Al Gore Slamdunked

[Chinahand]

Ars technica has a take on the hacked emails which has resonances to Terse's comment - there is little doubt that this affair has seriously damaged reputation of climate scientists in the eyes of the public.

 

I do wonder though Terse how you expect people to explain complex things? The interactions between humanity and the world's climate are not trivial, especially when you are trying to examine how the climate changes over timescales from years, to decades, to centuries, to millenia.

[Ringwraith]

[VinnieK]

Ars technica has a take on the hacked emails which has resonances to Terse's comment - there is little doubt that this affair has seriously damaged reputation of climate scientists in the eyes of the public.

 

I'd say not without some justification. Regardless of the mitigating factors, it is hardly edifying to see scientists closing ranks when it comes to FOI requests (even if they've been filed by crackpots and lunatics), talking about trying to influence the editors of journals, proposing boycots of others, and so on.

 

It's true that this doesn't come close to resembling a conspiracy, with all the stigma and connotations of that word, but that doesn't mean that it's nothing more than impolite mischief either. As Terse has said, people are sick of what can appear to be an authoritarian moralising streak in the establishment. Contrary to what I've seen claimed elsewhere, I don't think that people are inherently anti-science, but they have become anti-establishment and, like it or not, a fair portion of academia and academic research is a part of that establishment, even more so than before with the new funding strategy that's currently being implemented in the sciences. To be honest, who can blame them? For the past twenty or thirty years we've been barraged with warnings that if we don't change our behaviour this way or that the sky will fall, and each and every time the public has complied they have yet another crisis and the accompanying demands for sacrifice thrust upon them. Sure, the overall message has been justified and the advice good, but the way it has been delivered and enforced over the decades has succeeded primarily in creating a populace fatigued and exhausted from hopping from one predicted catastrophe to another and weary of anything a government or those close to it have to say.

 

In view of this setting, and taking into account how the reputation of politics has suffered over the years and particularly this past decade, it is possible to see how some could now see climate scientists as being politicized, closed off and averse to 'transparency', and actively engaged in using their influence to silence or frustrate critics. Now, of course the 'other side' has engaged in dirty tactics, but that's not the point; climate science is on the defence here, both scientifically and morally, and if that battle is going to be won it requires being whiter than white and cautious to the extreme about playing into the other side's hands, which is exactly what has happened with the release of these e-mails. Even were we to accept that humans being what they are will always stray from the straight and narrow every so often, the kind of discussions that took place in the hacked files should never have appeared in their institutional emails where not only are they subject to FOI, but pose a nice obvious target for hackers who disgree with their line.

 

Again, the CRU seems to have been painfully naive in trying to make their case. The e-mails feature one discussion of the dodgy science being used to discredit the climate change model, concluding with something along the lines of "thankfully, the prestige press wont fall for this", as if the battle for people's hearts and minds is even taking place in the pages of the broadsheets, which have little of the influence they once did. To my mind this smacks of the kind of attitude that still thinks it's the 1950's when the majority of the great unwashed will naturally defer to political and professional elites and when papers like The Times set the agenda for the political classes. So far we've seen little in the way of a reaction but a couple of press releases, and a whole lot of yammering on a few climate change websites that reltively few will read with a view to finding out what's going on.

[Stu Peters]

I've not read the links in detail but a quick skim reveals something along the lines that 'scientists have been fudging the evidence to make the official climate change story fit'. Is that fair?

 

Is anyone surprised? Don't all scientists answer to either a commercial employer or a government?

 

I saw a commercial break on the telly the other evening where something like 4 out of 6 commercials had an ecomentalist message. That governments are complicit in cooking the books as a way of taxing the public for being alive at the wrong time confirms my fears about the foundations of this whole movement (I'm not qualified to give a reasoned argument on climate change per se - so to avoid argument I'll agree that SOMETHING is happening).

 

And now big business is involved, it's become a powerful USP for dishwasher powder and family cars. Thank the Mayan gods - we've only got 3 years of this nonsense left to scare our kids with.

[Dr_Dave]

I do wonder though Terse how you expect people to explain complex things? The interactions between humanity and the world's climate are not trivial, especially when you are trying to examine how the climate changes over timescales from years, to decades, to centuries, to millenia.

 

Not only the complex scientific results... how do you explain the scientific culture to the average man in the street?

