The tricky Boulton and hapless Muir Russell have issued a statement here defending Boulton’s participation in the Inquiry. It begins:
On Friday February 12, allegations were raised that Professor Geoffrey Bolton’s background and views affected his ability to be a member of the Review. These have been rejected by Sir Muir Russell and by Professor Bolton.
In typical climate science fashion, the statement does not quote allegations as actually made. The issues as actually raised pertained to apparent misrepresentations by Muir Russell. Instead of dealing with the misrepresentations – or even changing the website – the Team has blustered onward.
I’ll review the bidding today in order to place the statement into context.
Issue 1: The first issue was the Inquiry’s misrepresentation that:
None [of the Team] have any links to the Climatic Research Unit, or the United Nations’ Independent Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). More information about each of the review team members can be found in the Biographies section.
It didn’t take long to show that this claim was wrong in respect to Boulton. First, Boulton had worked for 18 years at UEA, directly overlapping with Phil Jones and Tom Wigley (the link here is to a CA post; see CA post for relevant links to Bishop Hill and others). Second, Boulton was closely linked to IPCC author Gabrielle Hegerl and her husband Tom Crowley, a prominent IPCC advocate. Third, as recently as Oct 29, 2009, Boulton had invited and appeared professionally with CRU fellow Dlugolecki and Climategate correspondent Mitchell at a Royal Society of Edinburgh function.
The Boulton-Russell reply concerned itself only with the employment issue, stating as follows:
At the Review press conference (on February 11), I pointed out that I had worked full-time in the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA from its inception in 1968 to 1980, and that I had a part-time appointment between 1980 and 1986, whilst working primarily in the University of Amsterdam. Since then, I have had no professional contact with the University of East Anglia or the Climatic Research Unit.
A few points.
a) In this context, what precisely does “professional contact” mean? Boulton/the Royal Society of Edinburgh invited CRU fellow Dlugolecki to an Oct 29, 2009 presentation; Boulton made a presentation at the same program, presumably heard his presentation, presumably talked to Dlugolecki. Is that not “professsional contact”? If not, what is it?
b) Boulton’s reply dealt only with “professional contact” with CRU and not with professional contact with IPCC – also part of Muir Russell’s representation. We know that Boulton has an office three doors away from IPCC author Gabi Hegerl and her husband, IPCC advocate Tom Crowley. He used the Hegerl-Crowley hockey stick in a Royal Society of Edinburgh policy paper in December 2009. He may well have been closely involved in either attracting Hegerl and Crowley to the University of Edinburgh and/or in the decision to hire them in 2007. Can one have close professional contacts with IPCC authors and not have “links” to IPCC? Should the “open and transparent” Inquiry have disclosed such links?
c) Boulton’s comment at the press conference about past associations with UEA was not reported in any news report (to my knowledge.) There is no video or transcript either at the Inquiry website or elsewhere. Muir Russell said that “the Team will operate as openly and transparently as possible.” Disclosure of past UEA associations at a press conference with no transcript is not “open and transparent”.
And back to the original issue: misrepresentation. The fact that Boulton disclosed his past associations in an untranscribed press conference does not excuse the misrepresentation at the Inquiry website – a misrepresentation that is continuing. Nor has Boulton explained his apparent recent professional contact with CRU or his links to IPCC author Hegerl and her husband Crowley. Please note that there is nothing wrong per se with these links and contacts – the problem is the misrepresentation by the Inquiry that they didn’t exist.
Issue 2: The second issue is the Inquiry’s misrepresentation that none of the Team members had a”predetermined” view on climate change and climate science and that they had been “selected” for precisely that purpose. (Again, there’s nothing wrong with people having such views – the problems arise when the Inquiry makes contrary representations.) The Inquiry stated:
Do any of the Review team members have a predetermined view on climate change and climate science?
No. Members of the research team come from a variety of scientific backgrounds. They were selected on the basis they have no prejudicial interest in climate change and climate science and for the contribution they can make to the issues the Review is looking at.
They added the following particular comment in respect to Boulton:
Professor Geoffrey Boulton has expertise in fields related to climate change and is therefore aware of the scientific approach, through not in the climate change field itself.
Again, this claim in respect to Boulton was quickly shown to be untrue. He had strong opinions on climate change and its importance and was actively campaigning that the matter to be taken seriously. He has made numerous recent presentations on the matter – to name only a few, on Oct 29, 2009 at a Royal Society of Edinburgh program, in a RSE Policy Advice paper on Copenhagen in which he presented a supposedly “independent” hockey stick and even on the issue of Himalayan glaciers.
