Bishop Hill AR5 inquiry - written evidence
Dec 18, 2013 Climate: Parliament The House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee has published the written submissions of evidence to its inquiry into the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. There are many familiar names including Nic Lewis, Pielke Sr, Michael Kelly, plus lots of BH regulars.
From the establishment side of the debate there are submissions from the Met Office, the Grantham Institute, the Royal Society, the Royal Meteorological Society and DECC. These are what you might call "brazen", a shameless chorus of claims that the science is "even more certain than before". The models can fail completely, study after study can show that climate sensitivity is lower than previously thought, the long-predicted increase in extreme weather can fail to materialise and yet scientists are are more confident than ever that they are right.
The things you have to do to get ahead in the civil service eh?
Bishop Hill
Judith Curry describes Nic Lewis's evidence as a "tour de force".
Reader Comments (45)
Mosh backs Nic Lewis's testimony, there should be a few uneasy feelings in Exeter.
Just read the summaries of Donna Laframboise, Ruth Dixon, Nic Lewis and David Holland and the full submissions by Robin Guenier and Paul Matthews.
Oh to be a fly on that wall. What do they do? Hand the submissions over to underlings to make three-line summaries? Shuffle the pack and only read the stuff from the Grantham Institute? Whatever they do, the idea that sceptics are big-oil funded clones is going to take a hammering.
Congratulations to all for expressing a wide range of sceptical views that can only give any honest parliamentarian pause for thought.
Good stuff.
I addressed Paul's point on the occasion of the IPCC SPM press release. I wrote it on my blog.
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There is only a single paragraph on putting the blame on humans and it goes like this:
All three claims made in this one little paragraph are …wrong. Since the mid-20th century, global temperature increased till about 1998. Then the rate of increase changed abruptly.
How are humans able to have this type of influence on the climate?
As the rate of ‘warming’ has slowed, how has the likelihood of humans having caused it increased? The cause for the warming is going up, but the warmth itself has not?
Where can more and better observations come from? The only observations ‘more’ than what we had before, are of those that happened between now and then. It is not possible to gather more than 24 hours of observation in a day. These are the observations that show the slowdown.
Finally, whatever evidence has grown has only reduced confidence in the understanding of the climate system response the orthodoxy provided. It has reduced confidence in the models .As everyone knows, neither is an explanation for the temperature rate change on the cards, nor was it predicted by the models.
If the press release reflects the SPM, which I believe it does, and if the SPM reflects the main report, which I believe it will, the IPCC has put itself in a remarkably weak position. It will not provide any momentum for future international climate negotiations.
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Perhaps next time, I will make a submission.
Evidence?
We don' need no stinkin' evidence...!
The Royal Society has responded with..............er..with.....err,
I'll get back to you when I figure it out.
It must have taken someone about ten minutes to write (rubber stamp) their response.
We should be grateful. The guilty men and women have signed their names to a document. No pretending they weren't involved later.
So now we'll know who to prosecute.
Well done, chaps!
Marcel Crok's (and Richard Tol's) submission here: http://www.staatvanhetklimaat.nl/2013/12/13/submission-to-ar5-inquiry/
The UKMO submission
' 34 The IPCC provides an effective mechanism for determining the current scientific consensus and is underpinned by a rigorous writing and review process. It is hard to envisage a radically different process for determining such a consensus that would be as effective.'
Translated to: it's our science, we cannot be wrong so we use the IPCC to rubber stamp it.
Wouldn't expect anything different from them really.
After Nic Lewis's clear explanation, the choice of anything other than an objective prior can now only be seen as confirmation bias. Not necessarily malign in nature, just sloppy. The consensus is shown up for what it truly is, a bandwagon.
Lord Beaverbrook
"It is hard to envisage a radically different process for determining such a consensus that would be as effective.'
"Translated to: it's our science, we cannot be wrong so we use the IPCC to rubber stamp it."
This is an explicit example of the "circling of the wagons" defence against any potential due diligence.
The MO, Reading, CRU, Tyndall, Cambridge, DECC etc...write/contribute to the IPCC reports.
The UN report lands with HMG who have a duty to carry out due diligence on the report with a singularity of motive, the benefit to the well being of their UK citizens.
