So, as I have mentioned in my first post, I am part of Working Group II of the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As some of you might know, Working Group II of the previous Assessment Report (AR4) was the one that caught a lot of flak for problematic conclusions and references regarding Himalayan Glacier melt and whatnot. On one hand, these were stupid errors that should have been corrected in the review process (which will be part of my job in AR5). On the other, they really did not affect the overall conclusions or quality of the report – they just gave those who continue to have an issue with the idea of climate change an opening to attack the report.
Part of the problem for the IPCC is a perceived lack of openness – that something is going on behind closed doors that cannot be trusted. This, in the end, was at the heart of the “climategate” circus – a recent report has exonerated all of the scientists implicated, but some people still believe that there is something sinister going on.
There is an easy solution to this – complete openness. I’ve worked on global assessments before, and the science is sound. I’ve been quite critical of the way in which one of the reports was framed (download “Applying DPSIR to Sustainable Development” here), but the science is solid and the conclusions are more refined than ever. Showing people how this process works, and what we do exactly, would go a long way toward getting everyone on the same page with regard to global environmental change, and how we might best address it.
So I was dismayed this morning to receive a letter, quite formally titled “Letter No.7004-10/IPCC/AR5 from Dr Pachauri, Chaiman of the IPCC”, that might set such transparency back. While the majority of the letter is a very nice congratulations on being selected as part of the IPCC, the third paragraph is completely misguided:
“I would also like to emphasize that enhanced media interest in the work of the IPCC would probably subject you to queries about your work and the IPCC. My sincere advice would be that you keep a distance from the media and should any questions be asked about the Working Group with which you are associated, please direct such media questions to the Co-chairs of your Working Group and for any questions regarding the IPCC to the secretariat of the IPCC.”
This “bunker mentality” will do nothing for the public image of the IPCC. The members of my working group are among the finest minds in the world. We are capable of speaking to the press about what we do without the help of minders or gatekeepers. I hope my colleagues feel the same way, and the IPCC sees the light . . .
UPDATE (16 July 2010):
The members of the IPCC AR5 received a letter from Dr. Pachauri today. In it, he made clear the position of the IPCC with regard to media communications. I find this letter articulate, clear and eminently reasonable – everything the original letter was not. To quote Dr. Pachauri
“In my letter, I cautioned you to “keep a distance from the media” if asked about your work for the IPCC. This was a poor choice of words on my part and not reflective of IPCC policy. My only intent was to advise new authors not to speak “on behalf of the IPCC” because we are an inter-governmental body consisting of 194 states.
I want to reassure everyone the IPCC is a transparent organization. At a time when the work of climate scientists is undergoing intense scrutiny, it is essential that we promote clear and open communication with the media and the public.
While the media have at times been critical of the IPCC, I have a profound respect for their responsibility to inform the public about our activities. A free flow of information is a fundamental component of our commitment to transparency.”
I believe this puts to rest the idea that the letter was meant to muzzle the members of AR5. As I argued, the original letter was poorly worded and thought through, not nefarious. However, I am still a bit concerned about another part of the letter:
“Last weekend, a guide entitled “Background & Tips for Responding to the Media” was circulated to several hundred Working Group II authors. This document was produced to help scientists communicate effectively with journalists. However, I was unaware of its distribution.”
At some point, you do have to ask who is driving this bus. The PR situation at IPCC is clearly uncoordinated and still pretty amateurish. At least they are trying, though. That gives me hope for the process . . .
Members of the Panel might expect to be ambush video’d, no? Did the letter warn of that? What does some nerdy prof like me do when an agent from Fox News shoves a mike into his face during an exit from an elevator?
Certainly, this is a risk . . . perhaps even a likelihood. In the case of completely disingenuous “reporting”, there is not much anyone can do – creative editing and whatnot can remove all caveats from a statement. However, I think starting any response with “Speaking for myself, and not for the IPCC, I . . .” is all that is really needed here. This is Pachauri’s point – and it is a good one – my big concern is how this looks, not what they want us to do.
Just from the nature of Dan’s statement and your reply it seems that the call for self censorship from the IPCC may have been successful. You both seem to have accepted the bunker mentality yourselves with very little push from the IPCC. The enemy is out there in the form of Fox News!
Well, I’m not sure that is true. To put this in context, I should mention that I am the son of a lawyer, and grew up reading legal briefs – so I sometimes have a reflexive need to cover my ass. This does not prevent me from saying what I think at all. Saying that I am speaking for myself (which, incidentally, in this blog post I was) as opposed to speaking for a much larger organization is not merely good legal form, it is good etiquette. In my position as a review editor, I do not have the right to speak for every member of AR5 on anything – and I would be angry at any other member of AR5 who claimed to speak for me without first obtaining the consent of the IPCC. And, as we have seen recently with the whole Breitbart fiasco, putting one’s comments in context CAN be a way to push back against their misuse . . . and can be used to discredit those who would misuse them.
