351 thoughts on “Unexpurgated Reasons to Refuse MP3s.”

1. UNLOL.

2. I guess if Phil Jones is Steve Tyler, and Michael Mann is Mick Jagger, I could believe it. Somehow, it still stinks of cover up, sloth, and illegal activities.

3. bugs-

   The librarian’s behavior is not funny, is it?

4. A friend of a friend of a friend of mine knows one of the artists who gave you her recording years ago and she says that you messed with it. It does no justice that you altered and misrepresent her work without saying what it was that you did.

5. bugs (Comment#32776)
   February 10th, 2010 at 10:27 am

   “UNLOL.”

   We feel your pain.

6. Isn’t it funny how the tone of the homily changes completely when all the words come into play. This analogy could be great analogy for (anyone? anyone?) missing data. What’s being held as pro -AGW on one site in the severely edited version becomes irony on another when viewed in its entirety.

   Nice catch Lucia

7. One more thing …

   While posting at Rabett, I realized what this is – cherrypicking at it’s finest.

   This is precious

8. Outrageously ironic. Don’t people have some self-irony-aware meter or something??!

9. Didn’t the library cardholder in question already get 99.99% from the library? Or did ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.mean.Z not exist prior to this whole affair (the publicly available raw GHCN mean data making up the vast majority of temp data used in HadCRUT).

10. Stews the sad rabbit.
    Who’d have thought he’d end his stay
    Making his excuse?
    =====================

11. Zeke–
    There were various requests. But generally, the difficulty is in identifying the precise data used by CRU. Whether or not Jones or someone else understands of approves of the questions others ask, their questions required not only having access to the specific CRU data but also knowing which specific data CRU actually used.

    So, the questions being asked can’t be answered visiting a NOAA archive and getting data CRU claims is “similar”. This is especially true also refused to provide information like stations lists.

    If we use the MP3 analogy, it’s as if someone wanted the Maria Callas version of “oh mio babbino ” and someone said– come on, you can find all sorts of version at the other library. Why do you need to listen to the Callas version? Read my paper and I’ll describe it the Callas version to you!

    The librarian doesn’t get to keep his coveted Callas version to himself merely because it would be less trouble for him if you went to the other library and found someone else’s recording.

    FWIW– If there are no questions better answered by having access to the specific CRU archive, why didn’t Webster just go to the NOAA archive for his work? The reason is obvious: certain questions can only be answered by having access to the CRU archive.

12. Fantastic. They are really struggling over in Rabettland.

13. “Didn’t the library cardholder in question already get 99.99% from the library?”

    The data never mattered–it’s not like Steve McIntyre needs the data to write a paper :).

14. Dear Lucia, (sorry I forgot your last name)

    Wonderfully understated presentation. I enjoyed it very much.

    Regards,

    WJR

15. Boris–
    If the data didn’t matter, Jones should have just handed it over. Drama over.

16. Boris–
    If the data didn’t matter, Jones should have just handed it over. Drama over.

    Checkmate

17. I think the one thing that is most apparent about the the whole climategate episode is that these researchers don’t view themselves as public servants working for the public good on the public’s money, but as a petty (or not so petty) nobility, with a god given right to their sinecures.

18. I’ll toss in another analogy

    We have a court case
    Re: Gaia et al vs Humanity et al

    Their are two views..depending on whether Gaia is the prosecution or the defendant.

    The defendant has no obligation to turn over incriminating evidence.
    The prosecution however is obligated to turn over all evidence to the defense. It makes no difference whether the evidence was copyrighted or provided by an ‘anonymous informant’.
    If the prosecution is found to have withheld information from the defense a motion of dismissal must be considered.

    This is a fundamental difference on world view between the AGW proponents and the ‘skeptics’. The skeptics view Gaia et al as the prosecution and humanity et al as the defendant.

    Is a planet where endless indictments against humanity are handed down and humanity endlessly being asked to ‘prove innocence’ even worth saving?

19. I’d never release any MP3’s from New Kids On The Block, The Go-Go’s, Milli Vanilli, or Wham!

    I just wouldn’t do it. 😉

    Andrew

20. They did the same thing during Yamal.

21. Andrew_KY

    It’s good to know that you would delete your ample collection before ever letting anyone get their hands on it.

    😉

22. Earle Williams,

    “It’s good to know that you would delete your ample collection before ever letting anyone get their hands on it.”

    Now THAT was funny lol 😉

    Andrew

23. I agree with Zeke here. Phil Jones was never a librarian. GHCN were. They were funded by taxpayers to assemble a library, and they did.

    I still get amused by Lucia’s indignation about PJ’s unresponsiveness to her tax money. PJ was funded by British taxpayers. He got some US grants for scientific research, but not to assemble a library. If US taxpayers needed a library so badly, why didn’t they fund one? And go in chase of that one?

24. The explanations and excuses just get curiouser and curiouser as we go down this Rabett hole.

    Eli and his associates all seem to be graduates of Mock Turtle’s regular course…

    “Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”

    You ought to be ashamed of yourselves for asking such simple questions.

25. The librarian committed an offence from the word go. Compounded that offence and as a result was trapped by his own pubic hair. Jones also. Commit an offence, go to jail.

26. I suppose that anothr anlogy would be that of a medical library.

    A physician prepares a new treatment and publishes accounts of it in prestigious journals. The physician claims that the treatment is justified by survey of previous clinical studies held in the library at his university. Other researchers ask him for the studies. He refuses and say they can be obtained by going to the library.

    The other researchers then ask him for a list of the studies. The physician refuses initially and when pressed reluctantly agrees to provide a list of publications but the list is too vague to identify individual studies.

    The physician is again pressed to release the papers but again refuses. This time he say some of the papers were provided to him in confidence but he has forgotten which ones and so he will not release any. And by the way he has lost many if not msot the studies anyway in a move 20 years before.

    However in the mean time the physician has provided the studies to a few close colleagues.

    The treatment is then presented to the college of physicians which is the governing body to see if it cna be ethically administered to patients. The physician says that he and hsi fiends have sued the treatment to great success and points to his publications. Other doctors say that there has been no independent test of the treatment and argue that without such a test, it would be unethical to use the treatment.

    What should the college of physicians do? Is it ethical to allow this treatment to be used?

27. #32806
    fiends have sued the treatment to great success
    Sounds about right 🙂

    But to take the analogy further, suppose you’re actually sick, and the treatment looks good. That makes fussing about referencing look not so important.

28. Nothing unusual here. As far as I can see, the Rabbit is pretty much following CRU/GISS/NOAA and IPCC standard operating procedures.
    Cut and paste to serve the meme; damned the source.

29. Stick Nokes (Comment#32802) and Jones seem to forget that the data was collected for the Public Benefit, and paid for with Public Money. This data is not the the private Toy of the CRU. Plus

    1 Jones didn’t want to release ANY data to possible critics.
    2 CRU paid for the Yamal data that Jones claimed they had no right to disseminate.
    3 OMB guidelines renders unusable for Government purposes, any information that is based on data or calculations that can’t be reproduced. If you disseminate info based on Jones work, you are breaking US Law. Hope those of you that do get sued to pieces.

30. “the treatment looks good”

    How Scientific! Hooray for Science!

    Andrew

31. Hammer meet nailhead.
    Well done.
    Bugs’ response only makes it even better.

32. ha lucia did you read my comments to him

33. Jones worked for CRU. The reason he used for not being able to release the data was the agreements. Agreements which he failed to keep track of. His failure to keep track of the documents meant he couldnt even release data which wasnt covered. That rewards document control sloppiness.

    CRU have records management requirements. As an employee of CRU before confidential data is acquired via contract these things
    must happen.

    1. CRU must determine that the data is NECESSARY OR ESSENTIAL to their mission.

    2. They must inform the third party that FOIA can trump the
    contract.

    If Jones is signing these agreements then he has a duty to keep track of them. Personally I had my file of agreements that I had signed. my admin had copies ( in case somebody needed them when I was out of the office) and the legal staff had copies.

    the observation record is a record keeping. Usually when people transmitted confidential data to me I was required by contract to excercise best efforts to control that data ( not put it up on some FTP site) I wasnt allowed to transmit that data to others without notifying people. If it was leaked I had an obligation to tell the orginal owner.

    Analogies are not always instructive.

34. Steve–
    Do you mean comments to Eli? No.

    Nick– Metaphors and analogies are never perfect. I’m not indignant about PJ’s unresponsiveness. I merely note that a) he was unresponsive, b) British law requried him to be responsive, c) his suggestion that others who want similar archives should replicate the work he received public funding to compile for the benefit of the public is silly.

    In the past you suggested I have no right to be worried about (c) because he didn’t receive US tax payer money. I pointed out your claim was false: he received lots of US taxpaper money.

    The fact that I know he received US funds does not mean I am “indignant”. It simply means I can point out that you are mistaken to suggest that only the British tax payers have a right to feel taken advantage of.

35. Lucia, from commenter at Rabbet’s

    OK, something odd is going on here. Lucia claims to have the alleged “original” copy of cthulhu’s post. It is quite different from what is posted here.

    I Googled a couple of sentences in her version of the post and only got one hit– Lucia’s blog. Hmmm.

    So I Googled some sentence from cthulhu’s post here and only get hits for Eli’s blog.

    So where and how did Lucia get the “original”? Or did she just add in a bunch of text, manipulate and then claim it to be the original. She is not sharing how or where she sourced it, and I’m not just going to take her word for it, not given how she uses stats to lie.

    Eli, and perhaps more importantly cthulhu, any ideas what is going on here?

    MapleLeaf

    plus Dehog also sez you’re a lieing liar and will never get back your virginity 🙂

36. Re: windansea (Feb 10 14:51), At least one of Rabett’s commenters is really, really dim, don’t cha’ think?

    I’m so disappointed to learn I’ll never get back my virginity. I think I got some spam selling me a $450 online course that would teach me how to do it. Did I get ripped off?!

37. “I agree with Zeke here. Phil Jones was never a librarian. GHCN were. They were funded by taxpayers to assemble a library, and they did.
    I still get amused by Lucia’s indignation about PJ’s unresponsiveness to her tax money. PJ was funded by British taxpayers. He got some US grants for scientific research, but not to assemble a library. If US taxpayers needed a library so badly, why didn’t they fund one? And go in chase of that one?”

    Well Nick several points.

    1. Jones was the librarian of the confidentiality agreements.
    2. CRU, in responding to Willis’s FOIA, has variously claimed that
    they both got data FROM GHCN and supplied data to GHCN.
    3. In order to do a QC of CRU’s ability to download a file correctly ( nasa had some issues with this) One would want to compare the original at GHCN with the copy at CRU.
    4. CRU claim to have added value to the data set.
    5. CRU use a subset of GHCN, throughout the process they wouldnt or couldnt say what stations they used exactly.
    6. A librarian is someone who is paid to holds copy of a Book. If Jones
    said he has a copy of a book held at the library of congress
    the existence of the library of congress does NOT make him any less of a librarian. he claims to hold a copy of a book that is in the library of congress. Cool. I would like to check that. Phil,
    please send me a copy of your copy and I will take it to the library of congress to check it. Piece of cake.
    Crap, it reminds me of graduate school when I had to check multiple copies of rare texts.

38. “I am funded to run a library; tax payers have provided me a budget to acquire music for the benefit of the public.”

    I thought that CRU was funded to provide analysis, not to maintain a lending library of other people’s for public access. Perhaps there might be some value to funding such a data library, although the failure of the individuals who have demanded access to the data to do anything worthwhile with it makes that look pretty doubtful.

39. CRU was not the library of the data nor of the (likely informal) confidentiality agreements. Certainly the confidentiality agreements as might have existed are not the primary purpose of CRU.

    The suggestion that the work done by CRU is to be audited by volunteers outside the academy is interesting, but it is basically without precedent and there is little wonder it was handled badly by both sides. But those questions (most of the ones Mosher raises) are certainly outside the narrative of the many FoI requests for confidentiality agreements and as such constitute a red herring.

    The question addressed by the analogy is whether it was reasonable to expect CRU to keep perfect records on agreements that may well have been informal and verbal. Anyone who has worked in a scientific setting would have trouble imagining how such a thing might even have been accomplished had the need for it been foreseen.

    Nobody says CRU handled it well. The purpose of the undecorated analogy is to explain how CRU saw it. Lucia’s interpolations are neither especially germane nor especially amusing.

40. And so the ivory tower continues to circle the wagons.

    The real world is a cruel and unforgiving place if you’re unprepared.

41. Phil Jones had a professional obligation to preserve his data and provide the means for others to replicate his results.

    If he could not provide the data, he certainly could have given McIntyre the “on the envelope” information… namely who supplied him and with which data. That would have given McIntyre enough information McIntyre could assemble his own archive identical to Jones.

    Had I been in his shoes, that’s probably what I would have done, had some of the data been subject to NDAs.

    In the analogy above, this would be like giving a list of MP3s and the sources where they came from. What we had in this case was a refusal to even supply the play list.

42. “Boris–
    If the data didn’t matter, Jones should have just handed it over. Drama over.”

    I agree completely. I don’t think Jones would disagree either in hindsight. The best way to handle McIntyre is to give him a bunch of data and then never respond.

    One interesting thing I learned from the emails is that these scientists were way too concerned with what was going on at CA and American Thinker. I think they somehow thought AT was an important and influential outlet when it’s really just ideological flypaper. And CA is much the same, a place for people who are outraged and ill-informed to get together and insinuate fraud. The lesson that should be learned is to stay above the fray. And playing hard to get with your data just opens an avenue of attack for people who can’t find real or persuasive issues in the Peer Reviewed literature.

43. Re: steven mosher (Feb 10 14:55),
    1. Jones was the librarian of the confidentiality agreements.
    I’m sure he wasn’t. But no-one in the world is in the business of lending out their confidentiality agreements. Government or otherwise.
    2. CRU, in responding to Willis’s FOIA, has variously claimed that they both got data FROM GHCN and supplied data to GHCN.
    They very likely did both. I lend money to the bank and get money from them. So?
    3. In order to do a QC of CRU’s ability to download a file correctly ( nasa had some issues with this) One would want to compare the original at GHCN with the copy at CRU.
    You guys claim the right to be the QC auditors, which is a bit more than just asking for access to data. That’s not the issue here.
    4. CRU claim to have added value to the data set.
    Yes, they would claim that to be part of the analysis process. You can do it too.
    5. CRU use a subset of GHCN, throughout the process they wouldnt or couldnt say what stations they used exactly.
    They probably should have. But again, this isn’t an issue of access to data.
    6. A librarian is someone who is paid to holds copy of a Book. If Jones said he has a copy of a book held at the library of congress
    the existence of the library of congress does NOT make him any less of a librarian.
    No, but it doesn’t make him any more of a librarian. Which he wasn’t.

44. MT–

    Certainly the confidentiality agreements as might have existed are not the primary purpose of CRU.

    Of course maintaining confidentiality agreements restricting data dissemination if not the primary purpose of CRU. We could name a host of other things that are not the primary purpose of CRU: Paying Phil Jones salary, purchasing computers, buying large computers etc. All organizations do zillions of things which are not their primary mission but rather either assist them in fulfilling their primary mission or required to fulfilled that mission, or required to comply with laws.

    If CRU enters into confidentiality agrements, and is also bound by FOI, it’s their responsibility to keep track of the confidentiality agreements. Or do you think it’s NASA’s job to keep track of CRU’s confidentiality agreements?

    The suggestion that the work done by CRU is to be audited by volunteers outside the academy is interesting, but it is basically without precedent and there is little wonder it was handled badly by both sides.

    Whether or not you find a suggestion about someone conducting an “audit” interesting or uninteresting does not not negate the fact that FOI applies and that people subject to FOI can’t just make up fake reasons for turning down requests.

    But those questions (most of the ones Mosher raises) are certainly outside the narrative of the many FoI requests for confidentiality agreements and as such constitute a red herring.

    I agree you are bringing up a red herring. The FOI applied whether or not you or Jones find the concept of “audit” interesting or not.

    The question addressed by the analogy is whether it was reasonable to expect CRU to keep perfect records on agreements that may well have been informal and verbal.

    The question? Singular? Questions addressed by the analogy include whether
    a) CRU should be expected to try to keep records at all
    b) CRU gets a free pass to skirt obligations under FOI if they are too lazy to keep records.
    c) When entering informal verbal agreements does CRU have an obligation to note down the agreement and keep a file of those,
    d) Does CRU have an obligation under FOI to contact those who asked for confidentiality agreements to discover whether or not the data providers still insist on confidentiality,
    e) Do CRU employees have a right to just “forget” about the hypothetical, untraceable, unprovable confidentiality agreements when someone they like would like access to the data ,
    and
    e) if having failed to keep records, does CRU get to provide “technically not true” after “technically not true” reasons to justify not releasing data.

    There are many more questions.

    The fact that Chtulu writes an analogy suggesting that a presumably private individual who used his private funds and private time to compile an MP3 collection has no obligation to give copies to stray people to simply ignores the most important questions in the CRU incident.

    Nobody says CRU handled it well. The purpose of the undecorated analogy is to explain how CRU saw it. Lucia’s interpolations are neither especially germane nor especially amusing.

    Oh? Is there a law saying the all analogies must explain the situation from CRU’s point of view? Are those that explain from the other participant’s point of view not germane to understanding the story?

    As for what is amusing: Who says my presenting the story from the other POV was supposed to be amusing. I suspect you will find that quite a few people thought Chtulu’s version was not amusing. Did he intend it to be?

45. Re: trrll (Feb 10 15:41),

    I thought that CRU was funded to provide analysis, not to maintain a lending library of other people’s for public access

    I think you need to learn the concept of metaphor.

    Both “MP3” and “Librarian” are metaphors. By the way, once you learn the basic concept of metaphor, you should also learn that all methaphors are imperfect.

46. MT

    Good to see you here. Some interesting views on this. Anyways let me see if I can explain. lets look at what you wrote:

    “CRU was not the library of the data nor of the (likely informal) confidentiality agreements. Certainly the confidentiality agreements as might have existed are not the primary purpose of CRU.”

    1. CRU may not have been “THE” library, but they are certainly “a” library. As I noted above, they have variously claimed to have both gotten data from GHCN and provided data to GHCN. Further, they are the only repository of the ACTUAL data used in the papers they published. Further the fact that keeping agreements is not the PRIMARY purpose of CRU, its clear that they have document control and maintenance requirements. If they lost your paycheck and argued that their primary purpose was not banking, you might have another opinion on the matter. When I worked for defense, building weapons was my primary task. However, if I mislaid a top secret document it was a felony. If I didnt fill my time card out accurately.. also a criminal offense.
    Now, here is a question for you. Do you believe that maintaining a global temperature index is a primary purpose of CRU? or is that record largely redundant to that produced by NASA and NOAA?

    “The suggestion that the work done by CRU is to be audited by volunteers outside the academy is interesting, but it is basically without precedent and there is little wonder it was handled badly by both sides. But those questions (most of the ones Mosher raises) are certainly outside the narrative of the many FoI requests for confidentiality agreements and as such constitute a red herring.”

    Actually not. You can go back to the threads discussing the FOIA requests and see that I raised these issues early on. There is a reason why I did so. I worked with classified data and classified agreements. I spent many years in licensing. So, like the others, I requested the agreements. But I also requested the following:

    from my FOIA request dated July 24th.

    Pursuant to the Environmental Information Regulations, I hereby request
    the following information in respect to any confidentiality agreements
    affecting CRUTEM station data involving station data in NIGERIA, NETHERLANDS, NORWAY, NEPAL,NAURU

    1. the date of such agreement;
    2. the parties to the agreement;
    3. a copy of that part of the agreement that prevents further
    transmission
    of the data to non-academics or others
    4. a copy of the entire agreement
    In addition, I hereby request the following information:
    1. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding entering into confidentiality agreements.
    2. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employee responsibilities regarding the preservation of written agreements.
    3. A copy of policies and procedures regarding employees entering into verbal agreements.
    4. A copy of instructions to staff regarding compliance with FOI requests.

    So not so much a red herring as you think. In addition I had two subsequent FOIA into CRU to address the other issues I raised. While CRU was not able to locate their policies for me ( they argued it would take more than 18 hours so they didnt look) I was able to locate them. So, I asked for various items. One of those requests has been granted and I am in possession of some interesting material. I’ll make it public when the time is right. basically it confirms something I wrote in my book. It also adds some detail. Interestingly enough they withheld three pieces of mail. I have to look into that later. my second request is under appeal. I think it has a good chance as I was able to cite gavin and hansen as authorities for my position, oh also cited the MET.
    that issue should also be on the table at parliament. We will see.
    As for being without precendent? Again I’ll check on that, but the warming we see is with precedent ( ok a little levity )

    “The question addressed by the analogy is whether it was reasonable to expect CRU to keep perfect records on agreements that may well have been informal and verbal. Anyone who has worked in a scientific setting would have trouble imagining how such a thing might even have been accomplished had the need for it been foreseen.”

    The problem is this. A verbal agreement on this kind of matter is a problem especially if there is no consideration given, ie payment. In any case, you want to plead sloppy scientist
    and I’d agree to your stipulation. Zeng was also sloppy and didnt keep records. That cause huge problems for Wang and Jones as Wigley noted. If you want to argue that jones is not a good record keeper, so stipulated. I expect him to step down from his position at NOAA where he is a member of the standing advisory board on data archiving and access. And in case you want to know about UEA records management see here:

    https://www.uea.ac.uk/is/strategies/infregs/recordsmanagement

    And please note, I did not compare catching phil jones with bad record keeping to catching Al capone for tax evasion.

    “Nobody says CRU handled it well. The purpose of the undecorated analogy is to explain how CRU saw it. Lucia’s interpolations are neither especially germane nor especially amusing.”

    the lesson of the analogy on this view would be this.
    Jones didn’t want to send Mcintyre the data because he feared that Mcintyre would send it to others.

    1. Mcintyre already had the 2003 data which Jones left lying around and didnt send it to others.
    2. Mcintyre asked for the data set with the confidential data redacted in his sept 3 ammendment to the initial request.

    Now, CRU claim that they could not separate out the confidential from the non confidential. Kind of like a person who had Mp3s arguing that they could not run through there list of titles and check them against CDDB. Bogus. Further within a short period of Time MET has done just about what McIntyre asked.

47. What a load of pointless work constructing an argument by analogy that fails in it’s premise that tax-payer funded data collections are equivalent to privately-funded artistic creations.

    Next he’ll be modeling how many AGW skeptics can dance on the head of pin.

48. Nick

    “1. Jones was the librarian of the confidentiality agreements.
    I’m sure he wasn’t. But no-one in the world is in the business of lending out their confidentiality agreements. Government or otherwise.”
    Owing to their records management requirements and FOI requirements they are in the business of maintaining those records and providing copies of those records upon request.
    Perhaps you havent been to a library, but there are cases in which a librarian will COPY a document for you rather than LOAN you a copy. Hmm let me see if I can think of a good example.
    Here! When McIntyre requested the reviewer comments the IPCC told him they were being held in harvards public policy holdings. he could view the document there or visit the library and pay to have the file copied. Wow. next. You really should have command of the facts.

    “2. CRU, in responding to Willis’s FOIA, has variously claimed that they both got data FROM GHCN and supplied data to GHCN.
    They very likely did both. I lend money to the bank and get money from them. So?”
    The point is simple. MT is arguing that CRU is not a library, that GHCN is. Its not that clear who is the creator of the data, holder of the data, etc etc. basically, the metaphors are not very illuminating. THATS WHY THE LAW TRIES TO AVOID THEM.

    “3. In order to do a QC of CRU’s ability to download a file correctly ( nasa had some issues with this) One would want to compare the original at GHCN with the copy at CRU.
    You guys claim the right to be the QC auditors, which is a bit more than just asking for access to data. That’s not the issue here.”
    Its very simple. I am being asked to buy some science. When I buy a car I ask to test drive it. people want to know what it takes to convince me? Simple. When you publish a paper provide the code and the data AS USED. Make it checkable in principle. If you dont do this, then dont ask me to buy your science. cause I wont.
    And further you cannot provide any rational argument whatsoever why should assent to the conclusion of a paper when the data and code is not freely available.

    “4. CRU claim to have added value to the data set.
    Yes, they would claim that to be part of the analysis process. You can do it too.”
    That’s not the point. The point is to understand what they took in as raw data and how they processed it. Without code and data, the papers are a bedtime story.

    “5. CRU use a subset of GHCN, throughout the process they wouldnt or couldnt say what stations they used exactly.
    They probably should have. But again, this isn’t an issue of access to data.”

    Well yes it is. There are 6000 stations in GHCN. Wait let me make it easier. there are 1200 stations in USHCN. One time for grins I went into USHCN and selected a sample of stations. That sample was fairly large several hundred large. I then put them into Opentemp ( johnv) and calculated an average. It showed a NEGATIVE trend for the entire period. Now, if you ask me for my data and I tell you that I got them from USCHN it doesnt help you very much does it? And what would you make of my results. I honest to god did it.

    “6. A librarian is someone who is paid to holds copy of a Book. If Jones said he has a copy of a book held at the library of congress
    the existence of the library of congress does NOT make him any less of a librarian.
    No, but it doesn’t make him any more of a librarian. Which he wasn’t.”
    So whats a better word? Custodian?

49. I think Boris and I could come to agreement.

    MT may be interested in this. My take on jones and mann is basically this. They saw Mcintyre as a tool of corporate interests.
    As part of a conspiracy so they would never consider working with him. If they had things would be a lot different now. thats a suggestion for the future

    you know in the beginning Obsborn and Briffa were preparing to write a paper critical of Mann. Steve showed up. they stopped that work. there is an interesting story there. I’ll let steve tell it in due course.

    the fight against Mc has been one of trying to exclude him. bad tactic.

    WRT others, I would not suggest the same tactic. But the tactics they choose were a one size fits all approach.

50. windansea (Comment#32817) – hilarious!

    Tobis & Stokes:
    a) Creating a confidentiality obligation on behalf of a publicly-funded institution is a non-trivial legal commitment. If done without due authority and vetting from the institution’s legal advisor it could merit dismissal. Likewise failure to document that agreement and maintain records.

    b) Refusal of FOI requests under the specific grounds that such confidentiality agreements existed without detailing and documenting those agreements in support of the refusal is equally legally culpable on the part of all involved.

    Hard to see how Jones can keep his job.

51. I’m a bit shaky on the premise that CRU was paid to create a world temperature database for public use. The analogy stands or falls on that basis. What is the case to supoort that premise?
    thanks
    Ed

52. Alan Thanks:

    “a) Creating a confidentiality obligation on behalf of a publicly-funded institution is a non-trivial legal commitment. If done without due authority and vetting from the institution’s legal advisor it could merit dismissal. Likewise failure to document that agreement and maintain records.”

    One of the reasons I asked for their guidelines was just to see what kind of policies they had WRT employee behavior. In a past life I had to sign bunches of NDAs, and licenses, and contracts. My employees could not sign NDAs it required my signature. my review and legal review. In any case it doesnt look like they are taking any measures to ensure that the guidelines are being adhered to.

53. Edward–
    CRU was funded to compile the data and create the temperature record. The agency also operates under rules governing what record keeping and dissemination of requested records to the public. Knowledge of these rules does affect the decision of agencies when granting funding.

    Is CRU literally a library? No. The share features with publicly funded libraries– including the feature that compilations are assembled using public funds, and compilations don’t belong to the employees and the agency operates under rules that require permitting members of the public access. As with a library, members of the public must request the information and also fulfill some paper work obligations (i.e. get a library card.) Librarians are permitted to refuse circulation in some circumstances– but not capriciously, and not permitting access only to their sisters while refusing to people who are not their sister.

    So, there is an analogy, but like all analogies, it’s not perfect.

    CRU data is not literally MP3’s either. Does the fact that that analogy is imperfect bother you? Or do you like analogies that make the data sound like it is the private property of CRU (which it is not) and dislike those that suggest CRU has an obligation to permit some public access ( which they are obligated to do)?

54. You’re not very good at this Lucia, so let Eli sing you a song

    You are the Denialist Army.

    When we feel dissatisfaction,
    We scream our anger away.
    Some people may prefer science,
    But we make 50 FOI requests a day.

    Blog posts don’t have to be clever,
    And we add extra sentences into every line.
    It sounds more authentic at Rankexploits
    Without any sense or rhyme

    Remember the war against Phil Jones?
    That’s the kind where Lucia belongs.
    Though he does good science,
    We pretend he’s always wrong

    So join the denialist Army,
    FOI requests are the weapons we bring
    To the fight against global warming
    Ready! Aim! Whine!

