Notes on the Brune talk on Mann-Climategate in Boulder

WUWT reader W. Earl Allen attended this talk and provided notes of his observations. First the talk summary:

The seminar is a Chemical Science Division seminar entitled “Climategate, Michael Mann, and Penn State’s investigation”:

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Please note: this special seminar will precede the usual CSD seminar. There will be a 15 minute break in between the two.

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The release of emails purloined from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University inflamed the passion and politics that surround climate science. As one of the climate scientists whose emails were released, Professor Michael Mann, who I recruited to Penn State, became a focal point of this passion in the United States.

Intense pressure was put on Penn State to investigate Professor Mann, initiating a process that led to his exoneration eight months later. As Professor Mann’s department head, I was a participant in Penn State’s investigative process. At David Fahey’s request, I will tell what I can about Climategate, Michael Mann, and Penn State’s investigation.

W. Earl Allen writes of the event a few hours later:

The security gauntlet at a supposedly open scientific research center was daunting, surprising, and most unwelcome. Fortunately, I came about a half hour early so as to be there early enough to set up for recording, which turned out to be disallowed, so I was happy that I had time to run the gauntlet, which was pretty much exactly equivalent to the security imposed by the TSA. I’ve worked at federal facilities before, and this was far and away the most intrusive and unwelcome security I have ever experienced.

One possibly irrelevant note: the NOAA research center is named for former congressperson from Boulder, David Skaggs, who I ran against in 1996 as a Libertarian. On the way in, someone questioned the tastefulness of naming such a place for a still-living person. But I guess anyone who diverted so much Federal money to Boulder deserves his name on the building.

An overview: The room was packed SRO, which Brune appeared to be surprised about, since he expected a very small seminar with only a few interested scientists. Brune opened with a backgrounder about the history of Penn State and his department within Penn State. He noted that Pennsylvania was a coal-mining state. He described hiring Michael Mann 6 years ago. Brune was very annoyed to get a lot of offensive emails and phone calls about Michael Mann when Climategate revealed Mann to be one of the primary foci of the “hacked” emails.

Brune spent several minutes ruminating about the possible problems of using email for a “conversation”. I’m not sure this is just the opinion of someone brought up in the landline phone age or someone worried about revealing the internal “sausage” of science in the making. One of the questioners asked whether or not all emails between scientists should be encrypted. Brune thought that was a very good question, but didn’t necessarily agree that all emails should be encrypted.

Like all good academic bureaucrats, when faced with a messy political problem, Brune turned to “the process”, which at Penn State has a name: RA-10. He said that he decided to use that process to handle the problem. He noted that there was no *internal* request for inquiry from within Penn State itself, so they had to “construct” questions to put to Mann from inquiries from outside the University. He seemed a bit huffy that he had to deal with “outside” inquirers, as if the only “real” problems would surface from within Penn State itself, and any controversy imposed from outside was somehow just an annoyance. {/editorial on} Talk about Ivory Towers. Reminds me of the Falwlty ones. {/editorial off}

The first step was an Administrative Inquiry, led by Bill Easterling, the Dean. Brune himself, being department chair, and the guy who hired Mann, was considered only a “consultant” to this initial Administrative Inquiry. They constructed four questions for this inquiry, which they put to Mann himself. He was exonerated regarding the first three (sorry I didn’t get the details of those questions, but since Lindzen objected to Mann’s exoneration on those first three, they must be available somewhere). The only remaining question was whether Mann had somehow played fast and loose with a paper out for review in preprint, which seemed to me to be an entirely irrelevant question.

Brune emphasized that Mann was a great student of the Philosophy of Science, and that he was “very much the scientist.”

The second stage of RA-10, called an “Investigative Committee”, which included Will Castleman and token “denier”, Richard Lindzen, got to look at only the fourth question. Lindzen was nonplussed to note that the first three questions had been deemed non-questions, and was ignored subsequently. Brune made an interesting remark to a questioner about Richard Lindzen, asking the questioner, “Do you know Richard Lindzen?” The questioner said he didn’t. Brune said that “Richard Lindzen can stand for any number of people.” I took that to mean that he could stand for just about all the deniers “out there.” But I may have misunderstood Brune.

Brune emphasized that “in summary,” nothing was found against Michael Mann, and that the whole inquiry process wasted hundreds of hours of very productive academic time.

In closing his lecture, Brune noted that climate is not just an extension of the weather, and that people like Joe Bastardi, who insist on this point, have cut all ties with Penn State and excoriated Mann and Penn State for their bad behavior. Brune appeared to carry it as a badge of honor that Bastardi no longer supports Penn State. When someone asked whether donations to Penn State had dropped off because of the Mann inquiry, Brune said he wasn’t aware of any such decrease.

I enjoyed hearing Brune emphasize that scientists *should* be skeptics, and that they should never take anything on faith, since to do so would be “religion.” I wish some of his colleagues would take that admonition to heart.

Brune ruminated on the necessity for publicizing all code, noting that 10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been good practice, nor necessary. He said that it appears that the new standard in research is to reveal all your data for replication, and that code probably should also be revealed, although he waffled a bit on that one.

Brune agonized about the “politicized environment” that produced the whole controversy around Michael Mann, and then opened the floor for questions.

None of bouldersolar’s questions got asked. He appears to have gotten them from Steve McIntyre’s site, so I’ll let him post them here if he wishes. I got to ask one question: Since so much of science now relies on computer codes, isn’t the whole project of modeling a hypercomplex non-linear chaotic system in an attempt to make psychic prognostications 50 or 100 years out a bit hubristic? Brune’s answer was that I should take his course in climatology once it comes online. I said I would love to do so. There was a bit of a titter as I asked the question, but not much of a one for that answer.

I got to “dialog” with a “dynamics” modeler after the session who explained that there’s a difference between engineers like McIntyre and “scientists” doing modeling and other scientific work. Science is a lot less exact, while engineers expect perfection. I countered by asking him to state exactly what the measured human contribution to the current CO2 concentration was. He rambled on about how this can be done with isotopes. I said yes, that is one way. Tell me what the measured percentage is. He had no answer. I asked him about the 50X sink of CO2 in the oceans, and he said that had already been covered, and by implication, dismissed.

I left the room with the impression that nobody had asked the “elephant” question. Had the money that Mann brought to Penn State from Federal sources caused him to bend his research to fit the requirements of his Federal funders? To ask such a question on the grounds of a Federal research facility might have been a bit too brash.