Gerry North on McIntyre

Gerry North, who chaired the NAS panel on paleoclimate that famously declared that the Hockey Stick's data and methods were wrong but its conclusions were right is interviewed in the Houston Chronicle.

McIntyre to me, I think he is probably a well meaning guy. He's not dumb, he's very smart. But he can be very irritating. This guy can just wear you out. He has started it with me but I just don't bite. But there are some guys, Ben Santer comes to mind, who if they are questioned will take a lot of time to answer. He's sincere and he just can't leave these things along. If you get yourself in a back-and-forth with these guys it can be never ending, and basically they shut you down with requests. They want everything, all your computer programs. Then they send you back a comment saying, "I don't understand this, can you explain it to me." It's never ending. And the first thing you know you're spending all your time dealing with these guys."

Controversial.

Mike Hulme at Dot Earth

Mike Hulme has sent some comments on Climategate to the Andy Revkin's Dot Earth column at the New York Times.

The key lesson to be learned is that not only must scientific knowledge about climate change be publicly owned — the IPCC does a fairly good job of this according to its own terms — but the very practices of scientific enquiry must also be publicly owned, in the sense of being open and trusted. From outside, and even to the neutral, the attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. To those with bigger axes to grind it is just what they wanted to find.

This is a surprising statement from Hulme, who is heavily implicated in the CRU emails.

1. He was part of a group that organised a letter to the Times, ostensibly written by climatologists but actually drafted by Greenpeace (0872202064).

2. He appears to have changed confidence intervals in a presentation at the behest of WWF.(0933254004)

3. He appears to have been instrumental in the plot to oust von Storch from Climate Research (1051190249)

See this email from Michael Mann on the affair (1057941657):

I think that the community should, as Mike H has previously suggested ...  terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels -- reviewing, editing, and submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute,

A trainee climatologist speaks

This was posted at the uber-warmist site, Climate Progress, by Judith Curry of Georgia Tech. It's a letter from a young climatologist:

Hi Dr. Curry,

I am a young climate researcher (just received my master’s degree from xxx University) and have been very troubled by the emails that were released from CRU. I just want to applaud and support your response on climateaudit.org [95% of it ]. Your statement represents exactly how I have felt as I slowly enter this community. The content of some of the emails literally made me stop and wonder if I should continue with my PhD applications for fall 2010, in this science. I was so troubled by how our fellow scientists within the climate community have been dealing with opposing voices (on both sides). I hope we can all learn from this and truly feel that we are going to need voices like yours to fix these problems in the coming months and years.

Judith Curry then continues

At the heart of this issue is how climate researchers deal with skeptics. I have served my time in the “trenches of the climate war” in the context of the debate on hurricanes and global warming. There is no question that there is a political noise machine in existence that feeds on research and statements from climate change skeptics. In grappling with this issue, I would argue that there are three strategies for dealing with skeptics:

1. Retreat into the ivory tower
2. Circle the wagons/point guns outward: ad hominem/appeal to motive attacks; appeal to authority; isolate the enemy through lack of access to data; peer review process
3. Take the “high ground:” engage the skeptics on our own terms (conferences, blogosphere); make data/methods available/transparent; clarify the uncertainties; openly declare our values

Most scientists retreat into the ivory tower. The CRU emails reflect elements of the circling of wagons strategy. For the past 3 years, I have been trying to figure out how to engage skeptics effectively in the context of #3, which I think is a method that can be effective in countering the arguments of skeptics, while at the same time being consistent with our core research values. Some of the things that I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics and more effectively counter misinformation include posting at skeptical blogs, such as climateaudit, and inviting prominent skeptics to give seminars at Georgia Tech. I have received significant heat from some colleagues for doing this (I’ve been told that I am legitimizing the skeptics and misleading my students), but I think we need to try things like this if we are to develop effective strategies for dealing with skeptics and if we are to teach students to think critically.

If climate science is to uphold core research values and be credible to public, we need to respond to any critique of data or methodology that emerges from analysis by other scientists. Ignoring skeptics coming from outside the field is inappropriate; Einstein did not start his research career at Princeton, but rather at a post office. I’m not implying that climate researchers need to keep defending against the same arguments over and over again. Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it! If anyone identifies an actual error in your data or methodology, acknowledge it and fix the problem. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains that involve congressional hearings, lawyers, etc.

And you can't say fairer than that. 

(I've updated this slightly as I inadvertently ascribed the whole piece to the student. In fact the second part of the quote was due to Judith Curry.)

Zorita wants Mann, Jones and Rahmstorf banned

Another climatologist has called for prominent colleagues to be banned from the IPCC process. Eduardo Zorita, who appears to have been another victim of the Hockey Team's machinations, has made a statement on his website. Why does he want them banned?