    (Apologies to TL)

55. here is a thought. Since we have MT and Boris and Nick stokes in the room. Rather than rehashing the past, what would you guys suggest as a way of moving beyond this once and for all.

    What entity should be in charge of the “official” global temperature index.

    Some thoughts.
    1 They should not be associated with anybody who runs a GCM and checks the model against the observation.

    2.They should spend a lot more money on the problem than GISS or CRU do.

    3. Permanent staff with the right disciplines. Archivist. Legal.
    Historical. professional programmers. Statisticians.

    4. IV&V.

    5. Open source software. GPL.

    6. Creative commons data.

    7. Provisions for confidential data.

    So like it’ll never happen, but if you had to design the way to do it, would you have problems with the above?

    Just get CRU, NASA and NOAA out of this record keeping datacentric task.

56. Re: Eli Rabett (Feb 10 17:44),

    You’re not very good at this Lucia,

    Are you operating under the delusion that you are good at “this”– whatever “this” might be?

57. I would like to thank Nick and MT for coming here and having a meaningful exchange. I think we should encourage meaningful exchanges. Boris. I’m sorry for yelling at you in the past. Also, thanks for seeing me over on CheifIO. I try.

58. edward (Comment#32840)
    February 10th, 2010 at 5:28 pm

    I’m a bit shaky on the premise that CRU was paid to create a world temperature database for public use. The analogy stands or falls on that basis. What is the case to supoort that premise?

    Well, I guess as with all things climate and some politicians, it depends on what your defintion of [fill in the blank] is. In this case, “database” goes in the blank.

    Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models.

    Now there are some here who I’m sure will argue that just making the “value added” product available fulfills that obligation. One is left to wonder, then, why they routinely provided much more to their “friends”, which they’ve now admitted violated those sacrosanct back-of-a bar-napkin NDAs.

    Not to mention that if you’re going to publish your work in suspposedly reputable journals, you have an obligation to fully disclose you data and methods. That usually means: “We used this program (available for download from http://www.xxxx.edu) and these specific datasets (available for download from http://www.yyyy.edu)”.

    Of course, those of you that have now decided you don’t like the librarian metaphore might want to return to the silly wabbit’s silly original MP3 metaphor, and contemplate this that I posted at Tom Fuller’s blog earlier today.

    John M says:
    “Do I want to sift through my collection reading small print to decide which is copyrighted and which is not? Not for this @#$@#$@.”

    No, of course not. You only send the illegal stuff to your “friends”. Although I guess you can’t resell the copies with both your names on them.

    Hmmmm, not a perfect analogy, is it?
    February 9, 8:46 PM

    No need to strain yourselfs dealing with two metaphors.

    (What is it about “stop digging” that prevents it from making into the climate research lexicon?)

59. Ok, I better apologize to Lambert as well. On a scale of “contributes” to the debate, he just jumped way up in my estimation, by comparson.

    Lucia, thats a nice list to make. From the AGW side make your list of who you think makes the most sensible additions to the debate.

    Judith Curry is #1

60. Snow day today Eli?

61. “You’re not very good at this Lucia, so let Eli sing you a song”

    Eli Rabbett,

    …and evidently you aren’t a very good at singing.

    If you want us to imagine you are singing, you should use these:

    ♫ ♪

    around the lyrics and tell us what melody you have in mind.

    (Like “to the tune of “)

    Also, it might help if your lyrics weren’t irrational rant.

    Just sayin’ 😉

    Andrew

62. It seems to me the internet changed everything. The days of hiding behind ‘peer review’ as the gold standard are over, and so are the exclusive clubs off limits to those the elitists deem unworthy to critique their work.

    Steve Mosher is 100% on the mark.

63. John M (Comment#32827) February 10th, 2010 at 4:01 pm

    And so the ivory tower continues to circle the wagons.

    The real world is a cruel and unforgiving place if you’re unprepared.

    Yeah, I guess that’s why the scientists worked out years ago you don’t indulge in direct, personal attacks on other people. It doesn’t advance the science, just debases it.

64. “It doesn’t advance the science, just debases it.”

    bugs,

    You might want to take note of the fact that climate science hasn’t produced anything valuable, and that indeed all of us can do fine without it.

    Another FYI for you Ivory Tower Dwellers.

    Andrew

65. Eli Rabett (Comment#32843)

    TL isn’t the only person who deserves an apology for that clueless intrusion. The only useful insight in it was your name.

66. To those too young or sheltered to remember, Eli was paraphrasing Tom Lehrer (not Tim Lambert)’s “Folk Song Army”:

    http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/t/tomlehrer3903/thefolksongarmy185496.html

67. Mosh,

    Methinks the budgetary limitations of GISS and CRU are not of their choice. Perhaps this new climate.gov initiative that Anthony so recently lambasted would be a good opportunity to create a central clearinghouse of all available climate data? From what I’ve read, that was what some folks had in mind for it.

68. bugs (Comment#32857)
    February 10th, 2010 at 6:44 pm

    Yeah, I guess that’s why the scientists worked out years ago you don’t indulge in direct, personal attacks on other people. It doesn’t advance the science, just debases it.

    Really? You know, the non-advancing sciences may have come to some comfortable consensus, but the real advances in science throughout history were knock-down drag-out affairs.

    It’s only in the modern era, where science has become more of a bureaucracy aimed at squeezing grant money out of other bureacracies, only to have to grow their own bureacracy in order to manage all the grant money and to plead for more, that those within the tribe can claim to be above the fray.

    Of course, until now, they’ve only lived a delusional “gentlemen’s” existence, since they’ve routinely attacked their critics outside the tribe from what had been the comfort of their controlled environment.

    It’s those guys that feel it when reality bites.

69. Arthur: I recognized Eli’s source material; I really don’t think it matters to anyone. I think Eli has jumped the shark. The shame is he doesn’t know it.

70. Well, as a newbie to the debate, I can see which side acts more mature and less juvenile. Eli, that was childish, now don’t you think so? I read your blog on this post (Lucia posted a link), but if that is how you conduct debate, I can skip it from now on as just a childish rant.

71. Eli, Bad Rabbet, Bad Rabbet! Your science equals your rhyming! Not so good.

72. Re: Alan Wilkinson (Feb 10 17:25),
    Alan,
    I’ve done plenty of collecting data (not climate) for analysis for a government scientific entity in my time. Both in the time when PJ was most active (1980’s) and now. And I know all about NDA’s and their implications. In the 1980’s, they were quite rare in this context.

    But the emphasis on formal NDA’s is misplaced. I’m sure what was on PJ’s mind was this. When you go collecting data, you find that no-one much wants to hand it over (in any field) and they don’t really have a reason to. So your a supplicant. The first thing they ask is, what are you going to do with it. So you explain, rather specifically, what you have in mind, hoping that they will find it non-threatening and something they could support. Almost certainly, there was an understanding that the data would not be used for other purposes. And if you say that it might end up on the WWW in an uncontrolled way, that is a deal-breaker.

    PJ was a famous and reputable scientist, so he didn’t often have to go to the stage of formal NDA’s. But I’m sure he would feel limited by those understandings.

73. Re: steven mosher (Feb 10 17:46),
    I’m all for having a central entity compile an official index. Or better, several. It’s not a new idea. USHCN was set up by NCDC and CDIAC as a coop effort, with DOE oversight. GHCN was initially a one-time project sponsored by a similar grouping.

    It does come down to funding. None (or little) was originally provided for GHCN’s continuing role, so that devolved to NOAA. As you’ve said on other occasions, the funding required is small.

74. Nick #32867, these agreements were essentially between national meteorological agencies with publicly-funded CRU/Jones as the collator in association with the UK Met Office.

    The sweet talking of personal ownership does not apply. In any case once the dataset became a controversial on-going measure at the heart of international policy-setting it is inconceivable that formal agreements to secure on-going supply of the data were not put in place.

    Were they not then cluelessly incompetent scarcely begins to characterize those responsible.

75. “I think you need to learn the concept of metaphor.
    Both “MP3″ and “Librarian” are metaphors. By the way, once you learn the basic concept of metaphor, you should also learn that all methaphors are imperfect.”

    Yes, and some are intentionally misleading. It was never part of CRUs mission to maintain an archive of any kind of other people’s data for the benefit of the public, and I’d be astonished if received any funding whatsoever for this particular activity.

    In terms of scientific standards, CRU is responsible for providing in their publications sufficient information for other scientists to replicate their work, where all scientists understand that “replicate” does not mean “duplicate exactly” but rather enough to carry out a comparable study–in other words, an accurate summary of the method, and sufficient information on how to collect similar data. I am frankly astonished that anybody would have the nerve to ask a scientist for somebody else’s data. Scientific ethics dictates that if you want somebody’s data, you contact them directly; you don’t try to winkle it out of a collaborator. It is understandable that a layman might be under the impression that the data was the property of CRU, but to continue to demand it after it was explained that that was not the case–and worse, to seek legal means to compel the scientists at CRU to release it in violation of scientific ethics–was dishonorable in the extreme.

76. trrll, twaddle. Once the data was incorporated into the HADCRUT series and published by an official government agency it became public along with the transformations performed on it.

    I don’t think scientific ethics is a notion CRU are familiar with. Therefore legal sanctions are required.

77. Re: Alan Wilkinson (Feb 10 20:38),
    Alan, I don’t know if you people really want for there to be a comprehensive temperature record. It often seems not, although I don’t know what you’d do if there wasn’t one. Anyway, it’s always been possible for anyone to try to do what PJ did back in the 80’s. In fact, GHCN did, and you can see from what they wrote that they were consciously following him.

    Those who are so confident that it can be done another way, should try. Or get someone to try, as Mosh seems to be trying to do. PJ did it his way.

    In fact, there’s plenty of recognition in the FOIA for data to be communicated between other government agencies without the need to make it public.

78. All this CRU “confidentiality” is bo!!ocks. This information involves tree ring data and the like. It has almost zero commercial worth. Are the Governments concerned saying they should be State Secrets? Do they sell tree ring data? No. The sole reason for the “confidentiality” handwaving is to stop other people re-examining the data. Jones wants a Criminal monopoly.

79. Trll–
    First, if you really think scientific ethics requires what you claim, you may need to get parliament to rewrite FOI to match your notions of what is required of scientists when they receive requests.

    I’m going to skip the irrelevancies like whether or not scientists understand that that replicate does or does not mean “duplicate exactly” or what astonishes you and explain some basic facts about what you claim are scientific ethics.

    For what it’s worth, I’ve worked at two national labs (Argonne and Pacific Northwest Laboratory). US FOI applies to both.

    If any scientists or principle investigators have developed the notion that they can negotiate informal legal agreements that bind a national lab and/or contravene FOI, they are seriously mistaken.

    You can make all sorts of decrees about what you claim ‘scientific ethics dictates. However, real researchers and even mere employees working at US National Labs know that if they hand data over to someone at another national lab, and they want an enforceable non-disclosure agreement, they need to get the non-disclosure agreement writing and signed by the legal representatives at the receiving laboratory.

    Practicing scientists also know that person will be an attorney not a scientist.

    Scientists at national labs are well aware of this because they can’t even sign the copyright form granting journals permission to print their articles! The legal department signs. The same holds for all legalagreements.

    Scientists at universities who have written a paper in collaboration with a coworker at a national lab publishing in his capacity as an employe of a national lab know this because they have to wait for legal at the national lab to sign any copyright transfers.

    Since the time FOI was passed, any scientist bound by FOI knows if they give an informal guarantee they will keep data private even if someone files an FOI, they are lying. Even before FOI was passed, any scientist who thought he could make a legally enforceable promise that bound his employer was either a) lying or b) deluded.

    Since you don’t know this, I assume you don’t work at a US National Laboratory, or any place where US FOI applies. I also assume you know absolutely no one who works at one. If you have made the mistake of believing that any one at a national laboratory can guarantee you non-disclosure informally, and given them data on that basis without getting a formal agreement, you have made a serious error. The informal agreement will not shield your data in the event of an FOI.

    It is somewhat mystifying to read people insisting that scientific ethics both permits and requires scientists to do something that is legally prohibited by US National Laboratories, and likely NOAA, NCAR and many state universities!

    So if a scientist made such a promise to someone at another institution the scientists duped them into believing they were protected. Why might he do this? Two reasons I can think of are a) the people giving him data never asked for a nondisclosure agreement and gave it without such conditions or b) he didn’t want to expend his time and energy putting the agreements in place and decided a little white lie would be more convenient for him. There could be other reasons– too lazy to learn inconvenient truths that might make his job more difficult? Who knows.

    But if you give data to a scientists and it is later disclosed as a result of FOI, and you want to blame someone for lapses in ethics, don’t blame the person who requested the data. Blame the scientist who deceiving you into believing that he was personally authorized to grant a non-disclosure and that informal verbal promises by him were binding on his employer! He lied.

80. Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 10 21:29),
    You say the oddest things:

    1) People requesting data isn’t going to ‘undo’ the existing temperature records. Why would you even imagine requesting data means someone doesn’t want a temperature record to exist?

    2) Of course agencies that are funded can create temperature records. This doesn’t mean the members of the public shouldn’t be allowed to request data.

81. IMHO either the library is public and open for business or it is a private archive and nothing contained in the archive can ever used or construed as a public record or relied upon for policy decisions.

    If the private archive owner wishes to display the items in plublic claiming certain provenance, he needs to allow independent confirmation of that provenance.

    In the words of the imortal Bard, “Out, damn’d spot, out I say!”

82. The Eli Rabett allegory was silly and inapt. ..And the song…embarrassing. Tom Lehrer had a piercing wit. Our visiting parodist does not.

    The notion that Phil Jones ever believed himself to be bound by NDAs is belied by the facts that (a) there was not the remotest effort to segregate or tag “protected data” by anybody or even retain or organize the agreements and (b) data was shared without any formal reference to those agreements and (c) he expressly used the phrase “hide behind” in reference to those supposed agreements in emails in which the context and intent was the creation of excuses not to comply with the FOI requests. The NDA issue was entirely pretextual and not the first line of stonewalling defense.

    It is also annoying to keep seeing breezy assurances that the requested data set was always available elsewhere. Oddly enough, this “fact” never occurred to Phil Jones because he could have simply pointed out that exact source without any conspiratorial correspondence or shifting rationales for refusal. In short, Jones’ own behavior invalidates that line of defense.

    Jones was wrong. The circle-the-wagons behavior was wrong. The policy will be changed because no one other than kneejerk True Believers thinks it was defensible. Even Monbiot bailed. Ritual condemnation of uppity “denialists” won’t change that or justify Jones’ silly refusals. Simply regurgitating the “Jones Good because McIntyre Bad” shtick makes one look increasingly stupid. Why does anyone bother? It’s over.

83. Re: lucia (Feb 10 21:37)
    Since the time FOI was passed, any scientist bound by FOI knows if they give an informal guarantee they will keep data private even if someone files an FOI, they are lying.
    I very much doubt that PJ has made any arrangements since 2000. He was a pioneer – most of his data arrangements would have been in the ’80s.

    People demanding data isn’t going to undo the temperature record. But it may well damage the arrangements under which it was collected, and may threaten their continuation. In a way this is theoretical – data likely will be handled differently in the future, which is probably the GHCN way. But PJ did it as well as he could at the time, and apparently did not want to simply throw the arrangements that he had made out the window. Maybe he can be overruled, but I think he’s right to put his case.

    Incidentally, I think you overrate the absoluteness of FOI here. At least under the EIR, there are substantial protections for intergovernment etc data transfers. As there has to be.

84. Somehow, the version of Chtulu’s analogy on this site not only adds sentences in blue, but also rewrites some sentences from the first version, reproduced here : http://bit.ly/aupOr0 ; for instance, the ending is strikingly different.

    Compare the last paragraph of the version on Rabett’s blog :

    He gets uptight at this and bad-mouths me on his website, telling his regulars how my “story has changed”. Sure it has, but understandably. Nevertheless he riles up enough of his website regulars and gets dozens of them to spam my inbox with requests for MP3s.

    What a bastard.

    (I hope nobody will mind us assuming that the last sentence is only an alinea. The notion of paragraph is tricky.)

    Here is the last paragraph given by Lucia:

    He gets uptight at this and bad-mouths me on his website, telling his regulars how my “story has changed”. Sure it has, but understandably. You know what’s even worse than this guy being a bastard? Eventually, all this stuff came to the attention of the local newspaper and oversight committees. Turns out people who are not that bastards regular blog readers think I didn’t deal with requests properly. OMG! A whole bunch of them how think I’m a bastard! How depressing.

    This last paragraph is said not to have been edited, as nothing there is in blue and Lucia foretells us that The portions that had been edited out of cthulhus version are highlighted in blue. . This might be against the rules of proper philology: editing has been made without mention, worse editing has been made when it was made clear no editing was made. That could compromise Culture, but since no tax-payer money is involved (is it?) let’s not make any fuss.

    What is striking is that this editing of the last paragraph modifies the overall moral. The moral does not seem mainly moral anymore, but deontological. This seems to be an important shift of attention in the two versions of the story. Readers shall judge by themselves the version they prefer. Chtulhu himself says the version given original here is the product of a lie (see http://bit.ly/cyKzsI), but who knows if Chtulhu has any privilege upon his own imagination?

    (It also strikes as portraying an irrational character, as opposed to bring it to an understanding, which that would be more in the spirit of Cthulhu, but let’s leave that aside for the moment, as we should not invoke the spirit of Cthulhu for such a triffle.)

    In any case, both versions forgets an important backstory (evoked at http://bit.ly/bP5Kvq): the acquaintance, or that guy with a library card, previously, not so long ago browsed some of Chtulu’s MP3 files from his torrent directory, or bogarted some books from the library. The acquaintance, or the guy with the library card, even proclaimed that Chtulu’s little brother, or some book rat, acted has a mole.

    Let’s not forget that this has nothing to do with musicology or bibliotheconomy.

    PS: Free scores and texts; free composition; free sharing.

85. Come on now Michael.
    It was very, very amusing.
    Regardless if it was apt or not.
    And it was very apt.

86. Eli Rabett,

    I assume you took the same course with your work on Miskolczi’s paper!!

87. Nick Stokes,

    ” He was a pioneer – most of his data arrangements would have been in the ’80s.”

    Yes, and some day I expect we ALL will know exactly what PJ, as you cutely call him, pioneered, if anything!!!

88. Zeke:

    “Mosh,
    Methinks the budgetary limitations of GISS and CRU are not of their choice. Perhaps this new climate.gov initiative that Anthony so recently lambasted would be a good opportunity to create a central clearinghouse of all available climate data? From what I’ve read, that was what some folks had in mind for it.”

    I dont blame GISS and CRU for the lack of budget. I don’t know enough about how money is granted, dispersed, programmed.
    I’ll just say that the amounts that are spent on such a fundamental piece of data is not up to snuff. Climate.gov? I read Anthony’s piece, but not very carefully. I would say this about the organization that I would like to see do the dataclearing house. I think they ought to be separated from political influence.

89. Nick

    Incidentally, I think you overrate the absoluteness of FOI here. At least under the EIR, there are substantial protections for intergovernment etc data transfers. As there has to be.

    Nick, The FOIA clearly allows the PUBLIC INTEREST to trump confidentiality agreements. That is why PJ MUST if he follows the rules this time around he MUST inform the third party that there contract may be VOIDED if the public interest outweighs the third party interest. Further he MUST only enter into these types of contracts if the data is NECESSARY.

    Now nick you know math. You know how to make a spatial average. Today MET show a temperature series that is nearly identical to the orginal CRU. As does NASA. Neither of these use confidential data. Explain to me the mathematical necessity of using the small amount of data that is confidential. Explain to me the scientific necessity. You can’t. Sure its nice to have a few extra stations. But nothing in the science changes with the addition of those stations. Nothing except perhaps the error due to spatial coverage. My advice to CRU would be as follows.

    1. Dont use this data. Take the issue off the table.

    If you choose to use this data you should.

    1. Keep good records
    2. Justify the continued use of it.
    3. Establish a license to make it available to others OR provide
    them with contacts so that they can get their version.

    So maybe we can agree on that. What happened happened. We can dissect it forever. Or people of good will can just agree to do things differently in the future. But this episode should not be repeated.

90. Mosher’s suggestions:

    1 They should not be associated with anybody who runs a GCM and checks the model against the observation.

    Sure, but in practice GCMs are checked against satellite products. Obviously the surface obs are problematic and heterogeneous.

    2.They should spend a lot more money on the problem than GISS or CRU do.

    I’m pleased with this acknowledgement. Many of the problems we face are based on huge increases in expectations without commensurate increases in funding.

    3. Permanent staff with the right disciplines. Archivist. Legal. Historical. professional programmers. Statisticians.

    Maybe. But if surface obs are going to matter, most of the money should be spent on proper field equipment and field personnel training and vetting.

    Legal?

    4. IV&V.

    eh?

    5. Open source software. GPL.

    +1 from me, but there are huge institutional barriers

    6. Creative commons data.

    +1 from me, but there are huge institutional barriers

    7. Provisions for confidential data.

    Not really necessary for surface obs in an ideal world.

    So like it’ll never happen, but if you had to design the way to do it, would you have problems with the above?
    Just get CRU, NASA and NOAA out of this record keeping datacentric task.

    As usual, there is little basis for believing that any actual real arrangement would not be met with anything short of absurdly overdrawn hostility, unless it actually showed a stable climate.

    Why don’t you guys just get together and specify what result you actually would trust? Then we could create a government agency to produce those numbers for you and we could forego all the messy instruments and international collaboration altogether.

91. Nick where do you get the idea that the agreements date from the 80s? Was that possibly because Jones said so?

    You know, it will be relatively easy to figure out. You’ve got four extant agreements. SteveMc has a 2003 version of the data.
    The original DOE contract would have some records.

    Do you really want somebody going down that route to test yet another claim made under duress?

92. markR

    Temperature data has commercial value and military value.
    The question no one has asked is how much.

    Now, didnt people HOWL to get navy data about the north pole?
    remember that? Guys died to collect that data.

93. “Why don’t you guys just get together and specify what result you actually would trust?”

    No problem. Transparency in the data set and computations. The debate would then be about the confidence and quality of the result. There will always be quality issues and science is about finding flaws and making improvements.

94. We almost got there MT.

    “3. Permanent staff with the right disciplines. Archivist. Legal. Historical. professional programmers. Statisticians.
    Maybe. But if surface obs are going to matter, most of the money should be spent on proper field equipment and field personnel training and vetting.”

    I was referring to the historical record, but for the future I think the CRN is a good effort and USCHN -M shows a lot of promise as well. As a data junkie I suppose I am partial to spending on observation.

    Legal. I would expect somebody to be on staff to handle legal matters. Keep the scientists out of the handling of contracts business.

    IV&V. independent verification and validation. Professional programming thingy. If climate change is going to be a gravy train programmers might as well get some.

    Anyways. I feel better now. I guess here is how I think about it.
    If two people so far apart on a bunch of issues can agree in principle how things should be done, our talk is not for naught.
    In the end we both see each other as somewhat reasonable people. When it comes to the “he said” she said, when it comes to the monday morning quaterbacking, you’ll defend your guy and I’ll pick at him. We will get annoyed. say shit we dont mean and think that the other person is a lunatic. So its always helpful to remind ourselves that if we had to work together to devise a better way of doing things we could agree.

95. Re: steven mosher (Feb 10 22:45),
    Nick where do you get the idea that the agreements date from the 80s? Was that possibly because Jones said so?
    You know, it will be relatively easy to figure out.

    Steve, you don’t need to resort to FOI, or even water-boarding. People publish stuff. These are the papers that made him famous:

    Global temperature variations between 1861 and 1984
    Jones, P. D.; Wigley, T. M. L.; Wright, P. B.
    Nature, Volume 322, Issue 6078, pp. 430-434 (1986).
    Cited by 438

    Jones, P., S. Raper, and T. Wigley, 1986: Southern Hemisphere Surface Air Temperature Variations: 1851–1984. J. Appl. Meteor., 25, 1213–1230.

    Jones, P., S. Raper, R. Bradley, H. Diaz, P. Kellyo, and T. Wigley, 1986: Northern Hemisphere Surface Air Temperature Variations: 1851–1984. J. Appl. Meteor., 25, 161–179.

    And as I said above, I’m not particularly talking about NDA’s. I’m talking about when he made his data arrangements.

96. Sorry, Steven.

    Unless you meant to say that you wrote a whole book that you don’t mean, I am not in a position to shrug off our differences. You are doing a hell of a lot more damage than the minor idiosyncracies of a few boffins ever did.

97. steven mosher (Comment#32888) This is not temperature data, it is Proxy data. How valuable is a cross section of a hundred year old tree, or other proxy? Not very. Never heard of any Proxy hijackers. The reality is that all this data could easily be replaced with cheap labour surveys, it’s not valuable at all . Viz Steve McIntyres “Starbucks” escapade.

98. It’s disappointing to read some of the insulting comments towards the host of this blog. Tacky and tactless, says alot about the commenter.
    I assume these people visit friends and family and insult their host.

    Then again, if they had a solid argument, rude behaviour wouldn’t be necessary would it?

99. A small quibble….. All agreements, whether written, oral, formal or informal are verbal. Rather than saying “informal verbal agreements” it is better and more accurate to say, “informal oral agreements” or “informal unwritten agreements” if the thing is not written down.

    Sorry to be pedantic on the point, but I argue that even unspoken agreements have their basis in humankind’s verbal faculties.

100. We are all so lucky to have Eli as the self proclaimed conscience and moral authority of Climate Science blogging. He puts the suffering back into insufferable.

101. Twist it turn it and examine it from any angle you wish, looks to me very much like a two bit shift manager at the local supermarket zealously guarding his/her position of “authority” from the new employee who appears to be a trouble maker.

     But of course, we’re dealing with people with PhD’s aren’t we? We’re dealing with work that’s important internationally aren’t we?

102. Eli Rabett (Comment#32843)

     Some Swift boating (Jonathon to be precise)

     May He, whom Nature’s Laws obey,
     Who lifts the Poor, and sinks the Proud,
     Quiet the Raging of the Sea,
     And still the Madness of the Croud.
     But never shall our Isle have Rest,
     Till those devouring Swine run down,
     (The Devil’s leaving the Possest)
     And headlong in the Waters drown.
     The Nation too too late will find,
     Computing all their Cost and Trouble,
     Directors Promises but Wind,
     South-Sea at best a mighty Bubble

103. Nick Stokes (Comment#32892) February 10th, 2010 at 11:10 pm

     Im aware of those nick. Im also aware of various versions of that data set that have floated around. The number of countries with agreements is rather small. Peterson and Jones discuss some of them in the mails. My point? i’m not willing to believe the 1980s argument.

104. MarkR.

     Whatever are you talking about. McIntyre did an FOIA for temperature data. The Yamal tree ring data was promised to be released prior to the FOIA controversy and thanks to the Phil Trans B, it was in the late sept 09 timeframe.

105. Michael Tobis:

     Unless you meant to say that you wrote a whole book that you don’t mean, I am not in a position to shrug off our differences. You are doing a hell of a lot more damage than the minor idiosyncracies of a few boffins ever did.

     Could you lay out the damage that you think Mosher is doing? If he’s telling the truth (or a version of it), then the damage was done by the actor of whom he speaks.

     If he’s lying, going way over the top in his rhetoric, or deliberately distorting the truth, maybe you have a point.

     Anyway, the general audience (to the degree they are even paying attention) is a lot more astute than you might think, especially in judging people’s motives (not so much in decoding G_mu_nu = 8 Pi T_mu_nu or something like that of course).

     So even if he were a scalawag the amount of damage he could do is pretty limited.

106. MT,

     Where ever did I say you had to shrug off our DIFFERENCES.

     To quote myself: “So its always helpful to remind ourselves that if we had to work together to devise a better way of doing things we could agree.”

     IF WE HAD TO. Let me put it to you this way. You might say ” I could never agree with Mosher because he said and did horrible things and no matter how reasonable he was about this ONE issue, I could never agree with him on that ONE issue because I disagree with him SO MUCH on other issues. In fact I disagree with him SO MUCH on other issues that I wont even agree with him that 2+2=4. That’s how much I disagree with him. And until he repents, I will not agree that 2+2=4, cause he said it.

