Dear Ms. Eilperin,

I’m responding to someone who claims he challenged you to a bet over sea level rise. He inaccurately described Gore’s and Rahmstorf’s position on sea level rise and actually wanted to bet over a point that was within Rahmstorf’s predicted range of outcomes.

It’s not your job as a journalist to take sides anyway, but feel free to refer him or anyone to my response on a fair bet over sea level rise here:

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2009/01/sea-level-rise-id-love-to-bet-over-it.html

Or a variety of bets I’m willing to make over climate change here:

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_backseatdriving_archive.html#111700433898143899

Cheers,
Brian Schmidt

I’m sorry my comment is being posted late, maybe I can put up a pointer at a more recent post as well. I’m very interested in betting over climate change and have arranged a bet with David Evans, who is now somewhat well known among the skeptics.

I would be interested in a fair bet over sea level rise, just as David and I negotiated a fair bet over temperature. Unfortunately, I don’t think the bet Pierre suggested is a fair one, and I believe the information he posted about Gore’s and Rahmstorf’s opinions on sea level rise in the next 100 years is inaccurate. I put the reasons and my suggestion for a fair bet at my own blog, here:

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2009/01/sea-level-rise-id-love-to-bet-over-it.html

The summary is that skeptics who think temperatures haven’t risen over the last 11 years should believe that future sea level changes should be random, while I think the rise will continue at its current pace. Let’s bet at halfway in between the two positions.

I suggest we bet at Longbets.org to deal with trust issues, with all monies given to the charity chosen by the winner.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Their studies suggest Greenland’s icecap was less than half the volume then as today.

Mike Bryant (18:08:18) :

“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.“

This is an interesting quote, however this scenario will never happen. The genie has been loosed from the bottle. What I believe WILL happen… Those countries that deindustrialize will become the slaves of those who do not. The most industrialized countries, with the added benefit of capitalism, won WWII.

Maurice Strong and some other green leaders WANT the de-industrialization to occur, that’s why they fight ANY new technology to bring cheap and efficient energy to the masses. They know wind and solar are neither efficient nor cheap, so they let those pass.

The so called scientist should realize that Koala Bears don’t live in NZ, at least not outside of a zoo. The Koala, which is not a bear as pointed out in a previous post, is indeed a marsupial which lives in Australia. I just got back from Aus and NZ, saw a few Koalas in Aus. They may be in some danger, but not due to GW, more due to other human activities like farming and residential housing projects which disrupt the forests that they need to live in. Its just more convenient to blame every problem on GW.

This is an interesting quote, however this scenario will never happen. The genie has been loosed from the bottle. What I believe WILL happen… Those countries that deindustrialize will become the slaves of those who do not. The most industrialized countries, with the added benefit of capitalism, won WWII.

Perhaps we should all bone up on Chinese.

Michael S (05:18:35) :

The IPCC summaries are a great example. Take a lot of information and research, and come to conclusions that are not supported by the papers cited, many times over strenuous objections by the scientists themselves! It’s like being in a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. If someone is not inclined to read all the underlying research, it’s easy to take the summaries at face value, but as the facts come to light, it makes you wonder, who are these people, and what do they really want? What is the motivation for such biased interpretation?

Maurice Strong is one of those people, and we know his motivations:

“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse. “

TonyB (12:25 on 30/12): I attend the occasional UK sea level conference (which is why I was hoping Mary Hinge would tell everyone how accurate satellites aren’t) and there is a pecking order on this subject which in the UK’s case is:
The IPCC
EU Govt
British Govt
Defra
UK Govt agencies

This points to IPCC being the cornerstone, the key to unravel. And within IPCC, one finds pointers to the editing work done by just ONE scientist, Ben Santer, to vanish all the other 52 scientists’ conclusions that said they did not find any certainty of serious manmade climate effects, and to insert material which said they did.

An important bit of investigative work and publicity to be done here./viewforum.php?f=22″>our forum. There are others like Roger Pielke.

Ooohhh, I think I like that for a title for the new blog I mentioned… “The Great Reckoning”… Any other suggestions?

Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process.

