Today, Dr. Judy Curry posted On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust at her web site. She invited a number of bloggers to use her post as a jumping off point for discussion. Today, I am going to discuss structural changes in archiving of research results that might prevent future “climategates” in climate science or other areas of science that may have large impacts on public policy in the future.
In particular, I am going to flesh out the ideas related to the italicized sentence in Judy’s paragraph below:
So what motivated their FOIA requests of the CRU at the University of East Anglia? Last weekend, I was part of a discussion on this issue at the Blackboard. Among the participants in this discussion was Steven Mosher, who broke the climategate story and has already written a book on it. They are concerned about inadvertent introduction of bias into the CRU temperature data by having the same people who create the dataset use the dataset in research and in verifying climate models; this concern applies to both NASA GISS and the connection between CRU and the Hadley Centre. This concern is exacerbated by the policy advocacy of James Hansen at NASA GISS, and his forecasts of forthcoming “warmest years.†Medical research has long been concerned with the introduction of such bias, which is why they conduct double blind studies when testing the efficacy of a medical treatment. Michael Crichton made this point quite strongly with regards to climate research. Any such bias could be checked by independent analyses of the data; however, people outside the inner circle were unable to obtain access to the information required to link the raw data to the final analyzed product. Further, creation of the surface data sets was treated like a research project, with no emphasis on data quality analysis, and there was no independent oversight. Given the importance of these data sets both to scientific research and public policy, they feel that greater public accountability is required. I find it hard to disagree with any of these points.
In my view, much of the trouble in associated with construction of surface records by the climate community springs from the efforts having been conducted as single campaign academic research projects. That is: research projects were initially organized as efforts to create a product that would result in a peer-reviewed publication in a scholarly journal. Owing to page limits, these articles tend toward brevity. After publication of an article, the project might be re-initiated or not. While individual researchers might maintain records of some sort in their offices, there was no programmatic requirement to maintain raw data, meta-data, records, scripts, codes or any supporting materials to facilitate stakeholders (i.e. the broader public) exploring what was done, or in particular recreate it.
The extremely informal method of record keeping leads to three important problems:
- Researchers tend to retain only the specific information they will draw on when doing work to write future peer reviewed papers. Some tend to be careless about retaining confidentiality agreements, or any data they cannot imagine every needing again.
- Many researchers do not excel at the function of archivist. In any case, they rarely devote current research funds to archiving historic records and often simply cannot do so.
- Researchers tend consider those record they keep to be their own personal property to treat as they will, rather than material created for hire that is, in some sense, owned by either their employer or possibly taxpayers.
I think many who have worked at national laboratories or universities will recognize these sorts of behaviors, which are exhibited at various levels by different researchers. Those who have not worked on R&D projects that have more expansive reporting requirements may come to see this method of organizing research as simply the way things must be done. The informal academic system doesn’t work to badly when there are no stakeholders outside a closed research community. Unfortunately, it has serious deficiencies when stakeholders do wish to investigate asking questions of interested to the stakeholders themselves.
From the point of view of stakeholders, the system looks careless, sloppy, and untraceable. When results of the work have been supported by taxpayers, or are being used to influence public policies, stakeholders will tend to perceive researchers who refuse to share even the scanty records they did retain as tribal, self-serving and untrustworthy. Scientists’ justifications of this system as being required by the scientific method as will cause some stakeholders to conclude that “scientific ethics” is an oxymoron. This will result in a crisis of trust; it has done so in the incident we call “climategate”.
Because it is not in the interest of science as a whole to permit this level of loss of trust, I think it is useful for scientists to consider methods of enforcing transparency that meet the criteria of stakeholders, particularly those specific stakeholders seeking to discover answer to questions the they are asking themselves and each other.
How can this be done?
In her essay, Judy pointed to an article by Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences, who called for greater transparency in science. In his article, Ralph pointed to the NAS published “Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age” as a providing guidelines for scientists to follow. I applaud Cicerone and the NAS’s attempts to persuade scientists to adopt greater transparency.
Unfortunately, words of encouragement alone will not bring about the changes required to prevent future climategate. Structural changes in the way projects operate are needed. I propose these be driven by funding agencies and government laboratories (i.e. NSF, DOE, NASA), who I encourage to adopt formal mechanisms to enforce transparency, particularly in climate science. Specifically, I am suggesting that funded agencies like should create and enforce policies that force funded researchers to take proactive steps to archive certain types of supporting data and code, and make them available to interested stakeholders in a timely fashion. These sorts of steps are required to assure that scientific researchers can behave in manners that appear trustworthy to stakeholders outside the climate science research community.
Specifically, overtime, funding agencies like NSF, DOE, NASA, NIST, NOAA should consider:
- Insisting that raw data, meta-data, key intermediate data and functioning codes, spreadsheets or scripts used to process data that underlie information in each figure and table of peer reviewed articles be permanently archived in a publicly accessible location and made available to the public no later than the first date of publication in a journal. If a researcher used data or code archived already included in a different publicly accessible archive that is impermanent (e.g. GISSTemp which changes each month), the researcher should archive the precise version of data obtained and used for further analysis.
- When peer reviewed articles are written, use of as yet unpublished data should be avoided to support conclusions. However, in cases where unpublished data has been made available from a specific individual, the principle investigator should obtain permission to include this data in the publicly accessible archive associated with the peer reviewed publication that made use of the data. If confidentiality is appropriate, the PI should obtain a formal contractual confidentiality describing the specific restrictions for distribution. All formal confidentiality agreements should also be obtained in writing and archived.
- To minimize conflict of interest in oversight of, granting access to or loss of information and data, archives should not be maintained by principle investigators themselves. The funding agencies themselves should establish and support archives where data, meta data and codes are to be deposited. DOE already supports (OSTI.gov. It should be possible to extend its function to archive codes, data and other supporting materials for groups outside the DOE framework.
- To facilitate access to readers outside the funded research community, funding agencies should require P.I.s to indicate the location of archived data and codes in the acknowledgments section of peer reviewed journal articles and conference articles. This will permit both throngs of bloggers, motivated graduate students and principle investigators engaged in follow on work to easily locate the archive without bothering the article authors.
- To put teeth into the system, the public and researchers should be permitted the opportunity of formally request information that found to be omitted from the archive. For example, if a member of the public wishes to obtain a table of data underlying figure 245.4 in the appendix of a peer reviewed article, and the tabular data is not contained in the archive, should be permitted to write a letter noting the omission and requesting the data be added to the archive. This letter should be included as soon as those who maintain the archive receive it. PI’s should be expected to remedy the omissions any formal response indicating the resolution to the matter should be included in the archive. Naturally, a system of judge disputes should arise in the event that a member of the public requests code, script, or data but the principle investigator believes they are not required to provide such information.
Why these steps?
The steps outlined above would prevent many major and minors climate kerfuffles touched on in climategate.
Formal archiving of raw data used in peer reviewed articles would simplify the process of verifying steps in paleo-reconstructions and/or arguments about the precise provenance of underlying data. Formal archiving of tabular data appearing in figures and tables and figures in journal articles would mean interested readers and Ben Santer alike would not be burdened with the need to deal with the FOI process to these tables available to the public. Formal archiving of confidentiality agreements would have spared a scientist of embarrassment of being accused of having violated the agreements when sharing data with friends, applying double standards in refusing to share data with people who are not his friends and dealing with 50 FOI requests to produce the confidentiality agreements provided as the justification for not sharing data and finally admitting that records of these important confidentiality agreements were never kept. Moreover, archiving in locations outside the control of university faculty members would prevent loss of information when individuals move offices, change employers or simply retire.
Some will suggest that many of these things are already done in some ways. However, they clearly were not done by scientists performing the research they discussed in the climategate letters. Moreover, many funding agencies supporting climate research do little to monitor whether scientists actually archive supporting data or share with the public.
Some may suggest that such archiving is unduly burdensome. I loathe paperwork requirements– yet these do not seem burdensome to me. The most time efficient periods to archive the scripts, codes, spreadsheets, raw data and key results supporting the results of a peer reviewed paper is when the paper itself is being finalized and submitted for review or as editorial revisions to a manuscript that has been accepted are being made. If a funding agency establishes the archive, electronic submission should be relatively easy. The existence of the archive would relieve the corresponding author from the burden of discussing tiny details with throngs of bloggers without preventing trusted colleagues from contacting the authors themselves. Moreover, even trusted colleagues may prefer being able to access code or underlying data to resolve tiny, but perplexing inconsistencies without forcing another researcher to dig through files associated with a manuscript published two or three years prior. This time saving factor should balance the effort required to submit information to the archive at the time of publications.
In the end, I leave my suggestions at the mercy of commenters here at my blog, those at other blogs and in the wider public. Each can judge whether these steps are beneficial or counterproductive and add their own ideas. Such is the way of all blogs.
Other blogs posting
I’m adding links to other blogs posting reactions to Judy’s essay as I read them today. Anthony Watts, Jeff Id of TAV, Roger Pielke Jr., Tom Fuller (full essay), Bishop Hill, Guardian response posted before Judy’s essay appeared, Roger Pielke Sr., Lubos includes a mention, Romm, Revkin @ dotEarth, Dan Hughes.
Thumbs up, Lucia. Nice post.
Lucia,
I by and large agree with all your points. That said, scientists are not known for their amazing organizational skills, so some of the steps involved in preserving intermediate data, for example, might be a bit onerous.
There is also the larger question of the importance of allowing duplication vs. replication. Though I agree that the advent of the “digital age” has made the former a much lower burden, given the availability of scripts and code. Duplication also has lower barriers of entry than replication, though it may be less informative in some cases.
Zeke–
I am not known for my organizational skills either. That’s why some of these things need to be required. If the archive was properly designed, it could probably prod the scientists to upload things for each figure and graph. They might even be able to create a “draft” section, where a person could upload the current script, data, etc. for each current figure and table.
So, when writing, you can get someone (grad student, post doc, technical editor secretary) to enter the name and number of each figure. Then the GUI could prompt you to add the data underlying that figure.
Presumably this stuff exists at the time the author writes the paper because otherwise, the figures and tables can’t be created!
The key is to create something that helps disorganized people organize. (Plus, let’s face it, scientists aren’t that disorganized. They somehow manage to keep things together enough to run codes, write articles, cite etc.)
Re: Zeke Hausfather (Feb 24 10:09),
Yes. It can be less informative. But the issue here is how do you work in ways that make the public trust the results?
Real honest-to-goodness replication is also rarely done and even more rarely reported in science partly because it is unpublishable. The reason it is not publishable is that simply reporting “I repeated joe’s experiment and it worked.” is considered uninteresting as far as peer review literature goes. Peer review journals want to publish findings that are new, not confirmations of previous findings. If your paper doesn’t contain something new, you will find it difficult to publish.
So, instead, kinda-sorta replication is done, it is done years later and often only by people who have funding. While this makes sense in the context of research, it is not sufficient to ensure that stakeholders trust that findings are accurate, reliable or essentially true.
In areas where stakeholders demand trust, we require archiving, record keeping etc. as a matter of course. Whether climate scientists like it or not, stakeholders want to see them doing this sort of thing.
So someone needs to figure out how it can be done.
The difference between project management and program management is that the former is concerned with outputs and the latter is concerned with outcomes. Your post, if accurate, suggests that there were too many chiefs worried about outcomes and not enough Indians paying attention to outputs.
I would tend to think that this is normal at the beginning of ambitious and important endeavours. However, usually that gets corrected fairly quickly and that doesn’t seem to have happened with climate science. Any ideas on why that is?
Don’t rely on Government to properly archive data. At the first funding crisis the responsible agency will attempt to download (or evade) the responsibility. Been there and have seen millions wasted on creating the perfect database that in the end was worse than the one it replaced as no one “owned” (was responsible for) the data and meta-data that was supposed to flow into the database.
Re: Gordon Ford (Feb 24 10:37),
What do you suggest then? There is no mechanism to force journals to oversee this. I don’t think it’s even possible for them to do a good job given the way they operate.
Individual universities or labs are much too scattered and will be difficult for users to navigate.
In any case, Osti already exists. I’m not sure why OSTI could not be expanded to include a section that permits researchers to upload supporting data and scripts associated with each peer reviewed paper published under a DOE grant.
But why is it this:
“Just call off all of the dogs”?
Let’s sniff out the truth.
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Gordon Ford
Agreed, Government is not the vehicle for data storage. It requires competition and profit incentive to get the besst result. I can see Google interested in such a project.
@Tom,
Actually the difference between Project Management and Program Management is that the focus of the latter is strategic with a global overview of the whole business, while the former is about focusing on the getting the project done within the different constraints affecting the project. For a detailed list of differences, check this article.
A very balanced analysis. I agree entirely. However I doubt if google is the right sponsor/ owner. An international charitable foundation might work ( a bit like the Welcome Trust for pharmaceuticals), funded by met offices and others… perhaps Bill gates would provide a few ( hundred ) million!
Re: PM Hut (Feb 24 11:39),
This is why I think the priority for archiving must be set at a programmatic level. It can’t be left to individual projects.
Leaving things to individual projects has uses in research. It permits flexibility, particularly when during the course of research a PI finds the planned activity seems a dead end but discovers something new and interesting.
