Has Nature overstepped the mark?

I just had this comment on the previous thread about Nature's disgusting editorial on the Climategate emails:

As an active palaeoclimate scientist and also someone who has published in Nature I am deeply disturbed by this editorial. I have written to the editor and cancelled my subscription. There is no room in science for such closed minds. I fear that the editorial is now running behind the pack. By all accounts there is every chance the UEA investigation will be thorough and watching the Vice-Chancellor on television this evening he certainly was very careful to not defend CRU.

Update on Dec 3, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Pielke Jnr also thinks they may have overstepped the mark. His commenters are pretty appalled too.

This made me sad

What a book a Devil's Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horribly cruel works of Nature.

Charles Darwin

Nature has said its piece on the Climategate story, in an editorial that would not have looked out of place in the in-house magazine of Greenpeace. My overwhelming emotion was of sadness at what environmentalism has done to a once-great publication.

See here.

Mann on BBC radio

A commenter alerts me to the fact that Michael Mann will be interviewed on the World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 tonight. There is no confirmation of this on the show's webpage, but it airs at 10pm.

Update on Dec 3, 2009 by Bishop Hill

The programme link is here, starting at about 18 minutes.

McKitrick on Channel 4 news

Ross McKitrick was just on Channel 4 News here in the UK, up against Bob Watson of UEA. It came over to me as a substantial victory for McKitrick.

Back when I was an auditor, I used to come across bureaucrats whose books didn't balance. They had many of the same mannerisms that Watson displayed.

I'll add an link to video if I can find it.

Media relations - it's all in the timing

The University of East Anglia today announces "The world's first MBA course aimed at preparing the next generation of business leaders and managers for a low-carbon economy".

The Report

So my encounter with the BBC is over and they're off to St Andrews for their next interview. There was only one hiccup: I got a nasty shock when the interviewer, Simon Cox, said they wanted to interview me in front of my PC - the office looks like a bomb hit it. I would try to convince you that this is not normal, but that would be a gratuitous lie. Simon and Wesley, the researcher, were very nice though and didn't bat an eyelid.

L-R: Wesley (researcher), Simon, Bishop

The whole thing was very relaxed and I surprised myself by not being particularly nervous. Simon has a rather laconic manner, which suddenly disappears when he slips into super-interested-interviewer mode, and I was slightly taken aback the first time it happened, but after that I found myself waffling away quite happily. Simon clearly knew his stuff, having spent the whole weekend reading the emails - all of them he said - and he also covered the NAS hearings in 2006, so he had spoken to many of the key players before. He seems convinced that there is a story to tell. Interestingly he had also taken in my less-than-complimentary views on the BBC, but seemed completely unconcerned by them.

They're going to talk to McIntyre and Mann as well, so I think there's a fair range of views in there. They were quite interested in my visitor numbers and where people were coming from, so I think there may be a media angle to the story as well.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I just wish I could have tidied (and preferably redecorated) the office first.

Cosa nostra

In email number 1092418712, we see Phil Jones invited to review a paper by sceptics McKitrick and Michaels. The email is from the editor of the International Journal of Climatology, Andrew Comrie.

===== Original Message From "Andrew Comrie" <comrie@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
=====
Dear Prof. Jones,

IJOC040512 "A Socioeconomic Fingerprint on the Spatial Distribution of
Surface Air Temperature Trends"
Authors: RR McKitrick & PJ Michaels
Target review date: July 5, 2004

I know you are very busy, but do you have the time to review the above manuscript for the International Journal of Climatology? If yes, can you complete the review within about five to six weeks, say by the target review date listed above? I will send the manuscript electronically...

Jones replies that he will do it. Some time passes and we gather that with the review complete, Jones is now sending the paper to Mann. Mann replies as follows:

At 08:11 13/08/2004 -0400, you wrote:

Thanks a bunch Phil,

Along lines as my other email, would it be (?) for me to forward this to the chair of our  commitee confidentially, and for his internal purposes only, to help bolster the case against MM??

let me know...

thanks,

mike

So if I'm understanding this correctly, there is a formally convened committee of some kind for making the case against sceptics. This sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but I'm struggling to put another interpretation on these words. (As an aside, that question mark in the first line is strange too.)

