Monday
May282012
by 
Josh
Josh Hide da d.cline - Josh 169
May 28, 2012 Climate: Allen Climategate Hockey Stick Josh 
Hopefully you've watched the video, read the posts and comments here and at Climate Audit and Watts Up With That. Basically Myles Allen has been castigating journalists for getting Climategate wrong while getting it spectacularly wrong himself. Nice one Myles. Honest error or disingenuous?
Reader Comments (113)
ZT
Excellent questions! What exactly was Phil Jones trying to accomplish and what actually did transpire?
It would appear to objective observers that Phil Jones was seeking ways to bring pressure to bear on Professor Jonathan Jones, who had the temerity to pursue an appeal on an EIR request for data.
Why should any info about Professor Jonathan Jones ever have been circulated beyond the responsible responding parties at UEA? For each person privy to any confidential info shared inappropriately in this manner, relevant questions include "what did he know, when did he know it, and what did he do about it?"
Was any effort at Oxford to bring any kind of pressure or recrimination upon Prof. Jonathan Jones ever discussed? Was anything of the sort ever attempted? Who else at Oxford, in or out of the Physics Dept., knew of this?
geoffchambers:
And I can't manage blockquotes.
Bish
these threads on Myles Allen are priceless and should be brought to the attention of all world leaders. Here we see the great man from Oxford completely out of his depth in the company of those of us that inhabit the real world. Myles the electricity bill for my business is in the region of £9000 a month. Do you have any idea what it is like to start the month knowing that you have to make enough to pay EON £9k? And every year the burden gets greater and greater. And that is of course without all the other crap we have to deal with thanks to our overlords in Brussels.
I have never come across anyone who is so out of touch with reality as you demonstrate yourself to be. It is no wonder this country is as screwed as it is if anyone gives the slightest credence to your delusional utterings.
And I have to say Bish's regulars have shown themselves to be head and shoulders above you in every department.
I vote for you as our next representative in the Eurovision Song Contest!
Is that meant to be a joke? Presumably not.
It is known as "Guilt-tripping". An unpleasant, immature and manipulative tactic in debating or discussion. It's the attempt to manipulate someone into feeling guilty instead of discussing in a straightforward fashion.
In this case, it's a feeble and silly attempt. Posters on this site are mature adults who immediately see as totally ludicrous the idea that, because they spent some time over a few days discussing on a blog something someone said, that this would result in "carbon rationing" being imposed in eight years time and, as a result, their grandchildren would hold them responsible for this calamity.
Or, even more ludicrous, the implication that these blog discussions, by wasting the time of a recently promoted university professor, had obstructed him from proposing better policy alternatives, again with a calamitous outcome. A symptom of delusions of grandeur perhaps but no more than that.
Myles, didn't anyone ever tell you? Such tricks just don't work on grown ups. One the other hand, they don't cast the person attempting to use them in a good light at all.
re: "If the European Commission decide to impose carbon rationing in 2020 after another record-breaking warm decade, because we spent this past week discussing Myles Allen’s interpretation of climategate (not to mention his, admittedly poor, choice of shirts) rather than coming up with a less intrusive policy alternative, your grandchildren shall know the reason why."
Myles, really now, would you like to withdraw this statement?? This is beyond histrionic.... I have to admit that this sentence has left me feeling speechless since I read it this morning. I understand that you want to get people here to discuss action and not diagnosis, but since people are attracted to this blog with some degree of skepticism about the conventional "diagnosis" of impending climate catastrophe we are not exactly ready to sign on to proposed solutions. That is a good part of why the discussion has seemed so much at cross purposes, because we don't share the diagnosis of doom.
In any case, the idea that anyone here, in one or a few weeks, was about to solve the alleged crisis and forestall drastic action by the European Commission in 2020, is also not grounded in any reality I can recognize. I could understand it if you said let's "start" discussing what you think is of paramount importance, but this sentence implies that you expected us to decide and implement some solution for all of Europe and the world. I don't have such high hopes for life in the blogs, certainly not in one week.
p.s. I'd be one of the last people on earth to question your fashion sense! It may well be better than mine, but in any case I have no opinions to share in that department.