When the inconsistency between Inquiry representations and Boulton’s actual position was brought to light by bloggers, Boulton said that the Inquiry statement would need to be “clarified”:
I may be rapped over the knuckles by Sir Muir for saying this, but I think that statement needs to be clarified. I think the committee needs someone like me who is close to the field of climate change and it would be quite amazing if that person didn’t have a view on one side or the other.”
In today’s statement, Boulton said that he had said the following in (unreported and untranscribed) segments of the Feb 11 press conference:
I was equally clear that although my research is not in the field of modern or recent climate change, I am familiar with its scientific basis and uncertainties surrounding it.
“I declared my current view of the balance of evidence: that the earth is warming and that human activity is implicated. These remain the views of the vast majority of scientists who research on climate change in its different aspects. They are based on extensive work worldwide, not that of a single institution.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with holding such views. But if those are the views that Boulton holds, he and the Inquiry should never have said that that had no “predetermined” views on climate.
And while Boulton’s “research” may not have been in the field of “modern or recent climate change”, this has not stopped him from making many presentations on the topic, including, as noted above, a Policy Advice paper stating that the Hegerl hockey stick was “independent” of the others. (I guess that it’s possible that Boulton and the Royal Society of Edinburgh make such statements without doing any research – that they, like Jerry North and the Nas Panel, just “wing” it.)
A New Misrepresentation by the Inquiry
In order to justify keeping Boulton on the Inquiry, Muir Russell today made yet another misrepresentation:
“This Review must determine if there is evidence of poor scientific practice, as well as investigate allegations around the manipulation and suppression of data.
“As others have pointed out, it would be impossible to find somebody with the qualifications and experience we need who has not formed an opinion on climate change.
Muir Russell didn’t say who these “others” were. I, for one, have stated exactly the opposite. There are thousands of people who are qualified to address the issues within the remit of the Inquiry – issues which pertain to scientific misconduct – and who are not currently campaigning on climate policy, who have not published Policy Advice papers containing hockey stick graphics, who have not worked for 18 years at UEA, who have no professional association with IPCC scientists, who have not recently invited CRU fellows to make presentations about climate.
The issues in the remit are primarily legal (the science issues were to be studied separately) and were stated as follows:
1. Examine the hacked e-mail exchanges, other relevant e-mail exchanges and any other information held at the Climate Research Unit to determine whether there is any evidence of manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.
2. Review the Climate Research Unit’s policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice.
3. Review the Climate Research Unit’s compliance or otherwise with the University of East Anglia’s policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act (‘the FOIA’) and the Environmental Information Regulations (‘the EIR’) for the release of data.
4. Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management, governance and security structures for the Climate Research Unit and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds.
Russell stated “it would be impossible to find somebody with the qualifications and experience we need who has not formed an opinion on climate change”. There are thousands of scientists in unrelated fields who can opine on these questions, who do not have Boulton’s multiple conflicts. Indeed, Inquiry members Peter Clarke and Jim Norton appear at this point not to have Boulton’s disqualifications – so it is “possible” to find such people.
In addition, it seems to me that the issues here are primarily legal and misconduct. Lawyers are perfectly competent to deal with such issues.
At this point, I think that the Russell Inquiry should be folded and, as Nigel Lawson suggested long ago, the inquiry be turned over to a qualified judge, just like any other inquiry.
Climate Audit 
37 Comments
As a Scottish geologist I am pretty embarassed by all these shenanigans. How can a geologist be pro-AGW? It’s beyond me.
Steve: Again, Boulton is quite entitled to hold his views on climate. The issue is misrepresentations by the Inquiry – a different thing.
“As others have pointed out, it would be impossible to find somebody with the qualifications and experience we need who has not formed an opinion on climate change.”
I understand their concern. They are in effect saying, “no skeptics allowed”,
as a scientific skeptic is one who (such as yourself) is agnostic on a subject, given current understanding.
Steve: It’s a different thing than being a “skeptic” or not. I know many competent lawyers who could conduct this inquiry – none of them have any particular view on climate.
Steve, that is your message, and I agree with it, however Muir Russell stated,
“This Review must determine if there is evidence of poor scientific practice, as well as investigate allegations around the manipulation and suppression of data.”