Jones replies:

Mike,
I'd rather you didn't. I think it should be sufficient to forward the para from Andrew Conrie's email that says the paper has been rejected by all 3 reviewers. You can say that the paper was an extended and updated version of that which appeared in CR. Obviously, under no circumstances should any of this get back to Pielke.

Cheers

Phil

This is all very odd. What has Pielke got to do with it? Was he one of the other reviewers? It's anyone's guess.

But above all who are "our committee".

Update on Dec 1, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Remember this?

MANN: "Let's let our supporters in higher places use our scientific response to push the broader case against MM."

A pattern emerging here, I would say.

Some more climate scandals

Doug Keenan is an independent scholar who has some amazing stories to tell of civil servants flouting freedom of information laws in order to withhold climate data. There is also the story of his fraud accusation against one of Phil Jones' sidekicks.

Climategate is just the tip of the iceberg.

Phil Jones to stand down

AP is reporting that Jones will stand down, at least temporarily, pending an investigation that he overstated climate change.

Fair to say then that UEA is not interested whether he breached the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act and whether he sought to oust journal editors from their positions then? Mind you, given that the Vice Chancellor of UEA seems to have been implicated in the breach of FoI laws you can imagine why the authorities might want to limit the terms of reference of the investigation.

Update on Dec 1, 2009 by Bishop Hill

It looks like the bit about the terms of reference being related to "overstating climate change" was AP's spin rather than what UEA actually said, which was that the terms of reference will be decided shortly.

By the way...

...the UK ceased to be an independent country today. In case you hadn't noticed.

(Thought I ought to write a "not-Climategate" post today)

Briggs' guide to global warming

Matt Briggs has written a layman's guide to what is and isn't evidence for anthropogenic global warming. Matt has a way of explaining things very, very clearly, that cuts through so much of the nonsense spewed by the media.

Read the whole thing.

Don't forget GISS

While we're all banging on about CRU, it's important not to forget that there are other people producing temperature series and temperature reconstructions.

And other people looking at what they do.

One of these is EM Smith who runs a blog called Musings from the Chiefio. Like Climate Audit, it's pretty hard going sometimes but as the first outsider to actually get NASA's GISSTEMP global temperature index running, it's very important. Fortunately, the Chiefio has written a layman's introduction to what he has found.

It's all disturbing, but his comments on "The Great Thermometer Dying" are simply astonishing.

Since about 1990, there has been a reduction in thermometer counts globally. In the USA, the number has dropped from 1850 at peak (in the year 1968) to 136 now (in the year 2009). As you might guess, this has presented some “issues” for our thermal quilt. But do not fear, GIStemp will fill in what it needs, guessing as needed, stretching and fabricating until it has a result.

Read the whole thing.

Tom Crowley on BBC

Regular readers of Climate Audit will probably need a strong stomach to take Crowley's comments in this BBC Radio interview.

Update on Nov 30, 2009 by Bishop Hill

There is a transcript here.

Is Obama's climate czar implicated in Climategate?

Republicans on Capitol Hill certainly seem to think so and have started an investigation into his conduct.

Having reviewed Holdren's correspondence in the emails I can't see it myself. Now if there really are more emails to come, maybe my views will change, but saying you don't think much of someone's paper doesn't seem like a crime to me.

Another climatologist speaks out

I've been getting some traffic from a French site called Rue89 and I've picked up this quote by a French climatologist, Serge Galam, from there.

The debate is not over, even among the "warmists" ... but it should have been public like any scientific debate.   These emails show a discrepancy between the assertion that a spectacular scientific truth is established, the debate declared closed, and the fact that the proponents of those views recognize among themselves that uncertainties remain..."

The translation is mine via Google. French article here.