A series of events appears to be unfolding in the UK that provide for a serial story. As they say in the news biz “it has legs”.
Two more stories have emerged from the Guardian by Fred Pearce. They read like Climate Audit narratives rather than Guardian stories we’ve come to know in the past. In fact, Climate Audit is heavily cited, a first that I can recall.
Here are the two headlines:
and this one….
The Guardian is keeping up the pressure on UEA/CRU and Dr. Jones. It’s almost like a “death spiral” to borrow a phrase from Dr. Mark Serreze of NSIDC.
I would not be surprised if resignations are being considered.
h/t to Dr. Richard North of the EU Referendum for links
UPDATE: It appears that the Guardian reporter has tipped his hand. WUWT commenter “dodgy geezer” writes:
…note this comment from the Guardian, explaining why they seem to be addressing the skeptical line for the first time. It seems they are building the story into a big ‘disproof’ of the skeptical position. Find it at:
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Question – What is the purpose for publishing all these articles by Fred Pearce?
Many thanks for your comments and questions. The fall-out from the hacked UEA emails is the hottest story in climate science at the moment and a lot of claims about what they tell us have been flying around since they were made public in November.
The Guardian’s editorial line is that global warming is happening and caused by human actions, but that does not mean we are blind to contradictory evidence. It would be remiss of us journalistically to ignore a story like this where the actions of leading scientists are being seriously called into question.
We asked Fred to do a thorough investigation into some of the unanswered questions.
Is there evidence in the emails of data manipulation? Is there evidence of abuse of peer review and FOI? Is there evidence of “hiding” temperature declines? Is there evidence of fraud and conspiracy? etc etc
The answer to most of these questions turned out to be no. But it would be wrong of us not to have asked them. The aim of this investigation (which continues tomorrow) was to produce a more nuanced account of what went on behind the scenes of climate science than has appeared elsewhere. Some of it is not pretty, but significantly, the science of global warming has not been seriously challenged.
J Randerson
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
It may be that Jones will be made the sacrifice for the FoI transgressions, so that they can get the bus back on the road.
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Anthony,
The Guardian and the BBC will work very closely together. The paper could almost be the house magazine for the BBC – all the BBC vacancies, for instance, are advertised solely in the Guardian. So I suspect they have been talking together ever since this story broke.
They are in damage-limitation mode, and appear to have decided not to defend any individual scientist, but to defend the concept of AGW. So the scientists will have to fight their own battles – I daresay there are some ambitious juniors anxious to move up a grade if they go down, but at all times it will be emphasised that a few bad apples do not mean that the fundamental science is at fault.
My son reckons that a good move might be for you to talk to some friendly competing journalists on a different paper, such as Brooker or Delingpole. They will be much more attuned to the politics in the UK and should be able to give useful advice.
This merely heralds a shift in the MSM, from years of dismissing Sceptic claims about the Science, to attacking them, in a concerted attempt to defend the Science.
They have gone off the dismissive and onto the defensive, at last.
It’s about to get rather unpleasant.
Not so sure about the Guardian’s machiavellistic behavior. Most readers only will see the HadCRU misconduct and IPCC science-gates that will stuck in the mind. Maybe the Gruadian overestimates it’s readers? It’ll be very difficult to get the bus back on track after all the turmoil. It’ll be on track but it will have lost 3 of it’s 4 wheels.
If one reads the comments the skeptic views get the most recommands and are in the majority. If this is really Garudians aim, than probably they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Because it leaves the door open for all kinds of skeptical articles and analysis.
John Beddington comment to the Guardian is a significant development:
While the Guardian (Pearce and Monbiot) is still not clear on the meaning of sceptic, it is getting better. Claims of ‘fraud!’ and ‘hoax!’ ‘MASSIVE lie’ in the online media, claims based in part on McIntyre’s research – these are beyond scepticism. However, McIntyre has been careful to remained only sceptical – that is by criticising the science but withholding judgement on the overall AGW conclusion. This is why he has been just too dangerous to touch. But now, at this end of the week atleast, Pearce seems to give some recognition of the voice of the scientific sceptic behind all the shouting (A change from Monday?).
