Bishop Hill More on the Soon review
Jan 14, 2012 Climate: MWP The food fight at Wikipedia over whether there were four rejections of the Soon and Baliunas paper or none appears to have died down, and a decision - a wise one in my view - has been taken to drop the allegation that de Freitas accepted the Soon paper over the objections of all four peer reviewers.
Here's a wrinkle in the story though. Email 1719 is from Jim Salinger, the New Zealander who was possibly the most militant member of the Hockey Team at the time, promoting the disgraceful idea of complaining to the head of de Freitas's university. The email is addressed to many of the usual suspects: Mann, Jones, Hulme and so on.
I have just heard from a member of the department that the Editor who handled the Soon and Baliunas paper that Otto Kinne asked for an explanation of the criticisms. The Editor has given these. Apparently Otto Kinne has accepted these and plans to take no further action.
It is interesting to note that my informant also received the Soon and Baliunas manuscript for review, and strongly recommended rejection.
I may be in position to learn more this evening.
The identity of the informant in Salinger's department at NIWA is not clear. The reviewers of the Soon and Baliunas paper were apparently selected by a paleoclimatologist on de Freitas's behalf. Phil Jones believed that this was a New Zealander named Anthony Fowler (see #3265).
Reader Comments (86)
BBD
Let's get this right: the expression is pro bono publico or it would be if you were actually doing it "for the public good". What you are doing may be unpaid but that does not make it automatically pro bono.
To qualify for that description it must be work undertaken by a qualified professional in his field without payment and for the public good. I doubt that what you are doing comes under any of those headings except possibly that you don't get paid.
It now seems you are now adding delusions of grandeur to your other failings.
MJ
Nit-picking is always diagnostic of someone losing an argument. You should have resisted the temptation.
BBD
You really do need to stop making a fool of yourself.
I'm not having an argument, hadn't you noticed? I've made no contribution to this thread at all until now.
But if you are going to set yourself up as some sort professional something-or-other doing your job for free out of the kindness of your heart and for the benefit of mankind then I am going to call you on that, 'cos it ain't so.
There is more in 3265 and all points to impeccable conduct of de Freitas, but disturbing conduct of his assaulters:
Phil Jones thinks about the 5 reviewers,"...that the reviewer who said they were too busy was Ray..."
This could have well been Ray Bradley, a Team member and Hockey Stick author...
And Anthony Fowler may be a reputable scientist, but his background is certainly not of "people well known for their opposition to the notion that humans are significantly altering global climate" as accused by Mike Hulme.
Fowler has co-authored several papers with Jim Salinger and is employed at the University of Auckland School of Environment.
http://web.env.auckland.ac.nz/people_profiles/fowler_a/
The director of this school, Glenn McGregor is also chief editor of the International Journal of Climatology and known for the anomalous review of the highly disputed Santer et al 2008 paper. The Journal also twice dismissed McIntyre/McKitrick's reply in which they showed that Santer et al did not hold with updated data – an extremely important reply, later published elsewhere, which supports the assumption that ALL IPCC climate models are seriously wrong.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/a_climatology_conspiracy.html
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/01/question-to-international-journal-fo.html
2003 appears to have been a tipping point in climate "science", with the assaults on S&B, Shaviv/Veizer and McIntyre/McKitrick.
There are 2 reason, why some sincere and impartial scientists did react so wrongly at that time. There was absolutely no reason for anyone to resign. (Remember, to the present day the Hockey Srtick papers have not been retracted and not a single editor had to bear consequences):
First, they probably could not have imagined what was going on and what had been organized in the background and that the assaulters even lied about the peer review. Perhaps they could not have imagined such behaviour until the release of the first batch of climategate emails.
Second, the errors in the Hockey Stick reconstructions had not been exposed at that time, and some may have followed the party line that was communicated so violantly. Simply put, there must have be something very wrong with anything that contradicted the Hockey Sticks, just because party line scientist were so upset.
Mike Jackson
More nit-picking.
Since you are labouring this point, I have to correct your definition of pro bono publico. Professional status is not required.
Is Shell "Big enough" Oil to count?
Nasty research corrupting sponsors that they are......
From:
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0962818260.txt&search=shell
From: "Mick Kelly" <???@uea.ac.uk>
To: ???@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +010 ???