     Or you, like me, recognize that while I may disagree with you about a lot of things and think you are an evil bastard of the highest order (not really ), I will note that from time to time we agree and think its the best thing if we focus on those things.
     It’s like Tamino. I think he is a petty little shit for banning Lucia, but if he writes a good piece of analysis I try to drop by and say “good work… you petty little shit” Now I know that this juxtaposition of a compliment and a slam fries a few circuits. It’s meant to. It means, even though I think you have a less than laudable character, I still recognize that 2+2=4. And while your intentions may be bad, evil, misguided, whatever, you said 2+2=4, and by golly thats right.

     Oh well, late on the west coast.

107. Lucia:

     Since the time FOI was passed, any scientist bound by FOI knows if they give an informal guarantee they will keep data private even if someone files an FOI, they are lying.

     On the other hand, I have contracts that require me to gain permission from my government sponsor before I can release any data (that includes even silly things like pictures of me fielding an instrument, even if there are pictures of me, the field and the instrument existing separately on the web).

     There are whole categories of information that preclude public release and are protected from FOI inquiries, Nick Stokes is right about that. That includes stuff in the USDA too (think proprietary data gathered by industry), not just military sponsors.

108. My library permits me to borrow CDs, and I think also lends out DVDs (i.e. films, which are one of the more heavily protected IPs) for a nominal fee. They do not restrict my ability to copy and re-distribute the music on those CDs (except that 20 years ago when the medium was tape, the quality of the loan medium was poor). Libraries do not (in my limited experience) act to enforce intellectual property rights – generally they provide a service of allowing open access to material which may not be accessible by other means.
     If I borrow a book from the library, scan it, and post the PDF on the internet, the publisher has no claim against the library. They do generally have a claim against me, but not my ISP.

109. 1 They should not be associated with anybody who runs a GCM and checks the model against the observation.

     2.They should spend a lot more money on the problem than GISS or CRU do.

     3. Permanent staff with the right disciplines. Archivist. Legal.
     Historical. professional programmers. Statisticians.

     4. IV&V.

     5. Open source software. GPL.

     6. Creative commons data.

     7. Provisions for confidential data.

     I agree with all of these. I don’t know enough about who does what at GISS or elsewhere to know how feasible no. 1 is, but it is certainly an ideal situation and doesn’t seem too burdensome. Good suggestions, mosh.

110. Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 10 22:00),

     People demanding data isn’t going to undo the temperature record. But it may well damage the arrangements under which it was collected, and may threaten their continuation

     There is absolutely no reason to even imagine this is will occur. Dreaming up imaginary dangers like, “Oh, if we do that, Puff the Magic Dragon may become real, and hurt us” is not a valid reason to refuse requests for information that the law deems should be accessible to the public.

     In a way this is theoretical – data likely will be handled differently in the future, which is probably the GHCN way.

     Exactly: You are bringing up an imaginary danger when you know that data will be available in the future regardless.

     But PJ did it as well as he could at the time, and apparently did not want to simply throw the arrangements that he had made out the window. Maybe he can be overruled, but I think he’s right to put his case.

     First, he did not. Even before FOI, it’s unlikely he ever had the power to legally bind CRU by making informal legal agreements. Second, when people need such agreements, they should be kept formally, and someone should keep track of the documents. Assuming anyone granting data actually wanted these agreements (and it’s not at all clear anyone did ) Phil Jones did not take these steps to protect them when they did him the honor of letting him have copies of the data.

     He also didn’t seem to know what he thought those documents covered. Academics could see the data? Non academics? No one? Other collaborators at CRU? If he thought these agreements meant anything, it was his obligation to know what they meant and to act in accordance with them. In fact, he made no effort whatsoever to act in accordance with them until such time as he found them to be a convenient excuse to refuse data to people he did not like.

     This is not “as well as he could at the time”.

     Moreover, PJ is criticized for his behavior at the time the FOI’s were filed. Even if he did not forsee the importance of keeping a file of binding legal documents, he could have been upfront and admitted the real issue, recognized that now that he was getting requests, he was obligated to make up for his past deficiencies and figure out which data were covered.

     In fact, it appears almost none of it was. He would have wasted less of his employers time and funds if he’d just decided to assign a non-scientific functionary the task of contacting the very small number of countries that ever had even the tiniest hint of wanting an NDA and asking them if it still holds, and getting paper work waiving the past agreement.

     Seems as if this was easy enough to do after Jones’ machinations became visible to the broader public.

111. That criticism of Lucia on Rabett’s blog is hilarious. Could it be they were being satirical, and referring to Phil Jones?

     Or did she just add in a bunch of text, manipulate and then claim it to be the original. She is not sharing how or where she sourced it, and I’m not just going to take her word for it, not given how she uses stats to lie.

112. A link to the original you use should be provided. With that you are open game.

113. Re: Carrick (Feb 11 02:19),

     On the other hand, I have contracts that require me to gain permission from my government sponsor before I can release any data (that includes even silly things like pictures of me fielding an instrument, even if there are pictures of me, the field and the instrument existing separately on the web).

     There are whole categories of information that preclude public release and are protected from FOI inquiries, Nick Stokes is right about that. That includes stuff in the USDA too (think proprietary data gathered by industry), not just military sponsors.

     Yes. I”m not suggesting these categories don’t exist.

     In cases where your sponsor wished to keep data private, the sponsor made sure the requirement appears in the contract which legal departments work out. You, the PI, ordinarily subject to FOI have the contract and can present it should someone FOI your work.

     This is fine.

     I’m not saying everything is subject to FOI. What I’m saying is that if you, Carrick, were bound by this, and Jones, in his capacity asked your for the data, you couldn’t just give, say “Oh. Sure, bro’. I trust you! But not SteveM” and then blithely hand it over to him accepting his his informal, oral agreement to not pass it on further.

     If you did that, you would have a) violated your own contractual agreement, b) suddenly transferred it to someone who is not bound by your contractual aggrement to keep it private c) worse, you have actually handed it to someone who works for CRU and, absent a written agreement, must comply with FOIs!

     So, to give him this data you would have to

     a) get permission from your sponsor– in whatever form mandated in your written contract. You would be wise to keep track of this permission and it may well be an obligation to do so.

     b) your sponsor would almost certainly require you get a formal, written NDA from Jones. If you and he did not do so, you would basically have placed the data into the hands of someone who can disseminate it because this third party is not bound by any agreement! The people crafting these documents would be lawyers, and the paper work would have to be signed by the authorized signatories for CRU– it’s highly unlikely an individual PI like Jones is this person.

     c) Jones would have an ethical obligation to keep track of this legally binding document and behave as if he is bound by it. Even before the existence of FOI, would have a contractual obligation to require someone to keep track of this contract. When presented with a request for data, they could refuse on the basis of the contractual obligation which the could produce.

     The practice of keeping the contracts would predate FOI and FOI recognizes the existence of real, honest to goodness contractual obligations! When Nick seems to suggest that the newness of the FOI law somehow insulates people from knowing they needed to formalize NDA’s and keep track of them- well that’s just hooey. FOI does make it more difficult for scientists and political employees to refuse the public data, but in work settings, businesses or government agencies who want guarantees their data will remain private have always had the need to formalize the agreement in writing.

     If you and your sponsor wanted the protection of an NDA, you need to do all this formally.

     The fact that these formal agreements do not exist in the CRU/Jones case suggests that informal agreements also did not exist, or the binding was no more than people wanting to know the major intended use without really caring all that much what might happen to the data and having absolutely no intention of binding Jones to keep the data super secret for ever and ever and ever — certainly not for decades. This situation often arises. If it did, so, Jones later claim he couldn’t circulate due to an informal NDA was an utter crock because he has distorted what the “agreement” was.

     The fact that Jones didn’t even keep track of these possibly non-existent back-of-the-napkin agreements suggests that either they never existed, they really didn’t bind him to anything. The fact that prior to SteveM’s requests, he behaved as if they didn’t exist, further suggests they either didn’t exist or they didn’t obligate him to shield anything from anyone.

     In short: The evidence suggests that he was not bound by the types of NDA’s that actually do exist in government funded (or even corporate funded) research.

114. Re: “2 + 2 = 4” —

     On a week-old thread at his blog Only In It For The Gold, Michael Tobis wrote a comment yesterday that touched on this issue. He remarked,

     Many people [Lukewarmers and Denialists] value politeness and don’t value coherence. They claim to value “science”, a claim which is at best delusional, because coherence is the fundamental tool of scientific truth-seeking. This drives people who actually do value truth-seeking [–adherents to the AGW Consensus–] to a fury. This fury is unattractive to observers and weakens the credibility of science.

     MT’s opinions are insightful in their way (my response as the following comment at OIIFTG).

     One follow-on observation: it strikes me that leaders of the AGW Consensus have an overarching understanding of the motives of their opposition.

     Examples of AGW Consensus leaders would be Mike Mann, Phil Jones, Gavin Schmidt, James Hanson, William Connolley, Joe Romm, Steve Bloom, Eli Rabett, Michael Tobis, Tamino, and Deep Climate.

     There are some key AGW Consensus tenets (e.g IPCC report assertions and conclusions, the integrity of the instrumental record and adjustments, data and code archiving/sharing practices, Mann’s paleoclimate reconstructions, >3C effect of CO2 doubling, the need for urgent and drastic GHG actions). People who express doubts about them, do so for motives that can fairly be described as base: delusion, intellectual incoherence, anti-Science zealotry, and unfettered self-interest. Corruption, too.

     I think most Lukewarmers lack comparable Manichean insights into what motivates a given adherent of the Consensus. That is so for me, a newbie-Lukewarmer, at any rate.

     This imbalance seems to make communicating about climate more difficult than it would otherwise be.

115. I am a bit puzzled by this thread. I don’t see there is very much to get worked up about.
     .
     You need only read over PJ’s email messages about FOI requests and releasing data, and it becomes pretty clear that he 1) behaved (in general) more like a spoiled six year old than a responsible professional, 2) was willing to violate whatever informal NDA’s he had (if any) when it suited his purposes, 3) misled people about the existence/applicability of NDA’s to avoid giving data to those he didn’t like, and 4) willfully thwarted legitimate FOI requests for data, in clear violation of the law. The British prosecutors concluded that PJ had in fact broken the FOI law, but could not be prosecuted due to statute of limitations rules. There is nothing terribly complicated here. He did bad, he got caught, end of story.
     .
     And so he has “stepped down” (I just love that expression) from his position, and I doubt he will ever return to it. This seems a very reasonable result to me. Whatever PJ’s capability as a scientist, he is clearly incompetent as a manager/decision maker in any organization larger than himself and a small group of grad students. So after he is formally reprimanded, he will probably “stick to the science” or just choose to retire.
     .
     I’m happy that he chose not to kill himself; that would have been an inappropriate response to being a poor manager who broke the law, and terrible for his family. I’ve known lots of managers that did much worse things than PJ, and I never thought any of them should kill themselves. 😉

116. Even Tobis is admitting the AGW hype is in trouble, when you get past all of his sour grapes.
     He is still blaming the skeptics, like most true believers.
     But he is making progress.
     Skeptics, at this point in the AGW debacle, are the barbarians at the gates, from the pov of the AGW faithful.

117. Amac–
     It would be nice if many of MTobis’s arguments ever included any specific details to show who he thinks advances these incoherent arguments, what the incoherent arguments are (connecting those to individuals), showed that any specific individual he is critising by binning and labling actually holds incoherent and then showed these views are any more incoherent that Michael Tobis’s own views, or those of any individual he considers to fall inside his “coherence network”.

     I suspect one of Michael Tobis’s cognitive mistakes is that he feels a compulsion to see the world as consisting of two groups– with possibly a few unaffiliated individuals to be roped into a group. He bins almost everyone into one group or the other and then imagines that every single person in the group he considers “the other side” is advancing one single argument. We will call this the “borg argument”

     Of course he discovers that borg argument is incoherent. This is not surprising since the borg argument is a phatasm existing in MT’s mind and, in reality, is advanced by absolutely no one.

     The reason the MT’s fictional borg argument is incoherent is obvious, and can be explained by a simply hypothetical. Suppose MT lumps Monckton and me in the same “group”. Then MT concocts the borg argument by collecting together all the things he thinks the two of us claim to be true. Then he discovers this borg argument contains some mutually exclusive premises. It’s inconherent! Imagine!!! Wow!

     Of course, the truth is: I disagree with Monckton on some meaninful issues; Monckton in turn disagrees with me. But I think Tobis sees us as having some sort of group mind that disagrees with itself.

     Of course, it’s the notion of the group mind that Tobis seems to hold that is nutty. Not only that, but it likely shows the incoherence of Tobis’s world view because one the one hand, if pressed, he would admit he thinks individuals who he lumps in categories do not share a single group mind. Yet, on the other hand, he interprets their actions as if they do share a group mind.

     That notion is utterly inconherent– and I suspect that incoherence exists inside the single individual mind of Michael Tobis!

     Of course, I may be mistaken and Michael may have some coherent structure to how he thinks about the dynamics of interactions between his own “coherence network” and the group he considers ‘the other side”. But if he does, he manages to show no evidence of having a coherent structure for his thoughts about the behavior of these “two sides”.

118. I think the coherent thought is that MT sees the complete/substantive ediface of AGW and concludes it is the best explanation. However, he sees that the individual complaints about issues of “substance” that you and Monckton are incoherent between your selves and do not present a coherent ediface by your selves. Of course, perhaps MT could weigh in on this since this is the conclusion I drew from several of his posts and may not represent his conclusions well at all.

119. Re: The Borg

     “Surrender is irrelevant. There are no terms.” -Locutus of Borg/Captain Picard/AGW Drone

     Best Next Generation Quote Ever

     Andrew

120. John
     I also think AGW is the best explanation of the rising temperatures. So, I agree with MT on that. However, since MT rarely or never connects his theories about the incoherence of others to anything concrete,it’s difficult to know a) precisely what his theory of incoherence claims, b) who he is accusing of incoherence or c) what evidence he thinks supports his theory.

     In the end, his discussions about “coherence” sound like a philosophical ramblings of an intelligent but drunk college sophomore who is trying to impress the ladies during happy hour. (These sorts of sophomores rarely succeed in impressing the ladies. Although if they are very good looking, they might have some luck on that basis. This can cause the less intelligent ones to think the stragegy works, but it doesn’t. )

121. Lucia, I don’t mean to be a PITA, but the original unedited version doesn’t appear to be online. With the Stieg rant it was easy to fact check. Not so easy in this case. Please post a link to the original or the cache of the original.

     Thanks,

     dallas

122. AMac (Comment#32915),

     MT seems willing to rationally accept that there is uncertainty in key issues like climate sensitivity and the speed and magnitude of effects from AGW (and I think he has explicitly said as much). What MT simply can’t accept is that these uncertainties could justify a policy response which differs from what he (and others in his coherence group) believes is the correct response.
     .
     So MT pronounces anybody who disagrees with his policies to “not value coherence”; this is preposterous on its face, especially considering that many people who disagree with MT’s desired policies are technically trained, experienced and successful in their respective fields, and quite rational in their analysis of uncertainty. What really makes AGW scientists really crazy (MT, but many others as well… Tamino comes to mind) is that they can’t so easily dismiss the logical arguments of those who are technically trained. They can dismiss the “ignorant masses” as being unable to appreciate the complexity of climate science, and so while witless (and breeding far too much!), not truly evil. But technically trained people (like you AMac!) should know better, and so are truly loathed. I noted that MT would not even directly respond to you when you commented at his blog, and would not address the issues you raised.
     .
     MT allows his political views to distort his thinking about science, and he is plainly unaware of it. MT concludes that AGW Alarmists need to establish more trust and authority with the public and complains how “expensive ” that process is. Establishing trust is nearly free; it only requires that AGW Alarmists actually engage people who disagree with their political policy choices and discuss risks, costs, and benefits as a clearly political question. Their inability to do this would be funny were it not so destructive to progress.

123. captdallas2 (Comment#32923) —

     To spell it out, cthulhu’s comment was an analysis-by-metaphor of McIntyre’s FoI requests. In this post, Lucia parodied that metaphor. In turn, that rhapsody in blue prompted Eli Rabett to croon to a Tom Lehrer tune, “The Folk Song Army” (Comment#32843). I recall it fondly as a cut on a 33 LP, MP3s being in the far future of way back then.

     Which brings us full circle.

124. Lucia,
     “These sorts of sophomores rarely succeed in impressing the ladies. Although if they are very good looking, they might have some luck on that basis. This can cause the less intelligent ones to think the stragegy works, but it doesn’t.”

     I will have to defer to your experience and accept what you say. 🙂

     What does MT look like? just askin’.

125. As I sit with my “Hide The Decline” mug enjoying a cup of hot tea and reading all 119 comments, I finally find out where I went wrong as that two-fisted drinking sophomore of many decades ago.

     Thanks for the tip, Lucia, but it’s too late!

126. Re: captdallas2 (Feb 11 09:41),

     Thanks for your enquiry. I expect such requests from true scholars working in the area of “MP3-ology”, particularly those interested in the social dynamics evident in the great “MP3-snit indcident”. No doubt you have been following that incident with relish– as have we all!

     Unfortunately, the original for my document is not online. Like the musical works of PDQ Bach, the original document was unearthed by researchers who recognized its value and treated it with care. The article was printed in lemon juice on particularly fragile paper that, unfortunately, was not able to withstand photons for very long and has disintegrated into shreds. Like the dead sea scroll, these shreds are being preserved and only the elite are being given access! Since the entire project is funded by private resources, even the names of those on the list having access is private– and of course, not subject to FOI. Alas. But you know how scientists are, don’t you?

     Lucky for us, the scholars were able to scribble notes before the knowledgge of the contents of the original were lost to mankind! I was able to access a leaked copy and post the contents. Now we are all edified.

     Sadly, there are many details that remain unknown. For example, though diligent, my sources tell me the researchers have been unable to find the link to the website where the librarian was bad mouthed by the library card holder and his followers.

     They also have not been able to identify the precise collection of MP3s, or identify who the librarian or his acquaintance might be. To date, we have found no evidence of anyone spamming the librarian ‘inbox’ asking for MP3s. Possibly those emails were deleted by a cabal of librarians during the great “data purge event” known reported in leaked “MP3-gate emails”.

     So, for all we know that the full version I discovered, and the shorter one presented by chtulu was a work of fiction by some unknown author or authors. Scholars are, of course, intensely interested in discovering whether the incident is fictional or historic.

     If chtulu has evidence of the spam emails including the headers specifically requesting MP3’s or the link to the web site discussing the MP3’s, we might discover evidence to confirm the historicity of both our accounts. Then we could place this into the broader context of “MP3-gate” and “MP3-ology”.

     That would result in a true advance of “THE scholarship” as those working in the “MP3-ology” like to call it.

     Thanks for asking!

127. Eli Rabett has a good post, Betroffenheitstroll, which is a translation of a post by Jörg Zimmerman on Concern Trolls.

     The concern troll is also found in the climate debate … And then, by and by, the classic objections of the denialist scene emerge one after another. [It can be difficult to distinguish] a real skeptic who wants to deal with a few issues from the “concern troll”. A true skeptic will be satisfied with answers, a “concern troll” never. It can be irritating for the casual reader when an experienced person recognizes and attacks a “concern troll” after one or two comments, because in the opinion of the naive reader the “concern troll” had justified doubts that one should have dealt with politely. The polite answer, of course, ultimately wastes time that could be spent more productively and that thievery is a concern troll goal.

     Manicheanism once more.

     A true skeptic will be satisfied with answers provided by the AGW Consensus, because those answers are complete, correct, and accessible to all people of good will.

     Experienced people are justified in attacking a “concern troll” after one or two comments because only a naive individual would think that persistent skepticism of a tenet of the AGW Consensus could be legitimate.

     Polite answers, of course, waste the time of Consensus advocates and such time thievery is the goal of the concern troll.

     Such analyses were common on religious topics, in pre-Modern times. They also featured prominently in a number of secular movements of the 20th Century–some defunct, others ongoing.

     Here’s Eli commenting on the instructive test-case, Mann’s upside-down use of the Tiljander proxies, at Stoat (11/4/09, 8:23pm):

     This is getting pretty close to what Eli said several oh dears and Tijlanders ago

     Anyone ever consider the proposition that Tiljander had it upside down? That may be what the reconstructions are saying. Just saying.

128. Pittman gets me right.

     There are several hypotheses on offer.

     Monckton/Motl: There is no climate science, these are a bunch of communists. No policy is necessary. (Incoherent with itself.) “Not the IPCC.”

     Singer: There is excellent climate science, but it is being systematically misrepresented. The sensitivity is small, implicitly with very little uncertainty. The scientific establishment is corrupt in some ill-specified way. No policy is necessary. “Not the IPCC.”

     McIntyre: There is not much of interest in climate science other than observations. (Jones is the most important figure in the culture of climate science and CRU is the most important institution.) The observations considered alone in the apparent absence of significant theory do not justify policy action. “Not the IPCC.”

     Svensmark: My climate science is better than everybody else’s. It’s cosmic rays. No policy is necessary. “Not the IPCC”.

     Lindzen: My climate science is better than everybody else’s. Cloud feedbacks will save us. No policy is necessary. “Not the IPCC.”

     McLean/Freitas: My climate science is better than everybody else’s. It’s El Nino. No policy is necessary. Not the IPCC.

     Watts and his enthusiasts: Lindzen, Freitas, Svensmark, McIntyre, Singer, Monckton are all correct. No policy is necessary at least six times over. Not the IPCC.

     (I’m sure there are more to be found.)

     Meanwhile, the national academies of every significant science-producing nation: The IPCC WG 1 represents the best available information.

     Now, does this address Lomborg vs Stern? What are the risks and benefits? Here I would agree there is no consensus. My policy inclinations may differ from yours.

     While I don’t agree with SteveF that there is a level playing field, and I am pretty confident we disagree on the extent of necessary policy action, I emphatically do agree that this is where the serious discussion should be happening.

     But we need to start from a sound basis. That basis is provided by the scientific consensus as reported by IPCC WG 1, which document duly reports on what is considered well-established and what is considered merely plausible. Accusations that WG 1 report directly advances policy or overstates certainty are also incoherent with the actual facts.

     Now, if you want to contest IPCC WG 2 or WG 3 reports, I will not object. I don’t think there really is a coherent mature science in those areas; these reports may or may not be useful but cannot be authoritative in the sense that WG 1 is.

     The following is a bit tedious, but I suppose I ought to say it: Note that authoritative does not mean infallible. It just means, this is the balance of evidence as understood by the bulk of practitioners in relevant domains. You’re better off betting with it than against it.

     Please have a look at the graph and the exposition here:

     http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/01/ok-getting-serious-again.html

129. MT,
     “McIntyre/Watts/Liljegren: There is no climate science other than observations. The observations considered alone in the apparent absence of significant theory do not justify policy action.”

     Completely wrong. You seem incapable of learning, or of even understanding what people say.

130. Lucia Comment#32842
     It’s not that the analogy is imperfect that bothers me, not many can be. I do recall some constraints on my own use of libraries while attending Illinois in Chambana.
     There was the “main stacks” library and several smaller specialized libraries scattered amongst the schools. There were special privileges extended to some people regarding access to parts of the main stacks, particular resources or items at the specialized libraries that were not extended to all other students.
     Although CRU was publicly funded to create the record, the audience for that information was not the general public; it was a specialized group of researchers and probably some in the government. I can understand the reticence of Phil Jones to grant access to someone who he would not see as part of his initial audience, especially to someone who could threaten the value of the information by questioning its authenticity. I don’t defend that but it makes me suspect that PJ must have known the data would not stand up to such scrutiny.

     I’m interested in coming up with an analogy that can be used to understand the mindset of PJ and CRU. If a good one can be found perhaps that will give some better insight into what happened with this issue.

     In a comment above, someone made mention of the USDA. That government agency’s job is to safeguard the public. In a similar way, I think that Climate Scientists look at their work as an attempt to protect the public from the ill effects of CO2 which they view as a pollutant.

     The USDA collects lots of data regarding the suitability of beef processing and it’s “purity” to be eaten by the public. I doubt that the detailed information of the conditions at each and every plant is subject to complete public scrutiny. Would a private company allow you or me into their plant to audit their procedures in regards to cleanliness? Would the USDA even allow someone toaccess to their records regarding a particular plant? I doubt it.

     Here is one tidbit I did find “Nor can the USDA even tell consumers which stores might have meat subject to recall sitting on their shelves. Such information is considered the meatpacking companies’ proprietary business information. That secrecy can extend to an appalling degree. In 1999, IBP, a major meatpacking company, recalled 10,000 pounds of ground beef because it was shot through with bits of glass; but neither the company nor the USDA would tell the public which stores had received the extra-crunchy beef”

     If the USDA could not get the info in the above example, how likely is that someone could file a FOIA request and succeed? Perhaps the USDA knows that the data is “ugly” and that publishing it for all to see would create a “hysteria” amongst an ignorant public that would cause people to lose faith in the notion that it’s safe to eat beef.

     Perhaps CRU thought of themselves as more like the USDA. Collecting the data, knowing its ugly, publishing what in their view would be best for public “consumption” to support the interest of protecting all of us from the evils of CO2.

     Just for the record, in no way do I support CRU’s or PJ’s actions in this matter.
     Thanks
     Ed

131. I will not get involved in another non-productive thread that goes on indefinitely because MT is unable to argue based on specifics and unable to address or even understand what people actually write.
     .
     So after MT’s first non-sense post, I’m outahere…

132. I appreciate the ten minute delay thing on here. I did back off on a couple of points.

     As for specifics, they are for the most part those provided by IPCC WG 1. I don’t claim to know more than WG 1. Why should I?

     I think Jones made some minor, understandable mistakes under the pressure of what he perceived as malice, and what sure looks like malice now. These mistakes do not impact his results. I think the likelihood is that the GISS/CRU large scale mean temperature record is pretty near correct, and that it will be difficult to do substantially better.

     I agree with most of you that all the raw materials and all the processing code should in principle be public.

     I disagree that there was any expectation or obligation to that effect in the past, and assert that there were and still are contrary expectations.

     I don’t know how to back those opinions up with “specifics”. This mostly isn’t a matter of science, it’s a matter of opinion.

     The only objective claim I made on the subject at hand is that the GISS/CRU records are roughly correct and that you are unlikely to change it much if you do a good job reanalyzing the raw data once you get it. Supporting evidence includes: similarity of the existing records, coherence with other aspects of climate science, consistency with satellite obs, and the complete lack of a plausible theory as to how and why these records might be systematically biased.

133. MT (Comment#32930) —

     Thanks for emphasizing IPCC Working Group 1. That’s a helpful lead.

     I wonder whether people you paraphrase would agree with what you have them saying.

     The single most powerful thing that Consensus adherents could do to generate trust in its beliefs would be to advocate that the practices of climate science should map to the accepted practices of other physical sciences. Suggest you look at clinical trials, or another field that’s high-stakes with respect to policy. Shenanigans take place (of course), but they aren’t condoned or considered normal.

134. “Pittman gets me right.”

     Michael Tobis,

     Please tell us that AGW isn’t just some vain attempt at personal fulfillment by it’s proponents.

     There are other ways to raise your self-esteem, you know.

     Andrew

135. AMac: Of course I exaggerate the key naysayers’ positions for effect, but sadly, not much.

136. Michael Tobis (Comment#32937)

     You left out a key naysayers argument.

     Fossil fuels will price themselves out of the energy mix. No IPCC action required.

     From just 2 days ago..
     http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dff34cb2-1519-11df-ad58-00144feab49a.html

     “Credit Suisse recently raised its average 2010 thermal coal price forecast to $90 a tonne, an increase of 28.6 per cent on the previous year.”

137. Michael Tobis (Comment#32930)

     (I’m sure there are more to be found.)
     Meanwhile, the national academies of every significant science-producing nation: The IPCC WG 1 represents the best available information.

     On your blog recently,there was an interesting artwork of a Kraken.(21 Jan)

     The inverse (chiral) reaction to the lead up to Copenhagen by Hysterical scientists invokes the law of unintended consequences ie the Kraken wakes, Russian Academy of sciences Dec 18.

     One of the main topics of discussion was also the theme of climate change

     Vice President RAS Nikolai Laverov and Director of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology RAS Yuri Izrael, and briefly described what research are in the area of climate and advised the president not to succumb to the general panic created now in the West around this topic.