In my view these actions by Beddington and Pearce will have a very positive influence on this debate, and on public practice of science generally. Now the science may have a chance – a licence – to work itself out, and if the cause for AGW alarmism is found to be dubious there is a good chance that this will now emerge into the public arena.
Sure we are angry, and we want to blame and convict, but it is not for Beddington or Pearce to present the case against AGW, it is only for these gate-keepers to open the gate and permit the debate. Given they are who they are, can we ask any more?
Anyone who thinks the Guardian is coming around needs to read this piece by Pierce the other day,
How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies
FYI Mr. Pearce, George Will is an “intellectual” – George F. Will, Ph.D. Political Science.
“Some of it is not pretty, but significantly, the science of global warming has not been seriously challenged.”
This is the same punch line when climate gate broke “the science is not pretty, its ugly but it does not undermine the theory of global warming.”
This is a twist of logic and a distraction. Science is either correct or incorrect. I don’t care if Phil Jones is nasty personally, though he likely is. [snip]
My concern is, where is the raw data? Why should we trust the adjusted(manufactured) data? What is the logic behind this? The media ignores the science but at the same time claims science supports AGW. The typical message the media preaches goes something like “don’t be afraid of science/trust the scientists”, and of course most ignorant people don’t want to be on the dumb side. Afraid of science=stupid.
When has the media ever truly debated the science of GW? Why won’t these “champions” of science do so?
“Anyone who thinks the Guardian is coming around needs to read this piece by Pierce the other day,
How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies
FYI Mr. Pearce, George Will is an “intellectual” – George F. Will, Ph.D. Political Science.”
People like Pearce and Monbiot still underestimate the readers. One cannot claim one thing today and another thing tomorrow. Readers won’t buy this, read the comments (Pearce and Monbiot do that fersure) and eventually both will revert to a moderate, middle of the road approach of Climate Science.
I’m paraphrasing J Brignall here
You are a scientist, you discover a catastrophe about to happen, do you…
DaveE.
Whoops. your, not tour.
DaveE.
OMG. How stupid do they think people are?
We looked around for some bogus science to
hide, but there wasn’t any, so we had to hide
the good science. It’s not the science that’s
going to destroy these people, it’s their own
arrogance.
In the end, I don’t think it much matters what the Guardian or their ilk say or don’t say. Twenty years ago, sure. But today we have this thing called the internet and people are free to dig up information on their own without gatekeepers controlling the flow of information. The emails from CRU came out last fall with no help from the traditional media and in a few short months decades of “settled science” have been completely unsettled in the court of public opinion.
The Guardian is now just reacting to what has become obvious to anyone, scientist or not, with a modicum of common sense and they are no longer in the position of power they used to enjoy. I get much more information and factual data in places like this from posters and commenters than from newspaper columnists.
Pearce says that Briffa was not guilty of wrongdoing in the way that his data was used and then concludes that no one was guilty of wrongdoing. That logic does not work. Pearce seems correct to say that Briffa is innocent in the matter, and I do not think the point is worth an investigation. But Jones and Mann are shoulder deep in guilt in this matter. Is it not true that Briffa’s tree ring data showed a decline in temperature after 1960 or so but thermometer data showed an increase in temperature. The “trick” to handle this problem was simply to replace the tree-ring curve with the thermometer curve after 1960. This is “hiding the decline.” What the hidden decline would have shown is that there is 50 years of evidence that tree-ring data is not a reliable proxy for temperature. That would have required dropping all tree-ring data from the reconstructions. So, Briffa might be innocent but Jones and Mann are guilty of brute fraud. I cannot believe that Pearce does not understand these points. It looks to me that he is misdirecting the public to protect the Climategaters.
the Guardian is just covering it’s arse, now it can say it gave “equal time” to the skeptic side. scientists will take the fall. soon?
I think this is about damage control. A few bodies will get thrown under the bus.
Some new ‘transparency rules’ will be put into place.