But if the PI reaches a point where information can be presented in a peer-review article, and taxpayer funded agency covered his salary while doing the research, paid for equipment and is paying page charges, it seems to me that insisting certain information be made accessible to the public is wise.
Agree with the post and many of the comments.
Something to add: A list of existing standards could be picked that would implement your proposed program. For example, ISO 9000 requires “The organization shall establish a documented procedure to define the controls needed for the identification, storage, protection, retrieval, retention and disposition of records.”
Implementation of existing standards would bring some credibility and acceptance. The standards, as always, would likely require tailoring to the specific application. Some parts may not make sense for climate science.
As you mentioned, the journals will not be under these requirements, but the rule for the IPCC could be that they cannot use info in their reports unless it has been produced under the more well-defined and controlled program that goes beyond peer review as you have described above. That would not prevent science continuing as usual, but may and probably would in most cases require additional work for it to be used by the IPCC.
Re: John Phillips (Feb 24 12:45),
All that ISO standard means is that the organization doing the work will develop their own standard and document what their standard is. The standard could be “we retain almost nothing.”
I’m suggesting that the funding agencies should create their standards for archiving and establish the archive so that you don’t discover university or XYZ writing up their standard, and national lab ABC writing theirs with each group making up their own rules according to what they consider reasonable (which could be “we don’t have to keep anything. Donyon’t you realize graduate students leave and don’t always give their adviser their stuff?”)
Forget about IPCC rules. The IPCC is beyond control of taxpayers and it’s just not created to police research.
I really think the control needs to be at the level of funding agencies who can insist on certain requirements when writing contracts and grants.
If major funding agencies insist on certain requirements, peer review journals will also have to adapt and eventually, the IPCC will too. This will occur because the funded researchers will want unfunded researchers to be forced to comply with the similar archiving requirements.
Precisely who maintains the archive could be left open. Some have suggested Google. I could see a tweak being that the funding agencies recognize certain private archives as sufficient provide they meet the criteria of zero or very low cost public accessibility and permit the public to note deficiencies in the archive and have those remedied.
I see your points Lucia,
No real hammer over the IPCC. The control will most likely have to be limited to the funding agencies.
On your point 2: Scientific research is (mostly) a process of building upon the work of others. Because of this, I see very little scope for any form of confidentiality agreements concerning fundamental data in a research paper.
Either the data should be ignored and alternative sources sought, or published papers based upon data which is not freely available should be considered non referenceable.
Philip–
There are fields where some data are confidential. More commonly, meta-data might be confidential.
I imagine that in medicine, personally identifiable information is kept confidential. I’m pretty sure the US census releases data in various forms but also takes pains to conceal any personally identifying information.
In climate science, the need to keep meta-data confidentiality should be rare. I suspect that for the most part, the confidentiality agreements Jones claimed existed were chimera: both fictional and created to ward off anyone wishing to access data.
IMHO Projects and Programmes are identical except in size and purpose. Projects tend to be tactical and programmes strategic. The management of inputs, outputs and data generated by the undertakings is controlled and audited independently of the project teams.
There exists the ISO900x series of management and control for just the reasons cited by Judith and yes, it adds costs to the projects/programmes but those costs are built into the funding demand and if the demand is not fully met then its the scope of the projects which are reduced not the management.
So, NO to involvement of the funding organisation, NO to control by the project team and YES to complete and regular INDEPENDENT auditing and not the independence as defined by UEA and PENN state.
The complexities of setting up a “global warehouse” of scientific and research data seem rather large to me. Just providing enough storage space for the data seems like a tough task, even for a government entity.
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I’d not like to see the idea of some sort of perfect “global warehouse” be used as an excuse not to release data at all. For example, UAH is not releasing its code until it meets the requirement to run on “most” computers. But I could use that code, even if it didn’t run on my computer, to answer questions I have about the processing of data.
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Just provide public access to the data along with instructions/computer code to read and process it. We’ll handle the rest.
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Redistribution rights are an issue too. For example, LuboÅ¡ wanted the data I used to QA the Aqua satellite available in an easy download so he could double check the results. I couldn’t do it because it’s not clear to me whether or not I have the right to re-distribute NASA’s data. Such issues should be made clear and allow for liberal use of the data by the public. Ideally, the data and computer code should be considered public property once it’s been released (hence my idea of placing data and computer code in the public domain).
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[quote: Judith Curry]
The failure of the public and policy makers to understand the truth as presented by the IPCC is often blamed on difficulties of communicating such a complex topic to a relatively uneducated public that is referred to as “unscientific Americaâ€
[/quote]
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This kind of thing really gets me steamed. The reason the public doesn’t understand the issues is we’re presented with press releases that are literally garbage not worth the paper they’re written on and denied access to the real science.
stephen–
It’s fine to say you don’t want funding agencies involved, and you are worried the cost will burden projects such that scope is cut.
But I don’t see how saying we require independent audits gets around the problem.
If not funding agencies, who is going to require the audits? Congress? If Congress, who will they subject to audits? Bloggers reading articles and reacting at their blog? Every paper appearing in Science?
When will audits be performed? At the end of every project? When peer reviewed papers are published? By surprise inspection? Once a year?
Who precisely, is going to conduct the audits, and will they be paid? Who will pay them? The principle investigator using money remaining from their grant?
How will the results of the audit be documented? What metrics will the auditors investigate? The General Accounting Office already does some sort of governmental audits.
What information will scientists be required to provide to auditors? Financial records? Proof data are archived? How will the auditors decide the archiving is adequate?
To some extent, it really is necessary to discuss who requires the “audit”, what the “audit” will consist of, and where the money to pay for these audits comes from.
I actually think forcing people to upload scripts and data to an archive will cost less that anything that might be described as a independent audit. That means smaller reductions in scope of work performed.
Re: magicjava (Feb 24 13:57),
I think it would be wiser for them to release the code stipulating that it was run on machine X using compiler Y etc. I think it’s important to not set the bar so high that archiving or public release become impossible. It is simply not necessary that I, lucia liljegren, be able to compile and run the code on my mac using the compiler of my choice and be certain it will work.
It is better to release code along with some sample input and output that permits the user to verify the code runs on their machine, while also providing information describing the platform on which the code runs.
Well…. as for copyright, in the US, I think all it needs to be considered is government property. I think some government web pages may be misleading users as to conditions of use– but we’d have to consult a copyright attorney to be sure.
You could give their photo page a quick read:
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html
I think the reason you can find the information on the photo pages is that photos are one of the few NASA products that might contain some material protected by copyright! If you read the discussion of which things might have copyright restrictions, you’ll see what I mean.
I think it is best if these things are enforced by the journals via the funding agencies.
For example, funding agencies layout a no-nonsense archiving policy and leave it to the peer reviewed journals to enforce.
If a journal fails to enforce that policy for a paper then it must withdraw the paper or face removal from the list of scientific jounrnals the funding agencies consider.
The complaint process should be straight forward.
1) Someone asks the scientist for data for X from paper Y
2) If the scientist refuses the person contacts the journal.
3) If the jounrnal refuses the request goes to NAS which automatically notifies the journal that it has 30 days to withdraw the paper in question, produce the data or previously archived confidentiality agreements.
4) If the journal refuses the journal is blacklisted.
The disclosure rules have to simple and not open to interpretation and imposed by law on NAS. I simply do not trust NAS or any scientist to enforce these rules in good faith given their behavoir to date. Give them any wiggle room and they will slime through it.
Raven–
Journals have no obligations, power or incentive to enforce contractual obligations between those who accept agency funding and the funding agencies. In fact, as enforcers they have an extreme conflict of interest.
The journals business model is to:
1) Get researchers to provide them content for better than free. The researchers pay.
2) Get the same group of researchers to do the peer reviews for free.
3) Get individuals from the same group of researchers to act as editors for free.
By asking journal to be enforcers, you are basically asking researchers donating their free time to journals to enforce rules on themselves and people they work with. When disputes arise many will find it contrary to their own interest to rule against their fellow researcher for a variety of reasons. When you suggest that outsiders can just write to the journal and the journal will adjudicate, what you are suggesting is that someone like SteveMc writes a well known climate scientists who, likely as not, socializes with people who know Mann, and ask him to rule fairly against Mann. That same editor might later submit proposal to a funding agency and he knows there is a significant risk Mann or friends of Mann might review the proposal. In contrast, SteveMc will not.
This system will inevitably result in contentious disputes which will not make the public trust scientists. The public will all think you’ve put the fox in charge of the hen house because you have.
I think it’s wroth clarifying who NAS is. It’s a private groups, more akin to professional societies like ASME, IEEE, or AGU. Unless they operate a journal, (and each of these societies does), none of these groups has any authority to order a different journal to withdraw a paper. (Likewise, the a national organization of journalists would have no ability to order the New York Times to retract an article.)
In some regards, all these associations, academies and societies resemble special purpose clubs– except that they are specifically organized to promote their professions and to assist people in professional interactions.
How do you blacklist a journal? Who blacklists it? NAS? They members of the NAS are not going to want to get involved in policing journals. No way. No how. To some extent, all journals are is somewhat fancy versions of magazines that happen to run scholarly articles but do some screening by a system called peer review rather than by hired staff of the journal. They gain reputation and esteeme to the extent that the research community cites papers in the journal. There is no official “white list” or “blacklist”.
Pre-eminent researchers who become members of the NAS are not going to want to spend their time adjudicating individual disputes or creating blacklists of journals.
Why would congress write a law imposing any unique specific duty on the NAS? I’m not sure they even can.
i disagree with the majority of what Judith said in that article. and i think that her overuse of the term “gate” (more than 10 times in that short post) basically disqualifies her opinion.
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i also don t share your opinion on the rework of the data. we all know, that the result of the rework will be basically the same that we have now. the reason for this is, that the science is pretty much settled.
we are trying to rebuild the trust, that you folks destroyed before hand.
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i also disagree with the assumption, that all those sceptic demands come without any costs. all the researchers i know, constantly miss publication dates. time and money spent on archiving data, will be missing somewhere else. focusing skills on this topic, will remove other skills.
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my offer is a simple one. give sceptics all the data they want. and make them pay for it. but this will not happen, because money already could buy all data today. and data actually is not, what most sceptics are really interested in.
Lucia,
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We do something similar with courts.
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The courts have no power to forced police to follow the rules when collecting evidence. But they do have to power to exclude evidence if police do not follow the rules. This system is generally effective at ensuring police follow the rules.
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I am sugggesting we do the same with the peer review label because the funding agencies have to have rules about what they consider to be peer reviewed. If they have those rules they can use them to enforce compliance by withdrawing the ‘peer review’ label from papers and/or journals.
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I am open to other models but there must be punishment for non-compliance. Without punishment we will see scientists break teh rules for the same reason we would see cops break the rules if there were no consequences.
sod,
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If a scientist receives public funding then they have an obligation to the public. If they don’t like that obligation then they can go work for a private company.
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There is simply no excuse for not making data public. If it costs money then they will have to factor that into their budgets.
sod,
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If the research if funded by the public the data should be public. If it costs money to archive data then that should be included in their budgets when they ask for grants.
[quote lucia (Comment#34652) February 24th, 2010 at 2:09 pm]
[/quote]
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Agreed. And I think it would be the responsibility of each individual institution to release the data and source code, rather than passing that on to some “global warehouse”. NASA would release NASA’s data and source code, UAH would release theirs, etc.
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[quote]
[/quote]
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I tried to think this over so I could respond with exactly what I feel. The truth is, I don’t really care who owns the data or what the exact terms of a license would be, so long as I can use the data “as if” it belonged to me within reasonable limitations. I should be able to access it, test it, re-distribute it, create unique products from it, redistribute those unique products, etc. I shouldn’t be able to claim it belongs to me or that I originated it.
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Anything that fits those requirements, I’d be happy with.
Re: Raven (Feb 24 15:08),
Here the courts are making rules about what courts will accept as evidence.
Funding agencies do not assign the label “peer review”. But even if they did, what you do propose as the consequence of a journal not being assigned this label by a funding agency? Will the funding agency not pay page charges to that journal until such time as the journal persuades them to lift a ban? Well researchers be prohibited from publishing in that research supported by an agency even if they find someone else to cover page charges or get the journal to waive page charges?
Whatever you require, it shouldn’t be toothless. Otherwise, the rule is pointless.
Funding agencies can ban the PI from receiving further funding until the situation is remedied. They can also possibly hold up funding colleagues at that researchers institution if individuals don’t comply. Department heads will then be motivated to exert some pressure.
All of this could be done by a funding agency because they hold the purse strings.
sod,
Hang on a minute. Hasn’t the majority of this research been funded by the public purse and therefore the public, which of course includes sceptics, should by rights already own it?
Most scientists wouldn’t be able to do their research if the public purse was not available. Why then should they, so often, try to withold their data from the public?
Lucia,
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Ok withholding funding would work but I think withdrawing a paper will need to be remedy to avoid having to impose punishments on people who had nothing to with the offense. I am not sure whether a university can demand such thing from a journal without the author’s permission.
Re: magicjava (Feb 24 15:27),
That’s generally the way copyright works for government created works. I don’t know if the correct legal term is public domain, or government owned or what. But basically, if it’s ut there, you can use it.
