Guest commentary from Ben Santer
Part 2 of a series discussing the recent Guardian articles
A recent story by Fred Pearce in the February 9th online edition of the Guardian (“Victory for openness as IPCC climate scientist opens up lab doors”) covers some of the more publicized aspects of the last 14 years of my scientific career. I am glad that Mr. Pearce’s account illuminates some of the non-scientific difficulties I have faced. However, his account also repeats unfounded allegations that I engaged in dubious professional conduct. In a number of instances, Mr Pearce provides links to these allegations, but does not provide a balanced account of the rebuttals to them. Nor does he give links to locations where these rebuttals can be found. I am taking this opportunity to correct Mr. Pearce’s omissions, to reply to the key allegations, and to supply links to more detailed responses.
Another concern relates to Mr. Pearce’s discussion of the “openness” issue mentioned in the title and sub-title of his story. A naïve reader of Mr. Pearce’s article might infer from the sub-title (“Ben Santer had a change of heart about data transparency…”) that my scientific research was not conducted in an open and transparent manner until I experienced “a change of heart”.
This inference would be completely incorrect. As I discuss below, my research into the nature and causes of climate change has always been performed in an open, transparent, and collegial manner. Virtually all of the scientific papers I have published over the course of my career involve multi-institutional teams of scientists with expertise in climate modeling, the development of observational datasets, and climate model evaluation. The model and observational data used in my research is not proprietary – it is freely available to researchers anywhere in the world.
The 1995 IPCC Report: The “scientific cleansing” allegation
Mr. Pearce begins by repeating some of the allegations of misconduct that arose after publication (in 1996) of the Second Assessment Report (SAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These allegations targeted Chapter 8 of the SAR, which dealt with the “Detection of Climate Change, and Attribution of Causes”. The IPCC SAR reached the historic finding that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. Information presented in Chapter 8 provided substantial support for this finding.
I served as the Convening Lead Author (CLA) of Chapter 8. There were three principal criticisms of my conduct as CLA. All three allegations are baseless. They have been refuted on many occasions, and in many different fora. All three allegations make an appearance in Mr. Pearce’s story, but there are no links to the detailed responses to these claims.
The first allegation was that I had engaged in “scientific cleansing”. This allegation originated with the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) – a group of businesses “opposing immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.
In May 1996, a document entitled “The IPCC: Institutionalized ‘Scientific Cleansing’?” was widely circulated to the press and politicians. In this document, the Global Climate Coalition claimed that after a key Plenary Meeting of the IPCC in Madrid in November 1995, all scientific uncertainties had been purged from Chapter 8. The GCC’s “scientific cleansing” allegation was soon repeated in an article in Energy Daily (May 22, 1996) and in an editorial in the Washington Times (May 24, 1996). It was also prominently featured in the World Climate Report, a publication edited by Professor Patrick J. Michaels (June 10, 1996).
This “scientific cleansing” claim is categorically untrue. There was no “scientific cleansing”. Roughly 20% of the published version of Chapter 8 specifically addressed uncertainties in scientific studies of the causes of climate change. In discussing the “scientific cleansing” issue, Mr. Pearce claims that many of the caveats in Chapter 8 “did not make it to the summary for policy-makers”. This is incorrect.
The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the IPCC SAR is four-and-a-half pages long. Roughly one page of the SPM discusses results from Chapter 8. The final paragraph of that page deals specifically with uncertainties, and notes that:
“Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long term natural variability and the time-evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface changes”.
Contrary to Mr. Pearce’s assertion, important caveats did “make it to the summary for policy-makers”. And the “discernible human influence” conclusion of both Chapter 8 and the Summary for Policymakers has been substantiated by many subsequent national and international assessments of climate science.
There were several reasons why Chapter 8 was a target for unfounded “scientific cleansing” allegations. First, the Global Climate Coalitions’s “scientific cleansing” charges were released to the media in May 1996. At that time, Cambridge University Press had not yet published the IPCC Second Assessment Report in the United States. Because of this delay in the Report’s U.S. publication, many U.S. commentators on the “scientific cleansing” claims had not even read Chapter 8 – they only had access to the GCC’s skewed account of the changes made to Chapter 8. Had the Second Assessment Report been readily available in the U.S. in May 1996, it would have been easy for interested parties to verify that Chapter 8 incorporated a fair and balanced discussion of scientific uncertainties.
Second, the “pre-Madrid” version of Chapter 8 was the only chapter in the IPCC Working Group I Second Assessment Report to have both an “Executive Summary” and a “Concluding Summary”. As discussed in the next section, this anomaly was partly due to the fact that the Lead Author team for Chapter 8 was not finalized until April 1994 – months after all other chapters had started work. Because of this delay in getting out of the starting blocks, the Chapter 8 Lead Author team was more concerned with completing the initial drafts of our chapter than with the question of whether all chapters in the Working Group I Report had exactly the same structure.
The reply of the Chapter 8 Lead Authors to the Energy Daily story of May 22, 1996 pointed out this ‘two summary’ redundancy, and noted that:
“After receiving much criticism of this redundancy in October and November 1995, the Convening Lead Author of Chapter 8 decided to remove the concluding summary. About half of the information in the concluding summary was integrated with material in Section 8.6. It did not disappear completely, as the Global Climate Coalition has implied. The lengthy Executive Summary of Chapter 8 addresses the issue of uncertainties in great detail – as does the underlying Chapter itself.”
The removal of the concluding summary made it simple for the Global Climate Coalition to advance their unjustified “scientific cleansing” allegations. They could claim ‘This statement has been deleted’, without mentioning that the scientific issue addressed in the deleted statement was covered elsewhere in the chapter.
This was my first close encounter of the absurd kind.
The 1995 IPCC Report: The “political tampering/corruption of peer-review” allegation
The second allegation is that I was responsible for “political tampering”. I like to call this “the tail wags the dog” allegation. The “tail” here is the summary of the Chapter 8 results in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, and the “dog” is the detailed underlying text of Chapter 8.
In November 1995, 177 government delegates from 96 countries spent three days in Madrid. Their job was to “approve” each word of the four-and-a-half page Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC’s Working Group I Report. This was the report that dealt with the physical science of climate change. The delegates also had the task of “accepting” the 11 underlying science chapters on which the Summary for Policymakers was based. “Acceptance” of the 11 chapters did not require government approval of each word in each chapter.
This was not a meeting of politicians only. A number of the government delegates were climate scientists. Twenty-eight of the Lead Authors of the IPCC Working Group I Report – myself included – were also prominent participants in Madrid. We were there to ensure that the politics did not get ahead of the science, and that the tail did not wag the dog.
Non-governmental organizations – such as the Global Climate Coalition – were also active participants in the Madrid meeting. NGOs had no say in the formal process of approving the Summary for Policymakers. They were, however, allowed to make comments on the SPM and the underlying 11 science chapters during the first day of the Plenary Meeting (November 27, 1996). The Global Climate Coalition dominated the initial plenary discussions.
