Was Briffa the mole?

AJ Strata looks at the evidence that someone in the heart of the Hockey Team couldn't stand the pressure any longer and decided to spill the beans. Was it Keith Briffa?

Mail on the splice

Wow. A 3000-word article on the nitty gritty details of some paleoclimate shenanigans in a major newspaper.  Kudos to the Mail.

The madness of warming

Philosopher Martin Cohen finds an explanation for the global warming phenomenon in the madness of crowds.

Is belief in global-warming science another example of the "madness of crowds"? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible "authority". Could it indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality? After all, how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb (and insisting on their replacement by ones filled with poisonous mercury vapour) in order to "save electricity", while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on ... electricity? How rational is it to pay the Russians once for fossil fuels, and a second time for permission (via carbon credits) to burn them...? And how rational is it to suppose that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere take between 200 and 1,000 years to be felt, but that solutions can take effect almost instantaneously?

H/T Jonathan in the comments

Schneider doesn't want to acknowledge Climategate

Is calling security a reasonable response to someone asking a question about the Climategate emails? Global warming promoter Stephen Schneider seemed to think this was easier than trying to respond to the questions.

Hail to the Chiefio

Chiefio has some more interesting analysis of one of the emails, showing how CRU, NCDC and the IPCC are all in each other's pockets. He also finds more evidence that CRU has been "economic with the actualite" in their responses to FoI requests.

No conspiracy

Tom Fuller writes an interesting piece in which he considers whether there is evidence of an international conspiracy to create a "global warming scam" in the CRU emails. He concludes, correctly in my opinion, that there isn't. There is, however, enough bad stuff in there that we should still be worried:

I think that they had an informal conspiracy going to pump each others' careers up, peer review each others' papers, and slam any skeptics or lukewarmers who wandered within punching range - and later, after they realised how badly they had acted, they conspired to evade the Freedom of Information Act.

Anyone who has had an honest review of the emails will find this very hard to argue with.

Click to read more ...

And so it begins

McIntyre has posted his first analysis of some of the emails. It's not looking good for the Hockey Team, with their scheming to remove the divergence problem and "hide the decline" from the IPCC reports laid out in horrifying detail.

There are going to be months of revelations like this.

Faking it

From the emails

From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: New MAGICC/SCENGEN
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 15:48:15 -0700 (MST)

It just happens that, in your version, I 'faked up' column 5 as the difference between column 6 and the sum of columns 2, 3 and 4. I did this simply to get the code working; but (as you now know) I never got around to fixing it up until now. In the latest version, column 6 is again equal to the sum of columns 2, 3, 4 and 5 because I scale columns 3, 4 and 5 to ensure that this is so. . . .
(3) Re HadCM2, again it is impossible to be consistent. What I said before is that the reason for adding these results is simply to make them readily available. I do *not* advocate using them in combination with any other model results.. . .

I wonder what the result of all this "faking" was?

The Report

Provided the producers decided I didn't waffle too much, I should appear in The Report, tonight at 8pm, UK time. Link here. It should be available on the iPlayer for a while thereafter.

Lots of people think I will have been set up ("They always set up the sceptics!").

Let's see....

Update on Dec 10, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Overall I was pretty pleased with that.  I think the programme gave a fair crack of the whip to both sides and I think the conclusions were pretty much correct for where we stand now.

A few minor gripes:

• having said that the Hockey Stick isn't central to the AGW debate, it would have been nice if they hadn't cut off the bit where I explained why it matters
• the evidence that the IPCC process was biased against sceptics was not mentioned
• some mention of the code and maybe the Harry readme would have broadened the perspective.

But for my first experience of mainstream media, I'm quite happy (apart from the fact they didn't mention the book!!).

Russell review to be a whitewash

When Sir Muir Russell's inquiry into the goings-on at CRU was announced, many were sceptical of whether the results would be anything other than the traditional civil service whitewash. With that in mind I dropped a message to the CRU press office to try to find out exactly what kind of a review was going to be held.

This is what I asked:

1. Is there any significance in the fact that this is a "review" rather than an "inquiry"?

2. Will the review be open to external observers? Will there be public hearings for example?

3. The first point on the terms of reference in your press release indicate that the review will look at the question of "manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice". This seems very limited in scope. For example, will the review examine the possibility of manipulation of results through the data processing as well as through the data itself? In other words, will it examine code as well as data? Will the review look at the other misdemeanours that are alleged to have taken place, for example attempts by UEA scientists to undermine peer review and other procedures in the journals, rigging of the IPCC review and breaches of its procedures? If not, why not?

