by Judith Curry
Over the past week, there have been several notable events on the “Hill” of relevance to U.S. science policy, addressing issues of concern related to the integrity of science. In a word, Bravo!
Scientific Integrity Directive
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released guidelines from Director John Holdren on Friday aimed at ensuring and promoting scientific integrity (read the whole thing, its only 4 pages). The political back story on this is described by the NYTimes.
The memorandum is issued to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies to provide guidance for implementing the Administration’s polices on scientific integrity. Holdren’s memorandum requires agency leaders to report their progress toward completing those rules within 120 days. Here are some important quotes from Holdren’s memo:
Scientific and technological information is often a significant contributor to the development of sound policies. Thus it is important that policymakers involve science and technology experts where appropriate and that the scientific and technological information and processes relied upon in policymaking be of the highest integrity. Successful application of science in public policy depends on the integrity of the scientific process both to ensure the validity of the information itself . . .
[S]cience, and public trust in science, thrives in an environment that shields scientific data and analyses from inappropriate political influence; political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings.
Of particular relevance to the climate issue, the directive states:
- Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings.
- Strengthen the actual and perceived credibility of Government research. Of particular importance are: a) ensuring that selection of candidates for scientific positions in the executive branch is based primarily on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity, b) ensuring that data and research used to support policy decisions undergo independent peer review by qualified experts . . . c) setting clear standards governing conflicts of interest, and, d) adopting appropriate whistleblower protections.
- Consistent with the Administration’s Open Government Initiative, agencies should expand and promote access to scientific and technological information by making it available online in open formats. Where appropriate, this should include data and models underlying regulatory proposals and policy decisions.
- Agencies should communicate scientific and technological findings by including a clear explication of underlying assumptions; accurate contextualization of uncertainties; and a description of the probabilities associated with both optimistic and pessimistic projections, including best-case and worst-case scenarios where appropriate.
For more information and other perspectives, see:
- President Barack Obama’s memo, 9 March 2009
- Eos article on the new scientific integrity policies, 21 December 2010
- Eos interview with OSTP Director John Holdren, 21 December 2010
- Mike McPhaden (AGU President)
- Roger Pielke Jr
- Chris Mooney
Congress passes America COMPETES Act
Legislation that reauthorizes the America COMPETES Act of 2007 has been sent to President Obama for his signature. The best known aspect of this legislation is increased funding for NSF, NIST, and DOE Science. The bill aims to boost the international competitiveness of the U.S. in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
One little known but nevertheless very important component of the American COMPETES Act is the statutory requirement for Responsible Conduct of Research for NSF and NIH. The Statutory Requirement for NSF is:
“The Director shall require that each institution that applies for financial assistance from the Foundation for science and engineering research or education describe in its grant proposal a plan to provide appropriate training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research to undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers participating in the proposed research project.”
See NSF’s web page for details on how they are implementing this requirement. At Georgia Tech, we are already working on implementing training programs for students, which will be mandatory for all students starting Fall 2011.
Sensenbrenner to serve as Vice Chairman of House Science Committee
Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a noted climate change skeptic, is incoming Vice Chairman of the House Science & Technology Committee. Rep. Sensenbrenner will lead investigations and oversight into global warming science. The incoming Chairman, Ralph Hall (R-TX) said this about Sensenbrenner, “With his background, his insistence, he can do the mean things that we don’t want to do. I’m a peaceful guy; he likes combat.” The folks at WUWT seem quite gleeful at this prospect. On the other hand, Mike Mann can’t be too happy about this, he warned of this possibility in a recent Washington Post op-ed. Dare we hope for anything sensible to come of this?
“Dare we hope for anything sensible to come of this?”
Other then a realization that Government Budgets always have been and always will be set by the political winds?
How else could the government budgets be set? The political system is how the government leaders are chosen. That is its function. On the other hand the Competes Act only authorizes some science funding, it does not actually provide it. That is up to the Appropriations process, which under the new Congress may be quite stingy.
Pity that Mann and his cohorts haven’t participated in this blog.
If he had he’d realise just how out of touch his rants about deniers and tobacco and Big Oil and ‘anti-science attacks’ sound today. Like editorials from those old Marxist newspapers that duffel-coated bearded ones sold on street corners in University towns when I was an undergraduate.
Times have changed (if they ever existed as he imagined they were anyway). This robust debate shows that sceptics are not just here to ‘attack science’. But to test every aspect of the AGW case. And then to test it again. Only weak and ineffectual scientists could see this an attack on science..good ones would see it as strengthening their arguments if they survived the rigorous examination.
But despite Mann’s evidence-free protestations to the contrary, the overall case gets weaker and weaker each time it is so tested. The more it is really prodded – rather than just pal-reviewed – the less strength it has.
> Pity that Mann and his cohorts haven’t participated in this blog.
Well, gee, being smeared as a “shyster” isn’t much of an inducement to participate.
Being called a denialist doesnt stop me from posting at RC. Big boy pants.
use them.
There were two problems in climategate as we pointed out in the book:
1. Overstatements of certainty ( or hiding uncertainties)
2. Erosion of scientific integrity.
Seems like some people are finally getting the message. That’s good.
Ahh…poor dears.
Come over all sensitive and having a fit of the vapours are they? Not emotions I have previously associated with the Hockey Team Gang. They have been certainly been very well hidden under the exterior facade of intellectual arrogance and swagger that they have cultivated so successfully.
Perhaps they should take a lesson from our learned and erudite colleague Richard S Courtney who manages to post on this blog in his usual calm and reasoned way despite his being repeatedly accused of being far worse by your ‘good’ self earlier. With absolutely no evidence to back it up.
I think we should assume that Mann and his chums are quite capable of looking after themselves. Was it not one of them who was threatening to take somebody down a back alley and ‘beat the crap out of them’.
Latimer – a note of caution – according to a friend of mine who remembers him at IC, “duffel-coated bearded one” selling Marxist literature, might have been a lyrical, but essentially accurate description of a youthful Piers Corbyn.
@Tom FP
Its still an entirely valid description of his baby bro. Jeremy Corbyn, MP.
And Piers may be a fine predictor and forecaster, but he doesn’t go out of his way to win people over with wit and charm.
His style hasn’t evolved very far from his days leading student occupations with a megaphone and a slogan. At the Climategate debate in London last summer, even ardent sceptics like me felt he did more harm than good with his persistent and irrelevant interruptions. I almost felt sorry for the Chair..George Monbiot. (Only almost though :-) ).
I admire Corbyn for his technical expertise. But a schmoozer like Joe Bastardi, he ain’t.
And thanks for ‘lyrical’. I’m flattered :-)
Agreed. But it just goes to show that we have to take our scientific veracity where we can find it, and may have to accept some pretty strange intellectual bedfellows along the sceptical way.
And don’t be too flattered by “lyrical”. I mean no disrespect – you have a vivid style – but it was intended categorically, because I couldn’t remember whether PC in truth ever had/still has a beard. Similarly, although our friend Greg Craven, or Sir Oswald Muesli, as I prefer to think of him, appears clean-shaven in all available likenesses, he is clearly, for the purposes of lyrical description, bearded. Heavily. Like Prince Charles – makes him look like his grandfather.
Now David Bellamy, on the other hand, although to all appearances luxuriously hirsuite, has, in warmista terms, the face of a choir-boy.
Complicated, I know, and apparently counterintuitive, but then this is climate “science”, remember?
Sure. NP.
I’m sure that I would enjoy the personal company of many with whom I strongly disagree on this blog. And loathe some who are of the same sceptical persuasion.
My late grandfather was a working class High Tory who rose to some local distinction from very humble origins in South Wales. His best friend and sparring partner was the local firebrand Marxist leader. Publicly they were at daggers drawn where politics were concerned. But privately they admired and respected each other too much to let such little things get in the way of their friendship. Strange bedfellows indeed.
Those familiar with Don Camillo will recognise that he had a similar relationship with Peppone.
http://www.meaning-of-life.info/DonCamillo.html
Does all the mumbo jumbo you blokes are talkin ’bout mean that I may not enjoy a beer or ten with Latimer? Nah!! not possible.
No, but I’m thinking of growing a beard. It’s all so confusing…
Next time you’re passing LHR, you’re on.
From what I gather, not much is “passing LHR” these days. And I gather George Moonbat, another possessor of an immense, but cunningly concealed beard, has strung together a spiffing “all-this-snow-and-stuff-is-really-global-warming” tale at the Grauniad. You must be loving it.
A plane went over on its way out this very morning. Bystanders stopped in the snowy wasteland of our High Street and pointed at it.
They tried to remember what this unusual object signified..the younger children had never seen one before..some adults had dim memories (before ‘global warming a la Moonbat’ dumped feet of snow on us) of them having been transportation devices. But others weren’t so certain. Perhaps the planes had been sent by the Gods as final warnings of Thermageddon.
Debate about this aerial manifestation still rages here. Stay tuned.
I get a good laugh out of “warming creates more water vapor” and thus causes more snow. Let’s see, if it’s snowing, is it warm or cold? Tough question! LOL!!
I was at IC with Piers. He certainly had a reputation as a “duffel-coated bearded one”, with his leftie squats and the like.
Bravo!
I will post a list of “litmus tests for integrity” next.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor for
Nuclear & Space Science
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com/
Litmus Tests for Scientific Integrity
As noted in “Slaying the Sky Dragons”, the roots of the climate scandal run deep and have been growing “out of sight” in federal research programs, at least since the 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon.
See Chapter 2 of our book: http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com
All government research agencies (NASA, DOE, EPA, NOAA, NSF, etc.) and the President of the US NAS (National Academy of Sciences that reviews the budgets of those agencies for the US Congress) should take immediate steps to end obstruction of information (distorting, hiding, or blocking publication of experimental data) obtained with public funds:
For example, Experimental Data
1. The link of excess Xe-136 with all primordial Helium in carbonaceous mineral separates of the Allende meteorite that fell in 1969 and in the helium-rich atmosphere of Jupiter that was observed when the Galileo Probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere in December 1995.
2. Enrichments of lightweight isotopes that were implanted by the solar wind (SW) in surfaces of lunar soil samples that were returned by the 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon.
3. Enrichments of lightweight s-products in the solar photosphere that are exposed by comparing abundances of s-products in the photosphere with the abundances that predicted from federally-funded measurements of neutron-capture cross sections.
4. Excess mass (E = mc2) that correlates with the number of neutron-neutron interactions in federally-funded measurements of nuclear rest mass data all ~ 3,000 isotopes representing every atom in the visible universe.
I will explain next why Changes in Earth’s climate could not be correctly deciphered while these federally-funded experimental data were distorted, hidden, or blocked from publication.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com
How Earlier Deception Blocked Understanding of Climate Change
Observation 1 shows that Earth’s heat source (The Sun) is the remnant of a supernova (SN) that ejected poorly mixed SN-debris and gave birth to the Solar System. Iron meteorites and the iron core of the Earth formed directly from material ejected from near the SN core. Elements ejected from the outer layers of the supernova formed the giant gaseous planets like Jupiter and the carbonaceous inclusions in the Allende and other carbonaceous meteorite[ 1-6].
Observation 2 shows that the interior of the Sun is mostly Iron (Fe), Oxygen (O), Silicon (Si), Nickel (Ni), Sulfur (S), Magnesium (Mg) and Calcium (Ca) – like ordinary meteorites and rocky planets close to the Sun [7].
Observation 3 confirms, completely independently, the surprising information recorded in Observation 2 [8]. Xenon isotope data from the Jupiter Probe into Jupiter also independently confirmed solar mass fractionation and the “Iron Sun”[9].
Observation 4 shows that neutron repulsion is the energy source that powers the Sun and the cosmos and sustains our very lives [10].
The AGW hoax was made possible because the above, federally-funded quantitative data on Earth’s heat source – The Sun have been distorted, hidden, or blocked from publication in mainstream research journals [11].
References
1. “Elemental and isotopic inhomogeneities in noble gases: The case for local synthesis of the chemical elements”, Transactions Missouri Academy Sciences 9, 104-122 (1975).
2. “Strange xenon, extinct super-heavy elements, and the solar neutrino puzzle”, Science 195, 208-209 (1977)
3. “Comment on isotopic anomalies” in Proceedings of the Robert Welch Foundation Conference on Chemical Research XII. Cosmochemistry, pages 263-272 (1978).
4. “Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis”, Nature 277, 615-620 (1979).
5. “The enigma of helium and anomalous xenon,” Icarus 41, 312-315 (1980);
6. “Noble gas anomalies and synthesis of the chemical elements”, Meteoritics 15, 117-138 (30 June 1980).
7. “Solar abundances of the elements”, Meteoritics 18, 209-222 (1983).
8. “Solar abundance of elements from neutron-capture cross sections”, paper #1033, 36th Lunar & Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), Houston, Texas, March 14-18 ( 2005).
9. “Isotopic ratios in Jupiter confirm intra-solar diffusion”, Meteoritics and Planetary Science 33, A97, abstract 5011 (1998).
10. “Attraction and repulsion of nucleons: Sources of stellar energy” Journal of Fusion Energy 19,/b>, 93-98 (2001).
11. “Earth’s Heat Source – The Sun”, Energy and Environment 20 131-144 (2009).
Regretfully, Eisenhower predicted this sad demise of federal science in 1961:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOLld5PR4ts
Oliver K. Manuel
We already have a law requiring openness in regulatory matters. By adding “policy” to the list this provision may be a big step forward: “Consistent with the Administration’s Open Government Initiative, agencies should expand and promote access to scientific and technological information by making it available online in open formats. Where appropriate, this should include data and models underlying regulatory proposals and policy decisions.”
However, OSTP does not have a lot of clout with the science agencies, not like OMB, because OMB sets the budgets. We need to get OMB into this openness game.
I found the following particularly interesting relating to climate change:
For some reason it reminds me of past (and present) Constitutions of grotesquely repressive Communist regimes: full of noble sentiments and impeccable safeguards. Useful only for misdirecting the attention of outsiders from what is actually happening on the ground.
David:
“1. Ensure a culture of scientific integrity. . . .”
Seriously, what does that mean?? I would have a much better warm and fuzzy if they had simply stated “Ensure honesty and openness in practice of science…” or something similar.
Again I am sorry, but science and politics just dont mix. I know, because I have experienced it. In our Canadian system of government, the Minister gets up in the House of Commons and announces some form of Government policy. Down at the bottom of the food chain is a little scientists who has hard information that the Minister is wrong. Whatever that scientist does is wrong. He/she is in an impossible situation, and the only sensible thing to do is to keep quiet.
Look at the trouble the UK government had with it’s drug policy recently, when the senior people on the advisory committee resigned.
Here’s a general question – if a scientist’s work is shown to be incorrect in some way, has she committed fraud?
Was Piltdown Man a fraud? How does one gauge “intent?” Does a long and continuing pattern of dubious choices constitute “intent” or is it simple incompetence?
Warren Buffett had not previously cooperated with any biographer until 2006 when he agreed to assist Alice Schroeder with her effort. Buffett made but one request of the book’s author: “Whenever my version is different from somebody else’s, Alice, use the less flattering version.”
Is there such a thing as a honest error in science?
That is, was Copernicus (say) a fraud for saying that the planets went around the sun in circular orbits?
The parallels between Piltdown and hockey stick are striking. Back in Nov 07 I discussed them over at CA. I think intent does matter. there is no evidence of intent on Mann’s part. The interesting thing is how long it takes to get a result out of the scientific literature when it has achieved iconic status.
Steven,
I can see how it is possible to just follow the CO2 and the warming they follow in a lab.
BUT, not following through with other factors are ALL pointing to a massive cooldown due to gases build-up in the atmosphere.
Following through…Co2 picks up heat from solar radiation. What happens to the planet surface that was suppose to recieve this heat be it ocean or land? Especially when it is cummlative?
“there is no evidence of intent on Mann’s part”
Please elaborate.
Whoever did the Piltdown fraud, knew that he was creating a fraud. If you walk through Mann’s work there is nothing that speaks to a deliberate attempt to manufacture a result known to be false by the person manufacturing it. Mann makes certain choices. Choices in data and choices in methods. Those choices lead to a result with an antenuated MWP. They do not manufacture a view of things that Mann knows to be false or a view that can be shown to be false. I think the responsible thing to say is that Mann’s view of things results from a rather aggressive set of decisions made about data and methods. His choices are not black and white wrong. A more conservative approach to estimation will lead to larger error bars for the MWP than Mann has. He, of course, defends his choices rather aggressively. I guess I’m saying that the charge of fraud is a weighty charge. It should not be made lightly or without substantial evidence of intent to promote an answer you know to be false. So, I’d join McIntyre and say that claims that Mann has perpetrated a fraud are wrong. they are unsupported, and they DIVERT ATTENTION from the real issue which is overstated certainty. Now, steve Mc has worked for a long number of years to make this view of things clear. Still, people who have not followed all the details toss around the word fraud and do both Mann and McIntyre a disservice. The issue is that Mann’s choices in data and methods underestimate the uncertainty. If you make that case you will be heard in the halls of science. If you shout fraud, you just hurt McIntyre and keep him from being heard.
The word fraud embraces so many meanings, from the colloquial and rhetorical to strictly legal, that IMO it ought not to be used unless in its strictest – that is, legal sense. There are plenty of better ways of describing wilful deceit that do not invite the test of criminal proof.
The same care ought to be exercised with “conspiracy”.
I agree completely Steven. In science, fraud means making stuff up, and I find no significant fraud in climate science. In fact I am not aware of a single case, although there must be some. Unfortunately political language is much more extreme and less careful than scientific language and AGW is essentially a political debate.
For example, I have been called a liar here on this blog, simply for expressing a controversial opinion. That is the political, ideological voice, not the scientific voice. This is why some people believe all politicians are crooks, because they are frequently called crooks by the other side.
So what bothers me about this new integrity guidance, integrity training, etc., is that there is no integrity problem to speak of. It is a political reaction to a political voice. It does not strengthen science, rather it weakens science.
Steven Mosher:
I agree with you that “intent” is important. And I agree with you that Mann et al. did not conduct their analysis with an intention to deceive.
But they clearly and unarguably DID attempt to mislead in the presentation of their findings. The discovery of the divergence problem was the major result of their findings: their analysis method had no worth in the absence of a true understanding of the divergence.
But Mann et al. did not report the divergence problem as their major finding. Instead, they used “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline”. That was a deliberate misrepresentation of their findings and – as such – is tantamount to fraud.
Richard
The discovery of the divergence problem was the major result of their findings
No it wasn’t. It had already been identified in Briffa et al.
