Bishop Hill Murray-Rust on Pearce
Jun 15, 2010 Climate: CRU FOI Peter Murray-Rust, a Cambridge chemist who is also a bigwig in the Open Knowledge Foundation, has written a report on Fred Pearce's presentation at the Royal Institution last night.
As far as I can tell, Fred's book is going to conclude that CRU scientists didn't do anything bad, and he certainly seems to have persuaded Peter of his case:
I would agree from his analysis that there is no “smoking gun” and that many of the emails were unfortunate rather than malicious.
However, Peter concludes also that there are serious issues over data availability. I particularly liked this:
Climate research appears to have generated a priesthood which controls the release of information. For a science with global implications this is not acceptable.
Some common ground at least then.
This was interesting too:
My superficial analysis is that the CR community has retreated into defensive mode and has not changed its communication methods or interaction with the community. This is perhaps understandable given the hostility and publicity of much of the media coverage and further comment (and UEA has put a ban on staff speaking on the issue). Such bans can recoil, as it is then easier to believe there is something to hide. It may be difficult, but it seems essential to radically overhaul the governance and communication.
I think this would explain why my emails to UEA's Paul Dennis have gone unanswered.
Bishop Hill
He's alive! Paul Dennis responds in the comments.
Reader Comments (25)
It also explains why Dennis's new blog 'Harmonicoscillator', with its open notebook approach he was so keen to promote, suddenly frose on Feb 17.
froze!
So this is Britain 2010? Not 1984?
Scientists are not allowed to speak...
Stating the obvious, self-evident since at least 1999, is one avenue of exculpation. Acknowledging climate research's (CR) problem as exemplified by UEA, even in muted and self-serving form, must count as progress of a sort. But as AM says, until such as Paul Dennis --never mind the ineffable Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth, and others of their ilk-- shed their snakeskins and begin to act like scientists rather than hooded illuminati, all the third-party tut-tutting in the world ain't goin' to change a thing.
At root, the "climate studies" problem is that it is not an experimental discipline. Because linear extrapolations of complex dynamic systems such as Earth's atmosphere are mathematically and physically meaningless, AGW's Green Gang feels free to push out any fact-free conjecture their Global Governance rentiers approve. Absent integrity, climate hysterics' protestations of disinterested objectivity ring limp and hollow. Like botanists, butterfly or stamp-collectors, these trillion-dollar flaneurs are best left to ring changes in abandoned belfries, rousing flights of squeaking moonbats only.
Climate Research is a textbook example of the cargo cult science that Richard Feynman warned about in 1974. Yes 1974.
They sat in laboratories and wore white coats. They drew graphs. Held conferences and published papers. But the planes never landed - they never advanced human understanding.
Now it's simply time to turn off the money and bin the whole thing. No point in trying to sort out the mess - trying to decide which datasets are correct and which ones are fubarred. Or see if any of the computer simulations is less useless than the rest. Just chuck the whole lot. Gone.
Absolutely, Jack, but it's not hoing to happen, is it? Too much to lose, too many egg-covered faces, too risky to abandon the global governance meme, and above all, too many financial beneficiaries who will stand to lose millions, and their comfortable retirement living the lives that they would happily deny the plebs, for we are not worthy.
...going... ruddy keyboard!
...and of course the only real problem is poor communicating skills. Fix those and there's no more problem, is there? — is there?!
I think the denialists lie about what the climate scientists say, and some scientists even let themselves be used by dishonest non-scientists.
Why Did Dr. Will Happer Let the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) Add Footnotes to His February 25, 2009 Senate Testimony?
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-did-drhapper-let-science-and-public.html
It is a typical communist propaganda tactic to claim that "crafty" American scientists are hatching plots to destroy people. The Soviet regime spread a notorious canard about "crafty" Pentagon scientists fabricating the AIDS virus, just like Inhofe, Morano, and Cuccinelli spread the canard about the "conspiracies" being hatched by global warming scientists.
The Russian newspaper Izvestiya (3-19-92) reported during the Glasnost' era:
[KGB chief Yevgeni Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' 'crafty' plots were fabricated in KGB offices.
