Climate trends at the BBC

I was pondering the usage of the term "climate change" and how it seems to have taken over from "global warming" as a shorthand for the crise-du-jour. Is it really taking over, or have I just imagined it.

After searching around for a suitable tool to test the theory, I discovered that Google News now has an archive facility. This will let you do a search on a particular site and for a particular year. (If anyone knows of a better way to do this, do let me know. Google Trends won't do it because that's searches, not mentions on a site).

This is how things are at the BBC:

 

Which pretty much confirms what I'd thought. The growth in the BBC coverage is also startling. AGW has been a news issue for a long time now, so it's hard to come up with a rational explanation of these figures that is not conspiratorial.

Then, on the offchance, I thought I'd compare the growth of the total of the two terms in the BBC to all news organisations. This was quite interesting too:

 

You'll notice that the two lines are plotted on different vertical axes, but what it shows is that the two phrases were relatively more prevalent much sooner at the BBC than they were at other organisations.

So is this evidence of the BBC pushing an agenda? Perhaps. Probably, even. In order to prove it we would have to discount the possibility of a growth in the number of news organisations, or perhaps even the BBC getting having a relatively larger internet presence sooner than its competitors.

Gut feel says that this chart confirms my belief that the BBC has been acting as the publicity arm of the environmental movement.

Nature blogs

MacMillan Nature group now has a really quite impressive web presence - at least in terms of volume. Their head honcho, Richard Charkin, is a blogger and what's more he's a real one too. He actually seems to write the posts himself, and does (for a corporate bod) dangerous things like offering the occasional opinion. He looks like a good man to have in charge of a publishing business when things are changing so quickly.

Under his tutelage, the group has started up a plethora of blogs (or "clogs" as EU Referendum likes to call corporate blogs) covering every subject from peer review to avian flu. (There's a song in there somewhere). This is admirable, but the group still gives the impression of not really having found its feet in the online world. There are also some pretty large risks they are running, and I'm not sure that they are playing their cards very cleverly. More of that later.

First though, why do I think they're not quite on the ball as regards blogging? I've subscribed to a couple of their blogs - one on peer review and also Nature Climate Feedback. The first thing to say is that content is a little thin on the ground. If you want a popular blog it's pretty much a given that you have to update it regularly, if not daily. Only the very best bloggers manage to buck this trend. Comments on Nature blogs are also pretty much moderated to death. I left a comment on the Peer to Peer blog shortly after it opened. This was not actually published until after I'd had an email correspondence with the site administrator which lasted the best part of a week - it was a friendly correspondence, for sure, but why didn't they just post the comment straight away? Another comment which I posted on Monday night was finally published today, more than 24 hours later. This is not the way to stimulate an interesting debate. It rather smacks of the way science was conducted in the nineteenth century, when you put your correspondence in the mail and it was delivered by packet steamer. It just doesn't cut the mustard any more.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. Nature's web tech site, Nascent, has pulled in fully 164 comments in the 18 months since its first posting. Climate Feedback, being in such a controversial area, really ought to be their showpiece site, but has managed to pull in just 150 comments in three months. This all suggests that the punters are being turned off.

It's a tricky situation for Nature. It's not clear how the group intends to monetise their web presence. Most people out there are relying on getting lots and lots of eyeballs on their web presence in order to do this. This is fine for people like DK or Instapundit who can be opinionated, but Nature has a much more difficult tightrope to walk. Its whole commercial reputation relies as being seen as a neutral umpire in matters scientific. If it were seen to take sides in a debate, it might get away for it for a while, but eventually it would end up backing the wrong horse in one race or another, and then its reputation would be shot. It has to be very careful about getting into the news and opinion game.

A couple of examples:

In Nature Reports: Climate Change, which is a climate focused site of which the Climate Feedback blog forms a part,  Amanda Leigh Haag writes about a possible successor to the Kyoto Treaty. In it,  she cites the following:

• Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist and climate-policy expert at Princeton University in New Jersey,
• John Drexhage, director of climate change and energy programs at the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Ontario, Canada,
• Rob Bradley, director of international climate policy at the World Resources Institute, in Washington DC,
• Elliot Diringer, director of international strategies for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, based in Arlington, Virginia,
• Roger Pielke Jr, a climate-policy expert at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
• Saleemul Huq of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development

Now if you are going to take virtually all of your quotes directly from current and former staffers of environmental pressure groups (the exception is Pielke), you run the risk of people thinking that your publication is not actually a science site, or even just a news site, but is in fact just another arm of the environmental campaigning movement. You might perhaps think that this is an admirable thing to be. But many of your readers will not, and they may well stop reading both your websites and your scientific journals.

