Christopher Booker’s Telegraph column used Willis Eschenbach’s recent Open Letter to Nature as the basis for the Sunday column:
Booker writes:
On Friday came the fullest and most expert dissection of the Nature paper so far, published on the Watts Up With That website by Willis Eschenbach, a very experienced computer modeller. His findings are devastating. After detailed analysis of the study’s multiple flaws, he sums up by accusing Nature of “trying to pass off the end-result of a long daisy-chain of specifically selected, untested, unverified, un-investigated computer models as valid, falsifiable, peer-reviewed science”.
Read Booker’s column here
Read Willis’ essay here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/24/nature-magazines-folie-a-deux-part-deux
See also:
The code of Nature: making authors part with their programs
A note to Anthony about the headline. Despite the efforts of the metropolitan “elite” to ignore the rest of the country, the Daily Telegraph is a national newspaper and it hits the news stands over the whole of the UK (on the same day providing the mail coaches are not held up by highwaymen 😉 ).
Us provincials are a bit sensitive about the way the rest of the world seems to think London, England and the UK are the same place. London is the place where they talk about doing things, the rest of the country is where the work is done (said with tongue firmly in cheek).
PS I was born and bred a Londoner, but for preference live in the North West of England.
Robert Stevenson says “Why he (Christopher Booker) hasn’t got the sack yet for reducing the circulation of the Sunday Telegraph is beyond me.
Thousands of people like myself buy the Sunday Telegraph largely because of Christopher Booker’s column, and the editor knows this. It is a great circulation booster.
Equally I have stopped buying the Daily Telegraph because of the ludicrous AGW scare stories of Geoffrey Lean, Louise Gray and others that are churned out on a regular basis.
Reply to Robert Stevenson
Presumably it is a deduction from consensus opinion that singles out Christopher Booker’s weekly missive as the cause of the circulation decline for the Sunday Telegraph. No need then to consider the overall decline in circulation figures for Sunday papers over all as being in any way connected.
Full breakdown of (UK) national newspaper circulation figures for January 2011: (Title, average sale, percentage change year on year – source ABC)
Daily Star Sunday 316,712 -11.73
Independent on Sunday 152,561 -0.92
News of the World 2,789,560 -6.53
Scotland on Sunday 56,256 -6.75
Sunday Express 550,269 -5.94
Sunday Herald 43,084 1.01
Sunday Mail 366,325 -7.29
Sunday Mirror 1,092,816 -2.83
Sunday Post 317,896 -5.78
The Mail on Sunday 1,958,083 -4.4
The Observer 314,164 -11.39
The People 500,866 -6.02
The Sunday Telegraph 496,128 -5.99
The Sunday Times 1,039,371 -9.22
Just a local weather event?
St. Lucia’s flood (Sint-Luciavloed) was a storm tide that affected the Netherlands and Northern Germany on December 14, 1287 (the day after St. Lucia Day) when a dike broke during a storm, killing approximately 50,000 to 80,000 people……..
Although not known by the name of St Lucia, the same storm also had devastating effects on the other side of the water in England. The city of Winchelsea on Romney Marsh was destroyed (later rebuilt on higher ground). Nearby Broomhill was also destroyed. The course of the nearby river Rother was diverted away from New Romney, which was left a mile from the coast, ending its role as a port. The Rother ran instead to sea at Rye, prompting its rise as a port. A cliff collapsed at Hastings, blocking the harbour and ending its role as a trade centre, though it continued as a centre for fishing. Parts of Norfolk were flooded, eg the village of Hickling where 180 died and the water rose a foot above the high alter in the church. The port of Dunwich in Suffolk began its decline. Whitstable in Kent also reported to have been hit by the surge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucia's_flood
“Paul Leinster, chief executive of the Environment Agency, said: ‘There are already millions of people at risk from flooding and this number is set to rise due to the impacts of climate change’.
There are at least two million homes on flood plains.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1139255/Surge-homes-built-flood-plains.html#ixzz1FAPWYO8n
“Either I am mistaken or there is a lot of sloppy journalism out there.”
You are without doubt correct in your assumption. But it doesn’t stop there. Almost every field and discipline exhibits sloppiness and poor practice compared with the rigour and application of previous generations.
We sowed the zephyr of education with left wing terpitude and now reap the boreal draughts of careless conjecture from degree bearing children with undisciplined minds.
It may well be that their hubristic ignorance rather than CO2 carries the seeds of their much trumpeted, yet conditional, future destruction.
The reason newspaper’s are losing readers is because they are reading somewhere else now where would that be;-)
Seeing that it’s Oscars Night
The award goes to Tim Berners-Lee for “The Internet”
Acceptance speech: “I would like to thank Anthony Watts, both Steve’s and all you fantastic bloggers to help me realise my dream.
