Newsnight on Campbell resignation

The BBC Newsnight coverage of Philip Campbell's resignation from the Russell Review team is here. Non-UK readers may have difficulty accessing it.

What's missing

OK readers, you have work to do.

Submissions for the Russell review are due by the end of the month and it will require some concentrated effort by the community to put something together so quickly.

Here's the Issues for Examination document published by Sir Muir and his team. The first question is "Does this cover everything it should do?" The document covers several broad areas, with more detailed questions under each heading. Are there any broad areas missing? Are there more detailed questions to be added under existing headings?

Here are the broad headings.

1. The allegation of ignoring potential problems in deducing palaeotemperatures from tree ring data that might undermine the validity of the so-called “hockey-stick” curve.

2. The allegation that CRU has colluded in attempting to diminish the significance of data that might appear to conflict with the 20th century global warming hypothesis

3. It is alleged that proxy temperature deductions and instrumental temperature data have been improperly combined to conceal mismatch between the two data series

4. It is alleged that there has been an improper bias in selecting and adjusting data so as to favour the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and details of sites and the data adjustments have not been made adequately available

5. It is alleged that there have been improper attempts to influence the peer review system and a violation of IPCC procedures in attempting to prevent the publication of opposing ideas.

6. The scrutiny and re-analysis of data by other scientists is a vital process if hypotheses are to rigorously tested and improved. It is alleged that there has been a failure to make important data available or the procedures used to adjust and analyse that data, thereby subverting a crucial scientific process.

7. The keeping of accurate records of datasets, algorithms and software used in the analysis of climate data.

8. Response to Freedom of Information requests.

Answers in the comments please.

The Richard and Roger show

Richard North and Roger Harrabin go head to head on the subject of Climategate on the Gaby Logan show on BBC Radio. Richard isn't very gentle.

Audio starts from about ten minutes.

Channel Four on the Campbell resignation

Channel Four's website report on the resignation of Philip Campbell is here, with a mention for this site and some soundbites from Steve M.

Campbell resigns

Channel Four news here in the UK has just reported the Philip Campbell has stepped down from Sir Muir Russell's review because of the statements to Chinese radio that were reported here. This was undoubtedly the correct thing for him to do.

There was some discussion on the Channel Four report of sceptics seeing his departure as "taking a scalp" - I don't see this as being the case. The panel needs to be unbiased, without predetermined positions on the issue of climate change or climate science - these are, in essence, Sir Muir's words. Campbell clearly didn't meet this requirement and his resignation therefore became inevitable.

A replacement will obviously have to be found, and I am going to make some suggestions to Sir Muir as to where such a person might be found. In the meantime we still have the issue of Geoffrey Boulton, the ex-UEA man who has spoken out strongly in the past in favour of the global warming position. Although he's not as wildly inappropriate as Philip Campbell his position on the panel still makes it look somewhat unbalanced. I would suggest that either he needs to go too or he needs to be balanced with somebody of sceptical views.

11 days later

Sir Muir has taken three months to form his team and to decide what they are going to examine. We, the public now have eleven working days to make our written submissions.

Russell review under way

Updated on Feb 11, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Feb 11, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Feb 11, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Feb 11, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Feb 11, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The BBC seems to be first out of the block in reporting on the Russell Review's first appearance at a news conference an hour ago.

The most interesting part is the identities of the panellists:

• Geoffrey Boulton, general secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Professor of Geology)
• Dr Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief for Nature journal
• Professor Peter Clarke of the University of Edinburgh (a particle physicist by background, he now heads the e-Science Centre at Edinburgh)
• David Eyton, head of research and technology at BP
• Professor Jim Norton, vice president for the Chartered Institute for IT.

There seem to have been no changes to the scope of the review.

Click to read more ...

Russell review to start work

Nearly three months after Climategate, Sir Muir Russell's review of the implications finally gets off the ground today. Well, he's going to make an announcement about starting work anyway.

Sir Muir Russell, who is chair of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland and former principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow, will explain the review's remit at 11am at a press conference and clarify which issues it will investigate. He will also set out the review's work plan and processes, invite submissions and evidence, explain the inquiry's openness and publication policy and provide an estimate for when he will report back. He will also introduce his team.

