We tend to think of scientists as noble beings and science as the objective pursuit of truth. But once the fairy dust lifts, the reality is that science is a head-to-head competition - a race to see who can get the academic credit and public fame first. Consequently, the purity of that pursuit can be clouded by the lowest of human motivations and behaviours.

During my graduate studies, I witnessed a bitter feud between two supposedly reasonable adults who lived on different continents and worked in the same field of research. But there was no supportive collaboration in their work; only a personal vindictiveness and antipathy that led each of them to automatically discredit the other’swork . . . just for the sake of discrediting the other’s work.

These are the kind of games that now seem to exist in climate change research. Last November, over 1,000 e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were leaked to the media. The damage was immense. They raised questions about the reliability of climate science, suggested that data had been manipulated and that the peer review process was biased to reject alternate research or criticism. The charges are particularly significant as the CRU is a major data contributor to the UN reports on climate change that are used to create government policies.

These claims were supposedly put to rest this week by the release of the Independent Climate Change Emails Review. But after six months and $350,000, the resulting report only found that e-mails tend to be “informal,” “less inhibited” and use more extreme language than normal conversations. In addition, “it is possible to place different interpretations on the same phrase” and, “In such circumstances, only the original author can really know what their intentions were.” In other words, the report is willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the email authors.

Frankly, any longtime email user could have come up with those same conclusions in about 10 minutes and for about five dollars.

One of the most infamous e-mails, written by head CRU scientist Phil Jones, refers to the controversial hockey stick graph portraying the earth’s temperatures over the years. Temperatures remain relatively stable and then spike up in the 20th century, giving the appearance of a hockey stick. The graph has long been criticized for omitting key data and Canadian researchers showed that the computer model used to create it contains an error that causes it to always produce a hockey stick-shaped graph. The review calls the graph “misleading,” yet it will likely remain an iconic image for climate change. In discussing the graph, Jones writes, “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie. From 1981 onwards) amd (sic) from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

The Canadian critic claimed that the word “trick” referred to “the deletion of inconvenient data after 1960.” The author claimed the word “trick” simply meant “the best way of doing or dealing with something.” Of course, The report gives the benefit of the doubt to the author.

Despite this, many are claiming that the report is a total vindication of criticisms labelled against the scientists. After all, it concluded that there was no manipulation of data and no reason to question the honesty and rigour of the scientists or their behaviour. However, it should be noted that the review repeatedly states that it had nothing to do with examining the validity of the science - only the scientists’ behaviour, so I’m not confident that the credibility of climate change science remains unscathed.

The review found there was “a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness” and that the CRU was “unhelpful and defensive” when reasonable requests for data were made. The emails showed a reluctance to have their data checked and “there are plenty of references to anxiety about what critics would use the data for.” Further, it found “evidence that e-mails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them.”

The report may give the benefit of the doubt to the CRU scientists but, in the eyes of the public, climate change science will always be viewed with diminished credibility. Climate scientists have been revealed to be arrogant and reluctant to face criticism via legitimate scientific process. All in all, the report is hardly a win for climate science.

This week saw the publication of the third and final report into what will forever be known as ‘climategate’, the publication of leaked (or stolen) emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. But, like all inquiries, few people will ultimately be happy with the outcome. For the CRU and mainstream climate scientists, the whole affair has been both embarrassing and a distraction from their work. Public confidence in official pronouncements on climate change has been shaken and fixing that will not be an easy task. For Phil Jones, ex-director of the CRU and newly-reinstated director of research, this has been a stressful personal tragedy.

But neither are critics satisfied. The three separate inquiries - the first by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, the second, chaired by Lord Oxburgh, which looked at whether there had been scientific malpractice, and the third under Sir Muir Russell, into the content of the emails themselves - all came up with broadly positive conclusions on the behaviour of the scientists involved, although they were criticised for lack of statistical rigour and for being less than open with their raw data.

Sceptics point to deficiencies in the way the second and third reports were carried out, with ‘safe’ chairs being appointed who were unlikely to produce damning reports. Those who believe strongly one way or the other should not be discouraged from trying to make their case, but ultimately the debate about this affair will just continue as a rather pointless and sterile exercise if either side thinks it can win the argument.