Where do they go for such diligence? Back to the MO, Reading, CRU, Tyndall, Cambridge, DECC etc...
As our host has advocated many times, for UK politicians to fulfil their responsibilities UN IPCC reports should be subjected to a full on "Red Team" scrutiny. The present incestuous, consensus, circle ensures this will never happen.
Maybe, just maybe, some more politicos will gain insight from the submissions?
It's sad to juxtapose the Met Office's text to Nic Lewis'. Sad because the former is mostly a series of cheerleading inanities composed with the help of my own money.
As for the remainder of that text, imagine the surprise in learning that it "has already been demonstrated that skilful multi-year predictions of Atlantic hurricane frequency can be produced" (in a paper nobody ever mentioned) plus of course the fact that "Met Office scientists have been pro-active in raising awareness of how to participate in the review process, including in social media forums where criticism of climate science and the IPCC is regularly aired." (is that Richard's job spec or what)
ps as if by magic, the Royal Society's contribution is another set of inanities as well. It's the same pattern: lots of information that is already out there and useless details about what some other organisation has claimed to have been doing. Three fellows are then quoted, talking like mindless PR drones and perhaps demonstrating why the RS is in such a dire state at the moment.
A most interesting and varied set of submissions. I really believe that Nic Lewis has hit the nail on the head with his focus on the climate response and the apparent weakness of the IPCC in their method of calculating it. Here is an apparently straightforward flaw which will give Peter Lilley some good points to focus on. I wonder how the committee is going to examine this evidence. Will they test it by asking some of the "experts" from CRU or the Met Office to answer the points raised? Do we know when the evidence will be discussed?
Nic Lewis's submission is blistering -truly outstanding.
Last week Bill Gates wrote on his blog:
Maybe some want to join in on the disussion there, with quotes from the inquiry submissions.
Wow, André. Thanks for that reference. I'm not promising to comment but I'm extremely glad to know exactly how Gates frames the problem. I nominate Nic Lewis :)
The fact that Bill Gates apparently has some awareness and concern about the issue is interesting.
How does one get Nic Lewis' submission in his hands on a day when he has some quiet time to reflect on the topic?
A public question or two from Gates would be difficult for anyone to ignore!
'These are what you might call "brazen", a shameless chorus of claims that the science is "even more certain than before". The models can fail completely, study after study can show that climate sensitivity is lower than previously thought, the long-predicted increase in extreme weather can fail to materialise and yet scientists are more confident than ever that they are right.'
It renders David Rose's recent expose all the more timely.
Pav: Quite so. I think if Nic was able to get help from David Henderson, Richard Tol and Matt Ridley on the specifics of Simon vs Ehrlich there could be a useful introduction to his own submission in the comments. But Nic may want a rest and a glass of mulled wine. :)
Richard,
Nic's on a real cool roll and the adrenalin rush eliminates the need for rest!
But by all means, he deserves a few adult beverages of his choice!
Cheers, Nic!
It isn't for me to comment on grammar, punctuation and clarity, but Nic's submission would have done well with some proof-reading by a skilled editor.
In terms of substance, the submission contains the best explanation of Bayesian statistics to a layman -which is a revelation coming from someone known for his use of highly specialised language- and is definitely worth reading. There was a reference to a BH post, http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/1/25/uniform-priors-and-the-ipcc.html that I skipped at the time but went back to read it just now with a better understanding of statistics (of Bayesian kind, Subjective and Objective).
I wish Steve Jewson, referenced in the link above, had made a separate submission as well since he appears to be as skilled as Steve McIntyre but with a better command of English. I also wonder whether Steve Jewson is the famed 'VS' -Visiting Statistician- who took part in that legendary debate at Bart Verheggen's blog, http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/#comments
Steve Jewson and VS read like the one and same person to me. They both write with authority and confidence in their own expertise and do it with a great sense of humour as well as civility, though I am not statistically-minded enough to figure out whether they are making the same technical arguments. I'd like to see more contribution from them please, so after all his good hard work McIntyre can finally retire to play tennis and scratch his balls. :)
It occurs to me that whoever wrote these questions knows the answers, and they are uniformly devastating to the alarmist cause. This is a necropsy.
