Climategate revisited

“handful of scientists (including some at the University of East Anglia itself)”

Who? That’s quite a paranoid-sounding allegation ..

Nick,

The article you link to (which JQ also links to, above) merely suggests that there is no need to posit sophisticated hacking.

Who? That’s quite a paranoid-sounding allegation ..

Right, completely paranoid (coughPaul Denniscough). No one at UEA was involved.

Well, of course you could implement a side-channel timing attack on SuperJANET’s lightwave network using quantum computing, or build a homemade UAV powered by an ex-Soviet radio-thermal generator and fly it through Phil Jones’ office window, but if all it takes is to find their public ftp server, why waste your valuable time?

It’s still both rude and illegal to read other people’s letters.

Well, in that case, why don’t we abandon the rule of law, all tool up, and have it out at the windswept and deserted industrial site of your choice? Winner gets to gnaw on the loser’s carcass. After all, it’ll just be practice for what happens when the ‘sceptics’ win and comprehensively fuck the world.

In addition to the hack at CRU there was a hack of Real Climate. The hackers did gain access to the system, but were thwarted when the attempted to upload a file with selected stolen Emails to the system. And yes, they did hack the East Anglia system as well.

That bird is beyond not flying, it is dodo dead.

So, a University saying there is no reason to further investigate an accusation of misconduct is the same thing as the accusation being proven false?

Wow! What a scene! The very foundations of the UN climate change architecture are quaking and tottering all around him* but still the dogged Professor Quiggin remains crouched, nose to the temple floor, on the trail of those damn hacker mice. Admirable, really.

* http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017907.ece
(The statement by Bob Watson is especially significant).
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/climate-talks-un-sidelined

The parallels between creationism and climate denialism are what I find striking. The 3:09 post above me by bm has the line that “the very foundations of the Un climate change architecture are quaking”. Yup, just like the theory of evolution from natural selection is in crisis.

What’s frightening to me as a scientist is the clear illustration that there are no boundaries involved. We’re not trained in partisan warfare; we operate on the basis that we’re trying to figure out how nature works. We exhibit skepticism towards our own ideas; we’re willing to consider unorthodox ideas which probably are wrong but might be interesting. And these are used as weapons against us by ideological and political partisans.

Any of us would have our research crippled if we were flooded with freedom of information requests, or had people demand our codes and flood the airwaves with accusations of fraud for minor bugs or subtle defects in data handling. It’s not enough for the denialists to think that the scientists are wrong. They also have to be personally and professionally destroyed in scorched-earth fashion. It’s despicable.

And for quality climate change clowning, there’s Fox News.

This thread demonstrates the problem we face. Clearing the scientists of misconduct is, by the denialists, only interpreted as proof that the conspiracy is even bigger than they assumed. I confidently predict that when London is flooded, they will claim that the rise in sea levels was the result of fiendish machinations by climate scientists intent on covering up their previous misconduct.

bm has a serious point, though I’m not sure that ragging on the UN is part of the solution.

The progress towards dealing with climate change is very poor, and recent events have shown that the process is very easily derailed (the global economic crisis matters perhaps more than storms in teacups about e-mails or glaciers). I may be too pessimistic but I can’t see adequate action coming in time — the required international give-and-take will be enormously hard to achieve[1], and the public understanding and support for the problem is shockingly poor. Really significant numbers of people refuse to believe in it, because it has implications that are not congenial, whether from a lifestyle or an ideological point of view.

From this point of view, making the case and debunking the denialists is really important.

fn 1: As David McKay puts it, we pretty much have to give up fossil fuels entirely — this may be feasible but not without enormous political will.

By “paranoid-sounding allegation” I meant that you were treating it as an organised conspiracy, and sweeping anyone who questions the validity of any piece of climate science into the same conspiracy. Whereas it seems likely that there was an insider in the CRU who assembled the material and then leaked it, but possibly driven by concern over the failure to respond to FOI requests, his/her own concerns about the materiel, or some personal grudge.

I’m quite happy to believe that there is an oil-company funded pro-fossil fuels lobbying movement with no regard for the truth. But it concerns me that in response to that the anti-global warming movement is calling anyone who questions anything a denialist, and that evidence that global warming might not be as catastrophic as feared is being hidden.

What is your understanding of the “hide the decline” email?

I’ve advocated that the people at the centre of ‘climategate’ should have been investigated with a view to prosecuting them for offences against the Freedom of Information Act, misconduct in public office and fraud.

They would have been guilty of the first offence (FOI Act breach) if the complainant hadn’t been out of time.

As for the second and third offences (and perhaps other offences), until they have been investigated with a view to bringing prosecutions against the scientists involved; I don’t accept that anyone from the ‘climategate’ camp has been exonerated.

Further, the ‘climategate’ scientists should demand that they are subjected to this process in order to clear their names.

Bear in mind that I’m not saying that they should be prosecuted: that would depend upon a thorough investigation.

“After all, it’ll just be practice for what happens when the ‘sceptics’ win and comprehensively fuck the world.”

I thought that had already happened. But then I believe we live in a geoengineered world that Thomas Midgley Jr created by accident when he discovered Freon at the behest of Charles Kettering.

After all, it’ll just be practice for what happens when the ‘sceptics’ win and comprehensively fuck the world.

Actually, the denialists don’t even need to win. They just need to sufficiently muddy the waters so that governments and non-state actors fail to act (or to act sufficiently). And they may not even have to do that, given the policies proposed by such non-denialists as our current President (“clean coal,” anyone?).

@Pete asked “What is your understanding of the “hide the decline” email?”