In order to investigate the quality of the scientific practice they need some people with scientific, or at least solid computer science, mathamatical and statistical ability etc, and so the other side of the coin in regard to their statement,“As others have pointed out, it would be impossible to find somebody with the qualifications and experience we need who has not formed an opinion on climate change, ”could be (and apparently is) rephrased in paractice as “only CAGW advocates permitted.”
“The issues are primarily legal and misconduct.” Issues may also involve scientific methods.
If Muir Russell thinks there needs to be a climate scientist involved in his investigation to help inform the investigation, then it should be a balanced consideration of climate science issue, with a skeptic equally involved. Boulton seems a cheer-leader or nodder for the IPCC, so his selection for the inquiry strongly indicate’s Muir Russell’s one-sided mission.
There is just one valid approach to climate science. It would be founded on integrating skepticism and evidence, rather than keeping them apart.
Re: justbeau (Feb 15 11:38),
There’s nothing wrong with people supporting IPCC. Anyone who is worried about the future standing of IPCC has got to be worried about the impact of very adverse findings at CRU. How could they not be? Boulton is worried about climate change and how to connect to the public. He should be. The temptation for him to minimize things at CRU and not to inquire diligently will be very great. And the public quite rightly understands this. That’s why he shouldn’t be on the inquiry.
It’s not a matter of balancing an advocate with a skeptic. It’s a matter of finding panelists who don’t have a dog in the race. Russell’s statement that this is impossible is ludicrous.
I agree reviewers should be 100 percent independant. It seems Muir Russell and chums do not start from this basic premise, with Boulton 100 percent non-independant. The future credibility of the Muir Russell inquiry seems bleak.
My last comment on this…I think it depends on what one means by a “dog in the race”. I am certain there are honest scientist supporting CAGW.
However if one is a strong supporter of disaster, then is reasonable to think that the normal problems of confirmation bias may be amplified. So their dog may be different then direct affiliation.
This is why that as far as the science is confirmed I think a true group of diverse skeptics (those that neither strongly support or deny CAGW) would get the best results of inquiry into a field of research with known issues in numerous areas.
As an example I would suggest a review of the contributions of a group of skeptics, some of whom characterize themselves as “luke warmist” Steve, Bender, Jean S, Roman, and others such including Weegman, all would, IMV, provide a far more balanced and scientific review. (of course I know the “team” does not have the same POV as I do, so a selection of similarly qualified people from unrelated other disciplines, who can reliably state that the are agnostic in regard to CAGW because they have not had the time or inclination to study it specifically, may be best),
I fibbed, one more comment, and would not a truly objective investigation get to the bottom of a great many dat archiving questions, and have the right to demand further communications of the players involved?
Well it looks like they’re not even making a pretence that it’s not going to be a whitewash. My guess is that they’ll do a Penn State and exhonerate the CRU on most issues but recommend a change in process to eliminate the “failures”. Sir Muir is definitely more like the hapless Jim Hacker than Sir Humphrey I’m afraid.
If on the trial of an individual for bank robbery a bank robber was empanelled on the jury, the jury would benefit from his expertise, particularly If the bank robber had worked with the defendant for 10 years and was an intimate companion of his confederates. Notwithstanding the undoubted benefits, this course is not usually adopted because the public could not be confident that the jury would return a verdict according to the evidence.
The same principle applies to climate scientists.
Beginning to sound more like a “peer review” process than an inquiry.
That’s in part what I was thinking.
Boulton’s inclusion is an effort to have someone speaking for (and presumably supporting) ‘how things are done at UEA’ – that is, that Jones et al ought not be held accountable to an objective set of standards, but rather to whatever policies (ahem…) obtain at UEA and in the world of ‘climate science’ generally.
If you want intelligent comment on data integrity/archiving issues and scientific practice, then people from fields where these are standard and well-developed (and where people have actually been kicked out for scientific malpractice) would be useful, such as medical research, biochemistry, and physics. It might indeed be “impossible” to find such an expert within the field itself.
I like the way that matters of fact and record become ‘allegations’ – it will only hurt more when they need to u-turn. Anyway, it looks like Jones is going to be confessing to 1-4 to the media before the review ‘team’ have finished mixing the whitewash.
Actually…hmmm… stubbornness and rejection of plain facts – could Pachauri (sorry, TERI) be acting as a PR consultant for the inquiry(?)
“it would be impossible to find somebody with the qualifications and experience we need who has not formed an opinion on climate change”.
This statement is clearly false, as you have pointed out. Even if it were true it would be a straw man, as the main argument against Boulton being on the panel is his obvious conflict of interest due to his 18 years at UEA. The case for Boulton resigning is much stronger than that for Campbell, who has already resigned.
