Saturday
Jul102010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill HSI in the National Post
Jul 10, 2010 Peter Foster has written a long and very supportive review of The Hockey Stick Illusion in Canada's National Post.
The Hockey Stick Illusion leaves no doubt about Mr. Montford’s reporting abilities. He tells a gripping detective story in which the star gumshoe is semi-retired Canadian mining consultant Steve McIntyre. Mr. McIntyre, unfortunately for his opponents, happens to combine mathematical genius with a Terminator-like relentlessness. He also found a brilliant partner in Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph. Their story is one of intellectual determination in the face of Kafkaesque “peer review” and Orwellian “freedom of information.”
Reader Comments (164)
I dont altogether agree that Mr Monbiot was "fair" or "even handed" although I do believe he was trying very hard to appear so after his Amazongate fiasco. He called us Climate deniers and Climate sceptics. When speaking to SM he rold him he was responsible for a lot of FOI requests from his accolytes and then ask Steve if he had harrassed them into doing it??
He split the questions allowed by the audience 50% each for men and women even though the audience was largely male.
Every single question he allowed to women was to an attractive and young woman and I had to smile sheepishly at him to get my question allowed!
An interesting comparison of two statements the 'orrible Davis made:
After stating that the inquiries had been totally independent, some hero in the audience shouted "whitewashes!". Davis instantly adopted a headmaster attitude and pointing at our hero told him not make any more accusations unless he could prove them.
Later Davis responded to (I think) SM who was ridiculing Lord Ox for being responsible for running an inquiry into the science but then claiming that the science was not part of his remit. Davis consulted his somewhat unreliable notes and told Steve that the remit indeed did not include the science (He quoted what the remit was). When SM asked the Ox for a copy of the remit he was told that it was never written down therefore he could not comply. Mr Davis's statement on what the remit actually was should be inserted where the sun dont shine until he can prove it methinks.
P.S.
We did drink Fosters except for Lat who drank Pepsi :)
My first impression of Atomic Hairdryer was that he still need to do a lot of work on the product before it would become marketable.
I was most upset that I was the only member of our cabal who adopted the agreed dress code so that we could recognise each other! BP T shirt, Hockey stick slung over shoulder and the Hockey Stick Illusion hung round neck! I even wore a hat with a label stuck to it "DUNG", cowardy custards all of you :)
I had a 'What Katie Did' badge ;)
above comments are spot on - would add that I found almost all of the questions to be disastrous. Monbiot was v good panel wrangler but his idea of picking alternating genders when the audience was 3 to 2 male was unfortunate (more emotive questions - yikes and I say this as a woman) and too many Americans (I say this as a dual national)..
I was seated in a row of young very pro-CAGW kids with an American gal next to me. I applauded politey all of the speakers. She only applauded the pro-CAGW stuff and was taking notes furiously. But she relaxed a bit and started actually listening and might have had some of her preconceptions altered...
Fred Pearce had the best impact because he can speak well in a relaxed but still energy filled way. SM had the best content but drops his voice at the ends of sentences - but perhaps on the video that problem is lessened...Doug had gt content too but "palpable contempt" (actually I think it is passion from being wronged) is fine for the people who already agree with you but not so fine for others. But he was so receptive to some comments afterwards (this is my field) and so obviously bright and open, he will quickly develop as a good speaker. TD spoke as if his poo didn't stink. Bob Watson gave us every reason to distrust government.
Zinger missed: when Watson announced that he had not read the emails "Do you usually show up without doing your homework?"
Forgot my copy of HSI ......
Steve is a one off. He has no stance on AGW and he is not a great communicator (although I do detect improvement). He just got a bee in his bonnet about this hockey stick graph and for his own satisfaction he set out to investigate it.
At the end of the debate I rushed to the front with my Hockey Stick Illusion to get a signature, I got there second. The guy in front of me was trying to talk about all sorts of issues in climate science (despite the queue quickly growing to about 30 people -.- ). Steve was bored, he looked at the guy and said "I just do what I do"
A most excellent set of reports!
Mr Monbiot said the video would be available 13.00 or 13.30 today on the Guardian website. I cant find it? If it is on the website can someone tell me where?
Cheers
This is not really relevant to this post, but it does refer to something I discussed with Atomic Hairdryer yesterday.
Someone calling himself "The Distributor", claiming to be the person who leaked the emails and files, posted a comment on this thread in The Air Vent (post 152:)
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/leaked-foia-files-62-mb-of-gold/
At the time it seemed to get drowned in other comments and nobody even reacted to it.
