Bishop Hill Avoiding agreement
Apr 2, 2014 Climate: Parliament Climate: Sceptics So here it is - the Science and Technology Committee's report on climate science communication. In it we learn that the Mail and the Telegraph are bad people™ and that the BBC has been allowing other bad people on air.
So far, so predictable.
I was hugely amused by one bit of the report. I had told the committee that there wasn't any single trusted source for information about climate science and that you needed to check everything. And in particular I took issue with the reliance on peer review:
Peer review is completely overdone. I know this Committee has done its own inquiry into peer review, but there is a lot of empirical evidence out there that peer review does not do a lot for you. On the whole, it does not find fraud or error, so the only way of getting to the bottom of whether something is right is to verify it.
Quoting the opening sentence of the excerpt above, the new report declares:
We cannot agree with this contention as we made clear in our report Peer review in scientific publications, in which we concluded that peer review was “crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research”
This is a bit naughty of the committee, because if you refer to the report they mention, the opening words are "Peer review in scholarly publishing, in one form or another, has always been regarded as crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research". In other words this centrality of peer review was a premise of the report rather than the conclusion. Moreover, the report notes that there is "little solid evidence on the efficacy of pre-publication editorial peer review..."
So while we can all agree that peer review is seen as important, the committee's own report on the subject agrees with the point I made; the one that they are now trying to dispute because I am a bad person™. Really, it comes to something when a select committee has to misrepresent one of its own reports in order not to have to find itself in agreement with a sceptic.
Reader Comments (48)
At least you do get invited to speak. That in itself seems positive, even if they must be very naughty MPs to do such a thing as considering opinions critical of potentially catastrophic energy policies.
Some worthy sentiments dotted (e.g. don't accept dogma from either side...) around the report - one has assume that it's window dressing. For all the promotion of the scientific method - it seems they want their own facts as well as an officially sanctioned catechism.
The gravy train rumbles on.
They even seem to have trouble actually defining "climate change" (p12/PDF)
Enjoyed Greg Barker M.P. observing “climate change is climate change” or alternatively “climate change is a changing climate” - I was so reassured to read about the minister's grasp of the situation.
Keep on keeping on, Bishop. You are doing a Wilberforce to the tyranny of the climatocrats.
Page 5 they have this:
“Need” in order to do what, they don't say. “In order to reduce putative temperatures a few hundredths of a degree in a century's time” wouldn't sound too good to the electors..Page 7 the committee was obviously rather frustrated that six experts gave six wildly different definitions of “climate change”, and, with a straight face, complain that it's difficult to tackle something if you can't define what it is. They suggest merging the definitions of Professors Slingo and Rapley and pass over in silence the definition of government advisor Walport.
Page 31 they rather naughtily define Climategate as “the .. story surrounding the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2010”. Wrong year, and for “disclosure” read “non-disclosure”.
Page 33 Nursey gets a rap on the knuckles:
I agree with Tomo – the gravy train rumbles on… and on… and on… And we poor saps have to pay for it; NONE of those sitting on the comfy seats of those many committees will be out of pocket from any of the decisions that they railroad through, though the tax-payer may be bereft of everything as the “need” to “decarbonise” the economy results in no car, no home, no heat and no hope.
One comment I was about to put on the previous thread about the Groan seems apposite, here: few “deniers” deny that climate change is happening, or that humans play a role in it. What is in dispute is that humans are the cause of climate change, the degree of influence of humans, and how catastrophic any change is likely to be; most “deniers” feel that a warmer Earth would be better than a cooler Earth; most “deniers” feel that our ability to affect the climate either way is somewhat over-rated.
What we DO deny is this level of tosh from the IPCC:
There has been NO warming for 17 years, and NONE of the changes have been unprecedented.The only catastrophe that I can see is if the alarmists get their way – most of the population of this country, and many others, will be reduced to abject poverty, scratching out a living from the soil, with a death-rate that makes the logistics of proper disposal a serious problem. All the while this is carrying on, the politicos will be still ensconced in their luxury, quaffing at their leisure.
It is only through the auspices of Bishop Hill, Jo Nova, WUWT, Tallbloke, et al that this scenario might – just might – be prevented, as the awareness of the population rises to what is really going on; Global Warming be damned – this is about Global Governance.
