Privatising the state

...but not in the way any sane member of the public would want. Ian Parker-Joseph, writing at the Libertarian Party blog, has a very interesting post about the bureaucracy setting up private companies (limited by guarantee) to perform work that you or I would expect to be state-run. The examples he gives are the Association of Chief Police Officers and SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers).

As Ian PJ points out, SOLACE advises on recruiting local authority chief executives and setting their salary levels. It includes several chief executives on its board, so there is a clear conflict of interest. As he says, it's a pretty clear case of racketeering.

One other interesting facet of this scandal which Ian doesn't pick up on is the fact that structuring these bodies outside the public sector makes them immune to Freedom of Information requests.

Handy, that.

Met Office forecasts

September 2008:The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.

January:2009:Severe weather warnings have been issued as temperatures in the UK dipped as low as -11C (12.2F) overnight.

A response from Prof Hardaker

With commendable speed, Professor Hardaker, the CEO of the Royal Meteorological Society has responded to my email asking for a statement on the Society's position on one of its journals standing in the way of an attempt to replicate a study published there.

Thanks for your note. I've had a couple of emails relating to this discussion and the position currently is as Prof McGregor mentioned. As I have mentioned to others who have emailed in, I'm very happy to consider the requirement for a clear policy statement and as suchI have put this on the agenda for the next meeting of the Society's Scientific Publishing Committee, at which all the Editors of the Society's journals are members. 

While I had hoped for at least some sort of recognition of the need for replication, it may be that Prof Hardaker feels he can't commit the Society to a new policy one way or the other without discussing the matter with his colleagues, and this is not an unreasonable position.

I would hope that the Society would start out from a position that every published study should be replicable and that both the data and code to do so should be in the public realm at the time of publication. The oft-cited policies of econometrics journals would be as good a place to start as any.

My concern would be that the committee ducks the issue by putting in place a bland policy stating that authors should make data available on request or some such, which then merely opens the question of what happens should authors refuse to do so - would the journal withdraw the paper? Would they sue the authors for breach of contract?.  Assuredly not. It is surely in the interests of the Society to avoid having to deal with any of this kind of unpleasantness by ensuring that the data and code are handed over up front.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Update on Jan 5, 2009 by Bishop Hill

In response to a follow-up email, Prof Hardaker has provided some more details:

Many thanks for the pointer to the blog and I would be very happy to feed your thoughts into the discussion. I'd also be very happy to share with you the decision of the Committee, and of course any new policy would be publicised through our respective Journal pages. I would wholly expect that if the Committee decided to establish a policy it would do so for all the journals in the Society's portfolio, but that's just my assumption. The Scientific Publishing Committee next meets in early May. I recognise this is a little way away but it will give us the time to take a considered look at the comments we have received and best practice from other respected journals in time for when we send the committee paperwork out in April. I will also make sure the Chair of our Committee sees all the correspondence we have had associated with this.

Data archiving

Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has been trying to get hold of the dataset underlying a study by prominent IPCC author, Ben Santer. Santer himself has (rather snottily) told him that he can't have the data, while the journal in question, the International Journal of Climatology, has refused to help too. The editor, one Dr MacGregor, has said that they do not require authors to archive data as a condition of publication and that data can be obtained from the authors. This was rather cheeky, given that the authors had already refused to release a thing.

The International Journal of Climatology is a published by Wiley on behalf of the Royal Meteorological Society. I have now written to the Chief Executive of the RMS asking for a statement on the society's position on the issue

Dear Professor Hardaker

I read with great interest a recent article on the Climate Audit blog http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4742, which reported on attempts to obtain copies of the datasets underlying a paper published in the International Journal of Climatology. According to the journal's editor, Dr MacGregor:

"It is not the policy of the International Journal of Climatology to require that data sets used in analyses be made available as a condition of publication. Rather if individuals are interested in the data on which papers are based then they are encouraged to communicate directly with the authors."

I found it frankly rather amazing that a journal would adopt a position of not requiring datasets to be availableas a condition of publication,given the importance of replication in the scientific process. It also seems somewhat unhelpfulof the editor to suggest a direct approach to the authors as a possible remedy, given that the authors in question had already turned down such a request. Mr McIntyre at Climate Audit has subsequently made unfavourable comparisons between the policies of IJC and the Royal Society's Phil Trans B which has adopted and enforced a policy on data archiving (see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4754), and given that the paper in question is now essentially unreplicatable, I find it hard to disagree with this position.

Since this is a matter of pressing public concern, I was wondering if you would care to issue a statement on the Society's position on the importance of replication and the availability of data used in its publications, both in general terms and in relation to the paper in question. I think it is important for the Society to make a stand on the credibility of the papers that are published under its name. This would be an excellent subject for a posting on your blog.

I have published this letter on my own website at bishophill.squarespace.com and will of course link to or publish any response you give.

Kind regards

My feeling on this issue is that the Society has probably never concerned itself with nitty-gritty issues like data archiving, but that they could and should. It will be interesting to see what Professor Hardaker has to say.

(Professor Hardaker's blog is here).

The shorter Sunny Hundal

Better investors demand lower interest rates.