     “So now the issue heated up interest, and in all this I feel the taste of money. Otherwise I would so zealously that never had it,” – said Dmitry Medvedev – “ If we were talking about just a general scientific discussion, such a deep dive into the material of the world leaders who are not scientists, as is known, but then we are dealing with big politics, and with big money, and at the same time – the threat to which we will need to meet all together. ”

     Presidential doubts about the “drama” of global warming, supported and Nikolai Laverov actually called the president at a summit in Copenhagen “to weigh the position” and not to enter the country “serious commitment”, besides those that will be useful for the development of the country

     As an interesting aside , an imortant attribute of an experiment is to pose the question (arguments) and let time resolve the experiment without additional parameters.

     The experiment was successful(my suspicions confirmed by yourself 19th Jan)

     There is the Russian mathematician type. If this isn’t just one guy with three aliases, this is the third example of this type I’ve encountered. There is a rich literature of the mathematics of nonlinear dynamical systems which I have never been able to penetrate. It is amazing that people who accuse us of arrogance make common cause with this type of person whose main point is that I don’t know their theorems and haven’t read their papers, so who the hell am I to claim I know anything about climate.

138. Micheal–
     Now that you are more specific about what you think specific people claim, you have managed to mischaracterize the positions of nearly everyone you see as being on the “other side”. You may have Singer right. That’s about it.

     So, your theories about coherence are flawed because you are unwilling or unable to make accurate observations of other people’s full arguments.

     Accusations that WG 1 report directly advances policy or overstates certainty are also incoherent with the actual facts

     Incoherent? Incoherent with what? Newtonian mechanics? Radiative physics? Jungian Psychology? The writings of Mani?

     Or just Michael Tobis’s opinion of how things must be?

139. Re: edward (Feb 11 10:46),
     I’m familiar with the stacks in Chambana. Oskeewowwow ! 🙂

     Although CRU was publicly funded to create the record, the audience for that information was not the general public; it was a specialized group of researchers and probably some in the government. I can understand the reticence of Phil Jones to grant access to someone who he would not see as part of his initial audience, especially to someone who could threaten the value of the information by questioning its authenticity. I don’t defend that but it makes me suspect that PJ must have known the data would not stand up to such scrutiny.

     He can be as reticent as he wishes and you are permitted to understand his reticence. But the fear that the data would not stand up to scrutiny if viewed by people other than his friends is not a justification.

     But reticent or not, Jones can no more block someone who has been granted access by those who make the rules than the librarian overseeing the stacks can make her own rules about who to admit. When I was at chambana, if you were a graduate student, you could get into the stacks. Period.

     I don’t think you could get into the rare-books sections automatically. (I could ask my sister; she worked there.)

     If the USDA could not get the info in the above example, how likely is that someone could file a FOIA request and succeed? Perhaps the USDA knows that the data is “ugly” and that publishing it for all to see would create a “hysteria” amongst an ignorant public that would cause people to lose faith in the notion that it’s safe to eat beef.

     Perhaps CRU thought of themselves as more like the USDA. Collecting the data, knowing its ugly, publishing what in their view would be best for public “consumption” to support the interest of protecting all of us from the evils of CO2.

     Sure. CRU may have thought of themselves like that. But bear in mind: the USDA is not entirely shielded from FOI– only certain things are shielded. So, those at the USDA must still comply. When they request, they must provide truthful reasons for refusing a request, and in this regard CRU is no different.

     In contrast, people at CRU seemed to operate under the assumption they can provide technically not true reasons to turn down requests. The “I’m like the USDA” analogy doesn’t work for that. The USDA can’t do that either.

     Also, you would think by the time they began concocting not-quite true after not-quite true response to FOI’s people at CRU would have realized that they were not exempt since they are not the USDA and even if they were, the USDA is not whole exempt from FOIA.

     Of course we can try to write an analogy that explains their thinking. If you want to write one, go ahead.

     But it’s a big like writing an analogy that explains the thinking of flat earthers. If we surround that analogy with extra information, we discover that, while they have a certain point of view, its a delusion. If someone wants to post the first analogy without making it clear the point of view is delusional, that’s fine. But I think it’s worth taking the extra step and placing the analogy in context to show that the delusional point of view was… well… delusional.

140. Re: lucia (Feb 11 07:45)
     “When Nick seems to suggest that the newness of the FOI law somehow insulates people from knowing they needed to formalize NDA’s and keep track of them”
     I’m not suggesting that FOI was new. I’m saying that when PJ did most of his data collecting, FOI’s were 20 years in the future. NDA’s were a rarity too. If you wanted data, you asked people, and explained what you proposed to do with it. If they trusted you, they provided it. And I can understand that PJ wants to confine his use of the data to what he would have said then. He can be overruled – so can we all. Doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t try.

141. Nick-
     Where in the world do you get the notion that NDA’s were a rarity in the 80s? NDA’s have existed a long time. My father worked for a pharmaceutical firm and they used NDA’s back in the 60s. I’m sure NDA’s predated both you and me!

     Jones and try whatever he wants to try. But that doesn’t mean he provide not technically true responses to FOIs.

142. Re: SteveF (Feb 11 08:49)
     “The British prosecutors concluded that PJ had in fact broken the FOI law, but could not be prosecuted due to statute of limitations rules.”
     You guys love to criminalize anything involving scientists. There were no prosecutors, and statute of limitations was not involved. FOI is an administrative procedure. Some people involved in overseeing concluded that an FOI application was not handled correctly.

     That doesn’t mean someone has to go to jail. If the six-month limit has passed, all it means is that a new FOI has to be submitted. And someone will probably be reprimanded.

143. Re: lucia (Feb 11 13:58)
     I was much involved in activities (in Australia, and not climate) not too unlike PJ’s in the 1980’s. I encountered my first NDA in 1991. That was in the US – maybe we were just behind. They became common here soon after. But they would have taken a while to penetrate the world of Met Offices etc.

     I did once, in about 1980, have to get some data from BoM. I had to supply a letter from my boss, saying why we wanted it. Maybe that was something like a NDA in effect.

144. Zeke,
     Are you seriously suggesting that creating yet another government agency – supposedly to “ coordinate“ the input from other government agencies is going add anything to the mix.

     When we have pretty consistent evidence that most all of them have FUBARd what they were supposed to do to the Nth degree.

145. Nick Stokes (Comment#32945)

     Actually, it is exactly what you poo-poo. There have been several discussions on it (and not being an Englishman, I cannot recall the exact initials of which bureau is which) where the authorities said just that – since the statute of limitations had expired, there was nothing they could do. It is a criminal, not a civil statute (with the obligatory maximum of x years and y pounds).

146. Re: PhilJourdan (Feb 11 14:43),
     The reference is to an email from a deputy of the Information Commissioner’s Office. And Phil Jones is not mentioned there.

147. Nick Stokes (Comment#32945),
     “You guys love to criminalize anything involving scientists. ”
     Odd that you think so, since I am a scientist myself. 😉
     But upon reading the pertinent sections of the FOI law, it appears you are right about prosecutors; when the administrative process determines willful non-compliance with an FOI request, it is given to a court and handled as a contempt of court process. Does that make it not a criminal process? Maybe, but I suspect your fanny could still end up in a cell.
     .
     In any case, you are certainly right that PJ’s actions will probably be handled with a reprimand.

148. I have no interest whatsoever in the mindset of either M Tobin or P Jones and his co-workers. My only interest is ensuring that important data and conclusions, on which major economic and political decisions are based, are sound, transparent and properly independently evaluated.

     The rest is hogwash.

149. Sorry about the grammatical goof in 32959 – the edit facility appears not to be working.

     Strange! Now it has updated after a delay and several refreshes.

150. Re: SteveF (Feb 11 15:28),
     “it is given to a court and handled as a contempt of court process”
     It only becomes contempt of court if and when there is refusal to comply with a court order.

151. Alan Wilkinson (Comment#32960),

     Happens every time. You don’t see the fixed version until another post is displayed. Of course, your unfixed post does immediatly become available, and people will read it… mistakes and all, until the next post goes up.
     .
     See my Comment#32931, which copied Tobis’s original words and compare them to his revised comment. I think he realized his first comment wouldn’t play very well in Aurora Illinois, so struck Lucia from the list of the bad guys.

152. Nick Stokes (Comment#32962),
     So you are suggesting there are no consequences for refusal to comply with a legitimate FOI request? That doesn’t seem reasonable. Why would anybody in a mood to refuse a request ever comply?

153. Re: SteveF (Feb 11 15:46),

     Happens every time. You don’t see the fixed version until another post is displayed. Of course, your unfixed post does immediatly become available, and people will read it… mistakes and all, until the next post goes up.

     Yes. That’s a weird interaction between the cache plugin and the edit plugin. The cache plugin refreshes he cache when someone posts a comment, but the edit plugin doesn’t send anything to tell the cache plugin to refresh.

     The page will alway refresh within 30 minutes, or, oddly enough if I load it. That’s the cache feature has an option to refresh when a “registered user” loads the page!

154. Re: SteveF (Feb 11 15:50),
     “So you are suggesting there are no consequences for refusal to comply with a legitimate FOI request?”
     As I said, it’s an administrative procedure. Its purpose is to get information out to the public, not to be part of a bloggers’ lynching mechanism. So the sanctions provided are what is deemed to be appropriate to the task. The government that provides FOI also wants to keep its administrative (and scientific) functions working. They evidently believe that management processes can handle reluctant compliance, with the criminal law as a last resort.

155. Lucia,

     I think that if you just post a ‘.’ or something as soon as the edit is done, that replaces the original comment with the fixed one.

     A more useful feature would be to hold off posting a comment at all for ten minutes. That might give time for a cooler head to reconsider poorly chosen words. But that would slow down the give-and-take of a thread.

156. SteveF– I’d have to write a plugin or edit it. But yes, it would be better if the plugin stored the comment somewhere until the editing time window expired and then sent it through to “post”. The issue is thinking through how to do this given the existing wordpress hooks and the ability of WP to run a chron job.

157. Nick Stokes,

     “bloggers’ lynching mechanism”

     Nicely chosen words. I certainly want o lynch PJ… hang-em-high you known. I am certain that if you just asked a some bloggers they would all agree he needs to be lynched…. or maybe, in the best of British tradition, “drawn and quartered” in the public square.

     Your gratuitous hostility toward those who do not agree with you does not serve your objectives. Just the opposite.

158. > not to be part of a bloggers’ lynching mechanism

     That phrase triggered my hyperbole alert (in Firefox, it’s a small red X in the upper right corner of the window).

159. Re: SteveF (Feb 11 16:06),
     “gratuitous hostility”
     No, none intended. That’s just the way the focus on prosecuting and putting fannies in jail looks to me. In this huge fuss over what PJ is supposed to have done, I see almost no interest in whatever it is that the FOI request is supposed to unearth. Just what can be done to PJ.

     And I haven’t proposed putting anyone in jail.

160. Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 11 16:13),

     I see almost no interest in whatever it is that the FOI request is supposed to unearth.

     You must have your eyes closed then.

161. Re: lucia (Feb 11 16:15),
     Well, Lucia, what further actions have you taken to find out about legal agreements between CRU and Honduras? Which you needed for your academic research?

162. Nick Stokes (Comment#32973),

     I do not care at all about what is done to PJ. I do hope that the people at UEA recognize that he is probably not the person to make the kinds of decisions that he has been making, that he has caused a lot of problems, wasted a huge amount of people’s time, and that he is almost certainly better suited to a purely scientific role.
     .
     I note that all the data still has not been released. When it finally is released and people get a chance to independently look at adjustments, I do not expect a big change in the size of historical trend, almost certainly less than 10%, and likely well under 5%. And most people would not get too excited about a small net change unless some clear systematic error is discovered.

163. Well… the data are now becoming available to those investigating the surface temperature records. I use those here.

     Sorry if this doesn’t meet your standards, but it happens to meet the definition of academic research under FOI.

164. Re: SteveF (Feb 11 16:26),
     “he is almost certainly better suited to a purely scientific role.”
     I think he has been expressing sentiments in complete agreement with that.

165. Nick Stokes, the FOI requests revealed that almost no confidentiality agreements existed. Which in turn and in combination with Climategate has led to commitments to recover/regenerate and release the full data and audit trail of modifications.

     The revelation of the full inadequacy of Jones’ records was, in fact, to quote a well-used phrase, “Worse than we thought.”

166. Michael Tobis (Comment#32934)
     ‘…The only objective claim I made on the subject at hand is that the GISS/CRU records are roughly correct and that you are unlikely to change it much if you do a good job reanalyzing the raw data once you get it….’

     Suprisingly objective, Michael.

167. Well……. that was fun, and funny in parts. My congrats to the participants. Keep up the good work Lucia.

168. Re: Tony Hansen (Feb 11 16:55),
     Suprisingly objective, Michael.
     Well, I think Mosh agrees
     And SteveF thinks it’s possible. Even I agree.
     Almost a consensus?

169. Nick–
     I also agree that the surface temperature anomaly records are probably more or less right.

     While it often seems that “some” assume the that all who want transparancy want it to prove the surface temperature anomalies are wrong, the opposite is true. The truth is, quite a few people who wanted CRU to release data believe transparency will show the surface temperature anomaly records are probably more or less right. Transparancy is the only way to get to the point where the squabbles can end.

170. Scientists tend to hold to higher ethical standards than lawyers. Just because something might be legal, that does not make it ethical or honorable. It is dishonorable to attempt to use legalistic means to try to force a scientist to give up data that properly belongs to somebody else, regardless of whether that scientist correctly fulfilled his legal obligations for protecting the rights of his collaborators. If there were some great scientific question to be answered, and if that scientist were the only source for such information, then perhaps such an ethical transgression might be forgiven, but all of the information required to carry out an independent analysis of temperature trends was either publicly available, or available from the meteorological services that acquired it (although possibly not for free).

171. Lucia, while the temperature anomaly records are “probably more or less right”, I expect the full data set will reveal what we don’t know – significant spatial and temporal regions where no data exists.

     I also expect that various local impacts such as UHI and land use changes will be better revealed and explored.

172. trrll, I disagree with almost everything you say. Lawyers are a regulated profession bound by a code of ethics and supervised by their professional bodies under further scrutiny by courts and public. Scientists are not.

     The law determines who is the proper owner of property, not a scientist, let alone one in the employ of a government institution.

     The data required to examine long term global trends can only be obtained by comprehensive international agreements completely beyond the scope of most individuals. Your assertion that it is readily available is false.

173. Scientists tend to hold to higher ethical standards than lawyers.

     That is an empirical question. Will you please produce some evidence to support it.

     As one piece of evidence on eh other side, I note the large numbers of sicentists who claim authorship of papers for which they have negligible or no contribution.

174. Hi Lucia, I am most interested in Mosher’s suggestion Comment#32844, any possibility of a thread focusing on this? This whole issue needs to start heading in a direction about how to improve the situation.

175. Trll–
     You are just wrong on so many levels. One is: CRU was the only source that could provide the exact data set CRU used to create it’s temperature record. For that reason CRU was the right group to contact. Two is: You are just making up what you consider to be the ethics of science as you go. Three: The goal of getting the data is not to recreate yet another independent data set, and no one is required to want to make such a thing in order to want that data set. For example, Jones gave the data to Peter Websters, who had no intention whatsoever of recreating a surface temperature record. So, your suggestion that one could recreate a surface temperature record with out the CRU data is utter irrelevant to the issue.

     People need to want it for a reason but the reason does not have to be “I want to recreate a surface temperaure record and the only way to do that is to have your data.”

176. PhilJourdan (Comment#32952) No. The Information Commissioner made an embarassing mistake in Law. Because the FOI Offence was ongoing Jones can and probably will be deservedly Prosecuted, and hopefully imprisoned. I hope he will be the first of many, so as they say in the US, a “message” is sent. Don’t adulterate the data pool or the Peer reviewed Journal pool.

     From The Telegraph: “Careful examination of the Act, however, shows that it says nothing whatever about a time limit. The Commission appears to be trying to confuse this with a provision of the Magistrates Act, that charges for an offence cannot be brought more than six months after it has been drawn to the authorities’ attention – not after it was committed. In this case, the Commission only became aware of the offence two months ago when the emails were leaked – showing that the small group of British and American scientists at the top of the IPCC were discussing with each other and with the university ways to break the law, not least by destroying evidence, an offence in itself.

     failuresThe Commission is thus impaled on a hook of its own devising. By admitting that serious offences were committed, it is now legally obliged to bring charges. And if these were brought under the 1977 Criminal Law Act, alleging that the offences amounted to a conspiracy to defy the law, there is no time limit anyway.

     The real mystery therefore is how the Commission came to misread the very Act which brought it into being.”
     http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7113552/Climategate-confusion-over-the-law-in-email-case.html

177. “This whole issue needs to start heading in a direction about how to improve the situation.”

     Judith Curry,

     Why are suggesting this platitude now? Where was this suggestion a few months/years ago?

     Andrew

178. Hi Judy–
     We can probalby start a thread like that tomorrow. Obviously, figuring out the direction that improves the situation is important. I don’t know how much influence blogs like mine can have. To some extent, the direction can only change if those in the lead– and that’s not the bloggers– understand they need to change direction. Still, it’s worth a shot. Also, there are some signs some people in more prominent positions are beginning to recognize things need to change.

     Andrew_KY–
     Judy has been seeking ways to figure out how to communicate, and head in the right direction for some time now.

179. Lucia,

     “Judy has been seeking ways to figure out how to communicate, and head in the right direction for some time now.”

     I read one of her offerings over at CA not too long ago and it was ummm… (diplomatically) ‘hard to take seriously.’

     Andrew

180. AMac paints with an awfully broad brush.

     I suppose I can be accused of the same with my three-sentence characterization of various naysayers, but at least I allowed (emphasized, in fact) their differences.

     Anyway,

     There are some key AGW Consensus tenets (e.g IPCC report assertions and conclusions, the integrity of the instrumental record and adjustments, data and code archiving/sharing practices, Mann’s paleoclimate reconstructions, >3C effect of CO2 doubling, the need for urgent and drastic GHG actions). People who express doubts about them, do so for motives that can fairly be described as base: delusion, intellectual incoherence, anti-Science zealotry, and unfettered self-interest. Corruption, too.

     For the record:

     IPCC report assertions and conclusions: WG 1 has always done a good job overall; individuals with a particular axe to grind may see it differently without being dishones

     the integrity of the instrumental record and adjustments: I find the likelihood of a methodically introduced warm bias negligible; I find the attention to this question somewhat overblown; I find the attention to the character of the participants malign and grotesque given the present evidence; and I think alluding to the hacked emails as evidence to this effect is commonly done and mendacious

     data and code archiving/sharing practices: these emerged for historical reasons and are innocent in intent; McIntyre’s obsession with the matter has been hugely destructive regardless of any silver lining that may emerge

     Mann’s paleoclimate reconstructions; I find this a question of trivial consequence; global T is probably near the peak of the last millenium but not of the past 6Ka, and it’s a matter of near-zero consequence either way. Again an obsession of outsiders, not of climatologists. We did do one one-hour reading session on this at U Chicago while I was there. Nobody knew anything about dendro-whatever. The postglacial millenial time scale is perhaps the most inconsequential of all. It is little wonder the evidence is equivocal. I have no opinion about Mann except that there is no excuse for the way he is being treated.

     >3C effect of CO2 doubling: on the consensus that seems about 25% likely as an equilibrium sensitivity. I don;t think it’s sinful to suggest otherwise. Stating it is below 1.5 C with enough certainty as to support ignoring the possibility that it is greater is not “luke” anything. On current evidence it’s delusional.

     the need for urgent and drastic GHG actions; I do agree with this, but I don’t think it’s malfeasance to believe otherwise.

     It’s mostly not what you believe about science that is a concern. It’s what you believe about scientists, how you approach us, and how you give aid and support to the paranoids and lunatics (Monckton notable among them) who want us to be part of some hopelessly implausible grand conspiracy.

181. Andrew KY. “Why are suggesting this platitude now?” Isn’t it obvious? Since song references are in Vogue, “You Don’t Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows” is very apposite. Where the Sierra Club etc and indeed Jones et al have their roots. Read the sample from the book here.

     http://www.archive.org/stream/YouDontNeedAWeathermanToKnowWhichWayTheWindBlows_925/weather#page/n17/mode/2up

182. MarkR,

     I ‘hear’ you, man. I just want to hear what Judith Curry’s answer is.

     Andrew

183. I have to wonder why the collection, archival, analysis and presentation of climate statistics are not the responsibility of the department, facilities and expertise which manages all other national statistics.

184. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 11 18:30),

     I suppose I can be accused of the same with my three-sentence characterization of various naysayers, but at least I allowed (emphasized, in fact) their differences.

     Well it does seem you do see differences even if you utterly mischaracterize what they think. Of course you also failed to explain how someone whose full ideology consisted of your three sentence characterizations could be said to hold notions that are incoherent. You seem to think the word means “something I think is incorrect” or possibly, “an idea that would be incoherent if I, Micheal Tobis held it while also holding the other ideas I Michael Tobis believe to be true”.

     I find the attention to the character of the participants malign and grotesque given the present evidence;

     I hope you realize the irony that you hold this opinion given the fact that we see you constantly explaining that people who disagree with you are evil.

     It seems to me very few people spend as much time as you relating their theories about the characters of the people they consider to be on “the other side”. You seem to devote blog post after blog post to that exercise.

     d I think alluding to the hacked emails as evidence to this effect is commonly done and mendacious

     You can resort to latin sounding words like “mendacious” (i.e. lying and “malign” (i.e. injuring) all you want. However, it is not a mendacious to say the leaked emails show a number of scientists exhibiting bad, ill-spirited, unfair behavior intended to injure people the did not like. Making these observations is called telling the truth.

     It’s mostly not what you believe about science that is a concern. It’s what you believe about scientists,

     Oh? I know tons of scientists. I believe lots of different things about different scientists. They are people– just like doctors, lawyers and truck drivers. What do you think I need to to believe about scientists? What makes you think my opinion of scientists in general is any less likely to be correct than yours?

     how you give aid and support to the paranoids and lunatics (Monckton notable among them) who want us to be part of some hopelessly implausible grand conspiracy.

     To whom do you refer to when you say “you”? I don’t give aid and support to Monckton. I’ve not only criticized in public, I have done so in private mail. I don’t claim a whole groups of whoever you might call “us” is part of a any grand conspiracy. I do think the word “conspiracy” in it’s more generic form can be used to describe some of the planned unified actions evidenced in the climategate letter. (After all, one denition in merriam websters dictonary is “to act in harmony toward a common end”. People were certainly doing that– and in quite a few cases, the common end was also intended to injure someone. )

     Stating it is below 1.5 C with enough certainty as to support ignoring the possibility that it is greater is not “luke” anything.

     Excuse me, but who do you think has stated this? Me? Nope. Mosher? Nope. Andrew_KY? (Quite likely. I don’t know what he calls himself, but I don’t think anyone thinks he’s a lukewarmer anything.)

     I’m sorry Michael, but you just don’t seem to want to listen to people enough to know who thinks what or what collection of ideas you want to rebutt. How can you communicate science better if you don’t even know what other people think.

185. Thanks Lucia. I think it is important to start exploring these ideas, might as well be at the Blackboard since the issue was brought up here. Worth a try, i think. Also, I do have a venue on Feb 18 where i can bring up some of these ideas (will post on this more later).

186. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 11 18:30) “AMac paints with an awfully broad brush” —

     Here’s what I said in Comment#32915, after quoting MT’s explanation of why Lukewarmers’ and Denialists’ incoherent and delusional claim to value “science” drives adherents to the AGW Consensus to a fury.

     It strikes me that leaders of the AGW Consensus have an overarching understanding of the motives of their opposition.

     Examples of AGW Consensus leaders would be [11 leaders listed].

     There are some key AGW Consensus tenets (e.g [6 tenets listed]).

     People who express doubts about [those tenets], do so for motives that can fairly be described as base: delusion, intellectual incoherence, anti-Science zealotry, and unfettered self-interest. Corruption, too.

     I think it’s descriptive of the tenor of much that’s written or said.

     MT, if you want: Pick one of those eleven names, and challenge me to cite an instance where that leader imputes base motives to people who express doubt about one of the six listed tenets.

     Or pick one of the six tenets, and see if I can come up with a quote from one of those eleven.

     My failure will come with a concession that I was, indeed, exaggerating with an overbroad brush.

     Conversely, success would cause you to concede that, yeah, my picture of the strong Manichean overtones to your movement has some merit to it.

     I’m not eager to spend time on this, because I think the outcome is pretty obvious. But I’m willing, if the exercise would be useful.

     To state the obvious, none of this says anything one way or the other about how well the Consensus view maps to the reality of our planet’s climate.

187. Lucia,

     When will you start the thread Judith Curry talked about?

188. AMac, I’ll make you a different proposition.

     From now on, I won’t summarize what people I disagree with say, and (if you cooperate) you won’t either. We should take the trouble to provide direct quotes, and criticize the actual words, not our summary of them,

     Still, since you are so kind as to include me as a leader, I will respond to any case you find that involves myself, wherein you claim that I accuse any specific person of “base motives” for their beliefs about any of the listed points.

189. Michael Tobis’ intuition about coherence might have a simple explanation. I don’t know if that is exactly what Tobis had in mind. Let’s just hope so, for Borgs’ sake.
     .
     AGW is a theory, something like a coherent network of statements.
     .
     Criticisms of the AGW theory do not need to be coherent. Any criticism just needs to contest one of AGW’s statements. It is possible to imagine two criticisms of a same statement that are incompatible.
     .
     AGW proponents stand for the theory and need to be coherent with each other. AGW opponents don’t need that. (And this is when we personify this model that food fights start, yet again.)
     .
     Michael Tobis’ intuition about coherence might also be illustrated with a analogy. It relies on American football, but I am sure it could be extended to any Borg sport. (Do Borgs play tennis?) Let’s hope it is simple to grasp.
     .
     Imagine a football game with many teams. There are more than two teams, but each teams has two roles. (We do not need the concept of team, only the concept of role, but I think the teams are imposed by the role. More on that another time.)
     .
     A team can play offense or defense. When a team plays offense, it has to move the ball forward. When a team plays defense, it has to prevent the ball to move. Ideally, it needs to get the ball, but that is not necessary. (We could argue that it must, but not now.)
     .
     Here is another important point: offense cannot grab, defense can. Like in American football, so it’s not hard to understand. So the roles are not symmetrical, both in the ends and in the means.
     .
     Now, let’s transpose that into what I said earlier about theories. Coherence is not being able to grab. Non-coherence (yes, there is an alternative to incoherence) is being able to grab. Moving the ball is akin to building a theory.
     .
     I hope this explanation and this allegory helps. What I am saying so far is not very polemical. It would be possible to enter into a polemic by transposing what I said into rhetorics.
     .
     Let’s try it, tentatively. It’s frustrating when you always get grabbed when (a) you can’t yourself and (b) when you have the additional task to move forward the ball. The roles are simply not symmetrical. It could be, if only the roles were reversed from times to times. But somehow, players get specialized into offensive of defensive players.
     .
     That said, and to conclude what seems already long, I will finish by saying that the challenge AMac offers is very tempting. In fact, any honest broker could humbly surmise that it would be trivial, if we agree that motive is imputed by the above-mentioned persons not only by means of plain propositions, but also suppositions and presuppositions. Those who play the motive-attribution game should not be rewarded by being coy. Manicheism, like any ideological stand, is always what entertains the opponent. (This very thread could suffice to prove my point, actually, if we pick other players.)
     .
     But what is the real deal-killer is this: making everybody behave better will never make communication easier “than it would otherwise be”. The real deal would be that everyone satisfies Postel’s law: let us be liberal in what we accept and conservative in what we put out.
     .
     There are no exceptions to this law.

190. Tomorrow. I’m going to bed now!

191. Nick,

     It only becomes contempt of court if and when there is refusal to comply with a court order.

     Actually I think you have this wrong. We discussed this a while back on CA. When given a FOIA request the folks are operating like an officer of the court. Failure to follow the rules is a contempt of court. That’s my reading

192. Willard, I believe MT is taking about a coherentist version of truth.

     See this:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis

     I’ve esposed this several times on various blogs, so I dont get his
     comment.

193. trrll way back at #32870

     “It is understandable that a layman might be under the impression that the data was the property of CRU, but to continue to demand it after it was explained that that was not the case–and worse, to seek legal means to compel the scientists at CRU to release it in violation of scientific ethics–was dishonorable in the extreme.”

     When a publicly funded institution advocates that I, a layman, should be forced to spend a great deal of my money to solve a problem they have detected with their “private” data, honor is no longer the issue. The law is. They, the institution, had better back up their claims. If they cannot provide the data and methods, then they need to revise the research and only use the data and the methods they can disclose. Or retract the claim. Or become a private organization and provide the value added product for sale.

