Bishop Hill Ferman on Oxburgh
May 6, 2010 BBC Climate: Oxburgh Joe Farman, the scientist who discovered the hole in the ozone layer was interviewed on BBC radio's Today programme this morning and made some trenchant remarks that will be of great interest to readers here.
Farman seems to have a pretty low opinion of climatology and how it spends its money..
Too much too much money is going into expensive climate modelling computers, and not enough into basic observational science, he says.
and he thinks sceptics have been ritually ignored...
Dr Farman also blamed the science establishment for "brushing aside" specific criticisms of climate science.
Farman seems similarly underwhelmed by Lord Oxburgh's review of the probity of CRU's work.
He said the teams investigating the controversy at the University of East Anglia should have invited some climate sceptics on board. "Lord Oxburgh's review (which cleared researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of any wrong-doing) was not convincing, he said.
Lord Oxburgh has been criticised for completing his review too quickly. But he stressed at the time that his remit was to determine whether the researchers had conducted their work honestly, not to make judgements on the quality of their science.
He told me he had not chosen to put a climate sceptic on his review team because their meetings would have degenerated into polar arguments on the science, rather than concentrating on the key issue of probity.
It's remarkable to compare these remarks with the way Lord Oxburgh's report was relayed to the public by the media, who portrayed the report as complete exoneration for Jones et al. Scientists know the Oxburgh report was a farce. Why not environment correspondents?
Reader Comments (6)
Slowly slowly catchy monkey.
"Joe Ferman, the scientist who discovered the hole in the ozone layer"
From Junk Science today:http://www.junkscience.com/
http://junkscience.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.html
There never was a hole in the Ozone Layer:
The Antarctic Ozone Anomaly (later mislabeled a "hole") was actually discovered in 1956
Stratospheric ozone levels are seasonal and highly volatile.
No apparent change in seasonal fluctuation has occurred following adoption of the absurd Montreal Protocol.
Note the step changes in Antarctic readings after data gaps, indicative of equipment changes and calibration issues (or maybe temperature).
Note that such "losses" are absent from sites with continuous readings, like Mauna Loa Observatory.
There is no "ozone depletion crisis" and there never has been.
This scare was a practice for CO2 and is frequently quoted to show that "international action" can solve man made problems. Massive costs were involved in changing gases for refrigerants. Fridge mountains were created, leaking cfc's all over the place without any impact on "the hole". Replacement HFC's have theoretically greater greenhouse gas potential and have produced a fortune in CDM credits where companies in China started factories to produce HFC's and then got paid for destroying them.
Shouldn't UEA have sent McIntyre the requested correspondence by now?
I like this part of the history:
(http://www.meteohistory.org/2004proceedings1.1/pdfs/11christie.pdf)
"Farman was a cautious and conservative scientist. He asked for three main things before he would be prepared to publish:
♦ results from at least one more spring season to confirm the trend.
♦ recalibration and changeover of spectrometers at Halley Bay, to rule out instrumental artefacts
♦ a good explanation for why the NASA team had not seen unusual ozone levels.
In the event, spectrometers were swapped, comprehensively ruling out instrumental misbehaviour. Attempts to communicate with the NASA scientists failed. And data from three more seasons not only confirmed the anomaly, but showed it continuing to intensify. The publication went ahead, both later and stronger than it might have been."
Verisimilitude with what's wrong with this decade's climate science, especially the failed attempt to communicate with NASA scientists...GISS? Gem of a comment that.
No wonder Dr Farman says what he says.
Small point but, even though it is hard to believe, Joe is plain old Mr, not Dr. And he's a real scientist, former colleague of mine, and top bloke.
Buffy
Having come across Paul Dennis at UEA, we have no problem with plain misters here.