Andrew Adams:
Your attempted sleight-of-hand fails.
The discovery of the divergence problem was the major result of the findings of Mann et al., and that is not changed one jot by that finding having been – or not having been – discovered by others before or since.
Their attempt to “hide” the divergence problem instead of stating it as the major finding was tantamount to fraud.
Richard
By your logic every reconstruction done since then which includes tree rings is fraudulent.
Andrew Adams:
Perhaps they all are. Any scientist would be willing to consider the matter.
Richard
Richard and Stephen;
Beyond just the “presentation of findings”, the very aggressive and hostile response to questioning or challenging of patently weak procedures, and the vigorous effort to keep raw data hidden (ongoing), are common sense and, in some contexts, legal, indicators of deliberate deception in the form of “cover-up”. Further, using the “means, motive, method” rule-of-thumb forensics, the presentation and pushing of a wildly exaggerated threat analysis explicitly formulated to force very expensive and drastic policy and life-style changes on the whole of society were very likely intentional fraudulent acts (also ongoing).
The cover-up implies the crime. Else why go to the wall to sustain it?
Corr: “means, motive, opportunity”. Got carried away with alliteration. ;p
Methinks they doth protest too much?
“If you walk through Mann’s work there is nothing that speaks to a deliberate attempt to manufacture a result known to be false by the person manufacturing it.”
What’s your view on the R2 controversy? I had understood the original paper claimed to have passed R2, although it didn’t publish the numbers.
But in general, I’d have said that it followed the usual pattern of pathological science – a researcher with honest intentions messes up unintentionally, but invests too much self-image in the result, and when it is shown to be wrong, goes to more and more extreme lengths to defend it, eventually having to resort to fraud. The original paper may be an honest error, but in the subsequent fight to defend it at any cost, I find it extremely hard to believe that some of the things done were done unaware.
Certainly, I find it very hard to understand how other scientists could honestly continue to use it, and Bristlecones etc., after the problems were discovered.
However, it is less important to cast blame than it is to clear up the scientific record. On that I agree.
Perhaps McIntyre’s credibility would be enhanced if instead of letting the shouters who cry “Fraud!” at every turn were shouted down even more vigourously by McIntyre and his followers. I find it extremely difficult to sympathize with McIntyre since he allows his blog to be dominated by various shouters, when he ought to know better.
I’m still waiting for climate scientists to shout down the “C” in CAGW. It’s been really quiet. Maybe they would have more credibility if they spoke up.
Seeing as how it’s the “skeptics” who put the “C” in “CAGW”… Honestly, I had never seen that acronym until someone on some “skeptic” blog made it up.
For one thing, the “C” is ill-defined. Perhaps you’d care to define it for us.
D64
Do some checking before making unfounded allegations about McIntyre:
“Steve: As I’ve said on other occasions, I have blog policies that do not allow accusations of fraud. I do not make such accusations myself. Blog comments here are not moderated in advance. I remove comments that breach blog policies when I notice them and I ask others to notify me if they see such comments that I’ve missed, as sometimes the volume of comments in the past has been overwhelming to keep up with. Some uses of the word “fraud” are not accusatory. All of this you know as you’ve raised the same point dozens of time. I don’t want to have a situation where you say that I failed to rebut your allegation. You’ve had your say on this point over and over. And I can’t keep responding to the same point. So please don’t keep bringing up the same issue in multiple threads.”
The same “P. Solar” that has posted here looks to have gotten away scot-free:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/14/mcshane-and-wyner-discussion-2/#comment-249195
Well b…r off and complain over there, then! No point in going to Tesco’s to complain about food you bought in M&S.
I don’t understand how you can even go there at this point. You can start with this, but there are plenty other examples of the “C” on the web.
http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/18/climate-model-verification-and-validation-part-ii/#comment-23294
Who cares who put the “C” in CAGW?
Let’s face it, if AGW by CO2 had no negative consequences (catastrophic or otherwise) would anyone really care?
In fact, if AGW by CO2 was viewed as a postive event, then perhaps these discusssions would be much more amicable.
Let’s face it, more people have died as a result of cold climate and cold weather conditions than as a result of warm climates or even hot weather conditions, so perhaps AGW by CO2 is something which should be embraced rather than detested.
The opportunity to create fear provides the opportunity for some people to make a lot of money. If AGW by CO2 was viewed as a positive event, then would these same people be as wealthy?
Allen;
Yes, if the Big Cold switches on, we will hope and wish that the Magic Thermostat were effective!
But IMO the probable real state of play is as follows:
*CO2 is a minor climate player, but a major biosphere factor.
*The biosphere has significant impact on climate; it may even be doing some systemic forcing and “steady state” balancing. Evolutionary pressures would certainly work to maximize any such “skills” or capacities.
*Providing access to as much CO2 as possible for the flora of the planet would be a really smart move.
*The perhaps unfortunate tendency of the feedback systems in the plant life of the planet are, as speculated and suggested in http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/clathrate-to-production/, to drive CO2 down to starvation levels, significantly replenished (paleo-historically) only by rather drastic outpourings from crustal events like the basalt floods. We mere fauna are not up to the task of keeping the balance nice and high.
Actually Steve does not allow the word fraud on his blog. And in personal conversations with him since 2007 we have repeated puzzled over mann’s behavior ( not calling it fraud, just weird) and lamented the ease with which some use the fraud word. So he doesnt allow the word publicly on his blog and doesnt use the word privately in his mails or conversations. As for your claim that his blog is Dominated by shouters. That is not bourn out by a careful reading of the blog or any objective analysis either of comment counts or of understanding of who controls and shapes the debate there.
Now, shall we turn to the mails and see who did use the word fraud? shall we see how that word was used with the press behind the scenes? with potential reviewers of mcintyre behind the scenes? i think you would not like that. Very simply, the people who shaped the debate against mcintyre accused him of being a fraud in private. Where he could not know about the charge or respond.
As for shouting down others. I published a piece on Big Government. yes, the right wing site. And yes I defended Jones against the charge of fraud. And yes I took a beating. And NO you and the other people who believe in AGW were not there to defend me or my position. So, I ask you. I am a “follower” of Mcintyre. I shouted down the claims of fraud on one the premier right wing blogs. Funny, they invited me to write the piece for them. Yet, I am routinely censored at blogs who agree with me that there was no fraud. Go figure. You demand that we followers do some thing and the ONLY people who will give us a venue to do that is the people who disagree with us.
Integrity.
The “debate” over at CA is dominated by baseless accusations against the “Team”, and adulations of McIntyre, leavened with healthy doses of ignorance and stupidity.
Once, I pointed out the answer to a question McIntyre had, and his reply was quite muted, because there wasn’t a way he could spin it to manipulation or deception. He was very disappointed that the answer was so mundane.
McIntyre does tend to blow things all out of proportion, and blows his own horn to boot. He’s hardly the man who “overturned” climate science – not that he ever stops his fanboys who proclaim that sort of nonsense. Seems to me he’s more interested in keeping up face with his acolytes than much of anything else. I mean really, O’Donnell 2010 “refutes” Steig09? Hardly.
Link to your great triumph over McIntyre?
Nope, because I stupidly used my real name. McIntyre, in cahoots with Watts, took advantage of that. Fool me once and all that…
Derecho64:
Oh! So your claim to havew bested McIntyre is an unsubstantiated assertion that you are not willing to put your name to it.
In other words, it is similar to everything else you have posted on this blog.
Richard
I didn’t say I “bested” McIntyre – only that the answer I gave him to his question couldn’t be spun to show what he wanted it to be. The darned facts and all got in the way of the story he wanted to tell.
“Nope, because I stupidly used my real name. McIntyre, in cahoots with Watts, took advantage of that. Fool me once and all that…”
Ha, ha…D64 seems to see himself as a character in a John Grisham conspiracy novel. I’m sure McIntyre and Watts are receiving hourly reports about whether he’s been tracked down to his his safe-house, from whence emanates his politically explosive declarations that threaten to destroy their blogging careers forever!!
…obviously the dreaded Scarlet Pimpernel of cAGW has not yet been located, as his fiendish and cunning statements continue to be disseminated here, while McIntyre and Watts tremble with fear, every ingenious D64 utterance another dagger in the heart of their sham denialism!
I’m not into immodesty and dishonesty, as McIntyre and Watts are. Both will take the truth and twist it for their own ends.
@Derceh064
You are obsessed with these guys. Your obsession is approaching paranoia. And while fascinating to the sufferer, paranoid delusions are very tedious to the outsider.
Try to forget about whatever slights (real or imagined) have got you so riled over the holidays. In the big scheme of things they don’t matter much.
If its any consolation, I doubt if any of them are worrying at all about you, whichever of your many identities they know you by.
Christmas can be a tough time for those with ‘issues’. But the turning of the year and the lengthening of the days can be seen as an opportunity to move forward and leave the Bad Times behind.
Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt and happier, healthier, wiser and wealthier for it.
Go for it!
As long as McIntyre and Watts continue their campaigns against the science and the scientists, I’ll maintain my view of them. I’m not paranoid – just disdainful of their dishonest, underhanded games. I made the mistake of being truthful with them, and they viewed that as a weakness and something to be exploited. I’m not interested in sinking to their level. They’re little more than useful tools anyway.
I hope some kind friend gives you a hand mirror for Christmas.
Use it well.
I don’t lie. Morano, Watts, McIntyre and their ilk do.
I note that you avoided correcting your mistakes about “followers” of mcIntyre not taking a stance against charges of fraud. Then you changed the subject. when people usually do this its customary to move to a more solid ground of argumentation. You have not.
“”The “debate” over at CA is dominated by baseless accusations against the “Team”, and adulations of McIntyre, leavened with healthy doses of ignorance and stupidity.”
You’ll have to detail these baseless accusations. Ordinarily steve is very circumspect in his claims. On occassion a caste of random players will ‘pile on” and get it wrong. For which they are called to account.
Adulation? Steve is the only blogger O know who permitted a scientist to come on the site and have a whole thread devoted to attacking steve’s motives. Whatever. As for stupidity. We do not hold Judith responsible for your stupid comments, and dont hold gavin responsible for the stupid comments on RC, so I’ll just say I hold CA to the same standards as I hold other blogs.
“Once, I pointed out the answer to a question McIntyre had, and his reply was quite muted, because there wasn’t a way he could spin it to manipulation or deception. He was very disappointed that the answer was so mundane.”
Seriously, this one time at band camp.
“McIntyre does tend to blow things all out of proportion, and blows his own horn to boot. He’s hardly the man who “overturned” climate science – not that he ever stops his fanboys who proclaim that sort of nonsense. Seems to me he’s more interested in keeping up face with his acolytes than much of anything else. I mean really, O’Donnell 2010 “refutes” Steig09? Hardly.”
The fanboys of Mc? I’m sure you can find idiots who think he did “overturn” the science, but steve himself at heartland, and steve on TV, and all of us “fanboys” who have a public podium to speak from have a different view. As for 02010, I prefer to use the term debunk. or improves. either way, somebody fought awefully hard to keep a mere improvement out of the journal.
This is your cue to change topics again
Last few times I checked over there, McIntyre was obsessing over the hacked emails – kinda like the ugly girl in high school straining to overhear if the cute guy ever mentioned her name to his buddies.
McIntyre still wants to “get” Jones – as if making Jones retreat to a hole, publicly humiliated and disgraced, McIntyre standing over him like a trophy hunter over a kill, will make any difference to the science at all. What is it with McIntyre that Jones is his white whale?
You’ve just conformed Steve’s last point bigtime.
> You’ll have to detail these baseless accusations.
While these accusations certainly merit due dilligence, how can one detail them if we are to assume that they are baseless?
What was your motivation (other than profit) to write your book, anyway?
My motivation. On Nov 19th I wrote to Andrew Revkin and told him to follow the FOIA. At that point I was done as far as I was concerned. Anthony asked me to determine if the mails were a hoax or a trap. From nov 19 to Nov 29th I read people getting it wrong, especially on the skeptic side of things. I so no substantial follow up on the FOIA story. On the 29th Tom asked me if I would help him write a book, given my familiarity with the text. We sat down to see if we could agree on the message we got from the mails. We could. The science had not changed. We saw behavior that should be corrected, and we planned a chapter in praise of Judith Curry. So, from an intellectual standpoint my motivation was to get the story out as we saw it. As far as Money goes, it was clear that I would clearly be underpaid for the time I put in. I devoted roughly 30 days to writing and Tom did the editing etc and his own writing. By the hour it paid me something close to minimum wage. The other motivation was the long standing challenge I had from bender on CA. For 3 years bender has challenged me to read the whole blog cover to cover. So I figured that would be hella cool ( I kinda have a photographic memory for certain things ) It’s one of those challenges I just could not back down from. I find these kinds of questions kinda stupid, people ask me the same kind of question when I write poetry( which doesnt pay) or donate open source code ( which doesnt pay) or volunteer down at the soup kitchens in the tenderloin, which doesnt pay. Also, like the people who wonder why a libertarian agnostic attends a progressive socially activist church? It stimulates my mind to see how people who believe differently than I do interact. go figure. Having that active mind keeps me from asking stupid questions.
I see. You wanted to set the record straight – never mind the entirety of the stolen emails was *a priori* chosen to present the most biased and prejudicial view as possible.
If you’d really wanted the whole story, you would have dug into the all emails of everyone involved – McIntyre included. Interviewed ’em as well. As it was, you skimmed the skim, and that’s not really the truth, is it?
Derech064.
yes setting the record straight. Since the independent inquiries have agreed with all the important points we made about the behavior ( with one exception where they demonstrable failed) and since they had access to interviewing the scientists and could read any additional mails the scientists produced, I think We did a pretty fair job of outlining the wrong doing.
As for interviewing I interviewed those people who consented to an interview. Again, when I wrote that one problem was the emergence of a bunker mentality, I am heartened that I got it right when Jones concurs. When I write about violation of FOIA, I am heartened that the inquires and the ICO agree with my position. When I write that Jones should not have released the data to webster, I am heartened by the CRU appeal office agreeing with me. When I write that CRU brought the trouble upon themselves I am heartened when the inquiries agree with that.
Want more? What I tried to do was stick to the facts as the mails presented them. I got two things wrong. In both cases, when it was pointed out I admitted the error. One error was pointed out by gavin, the other pointed out by arthur smith.
I’m still waiting for you to admit your error abou Mcintyre followers not shouting down people who call it a fraud. man up.
Steve, take a look upthread:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/22/washington-update-science-integrity/#comment-24626
Like I said, Steve – the mails presented only a fraction of the picture.
What would be interesting is if someone hacks McIntyre’s/Watts’/Morano’s/Wegman’s emails. I don’t doubt there’s been quite a few circling between those four.
Derecho64 @ 12-23-10, 8:18 pm – that’s not what “a priori” means. If the emails were chosen based on their content, that would be “a posteriori.”
Also, simply the fact that the emails were damaging is not evidence that they were *chosen* to be damaging. To do that, you would have to show other emails that were not released, and that would mitigate the damaging content of the released emails. To my knowledge that has not been done.
D64:
So why then, in the course of all the ensuing inquiries, did they not produce all the other emails, which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, would have put things into perspective and cleared up the whole matter?
Surely at the very least, the trick Mann used in in Nature to hide the fact that he had truncated one curve, must count as fraud?
POSSIBLY, but you would find yourself, not unreasonably, held by his champions to the standard of proof of criminal fraud, which I doubt you could sustain.
However, Mann was CERTAINLY being deceitful, whatever his motives. Why not settle for that, and avoid the distraction of a spurious argument?
“Those choices lead to a result with an antenuated MWP. ”
You are serious about this statement??
The fact that he built a paleo reconstruction that was dramatically different from literally hundreds of years of scientific and non-scientific observational data apparently without any attempt to determine why his reconstruction was so different from previous work can be totally ignored?
That his reconstruction was accepted as absolute gospel by the IPCC and fellow travelers and defended practically to the death to the extent that other researchers collaborated to produce similar supporting work you see as completely normal, unexceptional behaviour??
HAHAHAHAHAHA
The assertion of Himalayan glacier melting by the IPCC is a concrete example you could comment on. Was it fraud if the ones who published it, and failed to correct it when so advised? Same goes for hockey sticks that don’t work without dubious proxies.
I would also be interested in hearing your views on funded research that has a very high probability of finding results that agree with the desires of the funding source.
Should read was it fraud if they knew better and allowed the glacier claim to be published?
Not likely. Fraud is defined in both common usage and legally as criminal deception or misrepresentation intended to benefit the deceiver. As one example – misrepresentation of data/code/methodology in order to obtain financial support from public or government agencies.
There are other words for various types and levels of scientific misconduct – fudging, cooking, trimming, finagling, forgery, plagiarization, etc.
But the normal practice of science is that ones work WILL be proved incorrect at some time in the future. Today’s science is sometimes tomorrow’s laughingstock although the “fall” is generally less severe than that. Example – the superceding of Newton by Einstein, Planck, Bohr, etc.
Or, as the following quote states:
Final answers don’t exist. The most we can achieve is a momentary, state-of-the-art solution that’s always open to revision and even replacement. The followers of Ptolemy once thought they had it all figured out, but Copernicus proved them wrong. Newton revised Aristotle and the whole Middle Ages. And a host of men revised Newton. The list goes on and on, around and around. Nothing is ever final, the results are always coming in.
— Dunn
Was Newton fraudulent? Einstein? Aristotle? I think not.
Was Phil Jones fraudulent? Mann? I think I won’t try to answer that.
Jim,
When you are in a position that you DO NOT WANT to know. Is that fraud? No, just cover your butt so you can honestly say “you did not know”, peer-review and all.
Of course not, in fact correction is one of the the paths of progress. In science, fraud means making stuff up, and I find no significant fraud in climate science. In fact I am not aware of a single case, although there must be some, given the number of people involved. Unfortunately political language is much more extreme and less careful than scientific language and AGW is essentially a political debate. All this “fraud” talk is political, not scientific.
David:
I understand your argument but would welcome a clarification.
You say “fraud means making stuff up”. So, to decide if “fraud” occured oine needs to define “making stuff up”. But that definition is not always easy.
Mann et al. (1998) found their results were meaningless because of the divergence problem. They chose to “hide” the divergence problem and to proclaim the findings.
Were they “making things up” when they asserted their results had meaning while taking action the “hide the decline” which showed their results had no meaning? It is at least argueable that they were “making things up” by asserting their results had meaning.
