Bishop Hill A chat with Graham Stringer
Apr 10, 2010 Climate: Parliament A few days ago I wondered how the Science and Technology Select Committee had managed to exonerate Phil Jones on several of the charges against him without actually having any evidence for the defence. Despite having previously expressed a willingness to discuss the report, committee chairman Phil Willis subsequently refused to explain this extraordinary set of circumstances.
Somewhat exasperated, I dropped a line to Graham Stringer, who, readers may remember, was the only member of the committee who seemed to have any great interest in probing for answers to the questions raised by the Climategate emails. He was also the sole dissenter from the majority opinion represented by the report.
I was very gratified to get a swift response from Mr Stringer, particularly now we are in a general election campaign. He said that he was happy to talk about the committee's findings and suggested we speak by telephone.
We spoke yesterday and I found him very engaging. He was keen to emphasise the time constraints that the committee was operating under and also the fact that several members of the committee are utterly convinced of the CAGW case, although he also said he thought that they were not dogmatic in their beliefs.
I particularly raised the question of Ross McKitrick's allegation that Phil Jones had inserted into the IPCC report some statements that had no basis in the scientific literature. I came away with the impression that the committee had not specifically examined this issue, and that their exoneration of Jones was presumably therefore limited to the specific questions that they had looked at. It appears to have been a case of "if in doubt find him innocent".
Of course, innocent until proven guilty is a principle I'm sure we are all right behind, but in these circumstances Phil Willis's declaration that Jones emerged from the inquiry with his reputation intact looks less than a straightforward declaration of the truth.
It is not that Jones has been found innocent; on many of the charges he just hasn't been tried yet.
Reader Comments (100)
So is anything likely to transpire from this - presumably if Dr. Jones hasn't actually been tried yet, the collection of evidence can continue for his trial at some future date? or will it all be quietly and conveniently shoved under the political carpet. I was quite impressed with Mr. Stringer at the inquiry. What a pity he seemed a lone candle in the darkness.
I just wish everyone would come to their senses and recognise this AGW nonsense for what it is. Richard Lindzen sums it all up pretty well in his "Earth is never in equilibrium" piece. Another candle shining in the darkness.
The only light at the end of the tunnel at the moment, appears to be that of an oncoming train...
At least Stringer answered your questions. I sense that there may have been some hesitiation in the answer about dogmatism. I doubt, however, that the other members of the comittee would subscribe to your final comment, or several of his.
Unfortunately Phil Willis, like many of those supporters of the CAWG cause, seem to have difficulties with handling and presenting data appropriately, and only sceptics seem to be able to recognise the all-important differences between the chronologies of "FOUND NOT GUILTY" and "NOT FOUND GUILTY".
Glad you got to talk to Graham Stringer. I'm asking all of the candidates that knock on my door what their stance on global warming is. I'm making that my election campaign issue. If enough people do that, maybe that point would make its way back up the chain to Whitehall.
Unfortunately Phil Willis, like many of those supporters of the CAWG cause, seem to have difficulties with handling and presenting data appropriately, and only sceptics seem to be able to recognise the all-important differences between the chronologies of "FOUND NOT GUILTY" and "NOT FOUND GUILTY".
Glad you got to talk to Graham Stringer. I'm asking all of the candidates that knock on my door what their stance on global warming is. I'm making that my election campaign issue. If enough people do that, maybe that point would make its way back up the chain to Whitehall.
Bishop
Do you still have the 'Not Proven' verdict in Scotland? i.e. Not Guilty, but don't do it again.
Will he be tried?
Interesting. Last week I posted a very late submission to the Independent Climate Change E-mail Review. I did so on the basis of the HoC Committee Report (released 31 March) and the CRU evidence to the E-mail Review (posted 1 April). I also copied my own MP as well as Phil Willis and Graham Stringer - they were all MPs at the time!
My evidence is that there is no evidence of a parallel run of the baseline 1969-1990 data with the post 1990 data. This is needed to validate the comparisons between the the two time periods. It appears, from GHCN data, that there has been a significant reduction in the thermometer count between the two periods.