 

I've worked in scientific research, albeit not for a long time. As I read through the CRU data, I felt some contempt and disappointment, but not as much as you may think. Mostly I just felt familiarity.

 

A good example is in the "revelations" from the code parts of the leaks. The response is typified here. From reading the comments in a kind of programmer diary, the situation appears to be one of confusion, compromise, fiddling, fixing and general flailing around in the dark. Naturally, those of an IT leaning are horrified by this.

 

Well, it's all true.

 

This is exactly what real science is like. And this is for the simple reason that data does not come handily formatted spreadsheets as people might expect. Data are delivered to scientists in the form of archaic file formats, incompatible with data from other instruments. Undocumented, confusing, plagued with systemic artifacts and misleading patterns. It is often just raw numbers direct from a detector and before anything can be done to it, it needs "cleaning".

 

This, I would imagine is where people would have a problem. There is an element of subjectiveness in processing data, what appears - on the surface - to be cherry picking to get the answer you require. In fact, it's not like this at all - what you're doing is honing in on a particular aspect that you can justify claiming to know a priori, and processing the data according to that. It looks like fiddling. But provided you can justify it and are up front about your methods, then it is fine and even necessary.

 

As an example, my research was in the field of infrared astronomy. The data I received were from the ISO satellite - a short lived ESA venture from the late 90s. It took me 18 months, half of my PhD, to process the data to the point where it could be used - this involved literally getting to know every aspect of the instrument - learning which frequencies could be trusted, which detections were artifacts and could be ignored, comparing endlessly with "dark frames" to remove residuals, countless months of fitting to remove cosmic ray strikes and a whole lot of exactly the kind of thing you see in these files. To me, it all seems to familiar - and acceptable.

 

But how do you explain this to the man in the street? Most people think that science involves looking in a telescope, shouting "by jove!" and then retiring to the local pub with the chaps in the Royal Society for a celebratory drink.

 

If there's a revelation in this leak, it's that scientists are human. They bicker, they're territorial, they don't like being wrong, they can be tasteless. It reveals that there's skullduggery happening in a field where objectivity should be paramount. Does this really surprise anyone?

 

Dave

Edited November 24, 2009 by Dr_Dave

[Dr_Dave]

I've not read the links in detail but a quick skim reveals something along the lines that 'scientists have been fudging the evidence to make the official climate change story fit'. Is that fair?

 

No. Which bits of the emails do you think show this?

 

Dave

[ans]

How can you enter into a debate and offer an opinion when you've only had a "quick skim"?

 

I've not read any of the emails, or the first four pages of this thread, but I think it's utter horsehit. What's this topic about anyway?

[Stu Peters]

I started the thread, but then lost the will to live.

 

It's about lycra and riding on pavements I think...

[manshimajin]

I started the thread, but then lost the will to live.

 

It's about lycra and riding on pavements I think...

In terms of 'censoring' news I really did find it fascinating that the biggest fall in CO2 emissions in 40 years (as announced by the IEA recently) got nearly zero coverage even though in the UK it apparently amounted to a 9% p.a. cut in CO2 emissions (3% globally)! Of course those in government may not want to let people know that their very effective economic policy of creating a recession has very positive environmental effects. Far better to try and re-stimulate the economy, increase CO2 emissions and then introduce a 'carbon tax' in order to say we are controlling pollution by tax!!!!

 

The unpalatable reality is that if 'man made' industrial growth has caused the environmental problems industrial retraction is needed to help their recovery.

 

...and then we have the Irish Greens voting for increasing speed limits in Ireland on a swag of roads - to increase fuel consumption, raise more tax and excise, increase pollution and give a justification for a carbon tax at a time when CO2 emissions in Ireland will have dropped by even more than the UK (based on the way the Irish economy has fallen off a cliff). Could it just be that at a time of economic collapse staying in government is more important to them than dealing with the environmental problems ?

 

Anyway two random thoughts:

1. Why do environmentalists carry on so much about cutting down of the 'rain forests'? I have not heard one of them point out that the biggest destruction of forests has been in Europe over the past 500 years. Maybe we should be re-establishing the European forests in our own backyard rather than telling the Brazilians what to do?
   
2. On the BBC the other day there was a 'good news' item about the shrinking Arctic ice. Apparently this has encouraged a massive increase in algae which firstly absorbs large amounts of CO2 and secondly is stimulating a growth in fish stocks in the region at a rate that hasn't been observed before.
   