Atomic Hairdryer was curious about it, so here it is (and sorry for the off-topic):
Well bless those Canadians' pea pickin' hearts. Sending a hockey stick graph to every Canadian household.
I need a new wing for my museum of climate ironies.
======================
Peter B, that's good to read. The miracle worker expects to be recognized, eventually.
================
Only on topic, as I was talking to Josh and Richard Drake about it following the GWPF meeting....
My point being, the general public are sceptical simply due to how CAGW is 'presented' to them.(they still no very little/nothing about climategate, CRU, Mann, Jones, IPCC, etc, never heard of Bishop Hill, Climate Audit, Watts up, RealClimate)
Just tracked the quote down, someone that might resonate with the general public..
(Following climategate/copenhagen/ipcc gates)
"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. "
Terry Wogan - 10th April 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/terrywogan/7575889/Nobody-likes-a-smart-alec-so-Ill-do-my-gloating-quietly.html
Actually, I tracked down my other example, even better a full article...
Alan Titchmarsh:
Climate scientists should stick to the facts and not use guesswork
We live on a volatile planet. The very term 'climate change' is tautological in that that is what climate does – change. It would be a great story indeed if there was no shift in the climate at all.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7111356/Alan-Titchmarsh-Climate-scientists-should-stick-to-the-facts-and-not-use-guesswork.html
"I've been gardening on the box and on the radio since the mid 70s, so for 35 years, and every spring without fail I'll get a phone call from a newspaper saying that the daffodils are either terribly early or terribly late, and what's going to happen. And it happens every year. Daffodils have an enormous capacity for waiting. "
A further talking point. Merry Environmentalist in his (mostly) excellent report on his blog at
http://merryenvironmentalist.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/the-guardian-climategate-debate-verdict-panel-%E2%80%93-exellent-audience-%E2%80%93-childish%E2%80%A6/#comment-25 makes the following very interesting observation
'It is interesting, to say the least, that he (Keenan) and McIntyre share a background in the use of statistics for business, McIntyre as a mining engineer and Keenan in the city. Keenan argued tonight and McIntyre has argued elsewhere that many leading climate scientists do not show the kind of rigour in their analyses that is demanded in the business world'
and I'd extend that remark to the general conduct of academe. My training is in hard science (BA Chemistry, Honours, Oxford), but I joined the commercial world of IT (sales, support, development, operations, project management, systems management) 30 years ago. So my ''professional DNA' automatically has a strong streak of the commercial world in it..just as Steve McIntyre's and Doug Keenan's have. It defines the way I see the world. And when I look at academe..and especially the global warming debate, I see a lack of rigour and sloppiness in all directions.
In the commercial world ALL your dealings are subject to audit. You cannot escape with feeble excuses like.'I didn't keep the data', 'nobody ever asked', 'we all thought it wasn't important', 'I'm not going to show you because you might find something wrong with it'. Failure to comply or even worse failure of audit has unpleasant consequences along a range from minor disciplinary measures to criminal prosecution and imprisonment. The consequence is that most people play straight most of the time. Not all..which is why auditors still make a living. And the fact that these checks and balances exist greatly improves the flow of business. If you have reasonable expectation that the person you are dealing with is going to play by the rules then things work better.
But in academe, as Keenan points out, there are no such checks.There is no audit process. There is no way for rogue players to be detected and disciplined. The peer review system is clearly broken at this level (remember Jones' classic remark about never showing his data to his peers -'they never asked')?.There is just the unverified (and unverifiable) assumption that if something is published in a 'reputable' journal, it must be good stuff. That is the implicit academic DNA mindset. And (as for example Andrew Montford has documented in HSI) it is demonstrably inadequate in many cases.
Is it right therefore that when problems arise, the investigators should be drawn solely form the academic world, whose implicit assumptions are wrong? I think not. I think that at least a sprinkling of commercial awareness - and a nasty suspicious mind like a true auditor - should be an absolute prereq for such an inquiry. We approached it with Stringer at the HoP, but all other reviews were academic driven.
Personally I expect that if a scientist is curator of the most important data the world has ever seen, then his methods of care should be the Gold Standard to which all other data curators should aspire...not an obligation carried out in their spare time in an old cupboard.
I think all research data should be available in an understandable form to anyone. Providing it in this format is not a drag on academic freedom, but should be an important step in verification...like taking a prototype and turning it into a pre-production model...another step in ironing out the bugs and making a better product.
