Toronto Sun on Climate Files

Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun asks if maybe climate science shouldn't be just a bit more open, and citing Fred Pearce's The Climate Files as evidence. The tone of the article is interesting, with Goldstein noting that Pearce is not a "denier", but pointing out his criticisms of the climatology community's failure to check its findings.

As well as taking pot shots at climatology peer review, he also has things to say about the Climategate inquiries:

Simply having panels of sympathetic academics (or politicians) take a cursory look at the work of climate scientists and pronounce it sound — what happened following Climategate — doesn’t cut it.

Telegraph letters

Two letters to the Telegraph from familiar faces today. First Bob Ward takes a pot-shot at Booker for questioning the integrity of the Climatic Research Unit.

SIR – Christopher Booker (December 26) claims that emails from the University of East Anglia “showed how the little group of scientists at the heart of the IPCC had been prepared to bend their data and to suppress any dissent from warming orthodoxy”.

Independent inquiries led by the Commons Science and Technology Committee, Sir Muir Russell, Lord Oxburgh, and the US Environmental Protection Agency found such allegations to be untrue.

Mr Booker stated that “much of the northern hemisphere” in 2007 suffered “the winter from hell”. In fact, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average temperature in the northern hemisphere for the boreal winter in 2007-8 was the 14th highest since records began, and 0.36C above the standard reference average for 1961-90.

He also claimed that the boreal winters in the northern hemisphere in 2008-9 and 2009-10 were “colder still”, when they were, respectively, the 8th and 9th warmest on record.

Bob Ward
Grantham Research Institute
London School of Economics
London WC2

Then Tim Worstall considers yet another piece of government lunacy, this time centred around the recommendations of the Stern report.

SIR – Having read the Stern Review, the various IPCC reports and multitudes of economic papers on what to do about the entire problem, assuming we accept that there is such a problem, it is clear that the policies being recommended by those experts are: a carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade system, or subsidies to new technologies.

All of the economists say the same thing. Any one of the three are viable and whole solutions.

Cap-and-trade limits emissions; a carbon tax provides the incentive to reduce them to the needed level; and subsidies will replace emitting with non-emitting sources of energy.

So now my question: having hired Lord Stern at some expense, having analysed his recommendations at presumably greater, why is the Government now insisting at gargantuan expense in doing what Lord Stern said we should not do?

We only need to choose one of the three – rather than be charged thrice to do all of them.

Tim Worstall
Messines, Portugal

Comedy of errors

The New American has been taken to task by Simon Dunford, the press officer of UEA. New American had been discussing the relationship between CRU and the Met Office

The Met Office works closely with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which made headlines last year at the center of "Climategate." That scandal involved a number of forecasters in Britain involved in fraudulent reporting of data to forward their own climate-change agenda.

I think it may be reasonable of UEA to take issue with the word "fraudulent", which is not really a particularly accurate summary of the allegations. However, Dunford chose to respond as follows:

We are extremely surprised at the inaccurate and defamatory claim in the final paragrah [sic].... Our scientists were exonerated of any dishonesty or malpractice by a series of independent reviews.... Readers of your article would not know that they had been cleared of any such accusations.

Dunford's response seems a mistake to me, opening up the question of the credibiliity of the inquiries, when concentrating on the question of "fraudulent reporting of data" would have done the job just as well. New American has now been able to responsd in turn with a further article looking at the work of Russell and Oxburgh. Your truly is cited in the process.

UEA hearings redux

The big news while I was away was the announcement of a further invitation to a member of staff at UEA to appear before the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. We have already had Oxburgh's appearance, and knew that Sir Muir Russell was to appear with Sir Edward Acton at the end of this month. However, it now appears that UEA's Trevor Davies will also be making an appearance. Davies, as regular readers know, was not only Phil Jones predecessor as head of CRU but, more importantly, appears to have been a pivotal figure in the organisation of the "independent" inquiries into CRU. All three men will appear on Wednesday 27th October.

Click to read more ...

Pursuit of Fox

When I wrote yesterday's piece about Fiona Fox, I expected little or no reaction, but a number of science commentators are now reporting the story, including Climate Audit, The Blackboard and the Guardian's Science Notes column.

Some of the commentators on CA were quite critical of Steve for discussing the story, even though he had made clear Fox's involvement in the Oxburgh report. To that we could also add her involvement in the recent Royal Society statement on climate change or the involvement of her various colleagues at the Science Media Centre in sceptic-bashing activities: Bob Ward's various smear campaigns need no introduction of course, but there were also the roles of Mike Granatt and (briefly) Philip Campbell in the Russell review.

