WWF-Russia rolls out scare-machine in advance of IPCC’s AR5

Last December, on the heels of a pronouncement from former United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) head honcho, Yvo de Boer, I had asked the question: Where’s the scare in AR5? The UNFCCC is the “main client” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

de Boer had told an Australian newspaper that:

his conversations with scientists working on the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested the findings would be shocking.

“That report is going to scare the wits out of everyone,” Mr de Boer said in the only scheduled interview of his visit to Australia. “I’m confident those scientific findings will create new political momentum.”

This wasn’t quite the equivalent of Andrew <we are the vote> Weaver’s 2007 “barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles“, but it was close.

As far as I know, de Boer declined to answer the question. And in the meantime, the dedicated alarmists have been doing their best to pretend that the mounting evidence of failed projections of IPCC reports past doesn’t matter – and they seem unable to meet the challenge of coming to grips with the almost daily collapse of yet another of their Big Green Dreams.

I don’t know if there’s any rivalry between Greenpeace (for whom Weaver might well be considered a PR agent), and WWF; but if the claims of Alexei Kokorin, head of WWF-Russia are to be believed, one might conclude that Korkorin Kokorin has actually surpassed Weaver in the over-the-top Big Scares ‘R Us department.

There’s a Norwegian NGO (that I’d never heard of before) called Bellona. Someone from Bellona interviewed Kokorin [h/t GWPF]. To my ears this sounds an awful lot like “next chorus, next verse, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse”:

Climate experts to announce global climate time bomb will go off by 2040, says WWF’s Kokorin

MOSCOW –The upcoming fifth climate change report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is believed to reveal new, and gruesome, scientific data: Natural and anthropogenic factors contributing to global climate change will escalate in the 2040s, causing ever more devastating effects on the planet. The “climate time bomb” is set to go off – unless humankind does something about it.

Andrei Ozharovsky, 21/05-2013 – Translated by Maria Kaminskaya

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, is working toward a future release of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), due for finalization in 2014. Compared with previous reports, the IPCC site says, “the AR5 will put greater emphasis on assessing the socio-economic aspects of climate change and implications for sustainable development, risk management and the framing of a response through both adaptation and mitigation.” Last week, the report was sent out from Geneva for closed-access perusal by the governments of the IPCC member states.

[...]

The climate time bomb

Bellona: Can we speculate as to what will be said in this report?

Alexei Kokorin: The main thing that is expected to be there is data saying that the climate “time bomb” may blow up sometime around 2040. Whereas earlier it was believed that man’s impact on the climate was gradual, and that the situation was deteriorating in a gradual way, now – in contrast to the previous report, which was being put together seven years ago – much more information has been obtained on ocean cycles and other natural fluctuations. Scientists have realized that today, in the 2010s, man’s impact is being mitigated by natural cycles that are offsetting the impact made on the climate by man. This situation will hold for about another twenty years. But it is completely clear that after that, this mitigation will yield to escalation.

We are having a sort of a breather now, but soon enough, we’ll see an onslaught of both – both natural and man-made processes that are causing the rise in temperature.

And temperature will surge dramatically. Yes, temperature rise will then slow down again, sometime in the 2070s, but it will soar up again after that. Understanding this is what makes this new knowledge principally different from what was known seven years ago.

A “respite given by nature”: a lucky break to turn the crisis around

Bellona: What must be done in this situation?

Alexei Kokorin: When you’re told that in the past fifteen years, the temperature of surface air on the planet has not been rising, this should not in any way be construed as proof that humankind’s impact on the climate has ceased. Scientists know it hasn’t. They know it’s because of how natural fluctuations are superimposed on the impact made by man. This is just a respite that nature gave us. And we must use this respite not for wishful thinking and inaction, but for reducing emissions, because after this respite, a double effect will ensue. [emphasis added -hro]

I suppose it’s possible that Kokorin was not quite as alarmist in his responses as “direct action” activist Bellona’s report indicates – and/or that nuance got lost in translation.

When the Second Order Draft of Working Group I (WGI)’s report was leaked last year, as I had noted in my post, Dr. Judith Curry had remarked that:

“The extreme overconfidence of many of their conclusions is bewildering”

One would think that – particularly in light of the InterAcademy Council’s recommendations – the IPCC might have at least learned one lesson. And, who knows, perhaps they have. If Kokorin’s claims are actually found in the report, it will certainly be interesting to read the Lead Authors’:

traceable account of the steps used to arrive at estimates of uncertainty or confidence for key findings.

Then again, perhaps this will turn out to be a false alarm from Kokorin whose “speculations” may well be nothing more than echoes and embellishments of de Boer’s.

Oh, well … time will tell;-)

Hiding the Decline and Bob Ward’s overactive imagination corner

Andrew Montford’s History of the Climategate affair

I am currently engrossed in reading Andrew Montford’s latest book: Hiding the Decline: A history of the Climategate affair (HTD) which is – as promised on the cover – a sequel to Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. As I have previously noted, this earlier work by Montford prompted climatologist, Judith Curry to write:

I give Montford’s book The Hockey Stick Illusiona full 5 stars. Montford’s book will stand the test of time in terms of a history of science book about this episode, and it is being cited in scholarly papers (check google scholar).

Like its predecessor, I’m finding that HTD is definitely a page-turner; and while I do have a few quibbles (mostly of the techno-virtual kind and on which I shall elaborate in a future post – when I’ve completed my reading), I would urge all who haven’t done so to buy your copy now!

My Kindle version (which, for the most part, I’m reading via Kindle for iPad … just love the ability to instantly magnify the graphs!) tells me that I’m now 67% of the way through – having reached location 3981.

So I found it somewhat surprising to encounter in Adam Corner’s corner of the twitterverse [see below, for explanation regarding the divergent path of my mouse to such terrain], the following from CAGW promoter par excellence, Bob <fast fingers> Ward:

He hasn’t read HTD, but he knows it’s a “conspiracy yarn”. Amazing, eh?!

I certainly recalled from my reading of HTD to date that Ward was mentioned a few times; and my search for “Bob Ward” confirmed this. His illustrious name can be found at Kindle locations: 1476, 2896, and 2952. But – unless he has conveniently redefined “featuring” – Ward’s self-declared billing is as far from warranting the adverb “featuring” as his “conspiracy yarn” is from being an accurate depiction of a book he admits he has not read. Even the fourth – and last – mention of “Bob Ward” [Kindle location 4356] is not an account of which (IMHO) he has any reason to be proud.

UDATE 11/27/2012: Paul Matthews advises that when he saw the above Ward-tweet, he responded:

Paul Matthews @etzpcm
@ret_ward So you didn’t listen to the radio programme featuring you and @aDissentient where he said it definitely wasn’t a conspiracy?

Paul Matthews @etzpcm
@ret_ward @aDissentient “Andrew Montford: I think there’s absolutely no doubt that there was no conspiracy” @AJCorner

The latter is from a transcript of this recent BBC radio program in which Ward’s voice was also heard. Yet the cat seems to have gotten Ward’s tweeting-tongue (and/or his fast fingers), because all Matthews has heard in response is … you guessed it … “Sounds of silence”. The “expertise” these activists have developed when it comes to ignoring inconvenient questions is something to behold, is it not?! [end Update]

So what made my mouse meander into Corner’s corner, you might be wondering. Adam Corner (not unlike Bob Ward) unabashedly wears his deep-green advocacy heart on his sleeve; but he is neither “featured” nor mentioned in HTD. Corner’s unconscionable flogging of Lewandowsky’s pseudo-academic “findings” last July did little, if anything, to convey an impression of one who does his homework before posting.

More recently, Corner posted his take on a November 15 seminar on “Communicating Risk and Uncertainty”. One of the scheduled presenters was Myles Allen (who makes two cameo appearances in Montford’s HTD, one of which happens to be a platform he shared with Bob Ward on the heels of the infamous Oxburgh Report pursuant to Climategate). Allen’s presentation topic was “The IPCC’s communication of risk and uncertainty”. For the record, Ward’s role in this seminar was to chair an earlier session entitled, “Public Understanding of Risk and Uncertainty”.

Here’s how Corner had described Allen’s presentation:

In a sen­ti­ment that seemed to be widely shared by the cli­mate sci­ent­ists present, Myles Allen argued that the forth­coming 5th Assessment Report should be the IPCC’s last. Allen’s view was that a mono­lithic state­ment of cli­mate sci­ence know­ledge every five years was no longer the most helpful way to com­mu­nicate cli­mate change. Instead, smaller, more focused reports aimed at spe­cific target audi­ences would make not only a more useful state­ment of cur­rent know­ledge, but a less vul­ner­able target for cli­mate sceptic attacks. One mis­take in the entire doc­u­ment can cur­rently provide a reason for some to doubt the vera­city of the whole cannon of cli­mate know­ledge. If it were not designed to be one, single, defin­itive state­ment, this situ­ation could be avoided.[emphasis added -hro]

I had commented on this in a Discussion hosted at Montford’s blog, Bishop Hill [Nov 16, 2012 at 10:13 PM]. At that time, there were no comments on Corner’s post. In the interim, only three comments have been posted (one of which was from Corner). But a few days ago, Tom Nelson had alerted his readers to a Nov. 22 report of this same seminar by SciDev’s David Dickson, which I found to be far more informative than Corner’s, so I added it to the Discussion thread at Bishop Hill [Nov 23, 2012 at 3:10 PM].