Criminy Watts! I better clean up my comments from here on. Your blog, with all its top-notch contributors added to your own, seem to be getting global attention on a daily schedule!
Need to clean up my grammar to…two…too, because it seem…seemed…seems like a good thing to do.
Uh oh. Second post disappeared.
Once Booker shines the light on the money flows, you realise that what might have been passed off as enthusiastic but misguided computer modelling is, in reality a deliberate mugging of the data to bolster a view that the authors want the world to see.
Shame on the Authors and behold Nature shamed and tainted by association and complicity.
As Willis pointed out, if they’d adhered to their own rules, they would have avoided being compromised like this.
Ref Homo Sapiens & R Stevenson
I started to read the DTel as the best way to keep up with how the fascists were thinking, but these days it is about as conservative (let alone right wing) as the present UK administration.
Lean and Gray (!) can’t compete with the brilliant Matt’s pocket cartoons, which are often worth the cover price on their own, but I see them as being on the ‘funnies’ side of the paper, as, for example, dear Louise’s recent assertion that in CCS the CO2 is sequestered ‘in caverns’…
Showing the public more clearly how finance industry is pushing the AGW religion should be an eye-opener for many. It’s about the mother of all bubbles … And literally hot air only.
I have for years been trying to emphasize the profit motives of the insurance industry when it comes to scare mongering and climate alarmism. The scarier the problem, the higher the risk, …the higher the insurance rates.
In multiple websites now conveniently gone there was evidence of companies like AIG funding, through satellite arms, studies of hurricane potential. These studies showed, much to the pleasure of the funding entity, that hurricanes would become more frequent and more intense with global warming (the term in use at the time).
Many will recall the furor in Florida over the dramatic hikes in hurricane insurance rates that stemmed from these studies. I lament saving the URLs for the proof and not the content of the insurance industry’s own proof of my claims. Fortunately, Mr. Booker will bring some light upon them.
Republicans and oil companies are continually bashed as being greedy corporate deniers of science. I’m not sure I understand the difference if the promoters of AGW have a multi-billion dollar industry thriving on increased taxes from the generation and use of a gas necessary for life, a very profitable network of government supported grant research machines, and spin off private sector beneficiaries consisting of “green” energy firms and insurance conglomerates.
Having spent a 35 year career at the Boeing Co., I can vouch for Willis’s thought process comparing computer modeling between Boeing and that described in the Nature article. In my experience, Boeing uses thousands of such models – – but each have limited scope and are overseen by a small Group that itself does testing or is allied with a test Group. Now, I must admit: I have been retired for a decade and am certainly not up to date on the latest modeling. But my impression from Willis’s article was that the flood modeling in question was an integrated PacMan creation transfigured into an uncharted fictional universe.
I see an important distinction however, between the Boeing modeling and the flood modeling. The consequences to the modelers is relatively swift, if the airplane design is proven defective by the tests – – or worse, lives are lost as a result. In contrast, there appear to be few consequences from the most extravagant misadventures in Climate modeling. This is likely due in part to the inability to truly check on the reality of much of the input to the climate model. This matter gets exponentially worse as Model A output is used to drive Model B, thence Models C,D,E etc. I think Willis’s challenge to publication of such studies is a splendid service, and could be extended to some sort of more stringent qualification of “models” from which results could be published and still be referred to as scientific literature. This would ultimately save multiple national treasuries billions of dollars on various foolish undertakings in the name of science.
Actually, I think Lars P (see comment 2/27 at 4:40am) captures the point very succinctly in his 2 alternate options for protecting against future Katrinas: a) don’t drive SUVs any more, have warm water & electricity only when the wind blows and the sun shines vs b) build the dam that was prevented by “save our wetlands” initiative.
Isn’t it up to scientists with some common sense to protect the public from others without ? Kudos in this regard to WUWT.
A Telegraph comment by clintboon:
Further, WUWT? is supported by the Heartlands Institute
Evidently Mr. Boon feels he is entitled to his own facts…
Nice article! I’m glad Willis got some recognition for his hard work. I read through some of the comments by readers and was struck by the one by David Cage. It starts:
Why does no one in a position question why we are simultaneously being told we must have expensive water meters because of droughts in this country and pay extra because of flooding.
Very good question!
One of the recent comments on Bookers article lays into Anthony:
clintboon
Today 02:33 PM
Brooker’s a good laugh on a Sunday.
Yes insurance companies and wind farms will make money from climate change, but so what? This is capitalism. I thought everyone round here loved making money?
Oil conglomerates and mining companies make vast amounts from maintaining the status-quo concerning climate change. But they’re never subjected to this level of moral ‘analysis’. Just why is that? Why does Brooker never analyse their motivations?
Rainfall unchanging? Its not quite the issue though is it? The issue is extreme weather events and their increase.