Another example is this post by Olive Heffernan, who is the editor in charge of Climate Feedback. In it she lambasts Czech president Vaklav Klaus' recent article in which he says that there is a risk to liberty from the demands of environmentalists. She decries his lack of qualifications as a climate expert by way of denouncing his views, although she is herself a zoologist by training. These kind of opinions are fine in general. It's fairly easy to take pot-shots at them, and if the comments cleared moderation in less than 24 hours I might do so more often - but that's not the point. When they come from a Nature employee the situation is rather different. Can a Nature editor really be seen to publicly take one side like this? Heffernan not only has a go at Klaus, but also at Richard Lindzen who is, if nothing else, a professional climatologist. These are Nature's customers for heavens sake. You can't go slagging them off just because they disagree with you, Olive. Should prospective Nature authors be asking themselves if their views are acceptable to the group before they submit their manuscripts?

It would be a pity if Nature were found to have spoken out in favour of the global warming enthusiasts and to have published junk science on their behalf, as well as having ridiculed the skeptics. It just wouldn't look very clever, would it?

I don't think all is lost though. The climate debate is largely conducted at Climate Audit and Real Climate and there is a real lack of communication between the two sides. There could be a very exciting role for Climate Feedback in umpiring a proper debate between the two sides. It could be wonderful to read, useful for the advancement of science, and cut a huge amount of risk out of the Nature business model. I imagine the moderators calling in expert advice - say a statistician when the conversation turned to matters statistical - in order to force people to address the arguments of their opponents rather than the usual ad-hominems and evasions which characterise most online argument.

First though they would have to admit that there is a debate at all, so I'm not holding my breath.

Update 21 June 2007: Welcome to readers from nurture.nature.com! I hope you find the posting useful.

BBC officially biased

The Sunday Times is reporting that an internal BBC report to be published next week will conclude that the corporation is institutionally biased in favour of the left wing causes held dear by most of its staff and journalists. While it is nice to have confirmation of what most of the dextrospere has long known, we have no idea of whether the report will actually have any effect in practive. It's much more likely that it will be paraded as evidence that the Beeb has changed while actually leaving everything just as it is.

If the BBC is sincere about wanting to correct the imbalance we might expect to see a number of actions.

Firstly, heads would have to roll. The requirement to be balanced is a key part of the BBC's charter - such a flagrant breach surely demands a major clear out of the senior staff who have allowed this state of affairs to continue unaddressed for so many years.

The placing of BBC job advertisements in the Guardian, to the virtual exclusion of any other newspapers, should be ended. There should be a defined period - say ten years - in which all BBC jobs are only advertised in the Telegraph. This should help redress the balance in the staffing.

The BBC's disinformation campaigns on behalf of environmentalists and socialists need to be reversed. There needs to be an sustained series of programmes to question global warming, recycling, UK membership of the EU, and all the other myriad causes for which the corporation acts as an unpaid cheerleader. The BBC has told one side of the story for many years. In order to redress the balance it needs to tell the other side, and the other side only, for many more years to come.

Of course there's not a cat's chance of any of this actually happening. There will be a fuss this week when the report comes out. Then when it's all died down again, the red flag will be raised again over Television Centre and normal service will be resumed. 

Quote of the day

Jeff Norman, in a comment in this thread. 

There is no consensus, anyway

There's a very interesting article here, which summarises and indexes a series of profiles of some global warming sceptics. These are not a few obscure eggheads in out of the way colleges - there are some big name scientists in there.

My series set out to profile the dissenters -- those who deny that the science is settled on climate change -- and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world's premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop -- the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series.

The consensus is a myth. 

