Bishop Hill A review
Jun 14, 2011 Climate: HSI I thought I'd posted a link to a Heartland Institute review of HSI before but, try as I might, I can't find it, so perhaps this is genuinely new - a review by Jay Lehr. Dr Lehr has a background in hydrology, and it's always nice to get a scientist's take on the book.
Mesmerizing Insight into the Infamous Hockey Stick Scandal
Cutting-edge science, mystery, and whodunit intrigue rarely merge in a single book. Rarer still do they merge in nonfiction. In A. W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, readers get an intriguing, highly informative dose of all three.
While walking readers through a tale of real-life mystery, complete with unexpected heroes and villains, The Hockey Stick Illusion presents superb chronological detail, explicit explanations of statistics, and a clear discussion of the science at the heart of one of science’s most troubling scandals.
Reader Comments (11)
Yes, an excellent review with which I fully concur.
I concur with Phillip Bratby's comment on the review.
An excellent review, Bish, and well-deserved, but does it trouble you that you get a much better hearing from the free-market right than from its ideological enemies?
Nicholas
My only MSM review was in Prospect!
This seems to me to be the central point. It may take decades - or even centuries - to discover and prove the worth of temperature proxies that will allow reconstructions over thousands of years in which one can have confidence. Though I hope Paul Dennis solves the problem before that!
Peer review became a false god and almost led the world astray. But it looks to me now as if we might just scrape through. THSI is going to have played an enormously important role if we do.
. . . does it trouble you that you get a much better hearing from the free-market right than from its ideological enemies?
Generally that's true though Dr Lehr makes no political points. However, this note at least is from one well-left-of-centre occasional commentator on this blog who greatly admires the book.
And it has to be admitted that big business sectors, esp in the UK the power supply industry, have been as active as any in promoting the cover-up, whitewash, call it what you will.
In all seriousness, I don't find a traditional left/right dichotomy very helpful in trying to get to grips with the politics and ideology of "climate change" though it is unarguable that many purportedly of the "left" like to see it that way.
What has to be acknowledged is that it has in the main been politically conservative bodies and scientists who have most effectively focused on the science (though there are honourable exceptions).
Hallam asks "...does it trouble you that you get a much better hearing from the free-market right than from its ideological enemies?"
Of course I cannot speak for Andrew Montford, but as an American who follows the polling of US voters, voting party identification (Democrat versus Republican) is the biggest single predictor as to whether one endorses AGW or dissents. The co-variant correlation is about 80%.
And if you study political history and the history of political theory, this sharp divide makes a great deal of intuitive sense; the politics are consistent with views on science policy.
As "Liberal Fascism" author Jonah Goldberg shows in his recent revisionist book, the modern Democratic party is the niece of European fascism, ot merely socialism. (And this thesis has survived hostile academic scrutiny of historians - he largely relies on secondary sources they have authored, after all.)
About a century ago, today's Democrats' precursor were "Progressives" - a term currently embraced again by the Left, now that Liberalism (meaning socialism) is in ill-repute, ever since communism fell. And just as Marxist Mussolini easily became a Fascist later, there was a kind of mutual admiration and emulation of methods between pre-World War Two fascists and Progressives in the US. This extended through Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal era administration that found many influential imitators of Italian fascism.
Today, this kinship finds its ideological echoes with Obama's post-Great recession government activism and Keynesian policies (a serious practical failure, by the way). And together with his cheerleaders at the New York Times, columnists like Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman - who would both be happy to dispense with vulgar, outdated "democracy" to achieve their "environmentalist" goals - voice the same frustrations as the President over losing congressional control of the House of Representatives to Republicans last fall.
At any rate, a century ago, Progressives endorsed reforms to empower experts to rule us in Platonic fashion because they are Wiser, more expert and knowledgeable than we are - mere plebes and uneducated rabble. Bureaucracies are almost God-like to them, requiring equivalent respect if not adoration.
