By Ross McKitrick, Ph.D
Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Guelph, Canada
Introduction
News broke on or around 19 November 2009 that a large archive of emails and files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK had been released on the internet. The contents of the files were sufficiently disconcerting to the public, governments and university administrations that a number of inquiries were established. Several of my research projects were discussed not only in the so-called “Climategate” emails themselves, but also in the investigations, and I made detailed submissions of evidence to three of the panels.
Consequently I take considerable interest in the outcome of these inquiries, especially with regards to whether they approached the issues impartially, investigated thoroughly and drew valid conclusions that fully reflected the evidence.
As of 30 August 2010 all five had issued their reports. The overall impression that has been created is that the scientists and their work were vindicated. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chair Rajendra Pachauri declared in a recent interview1
“the doubts raised have proved to be unfounded.”
Considerable reliance is being placed upon the outcome of these investigations. As I will
show, for the most part the inquiries were flawed, but where they actually functioned as proper inquiries, they upheld many criticisms. But a surprising number of issues were sidestepped or handled inadequately. The world still awaits a proper inquiry into climategate: one that is not stacked with global warming advocates, and one that is prepared to cross-examine evidence, interview critics as well as supporters of the CRU and other IPCC players, and follow the evidence where it clearly leads.
Altogether there were five inquiries or investigations, conducted by, respectively, The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, The Oxburgh panel, the Independent Climate Change Emails Review under Sir Muir Russell, Penn State University and the InterAcademy Council. The first three were established in the UK and focused on scientists at the CRU. The fourth was focused on Michael Mann of Penn State University, a major correspondent in the Climategate archive. The fifth was
commissioned by the IPCC itself as a review of its policies and procedures.
Many accusations and insinuations began flying around during the uproar after the climategate emails were released. I would distill the main concerns down to the following questions.
1. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges manipulate, hide, invent or otherwise misrepresent evidence in IPCC or World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports so as to mislead readers, including policymakers?
2. Did the scientists involved delete emails or other documents related to the IPCC process in order to prevent disclosure of information subject to Freedom of Information laws?
3. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges express greater doubts or uncertainties about the science in their own professional writings and in their interactions with one another than they allowed to be stated in reports of the IPCC or WMO that were intended for policymakers?
4. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges take steps individually or in collusion to block access to data or methodologies in order to prevent external examination of their work?
5. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges take steps individually or in collusion to block publication of papers, or to intimidate or discredit journals, in order to prevent rival scientific evidence from being published?
My examination of the Climategate inquiries centers on the extent to which they succeeded in providing credible answers to the above questions. As will be shown, the various inquiries reviewed evidence that leads to an affirmative answer in each case, and in many cases the inquiries themselves report affirmative answers, yet they couched such conclusions in terms that gave the opposite impression. In other cases they simply left the questions unanswered. In some cases they avoided the issues by looking instead at irrelevant questions.
Two further questions follow from these, pointing to issues larger than Climategate itself, which many people have asked in the wake of the inquiries.
6. Is the IPCC a reliable source of information on climate change?
7. Is the science concerning the current concerns about climate change sound?
I will return to these questions in the concluding section to show that the inquiries support a negative answer to the former and are uninformative on the latter.
Read the complete report here (PDF)
Jan says:
September 15, 2010 at 7:12 am
Released is the new expression for stolen?
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If I pick a dime up off the sidewalk, did I steal it? If a passerby gives me a dime, did I steal it?
By the way, an excellent and lucid report, Dr. McKitrick. It succinctly brings together the shortcomings of the inquiry and most of the failings of CRU and the IPCC revealed through the Climategate e-mails and analysis of the misleading claims in the IPCC report. It will make a valuable contribution for future historians trying to understand this fiasco, and hopefully before then will draw the attention of legislators and other scientists. Keep up the good fight!