Comment not free

Fred Pearce has another article up about the Hockey Stick, part of the Guardian's review of Climategate. We are invited to leave our comments and annotations.

Unfortunately that's less of an option for me, since the Guardian has put me on moderation. This means that my comments take 24 hours or so to get posted. It's not really possible to have meaningful input in these circumstances - rather like trying to take part in a public meeting by post - so I'll put some comments up here when I get the time.

Click to read more ...

Vexatious behaviour

Eli Rabett is trying to argue that the requests put into the University of East Anglia were vexatious and also that they were turned down. Now, I know something about this, having put in one of the requests myself, although I was not part of the coordinated effort to ask for them five countries at a time. I just took the blunt approach and asked for all of them.

What is interesting is that neither my broad sweep nor the piecemeal requests were rejected as such. While everyone got a response that was in the form of a rejection, the grounds given were not that the request was vexatious. Each of us was in fact directed to a new webpage where the information we had asked for (or at least the paltry collection of available agreements that UEA could find) was to be found. The grounds for the rejection were therefore that the information was publicly available already.

The FoI Act allows public authorities to treat requests made obviously in concert as a single request, at which point it is possible to reject them as vexatious or demand payment as the circumstances demand. The fact that neither of these things happened shows that Eli's supposition that the requests were burdensome is wrong.

Michael Meacher on the Hockey Stick

The left wing Labour MP Michael Meacher has posted an article about problems with the Freedom of Information Act and makes a passing allusion to the Hockey Stick affair.

It is dreadful that the FOI requests made to the scientists at the UEA climactic research unit were so disgracefully blocked (albeit that some of the climate change sceptics demanding the information may have been obsessive and partisan themselves). Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions, but it should still have been made readily available. The evidence about the 'hockey stick' is much more serious and should certainly have been provided in full. Scientific data should be a free resource to all who seek it. But that of course applies much more widely than just to contentions about climate change.

Amen to that. I wonder if he has read my book?

Council of Science Editors

The Council of Science Editors, a body that, in its own words, is a leader in promoting ethical practices in science publishing, is going to take the theme The Changing Climate of Scientific Publishing-The Heat Is On for its annual conference.

It reflects a program that addresses both global climate change (and the role science editors have in communicating relevant research on the topic) and the rapidly changing nature of the workplace and technology in the 21st century.

This sounded pretty interesting. There are some huge lessons to be learned by scholarly publishers from the sorry story of the Hockey Stick and Climategate. Materials availability, gatekeeping at journals is just the start of it. In fact I wondered why nobody had contacted me to speak on the subject. ;-)

Here's the reason: the Council is only interested in the role editors can play in promoting global warming scaremongering. Here's the notes on the keynote address:

It is striking that on climate change, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists (and the
scientific literature) are in consensus concerning climate change; yet a cloud (pun intended) of doubt and distractions like the recent “Climate Gate” email scandal continues to exist. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the climate change picture is clear to climate scientists even with a few missing pieces. This talk will examine the current and best science thinking on climate change and objectively discuss what “we know, don’t know, or need to know.”

So a body that exists to promotes ethical practices in publishing, when presented with evidence of unethical practices, gets in a speaker who is going to write them off as "a distraction".

Oh dear.

Pulling the wool

The letter from Phil Willis, the chairman of the House of Commons select committee on science and technology to Sir Edward Acton, Vice Chancellor of UEA, received a certain amount of publicity at the time the announcement of the parliamentary inquiry was announced. It is now possible to read the reply from Sir Edward on the website of the select committee. A PDF is available here.

Here are a few of the highlights and some thoughts thereon:

Hack or leak?

A significant amount of material including emails and documents appears to have been accessed illegally from a back-up server in CRU and downloaded in whole, or possibly in part, on to the Real Climate website . Whilst it was removed promptly from that website, it was not before it had been widely accessed and distributed across a number of other websites . The method by which the material was obtained from CRU is the subject of a police enquiry. Substantial resources from the Norfolk Constabulary are being brought to bear but clearly this is a complex and technical forensic investigation, and must be expected to take time.

