AGU President’s message
We must remain committed to scientific integrity
27 February 2012
During the third week of February our global community of Earth and space scientists witnessed the shocking fall from grace of an accomplished AGU member who betrayed the principles of scientific integrity. In doing so he compromised AGU’s credibility as a scientific society, weakened the public’s trust in scientists, and produced fresh fuel for the unproductive and seemingly endless ideological firestorm surrounding the reality of the Earth’s changing climate.
Peter Gleick resigned as chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics on 16 February, prior to admitting in a blog post that he obtained documents from the Heartland Institute under false pretenses. His transgression cannot be condoned, regardless of his motives. It is a tragedy that requires us to stop and reflect on what we value as scientists and how we want to be perceived by the public. Here are a few things that come immediately to mind:
- The success of the scientific enterprise depends on intellectual rigor, truthfulness, and integrity on the part of everyone involved. The vast majority of scientists uphold these values every day in their work. That’s why opinion polls show that public trust in scientists is among the highest of all professions. Public trust is essential because it provides the foundation for society’s willingness to invest in scientific exploration and discovery. It is the responsibility of every scientist to safeguard that trust.
- As a community of scientists, we must hold each other to the highest ethical standards. This is why AGU established its Task Force on Scientific Ethics, in 2011, to review and update existing policies and procedures for dealing with scientific misconduct. Long before the Heartland incident, we recognized the need to have clear and broad principles and procedures that expressed the value of scientific integrity and ethics embodied in our new strategic plan. More than ever, AGU needs a clear set of guidelines that encompasses the full range of scientific activities our members engage in. The task force, now under the leadership of Linda Gundersen, director of the Office of Science Quality and Integrity at the U.S. Geological Survey, will complete its work with a renewed sense of urgency in view of recent events. Union leadership will ensure that these standards of ethical conduct are widely communicated to the membership and that they become an integral part of AGU’s culture.
- All of this must be done with an eye to the future and to nurturing the next generation of Earth and space scientists. Today’s students must learn, especially through the example of senior scientists, that adherence to high standards of scientific integrity applies in all that we do: from research practices, to peer-reviewed publications, to interactions with colleagues, and to engaging with the public and policy makers. The lofty goal we set for ourselves of providing benefit to society through our research can be achieved only if we pursue our mission with the utmost honesty, transparency, and rigor.
This has been one of the most trying times for me as president of AGU, as it has been for many AGU volunteer leaders, members, and staff. How different it is than celebrating the news of a new discovery or a unique scholarly achievement. These rare and sad occasions remind us that our actions reverberate through a global scientific community and that we must remain committed as individuals and as a society to the highest standards of scientific integrity in the pursuit of our goals.
Mike McPhaden
from a tip received via email h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
=============================================================
UPDATE: 4:10PM 2/27 In related news, the author of The Ethics of Climate Change, James Garvey has written a defense article on Peter Gleick at the Guardian. saying:
Was Gleick right to lie to expose Heartland and maybe stop it from causing further delay to action on climate change? If his lie has good effects overall – if those who take Heartland’s money to push scepticism are dismissed as shills, if donors pull funding after being exposed in the press – then perhaps on balance he did the right thing.
Bishop Hill points out the Met Office Scientist that tell Garvey and the Guardian to basically go stuff it:
This comment from the Guardian thread:
Mr Garvey
I am a climate scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre and also a lead author with the IPCC (NB. the opinions I express here are my own though – I am just telling you that for context).
I would ask you to refrain from bringing my profession into disrepute by advocating that we act unethically. We already have enough people accusing us, completely incorrectly, of being frauds, green / left-wing activists or government puppets. A rabble-rousing journalist such as yourself telling us that we should “fight dirty” does not help our reputation at all. “Fighting dirty” will never be justified no matter what tactics have been used to discredit us in the past.
Inflammatory remarks such as yours will only serve to further aggravate the so-called “climate wars”. People’s reputations are already being damaged, and we know that some climate scientists get highly distasteful and upsetting mail through no fault of their own. If people like you continue to stir things up further, it is only a matter of time before somebody actually gets hurt, or worse.
Please keep your advice to yourself, we can do without it thank you very much.
Richard Betts (Prof)
Indeed. Mr. Garvey, with AGU’s president saying “His transgression cannot be condoned, regardless of his motives.” please do shut up. – Anthony Watts
Do bears sh** in the woods? Whatever happened to global warming (CAGW / AGW)? LOL.
“1) ALL data from every publication is made available to any scientist who requests it.”