Thank you for the excellent commentary on transparency. I appreciate the work you will be doing!
‘some people still believe that there is something sinister going on’
I guess I am one of them. My suspicion is that many decent people and honest scientists have been taken for a ride by the people who designed, launched, and manipulated the public face of the IPCC for their own prior political ends. Your quote from Pachauri’s letter does nothing to disabuse me of this suspicion.
I appreciate your concerns – and given the state of reporting on climate science and climate change (itself a product of an extended PR failure by the scientific and policy communities), I can see why you would be worried. However, you presume that “decent people and honest scientists” (I hope I am among that crowd) can be somehow duped. The fact is that these assessments have hundreds of authors (in the case of the Millennium Assessment, more than 1300). Having worked with these people, who are unbelievably talented and dedicated, I simply do not believe that they could all be dragged into a “hoax”. I am a pretty skeptical person who has written critical academic pieces on various development and environment efforts – but my critiques are not about a hoax, but about how we frame our analyses and what we can and cannot see because of these framings. This is normal critical inquiry. I do not, however, question the fundamental scientific findings of the IPCC, the MA or GEO-4. I’ve seen the data – and the data is robust. Plain and simple.
This is why I think transparency is the way to go – there is absolutely nothing to hide here. Yes, sometimes the science, and the terminology, are difficult to follow. But a lot of us are educators, and we need to work on educating the public so that they can understand the data, and what we are doing with it, to reach these conclusions.
Thank you very much for your response. I am certainly inclined to put you in the good and decent category. If I can impose upon your hospitality a bit further, here are some grounds for my suspicion:
(1) 1997 ‘The items that follow deal with the lack of scientific consensus on global warming, and demonstrate the inconsistencies between the IPCC’s “Summary for Policymakers”–a political document–and the main body of the 1996 report. Many of the items concern unannounced alterations made in the 1995 approved draft, prior to its printing in 1996.’
See, with many supporting documents: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/ipcccont/ipcccont.html
(2) 2007 ‘With each passing day, more and more current and former members of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are stepping out of the shadows to suggest that this group’s alarmist conclusions concerning global warming are more based in myth than science.’ See: http://newsbusters.org/node/13971
(3) 2009 ‘A former IPCC lead author Mike Hulme says in an e-mail: “This (CRU) event might signal some re-structuring of scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralised.
“The IPCC, through its tendency to politicise climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalising and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.” ‘ See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8387365.stm
(4) 2010 ‘The UN body that advises world leaders on climate change must investigate an apparent bias in its report that resulted in several exaggerations of the impact of global warming, according to its former chairman.’ See: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026932.ece
(5) 2010 ‘ A fundamental problem with the entire issue here is that climate science is not a classic, experimental science. As an emerging science of a complex, chaotic climate system, it is plagued by uncertainty and ambiguity in both observations and theory. Lacking classic, laboratory results, it easily becomes hostage to opinion, groupthink, arguments-from-authority, overstatement of confidence, and even Hollywood movies. When climate scientists are placed in the limelight because this issue can generate compelling disaster scenarios, we simply don’t want to say, “We just don’t know.” ‘ Words of former IPCC lead auditor John Christy. See: http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1117-john-christy-ipcc-lead-authors-are-gatekeepers.html
(6) 2010 ‘ It is not a scientific analysis of climate change,” said Anton Imeson, a former IPCC lead author from the Netherlands. “For the media, the IPCC assessments have become an icon for something they are not. To make sure that it does not happen again, the IPCC should change its name and become part of something else. The IPCC should have never allowed itself to be branded as a scientific organisation.’ See: http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/12721
And who got taken advantage of? I think the prize catch for the conspirators was Sir John Houghton:
‘Sir John Houghton, former IPCC chair, and the lead author of it’s first three reports, is an evangelical creationist who believes that climate change heralds the end of days.’ See: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100420102112AAH1Mrw and http://thegwpf.org/news/545-sir-johns-memory-lapse.html
And what of the next wave of IPCC work? The list of participants seems less based on scientific expertise than geographic coverage. This speaks of political rather than intellectual ambitions by the organisers. See: http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/06/climate-bibles-new-authors-announced.html
Then, I recall the wily Maurice Strong.’Maurice Strong has demonstrated an uncanny ability to manipulate people, institutions, governments, and events to achieve the outcome he desires. Through his published writings and public presentations he has declared his desire to empower the U.N. as the global authority to manage a new era of global governance. ‘ See: http://sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html I could go on and on, UNEP the 1001 Club, the WWF, …
I think scientists are often politically naive. I suspect they have been taken for a ride by the IPCC, and the whole world is losing out badly as a result. Not just the poor countries, but also the wealthy ones. And, of course, children everywhere who have been mentally harmed by the scaremongering.
