The Climate Standoff
Josh, the favorite cartoonist of climate skeptics, gives his take on Judith Curry’s public spat with Richard Muller.
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That is certainly the perception that the Greek choruses at WUWT and elsewhere are doing their best to reinforce. So Josh is in tune with his audience.
But the reality of what’s happening is more like this.
I guess it’s clear that we “deniers” have better PR through grins and giggles with Josh than the “doom and gloom” crowd with Romm and crew. 🙂
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O’course….there is quite a bit of grins and giggles over what Romm and crew has to say at times also. Just not on the message they want which does make the difference.
Isn’t perception and preconception a marvellously strange thing?
I mean, the world is out there and is what it is regardless of what we think it might be, and yet all we interpreting units make of it so many different things. That’s the kaleidoscope, I suppose.
Of course, we also have the power to act, and that in and of itself creates a certain degree of reality in the world that has to be processed and interpreted.
What I try for (and granted, do not always succeed in doing), is to stand aside as an observer of my own interpreting machinery, avoiding as far as possible becoming committed where evidence isn’t conclusive. What I can’t help creating are a number of hypotheses about the world, but hopefully manage mostly not to confuse those with actuality, or to allow them to engage my emotional machinery.
There is so very little I can say, hand on heart, is “the reality of what’s happening”. The two differing interpretations you present are both plausible; I lean more to the first than the second, but recognise that’s a hypothesis rather than fact. If you are honest, can you say your different viewpoint is fact rather than hypothesis?
I think this may be why it’s so hard for people to engage productively about certain issues. We aren’t expected, still less trained, to develop detachment. The emotional machinery always tends to kick in and screw things up.
Curry:
“There is NO comparison of this situation to Climategate.”
“All this does not constitute a new scientific scandal in any way.’
LOL. You already released those hounds, JC. Good luck calling them back.
Kieth,
Just when you think no one can top the Daily Mail in the misrepresentation department, Fox News shows them how its done: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/31/climate-scientist-accused-by-colleague-for-hiding-truth/
Judith Curry tops Fox News for misrepresentation. In the first BEST paper she with 9 others writes
“Though it is sometimes argued that global warming has abated since the 1998 El Nino event (e.g. Easterling and Wehner 2009, Meehl et al. 2011), we find no evidence of this in the GHCN land data.”
But she says in the DailyMail: “This is hide the decline stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.” The “hide the decline” bit may be some combination of her mis-speaking/being misquoted but on blog her she is still is flatly contradicting the BEST paper.
Its not surprising when people exaggerate the generality & importance of work when talking to journalists – but itsless usual to flatly contradict your work when talking to journalists.
Its also unusual to publicly air doubts your co-author like this gem from Curry: “My working hypothesis is that Muller is honest.” Many people would run a mile before co-authoring with someone whose integrity they were uncertain about – and very few would air such doubts in public.
And its surely hypocricitical to complain about Muller’s PR efforts then give the Daily Mail and indirectly Fox News, Morano et al. juicy quotes, which get run with a very dodgy graph from the GWPF misrepresenting the BEST data.
And its Tamino & Nick Stokes pointing out GWPF’s misrepresentation and defending BEST, not Curry. Not much investment for a co-author.
This is unusual in that Curry is co-author on the BEST papers and is also criticising them. That, as the journal editors say is a nono. She is trying a straddle, e.g. she is fine with the papers but hates the publicity, but it just won’t wash, so her choice is to withdraw from authorship or to withdraw her criticism and both have very unpleasant consequences.
@6
“she is fine with the papers but hates the publicity”
I have thought this is the case, too. But it’s the nature of the publicity that she doesn’t like, which is my working hypothesis.
I will have a related post on this tomorrow morning.
Well, it’s tough to continue building bridges from politics of lukewarming to the climate diluted crowd at WUWT when your name appears on a paper that directly tells Watts that the surface stations project doesn’t show bias on the trend. So if we really want to figure out what’a going on, ask Judith if she agrees with the following statement without letting her give the usual non answer:
“The small size, and its negative sign, supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change.”
Of course she doesn’t like the PR!
Andrewt
“My working hypothesis is that Muller is honest.”
Indeed a gem.