1a) You don’t get to define who is and isn’t a scientist.
So, essentially, the fall was what was shocking but not the betrayal of the principles of scientific integrity and neither, of course, was the behavior reprehensible since the behavior isn’t a question for AGU.
If they now set out to communicate the need for ethical conduct now they didn’t really have the concept of right and wrong before. What’s the concept of right and wrong worth if you merely communicate the need for it, but not enforce it?
No wonder they’re confused for, apparently, even their mission has changed to something “lofty”, rahter ‘an still just promoting discovery.
[Myrrh says: February 28, 2012 at 1:51 am …]
Myrrh, I re-read your note to see if I missed your intent – I was hoping it was a satire of the usual ridiculous attacks on “big oil”.
If it was satire, perhaps you could leave a few more clues.
If it was not satire, then your hypothesis highly unlikely to be correct.
Oil is no longer a good choice to produce electricity, except in a few isolated parts of the world – typically islands, isolated cities, and some countries with relatively primitive oil industries that produce large quantities of low-grade “resid” (aka “mazut”). Oil is too valuable as a transportation fuel to be used in electrical generation. Different grades of coal are primarily used for steelmaking and to produce electricity. Oil and coal do not compete in significant markets, and have not done so for many decades. The last oil-fired power plant in the developed world (that I am aware of) was built in the 1970’s. Oil just became too expensive for electrical power generation. Oil price in 1971 was US$3.60 per barrel, compared to about $100 today.
As a percentage of total global electricity generation, oil-fired power has fallen dramatically from about 21% in 1971 to less than 6% in 2007, according to the OECD.
Electricity from coal and peat have grown slightly in market share from ~40 to ~42%. Natural gas-fired power has grown from ~13% to ~21%, and nuclear power has grown from ~2% to ~14%. Hydro has declined in market share, from ~23% to ~15%. “Other’ power generation, including highly-subsidized, worthless wind and solar power have grown from ~1% to ~3%.
The energy business is driven by fundamental economics – the cheapest fuel that produces reliable electricity on demand wins. The only exception that I am aware of to this hard economic rule is grid-connected wind and solar power, where our idiot politicians have instituted huge subsidies to force worthless, anti-environmental wind and solar power into the grid, with disastrous results.
___________
World electricity generation by source of energy: As a percentage of world electricity generation
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/oecd-factbook-2010/world-electricity-generation-by-source-of-energy-figure_factbook-2010-graph119-en
1971 2007
Coal/Peat 40.1 41.6
Oil 20.9 5.6
Gas 13.3 20.9
Nuclear 2.1 13.8
Hydro 23.0 15.6
Other 0.7 2.6
.
“His transgression cannot be condoned, regardless of his motives.”
Please forgive the following cliché-ic formatting but that sentence knocks the bile into my mouth.
THE MOTIVE FOR HIS TRANSGRESSION
WAS TO MANUFACTURE AN IRRELEVANT SCANDAL
WHERE NONE EXISTED TO SMEAR THOSE WHO DISPUTE HIS PET THEORY!!! !!!!! [pause to prevent rage related damage to my cardiovascular system]!!!!!!!!!!
HIS
MOTIVES
WERE
*V_I_L_E*!!!!!!!
Why is that so hard for people to see?
Myrrh,
Here is a much more likely history of the rise of eco-extremism, written by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth. The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tradgedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are critisized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is adsurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are sucessful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
What exactly is the need for an “science ethics committee task force,” I’d like to know? Since its inception, what exactly has this task force done? I note the absence of any task forcing being done on the unethical behaviour coming from the warmist camp, so I suspect that this ethics committee is no more than a euphemism for “le’ts get the b’stards at HI, because they are reprehensible.”
Let us not forget that a description appended to a body often means the exaxt opposite in reality. Just as the most despotic states – those most tyrannical oppressors of human beings – like to use the appellate “democratic” or “peoples”, so the “ethics task force” is in reality “Black” or “Dirty” ops, whose sole purpose is to go after anyone who disagrees with their consensus on climate change.
That is why Gleick was put in charge, because he has shown to be a ruthless master at dirty ops. It’s just that he turned out to be, whilst ruthless, not much of a master after all. It would have been as if the head of the CIA was caught piling up barrels of gunpoweder under Fidel Castro’s palace, in broad daylight. And to add insult to injury, the President of the US would then issue a statement saying “such action cannot be condoned, whatever his motives.” Ie, even though blowing up Castro is a good motive, let’s not be so dumb in future, ok?