Richard
Richard, in science fraud usually means fabricating results. Making up numbers, drawing things on photos that aren’t really there, stuff like that. In the hockey stick case if you take their input data and apply their methods you get their results, of so I understand. If the results are silly, or false, or meaningless, or overstated, or a host of other problems, so be it, but that is not fraud.
Science has great latitude to play with ideas. The problem with the hockey stick was not the results, but rather what was done with those results, by the IPCC, the enviros, the press and others.
David,
Mann claimed his methods showed a particular set of facts and that this particular set of facts had meaning at a statistical level. The fact that he created those statistical procedures himself, and misrepresented what they meant, is equivalent to me stating that
8.1 x 10E-10 is the same as 8.1 x 10E10
to someone who does not understand exponents. If I actually did NOT understand the difference myself then you have a point. Since Mann made the stuff up himself in contradiction to almost all previous paleo evidence and no support from expert statisticians or other paleo scientists, attacked anyone who disagreed with him, and refused to show his methods or data, I would suggest there is a valid argument that he is not clean.
His continued mouthing off in the press only confirms this to me. Has anyone seen him apologize for making mistakes that misled people or apologized to his critics whom he smeared?
I have to agree that there is not DIRECT evidence, like video tape, of him talking about how he was going to defraud the world to support AGW. On the other hand, direct evidence isn’t required in egregious cases where the sum total of the actions leads in the same direction.
As in a number of other cases, can you show where Michael Mann actually attempted to reign in either the IPCC or Press in their misuse of his work?? I am probably biased, but, it appeared to me that he urged them on!!
obviously…. not necessarily
What do you think of Andrew Wakefield?
… and then there’s this:
Frontline ( PBS )
April, 2007
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/video/share.html?s=frol02n48eq72
Dr. James Hansen’s testimony before Congress in June 1988.
Quote:
[Senator] TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
[Senator] TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.
Considering the leftist Obama regimen’s general lack of integrity, I pretty much doubt anything coming out of the government. I suspect most of the general public has reached a similar position.
Scientists who have embraced the “green” religion and engaged in less-than-honest actions in order to feather their nests with federal money will get tarred with the same brush as the Obama regime, irrespective of the voracity of their subsequent work. Seems to me, the backlash is going to seriously setback climate change research.
I’d also like to suggest that maybe scientist should avoid climbing onto pedestal and remember they are no better or worse than anyone else.
there is an example of someone basing their view on a political bias and not the true facts.
The issue of potential climate change (and the rate of the potential change) is not a republician or democratic issue. It is really silly to blame obama. If you do not agree with a specific policy being recommended or implemented, state what it is you disagree with and why
Yes – I agree! Obama is not a scientist, and he took the issue of the potential future of the planet seriously. Much of what he has done as president seems good – including the new Start treaty – and his administration seems infinitely less belligerent than the previous one!
The corruption of science is a very difficult problem, that politicians of all persuasions will need to tackle.
Here, corruption equals politicisation – science is corrupted by virtue of it being politically funded.
Which means politicians (of all persuasions) are the root cause of the problem, and can thus hardly be expected to cure it.
The only hope – if there is one – is to find some way for political funding to be removed from political control.
>Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findingsPolitical officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings<] from any Govt anywhere – well, I have shares in the Sydney Harbour Bridge for sale, and very cheap
Please, spare us the hypocrisy … I mean that
Something very wrong with WordPress here – the post I put up had much more to it than has appeared. As it stands now, it’s just nonsense
I give up
Don’t try to use left or right chevrons for punctuation.
The only way to display those HTML-activating symbols is with some HTML coding. Ampersand – lt – semicolon produces this: < Ampersand – gt – semicolon produces this: >
Dr. C,
Yes, indeed, Holdren’s is a fine memo. But I’ve been inside several Federal bureaucracies (e.g. the DoE) and I see little reason for optimism there.
Here’s the typical scenario:
There is a public outcry (amplified or created by the media) that government-funded organizations haven’t come to Jesus.
The President mentions in a cabinet meeting that there are public doubts about government coming to Jesus.
The Secretary for Pink Bunnies sends a memo to all undersecretaries that the Department of Pink Bunnies will be a leader in coming to Jesus, even though of course our fine and efficient staff has always come to Jesus six times before breakfast.
Each undersecretary immediately drafts a memo to all department heads that the department’s strategic plan requires a 25% increase in coming to Jesus over the next fiscal year. The department heads then pass this memo on to their organization managers with a cover letter to the effect that he wants their implementation plans on his desk within 60 days.
The organization managers then draft three memos, one to their supervisors pointing out the crucial nature of coming to Jesus with all possible haste, another to their HR department requesting preparation of training materials on coming to Jesus within some impossible time frame, and a third appointing a dozen of his most loyal reports to a Continuous Improvement Committee on Coming to Jesus. That’s how he got to be a Manager.
The supervisors pass on the memo to the people who actually do the work, with the note that there might be still more mandatory training coming, and that they should be prepared to complete the training without impacting their normal workload.
So then the memos get passed back up: “98.4% of our personnel resources have completed the Come to Jesus module of our state-of-the-art training system”, “all of our departments have successfully implemented the Come-to-Jesus initiative as specified in the Undersecretary’s memo of Octember 5”, “Mr. President, I am pleased to report that the Department of Pink Bunnies is now in full compliance with your Come-to-Jesus directive.”
And nothing ever changes.
Academic bureaucracies may be somewhat more effective; I have no experience with very large university departments. Best of luck with the ethics program.
It was good to see that the Senate knocked 40 Billion off the COMPETES act before passing it.
Some caution is warranted. Proponents of various theories that are popular, from the evils of fat in the diet to climate change to the need to medicate ADD kids, can claim that contrary views violate scientific integrity. California Air Resources Board CARB put out rules against knowingly false statements, which include anything that disagrees with them. When a consensus is in power, it is not merely that you are bad to disagree, it is that contrary statements are de facto false. This makes you in violation of such codes of conduct for speaking out. Kind of like the libel catch-22 in Britain, even if you have proof a politician is crooked, saying so is libel. So I am all for (of course) policies that make data and codes available, but codes of conduct can cut both ways. Also, the item about government officials not altering technical reports, this sounds nice but there are lots of government scientists who go beyond the science in reports (about pollutants, endangered species, climate change, you name it) and into advocacy. Should these reports be unchangeable?
Dear friends,
Below is a message that I send to the retiring US Senator from Missouri, Kit Bond regarding OSTP Director John Holdren’s new guidelines on science integrity following the hoax of global warming.
Please feel free to copy and use any portion of the message that might he helpful:
Dear Senator Bond,
RE: OSTP Director John Holdren’s new guidelines on science integrity following the hoax of global warming.
As noted in our new book, “Slaying the Sky Dragons”, the roots of the climate scandal run deep and have been growing “out of sight” in federal research programs, at least since the 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon.
See Chapter 2 of our book: http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com
To restore credibility to government science, all government research agencies (NASA, DOE, EPA, NOAA, NSF, etc.) and the President of the US NAS (National Academy of Sciences that reviews the budgets of those agencies for the US Congress) should take immediate steps to end obstruction of information (distorting, hiding, or blocking publication of experimental data) obtained with public funds:
For example,
1. The link of excess Xe-136 with all primordial Helium in carbonaceous mineral separates of the Allende meteorite that fell in 1969 and in the helium-rich atmosphere of Jupiter that was observed when the Galileo Probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere in December 1995.
2. Enrichments of lightweight isotopes that were implanted by the solar wind (SW) in surfaces of lunar soil samples that were returned by the 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon.
3. Enrichments of lightweight s-products in the solar photosphere that are exposed by comparing abundances of s-products in the photosphere with the abundances that predicted from federally-funded measurements of neutron-capture cross sections.
4. Excess mass (E = mc2) that correlates with the number of neutron-neutron interactions in federally-funded measurements of nuclear rest mass data all ~ 3,000 isotopes representing every atom in the visible universe.
Changes in Earth’s climate could not be correctly deciphered while these federally-funded experimental data were distorted, hidden, or blocked from publication because:
Observation 1 shows that Earth’s heat source (The Sun) is the remnant of a supernova (SN) that ejected poorly mixed SN-debris and gave birth to the Solar System. Iron meteorites and the iron core of the Earth formed directly from material ejected from near the SN core. Elements ejected from the outer layers of the supernova formed the giant gaseous planets like Jupiter and the carbonaceous inclusions in the Allende and other carbonaceous meteorite [1-6].
Observation 2 shows that the interior of the Sun is mostly Iron (Fe), Oxygen (O), Silicon (Si), Nickel (Ni), Sulfur (S), Magnesium (Mg) and Calcium (Ca) – like ordinary meteorites and rocky planets close to the Sun [7].
Observation 3 confirms, completely independently, the surprising information recorded in Observation 2 [8]. Xenon isotope data from the Jupiter Probe into Jupiter also independently confirmed solar mass fractionation and the “Iron Sun” [9].
Observation 4 shows that neutron repulsion is the energy source that powers the Sun and the cosmos and sustains our very lives [10].
The AGW hoax was made possible because the above, federally-funded quantitative data on Earth’s heat source – The Sun have been distorted, hidden, or blocked from publication in mainstream research journals [11].
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor for
Nuclear & Space Science
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com/
Co-author of “Slaying the Sky Dragon”
http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com
References
1. “Elemental and isotopic inhomogeneities in noble gases: The case for local synthesis of the chemical elements”, Transactions Missouri Academy Sciences 9, 104-122 (1975).
2. “Strange xenon, extinct super-heavy elements, and the solar neutrino puzzle”, Science 195, 208-209 (1977).
3. “Comment on isotopic anomalies” in Proceedings of the Robert Welch Foundation Conference on Chemical Research: XII.Cosmochemistry, pages 263-272 (1978).
4. “Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis”, Nature 277, 615-620 (1979).
5. “The enigma of helium and anomalous xenon,” Icarus 41, 312-315 (1980).
6. “Noble gas anomalies and synthesis of the chemical elements”, Meteoritics 15, 117-138 (30 June 1980).
7. “Solar abundances of the elements”, Meteoritics 18, 209-222 (1983).
8. “Solar abundance of elements from neutron-capture cross sections”, paper #1033, 36th Lunar & Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), Houston, Texas, March 14-18 (2005).
9. “Isotopic ratios in Jupiter confirm intra-solar diffusion”, Meteoritics and Planetary Science 33, A97, abstract 5011 (1998).
10. “Attraction and repulsion of nucleons: Sources of stellar energy”, Journal of Fusion Energy 19, 93-98 (2001).
11. “Earth’s Heat Source – The Sun”, Energy and Environment 20, 131-144 (2009).
Oliver;
Well, you persisted. I warned you elsewhere long ago about what would happen.
Your carpet-bombing of any and every blog that hasn’t blocked you with your copy-paste summaries of your neutron-sun theories has resulted, I assure you, in your posts becoming automatic “scroll-by”. You will notice that no one responds to them, and their content has zero effect on the discussion.
Your posting behavior goes way beyond bad netiquette.
Thanks, Brian H, for your concern.
Perhaps this short summary for layman, with hyperlinks to references and experimental observations, will help you understand how we know that the interior of the Sun is not 91% Hydrogen (H) and 9% Helium (He) – like the top of the Sun’s atmosphere.
w.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/The_Suns_Origin.pdf
Hints from the top of the Sun’s atmosphere:
1.) Element #1 (H), the lightest element is 91%.
2.) Element #2 (He), the next lightest element is 9%.
3.) Isotopes of element #54 (Xe) are enriched by 3.5% per mass unit.
Correction:
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/The_Suns_Origin.pdf
“d) adopting appropriate whistleblower protections.”
I’m surprised no one has looked at this aspect. As a psychiatrist dealing with worker’s compensation claims, I have met many whistleblowers. Notwithstanding extensive legal protection notionally extended to them within government departments, they almost always cop the rough end of the pineapple. Their anonymity is virtually never preserved and they find themselves ostracised by their colleagues whilst subject to subtle and not so subtle harassment. At least that’s how it works in Australia and in New South Wales, our ‘premier state.’
Moreover, whistleblowers who call attention even to very minor malfeasance may often find themselves viciously targeted by superiors involved in major corruption. In effect, the seriously corrupt cannot afford to allow even minor wrongdoing to be exposed lest others perceive them as vulnerable and blow the whistle on major corruption. Consequently, all too many whistleblowers are effectively demolished until they resign in frustration or develop work-related psychiatric injuries which render them unemployable.
They are then thrown to the tender mercies of a seriously flawed worker’s compensation system, which is where I encounter them.
I wonder if the USA can do a better job of things.
It’s unfortunate that Holdren and crew haven’t addressed the lack of professionalism shown by the AAAS,the NAS, the AGU and other supposedly “professional” science organizations. We all know that junk appears all the time in the peer-reviewed literature, but we are told (by you know who) that the peer-reviewed literature is the end judge of what can be trusted. This is where the real problems reside, and the question of scientific integrity will not be answered satisfactorily until the issues revealed through “climategate” are thoroughly addressed by truly independent authorities and reported to the American people.
Mescalero,
You should be a bit more objective in your analysis and interpretation of “climategate”.
There was indeed a real climategate hoax that was perpetrated on the public by individuals suspected but unknown. A detailed discussion of the webmail hacking at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia can be found on RealClimate (with well over 1000 comments exchanged), including also a one-year-later perspective and assessment of the impact on climate research and public perception.
The ultimate objective of this deliberately orchestrated “climategate” misinformation campaign was to sow doubt in the mind of the public about climate science. This episode is reminiscent of the (successful) “swift-boating” character assassination that took place during the Kerry-Bush 2004 presidential campaign. Further details on the art of “swiftboating” in application to climate science can be found in Paul Krugman’s New York Times editorial commentary.
The public display of the stolen CRU e-mails did expose what may well be considered by many as bad behavior by scientists, such as the apparent reluctance by some of the scientists to make available the input data for global temperature analysis to individuals whom they perceived as “climate change deniers”. This unfortunate circumstance has had the effect of allowing global warming deniers to falsely assert that global climate change was based on “cooked” data.
NASA-GISS provides posted analyses (GISTEMP) of the global temperature trend (which agrees well with the East Anglia results). Furthermore, the relevant NASA data are publicly available, including the computer program for the data analysis. Attempts to link GISTEMP with climategate have been both persistent and totally baseless. Detailed discussions of GISTEMP can be found on http://www.realclimate.org/ and http://www.giss.nasa.gov/
Additional information on “swiftboating”, including more general perspectives on climate change issues, and a recent conversation with Bill McKibben, can be found in posted commentary by Jim Hansen on his webpage
“assert that global climate change was “cooked” data” – I would be – what’s the word – fascinated, that it – to read your interpretation of the NZ story I linked below.
“There was indeed a real hoax that was perpetrated on the public. But this was perpetrated by the people who concocted a deliberate misinformation campaign. They wanted the public to think that climate science is suspect. Sowing doubt in the mind of the public is all that they needed to accomplish. Their basic tactics included swift-boating and character assassination, using e-mails stolen from scientists’ computers.”
I have to disagree with this gross over generalization. For example, in our book on climategate we made it very clear that the mails did not and could not change the science. What the mails did reveal was a pattern of behavior on the part of a small set of individuals that led to MORE DOUBT than skeptics have created in years. There are two and only two scientific issues at the heart of the climategate mails: The question of UHI and the question of certainty around MWP reconstructions. the FOIA and the requests for data were directed at CRU to get to the bottom of these issues. However, the team beleived that releasing this data could cause more doubt. So some engaged in behavior found by the ICO to be in violation of the law. They hid the data for no good reason out of fear, fear that skeptics would create doubt with it. Ironically, those actions led to doubts greater than the doubts they sought to prevent. Finally, I believe Kerry was swiftboated by members of his own service, so you might want to rethink the implications of that metaphor when applied to the Team.
“Yes, the stolen e-mails exposed bad behavior by scientists, a clear reluctance on the part of some scientists to give climate change deniers the input data for global temperature analysis. This allowed global warming deniers to assert that global climate change was “cooked” data. But that assertion is total nonsense. ”
This understates the case. It was already known to the public and to the policy makers that the data was being denied. However, the data was not being denied to “climate change deniers.” the data was denied to Steve Mcintyre and a few others of us. None of us are what you could call climate change deniers. Our principle interest was in one area. UHI adjustments. You can in fact go back in history and look at the entire conversation that led up to the first request for data in 2007. It was ALL focused on addressing the issue of UHI adjustments. You would be wise to check the names and facts and beliefs of the people who actually requested the data and the purpose for which they requested it. To be sure others took the refusal of data as an indication that something phony was being done. But Steve Mcintyre is on the record saying that he didnt believe that the release of the data and code would show ANYTHING UNTOWARD.
had Cru released its data ( Steve even ammended his request to cover only that data that was public ) had they not taken action that the ICO and the investigations conclude was wrong and misguided, the mails would never have been released.
Steve, I wonder if you can comment on the NZ story
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1012/S00054/climate-science-coalition-vindicated.htm
I understand NZ’s 11- Station Series was an important source of data for the CRU et al, but I’m not clear as to how extensive the influence of the NZ data was in global statistical terms, and therefore what effect its recent radical alteration will have on the extensive body of work which depends on it. Can you assist? Obviously NZ itself is small-ish, but it seems reasonable that its temperature record may have been called upon to approximate for the much of the ocean that surrounds it, particularly pre-satellite?
I would guess that you could remove the WHOLE of NZ and not effect the global average. You could cool the whole of NZ and not effect the average.
WRT the ocean. The SST data all starts from 1 common source ICOADS. ICOADS is a very sparse but long dataset. The ICOADS data is used in conjunction with EOFs to create a ‘filled in’ dataset.
To my knowledge land station information is not used to inform these EOF. I was puzzling about thinking if this might be possible, but never took it anywhere as I got distracted by other things and the ICOADS guys were in the middle of revamping some stuff. That’s a huge project. I think peter webster would be in a better position to comment.
In general my position on NZ would be this.
1. there is nothing whatsoever wrong with adjusting ‘raw’ observations.
2. All ‘raw’ data should be kept
3. All intermediate data steps should be preserved
4. All codes for adjusting should be open.
To the extent that folks in NZ didnt follow this, they need to fix their process. No need to impugn their motives. Just fix your process.
if you believe in AGW you should be allowed to wear a “data quality” hat, and an “open process” hat. And you should be allowed to criticize those who don’t without being labelled a ‘denier.’
Thanks, Steve, but I was hoping somebody familiar with the use of these data could be more specific. Perhaps someone else can help. Orkneygal, where are you?
You say “there is nothing whatsoever wrong with adjusting ‘raw’ observations” – and so say I, but that makes it all the more odd that NIWA should have chosen to abandon these particular adjustments – all of them – on the courtroom steps, after years spent hotly defending them.