..because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore

Nullius in verba

In view of the Royal Society angle on the last two posts, I was very amused by the comments of reader MikeE, who opined that the society's motto of "Nullius in verba" must mean "nothing in writing". :-)

++++Whitewash starting++++

This from a correspondent - no verification as yet:

1) Lord Rees (Royal Society) to be asked by UEA to investigate CRU leak.

2) Foreign Office and government leaning heavily on UEA to keep a lid on everything lest it destabilises Copenhagen.

3) CRU asked to prepare data for a pre-emptive release in past couple of days but trouble reconciling issues between data bases has stopped this.

Update on Nov 27, 2009 by Bishop Hill

TonyN in the comments notes this article by Roger Harrabin where the official position on the inquiry is put.

One senior climate scientist told me that the chair would have to be a person accepted by both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics as a highly respected figure without strong connections to either group.BBC News understands that senior individuals at UEA have acknowledged the potential damage to the university's reputation from the CRU affair and are anxious to clear the institution's name.

It's not going to be Lord Rees then, is it?

The Royal Society and global warming

One of the themes in the comments on RealClimate's first thread on the CRU hack was that, yes, there may be problems with the Hockey Team, but that we should listen to the learned academies like the NAS and the Royal Society.

A while back I started to make some enquiries into the Royal Society's position paper on global warming. This is a rather outspoken document entitled Facts and Fictions About Climate Change which does a splendid job of (a) creating straw men and (b) failing to knock them down very convincingly.

It was written, according to the RS by "a group led by Sir David Wallace FRS, Treasurer of the Royal Society, and Sir John Houghton FRS, former chair of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

This explained a lot. Having met Houghton briefly, I could recognise his personality in the writing. He has a way of speaking about people he disagrees with that is unforgettable, if hard to define.

And then the thought struck me. Why was Houghton's style written all over it? Why not any of the others in the group? Who had written what?

So I wrote a letter to the Royal Society officer with responsibility for climate change. After a bit of to and fro-ing I elicited a reply, which was quite forthcoming.

The climate change controversies document was compiled in late 2006/early 2007 with the help of our climate change advisory network and other climate change scientists. The climate change advisory network is an informal group that we use to provide us with advice on climate science related issues on an as-needs basis.

Those involved in the compilation and review of the controversies document included:

Prof John Pyle FRS,  Prof Peter Cox, Sir Prof Brian Hoskins FRS, Prof Tim Palmer FRS, Prof John Mitchell FRS, Prof Chris Freeman, Dr Simon Lewis,  Dr Y Malhi, Dr J A Lake, Dr Nicole Augustin, Prof John Houghton FRS, Prof John Shepherd FRS, Prof Harry Bryden FRS, Prof Rick Battarbee FRS, Prof Carl Wunsch ForMem, Dr Philip Reid, Dr Richard Kirby, Prof Alastair Fitter FRS, Prof Nicholas White FRS, Prof Joanna Haigh, Prof Nick McCave, Prof Martin Parry, Prof John Reynolds, Prof John Harries, Prof Keith Shine FRS, Prof Peter Liss FRS, Prof Chris Rapley, Dr Carol Turley, Prof Michael Lockwood FRS, Prof Nigel Weiss FRS, Prof Phil Jones, Prof Chris Folland, Dr Giles Harrison and Dr Ed Hill.

Recognise some of those names? A veritable who's who of global warming promoters, Hockey players and the like.

But wait a moment, the question was, who wrote the thing? Clearly not all of these people, there are far too many. So I wrote back asking who wrote and who reviewed (as well as asking for permission to publish the list of names above).

And back came the answer that permission was granted. But no mention of who wrote it.

And so I wrote back and asked again, who wrote the paper?

And answer, was there none.

In 2007, when the Royal Society's position paper was written, the official statement of climate science was still the Third Assessment Report. Should we now conclude that the position paper was written by Sir John Houghton, the scientist responsible for that same third assessment report, working alone?

Smoking gun?

On the code thread, James Smith has just posted this comment:

From the file pl_decline.pro: check what the code is doing! It's reducing the temperatures in the 1930s, and introducing a parabolic trend into the data to make the temperatures in the 1990s look more dramatic.

Could someone else do a double check on this file? Could be dynamite if correct.

Update on Nov 26, 2009 by Bishop Hill

This is what all the fuss is about, but the reader who sent it thinks perhaps it may be a storm in a teacup. Still, it is strange that one would want to put an adjustment like this through a temperature series.

Update on Nov 27, 2009 by Bishop Hill

In the comments, Steve McIntyre reckons this is probably Briffa's infamous Tornetrask bodge.  This was an adjustment to deal with the divergence between tree ring widths and densities. So it's MXD versus RW, not MXD vs temperature.

Fiddling in the Antipodes

New Zealand Climate Science Coalition finds evidence that temperature records in that country have been adjusted to show warming. It never rains, but it pours eh?

Who's been spinning in my newspaper?

This is a guest post by Andrew K.