Yesterday (which was already today in Corner-blog time: November 25, 2012 at 12:33 am) I had posted the following comment on Corner’s blog:

Speaking from the audi­ence, the IPCC’s com­mu­nic­a­tions dir­ector, Jonathan Lynn, defended the struc­ture of the organ­isa­tion, and argued against more par­ti­cip­ative forms of engage­ment like blog­ging.

How very predictable of Lynn – and how very typical of the IPCC’s control the message modus operandi. But here’s another perspective on this seminar, offered by SciDev’s David Dickson [h/t Tom Nelson], which includes:

Jonathan Lynn, head of communications for the IPCC, points out that it is up to the 195 member government of the intergovernmental panel to decide on the type of reports it should produce, and that it already publishes reports on specific topics, in addition to its synthesis reports.

One can well imagine that Lynn would have been none too thrilled with the following comments Dickson attributes to Myles Allen:

as a result of criticisms of earlier reports “IPCC statements are becoming so legalistic that their value as a communication tool is diminishing”.

“We should give up on the ‘Stalinist’ notion of a single information vehicle,” Allen told the meeting, organised by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford.

Allen suggested that the IPCC process was partly motivated by a desire “to make a big media splash,” as a way of getting key messages through to policymakers.

But this could backfire when it came to conveying the uncertainties contained in climate change predictions.

It is interesting to compare Dickson’s take with that of Corner. Kinda makes one wonder if Corner’s summary of Allen’s observations – in which he depicts (and seems to attribute to Allen) skeptic views as “attacks” – is not heavily weighted by Corner’s own preconceptions and enviro-activist views.

As of 11/25/2012 10:14 PM PST, this comment is still “awaiting moderation”. Which is why my mouse and I had earlier today gone off in search of any cyber-activity on Corner’s part elsewhere on the ‘net. For the record, Corner’s last tweet appears to have been:

Perhaps Corner has “taken a powder”, or perhaps the Apple Crumble Cocktail proved to be too much for him. Or perhaps he had anticipated the advice I gave at the beginning of this post … and he’s decided to curl up with a good book by Andrew Montford, Hiding the Decline: A history of the Climategate affair ;-)

UPDATE: 11/27/2012 Corner has released my post from moderation. But he did not deign to respond to my observations. From his sparse responses to those who’ve asked about the involvement of “the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford”, my guess would be that the imprimateur was granted by virtue of the fact that the convenor, James Painter, is a member of the Institute’s staff. Although any journalist (except perhaps Adam Corner) might wonder why the Institute’s site makes no mention of this event. Perhaps it was really arranged by the BBC’s (now formerly) favoured secret seminar organizer, IBT;-)

Uncertainty Royale

The U.K. Royal Society is holding a two-day Workshop on Handling Uncertainty in Weather & Climate Prediction, at which Dr. Judith Curry will be one of the presenters (and also chairing one of the sessions).

As he has in the past, the inimitable Josh has been live-cartooning for the edification, amusement and benefit of all.

Herewith two of my faves that I hope he won’t mind that I’ve snipped from his virtual sketchbook. Brighten your day by checking out the rest of Josh’s brilliant sketches … Enjoy!

The big Lewandowsky … and the 97%

Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky is a “cognitive psychologist” at the University of Western Australia who seems to have a rather magnificent obsession with promulgating the message of the purported perils of “dangerous” climate change. By his own admission, he also likes to take trips back to the future.

On September 3, Lewandowsky began the rapidly snowballing descent of his credibility with a post that begins:

I recently published a paper on the motivated rejection of science that is forthcoming in Psychological Science.

How can one have “recently published” something “that is forthcoming”? And why in this particular post does Lewandowsky provide no link to this “recently published … forthcoming” paper?! Nor does he tell his readers in which issue of the journal they might find this opus in support of his Magnificent Obsession.

One might also ask why Anthony Watts received no response to his enquiry to the journal at which this purportedly “recently published” paper “is forthcoming”:

I asked Psychological Science editor Robert V. Kail to investigate this paper, as did others. Crickets

This does not inspire confidence in either Lewandowsky or the editor of the journal Psychological Science.

Notwithstanding several interim diversions of the desperate kind in lieu of responding to legitimate questions regarding his survey, his paper, and his methodology, it was not until September 10 that Lewandowsky chose to highlight – and provide – an introductory link to his paper.

Lewendowsky’s “published … and forthcoming” paper (which he claims is “In press”) begins as follows:

More than 90% of climate scientists agree that the global climate is changing largely due to human CO2 emissions (Anderegg, Prall, Harold, & Schneider, 2010; Doran & Zimmerman, 2009).¹

In the conspicuous absence of any due diligence on his part, I can (almost) understand why Lewandowsky might have blinded himself to the many faults of the authorities to which he chose to appeal.

There can be no doubt that he is dedicated to “the cause” and I cannot imagine that he would have conducted any due diligence prior to granting credence to the fault-riddled conclusions of Anderegg et al or those of Doran and Zimmerman.

I have yet to see any evidence that Lewandowsky’s “published … and forthcoming” paper is anything but “motivated” by his dedication to “the cause”.

There are so many questions that have arisen from Lewandowsky’s purportedly published paper that he’s chosen to avoid answering, that one might wonder if his mere “over 90% of climate scientists agree” was a typo!

After all, the climatically correct mantra (according to his sources, which include the pronouncements of Anderegg who uses the “data” compiled by green hobbyist Prall, a tech-support guy at the University of Toronto) is we’re doomed … and so is the planet.

It matters not that the late great communicator, Saint Stephen of Stanford was the mentor and/or sponsor of Anderegg’s abysmally inadequate “paper” from which the “97% of climate scientists” meme was derived.

Lewandowsky’s “survey” – and the paper he has purportedly “published” – has so many deficiencies, even from a transparency perspective let alone from the perspective of those who know far more about survey design (e.g. Thomas Fuller) and statistics (particularly Steve McIntyre) than Lewandowsky has been able to demonstrate he possesses.

So I found it somewhat amusingly ironic that, in a follow-up poll to ascertain who among the skeptics might have participated in Lewandowsky’s 2010 survey, those who chose Option 2, “I’m a skeptic and I DID NOT participate in the Lewandowsky survey in 2010″ constitute … 97% (as of this writing, Total responses to all four options = 1,698), where it has consistently hovered since I began periodically checking on September 14.

Full disclosure: I chose Option 2 … which places me among the clear majority whose voices Lewandowsky seems to want to silence – as he has recently demonstrated by the post-moderation purging of inconvenient comments on his flurry of self-serving “revisionist” blog-posts.

Dr. Judith Curry recently remarked on her blog:

Conspiracy theorists (?)

The latest ‘explanation’ for lack of belief in the IPCC consensus ‘truth’ is that these non believers are conspiracy theorists.

[...]

While I have used the term ‘auditors’ for deep investigations of problems with climate data, BS detection seems much more apt for this particular issue.

Lew, get a clew. I hope this experience with the skeptical bloggers has revealed what they are really all about, as they have revealed YOUR conspiracy by finding a really big pile.

Motivated (?) reasoning

[Curry concludes by offering:]

an alternative hypothesis: the motivation reasoning is on the other side, the liberal defenders of the CAGW consensus. Once the ‘consensus’ argument stepped beyond climate science into the realm of ‘dangerous’ impacts and ‘solutions’ involving global changes in governance and energy policy, BS detectors were triggered in people who didn’t share that motivation.

Hear! Hear!

Of climatologists and cartoons: Compare and contrast

Cartoon 1 [cartoonsbyjosh May 28, 2012]

Climatologist 1: Dr. Myles Allen, blog novice Academic affiliation: Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and Head of the Climate Dynamics Group in the University’s Department of Physics Extra-curricular activities include: leads the www.climateprediction.net project, using distributed computing to run the world’s largest ensemble climate modelling experiments IPCC involvement1: Lead Author, Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes, Chapter 12 of the IPCC WG1 Third Assessment. Review Editor, Global Climate Projections Chapter 10 of the IPCC WG1 Fourth Assessment. Lead author, Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional;, Chapter 10 of the IPCC WG1 Fifth Assessment. First reaction to cartoon: “The point made in the talk2 was that the revision to the surface temperature record was the only change to a published dataset that was used in the evidence for detection and attribution for human influence on climate to have resulted from the UEA e-mail affair, and that this is not the impression the general public would have got from the coverage.” [May 29, 2012 at 10:43 AM]

Cartoon 2 [cartoonsbyjosh: October 31, 2011]

Climatologist 2: Dr. Judith Curry, blog veteran Academic affiliation: Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology Extra-curricular activities include: President (co-owner) of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN) IPCC involvement3: None First reaction to cartoon: Cartoon captured and appended to Oct. 30 post with observation, “Josh weighs in”

¹ The intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), makes a point of noting that they do not do research; consequently it is somewhat odd that Allen has listed his history of involvement under the heading “Current Research”.

² This “talk” was a presentation Allen gave on November 3, 2011, the second of a two-day conference entitled “Communicate 2011: Nature People Economics” – sponsored by the Bristol City Council, DEFRA, and an organization called Living With Environmental Change; all of who which seem to have a very green outlook. The topic for this particular session was “The Elephant in the Room: Communicating Difficult Issues” and was Chaired by Professor Angela McFarlane, Director of Public Engagement and Learning, Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

McFarlane’s summary was as follows:

How do we confront The Elephant in the Room and communicate environmental issues that have become taboo? How do we engage people in rational debate about contentious topics. We heard from two experienced communicators who have tackled the issues of population growth and climate change.[emphasis added -hro]

Allen’s (choice of?) topic was “Climate Change – So Last Decade”, although I’m not sure what specific “taboo” he might have been addressing. At one point in his presentation, he did mention “a genuine prediction” and shortly thereafter he spoke of “The IPCC or us scientists, so to speak” [please see Background and Context: Cartoon 1, below]. Although it does occur to me that while he spoke of the UEA “affair” the word “Climategate” passed his lips only once. So perhaps that’s the “taboo”.

