Sceencaps of the video follow, link to the video below the “Continue reading” line. Last night in London, to a packed room, a panel of people convened to talk about Climategate.
Steve McIntyre (L) and Doug Keenan(R) represented the skeptical side.
The Guardian’s EcoBlogger, George Monbiot, chaired, and sat next to Steve McIntyre.
People attending expected a furor, given such odd juxtapositions as we see below.
But the only sparks seemed to be Piers Corbin being threatened with ejection by Monbiot for some apparently out of line comments.
Link to video and audio here:
‘Climategate’ debate: less meltdown, more well-mannered argument
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Bless those Canadians’ pea-pickin’ little hearts for sending a hockey stick graph to every Canadian household.
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I’m gonna send you folks a bill for all the time I spent clicking on those “video clips” that were just JPEGs. Damned sadistic web managers …
Thanks for posting this!
Whenever someone tells the “debate is over” on AGW, ask them if they listened to the Guardian Debate of 2010 (it is 98min of low bitrate audio).
This should have happened 10 years ago, the debate is now just beginning.
McIntyre makes his points well, but is too soft. Keenan is appropriately tough, claiming that there is no climate science and that Jones does not have an elementary understanding of statistics, but does not follow through. Pearce is the most surprising because he is rather critical of the climategaters. Watson is an apologist for climate science. The UEA fellow, Davis, is an apologist for CRU. Monbiot is just there.
Attempts to subvert the peer review process were overlooked entirely.
The big problem with the discussion is the failure to distinguish between science and policy. That failure meant that the discussion was not focused and often strayed way off topic to policy issues. As expected, those who would defend climategaters breathed a sigh of relief whenever they could turn the discussion to policy.
What is at issue in climategate is the integrity of climate science, especially as embodied in the hockey stick, and the integrity of the scientists. We need to learn whether climate scientists have lied intentionally, taken actions to cover-up their lies, destroyed data, attempted to take control of journals, and many other matters having to do with their personal moral behavior. The Penn State review says up front that they are unwilling that anyone question Mann’s integrity. The Muir Russell review failed to ask Jones if he carried through on his threat to delete emails. The Oxborough review is just as weak. Clearly, there has been no serious attempt to investigate the moral behavior of the climategaters,.
As regards the science, we must learn what theories are held by climate scientists and what evidence there is for them. Only Keenan addressed this matter when he explained that his professional expertise in statistical time series analysis permitted him to conclude that there is no climate science, at least not at CRU. No one else has addressed this matter. The climategaters do historical work on proxies for CO2 concentration. Their only theories explain how this information is collected and how it is massaged. Of course, their statistical expertise is crucial, along with their honesty. In this Guardian debate, McIntyre brought up the crucial issue of “hiding the decline” and made the crucial points, but no one else touched it.
Beyond climategate, the crucial theory that is needed at this time would explain cloud formation and similar phenomena in an atmosphere heated by CO2. As everyone knows, no such theory exists.
I hope that Keenan, McIntyre, and Pearce publish their thoughts on the debate. It was not a whitewash but it was too brief and too shallow to be worthwhile.
Man-made global warming scientists and pundits are like animals whom have learned not to bite the hands that feed them money.
Fascinating that the Guardian censored varies parts of the audio including Keenan’s fraud allegations and then used the pathetic excuse of “legality”. Looks like Monboit and company wanted to keep the most damning speech under wraps,
“Some parts of the debate have been edited out for legal reasons”
I also like how Monboit (@12min) tried to force McIntyre to waste his five minutes answering his strawman argument about the CRU temp data, when the bulk of the emails deal with the Hockey Stick and the IPCC.
Finally it was hilarious to listen to Watson say (@76min) that Mars has no greenhouse gases when it’s atmosphere is 95% Carbon Dioxide!
What a joke.
Doubt is all well and good, but what wasn’t touched by any of the skeptics is climate sensitivity. 3 degrees centigrade for a doubling of co2. That’s only for fast feedbacks. Include slow feedbacks over centuries and there is more co2 leaving the earth with higher positive feedback.
Theo Goodwin says:
Beyond climategate, the crucial theory that is needed at this time would explain cloud formation and similar phenomena in an atmosphere heated by CO2. As everyone knows, no such theory exists.