Jack Hughes
Once again, spot on. I had forgotten all about Feynman's address. I would guess that he would update it somewhat given the advancements in computers and computer modeling. More like they built complex computer models and simulated the future which never arrived.
I agree with your conclusion -- can it all.
Bishop
I think this would explain why my emails to UEA's Paul Dennis have gone unanswered.
Or, perhaps, they were stolen by a Russian hacker? :)
Anyone familiar with all the details of what Mann, Jones et al have done over the last 15 years cannot possibly read the e-mails and the rest of the documents and conclude there has been no wrongdoing. Not in good faith. Even if they adopt a standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence is too strong.
The quote about "a priesthood which controls the release of information" is especially interesting: I don't think I'm the only person to suspect AGW-oriented scientists of trying to construct a new religion for the consumption of hoi-polloi like me.
May I take a moment of everyone's time and ask a question that has always puzzled me (hockey stick anomaly graph, CET anomaly graph, etc)
Why are the anomalies calculated against a 1961-1990 climatology, vs any other 30 year period. (is it just because they show the best 'warming'?)
Is there a particular reason why this date (1961-1990) range is used to plot anomalies against?
It must be a stupid silly question with a really obvious answer, that I will be embarrased to have asked.
But, I have had a good look at Climate Audit, and read the hockey stick illusion, looked at DECC, Hadley centre, CRU, Met Office, etc (yet I'm still puzzled)
I just wonder what would these graphs look like be (particularly CET) if the 'anomalies' were calculated against a different date range average?
ie, 1969 - 1998, 0r 1925-1955 as a start. (or any other 30 year period, depending what result you want?!)
In my mind the current anomalies in temperature may be negative in some, depending on what period you use (heading for an ice age!)
So, why are the anomalies calculated against a 1961-1990 climatology, vs any other 30 year period.
I have downloaded the data from Hadley centre, but I am clueless with a spreadsheet.
I am attending a public meeting with Sir John Houghton on Thursday (my local church in Wargrave)
http://www.wargravechurch.org.uk/welcome.htm
Global Warming and Climate Change:
A Challenge to Scientists and Christians
Speaker: Professor Sir John Houghton FRS CBE
I'm sure only anomaly graphs will be shown, not actual temps like in the link below.
CET temps and co2 graph:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022226/agw-i-refute-it-thus-central-england-temperatures-1659-to-2009/
from here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/01/cet-temperatures.html
CET temp anomalies graph:
From Hadley centre:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcet.html
"The HadCET data series consist of daily, monthly and seasonal temperatures.
Anomalies are also calculated with respect to 1961-1990 climatology."
:
Are the 1961-1990 temperature supposed to be 'normal'
?
Barry
While someone comes up with the answer, here's something of interest re 'adjustments'. Ie the NASA ones appear to be progressively negative pre-1960 and progressively positive after.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/05/goddard_nasa_thermometer/print.html
Feynman also warned about the computer disease of 'playing' with computers...he described the first sufferer at Los Alamos.
Barry,
Here are some reasonably balanced thoughts on the matter -
http://www.climate4you.com/NormalClimateNormalPeriod.htm
The less charitable amongst us might believe that the 1961-1990 normals give the highest anomalies, which could be considered a 'feature' in some disciplines.
I don't recall receiving any emails Bishop!
If you'd like to email again I'll reply.
"Absolutely, Jack, but it's not hoing to happen, is it?"
Actually, between the media, the politicians, and the climatologists, there is a whole lot of ho-ing going on.
I did get an email reply from Paul Dennis, roughly in March.
I wonder if it's true that UEA have banned staff from commenting.
Perhaps he can tell us.
“I had no idea that this “FOI battle” had been going on for several years and that nothing had been done to try to solve the problem”.
Wikipedia says “Peter Murray-Rust campaigns for open data, particularly in science”.
Now that would be nice if Peter was to make a start on an open data campaign in climate science as he seems to be several years behind.
