From Channel 4 news in the UK:
‘Climate-gate’ review member resigns
By Tom Clarke
Within hours of the launch of an independent panel to investigate claims that climate scientists covered up flawed data on temperature rises, one member has been forced to resign after sceptics questioned his impartiality.
// In an interview last year with Chinese State Radio, enquiry panel member Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature said: “The scientists have not hidden the data. If you look at the emails there is one or two bits of language that are jargon used between professionals that suggest something to outsiders that is wrong.”
He went on: “In fact the only problem there has been is on some official restrictions on their ability to disseminate data otherwise they have behaved as researchers should.”
Dr Campbell, was invited to sit on the enquiry panel because of his expertise in the peer review process as editor of one of the world’s leading science journals.
The journal has published some of the leading papers on climate change research, including those supporting the now famous “hockey stick” graph, the subject of intense criticism by climate sceptics.
Dr Campbell has now withdrawn his membership of the panel, telling Channel 4 News: “I made the remarks in good faith on the basis of media reports of the leaks.
“As I have made clear subsequently, I support the need to for a full review of the facts behind the leaked e-mails.
“There must be nothing that calls into question the ability of the independent Review to complete this task, and therefore I have decided to withdraw from the team.”
The interview, posted on the Bishop Hill blog, run by climate sceptic Andrew Montford, will come as an embarrassment to the enquiry’s chair Sir Muir Russell.
At a press conference this morning to launch the panel, the experienced civil servant and former vice-chancellor of Glasgow University, emphasised his hand-picked panel’s impartiality.
A press release about the panel read: “They were selected on the basis that they have no prejudicial interest in climate change and climate science and for the contribution they can make to the issues of the review.”
Speaking this evening, Muir Russell said “I have spoken to Philip Campbell, and I understand why he has withdrawn. I regret the loss of his expertise, but I respect his decision.”
Read the complete story at Channel 4 News
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This turkey had a vested personal interest in covering up anything contrary to AGW orthodoxy. I’m amazed that he recused himself- this whole mess must be even worse than it looks.
Robert Kral, having been part of the believers and doing my bit to cheer leader them on, I know that there doesn’t need to be a lot to totally change your view. Here is how I think it happens:
1. I used to assume the “sceptics were highly paid lobbyists” and the “believers” were well intentioned individuals struggling to get the science heard. It’s not until you WRONGLY get labelled as a sceptic and become the target of the bile of the well organised highly professional attack machine of the believers and see the disparate individuals who were sceptics – that paradigms suddenly looks ridiculous
2. I used to assume “someone had done the science”. Every one tells you the “science is settled” so you assume that somewhere there’s this superb science which you don’t need to see because it is it bound to be there.
3. But when you realise that it is just possible the evidence may not be all that it is said to be, and you start looking…
4. You go through a phase of looking whilst “giving them the benefit of the doubt”. The fact you can’t see how they justify their assertion doesn’t mean that somewhere there isn’t something that does justify their assertion that mankind is the proven factor warming the globe.
5. Eventually you realise that you have followed enough leads to papers that are about the effects of warming and not the cause and you have been led up enough blind alleyways and assured enough times that “it is there” without being able to find it that, you realise, even though you don’t want to, that you can no longer assert the assumption that: “there must be science underpinning this assertion”.
6. For a while you mildly assert: “on balance …. I’m not sure … but the evidence is not there”
7. Pistoffenough
Finally, the realisation dawns, that there wasn’t ever any evidence, that people have been blatantly conning you – and you’ve be lying to other people. And you know you used to be so certain that manmade warming was true, and now you realise that you’ve been had.
Notice, none of this change is based on MORE evidence, it is based on appraising the evidence that is currently available and finding it lacking. Most of the mainstream media are now in around phase 3/4. They are still giving the climate “scientists” the benefit of the doubt, but the onus is now on the climate “scientists” to prove that they have the evidence to back their assertions.
