Despite regular attempts by head in the sand AGW cheerleaders to make it go away, Climategate continues to affect the path of climate science. This endorsement of the Climategate effect comes from a most unlikely source, The Guardian’s Fred Pearce, who also writes for The New Scientist. Most telling about all of the investigations so far is that they have not interviewed any of the primary investigators that question the methods and data, such as Steve McIntyre.
The investigations thus far are much like having a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators, and defendant, but no plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say. Is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up “not guilty”?
To summarize: it’s a whitewash in the purest sense of the word. I don’t expect career team player Sir Muir Russell’s report to be any different. He’s too much of an familial insider to have the courage to ask the plaintiff to get involved, and he didn’t. But Steve McIntyre is going anyway. Hopefully they’ll have the courage to hear what he has to say and not lock him out in the hallway. – Anthony
‘Climategate’ was ‘a game-changer’ in science reporting, say climatologists
After the hacked emails scandal scientists became ‘more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties’
Sir Muir Russell’s findings will be published on Wednesday. Photograph: University of Glasgow
Excerpts from the Guardian article:
Science has been changed forever by the so-called “climategate” saga, leading researchers have said ahead of publication of an inquiry into the affair – and mostly it has been changed for the better.
This Wednesday sees the publication of the Muir Russell report into the conduct of scientists from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), whose emails caused a furore in November after they were hacked into and published online.
Critics say the emails reveal evasion of freedom of information law, secret deals done during the writing of reports for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a cover-up of uncertainties in key research findings and the misuse of scientific peer review to silence critics.
But whatever Sir Muir Russell, the chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland, concludes on these charges, senior climate scientists say their world has been dramatically changed by the affair.
“The release of the emails was a turning point, a game-changer,” said Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia. “The community has been brought up short by the row over their science. Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance.”
And there will be other changes, said Hulme. The emails made him reflect how “astonishing” it was that it had been left to individual researchers to police access to the archive of global temperature data collected over the past 160 years. “The primary data should have been properly curated as an archive open to all.” He believes that will now happen.
…
“Trust has been damaged,” said Hans von Storch of the KGSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany. “People now find it conceivable that scientists cheat and manipulate, and understand that scientists need societal supervision as any other societal institution.”
The climate scientist most associated with efforts to reconciling warring factions, Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the idea of IPCC scientists as “self-appointed oracles, enhanced by the Nobel Prize, is now in tatters”. The outside world now sees that “the science of climate is more complex and uncertain than they have been led to believe”.
…
Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado agreed that “the climate science community, or at least its most visible and activist wing, appeared to want to go back to waging an all-out war on its perceived political opponents”.
He added: “Such a strategy will simply exacerbate the pathological politicisation of the climate science community.” In reality, he said, “There is no going back to the pre-November 2009 era.”
…
But greater openness and engagement with their critics will not ensure that climate scientists have an easier time in future, warns Hulme. Back in the lab, a new generation of more sophisticated computer models is failing to reduce the uncertainties in predicting future climate, he says – rather, the reverse. “This is not what the public and politicians expect, so handling and explaining this will be difficult.”
Full story at the Guardian h/t to Tallbloke and WUWT reader Pat
@CRS, Dr.P.H.
‘If you want to read some bizarre/disturbing conversations, visit Realclimate.org and check out some of the comment threads.’
I did once, but then I was searching for the rock from where under all the talibans come from. O_o
I like the suggestion of calling the careful side Climate “Reformers,” rather than skeptics or denialists. The desire is fixing climate science, not destroying it. Restoring it to its own better self.
Katabasis says: July 5, 2010 at 11:48 am
What Katabasis says is truly worrying in that it is an inside ‘peek’ at the state of mind of research science in general. It is the condition and level of corruption behind all of this that normally one would believe to be incredible. Now the scales seem to be falling from our eyes and one has to realise that the amount of corruption is huge and widespread.
Doug
Katabasis says:
July 5, 2010 at 11:48 am
What I personally find most distressing, not to mention highly disturbing is how this can affect one’s academic career even if one has little to do with climate science….
I’ve found this attitude seeping in even to my own areas though and its really making me start to rethink my career, it’s also filling me with a creeping sense of dread more generally. If the academic-scientific establishment continues to be corrupted in this way, the damage to wider society will be incalculable. My boss was slightly off target with his second comment – what he should have said is that “truth is just a hobby”.