############################################################
I haven’t been able to find the article in Science Daly. But there is a group studying Meteorology Data back 50 years of what cloud formation would be on the hotter days. Which is what would be expected with higher co2 levels. Data shows that cloud formation is reduced allowing more sunlight to heat the ocean for positive feedback. That is one study and we can wait for more science to come out to see what data comes forth.
I don’t find many of the comments in the debate acceptable. For example, as soon as one starts the audio, in the very first minute, we learn that ClimateGate was blown out of proportion by parts of the climate “denier” community, and all this stuff. It only became a scandal because some P.R. people didn’t do a good job in November 2009: surely, the content doesn’t matter.
There’s also a lot of friendly talk how the people may be forced to listen to criticism and similar nice – but completely unproblematic – words. But the important fact is that the current climate community is overwhelmingly corrupt and it can’t be fixed unless something like 80% of the people who are working in it today are fired together with the bad policies that got us into the current state.
It’s just impossible to transform this discipline into a decent one while preserving all the people who have been dragged into the community by the very dishonest and purpose-driven activities that the panel may have tried to eliminate. It’s equally absurd as keeping all the communist leaders – at the global and local level – in their chairs after the fall of communism, expecting them to build democracy and the market economy. It just couldn’t work like that.
So if there will be a solution to the problems, it simply can’t be unproblematic with many people. Debates trying to show that people from both sides can peacefully talk to each other can solve exactly nothing important here.
what a joke – you invite McIntyre all the way from Canada then muzzle him at every opportunity. The guy is not an academic who is skilled in public speaking, he’s a slow methodical mathematician and his qualifications are in the fraudulent creation of the hockey stick – it’s a pity he wasn’t treated that way, I would have loved to have heard more.
I really wasn’t interested in the boring rambling whitewashing by the CRU and IPCC academics Watson and Davies, I was interested in what Doug Keenan and Steve McIntyre had to say but they were muzzled by Monbiot’s dreadful moderating. Had I been there I would have rushed to the stage and smashed his stupid stop watch!
Everything Monboit says smacks of hard left politics. I am certain he hurt the cause of global warming by being there. He is rude and heartless.
Other than that he’s a great guy.
Luboš Motl:
July 15, 2010 at 9:54 pm
One problem with this debate, and I think most people don’t even know it, is that Steve McIntyre is actually a global warming believer. He just does not like the exaggerations and bad science that has, he feels, distracted people away from the real science of global warming. Lindzen, Christy, or Monckton would have made a far better representative than Steve McIntyre.
Lindzen, Christy, or Monckton
opps, forgot Spencer and Motl
😉
@Theo Goodwin says:
July 15, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Spot on!
The section for this topic begins at about 60mins on the audio replay.
Piers Corbin being threatened with ejection by Monbiot for some apparently out of line comments.
I can be fairly certain that it was censorship by Monboit and not ‘out of line comments’ by Corbyn. Piers Corbyn is too smart for Monboit. But this was a Guardian event so no surprise there would be no real freedom of speech.
Theo Goodwin says:
July 15, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Beyond climategate, the crucial theory that is needed at this time would explain cloud formation and similar phenomena in an atmosphere heated by CO2. As everyone knows, no such theory exists.
Maybe I am not understanding you correctly, but isn’t that Lindzen’s Infrared Iris? Isn’t Spencer’s work with clouds in the tropics proof of it? Or should the Infrared Iris still be considered hypothesis?
@about 90mins
“two more questions…I see the women in the red dress there…”
Reply:
[…]
“In fact, this made me think that the microkernel approach was essentially a dishones approach aimed at receiving more dollars for research. I don’t necessarily think these researchers were knowingly dishonest. Perhaps they were simply stupid. Or deluded. I mean this in a very real sense. The dishonesty comes from the intense pressure in the research community at that time to perusue the microkernel topic. Ia a computer science research lab, you were studying microkernels or your weren’t studying kernels at all. So everyone was pressured into this dishonesty, even the people designing Windows NT. While the NT team knew the final result wouldn’t approach a microkernel, they knew they had to pay lip service to the idea.”
