As expected, PSU inquiry is whitewash

Steve McIntyre has posted some initial thoughts on the Penn State inquiry into Michael Mann's conduct as revealed by the Climategate emails and, as expected, the inquiry has been cursory and biased and has broken its own rules.

As many observers have noted, PSU derives a large income from Mann's presence on its staff, and it was therefore quite foreseeable that they would move mountains to keep him.

Which is why the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has said that they are going to do their own investigation.

And another thing - it is slightly surreal for Penn State to find Mann innocent of having suppressed data when the code for his Hockey Stick confidence interval calculations is still not available.

Penn State inquiry reports

The Penn State inquiry into the conduct of Michael Mann has apparently concluded....without apparently taking evidence from anyone who thinks that Mann might have done something wrong.

I wonder if they think that anyone will find this a very convincing inquiry.

Amusing also to see that the Penn State inquiry has completed its work before Sir Muir Russell's "independent" review of the Climatic Research Unit has even started. As I understand it, Sir Muir is still putting his team together and finalising the terms of reference.

It almost looks as if he's dragging his feet.

PSU inquiry to be held in private

The inquiry into the Michael Mann's conduct launched by Penn State University in the wake of the Climategate revelations is to be held in private, with only PSU staff present.

The initial probe involves a committee of just three, all of whom are Penn State employees with a clear interest in preserving the reputation of a university ranked ninth in the nation in receiving government research and development grants. It may raise some eyebrows to know that no outsiders will monitor the proceedings.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The perception of integrity in the climate research community will likely determine whether trillions of dollars are pumped into less-developed nations in the form of virtual reparations to atone for 150 years of unequal occupation of the so-called “carbon space” by more prosperous nations.

Still, the public is asked to trust the findings of a secret probe conducted by the colleagues of the accused.

Meanwhile there is no information at all about the parallel inquiry into CRU. I'm trying to rectify that and will report back as soon as I know something.

Mann interview at philly.com

There is a very interesting article at Philly.com, featuring Michael Mann and Doug Nychka among others. Nychka is a statistician who is closely connected with the Hockey Team and was a member of the NAS panel that investigated the Hockey Stick.

Choice quote:

Nychka, who works for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the [Hockey Stick] became so controversial because it was misinterpreted as proof that humans cause global warming.

This misinterpretation was of course due to, among others, IPCC WG1 head, Sir John Houghton.

New Year starts badly for Mann

James Delingpole has the scoop

Michael Mann – creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal – is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.

Read the whole thing.

Mann in the WSJ

Michael Mann has an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he describes the accusation that he plotted to keep sceptics out of the scientific literature as "false".

Society relies upon the integrity of the scientific literature to inform sound policy. It is thus a serious offense to compromise the peer-review system in such a way as to allow anyone—including proponents of climate change science—to promote unsubstantiated claims and distortions. The good news is that it is not happening today in relation to either climate scientists or the deniers of climate science.

His case is seriously undermined by his failure to explain the contradictory evidence in the emails.

Climate contention

Eduardo Zorita thinks we might all be getting a little het up over the email in which Michael Mann says this of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen Northern Hemisphere records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly [2000 years] back--I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2k, rather than the usual 1k, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made [with] regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to "contain" the putative "MWP", even if we don't yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back.

Eduardo notes the context - of creating a new temperature reconstruction - and suggests that the word "contain" must therefore mean "incorporate". I'm not so sure.

If the words are to have the meaning Eduardo suggests, then the normal English idiom would be to have a subject in the sentence. Something like:

...it would be nice to have the reconstruction contain the putative MWP...

or, since we already know wer'e talking about a temperature reconstruction:

...it would be nice to try to have it contain the putative MWP"...

Alternatively, he could have avoided referring back to the subject by using a different word altogether:

..it would be nice to try to incorporate the putative MWP...

This feature of the standard idiom is not seen in the alternative meaning of "contain", which is "restrain". Here the word "contain" doesn't need to refer back to its subject, but sits comfortably on its own.

...it would be nice to try to contain the putative MWP...

just as he said it.

Let's refer back to the original quote.

...it would be nice to try to "contain" the putative "MWP"...

Why does he use quotation marks around "contain"? There is no obvious need to do so, but could it be that this is a way of giving his readers the equivalent of a nudge and a wink? And what then is the meaning of the nudge and the wink? Is he pointing out that he has used an idiom of "restrain", but is implying that, of course, he is talking about "incorporating" the MWP? Or is it the other way round - that it really would be nice to restrain the MWP?

Who knows? Without seeing the "good point that Peck made with respect to the memo" it's hard to say, but of course there will be those who point out that Peck is Jonathan Overpeck, the man who is alleged to have written the infamous "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period " email.

Caspar - the PDF

A couple of readers have asked to use the Caspar paper. With this in mind, I've prepared a PDF version of Caspar & the Jesus Paper. At the same time I've corrected some typos and made a change to the final section just to clarify some of the issues around RE benchmarking.

The PDF doesn't include the pictures from the original posting, because I haven't got that far with LaTex yet(!), but I hope people find it useful. You can download it here.

Caspar and the Jesus paper

There has been the most extraordinary series of postings at Climate Audit over the last week. As is usual at CA, there is a heavy mathematics burden for the casual reader, which, with a bit of research I think I can now just about follow. The story is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cyncism that is rife among climate scientists, and I'm going to try to tell it in layman's language so that the average blog reader can understand it. As far as I know it's the first time the whole story has been set out in one place. It's a long tale - and the longest posting I think I've ever written. You may want to get a long drink before starting, and those who suffer from heart disorders may wish to take their beta blockers first.

Click to read more ...

Climate Audit, potted history

Steve McIntyre has posted a presentation he made recently which is an excellent potted history of the Hockey Stick story. It's not too technical so it's suitable for anyone new to the subject.

It's a very large file though (11MB)