The Battle for the Soul of Science

At long last, the giants have begun to stir. Like the ents in the film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, they've taken their time about it. While climate war wounded sway, buckle, and fall, the giants are are so ponderous they take days just to greet each another.

They must have decided something by now sound bite The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers sound bites

Pippin, Treebeard & Merry, The Two Towers

Now, however, they're stepping into the sunlight, making their voices heard in a battle over the future (indeed, the very soul) of science.

For too long we, the public, have been told that science academies don't just endorse the theory of dangerous man-made global warming, they also support specific political responses (including emissions reduction and transitioning to a low-carbon society). We've been told that science journals and magazines agree.

We've been lectured by scientists, politicians, journalists, filmmakers, and celebrities about how our lives need to become less pleasant and less free because "science says" so. We've been told that to doubt global warming is to be anti-science, that to question behaviour reminiscent of adolescent gamers is to "attack" climate scientists for doing their job.

But the distressing fact of the matter is that much of climate "science" has been conducted by people who - as evidenced by their refusal to share their data or explain their methods to third parties - are blatantly unscientific in their approach. Much of climate science appears to have been produced by people who would prefer to destroy their evidence instead of sharing it with critics. Who have tried to circumvent Freedom of Information laws. Who have advised other scientists to delete e-mails.

While this shocking behaviour unfolded in excruciating slow-mo in recent years, the science academies of the world averted their eyes. They refused to see or to hear – never mind investigate and call people to account. Instead, they inappropriately inserted themselves into the global warming debate by declaring support for one perspective. In doing so they abandoned their core mission – which is to defend and uphold the scientific method. They not only permitted people who'd abandoned the scientific method to speak with the authority of science – they stood behind them in public and thumped them on the back.

An investigation is currently being conducted by the Science and Technology Committee of the British Parliament. Yesterday Phil Jones, the head of Climatic Research Unit and a key participant in the UN's climate consensus process, testified. He confirmed that it hasn't been standard practice in climate change research to disclose all of one's data to third parties. (Which means we're just supposed to take the word of these researchers that abandoning the entire fossil-fuel-based world economy is necessary.) Jones also admitted that, during the peer-review process, no reviewers had ever asked to see his raw data.

(Incidentally, it's fascinating what different people watching the same proceedings see. According to Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, Jones "looked taut, nervous, often miserable. At times his hands shook." You "had to feel sorry for him," says Hoggart. Meanwhile, over at the London Times, Anne Treneman insists that Jones "seemed eerily calm," that his "face was immobile, eyes steady behind wire specs. He seemed, like a dead calm sea, almost glassy." Video of Jones' testimony appear HERE.)

In any case, those giants I mentioned begin with the Institute of Physics. A scientific charity with a worldwide membership of 36,000, it has submitted a formal statement to the British parliamentary committee. The statement says the Climategate e-mails raise "worrying implications" regarding the integrity of climate research and "the credibility of the scientific method."

According to the physics institute, it's vital that scientists "expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others." The institute also says it's concerned by the "intolerance" on display in the Climategate e-mails, since this attitude impedes "the process of scientific 'self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself."

The second giant is Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry, with its membership of 46,000. It, too, has submitted a formal statement to the parliamentary committee. The chemistry society reminds us that the "true nature of science dictates that research is transparent and robust enough to survive scrutiny." It points out that, since "advances in science frequently occur when the prevailing view is challenged by informed scepticism, this is fundamental to the scientific method and should be encouraged…"

The third giant is the Royal Statistical Society, with a membership of 7,000. Its submission to the parliamentary committee declares that "the data, the analysis methods and the models" used in climate research should all enter the public domain so that findings may be independently verified. The statistical society statement continues:

…science progresses as an ongoing debate and not by a series of authoritative and oracular pronouncements…the quality of that debate is best served by ensuring that all parties have access to the facts...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.

Amen and hallelujah. The forces defending the scientific method have begun to gather. Now it's time for others to step forward. Science academies, meteorological associations, science journals, science funding bodies – that means you.