As for MP Greg Barker’s ideas on climate change, don’t be so dismissive, Tomo; is “climate change” really a proper technical term? “Climate” is a pretty amorphous concept, and is used to describe a wide range of conditions – the climate of the UK is very different from that of India. The Indian climate tends to be warm, with a twice-yearly variation from hot, sticky and wet, to warm and dry; however, the climates of many regions within India may be quite different. The British climate consists of more variable weather, with winters being cold and wet, and summers warmer and drier; however, we accept that those conditions might not follow (particularly the summers – indeed, three different seasons may occur in one day!); also, there are many variations in climates within the British Isles – which one is specifically “British”? Can we actually tell that the British climate is changing? Certainly, the Indian climate seems not to be, nor the Australian one, nor much of Africa, or the Americas. I suspect that the term “Climate Change” was adopted because it is not really possible to define “Climate” let alone any change in it.
Time to start unrelentingly asking if they are 'believers' in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?
If not, are they 'deniers'?
If yes, are they not showing us all the scientific evidence that must have convinced them?
" Irreproducible research too often leads to great discoveries."-
Journal of Irreproducible Results.
Perhaps this is the moment to clarify exactly who qualifies as a climate scientist. For example, qualifications in fluid mechanics, atmospheric physics, computer science all seem highly relevant and suitably white-coated. It looks as if statisticians ought to be more involved, but they seem curiously reluctant to do so. Then geography comes to mind, because lots of climate scientists seem to have started off in that discipline. Population geography concerns itself with topics that certainly seem relevant, but the subject is firmly a social science in outlook and methodology . As is economics, of course. But since economic models drive the whole affair you can hardly exclude economists (whether or not they would be comfortable describing themselves as scientists). And don't get me started on psychologists.
Nonetheless, my question for Mr Millar is quite serious - who qualifies? Or is the answer simply "those with whom we agree".
My Lord Bishop, you misunderstand. You are talking about skeptic Science - this is OUR science based on verification by actual measurement or test.
Instead they are talking about "science" - a socially constructed entity whereby: Peer review is “crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research” because the social institution they call "science" is only that which is peer reviewed by the "old boys club" of those who call themselves "scientists" - testing and verification is a "nice to have" not a "necessity" in this new "science".
What they are doing is defining "Science" as being predominantly defined by that which is peer reviewed. This is a definition, one which you are powerless to change. Therefore as an outsider, rather than fight this redefinition, you should embrace it.
Man made global warming stopped, by some sleight - it then shape shifted, its new meme of dissonance = weather is not climate but climate change is [bad] weather and "is happening!" = MMGW.
All of it is Casuistry but never was it so designed to be subtle - I mean Greg Barking has to get his head around it and he never was the sharpest TOOL in the box.
Ref - IPCC and Rajendra Pachauri and his cabal...............
Q. What can you expect from the IPCC soft porn merchants?
A. Not much.
So, no surprises there then.
In my work in industry, verification was at the heart of everything. Only after verification had been completed and signed off was "peer" review undertaken, to ensure that every aspect had been considered from a wider perspective. Few, if any, members of the S&T Committee would know the difference and the importance of both processes.
Roger Harrabin reports that the Committee thinks that the BBC must not give room to "opinions" on GW, only comments presumably, from people who have the approved message..
What makes me think that it is sceptics' opinions, whether scientific or not, which are to be silenced again, just as the door to allow them in had opened a little way, while Greenpeas and the Fiends of the Earth and the Wild and Woolly Fund and Caroline Lucas will continue to be allowed free reign to air theirs?
If contrary opinions are to be banned from the BBC, it's going to be pretty dull listening in future. Who next?
Philip: "In my work in industry, verification was at the heart of everything."
The difference between "the scientific method" and the engineer's naturally skeptical way of working ("it might work in theory but will it work in practice") is that skepticism is the natural way of thinking in engineering whereas "seeing if it works in practice" it is something that many academics have to be forced to do and then only very reluctantly.
The scientific method was not so named because only scientists checked theory worked in practice - it was so named because only scientists needed to be reminded that theory had to work in practice.
To all of the IPCC warmista hucksters ... where is the observable physical evidence for the claptrap that you espouse ? Don't bother, for goodness sake, to peddle the ludicrous position that 'models' satisfy the definition of observable physical evidence ... they just regurgitate what the modelers tell them to. Man, I'm fed up ! ;)
All that time, money and effort to conclude that previous policy to indoctrinate the public isn't working very well. Conclusions - carry on with more of the same but let's try using this internet thingy the evil sceptics find so useful. Couldn't they have reached the same conclusion with an afternoon of chat? Or got Briony to write it for them?
Is it Climate Change or is it Global Warming? The fact that the report (a) appears to use the two phrases interchangeably and (b) appears not to use the phrase "man-made" are very telling.
