Willetts transcript

The transcripts for the questioning of Science minister David Willetts by the Science and Technology Select Committee are now available here. The extract relating to Climategate is as follows:

Q46 Graham Stringer: What lessons can be learned from the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia from the Climatic Research Unit there? Has that damaged the image of British science?

Mr Willetts: We have now had three inquiries into that episode and on many of the allegations I think the UEA and the research community there have come out essentially cleared of any of the allegations that were made of them but, equally, there are some lessons. Not everything was right, including proper data-keeping. The Government attaches a lot of importance to transparency, making sure that research data are accessible to the wider public as easily and quickly as possible. The latest investigation suggests, as I understand it, that most of their raw data could be accessed, I think the phrase is, within two minutes, but it is very important and people think that it is absolutely clear that that kind of data should be accessible and perhaps a certain defensiveness got hold amongst some scientists at the UEA precisely because of the criticism and attacks they were under from sceptics on the blogosphere. Instead of advancing forward and wanting to engage, it made them think, "What is this mischief maker doing and why the hell should we correspond with that?" I think there is a lesson for all of us in that.

Q47 Graham Stringer: Finally, is the image of British science damaged by this episode?

Mr Willetts: I hope not. Clearly the initial reporting of the original concerns went round the world, but we have now had three investigations covering different aspects of this, and although there are lessons to be learned I think they show that when it comes to the conduct of the science the work that was done at UEA, as I understand it, has passed muster when assessed by independent experts to check whether anything went wrong. My view is that their scientific work stands. There are lessons about how they engage with members of the public and others coming to them asking for data and information about what they are doing.

Snippets

I have guests at the moment, so no time to blog. Here's some interesting links though:

Phil Jones interviewed in New Scientist

Kerry Emanuel op-ed.

Booker namechecks man of cloth

Christopher Booker's latest article namechecks your humble host while discussing the selection of papers for the Oxburgh report.

More on Oxburgh's eleven

When my FoI request to Imperial led to the disclosure of the Hand and Hoskins emails, there were many redactions of names, which I found rather frustrating. From the language of many of the emails, it appeared that many of the names were of senior people and should thus have been disclosed. I queried this with Imperial who have now disclosed almost all of the relevant detail.

One interesting snippet has emerged from this. When the original emails were released I reported on an inquiry made to Lord Oxburgh by Oliver Morton of the Economist about how Oxburgh's Eleven papers were chosen. When he replied, Oxburgh said in essence that he didn't know.

What I received was a list from the university which I understand was chosen by the Royal Society The contact with the RS was I believe through [name redacted] but I don't know who he consulted. [Name redacted], when I asked him, agreed that the original sample was fair.

Well, now we know who the redactions were. The contact through with the Royal Society was through Martin Rees - we knew that already. The other redaction, the other person consulted about whether the sample of papers was reasonable, was...Phil Jones.

Now, whichever way you look at it, this is a funny question to put to the accused if one's objective is a fair trial. I mean, what could Jones say? "You've picked all my bad papers"? And of course Jones must have known that the sample was not representative.

The Guardian debate

Atomic Hairdryer has produced this report of the Guardian debate.

Guardian Climategate debate, RIBA 14th July 2010

Panel

Fred Pearce
Trevor Davies
Steve McIntyre
Bob Watson
Doug Keenan

Chair

George Monbiot

A pretty full house for this debate, so approximately 300 attendees.

Monbiot got off to a good start by explaining origins of Climategate as either a "hack or a leak, who knows", releasing  email correspondence into the public domain. Those emails appeared pretty bad, with data manipulation, FOI obstruction and interference with the peer review process. Monbiot described the UEA's immediate response as catastrophic, with a failure to engage with critics or answer questions. He then moved on to suggesting the content was blown out of all proportion by the climate change denial community". He mentioned the three inquiries, the "half hearted and shoddy" Parliamentary enquiry, and the two UEA commissioned inquiries, describing the Oxburgh review as the science review with Russell reviewing conduct. The response to these reviews broadly exonerated UEA and the scientists, but still left issues unexamined.

Click to read more ...

The Hoskins emails

The Hoskins emails are much fewer in number but there are still some gems:

Click to read more ...

The Hand emails

These are the key issues from the Hand emails (excluding the attachments, which will be considered separately).

Click to read more ...

+++Behind the scenes at the Oxburgh inquiry+++

Slowly, but surely, the curtain is being lifted on Lord Oxburgh's inquiry into the science of CRU. Today I received a response to my FoI request for the emails of Sir Brian Hoskins and Professor David Hand (both of Imperial College, London) related to the Oxburgh inquiry. They are going to make a bit of a splash I think.