Most of the plenary discussions at Madrid focused on the portrayal of Chapter 8’s findings in the Summary for Policymakers. Discussions were often difficult and contentious. We wrestled with the exact wording of the “balance of evidence” statement mentioned above. The delegations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait argued for a very weak statement, or for no statement at all. Delegates from many other countries countered that there was strong scientific evidence of pronounced a human effect on climate, and that the bottom-line statement from Chapter 8 should reflect this.
Given the intense interest in Chapter 8, Sir John Houghton (one of the two Co-Chairs of IPCC Working Group I) established an ad hoc group on November 27, 1996. I was a member of this group. Our charge was to review those parts of the draft Summary for Policymakers that dealt with climate change detection and attribution issues. The group was placed under the Chairmanship of Dr. Martin Manning of New Zealand, and included delegates from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Kenya, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Sir John Houghton also invited delegates from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to participate in this ad hoc group. Unfortunately, they did not accept this invitation.
The ad hoc group considered more than just the portions of the Summary for Policymakers that were relevant to Chapter 8. The Dutch delegation asked for a detailed discussion of Chapter 8 itself, and of the full scientific evidence contained in it. This discussion took place on November 28, 1996.
On November 29, 1996, I reported back to the Plenary on the deliberations of the ad hoc group. The Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti delegations – who had not attended any of the discussions of the ad hoc group, and had no first-hand knowledge of what had been discussed by the group – continued to express serious reservations about the scientific basis for the detection and attribution statements in the Summary for Policymakers.
On the final evening of the Madrid Plenary Meeting, debate focused on finding the right word to describe the human effect on global climate. There was broad agreement among the government delegates that – based on the scientific evidence presented in Chapter 8 – some form of qualifying word was necessary. Was the human influence “measurable”? Could it be best described as “appreciable”, “detectable”, or “substantial”? Each of these suggested words had proponents and opponents. How would each word translate into different languages? Would the meaning be the same as in English?
After hours of often rancorous debate, Bert Bolin (who was then the Chairman of the IPCC) finally found the elusive solution. Professor Bolin suggested that the human effect on climate should be described as “discernible”.
Mr. Pearce – who was not present at the Madrid Plenary Meeting – argues that the discussion of human effects on climate in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers “went beyond what was said in the chapter from which the summary was supposedly drawn”. In other words, he suggests that the tail wagged the dog. This is not true. The “pre-Madrid” bottom-line statement from Chapter 8 was “Taken together, these results point towards a human influence on climate”. As I’ve noted above, the final statement agreed upon in Madrid was “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”.
Is “suggests” stronger than “points towards”? I doubt it. Is “The balance of evidence” a more confident phrase than “Taken together”? I don’t think so.
The primary difference between the pre- and post-Madrid statements is that the latter includes the word “discernible”. In my American Heritage College Dictionary, “discernible” is defined as “perceptible, as by vision or the intellect”. In Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, one of the three meanings of the verb “discern” is “to recognize or identify as separate and distinct”. Was the use of “discernible” justified?
The answer is clearly “yes”. Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report relied heavily on the evidence from a number of different “fingerprint” studies. This type of research uses rigorous statistical methods to compare observed patterns of climate change with results from climate model simulations. The basic concept of fingerprinting is that each different influence on climate – such as purely natural changes in the Sun’s energy output, or human-caused changes in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases – has a unique signature in climate records. This uniqueness becomes more apparent if one looks beyond changes averaged over the entire globe, and instead exploits the much greater information content available in complex, time-varying patterns of climate change.
Fingerprinting has proved to be an invaluable tool for untangling the complex cause-and-effect relationships in the climate system. The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 was able to draw on fingerprint studies from a half-dozen different research groups. Each of these groups had independently shown that they could indeed perceive a fingerprint of human influence in observed temperature records. The signal was beginning to rise out of the noise, and was (using Merriam-Webster’s definition of “discern”) “separate and distinct” from purely natural variations in climate.
Based on these fingerprint results, and based on the other scientific evidence available to us in November 1995, use of the word “discernible” was entirely justified. Its use is certainly justified based on the scientific information available to us in 2010. The “discernible human influence” phrase was approved by all of the 177 delegates from 96 countries present at the Plenary Meeting – even by the Saudi and Kuwaiti delegations. None of the 28 IPCC Lead Authors in attendance at Madrid balked at this phrase, or questioned our finding that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. The latter statement was cautious and responsible, and entirely consistent with the state of the science. The much more difficult job of trying to quantify the size of human influences on climate would be left to subsequent IPCC assessments.
Mr. Pearce’s remarks suggest that there is some substance to the “political tampering” allegation – that I was somehow coerced to change Chapter 8 in order to “reflect the wording of the political summary”. This is untrue. There was no political distortion of the science. If Mr. Pearce had been present at the Madrid Plenary Meeting, he would have seen how vigorously (and successfully) scientists resisted efforts on the part of a small number of delegates to skew and spin some of the information in the Summary for Policymakers.
The key point here is that the SPM was not a “political summary” – it was an accurate reflection of the science. Had it been otherwise, I would not have agreed to put my name on the Report.
A reader of Mr. Pearce’s article might also gain the mistaken impression that the changes to Chapter 8 were only made in response to comments made by government delegates during the Madrid Plenary Meeting. That is not true. As I’ve mentioned above, changes were also made to address government comments made during the meeting of the ad hoc group formed to discuss Chapter 8.
Furthermore, when I first arrived in Madrid on November 26, 1995, I was handed a stack of government and NGO comments on Chapter 8 that I had not seen previously. I had the responsibility of responding to these comments.
One reason for the delay in receiving comments was that the IPCC had encountered difficulties in finding a Convening Lead Author (CLA) for Chapter 8. To my knowledge, the CLA job had been turned down by at least two other scientists before I received the job offer. The unfortunate consequence of this delay was that, at the time of the Madrid Plenary Meeting, Chapter 8 was less mature and polished than other chapters of the IPCC Working Group I Report. Hence the belated review comments.
The bottom line in this story is that the post-Madrid revisions to Chapter 8 were made for scientific, not political reasons. They were made by me, not by IPCC officials. The changes were in full accord with IPCC rules and procedures (pdf). Mr. Pearce repeats accusations by Fred Seitz that the changes to Chapter 8 were illegal and unauthorized, and that I was guilty of “corruption of the peer-review process”. These allegations are false, as the IPCC has clearly pointed out.
The 1995 IPCC Report: The “research irregularities” allegation
The third major front in the attack on Chapter 8 focused on my personal research. It was a two-pronged attack. First, Professor S. Fred Singer claimed that the IPCC’s “discernible human influence” conclusion was entirely based on two of my own (multi-authored) research papers. Next, Professor Patrick Michaels argued that one of these two papers was seriously flawed, and that irregularities had occurred in the paper’s publication process. Both charges were untrue.
On July 25, 1996, I addressed the first of these allegations in an email to the Lead Authors of the 1995 IPCC Report:
“Chapter 8 references more than 130 scientific papers – not just two. Its bottom-line conclusion that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate” is not solely based on the two Santer et al. papers that Singer alludes to. This conclusion derives from many other published studies on the comparison of modelled and observed patterns of temperature change – for example, papers by Karoly et al. (1994), Mitchell et al. (1995), Hegerl et al. (1995), Karl et al. (1995), Hasselmann et al. (1995), Hansen et al. (1995) and Ramaswamy et al. (1996). It is supported by many studies of global-mean temperature changes, by our physical understanding of the climate system, by our knowledge of human-induced changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, by information from paleoclimatic studies, and by a wide range of supporting information (sea-level rise, retreat of glaciers, etc.). To allege, as Singer does, that “Chapter 8 is mainly based on two research papers” is just plain wrong”.
