Climate denier recants (1 Viewer)

[MJB]

I agree; I think the feedbacks question is more important, and there is scientific disagreement over that too. But the HSI is also about the scientific process, and how some pieces of evidence make into the literature, while others do not; and that is relevant to areas outside the hockey stick debate.

I'm sure John Cantelo appreciates the sentiment in your previous post, and I acknowledge that.

You are not wrong in your above comments, but may I suggest that the background and context of the larger picture is necessary to allow assessment on the nature of any scientific disagreement. In any scientific field, the cutting edge of research is one area in which scientific disagreement is expected, at least until the implications of the findings have been teased out.

Another area is that of complexity, when many variables interact in ways that are difficult to tease out. This means that when more than about five variables are involved, the human brain is working at its maximum capacity to determine the interaction, and so mathematical modelling is used as a major tool in working with hundreds of variables. That said, the fundamental requirement of such modelling is to determine beforehand exactly which assumptions are input: this determination requires an enormous amount of critical and pertinent discussion. (Incidentally, tightly-defined assumptions often show early flaws in the modelling methodology in test runs; usually it means that there are missing critical assumptions, but it also allows for later modification when results are not self-consistent.) Modelling allows for numerous computer runs, but the more complex the scenario being modelled,the longer each run takes.

Such work is so far beyond everyday life and experience that it is understandable that whenever any kind of disparagement (whether real or mischievous), is made in the public forum, everyday experience may well result in people concluding that the research has been faked. That's inevitable in a society that is increasingly connected with real-time immediacy. Science will have to expect such reactions and learn how to deal better with them. Added to the downside will be the need to add to the budget of any large scientific project to fund the administrators needed to handle the added bureaucracy to be able to respond to legitimate concerns such as Freedom of Information Requests and to general enquiries, both real and malicious.

I've seen somewhere that the tiny UEA scientific team later caught up in Climategate were having to spend a majority of the working day trying to deal with the mountain of FoI requests, some of which were word-for-word identical from multiple sources; sorry I can't find it at present.

Now just a few of web citations; one is reasonably complimentary to Andrew Montford, the others less so:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/sep/14/montford-climategate-gwpf-review. (Fred Pearce in the Guardian)

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/ Climate Science from climate scientists – many aspects explained in detail – website received an award from Scientific American

http://www.desmogblog.com/andrew-montford Site claims to remove the PR and examine the credentials of those involved in climate reporting

I leave readers of this thread to explore links on these sites and draw their own conclusions.
MJB
PS Yes, I have had some indirect experience of running complex mathematical modelling systems, but not recently!

 

[Squonk]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/ Climate Science from climate scientists – many aspects explained in detail – website received an award from Scientific American

This website, and its authors, are one of the main parties to the dispute detailed in 'the Hockey Stick Illusion', and I therefore continue to suggest that people read the book too. In fact, this thread is the one where Judith Curry appeared, hoping for a proper rebuttal to the points in the book (comment 74).

 

[Nohatch]

Such work is so far beyond everyday life and experience that it is understandable that whenever any kind of disparagement (whether real or mischievous), is made in the public forum, everyday experience may well result in people concluding that the research has been faked. That's inevitable in a society that is increasingly connected with real-time immediacy. Science will have to expect such reactions and learn how to deal better with them. Added to the downside will be the need to add to the budget of any large scientific project to fund the administrators needed to handle the added bureaucracy to be able to respond to legitimate concerns such as Freedom of Information Requests and to general enquiries, both real and malicious.

I've seen somewhere that the tiny UEA scientific team later caught up in Climategate were having to spend a majority of the working day trying to deal with the mountain of FoI requests, some of which were word-for-word identical from multiple sources; sorry I can't find it at present.

A good point, but very difficult to achieve on the very tight budgets that most research projects have to work to - the UEA team is a point in case, although an exaggerated one as they had to deal with people purposefully hijacking the FoI act.
The public are our main funders and therefore have a right to access the data and question the results. I'm all for open-acces (and wish anyone good luck with our lab's terrabites of yearly data output |^|), but I think it needs to be clear that to set this up will come at quite a price. The public has to decide if they're willing to pay for that, and in the current climate I don't think that's likely.