Comment from a climate scientist

I've just had a very interesting comment from someone signing themselves "Climate researcher" in response to my piece on the witholding of research data. I reproduce it here in full:

The data used by the overwhelming number of studies is freely available online from government sources. Same with model outputs. I always try to reproduce the results of previous studies to test my algorithms and have yet to find a problem. Climate science is not junk, as you say. The climate system is difficult to model, to observe and to predict. Most climate scientists are trying to understand the system in order to make season ahead predictions so that we may optimize agriculture or water resources systems to support a growing population or to make better flood predictions. Most researchers aren't involved with IPCC. I invite all people who are hostile to climate science to go back to school. You'll find out how fascinating and challenging the field really is. Thanks.

My response was this (again in full)

From the general tone of your comment I'm guessing that you accept the examples I've given, but you are saying that they are not representative of climate science as a whole. That seems credible and it would be hard for anyone to claim otherwise.

I don't mean to be hostile to climate scientists as a whole - only those guilty of withholding data and code and manipulating their results. But you as (presumably) one of the good guys needs to recognise that your professional reputation is being put on the line by the bad guys in your midst.

A professional body can't risk its brand being damaged by allowing miscreants to  get away with unprofessional behaviour. The honest majority are going to have to stand up and condemn the bad guys in no uncertain terms. If they don't, then they risk some of the mud which is being flung around sticking to them instead of its intended target.

(I should add that this article might be misconstrued as some kind of threat. It isn't, and I will be trying to ensure that I make clear who I am criticising in future). 

The hitchhikers guide to the IPCC

The IPCC has finally released the reviewers comments on its recent 4th Assessment Report. If you want to study them they are available in hard copy only at the Littauer Library of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. You may think that this means that if you are a hard up climatology student from, say, India, you are completely stuffed. But no, the IPCC have thought of everything. The staff at Harvard will arrange to copy up to 100 pages for you at a cost of $34 plus $0.40 per page. If you can afford to employ a researcher they are happy for someone to come in to see which pages might be of interest. Otherwise you will have to make do with 100 pages at random...so maybe the Indians are stuffed after all.

Does this situation remind you of something? 

 

PROSSER
But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.

ARTHUR
Oh, yes, soon as I heard of this plan, I went straight around to see them yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call much attention to them, had you? Such as maybe telling someone about them?

PROSSER looks more uncomfortable.

PROSSER
Well, the plans were on display –

ARTHUR
On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them!

PROSSER
That’s the display department.

ARTHUR
With a flashlight.

PROSSER
Well, the lights had probably gone.

ARTHUR
So had the stairs.

PROSSER
Er – well – you did find them, didn’t you?

ARTHUR
Oh, yes. Yes, I did. The plans were on display, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door reading “Beware of the Leopard.”

It is not known if the Littauer Library has stairs, or whether the Environmental Science and Public Policy Archives are, in fact, located in a disused public convenience.

(Source here. Hitchhikers Guide reference shamelessly ripped from the comments). 

More on peer review

Via Nature Peer to Peer Blog, this is an interesting article by a philospher of science called Janet D. Stemwedel, which throws a little light on some of the issues around the idea of replication of scientific results before publication.

Stemwedel wonders if it might be possible to create a paid job of "peer reviewer". This would solve the problem of having your work reviewed by your scientific rivals. But the biggest gain might come from having these reviewers actually try to recreate the science - hence replication would take place prior to publication. There's a very interesting comments thread which is well worth reading too.

Whether this would work or not would depend on the specialism. For many studies, the idea of collecting the data a second time is, frankly, ridiculous, but even for these cases there would still be immense value in reproducing the trail from raw data to results. It would certainly make cherry-picking of data and dodgy adjustments to the numbers much harder to get away with.

Thought for the day

Rio, Kyoto and now Bali. Climate scientists get to visit some very swanky places don't they? I wonder if, back in the good old days before the earth turned into a furnace, they had their get-togethers in more earthy places? Hull, perhaps. Or Dusseldorf.

Is the game up for the climate junk scientists?

I posted a while back about the failure of climate scientists to archive their data or to release it on request - a scandal which has been carefully documented by Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit blog.  Another post on the same subject developed a very interesting comments thread with contributions from McIntyre and Maxine Clarke, the executive editor of Nature - one of the journals who have failed to enforce their own policies on data availability.

Over this weekend there have been a couple of developments which suggest that change is afoot. The first was a comment left by the eminent climate scientists, Hans von Storch and Eduardo Zorita, on Nature's Climate Feedback blog

Another important aspect [of McIntyre's contributions to the climate debate was] his insistence on free availability of data, for independent tests of (not only) important findings published in the literature. It is indeed a scandal that such important data sets, and their processing prior to analysis, is not open to independent scrutiny. The reluctance of institutions and journals to support such requests is disappointing.