Whatever, the outcome is that NZ’s “official” experience of warming over the last half century has gone from approx 0.91degC rise, in broad agreement with the “official” trend globally, to marked disagreement – ie flat. The (undocumented, lost, left on the bus) adjustments whose removal brought this about were all the work of Dr Jim Salinger, an alumnus of CRU, but now, it seems, hard to locate.
Far be it from me, etc., but I’d be surprised if this was the only such temperature series to be so affected (we know of plenty of such jiggery-pokery in the Australian BoM’s records, although none quite so comprehensive). As each temperature series topples, the surviving records will have to bear the ever greater statistical burden required to maintain the scary trend that CAGW demands. And people are going to start asking common-sense questions like “er, I know NZ’s a long way away from anywhere, but is it really plausible that its temperature could have remained static for 5 decades while the rest of the world was warming?”
Tom, you’re being deceptive. Show me the big differences between these two series:
http://ftpmedia.niwa.co.nz/Seven_Station_Series/OVFig1_NZT_OldNew.jpg
If I had the skills to “Show … the big differences between these two series” I wouldn’t be asking for Steve’s help, would I?
I’m still interested to hear from anyone who can comment explicitly on the implications of the NIWA’s court settlement for the global temperature record.
You can read more here, Tom:
http://hot-topic.co.nz/a-christmas-cracker-for-the-cranks
I’ll go look at their report. The more interesting thing will be looking to see if they carry forward an error term for every adjustment they make. Noone does.
Can this question not be simplified to :
True or false?
– deprived of a successfully challenged methodology, the official temp records for New Zealand now show no warming for the last 60 (?) years; whereas previously, using the suspect methodology, they did show a significant increase?
Tom,
My understanding was that the adjustments were in the hands of an old buddy of Phil Jones, Dr Salinger, who was responsible for the original setting up the analysis in NZ. I also understood that he never realeased the underpinnings for the adjustments for public scrutiny. Without information to support the validity of the adjustments the NZ group had no choice but to abandon the defense.
This result is very unsatisfactory for the Denial side as it then cannot be show to be the same issue elsewhere!! As Steven Mosher pointed out is is a minor blip for the AGW industry as the NZ temps are not an important part of the overall racket. It would probably take Australia and Russia and possibly additional countries to have a noticeable effect.
This also goes to the point that what we are arguing over is such a small number for the entire planet that I sometimes STILL cannot believe it is being used to drive such an enormous political mess!!
Please, what is ‘swift-boating’?
This is not a term I am familiar with in UK. Thanks.
Not from the US myself either, but I believe this refers to ‘Swiftboat veterans for truth’-initiative, some kind of mudslinging group aimed to harm John Kerrys presidential campaign.
Thanks Anander
With your help I went to look at what the ‘swiftboaters’ did at
http://www.swiftvets.com/staticpages/index.php?page=Fitreps
and it seems fairly unexceptional to me.
I am no expert and had never really heard of this Kerry guy until twenty minutes ago so don’t lambast me too hard, but it seems that Kerry had claimed to have had great war service in Vietnam and published some records as part of his election campaign that supposedly showed him to be a great officer. And the ‘swiftboaters’ went behind the scenes a little and gave an alternative, more nuanced and uncomfortable interpretation of those same records.
I can’t really see where the ‘mudslinging’ comes. Either in that incident, nor in the Climategate scandal that Lacis refers to above.
Maybe its different in the US, but in UK if I stand up as a politico and say ‘I am a great leader and my whole record proves it’, it would be BAU for the press here to dredge back through the records and find a bad report from the Brownies or the Young Socialist League or the Birdwatchers at age 15 that said something less than creditable about me. Several of our current leaders are still embarrassed by a photo taken of them twenty five years ago as members of a university drinking club.
That’s what we call politics. A bit of cut and thrust, give and take.
No big deal.
it seems fairly unexceptional to me
Well any smear campaign seems unexceptional if you get your information from the website of the people doing the smearing. Maybe your fabled “BS” detector” isn’t as foolproof as you think.
Try looking here
http://www.factcheck.org/article231.html
This wasn’t some principled attempt at upholding the truth, it was an entirely politically motivated misinformation campaign aimed at impugning a man’s service record. If a political opponent of Kerry such as John McCain can condemn it then it shouldn’t be to hard for those without an axe to grind to see this. “Mudslinging” isn’t the right word for it, it’s much worse.
And in case this is in danger of getting too far OT, here is the connection to climate change.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Morano
Andrew,
factcheck.org is another group at least partially financed by George Soros. I will remember your suggestion that it would be a good place to look for information on the Democratic Party!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
By the way, John Kerry had his close boatmates supporting him in his campaign, until one of them stopped supporting him. The SwiftBoat team had his commanding officer and a number of other officers and enlisted who served on the same base and unit at the same time as did John Kerry. They also had hundreds of other associated veternas from Vietnam. There is a real question as to who had the stronger self interest in FLOATING Stories!!
For instance, one of Kerry’s big stories was that he threw his medals over the fence of the Whitehouse at a protest. Years later they showed up on his wall in his office. His excuse wat that he MEANT just his ribbons and that the medals he threw were other soldiers.
Another Kerry story was that he was captaining a mission to drop off covert agents and ended up being fired on by drunk Vietnamese villagers celebrating New Years.
1) John Kerry did not take command of a boat until AFTER the 1st of the year according to his orders and military papers.
2) Vietnamese are mostly Buddhist and do not get drunk.
3) Vietnamese do not celebrate the West’s New Year.
etc.
In his diary he states later, in describing a sortie, that it is the first time he and his men are in combat and under fire. Apparently he couldn’t keep the facts straight even in his diary alledgedly written when thing were happening.
Another of Kerry’s stories was that his boat had stopped and rescued a soldier who had fallen overboard under fire. The men on the other ships said that when a mine went off Kerry’s boat accelerated with the result that one of his team fell overboard. Kerry’s boat continued upriver and returned later. In the meantime the other boats stopped and rescued the crew of the sinking boat. Kerry’s boat returned in time to pick up the man it had lost but after firing had stopped. Kerry sustained one of his scratches in this encounter qualifying him for one of his Medals. (he wrote up his own action reports and ribbon applications, apparently rather common at the time)
There are numerous other examples of problems with his stories, many found in the book put out by the Swift Boaters, but, I am sure you can find better information at factcheck.org!!!
I put the use of the ver swiftboat right up there with the use of the term Mcarthyite. They both include a large amount of disinformation about the people involved.
Jones wasnt running for office and he wasnt taken out by his own “shipmates” and somehow the metaphor applies.
I think the main reason for the association between the climate-change argument and “swiftboating” is the involvement of Morano in both.
I did post a longer reply to Latimer which seems to have disappeared so I’ll just say that people running politically motivated smear campaigns (and that’s what it was) do not tend to advertise the fact on their own websites.
He could try looking here
http://www.factcheck.org/article231.html
retrieved from the spam filter
Who is this Morano guy and where did he feature in the Climategate saga? I’ve followed it pretty closely and his name is new to me. The UEA/CRU crew didn’t need any help to dig their own graves …they’d already done that. Maybe Morano stood up and shouted about it a bit. Good on him. No big deal there.
And I never suggested that the ‘swiftboaters’ did whatever they did purely from the goodness of their hearts or their love of humanity. Very few people do. But their motivation was irrelevant.
There existed documents that cast a disobliging light on this Kerry guy’s war record, contrary to his own self-proclaimed estimation of his abilities. And he was running for high office.
So they raised some cash to be able to show these records. Big deal…where is the problem that you perceive? Presumably Kerry himself hadn’t been averse to getting his mitts on a dollar or two to fund his campaign?
Sauce for the goose, mon brave……..
> their motivation was irrelevant.
Hardly. Morano and his part of the hard-right political machine are motivated to preserve their power and privilege, the facts, truth, honor, honesty, the country and so on be damned.
That’s why he runs ClimateDepot. That’s why he was one of Inhofe’s pit bulls. The man is a hit man, and will do or say anything to further the hard-right view of no government regulation and unaccountable megacorporations.
Fine.
You don’t like their motivations. Your privilege.
But it doesn’t change the argument one iota. Would their actions meet with your approval if it was part of the Save the Fluffy Bunnikins Leagie of Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice?
*What* they did was what mattered, not your interpretation of *why* they did it.
Their motivation is what makes Morano and his ilk do what they do – which is to spread disinformation and lies to preserve a certain misbegotten dogma.
Similar to Mad Jim Hansen and his ilk !
Maybe it is their motivation. But that wasn’t the question I asked
‘Would their actions meet with your approval if it was part of the Save the Fluffy Bunnikins League of Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice?’
And do you have any evidence of them ‘spreading misinformation and lies’ to justify your sweeping statement of condemnation. Care: you have used the word ‘liar’ here before and been called for it.
Kerry’s prior shipmates attacked his character and his war record.
“swiftboating” is a poor attempt to ‘reframe’ the climategate issue.
it fails as a reframe ( hey I studied lakoff when he was a linguist) because
1. the essential elements of the metaphor work against the frame.
2. it only works with those who understand swiftboating and not the target audience.
The intersection between the “swiftboat” attacks on Kerry and the various political attacks on climate scientists is none other than one man, Marc Morano. He’s a hard-right character assassin, nothing more.
It’s no wonder the swifthack meme has not caught on, whoever thought of it doesnt understand how framing works. They also dont get that if a meme really works nobody can remember who came up with it. Morano has had no measurable effect in the climategate story. And climategate wasnt about character assassination. It was character suicide.
As if climategate is the only attack on the science and the scientists. Remember, Morano worked for Inhofe, who has a hit list of scientists. Morano is up to his ears in the the political BS, which makes sense. He’s created a goodly portion of it.
If it’s ever determined who hacked CRU, and who paid them, I would not be surprised to see Morano’s name on the receipts. That’s his industry – dirty political game-playing.
The Latest from Norfolk Police:
“Following the publication of e-mails and other data prior to the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, the Norfolk Constabulary investigation into the data breach at the University of East Anglia continues.
With the many different lines of enquiry that officers identified, the workload has varied with specialist investigators/law enforcement partners used when needed.
Commenting on the investigation, Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory said:
“This has been a complex investigation, undertaken in a global context and requiring detailed and time consuming lines of enquiry. Due to the sensitivity of the investigation it has not been possible to share details of enquiries with the media and the public and it would be inappropriate for us to comment any further at this time.”
Note to Editors:
It is acknowledged that interest in this case continues, given that the enquiry has now been running for approximately a year and that there is a desire for us to publish further detail. However, the circumstances of the case do not lend themselves to public comment at this time due to the sensitivities of the investigation and this is unlikely to change in the near future.”
Translation:
“It’s been a hard slog, we might or might not have found out anything, and for the foreseeable future it’s none of your damn business anyway. Sod off.”
Their basic tactics included swift-boating and character assassination, using e-mails stolen from scientists’ computers.
You might be a world class physics expert, but your expertise doesn’t extend well to this area.
1. The skeptic community was very much alive and well long before the climategate episode, and I think you’re lending too much influence to “climategate.” The WUWT site was the most popular climate site worldwide even before the episode. Your reply reads as if there was a lack of widespread skepticism prior to the leak. The leak didn’t cause skepticism; it just made a lot of skeptics say “I knew it!”
2. All the leak showed was poor behaviours regarding a handful of people. The PR blowback in the political world seems to be that some are now realising that taxpayer funded data needs to be open to taxpayer view. This is hardly astonishing. This seems to be the aim of the leak, and if so it seems to have been effective.
3. It’s obvious that “climategate” was a leak, not a hack. Were a well funded professional to hack the climate community, NASA, CRU, NOAA and the IPCC would wake up one morning to discover their guts on display on 30,000 Russian servers. A professional hack funded by real bad guys for real nefarious reasons would have been a great deal more comprehensive. There would be nothing held back. Real hacks are warfare.
Do you read the news? Google “stuxnet” which is the worm western intelligence services created to flatten the Iranian nuclear effort. Real hacks by real pros aren’t simple mickey mouse leaks. Real hacks by real pros paid with real money are warfare.
“stuxnet” is freaking awesome.
Tell me about it. I wish I’d done it. [sigh]
OT I know, but I totally agree. Wow.
It has been done. It has been ignored. What are we to make of this??
A. Lacis,
I am glad to see that you can call voer 10 people with direct knowledge of John Kerry’s Vietnam service flat out liars along with those who simply show the conflicts in his personal accounts, official records, and diary on the basis of one editorial and one book by persons with NO direct knowledge. That is really digging for the truth there!! Ever consider that the Swiftboaters actually told the TRUTH in their accounts and John Kerry, who DID, at the minimum, misremembered details and told confused and obfuscatory stories was wrong?
A Lacis:
You need to heed your own advice, and be a bit more objective in your analysis and interpretation of the Climategate leak (almost certainly an attack of conscience by someone internal). The basic point, meticulously ducked at places like Realclimate, is that dishonesty is endemic in the alarmist climate establishment. This means we cannot trust them. So whatever this or that temp series says, we can have to confidence that they are not pulling the wool over our eyes in some clever way.
I’m surprised it’s taken you so long to show up, “Punksta”.
Put it this way – if CRU and GISS and so on are so suspect, how come UAH and RSS are so similar? Are they in on it too?
Punksta: The basic point, meticulously ducked at places like Realclimate, is that dishonesty is endemic in the alarmist climate establishment. This means we cannot trust them. So whatever this or that temp series says, we can have no confidence that they are not pulling the wool over our eyes in some clever way.
Derecho64 : Put it this way – if CRU and GISS and so on are so suspect, how come UAH and RSS are so similar? Are they in on it too?
Well ducked.
A Lacis—
Your response to my comment completely misses a key point I was trying to make, namely the crucial role played by the professional science/technical organizations in enforcing ethical standards in their respective publications. That the “climategate” e-mails showed suspicious activities regarding the peer-review process in several publications dealing with climate science I think is clear to all who bothered to read the e-mails.
When I was working on my PhD in engineering in the 70’s, the faculty was constantly reminding us graduate students of our obligations to be honest, timely, fair and open when dealing with critics. At that time, we were lead to believe that the editors of technical society publications firmly enforced those rules, especially transparency requirements regarding technical data. After reading the “climategate” e-mails and learning about the actions of editors of publications like Science, Nature, the several journals associated with the AGU and AMS as well as journals associated with other technical organizations, many of us are starting to have doubts. Excellent examples backing up our suspicions about peer review issues can be found at
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
and
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/15/mckitrick-and-nierenberg-2010-rebuts-another-team-article/#more-12612
The other point I was trying to make is that junk does make it into the peer-reviewed technical literature. I’ve been involved in the technical peer review process for almost thirty-five years, and virtually none of my colleagues will disagree with me on that point. Just because an article appears in a peer-reviewed journal does not automatically mean that it should be unquestioned if the circumstances deem otherwise. It isn’t clear to me that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates understand that yet. The infamous “black list” that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published online on 21 June 2010 is a very good example of “peer reviewed” junk .
When the Obama Administration took over in January, 2009 we were lead to believe the new administration would be “transparent”, that science would be restored to its proper place, and that politics would have no place in science policy. Instead, what we got was a arrogant herd of opaque/unaccountable czars and the controversial Allen Carlin case at EPA. I get the feeling that Holdren’s science guidelines are little more than whitewash that will do nothing to fix the ethics problems revealed by the “climategate” e-mails.
There is another aspect of your response that I find distasteful, namely your use of the descriptors “denier” and “swift boating”.
That the Swift Boat veterans sought to set the record straight about a veteran, John Kerry, who slandered other American veterans serving in Viet Nam by providing false, undocumented testimony to the U. S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1972 is well known and well documented. When Kerry took liberties with his own combat record in Viet Nam and ran for President in 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans had no choice but to tell their side of the story and set the record straight. Use of the term “swift boating” adds nothing to the discussion of climate change.
Then there is your liberal use of “denier” to libel those who question AGW hysteria by using guilt by association tactics to identify AGW skeptics with Holocaust deniers. You need to go back and review history at this point and identify the real Holocaust deniers. Well, who are the real “deniers”? As far as I can tell, Holocaust denial seems to be confined to the political fringes in this country; on the fringe left, for example, we have Norman Finklestein and his mentor (surprisingly) Noam Chomsky, and on the fringe right we have some individuals and organizations associated with Ron Paul. Worldwide, let’s not ignore the Islamists, especially that clown (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) who calls himself the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I am not aware of any technically knowledgeable AGW skeptics that deny the horrors inflicted on the European Jewish community by the Nazis.
The way I learned it, skepticism is absolutely essential to the scientific process. You would do well to keep that in mind, avoid guilt by association arguments, and present your case on its scientific merits and relevant background information. In my humble opinion, that is the only way climate change issues can be understood and resolved.
A bit of good scientific integrity news from the Kiwis:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1012/S00054/climate-science-coalition-vindicated.htm
And just for perspective, here’s how WUWT covered it at the time:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
To summarise, the CSC too the Kiwi met guys to court over adjustments to the much-vaunted “11-station series”. After some careful study of their shoelaces, the respondents decided a court trial was not in their best interests, and blinked – big time. The “official” NZ temperature record, which earlier showed the standard-Believer-issue rise, now shows no trend for the last half-century. And all because the “adjustments” made to it by Hockey Team acolyte Jim Salinger have been repudiated.
One down….,
I await Andy Lacis’ reply with interest.
It will involve some combination of the words and phrases:
‘Denier, Big Oil, sceptic meme, Creationist, character assassination, Koch Industries, thermodynamics, unqualified to judge, honest scientist toiling for the good of mann, great personal risks, extreme weather events, well-funded, tobacco, unprecedented, anti-science conspiracy, catastrophic, WUWT demagoguery, forces of reaction, stolen e-mails, IPCC infallibility, models predict, ‘will nobody think of the children’
…..all you need to do is add the linking words.
There may even be a wee Alarmist computer program running on a supercomputer somewhere that comes up with today’s standard complaint of being hard done by. Accessible only by True Believers.
What it won’t say is
‘Its a fair cop guv, you’ve got us bang to rights….gissanother chance and we promise to be good boys next time’
Interesting opinion by Bernie Lewin Climate Change and the Corruption of Science: Where did it all go wrong?
Lewin’s essay is just a rehash of standard “skeptic” talking-points leavened with mushy gobbledygook.
Change the subject from “climate change” to “smoking causes cancer” and he could make the same nonsensical commentary, but we would see right through it as baloney.
