Lecture at St Andrews

This is guest post by Messenger.

I was in the audience at the Bishop’s talk in St Andrews. He had been sponsored for this  appearance by a member the Tayside branch of the Royal Society of Chemistry, who had read the Hockey Stick Illusion, and who, as I mentioned elsewhere, had thought it was a Good Thing.

The talk was the closing one of a regular annual series held on Friday nights at the University. The lecture theatre was just about full, probably 80 people or so, including St Andrews academics, which was more people than usual and very encouraging. The Bishop’s presentation was confident and entertaining, giving a condensed version of the highlights of the HS controversy with graphs and photographs of the protagonists on the screen.  He went on to demonstrate how the CRU emails showed that Steve McIntyre’s suspicions had been correct, matching the most damning email comments to what the audience had already been told. He followed this section with a brief look at the various inquiry fiascos and summed up with an optimistic look at the future possibilities for how this current situation in climate science might develop, both here and in the USA.

Click to read more ...

IPCC - In a class of its own. Josh 86

More Cartoons by Josh here

Environmentalists trashing the environment (again)

From Der Spiegel

Once...rubbish is collected, the sorting continues. Special machines with infrared sensors discern six different types of plastic. But then something strange happens -- more than half the yoghurt cups, plastic juice bottles and packaging foils are incinerated. That is quite legal. Under German law, only 36 percent of plastic rubbish has to be recycled.

The remainder can be sold for a profit, for example to plants that burn rubbish to produce heating or power. Such facilities are everywhere in Germany. Municipalities across the country built then in response to a ban on storing garbage in landfills. Indeed, now there are far too many of them in Germany -- and there is a shortage of burnable waste.

The result is that firms are buying up as much plastic waste -- which burns well due to the high quantity of oil in plastics -- as they can get their hands on. Indeed, some companies have even resorted to importing plastic waste to burn -- hardly a contribution to an environmental utopia.

A piece of Stringer

Bob Ward pens about Graham Stringer MP at the New Scientist blog. To tell the truth, I'm not sure what his point is.

Use your HSI effectively

H/T to Lord Beaverbrook, who found this in the comments at WUWT:

I am not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I wanted to mention an interesting conversation I just had with my local Liberal MP Peter Chandler.

Some time ago I had dropped my copy of the book “The Hockey Stick Illusion” as I was aware from previous conversations that he and I saw pretty much eye to eye on matters relating to climate change, conservationism and power generation and I believed the book would be a good source of infor providing links and a clear discussion which not all MP’s in this country are willing to do.

My first call in after some time to see if he had read it revealed he had not yet had time to do so, however that was not the case today.

I called in to the office and we had a discussion on the book and he let me know that he has used it extensively in climate change discussions – and in fact in a number of cases related to but not always directly about CO2 emissions. In addition, he has quoted passages and given sources in local parliament and says that “the best thing about the book is that it is very clear on giving source information so when the people who are ‘enusiastic’ on climate change ask him questions such as ‘where is his source?’ he can easily give references’. He also said that with some of these people he drives them up the wall somewhat because every time he does bring up these points some people do not like them because it brings solid facts to the table.

I was somewhat floored by the use to which he has put the book and wanted to just let you know that here is a good example of where the book has had direct impact on discussions of policy for my local electorate (Darwin, Australia).

He also warned me that the book was currently on his nightstand and that when I got it back it would be a “work in progress” (referencing it will likely not come back in pristine condition) which I have no problem with as I have a feeling it has been put to very good use and more use than I probably could have done.

How to get to the top

Donna Laframboise has uncovered the remarkable story of the IPCC lead author, Sari Kovats, who was appointed a lead author on the IPCC report before publication of her first scientific paper and years before she had completed her PhD. In the meantime she appears to occupy the position of senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, desite the fact she was only awarded a PhD last year.

It stinks.

St Andrews tonight

Just to confirm that I'm speaking tonight in St Andrews. The talk is 8pm in the Physics Building (Lecture Theatre B). The public are welcome.

Quote of the day

The anonymous peer review process is the enemy of scientific creativity…peer reviewers go for orthodoxy.