On the other hand, the very fact that this controversy has arisen has changed the nature of the debate completely. Climategate was probably the single most important affair, but errors have also been found in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, which led to the setting up of two more inquiries; one by the Dutch government (which looked at exaggerated figures for the vulnerability of the Netherlands to rising sea levels and has also reported this week) and the other on the ways of working of the IPCC by the InterAcademy Panel, which is still in progress.

The Dutch report was also pretty positive about the IPCC’s influential Summaries for Policymakers. However, it made certain criticisms, in particular that there was an emphasis on worst-case scenarios and little mention of the positive effects of warming in some regions. The final inquiry, into the ways of working of the IPCC, is unlikely to be any more critical. Again, many mainstream climate scientists will resent the inquiry in the first place, while sceptics will remain unsatisfied.

But the very process of inquiry has made a big difference, with more openness being demanded. Some of the key figures in the climate change establishment have brought this on themselves by their high-handed and arrogant attitude to legitimate criticisms. By promoting a degree of certainty which exaggerates the real situation, they hoped to build momentum for radical policies which would reduce carbon dioxide emissions. If they had treated moderate critics with respect, it is quite likely that they would have been recruited to the overall process and made a positive contribution. Instead, they ignored or antagonised many and so swelled the ranks of the opposition. Their strategy has been counterproductive and there has had to be an extensive campaign of damage limitation, retrenchment and counterattack.

The BBC website carried a lengthy piece on the Russell inquiry (CRU scientists ‘did not withhold data’, which included this section:

“We demonstrated that any independent researcher can download station data directly from primary sources and undertake their own temperature trend analysis’. Writing computer code to process the data ‘took less than two days and produced results similar to other independent analyses. No information from CRU was needed to do this’. Sir Muir commented: ‘So we conclude that the argument that CRU has something to hide does not stand up’.

Asked whether it would be reasonable to conclude that anyone claiming instrumental records were unavailable or vital code missing was incompetent, another panel member, Professor Peter Clarke from Edinburgh University, said: ‘It’s very clear that anyone who’d be competent enough to analyse the data would know where to find it. It’s also clear that anyone competent could perform their own analysis without let or hindrance.’ “

As I understand it, this is a response to a somewhat different question to the one raised by critics, who wanted to see the actual data and methodology used to produce reported outputs. The inquiry’s report instead suggests that the critics were not competent to analyse data themselves, which is an important difference and one which still hints at a dismissive and defensive mindset.

Other commentators also have expressed concerns. For example, the Economist, which normally appears fully signed up to the mainstream climate change agenda, carries an interesting discussion piece about the Dutch inquiry on its website (Accentuate the negative). This goes into some detail about how some specific observations appear to have been extrapolated and generalised. Martin Parry, co-chair of the Working Group II (impacts) report, defends the work: “The IPCC does not just assemble evidence, Parry stresses: it assesses it.” That’s as maybe, but bias may inevitably creep in.

The author of the Economist piece makes the following comments:

“Perhaps the most worrying thing about the PBL [Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency] report, though, is a rather obvious one about which its authors say little. In all ten of the issues that the PBL categorised as major (the original errors on glaciers and Dutch sea level, and the eight others identified in the report), the impression that the reader gets from the IPCC is more strikingly negative than the impression which would have been received if the underlying evidence base had been reflected as the PBL would have wished, with more precise referencing, more narrow interpretation and less authorial judgment. . . . A suspicion thus gains ground that the way in which the IPCC synthesises, generalises and checks its findings may systematically favour adverse outcomes in a way that goes beyond just serving the needs of policymakers. Anecdotally, authors bemoan fights to keep caveats in place as chapters are edited, refined and summarised.”

This strongly suggests a desire to make the case strongly rather than simply stick to the facts. Pointing out and questioning this attitude can only be good for science, but it may make it more difficult for radical emissions reduction policies to be implemented. However, science, if it has value, has to be open and objective; distort those values and you may as well make policy on the basis of belief alond rather than evidence.