@Squonk: I see your point re the peer-review process (which is not the same as the scientific process - sorry to be pedantic). While certainly not perfect, I can say from experience that is no way near as bad as it's made out to be by some of it's critics. Again, making that process open-access should improve things and hopefully restore some of the faith in scientists' integrity that seems to have been lost.

N

 

[Andrew Montford]

Hi MJB

I've been asleep in the sun for most of the day, so apologies for the delay.

Here are the answers to your questions.

1. The NAS finding re plausibility is this:

"Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this
newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium." (NAS panel p. 4. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676)

It's certainly plausible that current temperatures are the warmest in the last millennium, it's just that the current crop of reconstructions haven't demonstrated such a thing.

2. The quote re inappropriate data is:

"The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, rather than increasing temperatures, was first proposed by LaMarche et al. (1984) for bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California. In old age these trees can assume a “strip-bark” form, characterized by a band of trunk that remains alive and continues to grow after the rest of the stem has died. Such trees are sensitive to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations...“strip-bark” samples should be
avoided for temperature reconstructions..."

(NAS panel report p. 51-2. Note that the first ellipsis is quite a long one, but I don't think this alters the meaning at all. The link is obviously as above).

3. The reply to the Woods Hole paper (by Huybers) is here http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/mcintyre-huybersreply.pdf

4. The reply to the German paper (von Storch & Zorita) is here (http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2005/09/mcintyre.vz.reply.pdf

Obviously it's fairly technical. The layman's summary is to be found in my book, or if you search ClimateAudit you will find McIntyre's versions, which are probably of intermediate technicality - between the original papers and my summary.

McIntosh's article didn't attempt to rebut any of my arguments, but as I've indicated referred to the alleged replications of the Hockey Stick without mentioning my arguments abou them. Most of his article was about me rather than my arguments - ad hominem, as I said.

I think people look behaviour of this kind as dishonourable and are rude in response. I don't condone this kind of thing though, and I try to discourage it.

Squonk has pointed you to some comments I have made about the attacks on Phil Jones. It's unacceptable.

Re Cuccinelli, I'm in two minds. It seems to me that state officials with authority to investigate misconduct must in normal circumstances be allowed to investigate. However, the perils of having an elected politician in this role is obvious, with the results seen in Virginia. I think the outcome in this case was probably about right, with the attempt being thrown out because in reality Cuccinelli had so little that could act as cause for an investigation.

Re the reviews - of course the favourable ones were all fair and the critical ones were all appalling. The critical ones were, like Alastair McIntosh, focused on me rather than any of the scientific arguments in the book. There are links here, although unfortunately one of them is now dead. http://bishophill.squarespace.com/reviews

I derive considerable comfort from the fact that nobody has felt able to address the scientific case in my book (the one possible exception is the "review" at RealClimate, which relied on some fairly outrageous quoting out of context for its effect.

 

[Andrew Montford]

Hi again MJB

I see you have linked to the RealClimate review of my book. As I said in my last comment, this involves some fairly outrageous quoting out of context for its effect. This is explained here

http://climateaudit.org/2010/07/27/taminos-trick-mann-bites-bulldog/

 

[Andrew Montford]

Nohatch

You make a good point. The Hockey Stick is one part of the evidence for AGW, and as I explain in the Hockey Stick Illusion, it's not even a particularly important one. The importance of the Hockey Stick is the fact that the IPCC promoted it as if it were important and then defended it to the hilt when it was found to be flawed. It shows us that the IPCC is not trustworthy.