Nothing has changed, except to learn not to get caught.
Most commenters here today get a 4.0 on reading comprehension, a rare level indeed. There are, or course, a few exceptions. For me, this is the slimiest thing I’ve read on the subject. “Ideological firestorm” indeed.
Pot calling the kettle black. Am running out of patience with AGU.
Some direct questions to Mike McPhaden President, AGU;
-What are your thoughts on the HockeyStick as used in Kyoto and “Hide the decline”?
-What are your thoughts on avoiding the FOIA laws?
-What are your thoughts on using models to project the future and use the results to make policy suggestions?
-How many degrees do you think man-released CO2 has increased the temperature since, say, 1800? Do you think it’s a problem?
-Whats your thoughts on Himalaya glaciers meltdown not happening?
-Whats your thoughts on no hotspot found?
-Whats your thoughts on negative feedbacks from cloud cover?
That is, If you take what the Team say seriously. And you do, don’t you?
Or?
If you don’t, then please tell us. According to your new etics standards.
Another nail in the coffin of the rotting corpse of “man made global warming.”
Gee, that broad ethics net should have a lot more fish in it than just one.
“adherence to high standards of scientific integrity applies in all that we do: from research practices, to peer-reviewed publications, to interactions with colleagues, and to engaging with the public … “
“we must remain committed as individuals and as a society to the highest standards of scientific integrity in the pursuit of our goals.”
The AGU wouldn’t know what scientific integrity is if it hit them the face. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/ipcc-reviewer-resigns-from-agu-saying-i-will-not-renew-my-agu-membership/
Another Empty suit. Completely missing from McPhaden’s essay is the soul-searching open question of “How can it be possible that the head of our Ethics Committee commit an act most people would agree is a hideous breach of Ethics?”
I don’t expect answers today, but you cannot understand any answer until you first state and understand the question. (Re: Deep Thought, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chap 28.)
There seems to be a few interpretations of the phrase:
“His transgression cannot be condoned, regardless of his motives”
If we were talking about a murder, no one would ever dream of attaching the clause “regardless of the motive”
Seems pretty clear to me that this condemnation is pretty weak all around.
Great–then 97% of the organized clime can be defunded come 2020.
It’s abundantly clear from the climategate emails, Michaeal Mann’s refusal to release data, the CRU’s stonewalling of FOI requests, and now Gleik’s behavior, that scientific integrity is a rare quality among climatologists. I commend the few honest scientists in that pack of weasels that had the courage to speak out against their bad behavior and their bad science.
Richard Betts deserves kudos for telling Garvey of the Guardian to stuff his “the end justifies the means” essay where the sun never shines. But as for the AGU finally paying lip service to scientific integrity in climate change, like so many others, I have to ask: ” Hello? What took you so long?” Forgive me for not feeling their profound sincerity.
You may recall that in addition to the AGU, the following organizations also jumped on the global warming bandwagon to “support the consensus view on anthropogenic climate change”:
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Chemical Society
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Meteorological Society
American Society of Agronomy
American Society of Plant Biologists
American Statistical Association
Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
Botanical Society of America
Crop Science Society of America
Ecological Society of America
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society of Systematic Biologists
Soil Science Society of America, and
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Their silence on this issue leads me to conclude that none of the above have any scientific integrity. I suspected as much before, but this confirms my suspicions.
“fall from grace”? When did that guy EVER manifest grace?
As far as the AGU was concerned, Gleik’s crime was to be caught. Otherwise he would still have their full support as an ‘ethics’ expert’ as well as, of course, a ‘climate expert’.
In my essay Ends, Means and Justification or Not (http://retreadresources.com/blog/?p=976) posted on the 21st I nailed this then why on earth has it taken so long for others to at least begin to be critical?
Allan MacRae says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:39 am
[Myrrh says: February 28, 2012 at 1:51 am …]
Myrrh, I re-read your note to see if I missed your intent – I was hoping it was a satire of the usual ridiculous attacks on “big oil”.
If it was satire, perhaps you could leave a few more clues.
If it was not satire, then your hypothesis highly unlikely to be correct.
Oil is no longer a good choice to produce electricity, except in a few isolated parts of the world – typically islands, isolated cities, etc….
