Bishop Hill Is New Scientist making things up?
Jul 29, 2010 Climate: Jones New Scientist has published a rather remarkable leader to go alongside its interview of Phil Jones:
For years, ruthless climate sceptics have harassed scientists, drowning them in freedom of information requests and subjecting them to vicious personal attacks. Climategate was merely the public face of this insurgent war. In that hostile climate, some scientists fired off personal emails that occasionally lacked decorum. The CRU accepts this. When will their opponents apologise for their own excesses?
It would be interesting to see whether the leader writer at New Scientist can explain from where they got the idea that CRU had drowned under FoI requests. This was not the finding of the inquiries. The Information Commissioner specifically told the Parliamentary Inquiry that the level of FoI requests was nothing out of the ordinary:
I am also bound to say that I think a figure of around 60 [requests] has been mentioned. That does not strike me as being an absolutely huge number...I do recall one example—I think it involved Birmingham City Council—where an individual made about 200 requests about a particular allotment site in Birmingham and how that was being developed.
I'd like to invite whoever it is that wrote this column to provide some backing for their claim - perhaps someone who is registered at the New Scientist website can pass the invitation on.
Reader Comments (29)
New Scientologist is a far divorced from any kind of reality as Phil Jones and CRU.
But I suppose, without them and Greenpiss and the World Wild Lies Fund and the rest of them, where would our beloved BBC get their "authority" quotes from?
I'm not a subscriber but a (more than) occasional purchaser.
I'll give them a miss from now on.
Reminds me of the line (from ISIHAC for UK readers)
"we were literally inundated by an email..."
1) The writers is making a general statement that would includeother climate scientists as well as those working for the CRU (UK Met Office, for example, not to mention scientists in the US).
2) As Nature reports, CRU received 58 FOI requests between 24th and 29th of July 2009 (only four business days in there, but nevertheless on average almost ten requests/day). Nature is saying "swamped" (instead of "drowned"), though: "But in recent weeks, Jones has been swamped by a sudden surge in demands for data.".
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090812/full/460787a.html
Warmists return to their old habits of gross exaggeration much like a dog that returns to eat its own vomit.
No surprises here.
I had thought that some of the requests under FOI were actually requests for evidence of contractual terms limiting their ability to share data, terms which did not always exist? If so, then the CRU were architects of their own drowning.
Similarly when the Met Office tried to hide behind a ruse that individuals were not acting as employees when undertaking IPCC work - they received FOI requests for evidence that this was the case.
So in both cases, the number of FOI requests would have been fewer had each organisation been more open to sharing data in the first place.
Schoolboy rhetoric on the part of NS. Naive and unconvincing.
Nobody thinks that the CRU were playing with a straight bat and were hauled up over intemperate language in emails. There are little issues like the HARRY_README file and the line Jones came out about not releasing data because he'd spent 25 years on the work and "you'll only try to disprove it". Doesn't really fit with the NS leader does it?
The CRU received SIX FOI requests between the act coming into effect in January 2005 and December 2008. They received a total of 103 in all up to the end of 2009: 58 of these were Steve McIntyres ruse, 29 of them, came after Climategate with around 10 others.
Need I say more?
Bishop. It is not sensible to be surprised by the avalanche of lies that accompany this multi trillion dollar carbon trading scam. The reason is the trillions of dollars. It doesn't matter how often they are caught, they will continue lying. There is no one to stop them. Literally every large source of money (governments, banks, corporations) supports the scam.
There are a number of individuals on the Guardian forums lying in exactly the same way. They have total establishment backing. They are orchestrated.
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It comes from an organisation called the Campaign Against Climate Change. Its honorary president is George Monbiot;
http://jamesdelingpole.com/blog/get-your-trolls-off-my-lawn-monbiot-928/
Wow! A conspiracy to prove there isn't a conspiracy.