The phrase man-made only occurs once, as a quote. Anthropogenic appears just six times, about half in quotes and the rest of the time in paragraphs such as:
...which actually gets repeated in the conclusions, so the word Anthropogenic appears just once in the main text, three times in quotes and is used twice in the same quote above.
But the question I think many sceptics have is "Yes, but what is its magnitude compared to natural causes?" Is it just a very small effect?
Finally, I loved this phrase:
That appears to anthropomorphise climate change itself, and suggest it should do better in the polls!
Yes, poor old climate change. It never got the hang of new-fangled new media and just kept producing weather every day, as it has since time immemorial. Its fall in the opinion polls is sad to witness but inevitable.
It's on the Today programme now. Only heard a bit of it, but Miller sounding almost Stalinist.
It's like we are watching a host of lemmings, running madly....
Apparently as a submitter of written evidence I will receive my own copy. I'll read it then. Pity they don't seem to have read my evidence though.
Is anyone else seeing or suspecting that this exercise will be used to officially adopt a policy of getting us out of the room, of getting our doubts kept out of the print media and get the BBC's home-grown exclusion policy taken up all round?
Next they'll be trying to shut us up right here on the net.
( They'll be rewriting the end of that story in genuine Ministry of Truth fashion. It always ended with the little boy saying the king has no clothes and then being locked up in a psych ward for his own good.)
Miller interrupted but I am sure he was about to accuse Richard Tol of being a lobbyist, also the clear inference was that differing opinions on policy was acceptable but differing scientific views were not.
The world is going mad, hope Nigel does well tonight as otherwise its all downhill from here.
From comments of the thinkingscientist,
As you say thinkingscientist - it is a strange statement and so woolly but truly worthy of the woolly minded jerks who promulgate and rely on public SYMPATHY for their man made global warming meal ticket. But sympathy now turns to apathy.
Ah............."public support" - what "public support" would that be then? As far as I can tell, there is no public support for climate change - public sympathy went out of the window when the
eejitsconsumers realized that they were the ones paying for 'climate change' palliative policies.Once more, I cannot rid myself of the feeling, man made warming due to man made emissions of CO2, the whole sorry affair - a crumbling edifice built on a foundation of a single fabrication based on a two dimensional lab experiment, has run its course. Metaphorically speaking, watching the gymnastic acrobatics of the likes of Betts et al still defending the indefensible is an extraordinary spectacle and one which not only demeans their own intellect, it has the additional but deleterious effect of highlighting their desperation. And that is the overriding impression I have of it - it's gotten stupid, it is schoolboyish yabbo sucks, "and if you don't believe us - we're gonna stick our fingers in our ears and shout till you've gone away - yeah and a meejah blackout for yer too".
Pathetic, really pathetic.
Poor dears. How do you present an incoherent pile of alarmist scare stories as a logically consistent body of work leading inexorably to the conviction of imminent manmade doom? Particularly when you can't let the public see the abysmal quality of the junk you're defending? If I didn't love science so much, the whole business would have me crying with laughter, rather than shaking my head sadly.
Ah well, another few weeks of spreading the truth, folks. (Yet again.) We can't let people go away thinking there's anything in this latest round of propaganda, any more than there has been in any of the others.
If peer review don't work then simply peers are cr*p.
What else didn't we know?
Rhoda: "Is anyone else seeing or suspecting that this exercise will be used to officially adopt a policy of getting us out of the room,"
Rhoda, it's a largely futile effort by this committee to try to control what ordinary people are allowed to hear. You need to see this in context of the fall in power of the large institutions as the newer social media start to take over. This is a Titanic clash of cultures between the old institutions that have largely been able to dictate to everyone else in society for many many centuries finally coming up against the iceberg of new social media which has allowed a host of new politics and media outlets to bypass the old stranglehold of the institutions.
The social media genie cannot be put back in the bottle. They can no longer pretend that we don't exist.
In the past, committees like this had the power to effectively instruct journalists like the BBC and newspaper editors who was and wasn't permitted to talk about subjects. So, e.g. it would be impossible to even get a letter printed if you were talking about "the wrong subjects".
Now, anyone can get their "letter" heard and anyone can read those letters. This committee is living in an archaic world before the social media revolution and it is frankly looking ridiculous. This revolution is having profound impacts.
Journalism is already suffering because of social media and we are already seeing the demise of papers like the Independent and many many local papers.
The BBC's reputation continues to take a nose-dive as social media continues to show it up it's ignorant prejudice. Long term who can doubt the BBC (if it exists) will be a lot smaller in the future?