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kim
that's an unusually specific and optimistic comment from you. I reckon the committee report will buckle under the force of institutional submissions from the Met Office and the Royal Society even though they are regurgitating the same unconvincing arguments. It is never going to be easy to tell the public all those costly policies -even if they worked or were ever needed- could have waited another decade or two before implementing. The best we can hope from the current process is that the skeptic view will be better known by a greater number of policy-makers and politicians and that they too may come to distrust institutional science like the rest of the general public. The day the government cuts the funding for the Met Office, the Royal Society, 'et al', by half will be the day we start talking.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
I do not understand the point of submitting such learned writings to the Committee. Members will not read and understand them. I have forgotten more science than most members ever learnt and it would take me months (years, decades) to assess this stuff sufficiently well to make a proper contribution to the Committee's deliberations on what it has received, or vote for this or that conclusion. So what is a poor member to do? I can only guess that most will go with existing gut feelings and ignore these submissions. On the margin, however, the more polemical the submission the more likely is it that it will have some influence.
Maybe, of course, this is beside the point. Either (i) The committee have a corps of experts to tell them what to do. (Where do they get them from - the MET office, the CCC? Gosh!), or (ii) The inevitable publication of the submissions puts the submitted science into the open where it can be properly discussed by people who understand what they are talking about. This is the point of the exercise and the committee itself is irrelevant. (This seems be a rum way of going about things.)
Does anybody know?
What strikes me about Nic's submission is that Bayesian statistics aside, what he's really talking about is characterisation of basic effects. If climate scientists had done the work to try and bound the effect of CO2 through experiment and then built models there would be less need for the raft of assumptions.
But then that line of investigation only comes if there aren't inbuilt assumptions in the field of research itself. Remember modern climate models were birthed in the field of planetary science which isn't exactly teeming with experimental data.
You always make assumptions but scientific method teaches you to state them and be judged by them. Hence the situation we are in with sceptics and believers where sceptics can see the glaring assumption yet the establishment can't. I think 'suspension of disbelief' is a better term. But that would imply models were just science fiction.
I couldn't possibly comment.
I've now read most of the submissions. But perhaps the most predictable, IMHO, is that from a "jewel in the crown of U.K. and global science", aka a founding pillar of the IPCC, the U.K. Met Office.
As I was reading through this latest of the MO's efforts to self-importantly pat itself on the back, beginning with their introductory summary ...
... I found myself wondering what the writers would do if there were no such word as "robust" - which they used no less than 13 times. Also sprinkled throughout this 3,390 word submission were:
21 "scientific"
8 "consisten*"
6 "consensus"
5 "comprehensive"
and 3 "multiple lines of evidence" - two of which were in the same paragraph (3.)
They also patted themselves on the back when they noted:
I'm sure it must have been mere "space limitations" that precluded the Met Office from noting that some prominent skeptics chose not to "submit review comments" because they believed it would be "pointless" and/or because they were not prepared to agree to the required "confidentiality" agreement.
And they patted themselves on the back, again, when they noted the invocation of their unique "fog machine" in July of this year (para 25):
Speaking of the MO's use of "social media" and their "fog machine" ... in light of Nic Lewis' July observation that:
It seems me that - while it could just be coincidence - the MO might well have anticipated Nic's "tour de force" submission of evidence, which, in turn might have caused them to turn on the fog machine once again, as we saw most recently, with Richard Betts at the "social media" wheel in Making Fog. But I digress ...
What I found most astounding was the MO's para. 35:
which seems to be in sharp contradiction to para. 30's:
One can only hope that when the committee reviews the evidence submitted, they will have the perspicacity to recognize the self-serving attempts to perpetuate the status quo - if not elevate to a highly undeserved level - the continued shenanigans of the IPCC and its self-important establishment pillars and supporters, such as the Met Office and the Royal Society.
So a few of the boys, friends and colleagues got together, they had a chat did some computer stuff with the fixed figures and did some more statistical analysis and found that although they were right, they were not quite as right as they were 7 years ago or whatever. So after six and a half years of procrastination, they issued a report, dressed it up in rhymes and riddles of gobbledegook and averred that they were 95% certain that they were right about what they had said before - nice work if you can get it!