But, leaving science to one side, there are in any case three (rather than the more usual one) elephants in the room. The first is the accepted need to pay off accumulated budget deficits, and investing in subsidised and unreliable green technologies is a step in the wrong direction. The second is the evident fantasy that China, India and other major developing nations are going to go anything to curb their own growth in emissions. And the third is one which is probably the most important: available reserves of fossil fuels and the rate at which we are able to extract them. If, as many commentators believe, Peak Oil becomes a reality in just a few years, we will have far more pressing issues to address than trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

A significant portion of ShoreBank Corporation’s progressive vision is investment in “sustainability” and the creation of a “green” economy, which may be part of the reason the distressed lender is in need of a bailout, seeking millions of dollars from Wall Street firms so it will then qualify for funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

For example, ShoreBank has two sub-entities based in the Pacific Northwest: the FDIC-backed ShoreBank Pacific, and the nonprofit ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia. Both are institutions whose lending criteria are based upon progressively defined notions of “sustainability,” with the bank a partnership between ShoreBank Corp. and the environmental group Ecotrust. The bank’s mission is to “profitably assist businesses, and through them their communities, to be sustainable in economic, social, and environmental practices.” Here’s how they explain their lending criteria:

Unlike other banks, we are conscientious to whom we lend, and potential customers are “scored” using a program of sustainability criteria, including conservation, community development, and economy measures. Our scoring process should not be seen as a deterrent to the loan process, but rather as an active step toward improving sustainability from the “bottom up”. A healthy and sustainable business will translate into a healthy and sustainable community and economy.

The problem with “green” projects is that hardly any of them are economically viable on their own. They require huge government subsidies, tax breaks, or charitable “investment,” or else they won’t survive (or even be started in the first place). A recently announced manure-to-energy project in Lynden, Wash. is illustrative:

Andgar Corporation is the general contractor building the 1.5 million-gallon reinforced concrete digester. It will convert manure from 2,000 dairy cows into a methane biogas, providing enough renewable electricity to supply an estimated 500 houses. Capturing the methane also will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by the equivalent of 7,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to a press release from Farm Power....

The project is funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Washington State Energy Program, a $500,000 USDA Rural Development grant and a $2.4 million bank loan from Shorebank Pacific.

According to its Web site, Farm Power is a start-up company founded by Kevin and Daryl Maas “with no corporation behind us and no fancy marketing...just the two of us (and) a couple dozen local investors...” If the manure digester project was truly profitable for the “investors,” it wouldn’t need huge grants from state and local taxpayers, in addition to a massive loan from a bank that is also looking for a government bailout. Is it judgment calls (and its lending guidelines) like this that got ShoreBank Corp. in trouble in the first place?

In another dubious decision, the lender’s nonprofit organization in Cleveland found this start-up worthy of investment:

The smell of the lacquer at Access-O-Ride Technology in Tallmadge is as intense as the goals co-founders Gary Green and Alissa Harvey have for the newly opened fiberglass company that (Ohio) Gov. Ted Strickland visited July 1…

The Tacoma Avenue company opened with a few employees just days ago after receiving help from JumpStart Inc., a pilot project started by the Ohio Department of Development’s Minority Business Enterprise Division to help minority-owned businesses and firms.

After ShoreBank, a Cleveland-based non-profit organization, lent the company $100,000, Green said they could begin their business. Now they are set to produce at least 80 pieces of fiberglass products daily.

“JumpStart’s involvement gave ShoreBank a great confidence to invest,” said Strickland.

“This is the best thing that’s happened to us,” said Green. “We hope to grow and eventually have three shifts a day with 50 employees.”

So all it takes to get money from a ShoreBank institution is taxpayer subsidization, passion, and hope. Watch as ShoreBank Pacific CEO David Williams explains why they believed the company Flexcar, a vehicle sharing company, was worthy of investment:

Williams described part of ShoreBank’s lending criteria, saying “How is that wealth that’s generated recirculated within the community, rather than being extracted? It is important to us that you’re not owned by some business outside the region. The ownership is local and the money gets recirculated locally.”