I thought these articles were better:
Climate scientists have long been targets for sceptics:Attacks designed to force researchers to resign or get fired is nothing new – the denialist industry has been at it for years
How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies:Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulation
REPLY: I suppose the photo of flames used with this caption
Kevin Trenberth suffered abuse for publicly linking global warming to Hurricane Katrina. Photograph: Michael Appleton/AP
Doesn’t bother your cowardly hide and snipe world view there deechy?
Yes, it seems that the new Guardian position is a typical political set up move. They’ll admit that some scientists may have done unsavory things, although not impacting the science itself. Then, once those scientists get “resigned” from their positions, everything will be all ok again and the Guardian returns to business (alarmism) as usual.
My take is that even this is a net good thing for skeptics. The Guardian is still prominently featuring the term “Climategate” and the more they do that, the more readers will get curious and hit Google, ultimately finding the truth elsewhere.
It’s a bit like that quote attributed to Gandhi that goes something like: “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then they lose”. I think the Guardian is shifting modes from “Ignore/Mock” and is setting the stage to go into “Fight” (once the movement has rid itself of a few inconvenient scientists/railway engineers). That’s a very good thing.
>>>What is a decline?
For those not familiar with this saga, here is a potted history.
The Yamal tree rings gave a temperature proxy that was pretty steady, but actually went down for the last 50 or so years up until year 2000.
This is the decline.
But the decline did not agree with Al Gore’s super-warming hockey-stick, supposedly recorded by land-based thermometers. So the decline in the Yamal proxy temperatures had to be hidden.
This was done by removing most of the steady and declining temperatures (tree-rings) and relying on YAD061 – the one and only tree that showed lots and lots of ‘warming’. (Actually, this tree’s big brother probably blew down in a storm, and let 061 grow strongly for once. Tree-rings are not actually very good temperature proxies, as there are many other variables involved).
So why worry about tree-ring proxies anyway? Why not use real temperatures??
Answer – the Yamal tree-ring proxies also managed to get rid of the Medieval Warming Period. How can you have scare stories about AGW caused by 4×4 pickups (UTEs, in OZ), if they had the same warming back in the days of horse and cart (is a horse a 4×4?).
That is why Yamal was important, and that is why they had to — all sing along now — “Hide the Decline – hide the decline”.
.
I think the point is that the scientists are in shock at being questioned. The interesting thing will be more how the scientific journals respond – will they tighten the review process and so the science starts to improve. The policiticians can hardly back down overnight. If good reviews were in place most of this stuff would not have made it into the journals in the first place. Hopefully the politicians will back down to cost effective c02 reduction. More sceptical papers will make it into the press. The next UN report will know it risks being torn apart for poor citations. Institutions like NASA and CRU and IPCC are only of use to governments if their statements are taken as being scientifically plausible. The damage they do to these institutions by carrying on like this will eventually make them hollow shells. The credibility they are losing here is incredibly difficult to get back, unless they start coming back with a proper scientific defence soon. From what I recall from the conversion is that it the sceptics case gives you the reference points to question every news article on the subject. If they don’t lose their jobs the reputations of the institutions are damaged. If they do, the other scientists are scared of over-representing the facts enough to lose their jobs. Their best bet really is to back off the expensive measures and wait for the media attention to die down. The problem for them appears to be that they have hordes of believers who are pushing them to act, and a rather expensive gravy train which is becoming more difficult to justify.
The public perception is pretty straightforward. If it stays cold they will more and more ignore the Jeremiahs of Global Warming. If it turns hot again it will continue to have legs for a little longer.
It was interesting to read comments on an Australian board the other day. Lots of AGW supporters there still in numbers you don’t seem to find anywhere else. But of course it is in the middle of summer in a warm/hot climate there. It is so much easier to be an AGW believer in an Australian summer than it is in an American or European winter.
Another cool summer followed by another harsh or harsher winter will really knock this on the head. A hot summer and a mild winter will let it drag on for a while longer. What we might see this year is complete debunking of the ‘ice caps are melting’ story which is at the moment generally accepted and one of the main sound bites of AGW supporters who know little else.
I wonder what the UK Met Office will forecast for the coming summer. I wonder if they dare forecast another BBQ Summer?