In the second prong of the attack, Professor Michaels claimed that a paper my colleagues and I had published in Nature in 1996 had been selective in its use of observational data, and that our finding of a human fingerprint in atmospheric temperature data was not valid if a longer observational record was used. Further, he argued that Nature had been “toyed with” (presumably by me), and coerced into publishing the 1996 Santer et al. Nature paper one week prior to a key United Nations meeting in Geneva.
My colleagues and I immediately addressed the scientific criticism of our Nature paper by Michaels and his colleague Chip Knappenberger. We demonstrated that this criticism was simply wrong. Use of a longer record of atmospheric temperature change strengthened rather than weakened the evidence for a human fingerprint. We published this work in Nature in December 1996. Unfortunately, Mr. Pearce does not provide a link to this publication.
Since 1996, studies by a number of scientists around the world have substantiated the findings of our 1996 Nature paper. Such work has consistently shown clear evidence of a human fingerprint in atmospheric temperature records.
Disappointingly, Professor Michaels persists in repeating his criticism of our paper, without mentioning our published rebuttal or the large body of subsequently published evidence refuting his claims. Michaels’ charge that Nature had been “toyed with” was complete nonsense. As described below, however, this was not the last time I would be falsely accused of having the extraordinary power to force scientific journals to do my bidding.
A Climatology Conspiracy? More “peer-review abuse” accusations
Mr. Pearce also investigates a more recent issue. He implies that I abused the normal peer-review system, and exerted pressure on the editor of the International Journal of Climatology to delay publication of the print version of a paper by Professor David Douglass and colleagues. This is not true.
The Douglass et al. paper was published in December 2007 in the online edition of the International Journal of Climatology. The “et al.” included the same Professor S. Fred Singer who had previously accused me of “scientific cleansing”. It also included Professor John Christy, the primary developer of a satellite-based temperature record which suggests that there has been minimal warming of Earth’s lower atmosphere since 1979. Three alternate versions of the satellite temperature record, produced by different teams of researchers using the same raw satellite measurements, all indicate substantially more warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The focus of the Douglass et al. paper was on post-1979 temperature changes in the tropics. The authors devised what they called a “robust statistical test” to compare computer model results with observations. The test was seriously flawed (see Appendix A in Open Letter to the Climate Science Community: Response to A “Climatology Conspiracy?”). When it was applied to the model and observational temperature datasets, the test showed (quite incorrectly) that the model results were significantly different from observations.
As I have noted elsewhere, the Douglass et al. paper immediately attracted considerable media and political attention. One of the paper’s authors claimed that it represented an “inconvenient truth”, and proved that “Nature, not humans, rules the climate”. These statements were absurd. No single study can overturn the very large body of scientific evidence supporting “discernible human influence” findings. Nor does any individual study provide the sole underpinning for the conclusion that human activities are influencing global climate.
Given the extraordinary claims that were being made on the basis of this incorrect paper, my colleagues and I decided that a response was necessary. Although the errors in Douglass et al. were easy to identify, it required a substantial amount of new and original work to repeat the statistical analysis properly.
Our work went far beyond what Douglass et al. had done. We looked at the sensitivity of model-versus-data comparisons to the choice of statistical test, to the test assumptions, to the number of years of record used in the tests, and to errors in the computer model estimates of year-to-year temperature variability. We also examined how the statistical test devised by Douglass et al. performed under controlled conditions, using random data with known statistical properties. From their paper, there is no evidence that Douglass et al. considered any of these important issues before making their highly-publicized claims.
Our analysis clearly showed that tropical temperature changes in observations and climate model simulations were not fundamentally inconsistent – contrary to the claim of Douglass and colleagues. Our research was published on October 10, 2008, in the online edition of the International Journal of Climatology. On November 15, 2008, the Douglass et al. and Santer et al. papers appeared in the same print version of the International Journal of Climatology.
In December 2009, shortly after the public release of the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Professors David Douglass and John Christy accused me of leading a conspiracy to delay publication of the print version of the Douglass et al. paper. This accusation was based on a selective analysis of the stolen emails. It is false.
In Mr. Pearce’s account of this issue, he states that “There is no doubt the (sic) Santer and his colleagues sought to use the power they held to the utmost…” So what are the facts of this matter? What is the “power” Fred Pearce is referring to?
- Fact 1: The only “power” that I had was the power to choose which scientific journal to submit our paper to. I chose the International Journal of Climatology. I did this because the International Journal of Climatology had published (in their online edition) the seriously flawed Douglass et al. paper. I wanted to give the journal the opportunity to set the scientific record straight.
- Fact 2: I had never previously submitted a paper to the International Journal of Climatology. I had never met the editor of the journal (Professor Glenn McGregor). I did not have any correspondence or professional interaction with the editor prior to 2008.
- Fact 3: Prior to submitting our paper, I wrote an email to Dr. Tim Osborn on January 10, 2008. Tim Osborn was on the editorial board of the International Journal of Climatology. I told Dr. Osborn that, before deciding whether we would submit our paper to the International Journal of Climatology, I wanted to have some assurance that our paper would “be regarded as an independent contribution, not as a comment on Douglass et al.” This request was entirely reasonable in view of the substantial amount of new work that we had done. I have described this new work above.
- Fact 4: I did not want to submit our paper to the International Journal of Climatology if there was a possibility that our submission would be regarded as a mere “comment” on Douglass et al. Under this scenario, Douglass et al. would have received the last word. Given the extraordinary claims they had made, I thought it unlikely that their “last word” would have acknowledged the serious statistical error in their original paper. As subsequent events showed, I was right to be concerned – they have not admitted any error in their work.
- Fact 5: As I clearly stated in my email of January 10 to Dr. Tim Osborn, if the International Journal of Climatology agreed to classify our paper as an independent contribution, “Douglass et al. should have the opportunity to respond to our contribution, and we should be given the chance to reply. Any response and reply should be published side-by-side…”
- Fact 6: The decision to hold back the print version of the Douglass et al. paper was not mine. It was the editor’s decision. I had no “power” over the publishing decisions of the International Journal of Climatology.
This whole episode should be filed under the category “No good deed goes unpunished”. My colleagues and I were simply trying to set the scientific record straight. There was no conspiracy to subvert the peer-review process. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are easy to disseminate. Many are willing to accept these theories at face value. The distribution of facts on complex scientific issues is a slower, more difficult process.
Climate Auditing – Close Encounters with Mr. Steven McIntyre
Ten days after the online publication of our International Journal of Climatology paper, Mr. Steven McIntyre, who runs the “ClimateAudit” blog, requested all of the climate model data we had used in our research. I replied that Mr. McIntyre was welcome to “audit” our calculations, and that all of the primary model data we had employed were archived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and freely available to any researcher. Over 3,400 scientists around the world currently analyze climate model output from this open database.