So what happened? Flexcar merged and moved in with Boston-based Zipcar in late 2007 and closed its Seattle headquarters, prior to this 2009 ShoreBank video promoting local ownership! But as with the previous examples, all that matters with the progressive model of business are intentions, hope and passion - and more government subsidies, which Flexcar enjoyed via public-private partnerships with local transit authorities.

In October 2007 The Washington Post reported the merger came “after years of losses by both companies:”

“It’s a niche that wasn’t exploited by the larger traditional car-rental companies,” said Chris Brown, managing editor of Auto Rental News. “I don’t think it will ever eat into a huge percentage of the $20 billion U.S. car-rental market. It’s kind of like this little cult of users that are all in it together in this cool new system.”

Cults, hope, change...all befitting an institution worthy of a taxpayer bailout in the eyes of the Obama regime. It appears more and more every day that ShoreBank’s distress isn’t about real estate or economic downturns as much as it’s about the failure of liberal redistribution schemes.
See more here.

As scientists give all-clear to a UN climate change report, yet another much-cherished theory is challenged.

As the scientific community seeks to put a lid on the outpouring of climate change scepticism unleashed in the wake of Climategate and the publicising of flaws in a UN climate report, a new study has suggested that the theory of ‘runaway climate change’ is “unrealistic”.

Today a Dutch government review gave the all-clear to a United Nations report which had been widely criticised for overstating the threat of climate change and containing bogus claims about the probable effects.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report contained “no errors that would undermine the main conclusions” that climate change will have serious effects for the world. The 35 errors it did find were mainly typographical or similarly trivial. The IPCC has accepted 12 of them.

Embarrassingly for PBL, it had to admit it was the source of one of the most glaring errors - a claim that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was at risk of flooding because it lies under sea level.

Tomorrow, Sir Muir Russell’s independent review of the Climategate scandal, in which hackers stole and circulated emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, is likely to clear climate scientists of malpractice. It would be the third inquiry to do so - leading to calls of ‘whitewash’ from climate change sceptics.

But a new study is set to rock the boat again by calling into question one of the more frightening global warming scenarios: ‘runaway climate change’. Under this scenario, rising temperatures speed up processes that catastrophically increase the rate of global warming - a positive feedback loop.

One of these processes is an increase in the rate of carbon dioxide (CO2) production by plants and microorganisms in the soil caused by an increase in temperature. As CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it has been suggested this will further increase temperatures, leading to a further increase in CO2 production until the Earth is too hot for human life.

Using Fluxnet, a global network of more than 250 ‘flux towers’ to sample CO2 concentrations, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute has found that, actually, temperature has a much smaller effect on CO2 release than previous studies claimed.

The researchers, led by Miguel Mahecha, found that the rate at which plants and microorganisms produce CO2 in ecosystems from tropical rainforests to savannah does not even double when the temperature increases by 10°C from one week to the next.

His colleague Markus Reichstein says: “Particularly alarmist scenarios for the feedback between global warming and ecosystem respiration (CO2 production) thus prove to be unrealistic.”

Climate change sceptics might say the new study is yet another nail in the coffin of the IPCC report, which says: “Anthropogenic warming could lead to some effects that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change.”

But mainstream scientists will just be pleased that Fluxnet has given them real-world measurements upon which to base their computer models - which could be another nail in the coffin of climate change scepticism, relying as it so often does on quibbles over the quality of data.  Read more here.

Responding to the BP oil leak, President Obama instituted a moratorium on deepwater (over 500 feet) drilling. Though a judge ruled against the moratorium, drilling has not restarted. In addition, though no official moratorium was issued for drilling in shallower water, the permitting process has slowed considerably.[1]

The President has raised questions about the long-term necessity for drilling.[2] Others would take this argument much further and ban all drilling offshore.[3]

To help policymakers evaluate the arguments for limiting or eliminating offshore drilling, this paper analyzes the economic impact of a total offshore drilling ban on the U.S. economy. The authors use a mainstream model of the U.S. economy to simulate a policy change that prevents new wells from being drilled and allows offshore production to decline as the current set of wells reach the end of their productive lives.