Things can be classified for security– but that’s different from copyright. Plus, you shouldn’t be able to even get your hands on that stuff— so irrelevant!
I think you should read Lubos on WUWT.. the fact is that climate is a pretty small part of science in general and the climate science boys have tried to make it into something it isn’t. It should be returned ASAP to what it was 20 years ago basically weather forecasting.
Re: Raven (Feb 24 15:53),
Why? Why can’t just making an individual researcher ineligible for future grants be the punishment? The funding agency has no contractual relationship with the journal. The current system is that authors withdraw papers when they author themselves no-longer believes their own result is supported by the analysis in that very paper. They aren’t withdrawn if new evidence shows the paper wrong or even if the analysis never made any sense to the vast majority of readers. They are only withdrawn if the author themselves thinks they find a mistake that vitiates their finding.
Plus what does withdrawing a paper really mean? Withdrawn papers still appear on the printed pages of journals in shelves in libraries. People can still read it. It can still be cited. If the author still stands behind it, some of his buddies still think it’s fine and cite it but there is some sort of “technically withdrawn because there is a dispute about the archive”, how does this punish the author? Chances are the technical withdrawal will just bring more attention to the paper and it will be cited even more.
Lucia,
Disqualify the individual researchers may be the only option then.
I thought withdrawing a paper had more significance.
i.e. could not be cited in subsequent papers.
Raven–
If the author of a paper says it’s wrong and was wrong even when written, that has significance. That’s what withdrawing means; so it does have great significance.
If you try to expand “withdrawal” to include situations where the author insist it’s right, peers still think it’s right, the journal still thinks it’s right, but the author is being a stinker and not providing code, then withdrawal will no longer have the same significance because withdrawal will mean something else.
Raven
There is no such firm rule about what can be cited in journals. In engineering, I’ve seen people site personal letters, papers in press, conference articles, masters theses, government reports, email or nearly anything in journal articles. The more prestigious the journal, the more flexibility permitted!
Mind you, the IPCC can create its own rules for citation in reports. Also, some technical editors insisted on some very nit-picky rules when I tried to clear reports at Pacific Northwest National Labs. (Other editors disagreed on some of these rules, particularly, as it often made it impossible for one final report to cite another one both being finalized as the end of the fiscal year approached.)
But journals themselves often have very flexible rules. They let the peer reviewers and editors use their discretion and some peer reviewers see no difficulties with people citing papers “in press”, or even “in preparation”!
For the record.
Dr. Curry shared this piece with a diverse group of people.
Every comment I made to her about the text was made to that entire group. i think two other people took that approach. Other’s made suggestions their own way. My suggestions were minimal.
i havent written a reaction piece yet, because the story I care about is being written by the commenters. here is the note I sent to Dr. Curry prior to publication. Every blogger should have got this:
“”Thanks Dr. Curry,
I think if I ran a blog I would challenge my readers to find agreement rather than nit pick the differences.
That’s hard for most people to do, myself included. It’s relatively easy to say “Dr. Curry is right about such and such, BUT…” Hobby horses are easy afternoon rides. It’s my experience that when people try to extend the areas of agreement, rather than dwell on the obvious and well worn differences, some measure of progress can be achieved. There is also the ever present temptation to engage in catchy phrase criticism. ( insert evil moshpit grin) This is especially true in the drive by world of the blogosphere. It will be interesting to see which blogs can put that aside, if only on an experimental basis.
So, thanks for the interesting experiment. Let’s hope that the number of thoughtful responses outweighs the knee jerk reactions.
Best Regards,
Steve”
lucia:
I enjoyed both Dr Curry’s essay and your response. Anything that improves accessibility of data and procedures makes sense to me. That said, I think this is the low hanging fruit in the climate debate. Given where we are in the debate, it seems to me that “confirmation bias” is a more deep-rooted issue that is unlikely to off-set by full access to the data.
So much of this is locking the Science Barn after all the horses have been stolen. The entire world has been bamboozled: the horses have been enticed away, the tack stolen, the barn set on fire, and now the perpetrators have us running around in the smoke, redecorating the empty stalls. “Do you think a nice flocked paper will work here, Bruce? We could put the chandelier right over here…”
The fire needs to be stamped completely out and the place given a good mucking out, first. Then we can rebuild the barn and look around for new horses. Complete horses, if you catch my drift.
Two issue I see with an otherwise excellent analysis.
1. Selection bias. Lets say you sample tree rings. Do you release all tree ring data or just the ones that meet your objectives? ie. What happens to negative data?
2. The knock on effect of withdrawn papers. The taint effect.
If paper A is referenced by B,C and D, and is then withdrawn, paper B, C and D are now tainted. If E relies on B, its also tainted.
If someone has access to a citation database, it should be possible to search for a set of climate change papers. Then mark the relevant ones as tainted and see how far the rot spreads.
Nick
Joe Romm is unpleased:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/24/my-response-to-dr-judith-currys-unconstructive-essay/
While I disagree with Dr. Curry, she is making great strides.
She will come through bruised but with honor. Romm & gang, well that is a different story.
Re: steven mosher (Feb 24 16:56),
Did you read Romm’s? I almost split a gut laughing when I read this complaint
Oh? So every essay about anything to do with climategate has to answer this specific key question? No discussion even remotely related to climate or AGW can discuss any other topic? Who’d a thunk?
sod,
So only people who agree with a particular view should have open access to data?
And if they find probelms with the data they are give=n free access to, will they be back charged if they point out the problems?
Perhaps someone could operate an escrow service, holding depoists that are only kept if the scientist who provided the data is unhappy about the results the user comes up with?
I think Dr. Curry is using the ‘gate’ taxonomy because it is… appropriate.
Watching AGW true believers, such as yourself, do Baghdad Bob imitations is very good entertainment.
LuboÅ¡ Motl’s take on Judith Curry’s essay is in the follow-on comments at WUWT. There doesn’t seem to be a way to link it directly.
How do we distinguish Better from Worse in the following areas:
* Treatments for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
* Analyses of the causes of the US Civil War
* Astrologers’ foretellings
* Elevator emergency-brake systems
* Protocols for evaluating Space Shuttle launch conditions
Some of these things are subject to common sense. Some depend on one’s prior perspectives. For some (e.g. “foretellings”), the question makes no sense; they’re all worthless.
When the stakes surrounding the answers are high, in lives and money, society has developed a set of procedures to qualify them.
What about these —
* GCMs and the records they are built atop
* Paleoclimate reconstructions
When it comes to Climate Science, the ardent defenders of the AGW Consensus (e.g. Joe Romm) seem to be claiming:
“Existing mechanisms (such as funding, publication in peer-reviewed journals, IPCC vetting) have proven sufficient to settle the important issues of fact and future likelihood, to the extent required to implement public policy.
Curry’s claim of problems in climate science is mistaken. Increased transparency and accountability are unnecessary, given that we already know the urgent actions to be undertaken.”
Much of the tragedy of the 20th Century can be seen as demands by elites, “You must trust us! Failing trust, we shall compel you to follow our dictates!”
Remarkable display of hubris, that some leaders of the AGW Consensus community think they can run that script, again. Given the likely reactions, a tragedy… assuming that their views of CAGW are correct.
lucia (Comment#34619) February 24th, 2010 at 10:22 am
What you are talking about are major changes to the way that science is practiced in regards to the general public. OK, that’s a valid thing to do. What I don’t think is valid is to crucify the UEA because they happen to be the ones who got caught up in the middle of what is at heart a political issue that has overtaken a scientific one. It’s way beyond their scope of responsibilities and capabilities to invent such a major new area of policy.
Bugs–
Get a grip. UEA has not been crucified.
They have suffered some deserved fall out commensurate with having bungled an FOI process. Responding properly is well within their scope and responsibility.
They have also suffered some fallout because a high ranking staff member appears to have acted badly during an FOI process– Jones. Many think he acted in a manner not quote becoming of a professional– and that has harmed the institution that employed him. But UAE cannot be said to have been crucified.
While I think the procedures outlined above would have helped save Jones from himself, the fact is, his errors were not limited to simply not archiving.
Also: Jones was clearly playing hardball politics. It’s silly to pretend he was merely overtaken.
sod (Comment#34664),
Certainly one of your most humorous comments! Keep up the good work.
AMac,
But surely the collection of iterative processes that make up the scientific method has proven to be the methodology for determing the best from the heap. It is not perfect. But it is what we have.
As to ‘elites’ saying, ‘Trust us,’ all of us depend on that every day. If we do not have the skills to check something out – and there is no way that any single one of us can have all the requisite skills – we have to trust someone who does have the requisiste skills. And obviously over time our trust can be confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence.
We can put in place systems where experts check the work of other experts. And those of us who are interested can work to become experts in particular areas so as to create our own work and check the work of others.
And I think that that is the system that we have in place at the moment.
I think that in the area of climate science much of the problem is simply because this it is something that impacts *everything* in a policy sense and in a massive way.
Bit of a rambling rant, I guess, but what I meant to say was simply that the system/method is already in place.
Why not let the internet do the archiving? Put the data into a file with a properly authenticated signature and checksum for verification and publish it.
Those interested will make copies and the data that is important will be saved in many places. FOI2009.zip will be around for a long, long time.
Are we watching a rethinking by Dr. Curry between her post of 2009/11/22 , her post of 2009/11/27 and her post of today 2010/02/24
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/22/curry-on-the-credibility-of-climate-research/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/27/an-open-letter-from-dr-judith-curry-on-climate-science/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/24/on-the-credibility-of-climate-research-part-ii-towards-rebuilding-trust/
The Nov 22 post implies that skeptics are engaged in â€politicization of climate science†while believers are motivated by “professional ego and scientific integrityâ€. There is an apparent disconnect between the “climate science†she believed in and the fact it doesn’t “require publicly available data and metadataâ€, doesn’t have “a rigorous peer review processâ€, and isn’t “responding to arguments raised by skepticsâ€. At this point she apparently believed that the science was settled and the climate scientists need only be more transparent and less defensive. Perhaps she had not had a chance to read many of the CRU emails which had been released just 2 days before she wrote this post.
On Nov 27 in “An Open Letter to Graduate Students…†she acknowledges that CRU emails violate the “the rigors of the scientific method (including reproducibility), research integrity and ethics, open minds, and critical thinkingâ€. She encourages her students to “upholding the highest standards of research ethicsâ€. Has she now had a chance to read the emails and realizes the conflict between what she has been telling her students and what she wrote on Nov 22?
Today, Feb 24, she has harsh words for both skeptics and believers and states that “No one really believes that the ‘science is settled’†This is a far cry from her statement in 2007/10/10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002157.html
that “climate change is no longer focused on whether the earth is getting warmer (it is) or whether humans are contributing to it (we are)†Although in this article she doesn’t use the words “the science is settledâ€, it was apparently settled enough to stop debate and move on to action.
One thing is settled, she has offended everyone from Joe Romm to Anthony Watts. My read is that she is no longer sure where she wants to be on the subject. Let’s hope “Professional ego†won’t stop her from following the advice she gave graduate students in her Nov 27th open letter.
David Gould (Comment#34730) —
Joe Romm’s essay has nothing to do with the Scientific Method as I understand it. Feynman expressed the problem with paens to the form, Cargo Cult Science. Climate Science is caught in its grip.
> As to ‘elites’ saying, ‘Trust us,’ all of us depend on that every day.
Of course. People have created successful science-based expert-based systems in all sorts of areas. Heart valve testing, concrete use in bridge decks, software validation, fly-by-wire aircraft control. Such people could learn climate science, and make useful contributions to it. (In fact, that has happened already.)
Conversely, people in climate science could bring their hubris, bad math, and ideological straightjackets to those other fields. That wouldn’t be an improvement.
Sorry to be so blunt. That’s what the field’s acceptance (usually tacit, sometimes explicit) of Mann’s reconstructions have taught me.
The errors are fairly unimportant in and of themselves; humans aren’t perfect. It’s the way that peers handle errors that speaks to the trust that an expert-based system deserves.
> And I think that that is the system that we have in place at the moment.
Functional systems are in place in many areas. Climate science is definitely not one of them.
Its real simple. You want us to spend money, you give us the data and the code. You don’t want to, fine, your material is barred from being used for public policy input. We need to go through the IPCC reports with a blue marker and just eliminate every single reference and citation where they won’t supply raw data and code. Starting with the hockey stick, MBH98, and Dr Thompson.
AMac,
I think that this is an area where you and I, unfortunately, disagree.
There do not appear to me to be any more errors or bad reactions to them in climate science than in any other scientific endeavour.
The scientific method seems to me to be working as well as it normally does.
I think that we need to look at what it is about climate science that is clearly different from other science. And I think that the difference is obvious: the implications for society.
michel,
It is very tricky to ‘bar’ something from being used for public policy input. In Australia, there are committee inquiries into all areas of public policy to which anyone can submit. This is important in a democracy, I think. If you mean that you, personally, will not take that material into account in coming to a decision, that is different.
As an example of what I mean, there was a poll referenced today that suggested that only one in five people in Britain believed that humans were causing global warming.
This is not a failure of the science or the scientific method: the science has determined that humans are indeed causing global warming (and I know that many here and elsewhere disagree).