No you couldn’t. It is about AGW not smoking. I don’t think you’ve bothered even to read it, but are working from an invalid assumption about its contents. (wow – I am *really* surprised!)
If I am wrong , please provide three examples from the article where you could make the change you suggest and it would continue to have a structure and an argument. Irrelevant whether you agree or not…I want to see you justify your sweeping evidence-free assertion that it could be done.
We call it ‘Put Up or Shut Up’.
One easy example:
“4. Noble Cause or ‘Virtuous’ Corruption
The legitimation of activist-science helps to promote what is called ‘noble cause corruption’. This is the term used in the context of criminal investigations, where, for example, evidence might be planted in order to convict a criminal of a crime that the investigator has no doubt he committed. (Such corruption is portrayed famously by Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil.) As this sort of corruption manifests in the sciences, Aynsley Kellow has labelled it ‘virtuous corruption.’ This is where we would have scientists genuinely believing that smoking causes cancer, quite prepared to manipulate, distort and misrepresent their research in order to promote this truth in the face of formidable opposition from powerful vested interests (read: ‘Big Tobacco’ etc) attempting to obscure the truth with their own distortions, misrepresentations and lies.”
But, we now know that it was Big Tobacco, and Big Tobacco alone, that engaged in a decades-long campaign of distortion, propaganda, and lies, and that no matter how much and how often Big Tobacco smeared the scientists doing the research, the truth won out.
The fact that Lewin refers to DDT as a “scare”, and touches on Singer’s old allegation (proven utterly without merit) about chapter 8 of the IPCC SAR, leads me to conclude that he’s just babbling to the WUWT choir.
Are you suggesting that the ‘smoking causes cancer’ scientists (a proposition I happen to agree with from very unhappy personal reasons btw) actually indulged in such ‘noble cause corruption’?
Because that seems to be the thrust of your re-written article. And AFAIK is not true. They had the science on their side and did not need to distort or obfuscate their results.
And your other two examples would be?
Latimer is this a “cat playing with the mouse it caught” type situation?
How do you do it? I get sick of reading this chit, it’s like being on scepticalscience all over again.
Latimer just likes to argue, no matter than he has no clue as to what he’s arguing.
Given a choice between “2 + 2 = 4” and “2 + 2 =6”, he would assume the truth is somewhere in the middle, and would push hard for “6” being correct.
The scientists were accused of distortion and fabrication by the tobacco industry. Imagine that. Sound familiar?
Is not one example sufficient? Einstein seemed to think so.
“people have survived being shot in the head at point-blank range.” You talking from personal experience, D64? It would explain a lot…
Wow, Tom – you make that up all by yourself?
..scientists were accused of distortion and fabrication by the tobacco industry. Imagine that. Sound familiar?
But were those scientists caught red-handed like Mann, Jones & Co were?
And was their general approach anything like Jones’s “Why should I show you my data if I know you’ll try and find something wroing with it?” ?
Thanks for playing “ignorant `skeptic'” so well, Punksta!
Do let us know if you ever come with a non-vaccuous comment.
D64 Are you a climate scientist if not what is your role in life?
But, until we hear to the contrary, I think the answers D64 is avoiding suppling are:-
* NO, the tobacco scientists were not caught bang-to-rights cheating
* NO, they didn’t share Jones’s hatred of openness
In general, they weren’t seen to be sabotaging the science process like the IPCC cadre have been.
As expected, Punksta buys the “skeptic” nonsense hook, line, and sinker.
I’ll give you a free hint, Punksta – the less you comment, the more credibility (and they need all they can get!) the “skeptics” have.
Simply more Climategate Denialism, grandstanding, “advice” and general hot air, D64. I guess that’s your lot.
Wasn’t that precisely the point? Subsitute tobacco-related terms for AGW and the piece reads exactly like the pro-tobacco/passive-smoking-harmful-“skeptical” spiels one still occasionally comes across today. However, because it relates to tobacco causing cancer (something a vast number of laymen have no issue accepting) it is more easily seen through as transparently biased rhetoric, except by the die-hards who would talk the hind-legs off the proverbial donkey defending the position in the face of all reason.
You don’t have a problem seeing tobacco screed as empty nonsense, and neither do I.
I don’t have a problem seeing that WUWT article as empty nonsense, but you do. I see that as a cognitive failing on your part, you see that as some sort of bias or agenda on mine. C’est la vie.
As a skeptic in the traditional sense (not in the “I don’t believe the IPCC no matter what you tell me” sense) I found the most telling part to be the dig at science historians being “on message” – like, you know, the author couldn’t *possibly* be wrong in any way at all – and those people with all the expertise in studying this sort of thing in excruciating detail, well, they’re the biased ones… It’s a red flag that someone may well be succumbing to conspiracy-thinking, where evidence *against* the conspiracy, corruption or incompetence is just evidence that the problem is *even bigger* than was first thought.
When the science is adjudicated other than in the press and the EPA it seems it loses:
http://www.smokingaloud.com/osteen.html
Judge Osteen disagreed with the claim that second hand smoke is dangerous made by the EPA. Like the DDT case that was decided by a Bureaucrat and not the scientists, second hand smoke has been declared dangerous. Y’all really ought to look into the quality of the science that declares rather than shows the connections.
My mom is 84 and lived with my heavy smoking dad for 35 years and her smoking family for 17 years. No cancer. I am 58 and smoked myself for 17 years for a total of 34 years exposure along with brake dust, various industrial chemicals and exhaust from tractors and other vehicles, no cancer. My dad was an alcoholic, heavy smoker for 50 years, mechanic with continuing exposure to asbestos dust, diesel and gas exhaust, hydraulic fluids, cleaners and numerous other chemicals, bad diet, little exercise, yet, some people would blame HIS cancer on the smoking!!! You can find plenty of people with heavy cigarette exposure with no cancer. you can also find plenty of people with no exposure with cancer. The so-called science is overrated!!!
You can never remind people too often that correlation does not mean causation. Most of that junk science is based on correlation and not chemistry or biology. Sound like anything else you can think of?? Like pharmaceutical validations?
If you want to believe it there is nothing I can do and it doesn’t mean the end of the world. It only means the anti-science control freaks win yet another skirmish.
Hey, kuhnkat – people have survived being shot in the head at point-blank range. Ergo, playing Russian roulette is harmless.
Same value as your anecdotal nostalgia.
Derech064,
grasping at straws as usual. How many people in one family that all play Russian roulette have survived an actual discharge to the head??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I would suggest that comparing smoking or second hand smoke to being shot with a weapon, presumably of large enough caliber to actually kill, is not a very good comparison.
If it were just me and my mom you might be perfectly correct. If it were a small percentage of those exposed who never got cancer, again, you might be correct. The problem is that without the direct biological causes and the ability to trace them and identify them in the cells you cannot control for all the other alledged exposure issues reasonably. Therefore junk science. With the rate of smoking in this country through the 90’s, smoking or secondhand smoke related cancers should be at epidemic levels if there were that strong of a physiological connection.
Being from an extended family of people with multiple exposures, some as bad as my dads, the risk levels assigned simply do not seem plausible and there is research that did not find these levels.
Since you apparently do not smoke it makes no difference to you whether the actual odds of getting cancer are 1 in one million or one in 100. Since you CAN be exposed to second hand smoke that number should be important to you so you can run screaming if someone lights up next to you. Do you know what your chances are of getting cancer from secondhand smoke and the dose level to reach it?
Since you apparently are very worried about it I would think that would be important information for you?? It should be an interesting set of numbers even if I do not believe them. Why don’t you find out??
“The U.S. Surgeon General estimates that living with a smoker increases a nonsmoker’s chances of developing lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent ”
Gee whilikers, that is a HUGE RISK!!! Oh wait, if you LIVE WITH the smoker, how many other risks might you share with them??? Darn, hard to evaluate due to lack of knowledge of cancer and possible environmental exposures that are unknown.
Living with a smoker brings the exposure level pretty high. Getting exposed in the bar every night could also be a significant exposure. Basically if you are exposed for an hour a day or more for a good portion of your life then second hand smoke will increase your risk of getting lung cancer by 20-30%. What are the odds with the Russina roulette again?? With the gun, every time you pull the trigger if the cylinder is randomly moved will give you a one in 6 chance of being shot. How does that compare to years of exposure daily and 20-30% alledged increase in getting cancer??? Very unrealistic comparison.
Seriously though, when they have enough information to CURE cancer or at least know what they have to do to prevent it, I will have more trust in the studies that only measure correlation and cannot control for what they don’t know.
They are STILL only suggesting genetic issues POSSIBLY being involved. It could turn out that some people are genetically protected from cancer and skew the result of the tests. It could turn out that some people are genetically susceptible to cancer and skew the tests the other way. They don’t really know what the results mean because they don’t really know what they are testing!!! Talk about being too sure of yourself!!
I figured you’d bite and dismiss the connection between smoking and serious health effects as “junk science”. Pity.
> With the rate of smoking in this country through the 90′s, smoking or secondhand smoke related cancers should be at epidemic levels if there were that strong of a physiological connection.
Citation needed.
Willard,
Nope don’t got no citation for that. Glad you were paying attention. With all the effort and uproar that was my own thought.
Here are some basic statistics on lung and broncheal cancer. For the life of me I simply cannot see the urgency for what they went through with the tobacco industry!!!
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/statistics/state.htm
In general the same states have higher overall mortality rates as the rates blamed on tobacco deaths.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db26.pdf
Interestingly for 1980-2006 the deaths from all forms of cancer have been relatively stable except for natives who have risen to close on the 20% rate.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_14.pdf
Smoking rates have been dropping for 40 years.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/109048/US-Smoking-Rate-Still-Coming-Down.aspx
Our ability to treat lung and broncheal cancers have improved, yet the death rates have been fairly stable.
Basically I just don’t see a justification for the government interference that happened. Of course, I don’t see justification for most other gubmint regulation either. If they had simply sponsored the studies and published them, that would have been good. Taking action based on those demographics, especially with what we have seen since then, was ludicrous.
D64 and others:
The mistake you’re making is trying to conflate smoking with so-called passive-smoking.
The EPA’s meta-study into passive-smoking and lung cancer, even after excluding some studies on spurious grounds and reducing the confidence level to an unprecedented 90%, could only come up with a relative risk of 1.19 – hardly worth writing home about.
It’s all in Kuhnkat’s link for reference.
Contrast that with the Bradford-Hill and Doll research into smoking and lung cancer, which found a relative risk of greater than 20.0, at the gold-plated confidence level of 99%
Of course, the latter was done back in the days when scientific research was still ‘scientific’.
Peter317,
I cannot stress too strongly that the research simply does NOT tell us what is happening in the real world. I am sure the GOld Plated research you reference is very well done. What my links show is that there does not appear to be a correlation between the rate of lung and broncheal cancer mortality in the population with cigarette smoking. With a statistically significant drop in smoking that far back we should also be seeing a drop in deaths from cancers and we are not.
Similar to the radiative physics in Climate Science, the studies indicate one result and the real world shows us a different result. Our Scientists have reached a point where they are chronically too sure of their own work. If nothing else we need a lot more humility in the world, and not just in science.
The world of science appears to go through regular cycles of this type where the leaders proclaim how much is known while ignoring what they do not, and cannot know yet.
Kuhnkat,
I do realise that statistical correlation is only part of the story, that correlation is not causation, and that the research results I quoted, whilst robust in themselves, pale into insignificance against powerful confounding factors such as ageing.
But that further strengthens my point that the case against passive-smoking is completely baseless, even when (incorrectly) conflated with the relatively very strong (but still weak) case against smoking.
Don’t have a link to hand, but it seems there’s some evidence of a 50:50 population split between those with a lung surfactant enzyme which transforms some smoke components into oncogenic chemicals, and those with a different form of the enzyme. Smoking even for a few years is enough for Group A to have the decades-long process of cancer development begin; Group B can smoke their whole lives without getting cancer. (Other problems, like emphysema, artery damage, etc. were not addressed, and may have completely different patterns.)
This would surely mess up any correlational studies. It also means that quitting smoking would have almost zero effect on cancer rates.
Derech064,
You really need to quit throwing your net of junk science so wide. The best anyone ever showed with DDT was that if you had a lof of money and WASTED it in overuse there would be negative consequences. One guy actually drank it regularly (yes he was part of the conspiracy!!) and died in his 70’s I believe. Yes there was some shell thinning for birds but no evidence of higher mortality.
Yup, DDT was one of the original successful environmental SCARES that hurt more than it helped. Thanks for showing how serious you are in investigating claims.
> Yes there was some shell thinning for birds but no evidence of higher mortality.
This is blatantly false. I mean, just hit google scholar for starters, you can scarcely move for all the evidence of mortality. I don’t know where you’re getting that information but:
> Thanks for showing how serious you are in investigating claims.
Dave H,
do you have any idea how many birds die from shells being broken even when the shells are NOT thinned??? No you don’t. Junk science depends on this type of misdirection.
> Junk science
Is your definition of this “science that says something I disagree with”?
I imagine you came up with this response after (as I suggested) hitting google scholar, seeing the contrary evidence, and deciding that the only possible explanation for all this evidence which disagreed with you was that it was all junk.
Or maybe you didn’t even do that. Maybe you preemptively assumed it must be junk.
Either way, discussion is futile.
Dave,
did you actually read the research and try to evaluate whether the procedures at least seemed reasonable?? Did you check what I asked you? As you say, if we simply throw papers at each other discussion is futile. Papers are not cards or money with known value. They must be read, and honestly, I can not understand some of them.
Do any of those voluminous papers include research from countries like India where they continued using DDT until, at this point, its effectiveness has started to drop off??
Yes, continuing discussion is futile if you are simply going to hit Google Scholar and throw up anything that happened to make it past Peer Review with no idea whether it is applicable to the discussion or whether it was just another me too paper to feather a nest.
Right, so based on your claim that:
> […] honestly, I can not understand some of them
Have you personally:
> […] actually read the research and try to evaluate whether the procedures at least seemed reasonable?
To allow you to arrive at the conclusion:
> […] no evidence of higher mortality.
You’re the one making extraordinary claims in direct contradiction to decades-long scientific understanding. It is *your* responsibility to provide the extraordinary evidence required to support that claim, not *my* responsibility to waste extraordinary amounts of time providing evidence that you will ignore. Stop trying to shift the burden you have created for yourself.
Well Dave H, since you basically called me a liar and are calling me on it I have to admit that there IS plausible research that supports my view. In fact, that is where I got those strange notions in the first place seeing as how I BELIEVED everything the told us back in the 60’s and 70’s. I mean they were for everyone’s good tight??
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
Millroy has done a nice job of collecting all the varied information around the issue. You really should read the whole thing before calling anyone else a liar about DDT, except, of course, Rachel Carson and fellow travelers.
Dave H:
“You’re the one making extraordinary claims in direct contradiction to decades-long scientific understanding.”
Wrong as usual. Rachel Carson and fellow travellers were always the ones making extraordinary claims. Utilitzing junk science to propagandize the population raises your level of obligation.
“It is *your* responsibility to provide the extraordinary evidence required to support that claim, not *my* responsibility to waste extraordinary amounts of time providing evidence that you will ignore.”
Since you have only waved you arms and spouted the old propaganda I really don’t know what to make of this other than you are ignorant of most of the research and take a long time to do internet searches.
“Stop trying to shift the burden you have created for yourself.”
Just trying to keep you from being more embarrased. Guess you are much smarter than I am.
Science is the art of objectively seeking the truth, even when such truth flies in the face of one’s most deeply-held beliefs.
So, as soon as you start indulging in ‘noble cause corruption’, you, by definition, stop being a practitioner of science.
Besides, it was proper scientific research which established the link between smoking and (lung) cancer. The same cannot be said of that purporting to link ‘second-hand’ smoking to all manner of illnesses. And now they’re really jumping the shark by going after ‘third-hand’ smoking.
Derecho64 | December 27, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Lewin’s essay is just a rehash of standard “skeptic” talking-points leavened with mushy gobbledygook.
Change the subject from “climate change” to “smoking causes cancer” and he could make the same nonsensical commentary, but we would see right through it as baloney.
Is this braindead drivel your best shot ? Or do you have any actual arguments?
And today, thanks in part to the truth coming out via Climategate, we know it is big Government, and Big Government alone – outspending all others put together by a factor or perhaps 10000 – that is engadged in a decades-long campaign of distortion, propaganda and lies it calls “climate science”, to get the public to accept the CAGW idea, so as to justify making itself even bigger.
In fact, you may want to look at the “PR” agencies aka charitable trusts aka NGOs for some more tentacles feeding the machine. Fenton, Tides, Rockefeller Bros., Hewlett, Packard, EMS and Moore for starters. UK has another powerful PR firm on the CAGW parade of misinformation-providers. All of these are, of course, NOT on the skeptic side of the equation. Which makes the job even tougher, but truth might just win out, thanks to the economy which allows some politicos to look for reasons to slow or divert spending. Canada’s Senate did just that.
Yes – sensing that this massive political spend will overwhelm all before it regardless, many privavate companies have deemed it sensible to climb on the greenwagon and be politically correct too. To say nothing of the financial sector, with interests in carbon trading.
Really. It’s not really worthwhile to argue with you, seeing as how you accept the “argument” that anthropogenic climate change is just a manufacture of “Big Government”. Amazing how its roots go back over 100 years. One heck of a conspiracy.
Derecho64: Really. It’s not really worthwhile to argue with you, seeing as how you accept the “argument” that anthropogenic climate change is just a manufacture of “Big Government”.
We have clear evidence (eg Climategate) that government scientists are cooking the books so as to support expanding the state. Why are you in denial over this? The point you keep ducking is this : given this unrepentant dishonesty, how can we then trust them at all?
Amazing how its roots go back over 100 years. One heck of a conspiracy.
AGW doesn’t go back a 100 years, not even according the IPCC. Only ~1960.
And it isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just the unexceptional behaviour of an organisation (government) acting to further its own interests, just like everyone else does. Bearing in mind that government is a highly and uniquely privileged organisation, vastly bigger and more powerful than all others put together. It would be surprising indeed if they did anything else.
Indeed, you are the only one who espouses a conspiracy theory here : that somehow, rather than serve their paymaster, scientists take on the nature of angels, and conspire to ignore their own and their paymaster’s political objectives, in favour of discovering the truth, no matter what it is. Just like we see them doing in Climategate.
> We have clear evidence (eg Climategate) that government scientists are cooking the books so as to support expanding the state.
To be taken seriously, I would suggest that AGW “skeptics” have a duty to respond to and disavow this kind of nonsense.
