It is really too bad that I don’t have a subscription. I’m a bit late to commenting on this editorial that appeared in Nature magazine yesterday, but I feel it is important to say a few things about it, even though many WUWT readers have probably already seen the editorial.
1. For a scientific journal to use the label “denialists” is in my opinion unconscionable, and highlight’s Nature’s own bias. For the record, while there may in fact be a few people who deny any warming has occurred in the past 100 years (it has) the real issue is the cause. That is what skeptics are about. There are many academics and researchers that have questions about what is being presented in the mainstream climate science today. To put the full weight of Nature behind a broad brush labeling them as “deniers” or “denialists” is a huge mistake. The scientific integrity of one of the foremost scientific magazines has been tarnished by the use of a cheap slur.
2. The claims of harassment are ludicrous. The very foundation of science is based on the ability of other scientists to perform replication via data sharing. Finding excuses to not do this, and actively setting up hurdles to those requesting data for replication is not only not part of the scientific method, it is obstruction of the method. Had the files been provide in early FOI requests, no escalation of requests would have happened. CRU brought this on themselves, mainly due to the stubborn refusal of Dr. Jones to allow data for replication purposes. Besides, UAE has a person specifically assigned to handling FOIA requests. Jones had the data to fill the requests, all he had to do is hand them to the FOIA officer. He chose not to, further in one of the emails it was revealed that Jones and his staff lobbied that FOIA officer not to honor these requests. My hunch is that is where this row started.
3. For Nature to claim that:
Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay.
Is pure rubbish. See point 5 below also – they provided the data to Peter Webster. The majority of weather stations that report data used in the CRU are from public airports worldwide. Here is a list of stations that was grudgingly provided by Phil Jones after years of effort, and it was delivered broken. McIntyre had to fix it. See the cru_station_info file. Pick a few stations in France, Germany, and United Kingdom, then go to weatherunderground.com and see if they are available as hourly reports, or check many of the publicly available climate data sistes It is public data. Yet CRU claims it is proprietary and protected by agreements and we can’t see the data they are using?. Something is wrong there.
I picked three from the countries listed at random from the cru station info file:
GERMANY HOHENPEISSENBERG See http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/HOHENPEISSENBERG/109620.htm
FRANCE BOURGES See: http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Bourges/72550.htm
UK WADDINGTON See: http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Waddington/33770.htm
Anybody with a PC and Internet connection can get some of the data CRU uses that is claimed proprietary, so why the need for protectionism when a researcher asks for data from the same locations collated as used in CRU processes?
4. Nature assumes it was a hack in, but the evidence points to a leak, or even a carelessly left file on a public FTP site at CRU (which has happened before) Hackers are usually smash and grab affairs, with little time for understanding of what they are grabbing since they don’t know how long it willbe before they are discovered. They’ll sort it out later. The FOIA2009.zip appears to have been carefully assembled, pointing to someone with specific knowledge and broad access across systems. Further, hackers usually tout their exploits as “badges of honr”. We’ve heard nothing.
5. Previously, Nature reported on Steve McIntyre’s attempts to get access to this data in their report on August 12th, 2009 without so much as a disparaging word against Mr. McIntyre. They wrote then:
McIntyre is especially aggrieved that Peter Webster, a hurricane expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, was recently provided with data that had been refused to him.
Webster says his team was given the station data for a very specific request that will result in a joint publication with Jones. “Reasonable requests should be fulfilled because making data available advances science,” says Webster, “but it has to be an authentic request because otherwise you’d be swamped.”
Yet today, they drag out the slur denialist over the very same issue: data access and replication. If replication is not a valid request, then climate science is doomed.
Yes, I’d cancel my Nature subscription if I had one. – Anthony
Here is the Nature editorial as posted here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Editorial
Nature 462, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published online 2 December 2009
Climatologists under pressure
Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.
The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ‘smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.
This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.
First, Earth’s cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.
Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential (see pages 568 and 570).
