JG-C is worried

John Graham-Cumming is worried he may have found an error in the CRU temperature series algorithm.

Read it here.

Hans von Storch interview

English translation here:

It appears from the so-called CRU-Mails that the cartel has sinned against a basic scientific principle namely the principle of transparency. Science should be practiced openly. All published results should in principle be verifiable, should be open to criticism, also to criticism from people who are not well-meaning. That is something a scientist must accept, that people who are not well-meaning scrutinize him.

The e-mails from CRU indicate that there have been attempts to keep people from publishing
by contacting authors or publishers, that one lead author of the IPPC has at the least  expressed the thought of keeping certain persons out of the whole process and lastly, and possibly the worst, that the data on which their research is based has not been put into the open for verification. This is not acceptable.

Science-free journal

Fred Pearce has a shocking report in New Scientist. Two of the claims he makes are simply not true.

This is turning into a bad week for NS, what with the world and his wife now referring to the once august publication as "non-scientist".

Pearce is attempting to explain away the failure of the CRU to release its raw data - "move along, nothing to see here". The reason the data has been withheld, he says, is quite simple:

It is tied up in confidentiality agreements with the governments that provided it. The Met Office and the UK government say they are now seeking permission to publish it.

This is not true. When CRU was questioned about these alleged agreements there were found only to be a couple which prevented commercial reuse and that was it.  The CRU page where this was shown has now been taken down, but that's what it was. The Climate Audit thread at the time is here. Even then, we know that the data was being merrily passed on to other favoured researchers, i.e. Peter Webster at Georgia Tech.

Pearce looks as though he is acting as a willing accomplice to a programme of disinformation.

Meanwhile Pearce also has this to say about Doug Keenan's work on the Wang papers on urban heat islands in China:

Keenan won his FOI request and said it showed the data was flawed, because some of the stations had been moved by the Chinese scientists who ran them. He said Jones's reluctance to share the data was evidence of fraud.

Keenan said nothing of the sort. This is what he actually said:

The two papers relied on data from 84 weather stations in China that were required to have very few significant moves. Of the stations, 42 were classified as rural and 42 as urban. For 40 of the rural stations, no histories exist (hence moves cannot be determined); the other 2 stations had substantial moves. For 9 of the urban stations, no histories exist; most of the other 33 had substantial moves.

In other words Keenan was saying that the researchers had made false representations of their data.

Scientists say "trust us"

The Met Office's hastily assembled list of scientists speaking out in favour of the alleged consensus has been something of a damp squib. I mean, lots of people with a vested interest in the continuation of the global warming crisis think that the global warming crisis is real and important?

Big deal.

Here's an interesting thing though - people who didn't sign it:

• Phil Jones
• Keith Briffa
• Bob Watson
• Andrew Watson
• Mike Hulme
• Tim Osborn

Some people might say that it's remarkable that some of the most prominent climatologists in the country failed to sign a statement of confidence in climatology.

Or perhaps they know something that the rest of us merely suspect.

Then again, maybe they were busy on other things.

Was Briffa the mole?

AJ Strata looks at the evidence that someone in the heart of the Hockey Team couldn't stand the pressure any longer and decided to spill the beans. Was it Keith Briffa?

Mail on the splice

Wow. A 3000-word article on the nitty gritty details of some paleoclimate shenanigans in a major newspaper.  Kudos to the Mail.

Schneider doesn't want to acknowledge Climategate

Is calling security a reasonable response to someone asking a question about the Climategate emails? Global warming promoter Stephen Schneider seemed to think this was easier than trying to respond to the questions.

Hail to the Chiefio

Chiefio has some more interesting analysis of one of the emails, showing how CRU, NCDC and the IPCC are all in each other's pockets. He also finds more evidence that CRU has been "economic with the actualite" in their responses to FoI requests.

And so it begins

McIntyre has posted his first analysis of some of the emails. It's not looking good for the Hockey Team, with their scheming to remove the divergence problem and "hide the decline" from the IPCC reports laid out in horrifying detail.

There are going to be months of revelations like this.

The Report

Provided the producers decided I didn't waffle too much, I should appear in The Report, tonight at 8pm, UK time. Link here. It should be available on the iPlayer for a while thereafter.

Lots of people think I will have been set up ("They always set up the sceptics!").

Let's see....

Update on Dec 10, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Overall I was pretty pleased with that.  I think the programme gave a fair crack of the whip to both sides and I think the conclusions were pretty much correct for where we stand now.

A few minor gripes:

• having said that the Hockey Stick isn't central to the AGW debate, it would have been nice if they hadn't cut off the bit where I explained why it matters
• the evidence that the IPCC process was biased against sceptics was not mentioned
• some mention of the code and maybe the Harry readme would have broadened the perspective.

But for my first experience of mainstream media, I'm quite happy (apart from the fact they didn't mention the book!!).

Russell review to be a whitewash

When Sir Muir Russell's inquiry into the goings-on at CRU was announced, many were sceptical of whether the results would be anything other than the traditional civil service whitewash. With that in mind I dropped a message to the CRU press office to try to find out exactly what kind of a review was going to be held.

This is what I asked:

1. Is there any significance in the fact that this is a "review" rather than an "inquiry"?

2. Will the review be open to external observers? Will there be public hearings for example?

3. The first point on the terms of reference in your press release indicate that the review will look at the question of "manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice". This seems very limited in scope. For example, will the review examine the possibility of manipulation of results through the data processing as well as through the data itself? In other words, will it examine code as well as data? Will the review look at the other misdemeanours that are alleged to have taken place, for example attempts by UEA scientists to undermine peer review and other procedures in the journals, rigging of the IPCC review and breaches of its procedures? If not, why not?

