I have been busy, so I am late to comment. You are right in that I am sure that no matter how your request was phrased, it was going to be denied. However, you are involved in a long campaign to increase transparency, and to the extent that those recipients of your appeal perceive it to be combative, they will simply fight you harder. You have done a great job, but my perspective, for whatever it is worth is that the more combative your tone, the more push-back you will receive.

I would suggest that one way to get underlying data and scientific communications so as to insure transparency is to request that Congress pass a law requiring, as a condition of receiving federal climate research monies, that those doing the research must release all of their data and code from now on. Additionally, I would add to the law that as a condition of receiving climate research monies, any institution that intends to receive money in the future, must qualify itself by releasing all PAST data and codes. Since some of that money went to the UEA, I believe a law could be written that would require them to be transparent or give up American funding. Those in the U.K. could possibly seek a similar law to be passed by parliament.

JD

Just out of interest which scientific studies helped you form this opinion about the measurement of the uncertainty in paleoclimate reconstructions?

QA seems to be a big issue with Steve and his followers. They claim that peer review is insufficient and want engineering-level QA done on any science used in public policy. As someone who works in public policy, I agree that only the best science should be used for public policy, and should be vetted thoroughly by experts in the field.

When it comes to opinion on climate science, I trust the opinions of scientists and their learned societies far more than semi-retired mining execs or unemployed social scientists or weather forecasters. But hey, if you don’t, fine with me.

Please provide me with evidence that the consensus has been wrong more than right.

I don’t dismiss paleoclimate reconstructions. I think they are highly uncertain. I think the temperature record has already been checked by several independent groups and been found to be sound, so I feel pretty good about our knowledge of temps in the last 150 years. Also, no one has yet shown that radiative physics and the GHE are invalid. Until they do, skeptics will have to explain why they reject both.

From what I have read, the LIA was likely global, but the evidence for a global MWP is not as clear. In some areas, it was colder during this time, IIRC. Cultural and anecdotal evidence is not of the same value as scientific. We need more scientific evidence to confirm whether the MWP was as warm globally as the CWP.

Steve: this has nothing to do with the Yamal FOI request. As I’ve said on many occasions, it is an editorial policy of this blog that discourage attempts to prove or disprove AGW in a few paragraphs as otherwise all threads become the same. I’ve given you more leeway than “supporters” but would appreciate it if you would adhere to this policy.

For the most part, I avoid discussion of policy at this blog, other than policies on data perhaps. There are many venues where you can discuss policy if that is your primary interest and I’d appreciate it if you commented on the topics of the individual threads.

Some of the people posting on this blog and others like it are experts in physics, climatology, statistics and engineering to name just a few disciplines.  Please also consider that throughout history the scientific establishment and its ‘concensus’ has been wrong far more often than it has been right, its track record is very bad compared to that of the individual scientist or citizen scientist.

On the one hand you dismiss paleoclimate reconstructions, and on the other hand you obviously accept those done by proponents of AGW, as you state that you believe in the CO2 and temperature data.  Fortunately for the MWP & the LIA there are a preponderance of other records, cultural, anecdotal and scientific which prove their existence.

snip – it is an editorial policy of this blog that commenters should not try to prove or disprove AGW in a few paragraphs. Otherwise every thread becomes the same.

To quote theduke:

…crickets…

“Policy is driven by GCM results and those results have nothing to do with tree ring findings.”

Hmmm … assuming that these GCM results are those reported in the IPCC’s AR4 (and/or its antecedents), and knowing that the IPCC mandate is to be “policy neutral” or in their lingo “non-policy prescriptive” OWTTE, one would have to be very naïve to assume that “tree ring findings” (as they have been graphically represented and emphasized far beyond their worth) have had no influence on “policy” (not to mention practice).

In the end, I don’t think the paleoclimate reconstructions, including sediments, tree rings and other are all that useful for policy makers and citizens who must decide what, if anything to do about the matter. It’s an interesting line of research but the data seems to me, who is only passingly familiar with statistical methods, to be very statistically tortured, uncertain the farther back one goes, and very complex in terms of physical relationships. The level of uncertainty seems to make the paleoclimate data merely suggestive rather than conclusive. When I see the error bars for some of the proxies I feel that people who claim to know what temp was like during the MWP are blowing smoke.

What seems more convincing to a layperson like me is the physics of the GHE, the data on CO2 increases and sources, the data on other climate forcings or attribution. Paleoclimate recons seem a real stretch which are potentially useful but fraught with problems like divergence, etc. and highly uncertain the farther back one goes in the record.

However, the existence of uncertainty in the paleoclimate record does not negate the other aspects of climate science. People use these uncertainties as justification for questioning the entire science and its findings, going against all the major science bodies and decades of research.

As someone with an academic interest in this, I’m interested in their reasons for doing so. People always claim to be motivated by an interest in the truth, and sound science, and just the facts, ma’am but in reality, research suggests that humans tend to be very biased in their assessment of evidence. They look and see that which confirms their pre-existing biases and expectations and interests. It’s very hard to overcome that tendency and truly, modern science is about the best means of overcoming that bias. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got.

I haven’t seen anything yet that convinces me that the radiative physics and CO2 data and temperature record have been falsified. What I have seen is a lot of speculation about individual scientists’ motives and integrity and methodological and process debates that I am not qualified to judge.

I’m skeptical of the skeptics. Overall, that seems to be the safest position to take.