EM Smith, who is investigating the unadjusted GHCN data in great detail, has demonstrated that many of these changes occurred c1990. Apart from a reduction in the thermometer count he has also demonstrated signs of migration of stations towards the equator and from higher altitudes to lower altitudes. I have suggested to him that he makes a parallel run using the freely available unadjusted GHCN data set. He replied that there were complications in doing this, not least because "duplicate numbers change en-masse about 1990 for a large number of places" and "The long lived records are mostly killed off about the same time."
The CRU evidence states that the agreement between CRUTEM3 and other results, including the unadjusted GHCN (which they plot on a chart), is "excellent". The CRU evidence is unclear what thermometer count they use in CRUTEM3 in the 1969-90 baseline and post 1990 periods. I have suggested that this be clarified.
The thermometer count changes revealed in the unadjusted GHCN data look to me like a significant process change. In the commercial world, such a change would not be made without a parallel run of the old and new processes to validate the new process. For example a retailer changing his cash machine system would like to be sure that when a customer bought two items, one at £1 and another at £2 and tendered a £5 note in payment, the system flagged up £2 change to be returned to the customer. He does not want the answer to be £1.50 (and be thought a fraud) or £2.50 (and be thought a fool). This is not so much a scientific point as a simple bean counters point.
I await with interest to hear if, at this very late stage, the Review team shares my bean counters point.
What a sad state of affairs it is when the HoC cannot find more than one scientist or engineer to sit on the Science and Technology Select Committee. I guess the important committees are filled by the better MPs, so the Science and Technology Select Committee will have the dross. Science and engineering are the lowest of the low in the UK these days.
I don't hold any expectations for the other inquiries to do a more balanced job. They also are full of members who are utterly convinced of the CAGW case.
I noticed today Sir Muir and his buddies have added 1 more written submission to the evidence web page making 29 in total. They really are cracking on now…..
It seems to me that the "religion" is so deeply embedded that people looking into scientific malfeasance on behalf of the people of this country returned a verdict of not proven guilty because it is one of the high priests of the religion who was on trial. The contents of the CRU emails are a disgrace to science, and those scientists who are staying silent on these issues are themselves a disgrace to science. Only the IOP had the courage to speak out for science.The shame is that these scientist/activists are going to bring down the whole of science with them, and the committee's exhoneration of Jones won't stop the evidence being out there and being examined by those who want to see science carried out in a transparent and honest manner.
It seems to me that the politicians are so ignorant of science and scientists that they believe that the words of "scientists" are pure truth, and have fooled themselves into believing the "deniers" and "flat earthers" who have challenged the conclusions of these activists are a bunch of swivel eyed loonies (one of them is!) who are as ignorant of the science and scientific method as they are themselves. I believe the penny is beginnning to drop, but, like Mann et al, they're too far in to begin to back off. In normal circumstances they would simply stop talking about an issue they when they realised their mistake, and hope that over a period of time it would be forgotten. The difference this time is that the extremist organisations like Greenpeace, the WWF and Oxfam won't let the issue go away because it is the one hope they have for getting control of way we live our lives.We live in interesting times.
Despite being 'cleared', Jones isn't getting off scot-free.
I can well envisage the gales of laughter if he tries to publish, for at least the next few years....
Rick Bradford
I would tend to disagree with you there. Phil Jones has a truly impressive publication record with papers in Nature and Science and an h-index of over 50 (50 peer reviewed papers each cited 50 or more times). In addition, according to the climate science community (who by and large have not read the climategate emails in detail), he's the victim of a totally unjustified campaign of harrasment and innuendo. I would expect his next few papers to get an extremely smooth ride.
The recent thread at Realclimate (Climate Scientist Bashing) shows the sort of support Phil Jones is getting.
See comment #5 from Jo Abbess, which is (amazingly) not meant ironically (see also #52).
And comment #64 is jaw-dropping:
"Perhaps it is possible to find different ways of working, or alternatively to push for legislative reform, so that climate scientists can be exempted from FOI laws. They are simply too busy, and the issues of climate change are too important, to waste scientists’ time in dealing with FOI requests or releasing their data sets to denialists."
Same old same old. What more is there to say?