Today, this makes for an almost reflexive deference among Democrats to the politically powerful. Because "scientists say so" is in no way a skeptical virtue - yet movement "skeptics" act as though it were. And among Republicans, an almost reflexive dislike for the same elitism and deference finds its echo with traditional American values, such as embracing populism and respecting traditional local rule, against of collectivist "solutions."
Thus, AGW means another reflexive opportunity to empower scientist-politicians to look out for not just the peoples good, but the entire planet's welfare. And since most "skeptics" are also of the secular Left, they are comfortable deferring in unskeptical fashion to whatever "counts" as science. And hence, Al Gore is not simply a former candidate for President, he is also an authority on science as well.
What would be a breakthrough for HSI would be to find Leftists embracing Montford's expose. That American free-marketeers embrace it comes as no surprise. But penetrating Leftist zeal for power and idealistic hubris (eg," science is above politics"), with circumspect humility, as HSI teaches by example, would be almost revolutionary to these Americans.
My sense of Britain is that as with Canadian politics, the Left-Right divide is not nearly so clear cut - yet remains vaguely similar to the US, at least in outlines. The American Right perception is that Canada's Harper and the UK's Cameron are much too "me-too Leftist" - or pro-socialist lite. They are too glib, lacking principled, independent moorings - too willing to bow and scrape before media's negative stereotypes of the Right.
And so while people in both the US and Britain have abandoned AGW belief by roughly 20% in the wake of Climategate, the latter's one year old coalition government led by "conservatives" fails to reflect that changed opinion. But that could merely be because of the different nature of the Parliamentary system.
Harper's recent post-election conservative government, for the first time achieving a majority, has just taken quasi-American Right environmental action: the humble incandescent light ban that the US still has coming in 2012 was all but repealed for Canada - or so I understand.
DaveB, Orson
Thanks to you both for picking up my query about climate change scepticism and political leaning, and for sharing your views.
For what it's worth, my own view is that scepticism and distrust of collectivism go hand in hand. In Popper's thought his anti-Utopianism and his opposition to the closed society are rooted in his scientific fallibilism - awareness of the limits of our own knowledge should lead to greater modesty in our political aims since we know that our actions will have unintended consequences, not all of which can be predicted and mitigated.
Preferring a freer future and distrustful of statist solutions, I am consequently predisposed to challenge the grounds that are presented for taking away liberty, and if they are scientific grounds, to ask how well supported they are. At the same time, my view of the fallibility of scientific knowledge, leads me to attach extremely little value to ideas like "consensus" and "authority" which are used to press science in service to politics.
Hi Andrew
just posted up a review of your book myself here:
http://zone5.org/2011/06/the-hockey-stick-illusion/
best wishes
Graham
BH wrote:
Ahem ... with all due respect, Your Grace, as your very own Reviews page notes, both The Telegraph's Christopher Booker and (Canada's) Peter Foster in the National Post reviewed THSI (and deservedly favourably, I might add!). So what are they, eh? Chopped liver? ;-)
But that aside ... as a layperson (for whom stats was never a forté) I heartily endorse the review by Dr. Lehr, as well as that of Graham posted above. Of course, this could be "confirmation bias" in action, but I very much doubt it!
As others have noted, your chapter on peer review was particularly illuminating. About the only good thing to come out of the Muir Russell report, IMHO, was Lancet editor, Richard Horton's appendix on peer review (in which, as I recall, he acknowledged THSI).
And speaking of peer review ... it is worth noting that the IPCC's so-called "reforms" - in response to the InterAcademy Council's recommendations - have led them to "disappear" their [albeit rarely practiced] "rule" that citation of non peer-reviewed material should be flagged in the references.
Jay Lehr: "it is impossible to miss the parallels between McIntyre and McKitrick unraveling the MBH hockey stick scheme and federal law enforcement officials exposing the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme".
This is a really perverse analogy. Madoff was unmasked by Harry Markopolos in May 2000 and repeatedly thereafter. Federal law enforcement officials (specifically, the SEC) took no action (see, e.g., this, or, if you want the whole disgraceful saga, then see Markopolos's testimony to Congress.). A better analogy would identify M&M with Markopolos and the various bogus Climategate enquiries with the SEC.