Climate tricks
Francis Sedgemore, Saturday 21 November 2009
It would seem that the climate septic blogosphere is currently in an onanistic frenzy over a large number of email files and other electronic documents stolen by hackers from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
One can understand why the authors of the texts in question are reluctant to comment on their content. What we have here appears to be a conspiracy by climate change deniers in collusion with organised crime. Inspector Knacker is now on the case, and when those responsible for distributing the material are caught, they will likely be shat upon from a very great height.
And rightly so. I’m sure that if I were to gain access to and publish the email correspondence of certain Daily Telegraph columnists, for example, some of the public would be fascinated, even if the material were to bore me absolutely rigid. But enough of this beating about the bush: James Delingpole is a tit. Separate Master Delingpole from his Oxonian corduroys and strangulated vowels, and he would be lost without hope. What a pathetic specimen of humanity he is.
The content of private working correspondence is in most cases none of the public’s business, and such prying can only be justified as part of a defensible freedom of information request. That is the moral position, and no amount of bleating from climate conspiracists about state funding of research can overshadow this.
How would you feel if I were to poke around your work email folders. Do I really want to know about your post-prandial slagging of a colleague in another department? I am a journalist, so the answer from me is possibly, but only as part of a properly conducted trawl for further evidence that you or your workmates are up to no good. Note my use of the word “further”.
Based on the comments made by climate scientists in their hacked email correspondence, I can see no evidence of actionable professional misconduct on their part. And as for a supposed “warmist” conspiracy to fiddle scientific data, don’t make me laugh!
Speaking from personal experience of working in the research trade, scientists’ “tricks” have nothing to do with pulling the wool over others’ eyes. Manipulating geophysical data into a form suitable for publication is an integral part of your average climate scientist’s job description. Take liberties with this and you will be torn to shreds by referees who are also research competitors.
In the relatively free market of scientific research, there is no collegial loyalty, and thus no space for grand conspiracies.
For far too long have climate scientists been reacting defensively to the lunatics who populate the blogosphere and more right-field sections of the media. Unlike wanky newspaper columnists and underemployed bloggers sitting at home in their jim-jams, climate scientists have a job to do. If they are to continue doing this job effectively, they will need now to go on the offensive.
Feed the writer! 
Sunday 22 November 2009 at 22:32 GMT
Dear Francis,
Thank you for this rather gripping yarn. The first question that sprung to my mind is who is Mike and what was his trick? Not able to sleep on this … and after a little digging … I assume it is Michael Mann and a reference to the statistical techniques employed in his 1998 Nature paper? (here is a link: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/mbh98.pdf ). I may be wrong but nevertheless this example still serves to illustrate a few points. The 1998 paper provides a detailed account of the methods employed and there is mention of training data and calibration techniques … somewhere in which I expect a very legitimate addition of data may take place (and one that is described openly, although opaquely to the general milieu, and available for criticism should another expert in the field take exception to the method). I am also not surprised that another scientist might paraphrase the complexity as a ‘trick’ as a short hand for an ‘inspired technique’. The paper illustrates that the statistical methods used by climatologists are complicated beasts and to explain them to the non-specialist is the real challenge. I hope that some of the skeptical-bloggers take up the challenge and go back to the source material to verify their claims.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 11:16 GMT
Yes, Bengt, it is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes Nature paper of 1998 – the one about multiproxy temperature reconstructions.
When that paper was published I was working as a research physicist in upper atmosphere and space physics, and had my doubts about the analysis techniques that Michael Mann and his colleagues were using.
In my own field there were at the time efforts to detect secular trends in the peak height of the ionosphere, using data from ionosondes sites around the globe. Similar instruments in terms of basic principles, but without a single, consistent calibration regime.
The science of global warming and ionospheric climatology are related. That is, a warming in the lower part of the atmosphere is accompanied by a cooling at stratospheric altitudes and above. In the latter case one can detect this through the proxy of changes in the height of peak electron density in the ionosphere, which is what ionosondes measure, albeit with a few complications.