Do it soon - before disgraced climate scientists drag you down with them.

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>> Let there be no more scientific consensuses
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Is this politics or science?
>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists

A Bogus 21-Year-Old Climate Prediction

In 1989 the first global warming book for a general audience was published. Titled The End of Nature, it was written by Bill McKibben, a morose young man with a dim view of humanity and an idealized view of nature.

It's difficult to read this book without concluding that McKibben yearns to scamper back to Eden - to a mythical, undefiled, natural landscape that existed before humans turned up and spoiled everything.

The book says a number of things which, with 20 years of hindsight, look a little foolish. One is especially noteworthy. It concerns what the world will be like "in a few more decades" if we don't heed the author's apocalyptic warnings.

Because this book was published in 1989, much of it was researched and written in 1988 or even earlier. That's 21+ years prior to where we are now. That's before tens of billions of dollars had been spent studying global warming. That's before the very first report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appeared in 1990. (There have been three since then, the last one completed in 2007).

McKibben felt no need to wait for the results of all that scientific research. He didn't choose to be cautious in his pronouncements prior to an alleged "scientific consensus" being developed and articulated by the IPCC process.

Back in 1989 his mind was already made up. He'd not only identified the problem, he'd divined the solution. Put simply: traditional energy sources were the root of all evil and must be abandoned.

On page 124 of the book he declares:

We must act, and in every possible way, and immediately. We must substitute, conserve, plant trees, perhaps even swallow our concerns over safety and build some nuclear plants. We stand at the end of an era - the hundred years' binge on oil, gas, and coal...The choice of doing nothing - of continuing to burn ever more oil and coal - is not a choice, in other words. It will lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with a similar temperature. [bold added]

Four pages onward, he adds: "a few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up, to put it bluntly." [bold added]

Somewhat later, on page 184, he asks:

And if what I fear indeed happens? If the next twenty years sees us pump ever more gas into the sky...what solace then? [bold added]

Well, Bill, a full two decades have passed since then. Considering the absence of large scale, viable alternatives, I expect you'd be the first to agree that we've continued our "ungoverned fossil-fuel use" and that the steady stream of emissions has continued.

But guess what? We aren't living in hell, or even in a place with a similar temperature. Indeed, as Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit (and a central player in the IPCC consensus-science process) confirmed to the BBC two days ago, "there has been no statistically-significant global warming" since the year 1995.

This is worth repeating. In 1995, six years after McKibben's book appeared, the world stopped warming - even though we did none of things he said were absolutely necessary to avoid disaster. This means his prediction was wholly and utterly B - O - G - U - S.

As I've discussed elsewhere, there appears to be no penalty for making false predictions. No one holds you accountable. Despite the apparent lack of connection between his predictions and the real world, McKibben is currently an influential personage in the green movement. (In the product description for this book, he's described as a "climate-change guru".)

Yesterday, he even authored an opinion piece in the Washington Post in which he continued to repeat his shopworn, 20-year-old message:

...the weird and disruptive weather patterns around the world are pretty much exactly what you'd expect as the planet warms...Despite global warming...the chances of what are technically called "big honking dumps" have increased...It's almost like a test...Can you sit in a snowstorm and imagine a warming world?...If the answer is no, then we're really in a world of trouble.

Yes, well, I've heard that one before. And now I'm changing the channel.

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>> Bill McKibben: extravagant emotional excess
>> Climate psychics: 10-year-old snow prediction fails miserably
>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
>> Global disaster is so 1976

Climate Psychics: 10-Year-Old Snow Prediction Fails Miserably

A decade ago, a scientist with the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia said snow would be rare in Britain within a few years. But plenty has fallen in 9 of the last 10.

On New Year's Eve, a local radio station aired a brief report about an alleged psychic making her 2010 predictions. The report didn't mention that psychic abilities have never been scientifically confirmed. Nor did it tell us what percentage of the psychic's predictions from last year had actually come true.