My response was insufficient for Mr. McIntyre. He submitted two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for climate model data – not for the freely available raw data, but for the results from intermediate calculations I had performed with the raw data. One FOIA request also asked for two years of my email correspondence related to these climate model data sets.
I had performed these intermediate calculations in order derive weighted-average temperature changes for different layers of the atmosphere. This is standard practice. It is necessary since model temperature data are available at specific heights in the atmosphere, whereas satellite temperature measurements represent an average over a deep layer of the atmosphere. The weighted averages calculated from the climate model data can be directly compared with actual satellite data. The method used for making such intermediate calculations is not a secret. It is published in several different scientific journals.
Unlike Mr. McIntyre, David Douglass and his colleagues (in their International Journal of Climatology paper) had used the freely available raw model data. With these raw datasets, Douglass et al. made intermediate calculations similar to the calculations we had performed. The results of their intermediate calculations were similar to our own intermediate results. The differences between what Douglass and colleagues had done and what my colleagues and I had done was not in the intermediate calculations – it was in the statistical tests each group had used to compare climate models with observations.
The punch-line of this story is that Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests were completely unnecessary. In my opinion, they were frivolous. Mr. McIntyre already had access to all of the information necessary to check our calculations and our findings.
When I invited Mr. McIntyre to “audit” our entire study, including the intermediate calculations, and told him that all the data necessary to perform such an “audit” were freely available, he expressed moral outrage on his blog. I began to receive threatening emails. Complaints about my “stonewalling” behavior were sent to my superiors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at the U.S. Department of Energy.
A little over a month after receiving Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests, I decided to release all of the intermediate calculations I had performed for our International Journal of Climatology paper. I made these datasets available to the entire scientific community. I did this because I wanted to continue with my scientific research. I did not want to spend all of my available time and energy responding to harassment incited by Mr. McIntyre’s blog.
Mr. Pearce does not mention that Mr. McIntyre had no need to file Freedom of Information Act requests, since Mr. McIntyre already had access to all of the raw climate model data we had used in our study (and to the methods we had used for performing intermediate calculations). Nor does Mr. Pearce mention the curious asymmetry in Mr. McIntyre’s “auditing”. To my knowledge, Mr. McIntyre – who purports to have considerable statistical expertise – has failed to “audit” the Douglass et al. paper, which contained serious statistical errors.
As the “Climategate” emails clearly show, there is a pattern of behavior here. My encounter with Mr. McIntyre’s use of FOIA requests for “audit” purposes is not an isolated event. In my opinion, Mr. McIntyre’s FOIA requests serve the purpose of initiating fishing expeditions, and are not being used for true scientific discovery.
Mr. McIntyre’s own words do not present a picture of a man engaged in purely dispassionate and objective scientific inquiry:
“But if Santer wants to try this kind of stunt, as I’ve said above, I’ve submitted FOI requests and we’ll see what they turn up. We’ll see what the journal policies require. I’ll also see what DOE and PCDMI administrators have to say. We’ll see if any of Santer’s buddies are obligated to produce the data. We’ll see if Santer ever sent any of the data to his buddies”
(Steven McIntyre; posting on his ClimateAudit blog; Nov. 21, 2008).
My research is subject to rigorous scrutiny. Mr. McIntyre’s blogging is not. He can issue FOIA requests at will. He is the master of his domain – the supreme, unchallenged ruler of the “ClimateAudit” universe. He is not a climate scientist, but he has the power to single-handedly destroy the reputations of exceptional men and women who have devoted their entire careers to the pursuit of climate science. Mr. McIntyre’s unchecked, extraordinary power is the real story of “Climategate”. I hope that someone has the courage to tell this story.
Benjamin D. Santer
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow
San Ramon, California
February 22, 2010*
*These remarks reflect the personal opinions of Benjamin D. Santer. They do not reflect the official views of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the U.S. Department of Energy. In preparing this document, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Tom Wigley, Myles Allen, Kristin Aydt, Graham Cogley, Peter Gleckler, Leo Haimberger, Gabi Hegerl, John Lanzante, Mike MacCracken, Gavin Schmidt, Steve Sherwood, Susan Solomon, Karl Taylor, Simon Tett, and Peter Thorne.
#623 Nick: “So far as I am aware, this is not simply a climate science practice either. I would be quite astounded if anyone really wanted to see all of my raw data, my metadata and my codes and scripts with regard to landscape evolution modelling, hydrological modelling, geomorphometry, bootstrapping and correlation, metamodelling and emulation, etc. etc. etc., regardless of whether the codes and scripts worked or not, or whether the output made sense or not.”
Spot-on. What raw data would readers of my papers want? The published text plus a sellotaped-on jiffy-bag full of mineralised samples from which to prepare polished sections so that they could “audit” what I had been describing? I can imagine them getting frustrated with a sheet of glass and some Vim, or maybe Brasso (it says it polishes things) rubbing away at a wee chip of galena that I’ve said is stuffed with silver-bearing sulphosalts and yet seeing nothing under the hand-lens apart from lots of scratches. I expect – from an anti-science activist: “I CAN SEE NOTHING. THAT SHOWS IT’S A FRAUD!”
I’m glad other mineralogists have a peaceful life, apart from those who have strayed into the climate scene! I’m way under best in my field but I’ve figured a few things out and published them, a contribution or three based on my inherent curiosity to go figure things out, and a wish to contribute to the sum of knowledge. Other things are in preparation. Perhaps I ought to start splitting all samples – half to go for sectioning and geochem, isotopes etc, and half to be kept in the safe of The Green Dragon (institutes obviously being untrustworthy) in the event that anybody wants to have a play with them? Generally I would suggest they go in the field and obtain their own samples, but in these Orwellian times, who knows?
Cheers – John
[edit – this conversation is getting very repetitive. Enough]
624 & 626 JRC: Regarding the CRU release, publicly available evidence thus far is consistent with a “dual key” scenario–a CRU figure of some authority assisted by a CRU staffer with technical skill. Reason for silence is then readily apparent: to avoid rupture of longstanding professional (and perhaps personal) relationships.
[Response: Enough fantasizing please. This is now OT. – gavin]
Sorry not to answer everybody in every details.
Yes I think that the days of the INDUSTRIAL civilization are numbered. I don’t think that there was NO civilization before. There were only agricultural civilizations, which doesn’t mean absence of art, literature, philosophy, and so on. Estimates of GDP of all these civilizations are around 500 to 1000 current $/yr/capita, which is very close to the current threshold of absolute poverty. Meaning basically that most of people just tried to survive , with a minimum amount of food, and a very limited number of energy sources and material objects. Even a good knife was a luxurious object. Current standard of living in the poorest countries, that are exactly the same as the most deprived of fossil fuels, was the average standard of living in the world before the XIXth century.
Yes I think that the current energy availability, around 20 times the biological power on average, 50 times for a european, and 100 times for an american, is possible ONLY through the massive use of fossil fuels. Again, no alternative can be sustained without them. You are so much swimming in fossil fuels that you don’t realize all what they bring. You don’t question the existence of cheap steel, concrete, plastics, roads, buildings, engines, everything that is not only useful but absolutely necessary to build anything that can provide energy on a large scale. Without that, you can just expect wooden windmills or watermills, and animals to draw the plough.
