One of the important issues raised in the House Committee Letters was the potential conflict of iinterest between individuals in their capacity as IPCC authors reviewing (and even promoting) their own research. Kevin Vranes, Roger Pielke and Hans von Storch in different ways at Prometheus have all discussed the problem, with a surprising degree of acknowledgement of the problem. I will re-cap some recent discussions on the issue in this post. In a follow-up post, I will illustrate the problem discussed here in general terms by examining the IPCC discussion of MBH98-MBH99 itself, which proves to be a highly interesting exercise, and illustrates exactly why conflicts of interest should be avoided. I note in passing that Vranes, Pielke and von Storch, in different ways, have acknowledged the legitimacy of the House Committee letters to institutions (IPCC, NSF), with von Storch even suggesting that the House Committee expand its institutional scope to include Nature. All three commentators contest the legitimacy of the letters to the three individual scientists. However, all three frame their objections in the context of asking information of an author who was merely publishing his views in a journal, rather than framing their analysis in the specific context of letters to (say) Mann in his capacity as an IPCC author in a conflict of interest situation and none of them inquire as to the effect of the agreed conflict of interest on such legitimacy. I’ll visit this topic in a future post. Continue reading →
I’ve upgraded the site, and experimented with a few themes (which I’m not completely happy with – suggestions please), implemented a new spam plug-in (Spam Karma 2) and threaded comments.
There’s still some extra stuff I want to put on (including a comment verification CAPTCHA to get rid of automated spam) but it’ll have to wait until the morning.
Any other suggestions for improvements, let me know in the comments.
"The time has come",
the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
of cabbages and kings"
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872
The time has arrived to upgrade the WordPress software to the latest version (1.5). Amongst the new features will be better colour schemes, a sidebar for Steve to put the purpose of the site, new linked pages where longer articles can be written (and probably his CV). I’ll also be adding some new functionality to enable threaded comments (which should stop the confusion of numbering when some comments are released before others) and some other features that I’ll let you know about when I’ve finished testing.
This means that sometime over the weekend, the weblog may not be available, or will look peculiar or broken. That’s OK, it just means that you’ve hit the site during the upgrade phase.
I’ve just been informed that a new paper is ‘in press’ snappily called "Testing the Fidelity of Methods used in Proxy-based Reconstructions of Past Climate", by Mann M.E., Rutherford S., Wahl E., Ammann C. It is due to be published in "Journal of Climate". If anyone can get a copy of this paper, then let me know via my e-mail: climateaudit AT gmail.com or by posting a link in the comments field Thanks.
Hockeysticks, the tragedy of the commons and sustainability of climate science.
Hans von Storch – Director of Institute of Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht. Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, Germany
Panelists: Warren Washington, Caspar Amman and Doug Nychka, NCAR, and Roger Pielke Jr. (CIRES)
Location: Mesa Lab Main Seminar Room Time 3:00pm
Abstract: The "hockey stick", elevated to icon-status by the IPCC, plays a crucial role in debate regarding climate change. Yet the methods used to develop it have not been completely explicated. We have tested the method in the artificial laboratory of the output of a global climate model, and found it to significantly underestimate both low-frequency variability and associated uncertainties. Our work focuses on multi-century simulations with two global climate models to generate a realistic mix of natural and externally (greenhouse gases, solar output, volcanic load) forced climate variations. Such simulations are then used to examine the performance of empirically based methods to reconstruct historical climate. This is done by deriving "pseudo proxies" from the model output, which provide incomplete and spatially limited evidence about the global distribution of a variable.
Our simulation study was published in "Science" but received less response than expected – almost no open response, a bit in the media; but many colleagues indicated privately that such a publication would damage the good case of a climate protection policy.
In this talk the methodical critique of the hockey stick methods will be presented, followed by a personal discussion about the problem of post-normal climate science operating in a highly politicized environment. The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion on the science of the hockey stick in the context of high-profile political issues.