Lots of people need to be sending articles like this to the PBS Ombudsman, asking WHY we hear nothing of these matters on our tax supported PBS NewsHour.
http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/feedback.html
I don’t know what the solution is for the rest of the MSM but if enough people keep up the critique of the publicly funded NewsHour it will eventually make a difference.
Letters to the editor of your local paper would be a good idea, also.
GeoFlynx says:
“It would seem that the documented evidence Dr. McKitrick submitted was not sufficient to prove malfeasance in any of the (four?) “Climate Gate” investigations.”
And the bloody glove was insufficient to convince the OJ Jury. I presume you therefore believe he was innocent.
The whole point here is that copious evidence which was readily available to all enquiries was wilfully ignored. It is grossly insufficient to simply ignore , for instance, Doug Keenan’s or Steve McIntyre’s allegations, without at least acknowledging that they have been examined, and setting out why they have been rejected. To pretend they simply didn’t exist, which is the common stance of both enquires, is to wilfully refuse to consider the very matter they were tasked with investigating .
Bias doesn’t enter into it. Both of the very fine reports under discussion simply document the evidence that appointees of the British “establishment” will return the findings they are expected to, regardless of how blatantly they need to ignore or twist the evidence they are presented with.
But the most amazing thing of all is – they think they are untouchable, and that no matter how preposterous their pronouncements, they will be accepted because of their establishment credentials.
Thank god for the internet, and for people like Ross and Andrew, who refuse to let the bastards get away with it!
Why do the warmists keep referring to the aquired CRU emails as being stolen? As far as I am aware no one other than the person(s) who aquired them know whether they were stolen, hacked or obtained in any other way. The most likely answer is that they were passed on from someone within the CRU -who else would know of their existence?- who was anxious to blow the whistle on the fraud that they knew was being perpetrated and the profound effect that such fraud was having in directing and manipulating the thinking of governments across the world with the attendant possibility of catastrophically expensive action being taken against us all. It was right and proper that the manipulated information being put out by the CRU should have been made available to the public, and it is reprehensible that various pro-warming committees of enquiry that looked into the incriminating evidence in the emails should go out of their way to defend the perpetrators of such criminal activity. If they believed in genuine scientific research with the results available for everyone to see, the critics of those who released the information would be grateful that the falsehoods contained therein have been exposed. It is only those who have been seriously embarrassed by the ‘leak’ who try to muddy the waters by screaming ‘theft’. Thank God there was someone in the know who was prepared to go public with the information and to whom all right minded people should be eternally grateful. If their action hasn’t yet steered the ship away from the iceberg, at least it has slowed the engines down with a strong possibility that the ship will stop before it crashes and sinks all of us.
James Sexton says:
September 15, 2010 at 4:06 pm
I’ll indulge you. I believe what Prof. Kelly was stating, is that a computer run doesn’t rise to the level of evidence. It isn’t the same as observations. The reason is because we don’t know all of the factors and values of inputs. Consequently, we know all computer runs and simulations will be wrong. When a scientist combines to elements and observes a chemical reaction, then documents and then replicates and then offers the same to others and others do the same, we know those observations to be correct. I believe that is what Prof. Kelly was stating.
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What a naive statement. Observations are never “correct”. Anyone who has done any “observations” in science knows that observing anything is always fraught with uncertainties (chemistry is a great example actually). And that is taken to the extreme in trying to observe the climate. As someone involved in climate modelling one of our biggest challenges is validating against a climate we are struggling to observe. Is the model wrong or are the observations wrong? The answer is that they are both wrong… that’s a given of experimental methods and something you grapple with daily in any scientific field.
Now before someone excitedly points out that this proves climate change science is “broken” please remember how science has worked through history. The “tools” scientists have used to do experiments always start off as crude and inaccurate though of course at the time they are considered “cutting edge”. Early observations of the universe used some pretty crude instruments compared to what we have today. And yet those crude tools provided some evidence, all be it fuzzy, that informed our understanding of the universe. As the tools improve, so does our understanding, sometimes will theory changing, paradigm shifting consequences. Perhaps such a theory changing tool will emerge in the climate science in the future.
