Crook feels the hairdryer

Clive Crook is on the receiving end of a typically mild and philosophical discourse from Joe Romm, entitled "Atlantic Shocker". Crook isn't impressed.

[T]he evident fondness of climate-change activists for delegitimizing dissent and spinning the facts to make them more "understandable" is simply not working. Cap and trade just died for lack of public support. I think climate-change activists are partly to blame, as I argue in this recent FT column. They are harming their own cause.

Romm exemplifies the tendency to the point of caricature. He delights in splenetic hyperventilation. This is his brand, so to speak. It goes down well with the faithful -- but persuading the faithful is not the challenge. He needs to convince the unconvinced. Operatic ranting is not, I would submit, likely to succeed.

Incidentally, Romm says that a proper journalist would have noted that the emails do not contain the phrase "trick to hide the decline". Oh dear, well, yes, I suppose it doesn't. Here is the exact quote:

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps  to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

But so what?

UEA on the New Scientist editorial

A few days back I linked to a New Scientist editorial on the Russell review, noting that it was surprisingly critical of CRU. (It's behind a paywall now, so you will have to take my word for it.) I noticed the other day that UEA have issued a rebuttal of sorts, which is, frankly, weird.

The editorial pointed out, quite correctly, that neither Oxburgh or Russell had looked at the science:

After publishing his five-page epistle, Oxburgh declared "the science was not the subject of our study". Finally, last week came former civil servant Muir Russell's 150-page report. Like the others, he lambasted the CRU for its secrecy but upheld its integrity - despite declaring his study "was not about... the content or quality of [CRU's] scientific work"

So this doesn't appear to be something that can reasonably be debated, I'm sure you would agree. Not so the University of East Anglia, whose response begins thus:

It is depressing that the New Scientist follows parts of the blogosphere, and some other sections of the press, in asserting that of the three independent investigations into Climategate "none looked into the quality of the science itself".... Our hope was that New Scientist would have a more informed understanding of the method of science research.

There follows a bizarre argument that a search for blatant dishonesty is the same thing as an assessment of quality. It then gets even stranger, with UEA first noting Oxburgh's statement that 'he Panel was not concerned with the questions of whether the conclusions of the published research were correct', and then, with a rhetorical flourish, asking 'New Scientist, when do science conclusions become “correct”? as if they were quoting from the editorial rather than the report they had commissioned. The editorial didn't discuss the question of the science being correct at all.

Quite the strangest document.

von Storch on the inquiries

P Gosselin has a must-read post - a translation of an interview Hans von Storch gave to Handelsblatt. The take-home quote is this one, IMHO

We have to take a critical view of what happened. Nothing ought to be swept under the rug. Some of the inquests – like in Great Britain - failed at this. They blew an opportunity to re-establish trust.

Yup. Read the rest too.

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.

Josh 27

More cartoons by Josh here.

New Scientist on Russell

I hadn't seen this editorial by New Scientist, which is rather critical of the Russell Report.

Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be.

Yup.

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 Russell review

I'm back in the saddle briefly. I've taken a look at the report and it looks pretty much as expected. The section on Ross McKitrick's allegation of fabrication makes for fairly jaw-dropping reading. I'm also intrigued by a section which deals with implied allegations rather than actual ones.

Nothing on the replacement of James Saiers at GRL either.

I'll add more comments as things occur to me. Feel free to add comments.

Update: Here's the bit on the fabrication allegation. Remember - the allegation is that Jones inserted a groundless statement that McKitrick's findings were "statistically insignificant". Here's what Jones said in his evidence to Russell:

The basis for this statement is that if the CRUTEM3 trend is reduced by the factor claimed by MM2004, the land-based record then becomes incompatible with the ocean and the satellite record. MM2004 make no mention of this in their paper. In writing Chapter 3 of AR4 the author team were mindful of this. MM2004‘s analysis of the land surface temperature record is completely at odds with the rest of the surface and lower tropospheric temperature records. MM2004 also fails to take into account the effects of changes in the atmospheric circulation.

And the panel said:

Having read most of the relevant papers... we observe a consistence of view amongst those who disagree with MM2004 that has been sustained over the last 6 years, that the large scale organisation of atmospheric circulation produces a spatially integrated response to forcing. Although we do not comment on the relative merits of the two views, we see no justification of the view that that this response was ―invented, or even that its various expressions in the response to reviewer Gray or the final text are fundamentally different.

 So Jones seems to have changed his argument from "McKitrick's findings are statistically insignificant" to "McKitrick's findings conflict with other evidence". Whether this is true or not is irrelevant of course. The fact remains that Jones has been unable to provide any support for the claim that was inserted in the IPCC text. This means that the allegation of fabrication stands. What is even more interesting, there seems to be an attempt to hide behind joint authorship - the finger of blame can't be pointed at Jones because everyone wrote the chapter.

The consequences are ugly: joint authorship implies joint and several responsibility for the text and allegation of fabrication that still hangs over it. I don't think this was what Sir Muir intended.

Who else is now implicated?

A late submission to Sir Muir

Mann et al have submitted a (very late) tale of woe to Sir Muir Russell's emails review. The signatories are a veritable who's who of hockey and this team's pucks are considerably out of kilter.

They need Sir Muir to protect them from harassment, they need Sir Muir to defend the "consensus" and they want Sir Muir to write off some of the evidence completely as not being in good faith. Oh yes, and does Sir Muir know they were harassed?

Give me strength.

Read it here.

Russell review due July 7

An announcement has gone up on the Russell review website.

The publication date for the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review report has been set for 7 July. Full details of publication arrangements will be given nearer the time.

Josh 22

Russell report imminent?

I hear on the grapevine that Sir Muir Russell's panel will be reporting "imminently". I imagine that means in the next few days. My guess would be that they will make the announcement on Friday so that they can run for cover straight afterwards.

Only a rumour, but I thought it was worth passing on.

Muir's new man

Readers will remember the resignation of Nature editor Philip Campbell from the Muir Russell inquiry - Campbell's position became untenable when he was found to have prejudged the outcome of the inquiry by telling a television interviewer that the scientists involved in the Climategate emails had done nothing wrong.

Click to read more ...

Harrabin again

The attitude of the establishment to the sceptics shines through the succession of inquiries into controversial science at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

When at the launch of the Sir Muir Russell inquiry I asked about the credibility of the review panel in the blogosphere, Sir Muir dismissed the enquiry with the flick of a wrist - he had been a senior civil servant and he had run a university, his bona fides were beyond question.

But the blogosphere does not respect past reputations, only current performance. And some of the top performers in the blogosphere are critics of the establishment.

Read the whole thing.

More from Sir Muir and his team

David Holland writes with the latest update on the bizarre attempts by the Russell inquiry to withhold publication of his evidence.

The Russell ICCER emailed me again yesterday. Unfortunately I left early this morning and was not able to report this until now.

Dear Mr Holland,

Thank you for your reply.

Click to read more ...