The best discussion of the CRU farrago is on the Real Climate blog http://www.realclimate.org

Here is how they answer your question. “Mike” is Michael Mann, who was just cleared by Penn State. It should be added that no one made formal complaints against Mann – the enquiry was begun by the University because of the pulic attention.

“No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.”

Look, it’s ignorant to deny climate change when the evidence is overwhelming. But it’s absolutely legitimate to question whether certain potential effects of climate change are being exaggerated by scientists for political reasons. And we’ve seen multiple examples of precisely this over the past few months – the Himalaya Glacier error being the most serious.

I suppose you could argue that missing footnotes or misattributed (or outright wrong) data are inevitable when it comes to projects like IPCC. I would think, though, that given the importance of climate change policy, IPCC reports need to have every fact verified until it is rock solid, and every chart or projection presented in a conservative manner. It’ s obvious that the credibility of the IPCC has taken a major hit over the past few months, and rightfully so! Those of us who are not climate scientists need to be able to trust IPCC reports.

Pete, I’d be interested in hearing your answer to your own question:

What is your understanding of the “hide the decline” email?

You figure it’s just generally understood among client scientists that they are defrauding the public, and so hiding data is a routine and normal part of doing business that scientists need not even conceal from each other? Or what?

[aeiou]

…by the partial exoneration of one researcher at a different university…

… who isn’t even a subject of the UK investigation. Fuck quiggles, just how dumb do you think we are? Don’t answer. We know. Oh but how I long for the day when morally and intellectually superior dickwads such as yourself assume their rightful control of the world economy. There will be skittles and unicorns for everyone.

You must have caught a link from the denial-sphere John. As a side-note, it was the denial of inconvenient truths (e.g. climate change) that convinced me that libertarianism was a intellectually bankrupt cult rather than an ideology to take seriously. And the libertarian post is important for another reason; he let slip his ideological reasons to reject science that he doesn’t like, because somehow it’s all an evil plot to take over the world economy.

I think there is a difference between climate science and the public policies that need to adopted in order to prevent/ modify/ take advantage of it.

At this point, I find it hard to accept that anyone would really query the science. The reduction in arctic and antarctic ice, the shrinking of glaciers, and the rising sea levels seem incontrovertible. There is no questioning that the noughties were warmer than the 90’s, and 90’s were warmer than the 80’s. We hear little or nothing about “The Hockey Stick is broken!” or “Global warming stopped in 1998!” any more. The really far-out denialists have moved from attacking the science to attacking the scientists.

What may be a more fruitful discussion is … what is to be done? I know – we need a communist world government! Only kidding, but meeting short term targets on drastically reducing carbon emission seems fruitless. Oil and coal money has such a stranglehold on the US Senate that getting the necessary legislation through it seems another waste of space. China can’t can even control its own mining industry – an unlicensed mine opens once a week!

We may need a desperate geo-engineering solution – not Dubner and Levitt’s sulphur dioxide, I hope! Artifical trees to absorb CO2 more efficiently that natural trees is my own pet solution.

http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/environment/artifical-trees-to-absorb-carbon-dioxide/

On the other hand, I like this blog of Joe Romm’s which continues to be optimistic in spite of all the gloom and doom.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/10/polls-public-support-for-clean-energy-and-global-temperatures/

Unfortunately the truth will make no difference here. The scandal was “page 1” and the rebuttals will be page “14C”, if at all. Moreover those who want not to believe will claim that those letting the scientists off the hook are all biased, etc., etc.

This is not a struggle over facts, it is a struggle over religion – those who claiming global warming is false are on a crusade and will not let a little things like facts dissuade them.

It’s why a large percentage of Americans still believe there were WMDs and still believe Saddam was aligned with Al Qaeda. To believe otherwise would crush their precious sense of self, and will do anything to avoid such even if it requires watching the earth get destroyed in the process.

…who stands to gain politically from climate change? I can’t think of a government on Earth that would prefer to have to worry about it virtually unlimited funds, and a pretext to control every aspect of the economy and every detail of people’s lives.

FIFY

As a side-note, it was the denial of inconvenient truths (e.g. climate change) that convinced me that libertarianism was a intellectually bankrupt cult rather than an ideology to take seriously.

The entirety of libertarianism is the denial of collective action problems. To the extent that you acknowledge that collective action problems exist – or even can exist – you aren’t a libertarian.

One of these days, Oliver Sachs will explain exactly which chunk of the brain enables the recognition of collective action problems, and what goes wrong with libertarians. Who knows? Maybe someday there will be a cure.

How much Antarctic ice has been lost toby? Last time this dumbfuck, science-hating, neanderthal libertarian looked at the literature—- I know, difficult with my knuckles scraping on the ground, but it turns out one can navigate a browser using speech recognition and a series of well-timed grunts—- Antarctica was gaining, not losing ice.

Look, nobody’s stereotype of libertarians is that they are dumb. People’s stereotype of libertarians is that they are amoral and inhumane greed-monsters.

Well, I happen to have sat next to Steve McIntyre at a college dinner last night. I don’t know him, he was someone else’s guest, and I didn’t talk to him much. But it did make me read JQ’s post with additional interest.

JQ may be 100% right about the science — he probably is — but his post is basically a series of unsubstantiated innuendos about people like McIntyre — about how someone among them did the CRU hacking (your evidence, John?), about their funding (your evidence?), and about their behaviour (they’re accused — shock, horror! — of communicating with each other and coordinating their actions).