Maybe the Science that supports CAGW is correct, maybe it’s uncertain and, perhaps, it is way off target.
Time will judge.
For the moment, we can only live in the present. If the Guardian and RH of the BBC are willing to ask questions that were unthinkable, for them, just a few weeks ago, then why should we attack them?
As Anthony said earlier, let us build a bridge that joins, more than it divides!
I agree with that.
Fact, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Fact, mankinds activities create GH gases.
Fact, we warm the planet.
Fact, most , after that, are worthy of debate.
Admission, I’m really happy that RH of the BBC and the Guardian newspaper have joined the debate.
Forget about motives because that is speculative and adds nothing, other than bad blood, to the narrative!
Jaw, Jaw, Jaw. Better than War, War, War.
Ralph (16:54:03),
Good explanation of "hide the decline."
Here is the single tree that Briffa used to create his hokey stick: click
Without that one tree [YAD061], there is no hockey stick. These graphs show the difference: click
Fred Pierce and the Guardian are lying. QED
John Finn (15:48:26) :
You can’t be following along and be serious about the below:
“Despite what many WUWT readers believe there is very little evidence that data is being manipulated. There is, though, plenty of evidence that dodgy reconstructions have been presented to show that the MWP was a non event.”
Your second sentence invalidates your first.
Here are some ways the data has been manipulated:
1. forcing behavior in the Fortran programs
2. “losing” all but the massaged data, and passing the massaged data along to other researchers
3. cherry picking which stations to use to compute site temperatures which are used to interpolate missing data points between the cherry picked sites
4. cherry picking which trees from the Yamal cores would be used, and mixing those with tree cores from 400 km away
5. showing an upward trend in temperatures in the NZ temp record that the publicly available data doesn’t show
6. ignoring the ice core data that shows rising temps precede CO2 increases by as much as 800 yrs
7. ignoring Argo buoy data that shows the oceans have lost energy
etc etc etc
Until all the data is made freely available, the Fortran programs made available, the assumptions made available, and until others are able to reconstruct the results, the belief has to be that manipulation has occurred.
What other branch of science would allow the so-called elite to behave in such a manner? None, of course. None.
Remember, the “results” from these scientists are used as inputs for the others studying climate change. The data manipulation is huge.
@RichieP (15:51:21) :
“I don’t remotely believe that we are witnessing some Damascene conversion by the Guardian … You only have to look at this appalling piece from today’s issue (the Graun is supposed to be a serious newspaper) to see that:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/03/bbc-climate-change-denier
This is the language of witch-hunting and the auto-da-fe. These are the people you’re dealing with.”
The reference above, for people who do not want to go there, is a fairly incoherent rage against the BBC by a Guardian journalist for daring to have a skeptic on a program. Obviously over the top and unjustified.
I strongly suspect that this is part of the ‘misinformation process’ and that the piece was commissioned by the BBC themselves. They need to appear balanced – it’s in their charter – and they obviously aren’t. If they commission a friendly newspaper to ‘attack’ them, they can point to the piece and say “We must be balanced – look, here we are being attacked for being pro-skeptic…”.
This is the sort of game we are starting to enter. The Brits used to be very good at this sort of thing – probably world leaders during WW2. I suspect they are less good at the moment, but I would not underestimate them….
Smokey 17.07
Fred Pierce. (its Pearce btw). May be lying, but he must be watching this site, (also his editors) and realise that the consensus is not what it is claimed by the IPCC. They know how many people log onto sites like this, and how many people log onto their own site. So maybe they are trying to follow the peoples opinions in order to improve circulation??
Just a thought.
Smokey (17:07:30) :
Ralph (16:54:03),
Good explanation of “hide the decline.”
Here is the single tree that Briffa used to create his hokey stick: click
Without that one tree [YAD061], there is no hockey stick. These graphs show the difference: click
Fred Pierce and the Guardian are lying. QED
Smokey, as much as I recognize your intelligence (and I do) your attribution of malfeisance may be faulty.
I think that Fred and his paper are sincere. I also believe that they have been misled. I suspect that they are re-assessing their sources.
Sorry Smokey but I think that they fall into the slot of victims not liars!