What it demonstrates is a failure of communication and politics. I would suggest that some of this failure can be sheeted home to scientists, journalists, politicians, the education system in general and to people in other areas. (How much should be allocated where is a difficult question to answer, of course).
I would also point out there has for a long time been a problem with communication of science and other knowledge. Many people, myself included, believe things that simply are not true. (And I know that some here will my belief in AGW as one of those things ;)). Generally, this does not matter too much as most often those things cancel each other out in a democratic society – while I may believe in drubblewerts, that belief is only a small part of what influences my vote on any particular issue of public policy. I may support candidates who also believe in drubblewerts, but likely my belief in throjebi will equally influence where I place my vote and I may therefore vote for a drubblewert heretic or unbeliever.
But belief or otherwise in AGW cuts across all areas of public policy. This is the difference, not the science behind it.
David Gould (Comment#34738) —
I got interested in this on reading a thread at Pielke Jr., where some prominent AGW Consensus bloggers were mocking him for agreeing with the hated McIntyre that Mike Mann had made some obvious errors.
The hated McIntyre and Pielke were right, the Consensus bloggers were wrong.
Eh, so what. Well, the “so what” is that not a single AGW Consensus scientist or blogger has stood up for Truth. “Yeah, in this case the hated McIntyre is right, Mann is wrong. The scientific method demands that errors be recognized and corrected. Now, this doesn’t mean that…”
The questions I would put to Mann are here. Every lukewarmer that I know of who has looked into the matter figures out the correct answers. Because they’re pretty obvious. AGW Consensus supporters? Not one.
Pre-determined policy implications trump.
The AGW Consensus as currently constituted is willing to accept the form of the scientific method without its substance.
AMac,
And how does this compare with other areas of science?
And the LOL from Ant today is.
I mean, my observation of science (and academia generally) is that it is nasty and brutal, and sometimes short. Sides form. Personality clashes disrupt the discourse for decades, and indeed can become institutionalised. (Read a history of the break between philosophy and science that started at Cambridge in the 60s and spread across the world and in places continues to this day – this started with a clash between just a few people …).
And yet … science works.
AMac,
And my personal immediate response to your questions would be:
1.) Don’t know.
2.) No.
If you could point me to where there is further information on the first, that would be good.
David Gould (Comment#34748)
> And how does this compare with other areas of science?
It’s exceptional, in my opinion. Can you cite another instance where a top-of-his-field physical science researcher gets a universal “pass” for obvious errors in a top-impact peer-reviewed journal, in the present or recent past?
(Per the discussion of the Curry essay, the comparison should be “another science whose practitioners claim that they should guide public policy, on the strength of the trust the public should have in their expertise.”)
David Gould (Comment#34752)
Re: post-1720 contamination of the Tiljander series, see Comment 23 of the first Stoat thread. Tiljander (2003) flagged the issue. Mann (2008) discussed the potential problem, then proceeded to use the proxies anyway. Links to references are here.
AMac,
Not off hand, no. And I would not necessarily agree with you on ‘obvious errors’ – I do not know, so they are not obvious to me, for example. And likewise for other sciences. I would not necessarily be able to determine whether or not an error is obvious, or even an error.
I actually think that this adds weight to my previous comments. Climate science is under the microscope. Under the microscope, things are being detected. But other areas of science are not under this microscope. It is my contention that if other areas of science were placed under this microscope, exactly the same things would be observed.
AMac,
I am willing to trust that you are correct, and that they can be calibrated. (I do not have the interest in this specific issue to spend time on it at the moment – I may do so later.)
My experience with academia is that these things happen all the time. It is just a function of the fact that these activities are performed by humans.
AMac,
And re your caveat re another science, I do not think that there is any science that can directly compare with climate science re public policy. This is the point that I am making: the difference is not in the science, not in the conduct, not in the personalities. It is in the public policy arena.
David Gould (Comment#34761) —
Just to be clear, My linked Question 1 asks whether the four Tiljander proxies can be calibrated to the 1850-1995 instrumental temperature record. This step is essential for the procedures used in Mann et al (2008). Mann’s claim is, “Yes, of course.” The correct answer is, “No.”
Question 2 asked whether Mann et al oriented two of the proxies according to the assignments of “warmer” and “colder” made by Tiljander (2003). To do otherwise is to invert the proxies such that Mann is rejecting Tiljander’s interpretations. Mann’s claim is, “Yes, the proxies are correctly oriented.” The correct answer is, “No, they are oriented upside-down with respect to Tiljander’s interpretations.”
AMac,
Then I am willing to trust you that they cannot. 🙂
David Gould (Comment#34763)
> I do not think that there is any science that can directly compare with climate science re public policy.
Examples are everywhere. Medical studies that are submitted to the FDA for drug and device registrations. Science/engineering studies on new-model aircraft. Science/engineering studies on nuclear reactor design, safety systems, Yucca Mountain’s feasibility as a waste repository. Science studies submitted to USDA on pesticide registration. And on and on.
The line of reasoning seems to be, “CAGW is such an important issue that underlying science studies should be subjected to less scrutiny than is acceptable in these other instances.
That’s a very curious argument.
David Gould (Comment#34765)
> Then I am willing to trust you that they cannot.
That’s a first! On that heartening note, I’ll sign off.
AMac,
No, that is not my argument. My argument is that climate science is operating in exactly the same way as other sciences. It is simply under more scrutiny, so people are finding out how science works in the real world.
As to medical studies, there have been many crap studies that got all the way through FDA approval. Vioxx is an example. In fact, the pharmaceutical area is probably a bad example: I would suggest that the science is probably less good in this area than in climate science.
The folks on both extremes rejected Judy’s piece, and folks in the middle liked it. I’d say that’s a testament to a good argument.
Zeke,
Depending on how you define ‘extreme’, I might be considered extreme. I found the piece interesting. Did not agree with all of it, but agreed with the main thrust of it.
And it is not necessarily a testament to a good argument that those in the middle are the only ones agreeing with it.
lucia (Comment#34716) February 24th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
CRU then. You read Anthony’s blog.
Now this
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/sen._inhofe_inquisition_seeking_to_criminalize_climate_scientists/
One indicia of an argument that is over polarized and in serious danger of being disconnected from reality is the lack of willingness on the part of extremists to admit mistakes that make no difference, and the lack of willingness to correct small errors and attribute anything of value to their opponents. This is just an observation about the character of discussions and not the truth of the matter under dispute. The other attribute is that people become identified with their cause. Any admission is seen as betrayal. It’s as if Gore stands for AGW and is identified with it. Any addmission of an error on his part, is weirdly seen as “falsifying” AGW.
Mann made mistakes and GHGs warm the planet.
Spencer made mistakes and GHGs warm the planet.
The nice thing about being in the middle is I get to say
reasonable things.
Mosher
“The nice thing about being in the middle is I get to say
reasonable things.”
Ha ha! yes, nice things like “Lambert is a tool”.
How about “Piltdown Mann”?
Not being in the middle, everything I say is of necessity unreasonable. However, while you may indeed get to say reasonable things, Steven, sometimes I – unreasonably, of course – feel that some of the things you say are unreasonable.
I think that things might progress better if people were not so willing to declare themselves reasonable and others not …
Just an unreasonable opinion, though.
I think this is the best line in Judith Curry’s essay. I think it sums everything up nicely:
“Debating science with skeptics should be the spice of academic life, but many climate researchers lost this somehow by mistakenly thinking that skeptical arguments would diminish the public trust in the message coming from the climate research establishment. ”
yes, so start producing some science. Lucia, where’s your science? Where’s the Lukewarming science to be debated? Let’s stop debating about stupid things like what the specfic context of an email is and actually prodcue some genuine attempt at science. Lucia, maybe you could actually publish you refutation or falsification of the IPCC projections. Get that out there into the science community and have the debate.
david gould:
“We can put in place systems where experts check the work of other experts. And those of us who are interested can work to become experts in particular areas so as to create our own work and check the work of others.”
I know you think we have this in place, but you are mistaken.
1. The mails show that osborn and briffa were trying to check mann’s work. Osborn did not believe mann’s work because mann was arguing that the error of proxies was less than the instrument error. Osborn could not replicate Mann’s work because he didnt have residuals from mann. This was the exact complaint that McIntyre had. Jones likewise in a mail to Mann says he will not share code with mcintyre
1. because he may not be able to find it
2. the code is not documented
and he tells man that he knows WHY McIntyre cannot replicate the work. There is a missing step not described in the paper.
Its clear that we can find examples IN THE SPECIFIC CASES mentioned in the mails of where the system does not work.
Now, You are left with these arguments:
1. these are isolated and dont matter
2. McIntyre is not an expert.
3. I’ve got the facts wrong.
WRT 1. This argument is besides the point. We dont allow car
manufactures to get away with shoddy products and processes.
WRT 2: You could argue that Jones didnt release to McIntyre
because Mc wasnt an expert. You should see the problems
with this.
WRT 3: go ahead show this
The requirement of providing a turnkey replication package for publication ( reproducable results ) is driven by a few things
1. The revier should be able to test that the data and methods cited ACTUALLY produce the figures displayed.
2. Whoever consume the science should IN PRINCIPLE be able
to reproduce the results without having to submit his credentials
3. It has been empricially shown that RESEARCHERS cannot reproduce their own results.
Simply, you argue that we have such a system of experts checking experts. That’s a nice theory. factually we know that
researchers are often unable to reproduce their OWN results.
hmm see if you can find the example of this in the mails.
Finally, for people who think we have such a system in place, there should be no harm in requiring what is already a reality in your view.
Steven Mosher
Wow, what happened to being able to say reasonable things?
Sounds like someone is having a bit of a dummy spit…
“2. Whoever consume the science should IN PRINCIPLE be able
to reproduce the results without having to submit his credentials”
What does this even mean? You want scientists to create a kind of shake and bake pancake mix?
Go back to Judith Curry’s essay Mosher. You need to be able to debate the science. NOT get a sort of shake and bake pancake version. Have you ever tried to debate the science with a scientist?
If McIntyre had any genuine complaint with the science he’d publish. And he did. Made a big impact too. Certainly every scientist involved in paleocliamate reconstructions stood up and took notice and then recreated their reconstructions and… Well not much changed did it? Why would they acknowledge they were wrong when… Basically they weren’t.
Steven,
I do not argue that there is harm in requiring such a system. I am happy with everything being released.
However, my point is that the problems you describe occur in other sciences. And yet, somehow, those sciences do indeed produce results. Science works. It is imperfect, but it works.
The reason that you and I know of the problems in climate science is because of the intense scrutiny. But climate science is no worse than other sciences – or academia generally – in this regard.
What I am saying is that these problems are no reason to doubt climate science any more than any of the other sciences.
And examples of individual events do not show that the system does not work, when the system is known to be imperfect and full of, you know, people.
Lucia, I think you’ve missed the point.
The primary problem is not poor archiving or being a bit disorganised with paperwork. This is just the excuse (“the Jones defence”).
The primary problem is the intrinsic bias of many of the people involved – clearly exposed in the climategate emails although it was pretty clear before. Poor record keeping is a secondary symptom.
David Gould and Amac,
Thank you for your exchanges above, I think they make a useful contribution.
Could I suggest however that your references to the ‘sciences’ should perhaps be references to ‘academia’ or ‘modern academia’?
Re PaulM (Comment#34796)
You have hit at least one of the nails squarely on the head; the problem is that from its inception, climate science has attracted “environmental warrior” types. Not only have they come to the subject with an inbuilt bias, in many cases they are also mediocre scientists. Not surprising, really, given that one of the key requirements for a good scientist is an open mind.
This is further compounded, in the case of a number of those whose sins have been revealed in the Climategate emails, by a highly inflated estimate of their own skills – to the extent, in one notorious example, of claiming higher knowledge of statistics than the statisticians!
Hubris, selection bias and groupthink are a poisonous mixture at any time.
This all reminds me of that movie where Jodie Foster gets gang-raped and people say it’s her own fault because she was asking for it.
.
I believe it’s true there is a huge asymmetry in accountability, and this simply has to change. People like Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre have a huge responsibility, now more so than ever as their tactic of undermining public trust in climate science (Jodie Foster) has been so successful. But if AGW turns out to be more serious than lukewarmers believe it will be, it will probably be spinned in such a way that the public will blame (and lynch) climate scientists.
David Gould —
I appreciate your reasonable tone, and your willingness to discuss matters on the basis that (1) there could be issues worth debating, and (2) that valid arguments must be consistent with the relevant facts, and logical. Further, (3) that if an argument is seen to fail to account for relevant facts or is understood to be illogical, it must be amended or abandoned.
With respect to paleoclimate reconstructions, you are displaying a flexibility and open-mindedness that is exceptional, for a person whose broader perspective on climate generally aligns with the IPCC (i.e. with the conclusions of Working Group 1).
I cannot cite a second such instance, with the exception of Kaufman’s and McKay’s views as expressed in the ClimateGate emails. But their opinions were private and have not been repeated for the public.
In looking at a broad question, one can evaluate on a top-down basis. As a summary statement, “Science works. It is imperfect, but it works” is one that I generally agree with. It was my starting presumption, a few months ago that it was applicable in the particular case of Climate Science. Howver, such a statement is nearly unevaluable.