The lowest point is the reference, in the Update about the hockey-stick graph, to “supposedly disinterested citizen researchers who were in fact paid right-wing operatives.” An operative isn’t just someone who gets funding; if he were, I’d be an operative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He’s someone who’s hired specifically to promote his hirer’s agenda. McIntyre is the principal “citizen researcher” who raised doubts about the hockey-stick graph. What’s JQ’s evidence for the “paid operative” innuendo?

Sorry, John: you may be entirely right about the climate science but your post is largely unsubstantiated ad hominem nastiness.

if -20 becomes -10.

I should note here that I have no idea if Antarctica is warming or cooling as a whole.

Hard to link them though.

virtually unlimited funds, and a pretext to control every aspect of the economy and every detail of people’s lives.

But that’s easier to accomplish (at least in the U.S.) by just declaring War on X. If what the lefties wanted was what you’ve said, we’d just throw our hats into into the anti-whomever hysteria ring and … invade Iraq, or something?

World War II comes to mind as a time when the U.S. economy was under the most direct control of its government. There’s nothing like a massive military buildup to achieve virtually unlimited funds (which can get spent on “defense contracts” = whatever) and a pretext to control every aspect of every thing (with a large subpopulation cheering us on and some support from the right wing, no doubt).

(Also, my sneer was at libertarian and pals, not you, S. McG. Altho I suppose it’s better not to sneer at all.)

Anyway, the thing about East Anglia isn’t either the supposed misconduct or the e-mail theft, but the fact that, if you follow climate stuff at all, East Anglia just matter. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of climate scientists around the world, and essentially all of them agree on the basic outlines of anthropogenic climate change. The mistake of mountaineer, etc. isn’t in believing the charges of misconduct — which I assume are baseless, but who knows — but thinking that even if they were true in their most extreme form they would have any informational content about climate change.

Marc at 16 nails it. Quoted for truth, as they say:

“What’s frightening to me as a scientist is the clear illustration that there are no boundaries involved. We’re not trained in partisan warfare; we operate on the basis that we’re trying to figure out how nature works. We exhibit skepticism towards our own ideas; we’re willing to consider unorthodox ideas which probably are wrong but might be interesting. And these are used as weapons against us by ideological and political partisans.”

One might also quote Yeats on passionate intensity.

Look, as a physicist-in-training who does computer simulations of problems involving fluid transport, I’d like to think I’m better qualified to understand climate science than, say, Melanie Philips. But without a thorough grasp of the literature or years of experience in the field, I’m inclined to defer to my colleagues in the Earth Sciences department, rather than barge in and say “UR DOIN IT WRONG” and seize upon every little dispute that arises in the course of normal science as evidence the whole shoddily built edifice is collapsing, noes!!

I’m troubled by a collapse of trust in science. Surely you must understand, “libertarian,” that I’m suspicious that what has convinced you isn’t the weight of carefully studied scientific evidence, but rather ideological distaste for acknowledging there might be a global problem requiring global coordination, or the earth’s atmosphere isn’t an infinite garbage can that we can forever perturb without consequence.

I can’t wait for the gang assembled here to start sending bucketloads of FOIA trolls to theoretical physics departments.

I’m somewhat agnostic on AGW (at least on the science; my mind is pretty well made up on the politics). I don’t find either side’s scientific arguments thoroughly convincing.

So, it doesn’t really matter which side is right — the crux of the issue is that “liberals” (whatever you may imagine them to be) really, really bug you, and if they’re for something, you have to be against it, and vice versa. Because they bug you.

You could get a sweet gig writing for the Washington Post with that kind of perspective, MM.

I always thought that a working e-mail address and or a URI was a requirement to comment here. Mods?

[trolling]

Your blog starts with an assertion that some allegations have been proven false. Thus far only 3 of the 4 against Mann have been dropped from the Penn State inquiry. They are still likely to be brought by the Federal Government. Jones was proven to have violated the FOIA. Fraud charges may well be brought against him.

That the emails and documents were “hacked” appears to be unlikely. At this point it is appearing more and more like they were left on an insecure ftp site, readily available for download by the public. A “skeptic” had advised them some time before they were released that there were files on the server that were not secure.

Since you start with two blatant lies I see no reason to continue reading your blog.

Perhaps you should actually read the emails before you try to act like you know what you are talking about.

No fraud? Consider this email from jones
Tue Jul 5 15:51:55 2005

John,

“This is from an Australian at BMRC (not Neville Nicholls). It began from the attached
article. What an idiot. The scientific community would come down on me in no
uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only
7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

Your stuff is right off the fanatic pages.

‘ … but he’s not a “disinterested citizen researcher” because he’s an academic.’

And what exactly would McKitrick’s ‘interest’ be, Tom, that he has by virtue of being an academic scientist? Please spell it out–because otherwise, that claim is what those in the philosophy trade call ‘bullshit’.

So, it doesn’t really matter which side is right—the crux of the issue is that “liberals” (whatever you may imagine them to be) really, really bug you, and if they’re for something, you have to be against it, and vice versa.

Expecting our current leaders worldwide to fix climate change is like sending the Three Stooges’ evil twins to intercept a nuclear warhead in space and convert it into a hydroponic garden with an old-growth forest in it, before it reenters the atmosphere. I do not believe these people have the smarts to fix the problem. Given the vast resources required to do so, I’d expect them to mostly buy things like palaces, helicopter gunships, torture facilities, etc. So I’d much rather just take my chances with climate change, and I don’t give a rat’s ass who agrees or disagrees.