Nipping Expansion in the Bud

The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that daily petroleum production will rise 18 percent between 2010 and 2035 and that daily production from offshore wells (in the lower 48 states) will rise by over 40 percent.[4] EIA also predicts that offshore drilling will supply significant increases in natural gas production. While total natural gas production will rise 16 percent over the same period, offshore production of natural gas will rise 63 percent, at which time it will be nearly a fifth of total domestic production.[5]

The reserves of petroleum are projected to rise by 5 billion barrels - even after extracting 57 billion barrels over the period 2010 - 2035. This happens because improvements in technology and price increases make previously uneconomic deposits economically viable. Further, because exploration and development are costly, it makes little sense to incur the costs of finding and extracting reserves that will not be used for decades.

In short, petroleum can be a major energy source for many decades. Consequently an offshore drilling ban’s impact on the U.S. would be felt for decades. (Below, enlarged here).

For example, between now and 2035 an offshore drilling ban would:

Reduce GDP by $5.5 trillion,

Reduce the average consumption expenditures for a family of four by $2,381 per year (and exceeding $4,000 in 2035),

Reduce job growth by more than 1 million jobs by 2015 and more than 1.5 million jobs by 2030, and

Increase the total expenditures for imported oil by nearly $737 billion.[6]

Effects on Consumer Prices

A permanent drilling ban would create a wedge between projected domestic oil production without the ban and the lower production levels with the ban in place. The lost petroleum output would have several impacts on the price of imported oil and thus consumer prices. For example, such a ban would necessitate the purchase of more imports to compensate for the lost domestic production. Because oil trades on world markets, this lost domestic production would cause world oil prices to rise - compounding the cost of the increased imports. The losses mount slowly, which means that the impact on oil prices and import costs will also mount slowly. The additional imported-oil cost exceeds $25 billion per year by 2018 and rises to over $45 billion per year by 2035.

Though, in percentage terms, the ban cuts domestic natural gas production half as much as domestic petroleum production, the price impact is greater because the natural gas market is predominantly regional, while the petroleum market is worldwide. Thus, there is less ability to buffer the domestic natural gas production cuts with additional imports. An offshore drilling ban, therefore, would likely lead to natural gas price increases of 10 percent by 2015, 23 percent by 2020, and 45 percent by 2035.

Since energy is a critical input for so many things, raising its cost will increase production costs throughout the economy. Though producers will pass most of the costs on to consumers, consumers will not be able to buy as much at these higher prices. Therefore, the higher energy prices cut the demand for all the other inputs, such as labor. As the higher costs for petroleum and natural gas ripple through the economy, there may be a few bright spots (such as suppliers of more energy-efficient capital goods), but the overall impact is decidedly negative.

An offshore drilling ban cuts domestic energy production, raises energy costs, and shrinks the nation’s economic pie. The broadest measure of economic activity, gross domestic product (GDP), drops $5.5 trillion over the period 2011–2035. Employment levels fall below those projected to occur without a ban in place. By 2020, employment would be 1.4 million jobs lower than without the ban. By 2030, the projected gap reaches 1.5 million jobs.

Of course, shrinking the economy makes families poorer. By 2020 the annual reduction in disposable income for a family of four exceeds $2,000. This lost income exceeds $3,000 per year in 2030 and is over $4,000 per year in 2035.

Pulling the Rug Out

Petroleum and natural gas play a vital role in the U.S. economy and are likely to remain critical to economic activity for decades to come. The Department of Energy expects offshore production to be a bigger supplier of the nation’s energy needs in the years ahead.

If a total ban on offshore drilling is implemented by 2011, then by 2035 Americans could expect national income (GDP) to drop by $5.5 trillion, total costs of imported oil to rise by $737 billion, total disposable income to decrease $54,000 per family of four, and job losses to exceed 1.5 million. A total ban on offshore drilling would pull the rug out from the economy’s incipient recovery.

David W. Kreutzer, Ph.D., is Research Fellow in Energy Economics and Climate Change and John L. Ligon is Policy Analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

A summary of the work of a leading international scientist who has conducted research critical of the global warming theory of greenhouse gases.