It’s WGI wherein the problem lies. There is no evidence for significant man-made global warming. The physics does not support the hypothesis and the evidence is just not there. There is plenty of evidence for natural climate change. WGs II and III authors do not understand the physics of how the climate functions, as that is not their field of study.
You say ” I do not, however, question the fundamental scientific findings of the IPCC”. As a scientist you should question the findings. In the translated motto of the Royal Society “Take nobody’s word for it”.
Well, I’m not sure this is entirely fair. First, the physics is there – I honestly don’t know why you would say otherwise. And second, I am not asserting that the physics is there – I do actually understand the physics of how climate functions. I actually teach a bit of it in some of my courses. To argue that all of the people in WG II and WG III don’t understand the physics is simply incorrect.
Finally, that is a pretty ungenerous reading of my comment – my academic record of questioning established knowledge is very secure. When I say that I don’t question the scientific findings, I mean that I have seen the evidence, reviewed it for myself, and no longer have questions about the overall findings. This does not mean that there are not questions to be asked, or knowledge to develop about issues of climate change. We don’t understand things perfectly, and we will always work to refine our understandings of how things work. Along the way, we will have to go back and admit we were wrong about some things. If something comes up that fundamentally rewrites how the world works, I will most certainly take it on. As someone who is really more focused on international development, I wish that the IPCC was wrong – it would make my life a lot easier, and the goal of a better world a lot easier to achieve.
I wish you would show the evidence. Where is the missing hotspot? Where is the evidence that CO2 increase causes warming rather than warming causes CO2 to increase? Please explain how back radiation works and manages to transfer heat from a cold body to a hotter body without work being done (2nd law of thermodynamics)! Please show me that increased water vapour from warming is a positive feedback mechanism, not a negative feedback. Please explain how CO2 has such a dominant effect on the climate compared to the water cycle.
You might want to inform the University of California, San Diego / Scripps Institution of Oceanography that there’s no evidence for significant man-made global-warming.
You see, UCSD/Scripps offers an upper-division course entitled “The Physical Basis of Global Warming. (Linky: http://www.ucsd.edu/catalog/courses/SIO.html)
117. The Physical Basis of Global Warming (4)
Introduction to the processes behind global warming, including the physics of the greenhouse effect, controls on greenhouse gases, atmospheric and oceanic circulation, climate feedbacks, relationships to natural climate variability, and global environmental issues related to global warming. Prerequisites: Math. 20D and Phys. 2C or consent of instructor. (S)
I would hate to see a world-class research institution like UCSD/Scripps mislead students like this. Could you kindly contact the UCSD/Scripps folks and straighten them out?
I see that there are no answers to my questions, just the usual “appeal to authority”. What exactly is your evidence that distinguishes man-mad from natural global warming?
And I’m one too. Influenced, not only by the issues relating to “The Hockey Stick” (as expertly explained in Andrew Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion” – you really should give it a read if you haven’t already) but by a long list of inaccuracies and exaggeration. As, for example, illustrated here: http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/climate-scandals-more-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at/
Of particular concern to me, being of NZ origin, is the unexplained “adjustments”, apparently by one individual, that change the NZ temperature record of one of no warming since 1853 into one where the claimed rate of warming is 0.92 Deg C per century. See http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/global_warming_nz2.pdf.
It is not surprising therefore that the public is suspicious (lets say) of climate scientists. The MSNBC poll of the last couple of days shows that. Asked “Are you satisfied with the British panel’s conclusion that while ‘Climategate’ scientists were not always forthcoming, their science was sound?”, 61.3% (12,567 votes) chose “No, I still believe those scientists fabricated data to support their beliefs on man-made warming.”
See http://msnbc.newsvine.com/_question/2010/07/07/4630892-are-you-satisfied-with-the-british-panels-conclusion-that-while-climategate-scientists-were-not-always-forthcoming-their-science-was-sound
From one of the links cited above:
stood out in dispelling the AGW-supporting hockey-stick shape arrived at by MBH, claiming it the result of severe data defects and flawed calculations, particularly an invalid principal component analysis.
This is the old “non-centered PCA produces hockey-sticks from random noise” claim.
Well, it is true that you can generate hockey-stick-shaped leading principal components via this method. But there’s an easy way to distinguish a “noise” hockey-stick scenario from one where the hockey-stick results from a real temperature signal.
You look at the eigenvalue magnitudes.
The red noise McIntyre used to generate spurious hockey-sticks had a much flatter eigenvalue spectrum than did Mann’s tree-ring data. In fact, the eigenvalue magnitude associated with the leading principal component was several times larger for Mann’s tree-ring data than it was for McIntyre’s simulated red-noise data.
Any competent analyst trying to extract a temperature signal from proxy data via the PCA method would look at the eigenvalue magnitudes before deciding whether to proceed with the regression steps.