“Expecting our current leaders worldwide to fix climate change is like sending the Three Stooges’ evil twins to intercept a nuclear warhead in space and convert it into a hydroponic garden with an old-growth forest in it, before it reenters the atmosphere. I do not believe these people have the smarts to fix the problem. Given the vast resources required to do so, I’d expect them to mostly buy things like palaces, helicopter gunships, torture facilities, etc. So I’d much rather just take my chances with climate change, and I don’t give a rat’s ass who agrees or disagrees.”

You’re right, but you’re only right because the liberal democracies are full of people like yourself who are too jaded or too confused to demand leaders that can and will fix this problem. And really, I would rather not have my kid “take chances” with climate change, and it seriously pisses me off that he will have to because of people like yourself.

I think most of the coordination is pretty loose, and most of the “attackers” are amateur fellow travelers. The main co-ordination is that right wing think tanks send talking points to talk radio, and similar print and video outlets, where they get trumpeted. Then the unpaid fellow travelers pick up on it. Of course there may well be a core of fossil fuel funded actors, who are taking advantage of the situation.

One thing that needs to be discussed, is the fallacy of false positives. Take a large sample of people, and heavily heavily scritinze them, and you will find some things embarrasing. Heck I’m one of the safest drivers out there, but if I had a police car following me all week, I’m sure there are some moving violations they could tally up. This attack on science is like that, harras then publically, and highlight an irregularity that comes up (even if the irregularity is terminology whose meaning is different in science as in the general public). As Jesus said “let he who is without sin…”. Pretty much an acknowledgment that if you scrutinze carefully enough anyone can be made to seem guilty. It ought to be important (regardless of one’s position on the political spectrum), to guard against the possibility that a highly motivated hostile minority can destroy the reputation of a group of people.

Expecting our current leaders worldwide to fix climate change is like sending the Three Stooges’ evil twins to intercept a nuclear warhead in space and convert it into a hydroponic garden with an old-growth forest in it, before it reenters the atmosphere. I do not believe these people have the smarts to fix the problem. Given the vast resources required to do so, I’d expect them to mostly buy things like palaces, helicopter gunships, torture facilities, etc. So I’d much rather just take my chances with climate change, and I don’t give a rat’s ass who agrees or disagrees.

This is what everyone assumed you believed already. Stop pretending that you think the earth is unlikely to be destroyed in the next century.

Exxon Mobil still spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to fund lobby groups that question the existence of global warming. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap to hire Michael Crichton to talk for an hour either.

AGW proponents get bigger money and better treatment from the press.

Name one climate skeptic who can command that kind of cash, either for research or as a speaker. AGW research is a huge business, and its investors do expect returns.

This is indeed a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

It is hard to choose just one from the many tendentious and wrong assertions that MM has made in this thread but I’ll go with one from his post @67: One scientist says X, another says not-X. Whom to believe? In this case, one scientist says not-X and 900 scientists say X. Whom to believe. Gosh MM has convinced me.

Michael Mann’s research has brought about $6 million in grants in the last ten years. I don’t know what Mann charges for a speaking fee, but it’s presumably hefty. Al Gore gets $100K – $175K for a one-hour speech.

Yes, that’s how we scientists live, jetting around in first class, commanding tens of thousands of dollars for a one-hour speech, kicking back at our opulent penthouse after a long day of bilking the public out of its tax dollars….

Wait, sorry, I just woke up from that daydream. What I mean is, writing code at midnight to try to finish a publication that I’ll get invited to give a few talks on, at places that will reimburse my airfare (coach, of course) and maybe even buy me a $20 dinner and, if I’m lucky, a beer or a glass of wine. Oh, the luxury!

Protevi, that actually sounded more like a Manchurian Candidate allusion (“the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”)

they could go to work for the petrochemical industry—there’s so much more money there

Aye, it sure wasn’t climate scientists summoned before congressional committees about record profits awhile back.

“How much Antarctic ice has been lost toby? Last time this dumbf**k, science-hating, neanderthal libertarian looked at the literature….Antarctica was gaining, not losing ice”

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/ice-shelf-instability/

The Antarctic Ice Shelf is thinning, as was repeated above, it is not hard to read the evidence if you look.
@Musical Mountaineer wrote “For instance, I found this, which seems pretty even-handed, and concludes that we ought to not worry about polar melting…”

You are joking, right! A right wing news site called “New American” that headlines Obama’s “falling popularity” and boldly attacks “Queen Pelosi”. If you expect climate science to get a fair shake on a site like that, then you are fooling yourself.

There are major problems in the article itself. It uses an old Creationist technique called “quote mining” – you pull quotes selectively from different scientists to sow a sense of confusion in the reader & sell them on you main point – in this case, that the globe is actually cooling.

Wiselav Mislowski, who is quoted, as been in the news before.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/15/gore-derangement-syndrome/

German scientist Mojib Latif is cited as if he was agreeing that there were cycles of global warming and cooling. See
http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/14/science-dr-mojib-latif-global-warming-cooling/

Just to show how bad it is, the article then trots out the worst denialist crook of them all, Viscount Monckton (self-styled adviser to Margaret Thatcher), to summarize, and then adds comments from an article written in 1922!

“this”= http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2871-are-the-ice-caps-melting

Scientists don’t have to pocket big wads of money to have a stake in the game.

Yes, but the scientist who convincingly proved that all previous theories about AGW were wrong would get a Nobel prize for that. Look at what happened when Robin Warren and Barry Marshall proved that stomach ulcers are largely due to infections rather than stress, like everyone had thought before. And a refutation of AGW would be a bigger and more important discovery than this. Big scientific discoveries are winner takes all: it’s the people who make big breakthroughs who get remembered, not the ones who confirm the current consensus. Are you saying that scientists wouldn’t be interested in being known as the person who got it right after all those years of every other researcher being wrong?