Link

That climate change seminar

Much of the interest over the whole Roger Harrabin/CEMP kerfuffle has centred on the ‘high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts' (as the BBC Trust put it) decided that global warming was settled science and that sceptical views could safely be ignored.

We now finally, after months of digging, have the first insider view of the seminar.  Richard D North, a critic of the BBC and apparently the lone sceptical voice on the seminar has emailed TonyN at Harmless Sky to tell us the real composition of the panel.

The BBC crew (senior executives from every branch of the corporation) were matched by an equal number of specialists, almost all (and maybe all) of whom could be said to have come from the “we must support Kyoto” school of climate change activists.

Oops! Read the whole thing here.

Subsidy farming

The Boxing Day walk was up part of Glen Devon which has had the misfortune to have a large industrial site built on it since the last time I was there. Yes, you guessed it, there's a bloody great wind farm been built at the top of the glen. Thanks greenies for that particular bit of landscape desecration.

Fifteen turbines I counted, and guess how many were actually operational, at this, the peak time of year for electricity demand? Well, when we arrived, none of the windmills were actually operating at all. After about half an hour, one of them ground into action, so it's not like there wasn't enough wind, although it was a still day. A little later a second one started to rotate a little hesitantly. It didn't last though. A few minutes later, first one and then the other ground to a halt again and it was all still. None had moved again by the time we left.

It's been said again and again that wind farms don't produce power when it's needed and that they can never produce enough, and here is real world evidence of just that. Wind farms are a means for politicians to divert funds to their client companies in the renewables business (in the shape of subsidies), from where it is diverted back to the politicians by means of political donations.

Corruption, pure and simple. And it spoiled my walk.

Extracting the Michael

More fun and games on the BBC/CEMP front. In the comments thread behind the last post, a visitor identifying himself as a former BBC exec has some interesting insider views on someone else who might have been the guiding hand behind the CEMP seminars. I've taken the liberty of reposting the comment in full so that readers can form their own opinions.

I (an ex-BBC exec) have attended a number of BBC "seminars" over the years. It seems that the climate change one may have been very similar to the most recent I attended, which was about the development of broadcasting in Africa (when I was chief exec of an organisation developing psb in Africa).

The idea was to help forge a strategy between "interested organisations". Those, it turned out, were almost entirely from the NGO or DFID sector, most of whom held views entirely in keeping with then government policy linked (in turn) to Bob Geldof/U2/Bono. My own organisation favoured a much more market led (as opposed to aid) approach - but surprise, surprise, the overhwelming majority there weren't interested.

I should add that I only got to attend the seminar by using old contacts - the first I knew the event was taking place was two days before. So I and my capitalist organisation only got in by gate-crashing.

My main point is that my guess is that the climate change seminar followed exactly the same lines - probably with almost the same cast of people present (ie from Oxfam, WWF, etc). It's the BBC hearing what it wants to hear via people who are government supporters and left-liberal think tanks/NGOs.

This part of th BBC was run by Michael Hastings, their head of "corporate social responsibility", now Baron Hastings of Scarisbrick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings,_Baron_Hastings_of_Scarisbrick). He has since moved on but he set the tone and tenor for this part of the BBC's operations. Michael now sits as a cross bencher in the House of Lords, but all his sympathies lie in the green/NGO arena and he is firmly in the NuLabour inner circle (I know him reasionably well, having once employed him).

There is not much of interest about Lord Hastings on the web - he appears to have left the BBC shortly after the seminar, apparently because his elevation to the peerage was deemed incompatible with his position - it remains unclear precisely why it took the BBC nine months for them to work that out. He has lectured a number of times on climate change. He's now head of corporate social responsibility at KPMG.

Interesting stuff. I shall have to work out how to follow this up.

More on CEMP

TonyN at Harmless Sky has had an interesting comment on one of his blog postings about the BBC seminar that Roger Harrabin's CEMP set up to decide the global warming issue for the purposes of BBC output (no prizes for guessing what their conclusions were!).

We know that the seminar took place at the BBC on 26 January 2006, but the corporation has resisted attempts to discover who actually attended. The attendees were, we are lead to believe, a panel of leading climate experts, but the only names identified as attending were:

Jana Bennett, Director of Vision (then Television), BBC and Helen Boaden, Director of News BBC. It was chaired by Fergal Keane, Special Correspondent with BBC News. The key speaker at the seminar was Robert McCredie, Lord May of Oxford.

So as far as the scientists were concerned, only Lord May counts (he is a biologist, IIRC).

The new name revealed was discovered in an article in the Times. In a gossipy column, journalist Rachel Johnson describes a conversation she had with Andrew Simms, a wonk at the New Economics Foundation, in which they discussed how the greens won the battle for public opinion:

Well, I thought that the piece Susie Watt did for Newsnight last week, questioning whether economic growth is good, was a real marker,” he said, “But I think the real conversion took place about 18 months ago . . .” He trailed off to snaffle a tranche of Cornish yarg before resuming, “when I was asked to attend a BBC seminar on climate change, and Fergal Keane was there.”