Mail trail
A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists’ conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.
If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.
The theft highlights the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers.
The e-mail theft also highlights how difficult it can be for climate researchers to follow the canons of scientific openness, which require them to make public the data on which they base their conclusions. This is best done via open online archives, such as the ones maintained by the IPCC (http://www.ipcc-data.org) and the US National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html).
Tricky business
But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers’ ease of access, governments should force them to do so.
The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers’ own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature‘s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.
The UEA responded too slowly to the eruption of coverage in the media, but deserves credit for now being publicly supportive of the integrity of its scientists while also holding an independent investigation of its researchers’ compliance with Britain’s freedom of information requirements (see http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP).
In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.
Way off topic here, but since it relates to Nature and Science policy and the use of “Deniers” and big money interests, I urge those who may be interested in another great scientific fraud to look at: http://rethinkingaids.com.93.seekdotnet.com/
Much the same game.
Disclosure: I am a signatory
I would like to propose that the UN establish an new panel to establish who in the IPCC (which should be suspended immediately without pay), who in the scientific publishing industry and other media (substansial fines), which politicians, which NGOs and which commercial organisations are innocent or guilty of fraud.
Perhaps it could also be given teeth to remove these people from circulation and help clean up the reputation of real hard science.
That’s a really bad editorial. I don’t think the writer(s) even read the emails. Who is the denialist here when you don’t want to account for the attitude that shows from these mails.
As to point one. I am a Biologist and was thinking it might be a good idea to call ourselves CLIMATE NATURALISTS from now one. Nature (the paper) wouldn’t like that for sure and it is true: I think most of us see the present warming as a natural proces were a lack of nature (changes in land use) helps.
What else do you expect from the RealClimate House Journal?
At John Sebastian’s prompting, I looked up the Wikipedia article on Jan Hendrik Schön’s fraudulent work on molecular transistors. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n)
This bit resonated:
‘[The Bell labs investigating committee] examined electronic drafts of the disputed papers which included processed numeric data. The committee requested copies of the raw data but found that Schön had kept no laboratory notebooks. His raw-data files had been erased from his computer. According to Schön the files were erased because his computer had limited hard drive space. In addition, all of his experimental samples had been discarded, or damaged beyond repair. […]
‘They found that whole data sets had been reused in a number of different experiments. They also found that some of his graphs, which purportedly had been plotted from experimental data, had instead been produced using mathematical functions.’
Déjà vu, eh?
Harassment is when McIntyre organises his entourage to send over 40 (probably nearer 100) FOI requests to CRU requesting confidentiality agreements.
He even admits this:
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/curry-on-the-credibility-of-climate-research/#comment-2069
Each request if actioned would cost UEA money and take researchers time.
40 requests in my book is harassment.
Now that the doors of “ClimateGate” have been opened and the “Hockey Stick” is broken perhaps those at ‘Nature’ should stop and think who the real denialists are!
I agree with designation CLIMATE NATURALIST.
An excellent fisking of this appalling editorial here:
http://www.di2.nu/200912/03.htm
As a practical matter I decided not to remain a member of the AAAS a while back. If I were still a member I would be resigning from the AMS and the AGU also. But things being what they were, I ceased being a member in those organizations for other reasons years ago.
Regarding the phrase “Nature trick?”
Q.
Was Nature helping out with the “trick” or did the Hockey Team “trick” Nature?
On the question of the Jan Hendrik Schön science fraud I have noticed that “virtually all primary (raw) electronic data files were deleted…” reason being because his computer had limited hard drive space.
http://www.engineering.utoronto.ca/Assets/graduate/The+Schoen+Affair+at+Lucent–Report+Summary.pdf
(PDF)
Sound familiar? Heh heh heh!!! If I were investigating Jones and CRU I would smell a rat.
The title “Nature” comes from a poem by William Wordsworth. “To the solid ground of Nature, trust the mind that builds for aye”. If you can find the whole poem, I suggest people read it. I hope that Nature soon returns to it’s roots. I can remember when I was studying at Cavendish Labs, how we rushed to read the new edition of Nature. How are the mighty fallen!!!