Of all the “accusations” arising from this, the one that disturbs me the most is the accusation that some leading researchers could and did somehow interfere with the journal referring process to keep opposing views from being published, simply because the views were opposing (not because the science was bad). (As I recall one email says, ‘if they ever do get that paper published in such and such journal, we’ll simply put such-and-such journal on our list of not-really-respectable journals and leave it out of our literature review.’)

I wish JQ or someone who knows more about climate science would rebut this, or discuss it. For two reasons: first, there was an effective sales effort to interested non-experts along the lines of ” this is settled science, with no respectable disagreement”; second, this seems like an odd way to run a discipline. In my discipline (economics), a good path (the best path?) to publication is to challenge a widely accepted stylized truth: David Card (and Krueger) takes on minimum wage and wins the John Bates Clark medal; Stiglitz takes on markets and information — Nobel; for that matter JQ takes on widely held positions and gets his book published at Princeton U Press. Of course, you don’t get published just for holding your breath and stamping your feet — your opposing views have to be based on clear theory and statistical evidence.

I have a hard time believing that this is different in the climate-science field; but there is a strong suggestion of this arising from the climate-gate material; and I haven’t seen it clearly rebutted.

Mountaineer: you clearly have no idea at all about how academic grants work, do you? The display of sheer idiocy on Mann’s 6 million dollars of grants should disqualify you from writing out of sheer shame. Why, you might ask?

***Because science professors get very little additional personal money from grants.* We are typically on 9 month appointments, and can get 2 additional months from grants. That means that – you guessed it – all of the rest of the money goes to funding students, postdoctoral researchers, and so on. The skeptics get substantially *more* money for themselves, since they are in many cases fully paid to mouth their propaganda by fossil fuel companies.

We’re also so naive as a group that we give scientific talks *for free*, or at best we get reimbursed for our plane tickets. This may be dismaying to true capitalists, of course, but what would you expect from a cadre of evil Marxists bent on world domination?

Howard: those claims were made and aren’t even close. The basic problem was that there were several high-profile *breakdowns* in the refereeing process, where flatly erroneous skeptical papers got published even in the presence of elementary errors. The emails contained typical complaints about the quality of the refereeing process, which is very different from suppression. Talking about whether source X should be included or not in a paper is pretty moot when, in the end, it *is* included.

Zamfir: scientists tend not to be interested in pursuing fraudulent research paths, and that is what they’re being accused of. Climate change is about as controversial within the field as evolution is in biology – in both cases there is an enormous amount of evidence and a well-developed theory. Yes, there are a lot of grants being written and research being done on the topic – because it’s clear that there is something major that we’re doing to the planet and we need to figure out of the consequences.

So the idea that people are chasing an effect that they don’t really believe exists, and are frauds…

well, what can I say? Denialist = creationist.

“Denialist = creationist.”

If that would have been the average quality of argument used in defense of Darwin, most of us maybe would still be uninformed enough to be creationists ;-(

Go to realclimate.org, and come back when you’ve read several thousand pages of scientific argument, then. What do you want from a one-paragraph comment?

Of all the “accusations” arising from this, the one that disturbs me the most is the accusation that some leading researchers could and did somehow interfere with the journal referring process to keep opposing views from being published, simply because the views were opposing (not because the science was bad).

I’m probably making a mistake in trying to answer this, because I’m not steeped in all the “climategate” details, but I’m pretty sure this is an example of how propaganda has been used to distort this issues. Note your language: “some leading researchers could and did somehow interfere with the journal referring process”. I’m pretty sure that even the mail thieves aren’t claiming they have evidence of this. Their claim is that influencing journals was attempted. My understanding is that the relevant papers were published.

100: this seems like an odd way to run a discipline. In my discipline (economics), a good path (the best path?) to publication is to challenge a widely accepted stylized truth… Of course, you don’t get published just for holding your breath and stamping your feet—your opposing views have to be based on clear theory and statistical evidence.
I have a hard time believing that this is different in the climate-science field; but there is a strong suggestion of this arising from the climate-gate material; and I haven’t seen it clearly rebutted.

Ah yes, if only climatology were as free from political posturing, as intellectually rigorous, as firmly based on a solid foundation of impeccably-observed fact, and as reliably predictive as the science of economics!

Keeping stupid wrong papers that disagree with overwhelming evidence out of journals isn’t censorship, it’s peer review. And any scientist, in any field, will have plenty of anecdotes about wrong papers that got published anyway, or good papers that got rejected for stupid reasons, which are failures of peer review. That’s the sort of grumbling that was going on in those emails.

113: I should add that I’m not saying that most or indeed many economists are dishonest, political hacks, bad scientists or innumerate. Most aren’t. Most are honest, smart, and try their best to produce impartial results.
But economics has not exactly covered itself in glory recently in any of these areas, and it’s certainly not a good idea for any economist to be holding up economics as an example of how to do rigorous science.

@48:

“…who stands to gain politically from climate change? I can’t think of a government on Earth that would prefer to have to worry about it virtually unlimited funds, and a pretext to control every aspect of the economy and every detail of people’s lives.”

So, let me see if I understand how the conspiracy works…

Governments that already have the power to tax and regulate the energy industry have decided that they need the power to tax and regulate the energy industry, because these taxes and regulations, as opposed to all others, magically give governments virtually unlimited funds and the ability to control every aspect of the economy and people’s lives.