So I prefer to look from the bottom up. If I can follow the arguments in a particular case — often I can’t — that tells me something about the relative merits of the two (or more) sides. The behavior of the principals is also informative (e.g. whether they modify arguments shown to be illogical or at odds with facts; whether they hold their antagonists to higher standards than their allies).
The Tiljander proxy issue turns out to be informative in all these regards. The arguments and conduct of AGW Consensus scientists (you’re the sole exception) and their blogging proxies puts AGW Consensus science in an extremely bad light.
A defense you have asserted is that “science works that way.” If “that way” means “imperfectly” then you and I agree. All reasonable and knowledgable people agree, so that’s not the issue. I’ll refer back to my Comment#34756,
The Vioxx scandal is not responsive, unless you can show equivalence — top of the field / universal pass / obvious errors /top-impact peer-reviewed journal.
I’ll stipulate that there are examples out there. But when we find them, it’ll turn out that they are other instances of notorious failures of Science. That does not support “Trust The Climate Scientists.” At least to me.
See Mosher’s observation in Comment#34782.
The torturing of the Tiljander proxies is just the tip of the melting iceberg when it comes to problems with Mann et al (PNAS, 2008). I’ve never gotten past these particulars in a discussion with an AGW Consensus adherent, though. Which is a bug or feature, depending on one’s point of view.
My working conclusion is that Consensus methods in this area are so fraught with error that paleoclimate reconstructions shouldn’t be accorded any more weight than astrology, right now. Hopefully that will change for the better, at some point.
Neven (Comment#34807), what sort of response would that comment merit. Suppose one of your adversaries presented you with an argument like this, what would you say. This is noise not signal.
There is an easy solution. Establish a Secretariat of Science, and people it with clones of Steve McIntyre. Give it utter authority over Truth. Then stand back and admire the Circumlocution.
==================================
[quote David Gould (Comment#34793) February 25th, 2010 at 2:38 am]
What I am saying is that these problems are no reason to doubt climate science any more than any of the other sciences.
[/quote]
.
Or you could say that climate science has shown us that the public’s blind trust in science is misplaced.
.
Because, as you say, this is what passes for science these days.
Dr. Curry seems somewhat oblivious to the transgressions of skeptics. Maybe it’s off her topic, but I think Santer’s post at RC shows how skeptics have been attacking scientists for years–and how the effort has been organized. It’s easy to understand how a bunker mentality was created.
I don’t disagree with the openness and scientists should definitely err on the side of too much openness. This isn’t going to stop the skeptic’s dishonesty, but it will take away a talking point.
The public will come around once again–all it will take is a heat wave on the east coast really.
“Suppose one of your adversaries presented you with an argument like this, what would you say.”
I’d be very happy to be wrong about AGW.
If I’d have a blog that is all about enhancing doubt and undermining public trust in the experts, and AGW turns out to be a serious problem I would feel slightly uncomfortable, especially if that blog would attract 2 million visitors a month.
I wonder how Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts would answer the ‘what if I’m wrong question’. They are skeptics after all, aren’t they? And I believe real skeptics doubt themselves at all times. I hope they realize that by the time they are convinced AGW poses real problems, it will be too late to do something about it.
“The torturing of the Tiljander proxies is just the tip of the melting iceberg when it comes to problems with Mann et al (PNAS, 2008).”
If this is true, I expect to see quality work in rebuttal of Mann 2008. Skeptics have been getting coddled while producing slipshod work. McIntyre’s response to Mann 2008 in PNAS was weak. He went with the colloquial “upside-down” language in regards to Tiljander, which doesn’t get to the heart of the disagreement (and it is a disagreement over the Tiljander proxy: Mann is not “wrong” anymore than you are). In addition he cited a bizarre article from a newsletter that actually seems to support Mann 2008 NOT being a statistical result from the methods.
Skeptics have the momentum at the moment, so now would be the time for a rigorous paper. Poking holes and complaints about “upside down” proxies are just noise aimed at getting attention. You have attention now, so it’s put up or shut up time.
Re: PaulM (Feb 25 04:18),
I agree there may be intrinsic bias. But how do you create formal procedures to avoid that? The best I can think of is to make the work transparent. When choices are visible to outsider, they can be questioned. Those who question and listen to answers can decide whether the results presented seemed biased.
Neven (Feb 25 05:39),
Get a grip. Climate science was not gang raped. Want a better metaphor? A few got their hands slapped for not admitting they broke the cookie jar. Go ahead and complain that corporal punishment is wrong, and that punishment should be limited to a time out. Then go ahead and escalate to claim that if the punishment for the crime was too harsh, then that magically becomes blaming the victim. But gang raped? All of climate science?
Climate science is still funded. Climate scientists still have their jobs. Some met scientists still flew to a vacation destinations in Turkey for a meeting to discuss getting more work because the previous work has been deemed screwed up by the particular climate scientists who did that work.
Neither bugs “crucified” nor your “gang raped” metaphors make any sense when applied to climate scientists as a whole or even any individual climate scientist.
I agree with Lucia, no gang rape (seriously that metaphor is a little offensive to me, but whatever..).
I’d say it’s more like the little brother/big brother issue. Little brother is poking and kicking and wiping boogers on big brother and then big brother gives him a pop right in the arm. Little brother whines and cries and, of course, mom turns around and punishes big brother. Mom isn’t interested in all the crap little brother did to me–um, big brother, and so big brother gets grounded and can’t go to the dance with the pretty girl. Man is big brother pissed. He’s really like to give little bro a purple nurple (and he sorta deserves it–how am I going to get these boogers off my jeans?) So it’s time for big brother to grow up and just point out all the stuff that the little guy’s been doing and hope that mom listens. But we know who mom likes. But now we know the way the world works, and it’s cool. After all, the pretty girl still wants to go to the dance with ME, it’s not like little bro has a chance with her.
Big bro can’t expect little bro to grow up, but he can’t afford getting in trouble with mom again. So, big bro is going to watch himself very carefully and even pretend to like little bro a little. He’ll tussle his hair now and then in front of mom even though he knows that the little shit is just planning something. You can see it in his eyes.
[quote lucia (Comment#34818) February 25th, 2010 at 7:44 am]
But gang raped? All of climate science?
[/quote]
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It seems the AGW crowd can’t even speak without using insane amounts of hyperbole.
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And they wonder why they have no credibility in the eyes of the public.
Boris (Comment#34816) —
> If this is true,
This is a technically-oriented website. If you comment on technical threads, that implies that you believe you are qualified to comment on technical threads. In other words, that you can work with concepts such as data, hypotheses, falsifiability, logic, arithmetic, consistency, statistics, the scientific method, the meaning of peer review and publication.
> rebuttal of Mann 2008 … producing slipshod work.
Please follow these links. Here is my concise summary of the background, followed by a concise statement of the first two questions about Mann/Tiljander. Because no advocate of the AGW Consensus has ever rebutted my contentions on these points (*) or conceded them (**), I focus only on them. Mann et al (2008) has other severe unacknowledged errors, but there is no profit in discussing a number sentence involving multiplication when we can’t first agree that 2+2=4.
The argument that the four Tiljander proxies are uncalibratable is made in this digest of the first Stoat thread devoted to the subject. See Comment 23. So is the argument that at least two of the four are upside-down. The poverty of the AGW Consensus counter-arguments are on display there, as well.
The following two Stoat threads are similarly informative, but harder to follow due to William Connolley’s aggressive moderation of skeptical comments. Because of that, I took to cross-posting the unsnipped, uninterrupted versions of my comments at Climate Audit. If warranted, I can reassemble those threads as digests, as well.
The relevant references to the peer-reviewed literature, archived data, and figures are here.
A decently complete record of blog posts on the matter is here. There is no link to a plausible defense of Mann’s position, because I have yet to encounter one. (Leave URLs to candidates in the comments there, and I’ll add them to the list.)
> In addition he cited a bizarre article from a newsletter
Add a URL or citation directing me to what you are describing, and I’ll add that to the appropriate list.
> just noise aimed at getting attention
You are ascribing motive to my actions. Support your claim.
> it’s put up or shut up time
Boris, I’m offering you a guest post on my blog to address whatever points you wish to bring up re: Mann et al (2008) (***). I won’t edit it, except to offer copy editing and html formatting assistance, if you wish, subject to your approval. I would likely offer commentary as a separate post. Or, you could sign up for your own Blogspot blog (as I did) and post your essay there. I’ll link it.
– – – – – – – – – –
(*) They aren’t “my” arguments but those made by McIntyre and McKitrick. They have been expanded upon by Jeff Id at the Air Vent.
(**) With the novel exception of David Gould, supra, who hasn’t worked through the problem himself, but “takes my word for it.”
(***) IIRC, Jeff Id has made similar guest-post offers at his high-traffic skeptical blog. If you and he agree to a guest post there, I will link to it.
Thanks for the offer AMac. I’ll seriously consider it, but it’s unlikely I’ll have time anytime soon to devote to it.
I really have no problem with the discussion on blogs, but why wouldn’t people try to get a paper together and correct Mann in the record? Maybe that is your intent already, but it would be my suggestion.
I’m running my own business and usually more orientated to marketing and production than to accounting. That however does not relieve me of my duty as an owner of being responsible for maintaining the ISO 9001 quality management system otherwise I cannot sell my products. I deliberately hire an external ISO auditor in order to be sure that my ISO QMS is controlled by an unbiased person. I don’t see the yearly ISO audit as an alibi or as a burden, but as an integral part of the company that can improve the quality of our products.
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Also as owner I’m responsible for the yearly account of my company to the other shareholders, where external accountants control the books and give their approval so that both the shareholders and government are sure that the figures are right.
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Therefore as a layman I cannot believe my ears that heavily tax funded climate scientists and their instutes can declare that they either cannot organize or submit their data, or worse, have lost or deleted the data.
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This is clearly against all normal company rules and I sincerely wonder how they can get away with this?
Its the duty of the Management of the climate science insitutes to secure, organize and backup ALL data in order to be controlled by external bodies. After all we’re talking MILLIUNS of taxpayers money, aren’t we?
“Get a grip. Climate science was not gang raped. Want a better metaphor? A few got their hands slapped for not admitting they broke the cookie jar.”
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That’s not a better metaphor. This isn’t about hands getting slapped, this is about undermining the public’s trust in science.
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My metaphor again:
1.
a) Of course Jodie Foster was drunk and acted in a provocative way.
b) Of course some climate scientists developed a bunker mentality and didn’t dish out their data to people who accused them of fraud.
2.
a) Jodie Foster gets raped.
b) Public trust in climate science gets undermined.
3.
a) The guys who were actively involved in the rape say it’s Foster own fault and their lawyer swings as much mud he can.
b) The guys who were actively involved in undermining public trust in climate science say it’s the scientists’ own fault and right-wing press and politicians grab and keep hold of media attention spreading a lot of distortion and disinformation.
4.
a) Jodie Foster needs a lot of time to recover and clear her name.
b) Action to mitigate and adapt to the consequences of AGW is delayed by several years.
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Jodie Foster = climate science
raping = undermining public trust
claiming not to have any responsibility = claiming not to have any responsibility
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Let me guess, the next step in the word-game will probably be: When did McIntyre or Watts ever claim they didn’t have any responsibility for the loss of the public’s trust in climate science?
Boris (Comment#34822) —
> why wouldn’t people try to get a paper together and correct Mann in the record?
I am guessing that you haven’t been a lead author of a peer-reviewed article, and are unaware of the nature of the task you propose, for a person without accredited professional standing in the field, in detail.
I am also guessing that you are unaware of the lengths that the hated McIntyre and McKitrick had to go to, to get their Comment in PNAS. It was too short and vague in places because of the mandates of the editors. Perhaps you disbelieve their account.
> Maybe that is your intent already, but it would be my suggestion.
Thanks, but no. I’ve assembled a compilation of the evidence, and arguments, for anyone who cares to look. It might, however, be a worthwhile project for an AGW Consensus paleoclimatologist who wishes to take an important but painful step towards restoring public trust in his/her subspecialty.
Forget what I said, I know I shouldn’t write when being in a bad mood. At least I managed to draw an analogy with a rape-movie and not the Third Reich. 😉
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It’s just that I can’t help thinking ‘what if AGW turns out to be a big problem after all’ when reading up on the climate PR-war.
Boris,
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What would be the point? SteveMc has already submitted a comment to PNAS explaining the issues. Mann’s response was to insult and deny. People who care about the science will read SteveMc comment and discount the Mann paper but that will not stop the Team, the IPCC and any other CAGW propogandist from reporting the paper as if it had merit.
Lucia,
You pretty much nailed it. But it’s obvious what the problem is. The problem is the reliance on academic research, supported by the belief that academic research can be “trusted”. Now we all realize that academic research is performed without any sort of standards or accountability, except for the informal process of “peer review”, a process that is completely vulnerable to manipulation.
Furthermore, the main goal of academic researchers is NOT to produce good, quality scientific results. Their main goal is to publish papers, in order to get grants.
Anyone who has done both academic research and industrial research (like I did) will understand this readily. If you work in industry and have to develop a product that actually works, academic research is just hopeless. You might find useful clues in journal papers, but normally you have to do the work all over again to make sure what’s in there is actually true. “Peer review” is just not good enough.