Funnily enough when the Parliamentary climate change committee - which is made up of boys and girls who are on the take from the masters of the green universe [hey what's new?] it was business as per usual.
So, the CCC asked a load of mates and colleagues - who had just drafted said report [see first para]. Stone the crows! Well, wow wouldn't you know it? The boys and gals from the Met Office, Grantham, RS - they all said that this was the latest bestest report to end all reports [well at least until the next
jollyconference/report committee backroom scribblings, computer sessions].Everybody else thought that, the IPCC AR5 was full of s***. Funny old world ain't it?
Ecclesiastical Uncle writes
I'd been thinking along rather the same lines. I really do doubt whether the committee members or the committee staff have the expertize to adjudicate on, for example, the merits of subjective vs objective priors. And it's difficult to imagine that any expert the Committee co-opts won't be squarely from the consensus camp.
But as you say, there may at least be some benefit from having a range of non-consensus views in the written evidence. And, of course, if, for example, Nic Lewis is called to give oral evidence, there's at least the possibility of some thought-provoking media coverage.
The things you have to do to get ahead in the civil service eh?
Just ask Betts, he knows.!
"Congratulations to all for expressing a wide range of sceptical views that can only give any honest parliamentarian pause for thought"
That's quite a short list.
It is great to see so many people have put in the time and effort to produce these superb submissions.
In one of the pieces that didn't make it to the final submission I introduced the idea of the "citizen scientist" which is the scientific equivalent of the "expert patient". This (after some initial resistance) has now been accepted in medicine as a de facto outcome of the internet and one which they have not only learnt to live with, but are now almost encouraging.
Likewise, in areas like the climate where the barriers to entry are low enough, where most of the information is readily available on the internet, and almost anyone with a PC can create a climate model, there is no way on earth that people like the Royal Society or Met Office will ever stop the citizen scientists taking an interest and not only criticising what they do, but in many cases (like the expert patient) gaining knowledge that surpasses the "official" sources.
Medicine has had to make this fundamental change in power between the citizen and official "expert".
Unfortunately, the Royal Society, IPCC, Met Office, etc. are still living in the dark ages and only very reluctantly being dragged kicking and screaming into the internet age. They are going to have to learn to live with us sceptics. Indeed unless they learn to live with us and learn to respect the fact that we bring to this subject skills which in many cases far exceed their own, it is their reputations and not ours which will suffer severely.
Ecclesiastical Uncle writes
I do not understand the point of submitting such learned writings to the Committee. Members will not read and understand them.
and that is maybe the most valid point. Some people think of politicians as well educated, well rounded, I don't ! They are deceitful liars who will apparently mis direct, mislead and take the lazy option every time.
Athelstan
Unless I have misread your post (which is possible and in which case I apologise), I repeat for at least the umpteenth time
The Climate Change Committee and the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change (which is what commissioned these responses) are not the same thing.
The CCC has nine members all of whom appear to have their snouts to a greater or less degree in the renewables trough. None of its members are MPs.
The Select Committee is a HoC watchdog which consists of the usual collection of non-specialist MPs trying to do their best. (In a fit of generosity I'll even include Yeo in that description, though with reservations!)
I really think for the purposes of our own credibility that we need to get these simple and basic facts right.
As someone who gained a chemistry degree in 1970 but ever since has worked in a different field, I sympathise with the Ecclesiastical Uncle. I remember facts I learnt at school such as "oxygen re-ignites a glowing splint" but beyond that everything is a little hazy!
One thing I do understand, however, is the scientific method. That is very easy to understand - unless you have a Nobel Prize and are president of the Royal Society! Therefore, although, like the Ecclesiastical Uncle, I find the details of some of the submissions hard to follow, I think I can grasp which arguments have some apparently strong evidence to support them, and which arguments are based on possibly shaky assumptions.
Most MPs, whatever their faults, are fairly well educated. Therefore, even if they know little about science, they should be able to make the distinction between assertions based on hard evidence and inferences drawn from theories where, if those inferences are of a quantitative nature, their values depend on certain assumptions, not on demonstrable facts.
Myles Allen's submission, also well worth a read (here), makes some interesting points, especially about the IPCC process. e.g.:
and
Judy is right. Nic's submission is not only a brilliant analysis, it is beautifully written, with incredible clarity. An extraordinary piece of work, for which he deserves the highest praise.
