Memo: don't mess with JC - Josh 126

Hulme on BEST and peer review

Mike Hulme has some perceptive comments about the BEST team's approach to peer review.

So what does this do to the conventional journal peer-review process?  Those asked to review these manuscripts for JGR will now conduct their personal reviews in the full knowledge of the parallel public review which is on-going.  And unless they shut-off all their communication platforms for the duration they will hear and see what others' judgements on the manuscripts are.  Whether for better or worse it's difficult to see how this will not change the (conventional) peer-review process.

Snow in New England

Heavy snow in New England has brought chaos, with trees still in full leaf leading to branches being brought down across roads and power lines. This is apparently the first time the region has had heavy snow in October since 1869.

You can guess what has caused it.

Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, last February linked monster snowstorms with climate change, "This is what the models project," he said, "that we see more of these very large snowfalls."

I can't help but be a little surprised that global warming is going to lead to earlier and heavier snowfalls.

Curry on BEST

Popcorn time. Read this in the Mail on Sunday:

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of  trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no  scientific basis.

Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

Sits vac

Anyone looking for a job?

Reporting to the UK News Editor through the Health, Science and Environment Assignment Editor, the Science Editor will be a regular contributor to “Today” and the “Six o’clock News” on Radio 4, the “Ten o’clock News” on BBC One, the News Channel, and the News website. He or she will also report for a broader range of BBC outlets on key science news issues when appropriate. He or she will lead the BBC’s journalism in the sciences - working with the Assignment Editor to shape the style, tone and substance of the editorial agenda in science coverage. This person will have excellent contacts with key people in the world of science and be the primary contact for scientific institutions throughout the UK and beyond.

Note this too:

Knowledge and experience

...thorough knowledge of all the requirements of the Editorial Guidelines and the recommendations of the Neil, King and Jones Reports for BBC News.

BBC Science Editor

Update on Oct 29, 2011 by Bishop Hill

A reader emails to say that the bookies' favourite within the BBC is Roger Harrabin. He is, I suppose, nothing if not familiar with the contents of the Jones report.

Dealing with overFITing

Representatives of the solar industry are apparently to march on Downing Street to protest that their subsidy is being cut.

Members of the solar sector are preparing to stage a protest calling on the prime minister to intervene to block anticipated plans to halve feed-in tariff (FIT) incentives for solar installations, which they fear will "kill off" the fast-expanding industry.

The new Cut Don't Kill campaign, founded by a coalition of 20 major companies from across the solar industry, is planning to hold a march next month calling on David Cameron to halt controversial plans to slash subsidies for small-scale PV installations.

Perhaps readers can suggest some slogans for these poor oppressed souls to shout at Dave and Nick.

Tol responds to Ackerman

A couple of days ago I posted an article by Frank Ackerman in which he defended his estimates of the "social cost" of carbon and made some criticisms of Richard Tol's work. This guest post by Tol is a response to Ackerman's piece.

Over the last 20 years, I have developed (and later co-developed) an integrated assessment model of climate change called FUND.  Model code and documentation used to be available to anyone on request. It can now be freely downloaded. Reproducibility and transparency are cornerstones of scientific inquiry.

Some modelers prefer to keep their code private. There are a number of reasons for this. One reason is the potential for abuse. Someone may borrow your model, do something inappropriate or silly with it, and use the results to embarrass you.

I have borrowed other people’s models. I have found bugs in their codes, or what seemed to be bugs. I always discuss this with the modeler in question. If there really was an error – more often it is a misunderstanding on the part of the outsider – I left it to the modeler to correct this and whatever results that were affected.

Colleagues have treated me, my code and my data in the same way. I have had to publish two errata.

Frank Ackerman borrowed our model. He discovered that in one equation there may be a division by zero. He contacted my co-developer, David Anthoff, on 16 December 2010. In the following email exchange, David introduced Mr Ackerman to our standard diagnostic procedures and explained to him that our results are not affected. David added bespoke diagnostic tests on Mr Ackerman’s request and again found immaterial effects.

Much to our surprise, Mr Ackerman claimed in a blog post on 15 March 2011 that there is an error in FUND. He recently repeated this claim (and again, and again). In an email dated 17 March 2011, Mr Ackerman admits that he used different methods than we do to work around the division by zero; and that if he uses these methods, there is a substantial error in the estimates of the social cost of carbon.

The computational error, therefore, is Mr Ackerman’s.