The academic system ...and the freedoms that go with it...are largely funded by the taxpayers from the commercial world. I see no reason why those who benefit so much should not be held to the same (or higher) standards of conduct than their paymasters. Special pleading that 'its all too hard and you're all being nasty to us poor misunderstood professors who work so hard and are trying to save the planet so leave us alone' will not survive even a smidgeon of scrutiny. Nor will the public allow it any more.
Climategate shone a harsh light on the internal academic world...and some distasteful practices were uncovered. The light will not be dimming anytime soon...and while those practices remain so entrenched in the academic mindset, the intensity will continue to increase.
Oops...Paul the Mystic octopus tells me that the post above concerning the standards of conduct of academe has somehow been signed by that pesky Muir Russell's Mum.It should, of course, be from me.
Any truth in the rumour that Paul the Octopus is being offered the job of Chief Climate Modeller with special responsibility for predicting oceanic pH ?
You may think so, but I cannot possibly comment. I have not shaken tentacles on any such deal.
But my mystic powers also tell me that the delay in the Grauniad posting their recording of last night's debates video is because UEA are begging them to remove the bits where Davies is floundering out his depth on simple matters of fact about the reports that UEA commissioned.
Questions like 'when did it start?... which was beyond him.
Muir Russell's mum,
I think you are correct about the lack of quality in academia. Check out the paper Ross McKitrick and Hu McCullough did on a number of badly flawed studies that had an impact on policy.
One of the arguments from alarmist scientists which continues to astound me is the response -- "that's just the way science is done." Steve Mc, Watts, and others point out that the work is shoddy and policy shouldn't be based on it. The scientists seem to think that shoddy is fine as long as everyone else is just as shoddy. But we aren't debating something purely academic (e.g. what happened to the dinosaurs). We're talking about policy affecting billions of people, yet they don't seem to understand the serious moral implications.
The Penn St "investigation" and those in the UK all share (along with a lot of other flaws) this notion that shoddy is fine since that's just the way academic science operates.
I concur totally with Muir's Mum (aka Latimer or mystic Meg) that in the real world, auditing ensures rigour and good quality. It is just not there in academia where number of publications, regardless of quality, seems to be paramount. That is why papers have multiple-multiple authors and why they cite each other's work. These academics wouldn't survive in the real world where the name of the game is added-value. In my time I interviewed many academics who had applied for a job, and I don't recall recommending any for employment - they just didn't have the right attitude (or aptitude) for a proper job.
Apologies for the delay in getting my post done, but unfortunately awoke to find I had work to do. But that's done, so now busily writing it up. I had also hoped for the video/audio to be up at the Guardian by now and suspect the delay is due to their lawyers wrt Doug's comments regarding Jones and Wang.
I also agree with Muir's Mum/Latimer and the Merry Environmentalist about business vs academia. I used to do some due diligence work in the dot.com days and saw a lot of highly optimistic business models and presentations based on dubious assumptions and exponential growth. The Hockey Stick looks remarkably like many revenue forecasts and is being used in the same way to sell carbon derivatives.
The audio of the debate is up. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audio/2010/jul/15/guardian-climategate-hacked-emails-debate
"Some parts of the debate have been edited out for legal reasons"
Muir Russell's Mum
Climategate shone a harsh light on the internal academic world...and some distasteful practices were uncovered. The light will not be dimming anytime soon...and while those practices remain so entrenched in the academic mindset, the intensity will continue to increase.
Don't we wish. However, there is a good reason why I left Academia 40 years ago, and that was for the same reasons you note. "Same old, same old". Nothing new at all -- sadly
Atomic Hairdryer
I used to do some due diligence work in the dot.com days and saw a lot of highly optimistic business models and presentations based on dubious assumptions and exponential growth. The Hockey Stick looks remarkably like many revenue forecasts and is being used in the same way to sell carbon derivatives.
Right on, lad! I spent 30 years in Silly Con valley (aka Silicon Valley) bouncing from one start up to another. Then I got a job for a while doing the same sort of work you refer to for the venture capitalists -- in fact I still do now and then. And the interesting thing is EVERY BS business plan had a hockey stick in it. It was a dead give-away.
And in case you are interested in where the hot new field of VC investment is in, it is in high capacity, rapid charge, light weight batteries or hydrogen cell technology for things like cars and light trucks.
Where is the Bishop?
On retreat!
OK I am now clear about Muir's Mum = Lat ( and to think I bought him a pepsi and he didnt tell me :( )
But who the hell is Paul the mystic octopus?? Plus I thjought he was under contract to Spain?