So yes, as any modeller will clearly state, the output of a model is “wrong”, just as the measurement of a weather station is always “wrong”. But as NickT points out, how else do we do this? How else do we understand our climate? Any suggestions from those of you who are ripping the models apart? At the moment, these models are the best tools we have to try and understand the admittedly fuzzy evidence we have and the results of these experiments do seem to point to AGW. Yes, the picture is fuzzy, hopefully we can work towards better models and understanding and the picture will come into better focus. It feels like a lot of you guys would have killed Galileo for using such an inferior telescope…
The whole premise to these inquires is not to dig and find answers but to give that public the impression that the scince is fine and hope this dies out and goes away.
Everyone knows that the public have a very short attention span.
Jackaranda @ur momisugly 3:36 am.
We are aware that models and observations can be flawed. That’s the point. The IPCC and the AGW crowd don’t admit the models are flawed. Indeed the models are right according to them and the observations are flawed. The models say there is a hotspot over the equator. The radiosondes and satellites can’t find the hotspot so they are wrong. We would give the models more credence if the modellers were humble enough to say ” this is our best guess at the moment but we may well be wrong because the earth isn’t heating as we expected”. When we see that alongside a computer prediction we might begin to give you some credit.
Jackaranda says:
September 16, 2010 at 3:36 am
“At the moment, these models are the best tools we have to try and understand the admittedly fuzzy evidence we have and the results of these experiments do seem to point to AGW. Yes, the picture is fuzzy, hopefully we can work towards better models and understanding and the picture will come into better focus. It feels like a lot of you guys would have killed Galileo for using such an inferior telescope…”
With all due respect, climate models are NOT “experiments”. This seems to be the biggest misunderstanding climate “scientists” have. The sooner these “scientists” understand what a true experiment is, the sooner they will be able to advance the true science.
Secondly, I submit that the reason the models “point to AGW” is because the models hold that hypothesis to be a fact. In other words, the models are developed around the concept of AGW hence the models will “support” the thesis. It is a self fulfilling “experiment”. I also submit that when new evidence is found which is contrary to the hypothesis of AGW, then the “scientists” find some way to massage the data or “tweak” the models to continue to force the desired output.
Finally, the parallel with Galileo is appropo since the models of our solar system at that time held that earth was the centre of the universe and when evidence was found which contradicted that “law”, the models of the day were tweaked by the “scientists” of the day. Galileo saw through the increasing complexity of the models and simplified them by making the sun the centre of our solar system. (I am not suggesting that simplifying the climate models of today.)
Give up the models. They are broken. Continue to improve measurement systems. Continue to gather raw data. Continue to document the data. It is much much too early to claim any true understanding of the earth’s incredibly complex climate. No model will ever be developed which will accurately predict the earth’s climate.
Jackaranda says:
September 16, 2010 at 3:36 am
James Sexton says:
September 15, 2010 at 4:06 pm
“What a naive statement. Observations are never “correct”. ”
========================================================
Observations are always wrong? My statement may be naive, but it isn’t absurd. Ok, chemists, In the thermite reaction, Al reduces Fe2O3 to Fe. What am I talking about? Welding. Then tell me how the observation is wrong. Or how about the formation of sodium chloride? I guess you missed the part where I stated documented, shared and replicated.
Jackaranda, you can blather all you want about computer modeling. But it doesn’t rise to the level of observed evidence. A computer run is nothing more than a disprovable hypothesis. EVERY ONE OF THEM. Of course, as I pointed out, if you still need clarification, you can take it up with Prof. Kelly from one of the whitewash panels.