[My emphasis] 

For two such prominent scientists leave comments of this kind on this particular blog can only be seen as a pretty stern criticism of Nature's stance on the issue, and we should certainly applaud their integrity in doing so, particularly as they seem to disagree with many of McIntyre's scientific arguments.

The second development looks to me as if it could be dynamite though. In a story entitled "Lies, all lies, but who do you tell?" the Sunday Times Science Correspondent Anjana Ahuja does a pretty good job of covering the issue of replication of scientific papers, and gives us the reactions of the management at Nature.

[Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature] is considering whether some studies, especially ones that make headlines, should be replicated before going to press.

Science operates on an assumption of honesty – raw data are rarely scrutinised by either institutions or journals, and academics are encouraged to work independently. Rogue researchers feed off this culture of trust: busy superiors and colleagues often sign off research papers and grant applications without reading them. Fame ensues and grants and citations roll in.

And so it becomes hard to “out” a suspect. Do you snitch to your head of department, for example? To your vice-chancellor? Might he or she wish to conceal an issue that could make the institution look culpable? If the person moves and you divulge your suspicions to his new employer, can you be sued?

If Nature actually go through with this and enforce the policy of replication before publication, it will be a big step forward for the integrity of science in general and of climate science in particular, although I'm sure it won't be the end of the story. For a start one might well ask the question of "who will do the replication?" Someone in the same closed clique is not going to give us the same assurance as someone who is of a diametrically different opinion. And it should also be pointed out that the new policy does not absolve scientists of the duty to make their data and code available. Different researchers may bring different criticisms to bear, and while it is obviously impractical to demand that everyone should have a shot at a paper pre-publication, it remains vital that they are able to do so after the event.

But all this notwithstanding it looks as though there may have been a welcome shift in the position of Nature on the issue. I'm sure everyone who cares about science, whether believers in global warming or not, will recognise that this can only help the search for the truth. Let's hope that this embarrasses the other culprits into making similar changes.

And while we're about it, we might also note that pretty much the whole story has been played out on blogs. Well done the blogosphere. 

Big questions

Climate change is a big question. No, make that a huge question. A multi-trillion dollar question. The biggest question of our times and probably of any other times too. We are being asked to make devastating changes to our economies and to the way we live. Lives will be disrupted and ruined,  but we are told that this we have to grit our teeth and deal with it. It's a necessary cost to bear in order to save the planet and a still worse fate.

This being the case, here are a couple of questions:

1. Shouldn't all the scientific research be replicated? I don't mean peer-reviewed - that's just a way of trying to cut out non-original work and any scientific "howlers". What I mean is take the raw data and turn it into the same results as were published in the original papers. This isn't done now because the climate scientists often don't archive their data, and don't release it when asked.

2. We should be able to see all the comments made by IPCC the reviewers of the IPCC reports so that the public can assess the firmness of the consensus. Complete agreement between 2500 scientists is simply not credible.

That's not too much to ask, is it? (Actually I'm sure it is).

Climate science is not sound science

It's pretty much fundamental that scientific results have to be reproducible in order to be accepted as valid. You have to describe exactly what you did, in sufficient detail for somebody else to be able to reproduce what you say you did. If they can't, and you can't explain  where they went wrong, then the result will be written off as erroneous or even fraudulent.

For many specialisms, statistical manipulation is a normal and necessary part of the  scientific process. In order for the results to be replicated, a number of things are necessary, but chiefly:

• the raw data
• how this was selected
• the statistical manipulations performed

Now obviously, for most studies, the amount of data is too large to reproduce in the printed journal. Because of this many journals try to enforce data availability in their conditions of acceptance for a journal submission. There seem to be two main approaches taken. The "strong" approach is that the data must be available in an online archive at the time of publication. The "weak" approach is a requirement that data is made freely available on request.

It's perhaps surprising that Nature, the premier science journal in the UK if not the world, adopts the weak approach. Their data availability policy is here:

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols available to readers promptly on request.Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed at the time of submission of the manuscript, and the methods section of the manuscript itself should include details of how materials and information may be obtained, including any restrictions that may apply.