Professor James Black

Quoted in Donald Gillies' submission to the House of Commons Science and Technology COmmittee. H/T Judith Curry.

No opposition

Peter Gill emailed me a couple of days ago. Some of you may remember Peter as the man who famously didn't write the Institute of Physics submission to the House of Commons inquiry into Climategate. Peter wanted to tell me about a recent invitation he'd had to take part in a global warming debate at one of the bits of the University of London. After several months of to-ing and fro-ing, the who event has now been cancelled because nobody was willing stand up to represent the other side of the argument.

This is a rather familiar story, isn't it?

(I had a similar experience a few weeks back, although the reason given was lack of ticket sales).

Science in hot water

Cumbrian Lad points to a BBC Radio programme starting at 9pm tonight called Science in Hot Water. It's about scientific misconduct and will apparently feature CRU at some points. Strange, I thought they'd been exonerated.

When the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit got into hot water over leaked emails, the case review stated: "[In] a matter of such global importance, the highest standards of honesty, rigour and openness are needed". In this two-part documentary, Adam Rutherford reviews some high-profile cases where scientists didn't take those responsibilities quite seriously enough. As he trawls through a fascinating rogues' gallery, from Piltdown Man to a South Korean geneticist's claim that he had cloned stem cells, Rutherford wonders whether scientific misconduct is more prevalent than we think

SciTech peer review inquiry

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee have started to publish the submissions of evidence on their website.

A number of familiar names are there, and I'll try to read these when I get a chance:

• Philip Campbell, the editor of Nature who had to resign from the Russell inquiry after prejudging the findings (not to mention his conflict of interest)
• Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, who replaced Campbell and whose advice was ignored where Russell found in convenient to do so
• Michael Kelly, of the Oxburgh panel, whose observations on the indequacies of CRU's work was not reported by Oxburgh
• Nic Lewis, of O'Donnell et al fame
• Prominent sceptics, McLean, de Freitas and Carter

There are also two from UEA and one each from the big learned societies, including the Royal Society.

Update on Mar 17, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Richard Horton's evidence includes this:

Peer review is a central issue in many scientific controversies and disputes today.  Take climate change. In the Times Higher Education , last year, Andrew Montford, author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (1), argued that events at the Climatic Research Centre (UK) at the University of East Anglia (CRU) had far-reaching implications for the world of scientific peer review and publishing (2). His charge sheet was sharp and precise: that scientists undermined the peer-review process. Implicit in Montford's argument is that peer review is critical to the process of – and thereby public trust in – science. Writing in The Guardian , George Monbiot put it this way: "science happens to be [a] closed world with one of the most effective forms of self-regulation: the peer review process."(3). But for many of us who do peer review, this "most effective" form of self-regulation is often misunderstood and misrepresented.

IJoC - business as usual

Long-term readers may remember my efforts to get the International Journal of Climatology to adopt a sensible policy on data and materials - this was prompted by Steve McIntyre's attempts to extract information from the journal and one of its authors, Ben Santer.

At that point the journal had no policy, simply referring requesters to the author, and apparently happy to let the authors refuse if they wished. IJOC is a journal of the Royal Meterological Society, and the society's head, Paul Hardaker, was initially very favourable, with an undertaking to instigate a review. However, as months turned into years it became fairly clear that the society was caught between a rock and a hard place. If their policy was tough enough to ensure that data became disclosable then mainstream climatologists would not publish there. Climategate brought some confirmation of this, with the revelation of an email in which Santer and Jones discussed a boycott of the journal over a future data policy. Santer's words:

If the RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available - raw data PLUS results from all intermediate calculations - I will not submit any further papers to RMS journals.

Click to read more ...

Vested interests

Rob Schneider emails to say that BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine has today been discussing public reactions to nuclear power experts - namely to distrust their advice because of their vested interests.

And quite right too.

So why does the BBC treat this same argument as risible when it is raised about the advice given by global warming scientists?

Scottish Sceptic

A new blog for your attention - Scottish Sceptic is the site of Mike Haseler, a former Green party candidate, who has now seen the error of his ways...

McKitrick on Earth Hour

Ross McKitrick has posted some thoughts on Earth Hour, as told to a journalist last year:

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity. People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.