Maybe someone will ask Ammann about the R2 of his reconstruction, whether his emulation method is almost identical to mine, whether he’s replicated Mann’s Preisendorfer selections (or any of the other questions in my list) and how he’s coming along with his GRL submission. Someone should ask von Storch whether he can get a high RE combined with a negligible R2 in his simulations and what the effect would be of pseudoproxies with a nonclimatic trend (emulating bristlecones) ?
I’m going to be up at Georgian Bay for a few days. John A. will clear posts – so everyone be on good behavior: please reserve taunts and quarrelsome comments until I get back.
John replies: Gosh! Thanks Steve. Having lit the blue touch paper stand well back….
There’s a description of IPCC procedures for adopting reports here. There are a number of policies on "disparate views" or "different views" Continue reading →
This sent in from a reader:
Here are a couple of quotes from a "peer reviewed" report published a
few hours ago.;
para 22 "We sought evidence that refuted the claims of McIntyre and McKitrick, but have not come across any detailed rebuttal."
Para 23 "We are in no position to determine who is right and who is
wrong in the growing debate on the hockey stick. If there are historical
periods of marked temperature increase, it seems to us it is important
to know why these occurred. Overall, we can only urge that the issue is
pursued in the next IPCC Assessment."
I say "peer reviewed" because it is a committee report from the UK’s
House of Lords here.
It is surely ironic how quickly Mann et al. have been to cite internet "grey" literature such as realclimate.org posts or Wahl-Ammann press releases as validation of their position, while withholding information about rejections of their submissions to journals: the submission by Mann et al. to Climatic Change cited last year in Jones and Mann [2004] has never appeared and the Wahl and Ammann submission to GRL was rejected. I don’t view journal publication as determining the truth or falsity of any argument – I’m merely noting irony.
Roger Pielke has an interesting article here. I’m going to be offline for a few days and don’t have time now.
There’s an interesting row between the UK National Academy (Lord May) and on the one hand the Russian National Academy and on the hand the U.S. National Academy, where the latter two have distanced themselves from recent statements on climate attributed by the UK National Academy. Here are a couple of references and it should be google-able.
BBC Radio 4
Times July 5
An article here about a stalagmite contributing to more debate about the MWP and LIA. I haven’t read the article yet, but will.
Jacoby is a key player on the Hockey Team. Jacoby and d’Arrigo have received nearly $8 million from the National Science Foundation (collated from public NSF records)- see here ; in addition, they have received an undisclosed amount of funding from other public agencies (collated from publication references).
As far as I’m concerned, US federal policy on data archiving states quite clearly that such data should be archived; it seems self-evident that NSF, as the granting agency, has an obligation to ensure that it’s archived. Jacoby and d’Arrigo have done work in North America (especially Alaska), Mongolia, New Zealand, Russia, Indonesia, Tasmania and perhaps elsewhere. They have travelled widely and undoubtedly worked hard. However, exploration geologists travel widely to remote places and work hard too and aren’t prima donnas. Continue reading →
Climate Audit 
Von Storch: Hockeysticks, the tragedy of the commons and sustainability of climate science
Hockeysticks, the tragedy of the commons and sustainability of climate science.
Hans von Storch – Director of Institute of Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht. Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, Germany
Panelists: Warren Washington, Caspar Amman and Doug Nychka, NCAR, and Roger Pielke Jr. (CIRES)
Location: Mesa Lab Main Seminar Room Time 3:00pm
Maybe someone will ask Ammann about the R2 of his reconstruction, whether his emulation method is almost identical to mine, whether he’s replicated Mann’s Preisendorfer selections (or any of the other questions in my list) and how he’s coming along with his GRL submission. Someone should ask von Storch whether he can get a high RE combined with a negligible R2 in his simulations and what the effect would be of pseudoproxies with a nonclimatic trend (emulating bristlecones) ?