'I particularly raised the question of Ross McKitrick's allegation that Phil Jones had inserted into the IPCC report some statements that had no basis in the scientific literature.'
======================================================================
From e-mail to Tom Wigley 22/10/04
"their is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the
last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C
on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but
years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility.
Must got to Florence now. Back in Nov 1.
Cheers
Phil"
Even to colleagues he's guessing !
jazznick - priceless! "....no science...." !!!
Phil Jones has a truly impressive publication record with papers in Nature and Science and an h-index of over 50 (50 peer reviewed papers each cited 50 or more times)."
Jones is a common name. Are you sure all those high h-index papers were by CRU's Phil Jones?
1. Phil Jones was not being accused of doing 'bad' science - which I doubt any committee could rightfully sit over and come to a verdict on (this is the job of ongoing scientific enquiry) but of failing to respond appropriately (legally) to FoI queries and of behaving poorly w.r.t normal scientific politenesses (ethics is too strong a word) - such as being open with data and methods
2. Since he received poor advice from the university over the FOI requests, the fault lies with the university not Phil Jones. The university vice chancellor is open to both civil and criminal liabilities as a result. Though I doubt they will go so far since he is new to the post.
3. Not being polite or playing politics with science are - to my knowledge - not actually criminal offences. Or, if they are, then you might as well lock all scientists up now and shoot them tomorrow on the 'precautionary' principle. For example, Crick and Watson definitely played hardball over the discovery of DNA and denied (for a long time) credit to a female researcher in the area (so they were sexist as well), just as Newton played hardball with Leibniz over the invention of differential calculus (In fact, Newton was probably one of the most poisonous characters in science who ever lived).
4. I am with the vice chancellor in saying that the very fact of an inquiry could be positive because it will lead to more open practices and better science.
Until some inquiry or investigator sniffs out the author of the Harry files and finds out who directed him to "fudge" the code we will only get whitewashes. Why would someone not want to talk to that guy? Only because they don't want to deal with the answers. It might take 2 minutes to find out who he is if you have Phil Jones under oath. Additionally no one seems to want to talk to Steve McIntyre. How can you take an inquiry seriously that doesn't inquire?
RR:
My source for Phil Jones' h-index was in this climategate email thread - http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=903&filename=1213201481.txt
where Phil Jones calculates it himself, having weeded out suspect references. It may not be correct - I have not tried to calculate it. But he did not seem to be trying to inflate it.
Phil Jones Jan 2009:
Chris - I presume the Met Office continually monitor the weather
> > forecasts.
> > Maybe because I'm in my 50s, but the
> language used in the forecasts seems
> > a bit over the top re the cold. Where I've been for the last 20
> > days (in Norfolk)
> > it doesn't seem to have been as cold as the forecasts.
> >
> > I've just submitted a paper on the UHI for London - it is 1.6
> > deg C for the LWC.
> > It comes out to 2.6 deg C for night-time minimums. The BBC forecasts has
> > the countryside 5-6 deg C cooler than city centres on recent nights."
Maybe Phil should get a thermometer and put it in his garden...
Re: Phil Jones H-index and his nomination as fellow of the AGU
In the correspondence you cite,
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=903&filename=1213201481.txt
Michael Mann told Phil Jones he would use the false h-index of 62, not 52, the number Phil Jones said he believed to be correct.
Did Phil Jones approve of, or object to, this falsification? Perhaps there is no evidence one way or the other, but it would be revealing to know what number was used in the AGU nomination?
"...He was keen to emphasise the time constraints that the committee was operating under..."
Why was the committee operating under "time constraints"?
What sort of investigation was it that was time limited?
What sort of committee members would accept such limitations?
I did a quick search on web of science, and my best guess is that his current H-index is 64.
Peter Melia asked:
"Why was the committee operating under "time constraints"?
What sort of investigation was it that was time limited?
What sort of committee members would accept such limitations?"
The life of parliament is limited by law. After the general election many members of the committee may have lost their seats.
This highlights that it is politics that is driving the AGW debate, not science.
RR had commented on Jones's "50 peer reviewed papers" ...