³ It is worth noting that in her review of Donna Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, an exposé of the IPCC, Curry observed: “As a student of the IPCC since December 2009 (yes I was defending the IPCC until that point), I’ve looked at many of these issues myself. I’ve made some of the same points raised in this book. [...] My personal reaction as a scientist is to be very thankful that I am not involved in the IPCC. I already feel duped by the IPCC (I’ve written about this previously), I am glad that I was not personally used by the IPCC.”

Background and Context: Cartoon 1

On May 23, Andrew Montford, author of the must read if you haven’t already The Hockey Stick Illusion and gracious host of the very widely-read Bishop Hill blog, posted the following:

From: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/5/23/myles-allen-on-climategate.html

[Sidebar: Dr. Allen, if you're reading this, I hope you'll appreciate that in deference to your "acutely sensitive" hearing and/or vision, I have reconstructed this post so that it reflects a more "flattering" image. Readers interested in this aspect of the background, please see YouTube Stills.]

As of this writing, there were 75 responses to this post. None from Allen. The view from here, so to speak:

Well, I suppose there’s something to be said for his recognition that the scary stories are just not cutting the mustard – except amongst the political elites who are, as usual, way behind the times when it comes to new, improved mantras.

Talk about cherry-picking, though … in his “summation” of Climategate, Allen hangs his “argument” not even on a single cherry, but on a portion of the skin of a single cherry! Certainly makes one wonder about his mode of “doing science”.

It seems that in our post-modern world, we have “journalists” (e.g. Goldenberg, Revkin, Hickman & Black) acting like PR hacks, “scientists” who don’t seem to have a clue about the scientific method, and advocacy groups pretending that their “reports” are “scientific”.

The verdict of all strongly suggests that this is not a video that is likely to go viral – no one was impressed. I would certainly question the judgment of anyone who describes him as an “experienced communicator”. One who liberally peppers and pads his speech with “ums and ers” does not meet my criteria for a successful communicator – let alone an “experienced” one.

Apparently he was addressing a roomful of journalists and after telling his audience that the “reversal” in “public interest in climate … is essentially [their] fault”, he presented his “argument”:

The problem is that climate change has very much been presented as an issue of global catastrophe that will affect our grandchildren, whereas in fact, the issue is substantially more prosaic than that, but no less serious. That is the point I would like you to take away and consider. [emphasis added -hro]

I’m not sure what he meant by “substantially more prosaic … but no less serious”. Ideas from readers are welcome!

If you prefer not to watch the video, here’s the text of the section (probably from his notes) to which Montford was referring [paragraphs reformatted for ease of reading]:

But what we’ve seen over the past few years is events like the climate-gate email revelations, giving the population at large the impression that the whole issue hangs by a thread of evidence, that a few scientists might have fiddled the data, and therefore, if they are “caught out”, this undermines the entire case for human influence on climate.

In the accompanying slides, you can see the impact of the whole UEA email affair – think about the amount of newsprint, the amount of air time and so forth that was devoted to that affair over the past couple of years – this is the total impact of that affair on any published data set that is of any relevance to the human influence on climate, and the correction is about two hundredths of a degree in the late 1870s.

It is important to get these things right, and we are grateful to those who scoured over the data and identified a problem with input files because that resulted in that small correction in this record. But that’s the only change to any published number which resulted from this entire affair. Now, you wouldn’t have got that impression from the way it’s been covered in the media.

Certainly the public has not got that impression, but rather they have the idea that basically it’s all up in the air again, and that really we have no idea what’s going on, because people have been caught fiddling the numbers.

I’m also not sure what other “events like climate-gate” he might have been referring to. But I certainly did find myself wondering what planet he’s been living on – and what media coverage he might have seen or heard.

I did have to endure the painful experience of watching the video a second time, in order to confirm that my ears had not been deceiving me when I heard him say – as I had noted above – apparently ad lib, because it is not included in the text:

The IPCC or us scientists, so to speak

This is a very telling slip of the tongue methinks … but it will have to be the subject of another post on another day!

Anyway … Allen must have been reading at least some of the negative reviews of his presentation. My guess is that he was not thrilled that his critics did not share his narrow view of the impact of Climategate.

However, rather than engage directly with his critics he chose to ask Montford to post a reply for him. And on May 26, Montford graciously obliged. He introduced the post:

Myles Allen writes

Myles Allen has asked me to post this response to the thread in which we discussed his Communicate 2011 lecture.

Alas, his response showed no indication that he had understood what his critics had written. Nor did the few direct replies he subsequently deigned to make. He chose to completely ignore some very thoughtful questions – and advice! Here’s how I expressed the view from here [May 27, 2012 at 2:15 AM]:

Dr. Myles Allen expounds:

I do think it is sad for democracy that so much energy in the debate on climate change has been expended on pseudo-debates about the science, leaving no room for public debate about the policy response.[...]

[and]

My fear is that by keeping the public focussed on irrelevancies, you are excluding them from the discussion of what we should do about climate change [...]

Frankly, I think it is far sadder for democracy that one who calls himself a scientist should so arrogantly presume that appealing to his own authority (and/or the “expert judgment” of his fellow IPCC authors) is an argument that the public should unquestioningly accept.

Dr. Allen seems to have adopted the approach urged by the “sustainability communications” company, futerra:

Forget the climate change detractors
Those who deny climate change science are irritating, but unimportant. The argument is not about if we should deal with climate change, but how we should deal with climate change.

Actually, I wrote more than that … but what I did not say at the time was how insulting the inference of his “irrelevancies” label was to Montford, Steve McIntyre, and others. I suppose it’s possible that he gave no thought to the implications of his actual words because he was interested not in dialogue but in pushing his “argument”.

Meanwhile, Steve McIntyre made a valiant attempt to guide Allen out of the hole he was quickly digging for himself:

Myles Allen and a New Trick to Hide-the-Decline

Myles Allen has written here blaming Bishop Hill for “keeping the public focussed on irrelevancies” like the Hockey Stick:

My fear is that by keeping the public focussed on irrelevancies, you are excluding them from the discussion of what we should do about climate change

But it’s not Bishop Hill that Myles Allen should be criticizing; it’s [former IPCC Chair] John Houghton who more or less made the Hockey Stick the logo of the IPCC. Mann was told that IPCC higher-ups wanted a visual that didn’t “dilute the message” and they got one: they deleted the last part of the Briffa reconstruction – Hide the Decline. If, as Allen now says, it’s an “irrelevancy”, then Houghton and IPCC should not have used it so prominently. And they should not have encouraged or condoned sharp practice like Hide the Decline.

In the run-up to AR4, I suggested that, if the topic was “irrelevant”, as some climate scientists have said, then IPCC should exclude it from the then AR4. Far from trying to keep the topic alive in AR4, I suggested that it be deleted altogether. I guess that there was a “consensus” otherwise. If Allen wants to complain, then he should first criticize IPCC.

[...]

Allen’s decision to show temperature data rather than Hockey Stick reconstructions cleverly draws attention away from the problems of those reconstructions. The Climategate emails have a apt phrase for Allen’s technique. Showing an unrelated dispute about a temperature graphic rather than the decreasing Briffa reconstruction is itself just another …. trick to hide the decline.

Allen’s first response made me wonder if he’d actually kept his eyes shut so as to avoid seeing McIntyre’s actual post:

The only attribution statement in the IPCC Third Assessment Summary that made reference to the MBH reconstruction was “Reconstructions of climate data for the past 1,000 years (Figure 1b) also indicate that this warming was unusual and is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin.” This is a very cautious statement (“likely” means a 1-in-3 chance that the warming is entirely natural in origin), reflecting our caution at the time about these new pre-instrumental reconstructions.

The key evidence provided for the headline attribution statement “Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” was the comparison of model simulations forced with and without anthropogenic influence with the instrumental temperature record.

This comment from Allen happened to immediately follow one of mine in the thread! And it left me shaking my head in utter astonishment. There’s a further irony here: Had Allen actually read what McIntyre had written he would have found a genuine (but irrelevant and immaterial!) error in his post. You see, in his background paragraph, McIntyre had mistakenly described the Bristol conference as “a 2011 conference on Climategate”. For the record, the program overview on the website states:

Recognising the inseparability of Nature, People and Economics is the greatest challenge currently facing environmental communicators.

Without accounting for the value of nature in our economic system, we risk pursuing a path leading inexorably towards the degradation of vital ecosystems. Fail to win the economic argument for wildlife conservation and environmental protection, and our messages are in danger of going unheeded in these testing times. Therefore it is essential that we continue to forge connections with the people whose actions will determine the future outcomes of our planet, and ensure that preserving biodiversity and achieving sustainability remain at the heart of the global agenda. Over two days of talks, workshops, discussion and debate, Communicate 2011 addressed these challenges.

Sure doesn’t look like a “Climategate conference” to me – or even a “climate change” communication conference. Strikes me as being yet another Run-up to Rio+20 propaganda exercise! In light of which, I’m beginning to wonder if the “environmental communicators” weren’t left shaking their heads after Allen’s presentation, trying to fit his “take away” point of “substantially more prosaic … but no less serious” into their communication of the latest and greatest “greatest challenge”!