Had Mann’s eigenvalues looked like McIntyre’s noise eigenvalues, Mann would most likely said to himself, “There’s not much of a common temperature signal in my tree-ring data here; don’t think that I will be able to do much with it.”
If Mann’s tree-ring eigenvalues had looked anything like McIntyre’s noise eigenvalues, Mann certainly would have realized that his tree-ring data did not contain any temperature information worthy of publication.
This whole “spurious hockey-stick” argument used against Mann is completely without merit.
The eigenvalue spectrum just shows how many independent factors are at work.
The correct way to test it is by “verification”, something Mann actually did. You split the temperature data into two parts, one of which you use to “calibrate” the proxy series (You scale and offset the data to best match the thermometers during the calibration period), and you then test the Pearson R2 correlation of the resulting reconstruction against the rest of the thermometer data. If your prediction matches observation, it’s more likely to be a good reconstruction. If it fails to match, it’s almost certainly a bad one.
This has been what a major part of the argument has been about. The sceptics claim Mann calculated the R2, found that his reconstruction *failed*, but that he published it anyway, without reporting the test failure and then later denying that he ever did it.
Mann claims that another form of correlation metric (that blurs high frequency details) is a better test, but the sceptics counter that with autocorrelated data (changes in noise value are gradual over time) he calculated the thresholds for this other test wrong.
And that furthermore he shouldn’t be inventing new and unconventional ways to apply poorly understood statistical tests on the fly without some input from the statisticians.
As a mathematician, I think the sceptics have a point – but it’s not a debate in which laymen can easily decide between the positions. The existence of a reply to a sceptic point does not imply that the reply is correct.
The eigenvalue spectrum also gives you information about the relative importance/dominance of the independent factors.
A nearly flat eigenvalue spectrum (per McIntyre’s red noise) is a good indication that there’s not much of a “coherent signal” common to the tree-ring series.
An eigenvalue spectrum like Mann’s tells you that the data are dominated by only a few “independent factors” — a good indication that the tree-ring time series are coherent enough to extract a meaningful “common signal” from them.
Having applied eigenvector techniques to acoustic data collected from underwater arrays, I can tell you that the eigenvalues can provide a lot of clues as to the “structure” of the data.
In the case where the array is being ensonified only by ambient noise, the eigenvalue spectrum will be much flatter than if it is ensonified by a coherent signal. In the case where the array is receiving coherent acoustic energy, then you will see the eigenvalue spectrum dominated by one or a very few eigenvalues.
There is no reason that the same wouldn’t hold true for tree-ring data. At one extreme, if the tree-ring data contained a noise-free global temperature signal, the tree-ring data matrix would collapse to a rank-1 matrix. Noisy data with a detectable “common signal” should produce a reduced-rank matrix with just a few dominant eigenvalues. In the case of random noise with little/no correlation amongst the tree-ring time-series, one would expect to obtain a data matrix that’s close to full-rank (per McIntyre’s red noise).
Mann did use a “suboptimal” PCA implementation, but it just didn’t matter very much, because his processing, repeated with the properly centered PCA algorithm, produced the same results.
Having a solid background in formal math/statistics is important, but it is also very important to be able to “relate” the numbers you’ve crunched with physical, real-world processes. That’s where many stats/mathematics types come up short — they haven’t worked with “real world” data enough to get practical experience with “real world” scenarios.
And there’s no substitute for working with lots of “real world” data to get an appreciation for this.
Mann certainly would benefit by consulting professional statisticians, but on the other hand, criticism of Mann by professional statisticians with no experience handling the sort of data that Mann had been working with for years should be taken with a large grain of salt.
I agree that the eigenvalue spectrum also tells you about the relative importance of the factors. It’s what I meant above – it tells you how many factors are ‘important’.
But it doesn’t say anything at all about whether those factors are ‘signal’ or ‘noise’. In your sonar example, you are relying on the environment being relatively noise-free to deduce that the strongest components are the reflected signal you’re looking for, and not a jammer. The only way to be sure, though, is to compare it against the signal you think was sent.
Ed, I hope the above comments have made it clear to you that there is *nothing* any scientist can say that will assure that crowd of flying monkeys (to say nothing of the think tank network that backs them up)about the science.
It is an unfortunate fact that much of the media is part of the problem, some overt (Fox) and some less overt (Revkin). Putting it in terms of the old media aphorism, climate science is “dog bites man,” climate science *scandal* is “man bites dog.” The former is same old, same old while the latter gets the coverage.
On the substance, I think you (and Mickey)over-reacted. Pachauri’s letter is “advice” to *volunteers*, and as you know he has no means of enforcing a proscription even if he wanted to. OTOH terms like “we have learned nothing” and “bunker mentality” are very much red meat for yellow journalists. (I can understand wanting a clarification, but would a preliminary private email to Pachauri asking for one have been so hard, BTW?)