“You could change a few words there and get Global Warming”.
Referenced quote –
Voices from the open source revolution
The Linux Edge 103
google books –
http://tinyurl.com/2wmfru2
Dear Jeff,
look at the numbers . . according to spectrum calculations the radiation hitting the ground increased by 1.7W/m2 due to CO2 in the last 150years and this number will increase to 3.4W/m2 due to doubling. This means, that we already saw more than 50% of the warming due to CO2 until 2100 (including all feedbacks).
There is no rise of a few degrees centigrades visible due to CO2.
Cheers,
LoN
Jeff Green says:
July 15, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Doubt is all well and good, but what wasn’t touched by any of the skeptics is climate sensitivity. 3 degrees centigrade for a doubling of co2. That’s only for fast feedbacks. Include slow feedbacks over centuries and there is more co2 leaving the earth with higher positive feedback.
Why does this remind me of the Blackadder goes forth episode where Blackadder is charged as the Flanders pigeon murderer for murdering General Melchett’s pigeon, and the court case was presided over by General Melchett? Only with Monbiot in the General’s role?
@38-40 mins
Phil Jones must respond to this!
Re Amino and Piers Corbyn
It may not be clear from the audio, but Corbyn had been continually heckling and generally making a nuisance of himself for some time previously. In what was a generally well-behaved audience, he was showing himself to be a plonker and inhibiting rather than enhancing the discussion. His disturbances were annoying and diminished whatever point he might have been trying to make.
I am no fan of Monbiot (barred from CiF for disagreeing with him), but in this case I think he handled it correctly. And Corbyn wasn’t actually thrown out. Just told to pipe down a bit or else he would be. The tactic worked and the discussion continued with Corbyn still there..but not shouting the odds so much.
Re freedom of speech…it was a well-conducted discussion and I saw no censorship or restriction of comments. I imagine the piece where Keenan twice accused Jones of intellectual fraud has been omitted from the audio…The Guardian is sensitive about defamation suits right now….
I am hardly surprised Doug Keenan was censored in that way. If there was a potential legal issue with the fraud claims, then hang him out to dry for the legal beagles to deal with. Monbiot could easily have said something along the lines of “well I’m sure their lawerys will be contacting you in the very near futre”, smug grin etc. Of course, that is precisely what they do not want, a real court case where scientific claims & methods can be placed well & truly in the glare of the spotlight for one & all to see! I suspect that the idea of censorship had been well planned beforehand, these guys are past masters at delivering the right conclusion at the right time!
BTW Piers Corbyn’s forecasts seem to be coming true for most of the country, at least a week in advance compared to the Met Office’s daily forecasts.
Piers Corbyn was kind trying to coat-rack the “Climategate” debate, in fairness. I like Piers and I want his science heard, because I don’t think it’s being properly heard right now, but the Guardian event was specifically about another topic and so it wasn’t Piers’ turn to rant.
It’s always a pleasure to hear Steve McIntyre speak, but I think my hero of the evening was Doug Keenan. I’ve crossed paths with him several times before in threads and appreciated his thoughts but not fully understood his position in the debate before. His concern with climate science, it turns out, is my concern – the accountability of the scientists and the integrity and value of the science itself – so I felt like, for the first time in a while, I learned something new about the Climategate landscape in listening to the audio. So it’s a win. 🙂
I was there, second row…
George Monbiot was actually a very good chair overall.. (and I have been VERY, very critical of George Monbiot)
You do really need to see hear the audio, to see how bad the UEA’s Trevor Davis was, especially how, the admission that PHil Jones was not seen by Muir Russell after the enquiry panel had formed, was dragged out of him…
Audio LINK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audio/2010/jul/15/guardian-climategate-hacked-emails-debate
I think it was The Time’s journalist, that asked for confirmation from Davis, whether Mcintyre account was correct, ie the head of the enquiry, had not the head of the department (Phil Jones) to be formally interviewed, after the panel had formed.
George to his credit, did not allow Davis (UEA) to get away with anything, Davis’ stonewalling after Steve Mcintyres filleting of the enquiry, George pursued the question, with Davis, until after much note shuffling, not sures, mumbling, refering to notes, Davis eventually mumbled Phil Jones,- met Muir Russell in January, Steve Mcintyre said, ‘confirming’, BEFORE the panel had formed.