It is the failure to do so (and to tacitly condone through inaction this kind of rote repetition of falsehoods) that helps foster an environment of constant and futile confrontation.
Dave H, the nice thing about Punksta is that its arguments are self-defeating. Notice how no-one jumps in to defend it? It’s on the lunatic fringe, where it belongs.
More rote Climategate Denialism from D64.
> To be taken seriously, I would suggest that AGW “skeptics” have a duty to respond to and disavow this kind of nonsense.
It clearly is not nonsense, as Climategate shows. To be taken seriously, I would suggest that alarmist “scientists” have a duty to respond to and disavow the patent dishonesty of the IPCC leadership. It is the failure to do so (and to tacitly condone through inaction) that helps foster an environment of constant and futile confrontation.
Your Climategate Denialism is no answer.
Minor comment: I’d address the director as “Dr. Holden” in the body of the text since he does have a Ph.D. Very bright guy from what I know of him and as far as I can tell his head is set on very straight.
It’s not his responsibility to spank the societies when they’ve behaved badly, but this science integrity initiative is a move in the right direction. He is a good ally to have on this issue, IMO.
Carrick,
Do you really believe that Holdren, who suggested forced abortions and mass sterilization is someone you should want for an ally?? He also called for a Planetary Regime with an enforcement arm. This was in a book he co-wrote called EcoScience.
It would appear that a number of Climate Scientists and supporters have roots extending back to the extremist of the 70’s and later!
Grrr… hate typos … that’s “Holdren” of course.
On first read through, these guidelines seem to be entirely reasonable, and go just about as far as any sensible skeptic could wish.
“Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings. ”
I understand in the US context, this relates primarily to the behaviour of some advisors in the GW Bush Whitehouse, but surely must also cover the preparation of documents such as the SPM to IPCC reports, which seriously downplay the uncertainties and caveats that are in the main report. I also hope that the definition of ‘Political Officials’ used is broad enough to include the input from NGOs.
“Strengthen the actual and perceived credibility of Government research. Of particular importance are: a) ensuring that selection of candidates for scientific positions in the executive branch is based primarily on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity, b) ensuring that data and research used to support policy decisions undergo independent peer review by qualified experts . . . c) setting clear standards governing conflicts of interest, and, d) adopting appropriate whistleblower protections. ”
You’d hope that point a) has always been the case – appoint the best person for the job.
b) I’d like to see a slight addition – “independent peer AND CRITICAL review by qualified experts”. Basically, the presented results should be tested by someone truly independent to assess the validity. This is something I’m quite familiar with in acting as an Expert Witness in civil cases – Experts acting for different sides are quite able to arrive at differing interpretations from similar initial observations, and then have to come up with areas of agreement and disagreement to assist the Judge.
c) and d) are things that should have been in place anyway.
“Consistent with the Administration’s Open Government Initiative, agencies should expand and promote access to scientific and technological information by making it available online in open formats. Where appropriate, this should include data and models underlying regulatory proposals and policy decisions. ”
Fine words, and pretty well all you could ask for. Let’s see if it is or can be properly enforced.
“Agencies should communicate scientific and technological findings by including a clear explication of underlying assumptions; accurate contextualization of uncertainties; and a description of the probabilities associated with both optimistic and pessimistic projections, including best-case and worst-case scenarios where appropriate. ”
The first part is to me the most important – it is amazing how many assumptions there in a lot of published work (not just climate) that don’t get explicitly stated. Not sure I like the words ‘ accurate contextualising’ – sounds like Civil Service speak to me, and just a way that someone will try to find a loophole so as to provide the minimum possible assessment of uncertainty. Surely it would be easier to say ‘quantification and statement of uncertainties’.
Obviously, in the world of real politics, policy does not necessarily follow the best possible scientific judgement. Taking the recent case of the UK drugs legislation changes and the resignation of Dr Nutt and others from the advisory panel, in my opinion it was perfectly reasonable for the scientists to say that the harm from soft drugs is minimal and that these should be legalised (or at least reclassified to a lower level), but for the Government to say from a political perspective ‘no, that does not fit with our desired policy or image of being hard on drug crime.’
The science, and perhaps following on to the economics and cost/benefit analysis (i.e. is it cost effective in terms of police and court time and possible sentencing to keep cannabis as an illegal drug?) only takes you to a factual answer. Politics has also to deal with the people (i.e. the voters) and the media, and sometimes the factually correct decision does not make good policy because it will lose votes or be portrayed as weak or foolish in the media.
There is a quote from Sir Humphrey in Yes Prime Minster, something along the lines of ‘A brave decision is one that loses you votes, a courageous one loses you the election’
There are interesting and specific fights between the lines of a lot of this guidance. For example this sounds quite sensible, almost innocent: “…agencies should expand and promote access to scientific and technological information by making it available online in open formats.”
Most basic research is funded by the Federal government and most Federal agencies make the research reports from the science they fund publicly available via http://www.science.gov/. But the National Science Foundation refuses to do so. These reports typically contain a great deal more information about how the research was conducted, what was found, etc., than do the journal articles that may flow from that research (plus the reports are free). 60 page reports versus 6 page articles, say. So the NSF refusal to make its reports publicly available leaves a huge hole in the open literature, including the climate literature.
In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, the UK has not been behindhand in enforcing ‘academic integrity’ either.
The smug and arrogant UEA management have been forced (through gritted teeth and with fingers crossed no doubt), to sign a public agreement to be good boys as far as FoI is concerned in future.
See:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/12/23/acton-and-uea-in-the-pillory.html?lastPage=true#comment10907194
to include gleeful commentaries, or, for those who still have to lie down after hearing the ‘C….gate’ word because of their so-refined moral sensibilities the actual press release is here.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/…/2010/uea_foi_undertaking_20101222.ashx
Now if only they’d followed the law when they should have, think how different things would be.
Latimer, I find the idea of a public servant being asked to undertake to stop breaking the law extraordinary. Is it?
It brings to mind the story of the First Mate who was miffed to find his captain had written in the log “position x, speed y, wind z, First Mate drunk”. He retaliated next watch by recording “position x, speed y, wind z, Captain sober.”
Bumble bumble…administrative oversight…bumble bumble…improved education in recent legal requirements….bumble bumble…compliance with both the spirit and the letter…bumble bumble….overstretched junior staff…bumble bumble….regrettable lapse in our usual high standards…bumble bumble…reaffirms UEA’s longstanding commitments to the highest academic standards…bumble bumble. My colleagues Davies and Jones fully support our wish that I don’t get blamed for this…bumble bumble. It was them wot dunnit….I was having supper with my old Mum and the Vicar *and the Archbishop of Canterbury* and I’m a personal friend of the Chief Constable…………..
Occurs to me this is a sort of ASBO for academics – not quite a conviction, to be sure, but not exactly good for your reputation…
A very very public slap on the wrist … that will be noticed throughout academe. Very bad for Acton’s personal reputation, disastrous for UEA in any scientific circles.
Its also interesting to see that the Met Office’s three strategic partners in their ‘Academic Partnership’ announced recently do not include UEA.
Here’s the press release from the University of Exeter.
‘Exeter joins the universities of Leeds and Reading to form the Met Office Academic Partnership. This will build on a strong history of scientific collaboration to tackle key challenges in weather and climate prediction’
So I wonder what research the newly reinstated Phil Jones and Vice-Chancellor Davies will find to occupy themselves with. Counting paperclips perhaps?
This issue was the basis of a play by Bertolt Brecht about Galileo.
He speculated whether scientists should take a version of the Hippocratic Oath.
The Hippocratic oath for scientists would perhaps stop the temptation to alter results to suit the wishes of the paymaster and presents the case for science with a social conscience.
http://sicmagazine.org/galileo/
Perhaps we could create doubleblind tests comparing the behavior of doctors who take the oath and the behavior of those who don’t.
Tom FP
The scoop NZ article looks way over the top to me. The NIWA wbsite is saying that the changes have not affected the trend nor the absolute growth during the 20th century. Until NIWA come out with something far more positive as regards a retraction on trend since 1960 then the scoop article is misleading and provides ammo to the AGW camp to show how “deniers” exaggerate in reports.
Seems to me that it was Salinger who was caught exaggerating, not the sceptics who caused his ‘voodoo science’ to be exposed.
Here is a comparison of the old and new versions so people can see for tehmselves how much difference it makes (clue – not very much).
Andrew, your source seems to be NIWA – the people who just had to settle out of court to avoid going to trial and finding out what “forensic” means. Sorry, but I’m looking for something from a credible source, not the very one whose recent discrediting aroused my interest.
Tom,
Their methodology for producing their temperature records was questioned. They have devoted a great deal of effort to re-examining their methodology and re-calculating the records, and have come to pretty much the same answer.
If you can point to an alternative source which shows they are wrong then fine, but otherwise it’s case closed.
Many critics of disgraced government science, myself included, have made the serious mistake of wallowing in negativity.
In creating this blog, Professor Curry has acted in a positive way to resolve the issues constructively, despite inherent flaws that we witnessed in Climategate: Potential flaws that President Eisenhower warned us about five decades ago in all government-funded science:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOLld5PR4ts
In a effort to become more constructive, I plan to make a new video acknowledging a few other brave souls that have played key roles in preserving scientific integrity over my career:
Nobel Laureates Glenn T. Seaborg and Hannes Alfven, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, and Science News Reporter Benny Peiser of CCNet and GWPF.
Please send other nominations to omatumr@yahoo.com
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
I am missing Girma.
Don’t call him. He’s like Beetlejuice.
“Never trust politicians any farther than you can throw them.” Etc. Etc.
Chris Mooney has written an interesting article on this
http://www.desmogblog.com/critical-science-moment-obama-administration
Dr. Curry, perhaps you read this interview of Dr. Hansen by Bill McKibben?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/20101221_McKibbenQA.pdf
If you could address the integrity of Dr. Hansens thoughts about using Fahrenheit instead of Celsius (since the numbers look bigger!) and his request for more civil resistance and civil disobedience as a necessary part of the solution for climate change. Do you consider this to be integrity? Do you think skeptics have good reason to doubt any of the data that passes through his sphere of influence?
A rather amazing interview. Here is one paragraph that I can agree with:
However, there are advantages in beginning to act rapidly. China is investing heavily in clean energies, and it is likely that they will recognize the merits of imposing an internal carbon price to spur development and implementation of clean energies. The United States risks becoming second-class technologically and economically this century if it does not stop subsidizing dirty technologies and instead move toward progressive policies such as fee and green check, which will stimulate development of clean energies.
Re Hansen’s science. His activism does not in any way negate his science. It should be scrutinized more carefully owing to the possibility of bias, and Hansen is enabling that scrutiny by making his data and codes publicly accessible.
Thank you very much for your reply Dr. Curry. Since Dr. Hansen is not only willing to break the law himself, but is recommending that others do so, I find myself with serious doubts that he would be adverse to fudging any data that might make his “cause” more urgent to be acted upon. He has a very wide sphere of influence due to his position at NASA/GISS.
Jon, you missed Judith’s 2nd phrase of her 3rd sentence. Re-read it and adjust your belief that Hansen would “fudge” data.
China in news today:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/beijing-fights-nightmare-traffic-74762
I thought China was aiming more at emission control and clean air rather than C02 although C02 reduction would be a bye-product.
I’m sorry but I just cannot agree with this in the slightest.
China is focused on CONTROLLED growth. They will do NOTHING that will interfere with this growth, for this is the way China will attain undisputed leading superpower status whilst raising their people out of poverty.
Yes China is investing large amounts (isn’t everything large in China these days) in “green” techs. They are investing in these because there is demand from the west.
And yes they may put a nominal price on carbon at some stage, but this won’t be because of any ideology to combat AGW, it’ll be to control the rate of growth of their industries and to feed the state treasury.
China still has hundreds of millions of people living in energy poverty. They will not leave these people in poverty because of AGW or some accord agreed to at Cancun or Kyoto. Observe the fact that not a single coal fired powerplant has been cancelled, they are still going ahead full bore.
Chinas energy policy will be determined by their growth needs coupled with availability and access to resources. Hence they are best friends with Australia, Canada and Brazil, and are very active in Africa.
Well, if I own a car dealership in Beijing, I’m a little concerned today with my growth.
So you should be. It’s a tough gig when you can only make a million a year when previously you made a million a month.
I didn’t miss it, I just disagree with it. I also feel that with his position and influence with other members of the NASA/GISS team, that he isn’t the only one who needs the enhanced scrutiny.
You disagree that GIStemp (and as recoded by CCC) is publicly accessible? Wow.
You have the delusion that all the adjustments made to obtain GISStemp. are publicly known and explained? Wow.
Go get ccc-gistemp and tear it apart, Richard. Show us where it’s gone wrong.
Gistemp is not the only thing they work on.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/
Look at it this way – if GIStemp is so suspect, how come UAH and RSS closely agree with it? UAH and RSS are considered unassailable by the “skeptic” community, remember…
Dere, you keep trying to change the subject away from the integrity of Dr. Hansen.
Dr. Hansen, the head of NASA/GISS has been arrested twice for environmental/global warming protests.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/hansen-of-nasa-arrested-in-coal-country/
He has this to say about a book that supports eco-sabotage.
“Keith Farnish has it right: time has practically run out, and the ‘system’ is the problem”–Professor James Hansen”
http://www.amazon.com/Times-Up-Uncivilized-Solution-Global/dp/product-description/190032248X
He recently testified for the defense in a case of eco-sabotage in the U.K. where the 20 defendants were found guilty of attempting to take over and shut down a power plant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/14/ratcliffe-coal-james-hansen-evidence
This along with the interview i linked to earlier make it impossible for Hansen to claim the role of being impartial scientist. He’s an advocate plain and simple and no work of his or NASA/GISS should be taken at face value without the utmost scrutiny. If he had any integrity at all (Science integrity, the point of Dr. Curry’s OP). He would resign his position to continue his activist political role, but then integrity and Dr. Hansen are mutually exclusive.
Judy says “His activism does not in any way negate his science.”
You’re claiming that since Hansen is now walking the walk, he has no integrity. That’s a derivation with a lot of missing steps, and rather misses the target in any case.
UAH and RSS only agree with GISS in the timing of the oscillations, not in the steady warming trend, which the satellites do not show. This difference is why skeptics think there must be an upward bias in the surface statistical models like GISS. My view is that GISS and the other surface models should be corrected to conform with UAH. If this were done there would be nothing left for AGW to explain.
UAH showed no warming for the first 20 years. Then we had the 1998-2001 ENSO, with warm and cold spikes. After that there was again no warming, but slight cooling actually, except the flat level was higher than before the ENSO. This is a step warming, not a steady warming trend as GHG warming implies.
Now we are into another big ENSO so we will have to see what happens after it is over. The basic point is that there is nothing in the satellites to support the steady GISS warming. It is either a puzzle or a hoax.
Hansen has made his GIStemp code available, and it has been recoded in Python as ccc-gistemp; before UAH has been declared the “truth”, I’d like to see Spencer’s code.
All the major surface temperature analyses show virtually the same increase – see Tamino’s examination.
Besides the “steady warming trend” is a red herring.
I don’t need the code on these Jones models because I have studied the underlying math, which sucks. There is simply no foundation in statistical sampling theory for these area averaged convenience samples. The math is far worse than the hockey stick.
The satellites are instruments that actually read the parameters in question. The surface statistical models are not instruments, they are goofy polls of thousands of poorly placed and badly maintained instruments. Polls versus direct reading instruments is no contest.
I wasn’t talking about CRU’s work, I was talking about Hansen’s. Two different methodologies. I figured you knew that, but I guess I was wrong.
And no, satellites do not measure surface temperature. What they measure has to be fed into a model to get out what is called “surface temperature”.
As for steady warming being a red herring you can’t have it both ways. GHG theory says every molecule added increases the warming and the molecules have been added steadily. The warming does not show up so you warmers keep chanting it will come, it must come, all the while looking for reasons why it has not come. At some point this amounts to falsification. I think we have reached that point.
Show me where the science says that for each and every increment of CO2, there’s a lockstep increment in temperature.
You’re good at erecting strawmen. Or else being unaware.
Derecho64:
“The science” says increased CO2 increases radiative forcing with resulting increase to global temperature.
Either such an increase raises global temperature or other factors overwhelm the effect of increased CO2. And if such an overwhelming occurs then there is no reason to suppose that increased CO2 will raise global temperature.
But you say;
“Show me where the science says that for each and every increment of CO2, there’s a lockstep increment in temperature.”
And you have the gall to follow that straw man by saying;
“You’re good at erecting strawmen. Or else being unaware.”
I yet again ask you to refrain from posting silly comments.
Richard
I have drafted the following email to integrity@ostp.gov, the email address given for comments in Director Holdren’s Dec 17 Scientific Integrity memo, but won’t send it until after January 1 when the OSTP staff is back to full strength and my email won’t be buried in the bottom of the stack. After reading many thoughtful posts on this site, I have decided to put this draft out for participants at this site to consider and provide feedback to me on my proposal for an independent review board to evaluate the validation status of current climate change models and to recommend acceptable uses for these models, including uses by politicians and federal agencies for public policy legislation and regulation:
Email to: integrity@ostp.gov (draft unsent)
Subject: Director Holdren’s December 17, 2010 Memorandum on Scientific
Integrity
To OSTP Staff:
I read with great interest and appreciation the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director John Holdren’s subject memorandum (attached). This communication will express my concern regarding Scientific Integrity in the general climate change research community, both within and without US Federal Agencies, as well as, research funded by US federal agencies. Also, let me state up front, that I respect the Scientific Integrity of the US scientific community more than the global scientific community as a whole, and much more than would be represented in science-related political committees such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sponsored by the United Nations.
My above perceptions regarding Scientific Integrity are based on considerable business dealings and technical collaborations with scientists and engineers around the globe in both the aerospace and oil and gas energy industries. This is not said to demean the many outstanding and extremely ethical scientists and engineers from other countries I have worked with on successful projects such as the International Space Station and oil and gas drilling research departments of global energy companies. Our US scientists have more freedom from political influences than their counterparts in many other countries around the globe, and the ethics of our US culture are much more advanced than many countries with representation at the United Nations. I want to make sure that the strengths of the entire, integrated US scientific community are engaged in US public policy decisions regarding climate change, and that these decisions are not unduly influenced by political committees of the United Nations such as the IPCC. I am disturbed that so much of the scientific data and content of US federal agency websites is attributed to the IPCC as opposed to the independent contributions of scientists within our own federal agencies.
