Fred Pearce on scientific data

Fred Pearce has written an article about availability of scientific data for Index on Censorship magazine. A Mr McIntyre is mentioned frequently.

The fuss over climategate showed that the world is increasingly unwilling to accept the message that “we are scientists; trust us”. Other people want to join the scientific conversation. Good scientists, interested in finding truth, should want to encourage them, not put up the shutters. The wider world instinctively knows to distrust those in all walks of life who reject openness. As McIntyre put it recently, “probably no single issue damages the reputation of the climate science community more than the refusal to show the data that supports their work”. There should, for the good of science as well as public discourse, be a presumption in favour of open access.

This is very definitely a read the whole thing article.

Update on Dec 1, 2011 by Bishop Hill

There is a related debate here.

Join Index on Censorship for ‘Data Debate: is transparency bad for science?’, a panel debate to launch the new issue of Index on Censorship magazine, ‘Dark Matter: what’s science got to hide?’

Scientific data is more freely available than ever. But does the push for openness help or hinder science?

Speakers include Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, George Monbiot, Guardian columnist and Baroness Onora O’Neill. Jo Glanville, Editor of Index on Censorship, will chair.

Morner on sea level

The Spectator's cover story this week is an article by Nils-Axel Morner on sea level rise (or not).

The sea is not rising precipitously. I have studied many of the low-lying regions in my 45-year career recording and interpreting sea level data. I have conducted six field trips to the Maldives; I have been to Bangladesh, whose environment minister was claiming that flooding due to climate change threatened to create in her country 20 million ‘ecological refugees’. I have carefully examined the data of ‘drowning’ Tuvalu. And I can report that, while such regions do have problems, they need not fear rising sea levels.

This bit is good too:

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment claimed that ‘there is strong evidence’ of sea level rising over the last few decades. It goes as far as to claim: ‘Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, sea level has been rising at a rate of around 3mm yr–1, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century. Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation, and indicate that similar rates have occurred in some earlier decades.’

Almost every word of this is untrue. Satellite altimetry is a wonderful and vital new technique that offers the reconstruction of sea level changes all over the ocean surface. But it has been hijacked and distorted by the IPCC for political ends.

In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year. When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: ‘We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend.’

Well, yes

The drought that has affected parts of England since June will last into next summer if there is insufficient winter rain, the Environment Agency has said.

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