Bob Watson’s admission, that he had only read a FEW emails was just laughable, given the debate…
Fred Pearce did come across very well (Fred and even George came across as journalists) – and I would recommend his
‘The Climate Files’ -to complement
‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ – A J Montford.
Fred in my mind, still trusts some of the ‘climate sceintists ‘ science too much, but he is very critical of the IPCC, he called it a ‘tradegy’ not a ‘conspiracy’, and I would agree, and perhaps add a popular ‘CAGW mass delusion’
Keenan was very concise and tough, maybe overstepped the mark, saying all climate science was rubbish (assuming he meant the man made kind)
What may be lost because he said that, is he talked about the human ‘cost’ of it all, hundreds of millions of poor affected, because we ‘must’ do ‘something’ about AGW,even as the uncertainties get bigger for AR5.
His other valid point, that struck a chord, was how there is no processes, for challenging academic fraud, incompetance, no way to hold anybody academic to account,(fraud/incompetance) Citing an example, (not climate science) that he was pursueing, where the university, said no method to do this.
Keenan I think impressed the journalists, like Fred, George, Roger Harrabin (BBC), Times, WSJ, etc, with his conciseness, and interest in accountability of academia, no ‘waffle’.
Former IPCC man Bob Watson, could only keep repeating, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, 95% scientists agree, very superficial platitudes, that just did not work in a debate, where every one was knowledgable.
Roger Harraibin asked him a question from the audience, and the response from Bob was very poor, totally not answering the question, whijh I heard at least one of the journalists present, saying Bob did not answer the question.
Fiona Fox (Director Science and the Media -advises governments!!) asked a question, pretty much attacking the Guardian journalists, for being irresponsble for reporting about climategate. She was quite scarey, sounded VERY angry, (listen to the audio)
Fred Pearces reply was perfect, comparing to how reporting MP’s expenses was referred as attacking democarcy initially, but long term better for democracy (cf climate science)
Fiona Fox, sounded to be like a very strident ‘activist’, really need to here it for yourself..
Personally, it was good to finally meet people, Fred Pearce was very easy to talk to, glad to meet Roger Harabin, if only so that I could introduce him to ‘Josh’ (cartoons by Josh) and a couple of others. I was in 2 minds whether to say hello, as I had perhaps ‘bothered’ him enough with emails, Roger has always been courteous to reply many times.
The journalists present could not fail to see, what the Muir Russell enquiry was really about, following UEA’s and Bob Watsons poor performance here
George Monbiot, WAS a very good chair… (in a potentially difficult debate)
I had thought – oh huh, when he started of with the ‘Climate Change DENIAL community’, but it would be picky to highlight any detail.
He fulfilled the role of chair correctly. (if only he’s stop denial stuff in his blog – that totally alienates me, annd many others,)
George came across well, with a sense of humour saying:
“He was the ideal chair, beacuse he had managed to alienate, everybody!”
Unfortuanetly, Piers Corbyn, imho, came across as a loon.
Getting angry, is not what it is about, I have read that several sceptical/advocates got together for drinks, swapped contact details and had interesting chats. Even Bob Watson and Doug Keenan. Not just an anonymous angry people anymore..
Even Dough Keenanm who clearly was angry about Phil Jones’ behaviour, came across as sincere, with no obviouls agenda.. I think the majority of journalists saw where he was coming from… (and maybe will not listen to propaganda against him, he came across MUVH better than Davis,Watson, who ‘waffled’ and new very little.
Let me repeat, Bob Watson said: “He had only read a few emails!”
Prompting a response from the audience: ” Do you always go out without doing your homework!”
And again, Steve Mcintyre, came across as a courteous canadian gent, whose portayal as some sort of sceptical/denying big oilf funded deniar, by the ‘alarmists’ just now looks ludicrous…. AND the Journalists could see this, VERY well attended by journalists…
The Times correspondent, (2 seats away) said it was shocking that Muir Russell had not been part of the process interviewing Jones, etc, after the panel had formed.
Trevor Davis, was atotal PR car crash for UEA and establishment procedures.