But as you will notice from the lack of any such evidence being put out by the mainstream media, the climate “scientists” simply lack the goods to back up their claim, and so it is only a matter of time before the press pack stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and you get the last phase:
8) “search for the guilty”.
Tennekes makes his case in the Dutch Press!
I told you they will be sorry!
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fclimategate.nl%2F2010%2F02%2F13%2Fklimaatbanneling-henk-tennekes-bloeit-op%2F&sl=nl&tl=en
IsoTherm had written of his own progress from AGW “believer” to AGW “sceptic” in eight stages, and I confess that I’d never thought about such a process before.
I’ve been a skeptic (extremely unpaid) on the subject since it first came to my intention around 1980. In addition to an education in the sciences, I’m a lifelong science fiction fan and was at that time very active in SF fandom. Mundane (“outsider”) prejudices to the contrary, fandom represents a population of highly literate, analytically adroit, technologically well-informed, and extremely argumentative people. SF conventions routinely run “science tracks” consisting of well-attended panel presentations on cutting-edge technologies of interest to SF fen.
Hell, at one Balticon, several clinical research people from Johns Hopkins presented several seminars on space medicine. At the first presentation, during Q&A, the chair got a puzzled look on his face when confronted with query after query couched in language straight out of Dorland’s Medical Dictionary and asked for all the physicians and nurses to raise their hands.
Well over half of those attending did so, which surprised the hell out of me.
He asked us to sign in at the end of the lecture series, and I came away from that Balticon with three CME credits from Johns Hopkins. Who’da thunk?
The moment the AGW hypothesis broke – decades ago – SF fen started batting it back and forth intra familia, and “the consensus” quickly evolved to the effect that the mundanes were (as usual) out of their friggin’ minds. It was obvious right then and there that they were overestimating the greenhouse gas effect of CO2 by at least three or four orders of magnitude.
Fandom then being what fandom is now – a loose aggregation of speculative fiction afficionados quietly convinced of our innate superiority in all regards when compared against the mundanes – pretty much disregarded the AGW blatherskite as bootless, and I recall no further significant discussion of the concept during the rest of the ’80s.
But I’d never had to make such a progression as is detailed by IsoTherm because from the outset I understood it to be an untenable and unsupported hypothesis, and had dismissed it utterly.
No change in the intervening decades, of course.
—
[snip -OTT]
Scientists have not hidden the data but they have lost the raw data by their own admission. The most ridiculously suspicious graph in the history of graphs must be hockey stick one representing proxy temperatures over the last millennium. Steadily going down from 1000 AD and suddenly rising exponentially as soon as the industrial revolution starts. Could anything look more suspicious than that. Al Gore had to stand on a step ladder to demonsrate the dramatic rise. If I was responsible for something so obviously bogus I would lose the raw data as well.
IsoTherm (01:40:39), 13 Feb:
You describe a step-by-step process, initially accepting at face value what the Warmists said, gradually educating yourself, arriving at the conclusion that we’ve been duped, and finally wanting to “search for the guilty”.
My own journey has been identical to yours.
Although the battle of ideas is going strongly in our favour (since the hacker published the Climategate e-mails, bless him), I am still concerned that there are so many vested interests that the Warmists may still win. A lot of politicians will lose face if they recant. Many scientists will lose their seat on the gravy train. There are clever besuited bastards in the City of London preparing to make millions out of Cap and Trade.
So how do we consolidate this “victory”. I sugest that (a) We exert citizen-power on the various inquiries going on, and tell ’em that no Penn State Whitewashes will be tolerated (b) The newspapers (brainless numpties that they are) have reached a tipping point, and now think they can sell more copies by ridiculing the Gore Brigade (c) We put pressure on our MPs (congressmen etc), to get with the sceptic programme and, as a by-product, save us all from increased taxes which otherwise would’ve been frittered away on solutions to a nonexistent problem.
Future generations will look on Hansen, Mann, Briffa, Jones, Gore, Pachauri et al with scorn and contempt.