[Vision2020] Head of Climate Dynamics at University of Oxford: "Science forgotten in climate emails fuss"

Ted Moffett starbliss at gmail.com
Sat Feb 6 16:27:45 PST 2010


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/11/science-climate-change-phil-jones
 Science forgotten in climate emails fuss

No one identifies any scientific flaws in Phil Jones' work, yet the 'fallen
idol' narrative is too alluring for the media to resist-

Article author:

   - Myles Allen <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/myles-r-allen>

   Myles Allen is head of the Climate Dynamics group at University of
   Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department. He is the
   principal investigator of climateprediction.net and is principally
   responsible for starting this project.


   - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Friday 11 December 2009
   12.30 GMT

 It is odd that we still don't take climate change seriously.

Judging from the acres of newsprint being devoted to the subject right now,
you might find that remark surprising. But look at the furore over the
University
of East Anglia emails<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/hacked-climate-science-emails>:
environmentalists hand-wringing as if the end of the world had suddenly been
brought forward; their opponents crowing that the whole of climate science
has to start again from scratch.

Can you imagine this kind of response if the subject of the emails had been
something we actually care about, such as health or the economy? The discovery
of the HIV virus <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gallo> involved one of
the murkiest incidents in the history of science. It's an insult to UEA's
Phil Jones and his colleagues to even suggest the comparison, but it serves
to make the point. Reporters on the HIV affair always scrupulously stressed
that although the integrity of some of the individuals involved was called
into question, the evidence that HIV causes Aids was unaffected. People
might have died if the public had been misled on that point. Whereas if it's
only about climate change …

A colleague working in astrophysics was expressing bemusement to me
yesterday about why the reputation of British science was apparently under
threat, given that no evidence had actually emerged of scientific
misconduct. Her specific question was: "Has anyone found evidence of an
error in a published paper or dataset?" If they had, then of course the
error would need to be corrected, which happens in science all the time.

If it could be proved that figures had been deliberately altered to give a
specific result then it would be very serious, but so far no evidence has
emerged from these Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails of any error in the
HadCRUT instrumental temperature record at the centre of the row, never mind
proof of deliberate intent to mislead. How often have you heard that
repeated, clearly, by the mainstream press reporting on this incident? Even
if they were reporting on Berlusconi's sex life they would be more careful.
Berlusconi can afford better lawyers than Jones can.

Take, for example, the "trick" of combining instrumental data and tree-ring
evidence in a single graph to "hide the decline" in temperatures over recent
decades that would be suggested by a naive interpretation of the tree-ring
record. The journalists repeating this phrase as an example of "scientists
accused of manipulating their data" know perfectly well that the decline in
question is a spurious artefact of the tree-ring data that has been
documented in the literature for years, and that "trick" does not mean
"deceit". They also know their readers, listeners and viewers won't know
this: so why do they keep doing it?

What is particularly ironic is that a favourite graph in the climate sceptic
community a few years ago entitled "Most accurate global average
temperature" did precisely this. It stitched temperatures from the
satellite-based temperature record from 1979 onwards together with the
surface temperature record before then. At that time the satellite record
showed no evidence of warming, so one might call this a handy trick to hide
the recent warming in the surface temperature record. Did that make it evil?
I wouldn't say so: there were concerns about the impact of incomplete
coverage and something called the urban heat
island<http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/urban_heat_islands.shtml>effect
on the surface temperature record, so combining the two data sources
might have been legitimate, provided it was clear what was done and why.
This particular figure has fallen out of favour since an error was
discovered in the satellite data processing which, when corrected, revealed
the satellites were actually showing warming after all.

Perhaps the most concrete example of journalists claiming to reveal
"problems" with the CRU temperature record was a report on Newsnight (widely
redistributed) in which a software engineer criticised computer code
contained in the leaked email package. Neither of the two pieces of code
Newsnight examined were anything to do with the HadCRUT temperature record
at all, which is actually maintained at the Met Office. Newsnight's
response, when I challenged them on this, was: "Our expert's opinion is that
this is climate change code." Presumably, then, the quality of the code I
use to put together problems for our physics undergraduates shows that we
should not trust results from my colleagues who work on the Large Hadron
Collider on the grounds that "it is all physics code". Newsnight have
declined to retract the story.

One can understand the blogosphere reacting as it has done, but why has
mainstream journalism collectively decided to treat the story in this way?
The bottom line is that journalism deals not in facts, but in "narratives".
And the narrative of the fallen idol is clearly a great way to fill the
airwaves – witness the reality television industry.

So the narrative journalists have collectively decided upon is that a few
scientists may have manipulated their data, and either (a) it doesn't matter
because the evidence for human influence on climate is so strong or (b) this
shows the whole edifice is now crumbling, depending on their editor's
predilections. And George Monbiot
laments<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response>that
the high priests of his climate change religion have let him down. All
without any evidence that any number, anywhere, is actually wrong.
Journalists, who always find numbers irritating, are revelling in the fact
that they are back in the driving seat. By making the story about the
individual scientists, rather than scientific results, they can go back to
reporting on the story as they see fit without being constrained by
scientific evidence.

This is all particularly painful for those of us who know and have the
deepest respect for Jones and his colleagues. Our instinct, of course, is to
stand up and defend his integrity. But we know that if we do so, journalists
weave this into their chosen narrative as "scientists circling the wagons to
defend their own". The Times
report<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6951029.ece>accompanying
the statement released yesterday by UK climate scientists was a
case in point: rather than simply reporting the boring story that scientists
agree there is nothing wrong with the data after all, they had to go and
hunt out a "human interest" angle of some scientist who claimed that he felt
pressured by the Met Office into signing the statement (ridiculously – many
of us who signed spend our professional lives annoying the Met Office).

Even the senior figures in the World Meteorological Organisation are letting
themselves get swept along, pointing out that even if we leave out the CRU
dataset the evidence for human influence on climate is still strong. While
true, this misses the point. If we allow personal attacks on individual
scientists or criticism of irrelevant software to be used as an excuse to
discount data that people don't like, it will be open season. Presumably
they will be hunting through the emails of someone involved in the Nasa
temperature series next, and so it will go on.

None of us can imagine what Phil Jones is going through, and all of us know
that it might be our turn next. For all I know someone is already sorting
through my emails on a Russian web server. But for the record, if they do
decide to pick on me, I don't want people out there defending my integrity.
I want people out there defending my results. Because we are scientists, and
this is what we do.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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