Nullius at Climate etc

Judith Curry has also written about my GWPF report.

In my recent presentation to the IAC, discussed on the thread Questions on Research Integrity and Scientific Responsibility,  I stated that I felt that issues of institutional integrity and responsibility were arguably issues of greater concern than the ethics and behavior of individual scientists.  Montford has lucidly described the “what.”  I am trying to understand the “why.”  I have an idea why individual and groups of climate scientists have been behaving this way (see my previous essay reversing the positive feedback loop), but why  the Royal Society?

I encountered Lord May at the Royal Society Uncertainty Workshop, and I liked his presentation Science as Organized Skepticism.  However at the end, or in the questions, he dismissed climate change skepticism.  Lord May is a biologist, where does his conviction on climate change science come from?  I am trying to understand this.

The "why" is a really, really difficult question, and I think there is no simple answer.

Nullius in the Financial Post

Canada's Financial Post has picked up my GWPF report, Nullius in Verba.

When Lord Robert May — a distinguished British population biologist — told a journalist: “I am the president of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over,” he was risking the reputation of the venerable institution he headed.

Presidents of national science academies are not meant to engage in ex cathedra statements, but to promote objective research. However, according to a devastating report this week from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Royal Society — former home to Newton and Darwin — has adopted a stance of intolerant infallibility over climate science and, even less appropriately, over policy.

The report, Nullius in Verba: The Royal Society and Climate Change, by Andrew Montford, is important to Canada not merely because of the continued threat of climate alarmism, but because the Royal Society of Canada has twice attached its name to intensely political statements from its British counterpart.

Dellers on the GWPF report

James Delingpole has a blog post up on my GWPF report.

I've written about this several times before but because I was once the victim of a nasty stitch-up by the Royal Society's current president Sir Paul Nurse there's always a danger of it looking like sour grapes.

That's why I'm so heartened by the magisterially damning report on the Royal Society produced by Andrew Montford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

We all have different roles to play in the great climate wars and Montford's, unlike mine, is to write with cool restraint. But though he doesn't title his report quite as provocatively as "The Royal Society is a joke" – that, essentially, his conclusion.

Ouch.

Nullius in verba

This has just been released:

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is calling on the Royal Society to restore a culture of open-mindedness and balanced assessment of climate science and climate policy.

In a new GWPF report, written by science author Andrew Montford, the Royal Society is urged to ensure that genuine controversies are reflected in its public debates and reports and that the full range of reputable scientific views are being considered.

“As the Society’s independence has disappeared, so has its former adherence to hard-nosed empirical science and a sober detachment from the political process. Gone are the doubts and uncertainties that afflict any real scientist, to be replaced with the dull certainties of the politician and the public relations man,” said Andrew Montford, author of the new report.

In his report, Andrew Montford describes the development of the Royal Society’s role in the climate debates since the 1980s. He shows the Society’s gradual closing of critical scrutiny and scientific impartiality and the emergence of an almost dogmatic confidence that climate science is all but settled.

In recent years, the Society has issued a series of highly political statements demanding drastic action on energy and climate policies from policy makers and governments. On the issue of climate change, it has adopted an increasingly political rather than scientific tone. Instead of being an open forum for informed scientific debate, the Society is at risk of turning into a quasi-political campaign group.

The GWPF report criticises the Society for being too narrow minded in its assessment of climate change and for failing to take into account views of eminent scientists and policy experts that do not accord with its own position.

In his foreword to the report, Professor Richard Lindzen (MIT), one of the world's most eminent atmospheric scientists, warns that "the legitimate role of science as a powerful mode of inquiry has been replaced by the pretence of science to a position of political authority."

 The report itself is here.

Quote of the day

I am all for making things available but, at the same time, I shall mention something which is perhaps tactless-if not even politically incorrect-which is that the Freedom of Information Act has, as many of your Lordships will know, been used as a weapon of harassment in some circumstances. The climate change community in general, and the community at the University of East Anglia in particular, have not only been subject to criminal invasion of their databases, carefully timed for particular events, but are continually bombarded with very elaborate requests for information that go well beyond the sharing of basic data, so we have to be careful in how we draft this.

Lord May of Oxford seems to oppose attempts to replicate climate scientists' work

Scientific disciplinarian

When I’m asked about the science I always start with the measured rise in atmospheric CO2 (the Keeling curve). This rise isn’t controversial; nor is its attribution mainly to the burning of fossil fuels. Straightforward chemistry tells us that the CO2 build-up will induce a long-term warming trend, superimposed on all the other complicated effects that make climate fluctuate.