But I digress …

Allen’s antics did not improve either at Bishop Hill – or at Climate Audit, notwithstanding some excellent advice provided by Lucia. Be sure to read McIntyre’s post which he subsequently updated by elevating Lucia’s advice to the headpost – immediately beneath which you will see Allen’s non-responsive reply which arrived there by virtue of the fact that McIntyre obliged when Allen requested that it be equally elevated.

One of the nice things about being a member of the “congregation” at Bishop Hill is that every once in a while His Grace (as Montford is sometimes fondly called) gives us the opportunity to have some frivolous fun by letting our imaginations run wild. May 27 was one of those days for one of those posts. It was a “caption contest” involving a photo of Allen and a U.K. rapper named Will.I.Am (whom I’d never heard of before). The winner will receive a coffee mug “adorned with the Josh cartoon” of her/his choice. Who could resist, eh?!

If Myles Allen has a sense of humour, one can only conclude that May 27 must have been a very “bad-humour day” for him. So on May 28, shortly after midnight, he let forth a barrage [May 28, 12:08 am] of what I would call “revisionist scholarship” – and did an exit stage-left with a resounding whine, leaving a long trail of very valid – and telling – unanswered questions behind him. Here are some excerpts:

I was in the papers last Tuesday through no initiative of my own, but because I was asked by Intel to talk to their technology ambassador who happens to be Will.i.am. Andrew Montford then decided to dig up an unflattering image on YouTube and it was rapidly whipped up into a claim I was plotting to overthrow democracy, all without anyone taking the trouble to ask me what I meant. Since I do care about democracy a lot more than I care about the Medieval Warm Period, I tried to post to explain that my concern was that the way the climate debate was going, you were running the risk of continuing to argue about things that may ultimately turn out to be irrelevant rather than formulating sensible alternatives to some of the more anti-democratic measures that are being tossed around. For my pains, I have now been called an “idiot”, “prat”, “arrogant” and I don’t know what else. [...]

Now, it seems, Andrew is running a caption competition. What is the problem, Andrew? I wasn’t criticising your book, I was criticising journalists for giving the public the impression that the UEA e-mails called into question the integrity of the data we use for detection and attribution of human influence on climate.

I do appreciate there have been a couple of thoughtful comments on this thread, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to sign off. [...] [emphasis added -hro]

As I had observed in a comment responding to those who suggested that the caption contest was inappropriate:

MA made three appearances (prior to his exit stage-left on May 28 at 12:28 am):

May 26 9:06 am
May 26 9:15 am
May 27 8:14 am

This May 27 comment was merely a copy and paste in which he combined two comments he had made at CA:

http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/26/myles-allen-and-hide-the-decline/#comment-334919

and

http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/26/myles-allen-and-hide-the-decline/#comment-334915

Such non-responsive and/or diversionary contributions might be your idea of “constructive dialogue”, but it certainly isn’t mine. And while I cannot speak for Andrew, I would suggest that in light of the above, this caption contest thread – which did not begin until May 27 (sometime prior to 9:02 AM when the first comment appeared) – is far too kind.

And if one adds to this, MA’s parting whine (May 28, 12:28 am) in which he describes an embedded video as:

an unflattering image on YouTube

and conflates and completely mischaracterizes** criticisms from a thread to which he chose not to respond directly – while ignoring the very valid questions and criticisms in the thread in which he did deign to “respond”, then all I can conclude is that he had no interest whatsoever in “constructive dialogue”.

Later on May 28, Montford wondered how Allen might have come by his mis-perception that Climategate was about the temperature record – rather than the paleo (tree sample) proxy records – as being the predominant “public perception” about which Allen kept harping. Although it should be noted that his “point” – not unlike Gavin Schmidt’s ever-changing story, come to think of it – certainly did change depending on … well, I’m not quite sure what it might have depended on!

As it turns out, on May 29, Steve McIntyre reviewed some of the early press coverage and observed:

I’ve quickly re-examined some of the contemporary news reports as the story unfolded to see how attention got shifted from the Hockey Stick to temperature. These comments are quick and do not represent a thorough canvassing, which would be interesting.

Many of the very earliest comments refer to the Hockey Stick. The earliest comments from the University of East Anglia refer to the temperature record, rather than the hockey stick. Most early coverage by Nature – which was very involved in early coverage – also drew attention to the temperature record, rather than the hockey stick. It looks to me like both the UEA and Nature were important contributors to focussing on the temperature record, rather than proxy reconstructions. I don’t think that Myles can fairly blame “mainstream media” for getting this wrong, when Nature and the UEA were busy fostering this misunderstanding.

But in the meantime … on May 28, Josh had created and posted Cartoon 1.

Background and Context: Cartoon 2

The genesis of this cartoon is far less complicated! Most of it can be found in a post I wrote on Oct. 31 last year. I provided some background – and asked some questions – about Dr. Richard Muller, a physicist at Berkeley who launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project on the heels of … Climategate. The project was designed to:

resolve current criticism of the former temperature analyses, and to prepare an open record that will allow rapid response to further criticism or suggestions. Our results will include not only our best estimate for the global temperature change, but estimates of the uncertainties in the record.

Curry was asked to join the project – which she did, with no remuneration and no obligation. Via her blog, she kept us apprised of their progress and developments. But on Oct. 20, she learned that Muller had launched a media blitz to announce the submission of four papers, all bearing her name as one of the co-authors despite the fact that her role had been primarily advisory. In Curry’s view, two of the papers were definitely not ready for prime time. This resulted in an article in the Oct. 30 U.K. Mail Online:

Curry was quite frank about her concerns regarding some of Muller’s statements. The article is worth a read – and you will see some examples of the “fat tale” headlines generated in the U.K. press. (See also Curry’s clarification and account of her subsequent discussion with Muller).

It was the article in the Mail Online which provided Josh with the inspiration for Cartoon 2.

Observations

One thing that became quite clear to me is that Allen’s interest was only in matters that affected his area of expertise and/or contributions to IPCC reports: detection and attribution. In his world, nothing else seems to matter! Curry, OTOH, has a much broader perspective.

This may seem nit-picky (if not sexist!), but if I compare the constant disrespectful haranguing (from both sides of the climate divide) on Curry’s blog to the relatively mild (and few and far between) assessments of Allen’s virtual personna, and their respective responses – I’ve certainly never seen a “whine” from Curry – then all I can say is perhaps female climatologists have much thicker skins than their male peers!

Another interesting difference that I detected is that Curry has never been reticent to publicly criticize if she believes that a colleague is wrong. Allen ducks. Over the last few days, it became apparent that Allen has co-authored at least one paper with known environmental activists [see citation in Donna Laframboise's recent post].

He has also co-authored a paper with two prominent Climategate actors:

MN Juckes, MR Allen, KR Briffa, J Esper, GC Hegerl, A Moberg, TJ Osborn, SL Weber
Millennial temperature reconstruction intercomparison and evaluation
CLIM PAST 3 (2007) 591-609

Here’s an example of Allen paddling away:

I was just saying I can understand the argument for not showing the data that Keith Briffa had concluded was contaminated, just as I can understand the argument for showing it. When Steve McIntyre or Richard Muller talk about this, they make it all seem completely black-and-white, but it isn’t. It all comes down to the dendroclimatologists’ confidence that whatever it was that was contaminating the most recent decades would not have contaminated the earlier data. They clearly were sufficiently confident about this to feel comfortable with displaying the data in the way that they did. I’m not a dendroclimatologist, so I don’t feel qualified to pronounce either way. But I don’t use tree-ring data: perhaps that speaks for itself. [emphasis added -hro]

A further example can be found when Allen was challenged on his failure to speak out against the whitewashes known as the Muir Russell and Oxburgh enquiries pursuant to Climategate:

[...]It would be extraordinarily presumptions for me to suddenly decide I disagree with Oxburgh, Muir-Russel et al without investigating the matter as pain-stakingly as they did.[...]

[...]please let me be clear: I am not actively supporting anyone, I am just declining to comment on scientific process and conduct questions because I’m not best qualified to do so. [emphasis added -hro]

(As an aside, I’m not sure what makes him “qualified” to determine what is “relevant” to a debate and what isn’t, not to mention what makes him “qualified” to flog his pet “policy solution”.)

Curry, OTOH, even in the days before she launched her own blog, was quite forthcoming. As McIntyre observed:

The majority of the climate science “community” appear to be so desperate for affection that they’ve proclaimed wind utility chairman Oxburgh’s love to the rooftops merely because of a few sweet nothings whispered in their ears. (Words of love so soft and tender.) Their gratitude is so great that they are willing to overlook the embarrassing brevity of Oxburgh’s report, Oxburgh’s negligible due diligence and failure to address any of the questions that were actually at issue.

Judy Curry has not compromised her standards.

Uniquely among the “community”, she’s noted the embarrassing brevity of the Oxburgh “report”:

When I first read the report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details; well, there weren’t any.

Uniquely within the “community”, she realized that Oxburgh avoided the questions that were at issue:

And I was concerned that the report explicitly did not address the key issues that had been raised by the skeptics. … I recall reading this statement from one of the blogs, which seems especially apt: the fire department receives report of a fire in the kitchen; upon investigating the living room, they declare that there is no fire in the house.

[...]

Perhaps in addition to having thicker skins, female climatologists are more inclined towards confronting “relevant” issues than their male peers.