Reply-to: ???@uea.ac.uk
Cc: ???@uea.ac.uk, t.o'???@uea.ac.uk
Mike
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the
agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic
partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain
conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end
after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss
asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc,
etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell's name came up at the TC meeting. I'm ccing this to Tim
who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to
make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me!
I'm talking to Shell International's climate change team but this approach
will do equally for the new foundation as it's only one step or so off
Shell's equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and
what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the
new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it's
within the remit.
Regards
Mick
____________________________
Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 44??? Fax: 44???
Email: ???@uea.ac.uk
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
____________________________
BBD
I would strongly recommend that you retract and rescind the last para of your post on Jan 15, 2012 at 6:39 PM.
Pharos:
Why? There's nothing there that's not been said before.
Nial
Imagine that your job was to present your employer in a favourable light. Your employer is Shell. You suggest that some funding for climate research might look good. Your boss nods.
So far, so PR. This has nothing to do with the well-documented association between vested energy company interests, 'think tanks' in the US, and funding for a handful of contrarians including Soon and Baliunas.
...the bell rings....BBD is employed by Mann and Jones to discredit climate science..why did it take so long for me to realise?
No - what you are doing is copy-pasting passages and posting comments that look like replies, which really don't address the comment they are in reply to. For instance when Markus is posting from de Freitas' emails, you are copy-pasting passages from von Storch's public statements, statements which in part or in whole, are contradicted to what actually went on behind the scenes as evidenced by the emails. Therefore, if you persist in reproducing the publicly available record in response, you haven't really answered his point.
The same goes to your 'reply' to my comment about how your criticism of SB03 is contradictory to your own stance about sensitivity. That you have to go digging deeper into conspiracy and connections to little oil shows that you want to avoid confronting these contradictions.
BBD
You are trolling again. The headline post was on the team reaction to S&B and the editor who arranged publishing.
You then drag in accusations that have nothing to do with this post under the context of "background". Despite what you assert, your link to "Canada's top guitarist's" blog shows nothing that proves Chris de Freitas took any behind the scenes money from any oil company. Even if he did, it isn't relevant to the reviewers correctly passing S&B as Mr Kinne confirmed. On DC, there is just a lot of smear and innuendo about association or irrelevant information of something 10 years later involving other people. In a previous age, it was known as McCarthyism.
I stand by my original comments.
It is also worthwhile noting that Mr de Freitas is still employed by the University and Mr Salinger isn't. Perhaps that is the reason it is rated higher in the rankings than either PennAState or East Anglia?
Markus
Salinger was employed by NIWA (NZ's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric research). They are a Crown Research Institute responsible, amongst other things, for the gathering and use of our climate data. Salinger got the push, ostensibly, because of unauthorised dealings with the media (he was NZ’s self-styled 'go-to' guy for all things weather and climate).
Entirely coincidentally (ho, ho), around the same time NIWA was forced to admit that its historical record of NZ's climate had been so 'adjusted' that it bore no relation to reality. The raw data show no trend at all. The data that had been in circulation for decades (and, who knows, are maybe still sitting as base inputs for various models) were a work of fiction.
Chris de Freitas is indeed still employed by University of Auckland. But he is the prime target of a Team vendetta and universities worldwide do not have a good track record of protecting climate scientists who do not toe the party line. I've expressed my sympathy and support to him. He's a genuine guy and academically brave. The suggestion that he's some kind of oil industry shill is repulsive, frankly. The link to his brother working in oil exploration (a geologist, working in oil exploration! Who'd a thunk it?) would be laughable were Chris not so beleaguered by the Team's henchmen.
As has been made clear through this thread and the S&B 'Discussion' thread, Chris was not wrong to pass the S&B paper. I don't want to bore people by going over it all again, so in the briefest of summaries S&B '03:
- did have academic merit, despite its flaw of an overstated (and therefore unsupportable) conclusion.
was accepted, NOT rejected, by its four reviewers
provoked a severity of reaction amongst the team and its supporters that is still hard to fathom
should never have led to von Storch resigning; it was curiously histrionic.