I assume you’re familiar with the considerable literature dealing with media coverage of climate change, but if not this excellent overview is a good starting point: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2859986.htm. Climate scientists should know what the landscape is like before taking a hike across it on a moonless night.
Steve: You say “Ed, I hope the above comments have made it clear to you that there is *nothing* any scientist can say that will assure that crowd of flying monkeys (to say nothing of the think tank network that backs them up)about the science.”
I assume that you are talking, at least in part, to me. So why don’t we take the particular example of the NZ temperature record where it appears incontrovertible that the record has been adjusted in such a way as to make the warming appear worse than it actually was. All without explanation.
I am open to your explanation as to why I must be mistaken in being concerned about the integrity of that record. I would certainly welcome an explanation from a climate scientist.
The reason that the NZ record is important is that as I understand it, the adjusted record forms part of the CRU database. Further, because NZ is surrounded by ocean, that temperature record is projected to adjacent gridcells.
It would be very simple and straightforward for skeptics to verify their claims that data adjustments have exaggerated the global warming temperature signal.
They could download the *freely available* adjusted and unadjusted temperature data, compute a global temperature average from the adjusted data and do the same with the unadjusted data. If data adjustments really did exaggerate the global-warming signal, then this simple analysis would reveal that.
Now the question is, why haven’t you guys done that? All the data are freely available, and the gridding/averaging techniques are well documented in the literature.
The Muir Russell team was able to replicate the CRU global temperature results with freely available data and documentation in just a couple of days (with no assistance from the CRU). *A couple of days*!
So why haven’t you guys been able to do something similar in all the years that you’ve been complaining about the global temperature data?
All the necessary data have been available on-line for *years*, and the gridding/averaging algorithms are something that a typical undergraduate engineering/comp-sci student would be able to implement.
It has been done often, of course. (By the Chiefio, for example.) That’s not the point.
The question is not “has it warmed over the 20th century” because most sceptics agree it probably has. The primary question is, “is it within the bounds of natural variation?” We’re just pointing out that you seem to have got the uncertainties wrong on the first question as a matter of scientific principle. It has little significance for the validity of AGW, unless you want to present it as a ‘correlation implies causation’ argument.
The question is not “did you calculate the right answer?” but “did you calculate the answer right?” A bit different.
It’s much the same as when McIntyre reported doing exactly that to try to reconstruct the MBH98 graph – he downloaded the original data from the public archives.
You know, when he reported that Mann/Rutherford had mislabelled, double-counted, and extrapolated (“in-filled”) a whole load of series? He *had* to re-download it, because Mann’s/Rutherford’s version had been so corrupted.
And everybody ignored it, because they could simply claim the sceptics were doing it a different way, or had downloaded the wrong series. If sceptics get different answers, the sceptics must be doing it wrong. So what’s the *right* way? We’re not telling.
Chiefio’s “analysis” was completely incompetent.
Chiefio didn’t even understand the difference between a temperature and a temperature *anomaly*.
His entire “analysis” (if you could even call it that) was based on a complete and fundamental misunderstanding about how temperature anomalies were calculated.
Nobody well informed about this topic would consider Chiefio’s “work” to be serious.
Just one more comment. Formatting problems with tree-ring data a dozen years ago is completely irrelevant to the issue of adjusted/unadjusted surface temperature data, which is freely available to anyone today, in a well documented format that any competent programmer could unpack.
And as for “the right way”, any competent researcher can easily figure that out for his/herself using publicly available information available today.
“His entire “analysis” (if you could even call it that) was based on a complete and fundamental misunderstanding about how temperature anomalies were calculated.”
Well, exactly. That’s why you need to publish precisely how the anomalies were calculated.
Saying “you can download the data and do the analysis for yourselves” entirely misses the point.
How the anomalies have been calculated is thoroughly documented in the scientific literature and at data.giss.nasa.gov.
The fact that you have been unwilling and/or unable to track down that information yourself is telling…
I’m well aware of the documentation at GISS, and the background on how it came to be published. It’s an interesting story.
Do you know it?
I guess I’m one of those sceptical scientists who has to put up with flying monkeys like you Steve Bloom and your backup think tank network.
Re your response to Revkin, now on his site:
“(Y)ou would think that someone might have picked up that this paragraph will play right into the hands of the climategate crowd(.)”
I love the smell of unintended irony in the morning. No, I take that back.
Re the global assessments, it is entirely the fault of the media that they don’t get the attention they deserve. Media-savvy PR professionals can make a difference in getting such studies a little more attention at the time of release, but the larger problem is that the media retain no memory of the assessments. OTOH this is just one aspect of the larger media failure to give an accurate impression of the state of the science.
Sorry to be making yet another comment, but I re-read your post and spotted this:
“The members of my working group are among the finest minds in the world. We are capable of speaking to the press about what we do without the help of minders or gatekeepers.”