Postscript for the record

Allen did eventually make some further – and more relevant – responses both at ClimateAudit and Bishop Hill. And eventually (after yet another whine [May 30, 2012 at 12:05 AM], Allen did move a few inches [May 30, 2012 at 9:58 AM]:

Sorry, I really do have to get back to the day job now. Given these comments, I’m happy to accept that it isn’t clear who was to blame for the conflation of climategate with the surface temperature record. I’ve accused journalists of being to blame, and they seemed to accept it, but perhaps they were just too gentlemanly to object. And watching the early coverage, I was probably acutely sensitive to references to the instrumental record, because that is what I specifically cared about.

Several posts have suggested I was blaming the blogs, but I hope that isn’t true, at least not to the best of my recollection. I was criticising the mainstream media for not keeping the affair in perspective.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Climatic licence

The matter of “global warming” aka “climate change” first crossed my radar a little under two and a half years ago. When I began my exercise in due diligence – apart from the then standard appeal to the authority of “thousands of scientists” who cannot possibly be wrong – the very first element of doubt that crept into my mind was learning that much, if not most, of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “climate scientists” have been telling us is derived from what they believe the output from computer simulations is telling us.

Another early eye-opening experience related to the much-vaunted “peer review” of the scientific literature (well, not all of it, of course) on which the IPCC bases its assessments – and the so-called “consensus“. My mind positively boggled when I learned that the process of peer review does not include any verification of the underlying data or methodology. Not to mention that some “climate scientists” depend on … wait for it … intuition when conducting peer review. But I digress …

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Luddite and I love computers! I certainly couldn’t imagine my life today without one – or even without the three in my possession that are currently functioning … not to mention my very recently acquired (much to the shock of some of my friends!) iPad which has a fabulous app for practicing and improving my Bridge-playing skills:-)

I mean, imagine trying to create a visual representation such as:

The jolly green sustainable hockey stick ... Eat your heart out, Michael Mann!

as I did to supplement my recent post on the phenomenal growth of non-governmental organizations (NGOs aka “civil society” in UN-speak) accredited with “consultative status” by the United Nations.

I could not have created that graph without the aid of a computer! Nor could Michael Mann have created his work of art. As Dr. Judith Curry noted in a post today:

When people say that the hockey stick and paleoclimate analysis of the last 1000 years isn’t an important part of the climate change argument, well it should be. We have been seduced by the relatively flat blade of the hockey stick into thinking that natural internal variability isn’t important. With improved proxies and analysis methods, we may find out that natural internal variability is significantly larger than is indicated by the Mann et al. reconstructions. [emphasis added -hro]

And speaking of seduction … thanks to a virtual army of mainstream media commentators, I think we may have also been “seduced” by their unrelenting repetition of hype – aided and abetted, of course, by hypsters such as Al Gore. He began his hyping twenty-three years ago. But simple hype wasn’t enough for Gore; he gave himself licence to inappropriately and appallingly invoke memory of – and word-images from – the Holocaust [h/t Richard Drake via Climate Audit]:

An Ecological Kristallnacht. Listen.

By Albert Gore; Albert Gore Jr., a Democrat, is Senator from Tennessee
Published: March 19, 1989

Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with our planet.

Unless we quickly and profoundly change the course of our civilization, we face an immediate and grave danger of destroying the worldwide ecological system that sustains life as we know it.

It is time to confront this danger.

In 1939, as clouds of war gathered over Europe, many refused to recognize what was about to happen. No one could imagine a Holocaust, even after shattered glass had filled the streets on Kristallnacht. World leaders waffled and waited, hoping that Hitler was not what he seemed, that world war could be avoided. Later, when aerial photographs revealed death camps, many pretended not to see. Even now, many fail to acknowledge that our victory was not only over Nazism but also over dark forces deep within us.

In 1989, clouds of a different sort signal an environmental holocaust without precedent. Once again, world leaders waffle, hoping the danger will dissipate. Yet today the evidence is as clear as the sounds of glass shattering in Berlin.

Twenty-three years ago, folks! And in the intervening years, billions of dollars have been spent and countless “peer-reviewed” papers have been written; all touting the glory of green – and the gory stories of projected gloom and doom.

In the interim, we have had to learn to, well, acclimatize ourselves to “climate scientists” who give themselves licence to redefine commonly understood words in the English language; words such as “trick“, “decline”, “fudge” – and even “experiments”

And in twenty-three years, regardless of medium, the message has not changed:

Humanity is at a crossroads. Social, economic and environmental crises that have played out in recent years offer a unique opportunity for a step change in the way humanity does business. Although the concept of the ‘green economy’ was introduced to address today’s challenges, its continued dependence on traditional – and questionable – trickle-down economic growth theory has rendered it inadequate. A fast-growing population, rapidly diminishing resources and planetary boundaries are forcing humanity to find innovative ways to use resources more efficiently, to work within the limits of the Earth’s natural capital, and to make fundamental changes to our economic systems. This policy brief sets out the guidelines for the social and technological transformations needed for a new economic system, as well as the new ways in which we will need to measure and monitor this system.[emphasis added -hro]

Where did that come from, you might well ask?! In case you hadn’t heard, in addition to various and sundry panels, pronouncements and preparatory papers peddling the “must act now” mantra all emanating from the UN en route to Rio+20, next week there will be yet another “international” confab with the ominous theme of “Planet Under Pressure”**. The text I quoted above was excerpted from one of their nine “policy briefs“.

[** For a more thorough discussion of the background (and self-licensed foreground, under the auspices of the U.K.'s Royal Society, a co-sponsor) of this conference, please see Donna Laframboise's recent post, Fairy Tales on the Road to Rio]

If you’ve done any reading lately, you will perhaps have recognized that the emphasis seems to be shifting away from “global warming” aka “climate change” and towards the more fashionable “sustainability” – which covers a multitude of our “sins”, not just production of the dreaded human-generated CO₂.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that we’re probably in for yet another outpouring of “science” that is nothing more – and nothing less – than computer generated simulations designed to support the conclusions and mantras of the day. But you don’t have to take my word for the rather dubious nature of the output from the “climate scientists’” computer modelling exercises; Bishop Hill has a very enlightening post (with comments from those who are far more knowledgeable than I) that is well worth reading: Mathematical models for newbies.

And consider the following from Wikipedia

Artistic licence (also known as dramatic license, historical license, poetic license, narrative license, licentia poetica, or simply license) is a colloquial term, sometimes euphemism, used to denote the distortion of fact, alteration of the conventions of grammar or language, or rewording of pre-existing text made by an artist to improve a piece of art.

The artistic license may also refer to the ability of an artist to apply smaller distortions, such as a poet ignoring some of the minor requirements of grammar for poetic effect.
[...]

In summary, artistic license is:

• Entirely at the artist’s discretion
• Intended to be tolerated by the viewer (cf. “willing suspension of disbelief“)
• Useful for filling in gaps, whether they be factual, compositional, historical or other gaps
• Used consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally or in tandem

[emphasis added -hro]

YMMV, but it seems to me that climatic licence is another form of “artistic licence” that falls well within the criteria listed in the summary above. At the very least, that with which the hypsters and “climate scientists” have been regaling us for so many years does require a “willing suspension of disbelief”.

Gleick and the green factor$

Well, I’m still waiting, as are others, for the MSM luminaries – who were so quick to publish what has now been unequivocally established as the contents of an obvious forgery – to apologize for their ethical failure in not verifying the provenance of the document purported to have originated from The Heartland Institute (HI).

So, I thought it might be interesting to stroll down some avenues that others do not yet appear to have explored.

I wonder if these journolites™ happened to see Dr. Judith Curry’s Feb. 24 post, in which she had posed the question: Why target Heartland?. This post resulted in an E-mail from HI’s Joe Bast, which Dr. Curry subsequently appended to her post with the observation that:

With virtually no effort on my part (beyond reading an email, cutting and pasting into the blog post), I have uncovered “juicier stuff” about Heartland than anything Gleick uncovered. Okay, maybe the HI are actually the baddest guys in town from the perspective of the alarmists. The irony of Gleick committing professional seppuku over getting information about stuff that is either generally known or suspected or regarded as no big deal. When all he had to do was ask Joseph Bast some questions, and he would have told him all sorts of things (just not the names of the donors, which aren’t all that interesting anyways.) [emphasis added -hro]

So why did Gleick do it?

That he had a rather longstanding dislike of the very fact of the perfectly legal activities and existence of “think tanks” is not in dispute. What has reinforced this particular conclusion, apart from his venom towards HI – or indeed any who do not share his view of the world – is the very high praise he had uttered via twitter for the contents of a blog called “Climate Ethics“.

His tell-tale tweet:

Sun 1/22 10:46 – Tweets “Fantastic analysis and essay on climate ethics here: http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/ – http://twitter.com/#!/petergleick

This page might best be characterized as the extension of the “Protocols of the Elders of Climate”. You would not believe the extent to which the author stretches in his mission to demonize “think tanks”. No wonder Gleick thought it was a “fantastic analysis and essay”. Here’s an example:

This is the fourth and last entry in a series that has examined the climate change disinformation campaign as an ethical matter. The purpose of this series has been to distinguish between responsible scientific skepticism, an approach to climate change science that should be encouraged, and the tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign, strategies deployed to undermine mainstream climate change science that are often deeply ethically offensive.

Gleick’s Feb. 20 “confession”, as I had mentioned previously was very carefully crafted and wrapped in a fog of creative ambiguity.

Needless to say, since the 20th, those in the skeptic blogosphere have been amazingly productive in sweeping the virtual scene for more “fingerprints” – and much has been discovered, with plausible narratives emerging. I did my own chronology a few days ago, after Steve McIntyre had posted the chain of correspondence between HI’s Jim Lakely and Gleick.