Although it would have been straightforward to check what the psychic said a year earlier, the media doesn't hold psychics accountable. Likewise, no one holds the media accountable for its false predictions.

In other words, there is no penalty for getting it wrong. There is no downside to behaving - despite all evidence to the contrary - as though it's possible to predict the future. A newspaper may publish melodramatic headlines. It may alarm readers with dire, confidently-delivered prognostications. But in a month, a year, a decade (or three) when it becomes clear the story was nonsense, no one gets pelted with limp noodles. Nor do writers, editors, producers, and broadcasters publish year-end roundups that let you know just how mistaken they've all been.

Given this state of affairs, it's sensible and appropriate to regard media scare stories with a healthy measure of skepticism. Some people, no doubt, read this Independent story in early 2000 (the headline of which appears above) and felt melancholy afterward.

Although a decade old, it reads much like the average "environment" news story today. The Independent told its readers:

• "snow is starting to disappear from our lives"
• "Sledges, snowmen, snowballs...are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture"
• "within a few years winter snowfall will become 'a very rare and exciting event'"
• "Children just aren't going to know what snow is"
• "Heavy snow will return occasionally...but when it does we will be unprepared...Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time"
• "chances are certainly now stacked against the sort of heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters" [bold added]

Readers were assured the future could be accurately predicted because "Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia" said so.

They were told something important was happening because Britain's biggest toyshop "had no sledges on display in its Regent Street store" for the first time.

They were invited to feel alarmed because a spokesman for the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club lamented that winters weren't as cold as they used to be when he was a boy (his current age was not disclosed).

They were advised to be concerned because a second scientist, "David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research" had mused (according to the journalistic paraphrase) that "ultimately, British children [will] have only virtual experience of snow." [bold added]

Perhaps most persuasive of all, readers were told the lack of snow in the first two months of the year 2000 was "the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years."

The notion that a complex, dynamic system like the Earth's climate might experience perfectly natural cycles lasting decades - or even centuries - went unmentioned. Instead, readers were told that "Global warming...is now accepted as a reality by the international community."

Perhaps the international community would care to explain a few things. British citizens are currently in some distress due to heavy snowfalls. Hundreds of them have been rescued from their stranded automobiles by the armed forces. Their children attend the thousands of schools that have been shuttered. Still others have had their cancer treatments and operations postponed.

No doubt large numbers of these people would welcome an explanation from the CRU's Dr. David Viner who advised, in 2000, that within a few years snow would become very rare.

In actual fact, Britain has experienced a great deal of snow since then. A mere two weeks after the Independent published this article, London's "Luton Airport had to be closed, as snow equipment was unable to clear the runways sufficiently for aircraft to take-off...[Meanwhile] snowdrifts up to 60cm were reported...with many cars being abandoned."

According to the website of Dr. Richard Wild (who recently completed a PhD on British snowstorms and recorded these events as they occurred), by December 2000 the country was experiencing the most "widespread snowfall over the UK since February 1996."

Dr. Wild reports a "total of 12 heavy snowfall days" in Britain in 2001, which he describes as "average". (Elsewhere, he says nine is also average.)

Although he says "virtually no heavy snowfalls" fell in 2002, in January 2003 "snow caused havoc in many parts of the UK," spurring the government to signal its intention to introduce "new legislation to force councils to grit roads." In December of that year, "Heavy snowfall brought New Year['s] Eve misery to large parts of Northern England and Scotland."

In January 2004, a snowstorm interrupted school for 70,000 Scottish children and "a 74-year-old man from Berwickshire died due to having a heart attack trying to free his wife’s car from a snowdrift." In late February, Dr. Wild reports that "many schools across Scotland, SW England, N England, N Ireland and Wales...closed, with numerous roads remaining blocked with snow" and that "a football match...[had] to be called off." In November, Middleton, Derbyshire, received 13 cm of snow - the "largest single fall of snow in November since records began in the year 1977."