Compare this to the Journal of Applied Econometrics: 

Authors of accepted papers are expected to deposit in electronic form a complete set of data used onto the Journal's Data Archive, unless they are confidential. In cases where there are restrictions on the dissemination of the data, the responsibility of obtaining the required permission to use the data rests with the interested investigator and not with the author.

Well, so what? 

It matters because the rules are being flouted by scientists - particularly climate scientists - and the journals are struggling to enforce them. Requests for data are being ignored or met by delay and obfuscation. This is unacceptable, particularly for public funded scientists.  Steve McIntyre details just a few of the problems he has encountered in this comment:

[I]f the data is not archived at the time of publication, the authors will typically move on to other things and there is no guarantee that the data will ever archived. Lonnie Thompson had never archived any data from his Himalayan sites, some taken in 1987, until I started raising the issue in 2004 and then archived the least conceivable information. The time when the data is most useful is when you read the article. I like to see what actual data looks like before it's massaged and the best time to do this is when you read the article. So the data should be online contemporary with publication rather than a year later when you may or may not still be interested int he file.

As it happens, many of [dendrochronologist Rob Wilson’s] associates aren’t very prompt about archiving data. None of Luckman’s data is archived; Rob’s ICefields and B.C. data done with Luckman are not archived, other than the reconstruction. None of Esper’s data from Tian Shan is archived. Esper refused to provide data except through repeated requests through Science and even after over 3 years of effort, the data provision is still not quite complete.

This situation stinks, and it may well eventually develop into a full-fledged scandal. No science which is not capable of reproduction should be permitted in the IPCC process, and that means the IPCC should insist that data and methods are fully disclosed, before the paper is considered.

To my mind it's the journals who must take the primary responsibility for putting it right though. If the Journal of Applied Econometrics is able to insist on concurrent data archiving, then there is absolutely no reason why other disciplines cannot insist too. There is certainly no excuse for Nature, whose scientific cachet is so great that they reject 90% of submitted manuscripts, nor indeed for Science.

To my mind the journals who fail to insist on full concurrent disclosure are risking their reputations. If one of these articles is later found to be wrong, or even fraudulent, the journal will certainly get egg on its face. By insisting on concurrent disclosure they will at least concentrate the minds of the authors on ensuring that their data and methodology are flawless.

Let's hope they recognise this and do something about it.

Dendrochronology

I'm currently reading Oliver Rackham's "Woodlands".  While the dust jacket says that he's one of Britain's best known naturalists, Rackham's is hardly a name that is often cited around most British breakfast tables. This is a pity, because he has written some masterful books, including the seminal History of the Countryside. His books are full of wonderful, arcane knowledge about the British landscape and the way land use has changed over the years. Woodland and trees turn out to be wonderfully counterintuitive. For example the presence of an ancient tree in a wood is a strong indicator that the wood is not ancient. This is because in woods, trees are felled on a regular basis. So if you see an ancient tree in a wood, it probably means that a wood has grown up around an a single ancient tree. I find that rather wonderful.

Rackham is a botanist: his specialisms are trees and woodlands - as a fellow of All Souls Corpus Christi Cambridge he is an acknowledged authority on his subject - which is why I was amused to read his thoughts on dendrochronology and paleoclimatology. It's possible that I may be inferring something into his words which is in fact not there. But I can't help but get a feeling of a gentle sarcasm, a wise old man raising an eyebrow at the antics of the young.

Tree rings have other uses. Because weather varies from region to region, the provenance of a timber can sometimes be determined: if the sequence matches a master curve from Poland rather than England, this is evidence that the sample is of Baltic oak. By removing year-to-year variation, leaving the long-term trends, it has been possible in America to use growth rates as a measure of climate change.

To get a result one normally measures at least 100 rings, preferably from each of several contemporary trees or timbers. Tree rings are affected by other factors besides weather, such as defoliating caterpillars. In view of the statistical 'noise' introduced by unknown factors, it is surprising that the method has been so successful and so seldom at odds with dating by other means. 

[Emphasis is mine] 

Climate sceptics on Five Live

Prmoninent climate sceptics Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder were interviewed on Radio Five Live about their new book on the cosmic ray theory of climate change. The programme is archived here and should be available until the weekend. The interview starts around 1hr 55min in.