As is plain from this, there is no mention of hacking. I still find the fact that the police are apparently unaware of whether CRU's systems were hacked or not completely incomprehensible.

CRU's commitment to transparency

CRU's research outcomes have been published in peer-reviewed journals of the highest standing. All adjustments to data where this has been necessary (for example to account for the move of a meteorological station), have been explained.

But the code hasn't been released has it?

CRU has undertaken, with the good offices of the Met Office, to seek permission from the various national meteorological services which have provided the original station data to publish it.

Why wasn't this done before? If you can hand the data over to your pals, why not to other researchers?

This is not a simple undertaking as some 150 meteorological services were involved in the collection of the original data, and some see the data as having economic value or are otherwise sensitive to its release.

You mean the three met services that said it could only be used for non-commercial purposes?

Restoring confidence in CRU

None of the adjusted station data referred to in the emails that have been published has been destroyed.

Ah, but the emails referred to the raw data, didn't they? I winced when I read this. It looks a bit like trying to pull the wool over the eyes of our elected representatives.

When we receive Sir Muir's findings we will understand which if any of the
allegations stand and which fall and we will act accordingly. We will publish
the findings and the University's response.

Can we take it then that we are going to hear none of the evidence? That the hearings are going to be held in private? No surprise there then. Can we also take it then that Sir Muir will not be considering Sir Edward's apparent role in breaches of FoI law either?

I guess it's down to Parliament then.

Paul Dennis responds to the Indy

Paul Dennis is highly unimpressed by the Independent's editorial this morning and has responded in the comments with an angry denunciation, which is, in my opinion, thoroughly deserved.

I am growing tired of the lazy, careless and vacuous journalism that seeks to smear by insinuation. This newspaper asserts that 2 prominent climate bloggers (who spoke at the Heartland Institute) who associate with Paul Dennis a 54 year old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia.

I don't know what the Independent is trying to insinuate but to me associate in this context strikes of conspiracy, subterfuge etc.

A few minutes checking archives would have revealed that my association is that I have written several comments relating to isotope geochemistry and how it may be used to determine past climates at several websites, including climate audit, WUWT, and Air Vent. I am passionate about the public understanding of science and making my science accessible to others. One way, in this modern age, is to engage in blogs. A little more research might have shown the journalists that I also hold some small grants to enable me to develop science education programmes that involve schools in some of my research and that are also to develop 'open notebook' science methds in teaching and research. For those who are unaware open noterbook science is the complete publishing of lab notebooks on the web, raw data, successful and unsuccesful experiments, comments etc. It is the laying out of the genesis of ideas, development of hypotheses and tests, the experimental approach through to interpretation, write up, publication. In addition my laboratory is completely open to anyone who would like to visit and see how we use isotope geochemistry as a tool to understanding natural processes.

I have never met any of the bloggers referred to in the article. I sent Jeff Id a copy of an important paper I wrote with colleagues on climate at the southern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, which by the way showed a strong warming. I wrote to Steve McIntyre once to invite him to give a seminar, and I also wrote to ask if he was aware of anything on the web that could have been hacked from UEA computers. Attempts to paint me a 'denier' (see the article headline are way clear of the mark and I take it very much as an insult.

It is because of this lazy reporting and repeating of memes that I refuse to talk to any newspaper journalist including Paul Bignell of the Independent on Sunday.

Paul Dennis

The Independent is exhibiting the worst kind of gutter journalism and seems incapable of understanding that it is possible to believe in manmade global warming while having an abhorrence of secret data, withheld code and all the shenanigans of journal nobbling and publication gatekeeping that seem to be a feature of Hockey Team science.

Politicians drawn in to FoI coverup

The scandal over the illegal blocking of FoI requests by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit has deepened somewhat, with the Mail reporting that the Defence Minister, Bob Ainsworth, used his statutory powers to help prevent disclosure of the work of the former Met Office Chief Scientist on the grounds that for the public to see it would prejudice Britain’s relationship with an international organisation.

Given that the disclosure is expected to reveal corruption within that international organisation, it does rather start to look as if Bob Ainsworth has managed to get himself implicated in the cover up. I don't suppose he has thought it through for himself - he is probably taking his officials' word for it.

I don't suppose people will forgive him though.