Speaking of "peer-review", readers are no doubt aware that the oft repeated refrain - in response to any questioning or criticism - is that the IPCC report, aka the "climate bible", is all "peer-reviewed". In this regard ... coming soon to a monitor near you ... "F21"
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/coming-very-soon-to-a-monitor-near-you-f21/
Expat in France: Could you give us a flavour of how the debate is going over there? It's easy for us rosbifs to monitor public opinion and the scientific debate on AGW in the English-speaking world.
Sorry to go off-topic, but I do wonder whether people in other countries are bored with the whole silly scare story or putting the finishing touches to their arks.
Trying to bolster the CRU and the UEA actually weakens the warmist cause.
The HoC is defending a discredited figure and organization who freely admit (for example) to 'pretty awful emails', emails which detail how climatologists hood wink the public through hiding the lack of agreement between proxies and real temperatures.
This is not science, and even MPs should know that. The Daily Mail can explain why this is a problem.
Anyone who checks the facts, because of the noise associated with climategate, will become aware of this.
Until climatologists, MPs, et al call for the resignation of people who are guilty of bringing their discipline into disrepute, climatology as a whole can be regarded as being no better than ufology or Scientology. Incidentally, George Monbiot, who has a high regard for the truth, has long realized this.
I therefore suspect that the chain of white washing exercises are designed to continue to allow the politicians to quietly suppress the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming fervor that they accidentally created while trying to increase taxes.
I think that we can therefore all wish the bumbling inquiries good luck in their endeavors. No doubt soon everyone's local council will have passed a resolution stating that the CRU were doing a really great job in looking after the public's data and that everyone knows that mixing data sets to hide confusing divergence is long established statistical trick, and that 'tricks' are a good thing in science.
Meanwhile the public and voters will be laughing at the climatic emperors prancing round in their sanctified CAGW clothes.
George Monbiot knows that this will happen. For better or worse, apparently, admitting to this fault is simply not possible for climatologists, and this flaw will bring down the CAGW edifice. So I say, bring on the white wash inquiries! The more the merrier.
ZT
You raise excellent points. It is usually the attempt at covering up that causes the greatest damage.
And, of course, the mini ice age we had this winter, caused by El Niño in the Pacific, will make many lay persons wonder about their arguments. I think it will come crashing down soon enough.
There are a few over optimistic comments in this string regarding AGM self destructing. In the meantime our children are being brain washed into the eventual cataclysm, the politicians worldwide are in search of a Kyoto replacement, cap and trade on the agenda developing countries pursuing financial handouts and the politicians plotting to donate billions into climate funds. This is not just about Phil Jones and climate change falling apart. I think this, Trojan horse bandwagon will be travelling for a long time to come, and anyone who rides the tiger will be afraid to dismount.
As far as I am aware, passing the peer-review 'process' actually does no more validity checking than saying 'this paper is fit for publication'. It is not a guarantee that the paper is correct.
For 'correctness' I understand that the idea is that others should be able to test the work by replication/reproduction, and hence a view is subsequently formed about it.
Claiming that peer-reviewed papers are necessarily 'right' is to overstate the facts.
The most devastating admission from Jones at the HoC was 'nobody ever asked', when Stringer inquired who else had seen his data during nearly 20 years of 'peer review'
RT I agree with you on points 1 (well, partially), 3 and 4, particularly your comments on Newton, but the areas where I disagree seem to go to the heart of the disappointment with the committee.
In your point 1 it should not have been beyond the committee to form a view on Jones' data retention standards, and his and Mann's involvement in undermining the peer review and publishing processes in favour of their friends and against those who disagreed with them. They would have been helped in this had they chosen to interview McIntyre or Mosher.
In point 2, it should have been clear to the committee from the emails that, far from taking advice from the Freedom of Information officer, Jones had established a strategy for illegally blocking FOI requests before any came in, and that he then executed it by leaning fairly crudely on the officer. While the FOI officer was weak and did not do his job, he would be the real scapegoat if hung out to dry for Jones's misdeeds, aided and abetted by senior management.
Sorry to have to correct you Bish but "innocent until proven guilty" is not correct.
"PRESUMED innocent until proven guilty". There is a world of difference between the two.
