Geoffrey Boulton and the IPCC

The news of the day is the discovery by Climate Audit readers that until quite recently Geoffrey Boulton's CV included in the information that he was involved in the IPCC process. This detail, together with the fact that he had worked at UEA for twenty years, was omitted from the version of his CV that was presented to the press when the Russell Review panel was announced.

While the omission of his time at UEA was explained to the press corps, the fact of his involvement with the IPCC was not, an oversight that is problematic in view of the panel's statements that none of the panellists had IPCC links.

Read the whole thing.

No, he did say it....

...or something very like it.

I'm referring to the recent kerfuffle over whether Sir John Houghton did actually say the controversial words that have been ascribed to him for many years. These words:

Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.

A few days ago, after years of this quotation doing the rounds of sceptic blogs, Sir John suddenly denied that these words had ever passed his lips, pointing out that they didn't actually appear in his book, to which early citations had pointed as the original source. Cue much gnashing of teeth and wailing about "deniers".

There has now been another development in this story, reported by Benny Peiser, who took a certain amount of stick for repeating the quotation over the years, including a demand from Sir John that he issue an apology. In a posting on the GWPF website today, Benny relates how Professor John Adams has unearthed from his archives an clipping from the Daily Telegraph, dating right back to 1995. In it, Sir John is quoted as follows:

“If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”

Oh dear.

The story was originally broken on Professor Adams' blog here. More here.

[Update: Benny asks me to make absolutely clear that he is passing the story on and the credit is due to Professors Adams and Stott]

[PS: If you ever get the chance to read Professor Adams' Risk, it's well worth it. It's one of those books that makes you smile with its deliciously counter-intuitive thinking.]

Keenan responds to Jones

Doug Keenan has taken issue with the way Nature has described his complaint against Phil Jones co-author Wei-Chyung Wang. In particular they seem to have missed the point that the evidence Wang cited didn't actually exist.

His comments are here.

JG-C in the Times

The Times covers John Graham-Cumming's discoveries of a series of errors in the Met Office's code for its HADCRUT temperature index. The article also quotes none other than Bob Ward speaking up in favour of data availability.

A Climategate parallel

Glenn Reynolds makes some interesting comparisons between the slow burn story of Climategate and the Bellesiles scandal, an earlier tale of academic misconduct and political mudslinging.

A comment from Roger Harrabin

Roger Harrabin, writing in the comments to this thread, has clarified the arrangements for his interview with Phil Jones. You may remember that there was a rumour that although the interview appeared to have been undertaken in writing, there was in fact a recording as well but that this had been squashed by the BBC bigwigs because Jones didn't come over well.

Roger H's comment is as follows:

Professor Jones agreed the interview with me on the strict condition that it was not broadcast. I pressed to do TV and radio but was refused. The university say he is not well enough to do a broadcast interview. The BBC kept the deal. For the BBC news website interview I sought questions from several prominent climate sceptics.

Make of it what you will.

The Register on hurricanes

The Register covers an interesting piece in which a researcher analyses the IPCC's claims on hurricanes and compares them to the data. They don't seem to match up.

Well worth a read.

It's in the Nature of the beast

A couple of interesting climategate postings over at Nature's website - some more statements from Phil Jones, the most startling of which is this:

I don't think we should be taking much notice of what's on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process.

Golly. I can't imagine for a minute which journals have had their peer review process hijacked by us motley band of sceptics.

Then there's this piece by Daniel Cressey, who does a reasonable job of rounding up the developments on the Russell Review and the latest errors from the IPCC. He then blows it unfortunately by suggesting that readers head over to RealClimate to get a good dose of truth, which looks slightly foolish given that these are the guys who are being investigated.

Unless Daniel Cressey, like his boss Philip Campbell, knows something about the outcome of the review already.

Boulton pulls the strings

Well, well, well. You really can't pull the wool over Steve McIntyre's eyes can you? It turns out that the issues paper for the CRU emails review was written, not by Sir Muir Russell, but by Professor Geoffrey Boulton, the secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the body that is supplying the secretariat to the review, the man who works along the hall from Hockey Team staffers, the man who promotes global warming, the man who stands in breach of the panel's own rules but refuses to stand down.

No wonder he's staying put - he's running the show.

Update on Feb 15, 2010 by Bishop Hill

In the comments to the CA piece, Mr Pete notes that the PDF was generated from a Word file and that the Word file's author was Boulton too.