Average yearly rainfall may not be increasing, but the number of dry spells are, as are the number of severe downpours, extreme rain fall in a short period of time. It is this which leads to flooding. This is obvious to anyone who remains to pause on the above text for just a second.
The continuance to criticise peer reviewed science with bloggers, (with their own particular interests & motivations), continues unabated. Peer review is not perfect, but its infinitely better than unaccountable bloggers being used to justify government policy that will affect millions of lives.
And this irrational suspicion of computer modelling, its like watching an old colonial film with the natives howling at the ‘boomsticks’. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean you have to be scared of it.
Computer modelling is tested against previous real life situations and events. This fact is repeated over and over and over again on these comment boards, of course its just ignored. Facts just don’t matter round here. Computer models are not faultless, but they’re far from the stuff of imbeciles and charlatans as you infer.
As for Watts up with that: Anthony Watt is a weather forecaster and holds false and discredited credentials, for example his ‘American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval’ – It doesn’t even require a bachelor.
Further, WUWT? is supported by the Heartlands Institute, a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to discover and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems”. Pet projects include: Genetically engineered crops and products; the privatization of public services; the introduction of school vouchers; the deregulation of health care insurance etc.
Further the Heartlands Institute has close ties to the tobacco industry and received $676,500 (unadjusted for inflation) from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006. Since 2007 the Heartland Institute’s funding has been made secret.
Just why is it that Brooker can’t apply the same level of criticism to his sources as to his targets? Surely good objective journalism demands this, as does common sense and ethical responsibilities?
I can do it with Google and ten minutes, and I’m not even being paid!
It only begins to make sense if you see Brooker as
1) A bad journalist, or
2) A shill peddling bias & misinformation for some other hereto unknown reason
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind…
Nice of him to throw stones, when he can’t even get Bookers name right….
[Italics added around the section you are quoting. Robt]
The jet stream position was crucial to flooding in the UK and Europe in Oct/Nov 2000:
http://climateprediction.net/content/uk-autumn-2000-floods
Typically, there are more October`s with higher rainfall in the UK that are cooler than average:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadukp/data/monthly/HadEWP_monthly_qc.txt
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/tcet.dat
We keep seeing that picture of New Orleans after Katrina. Katrina was a powerful storm, but New Orleans did not flood because of torrential rain. New Orleans flooded the day after Katrina passed, because the levee system was of flawed design and became compromised.
Things like that happen when cities are built below sea level.
Others have pointed it out above, but can we get the link to Willis’ essay fixed? The link above just confuses those coming here looking for information.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/24/nature-magazines-folie-a-deux-part-deux/
Stonyground says:
February 27, 2011 at 2:46 am
“I keep seeing Hurricane Katrina being cited an an example of flooding which may or may not, dependant upon who is commenting, be caused by global warming. My understanding is that Katrina was a regular hurricane and that the flooding was a result of a breach in the poorly maintained sea defences.”
Right on the money, Sir. The flooding occurred because a levee failed. The part of the city that flooded is four feet below sea level. The Old City, the Crescent City that was built on a crescent ridge next to the Mississippi, did not flood. Could there be a lesson about flood plains somewhere in all this?
Some may call me a cynic, but what I see here is a possible move by Risk Management Solutions (RMS) to add demand enhancement and cartel management to the list of services it provides to the insurance industry.
When RMS causes a paper to be published in NATURE that reports that any estimate of probable losses due to floods that is based on the historical record systematically understates the the actual losses that should be expected, it increases the demand for flood insurance. This is a service that is economically identical to advertising. The same paper also provides a strong incentive for insurance companies to price such insurance at a price higher than that which would exist under competition using the historical flood records, as it is unlikely that insurance executives would write flood insurance at a price that would be expected to generate a net loss when calculated with the ” most current science”. This is economically identical to a very clever price fixing scheme, one that involves no collusion amongst the principles.
The NATURE paper will result in higher premiums for the insured and greater profits for insurance companies regardless of whether it is science or quackery. If I had to bet, it would be on quackery. If this was actual science I believe that more likely than not, it would have been discovered without either the help of RMS or the inhuman data waterboarding chronicled by Willis.
RMS is playing with our money and the insurance companies love it. The insurance companies immediately abandoned their traditional historical data for risk assessment and embraced the RMS model instead, which resulted in huge profits for the insurers in the last six-years. The first local editorial about this scam came out on Nov. 14 in the Herald Tribune of Sarasota, FL:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20101114/ARTICLE/11141026/2055/NEWS?p=all&tc=pgall&tc=ar
Because of this my home insurance went up from ~ $1800 per year to around $7000! And there is no choice of insurance companies, everything is done through a state insurance pool. Now RMS is planning to release a new model this spring that significantly raises the hurricane wind risks to insurance companies and so we could be looking at another 200% increase.
Nice people at RMS:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20101230/article/12301050
Thank you Willis!!!
Best,
Jose