Gleick and HI’s James Taylor both write blog columns at Forbes (although I doubt that Gleick is still writing for Forbes). On Jan. 12, in a comment on Taylor’s post, Gleick had challenged Taylor to provide HI’s list of donors – a list which, IMHO, should have been none of his business; but, as Steve had noted:

On Jan 13, Jim Lakely of Heartland invited Gleick to participate in their forthcoming 28th Anniversary Dinner, a dinner that would be attended by Heartland’s supporters and donors. It would presumably have been an opportunity for Gleick to persuade his opponents. Heartland offered Gleick a charitable contribution of $5,000 to the charity of his choice

Gleick replied on Jan 16th; he neither accepted nor declined the invitation, but he thought he’d make another attempt to get HI’s list of funders. His response included:

In order for me to consider this invitation, please let me know if the Heartland Institute publishes its financial records and donors for the public and where to find this information. Such transparency is important to me when I am offered a speaking fee (or in this case, a comparable donation to a charity). My own institution puts this information on our website.

Lakely replied on the 17th – reminding Gleick that:

I’m sure you’ve seen James M. Taylor’s response to the funding questions at Forbes.com – a question he has answered publicly many times. In short: We used to publicly list our donors by name, but stopped a few years ago, in part, because people who disagree with The Heartland Institute decided to harass our donors in person and via email.

[and]

as you know, we are under no legal obligation to release a detailed list of our donors – nor is any other non-profit organization. Our 990 forms are in full compliance with the IRS. [emphasis added -hro]

Gleick took a full 10 days to “give serious consideration” to Lakely’s invite before declining.

He chose to completely ignore Lakely’s reasonable explanation of why HI does not disclose the names of its donors.

Here’s Gleick’s primary “reason” for his Jan. 27 … uh … decline:

Perhaps more importantly, the lack of transparency about the financial support for the Heartland Institute is at odds with my belief in transparency, especially when your institute and its donors benefit from major tax breaks at the expense of the public.

No doubt in the “ethical” world according to Gleick, it’s OK for his non-profit organization’s donors to “benefit from major tax breaks” but not for HI’s. But that aside, I certainly do wonder what might have been going on behind closed screens during Gleick’s ten days of “serious consideration”.

Jan. 27 appears to have been a somewhat busy day for Gleick. He turned down an invitation to debate; a “debate” which on Feb. 20 he declared needed to happen. In so doing, he also declined a perfect opportunity to meet and greet the funders whose names had become so important to him.

That same day, Gleick published a whine on his Forbes blog. Evidently, he wasn’t very happy that the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had chosen to publish a letter from Dr. Richard Lindzen and 15 other scientists. And – no doubt adding insult to injury – according to Gleick, the WSJ had dared to decline to publish a missive from Gleick and 254 friends.

But what Gleick conveniently neglected to mention is that this allegedly declined missive from the gang of 255 pertained to an article published in Science on May 7, 2010. Funny that he doesn’t mention this date during the course of his whine, eh?

Nor did he give any reason on Jan 27/2012 why the WSJ should have been obliged to publish the piece from the gang of 255 on May 7/2010. If you read the 2010 article, it’s merely an attempt to bolster the – by then – rapidly declining credibility of the IPCC. It began with a recitation of the big scare:

For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet

and continued with a repetition of the mantra that salvation of the planet depends on action now, along with the frequently repeated unsubstantiated allegations of “harassment” etc. of these poor beleaguered “climate scientists”.

This was also the day he embarked on his phishing expedition during which he cast his net several times: first on Jan. 27 and finally on Feb. 6. Hmmm …. another 10 day time lapse. Feb. 8 Hmmm … a twelve day time lapse.

UPDATE: It’s worse than I thought! Above edit 02/29/2012 07:58 PM PDT [h/t Paul Matthews' "Copner's Gleick Timeline"]

At any time along the way, he could have checked his moral compass (assuming he has one) and seen that he was sailing in the wrong direction. Had he done so, he would have headed back to port, contacted HI and turned himself in! But this was not the choice Gleick made.

Yet on Feb. 17 – a mere 3 days after the botched virtual Valentines Day massacre – out of the blue, the U.K. Guardian very obligingly made available* the undated “An Open Letter to the Heartland Institute” purportedly written and signed by 7 noble climate scientists (with Gleick’s name being as conspicuously absent as those of the CRU crew on the 2009 Statement in the immediate aftermath of Climategate).

This “open letter” not only echoed the claims in the forged “strategy” doc, but also laid out the false equivalence to Climategate, interspersed with what some might consider to be a restatement of the May 7/10 article allegedly rejected by the WSJ – incorporating the “principles” and buzzwords offered by what Gleick might well have gleaned from the “fantastic analysis and essay” he had spotted on Jan. 22.

* http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2012/02/17/heartland.pdf

There’s something else that’s rather odd about this very speedily written “Open Letter”. In his analysis of the forged document, Joe Bast notes:

I always capitalize the “T” in “The Heartland Institute,” the author of this [forged] memo did not.

The undated “Open Letter …” at the Guardian contains no actual signatures, just a list of 7 names and their academic affiliations. Yet there are 9 instances throughout this document of “the Heartland Institute”. Hmmm … Must be coincidence.

Some have postulated that Gleick was driven by “anger” or “fear”. Indeed his own “confession” suggested such a rationale for his behaviours. But I think it may be something completely different.

Consider the following from their respective Form 990 “Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax”

The Heartland Institute, founded 1984. 2010 Revenue $6,074,947 [Source]

Pacific Institute, founded 1987. 2010 Revenue $2,288,518 [Source]

Until his recent self-aggrandizing escapades which probably began circa August 2011 with his active involvement in l’affaire Wagner (as noted in my earlier post) Gleick was a relatively unknown little pisher in the Big Green Pond.

His claim to “international expert” fame was as a “water” man, not a “climate” guy. And his organization‘s “mission” gives the impression of being far more dedicated to “sustainable development” than to pushing the putative perils of “dangerous” climate change.

Considering the extended timelines I noted above, I fail to see how a credible case can be made that Gleick had reached a “tipping point” and that his behaviours can legitimately be construed – as he and his army of apologists lamely attempt to portray them – as the consequence of a mere temporary lapse of judgment.

Could it be that – notwithstanding his MacArthur “genius” status (which makes him “too smart to get caught”) and his apparent lack of a functional moral compass – Gleick is afflicted, if not driven, by chronic green envy?

From pisher to phisher in less than a year. What a legacy, eh?!

A tale of two interviews: candid Curry vs mythmaking Mann

In light of all the mealy-mouthed apologia and statements from individuals and organizations finally feeling the heat from Gleickgate, it was a very refreshing change to read a candid and balanced interview with Dr. Judith Curry.

James Stafford of OilPrice.com asks series of questions to which her answers give one cause for optimism. Here are some excerpts (all emphases are mine -hro):

The IPCC May Have Outlived its Usefulness – An Interview with Judith Curry

Mon, 27 February 2012

OP: What are your personal beliefs on climate change? The causes and how serious a threat climate change is to the continued existence of society as we know it.

JC: The climate is always changing. Climate is currently changing because of a combination of natural and human induced effects. The natural effects include variations of the sun, volcanic eruptions, and oscillations of the ocean. The human induced effects include the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, pollution aerosols, and land use changes. The key scientific issue is determining how much of the climate change is associated with humans. This is not a simple thing to determine. [...]

OP: You are well known in climate and energy circles for breaking from the ranks of the IPCC and questioning the current information out there. What do you see as the reasons for the increase in skepticism towards global warming over the last few years.

JC: Because of the IPCC and its consensus seeking process, the rewards for scientists have been mostly in embellishing the consensus, and this includes government funding. Because of recent criticisms of the IPCC and a growing understanding that the climate system is not easily understood, an increasing number of scientists are becoming emboldened to challenge some of the basic conclusions of the IPCC, and I think this is a healthy thing for the science.

[...]

[OP] [...] Do you believe that the organization as a whole needs to be assessed in order to better serve progress on climate change? What suggestions do you have on how the organization should function?

JC: The IPCC might have outlived its usefulness. Lets see what the next assessment report comes up with. But we are getting diminishing returns from these assessments, and they take up an enormous amount of scientists’ time.

But if self-promoting hype is more to your liking, try TIME magazine’s interview with Michael Mann.

I’m not going to sully my blog with quotes from an article headlined: “A Climate Warrior Puts it All On the Line — Including His Life”. But suffice it to say … Mann seems to be in competition with Peter Gleick for nomination as ‘martyr of the month’ or as Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. noted in a tweet:

No nuance or complexity here — Time’s hagiography of Michael Mann, what next, Mt Rushmore? Sainthood?

Perhaps Walsh should consider interviewing Dr. Michael Kelly, whose recent letter to the U.K. Times includes [h/t Bishop Hill]:

The interpretation of the observational science has been consistently over-egged to produce alarm. All real-world data over the past 20 years has shown the climate models to be exaggerating the likely impacts — if the models cannot account for the near term, why should I trust them in the long term?

I have noticed a tendency on the part of some journalists – and Walsh is one of them – to shift the focus of Gleick’s culpability by referring to events since Feb. 14 as the Heartland Affair.

Stafford gets it right, though. In his intro he wrote:

The IPCC, the onetime unquestioned champion of climate change, has had its credibility questioned over the years, firstly with the climategate scandal, then with a number of high profile resignations, and now with the new “Gleickgate” scandal (1) (2) – One has to wonder where climate science goes from here?