Barry
E M Smith has done some work analysing the differences that choice of anomaly period make at http://chiefio.wordpress.com/. I was always convinced that this would be responsible for a decent chunk of the warming. My recollection is that the effect is smaller than you might think, because the anomalies are simply the variation from the average of the baseline period, which included a period of getting colder and of getting warmer.
I personally believe the anomaly baseline should be around 60 years as this seems to represent a full temperature cycle. But a relatively comprehensive instrumental record only exists for around two cycles, so that doesn't really tell us anything, we just don't have a representative sample against which to compare.
But the anomaly baseline is not the real issue. The issue is that anomalies exaggerate the problem. It seems to me that that's what they are for. An increase in the anomaly of 1/2 a degree over 100 years can be represented as a huge problem, depending on how you scale your chart. However, scaled against the full range of variability of the data, say -50 to +50, it will be appear a flat line with no visible trend.
Statisticians think anomalies are significant. In the terms of that branch of mathematics that may be true. But in the real world climate science anomalies are meaningless, just tiny fluctuations within the actual variability.
The margins of error in the recording of temperatures and consequent overstatement, largely due to the overwhelming preference by GHCN for airports and lack of suitable correction for siting issues, build in discrepancies which to my eyes dwarf the actual temperature anomaly.
If structural engineering was always as soundly based as climate science, I'm pretty sure we'd still be living in caves.
Hi Peter...
It is annoying the use of anomaly graphs...
I'm always pointing out to people that it is not actual temperatures, and look at the Y -axis scale - tenths of a degree strecthed out. with the x-axis values compressed...,etc
A graph drawn/designed to to convey a message.
I'm sure the general public are not aware of this at all (ie "The Inconvenient Truth", etc)
I noticed something on the DECC website (statistics) which is really anoying:
sent it to a journalist or 2 , including the BBC.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ref: Department of Energy and Climate Change:
I might ask at the end, why the DECC now only show the CET anomaly temp graph. (starting 1850)
instead of the HADCET actual temperature graph from 1650, which shows no obvious man made global warming at all.
Just a gradual 0.2C trend rise per century (is natural warming since last iceage) (links below)
Interestingly the new coalition gov DECC (Department of Energy and Climate) website, removed the previous truncated HADCET temperature graph - only from 1850 - that was previously on the DECC website and now the DECC only show the anomaly graph.
(ie 1850 start of industrial revolution/man made CO2 - losing 200 hundred years of temp data)
Possibly as many people pointed out (me included) in a recent consultation, that even the truncated from 1850 graph clearly showed similar rates of warming in the past (ie not unprecedented, and could not be used to justify the comments they attributed to it)
Ie, the periods of temp increases and rates of temp increases, as described in the BBC Phil Jones Interview, were very obvious, on the actual temperature graph
This removal, and replacement with the anomaly graph for this period, clearly shows that the DECC has chosen the graph to fit the 'message'
links to the various scary, non scary CET graphs below,. (all CRU data)
This is now definetly a concious act of 'sexing up' the data, no longer just believing what they are told by the 'climate scientists'
CET temps and co2 graph:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022226/agw-i-refute-it-thus-central-england-temperatures-1659-to-2009/
from here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/01/cet-temperatures.html
CET temp anomalies graph:
From Hadley centre:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcet.html
"The HadCET data series consist of daily, monthly and seasonal temperatures.
Anomalies are also calculated with respect to 1961-1990 climatology."
:
Are the 1961-1990 temperature supposed to be 'normal'
Actually the DECC no longer display any graphs, buried away.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/climate_change/data/data.aspx
Average Surface temps spreadsheet and graph.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/media/viewfile.ashx?filepath=statistics/climate_change/1_20100312122831_e_@@_gafg01.xls&filetype=4
The 30 year baseline is a WMO thing, probably somewhat related to the '30 years is climate' meme. Hadcrut uses 61-90, Gistemp 51-80. The satellite series, UAH and RSS use 79-98.
It is supposed to roll over every 10 years to the next decade boundary - 1961-1990 becomes 1971-2000, but some of the AGW/Climate Change crew have stuck tenaciously to the earlier baselines.
Like using anomaly graphs rather than temps, it all helps with the message.