This conversation took place in January 2008, and this, together with the presence of Fergal Keane, suggest that they referred to the same climate change seminar in 2006 - even the BBC can't have that many.

Andrew Simms is head of policy at NEF and directs their climate change programme. What is rather more interesting about him is that he is a board member of Greenpeace UK and a founder member of the Green New Deal Group.

So those of us who were wondering whether the BBC's group of leading climate scientists were in fact a group of tofu-munching environmentalists are increasingly convinced that we were right.

The BBC - the public relations arm of Greenpeace.

You know when you've arrived...

..when one of your blog postings is cited in Wikipedia. Well, not exactly cited, because blog postings are not permitted in Wiki unless it's RealClimate. But there is a citation here of Roger Pielke Jnr discussing Caspar and the Jesus paper, which is good enough for me.

I expect the book contracts to be rolling in shortly...

Getting your argument straight

Some further thoughts have occurred to me after the recent posting on the Cambridge Environment and Media Programme. Joe Smith, you will recall, has argued that CEMP activities are not succeptible to Freedom of INformation requests because his activities on this front are private activities.

Meanwhile it is instructive to compare his position to that of his CEMP colleague, the BBC environment analyst, Roger Harrabin. The fine blogger, TonyN, over at Harmless Sky, has tried to get hold of the visitors of a CEMP get together, but was rebuffed, the BBC arguing firstly that these activities were not covered by the Environmental Information Regulations, and then stating that their exemption under the Freedom of Information Act, allowed them to withhold information relating to journalistic activities.

It seems to me that there is a contradiction here. Joe Smith says that CEMP is private activity, while the BBC says that it is BBC journalism and therefore exempt.

Which is it?

More Harrabin

I've previously blogged about the Cambridge Environment and Media Programme (which might be the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme; nobody seems sure). CEMP, as I'll call it, is run by the BBC's Roger Harrabin and Dr Joe Smith of the Open University, apparently to improve coverage of green issues in the media. As far as I can tell this involves using the BBC to promote environmentalism, but I recognise that my views may be prejudiced, so let me lay down the evidence I have recently uncovered.

CEMP's activities seem mainly to involve putting together BBC journalists and bigwigs and NGOs to discuss green issues. These meetings have lead to among other things the abortive Planet Relief day of BBC greenery.

CEMP is funded from a mixture of public and private sources - the BBC and the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia both say they have contributed. What the private sources are, or indeed what the legal status of CEMP is remain unclear, but it is not a great stretch of the imagination to believe that these are in fact the self-same NGOs who get to meet the BBC bigwigs.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, Dr Smith indicated that in his view, his work with Roger Harrabin is private activity.

Put these factors together and you have a disturbing situation which raises some uncomfortable questions for the corporation. For example:

• Why is the BBC funding the private activities of one of its journalists?
• How can the BBC claim to be editorially independent when it is engaged in a joint venture with unidentified private organisations to shape its own content?
• Who is authorising this expenditure within the BBC?
• What is the BBC getting in return?

Lots of questions, but precious few answers at the moment. I'll keep digging, but any suggestions as to ways of attacking the problem will be gratefully received.

Update on Jan 15, 2012 by Bishop Hill

The full story of Roger Harrabin and the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme is now available as a download here.

Five Labour administrations, five devaluations

James Bartholemew asks a very pertinent question: why is there always a run on the pound when Labour is in power?

The Speaker's committee

The news that the Lib Dems are going to boycott the Speaker's committee because they see it as a stitch-up is welcome. Iain Dale is calling for the Tories to follow suit.

But if there is not to be a Labour majority on the committee, how then should it be staffed? It seems to me that Labour and Conservatives both have too much of a vested interest in the findings - they both desperately need to win vindication for their actions in the past. It seems to me then that it is only the LibDems, of the major three parties, who can justify their presence on the committee.

Two LibDems, one each from the Scots and Welsh Nats, and one of the independents, plus a token Red and a token Blue; that's the answer.

Self-analysis

For followers of the climate change debate and the IPCC process, the fact that IPCC reviews are conducted by the same people who wrote the papers in the first place is not news - Michael Mann was of course famously a lead author on the paleoclimate chapter of the IPCC 3rd assessment report, which, if I recall correctly, managed to include a picture of the Hockey Stick no less than six times.

There is an interesting post up today at Peer-to-Peer, a blog run by the Nature group, and authored by Maxine Clark, the executive editor of that organ.

Nature's 27 November issue (456, 432; 2008) carries a News story about the planned retirement of the editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself.

According to Nature, 5 of the 36 papers in the December issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals alone were written by its editor-in-chief, Mohamed El Naschie, making nearly 60 papers written or coauthored by him in the journal this year. Most scientists contacted by Nature said that El Naschie's papers tend to be of poor quality, although a few find his ideas original and interesting.

Nature has played a less than stellar part in the global warming debate, refusing to adhere to their own policies on data availability, and suppressing views that do not adhere to the required view. Here is a chance for them to redeem themselves though - I wait, in hope rather than any great expectation - for an article from them demanding resolution to the similar problems that beset the world of climatology.