AllenC says: “It feels like a lot of you guys would have killed Galileo for using such an inferior telescope…”
Nice summary of your long statement. Alarmist like words like “killed”. Nobody is complaining about the instruments, just the conclusions. If Galileo had said, “my gosh, there are other planets out there, they could hit the earth and destroy it, quick, let us double the tax on the population so we can save the planet.” for that we would dislike Galileo, however he die not do that, and as Mckitrick points out, these climate scientist are not Galileo’s.
————–
Jackaranda,
Toolkit Bias – Is there a history of default toward an expert tool used by an academic? Is so then we should probe the possibility of toolkit bias. From Craig Loehle’s book ‘Becoming a Successful Scientist’: “Political advocacy is well-enough known that people can be on guard about it, but there are other more subtle forms of advocacy that also affect expert advice. One type is the toolkit bias. If someone has become an expert on a certain set of tools, they may advocate for the use of those tools whether they are the best for the job or not. A modeler may advocate for building a model to solve every problem.”
I am starting to realize the need to scrutinize the climate model situation for bias from modelers advocating the promotions their expertise as the best tool.
NOTE: I am not implying in any way that Craig Loehle shares my view of toolkit bias by climate modelers.
John
86.david says:
September 16, 2010 at 5:12 am
AllenC says: “It feels like a lot of you guys would have killed Galileo for using such an inferior telescope…”
David, Please correct your attribution!!!!
The quote you have associated with me originates from Jackaranda – not me!
AllenC says:
September 16, 2010 at 5:01 am
“Finally, the parallel with Galileo is appropo since the models of our solar system at that time held that earth was the centre of the universe and when evidence was found which contradicted that “law”, the models of the day were tweaked by the “scientists” of the day. Galileo saw through the increasing complexity of the models and simplified them by making the sun the centre of our solar system.”
Although I agree with most of your comment, Galileo was not the hero he is made out to be (nor the Church the villains). The scientists of the day (mostly Jesuits) were well aware that the standard geocentric theory was a mess, and were actively examining various alternatives. Everyone knew that a heliocentric model would make the most sense, if only they could get it to work. Unfortunately, Copernicus’s model was demonstrably inferior to the geocentric model, requiring more epicycles to reach the same accuracy. It was more complex, not less. Worse, it wasn’t even centred on the Sun, but on clear space some way off from the Sun; not even the centre of mass of the solar system, but a point that seemed completely arbitrary. Not until much later, with Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion and Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, did it become possible to replace the old geocentric theory with a workable and superior alternative. To put it bluntly, Copernicus and Galileo were wrong. They glimpsed, dimly, a better way to view the solar system, but they were not the only ones to do so, or even the first. As speculation, what they said was uncontroversial and unexceptional; to the science of the day, it was old hat.
Unfortunately, Galileo, like many well-respected old scientists, was rather arrogant, unwilling to listen to reason. That’s why he persisted in his blatantly erroneous theory of the tides, which denied the influence of the Moon and put it all down to the Sun. It was not enough to him to argue that the Copernican theory was probably along the right lines; he would insist on claiming to have proved it. But he hadn’t. His observations of the moons of Jupiter did not prove what he thought they did. They were entirely consistent with the geocentric theory. What he saw was that these moons remained close to Jupiter and appeared to circle it; from a modern perspective – post Newton – the obvious conclusion would be that they were orbiting Jupiter under the planet’s own gravity. But they didn’t know about universal gravitation then. At that time all it meant was that the dance of those particular heavenly bodies happened to be such as to keep them in attendance on Jupiter. It did not imply that Jupiter controlled them. (You can see this with carefully choreographed dances on stage – the dancers seem to be circling each other in complex patterns, but what they are actually doing is following the specific steps they’ve been taught, ignoring the other dancers yet relying upon them to follow their own moves correctly so they don’t collide). So although Galileo’s observations were suggestive (as the other scientists admitted), they were not by any means conclusive. In making wildly excessive claims for his observations and the Copernican model, Galileo was playing into the hands of cranks and mystics like Bruno who (like today’s militant atheists) misused science as a tool to attack the Church; so the Church had little choice but to discipline him.