I am a retired, but still active consultant, and former NASA Johnson Space Center employee with over 47 years professional experience with NASA, several NASA contractors, and the global energy exploration and production industry. I have a BS Degree in Physics (1963) and PhD in Mechanical Engineering (1970). My professional experience and expertise is heavily weighted towards development and validation of computer simulation models for complex systems, including the computer simulation for the Apollo Lunar Model (LM) touchdown toppling dynamics. This model, developed with a colleague at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (now JSC), was used to guide design and development of the LM landing gear, define safe touchdown and landing site conditions for toppling and energy absorption, develop piloting approach and landing procedures, and final landing site selections.
It was critical that these LM touchdown dynamics computer models be validated to the extent possible before committing these models for use in design decisions and operational planning decisions for all of our Apollo moon landings. In these early days of the Apollo Program (1963) when we first began to use touchdown dynamics models in lieu of physical drop test model experiments, computer simulation was in its infancy. Therefore, I consider myself to be an early pioneer in use of computer simulation technology for design and operational decisions involving risk of human life. I am a firm believer, based on my experience in critical manned space programs, that computer models should always be validated to details commensurate with the risk that use of these models presents to project risk related to cost, schedule and human life. I am still an active consultant to NASA for purposes of reviewing and assessing development risk of on-going space exploration programs, and model validation status is always a key technical review subject of these programs.
I should make it clear that none of my substantial computer modeling experience has been involved with models as complex as those used in attempts to run simulations of climate change 50 – 100 years into the future. I seriously question whether all of the climate change mechanisms involved and their relative importance, are adequately understood and properly modeled in the simulations using “first principle” scientific laws rather than empirical data from the past, and have sufficient data for which to initialize the models for accurate 50-year simulations. Perhaps when we can consistently get an accurate 10-day weather forecast for the USA (certainly a simpler simulation problem where many long term effects are essentially constant and can be ignored), with a sufficiently detailed and discretized weather model, that will execute in less than 10-days on current (or future) supercomputers, I will become less skeptical.
Another important factor to consider in successful past use of computer simulations involving risk to human life, is that in many computer simulations, we can use modeling assumptions that bias simulation results to a conservative, lower-risk solution. For example, in lunar landing simulations, we could assume that footpads of the LM landing gear could not slide due to obstruction by rocks, craters or high coefficient of friction between the footpads and lunar soil. This assumption could be shown by analysis and experiments with dynamically scaled drop test models, to be very conservative in determining touchdown conditions that would lead to overturning of the LM during touchdown, and we made critical design and operational decisions with the comfort of this extra “pad” of conservatism while recognizing there might be undiscovered inadequacies of our models that would “eat into” this “pad” of conservatism.
It is not clear how to confidently do such conservative simulations with a problem as complex as climate change. If we are trying to be as accurate as possible in predicting future average global temperatures (proper definition and measurement of this metric is not even “settled science”), we don’t want to err on either the hot or cold side of the solution. Therefore, common and successful “conservatively biased” engineering practices for safe use of computer simulation models do not appear to be available to the climate change scientists; absolute accuracy in their model predictions is paramount.
After the Shuttle Columbia accident review board findings, NASA realized that long-established informal, but common sense, rules used in the Apollo program for development and validation of critical models (like our LM landing touchdown dynamics computer simulations) that were used for design and operational decisions, were not being used by Space Shuttle engineers who were using “models” to assess potential damage to the Shuttle Orbiter from insultation foam falling off of the External Tank. They were inappropriately using results of these “models” to advise Shuttle management and flight directors about the level of risk and concern of specific foam impact events that occurred during launch operations. In fact, the term “model” used in engineer to management communications for this database was mis-used and mis-understood by critical decision makers using the information supplied. The “model” was merely a database of foam impact events that had occurred in the past with related damage to the Shuttle Orbiter determined from post flight inpsections. It was not a predictive model based on first principles and the Laws of Physics such as used for LM landing risk predictions discussed above, that would predict damage to a specific area of the Orbiter based on foam mass and impact velocity of a specific impact event. As a result of the Columbia review board findings related to this improper use of an unvalidated “model” for flight operations decisions, the NASA Chief Engineer in late 2008 issued a new policy for development, maintenance, configuration control and validation of critical math models used for design and operational decisions in manned space flight.
My concern, as an interested objective, and outside observer, is that climate change models are not being subjected to the same validation rigor as are models used in un-manned and manned spacecraft programs, commercial airplane development programs, or dynamic loads and structural analysis models used to design and certify public safety of buildings, bridges, etc. However, the questionable predictions of these unvalidated climate change models are being used by many in the US government and elected officials to formulate plans, federal agency policies, and legislation on extremely costly and potentially hazardous public policy decisions.
In the spirit of Director Holdren’s December 17, 2010 memorandum on Scientific Integrity, I suggest that it is unthinkable to embark on public policy legislation with trillions of dollars impact to the US economy and the risk of unknown consequences (such as risk of creating floods or droughts in certain areas of the US or the globe) based on predictions of unvalidated climate change models. Therefore, I recommend to the OSTP, that before such models are used to guide critical public policy changes, that an independent, objective review board or Federal Advisory Committee, as addressed in the subject memo, be convened to assess the validation level of climate change computer models used in various US Government agencies and to determine acceptable uses of these models in developing public policy changes. I believe such independent, objective review boards with scientifically qualified “outside of the research community” members, as those convened after the Shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents, were extemely important in highlighting obvious safety issues of the Space Shuttle operations that could not be seen or objectively decided by NASA insiders close to the known issues. In both cases, the Shuttle was not being operated within its structural design limits and requirements used in the fail-safe design process. Certainly, taking specific actions to try to modify global climate trends based on climate change model predictions, has a potential risk of cost and human life much greater than the Space Shuttle Program, and justifies the above recommended climate change model validation status review.
In general, my personal standards for model validation and those of other successful practitioners I respect, require that the model be shown to accurately predict (in advance) the outcomes of carefully designed and controlled experiments. Although this standard is difficult to apply for climate change models that are making predictions 50 years into the future, we recognize that it should be easier to correctly predict outcomes 5 or 10 years into the future. Based on our questionable ability to significantly affect climate change trends (climate has been changing for eons without human cause or interference), and the time required for significant climate changes to occur, we should be willing to take the 5 or 10 years required to at least partially validate the models and evaluate their accuracy, before using them for extremely costly decisions with high risk of unknown consequences.
If a climate change model includes all valid first principle Physics, Geo-Physics, Electro-Magnetics, Chemistry, etc., simulations required to model all important processes necessary to predict climate changes in the future, it should be able to predict what will happen in five or ten years. However, very few, if any models have correctly predicted global temperature trends and fluctuations of the last 10 – 15 years. Some of this disappointment from the most visible scientists in the climate change modeling arena, including US government employees, were captured in the “leaked” emails of the recent “Climategate” scandal. This scandal has severely damaged the Scientific Integrity of the global climate change research community in the eyes of many of my peers who have many years of experience in ethical uses of models for design and operational decisions affecting human lives.
I have other concerns regarding the political debate on climate change which places the climate change research community under extreme outside pressure and that influences which research proposals get funded by federal agencies and which don’t. This political bias even influences what research proposals scientists decide to write, based on their perception of what are the “hot buttoms” of the federal agency with grant funds to award. I believe these political factors are also significantly influencing Scientific Integrity in this particular research community. Claims of “scientific concensus” used by many politicians and activists without scientific credentials, have no place within a science community with high standards for Scientific Integrity. You either prove a theory or you don’t. You don’t give a theory scientific law status by a “concensus” vote.
We need much better Scientific Integrity within the climate change research community to repair the damage that has already been done. I sincerely hope that the OSTP will seriously consider the concerns and recommendations I have made in this communication. I don’t think the climate change research community realizes how many skeptics it has within the broader USA technical community, or that they have yet given adequate and objective consideration to those skeptics in an open and honest scientific discussion. However, some progress is being made through the efforts of Dr. Judith Curry (www.judithcurry.com) highlighted in the November 2010 issue of Scientific American magazine. My much more brief comments than presented here were made as Comment #257 to this article.
The number of highly experienced and qualified engineering and scientist skeptics regarding use of unvalidated climate change models is an important factor to consider. I believe the collective experiences and lessons learned from the broader USA science and engineering community should be utilized in addressing issues regarding acceptable uses of predictions made by unvalidated climate change computer simulation models. Dr. Curry should be congratulated for leading her climate change research colleagues along a path that will have them seriously considering issues raised by the “skeptics” of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). I believe the independent review board of qualified US scientists, that I have recommended herein, would hasten implementation of this process.
Sincerely,
Harold H. Doiron, PhD
Edit for conciseness. Put the two to five salient points you want to make at the top in the first para. Should be enough to show that the rest is worthy of attention.
All the rest of the guff should be in an appendix or supporting materials.
Use short direct sentences
‘After the Shuttle Columbia accident review board findings, NASA realized that long-established informal, but common sense, rules used in the Apollo program for development and validation of critical models (like our LM landing touchdown dynamics computer simulations) that were used for design and operational decisions, were not being used by Space Shuttle engineers who were using “models” to assess potential damage to the Shuttle Orbiter from insultation foam falling off of the External Tank’
= ‘Space Shuttle engineers used models instead of common sense and it didn’t work’
Work uou who is likely to read it and what will grab their interest. If its a politican – votes, a financier – money, an academic -status power ad papers…tailor your message to your audience.
Just a few thoughts. But even after just skimming it, it is waaaaay too long to gain attention.
‘I am sorry for writing you such a long letter…I dd not have time to write a short one’ attributed to Churchill (among many others)
Good letter, and I certainly appreciate the plug! you spelled my name correctly :) but have the wrong web address, it is judithcurry.com. My only suggestion is to see if you can tighten it up a bit (e.g. shorten or bulletize or something) so it is easier to spot the “take home” point. Also, maybe add a biosketch at the end, with a brief mention of your education and previous NASA position in the main text. A key challenge in a letter like this is to make sure that whoever receives this is motivated to actually read it, and not just glance at it and send you a form letter thanking you for your letter.
Good advice. Bullett points are good.
May I suggest that his NASA position is also included at the TOP with his introduction.
Thanks for your involvement in the highly successful Apollo Mission to the Moon. Great engineering !
I agree with Professor Curry’s comments on your message:
a.) Your message is lengthy but excellent.
b.) How can you get OSTP staff to read it?
c.) Short bulleted notes would be helpful.
The Shuttle disaster delayed the Galileo Mission, but data [1] from the 1995 Galileo Probe of Jupiter [2] confirmed the 1983 “Iron Sun” [3].
1. “Galileo Probe Confirms Strange Xenon in Jupiter”
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1998Data.htm
2. “Solar abundances of the elements”, Meteoritics 18, 209-222 (1983) http://tinyurl.com/224kz4
3. “Isotopic ratios in Jupiter confirm intra-solar diffusion”, Meteoritics 33, A97, abstract 5011 (1998).
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc98/pdf/5011.pdf
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
At risk of being mildly offensive, can I hope that a kind relative gave you another drum to bang on this Christmas Day?
As others have noted, I too just tune out your posts wherever I find them since they are so obsessively unrelenting on your sole topic of converse.
You would make your point with greater impact if it were to be occasionally leavened with some other fare. The public, and me, avoid engaging with those when the conversation is entirely predictable:
In the street:
Me: Morning Oliver – What bout them Saints then*
You: Yes, but did I tell you about the composition of the Sun? Its made of iron you know.
Me: Looks like its going to be cold again.
You: That’s because the Sun’s made of iron.
Me: How’re the grandchildren?
You: Doing as well as the can be in a world where the Sun is made of iron.
Me: Goodbye Oliver
You: Go carefully…the world’s a dangerous place because the Sun’s made of iron.
.
Later at home
.
Me: Hi darling – just met Oliver in the street
Her: What did he want?
Me: Dunno ..just wittered on as usual about the moon being made of green cheese and the sun being made of lead or something. I wasn’t listening…and neither was he.
(* or other appropriate remark suitable to chance encounters while walking the dog or doing the shopping. I believe that in the US ‘what ’bout them Saints then?’ is a common such expression and can be used in almost all social situations independent of place or season…..)
Thanks, Latimer.
You communicate well. I appreciate the message.
On this special day, can I mention that the event that gave birth to the Earth and the rest of the solar system also changed the personality of nuclear particles from the violent, angry, resentful character of Kali ?
Peace,
Oliver
Have a Great Christmas. Cheers.
On this and other blogs, I have defended Mr Manuel on a number of occasions.
But in keeping with the jovial nature of the festive season, I can’t help but think locking Mr Manuel and Dr Peter Wetzel in a room with a months worth of supplies would be a good thing.
I still admire Mr Manuels tenacity.
Thanks for your kindness and tolerance!
I am compulsively concerned that those trying to understand climate change do not understand that the heat, light, neutrinos, H (91%), and He (9%) issuing from the top of the Sun – Earth’s heat source – are like smoke issuing from the top of a chimney:
Waste products from the nuclear engine that actually powers the Sun and sustains our very lives here on Earth.
Even Nobel Laureate William A. Fowler was deceived into thinking that the basic concepts of nuclear physics were violated by the smoke coming from the Sun:
“Indeed there are details to be attended to, but they are overshadowed by serious difficulties in the most basic concepts of nuclear astrophysics.
On square one, the solar neutrino puzzle is still with us (chapt. 10), indicating that we do not even understand how our own star really works.
On square two we still cannot show in the laboratory and in theoretical calculations why the ratio of oxygen to carbon in the sun and similar stars is close to two-to-one (see chapt. 7).
We humans are mostly (90%) oxygen and carbon. We understand in a
general way the chemistry and biology involved, but we certainly do not understand the nuclear astrophysics which produced the oxygen and carbon in our bodies.” –William A. Fowler, 1988
http://www.omatumr.com/Fowler1988/CaldronsCosmos.pdf
A high school student from Germany helped solve this puzzle by reviewing abundances of elements in the solar photosphere with those predicted from neutron-capture cross sections, including neutron-capture cross sections measured by Professor Fowler’s group many years earlier in the W. K. Kellogg Radiation Laboratory at Caltech.
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/LunarAbstract.pdf
Best wishes for the holidays,
Oliver K. Manuel
They may indeed have “hot bottoms”, even the runs, but I think you meant “hot buttons”.
And consensus has only one “c”. Really.
The “guidelines” are phrased as applying to all gubmint approved or funded research, not just the Climate Change/Irritable Climate Syndrome issue. As such they are phrased very generally, in typical noble-sounding bureaucratese. Your suggestions about validation are so far from the current state of play that I personally doubt there is any realistic hope of seeing them given more than obfuscatory lip-service.
But we’ll see.
All, Thanks for the excellent, rapid feedback. Posting this draft which, I agree is waaaay too long, is working out better than I expected. But I have all the points and observations out there for all particpants on this website to consider and critique….JC, I had already caught the web address error: Was my “hot buttoms” typo a freudian slip?
Clicking the Chris Mooney link in your other perspectives links takes one to
DeSmogBlog and to what seem to me to be incredibly biased cv reviews of
“deniers”. If I were to do the same for, say, Holdren, or Mann, or Hansen,
it would be quite interesting (Holdren’s book with Ehrlich for example).
The thing is shameful propaganda picking unflattering photos and trying to make the people look foolish. One wouldn’t know, for example, that Dyson could have been given the Nobel prize along with Feynman, Tomanoga, and Schwinger for showing the equivalence of the formulations. The problem with the dominant AGW folks is their insistence on “consensus science” and lumping everyone who IMO isn’t an alarmist hysteric as a “denier”. NASA has just substantially lowered climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling. Rational people can see that there is climate change, even global warming without getting hysterical and insisting on immediate preemptive action that may not only be useless, but create yet another fraudulent derivative market.
‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ was written before climategate, just a swift chapter tacked onto the end, prior to publication..
Documenting Climate Audit’s battles and other with the ‘team’.
climategate, just gave extra prove to the behaviour and then some
Surely a lot of climate science is dubious at best, as the underlying data has not been published and the results have not been independently duplicated. Indeed, much of the original data has been revealed to be missing. If there has been fraud, the evidence has been destroyed.
Peer review is at the root of the problem. It has become the substitute for independent confirmation. This has left climate science wide open to cronyism and corruption, and the replacement of science with politics.
Yes, indeed. Independent confirmation is at the root of the scientific method.
Science recognises that humans are prone to beliefs, prejudices and other biases, partiality and even just plain laziness, which is why the scientific method came about as a vehicle to transcend these human failings.
You can circumvent the scientific method and still arrive at the truth, but you will never know, can never be sure. And you also cannot call it science.
“Science recognises that humans are prone to beliefs, prejudices and other biases, partiality and even just plain laziness, which is why the scientific method came about as a vehicle to transcend these human failings.”
Well said, Peter – which is why all this analysis of people’s motivations for believing this or that is misguided. Stick to the scientific method, scientists, and I don’t care if you’re mad, bad, or dangerous to know.
Yes, the cause of science would indeed benefit if scientists stuck to the scientific method. No examination of motives and funding would be needed then.
Derecho64 is right that motivation is important.
That is why government-funded science – which inter alia constitutes 99+% of all climate science funding – is inherently corrupted towards findings that favour expansion of government. Which is what drives the war on science corruption. The war that Derech is so annoyed about.
“There was indeed a real hoax that was perpetrated on the public. But this was perpetrated by the people who concocted a deliberate misinformation campaign. They wanted the public to think that climate science is suspect. Sowing doubt in the mind of the public is all that they needed to accomplish. Their basic tactics included swift-boating and character assassination, using e-mails stolen from scientists’ computers.”
The simple fact is the leaked Climategate emails show intovertable evidence of widespread malfeasance by the IPCC cadre. But does this alone make climate science as a whole suspect? No.
What does make it suspect, is
– lack of any repentance by those involved
– a deafening silence from so many other climate scientists
– blatant attempts at whitewashing by the universities involved
Untill these issues are rectified, the perception of ‘suspect’ is right on the money.
Hm. The Reply function isn’t functioning, it seems. The above is concerning the police statement about the investigation of the release of the Climategate emails.
Now it’s below! J, M, and Joseph!
“Brian H | December 27, 2010 at 5:24 am | Reply
Translation:
“It’s been a hard slog, we might or might not have found out anything, and for the foreseeable future it’s none of your damn business anyway. Sod off.””
Catching up on my reading and would like to re-visit the “fraud” topic discussed earlier. Perhaps this would qualify as fraud:
It has been reported that Dr Syed Hasnain, working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general, participated in helping TERI to win a substantial share of a $500,000 grant from one of America’s leading charities, along with a share in a three million euro research study funded by the EU.