[VinnieK]

I've not read the links in detail but a quick skim reveals something along the lines that 'scientists have been fudging the evidence to make the official climate change story fit'. Is that fair?

 

Not really, that's certainly the way it's being pitched by the more veherement side of the debate, but I suspect that there's actually very little there that you can point to as indicating a true fudge. Even the now infamous "hiding the decline" quote isn't really as cut and dried as it first sounds - for instance, if you're trying to merge models that are accurate at different points in time but the merging introduces some kind of anomaly (judged against real data) where they join, it's reasonable to try to get rid of that anomaly by putting that data in. What you're removing or hiding isn't 'real', but an artificial byproduct and requires modification in order to preserve accuracy.

 

Is anyone surprised? Don't all scientists answer to either a commercial employer or a government?

 

It's complicated, but I do think it's a little unfair to suggest corruption in this case - in effect it would be similar to someone saying that you must be biased in your job one way or the other based on where and how Manx Radio gets its money, and holding up a selected number of quotes sympathetic to this argument as proof!

 

There have been some ridiculous claims regarding the funding of the CRU and in particular its director. I remember seeing one person citing that he got X amount of money from the HEFCE, for instance, as if it were paid into his personal bank account to do with as he wishes. In fact, HEFCE money goes to the department, not individuals, and is used primarily for teaching undergraduates and so forth, with some money going to research. Similarly, very few people ever get rich off research money: you write a research proposal, declare what facilities and sundries you'll need to complete that research, and the funding councils (might) award you a grant to pay for it. In short you'd have to be a complete fool if you went into academic research in order to get rich, especially by questionable means.

 

There is a political element to it, in that the research funding councils ultimately answer to the government who do exert influence over what is and isn't funded, and it's true that a big part of academic reputation is based on a proven track record when it comes to attracting funding. However, this is complicated by the fact that the major measure of success and reputation is via publications and how many times you get cited by other researchers. The major journals which publish scientific papers are in fact private businesses, and they are generally very cautious about the veracity of what they publish precisely because any fraud or fudging that goes onto their pages is likely to harm their business considerably, and similarly other researchers would be very wary of citing an author who's been caught fiddling the books.

 

In other words, falsifying data carries a huge risk and spells sudden death for your career if caught, for little if any tangible benefit even in the short term. To my mind the CRU affair isn't so much about climate change directly, and more about PR: I very much doubt there has been any fiddling going on with regards to the research, the problem being more that the content of the e-mails can appear or be made out to suggest that there has been some conspiracy or trickery afoot at the level of research. That there has been such behaviour is really very unlikely, and I believe that where questions are raised by those emails it's really with regards to how the CRU people were dealing with those who were attacking them (and it has to be remembered that the e-mails released suggest that these guys were getting a lot of abusive e-mails, verging on threats, in addition to being virtually slandered).

 

My gut instinct is that some of the comments in the e-mails were misguided, and the FOI business is a little troubling, but it doesn't imply dishonesty, a general malice, or that the research was fixed.

[Albert Tatlock]

for instance, if you're trying to merge models that are accurate at different points in time but the merging introduces some kind of anomaly (judged against real data) where they join, it's reasonable to try to get rid of that anomaly by putting that data in. What you're removing or hiding isn't 'real', but an artificial byproduct and requires modification in order to preserve accuracy.

Isn't that a bit like, say, monitoring the temperature in 3 houses in different countries (3 different timezones) where the occupants are all home at night, for breakfast, lunch and tea and at those specific times ('accurate at different points in time') the temperatures are all the same - and then coming to the conclusion that their heating bills will be the same, by manipulating out the in-between data to get the same graph for each - yet when they go out in the daytime - House #1 might leave his windows open and heating on all day, House #2 might have the windows closed all the time and have insulation when the others don't, and House #3 might be an igloo.

 

Personally, I think a lot of it is more about manipulating graphs grants.

[Slim]

Isn't that a bit like, say, monitoring the temperature in 3 houses in different countries (3 different timezones) where the occupants are all home at night, for breakfast, lunch and tea and at those specific times ('accurate at different points in time') the temperatures are all the same - and then coming to the conclusion that their heating bills will be the same, by manipulating out the in-between data to get the same graph for each - yet when they go out in the daytime - House #1 might leave his windows open and heating on all day, House #2 might have the windows closed all the time and have insulation when the others don't, and House #3 might be an igloo.