Tom Osborn
Why don't the scientists get together and -insist- that the structure of the IPCC report production mechanism be changed? Ruth Dixon's submission makes the point. Make it more traditional. Why don't you guys/gals ask for this? Lord knows peer-review has its own problems but at least these are known problems.
As of now, the report does not depend on the collective judgement of IPCC authors and reviewers because authors ride roughshod over reviewer comments.
I've read Nic Lewis's submission. It is dynamite, really...
Re the IPCC - you have to remember that the clue is in the title - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate CHANGE - not Climate RESEARCH. In other words: 'We think carbon dioxide warms the climate. Prove it'.
Sadly - those in positions of power will simply take the views of the Met Office, Royal Society et al - because they are seen as the 'experts' - not views which flagrantly challenge the 'status quo', depite the unassailable logic contained therein.
We've still got a long battle on our hands, folks....
I think that many are missing the internal political action taking place here. The backstory of this inquiry is the eroding credibility of the IPPC which is, after all, THE authority behind all government policy as regards this issue. It is increasingly clear that the CCA carbon budget targets , for review in spring next year, imply economic disaster for the UK. But the CCA requires that the review be based on the recommendations of the CCC , the subject of the 15/12 posting "the eco-cesspit". That body has just strongly endorsed no change leaving the Gov. in shtuck.
Note the questions asked by the Select Committee, particularly 10,11 and especially 12. Now look up the DECC response - but be seated when you do it. The objective of this inquiry is to maintain the "authority" of the IPCC but to allow wriggle room on the "carbon budget" by allowing enough "uncertainty" to justify future policy decisions. Note the answer to question 7 - the decision can be postponed, but only if the CCC is discredited - hence its exposure by David Rose NOW.
In passing- the DECC submission is a rich mine of ironic humour. An early favourite is seen in question 1.
"There were only a few inaccuracies in the 4th AR and none were found in the previous WG1 report".
AR3 was, of course, constructed around its star feature - Michael Manns hockey stick graph, disappeared from AR4.
LMAO
Can I suggest that many take a leaf out of Dr (Prof?) Tol's book - very well structured response, highlighting the question and then providing a clear and reasonably concise answer.
He also highlights one of my bug-bears with climate science: the adoption of terms from other areas of science (and economics), but using them in a subtly, or sometimes not so subtly, different way. A recent thread at WUWT has go completely bogged down because of CliSci's use of 'residence time' to mean the length of time human-emitted CO2 will continue to affect the atmosphere's composition, rather than the geoscience meaning where it is the average length of time an individual atom or molecule will stay in a system.
Diogenes, good point. The points made in the submissions, for instance by BH sceptics, are not entirely novel though well presented.
So, the question is, who's gathering them and why?
'It occurs to me that whoever wrote these questions knows the answers, and they are uniformly devastating to the alarmist cause. This is a necropsy.' - kim Dec 19, 2013 at 3:07 AM
'I think that many are missing the internal political action taking place here. The backstory of this inquiry is the eroding credibility of the IPPC which is, after all, THE authority behind all government policy as regards this issue.' - diogenese2 Dec 19, 2013 at 1:50 PM
Perhaps we are being too pessimistic here, and all the usual establishment suspects have swallowed the committee's rather cunning bait without seeing the hook. Parliamentary committees have the potential to cross-examine witnesses to the point of crucifixion, and none more so than when they perceive mischief in publically funded ones.
In other words, the call for submissions could be conceived as a neat way to populate the firing line with victims and at the same time collect the best ammunition to fire at them.
Following her written evidence, Donna Laframboise has been invited to give oral evidence to the select committee. Good - that should be interesting. I wonder who else has been invited, especially from among the BH regulars who responded. I haven't BTW.
Perhaps an exploratory laparotomy in which the pus laden mass of Catastrophe, metastasizing sepsis systemically, can be excised, and what can be salvaged of the corpus's health will be undertaken.
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kim
Get rid of the green crap, you mean?
"kim
Get rid of the green crap, you mean?"
This time she is unusually cryptic. I think this time she is saying we ought to shower or have a bath six times a week to keep the belly button clean. One day a week will be the rest day.