…
World electricity generation by source of energy: As a percentage of world electricity generation
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/oecd-factbook-2010/world-electricity-generation-by-source-of-energy-figure_factbook-2010-graph119-en
1971 2007
Coal/Peat 40.1 41.6
Oil 20.9 5.6
Gas 13.3 20.9
Nuclear 2.1 13.8
Hydro 23.0 15.6
Other 0.7 2.6
That’s the connection and that’s the reason for the change of tune now – fracking has become viable and the greenie idiots previously roped in, particularly by Thatcher later, to be ‘the anti-coal via demonisation of CO2’ were given the brief to be anti all fossil fuels, including oil, gas and nuke and now that’s an irritation.
It wasn’t generally known that it’s always been ‘big oil’ funding this campaign, that’s been successfully hidden in having the greenies repeat ad nauseum that it’s the sceptics who were funded by them. It’s only recently being pulled together to show just how these non-coal industries and goverments have been directly funding the AGW scam.
That’s what’s so funny about it, hey, we need the laughs.., the greenies were soo anti-nuke and Maggie so pro nuke, they were really giving her a hard time about nuclear, but she very cleverly harnessed their great momentum by coming up with the CO2 warming, going back to before the coal cooling. They’ve been doing the dirty work for big oil and nuke ever since!
You can’t judge it by the market share now, look at the data you just posted – 1971 is when this was all planned – that’s when CRU was set up, by oil and nuclear, it continues to be funded by these – coal is the target. Hansen’s ‘death trains’ are still part of that original scenario, back then, in the ’70s it was coal bringing on the ice age.
There’s quite a bit on CRU, still,
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020304/climategate-peak-oil-the-cru-and-the-oman-connection/
CRU was set up to be anything the anti-coal cartel wanted, it’s from there the next decade that Jim Salinger began working on fiddling the New Zealand temperature records.
Allan MacRae says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:54 am
Myrrh,
Here is a much more likely history of the rise of eco-extremism, written by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
Yes? And look what he’s been doing since.. 🙂
http://theenergycollective.com/dan-yurman/48629/new-book-patrick-moore
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/Patrick-Moore-background-information/
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0228-20.htm
“Moore wrote his letter on March 16, 1971, two years after the group was founded, describing himself as a graduate student “in the field of resource ecology.” Clearly, then, Moore was not a founder of Greenpeace. Founders don’t write letters applying to join.”
Not an original founder, he just sells himself as that. I’ve just, in looking for some links for this, found out that he was first Greenpeace Canada before briefly being in charge of the lot, I wonder if there’s a Maurice Strong connection and took Greenpeace in that direction? I don’t know, haven’t read enough about it to connect the dots.
Could be that he was put into place in Greenpeace by the nuclear industry and friends thereof and now simply reverted back to it, the time he joined Greenpeace was when these were setting up CRU.
Anyway, that ‘big oil/governments/..’ has funded the greenie movement including Greenpeace and CRU and got the fictional fisics of AGW introduced into schools, is a complex mix of interests coming together. But anti-coal has been there from the beginning, from before Keeling. Now the main reason for them being anti is that it is cheap and affordable, and they don’t want that for the masses or places like Africa.
p.s. I read this some time ago, found it again when looking for when Salinger was at CRU. That’s why there’s no easy answer to ‘who is behind it’, it sort of grew like topsy and got more organised and better funded the more bigger players, different ideologies/businesses jumped on the wagon.
Some history: The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam
By meteorologist John Coleman (Founder of The Weather Channel)
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way: the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have led to a rise in public awareness that there is no runaway global warming. A majority of American citizens are now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints, resulting from our use of fossil fuels, are going to lead to climatic calamities. But governments are not yet listening to the citizens.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government to punish the citizens for living the good life that fossil fuels provide for us?
The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. .. /continued: http://jonjayray.comuv.com/grapr10.html
Around half way down.
Dr. Svalgård.
Despite what many may think, I know you are sceptical of the AGW meme.
May I ask, as you are also sceptical of the “twas the Sun”, meme what you think it was/is?
Or are you of the, “Don’t ask me neither fits the profile” meme?
DaveE.
Johanna, I’d argue that science as knowledge for its own sake is a benefit to society in that, if nothing else, it honors objective knowledge and fosters a social commitment to dispassionate understanding.
But, of course, we can confidently suppose that benefit is not what Dr. McPhaden had in mind.
Mike says:
February 27, 2012 at 7:06 pm
“No matter how much fun it is to turn it into one, the science of climate change is not a political debate or popularity contest.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Mike. We did not choose the battleground. If it were purely about the science there would be no battle, and websites such as this would not need to exist. The AGU and others have clearly chosen to promote a political ideology above science and to elevate liars to positions of importance, so that’s where the fighting takes place.