And because they need political cover to seize a power that they already have, governments have enlisted legions of scientists who are told to generate conclusions that they don’t believe in. And since the scientists have nothing to gain from this, the government bribes them with grant monies that they would have dispersed to them anyway, and that must be used for… research. Scientists need the research funds because falsifying data is very expensive.

And here comes the really sneaky part. After scientists from the world over — not just those working for government agencies, but those in academia, and nearly every professional society — come out and dutifully claim that global warming is real and needs to be addressed, the governments… do almost nothing! What better way to cover up their nefarious scheme of bribing scientist than to systematically ignore their recommendations? This having been accomplished, the path to unlimited money and power is, um… ???? … Profit!

Yeah, makes sense.

Zamfir, as someone who works in one of these fields (irrigation in Australia) and peripherally in another (management of coral reef ecosystems), I can assure you we had plenty of problems before climate change came along. Obviously, my research proposals now contain reference to climate change, for the reason that there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is happening globally, and a lot of evidence to suggest it is already affecting these systems. But if climate change were disproved tomorrow, my research support would be entirely unaffected.
Sure, but if there currently are no problems in the field you would like to study, then showing that global warming is likely to cause future problems in that field makes your research suddenly more relevant to society. Which can lead to some people overestimating the importance of climate change on their field of interest. Nothing conspirious, just people interpreting stuff a bit too much to their interest.

As far as I can tell, this is a real problem for the “working group II” section of the IPCC, who have to decide which of the many reports on the effects of climate change are solid enough to include. Sometimes the process makes a mistake and lets an overstated claim through, and at the moment even small errors can have a huge effect on public opinion.

If we want a public that has a robust trust in scientific results, I personally suspect that setting up scientists as a class of desinterested searchers for truth is counterproductive. Because scientists are just human, they make mistakes, hold petty grudges and once in a while someone is just fraudulent.

As more people become involved in climate related research, at some point someone will be caught who really did undeniably cook the books, or was perhaps even being bribed by some interest group. At that point people will have to be convinced that science works despite individual faults, and not just because of the ethical high standards of scientists compared to the low right-wing hacks.

but if there currently are no problems in the field you would like to study, then showing that global warming is likely to cause future problems in that field makes your research suddenly more relevant to society.

…and an example of one of these problem-free fields would be…?

Sure, but if there currently are no problems in the field you would like to study, then showing that global warming is likely to cause future problems in that field makes your research suddenly more relevant to society.

Enterprising grad students take note. A surefire thesis proposal: “Hey, this field I’m trying to enter has no problems to work on (!), so I’m going to gin up some tangential connection to climate change in an effort to look busy.” Tenure is just around the corner!

ajay: see the BHL thread for several examples of problem-free fields, many of which you proposed ;-)

Could someone clarify the following:

It is my understanding that providing a scientific proof requires the following;
The proof, the raw data, the steps to reproduce. If a computer model is part of the proof this would extend to the code and the computer program. Is this accurate?

My limited understanding of this issue, is that the proof and the output data is readily available but the raw data, steps to reproduce, computer code and computer programs are all restricted. Is this normal for the natural sciences fields?

Flash! Tim Lambert (he of the Deltoid blog) debated leading AGW denialist Christopher Monckton this morning. Read all about it here:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/moncktons_mcluhan_moment.php

Is this normal for the natural sciences fields?

You’ll find that the PETA types, for example, have made labs very paranoid – universities keep buildings with lab animals under very tight security nowadays. Basically, the rule is: If people feel the need to sabotage your work, there are strong practical reasons to keep your work as tightly held as possible.

Of course, the only people I’ve heard complain about the source code thing are climate change bullshitters, so there’s no particular reason to suppose there is anything behind the complaint.

In war, there is ordinarily a huge home-field advantage; but in political disputes, you’re better off fighting on your enemy’s turf. Hill and Knowlton, the PR firm that pioneered the modern art of scientific denialism, perfected the technique in its classic campaign for the tobacco industry by focusing public attention on every conceivable flaw in the research that linked smoking and cancer while making sure that nobody looked at the remarkable weakness or non-existence of science on the other side. Results unfavorable to the tobacco companies were evaluated with hyper-Popperian methodological scruples while the occasional finding that tended the other way was instantly accepted as legitimate. The theoretical possibility of bias on the one side was highlighted as scandalous while the obvious parti pris of the other side was never mentioned. And so forth. To combat this strategy, which is being employed afresh in the climate debate, often by the very same people who once fought the good fight for cash and carcinoma, it is necessary to bring the war to the enemy.

By the way, why hasn’t Hill and Knowlton ever been prosecuted under Rico?

I’m surprised how many people are complaining about how people doing scientific work are somehow being “interfered” with by people outside the organization making public statements about what the organization does and its worth. There are layers and layers of management, etc., shielding most of those people from all that.

Not when Freedom of Information requests are made. If you are being asked for specific data on a particular topic, the request will have to go down to the people who actually deal with the data on a regular basis, and since those requests have (in theory) to be dealt with within a specified time limit, that can be disruptive. Think of what happens if you’re asked for some information at work, particularly if it’s not in exactly the format in which you’re currently storing it. And climate change sceptics seem to have picked up on the technique of using campaigns of multiple FOI enquiries, so you’ll get fifteen requests with slight variants, rather than just one.

magistra,
I think the US FOIA deals only with records and not with whatever may happen to be in the minds of the people who know, so what you’re describing sounds a bit counter-productive.