5. There is an allusion in one of the emails to the vice chancellor apparently being aware of an attempt to avoid a Freedom of Information request. Will this be considered by the review?

Unexpectedly, I got a very fast response, from a press officer at UEA. This was as follows:

Thanks for your email.

The University has made it clear that all issues arising from allegations as a result of emails stolen from the CRU and published without permission on the web will be considered by an independent review.This will be led by Sir Muir Russell and it is expected that it will report by Spring 2010. Statements regarding the independent review and other related issues are available at: www.uea.ac.uk.

Any further statements will be available from this website and circulated via the wire services.

OK, so we're good on the scope, but we're none the wiser on the nature of the review or inquiry or whatever. I've pressed the, ahem, press officer for a response on the first two points, but he hasn't responded. In seems likely therefore that the inquiry will be held behind closed doors.

I conclude that the intention is to whitewash the affair.

Readers of this blog saw this coming. The results of my survey into sceptic attitudes to Sir Muir were as follows:

I trust him: 2%

I don't trust him: 56%

Don't know: 43%.

This was based on 717 responses, so only 14 people were impressed by Sir Muir's credentials. It was said at the time the review was announced that Sir Muir needed to have the confidence of the sceptic community. It is clear from these results that he doesn't. This, together with the suggestion that he intends to hold the inquiry in private mean that he should really stand down.

He will not do so, of course. He has some whitewash to apply.

Counting Cats on models

Climate modellers have created a plausible reality, not reality, says Nick M at Counting Cats.

Mathematics is an incredible toolbox and whilst it can be used to understand reality it can also be used to create new realities. For example it is entirely possible - indeed quite easy - to build a model of the solar system and then subtract Jupiter. The same perturbed Keplerian orbits pertain and the laws of motion and gravity are not changed because there is nothing in them to say “A gas giant must exist between Mars and Saturn”.

(H/T Chuckles)

NERC and climate change

There has been a great deal of interest in the posting I did on the apparent bias in funding for climatologists - the suggestion being that only studies to confirm the hypothesis will get money and the sceptics will be left hanging in the wind.

This idea is not a new one, and several commenters have said that they have heard similar stories. However, it is a testable hypothesis and to that end I've put a FoI request into NERC, the main UK funding body for the environmental sciences. I've asked for details of the eligibility criteria for funding programmes covering climate change, hopefully back to 2000.

In the meantime, take a look at the NERC Council, the body responsible for prioritising funding. Several of these are familiar names, and one or two have been ubiquitous in the media in recent weeks. For example:

• Bob Watson (of CRU fame)
• Andrew Watson (of CRU and "What an Asshole" fame)
• Julia Slingo (recently seen trying to drum up support for a pro-AGW letter signed by scientists)
• Mike Lockwood (well known to sceptics as the author of a rather questionable critique of Svensmark)

Political scientists or honest brokers? You decide.

Gavin says the uncertainties are huge

Apart from repeating the spin about "hiding the decline", the most interesting thing in this CNN interview of Gavin Schmidt and John Christy is that Gavin agrees with Christy that our uncertainties about the climate system are huge.

I'm struggling to equate this with the various IPCC statements about it being "very likely" that observed increases in temperatures are due to increases in carbon dioxide.  How can you speak with such certainty about a system you don't understand?

Follow the money

This is stolen from the comments at WUWT:

A reader commented as follows:

... it is possible that this is just a big conspiracy by climate scientist around the world to boost their cause and make themselves more important. Though I find it hard to believe that thousands of scientists...all agreed to promote bogus science ...Pretty hard to do without being discovered.

To which another reader, a scientist named Paul Vaughan, responded as follows:

Actually not so hard.

Personal anecdote:
Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety:

Successful candidates will:
1) Demonstrate AGW.
2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW.
3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2.

Follow the money — perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice.

This confirms the stories that I've been hearing over the last few years.

Bolt on Wigley

Andrew Bolt dissects some of Tom Wigley's recent pronouncements on Climategate. The warmist web becomes ever more tangled...

[Update - you really have to read Andrew's article, it's bloomin' marvellous]