Just one example from my personal life. There are probably hundreds of academic scientists across the world that work on high bandwidth, long distance fiber optic systems. End of the 90’s, I became part of a company that was actually developing, selling, and installing such a system. What we had then was the best system in the world, in terms of performance. How did we achieve that? We could have done it “climate science” way: form an international group of academic scientists, and ask them to produce a report based on all peer reviewed science, and based on their conclusions, build the system. Would that have worked? Well, good luck if you think it would.
Instead, our CEO hired six of the best fiber optics scientists in the world, only six, with a great team of supporting engineers and technicians, and plenty of money to buy the best equipment. Within about a year and a half, we had resolved all the main issues and built the best system in the world, with performance better than anything published in scientific journals of the time. None of that was ever published, nor was it ever the point. But you bet it was fully documented.
So the work of six scientist actually beat that of hundreds of academic scientists.
Could that work for climate science? Absolutely. The fallacy here is to believe that we NEED hundreds of climate scientists in all sorts of sub-fields to get the answer we need. Not true. But the reason we are made to believe that is that those academic scientists tell us so. And they tell us so because they see in AGW a great occasion to get more funding.
But when you look at it from the point of view of, say, a V.P. of R&D, you can simplify the problem, and focus on a couple of main issues that need to be resolved. You then go out and hire the best scientists, give them full support, make sure the work is fully documented. And do NOT ask them to publish. Do, however, pay them handsomely, and free them from the burden of asking for grants all the time, and relying on those grants for their professional future.
The main issue is, of course, what is the climate sensitivity to CO2 and other GHG’s. Do you need the hundreds or thousands of IPCC scientists to get that? No. You just need to go out there and measure the damn water feedback parameter. Not plug a number in models, just figure out how to measure it, with actual observations. Maybe it will take ten years. But you will get the actual real answer.
You can leave all the rest to academic scientists. Paleo-climate reconstruction? Who needs that? It has just been used to make a point: that today’s climate is warmer than at any other time in the history of the Universe, or maybe even parallel universes and what else. But who cares? I don’t want to know if it was warmer or colder in the past. I just want to know how warm it’s going to get if we keep spitting out CO2 for the next hundred years.
Just forget academia. It’s good for training scientists. But you don’t actually get “good” science out of it. By “good”, I mean actually usable in the real world. You might get good ideas and all, you have a lot of really creative people out there, and that’s OK. But the academic system is not MEANT to produce useful results.
What Judith Curry really wants is to perpetuate the fallacy that academic research can provide our governments with the answers that can guide policy. She does that because she is herself part of the system. Maybe she is sincere. But she is naive and ignorant about the real world, ie. the world outside the ivory tower of academia.
What the Climategate has revealed is not that a few scientists got carried away and acted badly. What it has revealed is what everybody who has worked in academia knows: you can pretty easily do what you want with the publication system once you reach a certain level (editor, reviewer). Nobody’s there to watch you. If you think you can “trust” scientists, forget it. They are just human beings, and without strict rules, they will act selfishly. Can the academic peer-review system be improved? Sure, a little bit, but not much. Not enough. It’s simply unmanageable. There are hundreds of journals, and new ones every day. There are thousands of academic research groups scattered around the world. No way you can manage that. It’s just a big playground full of spoiled kids. Are blogs any better? Come on, be serious!
And there is no such thing as “public trust in science”. The public doesn’t “trust” scientists. They just don’t care. They don’t even know how it works, and they don’t realize how much of their money goes to support a mass of mostly average scientists who all want to work on their pet projects. The public likes a good story, and AGW is one. AGW skepticism is also a good story. You chose the one you want to believe, but what do you know?
Did the public have to trust academic scientists to get the fiber optic infrastructure that we have now? Nope. It just needed to let scientists and engineers to their work and build something that actually works. And believe me, it was not the work of academic scientists.
Neven (Comment#34827)
> Forget what I said
Thanks, appreciated.
> I can’t help thinking ‘what if AGW turns out to be a big problem after all’
Me, too.
The Scientific Method is the main approach our culture has chosen to assess such issues…
I think “Climatologist” should not even be a title.
Seems like it is an “industry” term or something. The climate should not be an industry.
Just get Math (algebra, trigonometry, calculus)
• Physics • Meteorology • Statistics
• Computer modeling • Geography
experts and put them to work together.
This is from:
“Related Job Titles:
Climate Officer, Climate Forecaster, Climatology Researcher, Climatological Modeling Specialist, Atmospheric Scientist, Earth Systems Scientist”
From NASA web site: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/people/cfs/generic/climatologist_143.pdf
I would add a Geologist to that list too.
Lumping all that knowledge into one job/person title seems over the top to me.
the analogy was fine, even though i would avoid a comparison with rape normally.
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“sceptics” are simply trying to get scientists fired from their job. by using stolen mail, for example.
scientists receive hate mail. careers get damaged, because people might have been involved in a paper which is attacked for political purpose and without real reason.
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here is the Hadcrut data for the last 30 years. the review will not change the trend line in any relevant way.
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http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:360/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:360/trend
McIntyre has gotten a paper published before. McKitcrick has some too. There are many skeptical scientists with whom to collaborate, not to mention Tiljander, who presumably would want the record corrected.
Given the lengths they went to, they completely blew their opportunity. They cited gray literature (like the IPCC did :))–and the gray literature didn’t even support their point (unless the term “hockey stick” now means a reconstruction with a pronounced MWP and LIA and that looks little like Mann’s.) Maybe there wasn’t enough space, but stressing “upside down” instead of saying the relationship between varve and temps that Mann used violated the known physical properties of varve proxies cannot be blamed on space.
Well, given that it doesn’t appear your criticisms significantly affect the results, you’d probably have a tough time getting it published anyway. The bulk of your contentions appear to be aimed at making Michael Mann out to be arrogant or unwilling to recognize his own mistakes, which I’m sure is interesting on some meta level, but I’m not really interested in defending or calling out Mann. I’m much more interested in whether or not the reconstruction is useful, and even stipulating that Tiljander is used in an unphysical way, it appears that it is.
Boris (Comment#34839) —
This’ll likely be my closing comment. Final word to you. Let me know if you decide to write that guest blog post.
I asked her for comment but she declined to respond. I won’t attempt to read her mind as to why.
I think that characterization is unwarranted, readers can follow links and draw their own conclusions.
Again–specify your complaint, give a link; if there’s a relevant point then I’ll add it to a reference post.
The proxies were upside down. The words may offend you, but it’s true. If you want to contest that, show your work, here or as the aforementioned guest post.
That’s a step up to a “multiplication” argument when we still haven’t resolved the “does 2+2=4?” one. “‘No correction needed’ should be scorned as sloppy thinking and bad science. ‘Correction required!’ is a much better slogan.”
My web pages don’t get many hits, but I hope that a significant proportion of visitors use the arguments and links to inform their own thinking as to the bad behavior and poor reasoning of Prof. Mann and his defenders.
Hoi Polloi (Comment#34823)
Very good point Hoi Polloi,
For those of us who have worked under more rigorous programs and in industry, the climate science process seems so amateurish. Since climate change science feeds major proposed actions by governments, it can’t be just the scientific peer review process anymore.
AMac:
Another way of putting it, experimental science isn’t just about acquiring a numerical value. It’s about acquiring a number plus an uncertainty. You don’t want to have uncontrolled-for errors in your methodology because sloppy work leads to unquantifiable uncertainties in the outcome.
Just because after the fact flipping the proxy didn’t noticeably affect the outcome, doesn’t mean it was an acceptable practice.
Because all experimental numbers have fuzz (uncertainty) associated with them, you can make use of the presence of this fuzz in your experimental design. For example, in the measurement of a physical constant (e.g., Newton’s constant of gravity G), you can generate a list of systematic effects, make estimates of the effect of each of these on your final measured value, then correct for only those that are significant compared to the accuracy goal of your experiment.
I call this “error budgeting”.
Likewise, if you are trying to construct the the global mean surface temperature of the Earth over time from a sparse series of measurements, you can look at effects like UHI and use an algorithm that probabilistically improves the ensemble average. [What I mean by “probabilistic is some adjustments may go “the wrong way”, but when you evaluate the net effect of all of the UHI corrections, you yield a net improvement in accuracy.]
But what you certainly don’t want is a UHI algorithm that sometimes has the wrong sign for the correction but you haven’t ever evaluated what the effect of that error is on the global mean value. Same notion applies to having an algorithm that sometimes flips proxies. It can be controlled for, and it needs to be controlled for.
Re: Francois Ouellette
I think you nailed it.
Think of “The Human Genome Project” compared to J. Craig Vetner
“Climate science was gang raped.”
On the contrary, looking back (AGW) climate science, and especially IPCC, prostituted themselves to politics.
Nathan (Comment#34783) February 25th, 2010 at 2:03 am
Thanks for falling into the trap. I should actually send a note
to lucia and say.. “psst.. watch these knee jerks, they will
say “piltdown mann” and be my tool”
“I get to say reasonable things” does not == ” everything I say is reasonable.” In fact sometimes I get to test what is reasonable and what is not by saying things that border on the unreasonable and then listening to people and changing my mind. So, with Lambert, I said he was a tool. I looked at the first thing he said about climategate. people took issue with it, I got to say I was wrong about that. Another benefit of being in the middle. I get to say I’m wrong. In fact, I get to argue with other people in the
middle without impugning their motives. Lucia and I disagree about some aspects of releasing code.
WRT piltdown mann.
1. It’s an analogy.
2. I explained in the thread EXACTLY what I meant by using
the analogy. I accuse mann of willful ignorance, not
fraud or hoax. I explain how ( more to come on this)
these types of incidents happen. WOO HOO, thanks
for reminding me I have to finish that article, I’ll thank you!
3. I love the fact that people bring it up again and again
and again. they perpetuate the meme. this has been
a running joke of mine and it really pleases me that
you, like dhog and others, cannot resist the temptation
to REPEAT THE MEME. It’s so funny that now people have finally clued in and don’t allow posts that remind people
of this.
Francois Ouellette,
Well said, right on the money.
Amac.
On the bottoms up approach. I found that worked quite well, except neither of the extremes is satisfied by a clear attention to the facts. your work on Tiljander was a superb example of a methodical, measured, focused examination of the issue.
What you will find is that people will resist following you into the facts. Its like they know a clear assessment of the facts will put them in a situation where they might have to change their minds.
The other thing I find interesting is this. people defend Jones’ actions towards Mcintyre in April of 2005 and to do this they
attribute all sorts of things to Jones. They will say things like
Jones was justified in 2005 because of all the FOIA. there were none until 2007. They will say that jones was justified because
McIntyre was an industry stooge. A) was he? B) did Jones believe he was? C. what was jones actual belief about mcintyre D. Why did Jones believe this, on what evidence?
Nobody on either extreme wants to attend to an actual case and render a judgment that is based in fact. Everyone has a pet theory or pet metaphor that WONT STAND UP in the face of facts.
I find it ironic that both extremes blather on about the scintific method, and confirmation bias, and motive hunting blah blah blah, and none of them can take a simple case and stick to the facts.
Like I always say: It’s okay to be childish, as long as you’re having fun! Go, Mosh!
AMac,
Re vioxx, it was given a pass through many publications by many in the industry. When it started to unravel – after years of having gained approval, a second look showed that it was indeed obvious that these studies were crap. Some of them *had not even been really done but just used invented data*. A guy has just been sentenced to a couple of years jail for this, and there is likely more to come. Many journals. Many studies. FDA approval. And yet obviously complete crap.
This was indeed a failure of science (although a longer term success). But does it mean that all of pharmaceutical science fails? Of course not.
And that is my point. People getting territorial and defending a bad study – even a whole scientific field doing so – is not evidence that the whole of that scientific field is crap. It is simply people being people. It does not change the fact that we have large amounts of evidence that the world is warming, that this warming is caused by increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, that this increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is coming from us and that this warming is going to cause bad things to happen (and, I would argue, is already causing bad things to happen.)
This is why what has happened – the loss of public trust – is *not* a failure of science. These kinds of things are *part* of science. As someone noted above, if there was massive scrutiny of other sciences, the public would indeed lose some trust in science. This loss of trust would be unjustified (much like the unjustified belief, held by many, many people, that crime has dramatically increased in recent years – this belief is held because the media love to report crime stories). But it would occur.
Science has not recently become like this. Science was always like this. Read about how Newton behaved. Read about the maths ‘duels’ in Italy in the 1600s, were mathematicians deliberately set out to destroy the careers of others because they disagreed on how to solve cubic equations.
If we look closely at any endeavour carried out by people, we will be shocked and alarmed.
As to me taking your word on the Tiljander thing, I do not think that that is all that special. I think that it is quite probable that the MWP was warmer than today – I accept Huang’s borehole study, or it might have been Huang and Pollack, that the MWP was between .1 and .5 degrees (95 per cent confidence interval) warmer than the temperature in 1990. This does not alter my conclusions about current warming. Neither does me accepting that Mann made mistakes and climatologists closed ranks on the issue.
David Gould,
I understand your general point.
> a second look showed that it was indeed obvious that these studies were crap.
[sic].