For two decades multi-talented former meteorologist and explosives and fire expert, Martin Hertzberg Ph.D has been a forthright critic of what he believes are “propagandists” who have cherry-picked climate data supportive of the views of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and certain international governments.

His fiery condemnation of the theory has become popularised in Internet science blogs such as Climate Realists that have been quick to pounce on the growing controversy since the Climategate scandal.

Blasted for his views by environmentalists, the doctor of Physical Chemistry remains impervious; continuing to disparage those who support the IPCC. He fires back at alarmist claims about the possible future effects of increased greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere. Martin is convinced there is no such ‘back radiation effect’mechanism that may cause catastrophic runaway global warming; while the term, ‘greenhouse gas’ he says, also misleading.

Propaganda and Myths in the Climate Debate

The retired Navy meteorologist in a Canada Free Press article, further disputes the greenhouse gas theory and slates what he calls “global warming alarmists” who create “hysteria based on half-baked computer models that have never been verified and that are totally our of touch with reality.”

Keenly aware of ad hominems, Hertzberg mocks the assertion that climate skeptics are right-wing advocates for the oil lobby by declaring, “I am a lifelong liberal Democrat, but I am also a scientist.”

In response to allegations that he a tool of the coal barons, Hertzberg responded that such a claim “would come as a great surprise to them, since I spent most of my career advocating for more stringent safety regulations in their mines.”

Key Issues Regard ‘Fudged Modeling’

Hertzberg is aligned with the so-called ‘hard core’ of greenhouse gas theory skepticism. Unlike noted ‘soft’ skeptics such as Richard Lindzen who do not concern themselves with debunking the GHG theory, Hertzberg attacks the very foundation of the orthodoxy by seeking to debunk the reliance on the application of the Stefan-Boltzman equations, which although otherwise valid for flat black body calculations, are over simplified for Earth’s complex three-dimensional climate.

‘Like a growing number of hardcore skeptics he insists our climate should be represented by 3-D and not the crude two-dimensional models beloved of the IPCC.

The former navy man says, “Even for those portions of Earth that are not covered with clouds, the assumption that the ocean surface, land surfaces, or ice and snow cover would all have blackbody emissivities of unity, is unreasonable.”

His studies have led him to the conclusion that the so-called back radiation effect of greenhouse gas theory is bogus. He writes, “It is implausible to expect that small changes in the concentration of any minor atmospheric constituent such as carbon dioxide, can significantly influence that radiative balance.”

Increased Awareness since ‘Cafe Scientifique’ TalkIn recent times Hertzberg has gone further on the offensive with forthright and outspoken articles such as in Summit Daily News and with his ‘Cafe Scientifique’ presentation at Frisco, Colorado (April 27, 2010). A series of seven videos on Youtube shows the “Cafe Scientifique” talk in full, which has helped to garner further interest in his work.

The former Stanford scientist expounds many compelling points including those made in his paper ‘Earths’ Radiative Equilibrium in the Solar Irradiance,’ where he observed the small fluctuations in 20th Century temperatures were of no more concern that “the larger, longer-term variations of Glacial Coolings and Interglacial Warmings.” In other words, of natural and uncontrollable origin.

A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon? In May 2010 Hertzberg joined forces with two other scientists dismissive of GHG theory, Alan Siddons and Hans Schreuder to produce a seminal paper, “A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon?” The ground-breaking joint paper makes strident claims that the calculations inputted to orthodox climate computer models are so fudged that if they were applied to Earth’s moon they would also prove a greenhouse gas effect there-which is nonsense.

Like other skeptics the three strongly believe the Sun is our key climate driver and natural cycles dictate Earth’s ever-changing climate.

Hertzberg attributes his healthy cynicism to three years in the U.S. Navy. Now retired at Copper Mountain, Colorado, this erudite exponent of skepticism towards man-made global warming has productively been engaged in raising greater public awareness of this most contentious of scientific issues.

Read more here.

A bombshell from the Oxburgh “inquiry”.