I was doubtful about the statistical significance of the results obtained using historical datasets from ionosondes, and so decided to try and replicate the results myself. In this I succeeded, and thus became convinced that the extraction of small secular trends from noisy geophysical data was possible, even where the time series used cover only a few solar cycles (~30 years), and there are natural cycles within the measured paramters that might complicate the analysis.
This work I carried out during my postdoc years in Southampton. In the exercise I learned a lot about experimental statistics, and as a result of my endeavours I came to respect the work of climate scientists working with equally noisy geophysical data, if not more so.
The statistical techniques we’re talking about are not especially complicated, and they have been explained as well as could be for non specialists. The problem is where and when to go into detail, and at what level. This is a problem for science communication specialists to solve in collaboration with researchers. There is no time or space in typical newspaper or broadcast news reports of scientific developments, so that leaves longer feature articles in the press, and the odd TV and radio documentary.
As for climate “skeptic” bloggers, these people are in all but a very few cases like 9/11 troofers and holocaust deniers, and no amount of explaining of scientific detail will convince them that their prejudices are unfounded. For them this is a political battle, to be fought with political and not scientific tools.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 13:41 GMT
“As for climate “skeptic” bloggers, these people are in all but a very few cases like 9/11 troofers and holocaust deniers”.
As someone who lost many family members in the Holocaust, I recoil with disgust when one thinks it appropriate to throw this ultimate ad-hominem attack against someone with whom one disagrees. Indeed, statements like the ones you make draw me *towards* the arguments of the climate sceptics precisely because I want to see what is so threatening that this emotive superfluity of attack is launched against them.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 13:50 GMT
In very many cases, climate deniers are also 9/11 troofers, holocaust deniers (or at least “downgraders”) and general my-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend conspiracy theorists. I’m afraid it goes with the territory, and I make no apology for the comparison.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:03 GMT
I am not sure that spewing playground epithets is helpful in persuading people that your interpretation of the scientific data is accurate. It would be better to stick, calmly and confidently, to the facts. If others call you names in so doing, it reflects badly on them. This sort of hysterical tit-for-tat shrieking is neither reassuring nor convincing. To a genuine sceptic (ie: one who is unpersuaded by either polarity of the argument, and feels it hubristic to deify so quickly an interpretation on data), it seems that a plague might best be wished on both your houses.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:11 GMT
With the rise in antisemitism, including on the left of the political spectrum, it is hardly a “playground epithet”. And as for “polarity” in the debate, this exists only in the minds of climate deniers. The science is settled; only the fine details are up for argument, and there is no shortage of argument within the climate science community about the details.
I admit only to being intolerant … of fuckwits and malcontents who have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the science, but actively choose not to.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:28 GMT
It is precisely because antisemitism is on the rise and is so dangerous that I find its being related in such a haphazard manner problematic.
Isn’t claiming “the science is settled” a profoundly unscientific statement? After all, the ether, phlogiston and so forth would suggest that settlements can receive rudely unsettling disruption.
I and others are happy to look at the data and to try our best at understanding the interpretation of that data to determine whether we have solid inductive reasoning or bashing-the-data-to-fit-the-model. Like you, the interpretation seems reasonable and generally fits the data, but this does NOT mean it can be determined as settled. If it be a position of relative security (for now), then it also doesn’t require insecure screaming and shouting, or suggesting that most who suggest otherwise are Nazis.
I would suggest that your statement that “most” people who are sceptical about climate change are also holocaust deniers/minimisers is also unscientific – I await your sound, empirical validation for such an extraordinary statement.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:37 GMT
The science of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is as settled as the physics that define the behaviour of the nanoscale transistors in your computer.
Who, pray, is screaming and shouting? Certainly not me. Displaying contempt for climate deniers, maybe, but I can assure you there is no hotness under my collar.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:40 GMT
Why do you feel the need to display contempt for those, hotly or otherwise, who disagree with your interpretation of data? If they’re that silly (like flat earthers) then just ignore them until they produce data that convinces you otherwise, surely?
