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BREAKING: Phil Jones Endorsed “Evidence” for Oxburgh “Inquiry” Into Climategate
Jul 20th
[Editor's Note: What do you call an inquiry where the accused gets to choose what evidence is presented and no accusers are asked for their side of the story?]
via Bishop’s Hill Blog
July 18, 2010
…
One interesting snippet has emerged from this [Oxburgh inquiry]. When the original emails were released I reported on an inquiry made to Lord Oxburgh by Oliver Morton of the Economist about how Oxburgh’s Eleven papers were chosen. When he replied, Oxburgh said in essence that he didn’t know.
What I received was a list from the university which I understand was chosen by the Royal Society The contact with the RS was I believe through [name redacted] but I don’t know who he consulted. [Name redacted], when I asked him, agreed that the original sample was fair.
Well, now we know who the redactions were. The contact through with the Royal Society was through Martin Rees – we knew that already. The other redaction, the other person consulted about whether the sample of papers was reasonable, was…Phil Jones.
Now, whichever way you look at it, this is a funny question to put to the accused if one’s objective is a fair trial. I mean, what could Jones say? “You’ve picked all my bad papers”? And of course Jones must have known that the sample was not representative.
New Scientist Slams Climategate Whitewashes
Jul 19th
via New Scientist
July 14, 2010
IS CLIMATEGATE finally over? It ought to be, with the publication of the third UK report into the emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Incredibly, none looked at the quality of the science itself.
The MPs’ inquiry – rushed out before the UK general election on 6 May – ducked the science because the university said it was setting up an “independent scientific assessment panel” chaired by geologist Ron Oxburgh.
After publishing his five-page epistle, Oxburgh declared “the science was not the subject of our study”. Finally, last week came former civil servant Muir Russell’s 150-page report. Like the others, he lambasted the CRU for its secrecy but upheld its integrity – despite declaring his study “was not about… the content or quality of [CRU's] scientific work” (see “Scientists respond to Muir Russell report”).
Though the case for action to cut greenhouse gases remains strong, this omission matters. How can we know whether CRU researchers were properly exercising their judgment? Without dipping his toes into the science, how could Russell tell whether they were misusing their power as peer reviewers to reject papers critical of their own research, or keep sceptical research out of reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?
Info commissioner finds saintly CRU crew guilty
Jul 18th
via TheRegister
Andrew Orlowski
July 8, 2010
Climatic Research Unit director Phil Jones was being whisked back to his desk at the University of East Anglia by the University’s Russell enquiry yesterday.
But with exquisite timing, the Information Commissioner’s office chose the same day to confirm that CRU had twice broken the Freedom of Information regulations – once by ignoring the request, and twice by refusing the actual data. The breaches carry a civil penalty.
More is to come, as this was one of four complaints by David Holland under consideration by the ICO, which adjudicates on both FOI requests and EIRs, or Environmental Information Regulations. Other bodies include the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Met Office.
Global warming brings peace and happiness
Jul 18th
via TheRegister
Andrew Orlowski
July 16, 2010
A study correlating economic and political changes in China’s Middle Kingdom has found that warmer climate benefited society. By contrast, a fall of temperature of 2C was correlated with conflict and famine.
“The collapses of the agricultural dynasties of the Han (25-220), Tang (618-907), Northern Song (960-1125), Southern Song (1127-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) are closely associated with low temperature or the rapid decline in temperature,” say the academics led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Historical studies are problematic in two ways, and you have to be careful not to fall into one of two obvious elephant traps. One is that politics very much determines whether a society gets out of a pickle or goes into a decline. So deterministic views such as Jared Diamond’s in Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse tend to underestimate this capacity for change.
The other (not entirely unrelated) trap is that we’re no longer at the mercy of nature, and thanks to technology have tamed it to a significant degree. We don’t have a “peak wood” or a “peak whaleblubber” crisis today. Even the IPCC grudgingly admits as much. “The marginal increase in the number of people at risk from hunger due to climate change must be viewed within the overall large reductions due to socio-economic development.”
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