Obviously, the most contentious issue in the Hockey Stick controversy has been, uh, the hockey sticks - an area where CRU scientists Jones, Briffa and Osborn have been intimately involved as authors of key proxies, authors of multiproxy studies in the IPCC spaghetti graph, peer reviewers of journal articles and IPCC assessment authors. The core position of Climate Audit in respect to these studies is that the data and methods used in these studies do not permit assertions about the medieval-modern relationship to be made with any confidence. This gets played out in numerous disputes over individual proxies and individual statistical methods, but these do not deflect from the overall issue.

I heard from a reliable source that, during the Oxburgh interviews, Phil Jones admitted that it was probably impossible to do the 1000-year temperature reconstructions with any accuracy. Obviously, this would be a hugely important admission relative to this debate, but the Oxburgh Science Appraisal Panel “inquiry” did not report this admission even though UEA had announced that the Science Appraisal Panel would “re-appraise CRU’s science”.

I accordingly sent the following letter last week to Oxburgh (both to his House of Lords email and the UEA email address used for the “inquiry"), copying the letter to two members of the Parliamentary Committee and two journalists and forwarded it to the Muir Russell inquiry.

Dear Dr Oxburgh,
I am writing to you in your capacity as Chairman of the Science Appraisal Panel, which reported on April 14, 2010 on the independent external reappraisal of CRU’s science that had been announced by the University of East Anglia in February 2010.

Yours truly,
Stephen McIntyre

This morning, I received the following remarkable response:

Dear Dr Mcintyre,
Thank you for your message. What you report may or may not be the case. But as I have pointed out to you previously the science was not the subject of our study.
Yours sincerly,
Ron Oxburgh

Read it again. The “science was not the subject of our study”. Why would anyone have expected that science would be the subject of study of the Science Appraisal Panel? Well, there’s a good reason why they would. The University of East Anglia and Muir Russell said over and over again that the Science Appraisal Panel would, uh, “re-appraise” CRU’s “science”.

Consider first the original announcement by the University of East Anglia on Feb 11 here entitled “New scientific assessment of climatic research publications announced”, stating:

An independent external reappraisal of the science in the Climatic Research Unit’s (CRU) key publications has been announced by the University of East Anglia. The Royal Society will assist the University in identifying assessors with the requisite expertise, standing and independence.

“Published papers from CRU have gone through the rigorous and intensive peer review process which is the keystone for maintaining the integrity of scientific research,” said Professor Trevor Davies, the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Enterprise and Engagement. “That process and the findings of our researchers have been the subject of significant debate in recent months. Colleagues in CRU have strenuously defended their conduct and the published work and we believe it is in the interests of all concerned that there should be an additional assessment considering the science itself.”

Or Muir Russell’s comments at their Feb 11 press conference:

Our job is to investigate scientific rigor, the honesty, the openness and the due process of CRU’s approach as well as the other things in the remit.. and compliance with rules. It’s not our job to audit CRU’s scientific conclusions. That would require a different set of skills and resources. The University recognizes the need for such an audit. It has asked the Royal Society how this should be done. They have decided they would commission a re-appraisal of the main scientific conclusions of CRU with assistance from the Royal Society to identify the person or persons with the standing and expertise and skill to carry this out.

Or the Royal Society press statement on Feb 11 in which Martin Rees stated:

It is important that people have the utmost confidence in the science of climate change. Where legitimate doubts are raised about any piece of science they must be fully investigated - that is how science works. The Royal Society will provide advice to the University of East Anglia in identifying independent assessors to conduct this reappraisal.

Or the BBC report of the same day:

However, the panel will not review the past scientific work of the CRU, as this will be re-appraised by a UEA-commissioned study that will involve the Royal Society in an advisory role.

“Colleagues in CRU have strenuously defended their conduct and the published work and we believe it is in the interest of all concerned that there should be an additional assessment considering the science itself,” Professor Trevor Davies, UEA’s pro-vice-chancellor for research, enterprise and engagement, said in a statement.

Royal Society President Lord Rees said that it was important that the public had the utmost confidence in the science of climate change. “Where legitimate doubts are raised about any piece of science they must be fully investigated - that is how science works,” he explained. “The Royal Society will provide advice to the University of East Anglia in identifying independent assessors to conduct this reappraisal.”