“BPL :
Gilles (592): Fossil fuels can’t be replaced for metallurgy,
BPL: Electric furnaces.”
BPL : again, read up your chemistry. Electric furnaces do only REDUCTION OF CARBON IN EXCESS in the cast iron to produce steel. you first have to reduce iron ores.
”
Gilles: organic chemistry,
BPL: Biofuels.
”
Not on the scale we use petroleum and coal. Impossible.
“Gilles: cheap and fast transportation,
BPL: Electric trains. Biodiesel. Bioethanol. Biomethanol.
”
can’t power everything with that. Impossible. And they would compete with food.
”
Hydrogen from electricity.
”
not any closer to being cheap and convenient.
”
Gilles: fertilizers,
BPL: Organic farming.”
Much more demanding in manpower, so much more expensive.
“Gilles: and even stable electric grids in most countries,
BPL: Simply not true. Solar thermal power, wind, geothermal and biofuel over a wide-area smart grid can do BETTER than fossil fuels”
in your dreams, but nowhere else, excepted some very specific countries like Iceland and Norway, that you can number on one hand.
”
Gilles: or more exactly the replacement would be so difficult and expensive that the whole economy would collapse.
BPL: Wind is CHEAPER than coal.
”
Countries with the largest proportion of wind electricity are ALSO among countries that emit the most CO2. Guess why.
Ray :”Well, having lived in both rural Africa and in the US, I feel qualified to say that your idea that everything that separates them can be reduced to fossil fuels is risible”
That’s not an answer to the question of what doesn’t require them, is it ?
Philip :”Gilles #592: in your world view, civilization ends when fossil fuels end. How soon is that? If you take 200 years as the current stocks at current rates of use and escalate by the current rate of growth in demand of 2.4%”
First forget about the rate of growth of 2.4 % for one century (and all IPCC scenarios as well). Peak oil is upon us, and has started to kill the economic growth in western countries. China’s growth will end as well. I think peak of civilization is close, within ten years or so. Then a slow decline will begin – actually the fossil fuel consumption will be very close to the “frugal” scenarios, like B1 ones, but I doubt very much the economic growth can survive the carbon peak. Probably the exponential decrease will be – a few percent per year, meaning it will take several centuries before it will be completely gone. Much like Roman Empire , I guess. I don’t think we’ll have to wait a lot before seeing the beginning of decline, so maybe we’ll comment together on this very forum the evolution of economic growth in the next years .. ;-)
Sou, Reur 575
[1] Dare I venture to say that if the Murray stopped flowing for 6 months about a century ago, then even if the Hume dam, (1934) and others had been in place they might have run very low back in those days, even ignoring the huge growth in population and irrigation demands since then.
[2] You may be unaware that the Hume Dam is part of a system, and that although your photo seems to be very alarming, it is probably fairly typical after deliberate summer drawdown. For instance here is a brief extract describing its normal operation:
Hume Dam follows an annual cycle of filling and drawdown. The storage usually receives inflows during winter and fills by the end of spring each year. Releases generally occur between December and May, with Hume Dam regularly drawn down to less than half of capacity by the end of autumn.
And here is a dramatic graphical history showing that cycle:
It is actually not easy to define the scope and severity of a drought, and I think you will find that there are regional variations that don’t necessarily all occur at the same time. (not to mention a few floods during that time).
Coming back to water storages, for the Melbourne area, the situation is fairly good, at about 35% full, that being about 4% more than this time last year, which is close to the typical low point for each year.
You may be interested in this report from the Melbourne Age; Melbourne’s water reserves overflowing after rainfall October 15, 2009
And this is a less alarming reservoir photo for you…. peace:
http://www.melbournewater.com.au/images/reservoirs/res_maroondah_dusk.jpg
One and all
Here’s the need for new legislation for internet privacy that I found. I have not been making this up:
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/courses/com491e/491%20files/privacy/stored%20data%20act.pdf
Here is (from California legislation
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=484-502.9)
a type of exclusion that can be used to exempt an IT employee:
*******************************************************************
PENAL CODE
SECTION 484-502.9 …
(2) Paragraph (3) of subdivision (c) does not apply to penalize
any acts committed by a person acting outside of his or her lawful
employment, provided that the employee’s activities do not cause an
injury, as defined in paragraph (8) of subdivision (b), to the
employer or another, or provided that the value of supplies or
computer services, as defined in paragraph (4) of subdivision (b),
which are used does not exceed an accumulated total of two hundred
fifty dollars ($250).
(8) “Injury” means any alteration, deletion, damage, or
destruction of a computer system, computer network, computer program,
or data caused by the access, or the denial of access to legitimate
users of a computer system, network, or program.
********************************************************************
This stuff can be even more complex than climate science.
Although different states may have different laws, if you manage a computer facility you need to have some such reasonable limit to protect your IT employees from frivolous criminal lawsuits.
651 John Mason: Royal Society of Chemistry has weighed in apparently to the contrary.
@ John Peter — 1 March 2010 @ 3:19 PM “I know that the radiation exchange, uv as well as ir, is intricate but that’s what I’m trying to learn about.”
Radiative Transfer in the Earth System
by Charlie Zender
University of California, Irvine
http://dust.ess.uci.edu/facts/rt/rt.pdf
according to his CV (dust.ess.uci.edu/job/cv_2pg/cv_2pg.pdf) he’s the Maintainer of NCAR CCM Column Radiation Model (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/crm),so he prolly knows what he’s talking about.
Can someone pull the plug on John Peter’s endless posts about internet privacy and e-mail, since the issue with the e-mails in question is illegal access to servers (UEA CRU and Real Climate), as was said days if not weeks ago?
Philip Machanick (sp?) said:
I saw that there awhile ago and just wanted to thank you for telling it like it is and otherwise making a very fine post.
Brian Dodge (658)
Wow!!! 178 pages 8<( Up to date Dec 2009 yeah!!!
Well I can't say I didn't ask for it.
Thank you very much.
> John Peter
>> Brian Dodge
Good one.
John Peter, for that question you asked, the doc Brian points to says, in very few words, this about “saturation” — which needs much context to make sense and follow how this was figured out over time:
“Physically, the strong line limit is approached as the line core becomes saturated and any additional absorption must occur in the line wings. Put another way, transition lines do not obey the exponential extinction law on which our solutions to the radiative transfer equation are based. One important consequence of this result is that complicated gaseous spectra must either be decomposed into a multitude of monochromatic intervals, each narrow enough to resolve a small portion of a transition line, or some new statistical means must be developed which correctly represents line absorption in both the weak line and strong line limits….”
Go to Spencer Weart’s History (first link under Science in the right sidebar) and those many topics for the back story on why the atmosphere didn’t obey the law and how that has been sorted out.