And I’m not sure whether calling someone a Nazi with a cool collar is better than with a hot one :-)
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:43 GMT
Why? Because they are a menace, and their influence is hindering efforts to deal with this and other environmental problems.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:47 GMT
I guess they would say that you’re begging the question that this is an environmental problem that we can deal with. And thus the argument will continue, ad infinitum. (Or ad ardentem/refrigerium). Ho hum.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 14:58 GMT
There are always solutions to be found to environmental problems. Indomitability of the human species, and all that.
Oh dear, now I’m just being sarcastic. Lowest form of wit … and all that.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 15:00 GMT
I personally am not a climate sceptic. However, I am sceptical that any solution based on restraint could ever work. Either we find a technical solution, or we endure/adapt to the cataclysm. I don’t think that low-energy lightbulbs or fewer holidays are going to make much of a difference, and the true hairshirt measures that would be required actually to make a difference would never happen without a totalitarian government and would probably be useless by now in any case.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 15:05 GMT
A totalitarian government is not required to deal with resource scarcity. Surely history teaches us that. And hairshirts are emotive things, as well as extremely irritating.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 15:12 GMT
In order globally to ramp down the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere (whilst not simultaneously ramping up even more effective greenhouse gases), a hairshirt would be cashmere in comparison!
We need to be realistic. This isn’t just about turning your telly off standby or half-filling your kettle. We’re talking about a basic repudiation of everything we’ve done since the industrial revolution. It is intellectual cowardice to suggest otherwise. Now, obviously, this will not happen voluntarily, but I suspect a combination of increasingly scarce oil and disrupted global markets will throw us into the situation where we’re all producing much less carbon pollutant. But not through any voluntary “The Good Life” exigencies ;-)
In other words, unless someone finds a cheap, easy, non-polluting way to engage cold fusion by this time next week, we’re screwed whatever governments agree or don’t in Copenhagen. And we shouldn’t worry too much about it. After all, climate stability is just a blip in this planet’s story, and even if it weren’t, the 2nd Law will screw us all in the end no matter how much carbon we sequester ;-)
Monday 23 November 2009 at 15:47 GMT
If we routinely full-fill our kettles, leave the lights on in unoccupied rooms, and consume more petrol and diesel that we really need to, then we are indeed all screwed … as a result of a lack of will to act appropriately on scales over which we have some control. Domestic energy use is a significant fraction of the whole.
With the right political will and sense of individual and corporate responsibility, solutions may be found that do not result in mass human suffering. This is a moral issue as well as a scientific and technical one. But of course, preaching morality is, like, so 20th century.
Now I readily admit to having a misanthropic streak in me (“Human beings? Fuckers, most of ‘em!”), and my moral line on this issue is best defined as left-libertarian. That is, I have no desire to instruct others on how they should live their lives, but woe betide them if by their actions they adversely affect my life, or the lives of people directly around me, together with particularly vulnerable individuals and communities unable to effectively defend their interests without support from outside.
Climate stability on geological timescales, and thermodynamics on cosmological scales, are quite irrelevant to the discussion. As for controllable and sustainable nuclear fusion, this is at least four decades away, just as it always has been.
Now I have work to do. As it happens, this is on a project which combines technical solutions with market mechanisms to reduce energy consumption on a mass scale.
Monday 23 November 2009 at 15:53 GMT
“Climate stability on geological timescales, and thermodynamics on cosmological scales, are quite irrelevant to the discussion”
Meh – I find it quite relevant and a useful reminder of what a fuss about nothing this all is, even at its most genuinely intense. Anyway, good luck with your work.
Tuesday 1 December 2009 at 21:14 GMT
[...] Is this it – the denialists’ grand response to ClimateGate? [...]
Saturday 5 December 2009 at 12:25 GMT
[...] they perceive to be scheming behind the scenes. I stress the word “perceive”, as this ClimateGate business is so much [...]