There is something about S&B 2003 that drives the warmist faction nuts. I can’t put my finger on it. Most of its findings are about as simple and robust as you can find in the whole alchemy of paleoclimate and proxies. As Mooloo says, “Rather than worry about whether the factual basis of S&B is correct, they launch into issues of methodology. In the real world we would actual prefer our scientists to be right about the facts than correct in procedure.” Soon and Balunias brought together some very useful facts. Their statement of relativity vis a vis the C20th was an over-claim. They should simply have left the conclusion as being that the MWP and LIA existed, were significant in scale and showed widespread signals around the globe.
Does it all boil down to a semantic obsession with being able to say 'unprecedented'? Even the above conclusion would surely scupper that?
> Imagine that your job was to present your employer in a favourable light.
> Your employer is Shell. You suggest that some funding for climate research might
> look good. Your boss nods.
> So far, so PR. This has nothing to do with the well-documented association between
> vested energy company interests, 'think tanks' in the US, and funding for a handful
> of contrarians including Soon and Baliunas.
Are you seriously suggesting that someone in Shell was stringing the CRU people along to look good to their boss?
Are you saying that Shell have never sponsored warmist research?
They thought Shell were going to contribute to new building FFS.
Have you not seen the report that "Big Oil" has contributed something like 3,500 times the amount of funding to warmists than they have to realists? (I'm at a client's so don't have the link).
Gixxerboy
I've been trying to puzzle this one out as well. (It's partly how I ended up "discussing" polar bears with BBD, and I don't think that was in fact quite as irrelevant as it seemed).At what stage was McIntyre and McKittrick's paper when S&B was published? And at what stage was the preliminary work for AR4?
The reaction gives the distinct impression that Mann et al were well aware that MBH98 was crock but since it had become such a high-profile poster child with the IPCC it was beyond critical that anything appearing in an (allegedly) reputable scientific source had to be debunked by any means and as quickly as possible.
I've also noted before that Mann was awarded his PhD in 1998 (the year MBH98 appeared) while his co-authors received theirs in 1970 and 1974. I may be barking up the wrong bristlecone since I have never been involved in writing scientific papers (other than a bit of proof-reading!) but I do wonder why a PhD student was set up (have I got that phrase right, I wonder?) as lead author for the definitive paper that "got rid of the mediaeval warm period" when two considerably more experienced scientists were involved.
This was, after all, going to be a major boost to any climatologist's career! Always assuming it was robust enough to stand up. Which we now know it didn't since it was undermined by S&B03 (and M&M04) and needed a considerable helping hand from other team members to stagger into AR4.
I think with that sort of potential disaster staring him in the face Mann had no option but to go on the attack.
Any further comment could bring us into the realm of defamation so I'd better leave it at that but there are explanations aplenty available as to why the reaction was so violent.
Mike
Yes, there have been several fishy episodes and perhaps I'm barking up the wrong stripbark myself. ;-) As you say, 2003-4 was a crucial time for the Team's game plan. But what still perplexes me is the visceral reaction to this day.
Perhaps it's a tribal thing. I feel for Chris and the pressure he faces from a gang of thugs (Mann's bullying is only matched by his preening) who continue to hound him. He's an academic with a sceptical view of the standard meme. In most branches of study this would be viewed as normal, even admirable. Oil industry shill - pah!
Mike, the scientific work on many papers is carried out, in part, by PhD students. For those students who are already very self-confident and skilled at writing, the first draft of paper may be written by the student him- or herself. So the fact that Mann was involved in MBH98 does not look anomalous to me. His involvement with the IPCC shortly therefafter seems stranger to me. I would have thought that writing a balanced evaluation of the literature requires quite a lot of experience. But then as Donna L has shown, in some cases, IPCC authors were teenagers (well, they behaved like teenagers, and were barely in their 20s).
Gixxer
Come on, it's obvious ;-)
Their unsupported claim about the C20th was a piece of what the fossil fuel lobby needed to bamboozle Congress in 2003 (Inhofe was the delivery system). It's all about money. And that's why the mainstream reacted so strongly - they knew exactly what was going on and they'd just lost a round, big style. Blood on the carpet.
That S&B03 also questioned the much-touted findings of certain researchers did not exactly help matters either...