The politicians are also taking a huge knock as shown by the rapid rise of UKIP (& indeed the Green MP). These are are not so much a shift to the right, or toward certain policies, instead both UKIP and the greens are a shift toward the concerns - formally denied a hearing - of the ordinary people expressed & supported through social media.
This I think is why journalists always attack UKIP politicians through their social media outlets - it's not so much UKIP they attack, as those who dare to use social media to bypass their power and thereby do them out of a job.
Because of social media, we no longer have to suffer the likes of the BBC, these parliamentary committees, journalists or committees of "scientists" censoring everything to remove anything these "dinosaurs" of the old print-media era don't want us plebs to discuss.
This report is just another example of a wasted exercise as the present incumbents in parliament who are now clearly living in a fantasy world act out the age old ritual of writing a report dictating what the ordinary people are allowed to hear.
They are acting out an utterly absurd & completely outdated notion : that THEY are communicating to us. Imagine it! They still live in this fantasy world, before social media, where they the political elite could dictate what people like us were allowed to hear!
The reality of social media is that communication is now a meritocracy where no one has any ordained right to dictate what other people hear.
They are really the modern day equivalent of the Spanish inquisition: trying to repress dissent and force a single establishment view onto society.
I listened to Miller being interviewed on TODAY. He came across as a stuttering, stumbling fool doing the job his masters want him to do. He even rolled out the comparison with giving equal air-time to lung cancer/smoking sceptics. The irony of his position surely passed over his head: When he claimed that having people like Lord Lawson being interviewed about 'climate change' was tantamount to allowing lobbyists onto the BBC without the listener being warned about who they are. That was pure projection.
So we can forget the 'sceptic' label: we are all 'lobbyists' now.
Competent auditors are very trusting, but it is always "Trust and VERIFY".
Peer review allowed a "scientific paper" to be published in Acta Astronautica, which posited that Aliens are watching our planet and when they detect the temperature rising, they will see us as a threat and invade our planet!!!
Peer review in climate science is a total joke. It is meaningless.
The Science and Technology Committee seem to be approving the BBC censorship! Given that Tim Yeo is chairman, is anyone surprised?
An afterthought to the Miller interview: I listened to the headlines before it and wondered how long before someone claims the Chile earthquake was down to Climate Change.
I suppose we cannot expect any fair mindedness from politicians when the leader of the opposition states: 'that the Environment Secretary doesn't even believe in man made climate change', as if is a mortal sin to be a sceptic.
@ alan kennedy
In your list of disciplines relevant to climate science you omitted history. Tony Brown, a geographer who has studied a very wide range of historical records to find information about weather conditions, has written numerous articles on this subject, both for blogs and for academic journals. It is a pity that more of our MPs haven't read them.
In fact, I think climate researchers at the Met Office and other organisations ought to demonstrate that they have read Tony Brown's articles. All to often such researchers give the impression that they think climate change started in 1950 and nothing of any interest happened before then.
There are links to many of Tony B's blog articles, plus a few from other authors, in the web page below.
Climate Reason - The Little Ice Age Thermometers
A study of Climatic Variability from 1660-2009
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Academic publications by Tony Brown
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/about/staff/ab1e06.page#publications
A snippet from saner days (1790-98)
Climate.
The country of Abertarf, containing an extensive plain from the west end of Lochness to the bounds of the parish of Kilmanivaig, is hardly 30 or 40 feet above the level of the sea ; and owing to this circumstance, as well as to the temperature of the lake, it is very little addicted to any lasting snow, but from its contiguity to the Western Ocean, much more liable to floods of rain than the eastern part of the parish.
Stratherrick, rising gradually from the river Tarf to an altitude of 400 or 500 feet above the level of the lake, with the exception only of the principal residence of the family of Foyers, and some other possessions on the banks of the lake, being nearly the central point bewixt the eastern and western seas, is not liable to incessant rains; but, from its being surrounded with very high hills it is not only accustomed to an early fall of snow, but it is in the remembrance of many persons now in life, to have seen the country for 6, 8, and 9 weeks, in such a state that not a tuft of heather was to be seen. It is true, this has not been the case for seven or eight years bygone, but who can venture to say that these seasons may not again recur; and as the produce of the country in corn and hay could not subsist its present immense stock of the woolly species for one week, the question is, in that event, in what manner they can be preserved from starvation.
A splendid read
http://www.cillchuimeinheritagegroup.co.uk/index.asp?pageid=141629
Take "issue with the reliance on peer review" you say your Grace. Pfft, peer review is as reliable and robust as ever. See my comment on Unthreaded.