And the Royal Statistical Society weighs in. I find the last paragraph to be the most instructive:
“9. More widely, the basic case for publication of data includes that science progresses as an ongoing debate and not by a series of authoritative and oracular pronouncements and that the quality of that debate is best served by ensuring that all parties have access to the facts. It is well understood, for example, that peer review cannot guarantee that what is published is ‘correct’. The best guarantor of scientific quality is that others are able to examine in detail the arguments that have been used and not just their published conclusions. It is important that experiments and calculations can be repeated to verify their conclusions. If data, or the methods used, are withheld, it is impossible to do this.”
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc4702.htm
# 574 David Harrington and the other comments regarding the scientists sueing
A lawsuit is not something to be taken lightly. The expense in time, money and the fact that justice might not prevail is reason enough to give anyone second thoughts. It is to say the least an unpleasant process.
In the U.S. a libel suit requires as a general rule that 1)the statement is false 2)the person making the statement knows its false 3)the statement is made with the intent to cause harm 4)harm in fact has occurred. All of this is very difficult to prove in legal proceedings.
For Gavin a lawsuit would interfere with his juggling. ;)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/secretlife/scientists/gavin-schmidt/
Gavin, et al.,
Great job on the response to some of the shoddy reporting we’ve seen lately from the fourth estate. I’d like to see a rebuttal of some of the latest nonsens from the Institute of Physics:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3902.htm
You guys have done a great job wading through the muck in the last few months, and those of us that support science sure do appreciate it.
Re: J. Warner #662 (1 March 2010@ 9:24 PM)
No need for you and others to keep beating this dead horse. As has been repeated endlessly here, many datasets actively used by the researchers at CRU, GISS, and elsewhere are easily available to any researcher who wants to use them, as are codes. Go ahead and have at them, if you like. No one is stopping you.
Many irresponsible journalists and bloggers have alleged that climate data were lost or intentionally destroyed by CRU researchers. This is baseless. I suggest that a reasonable analogy for the few data records that were not saved by Dr. Jones and CRU due to storage issues is that they are similar to the receipts one gets when making a withdrawal from a bank’s ATM. The ATM receipt provides a record of the balance in the bank account, but it isn’t the only record of the account. One doesn’t need to keep the receipt in order to know what the account balance is, just as there has been no destruction of the MET office data used by CRU.
The climate data are available from the MET offices to anyone who wishes to obtain them, in accordance with the MET offices’ individual terms of use. Those are the same terms that govern CRU’s use of the data. CRU does not have a right to violate the terms under which they have been given MET data, just because Steve McIntyre wants some more data with which to play games, or more likely, to do nothing but go on another fishing expedition.
And here are some more graphical histories
shttp://www.g-mwater.com.au/storages/history.aspx?ContainerID=dartmouthdam&Label=Dartmouth%20Dam&strDef=&formsubmitted=1&&DropDownYear1=1992&DropDownYear2=1996&DropDownYear3=2000&DropDownYear4=2004&DropDownYear5=2009&DropDownYear6=Do%20not%20display&DropDownYear7=Do%20not%20display&DropDownYear8=Do%20not%20display
http://www.g-mwater.com.au/storages/history.aspx?ContainerID=humedam&Label=Hume%20Dam&strDef=&formsubmitted=1&&DropDownYear1=1992&DropDownYear2=1996&DropDownYear3=2000&DropDownYear4=2004&DropDownYear5=2009&DropDownYear6=Do%20not%20display&DropDownYear7=Do%20not%20display&DropDownYear8=Do%20not%20display
http://www.g-mwater.com.au/storages/history.aspx?ContainerID=yarrawongaweir&Label=Yarrawonga%20Weir&strDef=&formsubmitted=1&&DropDownYear1=1992&DropDownYear2=1996&DropDownYear3=2000&DropDownYear4=2004&DropDownYear5=2009&DropDownYear6=Do%20not%20display&DropDownYear7=Do%20not%20display&DropDownYear8=Do%20not%20display
Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (editor Energy & Environment) former senior research fellow at the Energy Group, SPRU, University of Sussex).
I believe, Dr., that Energy and Environment is not a scientific journal. So until you publish in a scientific journal and have your work vetted openly like every other scientist has done since the 1600s, why should anyone listen to you?
Energy and Environment is not listed in the ISI or Eigenfactor.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comments.asp?storycode=407763
> again, read up your chemistry.
> Electric furnaces do only REDUCTION OF CARBON IN EXCESS
> in the cast iron to produce steel.
> you first have to reduce iron ores.
All of which can be done with electricity. It not commonly used now but the technology has been around since the early 1900. You can find references in metallurgy texts as early as 1913.
655: And here is a dramatic graphical history showing that cycle:
Yes, add 1992 to the graph and observe the effects of the 12 year drought.
#567 The point is that the recent droughts in southern Australia are moving into a new pattern. In place of the seven year cycle that was seen with the Ferderation Drought and the WW2 Drought, we are now seeing longing period charactertised by lower rainfall. The drought sare getting longer and joining up. Not sure Dorothy McKellar would have been quite so celebratory these days.
@655 BobFJ
I don’t want to get into a slanging match, but I don’t think your reference to past droughts is any indication that what we are seeing now is no different to the past. It clearly is different to the past – at least for the recent period for which we have measurements.
There is a very large difference between a regular draw down to half capacity that you referred to, and the less than 4% capacity that we saw last year and years prior. I don’t know if the level of the Hume has ever been that low before. The Eildon was similarly very low during the recent extended drought. I live near the Hume Dam and have done so on and off for more than 50 years, so I am familiar with it and the upstream Dartmouth Dam. I’ve also lived at the other end of the Murray for several years.
The dams on the Murray were built for flow capacity, irrigation purposes and, to some extent, for flood control. Dartmouth was built to help make sure Adelaide continued to be able to draw water from the Murray. The dams have completely changed the natural flow of the Murray – not just the dams on the river itself but the dams on its tributaries, the hydro schemes and the irrigation systems in the catchment.
I agree that the effects of droughts are difficult to compare, especially across centuries when agriculture and water systems were vastly different. However temperatures and rainfall measurements are not so difficult to compare, at least not for the periods when they have been recorded by instruments designed for the purpose.
In my previous post I referred you to the BOM records. There is no doubt that the climate of south eastern Australia has changed to be hotter in recent decades. We cannot be sure of what the climate will be in the future, but I would be more confident that the CSIRO suggestion that it is likely to continue to be hotter and drier in much of South Eastern Australia from now on.
Hank Roberts (649)
OK
I had thought ir absorption in the troposphere was saturated as far as CO2 bands were concerned and so additional CO2 molecules had to go upstairs to the stratosphere where there was less competition from H2O absorption. The stratosphere gets a wee bit thicker, CO2 wise and AGW charges ahead, despite the saturation. I no longer believe that.
What happens is there is never CO2 saturation in the troposphere. (At least at the temperatures and pressures we consider.) Instead the effective CO2 absorption bands get wider, enough so as to absorb the added CO2. Since we now have more satellite data and analysis of troposphere stratosphere I don’t have any problem with that either. I divined that change from Raypierre’s 6/07 RC piece on Angstrom. I have to study that and its comments and try to read the Zender pdf that Brian pointed to, but I’m satisfied with my revised picture for now.