Boulton is staying

Sir Muir Russell and his team have rejected the concerns of those of those sceptics who have questioned his suitability as a panel member.

Sir Muir Russell said:

"This Review must determine if there is evidence of poor scientific practice, as well as investigate allegations around the manipulation and suppression of data.

"As others have pointed out, it would be impossible to find somebody with the qualifications and experience we need who has not formed an opinion on climate change.

"I am completely confident that each member of the Review team has the integrity, the expertise, and the experience to complete our work impartially."

Unfortunately it is not Sir Muir who needs to be confident of the integrity of the review team, it is the public who will be the consumers of his findings. Sir Muir said at the start of his review that he considered it important to carry the confidence of sceptics. It seems clear now that this is not an issue that is occupying his mind any longer.

Was there a recording of Phil Jones?

There are a few little stories floating around at the moment which I'll post here.

Cool Dude in the comments reports a rumour that Roger Harrabin recorded an interview with Phil Jones but decided not to run with it since Jones came over so badly.

Sources have told me there was a recorded interview and it was decided at high level not to use it because Jones didn't come across very well.

I hope someone from the BBC will comment here because if true this will smack strongly of the BBC playing at a PR service to the environmental movement rather than news reporting on behalf of the licence fee payer. The BBC Trust is soon going to begin a review of the corporation's perceived lack of neutrality on the climate change issue, so a suppression of Jones' interview after the announcement of this review would look very bad and moreover positively reckless.

Perhaps Roger Harrabin could head off this kind of criticism by posting the raw footage on the BBC website.

Boulton contradicts Sir Muir

From the same Times article discussed in the last posting, a statement from Professor Geoffrey Boulton on the furore over his combining a position on the CRU emails review and role as a global warming activist.

Sir Muir issued a statement last week claiming that the inquiry members, who are investigating leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia, did not have a “predetermined view on climate change and climate science”.

Professor Boulton told The Times: “I may be rapped over the knuckles by Sir Muir for saying this, but I think that statement needs to be clarified. I think the committee needs someone like me who is close to the field of climate change and it would be quite amazing if that person didn’t have a view on one side or the other.”

This is quite extraordinary. How was it that the review went public with a statement that the panellists' views on climate change were not predetermined when one of the panellists openly admits that his views are just that? Did Sir Muir check the views of the panellists before he published this statement on the official website? What did Professor Boulton tell him then? For that matter, what did Philip Campbell say? We need answers to these questions because either Sir Muir has not checked to ensure that his panellists are independent or someone has not been telling the truth.

The Russell review is rapidly turning into a farce.

Spring arrived early

...because it must be April fool's day. Bob Watson has declared that there is a problem with global warming science because of all the errors that have been identified in the IPCC reports:

Professor Watson, who served as chairman of the IPCC from 1997-2002, said: “The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact. That is worrying. The IPCC needs to look at this trend in the errors and ask why it happened.”

But here's the hilarious bit - as well as saying that the IPCC should look at where the problems came from, Bob Watson has another plan, this time to convince us all of the credibility of what we're being told:

Professor Watson has held discussions with Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, about creating a new climate research group to supplement the work of the IPCC and to help restore the credibility of climate science.

Al Gore! Restore the credibility of climate science!!?? This is a joke, right?

(H/T Lubos Motls)

Subprime science

H/T Marc Morano

Jones on the Medieval Warm Period

It's interesting to compare Phil Jones' various prognostications on the reality or otherwise of the Medieval Warm Period.

Jones et al 1998:

..we can only concur with Hughes and Diaz (1994) that there is little evidence for the
‘Medieval Warm Period’, although it is variably quoted as occurring between 900 and 1200...From the few reconstructions used prior to 1500 there is little evidence for the ‘Medieval Warm Period’.

Jones and Mann 2003:

To the extent that a ‘Medieval’ interval of moderately warmer conditions can be defined from about AD 800–1400, any hemispheric warmth during that interval is dwarfed in magnitude by late 20th century
warmth.

Jones & Mann 2004:

Our assessment affirms the conclusion that late 20th century warmth is unprecedented at hemispheric and, likely, global scales.

BBC interview 2010:

There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

One striking feature of the recent statements are that the disappearance of the scare quotes from the medieval warm period. But the overall tone has changed too. This looks like a pretty clear change of emphasis to me, but I'm sure that there are those who will argue that his latest statement is, in Hockey Team jargon, "consistent with" his earlier positions.