In the next post she describes why the PR is important. Because they are now concerned that the IPCC will ignore the BEST results due to timing, because based on the already assumed IPCC bias toward work that disagrees with… Oh, wait, BEST agrees with all prior science to date. Ok, now we are in soap opera territory…I mean farce.
BEST is largely in agreement with prior work, although their trend for recent warming is notably a little higher, which is causing the heads of deniers to spin a little faster.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1981/to:2010.2/offset:-0.60/mean:60/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.44/mean:60/plot/crutem3vgl/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.40/mean:60/plot/rss-land/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.14/mean:60/plot/uah-land/from:1981/to:2011/mean:60/plot/best/from:1981/to:2010.2/offset:-0.60/trend/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.44/trend/plot/crutem3vgl/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.40/trend/plot/rss-land/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.14/trend/plot/uah-land/from:1981/to:2011/trend
If it doesn’t make the IPCC deadline, we must assume the IPCC is trying to hide the incline. Curry says that Phil Jones has no comment on BEST either until it’s published, which she also (accurately no doubt) interprets to mean Jones, being the head gatekeeper of the IPCC, is also trying to hide the…[incline].
So what shall we call the latest Skeptic Soap Opera?
As the Denialist World Burns
Watts Branding
Slaves of our Lies
The Rolled and the Skeptical
The Dumb and the Senseless
Another World (that one needed no modification)
More?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_soap_operas
Careful, though. I hear Tom Fuller “censors” this page.
Michael Larkin Says:
“Isn’t perception and preconception a marvellously strange thing?”
Interesting post. Makes sense to me. Depending on their specific histories and experiences, different individuals (and cultures, sub-cultures, etc.) are variously conditioned to see the world through x-coloured glasses. The AGW debate is a classic example of that. Now, after decades of media messaging, many people see the world through AGW-colored glasses, and see every abnormal weather event as a sign of AGW. Thirty years ago (almost) nobody did. Instead, farmers tended to be very religious.
My favorite idealistic analogy for recognizing different views comes from a book called ‘Seven Arrows,’ a romanticized hippy era version of Native North American life. They talked about the ‘medicine wheels’ – large circles of stones, typically with spokes, laid out on the plains by some tribes. If you put a stone in the center, everyone around the wheel sees that same stone differently, from their own unique perspective.
So sweet in Age of Aquarius theory. In reality those people required a high degree of social cohesion to survive. Bison hunters operated with military discipline and their natural ‘us v them’ groupthink – vital for competitive group survival – led them to see people who saw things too differently as ‘enemies.’
Primates will be primates. Us and them is natural group thinking. What makes us us and them them is the colour of the glasses they wear and the common ‘reality’ they see through them.
This diversity of perceived realities and the opinions they generate is a wonderful thing. Sort of like the intellectual and cultural equivalent of biodiversity. But only to a point. Obviously no society or even a species could survive if all individuals had their own reality. That would be crazy, as they say.
NewYorkJ @11: Ridicule can be good for rallying one’s base. Not so good for winning over people in the middle. A contradiction when one is advocating the high road of reason and science.
Many times I wonder what the climate orthodox hope to achieve with their often aggressive, unpleasant rhetoric.
Speaking for myself, I find it quite offputting and take it as an indication that the orthodox case does not speak for itself but must be propped up with classic, dirty propagandizing.
That doesn’t mean it won’t work. I just wonder whether the orthodox are doing it as an intentional strategy and understand the risk that it may undermine the science of their position.
Curry in her blog hyped Donna LaFramboise ridiculous accounting of the IPCC use of grey literature. For example, the first 4 AR4 citations (in ch1 of wg1) are to Popper, Hawking, Kuhn and Newton (writing to Hooke). LaFramboise counts all 4 cites as grey literature because they aren’t peer reviewed. Curry is so eager to kick the IPCC she goes along with this absurd standard.
But when Phil Jones reportedly says he’ll wait until the BEST papers are peer reviewed before commenting on them, Curry somehow sees this as a sinister sign of IPCC gatekeeping – which makes even less sense which you discover Jones isn’t even an AR5 author!
> LaFramboise counts all 4 cites as grey literature because they aren’t peer reviewed.
She also counts all references to (peer-reviewed) TAR and (peer-reviewed) book chapters as grey literature, which is even more ridiculous.