I had been particularly interested in the press release issued by the SMC at the time of the Oxburgh report. The centre's choice of experts and their remarks on the inquiry were very interesting:

• Bob Ward, who described Oxburgh's five page report "rigorous" and "thorough";
• Sir Brian Hoskins, who had rubber-stamped UEA's selection of papers for the inquiry and then described the report as "thorough and fair"
• Lord Rees, who had helped select a chairman with a conflict of interest and a biased panel and who had allowed the  Royal Society's name to be used to disguise the fact that UEA had chosen their own papers. Rees described the 5-page report as "thorough".
• Myles Allen, a very vocal critic of climate sceptics, wisely made no comment on the thoroughness or otherwise of the report.

Given that the report was so embarrassingly short, for the SMC to put forward a series of people who were willing to describe the investigation as thorough suggests strongly that they are a propaganda outfit rather than a body that helps journalists get at the truth. One commenter at CA suggests that SMC is the "public relations arm of establishment science" in the UK. That may well be right and journalists might do well to consider that possibility when they are fed stories by Fiona Fox and her chums.

Wonky code

Nature has an article up about wonky computer code, with particular reference made to the Harry Readme file and Nick Barnes' efforts to get climatologists to do better on the coding front.

This struck me as interesting:

When hackers leaked thousands of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, last year, global-warming sceptics pored over the documents for signs that researchers had manipulated data. No such evidence emerged...

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but none of the inquiries actually looked at the computer code, apart from there being a brief word from Tim Osborn in evidence to Muir Russell, denying that the bodges he'd mentioned affected published results. I'm pretty sure the Harry Readme was not looked at by any of the inquiries.

There is an accompanying comment piece by Nick Barnes here.

L'Institut Turgot on le rapport Montford

For the French speakers among you, the Brussels-based liberal think-tank L'Institut Turgot discusses my GWPF report on its blog. (That's liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word).

Oxburgh transcript

The transcript of Lord Oxburgh's evidence to the Science & Technology Committee is now available, here.

Financial Post op-ed

I have an opinion piece up at Canada's Financial Post.

New S&T committee submissions

I the wake of the announcement of the reopening of the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee's investigations into Climategate, or at least into the UEA inquiries thereof, there have been a number of written submissions to the committee, which can be seen here.

• David Holland writes to complain about the way his submission to the Russell panel was mishandled.
• Doug Keenan points out that his fraud allegation was ignored
• Chris Huhne is still sticking to the "they were exonerated" line.

...and there is a lengthy submission from UEA. Notable features of this are:

There is some discussion of a non-existent allegation that Lord Oxburgh changed the terms of reference for his panel. This is not the concern. The concern is that Parliament was told that he would look at the whole of CRU's science, but he didn't. The blame for this appears to lie with UEA. The rest is very woolly.

Orlowski interview with Lord Turnbull

Andrew Orlowski interviews Lord Turnbull on the GWPF report.

The former head of the civil service has called for a new approach from scientists and policy makers to restore waning trust in climate scientists. Speaking to The Register, Lord Andrew Turnbull, former cabinet secretary and head of the Home Civil Service between 2002 and 2005, says the University of East Anglia's internal enquiries into the Climategate affair were hasty and superficial, and called for Parliament to sponsor two wide-ranging investigations.

Some points from El Reg

A couple of important points about the Oxburgh hearing have been pointed out to me.

Firstly, towards the end of Orlowski's Register piece, we are told that Professor Acton has agreed to return to talk to the Science and Technology Select Committee again. No date is given, however.

Secondly, in the comments on my earlier thread about his piece, Orlowski notes that Google News has not indexed his article, something which he says is very unusual.

It's all becoming quite interesting.

More Oxburgh reaction

Andrew Orlowski at the Register picks up the Oxburgh story:

When the University announced the composition and role of the Science Assessment Panel, it billed it as an "independent internal reappraisal of the science". In March the University's Vice Chancellor Lord Acton confirmed the impression, telling the select committee that Oxburgh's enquiry would "reassess the science and make sure there is nothing wrong".

That was misleading, Oxburgh told MPs yesterday.

TonyN's piece at Harmless Sky is also well worth a look.

Once the official transcript becomes available I expect that this will cause quite a stir. If there was any doubt before that his inquiry was a fiasco, then there can be none now.

Silence...

Delingpole's on-the-mark piece aside, there have been no more mentions of Lord Oxburgh's travails from the MSM. Perhaps they think it's not important.

Hullo New Scientist? Hullo Nature?

Is there anybody there?

Josh 39

More cartoons by Josh here.