Martin Rees is seems confused over scientific disciplines

Cicerone on Climategate

Ralph Cicerone is best known to readers here as the man who diverted the NAS panel away from what they had been asked to look at onto areas that were more congenial. He has now shown up again in an article about the state of climate science at the Atlantic. He seems be presenting an, ahem, mistaken view of what the Climategate inquiries looked at.

“The science at East Anglia was fine,” Cicerone says. “But I think [the East Anglia scientists] were just angry. They were too poorly equipped, scruffy, and informal an outfit to show everyone all their data all the time. On the scientific consensus, there’s no impact at all—although on public opinion there was an impact.”

Nursery cryme

Six months ago, Paul Nurse was taken to task by Maurice Frankel, the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, for misrepresenting the scope of the Act. Nurse claimed that

I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it's intimidating.

Frankel's response was that he was talking nonsense:

Click to read more ...

Dates for Scottish readers

A couple of diary dates for Scottish readers:

On 21 November, Prof Geoffrey Boulton is leading a discussion on Why and How Should Science be Open? at the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

For those feeling flush, the Scotsman is running a conference called Will Green Energy Leave Scotland in the Red? on 13 December.

I don't think I will make either of them, but if anyone is going it would be good to have a report.

To politic or not to politic?

Paul Nurse is profiled in the Independent. I think I've seen most of this before in other interviews, but this bit at the end was new:

"Long before he started his tenure at the Royal Society, Sir Paul had been an enthusiastic communicator of science and is particularly concerned with how the public copes with seemingly contradictory statements on complicated scientific issues, such as climate change.

We should try to keep the science separate from the politics. What you get with the polemicists and commentators is that they just mix it all up together,"he says.

Scientists must never cherry pick the data, but this is something that comes naturally to politicians, especially those who have had a legal training where presenting the evidence in the best possible light is all that counts, Sir Paul says.

"They don't have a problem with cherry picking the data because a lawyer will try to win a case in court with cherry-picked data. They try to make an argument like a politician. A scientist would lose their career if they do it."

The statement that the science should be kept separate from politics is probably right, but it does seem to contradict Nurse's earlier suggestion that the Royal Society should involve itself more in political issues.

Hansen at the Royal Society

James Hansen is among the speakers at the Royal Society's "Warm Climates of the Past" event next week.

Ain't no science at the RSE

I'm grateful to Messenger for pointing me to this excerpt from the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Facing up to Climate Change report. This is the winning entry for the schools' climate change poster competition, held as part of the project. Why such a competition would be felt necessary by a learned society is beyond me, but here, such as it is, is what the combined eminences of the society felt we need to be doing to face up to climate change...

Click to read more ...

Ask for evidence

Sense About Science have launched a new campaign encourage people to demand scientific evidence to support scientific claims made by companies and government.

Shall we start with the Stern Review then? That's a non-peer-reviewed work of art. Where's the scientific evidence?

Interestingly, Sir Paul Nurse is one of the campaign's supporters. This is odd because Sir Paul seems happy with model output alone in some areas of life.

Nursing times

Having recently announced that he wants to use the Royal Society as a tool to influence political debate, Paul Nurse has now decided that he's going to use his position as Royal Society president to try to influence elections more directly, taking a direct shot at the US Republican party.

Is it just me that finds the spectacle of the president of the Royal Society wallowing around in the mud just a little unedifying?

Political Paul

Sir Paul Nurse appears to have decided that he hasn't been nearly political enough yet. Something must be done!

Nurse wants the society to have a stronger voice on the big policy questions of the day. "The Royal Society has a responsibility to provide advice on difficult issues, even if they are contentious," he says.

He hopes to boost the society's role in government decision-making by fostering greater involvement of its roughly 1,500 fellows and foreign members in preparing reports, potentially with the help of more policy staff. Nurse also wants to expand the number of authoritative and influential reports on key issues, such as nuclear power, climate change and the definition of life.

Interestingly, he also wants to extend the terms of officeholders. I wonder why? In my experience, this kind of step is rarely done for good reasons. I think I'm right in saying the officeholders currently have 5-year terms (certainly the president does). Why would they need more?

Update on Sep 13, 2011 by Bishop Hill

James Wilsdon, who heads (still, I think - he's leaving at some point) the Royal Society policy unit, tweets that the changes are as follows:

Council currently serve 1 or 2 yrs (President/VPs 5). Change would move Council to 3 yrs (like many charity trustees)