This perception is part of the problem, although as a smart person myself I understand the feeling. I had to learn the hard way that it’s not true. The key point is that while some smart people are good at dealing with the media, it’s a skill that’s not correlated with how smart they are.
Your working group may be composed entirely of media-savvy people, in which case you can count yourself lucky, but I would hope it’s quite clear by now that the IPCC has many doubtless-samrt participants who aren’t gifted in that way. Rajendra Pachauri and Phil Jones come to mind.
Consider also: Is smartness correlated with success in politics, and between science and journalism which is more like politics?
I agree with you Ed – I hope scientists like you feel ready and able to communicate with the media. Climate science shares something in common with journalism, after all: those who practice it often find themselves having to justify the value and trustworthiness of what they do.
After reading the comments that followed your post, it seems worth pointing out that “the media” might include not journalists and pundits, but also bloggers such as yourself – some of whom may be able to take a real working knowledge of some field of study and report/opine on it in a meaningful way; some of whom will use their “insider” status to pander to private interests with deep pockets; and some of whom will simply pass on decontextualized, misconstrued and misrepresented half-quotes and half-facts as valid information without doing any actual research of their own, outside of the blogosphere. (Hm. Kinda like… journalists?)
Why do you link to a BBC report of the inquiry, rather than the inquiry report itself? I don’t think it is an exoneration – partly because it hasn’t examined the science (and says so, clearly) or a number of the other issues being contended, partly because it took no evidence from the critics, and partly because it does in many ways criticise the way the scientists behaved.
The problem with citing inquiries “exonerating” the scientists is that the public has seen the HARRY_READ_ME file, now believes that this is the quality standard set in climate science, and will need a *detailed* explanation/demonstration of exactly how this impression is wrong and the presentation of a lot of hard evidence to convince them otherwise.
A simple *assertion* that the science is still solid simply will no longer do. You now have to do it properly – data and code openly archived, all results replicable, the whole chain of reasoning checked and objections answered.
I know how hard it is to find a general solution to Navier-Stokes-like equations, and how sensitive they are to small changes. I know that modellers are approximating the atmosphere with a grid of cells each of them hundreds of kilometres across. I find it an *extraordinary claim*. The IPCC report seems to say that because modellers are currently unable to model the warming of the atmosphere without the contribution of CO2, that it is therefore unlikely to be possible to do so. I would very much like to know how you can be so confident that these models are good enough for what is being asked of them. Arguments affirming the consequent, arguing from ignorance or authority, or any similar fallacies should not appear. Nor should it simply direct me into a maze of tangled references in the paywalled technical literature, with no way to tell what is current or well-supported.
I have yet to see any clear and concise, complete and non-fallacious explanation of how the IPCC community have come to this conclusion. How was that 90% confidence calculated? I think that for the IPCC to construct such a explanation – somewhere the public can get at it – would be a very worthwhile activity.
Certainly more useful that talking to the press about “voodoo science”.
The post I’m responding to here contains several copy/pasted boilerplate contrarian talking points.
Here are my comments in response to them.
Climate-scientists have had to compute global-average temperatures from data that were not originally collected with that goal in mind. They’ve had to assemble disparate data sets, formatted in all sorts of random ways, into coherent global databases. It should surprise nobody that such a task would messy, frustrating, and at times downright ugly. Hence the HARRY_READ_ME notes.
But the bottom line is, climate-scientists done a pretty darned good job of extracting meaningful global-average temperatures from all those scattered, independent, and imperfect data sets.
The problems with surface temperature data quality are not the fault of climate-scientists; climate-scientists, like all other sorts of scientists often have no choice but to deal with imperfect, messy data. But that doesn’t mean that it is impossible to extract meaningful information from such data. Scientists do that all the time.
In the USA, climate-scientists have responded to the problems with the original surface temperature network (the Historical Climate Network) by implementing a “Climate Reference Network” of very carefully sited and calibrated temperature monitoring stations. That network has been place for close to a decade. CRN stations were deliberately placed near adjacent “well sited” HCN (Historical Climate Network) stations specifically for the purposes of calibration/cross-checking that pre-existing network.
Now, contrarians might argue “a decade is not nearly long enough — we will have to collect data from the CRN for another 30 years or so before we can say anything about the global temperature trend”.
But the contrarians would be wrong. The carefully monitored and maintained CRN is now being used to check and calibrate the already existing (imperfect) temperature network. And what the CRN data have told us so far is that the pre-existing temperature station network, in spite of its shortcomings, is doing a pretty darned good job. See http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf for details.
In addition, it should be pointed out that the trends seen in the global surface temperature network closely track the trends seen in two *independent* satellite-based global temperature reconstructions.
