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).

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.

The riddle of Russell

John Graham-Cumming writes:

Now there's a surprising thing to receive. A personal email from Sir Muir Russell who recently headed the Independent Climate Change Email Review. I had emailed the review on July 8 asking if they would be willing to release their C++ source code...

Read the whole thing.

Call for new UK research integrity org

Nature's Great Beyond blog notes calls for a new body to be set up to oversee UK research integrity. According to a report from the Research Integrity Futures Working Group there's a problem at the moment:

Current UK arrangements are sometimes portrayed as less than transparent, with examples of bad practice ‘swept under the carpet’,” warns the group’s newly released report. “And there is limited evidence to contradict that view.”

You don't say.

UEA response to the inquiries

UEA has issued a response to the various inquiries. The timing is odd, to say the least. Perhaps they've all been on holiday.

See it here.

Nice work if you can get it...

From the Glasgow Herald:

A former civil servant criticised for his role in the Holyrood Parliament building fiasco has pocketed £40,000 for chairing an inquiry into the recent climate change row.

Sir Muir Russell walked away with nearly £6000 a month for leading a probe which cleared scientists at the University of East Anglia of data manipulation.

And he didn't even attend the interview with Phil Jones.

Climategate report

I am now in a position to reveal that my report for GWPF on the Climategate inquiries will be released on 14th September.

+++Climategate hearings reconvened+++

The House of Commons Science and Technology COmmittee has announced that it is to hear evidence from Lord Oxburgh next week:

The Science and Technology Committee will hold an oral evidence session following-up to the previous committee’s report on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

The session will be on:

Wednesday 8 September 2010 at 10.30 am

Thatcher Room, House of Commons

The Committee will take evidence from Lord Oxburgh, who headed the International Panel that was set up by the University to assess the integrity of the research published by the Climatic Research Unit.

An oral evidence session with Sir Muir Russell, who headed the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review, will be announced in October.

The sessions will focus on how the two reviews responded to the former committee’s recommendations about the reviews and how they carried out their work. 

They get paid for this stuff...

[Update: I've just noticed that Gardner's article goes back to May, so it predates some of the findings about how the Oxburgh report was put together. I'll leave the post here anyway, because it's still instructive to see what Dan Gardner said in the light of what we know now.]

There's an interesting piece on global warming sceptics in the Ottawa Citizen, by Dan Gardner. I've never heard of Mr Gardner before but the Telegraph's Tom Chivers called him "the wonderful Dan Gardner" so I thought I would take a look at the article, which is called "Weighing the evidence".

It's well worth it because it turned out to be silly enough to get me laughing out loud.

Click to read more ...

BBC apologises to CRU

UEA have issued a press release noting that they have received an apology from the BBC. The kerfuffle was over a Today programme piece back in December 2009, in which John Humphrys said:

The facts are that the emails were stolen and they revealed that some researchers in the university's Climatic Research Unit had been distorting the debate about global warming to make the threat seem even more serious than they believed it to be.

The BBC explain that they were open minded on the question of whether data was manipulated and that this doubt over the guilt or innocence of the CRU scientists at the time would have been clear from the rest of the programme. So I think the BBC is probably right to apologise in this instance, since when serious claims are made it is right that they don't appear to have prejudged any investigation.

Of course, now that Muir Russell has pronounced Mike's Nature Trick as "misleading", we know that Humphrys was right all along, but that's another question.

The Mail picks up the story here.

Nature tries to move on

Nature Geoscience is trying its darndest to move on from Climategate, with an editorial declaring the affair closed and accompanying articles looking at where we go from here (although the latter are behind a paywall, one is discussed at Klimazwiebel).

There is an interesting point made about climate scientists at CRU, the ones whose "rigour and honesty as scientists" has been found to be beyond reproach...

[I]n an exchange in late July 1999, climate scientists discussed how to present projected climate change scenarios to best serve the purposes of the WWF (who had apparently expressed concern that the initial presentations were more conservative than those from other sources and asked for one section to be 'beefed up' if possible). Such considerations should not enter into scientific debate.

Indeed they should not. Honest and rigorous scientists do not change their presentations for the benefit of environmental campaigners. I wonder how Nature Geoscientist reconciles the contradiction between the findings of the Russell panel, which it appears to support, and its observations about the conduct of the scientists in this instance?

Thoughtful comment in the Atlantic

From the comments on Clive Crook's Atlantic piece:

Clive Crook.

You deserve to die and your children need to be taken out of the gene pool...

http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/04/atlantic-...)

You are so incredibly fucking retarded you rival even McMegan. It's ridiculous how a child-raping mongrel like yourself can be hired by the same magazine that employs Andrew Sullivan. I should flay you and your wife and have you trade skins, you absolute waste of all human components.

"Had Crook actually read the link he provides, he would know that since it clearly states that after thoroughly reviewing all of the relevant material, “The Inquiry Committee determined there was no substance to this allegation and further investigation of this allegation was not warranted,” for each of the first three allegations.

I have no idea where Crook came up with the phrase he puts in quotes “lack of credible evidence” — if anyone can find the source for that exact word-for-word quote, please let me know. Note: The original report (which Crook seems unaware of) uses the phrase “there exists no credible evidence” a number of times, but that is not the same as what Crook wrote.

To assert that Penn State “will not even investigate” three of the four charges and imply that they dismiss them out of hand without thorough examination is, I think, libel."

You can't even read, you useless little academic. Tell me again, why do you think you deserve to live when you continue to embarrass everything connected with yourself?

Nice.

More Russell review evidence

The CCE review has just posted up a letter responding to an inquiry from Graham Stringer as to how the panel dealt with the recommendations of the Science and Technology Select Committee. I don't recall having seen Stringer's original letter. Anyone know if it is there?