There is a piece on the Guardian's Comment is Free today by one George Marshall.

The heading and strapline say it all really:

Leaked email climate smear was a PR disaster for UEA

There was no evidence of conspiracy among climate scientists in the leaked emails – so why was the University of East Anglia's response so pathetic?

According to the profile on CiF, "George Marshall is the founder and director of projects at the Climate Outreach and Information Network. He posts regularly to the blog climatedenial.org"

This set me digging.I discovered that COIN was a registered charity, so my next port of call was the Charity Commission, to have a look at their accounts.

None have yet been filed, as the organisation is newly registered: Mem and Arts were incorporated on 21st December 2007 and they were registered with the Charity Commission on 26th March 2008 (though according to their own website they were founded in 2004).

Its charitable objects are listed on the Charity Commission website as "to promote any charitable purposes at the discretion of the trustees concerning climate change and its impact".

Their objects look rather more political on their "about us" page. The contact was listed as a Mr Tim Baster of Oxford.  Additionally there are two trustees.

Googling Mr Baster's name came up trumps.  The buggers are getting close on £700,000 from DEFRA over two years.

According to DEFRA's press release this is to "profoundly change the attitude of rank and file union members; generating visible collective reduction action, establishing a social norm for personal action, and creating a persuasive synergy and cross over between personal action, work-placed programmes such as 'Greening the workplace', and the emissions reduction targets of employers."

The other awards on the press release merit a look too.

Koutsouyannis on Climategate

A must-read review of Climategate by Demetris Koutsouyannis. Demetris is professor of hydrology at the University of Athens. He looks as if he has been on the receiving end of some of the Hockey Team's attempts to keep non-orthodox views out of the literature.

Code thread updated

I've been updating the code thread. Some readers, particularly Mark (thanks Mark), have been doing a fantastic job of uncovering juicy titbits. There's some, ahem, extraordinary comments on that code. Take a look.

Thought for the day

Much rejoicing over Monbiot's apology for having meekly accepted everything the scientists had been telling him for the last twenty years. He goes as far as saying that Phil Jones should retire.

But given that Monbiot has, by his own admission, failed in his primary duty as a journalist, can his own position be very secure?

Quote of the day

"I'm just a humble scientist trying to do research"

Phil Jones, interviewed by the BBC's Freedom of Information correspondent, Martin Rosenbaum. A second career as a stand-up comedian beckons, IMHO.

The code

This is a new thread for updates on the analyses of the data and code freed from CRU.

Everybody, I'm sinking under weight of things to do here. I need you to post one or two line analyses of what you are finding in which bits of code. I'll transfer these to the main post as they come in. It needs to be in layman's language and to have a link to your work.

CRU code

• Francis at L'Ombre De L'Olivier says the coding language is inappropriate. Also inappropriate use of hard coding, incoherent file naming conventions, subroutines that fail without telling the user, etc etc.
• AJStrata discovered a file with two runs of CRU land temp data which show no global warming per the data laid out by country, and another CRU file showing their sampling error to be +/- 1°C or worse for most of the globe. Both CRU files show there has been no significant warming post 1960 era
• A commenter notes the following comment in some of the code:"***** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********"
• Good layman's summary of some of the coding issues with a file called "Harry". This appears to be the records of some poor soul trying to make sense of how the code for producing the CRU temperature records works. (rude words though, if you're a sensitive type)
• Some of annotations of the Harry code are priceless - "OH **** THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found."
• CRU's data collation methods also seem, ahem, amusing: "It's the same story for many other Russian stations, unfortunately - meaning that (probably) there was a full Russian update that did no data integrity checking at all. I just hope it's restricted to Russia!!"
• Borepatch discovers that CRU has lost its metadata. That's the bit that tells you where to put your temperature record on the map and so on.
• Mark in the comments notices a file called resid-fudge.dat, which he says contains, believe it or not, fudged residuals figures!
• Mark in the comments notes a program comment: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!! followed by the words `fudge factor' " See briffa_sep98_d.pro.
• From the programming file combined_wavelet.pro, another comment, presumably referring to the famous Briffa truncation: "Remove missing data from start & end (end in 1960 due to decline)".
• From the file pl_decline.pro": "Now apply a completely artificial adjustment for the decline only where coefficient is positive!)"
• From the file data4alps.pro: "IMPORTANT NOTE: The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring density' records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set this "decline" has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and this means that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring density variations, but have been modified to look more like the observed temperatures."
• From the Harry readme:"What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah - there is no )'supposed', I can make it up. So I have :-)...So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option - to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations (er, CLIMAT excepted). In other words, what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad, but I really don't think people care enough to fix 'em, and it's the main reason the project is nearly a year late. " (see Harry readme para 35.
• James in the comments says that in the file pl_decline.pro the code seems to be reducing temperatures in the 1930s and then adding a parabola to the 1990s. I don't think you need me to tell you what this means.