135: I’m a lawyer who occasionally deals with FOIL/FOIA requests, and of course they’re massively burdensome, and of course they have to be dealt with by the people who have actually generated and work with the records requested in ninety-nine out of hundred cases. (The hundredth case is where there’s a dedicated staff devoted solely to maintaining records and responding to such requests, but that obviously doesn’t apply to researchers.)

Think about it — who other than a researcher is going to be able to compile and produce the records relating to their research? It’s not as if a university admin could plausibly go rifling around through various network directories looking for anything that looked related to the request.

james in 126 wrote:

My limited understanding of this issue, is that the proof and the output data is readily available but the raw data, steps to reproduce, computer code and computer programs are all restricted. Is this normal for the natural sciences fields?

It’s completely normal (though I have no clue what you mean by “proof”). Some experiments release raw data, but many do not; in many cases, no one would know what to do with the raw data anyway, without also having massive amounts of code and documentation made public, which would multiply the work involved by an absurd amount.

Computer code is often a hacked-together mess that works but is incomprehensible to anyone else who reads it. Sometimes scientists will clean up code and release it, if they think other people will find it useful. I’ve released some public code, which I wrote to be much more general than the specific task I was using it for, and which has proven to be a major pain as I have to put in the time to maintain it and fix bugs that have nothing to do with my current research.

In general, the people complaining about climate scientists make it abundantly clear that they have no idea how science works. Science isn’t about making every little thing you do public; it’s about figuring things out, and publishing clear explanations. The point isn’t to let someone repeat all of your steps exactly, as a rule; usually it’s to make things clear enough that other people can do different, related things that confirm what you did. You don’t want people poring over your code with a fine-tooth comb, because it’s not a very useful thing to do; they should be writing their own code, from scratch, and then if there are disagreements, you can try to hammer them out.

Thanks to all who responded to my comment (100).

1. I seem to have set off a minor red-herring on the problems of economics. (comments 112, 113, 116, 119, 122, 125). I didn’t actually mean to say, “Economics is great; we have no problems; everyone should be like us.” But on international trade orthodoxy, I’d have to say Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize by taking on hecksher-ohlin and pointing out realistic circumstances in which there are losers from trade. In any field there is a “meta” or “macro” orthodoxy that defines “how we agree to dispute”, and a set of “micro-orthodoxies” that define how those of us who have agreed to abide by the meta-orthodoxy believe on individual issues. So classically trained economists (abiders in the meta-orthodoxy) have micro-orthodoxies that might include “free trade benefits all” or “minimum wage laws reduce employment”. I was referring to differences on the micro-orthodoxy level. I believe that Stiglitz, Krugman, Card, Quiggen show that fighting micro-orthodoxies is not just acceptable, but encouraged, in economics.

2. On the issue I did mean to raise, comments 101, 110, 114, and 115 do address it, and 111 (sathew) is especially helpful in providing links to a rebuttal. That rebuttal provides links to the article
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2003/23/c023p089.pdf
and to the (stolen ?) email exchange
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=297&filename=1047474776.txt

The paper itself does not look silly to an outsider like me: it is pretty convincing (again to an outsider) that the question of whether or not there is a medieval warming period (table 1); and they describe what appears (to an outsider) to be a legitimate way to answer the question. The emails do contain suggestions that there are serious flaws: “The phrasing of the questions at the start of the paper determine the answer they get. They have no idea what multiproxy averaging does.” But they also recognize the need to rebut the paper, and the question is where and how to rebut it. (They are talking amongst themselves; they understand each other; I don’t expect to understand the substance of their objections from the emails.)

The problem is: if they respond, they can no longer claim, “it is settled science”, because if it had been settled, why would they need to respond?

It’s not clear to me that the accusations trail off into nothingness (comment 113). I see hints of intimidation: “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the editorial board, but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.” “It results from this journal having a number of editors. The
responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere.”

So, what’s wrong with having this debate as comments and rebuttals to the paper and new papers on the issue? Maybe they exist. Expose the errors. I’m not convinced at all by assertions of bullshit (comments 115 and 117). Read the paper and you (at least I) don’t come away thinking “this is bullshit”. That’s why it needs a more careful and informed rebuttal. And I’m not convinced at all by assertions that Exxon funded the research. (“If Exxon funded the research then the medieval warming period did not exist.” Find the logical flaw in that sentence.)

All of this said: I don’t doubt the existence of anthropogenic climate change. But I still want a better defense to the assertion that there is a “climate change establishment that tried and to an extent succeeded in quashing opposing ideas.”

Wikipedia has a summary of the controversy over that paper.

If you release the source code for analyzing the data you’re releasing code which is typically complex, poorly documented, and far from straightforward to operate. As a result, you then have to dedicate a lot of time to teach people how to use it.

When they are hostile to the scientific enterprise, looking for confirmation of their political biases, etc. then it’s even less appealing.

Also note that people spend a lot of time writing many of these codes (mostly for themselves), so it’s pretty typical to have a window of time when you use your code an get checked by competitors. If you just give code away then you’re, in effect, subsidizing your competitors to take advantage of your hard work and skim the cream.

So there are huge problems with releasing source code, especially to political fanatics not operating in good faith.

Hurka, the post author is not engaging in ad hominems. The networks that drive denialism and link all these people are old and they pre-exist the modern global warming “debate”.