Indeed the Review should be abandoned. Perhaps it is time for another of those Number10 petitions?
Translation:
“We’re academia; we know better than you; so won’t you busy bodies just buzz off!”.
In the Muir Russell statement – see link in first line of post – they have spelt the man’s name wrongly no less than 3 times in the first two paragraphs – “Bolton” rather than “Boulton”. This is pathetic.
If the facts are as you say, then I lean towards agreeing with you that issues 2 and 3 (the new one) badly need to be addressed by this inquiry.
But on issue 1, even if the facts are as you say, I don’t understand why its an issue. Someone had an office a few doors away from someone else? Someone worked at the same university but did not work within the institute being investigated? Some used data from an IPCC report after it was published, even though they were not involved in its creation? I fail to see why you think any of those facts are problematic.
I think you have posted IPCC materials on your blog; does that make you “linked” to the IPCC? Would it render you incapable of impartially reviewing IPCC policies, procedures, and analyses? What if Phil Jones moved into your neighborhood, just a few doors down from your house? Would you conclude that now that he was so close to you, that you would no longer be able to objectively critique any of his work?
Again, insofar as the facts you lay out are correct, I agree with you that issues 2 and 3 are a big deal. Issue 1 though seems to be a tempest in a teapot.
The issue is not where these people work relative to each other but whether they had “professional” contact. There appears to be sufficient evidence that they were in contact in public talking about “climate” and therefore a reasonable person would conclude that some of that contact involved the “climatic research profession”.
It is likely that contact in relation to the “climatic research profession” was facilitated by the close proximity of their work spaces.
In future please try and avoid quotes from James “Death Trains” Hansen’s e-mails.
You say:
“Someone worked at the same university but did not work within the institute being investigated?”
They worked in the same department of a small, provincial, campus style university for 10 years. He must know Phil Jones quite well, not only formally through departmental meetings, but also socially, university departments are gregarious places.
Quite apart from personal relationships, I cannot imagine Boulton would want to brand the department in which he launched and established his academic career as the department which, contemporaneously, launched and established the careers of the scientists embroiled in the greatest scientific scandal of modern times.
If you are appointed to a comittee and it has a web site then most people would visit the web site, probably by an email link sent to them.
You would read the content and if there were factual errors, a reasonable person would advise of the errors immediately and request they be corrected. If there were an obvious conflict of interest in respect of the terms of reference they would withdraw.
I think its called integrity.
Merely being on the same program with these people does not demonstrate that Boulton either shares their view or has a stake in the issue. It’s far more telling that Boulton acted as a cheerleader for AGW/IPCC in his Oct. 29 presentation, linked at https://climateaudit.org/2010/02/12/royal-society-of-edinburgh-oct-29-2009/.
Similarly,
I think Steve is being a bit OTT here, in hounding Boulton. There are clarly issues about the composition of the panel, and the removal of Campbell was appropriate, and the presence of Boulton (why can’t the inquiry’s own website get his name right?) is odd, but we do have to recognise that Sir Muir is a bit of an classic Scot and wants some of his compatriots around him in difficult circumstances. Hence Boulton. He may not ever have met him, but his mates probably tell him he’s a solid person, so he’s on.
No doubt Sir Edward Acton (UEA VC) is beginning to regret either taking bad advice or not thinking things through properly, but he had only just got his feet under the VC desk when all this broke, and I suspect that he was under some pressure from the climate mafia and his Pro-VC Trevor Davies to close things down as quickly as possible to preserve funding and sponsorship.
Sir Muir Russell is a very tainted commodity in bureaucratic circles, but maybe the “great and good committee” thought that this was a soft one to get him back on track. They were wrong; they so often are these days.
It sounds like a case of McChumGate.
I was surfing the Internet and found the following:
The David Hume Institute
Hume Occasional Paper No.79.
Seminar: Reducing Carbon Emissions – the View from 2050.
14 October 2008
The theme of the seminar:
< "…was to ask people
to consider themselves as being in 2050, with the Scottish Government’s 80% greenhouse
gas emission reduction target having been achieved, and to set out how this came about and
what were the consequences – as narrow or wide as contributors wished."<
Prof. Geoffrey Boulton participated; his short paper was entitled: "A Tale of Misplaced Optimism"
Perhaps reading this gives one some insight into his thought processes. He is on pp. 23-26 of the paper, pp. 32-35 of the pdf below:
Click to access hop%2079%20reducing%20carbon%20emissions%20-%20the%20view%20from%202050.pdf
I think he could play on the First Team of the IPCC.