I tried to remember where I got the” move up to the stratosphere explanation” but I haven’t yet. I tried Google but there’s so much on the topic that I haven’t found anything even remotely familiar. The weirdest site I found was “Cold Facts” at http://brneurosci.org/co2.html which sounds like they are trying to be scientific but wandwer all over the map. Are they a denier site.
So that’s it for now, I’ll see what gives tomorrow.
The data, of course, is available. it’s not “withheld”, it’s like “you need to talk to Sweden if you want it, sorry”.
How *bleeping* hard is this to understand?
And of course, the *methods* used are documented in published papers.
These people are just the typically politically-charged misinformed science-fraud coattail hangers on that we’re all used to.
dhogaza Reur 659:
No, the issue is not HOW the Emails were obtained, which is unproven, but what they reveal. (together with many other documents, including code and code comments).
Donna 617
Food for thought
thanks
The current anomaly idea doesn’t play well since no-one really experiences this average temperature. That’s a problem with pitching the average. And it ain’t selling.
[Response:This makes no sense but seems likely to be connected to your belief that there is no such thing as a global mean temperature, which is among the most absurd arguments ever offered against global warming.–Jim]
Actually, this time you missed the point, Jim. The above isn’t about the science, but about John and Joanne Q. Public’s perceptions, and the commenter is correct. Anomalies are hard to conceptually nail down because the reference point is unclear to most non-scientists. It’s like saying, “There’s some changes in temperatures overall compared to something… somewhere.” Non-scientists/mathematicians/statisticians don’t get means and standard deviations, etc.
It’s messy and is not the best way to frame the information.
Cheers
622, Nick O. : Or am I just plain wrong here somehow, just over-reacting?
Technology has improved, and standards have been changed. Consider the current standards of Nature, Science, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association: publication requires that the data and code be deposited in a publicly available repository. Last November, Mann et al published a paper in Science, and the Supporting Online Material for the paper, available to any member of AAAS, was 20MB, compressed. If you are not a member of AAAS, you have to pay to download the paper, and that may entitle you to download the Supporting Online Material (I am not sure of this.)
Many of the weak arguments for AGW ( proxies, cherry picked climate events, accelerating current warming) pollute the strong, physics based arguments for slow, inevitable warming with various effects both positive and negative.
Avataer, my dear friend, you need to study up on Rapid Climate Change. “It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time,” said William Patterson, a geological sciences professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who carried out the research. “It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/earth-environment/article6917215.ece
is thinking of betting on when the Mertz glacier tongue is back on it’s original lenght after this breakup event. options could include a)never, since the GW won’t allow it b)the year when this happens, due glacial flow c)if b)will it extend further out since the torque on the grounding line has diminished and d)never, since the currents in the area will produce similar collisions as long as there is a glacier tongue.
“656
John Peter says:
1 March 2010 at 7:44 PM
One and all
Here’s the need for new legislation for internet privacy that I found. I have not been making this up:”
Yes you have.
You’re even doing one version of “making it up” here: what “it” are you defending with that link?
“Wind is always going to have physical limitations just because of materials and stress’s limiting scale. ”
And nuclear power is always going to have physical limitations just because of materials and safety.
Not to mention that you can only dig it out, transport it, refine it, etc only so fast unless you build lots of roads and buildings purely for that purpose.
(Also needing lots of water and power)
Is it still a strawman argument when you take a problem some other thing has and just state that that problem exists with the thing you don’t like?
Or is that plain old weaselling?
Any ideas, anyone?
“(Do you recall where you came across it? I’m always curious about sources for ideas.)”
Hank, it came from beyond the grave.
It’s a zombie argument.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Donna:”I think that there are deniers/skeptics (whatever is the term that least offends) who truly just need to see more to be convinced.”
When you find one, can you let us know who it is.
Note: It is NOT someone who asks a question but didn’t bother reading any of the links under Start Here.
Re 647 J Bowers
When you do that graph of the trends in the 4 temp records, you should apply the appropriate offsets to GISTEMP and HadCRUT:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/trend
Otherwise bears of little brain, such as NZ’s Ian Wishart, get all confused and try to tell you that GISTEMP overestimates temperatures, because its line is higher up the graph.
I’m starting to conclude that Gilles is an optimist :(
Take a look at David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. He answers a lot of your energy questions, though not your alternative chemicals questions.
My point remains: if there is a solution to these problems it would be much better to work hard on it before the crisis, rather than deny there’s any crisis (starting with vicious personal attacks on climate scientists). I hope you agree with that even if you see no solution.
“Does any other branch of human endeavour have to be subject to such scrutiny? Would the critics of people like Jones, for example, or his questioners for that matter, last more than a day in the job if their procedures and motives were taken apart in this way?”
The problem is of course that global taxation and the changing of entire societies does not rely on the results of most scientists. When the stakes are as high as taxation, changes in global lifestyle and potential global catastrophe, then yes, we need everything and it has to be treated as a unique case. Anyone reading the CRU emails can see that there is an issue in that science, even if it is just to do with process, and it needs to be resolved and confidence restored in the eyes of a significant proportion of the public’s eyes.
Or is that unfair and unreasonable?
Joseph O’Sullivan, Thanks. Scientists being human. Amazing concept. Great juggling and great analogies, too, Gavin.
“When the stakes are as high as taxation, changes in global lifestyle and potential global catastrophe, then yes, we need everything”
Apparently you don’t need anything to assert that the stakes are high taxation.
And the desire to have everything everywhere and every time increases taxation.
Funny how you don’t mind wasting tax money, especially since you won’t bother with using it all.
John,
Yes, it is unfair and unreasonable to judge the processes of CRU scientists on the basis of selective leaking of stolen material. As for your wider point, despite the strange beliefs of many denialists, almost all publicly-funded science (the exceptions are military) is carried out on tightly restricted budgets. It would be absurdly inefficient to employ highly-trained scientists to put everything in a form that will make sense to the general public, let alone deal with the resulting avalanche of further nuisance requests, demands, accusations and lies from denialists. Part of the answer is to develop semi-automated systems for metadata capture and maintenance, and this is a current area of research (try google scholar on “e-science”, “metadata”, “provenance”), but really useful systems are some years off. Meanwhile, you could employ an army of graduate students to prepare the material, but you would inevitably get errors in the process of preparing the material for public availability- followed, of course, by further accusations of conspiracy and cover-up.
Mike (650),
There is “hot dry rock geothermal” which could be used anywhere. No plants yet. We know how to do it; we just have to start building. Preferably today. And it provides power 24/7.
BPL: Biofuels.
Gilles: Not on the scale we use petroleum and coal. Impossible.
BPL: Just because you say so? Brazil is already running 100 million cars on bioethanol.
BPL: Electric trains. Biodiesel. Bioethanol. Biomethanol.
Gilles: can’t power everything with that. Impossible.
BPL: Just because you say so? Do you know how much algae could be raised on land, and how fast?
Gilles: And they would compete with food.
BPL: Outside of Japan, not many people eat algae. Or switchgrass. Or municipal garbage. Or animal dung. And as for sugar cane, we could probably do better with less sugar in our diet.
BPL: Hydrogen from electricity.
Gilles: not any closer to being cheap and convenient.