Dear All. It didn’t realize that this journal was so trashy. The language about denialists etc. is certainly repugnant and inappropriate for a journal of this type, or anywhere for that matter. I hope one day to see this language banned under anti-vilification laws.
However, to my mind the most damning paragraph is the infantile logic that warming is caused by carbon dioxide, because the results of their models “bear little resemblance to the observed warming”. This is the logic of a nine year old child (apologies to our younger readers). And then the call to action at the end, curbing the worlds appetite for carbon. It’s grossly prejudiced.
It’s worth pondering the offending paragraph in it’s entirety:
“Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential”
Rutherford famously said that “all science is either physics or stamp collecting”. What we are seeing here is definitely not physics, or science.
I stopped reading the Nature article at “climate-change-denialist fringe” in the first line.
You can post comments, on the Nature Climate Feedback blog.
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/
I just posted this:
This editorial can only be described as disgusting.
How can a formerly highly regarded journal have sunk so low?
First we have the repeated use of the ‘denialist’ smear, more worthy of an political activist blog.
The article is just full of false statements, and repeats the usual spin and exaggeration of the global warming fanatics. In fact the only ‘denialist’ here is the person who wrote this ridiculous article.
One false claim is about the word ‘trick’. This word is used by mathematicians for a clever way to solve an equation. But a reputable scientist would NEVER use the word ‘trick’ to describe a way of presenting data, let alone in conjunction with the phrase ‘hide the decline’ .
It is amazing how swiftly things are moving. Whilst Nature said it sees nothing in the e-mails that it thinks requires an investigation, the head of the IPCC is reported on the BBC as saying that UK scientists manipulated data should be investigated. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394483.stm)
If I was on the Nature editorial board I would be feeling a bit isolated, not to mention out of touch.
FWIW, my observations on some time stamp issues (for example, in the “Harry Readme” file there are dates that indicated age of the entry) and the nature of the “collection” along with the “negative space issues” (what ought to be, but isn’t) all point to the highest probability being an internal leaker.
Next lower probability is a fumbled FOIA preparation that was supposed to be pulled but instead got released via an administrative error.
If it was a “hack” from outside, it would have to be the luckiest hack in the world, and then stopped with nothing else done. “I don’t think so, Tim!”.
Basically, as a guy who has done security audits at companies, this does not look at all like an external hack and has no signs of “theft”. It has every marker of a well thought out ‘leak’ being dressed up as a hack (ie washed through pub servers et. al.; date stamps washed; focused content; no “taking coup”…)
FWIW I used to buy “Nature” at the news stands. About 2 years ago the articles just lost their science and took on a propaganda feel with a lot of ‘infotainment’ spin. I’d stop buying it at the news stands except I already did… about 2 years ago. Guess they are only left with “The Faithful”…
Same thing happened with Sci. Am. right after it was sold to the Germans. Used to buy it almost every month (had a subscription for some years). Can’t remember the last one I bought… Did look at one about a year ago on the news stand. It was another greenwash job. Just put it back and have not even looked at the covers since.
Oh Well. There is better stuff here than they have anyway. And more timely too…
bill (03:38:55) :
“40 requests in my book is harassment.”
If they had cooperated in a professional manner with the first one instead of looking for ways to obstruct the request, maybe the other 39 wouldn’t have been necessary.
Just The Facts (00:19:24) :
Maybe after we’re done debunking catastrophic anthropogenic global warming Anthony can leverage WUWT to develop the first widely respected online interactive unfiltered open source open access peer reviewed website. It is already well on its way…
I’ve been pondering just that…
It would not be hard. A “blog” format with tabs for major disciplines. A private “log in to read and review” area for folks who want a quite circulation among peers – id’s handed out to academics with credentials in that field (ie. you can have a private screening prior to going public to catch the real howlers without shame…) but all reviewers are identified. None of this “single blind” stuff.