#14, #15,
You’re missing the point. The claim is not made to say that every single case of the IPCC’s use of grey literature is necessarily bad. There is plenty of good material published without peer review, and plenty that is bad published with. While some of the IPCC’s grey citations are good material, not all of them are.
The point is that the IPCC have relied on the claim that all their references are peer-reviewed in their publicity and media appearances in order to claim greater authority, and as an excuse to exclude known valid criticisms of the results they rely on.
For example, here’s good ol’ Pachauri:
“‘We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.’ […] Pachauri dismissed the report saying it was not ‘peer reviewed’ and had few ‘scientific citations’.”
(More here:www .noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/not-as-advertised.php )
And there is of course the famous: “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow ““ even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Demanding peer-review before criticisms of the science can be taken into account by the IPCC is indeed an absurd standard. The criticism is either valid or it isn’t, whether it’s been peer-reviewed or not, and to reject discussion of known faults and errors because it’s not reported in the literature is ridiculous. It’s even more so when it’s done selectively – you’ll cheerfully include an unconfirmed anecdote from a climbing magazine or a campaign leaflet, but you won’t pay any attention to McIntyre pointing out that you’ve verifiably put the data in upside down because he said it on a blog and not in a journal.
The IPCC’s stance and public statements on this issue are well known. If you agree with us that valid criticisms shouldn’t be rejected simply because they’re grey, then join us in calling for the IPCC’s reform. If on the other hand you think peer-review is a necessary requirement, then logically you must also reject all those examples you give.
As the IPCC’s public face says here (articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-11-10/india/28069084_1_himalayan-glaciers-climate-change-global-temperatures-rise):
“IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.”
> You’re missing the point. The claim is not made to say that every single case of the IPCC’s use of grey literature is necessarily bad
No, I’m not missing the point. The claim is the IPCC TAR was not peer-reviewed, which is false.
> The point is that the IPCC have relied on the claim that all their references are peer-reviewed in their publicity and media appearances in order to claim greater authority, and as an excuse to exclude known valid criticisms of the results they rely on.
Last time I checked, Pachauri wasn’t a Lead Author for the Working Group II.
> The IPCC’s stance and public statements on this issue are well known. If you agree with us that valid criticisms shouldn’t be rejected simply because they’re grey, then join us in calling for the IPCC’s reform.
The IPCC’s stance on this issue is described in “PROCEDURES FOR THE PREPARATION, REVIEW, ACCEPTANCE, ADOPTION, APPROVAL AND PUBLICATION OF IPCC REPORTS”
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf
They don’t forbid using grey literature.
“The claim is the IPCC TAR was not peer-reviewed, which is false.”
In the usual sense in which “peer review” is normally used, the IPCC reports are not peer reviewed. In no other peer review can an author respond to a reviewers criticism with a simple “Rejected.” and ignore it.
I wish!
“Last time I checked, Pachauri wasn’t a Lead Author for the Working Group II.”
Last time I checked, I hadn’t said he was.
“They don’t forbid using grey literature.”
No, they don’t. So when Pachauri went round the world saying they did, he was lying, right?
You’ll also recall that their rules say they have to mark non-reviewed literature in the references so that readers can tell. And did they?
@18 NiV,
It is somewhat amusing to watch the likes of doskonaleszare – who clearly have not read Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert – attempting to “debunk” her work.
They seem to think that their attempts to warp the odd pixel here and there (and funnily enough they all manage to pick the same few pixels, for some strange reason) will have some impact on the big picture.
And, just for the sake of completeness, wrt to flagging non peer reviewed literature, it is worth noting:
a) That in its review of the IPCC, the InterAcademy Council (IAC) reported on another study of the use of non-peer reviewed literature in the TAR, the findings of which were quite similar.
b) The IAC had recommended that the IPCC “strengthen and enforce” its existing rules.
c) Notwitstanding b) (and its initial acceptance of the IAC’s recommendations) the IPCC decided to accept the recommendation of its Task Group that the flagging rule be “dropped” because after all these years (of not practicing the rule), the Task Group determined that it “would not be practical”.
> In the usual sense in which “peer review” is normally used, the IPCC reports are not peer reviewed. In no other peer review can an author respond to a reviewers criticism with a simple “Rejected.” and ignore it.
I wish!