At the awesome site WeatherUnderground there’s a great paper on this called The Skeptics vs the Ozone Hole.
http://www.wunderground.com/education/ozone_skeptics.asp

It turns out that many of the same names you find in the current anti-science movement on AGW you also can find in the Ozone Hole “debate.” Before that they were working for Big Tobacco. These networks are old and everyone in them knows how the game is. For example, just today in a discussion with a skeptidork on a forum I was given Gerhard Gerlich’s awful paper claiming that the second law of thermodynamics refutes AGW — another of the many echoes between Creationism and AGW Denial, since Creationists love to cite the Second Law. Gerlich, as probably some of you know, is a nutcase who believes in dowsing, but more importantly, he has old links one of Big Tobacco’s fronts, the European Science and Environment Forum. As a commenter in yet another one of discussions elsewhere noted: “The agenda of this group was to discredit government safety regulations and reports on such things as genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone, pesticides, public smoking, and global warming. Gerlich’s coalition fought to discredit the World Health Organisation, and attempted to rebuff the science used by the USA’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Gerlich also worked with the Weinberg Group which ran special conferences for the tobacco industry to fight regulations against second-hand smoke. Gerlich participated in the anti-global warming study co-produced by the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute, ‘Climate Change and Policy: Making the Connection’.”

Name one climate skeptic who can command that kind of cash, either for research or as a speaker.

You’re kidding me, right? Exxon alone has pumped millions over the years into funding a large network of organizations dedicated to Denialism, and before that the “skeptics” got big sums from Big Tobacco, DuPont on Ozone, etc. In fact squabbles over the PR cash involved had led to some quite bitter organizational battles between the various entities in the Denialist campaign.

As for individual speakers commanding the big bucks, there are many. Monckton has gotten $100k for engagements (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/13/climate-scepticism-talk-lord-monckton), and him not even a former Veep. The well known Denialist Patrick Michaels has received hundreds of thousands from fossil fuel interests (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/03/hacked-climate-emails-sceptics-funding). Etc.

But all this is really beside the point. If Exxon et al could get the data/results to destroy AGW, they would pay some scientist and that would be the end of AGW. There’d be no need for the multimillion dollar PR effort that the fossil fuel industry is engaged in, because the science would nail it for them. But the existence of Denialism, and the PR machine, and the attacks on the scientists, are actually evidence that the science is sound. If it weren’t AGW would rapidly disappear.

Michael Turton
The View from Taiwan blog

I hope that some of you realize that this kind of discussion is exactly why many people simply don’t give a crap about any of this.

You have people calling anyone who questions data a Denialist (with a capital D), an intended insult, which does nothing to help discussion. They say that these phrases, such as the infamous ‘hide the decline’ phrase, are taken out of context and yet they completely fail to explain what that context is. Anyone who doesn’t Believe in man-made global warming is immediately branded a heretic and an idiot. There’s climate models being used that are primitive and can’t even approximate on a basic level the entire climate system, and yet they are followed religiously. It really does not help that data and methods are often kept secret until they are forcefully pulled out into the open. Isn’t science about having an open exchange of ideas and information?

This sound too much like the Catholic Church in the middle ages. The Priests are the only ones holy enough to read and interpret the Bible, and anyone who might question the Word of God is banded a heretic to be burned alive.

You cannot have any kind of meaningful, healthy discussion in this kind of environment. The common people, myself included, see this kind of crap going on and we just see Talking Head Number One in a box on the left and Talking Head Number Two in a box on the right, screaming at each other, and we end up changing the channel.

In response to,

“Marc 02.11.10 at 6:00 pm

Scum.”

May I draw your attention to,

“The University of East Anglia rejected requests for information relating to claims by academic staff that global warming was being caused by man-made emissions.

But it said it was unable to prosecute the people involved because the complaint was made too late. ” See, University scientists in climategate row hid data.”

The Information Commissioners Office and I may well be scum in the eyes of Marc but if the ‘deluged with requests’ defence had any legs why wasn’t it pleaded? Further, the idea of a lone scientist being deluged with requests is a huge misrepresentation of the situation.

However, I would like to thank Marc for drawing my attention to his argument and manner of reasoning.

guthrie @151 You make a very good point. My opinion is based upon the numerous press releases that quote deputy information commissioner Graham Smith.

In the following report from the Times the original complainant, Mr Holland, talks of a Catch-22 situation. He says, “[t]here is an apparent Catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be initiated within six months but you have to exhaust the university’s complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months.”

Perhaps there is another Catch-22 that arises from the complaint being out of time. Since the complaint was out of time the Information Commission are unable to make any ruling; hence, Mr Smith’s comments to the press have no legal basis and so they cannot be reported on the Information Commission’s webpage like the rulings born of other complaints. However, this is mere speculation on my part.

‘Newsflash: Jones of UEA has cracked. Says warming stopped in 1995’.

Assuming you are not being ironic, then this is very easily disprovable bollocks. .

Hidari beats me to it, and more incisively… Meanwhile, t’other Alex, doing good work:

http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2010/02/very-serious-indeed.html

@ 67
“Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to find whatever answer you want.”

I take this more as a plea, sort of a “I’m not waving, I’m drowning”. I think that might make an interesting idea for a post all on it’s own. This feeling of being lost in a sea of information with no ability to find one’s way. Together with the incessant desire for some big Other to tell one what to think and how to think it.

Someone please take this horrible burden of free will away from me. Please let me sleep, let me close my eyes. I can’t deal with this gnawing uncertainty. I just want to dream of a place where everything is known and functions like clockwork. I want to be an unthinking animal again. I want to live like they do, simply acting on instinct with no thought beyond “where is my enemy, where is my food, where is my mate”. Why do I have to struggle and choose? Just let me sleep a little longer. It is such a beautiful dream.