Fairfax publishes another article by Bob Carter

3 July, 2011 by

Climate sense

Two in a week is pretty good going (see here for the first). As before, they will no doubt have lined up a bunch of hysterical alarmists to smear and rubbish Bob Carter, but at least they are letting their readers see the other side of the debate for once.

In this piece, Carter addresses points made recently by Chief Scientist Ian Chubb:

Sound science is based upon observation, experiment and the testing of hypotheses in the context of the principle of simplicity (often termed Occam’s Razor).

The unvalidated computer models that now dominate the public face of climate ”science” are a jungle of complexities, and represent speculative thought experiments not empirically tested science.

In support of these methods, the former director of the British Meteorological Office, Professor John Mitchell, has said that ”people underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful … Our approach is not entirely empirical”.

The last part of this statement is only too true, and leads to the discomfit expressed by those such as the British engineering professor John Brignell: ”The ease with which a glib algorithm can be implemented with a few lines of computer code, and the difficulty of understanding its implications, can pave the path to cloud-cuckoo land.”

Read it all here.

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University forced to hand over temperature data

2 July, 2011 by

Avoided releasing data

The university at the centre of the Climategate scandal has been force to hand over its raw temperature data by the Information Commissioner in the UK. The University of East Anglia has repeatedly refused access to the data using various methods to thwart FOI requests. Why would they do that?

Here we have a body which is responsible for one of the main temperature data sets on which the global warming scare is built (CRUTEM3), and yet they refuse to hand over the data so third parties can check it. There’s transparency for you.

As The Guardian reports:

Critics of the UEA’s scientists say an independent analysis of the temperature data may reveal that Phil Jones and his colleagues have misinterpreted the evidence of global warming. They may have failed to allow for local temperature influences, such as the growth of cities close to many of the thermometers.

Jonathan Jones, who is not a climate scientist, said he thought “the most significant features of this decision are the precedents that have been set”. The commissioner is likely to rule more generally in favour of public access to scientific data.

Under the 2000 Freedom of Information Act, public bodies such as universities have to share their data unless there are good reasons not to. But when Jonathan Jones and others asked for the data in the summer of 2009, the UEA said legal exemptions applied. It said variously that the temperature data were the property of foreign meteorological offices; were intellectual property that might be valuable if sold to other researchers; and were in any case often publicly available.

But in a damning verdict, [Information Commissioner Christopher] Graham said suggestions that international relations could be upset by disclosure were “highly speculative”, and “it is not clear how UEA might have planned to commercially exploit the information requested.”

Jonathan Jones said this week that he took up the cause of data freedom after Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician, had requests for the data turned down. He thought this was an unreasonable response when Phil Jones had already shared the data with academic collaborators, including Prof Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. He asked to be given the data already sent to Webster, and was also turned down. So he appealed to the information commissioner.

“I am extremely concerned about the apparent pattern of secrecy and evasion,” he said. “My sole aim [in pursuing the case] is to help restore climate science to something more closely resembling scientific norms.”

The UEA said: “We have nothing to fear from scrutiny; we are committed to openness and transparency in our research… and we fully intend to make all data publicly available as soon as possible.” (source)

Yeah, right. They wouldn’t have done anything of the sort if this kind of application hadn’t been made and prosecuted vigorously. Well done Jonathan.

The Commissioner’s ruling is here (PDF).

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A challenge to the Chief Scientist

1 July, 2011 by

Peter Ridd

Professor Peter Ridd makes the excellent point that if no funding is made available to sceptics wishing to challenge the consensus on dangerous AGW, then it is like a court case without a defence. The defence is there to test, on an adversarial basis, the case put forward by the prosecution by means of questioning the evidence, cross-examination and forensic inquiry.

However, the alarmists don’t want that. They want to shut down debate crying that the science is settled (or “Guilty! Hang him!” to continue the analogy), and for everyone simply to trust what they are saying. What court in the land would accept the word of the prosecution on trust? Similarly, the claims of the alarmists must be subjected to equally rigorous scrutiny, similarly funded out of public money, in order to put them properly to the test.

