Kellow was more negative and damning than George Monbiot ever would have been. I had the feeling he didn’t have a good grasp of climate science, which didn’t stop him from making some calls only a climate scientist should have made. Kellow, you see, is a social scientist, albeit with a specialty in science policy.

Brendo @ 129, you did well. To be frank, I just saw McIntyre’s ‘correction’ which looked pretty wild compared with all the serious efforts and left it at that.

I followed your links and ended up in Siberia trying to figure out trees rings. Steve Mcintyre claims Briffa created a hockey stick graph (pointing to GW) out of too small a data set tree-ring sample chronology:

http://dotsub.com/view/19f9c335-b023-4a40-9453-a98477314bf2

Then Briffa replies, and it seems Mcintyre got nearly everything the arsed way around.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/30/briffa-teaches-but-will-mcintyre-ever-learn/

The funniest bit is, where in order to prove the hockey stick graph wrong, Mcintyre gets his own data and comes up with a graph that has temperatures actually dropping in the 20th century. Instead of saying: “Hang on??!! Oops. I think I stuffed up here!”, he points to this as proof(!) the hockey stick graph is all wrong. Apparently I didn’t I miss anything by not going to uni.

On the other hand the absolute feeding frenzy of the denialosphere is something to behold, and much of it utterly dishonest. An example: one of the stolen files (osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro) contains a program for generating a graph with the following juicy lines:

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,?Oooops!?
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

This is conveniently snipped at this point. The rest of the file shows very clearly that THIS CALCULATION IS NEVER USED. Here is the only place where it could have been used:

;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow

Note the “;” at the start of the line, which turns the rest of the line into a comment, i.e., for those who aren’t programmers, it’s ignored when the program runs.

The fact that I first encountered this very dishonest snippet on the web site of a person very well known in the programming world (http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447) makes it rather hard to believe that the dishonesty was not deliberate.

On that graph you will also notice red data and black dots. The red dots are from land stations and the black satellite data, another check to show that they are on track.

Much is often made of the problems of heat islands and the changed conditions of many land stations in the US in particular. This is one of the reasons why the data is normalised. I recently read that a plot of the temperatures using the subset of the “good” stations gave a graph which was virtually identical to the graph from the whole set. The “crook” stations are necessary because they show changes at that site and enable scientists to connect all the dots in producing a graph of temperature anomalies.

Taking a broader view of the period of the instrumental record, all four graphs look something like this. This graph is much more important than the old “hockey stick”, which uses proxies and is a northern hemisphere (if that) measure.

Much of the heat, I gather, relates to how Mann and Jones patched the link between the proxy record and the instrumental record to make a graph that visually made sense. I gather the “gotcha” email goes back to the original exercise in 1998.

Mann and co have been criticised for the statistical methods they used way back then, and in my not totally informed view it seems as though some of this criticism was justified. But Mann and co have since had another go, and so have others. And guess what, they’ve come up with results that look remarkably like a hockey stick. Have a look at Skeptical science:

You’re clutching at straws and misrepresenting the work of the scientists involved while you do it.

Also my examples aren’t silly or patronising – you haven’t answered a single calibration example, and why not? You haven’t given any response to the point about non-climate effects on temperature readings, and you haven’t done so because you know that any attempt to do adjustments of the sort Brian described above will inevitably involve modelling. If you have a problem with modelling you’re just out of step with modern science.

Re the email scandal: Wouldn’t a control group to see if there was anything to the East Anglia email saga be other scientific bodies?

If the people at East Anglia were fudging the figures then it would show up with publications coming out of places like NASA. But it doesn’t. If NASA is right, then East Anglia can’t be making it up too. Not in any meanigful way.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=38818

If I was sharpish, I’m sorry, but it does try the patience when old chestnuts are repeatedly served up when the relevant information is readily available.

For most people round here, climate is mostly a battleground in tribal politics, and hardly at all an issue about science.

That’s because the basic science is settled. What is most germane is how we respond (the quality, ubiquity and quantity) and how soon. The apparent decomposition of the coalition over this issue threatens to clear the way not only for an effective mitigation scheme (if not to take to Copenhagen then certainly to the next election possibly in March 2010), but for new policies in other areas as well.

If I stormed off in a huff, as you put it, it is because it is impossible not eventually to get weary of arguing with someone who is merely talking to himself/herself.

Brian I agree that Roger Jones makes much better arguments – not hard – than sg, but they are not wholly convincing. “Typical of a group of climate nerds …. playful and ironic” means “er yes, I agree it looks damning”. The licence/data concern is valid – but similar arguments about legal requirements for confidentiality (eg in regard to public/private partnerships) have been regularly condemned around here, so there is a bit of selectivity in giving them a free pass this time. Reluctance to provide material to people who will just beat you around the head with it is understandable – but it is contrary both to the law of the land (FOI) and the usual standards of scientific openness.

I remain convinced that many commenters in LP do not understand what “science” means, and don’t even care. And if we are to start using terms like “lazy…,grow up” in this discussion, Brian, then I will say that I certainly include you in that number. Mindless regurgitation of talking points from politically approved sources and total ignore of anything from elsewhere does not make for either knowledge or understanding.

It is revealing that there are currently 235, mostly gloating, comments in the two threads on the ETS and the Liberal leadership, and 34 in the thread on Copenhagen. For most people round here, climate is mostly a battleground in tribal politics, and hardly at all an issue about science.

Over and out.

Whenever you write something you have a particular audience and purpose in mind and adjust your style accordingly. If you have to do this in a goldfish bowl you have to regard the people potentially gawking into the bowl as part of the audience. When you know that they bear you ill will and can’t possibly understand the circumstances within which you operate, your purposes and procedures, well, I’m glad I left when I did.

Also you can hardly expect a journalist not to get quite touchy about FoI issues.

When I look at the response to these emails by the skeptics I see a lot of that going on. Watching people assiduously insisting that the inner workings of a scientist working on reconciling old data with new data is sure proof of fraud is very unpleasant. there but for the grace of god go I…

Monbiot is a real facts and figures writer. He loves sticking it up his opponents using their sloppy inaccurate and contrived contributions. He probably feels stabbed in the back by his own allies and people he felt he had supported.

Would have been an idea if he waited a day or two. Monbiot might have to apologize twice in the same week.

Go back to Roger Jones @ 69 and read it carefully.

As for the argument that the University of East Anglia has no responsibility for denying FOI requests for data – that some vague, Orwellian “organisation that makes judgements about FOI requests” frustrated the brave attempts of the academics to uphold their outstanding standards of openness – you are aware that my earlier quote ((”I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone”)is from Phil Jones? And of who he is?

And in any case there are far more worrying issues than mere denial of data raised by this affair which you are avoiding.

However I am not going to bother further. I will retire to beat my head against a brick wall. I will clearly make far more progress in that task; walls are, compared to some things, rational

Monbiot needs a cold shower, or a becks and a good lie down.