 

[Andrew Montford]

MJB again

I've just finished writing a history of Climategate (should be out in the next couple of months) so I can fill in some details for you about the UEA FOI requests. There's quite a funny backstory here. McIntyre had asked for the data behind the CRU temperature series and had been rebuffed for many years. However, he discovered that UEA had sent the data to a researcher in the US and therefore put in an FOI request. UEA told him it was held under agreements that meant that it could only be released to academics. At this point McIntyre's co-author, Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, repeated the request. At this point, UEA informed them that the previous response was a mistake and that the data was actually not disclosable to anyone and that it had been sent to the US in error.

At this point Climate Audit readers started asking for copies of the agreements themselves - each person asked for five each. This led to a flurry of FOI requests, which was the basis of the story that UEA was overwhelmed with requests. In reality there weren't that many, a point the Information Commissioner made in his evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee inquiry into Climategate. In reality, if the number of requests was burdensome, there is scope within the FOI Act to refuse them. In reality UEA couldn't do this because it would never have stood up to scrutiny by the Information Commissioner. In the end all the requesters were pointed to a webpage which contained the agreements that UEA could find about the data in question - they could only find five agreements at all, and none placed restrictions on use of the data beyond asking for citations and preventing commercial re-use.

 

[John Cantelo]

No, that's not what I meant at all and I'm sorry that you read it that way. Initially I wrote that paragraph without the word 'educated', then started worrying that I might make people who have no interest in maths spend £10 on a book which contains a fair bit of it. I'm a nice chap you see

MJB, if you've read the book, I'm not sure why you're still quoting reviews of it that don't address any of the substantive issues raised in it (and you concede that there are issues).

Andrew, welcome to BirdForum, had no idea you were interested!

Many thanks for this and apologies for my misunderstanding.

However, I think I'd better bow out of this one since a) for reasons not related to this thread whatsoever I suspect I'm in a rather tetchy mood these days & not in the right frame of mind for civil discourse and b) I'm woefully ill equipped to discuss scientific minutea of the debate which are now developing. I will, however, continue to read the various posts.

 

[Andrew Montford]

For those interested in Richard Muller, he gave a very interesting interview to a green radio show in California yesterday.

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/8/4/muller-still-not-impressed-by-hockey-stick.html

 

[Andrew Montford]

Whoops - try that link again

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/8/4/muller-still-not-impressed-by-climategate.html

 

[Phil Andrews]

I logged on thinking this was going to be a thread about tights ...:eek!::-C

 

[Nohatch]

the fact that [...] promoted it as if it were important and then defended it to the hilt when it was found to be flawed. It shows us that [...] is not trustworthy.

I'm sorry but the same could be said for the vast majority of 'sceptics' book, websites and interviews out there - and thus the same conclusion drawn. Now I am not familiar with your work, so this is more meant as a general observation. If this were to cut both ways fairly, then so be it, but the disproportionate amount of media attention against, for example, the UEA team in climategate versus the 'back page' coverage when they were acquitted is striking. It's the same disproportion we see in the entire popular media - it's not a reflection of scientific consensus, which means it's either a misinterpretation, ignorance, or just blatantly/selectively ignoring the facts.
Every political person or body has their own agenda and I'm sure the IPCC does as well, which makes them biased. How else are you going to push through your point of view? Science, based on pure hard facts, is neutral and blissfully ignorant of political agenda (as are the majority of scientists I have to add...). Current scientific consensus, based on hundreds of thousands of individual pieces of research is ACC. So why vehemently object to that consensus? We don't object to the state-of-the-art in dentistry or aviation theory. And the argument that the entire scientific community blocks ACC papers by giving them bad reviews is poor and shows a hint of a Calimero-complex.
I hope we can agree that consensus about ACC has to be based on facts, not opinions or coloured views. That's what the whole scientific method is for. Well, I've said my peace - will continue to follow this thread like JC.

N

 

[Minto]

James Hansen now says extreme weather linked to Climate Change, you can read it all in the Beano. Isn't it funny how any type of extreme weather floods, drought , snow can be linked to Climate change, and they wonder why the man in the street just yawns with every pronouncement. I'm still waiting for that idiot Gordon Browns " fifty days to save the planet " to come true