To show equivalence with Mann et al (2008), show me the prominent evidence that would have told me, an outsider, that these studies were crap. On first look.
> People getting territorial and defending a bad study – even a whole scientific field doing so – is not evidence that the whole of that scientific field is crap.
Yes, it is evidence of that. It’s not proof but it is evidence.
> It is simply people being people.
People are people are people? Google Peter Pronovost, the Johns Hopkins doctor who is doing so much to cut rates of hospital-acquired infections. Do you think he would agree that there’s no such thing as ‘better’ and ‘worse’ practices, or that they don’t amount to much?
> It does not change the fact that we have large amounts of evidence that…
Whatever goes on in Mann’s lab changes nothing as to [CO2] or the physics of temperature forcings.
That shouldn’t be conflated with what we think we know about the size of the forcing, and the associated uncertainties, the historical context, and the confidence that we should ascribe to experts’ conclusions. Those things are very much affected by how the experiments, data collection, modeling activities, coding, and so forth have been performed.
AMac,
Fair enough. I likely cannot do that. But at the very least you must concede that vioxx was a failure of science – it passed through many levels of scrutiny, got FDA approval, endangered lives and so on.
Of course there are worse and better practices. I do not argue that. I am simply saying that bad practices are *inevitable* in science, as in any human endeavour, no matter what safeguards or checks and balances we put in place. Is this good? No. Does it mean science is a waste of time? No.
Re the confidence we can place on the conclusions of climate, if your confidence has been significantly reduced by the Tiljander incident, I think that you are placing too much weight on it. However, there is, I think, not much that I can do to assuage your mind on this.
Personally, my trust in science has always been very high. Individual events – such as the cold fusion affair – have never altered that confidence. Science works. Climate science is not simply the sum of the poor reaction of climate scientists generally to one wrong paper.
AMac,
I would also suggest that one of the reasons it is difficult to find an example that equates to this is that there has not been a science that has undergone anywhere near the same scrutiny as climate science. One of the reasons for the bad reaction to Tiljander, imo, was that scrutiny. This is why I do not think that the loss of trust is a failure of science. It is simply an automatic consequence of intense scrutiny.
If we intensely scrutinsed practices in the medical profession, I doubt too many of us would feel comfortable about going into surgery. Yet the vast majority of people survive surgery and live better lives because of that surgery. Confidence and trust can be severely damaged by relatively few bad experiences. It is asymetric, something that I think should be always kept in mind. I always come back to our perceptions of crime.
David Gould,
.
Doctors can be sued for malpractice.
This gives them an incentive to follow processes to letter.
We can’t sue scientists.
Most of the time no one cares what scientists do because none of it affects the public.
This has created a culture of arrogance and sloppyness.
This has to change.
Raven,
It may well give doctors an incentive to follow processes to the the letter. The evidence is, however, that quite a few of them do not, and suffer no consequences because of it.
As to what scientists doing not affecting the public, it affects the public all the time. It is just that the public are so used to new technology and new methods that they do not even notice how science is helping them and improving their lives.
I do not think that there is a culture of arrogance and sloppiness. I think that there is arrogance and there is sloppiness. But the scientists that I speak to are amazingly helpful – they do not know me, and yet they respond quickly to my questions, provide me with useful information, tell me kindly where I am wrong (which is a much of the time!) and so on. I guess our general experiences have been very different.
What I think has to change is the connection between science and the general public. I do not know how this can be done, however. In fact, I would go so far as to say that from my perspective it appears irrevocably broken.
David Gould,
I have points of agreement with what you write, and points of disagreement. With you — as with Judith Curry — my sense is that you are a reasonable person, interested in using tools such as logical, fact-based argument to persuade others. And that you are, in turn, open to considering facts and arguments that might, if accepted, lead you to change your mind.
Given your stance as a scientist who accepts (most of) the AGW Consensus, these traits make you an unusual commenter on a “Lukewarmer” site such as this.
Your approach strikes me as “the road not taken” by your profession in dealing with skeptical parties.
That’s too bad, in my opinion. Perhaps that can slowly change for the better.
AMac,
I did not mean to misrepresent myself: I am not a scientist. I am a mathematics and teaching undergraduate and an editor for Hansard at the Australian parliament.
David Gould,
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Doctors might get sloppy. But the fact that they can be sued and even lose the privilege of working as a doctor means I trust them more than a scientist.
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As long as scientists are unaccountable they cannot be trusted and their work should not be used in a way that affects the public unless is it reviewed and verified by people or organizations who are accountable.
Raven,
I have to say that I trust doctors less than I trust scientists. Scientists are not ‘unaccountable’. The necessarily imperfect scientific process holds them to account.
As to work not being used in a way to affect the public, by what mechanism would you enforce this? As I have said previously, in Australia the parliament holds committee hearings into all sorts of public policy areas, and anyone can submit to those inquiries. How would you prevent a politician from taking on board something that person X said, talking to colleagues and convincing them of the need to take some action, and then gathering sufficient votes in the parliament to acheive that result?
It seems to me that what you are asking for is an impossibility.
In my opinion, people whose views are influenced by religion are bringing nonsensical things into public policy debates. But preventing them from doing so would not be a good thing for democracy.
And of course my own views are influenced by nonsensical things, too – different ones.
David Gould,
I am signing off, but thought I’d breeze through this thread and pick out some of the most insightful comments, that express points I largely agree with. Here they are.
stephen richards (Comment#34648)
magicjava (Comment#34672)
Bernie (Comment#34695)
steven mosher (Comment#34782)
Hoi Polloi (Comment#34823)
Carrick (Comment#34849)
Take these ideas, combine them with Curry’s and Lucia’s, and you’d go a pretty far distance along a Peter Pronovost type path towards improving the processes of climate science. My prediction is that, to the surprise of the AGW warriors, the quality of the science itself would also rise.
Re: Raven (Feb 25 17:39),
I can think of lots of bad things that being subject to malpractice suits does to the practice of medicine, but I have yet to see any evidence that it actually improves outcomes other than in theory. Substantially increased costs with nothing but theoretical benefits is not a good thing in my book.
David Gould,
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Politicians are free to argue for policy changes based on nothing other than what they feel is the ‘right’ thing to do. Other politicians are free to disagree. The politicians are held accountable by the public.
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However, the dynamics change if politicians try to evade accountability by delegating their decision making power to scientists. i.e. they insist that the claims of scientists must be accepted as gospel truth and any who disagree are flat earth creationists.
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If politicians give scientists that kind of decision making power then scientists need to be held accountable. If that is impractical then responsibility goes back to politicians which means the debate should depense with the notion that science has anything to do with the decisions made.
Raven,
If you mean that *you* will not trust them and not vote for or support in other ways public policy action based on what they say, that is a different matter, of course.
DeWitt Payne,
.
If there is no accountability there can be no trust.
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The US system of letting juries decided on such matters has created a monster but that is a problem with the US system rather than a problem with the concept of suing for malpractice.
Raven,
In no country that I know of have politicians delegated their decision-making power to scientists. Can you give me an example? There are many who insist that the claims of scientists are true. I am unclear how you would legislate to prevent politicians from making such claims or why it would be desirable to do so.
Raven,
I do not think that I am following you here.
In no country that I know of have politicians delegated their decision-making power to scientists. Can you give me an example? There are many who insist that the claims of scientists are true. There are those who insist that the Bible is true, and any who disagree are going to hell. There are also politicians who – gasp! – *do not tell the truth*. I am unclear how you would legislate to prevent politicians from making such claims or why it would be desirable to do so.
Further, by what mechanism would you prevent politicians from doing these things? In our political system, we have something called ‘parlimentary privilege’. This is a means by which politicians are allowed to say pretty much whatever they like when speaking in the chamber, without fear of legal action or any other negative consequence beyond the reaction of the public to what they say.
The system that I would want is one in which scientists are able to make whatever claims they wish to make, and that those claims are then debated on the evidence for and against them. And I think that this is what already happens (although imperfectly, of course, because people are people.)
David Gould,
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Politicians should be free to state their opinions. But it cuts both ways. The opinion of a politician that believes carbon control is necessary is worth no more than the opinion of a politician that disagrees. There is no problem as long as the media/pundits remember this. There is a big problem when people start insisting that a politican opinion is a scientific truth.
Raven,
By what mechanism are you going to enforce your rule that no-one is allowed to insist that their opinion is a scientific truth? Politicians can say whatever they like: including insisting that their opinion is a scientific truth. Indeed, with free speech, *anyone* can insist that a political opinion is a scientific truth.
Again, I do not quite know what you are arguing for here.
Are you saying that it should be illegal for anyone, politicians included, to make the claim that their opinion is a scientific truth? If not, what are you saying?
For example, if I say, ‘The earth moves around the sun. That is scientific fact,’ would a hypothetical person who at least claims to disbelieve this be able to have me charged with asserting political opinion as scientific fact?
And what about evolution? If a politician says, ‘Evolution is scientific fact,’ would they, under your system, face prosecution?
(To clarify: I do not think that you are arguing this. I just have no cluse what it is that you *are* arguing, other than that you personally don’t like it when people insist that their opinion is scientific fact.)
Re: David Gould (Feb 25 19:21),
I’m guessing a law like this would have serious first amendment problems in the US!
It comes down to understanding who is responsible for decisions. It is the politician’s job to make these decisions. Not scientists. People who say that science should drive policy don’t know what they are talking about. Politics drives policy.
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All I am really doing is trying to reframe the debate which has been usurped by people that seem to think science trumps values.
Raven,
I still do not know what you are arguing, other than that you do not like people claiming that their opinion is scientific fact.
There is no country that I am aware of in which scientists make the decisions.
Politicians have for as long as there have been politicians always argued that the facts were on their side – economic, scientific, social, religious or whatever other facts that could marshall.
And science, economics, religion and so on drive policy as much as politics, as these things *shape* political views in the first place.
lucia,
It would likely have similar problems in Australia, as while we have no first amendment the High Court ruled back in the 1980s that our constitution provides an implied right of free political speech. However, in my journalism studies, my lecturer said that this did not provide a blanket protection for free speech, which was unfortunate.
David–We have an explicit right. Historically, the constitution was proposed but needed to be ratified. It was ratified by individual states with a number of people saying they would insist that it be amended immediately. Amazingly enough the first congress set about to amending it immediately, proposing 10 amendments, which were also ratified. This is called “The Bill of Rights”. The first assures the right to free speech– among other things.
There are some exceptions for false speech (libel, slander etc.) But owing to the explicit statement of the right to free speech, our exceptions are much smaller than in other countries. The burden of proof for things like libel fall on the person claiming defamation; truth is an absolute defense against libel, it’s really hard for politicians to claim libel etc.
David Gould,
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I said all I am doing reframing the debate. This main issue is with media outlets who have bought into this idea that science determines what we must do and the nonsense about ‘balance is bias’. The way forward is for people who disagree to stop arguing the science and instead argue that the science provides insights but cannot tell us what we should do. That is a political decision.
The US has a stronger constitution than we do. In fact, a couple of days ago a deputy speaker of the Senate breached the constitution, and nobody noticed except those of us in my office (I am not a lawyer, but a guy in my office is). It was not on anything that significant, but it was a little but stunning. (I do not think that he knew he was breaching the constitution, either – he was just trying to smooth out a bump in a technical process). I doubt that would be allowed to happen in the US. 🙂
Raven,
Okay. But if the science is not agreed on, surely that has to be agreed on first, before we can argue about how we are we going to respond to what the science tells us?
I mean, there are a few issues here.
If I think that the science is telling us that the we are going to be facing another two degrees of warming if we do not cut CO2 by 80 per cent by 2050 (for example), and then I start discussing by what means we might be able to acheive that, but then you – for example – say that you disagree that that is what the science is telling us, doesn’t the debate between the two of us start with the science?
Between two people who agreed on what the science said, sure, their debate might be on what to do about it – and that debate has been happening around the world for a long time now.
But between two people who disagree, how can they move to debating what needs to be done?
Or are you saying that attempts to convince one another on what the science says are over and the sides (however many there are of them) are pretty much fixed?
Re: David Gould (Feb 25 20:03),
Oh… our constitution gets breached. Sometimes people don’t know if something breaches the constitution. Law suit ensue… courts make rulings. Every now and then, SCOTUS (the supreme court of the US) even changes its collective mind!
David Gould,
.
Science can inform but it cannot determine.
No matter what the science says “do nothing” is a legimate choice.
IOW, there is no need for agreement on the science.
I bet that when it gets breached there is a bit of an outcry. Here, no-one noticed. Or no-one cared.
David Gould,
.
The science will never be agreed on. Different people will put different weight on different evidence. Some weighting will make more sense than others but it all ends up being an opinion. Not a fact.
.
That is why this obession with consensus is wrong headed.
Raven,
So does this mean you think we should stop debating the science?
This is what you said above:
“The way forward is for people who disagree to stop arguing the science and instead argue that the science provides insights but cannot tell us what we should do.”
If person A does not believe that the science tells us that we are facing dangerous warming, how am I in a political sense going to convince them that we need to take action to avoid dangerous warming? How would I frame that political argument when they disagree with the premise for action?
The way that I understand debating/arguing/convincing is that you need to try to work backwards to premises that both parties agree on, and then move forward from there. You cannot skip over relevant premises that you disagree on and then have your debate with any hopes of convincing them.
