Monday
May312010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Lovelock on CRU
May 31, 2010 Climate: CRU Hot foot from demanding the suspension of democracy in order that his pet projects can be put into practice, James Lovelock comments on CRU
Globally-respected scientist James Lovelock praised climate researchers at the University of East Anglia at the weekend stating they were some of “the best in the world”.
Reader Comments (22)
It appears Lovelock has conclusive evidence that the emails were "hacked" from CRU. I wonder if he has informed the ongoing police investigation. I note the Sir Muir Russell inquiry is "expected to report back later this year". Does somebody have inside information I wonder?
Bill Bryson is already coming under fire as President of the CPRE for appearing to support wind power stations in the very countryside that the CPRE is fighting to preserve from industrialisation. Most county branches of the CPRE are spending most of their time and much of their meagre income (as independent charities) opposing inappropriately sited wind power station proposals. Public inquiriies cost the opposition typically ~£30k, which has to be raised from the local community. On the other hand the developers have loads of money to throw at inquiries.
Maybe they are 'some of “the best in the world” '. But that doesn't say much for the discipline of climatology, then, does it?
Until recently, climatology was a sleepy backwater that was collecting data for historical purposes, with a bit of paleo thrown in. Nobody bothered about it because it had little practical impact on how the world works - a bit like astronomy. And like astronomy it bred all sorts of fanciful ideas and stories, lots of suppression of evidence, and lots of manipulation of the peer review process: but the general public care lttle for that as it has no impact on them. But as Roger Pielke Jnr pointed out, though this bad behaviour is the norm in some academic disciplines, it would never be tolerated in applied science and engineering (e.g. pharmaceuticals, medicine, civil and electrical engineering etc), where it would be regarded as gross professional misconduct.
I'm amazed at the squealing of academics to the fraud investigation into Michael Mann's antics at the University of Virginia, as if academics should have the 'academic freedom' to be able to use taxpayers' money to engage in junk science, and then have their junk science quoted by policy makers to affect the whole world to the tune of trillions of dollars.
“It is most unfair that they have been tarred with a bad brush because a hacker broke into their computer.”
Prof Lovelock, who first published his theory in the 1960s, said he felt the hackers would have found similar emails if they had broken into many climatic research facilities.
Does he actually mean to be saying that it's most unfair that the CRU gang have been exposed, while most other "climate scientists" have been up to the same shenanegans but so far have not had the whistle blown on them? Probably not, but that's what it sounds like.
I thought Russell's inquiry was going to report by spring. What's holding them up? Oxburgh's inquiry was completed in just two or three working days.
Maybe Lovelock is right - the tricksters at CRU represents the best of a bad bunch.
Best in the world at what?
I remain ambivalent regarding Cuccinelli: if he has evidence of a crime, he should investigate, but so far all I see is evidence of an academic dispute that should be handled, well, academically. WUWT has a post decrying how UVA had no problem releasing emails concerning a warming skeptic, but clammed up with Mann. Obvious hypocrisy there, but the wrong was to release emails in the earlier case and that should be addressed; the argument that they should release Mann's emails just to make up for it is spurious.
As for the primacy of applied science and engineering, I want to agree, but the recent unpleasantness in the Gulf of Mexico is not giving a good presentation to it. As SteveM points out on CA, the BP oil spill response plan should have been more than adequate to address the current crisis, and yet it has come up way short by overestimating this and underestimating that, which sounds somewhat familiar. Also, the well documented failures of engineering in New Orleans preceding Katrina.
And as for Lovelock, opinions are like ... well, need I go on?
Can't manage a store of thermometers, but oh, look at the flashy treemometers in stock for your perusal.
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To follow on from Phillip Bratby's first point. As others here will be aware, the Russell enquiry website has from the start referred to the emails as stolen, using the phrase: "(this) ... incident saw an anonymous hacker steal 160MB of data from the UEA server", so is equally guilty of prejudging what happened.
Back in February after the enquiry team was announced I sent a list of (what I consider perfectly reasonable) questions to Kate Moffat (of Luther Pendragon Ltd, whoever they are - a PR agency, perhaps?), who is the contact given on the Enquiry website, one of which was:
On what basis is the word 'steal' used, given that investigations into how this data was released have yet to report?
The other questions related to the Boulton CV that was found on the internet; and to Boulton's selection, what Sir Muir knew about him, and when.
