The Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard teaching affiliate, has just released the latest in a series of publications discussing data withholding, concluding that:
"Data withholding clearly has important negative effects on the integrity of the scientific education system in the U.S."
In some of the medical areas, there are at least occasionally patent or commercial issues. No such excuses exist in climate science. Continue reading
I’ve been browsing through some articles on climate modeling and GCMs since even the Hockey Team no longer seems to try to base climate policy on multiproxy studies. I’m particularly interested in the approach of maximum entropy theorists, since they offer a very non-IPCC perspective on GCMs. Here are a few quotes from Holloway [2004], “From Classical to Statistical Ocean Dynamics” which is online here. Holloway observed:
In principle we suppose that we know a good approximation to the equations of motion on some scale, e.g., the Navier-Stokes equations coupled with heat and salt balances under gravity and rotation. In practice we cannot solve for oceans, lakes or most duck ponds on the scales for which these equations apply.
He likened the GCM method for climate modeling to the following:
This enterprise is like seeking to reinvent the steam engine from molecular dynamics’ simulation of water vapour. What a brave, but bizarre, thing to attempt!
The Liberal government in Canada, the hosts of the recent Montreal COP conference, has been defeated. A Conservative minority government has been elected. It will be approximately: Conservatives 122; Liberals 103; Bloc Quebecois 50; NDP (Socialist) 32; Independent (a Quebec radio shock jock) 1.
I’ve hardly ever discussed Kyoto on this blog although it’s the elephant in the room. Kyoto was not a big issue in the election. By nature, Canadians tend to want to do the “right thing” whatever that is. I would be surprised if the Conservatives changed Canadian direction on Kyoto. In fact, as soon as I write this down, it’s obvious that they won’t. The Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and NDP are all strongly pro-Kyoto and would almost certainly vote together against any change of direction with respect to Kyoto policy. About the only thing that the Conservatives could do is initiate new studies on the topic.
I will relapse momentarily from my avoidance of policy discussions and will probably regret this relapse. Impressionistically, Kyoto has struck me as either being too much or too little. If significant climate change is caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions and this is a bad thing, then Kyoto is almost certainly far too little. If it’s a big big problem, then the Kyoto half-measures are probably counter-productive since they give people the illusion that they are doing something about climate change without really coming to grips with what’s needed to actually change CO2 levels..
Secondarily, the Kyoto carbon trading system (which was promoted by Enron) over-rewards countries that merely negotiated easier benchmarks, rather than ones that have dealt with the problem through actual conservation. In this respect, impressionistically, it seems to me that Canada, in its typical boy scout fashion, negotiated the most onerous Kyoto treaty obligations of any country in the world. We have a growing population unlike many European countries; we have a relatively low production of electricity from coal due to large nuclear and hydro baseloads and thus little (relatively) easy power conversions. I’m puzzled as to how the transfer of money to Russia to purchase carbon credits arising from economic collapse (rather than more responsible technologies) is a sensible response to the underlying questions.
Anyway, I strongly doubt that Canadian policy on Kyoto will change under the new government.
I’ve been working away at our reply to Ammann and Wahl so I’m a little behind in blogging. One of our readers drew my attention to a discussion in the New York Times involving our favorite bristlecone pines. Kammerer et al. [J. Im. Gen. 2006] report the extension of human lifespan to 969 years following vector insertion of bristlecone pine antioxidant gene complex. See a summary of the article here and a discussion by the New York Times here.
Here’s an interesting op ed by philosopher David Oderburg, who says:
I venture to suggest that contemporary science is now so corrupted by the lust for loot and glory that nothing less than root-and-branch reform can save it. For a start, although I distance myself wholly from his anti-rationalism and methodological anarchy, I share the late philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend’s demand for a separation of science and state, or at the very least a radical curtailment of public financial sponsorship of scientific research. How could the millions thrown at scientists be anything other than a veritable inducement to misconduct? When you combine it with the innumerable honors and awards that await the next would-be secular savior of humanity, one wonders that fraud is not even more common than it appears to be.
He was thinking about medical research – I wonder what he’d think of climate research.
Noticing that some spam comments were getting through, I decided to upgrade the Spam Karma plug-in to version 2.1 (from 2.0) and Bad-Behavior plug-in to 1.2.4 (from 1.1.4).
Continue reading
I’ve just noticed at the UCAR website that Ammann and Wahl now say that their CC re-submission was “provisionally accepted” on Dec 12. I have no information on what a "provisional acceptance" means, but it’s certainly a coincidence that the “provisional acceptance” occurred only 3 days after GRL agreed to send their previously rejected GRL comment out for review, together with an expected reply from us. This is a second coincidence: they re-submitted to CC on Sept 27, a few days after they were allowed to re-submit to GRL on Sept 25 after getting their editor changed at GRL. Maybe it’s just a coincidence; but perhaps CC acceptance is contingent on their GRL submission not being rejected another time.
Here is a summary of the chronology, showing some of the intricate timings. Note that Ammann and Wahl cited their GRL submission to CC in support of their refusal to provide cross-validation statistics in response to a reviewer request, even though the GRL submission had already been rejected. Continue reading
MBH98 and subsequent Mannian papers (MBH99, Rutherford et al , 2005) report briefly that they tested calibration residuals (not verification residuals) for normality and whiteness. These results are used to calculate confidence intervals. They do not use typical tests for whiteness e.g. Ljung-Box portmanteau statistic used not just in econometrics, but also in climate e.g. here, but rely on a frequency-domain technique published by Mann and Lees [1996] in Climatic Change.
I’ve collated some information on these methods from MBH98, MBH99 and, most recently Rutherford et al [2005] and think that I’ve got a lead on what accounted for the peculiar difference in confidence intervals between MBH98 and MBH99 which I discussed in May here.
Given the failure of a simple cross-validation R2 test, I’m not sure that the results of these tests matter very much. If the confidence intervals were calculated on the verification residuals, which would be more conservative practice (and probably the only acceptable practice), then the standard error of the residuals would be equal to the natural variability and little predictive power would exist. Continue reading
Important stuff – 24 starts up again after the 2nd football game today. Last season ended with Jack Bauer’s death being faked in order to avoid an assassination attempt against Jack commissioned by the Vice President, acting as President while the President was incapacitated. Jack was also being sought by the Chinese for the attack on the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, while they were looking for information about Marwan and the nuclear bomb. So how does Jack get back into the picture to start the season and who will be the adversary this year? Predictions please. I am unaware of how to apply R2 or even RE statistics to this validation.
I think that the incapacitated President will somehow recover and ask for Jack; the Vice President will be in trouble and this will be an ongoing subplot. The Chinese will be dissatisfied at Jack’s supposed death as being an inadequate account of their demand to try Jack; they will demand to see Jack’s body, which no one will be able to find. I suspect that the Chinese will be this year’s adversary and the main plot will be the U.S. and China going to the brink of war. Jack Bauer will somehow salvage the situation. It’s a given that Jack will salvage the situation in the end, but there will be lots of twists and turns. 2 hours tonight, 2 hours tomorrow. Great stuff.
Climate Audit 
The Hockey Team at Daily Kos
realclimate recently advertised an interview at Daily Kos with Schmidt, Mann and Rahmsdorff. There has been an interesting exchange arising from the following posting by a reader.
The reader’s comment was posted both at realclimate, where the debate appears to have been swiftly censored, but a couple of illuminating responses from the Hockey Team were elicited at Daily Kos, including a response to an inquiry about Bürger and Cubasch. Continue reading →