__________________________________________________________________________
You have very nicely stated the major damage that grant chasing and politicizing science has done. I am a chemist and I am appalled at what I have seen over the last 40 years. I now have very very little faith in any scientific results especially when politics are involved.
For example here is a lawsuit against the FDA for playing fast and loose with the testing of food: It is also interesting that while the USDA FORBIDS a corporation to do its .own testing of BSE it is shutting down government labs and turning food testing over to corporations under HACCP
(Make sure you are not eating before you read the articles in the links)
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
July 5, 2010 at 12:08 pm
“[…]
[RC comment:]“It is time scientists realised that they are in a war. There are no rules in love and war. The sceptics know that. So long as they can get away with their lies and false accusations scot-free, then the battle for the future of the planet will be lost.””
The number 1 climate science blog of the planet leaves such a post up? My, my, Gavin, what have you become.
So, next Cancun jamboree is OK!, well, well…unless there is a new Climate-Gate: Climate Gate Version 1.01.
Keep on visiting WUWT and one month before Cancun….
While we’re on a british thread, this is so sweet:
“Top Gear sales boost BBC profits”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10509919.stm
You’re trying to brainwash 60 Million people into fear of CO2 emissions and what do you get? Boosted profits from that petrolhead cult series…
I have just finished reading Climategate: The CRUtape Letters.
EXCELLENT. I am a skeptical lukewarmer, if anyone feels the need to categorize me. A friend introduced me to the AGW “scandal” about a year ago and finally, after some coaxing, to this site about 6 months ago. Enlightenment!
I truly commend yourself and others such as Steve McIntyre for the tireless work you do bringing balance to this whole AGW “debate”. I can’t imagine where we would be without people like yourselves.
Where is your “Visitors Page” so all your readers can register as supporting you and your work. A bit like a petition of attitudes.
Keep up the goodwork. Sorry I missed you in Oz. I am currently out of the country.
“The desire is fixing climate science, not destroying it. ”
We must be visiting different websites and blogs then, Robert. Everything I have seen, including Watts’ site, hopes to embarrass, denigrate and deny governmental agencies and scientists.
And I’m sorry folks, Climategate is a wash-out. It’s over. And the only people who thought it was a big deal…well, they’re mostly here and sites like this one.
About climate models, I would like to point out this climategate email:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=861&filename=1202939193.txt
I find this email very interesting.
@DirkH: So, you want RealClimate to engage in censorship?
On a related note Michael Shermer’s “skeptic” column titled When Scientists Sin in this month’s Scientific American is uncharacteristically harsh but refreshingly frank on the subject of scientific integrity. Nice comparison I thought on science as an ideal and science as practiced. The article’s not behind a paywall.
First two paragraphs:
Another day, another whitewashed report, this time from the usually sensible Dutch:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10506283.stm
I predict that not much will change. It took 40 years before it was agreed that the Piltdown Man was a hoax, and that fiasco grew from a single confected fossil. Billions of dollars of potential wealth transfer weren’t at stake in that situation.
The AGW-pushing academics and journalists are simply stage props for the politicians, commodity traders, hair-shirted ecology Savonarolas, and subsidy-gobbling industries who stand to benefit from the hysteria.
Zilla says:
July 5, 2010 at 12:58 pm
“[…]
And I’m sorry folks, Climategate is a wash-out. It’s over. And the only people who thought it was a big deal…well, they’re mostly here and sites like this one.”
Yep. Preparing for the long winter.
Reading the Guardian article comments, what came up for me is how easy it is for some people to turn people such as Judith Curry and Mike Hulme into denialist weirdos (ie, don’t listen to a thing these people say). Anyone who has been following this stuff knows the important part Hulme played in the ‘alarmist’ cause. And Judith Curry has only recently been involved in a dialogue with sceptics. These scientists will soon end up on the sceptics ‘blacklist’ if they aren’t already.
This is a big problem- seems that as soon as someone has plucked up enough courage to publicly state their uncertainties they immediately start to take on this aura of suspicion… then these character memes get amplified in political blogs to the point where the person has now become untrustable, they’ve become a denialist. Perhaps Mike Hulme would find this new label for him somewhat amusing, given his history.
For all the talk from the warmist side in response to the flak about ‘the science being settled’ being a strawman because no real scientist would believe that (we are real scientists after all), some people can still get very uptight and edgy when any specific uncertainty gets raised by a prominent scientist in a public medium. It’s sad to see such people receiving “the big cutoff” but this is after all climate science.
