Santer's claws

Ben Santer is interviewed at the Climate Sight blog, and he remains something of a catfighter, aiming his claws at, among others, sceptical bloggers:

These fringe voices now have megaphones,” he continues, “and have means of amplifying their voices and trumpeting shoddy, incorrect science. We’ve seen the rise of the blogs, we’ve seen the rise of these “independent public auditors” who believe that they have carte blanche to investigate anyone who produces results they don’t agree with, and if that individual doesn’t comply with their every request, they indulge in this persecution campaign on their blogs and make your life very uncomfortable. I’ve had direct personal experience with that.

Does he sound slightly hysterical to you?

ClimateSight article

Update on Oct 26, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Commenters note that the Santer article has been taken down. I've retrieved it from Google cache and posted it at the bottom of the header post as a PDF.

Lobbywatch and the Fox

Interesting suggestion here that the SMC may have been "got at" by the Lobbywatch organisation.

(H/T Messenger)

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.

Bob's boss in bizarre hoax

It's not often I link readers to the Sun, but this turned up via a Google alert. It appears that Bob Ward's colleague at the Science Media Centre, the former revolutionary communist, Fiona Fox, is something of a practical joker. Fox, readers may remember, has called for sceptic views to be avoided in media coverage of global warming.

She is also apparently a close friend of Jim Devine, a former Labour MP who is now facing fraud charges over his expense claims. She appears to have got herself involved in a bizarre and rather nasty practical joke involving Devine and his office manager, and which has now led to a substantial damages award against the politician.

They're a rum lot at the Science Media Centre aren't they?

Going

William Connolley has been topic banned by Wikipedia. Climate change is now off-limits for WC.

Media coverage of Wegman

	On the Wegman report	On the Wegman plagiarism allegations
WaPo	Nothing	GMU investigating climate change skeptic cited by Cuccinelli
USA Today	Nada	University investigating prominent climate science critic
Nature	Rien	Old claims of bad climate science countered by new claims of plagiarism

Down and dirty authors

Natalie Hanman, the new editor of Comment is Free, wants authors of CiF articles to get down and dirty in the comments threads with the punters.

Quite right too.

And I would have joined in with the people who commented on my CiF article the other day, if only the Graun didn't have my comments premoderated.

I wonder if they will make the connection?

Monbiot and TERI's accounts

I've been enjoying the comments thread below Julian and Shub's Monbiot piece. George is clearly quite upset at the suggestion that he was responsible for deleting comments and he has defended himself at his own site, stating that he has never asked the CiF moderators to delete anything.

Some commenters, notably Barry Woods, have argued that we should take George at his word, and I must say I think this is right. Having seen a BBC blogger (Richard Black, IIRC) getting one of his comments snipped on his own thread, George's story that he had nothing to do with the deletions is at least credible.

Click to read more ...

Josh 40

Can one trust the Guardian?

A couple of readers have noticed the extraordinary speed with which Bob Ward managed to respond to my article.

This is odd enough, but when I tell you that at approximately 5pm, James Randerson sent me an email to say that he had posted my article up, it looks...well... not quite right.

But then if I tell add in this comment from reader, Jono...

The other strange feaure about Bob's reply is [that it is] completely missing the link back to Andrew's rebuttal. It's almost as if he only saw a text version when preparing his reply.

...it all looks...very odd.

Especially if I tell you that the drafts that passed between me and the Guardian had no links in them.

Ho hum.

Update on Sep 10, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Hold on, that last bit can't be quite right. Where would the links have gone in Bob's piece? I think maybe I have misunderstood Jono's point. He is saying that BW hasn't mentioned my rebuttal. Still leaves us with the timing issue though.

Moderation in all things

I'm just wondering if I'm the first author on the Guardian website whose comments are on premoderation at the same time...

If you are having comments deleted at the Guardian, do feel free to post them here.

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?

Oxburgh reactions

I'm not sure which members of the press corps were watching the Oxburgh hearing, either in person or over the web. The only reaction I've found so far is this from the Guardian Eco twitter page:

Interesting that Lord Oxburgh said he was not looking at the #climategate science. Looks like that fell through the cracks between him + MR

Update:

The Guardian's full reaction is now up and picks up many of the major points - Keenan, Kelly and the misleading of Parliament.

Oxburgh: UEA vice-chancellor was wrong to tell MPs he would investigate climate research

Uncertain climate part 2

The second part of Roger Harrabin's history of climate change is now available.

Fred on the IAC

Fred Pearce has an article on the IAC report in New Scientist.

The IPCC has tried hard to preserve the normal rules of scientific discourse and to explain continuing uncertainty, but it has been pushed towards simple sound-bite conclusions. Some of this pressure has come from the desire of many scientists to underline their concerns about the dangers the world faces. Sometimes, in the process, "could happen" has become "will happen", and analysis has veered close to advocacy. Journalists have been willing colluders.

Yup.