Bishop - as a man of religion, you should understand what is going on. It's a religion. Selling hymn sheets to the choir is going to be more lucrative than handing out "Russell was a whitewash" fliers in pubs.
The New Scientist has, I assume, done some careful surveys of its readership. It has probably concluded that much of its readership are "climate scientists", and its advertising manager will have carefully noted how much of its advertising income comes from advertising CAGW alarmist jobs at the Met Office and elsewhere. The tone of its editorial is probably due to an entirely rational wish on behalf of its editor to remain employed.
What always annoys me is the lack of attribution to all the verbiage. If some one wants to argue an opinion then they should quote the section they are arguing against. If you want an apology then at least name the people you want an apology from. The 'skeptic' camp is a very diverse group with I'd guess the most common trait being they are somewhat 'scientific'. As had been said many, many times a vast amount of the pro AGW arguments come across as faith rather than fact based.
Wow. "Ruthless", "vicious" and "hostile" in an "insurgent war". Hyperbole much? And insurgent is certainly an interesting term.
This is just as good -- the poor dear scientists sent "personal emails that occasionally lacked decorum." Wonder where I got the idea that the e-mails were work related and sent from computers at work? And manipulating peer review is merely a "lack of decorum"?!
I would say that this little missive has all the accuracy and restraint we have come to expect from climate science.
Jones was not sharing the data as he ought to have. Therefore folk invoked the FoI mechanism to obtain the data. People generally only go down such bureaucratic routes when they are being stonewalled. UEA have only themselves to blame for that. There would have been few or no FoI requests had UEA been doing their job properly.
Why should those who used FoI apologize when they have only had to go to that trouble because of a fault with UEA? We also know that Jones hastily wrote to his contacts to delete their emails when he received FoI requests. That's prima facie evidence of mens rea to break the law.
New Scientist's stance is ridiculous. It is like asking a creditor to apologize for sending a solicitor's letter to recover a debt that the debtor refuses to pay, especially when the debtor is moving his money with a view to defrauding the creditor. The guilt is all on the side of the recalcitrant debtor, as it is on the recalcitrant Jones and UEA.
Disgusting.
I stopped reading the New Lysenkoist some years ago because of their Green Advocacy - and I told them so.
Does not this illustrate the point that Judith Curry was raising: The uncertainty of the science is being driven out by the certainty of a vision?
Jones and co plotted to aviod FOI before they got a single one , we know this from leaked e-mails. After New Scientologist supposed 'interview' of Jones it clear thay have no interest in findign out any facts over this issue so its no real surpise to see them makign this claim.
The article is already fisked to death by the 2 comments.
Re: Mikael Lönnroth
These 58 requests came about because CRU refused data for ALL countries because there was a confidentiality agreement with SOME countries. Because of this the list of countries was split into groups of five and an FOI request was sent for each group asking for details of any confidentiality agreement. The objective of this was to obtain a list of countries that had confidentiality agreements with the CRU. Previous experience with both the Met Office and the CRU had shown that a single request covering all countries would fail.
Muir Russell Report, p. 91-92:
Muir Russell Report p.93:
Muir Russell Report p. 95:
Now what was New Scientist was saying?
Heavens - I have not looked at New Scientist for a while now as its descent to scientific irrelevance has proceeded, but I had no idea it had sunk to the level of gutter journalism. The anger in that leader can only have stemmed from a religious zealot. Truly, if they had their way, we would be seeing the formation of a new Spanish Inquisition: the world may be about to become a rather terrifying place!
Transparency and openness in posting data and procedures at the disposal of whoever wants to analyze them, and also kinder and candid responses to requests for data, would have avoided most (if not all) de FOI requests. Glasnost and perestroika are needed (though one should be aware that in fact they historically failed to stop the collapse of the Soviet Union).
Martin A:
A few years ago, New Scientist actually had some kind of small supplement or extended article about the great and growing opportunities for employment in climate science. I really wish I could find it now.