The TERI request for funding for this glacier study was supported by the supposedly rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers (“glaciergate”). Dr Syed Hasnain has admitted that prior to requesting the funding he knew that this rapid melting reported by the IPCC was incorrect .
(If the facts are in dispute, I’d like to know).
You are expecting politicians to inject ‘integrity’ back into science?
Hahahahahah
Happy New Year.
If you’re talking about the current 111th Congress, forget integrity. As far as the incoming 112th Congress, we have to wait and see.
Actually, we know ahead of time that the majority will be corrupt.
It’s not a question of politicians fixing science, but rather a question of whether they’ll wreck it less than they currrent do; ie, will politically-funded science be any less corrupt/politicised under the new regime?
It’s all a question of whether the new regime will be less totalitarian than the current one, ie will bring about a less politicised society.
Burt Rutan, a great “out of the box thinker” engineer who designs airplanes and spaceships for safe human travel, has captured in following slide show presentation why so many engineers I know are skeptics about AGW, and why we are concerned about Scientific Integrity in the climate research research community.
http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.pdf
We engineers may be outsiders to the climate change research community, but we do have a point of view and a successful track record (built upon many embarrasing failures and lessons learned) for dealing with public safety that insiders should carefully consider.
Harold–
I’m with you on this one.
I’m disappointed in Mr. Rutan.
Next time I design an airplane, I’ll ask a climate scientist. Should work, right?
Derecho–
You might try reading Rutan’s presentations to understand where he’s coming from — among other things it’s about data analysis, something engineers like Rutan and myself do all the time. That rational people can view the same noisy and incomplete datasets and come up with different conclusions is something most of us learned the hard way while working on advanced degrees.
When was the last time you “designed” an airplane?
I looked over his presentation – it’s a gallery of “skeptic” talking points. The careful selection from Schneider’s oft-mangled comment, making it appear the opposite of what was intended, was a nice touch.
I know a thing or two about data analysis myself.
Derocho–
“Schneider’s oft-mangled comment…” perhaps you should provide us with a acceptable reference. At this point in time, I have at least three, and none of them point favorably in Schneider’s direction
The case against global warming alarmists starts from there. Do take the time to think about that!!
H’mm
Is that the best you can do?
‘It is a gallery of sceptic talking points’. What were you expecting… a small poem on the delights of Christmas pudding? A playlet a la LA on the topic of the Australian floods and the lack of Ashes to hold them back? Or a tripliacted application form to join the IPCC because Rutan wants to save the Polie Bears from Big Oil Deniers and Al Gore?
Of course its a sceptical document. The guy is an engineer and is used to looking at similar problems…very small signals among a lot of noise.
If the best you can do is to shuffle past holding your nose and say that ‘I too have done some data analysis’, then Joe Sixpack might conclude that in this case you have absolutely nothing to say in response.
Rutan’s points are well made, logical and well thought out. Attempting to dismiss them with an airy wave of your supposedly expert hand is missing the point bigtime.
Ignoring anything purely because you deem it ‘sceptical’, but without reply is a very very short-sighted ploy. It may have worked well on Warmist blogs in the past, but is not a winning tactic here.
Derech064,
No it wouldn’t work. And it wouldn’t work for reasons you refuse to look into. Engineers come up with ideas the would seem to work based on the physics, prior experience and models. They then TEST those ideas to see how the actuality compares to the ideas. It there are discrepancies, and they cannot clearly see the issue, they would change something and redo the process repeating until someone came up with an out of box idea that worked or whittle away the discrepancies by trial and error.
Changes may be made in how and what data is gathered, insurin g the accuracy of the data, and conferring with other experts with complementary experience who may be able to give insights.
They do NOT reanalyze data to force it to fit what they WANT to work, adjust models to fit what they WANT to work, because if they do they have a large probability of ultimate failure.
So you are right, I WOULDN’T expect a Climate Scientist to be able to build an aircraft that would perform within the required performance and safety parameters. On the other hand, I would be more trusting of an honest engineer, geologist, chemist… than of a number of Climate Scientists.
Sorry if you did not want a serious response to your smart-aleck comment.
Provide us with a control earth, then.
Ooops – we have only the one, and it’s undergoing a test as we write. Care to tell us how well an aircraft designer would do with one and only one plane to do every test conceivable? No wind tunnels, either.
Well Derech064, tell me about CLOUD. Isn’t that the type of thing that engineers would do since, in many cases, they have to PROVE a lot of engineering BEFORE building say, a Space Shuttle?
How about all those embarassing Solar readings, wouldn’t an engineer try and figure out why they don’t fit into his model before proceeding?? Nope, the head Climate Scientists simply keep attempting to PROVE their conjecture rather than doing honest research which has the chance of DISPROVING it.
As usual you are simply wagging your fingers with little but the party line to write.
Probably only mildly dumber than asking a consensus climate scientist about climate.
Harold,
I am a bit perplexed by the amount of misunderstanding of global warming on the part of many who claim to have an engineering background. After all, global warming is more an “engineering” problem than some kind of a new scientific investigation. The work that I do in climate modeling is more engineering in nature than it is in “new” scientific development.
Dispensing with subjective terminology such as catastrophic, critical, pollutant, etc., let us start with the basics. Precise measurement and monitoring of atmospheric CO2 has been made since 1958. Such precise measurements have been extended backward in time for over 400,000 by measuring the CO2 content of air bubbles trapped in Antarctic and Greenland ice cores. These show that atmospheric CO2 has varied from about 180 ppm during peak ice age to about 280 ppm during inter-glacial periods. The CO2 increase from 280 ppm pre-industrial levels to the present value of near 390 ppm is due almost entirely to human industrial activity.
Anyone who is unwilling to accept the basic reality of the atmospheric CO2 measurements, and attribution to human industrial activity, is predisposed to denialist thinking. Why muddy the water by plotting inaccurate chemical measurement results and stomatal density inferences from fossil pine needles as if they were comparable to the precise Mauna Loa monitoring measurements of atmospheric CO2? Industrial records show some 7 billion tons of coal and 5 billion tons of oil being produced each year. What do you suppose they do with that stuff? It does get burned you know, and there is the corresponding decrease in in atmospheric O2. About half of the fossil fuel CO2 gets absorbed by the ocean, leaving an annual increase in atmospheric CO2 by about 2 ppm per year. The details of the atmospheric CO2 trend are fully described in the IPCC AR4 Report.
The next basic point is that atmospheric CO2 has strong spectral absorption bands at thermal wavelengths, the detailed spectral properties of which are tabulated in the HITRAN spectral line data base. There is no rational reason to think that this basic data is suspect – it has had plenty of laboratory and theoretical verification and validation.
Tabulating greenhouse gases by volume (water vapor = 95.001%) and suggesting that “Man’s emissions of CO2 contribute only 0.117%
of the total greenhouse gas warming effect” is being extraordinarily disingenuous, if not deliberately dishonest. Perhaps gullible public opinion might be swayed by such nonsense. But why would an engineer who should know better make such a ridiculous and erroneous statement?
Given the atmospheric composition, absorption coefficient data base, and temperature profile structure, it is a matter of radiative transfer calculations to compute the atmospheric radiative fluxes. This is basically a straightforward engineering task, numerically tedious to be sure, but no new “theory” or technical information is required. The results show, for example, that the LW flux emitted by the ground is about 390 W/m2 (288 K), while the outgoing flux at the top of the atmosphere is only 240 W/m2 (255 K equivalent) – the 240 W/m2 being equal to the absorbed global-mean solar energy would signify a planet in radiative equilibrium possessing a greenhouse effect of 150 W/m2 (or 33 K).
The above is a rather straightforward engineering description of the global thermal structure of the Earth in radiative/convective equilibrium. The curious engineer might want to know what components of the atmospheric structure contribute to the greenhouse effect, and how much by each component. If we performed a purely radiative equilibrium calculation for the vertical distribution of current atmospheric composition, we would find a greenhouse effect of about 66 K, instead of the actual 33 K. But the radiative equilibrium atmosphere would exhibit a temperature gradient that is far too steep to be stable against convective instability. (It is moist convective and advective energy transport required to maintain dynamic stability that acts to establish the current climate temperature lapse rate.)
By performing a radiative modeling dissection of the atmospheric thermal structure (by adding and subtracting individual components one-by-one), we find that water vapor accounts for about 50% of the terrestrial greenhouse effect, with clouds contributing about 25%, CO2 20%, and the minor greenhouse gases such as CH4, N2O, O3, CFCs, the remaining 5%.
Further physical insight comes from noting that CO2, CH4, N2O, O3, and CFCs, do not condense or precipitate from the atmosphere at current climate temperatures (although their atmospheric concentrations are affected by much more slowly acting chemical and biological interactions). On the other hand, water vapor and cloud amounts are highly variable in time and space, and are strongly affected both directly and indirectly by atmospheric temperature and meteorological effects.
A logical conclusion is to identify water vapor and clouds as fast acting feedback effects, and to associate the non-condensing GHGs as radiative forcing that provides the basic stable temperature structure that enables the current distribution of atmospheric water vapor and clouds. This view is fully supported by the climate experiment that we performed by zeroing out all of the non-condensing greenhouse gases, then running the model to equilibrium. Without the temperature support structure provided by the non-condensing GHGs, the terrestrial greenhouse effect collapsed with water vapor condensing and precipitating from the atmosphere, plunging the Earth into an icebound state.
There are of course other things besides GHGs (e.g., aerosols and natural variability) that impact the climate system. It should also be clear that the large heat capacity of the ocean will greatly delay the convergence of global temperature to equilibrium in response to the realized radiative forcings. This makes drawing conclusions from simple correlations between changing surface temperatures and GHG amounts problematic because of the noisiness of the temperature data record and the relatively short length of the observational data record compared to the heat capacities involved.
It makes good sense to differentiate between global warming due to increasing GHGs, and global climate change which encompasses all factors that affect the climate system. The relationship between increasing atmospheric GHGs and the resulting global warming is that of a direct cause and corresponding effect. Natural and solar irradiance variability, and aerosol effects impose global (and regional) surface temperature effects that overlap the global warming effect by GHGs. This provides a good engineering overview of what is happening with the terrestrial climate system.
A Lacis,
Perhaps it would be better to use the expression “climate model experiment” than “climate experiment”.
As a physicist, who has spent quite a lot of time in trying to learn about climate change, I am also frustrated by the difficulty of getting even the (for me) obvious facts accepted. Getting them accepted would, however, not solve the policy issues.
Accepting issues based on sufficiently well known physics directly enough for any well qualified physicist to verify, there remains a lot of uncertainty in climate sensitivity. IPCC reports wide limits and accepting even those limits requires trust in climate scientists, as simple physics arguments cannot tell much about the strength of feedbacks and as empirical evidence is also not very direct or precise. For me, it would be very nice to find a forum where modelers discuss openly the basis for their confidence. Presently I have certainly problems in deciding, which of the assurances are unbiased and fully objective. There is certainly basis to think that some climate scientist do not meet these requirements in the public statements even if most try to be honest.
On the other hand, what I would really like to learn and what would really make a difference is only fairly high certainty that climate sensitivity is rather low, say almost certainly below 2.5 C. I know that this is not, what I can expect to learn, not at least in near future.
And yet, and yet … many, many engineers disagree with you. Are they just the dumb ones? How can you tell in advance of this particular test case?
A Lacis,
“Why muddy the water by plotting inaccurate chemical measurement results and stomaeaal density inferences from fossil pine needles as if they were comparable to the precise Mauna Loa monitoring measurements of atmospheric CO2?”
Very superficial. When did Mauna Loa start recording?? Lemme think, Oh yeah, it started recording during the last minimum temp cycle that GISS uses for their base line. Yup, if the oceans are heating we would expect CO2 to climb. Funny how that works. The next 5 years should be quite interesting.
Now, you expect us to give you respect because you are scientists and you know what you are doing. I tell you what, I will give you the same respect that you gave Beck and the Nobel winners who made a load of CO2 measurements that you and yours have made rather rude remarks about and totally ignore. Let me see, we are told that those measurements have a 3% error rate. HORRORS!!!! A 450ppm reading could actually be anywhere from 436.5-463.5. I really don’t care what your complaints are, they are bull. I can go to quite a few areas in the world today and get higher measurements than that while Mauna Loa is ticking off 380-390 readings. Instead of saying that the old readings are bad you people should have been investigating how the background levels at Mauna Loa compared torural and urban areas over the years. Of course, you knew what you wanted to prove so only want to discredit anything that doesn’t fit your agenda!! On the other hand, unlike CO2, with temperatures you apparently are only interested in readings that are human contaminated. Please explain to us why we wouldn’t want to know both types of readings for both metrics??
Then there is also the question why do we have any paleo reconstructions? Scientists and engineeers would like a better idea of what was actually happening BEFORE your wonderful modern measurements. Since you and yours don’t accept the work that previous scientists have done, what else is there??
I really doubt if many deniers like me deny the Mauna Loa readings really are steadily going up. We DO claim that CO2 is not as “well mixed” as was claimed and satellite data is doing a very nice job of showing it. We also doubt that the ice closes up as nicely as you wishful thinkers claim and that at best it provides an extremely smoothed lower limit to historical CO2 at that location.
Basically A Lacis, when a group of wannabes comes along and starts rewriting accepted science for an agenda, exactly what do you expect?? The idea of AGW was refuted 3 times and yet you geniuses decided to try and bring it back again to remake the world.
Think about it bud. We aren’t going to accept it until you can show a case more solid than gravity, which I might point out we STILL don’t have a mechanism for!! In other words, your math has to be more than pretty, it actually must be able to make USEFUL PREDICTIONS!!! Anyone can make hindcasts and you fail at that also. You have a sum total of failure at pretty much everything. No tropical hotspot warming faster than the surface (see, adjusting surface temps hurt you there!!), no elevated tropopause, and no cooling strat. Can you fail at any more basic predictions and still claim you know what you are doing?? You haven’t even fixed what you have failed at. You gonna MOVE ON from this also??
Pekka,
Sure enough, “climate modeling experiments” would be a far more accurate description of what we do than the vaguely inapplicable (and unnecessarily sloppy) term of “climate experiment”. (The Pinatubo volcanic eruption would be a more appropriate example of a ready made climate experiment.)
A climate sensitivity of 3 C +/-0.5 C for doubled CO2 is probably a reasonable current best estimate. It is difficult to pin this number down more precisely based on currently available measurements of climate change, primarily because of uncertainties related to aerosol direct and indirect forcing. Perhaps the strongest evidence for 3 C sensitivity comes from the geological record provided by the Antarctic Vostok ice core data as described by Hansen et al (2008), “Target Atmospheric CO2, Where Should Humanity Aim?” in The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 2, 217-231, available in pdf form from the GISS webpage http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008/
What effect are cloud feedbacks attributed in that ?
Andy,
Just as you zeroed out the non-condensing GHG’s, have you ever run a climate modeling experiment with:
1) No water vapor or clouds? Mass of non-condensing GHG’s held constant.
2) No non GHG’s (N2, O2, Ar) GHG’s, mass of GHG’s held constant?
I would find these climate modeling experiments to be illuminating .
I believe they have and they find that there is no warming and they cannot hindcast.
Of course, since they have set values for aerosols, solar and all the other parameters to match what they believe should be right, that is perfectly understandable. When they say the models are based on physics, that isn’t a completely true statement. Much of the math cannot be solved directly so they do the best they can. The values for the parametes is where it gets ugly though. There is little empirical data to provide these values which may change for differing conditions.
(Do we really need/want the apostrophe in “GHG’s” ? Surely “GHGs” would be better?)
Ya; apostrophic incompetence abounds.
Best simple guideline:
” ‘s ” is for abbreviations of “is” and “has”, and for possessives of nouns not ending in “s” or “z”.
NEVER-EVER-EVER for plurals.
For the tricky pronouns (which actually obey the above, btw):
His, hers, its;
He’s, she’s, it’s.
Done!
“apostrophic incompetence abounds.”
Not necessarily in this case. With informal initial-isms there is a danger of the “s” being misinterpreted as part of the initial-ism. In the case of a formal initial-ism, i.e G.I.s, the .s is awkward. G.I.’s is much clearer.
Thus, the ” ‘s ” is clarifying the plurality, and is an application of the rule for formal initial-isms.
Old school – Rule 15 d, page 142. Harbrace College Handbook, John C. Hodges, Harcourt Brace and Company, NY NY.
New School – Wikipedia, on the other hand, does make a case for just using the ” s “.
Kan;
I did say the simplest rule. I’m all for minimizing misinterpretation. That means not “leaning” on context unnecessarily. Stand-alone, distinguish plural G.I.’s from possessive G.I.’s, please.
Waiting …
In my world, both of those are the singular possessive. G.I.s is plural. The possessive of the plural would be G.I.s’ . How would you do it? G.I.’s’s ? Blech.
For a generation or more now I haven’t seen anyone write G.I. (with the dots), as opposed to GI (without the dots). And I’ve never seen anyone write G.H.G. .
With this convention, the plurals are unproblematic : GIs and GHGs, with the change from upper- to lower-case clarifying that the ‘s’ indicates a plural, as opposed to being part of the initialism. So, no apostrophe needed.
And for possesives we’d have GI’s and GHG’s (singular), and GIs’ and GHGs’ (plural).
Punksta;
Keerect throughout — but the “G.I.” is a happenstance poor example. Quite a few suffer that fate, of course, but pick one that retains the periods and do it. Same rules.
A. Lacis;
The emphasizing of the minuteness of the CO2 fraction and the human contribution thereto is not “dishonest”. It is a rough-and-ready application of the Reasonableness Test: is the result of the computation of the correct order of magnitude? In this case, no. The “leverage” postulated, in multiple stages, required to make it seem so is indeed so extreme that it requires one of those “extraordinary proofs”. And even ordinary proofs are not forthcoming, nor will they be.
The contortions required to explificate away the retroactive causality is a prime (famous) example. No, don’t reiterate it. It’s foolish on the face of it.
And on it goes.
An initialism ending in an ‘s’ might be interesting (similar to the example of Phil Jones’s Diary). Let’s invent one and try it out – TWS, for Troll With Style.
The plural would be TWSs (pronounced tea-double-you-esses; or tea-dubya-esses in the US ?).
Possesive would be TWS’s (pronounced just like TWSs).
Plural possesive would be TWSs’ (ditto).
As with Phil Jones’s diary versus the Joneses’ diary, the written word distinguishes whereas the spoken word does not.
My point was that the periods convention has been dropped – in all cases, so nothing special about G.I. example going to GI.