Last night, Marta and I had the pleasure of attending the Broadway opening night of Will Eno’s...
When the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee considered the Fifth Assessment Report a few months ago I was surprised when chairman Tim Yeo asked witnesses about the Hockey Stick. Although central to the Third Assessment and still relevant to the Fourth, I was of the view that its importance had now waned as all but the activist parts of the climatological community seem to have quietly accepted its methodological...ahem...peculiarities.
Like so many of his colleagues, Brian Hoskins seemed unable to say clearly that the Hockey Stick was wrong but, with a wonderful sirhumphreyish circumlocution, allowed the committee to understand that this was in fact the case:
Q3 Chair: Do you have any anxiety that controversies that arose from previous reports—take the hockey stick graph that seems to be referred to quite frequently—may cast doubt on the conclusions reached in AR5?
Professor Sir Brian Hoskins: There is a concern always if previous mistakes have been made, as in some cases, or maybe be accentuation of one view. It is a group of people and mistakes will be made and that should not reflect on anything in the future for that body. Of course, we should all be sceptical and we are all sceptical the whole time; so probing it must go on. It is not going to be taken as the Bible, but it should be taken as the view of a large group of scientists from the diverse range of where the scientists come from and this is the consensus view given by them. That is what it is. There must always be a concern if then people can return to a mistake made 20 years ago or an accentuation made 20 years ago to down excellent work that has been done now. There must be a concern.
I couldn't help but remember Hoskins' words when I saw this photo on Twitter yesterday. It shows the President of Yale, Peter Salovey, making a presentation to IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri.
As Max Planck noted, science advances one funeral at a time. On that basis, expect Yale to continue to celebrate junk science for many years to come.
President, Yale University