Not only NS. In the late Stephen Schneider's scientific (or scientistic) apologia "Science as a Contact Sport" he tells the piteous tale of Ben Santer, who received one (count 'em, 1) request for data and was so disturbed that he went to his friend Schneider and blubbered that if that's the way things were going to be, he was considering getting out of climate science.
Although I greatly admired "The Hockey Stick Illusion," it did mislead in an important respect. By maintaining a mature and judicious tone throughout, it entirely missed the hysterical and childish atmosphere that prevails in the halls of climate alarmism.
E Smith
It is easy to forget the CAGW behaviour...
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I thought James Delingpole made such a hash of the story, ie in a way that would turn off most of the uninformed general public - (preaching to his little tribe - I gave him the tip)
That Bishop Hill was kind enough to let it be written here.
PLease link it anywhere you think it might get more widely read.
NewSci has become very strange. I've subscribed many years and I'm starting to mourn its terminal disease as it disintegrates before my eyes.
The trouble is that ordinary articles, which have no climate related flavour, are still pretty good. They seem to be in the same old bright-eyed optimistic style which I love. But if an article has anything climatological or environmental in it they go completely gushy and flaccid. The style is completely different, without the hard sciency edge of the mainstream articles. I'm still managing to read it each week but I have to skip any greenish articles as they are nauseous.
And the invitees! Couple of weeks ago they had Clive Hamilton who even at home here in Oz is regarded as a sort of uber-Green. I just couldn't read his op ed.
In depth of depression I fantasize about what the reading public would say if say the Roman Catholic church had taken it over and started inserting Catholic doctrine and interviews with cardinals in similar fashion.
Methinks New PseudScientist has done a Watson by not doing their homework properly. It's hard to say CRU was 'drowning' when if they'd handled the original requests, they'd have not ended up digging themselves such a deep pool.
But drowning, or floundering? The leaked emails make it quite clear that there was a conspiracy to break FOI laws, amongst other things:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=940&filename=.txt
Yet I don't see any complaints from CRU's computing department that they're 'drowning'. The emails show clearly that Jones and others spent time contemplating how to evade, or obstruct FOI requests rather than answering them as the law requires.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=907&filename=.txt
again shows how CRU colluded to obstruct:
So instead we see an organised campaign to prevent the release of data that people were entitled to request in law.
A post, on a thread in the future, on this blog asked if "we" wanted to be associated with Richard North. I, but only in my head, answered yes. Richard, as much as he may annoy some, is,in my head, an honest reporter on the issues that he had focussed upon.
Thanks to cannaman for that question.
If I'd been asked the same question about JD of the Telegraph, my answer would have been no!
IMO, JD and his tribe of followers, sink to the levels of schoolboy behaviour that made me question the consensus viewpoint years ago.
As Mr Watts pointed out, on the occasion of WUWT hitting the 50 million unique-visitor milestone recently, let's raise the bar and move into adult territory.
On non-political, emotion detached issues the New Scientist is still great reading.
Yes, it currently has a number of hot-heads at the helm, but, in time, they'll fade into much deserved obscurity when PMI ( politically motivated initiatives) lay out new visions of FoF, Fads of the Future.
The NS will survive and flourish as will the DT, sans hot-heads and JD pit-bulls, Ms Gaia will prove as fickle and anti-human as today's most rabid Eco-self-haters could fantasize about and, still, the Science cares naught for the confident hubris of its most ardent disciples.
I cancelled my subscription of many years to the New Scientist about a year ago. Issue after issue seemed to contain evidenceless articles about why our brains evolved to need religion or some other untestable hypotheses to do with social science. It would appear I made the right decision.
I felt at the time that a weekly magazine format was not conducive to accurate and well researched scientific articles or stories. The daily press seems to me to exemplify that fact that if you want accuracy and evidence, you have to look somewhere else other than daily msm.
Nevertheless, the absurdity of the NS editorial summary of the FOI situation at CRU fills me with amazement. Who writes this stuff?