And finally, it should be pointed out that climate models are *not* the primary source of evidence for global-warming. NASA climate-scientist James Hansen has placed climate-models at a somewhat distant third place as a source of evidence. The first, and strongest, line of evidence comes from the tremendous amount of physical paleoclimatic data that have been collected over the past decades. Second is the surface temperature record, and in third place are the models. Throw out all the climate models and we still have a slam-dunk case linking CO2 emissions with global-warming.
Caerbannog: You confidently state: “But the bottom line is, climate-scientists done a pretty darned good job of extracting meaningful global-average temperatures from all those scattered, independent, and imperfect data sets.”
How do YOU know that to be true? How do you KNOW that to be true?
Have you compared the surface temperature results with the satellite-based results?
Did you read the peer-reviewed article that I linked to in my previous post? Please spend some time reading and digesting that paper before you reply again.
Thanks for the reply.
I agree that climate scientists have a difficult-to-impossible job trying to extract anything meaningful from the data, and that’s not their fault. To be able to get anything at all is an achievement.
HARRY_READ_ME is evidence of a lot worse than this, though. He isn’t just complaining about the data, he complains about the code too. And he questions the validity of the output as a consequence.
The satellites measure the lower troposphere average, not surface temperature.
The case of the HCN and CRN is interesting. The CRN was introduced because of the valid concerns raised by a sceptic (Anthony Watts), about a network that was itself previously assessed as “high quality” by climate scientists, and which some people are still fighting. But praise is due for the action taken on the CRN – this is how it should be.
The decade/30-year argument again misses the point the sceptics are trying to make. Trend lines are calculated based on an assumption of a specific statistical model of the signal and noise. If the model is wrong, the trend line is meaningless.
Why would 30 years be enough? How have you calculated this number? If the time series has a unit root on a centennial scale, you would expect to see stochastic trends on all decadal time scales but they would all be spurious. So whether you take one year, ten year, thirty year, or a hundred year trends, you’re missing out a big chunk of the argument in claiming that *any* of them are meaningful.
If that’s what James Hansen says, then he’s wrong. The paleoclimate results are tremendously important as evidence for AGW from a persuasive/polemic point of view, but not from a scientific point of view – both sides have privately agreed on this. (Well, OK, not on the polemic bit.) Evidence for the temperature rising says absolutely nothing about causes.
The IPCC discusses attribution in AR4 WG1 ch9, where the primary evidence listed in table 9.4 you find there is mostly the fit with computer models.
*Given the assumption* that CO2 is the primary cause of the observed warming, then paleoclimate data fed into models provides some (weak) constraints on climate sensitivity, but the attribution of recent GW to humans, and the predictions of vastly larger future change are based almost entirely on models.
If you have read all the e-mails then you must be fully aware of the mountain which you must climb. You cannot hide behind the findings of the so called enquiries because the whole world has seen the evidence. Attempting to dismiss the e-mails is like saying black is white.
Black is black and we all know it.
I am waiting for more scientists to come forward and tell me that black is black and those are the only scientists that are worth listening too.
I repeat: WE HAVE SEEN THE EVIDENCE
The scientists’ FOI foot-dragging was driven far more by anger and frustration than by any desire to “hide” anything.
Here is a complete list of the FOI requests sent to the CRU: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/request_for_list_of_foi_requests#incoming-66822
Read through the list of FOI requests made, and then come back and argue with a straight face that most of those FOI requests represented good faith attempts to obtain scientifically meaningful information about the CRU’s work.
As has been explained on many occasions, the CRU fobbed off requests for data by saying that they were precluded from making information available by confidentiality agreements with various countries.
Most of those FOI requests are asking CRU to support their statement by producing the CAs. The reason that there were so many is that each one took five countries.
An administration officer, or lawyer, could easily have dealt with those CAs in a couple of hours had CRU actually had the CA agreements properly filed. It appears that they could not deliver.
Provided that the CRU even had those resources at its disposal.
The CRU is a tiny organization with about 5 FTE’s (i.e. virtually no support staff). Jones couldn’t fob off those frivolous FOI’s to the legal staff because the CRU didn’t even have such a staff.
And why should a professional scientist have two waste even a couple of hours of his time on a bunch of dishonest gadflies from foreign countries?
And if the FOI requestors were really interested in obtaining those nondisclosure agreements, they could have contacted the original Met offices for copies of those agreements. Are skeptics so inept that they can’t figure out how to do that?
Following up:
The “skeptics” who had been hassling the CRU have known for many months exactly where to get all the temperature data the CRU used (namely the various Met offices).
Can you tell me if any of the skeptics who had been demanding the CRU’s data ever contacted the those Met offices and asked them for the data? If not, why not?
If they have, what have they done with the data? Have they bothered to compute their own global-temperature estimates to compare with the CRU’s results? If not, why not?
And remember, the Muir Russell team was able to perform their own independent verification of the CRU’s work, using publicly-available data and documentation, *in just a few days*.
