Rip it up and start again

Fox News seems to have something of an exclusive, with a story that the Met Office is proposing creation of a new verifiable set of global temperature data. Something of an admission in there, wouldn't you say.

At a meeting on Monday of about 150 climate scientists, representatives of Britain's weather office quietly proposed that the world's climatologists start all over again to produce a new trove of global temperature data that is open to public scrutiny and "rigorous" peer review.

I am almost certainly an incorrigible cynic, because I just can't get out of my head the idea that this will mean that the existing CRU data and code will remain off limits, while scientists spend a decade or more creating this new temperature set.

Update on Feb 23, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The text of the Met Office's proposal (or at least the executive summary thereof) is here. Interestingly it requires the data to be publicly available and the methodology to be published in the peer reviewed literature.

I guess this means that we will have access to the data but not the code. Adjustments to remain a secret then, and remember the warming is all in the adjustments (or it is in the US at least).

Oral evidence

The oral evidence sessions for the Parliamentary Inquiry into CRU have been announced.

Oral evidence

Forthcoming session:

Monday 1 March 2010

3.00pm The Rt Hon the Lord Lawson of Blaby, Chairman, and Dr Benny Peiser, Director, Global Warming Policy Foundation
3.30pm Richard Thomas CBE, former Information Commissioner
4.00pm Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor, University of East Anglia and Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit
4.40pm Sir Muir Russell, Head of the Independent Climate Change E-Mails Review
5.00pm Professor John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Julia Slingo OBE, Chief Scientist, Met Office, and Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientist, Defra

Click to read more ...

Academic sceptics

Roger Harrabin emails to ask if I know any UK-based physical scientists who are sceptics. Not many is the answer, but then I don't know who the vast majority of my readers are anyway.

I do serve a lot of pages to readers at .ac.uk web domains, and I can see that at least some of these are from physical science departments, so it's fair to say that such people exist, although they are perhaps few in number. If so, Roger H would like to hear from you, in confidence, if necessary. He also welcomes evidence that putting one's head above the parapet in this way is a career-ending move.

Commenters have already noted Paul Dennis's remarks at WUWT to the effect that he responded to Roger H's earlier call and didn't get any reply worth the mentioning, but I would suggest that this could reasonably be interpreted as an oversight. Best to make the effort I would say.

Reisinger and the divergence problem

An interesting article from the New Zealand Herald, looking at the divergence problem. What particularly fascinated me was the explanation of the issue from Andy Reisinger, who some will remember as being a man who is very close to Rajendra Pachauri.

Reisinger is a climatologist, but not, if I remember correctly, a paleo guy. It's odd then to see him being the expert interviewed on the subject of the divergence problem. It might also explain the explanation he gives for this inconvenient effect:

Dr Andy Reisinger, a climate researcher at Victoria University who has followed the progress of proxy temperature reconstructions, said it could be that a lack of rain in recent decades had stunted tree growth in some high-altitude spots - or that when temperatures reached a certain point, trees began to react differently.

Whatever the cause, "the relationships [between tree-rings and temperature] that we've developed for the last 500-100 years may not apply in the last 50," he said.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that paleoclimatologists picked trees that were sensitive to temperature rather than precipitation when they set about recreating temperatures of the past. If a drop in rainfall can cause a drop in growth now, then it could have caused a drop in the past. In other words, the paleo guys will have to admit that they know absolutely nothing about temperatures before the nineteenth century.

Light posting

Posting will be light-to-non-existent this weekend.

Reiner Grundmann on the Hockey Stick Illusion

Reiner Grundmann reviews The Hockey Stick Illusion at Die Klimazweibel.

Email

I seem to be getting a certain amount of incoming email going astray. If you've sent me something important and I haven't responded you may want to send it again.

Michael Mann in the Benshi...

...the Benshi being the name of a website. It's mainly about the interaction of media and climatology, with the usual denunciations of the "well-funded" efforts to undermine Mann and his colleagues. Ironic that, given we've just been having a conversation about why we can't seem to afford anyone easier upon the eye than David Henderson and Lord Lawson to put our message over to the masses.

The interview is here. (H/T Doug Keenan in the comments).

Richard Lindzen in the Boston Globe

Richard Lindzen has a pop at Kerry Emmanuel's Boston Globe op-ed in a letter to the paper's editor.

KERRY EMANUEL’S Feb. 15 op-ed “Climate changes are proven fact’’ is more advocacy than assessment. Vague terms such as “consistent with,’’ “probably,’’ and “potentially’’ hardly change this.

Environment correspondents

David Henderson's interview on Newsnight Scotland was rather good, I thought. Henderson came over rather well, and in my opinion he's a better frontman for the GWPF than Nigel Lawson, with none of the political baggage with which the former chancellor is encumbered, while also being possessed of oodles of gravitas.

Henderson's opponent was Rob Edwards, the environment editor of the Glasgow Herald.

Click to read more ...

Jones in Sciencemag

There is an extended interview with Phil Jones in Sciencemag. I think it's fair to say that people are going to take issue with some of the things he has to say.

David Henderson on Newsnight

Viewers in Scotland should be able to catch David Henderson talking about climate policy in the wake of Climategate on Newsnight tonight. I gather it's only going to be shown on the Scottish edition of the programme, so those of you south of the border will miss out unless it turns up on YouTube.

Use the unthreaded link

Please could readers who want to make general and off topic comments use the unthreaded posting. I've added a link at the top of the navigation bar so you can always find it.

I'd also appreciate it if commenters would maintain a calm tone and refrain from making rash remarks.

Update on Feb 18, 2010 by Bishop Hill

I've also added a recent comments section in the nav bar so that unthreaded comments get noticed.

Hiding the decline

de Boer steps down

The BBC is reporting that top climate official, Yvo de Boer, is stepping down. Perhaps indicative of some behind-the-scenes manoevring?