The claim in this report is that Scotland has reduced its GHGs by 15% from the 1990 level through the elimination of steel-making and deep-mining. In the case of steel-making, I doubt very much that the consumption of steel has declined in Scotland and I doubt very much that the previous buyers of Scottish steel have reduced their consumption of steel. So this is a phony calculation – the Scots have simply transferred the production of GHGs from steel production so another part of the world. There is thus no true reduction of 15% in GHGs.
The same can be said about deep-mining. Were the GHGs associated with the deep mines which still exist or were they associated with the values extracted from those mines. In the former case, GHGs would still be being emitted while in the latter case, the GHGs have simply been transferred to another part of the world.
Up until 5 months ago I worked for a major Scottish manufacturing company, left after 20 years. Annual consumption of steel 12K tonnes. For first 8 years all this came from Ravenscraig, even if it was finished in the Midlands as it had the lowest level of inclusions and so was the best quality steel in British Steel for our product. Now it all comes from Russia via Belgium. The carbon usage was exported along with the jobs but the true Carbon usage stays the same and possibly increases due to higher transport content.
I think I would like somebody on the panel who knows the history of paleoclimatology practice. It’s not something a judge could learn on the fly, even if that’s how courts operate generally.
The remit, as Mr. McIntyre says, doesn’t require knowledge of climatology. But it would be nice to have.
It shouldn’t be all lawyers and IT guys.
Sorry if ot but thought it worthwhile as just current.
Hacked climate emails: Phil Jones admits loss of weather data was ‘not acceptable’Head of the Climate Research Unit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/15/phil-jones-lost-weather-data
“A second review, announced by the university last week, will investigate the robustness of the scientific conclusions in journal papers published by CRU experts, including the 1990 Nature paper.”
Within the link above?
Jones (in the Guardian piece): “I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process.”
For all the time the man has had to think about his work and the issues, to be able, and willing, to come out with a statement like this suggests that he is not especially bright. He and his mates have clearly and demonstrably ‘hijacked’ the peer-review process, and in the process demonstrated all the problems with the dissemination and review of science papers in a period when access to scientific findings is changing for ever. This is a man who should have had a blog some time ago, in the way that some of his more enlightened colleagues have discovered. The bunker mentality prevails.
This Muir Russell Team seems to be guilty of “truncating the data” prior to 1990 to “hide the decline” in their integrity, that is, conflicts of interest.
They should not be cut any slack at all – they have set themselves up in all their glory and self esteem – they should be held to account.
Not only do they incorrectly call IPCC the Independent Panel on Climate Change they also incorrectly call CRU the Climate Research Unit rather than Climatic. Complete sloppiness.
http://www.cce-review.org/index.php
I mentioned before wrt Campbell that it could be possible to have a trusted insider on an inquiry. Campbell wasn’t it and neither is Boulton. One can be independent but still have formed an opinion on the issues. The question is whether the independent inquirer can keep on open mind and render an opinion based on the evidence presented. COI exists when the inquirer not only has a prior opinion but has a definite interest in a particular outcome- An obvious lack of independence. Prof. Boulton will be wasting everyone’s time if he continues. The inquiry will merely add to the political debate without resolving the issues mandated by the remit.
The term ‘catspaw’ comes to mind.
Have Muir Russell stated the qualifications and experience he needs?
I’m astonished to read some of the feedback. I’m deeply trouble by a so called inquiry who calls itself “independent” and claims to be an “independent” inquiry is anything but the truth. Independent means you have NO connection to the individuals being investigated nor past affiliation with said group/individuals/organization in which you are charged with investigating. Nor do you have a previously stated position, in this case directly related to belief in Global Warming as Bolton does – how on earth can this guy claim he is independent? Not in a sane world where independent actually means independent. This is a whitewash – all criminals would love their work buddies to investigate them every day of the week. Believe me.
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[…] Le Boulton délicat et malheureux Muir Russell ont publié une déclaration ici défendre la participation de Boulton à l'enquête. Il commence ainsi: Vendredi Février 12, les allégations ont été soulevées et la formation du professeur Geoffrey Bolton et les vues affecté sa capacité à être un membre de la Revue. Celles-ci ont été rejetées par Sir Muir Russell et par [. . . ] URL article original: https://climateaudit.org/2010/02/15/more-tricks-from-boulton-and-the-hapless-muir-russell/ […]