5. There is an allusion in one of the emails to the vice chancellor apparently being aware of an attempt to avoid a Freedom of Information request. Will this be considered by the review?

Unexpectedly, I got a very fast response, from a press officer at UEA. This was as follows:

Thanks for your email.

The University has made it clear that all issues arising from allegations as a result of emails stolen from the CRU and published without permission on the web will be considered by an independent review.This will be led by Sir Muir Russell and it is expected that it will report by Spring 2010. Statements regarding the independent review and other related issues are available at: www.uea.ac.uk.

Any further statements will be available from this website and circulated via the wire services.

OK, so we're good on the scope, but we're none the wiser on the nature of the review or inquiry or whatever. I've pressed the, ahem, press officer for a response on the first two points, but he hasn't responded. In seems likely therefore that the inquiry will be held behind closed doors.

I conclude that the intention is to whitewash the affair.

Readers of this blog saw this coming. The results of my survey into sceptic attitudes to Sir Muir were as follows:

I trust him: 2%

I don't trust him: 56%

Don't know: 43%.

This was based on 717 responses, so only 14 people were impressed by Sir Muir's credentials. It was said at the time the review was announced that Sir Muir needed to have the confidence of the sceptic community. It is clear from these results that he doesn't. This, together with the suggestion that he intends to hold the inquiry in private mean that he should really stand down.

He will not do so, of course. He has some whitewash to apply.

Irony failure

The Graun is reporting that some of the climate scientists at the centre of the email scandal have received abusive emails.

Yuk. I hate it when people behave like this.

I laughed though when I read David Appell's coverage of the story:

A society in which anyone, but especially scientists, are not free to express their findings, thoughts, and opinions (regardless of what they are) without being threatened by death is a society which no longer respect freedom, reason, rationality, or decency.

It goes without saying that hounding them out of their jobs or closing journals to them is quite acceptable (if they are sceptics of course), but abusive emails, no. 

Free speech goes for people you disagree with too.

(As a footnote, now we know that the break-in suffered by Andrew Weaver was a misleading piece of spin (the breakin was a year ago, during a spate of such incidents at the university) I think I would like to see these abusive emails.)

Quote of the day

Hat tip to Hans von Storch for pointing out this comment in the emails. It was sent by paleoclimatologist Ed Cook to the CRU's Keith Briffa, outlining his opinions on the current (2003) state of knowledge of past temperatures:

The results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).

Read that carefully people. We know a fair bit about the temperatures in the last 100 years, but only for the extra-tropics. Before that, we know nothing. Nothing.

Nothing.

Read the whole email. It's astonishing.

Update on Dec 7, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Aidey in the comments points out that I've got the nuance of this post wrong. What Aidey points out is that what Cook is saying is that we understand short-term variability (<100 years) but not long-term (>100years). What does this mean about our understanding of the much-disputed medieval warm period though?

More cracks in the facade

In my posting on the lack of any statement from the Royal Society on Climategate, I wondered if a refusal to address the wrongdoing might eventually lead the fellows to take a stand against the leadership. Something very like this seems to be happening at the American Physical Society. This email to a selection of the fellows of that august body was reposted to the comments at Climate Audit.

Dear fellow member of the American Physical Society:

This is a matter of great importance to the integrity of the Society. It is being sent to a random fraction of the membership, so we hope you will pass it on.

Click to read more ...

The Royal Society on Climategate

In September 2006, the Royal Society was apparently concerned about ExxonMobil's involvement in funding political lobby groups. This is what they said at that time.

The Society welcomes open debate, underpinned by sound science, on the subject of climate change.

This is an admirable position for the Royal Society to take. A national academy should demand open debate on scientific issues and must require the science that informs that debate to be sound.

This is important, because we have seen in the CRU emails that prominent climate scientists, among them one of the Society's own advisers, have attempted to prevent free debate on the subject of climate change. On an issue of such importance it is inconceivable that the Royal Society would not take an unequivocal stand.

In that same statement, the society also said this:

In September 2006, the Royal Society wrote to ExxonMobil to express concern that some of its corporate publications were presenting a misleading view of the scientific evidence about climate change and were over-emphasising uncertainties about what we do and don't know....

As the UK's national academy of science, the Royal Society has a responsibility to speak out when scientific evidence is misrepresented. We will continue to do this on climate change and on other issues.

It is essential that the scientific evidence on climate change is accurately represented so that policymakers, industry, the public and other stakeholders can make informed decisions about what actions to take.

I think all sides can agree that misrepresentation of the science to policymakers must be prevented. Informed decision-making by politicians is vital. Again, the need for a statement from the Royal Society is overwhelming. It is clear at least from "Mike's Nature trick" that scientific evidence has been misrepresented. (The argument that the word "trick" means "technique" when used in the context of "hiding the decline" is foolish in the extreme. The ready acceptance of this wordplay by journalists has brought them nothing but ridicule.) Removing evidence that tree ring proxies are failing to capture temperature changes is simple misrepresentation.

This is an important moment for the Royal Society.  The evidence is clear - scientists at the CRU have misrepresented our understanding of the Earth's temperature history to policymakers. The Society must speak out now. If it does not, then the fellows must take a stand against the Society's leadership. Failing that the premier scientific body of the UK will forever be brushed aside as another mouthpiece for the environmental movement.