Here’s the link again to his interview with Dr. Curry.

From the ashes of Gleickgate a new mantra is born

Cartoon by Josh: Feb. 21, 2012

There was a time in days of olden
When ’twas said that silence is golden
Yet thanks to a scientist, an expert on water
Who dared not speak, though many thought he oughtta
His inactions are leading to conclusions unvarnished
That Gleick, by his silence, has glitter much tarnished!

-hro, Feb 18, 2012 at 9:39 AM (GMT):
a contribution to the speculations on the identity of a forger.

What a difference a few days makes in the fast-moving world of the blogosphere. One might, perhaps, summarize these momentous events as the “Fall and Rise of Peter Gleick” … on the wings of a forgery purporting to be a “confidential” document he claims fell into his lap, but which has turned out to have Gleick’s unmistakeable “fingerprints” all over it. Although he may well have had a hidden but helping hand from one of DeSmearBlog’s frequent contributors, mashup artist par excellence, John Mashey.

Steve McIntyre has diligently documented the background and timeline since Gleick – with the assistance of 15 cheerleading chums – launched what they may well have hoped would be a virtual Valentines Day massacre of those at whose views on climate change, aka global warming, they so dearly love to sneer and smear.

Sneering and smearing are not exactly my idea of the best way to win friends and influence people – nor to convince any thinking person of the righteousness of one’s “cause”, let alone one’s science. But what do I know, eh?! After all, I’m not a self-declared – or MSM fabricated (e.g. railroad engineer, and man of many hats, IPCC Chair Ranjendra Pachauri) – “climate expert”.

OTOH, Gleick (at least in the world according to Gleick, and that’s the only one that matters, isn’t it?!) is an “internationally recognized climate and water expert [who] works at the intersection of science and policy, including issues related to the integrity of science”. I learned this important detail about Gleick back in October, when I came across his “review” of Donna Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert (TDT).

I can’t vouch for any other books Gleick may or – may not – have read; but based on his “review” of TDT, as I had noted in my post, he gave no indication that he had read TDT, or that he had the slightest clue what the book is about. Drive-by sneer and smear rant, followed by a few temper tantrums elsewhere is probably the most apt summary of his abysmal, disrespectful and unprofessional performances.

It became quite obvious that substantiating his assertions is a lesson Gleick seems not to have learned during the course of his brilliant career. But, to be fair, it’s a lesson that seems to have eluded many of the leading lights on the warm-side. And, as Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. reminded us in a recent post, Gleick (in conjunction with Kevin Trenberth and John Abraham) is never loath to cast unwarranted and malicious aspersions on those whose work does not support his own view of the world:

[...] the recent behavior [...] of Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California, involving the Heartland Institute is just another example of the often vitriolic and unseemly behavior by some to discredit what are appropriate alternative viewpoints on the climate issue. Unfortunately, the attitude towards the Heartland Institute displayed by Peter Gleick is just another example of an attitude that pervades a significant number of individuals in the leadership of the climate science community. [emphasis added -hro]

It is sad, but not surprising, that after reviewing Trenberth, Abraham and Gleick’s September 2011 very public ‘hatchet job’ on Roy Spencer and John Christy, Dr. Pielke had concluded:

Roy Spencer is hardly discredited because there are papers that disagree with his analysis and conclusions. This will sort itself out in the peer-reviewed literature after he has an opportunity to respond with a follow on paper, and/or a Comment/Reply exchange. Similarly, John Christy can respond to the Santer et al paper that is referred to in the Trenberth et al article.

What is disturbing, however, in the Trenberth et al article is its tone and disparagement of two outstanding scientists. Instead of addressing the science issues, they resort to statements such as Spencer and Christy making “serial mistakes”. This is truly a hatchet job and will only further polarize the climate science debate. [emphasis in original -hro]

The Climategate emails revealed another aspect of this brilliant diamond in the rough, as I had discovered a few weeks ago. In Gleick’s world (shared by such luminaries as Phil Jones, Michael Mann and the late, great communicator, Stephen Schneider), the professional and scientific response when learning that a journal peer reviewer has requested data and code is: “Yuck“. FWIW, from Jones’s reply, there may well have been “consensus” on this.

Unlike the NYT‘s Andrew Revkin, or the U.K. Guardian‘s Suzanne Goldenberg and Leo Hickman, for whom fact-checking and provenance confirmation is – for all intents and purposes – anathema when it comes to matters enironmental, Megan McArdle of the Atlantic has been following this story and <gasp> asking questions, as a journalist should.

McArdle readily acknowledges her green-tinted glasses; but she does not permit her vision to become as clouded and biased by advocacy as Revkin, Goldenberg or Hickman. Here are some excerpts from McArdle’s thoughts on Gleick’s “confession”:

Peter Gleick Confesses to Obtaining Heartland Documents Under False Pretenses

Feb 21 2012, 5:36 PM ET

[...]
The very, very best thing that one can say about this is that this would be an absolutely astonishing lapse of judgement for someone in their mid-twenties, and is truly flabbergasting coming from a research institute head in his mid-fifties. Let’s walk through the thought process:

You receive an anonymous memo in the mail purporting to be the secret climate strategy of the Heartland Institute. It is not printed on Heartland Institute letterhead, has no information identifying the supposed author or audience, contains weird locutions more typical of Heartland’s opponents than of climate skeptics, and appears to have been written in a somewhat slapdash fashion. Do you:

A. Throw it in the trash

B. Reach out to like-minded friends to see how you might go about confirming its provenance

C. Tell no one, but risk a wire-fraud conviction, the destruction of your career, and a serious PR blow to your movement by impersonating a Heartland board member in order to obtain confidential documents.

As a journalist, I am in fact the semi-frequent recipient of documents promising amazing scoops, and depending on the circumstances, my answer is always “A” or “B”, never “C”.

It’s a gross violation of journalistic ethics, though perhaps Gleick would argue that he’s not a journalist [...]

[...]
Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it’s no good to say that people shouldn’t be focusing on it. If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science? For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions?
[...]
After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.
[emphasis added -hro]

Is it not about time that Revkin, Goldenberg and Hickman – not to mention the BBC’s Richard Black – began asking themselves whatever happened to their practice of journalistic ethics. Or is it the case that they are also so dedicated to “the cause” that objectivity and due diligence prior to publishing just don’t occur to them when it comes to environmental matters?

Instead of uncritically echoing and acting as virtual cheer-leaders for Gleick’s unconscionable forgery, why aren’t they investigating and reporting on the funding, budgets and mission of the BIG players with such BIG bucks in their pockets, that they probably wouldn’t even miss the dollars Heartland has at its disposal if someone were to abscond with the funds.

Surely Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager … an exposé of the IPCC and/or Andrew Montford’s Nullius in Verba, a review of the descent of the U.K.’s Royal Society, are far more deserving of being brought to their readers’ attention than pretending that the contents of a slanderous document, the provenance of which they didn’t even bother to check are worth promulgating.

So much for “journalistic ethics” at the New York Times, the Guardian and the BBC.

As for Gleick’s “ethics” and “integrity”, I think Dr. Judith Curry summed it best when she wrote:

When ‘Heartlandgate’ first broke, I saw no parallels with Climategate. Now, with the involvement of Gleick, there most certainly are parallels. There is the common theme of climate scientists compromising personal and professional ethics, integrity, and responsibility, all in the interests of a ’cause’.

On the one hand, Climategate involved a large number of people that were involved in the IPCC. Apart from the FOI avoidance that was arguably criminal, everyone seems to have been ‘cleared’ by the various investigations. On the other hand, Gleick is only one person, but his actions are far more serious, particularly if they involve fabrication of a document. [emphasis added -hro]

Dr. Curry then provides an example of the “response” from Gleick’s good buddy, Scott Mandia of the “Climate Rapid Response Team”:

…”Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years,” wrote Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. “They also subvert the education of our school children by trying to ;’teach the controversy’ where none exists.”He went on: “Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him.”

Lining up to support him, eh?! Wow! What a guy! Such integrity and high “ethics”. And because he’s a both a scientist and a “journalist” no doubt the “tricks” take on a whole new and wholesome meaning. But Mandia is definitely “on message” … Gleick should probably be a candidate for beatification on account of his dedication above and beyond the call of duty.

As Dr. Curry had concluded:

The climate insanity factor has just jumped upwards a big notch.

My own take on this “confession”? First some thoughts on the role of the press:

What I find most ironic about Revkin’s reporting of Gleick’s “confession”, is his failure to acknowledge his own role (along with that of his U.K. counterparts) by jumping to publish the original story without any due diligence or attempt to verify. Although, as Steve McIntyre note in his timeline Revkin did subsequently “disappear” his post – and at least one “tweet”.

Does he seriously think that media reporting on climate/environmental/sustainability issues has not also sustained a deep self-inflicted wound?! From his response to one of the comments on his post, I’d say he’s oblivious:

[Gleick] has done excellent analysis of water issues and I’ve credited him for daring to blog on skeptic turf in Forbes.com. I’ve cited him off and on literally for decades. But he’s undone much of this here, to my mind. He handed his enemies a huge heap of raw meat with this act and they’ll feed on it — through our polarized politics — for a long time to come. It’s tragic, to my mind. [emphasis added -hro]

Will we ever see acknowledgments and apologies from Revkin, Hickman, Goldenberg, Black and their ilk? So far, they seem to be carrying on – pretending that there is no egg on their respective faces.