@Dolphinhead
If it is any consolation, Myles Allen has 35k computers burning away at ~100 watts each - so that is costing someone (not him, probably you) about 250 thousand pounds per month.
(35k CPUs at 100w = 3,500 kw; 3500*24*31=~2500000 kWhr pcm, at 0.1 pounds per kWhr =250,000 pounds)
Don't worry, as fast as some people can figure out how to make payroll and pay taxes, Myles can figure out how to burn the taxes, and emit millions of tons of CO2 in the process. Resistance is as a futile as requesting scientific honesty.
Well, according to Myles (Perg) Allen (thanks, DR!) "…My last sentence was, of course, a joke: sorry that wasn’t clear. My concern, Paul, is that your grandchildren might be unnecessarily deprived of iPads because of the EU’s carbon rationing system introduced as “the only option on the table” because, instead of discussing negative liberty, you took us back to discussing climategate. Mentioning grandchildren is not necessarily invoking eco-doom: my kids aren’t particularly worried about eco-doom, and I doubt theirs will be either…"
So, you see, his concern is that his grandchildren, or Paul's, will be deprived of iPads at some unspecified future date, when they will be obsolete anyway, because some people on blogs insisted on posting about the shoddy statistics methods, poor data selection, evasion of FOI's, pal review, wonky ethical standards, and refusal to acknowledge any of it by the second rate scientists who inhabit such "a small field" that it is unavoidable that they have to review one another's papers (How small is it?... They don't even have statisticians!)
Because, you see, if we all posted about "negative liberty" instead, we would have a seat at the policy options table and all our grandchildren could have iPads.
My concern is that Josh is up against Poe's Law with this guy.
Thicksides at 2:05 AM is quoting from Myles' recent comment at Climateaudit, in response to Paul Matthews, Ross McKitrick, and Steve McIntyre.
ohh ok, Myles, I just now saw your latest post at Climate Audit and realize that the last sentence was indeed meant in jest. Maybe I'm too earnest sometimes. It's just that it did sound like so much eco-doom that we get from other sources that I thought "ah, here's what he really wants to tell us."
There is this "Poe's Law" phenomenon that a lot of extreme views are impossible to parody, or something like that, so that people online will not know it's a joke without a smiley emoticon or LOL.
Well I do get a good chuckle out of it now that I realize you didn't mean that literally. Maybe with all the serious talk it's not always easy to know when we have lapsed into humor, but we need humor....
Martin A / skiphil
As I keep pointing out what will cause our grandchildren to curse us is impoverishing their generation to the point where they are unable to take whatever action is needed to deal with whatever problems they are facing in 50 years time.
And they will curse us all the louder if we have spent £$€trillions when we have been told even by those who buy totally into the CAGW religion that nothing we can do now can possibly affect temperatures for the next 50 years.
Even the IPCC admitted that if Kyoto were implemented in its entirety the delay in reaching the magic +2C would be about five years.
Like generals always planning for the previous conflict whatever we decide to do now for the benefit of future generations will certainly turn out to be wrong.
Myles,
You are entirely correct that Climategate did not make significant impact on the temperature record. No-one claims this.
Can you not see that Climategate is an issue of trust? Hiding data, cherrypicking, criminal conspiracy to subvert FOI law, pal review, "going to town" are all issues of trust.
Your failure to address these points means that I cannot trust you. Hilary is correct: what you omit is more informative than what you say. You have an opportunity to address these points, and establish a reputation as trustworthy. But attention spans are short, and the window for you to save your reputation is closing.
By Tuesday, you'll be files as "another partisan activist" rather than an honest scientist.
Thanks, Jeremy.
Sorry, Dead Dog Bounce. I'm not waiting until Tuesday.
Watching that blowhard tap dance around any criticism, no matter how cogent or intelligent, backtrack, contradict himself and weasel out by pretending to misunderstand the point was enough for me.
Skiphil, don't worry about not getting his "joke"; it wasn't that funny when energy poverty and rationing due to misguided policies is a real concern now.
My concern with Poe's law was that Myles Allen is such a self-parody it would be difficult for Josh to depict him as any more ridiculous than he already is.