that. No wonder everybody considers RC a joke and gives up trying.
Bishop
Your attempts to read my aura over the intertubes are growing extremely tiresome.
You are not a mind reader, you can't read my mood from my words, and there is reason that people use emoticons in Internet communications - so please give it up.
Yes it is. And you did not write 'some of those guys' you wrote 'those guys'. This is exactly the sort of guilt by association and gutter journalism you threw your toys out of your pram over when the topic was your golden boy Mr M and his two degrees of separation from certain 'think tanks'.
Listen to yourself lately. You are reduced to using arguments such as somebody working down the hall from somebody else to create guilt by association, even before any guilt of anything is shown. It's like the 'top tenuous' on the Chris Evans show.
I've been visiting your blog on and off for a long time and you used to be much better than this. I'm not saying this for debating points either, I'm wondering what on earth happened here.
Philip Bratby,
But you can still do so here or start your own blog. And it's hardly true of 'everybody' since it is obvious that other views are present there.
Dave Salt,
I've no problem with linking to that stuff too but I think bigcitylib is on the money in the comments there.
And I didn't say RC was open (I'm not even sure what you mean by that), I just noted the lack of rebuttals.
Dave Salt,
Re Pielke and Muir-Wood, here it is from the horse's mouth
Seems pretty clear to me.
"Try and "address the content" at RC and you get dumped on by RL et al on the first occasion and moderated out of existence after that. No wonder everybody considers RC a joke and gives up trying."
But you can still do so here or start your own blog. And it's hardly true of 'everybody' since it is obvious that other views are present there.
If there are I haven't found them. Philip is right. Disagree with the Team and you get moderated till it hurts. Here you are allowed to express a view; have you thought about expressing a view, Frank, or is ranting all you can manage?
Sam the Skeptic,
Try looking. Works for me.
Here's that link again.
Once you're done reading the comments and noting that there are in fact views of many flavours represented there, maybe you'll have something to say about the content. Have you thought about doing that, or is ranting all you can manage?
Frank O'Dwyer, bigcitylib's comments appear somewhat oblique but, to me, seem well rebutted by Pielke Jr.
However, I'm far more intrigued by Richard Tol's comments, which suggests that RealClimate have placed him on their black list. So maybe I should have used the word 'balanced' rather than 'open' in my previous post.
The only problem with that is that there is no higher-than-average activity level which really calls into question the accuracy of the rest of their research, wouldn't you say, Frank? Is a 2% increase really significant? I'm not so sure.
And if you care to pursue the argument a little further you will (as a seeker after truth) admit — as does the IPCC though not quite in so many words of course — that the results were distorted by the relatively active hurricane years of 2004 and 2005 and that a large part of that distortion was caused by the fact that the New Orleans levees were not properly. maintained.
frank,
you clearly dont like the bishop perhaps you need to get out and rearrange your deckchairs more
Ad Hom might be saying 'ignore Frank, he wrote an article at RC, and we all know what sort of distractions they use to avoid the issues'. There is no question that the RC site is set up and run to present the consensus view - a view which is under severe question. The nature article provides a link to RC as an authority - that was a mistake.
Frank O'Dwyer, Pielke's article is about the way RealClimate have both reported the issue and then reacted to his comments, so the paper you linked to seems to have only indirect relevance.
"I don't think we should be taking much notice of what's on in the peer review because they seem to be hijacking the scientific process."
From Harrabin Armistice article linked by FergalF above:
"The Russell review will consider whether the data procedures at CRU were acceptable by current standards and, crucially, acceptable by the standards of 1990."
What the $duck does this mean?!...
"Of course back in the days of primitive science in the 90s when all man had mustered were a flint and a stick, things weren't as advanced as in the 21C. Odd scriblings and scratchings on cave walls could easily be misread or miconstrued as lack of wall space meant overwriting was the norm. Or sometimes even wholesale abandonment took place as the evolving tribe moved on to bigger to bigger and better caverns. How to judge those early and primitive days by the lofty standards we have now become accustomed to is indeed the crucial question. " .... ?
Frank, Real Climate refused to post this comment in response to the very article you linked to:
"The IPCC and many of its' contributors exhibit an agenda that disqualifies them as honest brokers of the science of climate change. IPCC reports are held up as a synthesis of the "settled science" of climate change; but some of their 'research' doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. Most deniers are agnostic about AGW. We want to know if the human contribution to the current warming trend is real, and if so, how significant? It is unfortunate that the agenda of the IPCC and its' contributing reseachers has muddied the waters to the point that we don't have an accurate assessment of the potential problem."
RC's refusal to post this proves they're not "honest brokers" of the science of climate change or the opinions of dissenters.
Louis,
FWIW I don't generally defend not publishing comments (did they really refuse or just hold it for moderation?), but in your case I note that there plenty of similar comments there and I'm not sure what yours adds beyond repetition of similar unwarranted insults. You don't address a thing that they wrote, you simply ignore it and repeat the accusations that prompted it. Ultimately it's their house, their rules.
My point re RC is not that they publish everything, only that it's demonstrably not true that they automatically refuse anything that disagrees with them - there are plenty of 'denier' comments on there.
"Blogs hijacking peer review?" How? I thought Phil Jones et al had peer review completely stitched up. Or are they just afraid of people publishing their views online without the permission of the 'Team'?
Phil says Blogs are taking over peer review. Does he have RC in mind for this?
Mr O'Dwyer
Try asking some simple questions about Climategate - all relevant of course, within the right context in any given thread with a nice rhetorical bite. As a simple experiment.
Nice spam-style defence of RC here, though. Remember that you can do that because this is not RC.
And 'mike' at RealClimate is Michael Mann - who is under investigation as we speak. RealClimate is certainly nobody to defend or say anything meaningful about Climategate.
-Regards
Anand