     If they were a private institution, I would not care, the loss of imprimatur would be enough – and they would be spending some other fools money. This is called due diligence on my part – and they have failed.

194. Andrew_KY (Comment#32994) February 11th, 2010 at 6:06 pm

     WRT Dr. Curry.

     See the RC thread on 1934 back in 2007.

     http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/1934-and-all-that/

     BONUS: You see moshpit on confirmational Holism.
     You see one of the first occurances of “free the code”

     “The point is science is always contigent. Wilson is merely stating this. If we gave up plate tectonics, we would have to redo a bunch of work. It is pragmatically valorized not epistemically more secure. As Quine noted no theory faces facts in isolation. This is why no single fact overturns accepted theory. There is always a balancing act. Facts can be ignored, epicycles created, results questioned. It is a huge undertaking to overturn a theory, and with no viable replacement, highly unlikely.

     All the more reason to free the code

     No ne denies the consistency of the body of evidence. That is the whole point of theory laden observation and confirmation bias. Surely you have encounter some folks who never saw a negative feedback they liked? Shrugs”

     EXTRA BONUS: COMMENT #69. JUDITH CURRY

     Now, at the time I missed this because I was stupid and didnt know who Judith Curry was. ( Sorry Dr. C ) anyways, people who want to question whether or not her commitment to Openness is new found only need to consult the record.

     Here she is.

     An important statement relevant to this issue was made as part of the recommendations from the CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Report on Tropospheric temperature trends:
     http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm
     see particularly ch 6 (recommendations)
     http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap6.pdf

     “To ascertain unambiguously the causes of differences in data sets generally requires extensive metadata for each data set. Appropriate metadata, whether obtained from the peer-reviewed literature or from data made available on-line, should include, for data on all relevant spatial and temporal scales:
     • Documentation of the raw data and the data sources used in the data set construction to enable quantification of the extent to which the raw data overlap with other similar data sets;
     • Details of instrumentation used, the observing practices and environments and their changes over time to help assessments of, or adjustments for, the changing accuracy of the data;
     • Supporting information such as any adjustments made to the data and the numbers and locations of the data through time;
     • An audit trail of decisions about the adjustments made, including supporting evidence that identifies non-climatic influences on the data and justifies any consequent adjust- ments to the data that have been made; and
     • Uncertainty estimates and their derivation.
     This information should be made openly available to the research community.”

     “The independent development of data sets and analyses by several independent scientists or teams will serve to quantify structural uncertainty and to provide objective corroboration of the results. In order to encourage further independent scrutiny, data sets and their full metadata should be made openly available. Comprehensive analyses should be carried out to ascertain the causes of remaining differences between data sets and to refine uncertainty estimates.”

     Last week, Bush signed a bill on “America COMPETES”. There is a relevant part on the open exchange of data and metadata:

     “SEC. 1009. RELEASE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH RESULTS.

     (a) Principles- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the heads of all Federal civilian agencies that conduct scientific research, shall develop and issue an overarching set of principles to ensure the communication and open exchange of data and results to other agencies, policymakers, and the public of research conducted by a scientist employed by a Federal civilian agency and to prevent the intentional or unintentional suppression or distortion of such research findings. The principles shall encourage the open exchange of data and results of research undertaken by a scientist employed by such an agency and shall be consistent with existing Federal laws, including chapter 18 of title 35, United States Code (commonly known as the `Bayh-Dole Act’). The principles shall also take into consideration the policies of peer-reviewed scientific journals in which Federal scientists may currently publish results.”

     As a climate researcher, I wholeheartedly support the above principles. In my opinion research scientists (and particularly government research scientists) should not be given any “choice” in this matter if they wish to receive government research funding, publish their research in the peer reviewed journals of the major professional societies, and have their data used in assessment reports.

     Yes all this adds to the cost of doing research, and even the COMPETE bill is apparently an unfunded mandate. But it’s a cost we need to accommodate in some way. I have seen too many examples in the climate field where scientists do not want to make their data and metadata available to skeptics such as Steve McIntyre since they don’t want to see their research attacked (and this has even been condoned by a funding agency). Well, in the world of science, if you want your hypotheses and theories to be accepted, they must be able to survive attacks by skeptics. Because of its policy importance, climate research at times seems like “blood sport.” But in the long run, the credibility of climate research will suffer if climate researchers don’t “take the high ground” in engaging skeptics.

     With regards to Steve McIntyre and climateaudit. In the early days of McIntyre’s attacks on the “hockey stick”, it was relatively easy to dismiss him as an industry “stooge.” Well, given his lengthy track record in actually doing work to audit climate data, it is absolutely inappropriate in my opinion to dismiss him. Climateaudit has attracted a dedicated community of climateauditors, a few of whom are knowledgeable about statistics and are interesting thinkers (the site also attracts “denialists”). For all the auditing activity at climateaudit, they have found relatively little in the way of bonafide issues that actually change something, but this is not to say that they have found nothing. So taking the high ground, lets thank Steve and climateauditors if they actually find something useful, assess it and assimilate it, and move on. Such actions by climate researchers would provide less fodder for the denialists, in my opinion.

195. SO, MT and others, time to put on your big boy pants and catch up to Dr. Curry.

196. You know looking back on that 1934 thread i now remember why it amused me so much. It’s the thread where a guy ( timothy chase) who was a philosophy major turned programmer, decided that
     i was Steven W Mosher. he then proceeded to argue ( like MT)
     that because I was Steven W Mosher and had all these other bad views, that I should be banished from RC and not talked to anymore. Funny. Instructive though.

     This is something that MT should consider and others should consider when they espouse coherentist views of things.

197. Judith Curry (Comment#32991) February 11th, 2010 at 6:03 pm

     Hi Lucia, I am most interested in Mosher’s suggestion Comment#32844, any possibility of a thread focusing on this? This whole issue needs to start heading in a direction about how to improve the situation.

     I am all for improving situations and advancing science. I don’t know how blogs like CA and this do anything to help that, with the feeding of conspiracy theories, abuse of individuals, snide backhanders and cheers for charges to be laid.

198. lucia (Comment#32780) February 10th, 2010 at 10:49 am

     bugs-

     The librarian’s behavior is not funny, is it?

     the old ‘fixed it for you’ joke is way past tired now.

199. “I don’t know how blogs like CA and this do anything to help that, with the feeding of conspiracy theories, abuse of individuals, snide backhanders and cheers for charges to be laid.”

     It’s unnecessary to “feed” conspiracy theories when emails that document them have been published. It suffices merely to quote the participants.

     For abuse of individuals and snide backhanders you can’t beat most AGW blogs, notably for example, RC, Tamino and Romm. And they come with the added bonus of refusing all rights of reply to the victims.

     As for laying charges as far as I can see the only charges laid have been against the alleged “hacker”. Not exactly cheered on by the sceptics?

200. Bugs.

     The best way for you to understand how your views have no logical or sceintific merit its best to list them as propositions

     “I am all for improving situations and advancing science. I don’t know how blogs like CA and this do anything to help that, with the feeding of conspiracy theories, abuse of individuals, snide backhanders and cheers for charges to be laid.”

     1. Bugs is in favor of improving situations.
     2. Bugs is in favor of advancing science
     3. Bugs has no knowledge how CA can improve situations
     4. Bugs has no knowledge how CA can advance science
     5. Bugs believes that CA feeds conspiracy theories
     6. Bugs believes that CA abuses individuals.
     7. Bugs believes that CA has snide backhanders
     8. Bugs believes that CA cheers for charges to be laid.

     What you see is really no argument whatsoever. Bugs has no knowledge.

     Lets try to cast this into an argument. I will keep it simple.

     1. X believes in conspiracy theories
     2. Therefore X cannot advance science.

     I mean thats what Bugs says or means. because CA belives in conspiracy theories, he has no idea ( no idea exists) how they can help advance science.

     And so, on this view, Michael mann and others who believe skeptics are some kind of conspiracy, cannot advance science.

     NOW, here is the really really funny thing about MT and others view of skeptics. Skeptics are bad people with bad motives, therefore their views are wrong. Or something like that. Something like, the only way to explain Mcintyres behavior, is by appealing to base motives or delusion or whatever.

     Remember when the mails broke? Remember the early line?
     This is scientists behaving badly, but the science still stands.

     Dont you find this odd? When do motives matter? when they are your opponents motives. when do motives not matter? when they are yur motives.

     Sceptic holds view X. This is somehow challenged by explaining why ( his motives) he holds view X. Now clearly since view X on climate science involves “observables” its clear to me that any evaluation of the truth of view X will be more certain than a hypothesis about unobservables, motives.

     Very simply: It’s far easier to determine that Mann’s de centering step in PCA is wrong, than it is to “figure out” McIntyre’s motivation. Forget the fact that mcintyre’s motivation is a NOP
     WRT the issue of PCA decentering. Forget that. Assume that there was some connection.

     Ask yourself this: Which is more testable. The rightness of de centering or motives of McIntyre?

201. Re: steven mosher (Feb 11 23:22),
     When given a FOIA request the folks are operating like an officer of the court. Failure to follow the rules is a contempt of court.
     Which court?

202. Ask yourself this: Which is more testable. The rightness of de centering or motives of McIntyre?

     I said nothing about conspiracies or the motives of McIntyre. I said only what the FOI officer was shown, what CA does. It attacks and pillories individuals, supposedly in the cause of advancing science. You can’t have both. Make up your mind what you want.

203. Re: lucia (Feb 11 10:17),
     “They also have not been able to identify the precise collection of MP3s, or identify who the librarian or his acquaintance might be. ”
     I think “some” may have identified the Librarian and asked concerning the document and MP3s in question but have not as yet deciphered his response: “Oook”.
     When I saw your comment “I’m familiar with the stacks in Chambana. Oskeewowwow !” I was hopeful you might have some hint as to the meaning.
     Just but don’t let anyone mention the “M” word around here…

204. Steven,

     Every theory of truth has to be coherent. The only particularity of coherentism is that it says it is the (only, main, etc.) essential property of truth. You just can’t dismiss Tobis’ intuition that way, since it does not rely on coherence to be sufficient for anything.

     Any way you interpret it, Tobis’ standpoint is more epistemological, really. To apply my allegory, we can that Tobis is discovering the magnificience of the role of offensive lineman. The natural reaction is to have some aversion regarding the liberties taken by the defensive line.

205. Re: schnoerkelman (Feb 12 06:16),

     When I saw your comment “I’m familiar with the stacks in Chambana. Oskeewowwow !” I was hopeful you might have some hint as to the meaning.

     I was replying to edward (Feb 11 10:46) who said:

     I do recall some constraints on my own use of libraries while attending Illinois in Chambana.
     There was the “main stacks” library and several smaller specialized libraries scattered amongst the schools. There were special privileges extended to some people regarding access to parts of the main stacks, particular resources or items at the specialized libraries that were not extended to all other students.

     Chambana is a contraction of “Champaign – Urbana”. If you went there, you’d have heard the song on the video at least once:
     

206. Steven Mosher,

     Thanks for the follow-up. I guess you’ll have to do, since JC won’t answer. 😉

     JC’s comment concludes thusly:

     “So taking the high ground, lets thank Steve and climateauditors if they actually find something useful, assess it and assimilate it, and move on. Such actions by climate researchers would provide less fodder for the denialists, in my opinion.”

     Who in the climate science community took the high ground in 2007, and to what effect?

     *If* Steve and climateauditors *actually* find something useful?

     Calling people ‘denialists’, just like a Good Borg would?

     You are *actually* defending her with this pile of dung?

     Andrew

207. Re: willard (Feb 12 06:18),

     Every theory of truth has to be coherent. The only particularity of coherentism is that it says it is the (only, main, etc.) essential property of truth.

     Also, Michael seems to fail to grasp that science is a ultimately a creative process. At any point, there will be some prevailing paradigm. Facts and observations accumulate. Sometimes people notices that if we believe the facts and observations and the paradigm are all true, then collective “theory” combined with the facts become incoherent.

     Of course, one of the first steps is to check to see if the facts are facts and the observations are correct. But if we become confindent they are the it’s the paradigm that must be revised. Science can even cope with knowing the paradigm requires revision, knowing we have not yet figured out the correct revision. The scientists don’t all run around like chickens with their heads cut off, with the severed heads clucking, “Oh! We have an incoherent mess on our hands. Abandon Science! STAT!” They continue make use of the old paradigm where it works, accept that it needs some modification and some work to discover how to modify the paradigm to come up with a new, more coherent framework to interpret all that we know.

     I’m also not entirely sure Michael is applying the word “coherent” correctly.

208. Re: steven mosher (Comment#33027, Feb 11 23:45) —

     That 2007 Judith Curry comment that you quoted from RealClimate is worth noting. If only leaders of the AGW Consensus had paid attention to her, rather than circling the wagons.

     With agreement on the first principals of sharing data and sharing code, we’d all be debating more interesting and important issues.

     Ironically for Consensus adherents — if they are right — we’d likely be closer to enacting the policies they prescribe.

     Here is a direct link to Curry’s Comment #69 (11 August 2007 at 8:44 AM) to Gavin Schmidt’s post “1934 and all that.”

     Excerpt:

     [The CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Report on Tropospheric temperature trends made these recommendations:] “The independent development of data sets and analyses by several independent scientists or teams will serve to quantify structural uncertainty and to provide objective corroboration of the results. In order to encourage further independent scrutiny, data sets and their full metadata should be made openly available. Comprehensive analyses should be carried out to ascertain the causes of remaining differences between data sets and to refine uncertainty estimates.”

     Last week, Bush signed a bill on “America COMPETES”. There is a relevant part on the open exchange of data and metadata:

     [snip]

     “The Director of the OSTP, in consultation with [other research agencies], shall develop and issue an overarching set of principles to ensure the communication and open exchange of data and results to other agencies, policymakers, and the public of research conducted by a scientist employed by a Federal civilian agency and to prevent the intentional or unintentional suppression or distortion of such research findings. The principles shall encourage the open exchange of data and results of research undertaken by a scientist employed by such an agency and shall be consistent with existing Federal laws…”

     As a climate researcher, I [Judith Curry] wholeheartedly support the above principles. In my opinion research scientists (and particularly government research scientists) should not be given any “choice” in this matter if they wish to receive government research funding, publish their research in the peer reviewed journals of the major professional societies, and have their data used in assessment reports.

     Yes all this adds to the cost of doing research, and even the COMPETE bill is apparently an unfunded mandate. But it’s a cost we need to accommodate in some way. I have seen too many examples in the climate field where scientists do not want to make their data and metadata available to skeptics such as Steve McIntyre since they don’t want to see their research attacked (and this has even been condoned by a funding agency). Well, in the world of science, if you want your hypotheses and theories to be accepted, they must be able to survive attacks by skeptics. Because of its policy importance, climate research at times seems like “blood sport.” But in the long run, the credibility of climate research will suffer if climate researchers don’t “take the high ground” in engaging skeptics.

     Here is a http://www.tinyurl.com shortcut to that comment.
     http://tinyurl.com/Curry-at-RC

209. Lucia,

     I too am not sure Michael applies the word correctly either, as I did not inquired, nor investigated the matter. That’s why I talk about intuition. If we can make sense of what he can mean by his intuition, I duly submit that the question would be irrelevant, at least semantically.

     Whatever Michael fails to grasp, Michael wants to talk about theory building. I fail to grasp how it relates to truth theory. I could have said that Mosher seems to fail to grasp that we’re not talking about any Borg-damn theory of truth, but I suspect it would not be proper to do so.

     If I understand your point correctly, Michael has to accept that his intuition relies on ideal theories, and real-life theories are not exactly how we model them on a blackboard. But I think we should consider that however you consider his stance, a theory needs to be coherent, whereas the criticisms of that theory does not. As interesting as it might be, I fail to grasp exactly how discussing paradigm shift acknowledges that.

210. Pingback: The Blackboard » Design a Program for Surface Temperature Records.

211. willard,
     “a theory needs to be coherent, whereas the criticisms of that theory does not. As interesting as it might be, I fail to grasp exactly how discussing paradigm shift acknowledges that.”
     What?
     Certainly a scientific theory has to be internally consistent and externally consistent (coherent) with our understanding of how the world works. Any such incoherence can be pointed out in the absence of data, and shows the theory to be obviously incorrect. In a few cases, like relativity and quantum mechanics, a theory can show/explain that the earlier understanding was obviously incorrect or incomplete, and that the earlier understanding was only an approximation to the correct one. But most of the time, theories are refuted based on simple disagreement between expectation and results. “Criticism” of a theory is in fact usually nothing more than showing conflicts between data and expectations, and is of course not required to be “coherent”. As Lucia has noted, scientists faced with this kind of disagreement normally first go and check the accuracy of their data or collect new data which they hope/expect will show their theory to be correct. When that doesn’t work, they sometimes get involved in “arm-waving” explanations and claim that the data really aren’t that much in conflict with the theory (Santer et al’s 2008 defense of the accuracy of model projections of tropospheric temperature profiles comes to mind as a perfect example).
     .
     My experience is that when data conflict with theory, almost always the data ultimately win out. There are exceptions, of course, but these are very rare. Scientists who are too close to the problem (and so have too much invested intellectually and emotionally) are usually the very last to accept that the theory is not adequate (AKA wrong). This seems to me to be what is happening in climate science right now, where a lot of people have an enormous personal investment in climate sensitivity being quite high, but are faced with credible data that conflicts with high climate sensitivity. Tamino an Tobis become apoplectic when Lucia shows the IPCC model projections are not consistent with the actual temperature data in a statistically significant way. They are in denial of the data.

212. Mosher said

     Ask yourself this: Which is more testable. The rightness of de centering or motives of McIntyre?

     Where have I said anything about his motives? I am just pointing to the public pillory he has set up that breaks the established rules of science about not attacking the individual. It was realised long ago that attacking the individual is counter to advancing science.

213. Bugs, you still dont get it.

     You’ve made an argument against Mann and all those who attacked McIntyre in the mails. you cannot have it both ways. i agree with your view. Attacking the person is anti science. One way to avoid this is to share data and code. If you present your actual science , like Mcintyre did in his papers by providing code and data, only really twisted people, like mann, will cry that he is a fraud. Others, like ammann and wahl will use his code and data to write a criticism.

214. OT
     Steve Mosher:
     I just read these articles posted on another blog that I read and thought of you…that you might find them interesting:

     Cattlemen fight EPA with ‘Climategate’
     http://www.capitalpress.com/lvstk/TH-beef-appeal-011510

     Insurance Group Says Stolen E-Mails Show Risk in Accepting Climate Science http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/01/13/13climatewire-insurance-group-says-stolen-e-mails-show-ris-91554.html

     Also, the spin masters get a new website:
     http://www.climate.gov/
     the blog I read calls this the “Ministry of Silly Walks” and singles out an article about Rode Island and sea level as one example of the propaganda dished out for the public.

     Sorry for the OT.
     Lucia I really like how you tackle the issues, further the debate in a balanced and positive way; and all the things you find interesting to make threads about.

215. SteveF and others.

     MT wont explain “coherentism” so I’ve taken my best shot.
     Please read the duhem Quine selection I linked to.

     But lets take SteveF as a starting point:

     “Any such incoherence can be pointed out in the absence of data, and shows the theory to be obviously incorrect.”

     According to Quine and duhem, no single observation can be taken to show that a theory is incorrect. The easy way for me to point this out is to say this: All data is in tension with its governing theory. A theory predicts X. We measure, we find X plus some noise. What is that? Noise is the part of the observation that doesnt match the theory exactly. In some way noise is an auxilary hypothesis. If you do Y you will measure X, plus some noise. That’s just a way of making an epistemological statement about the relation between observations and theory statements.
     Observations also underdetermine the theory. That is, give the same set of observations they can be explaind by multiple theories. Thats because no set of observations LOGICALLY DICTATES a theory.

     Another way to look at it is with the divergence problem.
     Some tree rings diverge in the 20th century.

     Logically lets se how that works.

     1. Tree rings grow thicker with higher temps.
     2. here are some tree rings that look like they grow thicker
     from 1850 to 1960, but then they reverse.

     So you have a theory and you have an observation. A simplistic
     ( usually popperian inspired) version of science says. The theory is falsified. But looking at the situation from a purely logical standpoint we have several options.

     1. We can toss the WHOLE THEORY, but then we have a bunch of science based on this science that will need re doing.

     2. We can hide the decline. We can add an auxilary hypothesis
     that explains the divergence. Post 1960 something happened
     that messed up the relation between tree rings and temperature.

     3. We can reject the data outright. Its a fluke. Shit happens.

     Now, logically ANY of these options is available. Reject the theory, modify the theory, toss the data. In normal science people usually choose Option 2. Option 1, while inviting is usually too much damn work, especially if the theory is already “working” being used, producing results. So the decision in some sense is entirely pragmatic. How does this play into my view of things. Simple. When an engineer takes over a body of science to work with it he basically cares “does it work” can I build things.
     When activists take over science….

     basically, the way science IN FACT operates is through making pragmatic decisions about which theories to keep and modify, and which to toss out or IGNORE. In normal cases these pragmatic decisions have to do with things like simplicity ( occams razor) or elegance, or ease of computation, or fewer underlying assumptions, or we can build cool things if we take it to be true.
     We accept the science because it works,not because it describes a realistic picture of the world (realism) BUT, as others have pointed out we are in post normal science. In my view that means the PRAGMATIC values sciences are bring to the decisions are political.

     I dont want this to devolve into a philosophy fight. So I’ll just recommend that you all read Quine, Duhem, blah blah blah.
     or not

216. Re: steven mosher (Feb 12 11:06),

     On Hide the Decline —

     1. Tree rings grow thicker with higher temps.

     2. Here are some tree rings that increase in thickness from 1850 to 1960. After 1960, the trend is towards thinner rings (diverging from the instrumental evidence of continued warming).

     So you have a theory and you have an observation. A simplistic version of science says, “The theory is falsified.” But from a purely logical standpoint, we have several options.

     1. We can toss the WHOLE THEORY.

     2a. We can explain the decline. We can highlight the departure of the data trend from expectation, and add an auxiliary hypothesis that explains this divergence. “Post-1960 something happened that messed up the relation between tree rings and temperature.”

     2b. We can hide the decline. We can adjust the text and the graphics that show the overall trend, so that most readers won’t notice the piece at the end that doesn’t fit so well. For those in the know (our friends and allies, mostly), we can add an auxiliary hypothesis that explains this divergence. “Post-1960 something happened that messed up the relation between tree rings and temperature. Not anything of particular importance.”

     3. We can reject the data outright. Its a fluke. Shit happens.

217. A few things.

     1) I wholeheartedly agree with Dr Curry’s comments above.

     2) I was unaware of Quine’s philosophy but it rings essentially true for me, and certainly as closer to actual practice than Popper’s simplistic and appealing but unrealistic view. As an engineer myself, I am interested in the pragmatic value of science as opposed to its utility in some philosophically abstruse pursuit of some deeper absolute truth. I thank Steve Mosher for the interesting link.

     3) Regarding the postnormalcy of climate science, I think Mosher and I have some very severe disagreements.

     Most practicing climate scientists of twenty years ago had no more taste for politics than any other scientists. The origins of the field were in meteorology, oceanography, space exploration and physics, hardly hotbeds of environmental activism. They stumbled on what we may, for lack of a better phrase, call “inconvenient truth”. In order to account for the position of the field in the politicized world, you need to account for its actual social history, not some imagined social history that you would prefer.

     4) As for tree rings, as far as I understand it, they seem not to work very well as paleothermometers. It is interesting that the dendrochronology group does not have the hard science origins I spoke of and so the social history may be very different. I never heard of these guys and their work until they made the cover of TAR. In my experience, their work is not part of the network of coherent and rich evidence on which physical climatologists draw to build expectations about the climate system.

     5) I like Willard’s posting about football.

     (As an aside, it’s interesting to consider how much sharper the distinction between offense and defense is in the two most American sports (baseball, American football) vs other common sports (soccer, hockey). Willard should just talk football without apology.)

     The analogy makes clear the current configuration in climate, but to me it also emphasizes how very unusual it is. I can’t think of any prior case in which the hobbyists interested in a field were organized in opposition to the professionals. My thought was that this had been deliberately engineered. Again:

     http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/01/ok-getting-serious-again.html

     I argue that the situation has been engineered. Willard’s football analogy suggests that it’s a natural configuration. It’s an interesting thought. If so, I’d like to hear of another instance where something like this has happened. Even if so, in the present case it is not on the whole a good thing.

     Willard’s football analogy misses that coherence is a matter of degree. Some bodies of knowledge exist with considerable confidence. We do not know everything about the climate system. If we did, all climate models would agree. We also know a great deal more than nothing about the climate system. If we didn’t, climate models of the sort we now have could not exist. Any attacks on the field that disregard the key components of existing knowledge that constitute the current level of flawed but far from trivial expertise are (in the least judgmental possible sense) ignorant and incompetent.

     Now all of us are ignorant and incompetent (in the least judgmental possible sense) about lots of things. What is so odd about the present state of affairs is the extent to which people who do not know or care much about the actual core knowledge of the field are happy to snipe at it.

     This is the problem. The open availability of the MODTRAN program via the University of Chicago supports my point; on several occasions that I have seen, persons unqualified to use the program misinterpret what its results tell them and jump to ludicrous conclusions about the state of climate science. In the end, science is a peer process for a reason. In the past the way to establish peerdom may have erred on the side of exclusion, but the actual number of false negatives is likely to have been very small.

     I think the openness everyone is asking for is likely to be expensive and difficult. While I hope it is otherwise, it’s surely questionable whether it can resolve the communication problem on a time scale commensurate with the policy decisions we face.

     If more openness in science emerges as a result of this peculiar state of affairs, I for one will be very pleased with this silver lining. I think in the long run, we want everyone to have the interests and as much as possible the skills of scientists. But, pessimist that I am, I have always been one to point out that every silver lining has a cloud.

218. Michael

     Now all of us are ignorant and incompetent (in the least judgmental possible sense) about lots of things. What is so odd about the present state of affairs is the extent to which people who do not know or care much about the actual core knowledge of the field are happy to snipe at it.

     Whether or not one has what you consider core knowledge of climate science, people can test claims that do not require core knoweldge. You may not believe this, but it is true.

     For example, one need not have core knowledge of the claims of psychics to devise tests to determine whether they can forecast, or have mental telepathy or test a number of other psychic claims.

     One does not need to develop the skills to predict weather to tell whether predictions have any skill. One does not need to understand why Hadley cells form to test whether a paleo-reconstruction is valid. It may irk the heck out of you that people who do not understand the 2nd law of thermo and how it is used to determin the adiabatic lapse rate can do these other things. But the fact is, you don’t need to have memorize Euler’s equations, or understand why Katabatic winds are warm to be able to determine that some of the claims of by some climate scientists are wrong.

     Go all red in the face, stomp your little foot and scream, but I have a degree in climate science all you want. But people who can tell things are wrong will remain willing to say so. They will not say “Oh! Look at that angry climate scientists! I’d better behave!” They will still know things that are wrong and testable are are wrong and they will so. What’s more, there will be plenty of people who will understand the explanation of why the claims of the climate scientists are wrong, and who have also learned that when the only counter argument presented is “Don’t believe him/her! He/she is not a climate scientist.” that often means the person with the red face cannot think of any valid rebuttals.

219. Lucia, do you have any instances at all for your just posted generalization when the only counter argument presented is “Don’t believe him/her! He/she is not a climate scientist.” coming from an actual climate scientist, or indeed, from anyone with scientific training?

220. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 12 15:54),
     In a paragraph worded exactly like that? Maybe– though I’m not going try to test my google-fu hunting. I note you write things like this:

     What is so odd about the present state of affairs is the extent to which people who do not know or care much about the actual core knowledge of the field are happy to snipe at it.

     This is the problem.

     You then to on to give an example of some unnamed person who didn’t know how to use MODTran.

     So, what are you intimating?

     The fact is, we know your big problem is not outsiders downloading Modtran and making a hash of it. It’s outsiders showing that some important claims by scientists are either a) poorly founded or b) wrong.

     I should think it’s a service for people who lack actual core knowledge of climate science but who can tell that a PC reconstruction is wrong explain to climate scientists that PC reconstructions have gone wrong.

     You can suggest that you haven’t said these people should not be listened to because they are not cliamate scientist, but you sure are intimating it.