BPL: And it never will be until we start building.
Gilles: fertilizers,
BPL: Organic farming.
Gilles: Much more demanding in manpower, so much more expensive.
BPL: In practice prices are already competitive.
Gilles: and even stable electric grids in most countries,
BPL: Simply not true. Solar thermal power, wind, geothermal and biofuel over a wide-area smart grid can do BETTER than fossil fuels”
Gilles: in your dreams, but nowhere else
BPL: That’s from STUDIES with ACTUAL PLANTS. Solar thermal plants which store excess heat in molten salts during the day to run the turbines at night achieve BETTER on-line time than coal-fired plants.
I don’t think you’ve ever seriously researched any of this. I have. You’re wrong. We depend on fossil fuels now, but there is no reason at all why we have to. There is no natural law that says wealthy civilizations can only run on fossil fuel. Energy is energy.
~664 Joseph O’Sullivan said:
“In the U.S. a libel suit requires as a general rule that 1)the statement is false 2)the person making the statement knows its false 3)the statement is made with the intent to cause harm 4)harm in fact has occurred. All of this is very difficult to prove in legal proceedings.”
Not so in the UK! I know that the UK libel laws stink and are often abused, but they have also been used in valid cases. Although using them may feel bad, the other side are playing very dirty and and you can be too honourable in the face of that. I think that now the British press are smearing individual scientists, the time has come to use them.
Someone’s already probably mentioned this here, but I’ve just been watching the hearing of the UK House of Commons (HoC) Science and Technology Committee looking at the disclosure of climate data from the CRU.
My initial take is written up on my new blog. Nothing startling emerged. Fred Pearce wrote a misleading article about the session in the Guardian. Other articles in the Guardian seemed to be a bit more straightforward.
#692 BPL. There are huge concerns about getting fuels from crops. Setting aside large areas of arable land to produce crops for fuel and not food will inevitably put upwards pressure on food prices. Obviously, the people who will suffer first in that are the world’s poor. It’s also not going to be too great for the earth’s climate if profits from biofuels encourage farmers to convert large areas of rainforest and peatlands to sugar cane and palm tree plantations. Then there’s also the problem of strain on water resources.
This isn’t to say that biofuels can’t possibly play a role, but in my opinion western governments have used AGW to railroad through deals on biofuels that will be harmful for the environment and even more harmful for the world’s poor – all the while continuing to ignore their historic responsibility to take specific actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that Gilles’ claims are n’importe quoi. And frankly, for him to say that civilisation is soon to meet its end – regardless of what we do about greenhouse gas emissions – sounds remarkably like fear-mongering and alarmism. Humankind has overcome technological and social problems in the past. The present one is different in scale, but not in nature. We’ll have to adapt. Our societies will have to adapt. If less travel and fewer consumer goods are what’s required, then I’m sure people can put up with that for the sake of the continued existence of human civilisation.
Energy is indeed energy, but the problem is economy of cost.
There is an easier way out of this conundrum/debacle.
1) Scientists are scientists, whether their field is particle physics, or climate, and given their innate intelligence (and hopefully humble personalities), are aware of their own biases. We should (and now clearly must) make available all the raw datasets, our calculations and algorithms (code), plus our known facts and assumptions of the unknown elements required for the calculations to all scientists. After all, it did not take us THAT long to get our BS,MS, PhD degrees in Climate Science…so it is not unreasonable that they should not be able to independently derive our conclusions and abandon denial.
2) I’d like to submit that our aggregate scientific prowess (we are, after all, the newest field of science, but not the only one) and financial resources should be applied to cracking the Fusion nut. Benefits are: no CO2 emissions, no radioactive waste with 50,000 year+ half-lives to contain, no proliferation issues, virtually free fuel sources with no environmental extraction impact (even wind/solar/battery technologies have these)…just cheap, on-demand energy, plus a real crack at non-hydrocarbon derived H2 from H2O hydrolysis for tranportation fuel using internal combusion engines that emit water. If we cracked the Fission nut for ~US$40B (Y2K$) in 1936-45, put a man on the Moon for ~$141B in 1960-69, and spend ~$17B/yr now on the shuttle/ISS programs, we can surely solve the Fusion problem in 10 years with dedicated government funding. The same is true with Superconductivity (which is perhaps even more attractive because it would cause a vitually immediate de-rate of US coal-fired power plants). With a standarized design, the ensuing 40 years will be required for the capital investments to convert from fossil fuels to widespread Fusion electric power facilities. For more info, check the ITER project (though there are many quasi-institutional government/private sector efforts currently, and quietly, going on in this area)
What am I missing here? Logic-based refutations welcome.
Respectfully Submitted, TOM
If anyone wants to see how to face up to a Senate hearing, you could do far worse than watch George Galloway giving it very blunt and very straight while barely blinking. Facts talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyyGoPerzWc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lINNad6Njs
BPL comment 512: Can you give a link or citation for your PDSI numbers? I have not been able to verify them. I find those numbers more threatening than potential sea level rise.
On the subject of the IoP’s submission to the Parliament hearing yesterday, apparently it’s started a lively debate at the IoP’s policy forum which, unfortunately, is for members only. The Guardian poster gave me a quick summary:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/01/parliamentary-climate-emails-inquiry?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
___________________________________________________________________
“Roughly:
– Everyone welcomed the call for open release of data.
– One participant, to general approval, mentioned that open release of data needs to be accompanied by good quality metadata.
– I pointed out that for open release of data to become general practice in science, we will need to be clear about who funds the necessary data storage and server infrastructure, and about how we make sure that spending time and effort on providing good quality metadata does not adversely impact any individual scientist’s REF score.
– I mentioned that one could argue that the UEA folks had already met the standard of open electronic release of data, before the various FoI requests were made.
– One participant, who generally distrusts the IPCC, primarily on grounds that the field data they use may not be ISO 17025 certified, welcomed the IPCC-bashing.
– One other participant and I expressed concern that the submission came perilously close to repeating as-yet-unproven allegations of malpractice by people at UEA.
– I expressed further concern that the submission may have introduced a new, and downright false, allegation that the post-1960 divergence between tree-ring temperatures and instrumental temperatures had been suppressed from IPCC graphs. I pointed out that the divergence was openly shown in figure 2.21 of the WG1 Third Assessment Report and the hypothesized reasons for it reviewed in some detail in section 2.3.2.1 of that report, which would be a strange way of trying to hide something.
– There was a brief spat about how high the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentration was – from the literature, Beck or Jaworowski were cited on one side of the argument, and Meijer and Keeling, Oeschger, or Levin and Heshaimer on the other side.
– One participant argued that it’s meaningless to try to infer secular trends from any temperature time series that’s not long compared with the periods both of ENSO and of the solar cycle.”
doubting Thomas@696,
1) You are missing the immense cost in terms of scientists’ time. Actually, I rather suspect that’s exactly the point, and that you’re not missing it at all, but maybe you’re just very naive – in which case, blame my suspicions on your chosen handle.
2) The timescale is hopeless. We need to reduce GHG emissions by upwards of 80% (probably near 100%) by 2050. Practical fusion power is, as it has been for decades, about 50 years away.