Forgive me if this seems a little bit silly, but how does anybody know that Galileo was wrong in his assumption that the Earth was at the center of the Universe?
My understanding is that the universe is infinite, by definition, and it extends out to infinity in all directions. The Universe is anisotropic indeed, but it is infinitely anisotropic. That surely makes Earth to be at the center of the Universe. In fact you could, presumably, refine that further and say that each one of us is at the center of the Universe.
James,
I don’t think that even politicians are daft enough to believe that we can successfully carry out experiments with the entire climate of the Earth in physical real time.
Hence the comment is both moot and a waste of time.
I live in a world where we create theories, test them, time box them, move on and then check reality against the tested theories as we progress.
Let me give you an example of computer modelling in a small environment. If you look at any aircraft built before the mid 80’s you will see loads of small plates of metal riveted onto the wing. Why you might ask. Because it was impossible, before the advent of enough computer power, to do enough calculations in a short enough time, to fully model the airflow over the wing and change the design so that the air would flow smoothly.
With the Airbus that became reality and the first aircraft wing designed by computer which performed exactly as expected when put into a wind tunnel.
The planet and it’s climate on the other hand are of such an exponential order of magnitude greater in heat/cold/air/conduction/convection actions; that it is impossible to determine the day to day actions of weather and climate with the computing power at our disposal.
So what physical experiments (which would be representative), could we possibly do? To answer my own question, only one. The one we’ve been carrying out for at least 200 years and are nearing some kind of “result”.
You don’t have to state the blindingly obvious especially when every piece of evidence shown in the assessment has “model” in the name.
Anyone can pick fault with anything. It’s easy to do nothing and harp on about the failings of those who do something.
It might not, though, be so easy to live with the consequences of doing nothing though…..
@Jackaranda 3:36 am
“It feels like a lot of you guys would have killed Galileo for using such an inferior telescope…”
No.
We would have killed him if he studied the planets with a tree-stump or a pencil and subsequently claimed the world was going to die so taxes should be quadrupled…
Jan says:
September 15, 2010 at 7:12 am
Released is the new expression for stolen?
IF you have evidence that these emails were “stolen” then I am sure there are many people/organisations that would be pleased to see your evidence. Starting with, but not limited to, the Norfolk Constabulary!
NeilT says:
September 16, 2010 at 7:55 am
James,
“I don’t think that even politicians are daft enough to believe that we can successfully carry out experiments with the entire climate of the Earth in physical real time.”
========================================================
Yeh, thanks for that and all of the rest. I don’t believe anyone was advocating real time global experiments. And none of what you stated addressed my assertions. But now that you did bring up politicians……….. We do know they are daft enough to believe computer models (in climate science) reflect reality. I know they don’t, you know they don’t, others here defending the use of computer modeling know they don’t, but the politician do. Why? Because some unscrupulous individuals intentionally mislead the policy makers into believing they reflect reality. In terms of forecasting, they are probably our best tools. I didn’t suggest we should stop using them. What was stated by a panelists of the Oxburgh inquiry, Michael Kelly, Professor of Physics is clearly obvious. The reasons are obvious. We don’t know all of the inputs, outputs, weights, and residuals to be able to accurately model our climate. It simply doesn’t not rise to the level of observable experimentation and should not be considered as such. It isn’t the same as stating “look at what happens when sodium and chloride combines…..!” If you know anything about programing, then you know the program is only as good as the programmer. In other words, garbage in = garbage out. There is no way in hell someone can state, we know we don’t know all factors of either side of an equation but we think the model is correct. That’s lunacy, more, its lunacy to have policy makers pass laws based on knowingly flawed assumptions.
Neil, you can have all the computer power necessary and we’ll still get the wrong answer, because we don’t know the right questions yet.