BBD
Perhaps you're right, and it gave them a memorably 'unprecedented' punch on the snout (whether deservedly or mendaciously we shall have to disagree on). But from the perspective of 2012 Inhofe's testimony seems a sideshow. Meanwhile the zombie Hockey Stick (Behold the pristine alignment of its shaft!) lives on.
Bonkers.
Gixxer
"There is something about S&B 2003 that drives the warmist faction nuts. I can’t put my finger on it."
In 2003 - with S&B, Shaviv/Veizer and McIntyre/McKitrick - they lost the science and started to hide data and derail the peer review process.
Since then, they have brought up nothing to explain the warmer temperatures of the past, produced not a single sound hockey stick paper or found any errors in cosmic ray papers.
On top of that, serious issues with the ground based temperature data sets arose and measured data and model projections are now incompatible.
All that was needed was a decent reply to the SB03 paper. That is how science works.
Not a gang-up consensus statement published in a hurry (the Eos comment), none of the skulduggery. Politics always happens, the tides rise and fall. Mann successfully got everyone int the paleocommunity to throw their lot behind his paper and tied all their fates to his hockey stick.He made his political biases everybody else's and got everyone to defend his nonsensical graph.
If scientists lose their minds like Mann and his cohort did at every whiff of political controversy- as we can clearly see from the emails - they cannot be trusted to carry out their work in a dispassionate manner. The acutely political animal that he is, Mann appears to have seen every Senate hearing as the one final roadblock to a worldwide rolling out of carbon control. Why does he have a stake in any kind of carbon legislation at all?
The answer to Gixxer's question is easy. Why did Mann and co lose their heads so badly over the SB affair? It is because some of whom they (i.e., Mann) despised the most and thought inferior, had a paper to which they (i.e., Mann) had no substantive response.
If you read the emails with Tom Nelson, you can see how the vindictiveness of Mann shines through with each message. Mann and Jones spread their poison, day in and day out, and far and wide in their circles.
Markus
If I recall, BBD brought up TSI as the culprit for the MWP and subsequent LIA. I'm a tad sceptical that estimates of TSI from a thousand years ago are accurate in comparison with modern measures, especially in the context of a profoundly complex and chaotic climate system. But that's a lurking abyss of OT potential. And yes, they have failed to produce a sound hockey stick, and the reason is simple. It is utter bunkum, as has now been laid bare. It should have been forehead-slappingly obvious at the outset, given the huge uncertainties associated with paleo reconstructions. Maybe a nice bit of academic-intellectual conceit that readers could mull over, before dropping as too tenuous for serious consideration. And that's before the statistical contortions and culpable manipulation of data are even looked at.
I must admit the Cosmic Ray stuff intrigues me but I have not studied enough to comment.
Shub
Abso-bloody-lutely! I mean, it's not the hardest of papers to understand, is it? It's merits and faults are obvious. So perhaps, as you say, its obvious and undeniable findings drove Mann and his cohorts into a fury because pulling the wool over anyone's eyes about it was impossible.
And perhaps that is why an interminable witch hunt has followed, fueled by innuendo, muck-spreading, aspersion and downright lies. (Okay, BBD, I know some of the associations you point to are fact. But patronage in this entire field of climate science is an issue.)
I still reflect on the visceral campaign to take down CdF. Soon and Balunia for a paper that is mostly factually correct versus a PhD and stellar career for a lying toerag producing a paper that was:
a) complete bunk, and yet
b) went on to star billing in everything from scientific briefings to governments to a massively hyped documentary.
What an illuminating thread!
Regards
Mailman
Jeremy
Thanks for that reply.
I think I might have assumed that as a PhD student Mann was the gofer; it's the presence of his name as "lead" that puzzled me a bit. Why wasn't it 'Bradley, Hughes and Mann' (alphabetical) or 'Hughes, Bradley and Mann' (order of 'seniority')?
As for his position with IPCC, I would agree with you except that Donna has exposed that farce for what it is.
Mike, as Jeremy says, it's quite usual for the PhD student to be the first author on the paper and the supervisor(s) second. If you look at Jeremy's publication page, or mine, you'll see that on most of the recent papers he's not the first author. He and I have around 4 PhD students. They do the majority of the work for the joint papers (since they are working 100% on their one project), and the order of authors just indicates this.