 

Cor, why didn't the thousands of people involved think of this? You're a genius Albert! Albert for president!

[Dr_Dave]

Isn't that a bit like, say, monitoring the temperature in 3 houses in different countries (3 different timezones) where the occupants are all home at night, for breakfast, lunch and tea and at those specific times ('accurate at different points in time') the temperatures are all the same - and then coming to the conclusion that their heating bills will be the same, by manipulating out the in-between data to get the same graph for each - yet when they go out in the daytime - House #1 might leave his windows open and heating on all day, House #2 might have the windows closed all the time and have insulation when the others don't, and House #3 might be an igloo.

 

Science is all about extrapolation and assumption - but justified extrapolation and assumption. Climate science in particular requires a lot of this - you're trying to describe a global system of extreme complexity, an n-dimensional system, on a 2-dimensional graph. Therefore, it is necessary to average out localised variations. Similarly, climate is not weather - it is dangerous to pin single events on global trends. This is why statements like "but Vikings grew wine grapes in Greenland 1000 years ago" or "the flooding in Cumbria is due to climate change" are generally not relevant to the debate. The important picture is the BIG picture.

 

But the case of "Mike's nature trick" and "hiding the decline" is not really about this. The trick they speak of is the trick of combining disparate datasets obtained using different methods. Do you understand that we require temperature readings on the scale of millenia, but that we only have instrumntal records for centuries? Luckily, we have other methods of measuring temperature indirectly - such as tree rings and ice cores. It should be noted that each proxy measure is not taken in isolation - each is verified and cross calibrated with various other methods and where uncertainties occur, associated error bars are increased - these are the strange vertical "I"s plotted on graphs. The methodology used here is open and well discussed. If you wish, you can read about how it is done, and also the pitfalls of doing it.

 

One of the pitfalls of using tree ring data is that tree rings are not only affected by temperature but by other factors. We're able to verify the accuracy of this data between about 1850 and 1960, since tree ring temperatures broadly agree with instrumental temperatures. But after 1960, something weird happens. The instrumentals go up, while the tree ring temperature go down. This is the decline that is spoken of - in the literature, it is known as the "divergence problem".

 

Now, what do we do in this situation? Only one of them is correct - provided we're taking a broad enough sample. Which would you trust in this situation? The temperature read off a real thermometer? Or the temperature read indirectly from the width of a tree ring? The scientific thing to do is to discard the least trustworthy dataset, but to justify doing it. And in this case, the justification is that tree ring data after 1960 is being affected by acid rain effects and becomes no longer a good proxy measure. Do you accept the reasoning here? If not, can you explain what you think has been done that isn't scientific?

 

I think it's interesting to pick apart this email, because in just one paragraph we can reveal a whole microcosm of methodology. How scientists reach their conclusions may surprise most people with how haphazzard it seems. But I think most semi-intelligent people can appreciate why such methods are necessary if they're exposed to the reasons why things are done like this.

 

Alternatively, you may choose to believe that scientists are all in the pay of "Big Government" but I can assure you that this accusation is something that would amuse 95% of working scientists, most of who work 7 day weeks for a well below average salary.

 

Dave

Edited November 25, 2009 by Dr_Dave

[VinnieK]

How scientists reach their conclusions may surprise most people with how haphazzard it seems.

 

I think the new criteria is that if it doesn't involve a bunsen burner and results can't be expressed solely in terms of a single, albeit complicated equation, it's not science.

 

Alternatively, you may choose to believe that scientists are all in the pay of "Big Government" but I can assure you that this accusation is something that would amuse 95% of working scientists, most of who work 7 day weeks for a well below average salary.

 

Not to mention spending what amounts to eight years or so training, only to often end up shuffling about the country living on short term postdoc contracts before finally landing a job that turns out to be as much pain in the arse admin work as it is actually doing what you want to do. Science is a labour of love - big Government barely pays enough to even make the job itself worthwhile, never mind encourage corruption and conspiracy.

[Cambon]

I've not read the links in detail but a quick skim reveals something along the lines that 'scientists have been fudging the evidence to make the official climate change story fit'. Is that fair?

 

Basically, yes. Western governments have managed to create a massive industry around this, and at a time when they are trying to find ways to create jobs, this is an easy option. It is also a soft touch for taxation. Better to cover up any good news on reductions in CO2 with lies about bank bail outs. Good news about reductions in CO2 could affect their plans to create new jobs in the industry.