     The reason people without core knowledge of climate science are telling you some findings of climate science wrong is that the findings are wrong.

     It is true that this is a “problem”. But the problem is not caused by the people who are noticing that some of the findings of climate science are wrong.

221. > do you have any instances at all for your just posted generalization when the only counter argument presented is “Don’t believe him/her! He/she is not a climate scientist.” coming from an actual climate scientist?

     This is pretty close. Gavin Schmidt defending Mike Mann’s upside-down use of the Tiljander proxies against the criticisms of not-climate-scientists with impressive-sounding climate-scientist nonsense.

     [Response: This issue was discussed ad nausem at Stoat – bring it up there… There is no other possible reconstruction that would use the proxy in another orientation. It is either in the way it was, or it isn’t included at all. Both options were published together in the PNAS paper. No correction needed… ]

     > Whether or not one has what you consider core knowledge of climate science, people can test claims that do not require core knowledge. You may not believe this, but it is true.

     Yep. (Comment at OIIFTG to appear after this one, if it passes moderation.)

222. First of all, you have to weigh the risk of false positives against false negatives. If amateurs come up with 10,000 critiques of which the expectation is that two hold water, and one also has two critiques from credentialed competitors, which of the 10,002 critiques should one rationally examine? I promise you that it is not difficult to find completely nonsensical critiques, some even finding their way past peer review these days.

     Secondly, the example given by AMac may have an unfortunate tinge of impatience to it, but it certainly addresses or attempts to address the substance of the matter so does not constitute an example.

     Thirdly, Lucia’s assertion that “important claims” are “poorly founded or wrong” is far from obvious to me. In the field, the perception is that the amateur critics are focused on fringe issues of no great importance.

     Nobody denies that climate scientists are edgy these days. Whether that is because of justice finally being done or a great injustice and a huge error being committed is perhaps in the eye of the beholder. Seriously, it is hard enough having to deliver news nobody wants to hear, without being accused of malfeasance for it. If you expect us to be cheerful you might want to try refraining from treating us like criminals, as if we had anything much to gain from all this.

223. “Nobody denies that climate scientists are edgy these days”

     Stating The Obvious

     If climate scientists (the AGW drones) want some peace, they should behave honorably. If they want respect, they should treat others with respect. As of this writing, they have done neither.

     Andrew

224. AMac, I wouldn’t regard comments made on RealClimate as representative of the position of climate science so much as a position take by AGW policy advocates who happen to do climate science. Same goes for Tamino and his sometimes over-the-top rants.

225. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 12 17:09),
     Of course it’s possible to find nonsense critiques. You can even find them in peer reviewed papers.

     In the field, the perception is that the amateur critics are focused on fringe issues of no great importance.

     So what? Importance depends on context. Some things are important in the broader context that affects the public. People get to discuss these even if climate scientists don’t think they are important as bleeding edge research in climate science.

     If you expect us to be cheerful you might want to try refraining from treating us like criminals, as if we had anything much to gain from all this.

     First– to whom do you refer when you say “you”?

     Second– who is expecting you to act cheerful. I don’t give a hoot whether you act cheerful, are cheerful, have a fulfilling life or enjoy eating cheerios. I don’t think you give a hoot if I’m cheerful.

     Third:

     Thirdly, Lucia’s assertion that “important claims” are “poorly founded or wrong” is far from obvious to me.

     So what if it ‘s not obvious to you? Lots of obvious things seem unobvious to you.

     Fourth– What’s with the tag on “as if we had anything much to gain from all this?” Why the heck do you so often seen to see these arguments through a filter of personal gain? I mean… lets start with your blog title!

     Either scientific arguments are convincing and supported by data, or they are not convincing and unsupported. All these weird discussions of your emotions or finances, who is good, who is bad– who gives a hoot? (Well, it seems you must, because you resort to it so often. But really, it’s irrelevant.)

226. Steve Mosher, thanks for digging up my old CA post. while slightly off topic, that post is relevant to climate gate. The CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Report 1.1 on Temperature Trends was mentioned in the CRU emails, specifically with regards the the National Academy of Science Review Panel for that report. They were discussing the various members of the review panel in terms of whether they could be expected to be supportive, they mentioned Lindzen among others. Note, they did not discuss me (I was also a member of this review panel), apparently I wasn’t worth mentioning (Hah!). Phil Jones was on the review panel, and presumably several others of the CRU emailers were on the main panel that wrote the report. So my point is that the following text appeared in a report that (probably) included some of the CRU email authors and also Jones as a reviewer. So the appropriate way to handle these data sets should hardly have been a revelation to them.

     Here is the text from this report that I referred to earlier: The CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Report on Tropospheric temperature trends made these recommendations:] “The independent development of data sets and analyses by several independent scientists or teams will serve to quantify structural uncertainty and to provide objective corroboration of the results. In order to encourage further independent scrutiny, data sets and their full metadata should be made openly available. Comprehensive analyses should be carried out to ascertain the causes of remaining differences between data sets and to refine uncertainty estimates.”

227. “If you expect us to be cheerful you might want to try refraining from treating us like criminals, as if we had anything much to gain from all this.”

     Unfortunately, there are clear gains available as a result of successful fearmongering. These include funding, public exposure and prestige and, for some, the achievement of personal agendas regarding desired political and social objectives.

     It is obviously wrong to treat all climate scientists as guilty of participation in a fraudulent conspiracy but until the profession sorts out its own ethics and identifies and properly handles its past mistakes the public will not be able to discriminate. That is the simple fact of life. Time for the profession to front up and face it.

228. Carrick (Comment#33203) —

     One of the distinctive features of science is error correction. Pick a field, there will be peer-reviewed papers that occasion eye-rolling by those in the know. Most were published in lower-impact journals, never achieved much prominence, and are infrequently (if ever) cited.

     The publication of the landmark but error-ridden Mann et al (2008) paper thus isn’t that abnormal, although it is (er, ought to be) extremely embarrassing to the high-impact PNAS and its editors and peer reviewers. What amazes is that McIntyre and McKitrick published their critique of some of the paper’s worst mistakes, and that PNAS allowed Mann et al to reply with nonsense and non sequitors. And that fellow climatologists supported Mann, or remained silent. And that the AGW Consensus activist community rallied to defend their teammate. And that there the matter rests.

     > I wouldn’t regard comments made on RealClimate as representative of the position of climate science

     OK, point me to a comment that is representative. (The Climategate emails of Kaufman and McKay don’t count.)

     * crickets chirping *

229. Re: AMac (Feb 12 16:53)
     I don’t want to divert into Tiljander stuff. But Gavin’s comment isn’t nonsense – it’s exactly right. Mann applied the regular calibration process, and came out with a proxy that Tiljander reasonably argues is the wrong way around in the pre-instrumental period. But you can’t use it “upside-down”. There’s no alternative calibration available. You either use it Mann’s way, or discard it. I would discard it.

230. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 12 17:09),

     If there were a decent FAQ or Wiki on the web to which you could point, then you could filter out the signal from the noise more easily. Maybe Archer’s book is a good start, but it costs $50. Very few people are going to spend that kind of money to find answers to their questions. Wikipedia might have served, but Connolley won’t let it happen. Try to consider the question asked by a skeptic in the best possible light rather than turning it into a strawman and knocking it down. It’s annoying having to answer the same question again and again, but it’s really your (in the general sense) fault for not putting the answers in a central location.

231. wrt,..“… He/she is not a climate scientist.”
     Is there a precise definition of the term ‘climate scientist’?
     If so, then is it easy to get most people to agree on that?
     If not, is the term too vague and therefore essentially meaningless?

232. Oh I guess I am making up the arguments as to motiovation, and the Utah legislation passed this week including the following text is not referring to motivation of climate scientists at all, but something else entirely.

     WHEREAS, H. [ the climate change “gravy train,” estimated at ] .H more than $7 billion
     53 annually in federal government grants, may have influenced the climate research focus and
     54 findings that have produced a “scientific consensus” at research institutions and universities;

     http://le.utah.gov/~2010/bills/hbillamd/hjr012.htm

     Sorry, then. My bad.

233. Nick Stokes (Comment#33214) —

     What you and Gavin say is narrowly correct, but elides the important points M&M raised. Your arguments fail.

     1. Mann et al (PNAS, 2008) reads the varve thermometer upside-down. Tiljander says higher XRD means lower temp. Mann uses higher XRD to mean higher temp. Mann forgot that varve characteristics have physical meanings.

     2. “There’s no alternative calibration available. You either use it Mann’s way, or discard it.” That’s a defense of Mann’s use of upside-down proxies?! Actually, it’s worse: There is no calibration available at all.

     1 or 2 alone would be lethal to Mann et al (PNAS, 2008) as it (still) stands. Together, they’re doubly fatal. Actually, it’s even worse, but it takes some effort to understand the faulty statistics, teleconnected temperature records, and impossible figures. Wrongly calibrated upside down thermometers are easy. More here.

234. I find much of Michael Tobis’ offerings here to be tiresome. It is fundamentally disingenuous to claim to be speaking for science when one is actually speaking for a filtered version of science that serves a particular ideological and political agenda.

     Genuine science always seems to speak for itself.

     When Isaac Newton published the Principia Mathematica or when Einstein unveiled special relativity in Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper I don’t think there was an emergence of a Michael Tobis-Joe Romm-RealClimate-style flak community promoting the idea that “the science is settled, people” and to deride those who disagree as knuckle-dragging morons who should not speak much less publish etc.

     The “Consensus” is also oddly constructed. Lukewarmist expectations of modest CO2 sensitivity are (a) not far removed from the majority of IPCC model guesses and (b) far more “consistent with” the actual data than alarmist scenarios. Yet they are somehow never really part of The Consensus. On the other hand, loony 4 to 6 degree mega-feedback speculations are never excluded from The Consensus. Why is that?

     The Consensus appears to be that which serves a useful political view.

     It is also noteworthy how badly the Warmist True Believers need to demonize those who disagree. Those outside The Consensus must be there only through malice and/or intellectual defect. However, persons of demonstrably limited intellect, unpleasant temperament and no scientific understanding can still join the elite and also condescend if only they too believe in The Consensus. Constant, obsessive derogatory characterizations of the infidels is pathetic but apparently requisite for membership. Does that behavior emanate from the science of the issue? I think not. There is something else at work which would also be tiresome and probably unproductive to explore.

235. Re: AMac (Feb 12 18:41),
     “1 or 2 alone would be lethal to Mann et al (PNAS, 2008) as it (still) stands. “
     Nonsense. They are arguments for leaving the proxy out. If correct (as I think, too) they mean you can’t use it, as Gavin said. And as he also did, Mann et al acknowledged difficulties with that proxy, and did an alternative analysis without it. So it’s hardly lethal.

236. Nick, you can’t just leave a proxy out unless you can account for its contra performance. That proxy is telling us something about the reliability of those proxies and you can’t just put your fingers in your ears.

237. Michael
     Let me remind you that you wrote this:

     If you expect us to be cheerful you might want to try refraining from treating us like criminals, as if we had anything much to gain from all this.

     Now it appears in a comment, here, in a comment speaking to someone here in comments, “you” means the utah state legislature!!
     Look. If you– and by you, I mean you Michael Tobis, have an gripe with the utah state legislature, name them. Don’t write posts tat makes it appear you are accusing me of treating the group you call “us” as criminal or accuse you of something to gain. Sheesh!

238. Amac:

     One of the distinctive features of science is error correction. Pick a field, there will be peer-reviewed papers that occasion eye-rolling by those in the know. Most were published in lower-impact journals, never achieved much prominence, and are infrequently (if ever) cited.

     I agree with this… also note that probably 1/2 of all papers contain significant errors, and on top of that, perhaps as much as 90% contain no relevant, useful knowledge.

     WRT some fast moving issues, by the time it’s written up, people have already started moving on, and the publication is more about establishing priority than further advancing the science. (And at the same time, the same group of dead beats can continue to publish a series of the same papers for 10 years at a time, remaining fully funded the whole time.)

     AMac:

     OK, point me to a comment that is representative.

     Pick almost any researcher discussing his results. Plenty examples out there, you need me to field you a couple?

     They are usually much more careful in stipulating the limitations of what is known, than the journalist is in communicating it to other people, with the desire to jazz up what they see as an otherwise drab story and all.

239. Re: Alan Wilkinson (Feb 12 19:27),
     Plenty has been said to account for it’s contra performance. The encroachment of agriculture. Building of bridges. Here’s what Mann et al said:
     These records include the four Tijander et al. (12) series used (see Fig. S9) for which the original authors note that human effects over the past few centuries unrelated to climate might impact records (the original paper states ‘‘Natural variability in the sediment record was disrupted by increased human impact in the catchment area at A.D. 1720.’’ and later, ‘‘In the case of Lake Korttajarvi it is a demanding task to calibrate the physical varve data we have collected against meteorological data, because human impacts have distorted the natural signal to varying extents’’).
     

240. SteveF accepts both of my propositions:

     1. Certainly a scientific theory has to be internally consistent and externally consistent (coherent) with our understanding of how the world works.
     2. “Criticism” of a theory is in fact usually nothing more than showing conflicts between data and expectations, and is of course not required to be “coherent”.

     The rest of the discussion is very interesting, but unnecessary to accept that point. So I guess that Michael’s intuition is not that bad after all.

     ***

     The candid reader might ask himself: why exactly talk about paradigm-shift and the Duhem-Quine thesis, then? The question remains, and will remain for a while, as blogs requires continued sustenance to keep moving along. But since there are many sentences invested already, let’s talk like an empirical holist, the story is not so complicated.
     .
     Observation is the ultimate basis for our belief systems. An observation sentence is a sentence all witnesses are bound to accede at the time of the observed event. All observations sentences could be learned by ostension, associating observation with stimulation. They are an intersubjective matter, devoided of any theorical construct : “the cat is on the mat”. If we don’t share the same observations, chances are we don’t even share the same language. (This is a close paraphrase of a book I wrote with a good friend of mine.)
     .
     Observation sentences are not what we are talking about, here. Observational sentences are not built on data. If a theory is a force field, they are at on the outer extremities. No theory, no data: data is theory-laden, even for holists.
     .
     Why? First, because data is a complicated construct. Second, because one has to interpret it. (There is no such thing as raw data.) And that’s where enters the model wars, with stuff like statistical significance. All that has been discussed, so far, presented as reasons to destroy theories, are rather targetting models, like projections. But models do not equal theories, they are more like hypothesis. This explains lukewarmism: the possibility to attack about every data and model topic while accepting the overall theory.
     .
     Anyway, it would be cool to have adamant data. Without adamant data, we can disagree about data. So here is another reason why data is not an observational sentence: people disagree. Not so long ago, there was a little quarrel about satellite data, for instance. (No apoplexia back then?)

     ***

     And so I will move to the next blog topic, like everyone else. But let’s return to bugs’ argument, by way of conclusion. It is simple and has its merits : 1. Either you seek to advance science or you play the Manns ; 2. CA plays the Manns ; 3. CA do not seek to advance science. “Seek” could be define cybernetically, with overtly behavioral descriptions: the argument is not about any motive, after all.
     .
     Better to tackle, the first premise, in my humble opinion, like a good linebacker. For example, here is an hypothesis to help dissolve the seemingly false dillemma: scientific blogs that do not play the Manns get less readership, and so have less chance to promote their science. Every problem solver likes to read his daily legal puzzle, spiced up with political intrigues and mysterious mazes. Good, old, plain, normal science in crisis, forming a dark story, where there are no heroes.
     .
     The Duhem-Quine thesis simply states that no experiment can alone refute once and for all a theory: there are no experimentum crucis. So all these stories where the reader is the investigator can go on for a while. I would like the reader wonder why, then, insist here on that thesis.

241. Nick Stokes (Comment#33226) —

     > They [upside-downness and uncalibratability] are arguments for leaving the proxy out.

     Quite.

     > Mann et al acknowledged difficulties with that proxy

     You refer to his Supplemental text (quoting it in Comment#33232). Mann discussed possible difficulties with calibrating the proxies, then used them anyway. He used two or three of the four in an upside-down orientation. Recall, when M&M raised this point, Mann responded that the claim was “bizarre.” So he and the PNAS editors don’t seem too concerned about these difficulties.

     > [and Mann et al] did an alternative analysis without [the Tiljander proxies].

     Quite.

     He shouldn’t have to retract that part of the paper… on account of the reasons given as 1 and 2 in Comment#33222.

     Again — these are defenses of the status quo?!

242. Carrick (Comment#33230) —

     AMac:

     > OK, point me to a comment that is representative.

     Pick almost any researcher discussing his results. Plenty examples out there, you need me to field you a couple?

     In Comment#33203, referring to Mann et al (PNAS, 2008), you wrote,

     AMac, I wouldn’t regard comments made on RealClimate as representative of the position of climate science so much as a position take by AGW policy advocates who happen to do climate science.

     Do I need you to field me a couple of representative comments referring to Mann et al (PNAS, 2008)?

     Yes.

     As far as I know, the current high card is Gavin Schmidt’s (Comment#33197). We can agree that it’s not very good, but can you beat it?

243. Nick, quite. The question, of course, is how many other proxies included are corrupted to varying degrees without having to be turned upside down but still contributing to make the overall conclusions worthless?

244. To summarize the Tiljander Tail of this thread.

     Michael Tobis asked

     Lucia, do you have any instances at all for your just posted generalization when the only counter argument presented is “Don’t believe him/her! He/she is not a climate scientist” coming from an actual climate scientist, or indeed, from anyone with scientific training?

     I responded

     This is pretty close. Gavin Schmidt defending Mike Mann’s upside-down use of the Tiljander proxies against the criticisms of not-climate-scientists with impressive-sounding climate-scientist nonsense.

     MT disqualified that example because Gavin “certainly addresses or attempts to address the substance of the matter”.

     Rather than deploying the exact words, “Don’t believe him/her! He/she is not a climate scientist.”

     Carrick suggested that Gavin’s comment isn’t representative of climate science. Links to more-representative remarks may or may not be forthcoming.

     Nick Stokes gamely rose to the defense of Mann et al (2008). Whether the shameless Mann or the red-faced editors of PNAS appreciate the damning praise of such faint assistance is left as an exercise for the reader.

     Adherents to the Consensus, accepting junk science, as long as the results point in the desired direction.

     Others ask: “If the Consensus scientific community accepts this pleasing garbage, which other authoritative planks of the Case For Drastic Global Warming are similarly tainted?”

     It’s a concern that the Consensus community could have put to rest in 2008 at a low cost, simply by following accepted scientific norms. With Mann’s nonresponsive and “bizarre” rebuttal of McIntyre in 2009, the price went up. 2010, and the damages mount yet higher. IPCC errors suggest that instances of confirmation bias may be common.

     Meanwhile, cthulhu invents librarian analogies. Eli Rabett composes ditties.

245. And then there is Willis http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/13/congenital-climate-abnormalities/#comment-317143 presenting a really good low blow. Wonder who is game enough to step up for this one? Or will the “pooh pooh” bird call be the only response http://www.wotwaste.com/waste-articles/agricultural-waste/us-bird-pooh-laws-pacific-islands-and-a-very-large-british-home ? For AMac #33269 to add to his list.

246. Re: willard (Feb 12 19:40),

     ‘CA plays the Manns’ is an assertion that doesn’t hold water.

     Putting the best light on everything and filtering out the snark from both sides:

     1. MBH publish a new method for paleoclimate reconstruction.

     2. M&M publish papers showing that the MBH method doesn’t work.

     3. Wegman and the PNAS panel agree with M&M.

     Lather, rinse, repeat.

     How you get from this to ‘CA is playing the Manns’ is beyond me. Showing that a claimed advancement of the science is wrong is also advancing science.

247. Re: DeWitt Payne (Feb 13 12:38),
     2. M&M publish papers showing that the MBH method doesn’t work.
     Nope. They didn’t show that it doesn’t work. All that seems to survive of their criticism is that MBH used non-centred PCA. That may well not be optimal, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work.
     The proper test of a new scientific method is whether it can be successfully be replicated and used by others. And there has been plenty of that.

     3. Wegman and the PNAS panel agree with M&M.
     Perhaps it’s snarkier, but you could say Joe Barton and congressional Republicans appoint committee that agrees with M&M (surprise!). It’s a stretch to say PNAS agreed.

248. Check this out from Richard Somerville, esp #5

     http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/somerville-response-to-denialism/

249. Nick, your arguments are absurd. The reconstruction included a proxy with the incorrect relationship to the physical meaning. All your evasions and arguing of semantics cannot change that one basic fact. You even acknowledge that the proxy should have been discarded yet you somehow defend Mann. If I understand your strained reasoning, Mann’s analysis is ok because he didn’t use a proxy upside down, he just used a proxy he should have discarded. I share AMac’s bemusement that you feel this is anything approaching a valid defense.

     As Amac points out, you have unwittingly and ironically provided direct proof of Lucia’s original assertion.

250. Judy-
     Do you know whether he was responding to any specific ‘denialist’ or any specific argument?

     While some of the things he says true, some just seem to be counter arguments to strawmen.

     For example:

     People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science.

     First, this is a rather narrow view of science. There are plenty of people in industry who do science and do not publish material in peer reviewe journals.
     Second: In many claims the people who he is rebutting do not claim to be doing “science” qua “science”. They are claiming to be comparing testable claims presented to the public against available data and they find those claims wanting. One can argue about whether or not this is “science”, but that is irrelevant to the question about whether or not what the results, observations and arguments presented by lay people are correct.

     When they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.

     I don’t know who he groups in his collective pronoun “they”. But many of “them” aren’t claiming to be experts is the vague un-named topic Sommerfeld is discussing, so Sommerfeld’s claim is irrelevant to many post-climategate discussions.

     More over, it’s impossible to tell if Sommerfeld is right when he says they are not “real experts” because they may be real experts in some field. Since Sommerfeld names no field and does not tells us who “they” are, for all we know he is utterly wrong.

251. Nick Stokes:

     The proper test of a new scientific method is whether it can be successfully be replicated and used by others. And there has been plenty of that.

     That’s not the only proper test.

     Validity is the key test, and at least through Mann 08 it fails simple tests.

252. Re: brid (Feb 13 14:02)
     No, you’re missing the point. Mann did an analysis with and without using that proxy, and there wasn’t much difference. Now, I agree that the proxy doesn’t add value, and he should have left it out completely, which would have made a clearer argument.

     I actually wasn’t particularly defending Mann here – I was disputing Amac’s citing Gavin’s comment as nonsense, when I thought it was the most sensible comment on the Tiljander stuff that I have seen. And then his statement that the reference to Tiljander’s proxy was “fatal” to Mann’s paper. I don’t think it’s helpful, but it isn’t fatal.

253. Judith Curry,

     Richard Somerville has adopted clear and rather extreme advocacy positions about the appropriate public response (national and international) to rising CO2 levels, including specific targets for acceptable atmospheric CO2 concentrations, specific targets for acceptable temperature increases, and warnings of catastrophic consequences if his advocated targets are not adhered to.
     .
     With all due respect, much of what he advocates is far removed from his personal expertise, and so is no more factually informed than the opinions of many other people. I certainly do not think that Richard Somerville’s advocacy positions are credibly linked to the current state of knowledge in a range of fields, and what he advocates completely ignores critical issues that must be addressed, including costs, uncertainties, and priorities (when compared with many other pressing problems faced by humanity).
     .
     While he is most certainly welcomed to advocate what he wishes, I am not at all inclined to give what he advocates any special consideration.

254. Nick Stokes (Comment#33324) —

     > I was disputing Amac’s citing Gavin’s comment as nonsense, when I thought it was the most sensible comment on the Tiljander stuff that I have seen.

     As far as pro-Mann ’08 comments, Gavin’s statement is both. Faint praise, in my opinion.

     > And then [I was disputing] his statement that the reference to Tiljander’s proxy was “fatal” to Mann’s paper.

     Mistakenly calibrating uncalibratable proxies: fatal to a proxy-based temperature reconstruction.

     Mistakenly orienting proxies upside-down, such that warmer reads colder and colder reads warmer: fatal to a proxy-based temperature reconstruction.

     There are subtle but severe additional problems, such as the invalidity of the statistical approaches that Mann used, and the impossible results of some Tiljander-less reconstructions.

     But what’s the point of getting into those, if we can’t even agree that:

     1. Procedures requiring calibrated proxies, require proxies that are calibratable, and

     2. Thermometers shouldn’t be read upside-down.

255. Somerville’s #5 is simply wrong (as are some of his other assertions).

     a) Feynman: “Science is the system of disbelieving experts.”
     b) One simple fact can destroy a theory. You don’t have to be an expert to discover a fact.

     My conclusion: Somerville is not an expert either.

256. By the way, i am certainly NOT defending somerville’s statements. I thought it was relevant to the discussion regarding who was “qualified” to participate in the debate. This was a public statement he made in response to the declining credibility of climate research. I thought #5 was elitist in terms of deciding who should be listened to in terms of scientific arguments

257. Judy/Lucia

     Somerville was responding to accusations by E.M. Smith and D’Aleo on GHCN “dropping” stations, if I recall correctly. That whole mess was a good example of why science via blogosphere could use some additional checks before, say, being broadcast on the news :-p. That said, I do agree that there are plenty of people qualified to comment on climate science who aren’t actively publishing. The challenge is separating the signal from all the noise.

     http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/noaa-drops-another-13-of-stations-from-ghcn-database/ yesterday was particularly funny. He really just doesn’t understand how GHCN works…

258. Yes, Judith, Somerville was elitist as well as wrong. It was simply the ancient and blatant discredited, appeal-to-authority argument.

259. Judith Curry (Comment#33347),

     “By the way, i am certainly NOT defending somerville’s statements.”

     Well I am very happy to hear that. Scientist like Somerville, who only want to exclude anyone but climate scientists, are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Perhaps he can make a constructive contribution to the public debate, but so far, it isn’t looking good.

260. Zeke Hausfather (Comment#33348),

     “Somerville was responding to accusations by E.M. Smith and D’Aleo on GHCN “dropping” stations, if I recall correctly.”
     .
     How do you know this? The statement was placed on the Scripps web site, with no reference to any specific accusations that he was trying to refute.

261. 5. Science has its own high standards. It does not work by unqualified people making claims on television or the Internet. It works by scientists doing research and publishing it in carefully reviewed research journals. Other scientists examine the research and repeat it and extend it. Valid results are confirmed, and wrong ones are exposed and abandoned. Science is self-correcting. People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science. When they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.

     Let’s turn this statement around and ask whether the paleo “Team” are carrying out “science” as defined by Somerville. Paleo reconstructions are essentially statistical exercises. Mann is not a “statistician” nor are any other Team members. Nor have they bothered familiarizing themselves with relevant statistical literature. They are “unqualified” in Somerville’s terms. They do not publish in “carefully reviewed research journals” – they publish in weakly reviewed journals, where there is no statistical review. These “unqualified people” make claims on the internet (realclimate). There is no effort within the climate science community to “examine the research”; everyone is either too busy to bother examining this research or too afraid to get involved (the silence of the lambs, observed at CA). As Somerville says, people who are not “trained and experienced” in statistics, who do not publish their “novel” statistical methods in statistics journals where they can be carefully refereed are not doing “real science”. And as Somerville says, “when they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.”

     This does not preclude the existence of valid experts and scientists in other fields, but Somerville’s criteria exclude the Team.

262. Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 13 13:17),

     I’ll define my terms a little better. ‘Doesn’t work’ means that the true error in the calculated past temperatures, as opposed to the error bars in the paper, becomes so large that it’s impossible to tell with any degree of confidence that the temperature then was different from the temperature now before about 1600 AD. So the statement in MBH that the temperature in 1998 was the warmest in the last 1,000 years is not supported. It could be true, that is it’s plausible, but it could also not be true. Both the Wegman and PNAS panels agree on that point. The MBH method does not advance science because it does not tell us with any confidence anything new about the past climate.

263. MT

     “Michael Tobis (Comment#33183) February 12th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
     A few things.
     1) I wholeheartedly agree with Dr Curry’s comments above.
     2) I was unaware of Quine’s philosophy but it rings essentially true for me, and certainly as closer to actual practice than Popper’s simplistic and appealing but unrealistic view. As an engineer myself, I am interested in the pragmatic value of science as opposed to its utility in some philosophically abstruse pursuit of some deeper absolute truth. I thank Steve Mosher for the interesting link.
     3) Regarding the postnormalcy of climate science, I think Mosher and I have some very severe disagreements.”