The emails can be downloaded here. There's a file for each man's correspondence and another for the attachments to Hand's emails. There's a lot of administrative stuff, but there is much of interest and some that made me laugh out loud.

I particularly liked the bit Oliver Morton of the Economist asks Oxburgh who chose the papers for the inquiry. Oxburgh replies:

Thanks for your message - the answer is that I don't know! What I received was a list from the university which I understand was chosen by the Royal Society The contact with the RS was I believe through [redacted - probably Martin Rees] but I don't know who he consulted. [Name redacted], when I asked him, agreed that the original sample was fair.

 A summary of the Hand emails is here. The Hoskins emails are here. Just the attachments to do.

The wisdom of Solomon

As part of his ongoing investigations into the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, David Holland has used FoI to get hold of a pile of emails from Professor Brian Hoskins, then of the University of Reading and now at Imperial College.  Readers will remember that Professor Hoskins amusingly rubber-stamped the list of papers chosen by UEA for the Oxburgh report.

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When Trevor tricked John

Among the extra information released by Professor Beddington's office today, there were also some attachments to a message sent to him by Professor Trevor Davies of UEA. The message itself was released last time round, sans attachments, so I wrote back requesting the missing detail. They have apologised that the attachments "had become disconnected from the IT record".

The message concerned was the one in which Davies invited Beddington to "warm up" certain panel members before they received their official invitations to take part in the Oxburgh inquiry. Having made this request of Beddington, and explained the need for speed, Davies continued as follows:

For background I attach (1) a draft letter which will be sent to David [Hand, one of the panellists] by Ron [Oxburgh] (2) a list of papers we anticipate will be examined.

The letter is essentially just the invitation. I don't see anything of interest. The list of papers meanwhile is more intriguing. It can be seen here. While the papers mentioned appear to be identical to the versions seen previously (although I've not checked them in detail), at the bottom there are some words I hadn't seen before:

These key publications have been selected because of their pertinence to the specific criticisms which have been levelled against CRU's research findings as a result of the theft of emails.

Oh dear.

The boy played a blinder

Professor John Beddington, or Sir John as we must start learning to call him soon, was the man who suggested Lord Oxburgh as the head of the inquiry into UEA's scientific oeuvre (or at least those parts that were likely to be uncontroversial.

As readers here know, I have previously obtained some of Professor Beddington's emails under FoI and I've now obtained one more.

It's pretty interesting.

It was sent on the afternoon after the publication of the Oxburgh report.

Click to enlarge

This is the text:

Dear Ron

Much appreciated the hard work put into the review, general view is a blinder played. As we discussed at HoL, clearly the drinks are on me!

Best wishes, John

Update on Jun 15, 2010 by Bishop Hill

For the benefit of non-speakers of cockney, "played a blinder" simply means "played very well", usually in the context of a game of football...erm....soccer.

In the circumstances though, one can't help wonder if there's some kind of pun in Sir John's words.

Lord's letterhead revisited

I'm reliably informed that the letterhead in the Oxburgh letter is genuine. I'm also informed that its use in chairing the review panel would not count as non-House-of-Lord activity. This seems rather odd to me, but I stand corrected.

40% say AGW is exaggerated

From the Mail

Global warming scepticism is rising, a major poll shows.

It found that 78 per cent of Britons believed the world's climate was changing, compared to 91 per cent five years ago.

The Ipsos Mori survey of 1,822 people for Cardiff University found 40 per cent believed the seriousness of global warming was exaggerated.

But the vast majority believed in climate change and that human activity was to blame.

Only 18 per cent thought it was mainly or entirely caused by natural processes.

The Lord's letterhead

Updated on Jun 11, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Steve McIntyre has an amusing piece about the briefing letter written by Lord Oxburgh to Kerry Emanuel, one of the panellists on his inquiry into the science of CRU. Oxburgh seems to have given his address as "care of Lisa Williams at UEA" - Williams being someone in the vice-chancellor's office.

This does rather suggest a certain lack of independence by Lord O, but something else has caught the eye of the observant readers at Climate Audit - something that makes the story even stranger than it at first seems.

Reader "Mac" at CA makes the following comment:

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Foundation for SciTech on global warming

The Foundation for Science and Technology is a charity that allegedly promotes science and technology and aims to bring about "the greater efficiency of the industry of the United Kingdom".

A brief glance at some of its council members might suggest a different view, however.

• Lord Rees
• Lord May
• Lord Oxburgh
• Lord Browne (head of BP)

Hmm....

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