(not that i think that debates/arguments/discussions alter opinions in any easily discernible way)
Re: David Gould (Feb 25 20:32),
People are constantly filing suits about the constitution being violated. There’s a second amendment (gun rights) suit hitting SCOTUS this year (or already hit. I don’t known when the sit and listen to cases.) Some think the suit will also involve the 14th amendment.
There are others suits!
David Gould (Comment#35029),
Hello David. It’s an interesting exchange you’ve had with Raven. I will offer my 2 cents.
.
The problem seems to me to be more fundamental than a scientific discussion/search for ‘the truth’. It is more a question of values and priorities than science. Suppose for example that we could conjure up a crystal ball to see the future perfectly under a BAU scenario in 50 years and in 100 years, and we saw that there would be 1 degree warming in 50 years and 2.5 degrees warming in 100 years. I submit that you and I (just for example) could very well still strongly disagree about the urgency for CO2 restrictions today, even based on perfect knowledge of the future, because consequences that are important to me might not be so important to you (and vice-versa). I believe this is why people who advocate immediate action tend to exaggerate extremely negative future consequences, to essentially force action by making the risks appear unacceptable to everyone, a la Stephen Schnieder:
.
“To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
.
So while it is important to improve scientific understanding of GHG effects, so that people can make a more informed judgment of future risks, it seems to me decisions about controlling GHG emissions will ultimately be political/economic/values based, not based mainly on science. I think POV’s like Schneider’s are idiotic, horribly damaging to climate science, and take away from the public’s trust in climate science and climate scientists. Statements like Schneider’s ought to be loudly and publicly condemned by other climate scientists.
SteveF,
I certainly agree that even with perfect foreknowledge of scenarios you and I might disagree on what to do about those scenarios. And even if we agreed on the plan, we might disagree on who is going to implement it. And so on and so on.
However, if we disagree on the problem – or on whether or not there is in fact a problem – I find it difficult to see how we can come to any agreement on a solution.
This is what I mean about going back to the premises that we can agree on.
And I was going to put an example here that I have used in other contexts, but I have changed my mind in the light of the ‘hyperbole’ thread. I suspect that the example will be a little too confronting and may cause unintended offence/anger/misinterpretations.
SteverF,
I would also suggest that without the science there would be no political debate on GHGs, so it depends on what you mean by ‘based on the science’. I certainly agree that targets are of necessity political – it is why I despair at the Australian Greens demanding targets of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 and so on. Sure, that is what the science, interpreted in a certain way, may call for. But there are other considerations – political and economic ones.
SteveF,
I also think that some people may appear to exagerate because they honestly believe that those are what the risks are. I, for example, believe that where I live has already been affected by climate change. I think that there will be effectively zero runoff into the dams that supply water to my city within the decade. This is a scenario far worse than that presented by the CSIRO. I fully accept that I might be wrong. But it is where my investigations of the issue have led me. If my prediction comes true, there is nothing that can be done about it in terms of GHG reduction, of course. But there are adaption measures that should, imo, be initiated now.
As to deliberately exaggerating for effect, I reject that. I think that to sell climate change to the public a ‘true myth’ is needed – a true story that place humans in the centre and as the heros. But that is not the same thing.
David Gould,
“Sure, that is what the science, interpreted in a certain way, may call for.”
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It’s the “interpreted in a certain way” part that is the key. It all boils down to what consequences you believe and how you evaluate those consequences against the costs for GHG reductions.
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Don’t worry too much about water in Australia; one good size nuclear plant powering a big desalinization plant could provide all the water needed for a big city and more. 😉
David Gould,
The last bit was only to show how philosophical/values differences change one’s perspectives.
SteveF,
We are not going to get a nuclear powered desalination plant built for Canberra (plus the 300 kilometres of pipeline and pumping stations that it would require, built on land that is not Canberra’s but that of New South Wales) – or any other city in Australia – within the next 10 years. As such, there is – imo – plenty to be concerned about.
As to interpreted in a certain way, of course.
Would you agree that in order for you and I to come to an agreement on and implement the best method to reduce GHGs we would also have to come to an agreement that there was a need to reduce those GHGs? And an agreement on how much we need to reduce those GHGs? We cannot simply move past the science if we do not agree on what the science says.
SteverF,
I understand. I am not opposed to nuclear power. I think that Australia is going to need it. But it is not politically viable in the timeframe needed. Nuclear is not going to play a big role in reducing Australia’s greenhouse gases over the next 40 years – that is simply political reality.
People who suggest that it’s even possible to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 are just not aware of what that actually means. In the US alone it would mean building 800 1GW nuclear power plants at a capital cost of $5 billion (that’s 10E9 in the US) each, not including the time value of the money and no licensing delays, to replace the current coal fired capacity. And that’s just for starters. You’d need lots more to electrify most transportation, which is also required, plus more for the expected increase in population, not to mention heating all those homes that currently use fossil fuel directly. If we round things off, we need to bring a new power plant on line every two weeks starting now. If by chance there’s some magical battery invented in the next year or so, you’d need 1,000,000 2.5 MW wind turbines operating at a 30% duty cycle (highly optimistic, IMO), also not in the cards. Solar is equally problematic. Decarbonization of the economy on that scale just isn’t going to happen, even if we wanted it to, which we don’t. Roger Pielke, Jr., among others, keeps pointing this out, but nobody seems to be listening.
DeWitt,
.
That is the bottom line as far as I am concerned. The science is irrelevant cause we can’t doing anything about CO2 emissions. If there is a real problem we adapt. Money spent mandating CO2 emission reductions is money wasted. End of discussion.
Re: David Gould (Feb 25 22:20),
I agree. If there was no scientific argument indicatng that all other things being equal, rising GHGs causes warming, the there would be no political debate on GHGs.
We don’t expect the warming to be due to growing bananas so the warming debate doesn’t touch on controlling that growth. Science does ‘touch on’ many political debates. What to do about climate change is one of them. Science — especially physics– is not the only things that matters when deciding how to respond.
I think you and I agree on that at least.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#35056),
You are right, of course, that 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 simply can’t happen. However there are a couple of points that I think are relevant.
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1. Fossil fuels will gradually become scarce, especially petroleum. I therefore think it important for people to consider today alternatives that economically deal with future declines in supply, especially of petroleum.
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2. An 80% reduction is not needed to ‘stabilize’ CO2 concentrations at some specific level (for example, 450 PPM, or 475 PPM) because half or more of current emissions are being taken up by the ocean and biosphere. At 475 PPM in the atmosphere, uptake will increase to equal about 65% of today’s emissions, so a reduction of ~35% relative to today would stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere at ~475 PPM (ocean/biosphere absorption capacity are adequate for at least 400 or 500 years). Even a 35% reduction represents an enormous challenge, especially considering the rapid economic expansion likely in China, India, Brazil, etc over the next 30 years, but it is a far easier target than 80% reduction.
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3. Conversion of electrical generation to nuclear is the most economic path to significant emissions reductions. Yes, the capital cost for nuclear is high, but a fair part of that capital cost is related to endless political fights that delay construction. Operating costs are relatively low, and could be significantly lower if we abandoned Jimmy Carter’s idiotic ban on breeder technology (which also eliminates most of the high activity waste material). The real issue is political. So long as ‘Greens’ continue to fight nuclear power, we are pretty much doomed to ever rising CO2 emissions, since wind/solar are absurdly expensive, intermittent, and not really suitable to replace fossil fuel powered generation. Voters in the developed world will not accept a drastic decline in worldwide wealth to make the Greens happy. And people in less developed countries are NEVER going to accept continued poverty to reduce CO2 emissions growth.
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4. Conversion of biomass to char in the soil effectively removes carbon from circulation for many thousands of years, and improves soil properties/productivity. It is low tech, low in capital cost, can be done most anywhere, and could make a real impact on net emission of CO2.
Re: DeWitt Payne Comment#35056 —
My former home is one of the “bluest” (most liberal) states in the Union, and also one of the “greenest.”
Two days ago, the Vermont State Senate voted 26-4 to close the only nuclear power plant it has. According to Democracy Now!, “Opponents of the plant gathered at the state legislature broke into cheers after the vote was announced.”
This pro-environmentalist, partisan site was mum as to any concerns about the impact of such closings on AGW. Neither that account nor any other I’ve read paints this as anything but a victory for the Green movement. The WSJ‘s story did point out the obvious, namely that the hole in baseline generating capacity would be plugged by coal.
Of course, stories like this say nothing about the likely extent of the forcing due to feedback from rising CO2 levels, and the associated uncertainties — the issue at the heart of AGW science.
But the absence of howls of protest at this “selfish” triumph of the parochial over the global does tell me something about Green politics.
The environmental movement, AGW Consensus included, is not consistently serious about its own professed priorities.
It looks like there may be another mistake in the WG1 report. The equation they have for the decay from a step change in CO2 concentration doesn’t trace back to the references they quote. See comment #39 on the Mike Hulme – Consensus Science thread at The Air Vent.
So that got me started looking to see if I could derive something from the emissions data and the measured atmospheric CO2 concentration. Much weirdness ensued. Prior to 1940, there appears to be no or very little concentration dependence of the sink rate. At 310 ppm CO2 there’s a step change and after that there is a strong dependence of the sink rate on concentration. 310 ppm happens to be the concentration at the flat spot in the CO2 data from 1940 to 1950. That flat spot is also about the same time as the spike in global temperature. Yet more evidence that we, well I for sure, don’t have a clue what’s going on with the climate.
There’s a new post up at CA on the Institute of Physics’ submission to the UK parliamentary committee. As the header states, it doesn’t mince words.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Feb 26 12:41), ” As the header states, it doesn’t mince words…” …and it is highly relevant to this thread, particularly the earlier debate between AMac and David Gould.
Hi Lucia, I finally have time to catch up on the blogs. Your thread gets A+ for the most productive discussion in terms of how we might move forward (of course we will have to wait for Steve Mosher’s assessment for the final grading 🙂
I would like to pick up on the issue brought up later in the thread re science interfacing with policy. My current thinking is that the UNFCCC treaty, and the IPCC linkage with it, was the beginning of the end of sensible dialogue on the subject, and worked to corrupt the science. Scientists and policy makers somehow thought that the scientists should come up with level of CO2 in the atmosphere is dangerous, and policy makers would would figure out a way to do this, with the advice of the scientists. Ergo, Kyoto Protocol, cap and trade, etc.
For insights into what is wrong with this picture, I have been reading a new book by Brunner and Lynch (note Brunner was RP Jr’s Ph.D. advisor) entitled Climate Change and Adaptive Governance. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Science can provide some sense of the risk (i.e. what can happen and the probability of it happening), but having uncertain science in a postnormal environment dictate policy is not only bad policy, but it is corrupting the science. If we can somehow make a more reasonable link between the policy and the science, we will end up with better policies (and more politically acceptable ones) and minimize the corruption of science in the process
Thanks Judy–
I saw your essay as an attempt to move forward, not a desire to describe timelines of what happened and who did what in climategate. (There are plenty of opportunities to do that!)
I can’t help but agree with this. One of the difficulties I see is that when scientists are worried about uncertainties and policies, ±95% ranges that would ordinarily be reported at [-1 to 1] with the most probable outcome of 0 are reported as “the most probable outcome is 0, but it could be +1, and we remember, the 95% intervals don’t include everything that could possibly happen. We can’t exclude the possibility of much, much, much higher values!!!!
Some can see this as “not corrupting science” or “we are reporting the uncertainties” — but it’s not really the way science normally reports the uncertainties. So, it can be seen as corrupting.
Other things can happen too– the specific result rather than quality can influence whether something gets published. (Not that this doesn’t sometimes happen anyway… but…) Reviewers rarely think the identities of authors, their affiliations, the results etc. affect their assessement, but really, everyone knows it does. Reviewers are just a human when reviewing as any other time in their lives.
I’ll have to read the book.
Lucia,
The book is great.
As I suspected the folks at Lucia’s blog did the best.
Lucia, to mee it looks like more and more people are strting to look at code for themselves and build there own estimates of
global temp. That’s all to the good. THE BEST THING is that AGW types are starting to join this. first of course is Clearclimatecode.
If Tamino would actually join the “post the code club” it would
help there side. I’ve been to Ron’s page as well. Good stuff.
Tamino should have taken Roman’s code and integrated it into his project rather than saying “its better, but makes no difference”
I wonder if Judy has seen kerry and chris’s recent paper on hurricanes.
Here is the thing. If people on the AGW side start to push for code and data sharing, if they start to participate in the “watchdog” activity then climate science will gain more trust.
Clearclimatecode is a perfect example. people should be promoting that effort. rather than engage in tedious stupid arguments about “code is Not necessary” they should focus on showing how science is Moved forward by sharing code and data,
even if the move forward is the correcting of a few minor bugs.
I already read a lot of articles with the same topic, but I haven’t seen yet a site like this that gives all the details that I need to know. This is a great site! What are the other things that you can share with us in regards with this topic?
I have looked at many sites on this subject and not come across a site such as yours which tells everyone everything that they need to know. I have bookmarked your site. Can anyone else suggest any other related topics that I can look for to find out further information?