     #2. You are welcome. Always a pleasure. I think I will explode the next time I hear somebody say one example falsifies a theory. But lets not go there its a thread jacking of the highest order.

     #3. Well, you may be right. I read one article on it and gronked what I could from that. We should have a forum to discuss elsewhere. I promise to behave.

264. Let’s consider this comment from Somerville:

     1. The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. This is solid settled science. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural. It is not due to the sun, for example. We know this because we can measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide and it is much stronger than that of the sun, which we also measure.

     Oddly enough the global climate models don’t agree entirely with Dr. Somerville. What the models say is that part of the warming since 1980 is man-made but prior to 1980 almost none of it was.

     Dr. Dude could start by getting basic facts straight.

265. This is also pure crap:

     People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science.

     One needs not be trained in the field(s) of climatology (it can refer to a semi-infinite number of non-overlapping fields of study), nor to need they actively need to be publishing in that field, in order to have a valid opinion about some aspect of climate science.

     Having relevant training is important, “in this field”, not so much.

266. Carrick,

     I like this one:

     “ice melting” is evidence of a warming planet.

     So, if the planet is static or cooling, ice never melts.

     Andrew

267. Andrew_KY:

     So, if the planet is static or cooling, ice never melts.

     LOL.

     Well he does have sort of a point, if he were to qualify this with” glacial ice mass. Consider this.

     As I’ve pointed out to you in the past, there is evidence that we were in a “Little Ice Age” prior to 1850 and that “we have come out of it” is sort of a proxy for warming of the global climate since then.

     My problem with Somerville is he is conflating the warming from 1850-1980 to human activity, when it seems that the climate science says this was all natural.

     Secondly, the climate models all predict that increased warming = warmer seas off the coastlines = more precipitation inland in Greenland and Antarctica = increased ice accumulation.

     So what he is arguing is once again at odds with what the basic science predicts!

     (Addendum: I meant to point out that most of the melting occurred prior to 1980 and so prior to “warming attributed to human activity”, currently it’s sort of “flat-lined’.)

268. Carrick,

     I agree that if he were to qualify it, he may have a point as you have reasonably illustrated. But in the section you quoted, he didn’t qualify it.

     But glacial ice mass isn’t strictly determined by temperature, is it?

     Andrew

269. If DeWitt Payne (comment#33312) puts the best light on everything and filters out the snark, he does not get “CA plays the Manns”. Nor does DeWitt Payne get it from lathering, rinsing and repeating that MBH publish a new method for paleoclimate reconstruction, M&M publish papers showing that the MBH method doesn’t work, and Wegman and the PNAS panel agree with M&M. If DeWitt Payne only gets that lathered, rinsed and repeated message when he filters out the snark and puts the best light on everything on CA, he must admit that what he gets from reading CA becomes restricted and redundant.
     .
     We could agree with DeWitt Payne, and still maintain that some readers get “CA plays the Manns” simply by reading CA. We might still maintain that readers do not need to filter the snark and put the best light on everything to acknowledge that science is being advanced at CA, even if it was only operating in a critical fashion (which it is not). We might doubt that readers would enjoy reading CA if all the snark was pre-filtered and every topic and comment was enlightened in the best possible way. We could also disagree with DeWitt Payne, and reply that the two premises of bugs’ argument are independent (i.e. we don’t need to get from 1 to 2), that he’s contesting one of bugs’ premises by simply denying it, and that it might be tough not to find science (almost) anywhere, if you only have to put the best light on it and filter out the snark.
     .
     Lathering, rinsing and repeating the same message might not be a valid way to answer every question. Lathering, then rinsing and repeating one particular message might not be the best way to talk about bibliotheconomic and musicological warfare, football, paradigm shifts, observational sentences, adamant data, the Duhem-Quine thesis, and other fascinating subjects hitherto discussed.

270. I mean, ice mass isn’t strictly reduced/increased by the temperature.

     Andrew

271. Andrew:

     But glacial ice mass isn’t strictly determined by temperature, is it?

     Well, no. I agree with you 100% here.

     In fact, you could get the circumstance where you might see a “rebound” in (upper mountain) glacial ice if you get enough of an increase in precipitation associated with the warming.

     Ice mass is definitely not a thermometer by itself. You have to look at other aspects of the climate record to make sense of growth or loss of it over time.

272. Judith Curry (Comment#33347) February 13th, 2010 at 4:36 pm

     By the way, i am certainly NOT defending somerville’s statements. I thought it was relevant to the discussion regarding who was “qualified” to participate in the debate. This was a public statement he made in response to the declining credibility of climate research. I thought #5 was elitist in terms of deciding who should be listened to in terms of scientific arguments

     Von Storch has also discussed these pretentious arguments,

     One could read “You won’t a surprise to learn that an opinion piece reprinted by the uber-anti-science editors at the WSJ isn’t in fact written by ‘three prominent climate scientists.’ — Two of the people you call ‘prominent climate scientist’ aren’t even climate scientists!” They referred to Richard Tol and Roger Pielke.

     One wonders, what the problem is. I would label anybody writing scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals about climate, climate dynamics, climate variability, climate change, climate impact, adaptation, mitigation or climate policies as “climate scientist”, and both Richard Tol and Roger Pielke (jr) have written many fine articles of that sort. Thus, there is no need to question whether these two men are “climate scientists”. They are, in my opinion excellent ones with an extraordinary broad range of interest and competence.

     http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/02/science-magazine-confused-about-who-is.html

273. Nick,

     You are the one missing the point. Mann made a clear mistake in using a proxy with the inverse relationship to the physical meaning but all you can say to this blunder is: “the proxy doesn’t add value, and he should have left it out completely, which would have made a clearer argument. ” A “clearer argument”?? This is amateurish spinning at its worst and shows you have no pretense at objectivity. There really appears no point in debating you.

     You also completely miss the point that without Tiljander, the reconstruction becomes significantly dependent on our old problematic friend, bristlecones. In late 2009, Mann finally published a correction showing his reconstruction without Tiljander and bristlecones and we see a marked jump in the MWP. AMac is right, you are wrong. Or, in other words, your argument could be clearer…

274. I am willing to stipulate that if you keep removing data until you get a result you like you will eventually get a result you like.

     It is interesting that Lucia gets a free pass when she says she doesn’t want to look into this particular Mann matter in great detail, but people with closer ties to the scientific community do not.

     Let me try again. Mann’s work is not important to me or to the world. At worst, somebody is stubbornly doing work of marginal importance that is wrong. I have no intention of stipulating that is the case because I don’t know enough about it, and I don’t know enough about it because I don’t think it is important. And anyway I doubt it.

     Consider this, though.

     I saw Roy Spencer talk at the latest AGU meeting, arguing for low climate sensitivity. Somebody who seemed to know what he was talking about (I wish I knew who) asked a very critical question in the question period, implying that Spencer’s whole analysis depended on choosing a particular number way out of the realm of accepted estimates without even stating so. It flew past pretty quick but the guy seemed pretty credible to me.

     If I were to act the way you do about Mann I would predicate ever responding to anything any of you said on your individually renouncing Spencer’s flawed analysis.

     Maybe I would also call my congressman and urge him to launch a congressional investigation into Spencer’s work, try to cut off his funding, publish his emails, misquote him in the press… What fun you guys have!

275. TM, or you could just post your refutation here:

     http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/01/spencer-natural-variability-unexplained-in-ipcc-models/

     .. and unlike RC, Tamino, etc. it would not be deleted or edited to make you look foolish.

276. Re: brid (Feb 13 22:41)
     You are saying that the Tiljander proxy is not good, and Mann should have done an analysis without it. Well OK, I agree. Mann did do an analysis without it. It’s all there.

     He also did an analysis with it. You can reject that if you like. I discount it too. At worst, it’s a waste of space. He’s said what the problems with the Tiljander proxy are, and gave you that choice.

277. Nick Stokes did you see this:
     http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/06/say-my-name-%E2%80%93-february-rerun/

     Professor Matti Saarnisto: “It has been turned twice upside-down in Science, and now I doubt if it can be a mistake anymore.”

278. Two thematic threads on this comment thread have come together beautifully.

     Judith Curry links the powerful and eloquent defense of the AGW Consensus by Richard Somerville, PhD, distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD (Comment#33315). Since it is mostly an appeal to authority, Somerville’s titles are very important to his argument.

     This is introduced in the midst of a discussion of Mann et al (PNAS, 2008) — the clearest example of prominent and invalid peer-reviewed work in support of the AGW Consensus. More significantly, this paper’s publication and subsequent well-deserved notoriety has not led to a single public criticism by any credentialed Consensus-supporting scientist.

     The poverty of the pro-Mann arguments are on display on this thread, starting with Gavin Schmidt’s impressive-sounding and incoherent ramble (Comment#33079). Nick Stokes bravely treads the path broken by William Connolley and Gavin. “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own lyin’ eyes?”

     By Somerville’s terms, the pro-Mann arguments are superior, however bizarre [sic] they may seem to non-climatologists.

     I use this outcome of Somerville’s argument to evaluate the merit of his position.

     Michael Tobis (Comment#33388) notes that Lucia gets a free pass for not passing judgment on Mann et al (PNAS, 2008), but people with “closer ties to the scientific community” do not.

     At the heart of Somerville’s essay is the claim that AGW Consensus Science is in good shape. Because its practices follow the norms of other physical sciences, its conclusions, while necessarily somewhat tentative, are similarly reliable.

     We know that papers with mistakes often find their way into the peer-reviewed literature. But when they are provocative findings undertaken by leaders of the field and are published in highest-impact journals and enter the public sphere as icons of established scientific wisdom — that’s different! And when crucial mistakes are easily understood — uncalibratable proxies, upside-down thermometers — that’s different, too!

     MT, the proper functioning of Science doesn’t require that you judge Mann et al (PNAS, 2008). Nor do I dictate how Lucia or Curry spend their time. Mann’s work is not important to you, and that’s fine.

     Some AGW-Consensus-supporting people with PhD after their names have offered their qualified judgments. Notably Gavin Schmidt, “RealClimate’s other authors, William Connolley (this and subsequent Stoat threads), and Bob Grumbine.

     All offer full-throated defenses of Mike Mann’s science. There are no deviations that I know of. Similar approval comes from those AGW Consensus bloggers and commenters who have addressed the matter.

     Those of us who wish to critically evaluate the merits of AGW Consensus science — and the authority of AGW Consensus scientists — are entitled under Popper’s and Feynman’s schemes to consider the dissonance between the quality of Mann’s work and the quality of the Consensus evaluation of that work.

     You (and Somerville) may not like that state of affairs, but it is so.

     You — the collective You of Consensus-promoting climate scientists — can change the terms of the debate, should you wish to do so. That is not an obligation, it’s a possibility.

279. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 13 23:49),

     It is interesting that Lucia gets a free pass when she says she doesn’t want to look into this particular Mann matter in great detail, but people with closer ties to the scientific community do not.

     Actually, there is a good reason for that:
     a) I do make some observations about how certain analytical choices– if they were made– are mistakes. One can always do that. After all, if someone ask whether 2+2=5 is a mistake, I can say “yes, that’s a mistake”. (If it’s more complicated, I can say “I don’t know. “)

     b) However, I don’t make conclusions about whether or not any particular researcher made these mistakes because that would involve a detailed investigation, which I haven’t done.

     In contrast, if asked in a context they think is related to what their “friend” did, they will not even admit that some particular analytical step would be a mistake if done. Then, with regard to (b), they insist that their friend could not have made mistakes– even though they tell the questioner they haven’t looked into it.

     Of course people who do that get criticized. The fact that others don’t isn’t a “free pass”.

280. Michael Tobis, Richard Somerville —

     Two years ago, Mike Mann left a steaming pile of excrement in the middle of your living room carpet. You still haven’t figured out what to do about it.

     Mann and the other Bad Boys had been violating scientific norms for some time. See the archives of the hated Climate Audit for specifics. But their antics had been in the closet, the attic, the bedroom. Annoying as hell, but they didn’t stop you from inviting strangers into your home.

     Bringing disputes into the public would have dealt a blow to collegiality, and it would have meant a field day for your opponents. The sound-the-alarm message would have been diluted by doubts about the messengers. So there were good reasons for keeping it in the family.

     Then, the PNAS paper.

     Most of you folks settled for averting your eyes. Nothing to see here! But some high-profile climate scientists did face the issue. That’s not excrement, it’s, er, a reasonable difference of opinion!

     It would have been great if Mann had retracted, once McIntyre and McKitrick got their Comment into PNAS, however much it was whittled down by the editors. But he didn’t. He doubled down.

     Now you’ve got a real problem. Cleaning up the damage is going to lead to obvious questions from disinterested parties. Like, “Why didn’t you do this earlier?”

     Worse, what about those who have publicly defended Mann’s work? How do you address the mess without implying that their behavior has been stupid, agenda-driven, or both? So much for collegiality.

     And what about your enemies, who mount attacks on the entire Consensus edifice at any sign of weakness? Paleoclimate reconstruction may be an outbuilding, but will that distinction be made by the media? By the public? By policymakers?

     What a mess, indeed.

     A few thoughts.

     1. The Mann Affair wasn’t concocted by “Denialists”. It’s a self-inflicted injury. Keep the focus where it belongs.

     2. A return to the normal standards of the physical sciences may not ease the recovery from this gaffe, but it will be a big help with the next one (whatever that turns out to be).

     3. Engineers and clinical scientists have a lot of relevant insight. They accept oversight because they acknowledge the high-stakes consequences of their work.

     For reference, here is Eli Rabett’s perspective on this sort of advice.

281. Re: Judith Curry (Feb 13 16:36),

     This was a public statement he made in response to the declining credibility of climate research. I thought #5 was elitist in terms of deciding who should be listened to in terms of scientific arguments

     I thought so too. The reason I wanted to know the context was to see if there were any mitigating factors.

     If the whole thing was discussing a very pin-point case, and we could be sure who only meant specific individuals acting in a specific context, what Sommerfeld said might not be so bad.

     That said, the language would, in that case, be wildly over broad, because it can easily be read to read as if he is suggesting that people who do not publish in the peer reviewed literature have no right to say anything whatsoever touching on climate science etc. If he actually things that, he is very mistaken. If he thinks saying it will make other people think that, he is even more mistaken.

     If he doesn’t think it, he might do well to learn to tighten up his prose. If you want to sway people toward your views, uttering paragraphs that the audience is likely to interpret as sputtering nonsense — and which also insult most of the audience–tend to be losing strategies. So, assuming Sommerfeld isn’t just deluded about who has a right or ability to make comments on some aspects of comment science, he ought to learn to make more nuanced statements. Simplifying is fine– provided you simplify down the a nub of truth. Simplyfing down to something that makes people think, “What tosh!”… not good.

282. Lucia,

     “These sorts of sophomores rarely succeed in impressing the ladies. Although if they are very good looking, they might have some luck on that basis. ”

     I have a few data points that confirm this hypothesis.

283. MT.

     “Let me try again. Mann’s work is not important to me or to the world. At worst, somebody is stubbornly doing work of marginal importance that is wrong. I have no intention of stipulating that is the case because I don’t know enough about it, and I don’t know enough about it because I don’t think it is important. And anyway I doubt it.”

     I have really gone back and forth on this issue. I’m working on a long article on the matter, so what I say probably will change.
     It’ll change because I take feedback from people who argue against me and when I can’t make progress on a line of argument I try another line. When I find a line of argument where people attack me rather than the argument I figure there is gold in that vein. Anyways.

     Does Mann’s work matter? First let’s just take that literally.
     On a coherentist view of things it doesnt matter much. It’s but one thread. That view of things causes the following problem.
     If it doesnt matter much, why all the fuss? I will give you an example. Mann got a detail wrong a while back in a paper–locating a proxy incorrectly. This was pointed out to him.
     he repeated the error. It was pointed out again. Much later he fixed the problem, updated his data, never gave credit. It did change the results. no notice was published. Those are the facts.
     In the grand scheme of things it just didnt matter. What I and others found interesting was the behavior around this. The sociology if you like. People had to be dragged kicking and screaming to admit a minor mistake in a field of study that just doesnt matter that much, on the coherentist view of things.
     That is a huge puzzlement to me. the work and the mann has taken on an almost “iconic” status. Like a missing link. Now the missing link is not critical to the science of evolution. but look at the importance it plays in some corners of the argument. The other thing that is odd is the reaction Chapter 6 people had to being left out of summary conclusions. I’ll find that comment in the AR4 reviewers notes ( somebody psoted it on CA) but the upshot was the Chpater 6 guys were pissed that they didnt get a stronger or visible role.

     here is one of the positions I’m trying on for size.

     On a coherentist view of things Mann’s work and chapter 6 work in general is a peripheral thread in the cloth. Nothing much turns on its inclusion or exclusion. It barely is connected with radiative physics. That is, if you started a deductive chain with radiative physics it would be hard to construct a clear path to:
     Conclusion: “therefore the MWP should be less warm than the current period” That’s a way of saying that there is no clear logical path from the presence of a MWP to the falsehood of radiative physics. So, given the peripheral status of chapter 6 claims, from a sociological standpoint I want to understand why it is so deeply defended ( in some quarters, yourself excepted of course ) There are many reasons for the deep defense or potential reasons. Sometimes people fight MORE vociferously over things that dont matter. Hamburger hill syndrome. On this view of things the hockey sticks fights become more interesting for what they reveal about sociology rather than science. It’s also a good study in the strategies and tactics.

     The flip side of this position would be for me to argue that all the attention paid to chapter 6 and mann IS WARRENTED. That understanding the MWP is central to the science. Here I would note the following. The core belief ( radiative physics) just isnt in question. There isnt any point in even looking at that aspect of the science for flaws and people who attack it ( C02 is just a trace gas) are for the most part nutters ( sorry if I insulted nutters) The Core tenet of AGW that matters is the sensitivity question. That’s the battlefield. That’s where the action is.
     If the MWP plays on that battlefield in any way, if it narrows or widens the estimations of sensitivity or calls into question attribution, then the defense of Mann and ch06 takes on a different character. It’s defended deeply because it matters.

     As I see it those are two lines of argument. schematizing:

     1. The MWP doesnt matter.
     2. Why is it defended so deeply
     a sociological explanation follows with
     3. More better research please

     1. The MWP does matter.
     2. It’s obvious why it’s defended.
     3. More better research please.

     And the thing that Dr. Curry and some of us agree on is an outline for more better research please. It’s not the status quo.whatever that is, it didn’t work to convince people that are willing to be convinced.

284. steven mosher (Comment#33440) —

     Nicely stated.

285. MT, Mann’s work may not be important to you, but it is important to the world. It has been republished and used as a flagship icon for many claims about the past, present and future of the climate. It was important enough to call forth an energetic defence that seems almost theological in retrospect, and important enough to remain a frequent topic of conversation by many people worldwide.

     There are many people who express the opinion that, if Mann is wrong, global warming is wrong. I disagree with that. But I think the most disinterested observer would acknowledge that there has never been a better example of an ‘own goal’ in recent times.

     Mann’s work may be marginal in terms of the total advancement of scientific knowledge, but its impact on everything else was much larger.

286. Mosher.

     1 CO2 has no correlation with atmospheric temperature.
     2 There is no experimental evidence to show that increased CO2 leads to greater Temp.
     3 Professor Jones admits that there has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years.
     4 In a paper Webbed today “Although we reject AGW, we find that greenhouse gas forcings have a temporary effect on global temperature. Because the greenhouse effect is temporary rather than permanent, predictions of significant global warming in the 21st century by IPCC are not supported by the data.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/new-paper-on/
     5 Much of the “information” in the IPCC reports appears to come from Crooks and/or the World Wildlife Fund/Greepeace.

287. Where’s JohnV when you need to laugh at him?

     http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/christy-and-mckittrick-in-the-uk-times-doubts-on-station-data/

288. MarkR:

     CO2 has no correlation with atmospheric temperature.

     Of course, nor would you expect a direct correlation. It’s hardly the only climate forcing, with anthropogenic sulfate forcings being almost as important.

     2 There is no experimental evidence to show that increased CO2 leads to greater Temp.

     What direct experimental evidence would you propose to test the hypothesis that increasing CO2 leads to greater temperature?

     Is not evidence that CO2 traps radiant energy, and adding more CO2 traps more radiant energy sufficient?

     3 Professor Jones admits that there has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years.

     You need to go back about 30 years to get to climate, IMO, if you don’t want to have to deal with short-term climate fluctuations associated with ocean-atmospheric oscillations. Over 30 years, according to all accounts, there has been significant warming.

289. carrick we all know there is no basis for the 30 years number. I’d just prefer to say we are x% confiddent the trend at 30 years is positive. it may not be “significant” that word has two meanings

290. Steven Mosher:

     carrick we all know there is no basis for the 30 years number. I’d just prefer to say we are x% confiddent the trend at 30 years is positive. it may not be “significant” that word has two meanings

     Actually there is a reason for choosing 30 years.

     If I do a Monte Carlo of the temperature fluctuations associated with ocean-atmospheric oscillations, it turns out that 30 years gives me a standard deviation of 0.1°C/century in my trend estimation. If I reduce this to 10 years, it balloons to 1°C/century. 30 years is also the “break-even” where the error due to the effect of temperature fluctuations is approximately equal to the measurement uncertainty in the temperature trend due to instrumentation issues.

     So yeah, there is definitely an analytic basis for choosing thirty years.

     Also, when I use “significant” in the context of data analysis, I mean it in the statistical sense, usually p< 0.05. Obviously there are others, not necessarily scientific, uses of this word too.

291. Carrick–
     The problem with the 30 year number is when it gets flung around as the criteria for anything and every short term result someone doesn’t like. It’s probably a good guide for the USDA to create temperature zone maps for plants. But it’s not a firm guide for testing every possible question about climate. If modelers were claiming 10 C/decade, we could demonstrate the current observations don’t fit that trend with very few years in hand.

     So, I think the answer isn’t ‘no basis’– but as a practical matter, some of criticisms of looking at short term trends do have no basis.

292. Lucia:

     The problem with the 30 year number is when it gets flung around as the criteria for anything and every short term result someone doesn’t like.

     I agree with this, but my point is there are actually good physics-based reasons for choosing 30 years rather than say 5.

     To amplify this, when discussing the period you need to integrate over, you need to know too things, one is the magnitude of the trend, which tells you what the magnitude of the error in the trend that you can tolerate. Since we are looking for trends on the order of 1.5°C/century, our tolerance should be 0.5°C/century or less from corruption of the trend estimate by long-period fluctuations.

     Secondly, we can use actual measurements, e.g. from GISTemp, to generate a realistic method for Monte Carlo simulations. And by generating an ensemble of fairly realistic simulation of temperature fluctuations, it is easy to show that if you take a 10 year period, the corruption of the trend by short-term fluctuations of the same magnitude as the signal you are looking for.
     

     Results of my simulation

     Based on this simulation, you need at least a 20-year period to reliably resolve temperature trends of the order 1.5°C/century. And to get the uncertainty to the same level as the instrumentation uncertainty, you need to go to about 30 years.

     Caveats:

     1) I didn’t include the 54-year oscillation into my simulation. Doing that may force even longer periods.
     2) The purpose of this analysis was to study the influence of climate fluctuations on the linear trend coefficient obtained by the usual LSF-based approach. Other more sophisticated approaches should allow you to shorten the integration period considerably.

293. DeWitt Payne (Comment#33215) February 12th, 2010 at 6:14 pm

     Jumping ahead before reading all comments and maybe the thread is already over, but I’m very interested in information about Archer (his book was recommended by a warmist friend – but the price is rather steep). I have found a one-page summary but it wasn’t very helpful.

     I’d be very grateful if anyone could steer me to sites, analyses, etc., concerning The Long Thaw or his thesis in general (pro and con!).

     Thanks, if no no sees this, I’ll ask again later (I’m always behind in reading the comments).

294. Kendra– The best thing to do is to order the book from your local lending library. If they don’t have it, ask about interlibrary loan. Most libraries will order books from other libraries.

295. Lucia, I was thinking of exactly the sorts of analyses such as you did in your other thread in accounting for ENSO by the way.

     Also, if the trend you are trying to measure is temperature change associated with anthropomorphic drivers such as CO2 and sulfate emissions, it is more appropriate to develop a model that semi-realistically describes how a change in CO2 or sulfate level affects climate over time (“impulse response functions”), and convolute your estimation CO2 and sulfate emissions over time with that… and then use this derived quantity to determine what fraction (with associated “p” value) of the climate variability can be explained by these contributions. Obviously something like your 2-box model would be a starting point, though I don’t think changes in sulfate levels will have the same impulse response as changes in CO2 levels.

     This is a more complicated problem than is typical of the usual ANOVA in that you have a system with memory, time lags, and nonlinearity. I raise this point because it is just goofy to just compute the linear correlation between CO2 emissions and temperature change and assume that is telling you anything of value.

296. Re: Carrick (Feb 15 16:36),

     I raise this point because it is just goofy to just compute the linear correlation between CO2 emissions and temperature change and assume that is telling you anything of value.

     I agree. Even with a one box model, the response to a linear ramp in CO2 is not linear. I discussed this a long time ago here: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/linear-thinking-can-we-fit-a-line-to-figure-out-climate-sensitivity/

     This is why it eventually dawned on my that I need to subtract observations from models as the first step to testing the multi-model mean. After all, in principle, the models are N-box models with ‘N’ being large, and that’s their output is what I’m checking. So, it’s reasonable to make the null hypothesis be that the difference between the model projection and the observation should be zero, have zero trend etc.

297. Lucia,
     What do you make of this post which seems to argue that ensemble average of the models is not the truth?
     http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2010/01/reliability-of-ipcc-ar4-cmip3-ensemble.html

298. BTW, on the Archer book, ordering directly from the publisher is cheaper – I plan on getting it when I have some slack time.

299. RB–
     That’s been discussed in comments here. I think:

     0) The idea that the ensemble average of models is centered on the truth is idea IPCC has used as have a other prestigious climate modeling groups.

     1) The idea never has made any sense for the IPCC guys or other modelers to suggest the ensemble average of the models should be the truth. That is: it has no theoretical foundation.

     2) There has never been much evidence it works. That is: it never had much empirical support.

     3) The IPCC and climate modelers used that notion anyway. (That’s what Annan problably means when he ways

     “The basic paradigm under which much of the ensemble analysis work in recent years has operated is based on the following superficially appealing logic: (1) all model builders are trying to simulate reality, (2) a priori, we don’t know if their errors are positive or negative (with respect to any observables), (3) if we assume that the modellers are “independent”, then the models should be scattered around in space with the truth lying at the ensemble mean.”

     4) People at blogs like CA, The Blackboard and TAV have been saying the IPCC decision to use that method never made any sense.

     5) Some bloggers at other blogs have patiently explained to use and others that the truth centered paradigm should work. (I’m sure someone can google to find the patient intonations from the climatati-blogger.)

     6) The fact that the multi-model mean of the surface temperature is appears wrong is evidence that the models are not truth centered.

     7) So, yes. I’ve always thought it likely that the multi-model mean of an ensemble of models was unlikely to be truth centered.

     8) So, in reality, while some get all upset by my results, it should be no surprise that the multi-model mean does not match the truth. (I think the same some would be less upset if it happened to not match with observations on the high side. However, it happens they are on the low side.)

300. Thanks for your explanation Lucia. Actually I recall Gavin Schmidt had a post also saying “Thus while they do span a large range of possible situations, the average of these simulations is not ‘truth’. ”

     http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/

     With regards to Mosher (Comment#33440), I read him as saying that MWP matters because it affects sensitivity. Maybe I’m embarrassing myself here, but based on Annan/Hargreaves, Royer etc. the sensitivity range provided by IPCC covers a wide range of paleo-climates with 95% confidence and it’s quite likely that an enhanced understanding could still place sensitivities within the IPCC range. Although something on the lower end is still significant from a mitigation perspective. I’m not so sure that the MWP would be defended because it affects sensitivity. I think the political angle is stronger, because as seen already, the very mention that today’s temperatures may be similar to that in the MWP makes people discount the human influence while forgetting that the emissions are not frozen in time.

301. RB–Search for earlier posts– before it was clear the multi-model mean is off. 🙂

302. It’s difficult to google for the types of things that g used to say, but you’ll find stuff like this:

     http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=467

     guess I don’t understand something at the end of this article. If the probability of any particular path in the simulation is not proportional to the probability of this path actually occurring, then why is it valid to average the ensemble of paths and claim that the average value of the (say) temperature increase is the same as the likely value of the actual temperature increase? What does the distribution of paths actually mean?