Or the UEA written submission to the Parliamentary Committee on Feb 25:

2.3 Alongside Sir Muir Russell’s Review, we have decided on an additional scientific assessment of CRU’s key scientific publications; an external reappraisal of the science itself. The Royal Society has agreed to assist the University in identifying assessors with the requisite experience, standing and independence.

Or Muir Russell’s written submission to the Parliamentary Committee:

4. The[Muir Russell] Review’s remit does not invite it to re-appraise the scientific work of CRU. That re-appraisal is being separately commissioned by UEA, with the assistance of the Royal Society.

Or Acton’s oral testimony to the Parliamentary Committee:

“As for the science itself, I have not actually seen any evidence of any flaw in the science but I am hoping, later this week, to announce the chair of a panel to reassess the science and make sure there is nothing wrong.

Oxburgh neither confirmed nor denied the Jones admission. Unfortunately, there are no documents of the Jones interview since Oxburgh flouted the Parliamentary Committee recommendation that the inquiries conduct their business in the open, in which they stressed the importance of opennness in achieving acceptance of the inquiry results. Lord Oxburgh in effect spit in the eye of the Commons Committee recommendation by not taking submissions, not transcribing interviews and not even reporting interview notes. Worse, at least one panelist has already destroyed his interview notes.

Despite all the statements by the university to the public and to Parliament through press releases and evidence to the Commons Committee that Oxburgh’s panel was to “reappraise” CRU’s “science”, Oxburgh says that “science was not the subject” of his “inquiry”.

Given all the statements to the public and to Parliament saying the exact opposite, one would expect Oxburgh, as chair of the inquiry, to have clear and written terms of reference, changing the terms of reference from those presented to the public and Parliament. And here, of course, mystery and inconsistency abound, with Oxburgh saying that his terms of reference were “verbal”. (Who ever heard of “verbal” terms of reference?)

But back to Jones admission that it was “probably impossible to do the 1000-year temperature reconstructions with any accuracy.” I have this information on excellent authority. If so, this would be an important admission given statements by IPCC and others that confidence can be attached to the spaghetti squiggles. The validity of this information needs to be determined - perhaps some of the members of the Oxburgh Panel can confirm this to reporters. Perhaps Jones himself will admit the point.

Maybe the Commons Science and Technology Committee can re-convene and find out what the hell was going on with the Oxburgh “inquiry”. See post and comments here.

See James Delingpole’s column on George Monbiot “I’m SO sorry! How will you ever be able to take me seriously again?’ sobs remorse-stricken Monbiot” here. 

Professor Michael Mann plotted a graph in the late 1990s that showed global temperatures for the last 1,000 years. It showed a sharp rise in temperature over the last 100 years as man made carbon emissions also increased, creating the shape of a hockey stick.

The graph was used by Al Gore in his film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and was cited by the United Nations body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as evidence of the link between fossil fuel use and global warming.

But the graph was questioned by sceptics who pointed out that is it impossible to know for certain the global temperature going back beyond modern times because there were no accurate readings.

The issue became a central argument in the climate change debate and was dragged into the ‘climategate’ scandal, as the sceptics accused Prof Mann and his supporters of exaggerating the extent of global warming.

However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were “uncertainties” in his work.

“I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate,” he said.

In a BBC Panorama programme, scientists from both sides of the debate agree that global warming is happening and it is at least partly caused by mankind.

But they differ on how much the recent rise in temperature has been caused by man made emissions and what will happen in the future.

Professor John Christy, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Huntsville in Alabama, said just a quarter of the current warming is caused by man made emissions. He said that 10 to 30 per cent of scientists agree with him and are fairly sceptical about the extent of man made global warming.

However Prof Bob Watson, a UK Government adviser on climate change, said even if severe global warming is not certain it is worth preparing for the higher temperature projections.

“What risks are we willing to take? The average homeowner probably has fire insurance. They don’t expect a fire in their home [but] they are still willing to take our fire insurance because they don’t want the risk and there’s probably a much better chance of us seeing the middle to upper end of that temperature projection than a single person saying they’ll have a fire in their home tomorrow morning,” he said.

See post here. See video interview here.