Dr. Wild sums up the year 2005 by observing that it "saw 25 heavy snowfall days, the highest (equal with the year 1876) since the heavy snowfall research began in the year 1861." (See details here, here, here, and here.) [bold added]

In other words, during the five years immediately following the Independent's claim that snow was a "rapidly diminishing part" of British culture, snowfall was minimal in only one year (2002). Not only was there plenty of the white stuff during the remaining four, but 2005 was one for the history books.

So how did the next five years fare?

• in late February and early March of 2006, "Heavy snow showers affected many districts of the UK" (East Anglia was among the areas hardest hit). A few weeks later, "Heavy snow fell across N England, N Wales and S Scotland". [more]
  
• in April 2006 "More than 13cm of snow fell in parts of Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and southern London"
  
• "large parts of Southern England, the Midlands and Wales" experienced "heavy snowfall" in February 2007 [more, more, more]
  
• in January 2008 Britain experienced "more snow chaos"
• later that year, thousands lost power when London experienced its first October snow in 74 years
• in November 2008, heavy snow was a problem in large areas of Britain
  
• in December 2008, snow closed "hundreds of schools" and caused traffic difficulties
• during the first 13 days of February 2009, Britain experienced a prolonged period of snowfall in which authorities warned they were running out of road grit [more, more, more, more]
  
• in March 2009, motorists "were stranded after worse-than-expected snowfalls caused blizzard-like conditions in parts of England"
  

By mid-December 2009 parts of Britain were in the grips of snowy, cold, blizzard-like conditions that have yet to fully abate. The media is at last beginning to acknowledge a well-known, but under-reported fact: cold weather is far deadlier than hot weather. Britain's elderly population and poorest families are especially vulnerable.

It turns out that Dr. Viner of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit was flat-out wrong when he told the Independent in early 2000 that within a few years snow would be rare. In fact, snow has been abundant during every year but one since then.

Ten years on, it's clear the journalist and editors involved in this "news" story might as well have consulted a psychic. A crystal ball could hardly have been further off the mark.

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UPDATE:
Near the bottom of this Daily Mail article (which appeared three days after I posted here), there's a photo of Dr. Viner. The third-last and second-last paragraphs from this article read as follows:

Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: ‘We’ve had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn’t change anything.

'This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.’ [bold added]

So ten years ago Dr. Viner made a short-term prediction. This prediction was contradicted by shovelfuls of frosty white evidence in nine of the ten years that immediately followed. Ignoring these facts, Dr. Viner declares that three weeks of cold weather don't mean anything and that he still believes his prediction is accurate.

As I note at the beginning of this post, there is no downside to making false predictions. We all need to remember this the next time we hear that "science says" that X or Y is going to happen.

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Is Corporate E-mail Private E-Mail?

In my view, it's still too early to say much about the vast amount of information that has become public over the past few days in what is being called ClimateGate or CRUgate. The significance of these documents will, one hopes, become clearer with time. [see & search them here]

But there is one point about which we should not be confused. Contrary to the opening line of this news story, these are NOT private e-mails. E-mail messages sent at the place of one's employment, pertaining to one's on-the-job responsibilities, belong to one's employer.

Dr. Kevin Trenberth tells this reporter, "I personally feel violated."

Tough luck. As an employee of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research - which is funded by public dollars and is, one would expect, subject to Freedom of Information legislation - what Prof. Trenberth does in the course of his employment is NOT his own private business.

Full Disclaimer:
So far, no one - on any side of this issue - has declared any of these documents to be fake. But since forgeries aren't unknown, it's appropriate to tread carefully. Fictional e-mails could be mixed in with real messages.

We should also take note of the significant chronological gaps in these documents. This isn't the entire record of e-mail sent and received by certain people, but a partial one. According to what criteria was this selection made? By whom? What agenda might be motivating this person(s)? If we could access the entire record, would the picture that is currently emerging differ significantly? How?

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