The problem of individuals having a beef over the inquiry is that they don't understand the nature of inquiries. They are inevitably time bound and constrained in their scope. There is no conspiracy just not enough time, money or political will.
Much as you might wish to hang, draw and quarter the opposition, that is, in general, not their remit. In fact, other than the FoI question which was fairly straightforward, it is difficult to pin down what Jones did wrong i.e. he breached what is essentially a recently invented scientific "custom" or "tradition" (most traditions are of recent invention) which actually differs between areas of science. For example, it is customary in mathematics to provide access to textbooks for free once the initial contract has expired, whereas you have to pay (through the nose) for computer science books. It is customary in econometrics, which is a highly politicized science to publish all data and methods, along with code to support a paper. In computer science, one will simply note that such materials are "available upon request" and one would be very surprised to get such a request. One can also understand the reluctance behind Jones releasing raw data sets, since his research is based on manipulated data sets where the manipulations are complex and occasional the documentation behind them is cursory. He knows that the results will be embarassingly hard to explain. I am not excusing, just explaining. As for bad models and the use of Fortran, most physics PhDs are based on precisely these two factors.
RT - you make valid points re: the actual wrong doing being related to FOI. However PJ, CRU and UEA cannot be excused for allowing the global response to the predicted catastrophes to escalate to the point it has without putting any caveat on the quality of their work. They full well knew the quality of their work was not good enough for the case that has been built on it, otherwise they would not have done everything possible to prevent scrutiny. Your comments about PhDs and Fortran and poor models are a confirmation of this lack of critical examination in some branches of academia.
Just quoting Terry Wogan today.....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/terrywogan/7575889/Nobody-likes-a-smart-alec-so-Ill-do-my-gloating-quietly.html
Although I won't be around to see it, I believe that in 50 years' time, a bigger penny will drop, and our descendants will look at each other in disbelief and say, "All those windmills! What were they thinking of?" Putting aside the late Michael Crichton's theory that regular scare stories are used by government to take the public's eye off the ball, it's still remarkable how readily politicians jump on every passing pseudoscientific bandwagon.
Not yet banned has just scratched the surface when he says the climate establishment knew thier work was not robust enough for the case that has been built on it. I believe cabals in Governments, the EU and the UN also knew and they silenced with the financial benefits argument those that had the courage or the will to argue the point. Now the bandwagon has such momentum it will take something extraordinary to stop and a few whitewashes is neither here nor there.
barry woods,
,
Most politicians are intellectually shallow and insecure people - yet, since they are motivated by ego, image, and power, they also want to persuade others, and themselves, that they are smart and knowledgeable.Hence their extreme vulnerability to falling for ideas that happen to be fashionable - "every person who seems smart believes that, I want to seem smart,so I'd better believe that, too".
Which means that CAGW - like everything else - will reach the point when suddenly the seemingly-smart thing to do is not to believe it anymore.
There is a typo in my earlier post (7th in the list). I referred to the CRU baseline as 1969-90 whereas it should read 1961-90. Apologies for that - though it does not alter my point.
I too am curious to see how the two enquiries respond - and also when they report. Will it be a clean bill of health? Will they seek to report, and hope to bury their conclusions, in the heat (or boredom) of the election campaign - or wait until it is over and dump the issue back into the lap of whoever is unfortunate enough to be elected PM?
Martyn
You said: " I believe cabals in Governments, the EU and the UN also knew and they silenced with the financial benefits argument those that had the courage or the will to argue the point."
This is a point well made and a lesson as well, at least for me. I had always thought that conspiracies were unlikely in government because of the leaky nature of public life. But the increase in public understanding that there is a conspiracy after its discovery is not rapid.
We have incomplete history of the WMD affair at hand and are beginning to put together an understanding of the CAGW business.
It seems some conspiracies can be quite effective, particularly if it takes an extended period for the "truth" to be teased out.
One might ask if the objectives of the CAGW cabal can be achieved before the theory's credibility is completely dissipated.