You can ignore the reviewers even in the “usual” peer review. It’s up to review editors to judge if you’re avoiding a valid criticism.
> No, they don’t. So when Pachauri went round the world saying they did, he was lying, right?
No. To prove that he was “lying”, you would have to demonstrate that a) he knew the procedures about dealing with grey literature b) he purposefully tried to deceive his audience.
And by the way, it seems to me that when you say “the IPCC”, you really mean “Pachauri”.
> You’ll also recall that their rules say they have to mark non-reviewed literature in the references so that readers can tell. And did they?
Could you please quote this specific rule? I can’t find it in the “Principles Governing IPCC Work”.
> They seem to think that their attempts to warp the odd pixel here and there (and funnily enough they all manage to pick the same few pixels, for some strange reason) will have some impact on the big picture.
Wasn’t the whole purpose of Donna’s “IPCC Citizen Audit” to warp the odd pixel here and there, and to prove that “IPCC chairman’s claim that the report relies solely on peer-reviewed sources is not supported”?
@21
<blockquote>Wasn’t the whole purpose of Donna’s “IPCC Citizen Audit” to warp the odd pixel here and there, and to prove that “IPCC chairman’s claim that the report relies solely on peer-reviewed sources is not supported”?</blockquote>
Absolutely not. As would be glaringly obvious to anyone who has actually read the book and/or followed the links to the source material.
As for your inability to find the rule regarding marking non-peer-reviewed material … take your mouse to:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf
Go to page 14 and scroll down to the bottom of the page. But you better go fast, because as I noted in 19. above, they’re about to disappear the rule they have rarely practiced.
> As would be glaringly obvious to anyone who has actually read the book and/or followed the links to the source material.
It should be also glaringly obvious to anyone who has actually read my comment that I wrote about the “IPCC Citizen Audit” project, not the book.
http://noconsensus.org/CitizenAuditReport.pdf
“IPCC chairman’s claim that the report relies solely on peer-reviewed sources is not supported”
Well, duh. I didn’t need Donna and her 40 “citizen auditors” to find out that IPCC could and did use non-peer-reviewed sources.
> Go to page 14 and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
“Non-peer-reviewed sources will be listed in the reference sections of IPCC Reports. These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources. These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.”
I don’t see anything about marking non-peer-reviewed sources, only the UNPUBLISHED ones.
But hey, maybe the IPCC “disappeared” the rule you guys were talking about.
#23,
“Non-peer-reviewed sources will be listed in the reference sections of IPCC Reports. These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources. These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.”
The word “These” refers to non-peer-reviewed sources, and it is therefore the listed non-peer-reviewed sources that will be followed by the statement that they are not published.
If you wish to make a distinction between “published” and “non-peer-reviewed”, then that’s another point on which the IPCC policy is being deceptive. Although I think it’s just a different usage for the word “published”.
And if the procedures say that non-peer-reviewed citations will be marked unpublished, then a reader could justifiably assume that when a citation isn’t so marked the IPCC is saying that it is peer-reviewed. Which of course in thousands of cases is not true.
You give some interesting examples of rhetorical technique here. Hilary didn’t say you were talking about the book, she said you hadn’t read it; you’re answering a claim not made. You complain that you already knew the chairman of the IPCC was wrong to say that the IPCC uses only peer-reviewed material, as if it was obvious and well-known. If so, why are you complaining about the book, when you ought to be complaining about the fact the chairman of the IPCC is going round the world telling lies and nobody in the IPCC mainstream seems the slightest bit bothered about that? (Of course he knew the IPCC procedures on grey literature, and even if he didn’t it would still be deceptive to go round giving people a false version of what they were.) A little further above, you complain that the chairman of the IPCC is not the IPCC, and thus the IPCC itself didn’t make the statement. Except of course that “the IPCC” is not a person, and is therefore unable as such to talk or to make any statements at all. Everything the IPCC does is actually done by the people who are its members and representatives.
That’s an impressive bit of sophistry just to avoid having to say that you knew all along that the IPCC cited lots of junk grey literature and then lied to the world about it. The fact that you and many others seem to think that’s normal behaviour for scientists and academics and not a matter for any criticism does worry me.
huxley@13:
“Ridicule can be good for rallying one’s base. Not so good for winning over people in the middle. A contradiction when one is advocating the high road of reason and science.