I am reminded of Phil Jones’ “Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?” although in this case it is more like “Why should I give you my code when all you want to do is introduce a bug and blame it on us?”

Nonetheless, FUND will remain in the public domain.

David Henderson's letter to the FT

David Henderson sends me this letter. It was sent to the FT in response to an article by Max Hastings, but was not published.

Sir:

Hastings on Energy Policies

Sir Max Hastings (FT, 22 October) is right to describe wind power as 'an expensive and unreliable source of energy', and to note that 'extravagant green policies' are pushing up energy costs in Britain. But his proposed remedies for the situation are not well judged.

As to specific proposals, it is surprising that he should argue that 'turbines should remain part of Britain's energy mix'. Again, he advocates subsidies for new nuclear power stations on no better grounds than that (according to him) they are costly. Most people would think that this, if true, was a reason for not subsidising them. In viewing the future, he takes no account of the possibilities that may have been opened up by the development of shale gas. It is not to be taken for granted that 'every form of power generation becomes inexorably more expensive'.

More broadly, Sir Max harbours twin illusions that the array of past policy failures might have led a historian to recognise as such. Illusion No 1 is that wise energy policies require the timely adoption by governments of far-reaching centralised strategies for 'Britain's energy mix'. Illusion No 2 is that the future is sufficiently well charted for such strategies to be soundly based.

The main current threat, not only to costs and competitiveness but also to energy security, comes from the intertwined energy and climate change policies which successive British governments have embraced.

David Henderson

Update on Oct 29, 2011 by Bishop Hill

DH emails to say that his letter has been published today.

A bunch of aerosols - Josh 125

Click for a slightly larger image

Judy on Pielke on the mainstream

You don't need to read anything here tonight - read Judith Curry instead.

GWPF Annual Lecture 2011 - Josh 124

Josh's sketch notes of Cardinal George Pell's fine lecture on the Climate Change debate from a Christian perspective. Held at Westminster Hall, London, 26th Oct 2011.

Click to read more ...

My letter in the BMJ

I have a letter published on the BMJ's website in response to their call for action on climate change.

Climate change editorial was callous

Andrew W Montford, Author: The Hockey Stick Illusion

Sir

The timing of your call for action on climate change (Editorial, 19 October 2011) could hardly have been worse. Rather than dwelling on the theoretical dangers of climate change, you would perhaps have done better to note the BBC's report the same day that 2700 people die each year in the UK because of conditions linked to fuel poverty. For you to call for "governments to enact legislative and regulatory change to stop the building of new unabated coal-fired power stations" - actions that would undoubtedly increase the death toll still further -- therefore seems needlessly insensitive. For you to do so on the same day that the main pilot carbon capture and storage plant was scrapped, thus ending any realistic near-term hope of 'abated' coal-fired power stations, might been seen as somewhat callous.

Yours faithfully

Andrew Montford
Author: The Hockey Stick Illusion

Extracting emails from UVA

Chris Horner is interviewed on WINA-Charlottesville radio about his struggle to get Mann's emails from the University of Virginia. It's a struggle, by the sounds of it.

For whom the blog Tols

Readers will remember the post a couple of days ago about Sir Andy Haines' citation of a new paper by Ackerman and Stanton about the costs of carbon. The paper was much criticised in the comments. This is Frank Ackerman's response. Please could readers try to engage with the arguments rather than piling on.

Is it true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity? If so, we’re in luck. The paper that Elizabeth A. Stanton and I wrote on the social cost of carbon has been discussed by the author of the Bishop Hill blog, and in comments on that blog and on Twitter by Richard Tol.

Bishop Hill cites us as estimating that the social cost of carbon – the monetary value of the present and future damage caused by emitting one ton of carbon dioxide – could be $1,000 or more. Tol calls this estimate “complete nonsense,” and Bishop Hill refers to the increase from the U.S. government’s $21 estimate to $1,000 and higher as “fairly jawdropping.”

Click to read more ...

Academics: "No oversight for us"

This is a week old, but is rather interesting:

The government and the research councils have rejected suggestions that the UK needs a specific body to police research integrity.

The idea was floated by the Commons Science and Technology Committee in its report on peer review, published in July.

As one casts one's eye back to Climategate and the integrity failures by academics and administrators, and the Science and Technology Committee's Climategate inquiries and the voting down of any less-than-mild criticism of scientists by government MPs, and the peer review inquiry that followed that recommended some oversight, and now this...

...well it doesn't look very good does it?