     [Response: Fair point. The reason why the multi-model mean is used is because it empirically shown that it works the best at getting other observables correct. That implies that at least some of the errors are random and not systematic. But it doesn’t imply that there are no systematic errors remaining. – gavin]

     In reality, it’s not at all clear the multi-model mean has been empirically shown to work “best”. Best compared to what? It is generally the case that at least some models work “better” than the multi-model mean at predicting something.

     The IPCC AR4 WG1, section 8.3 says:

     In order to identify errors that are systematic across models,
     the mean of fi elds available in the MMD, referred to here as the
     ‘multi-model mean fi eld’, will often be shown. The multi-model
     mean fi eld results are augmented by results from individual
     models available as Supplementary Material (see Figures S8.1
     to S8.15). The multi-model averaging serves to fi lter out biases
     of individual models and only retains errors that are generally
     pervasive. There is some evidence that the multi-model mean
     fi eld is often in better agreement with observations than any of the
     fi elds simulated by the individual models (see Section 8.3.1.1.2),
     which supports continued reliance on a diversity of modelling
     approaches in projecting future climate change and provides some
     further interest in evaluating the multi-model mean results.

303. Dr. M.T.

     The Mann hockey stick matters the MOST because people like me, who do not know enough about the maths to read a real “science” paper, depend upon imagery to understand.

     The hockey stick is a powerful image.

     A powerful image that was used to “teach” us masses.

     For most people out there in the non-science world, it is this image that has had the most effect on their decision as to whether or not the globe is warming, and whether or not it is because of CO2.

     You spout all the science/maths you want, but the hockey stick is what makes people pay attention!!

304. lucia (Comment#33582)
     February 15th, 2010 at 4:54 pm

     Re: Carrick (Feb 15 16:36),

     I raise this point because it is just goofy to just compute the linear correlation between CO2 emissions and temperature change and assume that is telling you anything of value.

     I agree. Even with a one box model, the response to a linear ramp in CO2 is not linear. I discussed this a long time ago here:

     So cos you can’t find any (including linear) relationship between CO2 and Temp, then that shows that CO2 drives AGW?

     But Manns non linear correlation efforts with tree rings can show the Temp 1000 years ago +/- 1deg?

     You can’t possibly believe this?

305. MarkR

     You’re dead right.

     What is it with these people? Can’t they be happy without wanting to be frightened?

     Look at this blog! They’re arguing about whether or not it’s warming by 1C in a century!!! So what? Who really truly gives a s…t?

306. From Dr. Sommervilles critique –
     {Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat.}

     Can we please get this verse taken out of the GW handbook?

     It doesn’t really trap heat does it?

     Isn’t more like that CO2 slows the release of LWR out to space, therefore keeping the kinetic energy around longer then “normal”?

307. Lucia,

     To be fair, James Annan has been harping on the issue of multi-model means being a poor approach for quite some time :-p

308. MarkR:

     So cos you can’t find any (including linear) relationship between CO2 and Temp, then that shows that CO2 drives AGW?

     To refresh, some persons have claimed that the absence of a simple parametric relationship between change in CO2 and temperature disproves that CO2 drives climate change. However the theory says there isn’t a simple relationship…. so proving there isn’t a simple relation does not disprove the theory. [Do I have enough negatives yet?]

     Thus it is the converse that is false. Showing there isn’t a simple relationship simply doesn’t disprove AGW. Nobody said anything about “proving AGW” from the absence of a simple relationship.

     What Lucia is doing is the right approach IMO, which is to use a model response to the various driving forcings, including CO2, sulfates, volcanic activity, and the amplitudes (“indices”) of the major climate oscillations.

     You “prove AGW” by showing that there is a statistically significant CO2 climate sensitivity that is large enough to explain a substantial portion of the warming observed since 1980.

     Even for something as “simple” as el Niño, it was necessary to time shift the index to maximize the correlation with that and the data. (Relatively an easy thing to do, IMO, as there are not too many other major oscillations with the same period as the ENSO).

     There! I’ve given away my crazy sleep cycle again.

309. Zeke:

     To be fair, James Annan has been harping on the issue of multi-model means being a poor approach for quite some time :-p

     I have too, but JA has a lot more stature within this field than me, lol.

310. Leo G:

     It doesn’t really trap heat does it?

     Since there is no physical, measurable quantity “heat”, it certainly can’t be “trapped”.

     You can talk about the rate of heat loss q and the total heat loss Q, which is just the integral of heat loss over time. These are very different concepts than “trapped heat”, which is an entirely fictional concept as far as I understand it.

     This unfortunate language on Sommerville’s part is just a throwback to caloric fluid theory. What is it with these guys that try and lecture people on science and can’t even get first-year physics terminology correct???

     Your description is a much better one, basically you’re increasing the thermal resistance of LWR measured from the Earth’s surface to space, thereby increasing the net internal temperature at the surface of the Earth. (This description avoids the discussion of a lot of technicalities. I owe Jeff ID a post at some point, but there is a really good, in depth discussion here.)

311. Thanks, Lucia and RB,

     Sorry for seeming dumb and not thinking of the library, I forgot to mention I’m in Switzerland. Some of the libraries do have small English language sections but I doubt the Archer book would be there. The price at Amazon Germany is about $30. Upshot (to paraphrase a certain someone), why should I run around slipping on the ice trying to find it at one of the libraries (about a 1% chance) or spend $30 when I only will try to find something wrong with it!

     At least The Crutape letters is now available through Amazon Germany so I could order that and Bishop Hill’s and there goes my book budget for the time being.

     So I’ll keep (intermittently) trying to find internet info on it/him and, worst case, wait til next fall when I visit my sister stateside and get it from the library there. I’m probably most interested in his references.

312. Kendra– I see the problem. Maybe someone can scan the references for you and email them to you?

313. Re: MarkR (Feb 15 23:41),

     So cos you can’t find any (including linear) relationship between CO2 and Temp, then that shows that CO2 drives AGW?

     No. But since you don’t expect a linear relationship, not finding a linear relationship doesn’t disprove it either. It’s better to test whether the sort of relationship you expect holds.

     This discussion has nothing to do with whether or not Mann’s stuff is splendid or ridiculous.

314. Re: Zeke Hausfather (Feb 16 00:05),

     ucia,

     To be fair, James Annan has been harping on the issue of multi-model means being a poor approach for quite some time :-p

     Sure. But others have been valiantly defending the practice against all criticism. 🙂

315. Lucia. There is no statistical support for the proposition that CO2 levels control Temp. Nothing, Nada, Zip.

316. On the “what’s the big deal” question:

     First of all, according to the consensus, at this point there’s little hope of staying much below 3 C in the century. Very vigorous immediate action of the sort that looks far less likely now than it did a few months ago had a chance of keeping it to 2 C. Even 5 C is looking plausible.

     Secondly, the warming doesn’t stop until a couple of decades after we stop forcing the warming. As new sources of fossil carbon are identified, it looks like 3C is far from the ceiling.

     Thirdly, many things we care about are sensitive to temperature (ecosystems, water supply, sea level) or its rate of change (infrastructure, agriculture, resilience to severe events).

     Fourthly, the change will be much larger over land at middle and high latitudes, where much of the population lives. 3 C is not a uniform measure.

     Fifthly, the weather patterns (climate) are likely change substantially with small changes in forcing. The 3 C average may wash out huge warming in one place and little change or even slight cooling in another. This will drastically alter wind patterns. These changes themselves are hard to predict and may be unstable.

     On a side note, the carbon dioxide accumulation is also a direct threat to most food chains in the ocean. The world has survived a near-dead ocean in the distant past, but it’s not exactly a happy outcome itself.

317. “according to the consensus”

     Nice Appeal to Authority right off the bat. Seen it already.

     Andrew

318. Michael Tobis (Comment#33713)

     From a bloke at WWF or Greenpeace direct to the Alarmist Propaganda Machine?

319. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 16 10:14),

     …according to the consensus, at this point there’s little hope of staying much below 3 C in the century

     Could you point to the consensus document that says this? Do they quantify “little hope”?

     I’m all for taking action, but could you firm up this goo a bit?

320. Comment#33713 by Michael Tobis isn’t an appeal to authority or stuff cadged from a WWF website, and shouldn’t be characterized as such.

     It’s his best understanding of what climatology projects as to the next century or so, and should be respected as such. It’s not as if his numbers come from noplace, or that he couldn’t supply supporting links from the literature, if prompted.

     There are plenty of better targets for generalized outrage, if that’s productive.

321. “Michael Tobis isn’t an appeal to authority”

     AMac,

     Yes it is. MT names the authority. He does it all the time. The Consensus (in all it’s imagined radiant glory) is The Authority from which MT derives his assertions.

     Does naming an imaginary consensus infuse MT’s assertions with truth?

     Only if you believe it does. 😉

     Andrew

322. AMac–
     There are several difficulties to MT’s post. He starts by wrigint “On the “what’s the big deal” question:”

     Reading this, one might imagine his comment is a post is a response to something someone actually wrote. If we could identify whose question his is answering, we could place that result in context.

     My search tool shows no one using the words “big deal” on this thread. MT doesn’t link to anyone or name them. Is he arguing with Andrew_KY? JohnMurphy? Carrick? Who? In what context did they claim something was not a big deal?

     Certainly, his comment contains certain factoids that are in the vicinity of truth. Factoid 2 sounds like what the IPCC predicts– and it makes sense. But others are vague or confusing.

     Michael would do well to be proactive and provide sources for his more specific predictions instead of just decreeing what he claims is “the consensus”. He could at least tell us that he thinks we can learn “the consensus” from chapter x.x of the IPCC report. Or maybe he means “Joe Romm said”. Who knows?

323. Lucia,

     I don’t think MT even knows who he thinks makes up “the consensus”. Even if he provided a list of names, he would still have to know what each one thought about all these things. I doubt he has bothered to find out. They probably all said “I agree with the consensus.” lol

     Andrew

324. MIchael Tobis, you raise some important issues, the ones that I keep railing about the lack of real dialog on. I’m not sure how much your “tribe” will permit you to honestly discuss the limits of the science on these issues, they tend to view as heretical, dissent on their Firmly Held Beliefs, even on your own blog. I guess we’ll see over time.

     But in my opinion, this is the debate that really needs to happen. The physical basis for climate change is getting microscopically on the blogs, with very little in the physical science itself.

     My problem is I think the consensus for climate impact is badly flawed (if we define IPCC WG2 as our basis for consensus) and that this consensus resembles sociologically the farce that was Y2K, in which people downplayed the threat from issues they were knowledgeable but too willing to expand on those ‘threats’ for which they admitted no expertise.

     Short version I don’t find the consensus on this trustworthy, it needs to be redone at a much higher level of scholarship before it can be relied upon [It needs to be based on sound peer reviewed literature, and reflect the range of opinions found there.]

     In the end the general public is very good at recognizing when they are being sold a bill of goods or even flat out lied too. The scientists model for the general public should neither be that as a group they are outright gullible fools nor people who are easily manipulated by naysayers.

     A series of questions that need reexamining in my opinion are:

     Realistically what is the maximum CO2 level expected from fossil fuels? [I think not over 600 ppm]

     Realistically what is the maximum climate sensitivity? [I think not over 4*C/century can be supported by measurement at the 3 sigma level.]

     What is the realistic impact on water supply? [Increased temperatures equals increased global precipitation. That is observed. It is posited the dry belts will expand, but cimate impact of that on agriculture can be effectively mitigated by economic adaptation.]

     What is the realistic impact of climate on illness and mortality? [Evidence strongly against the alarmists on this one. Many more people die from cold weather than warm, heat waves result in displacement rather than increase in mortality. Also evidence is winters will warm more than summers, night time temperatures more than day time… all of these observed… these move the climate to a more temperate one, not towards one with more extremes.]

     What is the realistic level for sea rise by 2100 and it’s economic impact? [The economic cost of a 3-foot rise over a century does not offset economic benefits from a more temperate climate.]

     What is the realistic impact on ecological diversity when measured in the context of other human activity? [I personally think this is the most serious consequence from climate change, but it is also one that is even more heavily affected by loss of habitat and other consequences of industrialization.]

     Really big question, what global economic policies would simultaneously mitigate climate change and not cost more than the cost to mankind to simple adapt to the changes? [Evidence is CO2 emissions in developed nations are already peaking… a natural consequence of demand for petroleum outstripping a diminishing supply, the major threat for future increases comes from China, India and other developing nations, not the developed ones. Restricting economic productivity of developed nations will barely dent the ultimate peak CO2 level. There is a corollary for developing nations that their future industrialization may be severely hampered by over reliance on diminishing petroleum supplies. Development of alternative energy sources is a must for humanity regardless of what one thinks about climate impact.]

325. MarkR:

     Lucia. There is no statistical support for the proposition that CO2 levels control Temp. Nothing, Nada, Zip.

     Define “statistical support”.

     There is plenty of scientific basis to say increasing CO2 warms the climate. The issue isn’t whether it does, but how much.

326. Andrew_KY:

     I don’t think MT even knows who he thinks makes up “the consensus”.

     AR4 WG2 I imagine.

     These are some particularly nonproductive comments on your part.

327. Carrick–
     I’m not sure MT means limits his reference of “the consensus” to things in the AR4. Some of those claims are in that document, but …are they all? Are they stated quite the way he suggests? I’m not sure.

     I do think MT has a notion of who he considers “the consensus”– but it’s possible if he names the people might dispute that label.

328. Er, mea culpa, maybe. I started using the kludgy “proponents of the AGW Consensus” as a term to characterize views of adherents to the “mainstream”, IPCC-etc.-supportive factions. Trying to be neither adulatory (“climate realists,” “pro-science”) nor derogatory (“alarmists”).

     MT may just have adopted that term.

     Adherents to the Consensus know how to label others — Denialists — but do they have a general moniker for themselves that doesn’t require fulsome applause? “Warmists” perhaps?

329. I was responding to 33676.

     In regard to Lucia’s query:

     The consensus is only documented by IPCC.

     It does not require a document to create a consensus. Which document created the consensus around, say, Maxwell’s equations?

     I think that if we give up hope on something like we expected from Copenhagen for another ten years or more, we will need a huge breakthrough on alternative energy and/or sequestration to avoid 3 C. My impression is that most people who have some understanding of the consensus position would agree with that. I can’t prove it, of course, unless IPCC decides to take up the question. It’s not hard to extract that opinion from a fair reading of AR4 WG1 chapter 10; see for instance fig 10.4 .

     Finally, to all squawking about an appeal to authority:

     I didn’t claim the consensus was infallible. I just asserted what it happens to say. You can value it in your own estimations as you like.

     MarkR, for instance, believes that the best estimate of sensitivity is something like 0 +/- 0 and that the opinion of the scientific community doesn’t matter. You are welcome to make your own evaluation. Although I don’t know anything about MarkR save what I have seen on this thread, I still think betting on MarkR over the great majority of relevant scientific opinion is a bad bet. Indeed, MarkR’s claim of “no way” does not affect my opinion of the consensus a bit.

     There are reasons to believe the IPCC consensus is biased high, and other reasons to believe it is biased low. I think both are at work in the WG1 reports, with the result that the reports to date have been well-balanced or slightly reticent.

330. Amac–
     This is the problem with labels and anything involving politics or beliefs. They can never be specific; they are often loaded.

     Hell-fireandbrimstone-warmers-Warmers- lukewarmers-??- coolers– stone-cold-coolers might describe people prognosis for likely outcomes. But instead we get “realists” (which groups is this?), alarmist, pro-science- anti-science, denialists etc.

     The problem with “the consensus” — it that I’m not sure everyone means the same group!

331. Lucia:

     I’m not sure MT means limits his reference of “the consensus” to things in the AR4. Some of those claims are in that document, but …are they all? Are they stated quite the way he suggests? I’m not sure.

     I guess he can answer that, but I am hoping we can talk about the bigger picture here:

     I think for its flaws, WG2 should be the starting point for a discussion, unless Michael can point us to another, more reliable consensus document, that is.

     He does raise some good issues, though we can object to the veracity of his claims for consensus support on some of them.

332. Carrick (Comment#33725) —

     I didn’t know you were campaigning to be Pachuri’s successor, but those remarks secured my vote.

     As long as you aren’t first burned at the stake for climate heresy.

333. “AR4 WG2 I imagine”

     Carrick,

     You just made a guess at what “the consensus” is supposed to mean. You don’t know either, evidently. Now, don’t get mad at me… I’m just callin’ it like see it. 😉

     Andrew

334. Michael Tobis:

     It does not require a document to create a consensus. Which document created the consensus around, say, Maxwell’s equations?

     It does require a document to demonstrate the existence of consensus, and as to consensus that isn’t codified into written language? That has no scientific value whatsoever.

     I guess if you want to run away from WG2 that’s fine, but it’s the issues there that need addressing, not ethereal, unprovable claims of consensus not supported by written words.

335. Re: Kendra (Feb 16 04:08),

     If your physics and math background is strong enough, there’s Rodrigo Caballero’s Lecture Notes on Physical Meteorology. It’s a work in progress, but recently he’s added a chapter on atmospheric radiative transfer that is pretty good. From looking at the pages of Archer’s book available from Amazon, Caballero’s notes are written at a higher level than Archer’ book. It’s advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate student math/science major level. Archer’s book looks to be aimed more at the general undergraduate with some, but not a lot, of science background.

336. The nomenclature for both camps is fraught. I do not think most readers of this list qualify as “denialists” because that implies willful deceit. I do believe some willful deceit exists and there are people on lists like this one practicing it, but I am reluctant to accuse any individual.

     I have seen estimates of as many as 200 people worldwide paid to astroturf and otherwise issue misleading PR. That’s enough to make a difference.

     But as for people who come in as skeptics and honestly but mistakenly drift into the hostile camp, I have taken to calling you “naysayers”. This seems neutral.

     “Warmists” seems fair enough for us, except for the contempt with which the term is so often wrapped. I absolutely hate being called an “AGW proponent” which is exactly the opposite of what I am trying to do, you know?

337. Michael–
     Of course a consensus doesn’t require a document. When there really is a consensus, we don’t have the sorts of arguments we are having though, do we? So, when you say ‘the consensus’, you must, perforce, mean the consensus amoung some sub-group whose numbers may even be small.

     There is a very-very broad consensus on Maxwells. The two large groups are a) people who know what they are and accept them and b) people who know they don’t know and have no particular opinion don’t intend to form any firm opinion and, having been convinced about the qualifications and judgment of those in the first group, willingly accept the judgment of the first group. This can easily be characterized as a consensus.

     I’m not sure we can say the same for *anything* about AGW.

     Now that you do point to the IPCC, where do we find text to support this:

     “according to the consensus, at this point there’s little hope of staying much below 3 C in the century. Very vigorous immediate action of the sort that looks far less likely now than it did a few months ago had a chance of keeping it to 2 C. Even 5 C is looking plausible.”

     Or, in this case, do you gauge the consensus from some other source. If so what source? The difficulty with the word “the consensus”, is that it is clearly overbroad. You are, at a minimum, missing an adjective.

     I agree that MarkR seems to be either a cooler or a “there is no warming-er”.

338. MT–
     Naysayers is neutral? What do you think of AGW-yes-men? Neither Naysayers nor yes-men is really neutral.

     We probably should go with Carrick’s suggestion though. See Carrick (Comment#33725). We can discuss substance instead of word choice. There still are problems with certain word choices in so far as they can give incorrect notions, but Carricks suggestion is wise.

339. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 16 11:33),

     Is what you’re saying that assuming the IPCC SRES are anywhere close to correct in terms of projected fossil fuel consumption, then there’s little chance that the atmospheric CO2 won’t reach and possibly exceed 560 ppmv? Then if the IPCC estimate of climate sensitivity is also correct, the global average surface temperature would go up by 1.5 to 4.5 C? Have you actually looked at the details of the SRES? While they look scientific, they’re little, if any, better than guesses and they’re biased guesses to boot. For starters, the growth of GDP in the less developed countries is based on the relative size of the economies today calculated on a monetary exchange rate basis rather than purchasing power parity. That wildly underestimates the current GDP of those economies and as a result wildly overestimates their growth rate to 2100 and hence their future energy use. If I had a copy of Access 2003 or later I could go into the details but from what I’ve read elsewhere, it’s pretty ugly. You end up with less developed regions today having GDP’s/capita higher than the US in 2100.

     Then there’s the estimates of fossil fuel consumption. About half of the SRES have oil consumption in 2100 higher than today. That’s not going to happen. Natural gas use is even worse. Shale gas may well expand our reserves a lot, but by a factor of 20? So the estimates of atmospheric CO2 concentration past 2030 are most likely too high and get worse as time progresses. Even if the models are correct, if you feed them garbage as input, they will produce garbage as output.

     Also, I don’t understand why you thought that Copenhagen would accomplish anything. But that’s getting pretty far OT.

340. > But as for people who come in as skeptics and honestly but mistakenly drift into the hostile camp, I have taken to calling you “naysayers”. This seems neutral.

     “Naysayers” as a neutral term?! Well, if you simply must patronize, it’s an improvement over “Denialist.”

     It doesn’t invoke Godwin’s law by alluding to Holocaust Neighers, another plus.

341. Michael Tobis (Comment#33713)

     On a side note, the carbon dioxide accumulation is also a direct threat to most food chains in the ocean. The world has survived a near-dead ocean in the distant past, but it’s not exactly a happy outcome itself.

     A rather paradoxical argument if you are asserting,that points1-5 allow predictions of ‘catastrophic” outcomes in the biosphere,indeed by analogue the biological systems are a constraint on the ” consensus” arguments of the reducibility of the climate system to a set of parametrized qualities.

     Firstly the underlying constraint in the simplification of biological systems is evolution,this is well understood eg Darwin 1856.

     The mathematical constraints on irreducibility are well documented eg

     A Study of the Equations of Diffusion Accompanied by an Increase in the Amount of Matter, and Its Application to a Biological Problem (1937)
     Kolmogorov, A. N., I.G. Petrovskii, and N.S. Piskunov

     Nalimov succinctly argues the constraints,

     A compact description of biological systems that would encompass the entire complexity of their behavior is impossible, since [as was pointed out very convincingly by Monod (1972)l the world of biological phenomena can and must be described not in terms of necessity but in terms of chance [from a slightly different point of view, we have also written about this (Nalimov and Mul’chenko, l970)l. In other words, the complexity of biological phenomena is such that it cannot be described more concisely than by writing down all the observed phenomena. On the basis of the results of a short series of observations, we cannot write an algorithm that would express (even approximately) the subsequent evolution of the system.

     Let us examine this assertion in detail. One of the peculiar features of biological systems consists in the possibility of observing such phenomena at two levels, as it were. One of them is the surface level, when the phenomena take place under certain steady-state external conditions;the second level is the deep gene-molecular level which manifests itself when the conditions of existence of the system change sharply. The
     phenomena taking place at the surface level are to a certain extent amenable to a brief description, but the knowledge about them is not of particular interest.

342. WTF is it with all this labeling and calling ???

     A more certain method to significantly reduce the S/N ratio is not known.

343. Maksimovich provides a typically dense argument intended to show, essentially, that science is extremely limited in the subjects it can address and that climate is not among them.

     It’s a sort of reverse deconstructionism; not that science is politics by other means but that science cannot be approximate, and that anywhere that exact predictions or analyses are impractical is not science. It leaves us in the same predicament as the postmodernists do, with nobody to trust, wandering blind in a universe where the cleanest problems have exact solutions and everything else remains in a medieval haze of mysticism.

     My response to this is that in a sense it is correct, but it leaves one with a very narrow definition of science, which excludes, for example, medicine as much as it does climatology. Neither medicine nor climatology nor many other practical fields of intellectual endeavor can attain to the precision Maksimovich requires, but I imagine, like most deconstructionists of the more familiar sort, that M takes airplanes, drives over bridges, and accepts medical advice nonetheless.

     Nonetheless, there is a real point here. It is why I tell people not to expect a Newton or an Einstein of climatology. There isn’t a rich unifying theory lurking, waiting for a genius to unveil it. It’s big and messy and irreducible, and will never be perfectly known.

     To say that as a consequence we know nothing is unsupportable.

     To imply that as a further consequence of our incomplete knowledge (or even of our total ignorance if you prefer) that we cannot actually disrupt the system is plainly foolish.

     That’s all I have to say about it.

344. Dan, it’s definitely a sign of something wrong that there are two camps, but there are, nevertheless, two camps. It would be best in trying to repair the situation to find names for both that each could tolerate.

345. MT–

     Maksimovich provides a typically dense argument intended to show, essentially, that science is extremely limited in the subjects it can address and that climate is not among them.

     Do you mean comment ‘maksimovich (Comment#33745)’ I agree it was dense. I’m not sure I think what he wrote was intended to show that!

     Irrespective of what Maksimovich said medicine itself is not science. Some doctors do research, and the field of medicine does include scientific research. Modern medical practice is based on science. However, medicine itself is not science.

     Also: of course our lack of knowledge about biological or climate systems does not mean we can’t disrupt these. The Asian carp are fixin’ to disrupt Lake Michigan. If they reach the lake, their ability to disrupt it not be slowed by the fact that no carp has ever written a scholarly treatise on ecology.

     Still, this isn’t much of an argument in favor of insisting that if we don’t positively know whether or actions disrupt or not then we should say we know. If we don’t know; we don’t know. We can still act based on uncertainty– but that doesn’t require us to claim we know things we don’t know.

346. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 16 12:55),

     Dan, it’s definitely a sign of something wrong that there are two camps, but there are, nevertheless, two camps. It would be best in trying to repair the situation to find names for both that each could tolerate.

     Why do you think there are two? If there are camps there are at least 3. There may be a dozen or more with a few campless rogues migrating around trying to find a camp they like.

     You should find a pantheist religion to replace your Manichean viewpoint!

347. let’s do the name calling scientifically.

     Those who support AGW will henceforth be designated as DT

     Those who support natural variation will henceforth be designated as DN

     And those of us who are undecided will henceforth be designated as DDK

     🙂

348. Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 16 11:33),

     I think that if we give up hope on something like we expected from Copenhagen for another ten years or more, we will need a huge breakthrough on alternative energy and/or sequestration to avoid 3 C. My impression is that most people who have some understanding of the consensus position would agree with that. I can’t prove it, of course, unless IPCC decides to take up the question. It’s not hard to extract that opinion from a fair reading of AR4 WG1 chapter 10; see for instance fig 10.4 .

     To the contrary. I think it’s takes some creativity to extract your opinion from figure 10.4.

     Figure 10.4 includes outcomes form the B1 scenario with a mean trajectory showing a rise of 1.79C over a century; this is less than 3C. Scenario A1B hits shows a rise of 2.65C; this is less than 3C. (The span compares the final decade of the 20th and 21st century).

     Only A2 projects a rise above 3c– it’s multimodel mean shows a rise of 3.13C (See table 10.5 for specific values.)

     There is no way to interpret Figure 10.4 as suggesting

     … at this point there’s little hope of staying much below 3 C in the century.

     There may be some group somewhere who believes what you claim about the consensus, but you aren’t getting this from Figure 10.4! So, if figure 10.4 is the consensus about the probable trajectory of surface temperatures, then you, Michael Tobis, are misrepresenting it.

349. geezzz MT, did I not state it clearly enough.

     Don’t ever use labels.

     In the spirit of a discussion of engineering / technology / science, labeling is not consistent with a concise nomenclature. Very often, in my personal experience, the labeler hasn’t a clue about if the labelee even belongs to an established ‘camp’.

     In my long career, I had never, and I do mean never, encountered the application of labels to any cohorts, colleagues, co-workers, or anyone in any areas of my work. No labels for nobody in no area.

350. There are two ways to look at the sensitivity predictions. You can look at theory and models and conclude 3 deg C is the consensus.

     Or you can look at the thermometer readings for recorded history and conclude that it isn’t. The trouble for “climate science” is that most people look at the thermometers.

351. Upthread, there was expensive discussion of how the scientific community’s response to errors in Mann et al (2008)’s paleotemperature reconstructions should factor into the arguments raised in the post. Summary here, most recent comment href=”http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/unexpurgated-reasons-to-refuse-data/#comment-33671″>here:

     The Mann hockey stick matters the MOST because people like me, who do not know enough about the maths to read a real “science” paper, depend upon imagery to understand.

     The hockey stick is a powerful image.

     I’ve written a post that explains why I think the issues with Mann et al (2008) are still timely, two years on. The Null Hypothesis.

Comments are closed.