It is a very powerful argument indeed, and Professor Ridd has put it directly to Ian Chubb:

Dear Prof Chubb,

I wish to support A/Prof Franks comments in his email to you on 30th June.

In addition I would like to add that it is evident that the scientific systems needs considerable modification if we can have faith in some of the conclusions about the big environmental issues of our time such as Greenhouse, the supposed demise of the Great Barrier Reef and such like. I have no faith that both sides of the arguments on these issues are being funded. This comes partly out of personal experience. It is not enough to rely upon peer review and hope for impartiality of scientists. We need to spend money to try to prove that the case against CO2 is flawed. That may seem strange but, if this debate was a court case against the criminal CO2, the conviction by the court (mostly the IPCC etc) would be thrown out on appeal because no resources have been expended mounting a defence of CO2. Can you imagine a court case without a counsel for the defence – a person whose sole aim is to destroy the prosecution case. We need an organisation to do this for CO2. If after spending considerable resources on such a defence it still looks like CO2 is guilty, then I at least would be satisfied about the conventional wisdom on this issue. Presently I have as much faith in science as I did in the Police system in Queensland in the 1980’s before sweeping reforms cleaned it up.

You may feel that the present systems in science make it reliable, but the fact that scientist like me, with a better than average record, in addition to a growing number of the educated and uneducated public have lost faith in science and scientists means that something has to be done to regain confidence. And bashing people like Stewart Franks will do nothing to that end even though he can be pretty brutal at times.

If you have time, I have written more on what I think needs to be done about the systems of science at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11455

I would be very grateful if you could at least contemplate this issue further.

Peter

Prof. Peter Ridd
HOD Physics
James Cook University
Townsville

Thanks to Bolta.

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Gillard "untrustworthy and tricky" over carbon tax

1 July, 2011 by

Twisting in the wind...

Julia Gillard is just like a weathervane, twisting in the wind this way and that with no guiding principles to fall back on. She is like Humpty Dumpty: words mean exactly what I want them to mean.

The Australian’s Cut and Paste summarises perfectly:

I’m happy to say tax. 7.30 on ABC, February 24:

HEATHER Ewart: With this carbon tax, you do concede it’s a carbon tax, do you not?

Julia Gillard: Oh, look, I’m happy to use the word tax. I understand some silly little collateral debate has broken out today. I mean, how ridiculous.

The media may make me say it. Gillard, Today, February 27:

LAURIE, I didn’t want to get caught up in what I knew would be one of those semantic word games about whether I would say the word “tax”. You know how these games are played. A politician decides they’re not going to say a word, and then media, people like yourself, Laurie, spend weeks trying to make them say it. I wasn’t going to do any of that.
The parliament made me say it. Gillard, Radio 2SM, February 28:

YES, I did, John, and working with this parliament I have agreed that there will be a fixed price period before we get to a full market-based pricing scheme. That is effectively like a tax, I’m happy to say that and I’m happy to say that I worked with the parliament the Australian people voted for.

Tony Abbott made me say it. Gillard yesterday:

NOW, what Tony Abbott likes to refer to as a carbon tax, a fixed-price period for an emissions trading scheme, is a period I believe should be as short as possible and today can I say to Australians the debate that they are hearing about a carbon tax is a debate about what Tony Abbott calls a carbon tax, which will be for a limited period of time, and then we will move to an emissions trading scheme which I support, John Howard supports, Malcolm Turnbull supports. (source)

Not forgetting the biggest porkie of all, in August 2010,

“There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.”

And Tony Abbott pounces:

Mr Abbott said Ms Gillard had been calling the carbon price a tax for months. “If it looks like a tax, if it works like a tax, if it costs like a tax, it is a tax.

“What we see is a Prime Minister who is compounding incompetence with trickery.

“We know that this is a government which was untrustworthy, now it’s being tricky as well and I think that the Australian public deserves better than a Prime Minister who is not only untrustworthy but tricky on top of that, too,” Mr Abbott said. (source)

This is unfortunately what happens when you have no principles (except the one reminding you to stay in power at all costs).

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