What is odd (agreeing with Jeremy and you) is that he was appointed as a Lead Author for the IPCC almost immediately after getting his PhD.
Does anyone know WHO appointed him lead and on what grounds?
Mailman
Paul
As I said, my involvement with scientific publications is limited to correcting your spelling mistakes or the typesetter's clumsy fingers! So I bow to your superior knowledge of how these things work.
Certainly the appointment of a "wet behind the ears" newly-qualified PhD to a position of responsibility in such a prestigious organisation as the IPCC ought to be a cause for wonderment but perhaps it would be better if we looked at it the other way and asked what sort of useless organisation would appoint a railway engineer to oversee reports on climate change and enlist as its "experts" newly-qualified PhDs or PhD students or passing environmental activists on a sort of country/race/gender allocation basis.
A look at what the IPCC is, how it operates, and who it employs tells you all you need to know about climate science.
I knew I had seen this elsewhere, but have only just remembered where. Maybe it is unfair to complain too much about lack of experience in the case of Michael Mann. He completed his PhD at quite a 'late' age - if you look at the hagiographical article in the Independent that our host recently linked to, Mann was born in 1965 hence in 1998 he was in his mid thirties. He had been studying and researching climate for some time by then. Our current chancellor of the exchequer was also in his thirties when he took on the job - albeit a bit older - so there's an inconsistency in insisting that you be older to be an IPCC lead author than a senior elected politician. That being said, I think there are many examples in Donna's IPCC book and on her blog of IPCC authors who were much younger than Mann. And of course none of this guarantees that Mann is right or wrong about anything.
Gixxer
Does it? Congress was once again dissuaded from even beginning endorse any kind of emissions reduction policy. And it still has not done so to date. This ultimately helped derail Copenhagen because Obama's hands were largely tied in 2009. US inaction causes China and India to refuse to do anything substantive (reasonably enough). The whole global process remains stalled.
I'd say the fossil fuel lobby has done a very, very good job so far.
With the contention that late 20th century temperatures are outwith natural variation looking more threadbare by the day (except to those who choose not to put them in the context of long-term, i.e 1000+ years, climate behaviour) and the whole question of forcings and feedbacks beginning to be questioned by those who, from where I sit, appear to have a better understanding of physics than the assorted geographers, geologists and (failed) statisticians that inhabit the Alice in Wonderland world of climatology it is a relief to know that at least the US might have started the process of rejoining the real world.
"Emissions reduction" is merely a euphemism for "economic suicide" which is why the BRIC countries are not going down that route. To believe that they would have signed up to any sort of agreement that would have limited their capacity to develop as the "developed" world has already done is to believe in fairies.
And any economist worth his salt — which emphatically does not include Stern — will tell you that in the event that humanity needs to take action against possible but as yet solely conjectural weather events they will be better placed to do so if we have not already impoverished them by needlessly and culpably setting out to reduce our national wealth and hence their ability to find the means to solve their problems.
MJ
And there are others - perhaps with a slightly better understanding of the science and its implications - who regard the interference by vested corporate interest in global policy as criminal.
And indeed there are as many, fully aware of the facts, who consider the interference in the democratic process by single interest environmental pressure groups and activist scientists with an agenda to pursue and an axe to grind as equally criminal.
The distortion of the facts, the over-weening self-righteousness, the determination to bully, cheat and lie their way to policies that would never ever command a majority view in any democratic society in the world need to be exposed at every opportunity and no quarter given either to them or the "useful idiots" who do their work for them.
> who regard the interference by vested corporate interest in global policy as criminal.
Indeed BBD.
Can I refer you to the questions I asked in my post of Jan 16, 2012 at 12:38 PM?
Nial
- No
- No
[- N/A]
- No
BBD,
I have to disagree with this statement:
US inaction causes China and India to refuse to do anything substantive
China and India are behaving in what they see as their best interests. What the US chooses to do with regard to emissions matters little to them with regard to their own policies. We could stop all fossil fuel related emissions tomorrow and there would be zero impact on chinese or Indian policy.
Bottom line, trying to blame inaction on the part of China and India on the United States is simply baseless finger pointing. If anything, the reverse is more likely to be true, with the US recognizing that any action on its part is a waste of time if the other two nations are not acting in concert with our actions.