*shrug
Mike says:
July 5, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“@DirkH: So, you want RealClimate to engage in censorship?”
You must be new on this planet.
We have social engineering confronting us. We have climate gate exposing the engineering of the data and models.
Now Oprah Winfrey wants to jump in and do Green programs on TV. That is more than we can refute.
People get very angry if their money grab is jeopardized.
@ur momisugly Katabasas
There are many academic sacred cows. The two most likely to negatively effect your career if you fail to genuflect is giving any credence at all to purpose in the universe or expressing any doubt about anthropogenic global warming and its horrible consequences.
James P. Hogan’s “Kicking the Sacred Cow” has chapters on seven of them:
Recipe: Proxy Mayonnaise
Take a clean computer
Add a carefully concocted statistical smoothing technique
Add one proxy dataset at a time, vigorously beating as you do so
If any lumps appear, add another proxy dataset until all lumps disappear.
Add current temperature dataset from 1960 to present
Voila! Proxy Mayonnaise!
Recipe: Finnish Sediment Blancmange
Into a clean bowl, carefully place one Finnish Lake Sediment dataset with the label removed.
Put in a cool place (Penn State University is very cool) and allow to set. When set, get a large sheet of graph-paper and place over the bowl. Hold the paper firmly in place and invert the bowl onto a firm surface (any prominent scientific journal will do). Invert the label and re-attach. The result is now the exact opposite of the shape of the original dataset.
Sit back with a smug grin and enjoy your Mann-made blancmange.
Serving Suggestion: Sup with a long spoon.
BSM says:
July 5, 2010 at 12:56 pm
I have just finished reading Climategate: The CRUtape Letters.
EXCELLENT.
******
Thanks. I think one of the unfortunate things in this whole debacle has been the way in which the AGWers have effectively switched the frame. As long as the frame is
“fraud” then they have a pretty clear defense, as the mails don’t show clear fraud, beyond a reasonable doubt. They defend with ‘the mistakes don’t matter’ and ignore our suggestion that mistakes and bad practices should be corrected BEFORE the accumulate and start to matter.
What the mails show is a process that has gone down the wrong path. A path that surely CAN lead to actual fraud, but hasn’t yet. We criticized the scientists for failure to use best practices. They defend themselves by arguing that they committed no fraud.
And so, the poor practices go unchecked and unacknowledged.
Mike
Everybody knows RealClimate engages in censorship, but only of those they disagree with, so the implication is that they agree with the poster.
Ref – CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
July 5, 2010 at 12:08 pm
“..visit Realclimate.org and check out some of the comment threads. Here’s a doozy: ‘It is time scientists realised that they are in a war. There are no rules in love and war. The sceptics know that. So long as they can get away with their lies and false accusations scot-free, then the battle for the future of the planet will be lost.'”
_______________________
The only ‘science’ this comment represents is political science (a’la Ho Chi Min, Mao, and a few other notable wanna-be’s), it is also representative of a few cults with a rather restrictive ‘spiritual’ orientation. Fortunately, the days of Realclimate.org are numbered. They seem to be killing off visitors by the gross and the word is getting around.
Sordnay:
That is one of the most interesting mails. I had collected all the mails on GCMs and that mail was going to play a central role. Never wrote that chapter alas.
Key issue for me was this:
2. Is “model democracy” a valid scientific method? The “I” in the IPCC
desires that all models submitted by all governments be considered
equally probable. This should be thoroughly discussed, because it may
have serious implications for regional adaptation strategies. AR4 has
shown that model fidelity and model sensitivity are related. The models
used for IPCC assessments should be evaluated using a consensus metric.
“bad models” can increase the spread of predictions, making the models less susceptible to falsification when compared to observations. But in the current scheme all models get a ‘vote’ regardless of their skill. Ar5 may remedy this
@Zilla
‘And I’m sorry folks, Climategate is a wash-out. It’s over. And the only people who thought it was a big deal…well, they’re mostly here and sites like this one’.
Well, I don’t know which country you are in, but in UK having the article referenced above as the front page news in the Grauniad (cheerleader-in-chief for all things CAGW) suggests that here at least its been treated a very much more than a wash out. And they think enough of the subject to host an international debate next week that has attracted lots of attention already.
Funny that such a washout should still be in the forefront of discussion over six months on………..