"On the whole, it does not find fraud or error": it's not meant to. When I was young I was told that my job as a referee was only secondarily to point to error ; my main job was to insist on clarity. Then if there were errors the reader could find them. It was obscurity, incompleteness and ambiguity that were the enemies.
The only reference to lobbying I can find is: 'The BBC should be clear on what role its interviewees have
and should be careful not to treat lobbying groups as disinterested experts.'
Presumably this applies as much to Greenpeace, WWF et al. as anybody else?
Obviously there is a role for peer review, but, even when applied with integrity and as much objectivity as possible, it is essentially a human process and therefore irredeemably fallible. This being so it is hard to see the onus placed on peer review as more than a massive appeal to authority.
Roy
Yes, you are right of course. Indeed what prompted my own interest in this topic was a quote in one of Lindzen's papers about the Arctic in the 1920s. I was just trying to make the rather obvious point that the word "scientist" seems to mean something to the people who write these reports, whereas it means nothing much to most people working in a multitude of scientific disciplines. Not even the BBC will accept for long that a geneticist or a chemist or a mechanical engineer has any necessary expertise (i.e acquired by virtue of their scholarship) when it comes to the climate, yet these people would manifestly be "scientists". If the Miller line to it be followed you would have to be much more specific as to who is in and who is out. Publication in peer reviewed journals may well be proposed as a criterion, but that would capture quite large number of extremely sceptical people. It would also exclude people like geneticists and psychologists with an amateur interest in the topic. A more rational approach is to allow those who dispute received wisdom their say: Nature will decide who is right (that's how science works). The worst possible outcome would be to have someone with no knowledge or competence (or even interest) in the subject determining its future simply because they are the President of an Academy.
Perhaps it's not a gravy train, maybe it's something more like a huge blimp where the passengers can peer down from their observation deck at the ant like peons far away. The Westminster bubble blimp will prove to be like self-sealing fuel tanks, - as in a few bullet holes won't make a bit of difference unless the flammable gas and aluminium powder paint cop a spark..
Miller's biog shows him to be a diligent retailer of the party line and the rank hypocrisy of spouting about the integrity of the scientific method and then playing partisan political games and worse with the facts such as they are - simply stinks to high heaven, James Lovelock's recent observations about the religiosity suffusing the subject are spot on - flick a few drops of holy water, mutter a few mantras and do your best to persecute and suppress inconvenient stuff.
The consequences of following the present policies are clearly not actually thought through - it reminds me of David Brent style managers (reality exceeds art here) in tech companies believing that they can fix engineering issues with wedges of inane memos and lots of equally inane, narcolepsy inducing meetings.
Just got an email from them, containing the same text as the announcement on their website.
It's another you-couldnt-make-it-up, starting with
“All Ministers need to acquaint themselves with climate science and clearly and consistently reflect the Government approach in all their communications, especially with the media.”
and ends with
"Dogma on either side of the debate should be revealed as such.”
A whiff of hypocrisy from Andrew Miller M.P. - (STC's chair) on a branded gravy train.
Amusing to hear the Beeb having to defend the charge that they had too many sceptics on. They only ones they could think of this morning were Lord Lawson and their new bogey man, Richard Tol - total air time about 2 mins! I wonder what the total time for alarmist nonsense comes to..?
They love peer review except when something inconvenient slips through. That is why climategate shows them trying so hard to be gatekeepers. There is also selective choice of the literature they cite. For example, none of the hundreds of studies showing that higher temperature and CO2 increase crop and tree growth will ever by cited by these people
I wonder if that would extend to the description of the NGO activists from Greenpeace etc who attended the 28gate conference and were later described as climate scientists and experts?
ThinkingScientist wrote: "Is it Climate Change or is it Global Warming? The fact that the report (a) appears to use the two phrases interchangeably and (b) appears not to use the phrase "man-made" are very telling."
Indeed. The lack of precision in language has provided the basis for perhaps the biggest "bait and switch" in history. Identifying "climate change" or "global warming" is very easy. Identifying "anthropogenic climate change" or "anthropogenic global warming" is a lot less straight forward to damn near impossible. In effect, the reversal of the null hypothesis proposed by Trenberth and others has already been successfully carried out in public discourse.
A quote in the Times (020414) from Miller...
97% huh? Dear oh dear oh dear - but ninety seven per cent of whom? Show us the figures Miller - you a8se.
Previously he averred:
........."Lunatic fringe, or Lunatic mainstream? - like the communist nutters in the Labour party?
Miller, bought and paid for by Big Green-dollars.