Atomic Hairdryer, Dung, Cumbrian Lad, Latimer Alder, great meet you guys at the various events this week. Sorry not to be there for the drink after the Guardian debate - good to see some posts about it tho'. I will post the pencil sketches up for anyone who is interested (email me for the link).
And I met Peter B, and of course Barry! Barry proved to be quite an inspiration so he will be in the cartoons, and many thanks for the introduction to Roger Harrabin. I too sat next to a warmista who got quite perplexed by Doug and the 'fraud' moment. Worth listening to the debate just for that.
Barry Woods
I think your point about how many people (even in the audience maybe) dont know about the hockey stick, CRU, the IPCC etc and when SM talked about Hide the Decline, how many in the audience of (one assumes) very interested people, really understand this issue and its importance.
Many people who are knowledgeable on a subject make the mistake of talking about their subject with an assumption that their audience all understand it.
Communication is about allowing your audience to understand what you want to explain, you can not do this unless you understand what they already know.
SM is an absolute marvel but I dont think he considers this at all.
Lil update.. report should be done soon, turning into a more transcripty version than I'd intended, but what the heck, the audio isn't always the best for some people. One complication is from checking the audio, looks like Doug Keenan's section has been dropped entirely. So may abreviate that part.
Just listened to the Guardian audio recording. Doug Keenan's introductory section is completely missing. I don't know what he said, but from that point on everyone was extremely twitchy everytime he spoke. So, if anyone has a recording, I'd love to hear it.
The official alarmist position seems to have moved to a position of slight retrenchment. It is, officially, no longer the 100% consensus/Everything proved/everyone doesn't agree with others is a climate change denier/lunatic. According to Bob Watson it's now all about the nuances and uncertainties of the evidence. Hurrah!
Unfortunately the message doesn't seem to have reached through to the members of the audience. All the alarmist questions consisted of the following subtext, “… yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, we all know that the world is going to burn and if we wait around trying to get, like, everything worked out properly, were all going to die. So what is the problem with you guys? Get with the program.”
I'm glad there wasn't any video at the point the Fiona Fox asked a question. Her voice alone scared the pants off me. She sounded so angry. I suppose people get like that when they see their entire way of life threatened.
Anyway, my impressions of the debate were as follows:
Steve McIntyre deserves a knighthood and the Nobel Prize. But is not a particularly good debater, as he is too interested in accuracy, and too opposed to that friend of the debate, empty rhetoric. He comes across very well, in parts. The question from the alarmist about where the sun's energy since 1980 had come from told very much against him–if you didn't know anything about how or why Steve was trying to answer accurately. To any ignoramus, Steve's responses to that question would have come across as evasive.
Doug Keenan, I have to say, didn't come across very well. He clearly knows what he's talking about, and he very clearly articulated the rage that many others (including me) feel towards the alarmist camp. But for some reason he came across as a little bit strange, and I don't know why that was.
Bob Watson comes across very amiable, very clear, and sensible–as long as you don't know anything about what he's talking about. If you do, however, you know that he is completely and utterly wrong. A high priest of global alarmism. Dangerous.
Trevor Davies frankly came across as a complete buffoon. He reminded me of an apparatchik who had simply been promoted way beyond his ability level. A minor character from a bad episode of yes Prime Minister.
Fred Pearce impressed. In his opening piece was calm and reasoned and evenhanded. Yes, he is clearly on the side of the alarmists, but also clearly wants an open scientific debate. His attitude seems to be (quite rightly) that if the world is warming disastrously it should be possible to PROVE IT.
George Monbiot was reasonably fair.
Piers Corbyn came across as a bit of a Nutter.
"Piers Corbyn came across as a bit of a Nutter."
He does rather, but his record on medium and long range forecasting makes the Met Office look like complete amateurs, even more so considering the disparity in their resources. The MO's hopeless recent track record makes their apparent confidence in forecasting climate changes utterly risible, IMO.
Oh, BTW, check out the rather complacent odd woman near the end who tries educate everyone about the apparent 'consensus' of Newton's theory of Gravity...
Talk about missing the point of what science is by exactly 180 degrees.
Dear lady, repeat after me, "gravity is verifyable by experiment". Do you understand what that means?
Does anyone know who she was? Please don't tell me she is a science journo or activist. Sheesh! Thank Heavens there wasn't a consensus for Wegener.
