Keep on gatekeeping

Ross McKitrick shows plainly that, despite the furore over the emails and the frantic issuing of denials, mainstream climatologists, are still determined to keep sceptic views out of the literature.

This is the story of how I spent 2 years trying to publish a paper that refutes an important claim in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The claim in question is not just wrong, but based on fabricated evidence. Showing that the claim is fabricated is easy: it suffices merely to quote the section of the report, since no supporting evidence is given. But unsupported guesses may turn out to be true. Showing the IPCC claim is also false took some mundane statistical work, but the results were clear. Once the numbers were crunched and the paper was written up, I began sending it to science journals. That is when the runaround began. Having published several against-the-flow papers in climatology journals I did not expect a smooth ride, but the process eventually became surreal.

This is simply astonishing stuff. Read the whole thing.

Live chat of statisticians

Statisticians are currently live discussing climate science here.

There is an accompanying AMS article here.

http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Statisticians_Comment_on_Status_of_Climate_Change_Science

Quote of the day

Frank Furedi at Spiked

Investigations that are meant to serve as a ‘corrective’ to people’s misguided or immoral sentiments used to be called rituals. And that is what this the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s ‘limited inquiry’ was mostly about: a ritualised pseudo-investigation aimed at correcting people’s allegedly backward views.

BBC World Service

I will be on the BBC World Service at 14:05 today. The internet link is here.

I was rather nervous, and I don't think I came over very well, but I managed to get a couple of key messages over:

• they've missed the point of the Nature trick
• they should have interviewed McIntyre.

Update on Mar 31, 2010 by Bishop Hill

That was better than I thought. I think they cut out a bit where I burbled, and I didn't sound as angry as I worried I might.

Fred Pearce

Fred Pearce has one of the more interesting responses to the Parliamentary report, picking up on some interesting omissions and contradictions in what our elected representatives had to say.

His points on the "Nature trick" are less informative though. He points to statements by Sarah Palin and Senator Inhofe on the subject and rightly points out that the idea that CRU were trying to hide the "fact" that temperatures are not rising is false.

Of course they weren't.

So. Now we have, yet again, disposed of this canard, can we get on to the real accusation, namely that Jones hid the decline from policymakers so as to make the proxy reconstruction of the Medieval Warm Period look more reliable than it actually is?

Fred?

Stephen who?

Has anybody noticed how little attention the committee gave to Steve McIntyre's evidence? I said at the time that their failure to invite him to give evidence smacked of not wanting to know the truth. In particular, SM's evidence put the Nature trick in clear perspective, but despite that the committee concluded there was no case to answer.

It looks as though my original surmise was correct.

The Parliamentary Report

I've now had a change to review the S&TSC report into Climategate, which is pretty much as expected. Here are a few thoughts. 

Was data deleted? - The committee report (12) Sir Edward Acton's reply to their letter, in which the UEA boss said that "none of the adjusted station data referred to in the emails that have been published has been destroyed".  Given that it was the raw data that everyone was after, it was disingenuous of Sir Edward to respond in this way and disingenuous of the committee not to report his evasion.

Click to read more ...

Comments

The comments threads have been getting somewhat out of hand here in the last few days. Could I ask everyone to avoid:

• being provocative or dismissive of other commenters
• making overlong comments
• dominating conversations
• using fallacy or other rhetorical devices.

Thanks.

VS

A note to everyone who was bashing away at each other on the Josh 14 thread, VS has added a comment to the end which may be of interest.

Brushes at the ready...

Updated on Mar 30, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The report of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Climategate is due in a few hours time, and I've just seen what looks like the first news report of the press conference today. The general theme seems to be:

• breaking the FoI laws was naughty
• apart from that please move along because there's nothing to see here.

Click to read more ...

It's Big Oil, stupid

John Vidal of the Guardian is getting all excited by a Greenpeace report linking sceptics to...Big Oil. The wicked capitalists in question are Koch Industries, "a little-known, privately owned US oil company" (which just happens to be the largest privately owned business in the world). Now that the truth about their corporate largesse has been revealed by the tireless efforts of Mr Vidal and his colleagues at Greenpeace, we can presumably ignore everything said by...

Click to read more ...

Sir John Lawton on AGW

The Chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has just made some quite interesting comments in relation to the expected rate of warming. Speaking at the launch of a report into how the UK should adapt to possible climate change, he said:

The planet is already slightly above the worse case scenario so if we do nothing we could be looking at a temperature rise of 4C (7.3F) by 2100

Click to read more ...

Micro-id

Congratulations to Jeff Id of The Air Vent fame, who has become a father.

Baby Ethan weighs in at 0.00354 Metric Tons apparently.

Josh 15

More cartoons by Josh here.

Lovelock, AGW and democracy

James Lovelock in the Guardian

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Update on Mar 29, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The full transcript is here. It will make painful reading for AGW proponents.