As regards support for AGW in France, I get the impression this is falling off here as well. Sarkozy's projected "Carbon Tax" was considered unacceptable, and he delayed it, and more recently delayed it further (if not dumped it completely). The French, being the French, would have given that particular piece of legislation short shrift had it gone ahead, in their own particular way.... And Sarkozy's initial popularity has plummeted somewhat, especially recently, mainly because he hasn't come up to expectations (not unlike the incumbent somewhere else, across a certain body of water!). Not being a fluent French speaker, I really don't know the opinions of the local French peasantry at large, but those who I have tackled have merely said "Pfft", which I take to register disapproval.
Brent Hargeaves
Things have gone quieter in France following the announcement of the AGW debate being organised by the Academie des Sciences in October.
I am hoping that Vincent Courtillot will take part. He is less of a bruiser than Claude Allegre and has the advantage of having done some work on temperature records.
I found the following interesting, as touching on the reluctance of Phil Jones to share data. It is taken from an article by Courtillot in the ‘Annales des Mines’.
http://aes-france.org/Quel-rechauffement-climatique.html
“Les courbes publiées dans le rapport du GIEC montrent une augmentation de la température au cours des 30 dernières années et des fluctuations qui remontent jusqu’aux années 1850. À nos yeux, une grande question est de savoir ce que signifie cette courbe globale et si les incertitudes sur ces valeurs ont été bien estimées ou non. Je suis en discussion avec le professeur Jones, à travers un échange amical et régulier pour essayer de voir si nous pouvons reprendre et comparer nos données aux leurs. Pour l’instant cela semble difficile, ce laboratoire ayant signé un accord de confidentialité avec les fournisseurs de données brutes! ”
“The graphs published in the IPCC report show an increase of temperature over the last 30 years and fluctuations going back to 1850. In our eyes, the main issue was to know what these curves meant overall and if the error ranges on the values were well estimated or not. I was in touch with Professor Jones, through a friendly and polite exchange, to try to see whether we could copy and compare their data with ours. At the time, that seemed difficult, Jones’s laboratory having signed confidentiality agreements with the suppliers of the raw data!”
Brent Hargreaves
Perhaps we should not expect too much from the Academie des Sciences. They signed up to the Joint Science Academies' Statement in June 2009.
http://insaindia.org/pdf/Climate_05.08_W.pdf
Look at this interesting letter from Cicerone and Rees, respectively leaders of two discredited, activist, scientific acadamies:
http://icecap.us/
They talk about science being open, that scientists can only state what they see and give open, transparent scientific opinions complete with uncertainties.
Now pop over the the Royal Society web page and read the "scientific" way the deal with CAGW.
Sorry for being OT but it's a sign that there is a re-positioning among the scientific community. I doubt the arrogance we've experienced from them for the last decade or two has gone away, but the confidence is clearly ebbing out of them. I am a true sceptic, in that I don't know, but want better proof than they can give me, but if I were Ciccerone or Rees, I would be concerned that I had been led up the garden path by a bunch of activists and that my, in both cases, eminence in science would be destroyed by blindly following the "science" without having put my (not that I have any, but they do) considerable reputation into making sure that the "consensus" opinion was tested. Neither has done anything other than parrot the "consensus" line and both are at risk of having their scientific reputations repudiated because of a lazy acceptance of "consensus" science. Now they appear to have woken up, what are we to see?
I think it's a pity that being aware the 'denier' position is scientifically untenable, and having no argument to support it, so many people think it's acceptable instead to resort to character assassination and hyperbole, rather than just accepting the evidence for anthropogenic global warming. Instead of hounding Phil Jones, a scientist of honesty and integrity, you should be supporting his work and be grateful to him and everyone else who is giving us advanced warning of the dangers of climate change.
Thanks Icarus, “hyperbole” is that like end of season American Football.
Icarus, stay away from the light - sunlight in particular. Personally I've seen zero proven evidence to support man-made global warming - you provide it, and we'll discuss it. It's all just an expensive, controlling pipe dream, and I have an unshakeable fondness of carbon dioxide - it seems to help things to grow.
Expat in France
I too am very fond of carbon dioxide. Sometimes, as a special treat, I have some disolved in dilute ethanol.
http://www.moet.com/
Hey, Guys, lay off Icarus -- he's still stage one of Kübler-Ross. Give him time. :)
Anybody seen Cedric or Frank?