Left Foot in Mouth

Will Straw's blog Left Foot Forward has posted an article (h/t Old Holborn) on the great climate-skeptic conspiracy. Apparently, some "research" conducted by a marketing agency - but not yet published - has shown that bloggers on the internet link to each other, and claims that this is part of an orchestrated plan "to have maximum impact on the Copenhagen negotiations".

Apparently this "research" was conducted for Oxfam. Anyone remember when they were a charity that cared about famine, not a political pressure group demanding Tobin Taxes and promoting global warming hysteria? How times change, eh? Ironically, Oxfam's current policies seem designed to exacerbate famine, but I doubt they care about that when there are political bandwagons to jump on - and policies which keep people starving and in poverty gives the "charity" a reason to keep existing.

The post claims that "the story was picked up by a wide range of media outlets, and went global – the culmination of a concerted effort to push it into the mainstream". That's not how I remember it. I remember the story being completely ignored by most of the media, despite UEA denials, Lord Lawson opening a global warming think-tank, and a scathing blog article from arch-climatista George Monbiot, until "climategate" became one of the biggest search terms on Google in a week and, eventually, the press felt they had to say something about the story people were already talking about. If there's a conspiracy, it looks rather more like it was amongst the BBC and Fleet Street soi-disant elite trying to ignore the story in order to push their own COP15 agendas.

He then goes on to cite some pseudoscience about the Overton Window and a linguist called Lakoff talking about "Framing" (straight out of NLP!) the debate, as if the public are simple-minded sheep who will believe everything they're told. No. People mistrust authority figures, and climate skepticism is deep-rooted in personal experience: no matter what the "global average temperature" figures claim, people over 40 can actually remember warmer and colder years and so the ever-greater catastrophes that are prophesied are in direct contradiction to experience. You've oversold it and now nobody is buying.

Then the author claims that "Oxfam’s study shows that almost no-one bothered to back [Monbiot] up in defending the integrity of the science" - which is largely because Climategate showed that there has been no actual science going on at the CRU: irreproducible "results" are nothing more than anecdote, no matter how many bent "reviews" they go through, how many times they're cited, or how pretty the graph looks.

So, co-conspirators, watch out for an organised pro-AGW propaganda campaign being directed through marketing agencies. Don't let them convince you that things didn't happen the way you remember them!

- KoW

Climategate: Review Announced

Yesterday afternoon, the UEA announced that their independent review of the CRU will be conducted by Sir Muir Russell KCB FRSE, a distinguished physicist, civil servant and former principal of the University of Glasgow.

The terms of reference for his review are much broader than previously indicated, and include that he should

determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes

which is what is needed, not merely a whitewash over data security policy. This review fulfills all of my wish list points from Wednesday, and so I hope you'll all join me in wishing Sir Muir all the best and looking forward to reading his review next spring.

- KoW

Heads start to roll... but not very far

The CRU has just announced that Prof Phil Jones is stepping down until after the Independent Review. So, nearly two weeks after his position became untenable, he's been put on Gardening Leave.

Before anyone gets too excited, though, that link also contains Prof Trevor Davies' (Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at UEA) description of the Review - it:

will address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be addressed

That isn't good enough.

Prof Jones stands accused of blatant academic fraud, conspiracy to withhold data, deleting data subject to FoI requests, and generally falling below the standards of conduct expected of a scientist... yet those terms of reference would allow the review to "exonerate" him based on nothing more than an INFOSEC policy review.

The Review needs to be beyond reproach and truly independent: no IPCC or UEA connections, probably no climate scientists at all, given Prof Wegman's social network analysis of the field. There are plenty of respected academics from fields such as physics, engineering, chemistry and mathematics. They can, and must, provide sound analysis of the data handling at the CRU and whether - as some have claimed - (allegedly) faking results and smearing rivals is "business as usual".

- KoW

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

The CRU is now in full spin trying to limit damage. Apparently what they consider the most damaging is this email, which (presumably) they admit is genuine, given that they're arguing over its context.

The relevant passage is:

"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) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline"

Now, there are several different meanings of 'trick'. It could mean a deception, which is clearly what some took it as; it could also mean a skillful technique - like a 'trick shot' in snooker. Clearly Prof Jones would like us to believe it's the latter, and has provided two images and an explanation. This image is the one that was published (WMO1999), including the trick, and this one (which looks rather hastily prepared) shows the series separated.

First, looking at that second image, I'm going to point out a few things that seem rather glaring to me. Firstly, the scale is rather large - let's cut that down for now, as data prior to the instrument record is relevant if (and only if) the data for the overlapping years is a good match. Here we go:

The red/green/blue lines are the "reconstructions" - the CRU data - and the black lines are recorded temperatures. Now, it's a pretty close match in the middle - 1900-1950 or so:

But, um... it's not so good in the 50 years or so before that... in fact, it looks a bit like negative correlation:

Still, things were a bit rough in the Victorian era, so maybe we can forgive inaccuracies there? I mean, they didn't even have cars and aircraft, let alone the satellite temperature readings we have today! Clearly the more modern data is important.... Oops:

With accurate global temperature measurements, the divergence is huge. One of the series is going exactly the opposite way to the temperature, the other two aren't showing any warming. I'd say that's a pretty awful fit, really, wouldn't you?

I agree with Prof Jones on one point: "The ‘decline’ in this set of tree-ring data should not be taken to mean that there is any problem with the instrumental temperature data". Indeed it should not. When your proxy data disagrees with your real data, you reject the proxy - and that's just what we need to do. The tree-ring reconstructions here, while superficially promising for early-20th-century data, are clearly a very poor match and must be discarded as irrelevant.

Yes, they go back a thousand years - the bible goes back further, but that doesn't make it an accurate source of climate data!

Hang on, though. What about how this data was published - using "Mike's Nature trick":

The top circle on there is where the instrumented temperature finishes up, and the bottom one is (as you can see in the graphs above) where the data ends up: below the 1961-1990 average in all three cases. Yes, the data runs out before the end of the graph, but that's hardly a reason to add extra points to the series to make it finish well above the baseline. If I had to pick one word for that, it would probably be "fraud".

I'm not a climatologist, I'm not in posession of the full facts, and I'm not a professor, so I'm in no way competent to judge whether any dishonest practices have taken place. That's up to the relevant academic authorities, the journals, and the funding councils, and I look forward to hearing their decisions. But, for me, this whole thing stinks.

- KoW

The Day Global Warming Died

Friday afternoon saw a huge story break: the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has been hacked and a large quantity of email, raw data and (proprietary) climate model code has been leaked. The director of CRU, Professor Phil Jones, has confirmed the leaked information as being genuine.

The CRU is one of the leading lights in climatology and, in particular, paleoclimatology - reconstructing historical temperatures from secondary sources such as tree rings and ice core samples. Analysis of some of their data - released only after pressure from the Royal Society - has already shown significant anomolies.

The emails do not paint a flattering picture - in fact, they seem to show a pattern of deliberate fraud and abuse of the peer-review process with conflicts of interest, hiding models/data from review and manipulating editorial boards. These are not trivial charges and, if the emails are shown to be genuine, they should be sufficient to end careers and probably secure convictions for fraud.

As is traditional, this scandal has got a "-gate" suffix: Climategate. But, for once, it might actually be bigger than Watergate.

- KoW