16 July: WSJ: A Climate Absolution?
More like a 160-page evasion of the real issues that confront global-warming science
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703394204575367483847033948.html
Read the Wall Street Journal article here.
Tiny bit of story behind the WSJ article.
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/amazongate-open-secret/
Thanks
James P "The MO's hopeless recent track record makes their apparent confidence in forecasting climate changes utterly risible, IMO."
Especially since the Met Office themselves state that they use the same models for weather forecasting as they do for long range climate prediction.
No wonder they predict barbecue winters, mild summers and so on.
July 15, 2010 | Unregistered Commenter
This is what will make the general public wake up, they know nothing about the blogs, mann, mcintyre, not even climategate..
Ask your neighbout, brother in law, newsagent, firend of a friend, chap down the pub, taxi driver, colleague, etc. Most wil have not heared of ANYTHING about the debate..
AlanTitchmarsh again:
(TV presenter, chat show host, entertainer, and gardener - 20 million UK citizens know who he is. It just needs a nudge - public opinion - that is)
"We live on a volatile planet. The very term 'climate change' is tautological in that that is what climate does – change. It would be a great story indeed if there was no shift in the climate at all."
"If you look back, there have been times in the planet's distant past – long before any human intervention – during which it has been very warm indeed. But nowadays, if you say this kind of thing, you're immediately branded as a CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER, which I find frustrating, particularly when it comes from scientists, who should be prepared to put all the facts on the table."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7111356/Alan-Titchmarsh-Climate-scientists-should-stick-to-the-facts-and-not-use-guesswork.html
I exagerate of course in the above..
My point is, the public are mildly sceptical, only because they react to the ridiculousness of the 'consensus' alarmism, by politicians and lobby group and MSM...
They are totally uniformed by anthing commentors here, know inside out.
The published recording of The Guardian debate has my opening statement edited out (apparently for legal reasons). A transcript of the statement is at
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a4040/b100714.pdf
I expect the Graun is a bit sensitive to legal challenges just at the moment, since Richard North has threatened to sue the Moonbat. Perhaps Douglas could sue them for leaving his bit out!
The Climategate video is on the Guardian site under VIDEO.
The video is SIX MINUTES 19 SECONDS!
STEVE MCINTYRE does not even appear in this video!
Doug Keenan is shown and makes good points.
The vast majority of the 6 mins is devoted to Watson and Davies.
Yet another whitewash.
When you consider how far Steve travelled to attend this debate and how many of us contributed to his travel costs then this a real example of ignorance of the highest level.
Shub
Where is the Bishop?
Hopefully having a good time and he need not rush back as it appears we are doing just fine on autopilot.
Dung
But who the hell is Paul the mystic octopus?? Plus I thjought he was under contract to Spain?
You must follow fútball from quite a distance. He lives(d) in a living in a tank at a Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany. When he chose Spain over German, there was a movement on in Oberhausen to add grilled octopus to the menu, but cooler heads prevailed. According to his agent, Paul is available to predict elections, various other sporting games, as well as the weather. Just how the latter is done is not explained. Perhaps he will start a blog.
Barry
Sadly, I agree with your assessment of the average punter with regard to "climate change", but I think they also smell a rat with regard to the "carbon tax" being just another rip off.
Yes, where is the Bish?
More to the point, do we really need him anymore?
I've just been watching this video on YouTube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xd_zkMEgkI
and it gave me an idea - not, I would agree, perhaps entirely original.
Anyway, we could set ourselves up as an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We could take it turns to act as sort of an executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer would have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting, by a simple majority in the case of internal affairs, but by a 2/3rds majority for other measures.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, after all - us, in other words.
Thats a load of Bish Bosh :)
Doomed..
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100715_globalstats.html
Time to return and bang your crosier, Bish. The natives are getting restless...
:-)
Paul Boyce
'Tis one thing to fly on autopilot and quite another to set yerself in the left seat and grab the stick.
I suspect the Bishop is working his mitre off on the GWPF investigation of those three oh-so-thorough and impartial climate-gate investigations. He has an announced deadline some time in August. If he needs some help doing research or anything else that may need doing on this side of the pond, I'm willing to offer my services, as I'm sure a great many others are. The trick, however, will be to be really, really, really and truly thourough, fair, scrupulous and accurate.
spending too much time on British blogs... starting to add too many "u" s where they don't belong and aren't welcome.
u are entirely welcome :)
Robert E
Agreed. That commission's a tough ask. Following his Casper - Jesus HSI analyses he's set the bar very high and will need to remain undisturbed in his priory retreat.