My questions were ignored, so I sent them again, and again, and again... every two weeks or so. The fifth time I added that I'd copied them to the general correspondence email address so at least they would be on record. By coincidence or otherwise, Kate Moffat finely responded (about 8 weeks after questions were first sent). It had taken her so long to reply that questions relating to the Boulton CV were not really relevant any more, which was fair enough (I'd not modified them from the first time they were sent). Questions relating to Boulton's selection, and what Russell knew about him and when, were given a PR brush off, with no attempt to answer what I'd actually asked, merely pointing to a statement on the website that "(Sir Muir) ...expresses his complete confidence in Professor Boulton". On the issue of the 'stolen' emails she said:
"In our view, the use of the word ‘steal’ accurately describes the circumstances around the release of CRU emails, in that they were placed online by an unknown and unauthorised party without the permission of CRU, the university or the individuals involved."
Perhaps the rest of the enquiry won't prove to be as prejudged.
Banjoman0: "Also, the well documented failures of engineering in New Orleans preceding Katrina."
Are you so confident that these failures were of engineering and not budget?
One might suppose that the Corps of Engineers produces engineering. My view is that they produce construction or the absence of construction.
What happened? Didn't Lovelock just say that he was "utterly disgusted" by Climategate?
He did also say that "there are some good people there." Still, this seems to be a different tune.
@Mac, or an instance of "damnation by faint praise"?
The use of "steal" and "theft" seems inappropriate relative to the "Climategate" emails.
The emails were presumably written by climate scientists on their public-funded work time, exchanged on public-funded computers and archived on public-funded servers. Whoever copied them simply made them available to public scrutiny - a public service which has led to public inquiries into CRU, official rebuke of CRU's possibly illegal FOI practices, and reconsideration of peer review practices in the climate science field.
It would be a most peculiar crime in which no one profits, no one is an innocent victim, and both science and the public benefits.
Dearieme disparaged workers at the University of East Anglia at the weekend stating they were "climate researchers".
It is over 6 months since the emails were hacked/stolen/freed/released by a person or persons unknown. I wonder if we will ever learn the name of the hacker/thief/whistle-blower. He has given us such a wonderful gift, that I for one would be willing to give him a considerable reward if he were to step forward.
I think iof you read a certain book about it, there are two people referred to in passing who I would say are probably the leakers.........but I suppose we shall never know.
Banjoman0: "Also, the well documented failures of engineering in New Orleans preceding Katrina."
The Army Corps of Engineers shows up by request of some entity. They then roll out the plans to protect against a 100 year flood, 200 year flood or 500 year flood. Each with price tags.
There are very few places worth protecting from a 200 year flood never mind a 500 year flood. It's just cheaper to move everyone to higher ground.
Correction:
Previously globally-respected scientist James Lovelock....
"Previously globally-respected scientist James Lovelock...."
Long way back... way back before he became a greeny New Age Guru. He is in his 90's and its half a century since he did any real science or engineering of note. Shame.
Considering this hypothetical could be instructive.
Two professors of forensic science engage in a heated dispute over the treatment of gunshot evidence in murder cases. In the course of the dispute, one professor shoots and kills the other.
Police respond but are told they can't look at the evidence because the evidence was the subject of an academic dispute, and that the matter should be handled academically instead.
I'm with ScientistForTruth on this: "climate science" started off like "yet-another-non-subject". An early prototype of "Golf Psychology" or "Gender Studiz".
Tragically the insiders didn't realise this and thought they were scientists. They followed a cargo-cult-science trajectory: they thought they just needed to wear white coats and draw graphs while sitting in labs and somehow new laws would emerge from their efforts.
Even more tragically for everyone it now seems to me more important than that.
A possibility not contemplated in Feynman's talk on cargo cult science nor in the observations of the John Frum cults in the islands is what would happen if the rituals produced.
If the planes came, if riches flowed out over the islands, if lucrative grants were awarded, it names were recognized by the masses, tenure gained, what then?
We have a problem, but maybe it isn't unprecedented. But which is the instructive precedent? Any ideas?
Maybe something that happened during the Medieval Warm Period.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
Lovelock on the over-reliance on computer modelling:
"I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole.
But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault. We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models.
But they're not complete models. They're based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don't take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet.
So I don't see how they can accurately predict the climate.
It's not the computational power that we lack today, but the ability to take what we know and convert it into a form the computers will understand. I think we've got too high an opinion of ourselves. We're not that bright an animal. We stumble along very nicely and it's amazing what we do do sometimes, but we tend to be too hubristic to notice the limitations. If you make a model, after a while you get suckered into it. You begin to forget that it's a model and think of it as the real world. You really start to believe it.