You have both have described what I suspected must be happening. I was wondering what the mechanics must be that can drive statistics / conclusions that seems to support a particular viewpoint, yet if anyone else looks at the data, other, simpler explanations are all too obvious. The IPCC summaries are a great example. Take a lot of information and research, and come to conclusions that are not supported by the papers cited, many times over strenuous objections by the scientists themselves! It’s like being in a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. If someone is not inclined to read all the underlying research, it’s easy to take the summaries at face value, but as the facts come to light, it makes you wonder, who are these people, and what do they really want? What is the motivation for such biased interpretation? How can some scientists use blatantly faulty statistical methods and still get “peer reviewed” with nary a question asked? I’ll bet there are thousands of examples of bad data and pay to play science leading to prescribed conclusions and damaging public policy. We really can’t expect the average politician to sort out science, they are not equipped, to say the least. They must be given real facts and evidence, which is clearly not the case. And the problem goes well beyond climate science, into health care, transportation, the military, you name it.

I think this would be a great subject for a new blog called “Broken Science”, “The End of Science”, or some other (your suggestion here) name. Here researchers could post their experiences with the political aspects of the process, cite examples of false conclusions knowingly submitted, and suggest methods of how to fix the research financing and control system to prevent such biases (and probably a whole lot of bad data) from cluttering and ultimately destroying the knowledge base. Discussions of the political processes involved in essentially managing conclusions for political purposes could come to light.

In the world of climate science, more of a double blind approach would help, having “modelers” write their code, then have another independent panel run the simulations and test results against reality would be another suggestion. Since model parameters are so well known by observation ahead of time, this should have no impact on the quality of the model output (!). Obviously having data and methods available with all published papers would allow replication / verification by independent parties. Anyone so sure of their conclusions would welcome independent verification since it serves to bolster their viewpoint. er, uh, hmmm. Well, you see my point.

Climate science is due for a very thorough independent audit by independent statisticians and scientists from other fields. With public policy in the works around the globe based on a CO2 / temperature link that is so obviously strong in one direction (temperature drives CO2), and yet so utterly weak in the other (CO2 drives temperature), this science needs to get “unbroken” as soon as possible. A simple method would be to start the audit with the IPCC itself, i.e, are the main conclusions supported by the references cited, are the policies at the IPCC conducive to independent conclusions? Then audit the temperature record and other key databases, then audit the papers most often cited, or most heavily weighted in the conclusions, then work your way down from there. To fund such an audit, I would propose a temporary shift away from further climate research (but not data collection) while the audit is underway. Not a suspension, but a significant reduction to help shift resources to a group of independent auditors. Once a clean bill of health is established (not bloody likely), pour on money for research that can be carried out using an independent, scientific approach, WITH quality control.

Any thoughts on such a “broken science” blog?

Michael S.

There is a great reckoning ahead. The exaggerators and demonizers of CO2 are bankrupt.
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Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process.

I was working with particle high energy physics. Most of my working years were at a time where grants were given to agencies and not researchers, the agency then distributed the money to institutes and projects. Lobbying took place at that time, mainly with politicians to get a large enough pie for the institute. There was no pretense of checking peer review etc. Just a general push to get as much as one could. Knowing MPs ( in my country) could help, to gauge the level of political.

As a result the politics of high energy physics were confined on the committees that decided what experiment was going to run, who was going to head a large collaboration and stuff like that. The process you describe of back scratching was there, but at a polite and on level with scientific integrity. Scientific reputation played a great role, Nobel prizes were important in weighting decisions. I suppose the integrity was necessary because you could not fool colleagues the way you can fool politicians and the public.

When the grant system came in , with the EU and the way grants are given, at first we thought it was an improvement, not to have to find handles on politicians to get money but fight for it with proposals and justifications. I now think that it is the downfall of science, because of what you describe.

I think the scientific community should seriously go back to the old system of financing research: universities and institutes to get adequate grants. There may be infighting, but it will not create a global community of “scientific fools”, because each institute will be independent in its decisions.

I read that at Icecap, on the ice build up on Greenland.

I calculate, based on 2.16 million sq km of Greenland, and 5 cm of accumulation per year, that 108 cubic km of ice is added to Greenland every year.

It is still a relatively young science but the equipment at our disposal means that great progress is being made.

What, like a child in a kindergarten?

When then, will Climate Science be mature enough to be used in Public Policy?