Tom says:
September 15, 2010 at 6:59 am
If you didn’t have predetermined answers to your own questions as following….
then I doubt you would even have bothered writing this report, let alone posting it on this blog. Why don’t you just drop the pretense of open-minded questioning and admit that this is just another attempt to discredit the science?
_____________________________________________________-
OK Tom why don’t YOU write a report – sticking to the actual facts and ALL the facts – about the subject.
Personally, as a chemist, I am ashamed to call myself a scientist given the actions of these people. The continuing cover ups do nothing to elevate the status of science to its former place in the eyes of lay people. This is a disservice to civilization which depends on science and technology. The Climategate scientists like Mann and Jones should hang their heads in shame given the damage they have done to the name of science.
As far as I am concerned the originial Watergate scandal was a tempest in a tea pot compared to the far reaching consequences of Climategate.
Jackaranda says:
September 16, 2010 at 3:36 am
“At the moment, these models are the best tools we have to try and understand the admittedly fuzzy evidence we have and the results of these experiments do seem to point to AGW. Yes, the picture is fuzzy, hopefully we can work towards better models and understanding and the picture will come into better focus. It feels like a lot of you guys would have killed Galileo for using such an inferior telescope…”
————–Amazing that a warmist should talk about ‘fuzziness’ and ‘the hope of getting better models and understanding’ of AGW. Have we not been told that’ the science is settled’ and that there is a ‘consensus with majority of scientists’ on that point? And what a silly analogy with Galileo’s telescope. His telescope was an incredible invention even though it was poor compared to today’s more refined models. Furthermore, his sound science was not falsely leading the world into spending multi billion £s to combat his findings as the AGW fanatics are.
George Lawson says:
September 16, 2010 at 12:42 pm
“Amazing that a warmist should talk about ‘fuzziness’ and ‘the hope of getting better models and understanding’ of AGW. Have we not been told that’ the science is settled’ and that there is a ‘consensus with majority of scientists’ on that point? And what a silly analogy with Galileo’s telescope. His telescope was an incredible invention even though it was poor compared to today’s more refined models. Furthermore, his sound science was not falsely leading the world into spending multi billion £s to combat his findings as the AGW fanatics are.”
OK, except that Galileo did not invent the telescope and his science was not actually sound (though not as unsound as the warmists’).
NeilT,
It isn’t about computer power at all, but at our total understanding (or lack thereof) of climate forces. The greenhouse effect is well understood, but there are hundreds, or more probably, thousands of other factors that play a part in the formation of climate.
Can the modern models claim to account for all of them? Or even half of them?
Worse yet is what we don’t know. We literally do not know what we don’t know. Before understanding how the myriad forces effect climate, we need to be able to list all the factors that can effect climate. We cannot even do that yet.
Finally, to say that our tools (climate models) are not refined enough, but we should use them anyway because we don’t have anything better is akin to saying that, lacking a hammer, a bologna sandwich is the best tool for hammering in a nail, because its the best thing we have to do the task.
Lady Life Grows says: September 15, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Mann’s proxy was tree ring growth. That is enhanced by higher temperatures (why are we complaining????) … how did that come to be bad?
Hi. To all those wondering “what is the big deal if temperature rises anyway?” please read Mark Lynas “Six Degrees” for a well researched and entertaining summary of potential effects should temperatures rise 1C, 2C, 3C etc. Feel free to stop reading at 3C. Many likely outcomes are far from benign.
After reading the paper and verifying the facts it is readily apparent to this Retired LEO that none of these individuals were interested in obtaining the facts of the matter. No one addressed the ROOT PROBLEM of this whole mess.. CLOSED CIRCLE PEER REVIEW!
They let Phil review and allow the papers they read…. this is the equivalent of allowing an armed robber to make the prosecutions witness list…
Its amazing that individuals who have PHD’s can be so inept at basic scientific process.. Or maybe this was on purpose, which is much more frightening a thought…