Here’s my brief translation of Gleick’s very carefully crafted “confession“: It seemed to be written in the unmistakable – and ubiquitous – “key of Mann” i.e. ‘Well, yes, I was wrong to do this; but it doesn’t affect the “truth” of my claims about the evil forces of darkness (which I’m repeating here just for good measure)’.

As an aside, speaking of Michael Mann … I’m not sure what mode of transportation he’s beein using, but he’s been popping up all over the place, flogging his latest opus which, based on what I’ve read or heard him say, would be more aptly titled: Portrait of the Artist as an Aggrieved Mann. But I digress …

On the blogs, there was considerable surprise that Gleick had “confessed” to obtaining the Heartland Institute’s documents by impersonating a board member but neither confirming nor denying that he was the forger. Some wondered how he could be so stupid as to do this. But I agree with Steve Mosher (who found most of Gleick’s “fingerprints”) and also observed:

Gl[ei]ck isn’t intelligent. He is a genius. That means he thinks he is too smart to get caught. Dumb people fear getting caught. A dumb person would say ” I dont know enough about computers, I might get caught”. A genius, a gold star winning genius on the other hand, thinks he knows everything. Thinks he is too smart to get caught.

Contrary to his plea that it was “frustration” that made him do the dastardly deeds, Gleick’s self-inflicted wounds can be attributed (with a high level of confidence by IPCC standards) to his very high opinion of himself – along with his very low opinion of those who happen to disagree with him.

This became quite clear to me from his behaviours pursuant to his “review” of The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.

Add to this his very vocal, arrogant, pit-bull and longstanding antipathy towards Heartland and the over-riding lack of humility in his “confession”, such as it was – not to mention the conspicuous absence of any specific details pertaining to his transgressions, compared to the repetition of the ‘truth’ of his claims regarding the evil forces of darkness.

How should one translate “At the beginning of 2012″ from Gleick-speak? And when did he do his impersonation act? Surely some dates would have been helpful – and would have added a modicum of credibility to the protestations in his “confession”.

Yet – totally out of character for one who so readily and frequently appeals to his own authority, and expects others to defer thereto – he seems to have been advised to opt for the (more sustainable?!) plausible deniability conferred by his frequent use of creative ambiguity.

Was his impersonation act conducted via landline, cell or E-mail?

And why did he not disclose the names of the “set of journalists and experts working on climate issues”? How very noble of him to protect the 15 … uh … “fences” he probably (as defined by the IPCC) knew he could count on to peddle his forgery and/or stolen goods, eh?

He certainly succeeded in generating enough blog and MSM coverage that at the AAAS Annual Meeting held in Vancouver – which just happened to end Feb. 20 – the AAAS president was sufficiently “alarmed” to echo and amplify Gleick’s “concerns”.

Consider the Guardian‘s banner:

Attacks paid for by big business are ‘driving science into a dark era‘

Researchers attending one of the world’s major academic conferences ‘are scared to death of the anti-science lobby’

[and underneath pic of obligatory polar bear:]

The vast majority of scientists on both sides of the Atlantic say rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere threaten to increase temperatures to dangerous levels.

[...]

Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring. Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner.

She confessed that she was now “scared to death” by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world.

“We are sliding back into a dark era,” she said. “And there seems little we can do about it. I am profoundly depressed at just how difficult it has become merely to get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms.”

Was AAAS president Federoff one of the 15 “fences” – or perhaps one of the 15 had “teleconnections” to Federoff?!

YMMV, but I see nothing in any of the above that gives me any reason to believe that Gleick’s carefully crafted “confession” consists of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Looks like he still thinks he’s “too smart to get caught”.

Mind you, I still think Gleick may have had a helping hand from Mashey in pasting together the obviously fake memo with his very own “fingerprints” all over it – regardless of what he may (or may not) have received in the mail “at the beginning of 2012″

So what might have precipitated Gleick’s choices, apart from his very high opinion his robust mastery of the skills of deception which would, no doubt, shield him from getting caught – at least in his opinion? And of course, in the event that he did get caught, and could not smother the questions with his silence, well … he could simply excuse himself by blaming those he was targeting via recycling a recitation of his fabrications.

Hey, it’s always worked in the past for these noble climate scientists. Why should it stop working now? Gleick knew he could count on his 15 “fences” to come to the aid of his party. They will step up to the plate and eliminate the negative while manufacturing the positive … hmmm … kinda like many actions on the part of some climate scientists and their army of willing apologists! But this is a subject for another post on another day!

It is somewhat telling that Kevin Knobloch, President of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) – who have done much to promote the so-called “overwhelming scientific consensus” – echoing Gleick, gives away the new, improved, advocacy message with his take on the matter which, apart from repeating the claims derived from Gleick’s forgery,

Gleick’s Actions Don’t Excuse Heartland’s Anti-Science Campaign

Dr. Gleick is among many climate scientists who have been targeted by ideological groups that are eager to attack the messengers of scientific findings. And he is a strong advocate for the important role science plays in society. It’s unfortunate that the bitter, personal attacks on his colleagues and their work contributed to what he called a lapse of his own personal judgment and ethics.

Doesn’t your heart just bleed?! But, notice how the message has been reframed!

Gone is “overwhelming scientific consensus” which appears to be yielding to a new, improved mantra:

The science about climate change is clear, but the debate about how to respond to it is broken

Knobloch evidently has:

more than 30 years of experience in public policy and advocacy. He is an expert on a number of environmental and national security issues, including climate change, nuclear weapons, natural resource economics, clean energy, and efficient vehicle policy and legislative strategy. He holds a master’s degree in public administration, with a focus on economics.

Was it his “30 years of experience in advocacy” or his masters in public administration that made him an “expert” on climate change, so that he could declare so confidently that “the science is clear”. Oh, well, maybe he developed his “expertise” by osmosis via press releases from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But I digress …

I wonder how long it will take before the mantra is abbreviated to the shorter, punchier “The science is clear, but the debate is broken”.

And I’m not entirely sure how:

• a subject so clouded miraculously became “clear”
• a debate that Gleick and other activists and advocates been doing their very best to avoid – if not declare “over” – can be “broken”

But I’m not holding my CO2 in anticipation of an explanation that would, well, hold water:-)

In the meantime … isn’t it good to know that (according to the UCS, and given their connections to the approved climatalogical luminaries, they should know), those who do dare to differ – or Gaia forbid, dissent – are no longer funded by Big Oil, but by evil-minded anti-science lobbyists who are funded by a cartel of heretofore unknown Big Business.

Also, evidently, the d-word has lost its efficacy. Henceforth, dissenters (and probably those who dare to question the newly pronounced “clarity”) are deemed to be “anti-science”.

Clearly, as a teachable moment, Gleickgate – not unlike Climategate – did not make the cut for those on the warm-side.

Desperately seeking humility and nuance in climate science

In October 2011, Dr. Judith Curry had a lengthy and interesting post regarding the Draft Strategic Plan (2012 -2021) of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). In her commentary, Dr. Curry shared with her readers some conclusions that she had conveyed during the course of a related panel discussion:

If we as scientists are not humble about the uncertainties and areas of ignorance, we have an enormous capacity to mislead decision makers and point them in the direction of poor policies. Uncertainty is essential information for decision makers.

Climate scientists have this very naive understanding of the policy process, which is aptly described by the A+B=C model in the context of the precautionary principle. This naive understanding is reflected in the palpable frustration of many climate scientists at the failure of the “truth” as they “know” it to influence global and national energy and climate policy. This frustration has degenerated into using to word “denier” to refer to anyone who disagrees with them on either the science or the policy solution.

Today’s issue of Nature includes a “World View” column authored by Ryan Meyer, science integration fellow at the California Ocean Science Trust in Oakland, on this very same plan:

Finding the true value of US climate science

A new strategy for addressing climate change takes a realistic approach to the challenge of making science useful, says Ryan Meyer

08 February 2012

[...]

Is it possible to be realistic and nuanced about the limited role that science often has, but still to offer a compelling case for public support? The US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) will shortly release a strategic plan that does just that.

Over the past two decades, the USGCRP, which coordinates 13 federal agencies and departments, has spent more than $30 billion on climate-change research. In doing so, it has improved our understanding of climate systems. But, as the National Research Council pointed out in 2009, when it comes to fulfilling its legal mandate of supporting decision makers with useful information, the USGCRP has been a disappointment.

[...]

There was no coherent plan (let alone resources) to implement the concepts, and the central goals of the programme remained entirely focused on advancing knowledge. The USGCRP did not provide any coherent account of how doing science in this way would be different from what had gone before, or how science institutions would need to change in order to deliver better value to society.

What, then, is different this time? In its 2012 report, the USGCRP has expressed a more nuanced and humble account of the role of science in society’s responses to climate change.

[...]

The latest plan also acknowledges difficult but crucial science-policy trade-offs. For example, it discusses the “dynamic tension” between increasing model complexity and policy-makers’ needs for simplicity and tractability. For a government science programme to explicitly recognize these choices as a proper concern of science management is a new and welcome step.

Will this bold vision be realized? The USGCRP does not yet have a strong mechanism for allocating funds among its new priorities. Some in the research community will surely lobby against trade-offs that seem to threaten the status quo. And, as it has in the past, the National Research Council reviewed this plan with a critical eye, pointing out that the USGCRP will need more resources and greater leverage over agency budgets and priorities to make it happen. Without these ingredients, the idea will probably run into the sand. [emphasis added -hro]

Speaking of those who perceive threats to the status quo … I wonder what Trenberth and his gang of 37 (who seem to think that “panic” is the preferred option) might have to say about all this?!

As someone once said, we live in interesting times!