Why haven’t the skeptics been able to accomplish in many months what it took the Muir Russell team only a few days to accomplish?
One of the letters the CRU subsequently sent out to the national met offices requesting permission to republish the data revealed that the data the CRU used was *different* to what was on the national met office’s own site, which was why they had to ask, and which was why the met office in question was unwilling to give permission.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/05/phil-jones-called-out-by-swedes-on-data-availability/
Not even CRU know what adjustments were made to the ‘raw’ data and why – they claim lack of tape storage in the 1980s. More of that HARRY_READ_ME, we presume.
Unfortunately, most (all?) climatologists are only looking selectively at sets of numbers and apparent “trends” overlooking more basic data.
Here’s a good one for them to study and discuss openly, honsestly and in depth.
http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/erin/
Looks to me like it changes everything you thought you knew.
How fine is your mind? Is it as fine as the one that compiled this data? Is it fine enough to draw its own conclusions – without “shutting down”? We’ll see….
Plenty more climate data to address here:
http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=173&Itemid=50
The first of two brief responses (from a ‘lukewarmer’ perspective) to prior comments (but I’ll make this freestanding, as the threading’s getting complicated.)
Per ‘Nullis in Verba’ and ‘caerbannog’ upthread — On analysis of the surface temperature record, I agree with caerbannog that ChiefIO’s analysis is fundamentally flawed. This was discussed at length at “The Blackboard” this past spring; e.g. here, or review the other 9 Blackboard posts that a search of “Chiefio” returns. Chiefio’s arguments are muddled, and he declined a Guest Post at the freewheeling Blackboard, preferring to stick to sites where comments are tightly moderated (in his favor).
There should be no contention about the correctness of GISSTEMP and similar temperature-anomaly-calculating code, e.g. at CRU. Independent replications agree: they are basically correct. Zeke Hausfather and others have taken this further, with both obvious and clever looks at subsets of the instrumental data. Here is a recent post by Zeke; click on his name for many others.
This is the second of two responses (from a ‘lukewarmer’ perspective) to prior comments. Upthread, ‘Nullis in Verba’ and ‘caerbannog’ discuss the use by Prof. Mann of screening, verification, and calibration steps in the evaluation and use of proxy datasets for paleotemperature reconstructions. Caerbannog goes on to suggest that eigenvalue calculations provide Prof. Mann and others with a further method for choosing valid proxies.
The use of proxies in the Mann group’s September 2008 article in PNAS (Mann08) sheds much light on this. In particular, the Lake Korttajarvi varved lakebed sediments characterized by Tiljander et al (2003) are an important test case of this claim:
“Mann08 demonstrates methods of proxy selection and calibration for paleotemperature reconstruction that are robust.”
In my opinion, analysis of Mann08’s use of the Tiljander proxies shows that this recent, high-profile paper clearly fails the “robustness” claim.
As fellow commenter Steve Bloom will attest, my assertion that the Tiljander proxies were misused in Mann08 is controversial. My opinion — FWIW — is that it shouldn’t be. A slow-paced exposition of the problem as I see it is here, on my blog. (Other posts contain compendia of links to literature and to bloggers’ posts on this subject.) There is an active post on Mann08’s use of the Tiljander proxy at pro-AGW-Consensus blogger Arther Smith’s site, Michael Mann’s errors. The comments there present the key arguments, pro and con, as well as links.
I do not know what an eigenvalue-based test of these proxies (as used) would show–it’s an interesting and potentially important question. If such a step would have rejected their inappropriate use, it would be a valuable addition to the toolbox.
I can’t help but notice that there is no response to my question regarding ‘adjustments’ the the NZ temperature series. Can I assume that means that posters here concede the point?
Folks, I have allowed the comment string to go on unmolested, despite my protestations that this is not a climate site per se (I really focus on development), but I feel the need to comment here . . . I understand and value provocation, but this finally strikes me as unproductive. First, I think this issue has been addressed at other sites (e.g. RealClimate) that are more appropriate. Second, blind provocation just kicks a hornet’s nest. Nothing productive comes of it – and certainly we will not get anything that resembles productive conversation. I welcome debate here, as long as it is engaged in the spirit of building real interaction.
Further, I apologize to Mondo for appending this to his/her comment only – I probably should have dropped this a few days earlier, and I could have linked to a number of commenters.
Guys, do your own research. If you want question-ahswer-question-answer process, go to Real Climate Website (Climate Science from Climate Scientists) – http://www.realclimate.org
Cheers
Must say that I agree with this recommendation – I am sure that some people will have issues with the site, but they do know their stuff and have posted answers to basically every issue raised in the comments thread . . .
it was very interesting to read.
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
Another thought: it is easy to think that something sinister is going on if one really doesn’t want to accept any given idea. Presenting a sinister aspect to a situation is also an excellent way to control it.
learned a lot