Then a “front room” where “public review” happens for a period of time; articles moved here at the authors discretion. Anyone can toss rocks or praise. No logins needed to read, login available to anyone for comments.
After a suitable period of time, the article, with public comments, goes to “reviewed” status and is part of the “published peer and public reviewed literature”. No paywall, but maybe an advert or two to fund the operation.
All code and data to be included with the articles.
It could be fairly easily set up with existing blog software and sites. Would work one heck of a lot better than the present system of social gamesmanship.
That Nature editorial really is disgraceful.
In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance
That’s the excuse of a wife beater or worse.
Over the past decade I have abandoned associations with APS, SEG, AAAS, and Scientific American over the endless politization of science, political hackery, and, yes, global warming was the focal point of most of it, but not all of it. We are suffering under a tyrany of “experts”.
All one needs to eventually break the backs of the science journal monopolists is the internet, where anyone can post a scientific paper, and then a sort of peer-review process that gains these on-line submissions respectability. The model of Wikipedia comes to mind first, but it became suspect early, then an embarrasment, because of the pranksters and occasional incompetents that polluted its pages (BTW Wikipedia is still full of very useful information). However, considering what Climategate shows, how could any bunch of amateurs, operating under any model, do a worse job of representing science?
So, the mission is to come up with an open, transparent, no anonimity allowed, credible peer-review process for wide open, transparent, credible on-line publication.
Here’s something from the October 2, 2009 issue of Science:
Climate Change:
What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit
Richard A. Kerr
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/326/5949/28-a
“Pinning the cause on natural variability makes sense to most researchers. “That goes without saying,” writes climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany by e-mail. “We’ve made [that point] several times on RealClimate,” a blog. Solar physicist Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and climate modeler David Rind of GISS reached the same conclusion in a peer-reviewed 15 August paper in Geophysical Research Letters. They broke recent temperature variation into components attributable to greenhouse gases, pollutant aerosols, El Nino/La Nina, and solar variability. Combined, those influences explain all the observed variability, by Lean and Rind’s accounting. But unlike the Hadley Centre’s model-based analysis, this assessment attributes a good deal of climate variability to variability in solar activity. That’s because most models can’t translate solar variability into climate variability the way the actual climate system can (Science, 28 August, p. 1058), Rind says.”
I dunno, guys… this might be a keeper! The petulant whining in this editorial might mark one of those “jump the shark” moments. Cut out the editorial and mount it in a nice picture frame. Give it a read whenever you need a good laugh that will leave you shaking your head at the same time.
Jim Hodgen (23:00:50) :
I liked your post.
Yes, I like your idea of a talking points memo to help out the journalists, but will providing them with more information actually help the situation? The journalists are 1) not scientifically literate for the most part, 2) drawn to the emotional aspects of any topic, 3) have short attention spans (equal to the duration of a publication cycle), 4) skeptical only of the value of skepticism, 5) occasionally unable to provide sustained rational attention, 6) unduly influenced by celebrity, and on and on…. They possess exactly the least useful skills for dealing with global warming, climate change, and climategate.
I know it sounds like I am contemptuous of journalists, which is no way to start a productive relationship, but I am actually more frustrated with them.
Moreover, what about the size of such a memo? A succinct memo on the one hand leaves open all sorts of avenues for a clever opponent to change the subject and appear, to the scientifically illiterate, to have answered criticism. In order to provide barracades against escape, the memo might become too large to be useful.
Maybe your suggestion is more useful if turned into a sort of scoreboard for failures of the current “concensus” model of climate change, which is of course AGW. Maybe it would also help to score other models that appear regularly here.
E.M. Smith’s suggestion, which occurred just ahead of mine (he must have pushed his “submit” button just as I started typing) is certainly along the right lines. This is likely to be a huge effort, however, and maybe we need to unload Anthony and WUWT. This site seems like it is doing enough already.