Many times I wonder what the climate orthodox hope to achieve with their often aggressive, unpleasant rhetoric.”
I wonder if you were subconsciously aiming to make the most unintentionally funny post of the week, because you have.
Ostrov @19:
“They seem to think that their attempts to warp the odd pixel here and there (and funnily enough they all manage to pick the same few pixels, for some strange reason) will have some impact on the big picture.”
Oops, sorry huxley, I’ll have to take that award back and hand it to Hilary here, for penning this gem with utter disregard of the ‘warping’ the skeptic echo chamber has diligently applied to the whole vast IPCC report on the basis of a few erroneous ‘pixels’ therein.
> The word “These” refers to non-peer-reviewed sources, and it is therefore the listed non-peer-reviewed sources that will be followed by the statement that they are not published.
“These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources. These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.”
Don’t you find this repetition strange?
The title of the Annex 2 says “PROCEDURE FOR USING NON-PUBLISHED/NON-PEER-REVIEWED SOURCES IN IPCC REPORTS”. It’s pretty clear that in the section 5 they described procedures for “non-peer-reviewed sources” (“these will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources”) AND “non-published sources” (“these will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published”), but they screwed up with the grammar/formatting.
> If you wish to make a distinction between “published” and “non-peer-reviewed”, then that’s another point on which the IPCC policy is being deceptive.
Hey, you’ve found another -gate! Let’s call the press!
>You give some interesting examples of rhetorical technique here. Hilary didn’t say you were talking about the book, she said you hadn’t read it; you’re answering a claim not made. You complain that you already knew the chairman of the IPCC was wrong to say that the IPCC uses only peer-reviewed material, as if it was obvious and well-known. If so, why are you complaining about the book, when you ought to be complaining about the fact the chairman of the IPCC is going round the world telling lies and nobody in the IPCC mainstream seems the slightest bit bothered about that?
I’m saying that the attempt to “discredit the IPCC report” (Donna’s words) by demonstrating that the AR4 often made the references to the TAR, or that Pachauri was incorrect in his characterization of the IPCC procedures is, well, pretty weak.
> A little further above, you complain that the chairman of the IPCC is not the IPCC, and thus the IPCC itself didn’t make the statement. Except of course that “the IPCC” is not a person, and is therefore unable as such to talk or to make any statements at all. Everything the IPCC does is actually done by the people who are its members and representatives.
I wonder how the IPCC’s reform you were calling for would prevent its chairman from saying inaccurate things in public.
> That’s an impressive bit of sophistry just to avoid having to say that you knew all along that the IPCC cited lots of junk grey literature and then lied to the world about it. The fact that you and many others seem to think that’s normal behaviour for scientists and academics and not a matter for any criticism does worry me.
I think that’s normal behaviour for scientists and academics to make mistakes. On the other hand, it does worry me when someone is imputing the motives (“lied”, “deceptive”) without having any actual evidence.
“I wonder how the IPCC’s reform you were calling for would prevent its chairman from saying inaccurate things in public.”
Because if he did, everybody else would point it out, and if he did it often enough to be clearly non-accidental, they’d replace him.
Steven Sullivan demonstrates @26 that – for reasons perhaps best known only to himself – either he hasn’t read the book or he’s not following the conversation.
If the latter, I will concede that doskonaleszare’s pixelations might make the effort somewhat of a challenge (particularly if Sullivan is as unfamiliar with the IPCC’s own “rules” and “strict procedures” as doskonaleszare.)
And if the former, well, he’s simply doing some diversionary hand-waving while talking through his hat.
@27 “These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources. These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.”
Don’t you find this repetition strange?
Quite. As a matter of fact, before Thomas Stocker et al decided that a disappearing act was the best strategy for this inconvenient rule, they had actually written a first draft that made it somewhat more convoluted:
“Non-peer-reviewed sources will be listed in the reference sections of IPCC Reports. These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources.1 These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.
[…]
1 Non-published sources also will be listed in the reference sections of IPCC Reports”
But since you are so fixated on this particular pixel, you might be interested in more of those that immediately surround it. If so, feel free to take your mouse to: IPCC’s user of grey literature: To flag or not to flag, that is the question