date: Mon Feb 21 16:41:02 2005 from: Phil Jones subject: FYI re IPCC to: Susan Solomon Susan, In case you've not seen this, look at Item 4. Some of the other items are interesting re Mike Mann, but less relevant. A rival IPCC (their Team B). They seem to not realise we're doing an assessment and not a review ! Surprised by Zillman's quote. It is likely out of context as Francis Zwiers one was in the WSJ on the hockey stick. Thanks for sending round the piece about dealing with the media. Kevin and I are fully aware how careful we need to be about tropical cyclones and on the MSU issue (I'm off tomorrow to Chicago to be on the Academy review of the CCSP report on vertical temperature trends). Keith Briffa is also totally aware of the importance of the last millennium re Ch 6. Cheers Phil X-Sender: f023@pop.uea.ac.uk X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.1.0.6 Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:40:05 +0000 To: p.jones@uea.ac.uk From: Keith Briffa Subject: Fwd: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA Subject: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:02:37 -0000 X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: pressure grows on climate modellers to relase secret data Thread-Index: AcUXiV64e/f3Ii8uQSa0X88pndSQgQAl2O1w From: "Peiser, Benny" To: "cambridge-conference" X-UEA-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-UEA-MailScanner: Found to be clean CCNet 22/2005 - 21 February 2005 PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA -------------------------------------------------------------------- This should have produced a healthy scientific debate. Instead, Mr. Mann tried to shut down debate by refusing to disclose the mathematical algorithm by which he arrived at his conclusions. All the same, Mr. Mann was forced to publish a retraction of some of his initial data, and doubts about his statistical methods have since grown. --The Wall Street Journal, 18 February 2005 But maybe we are in that much trouble. The WSJ highlights what Regaldo and McIntyre says is Mann's resistance or outright refusal to provide to inquiring minds his data, all details of his statistical analysis, and his code. So this is what I say to Dr. Mann and others expressing deep concern over peer review: give up your data, methods and code freely and with a smile on your face. --Kevin Vranes, Science Policy, 18 February 2005 Mann's work doesn't meet that definition [of science], and those who use Mann's curve in their arguments are not making a scientific argument. One of Pournelle's Laws states "You can prove anything if you can make up your data." I will now add another Pournelle's Law: "You can prove anything if you can keep your algorithms secret." --Jerry Pournelle, 18 February 2005 The time has come to question the IPCC's status as the near-monopoly source of information and advice for its member governments. It is probably futile to propose reform of the present IPCC process. Like most bureaucracies, it has too much momentum and its institutional interests are too strong for anyone realistically to suppose that it can assimilate more diverse points of view, even if more scientists and economists were keen to join up. The rectitude and credibility of the IPCC could be best improved not through reform, but through competition. --Steven F. Hayward, The American Enterprise Institute, 15 February 2005 (1) HOCKEY STICK ON ICE The Wall Street Journal, 18 February 2005 (2) SCIENCE AND OPEN ALGORITHMS: "YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING WITH SECRET DATA AND ALGORITHMS" Jerry Pournell, 18 February 2005 (3) OPEN SEASON ON HOCKEY AND PEER REVIEW Science Policy, 18 February 2005 (4) CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE: TIME FOR TEAM "B"? The American Enterprise Institute, 15 February 2005 (5) BRING THE PROXIES UP TO DATE! Climate Audit, 20 February 2005 (6) CARELESS SCIENCE COSTS LIVES The Guardian, 18 February 2005 (7) RE: MORE TROUBLE FOR CLIMATE MODELS Helen Krueger (8) HOW TO HANDLE ASTEROID 2004 MN4 Jens Kieffer-Olsen (9) AND FINALLY: EUROPE FURTHER FALLING BEHIND IN TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH EU Observer, 10 February 2005 ================== (1) HOCKEY STICK ON ICE The Wall Street Journal, 18 February 2005 [1]http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110869271828758608-IdjeoNmlah4n5yta4GHaqyIm4 ,00.html On Wednesday National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the season, and we guess that's a loss. But this week also brought news of something else that's been put on ice. We're talking about the "hockey stick." Just so we're clear, this hockey stick isn't a sports implement; it's a scientific graph. Back in the late 1990s, American geoscientist Michael Mann published a chart that purported to show average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years. The chart showed relatively minor fluctuations in temperature over the first 900 years, then a sharp and continuous rise over the past century, giving it a hockey-stick shape. Mr. Mann's chart was both a scientific and political sensation. It contradicted a body of scientific work suggesting a warm period early in the second millennium, followed by a "Little Ice Age" starting in the 14th century. It also provided some visually arresting scientific support for the contention that fossil-fuel emissions were the cause of higher temperatures. Little wonder, then, that Mr. Mann's hockey stick appears five times in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark 2001 report on global warming, which paved the way to this week's global ratification -- sans the U.S., Australia and China -- of the Kyoto Protocol. Yet there were doubts about Mr. Mann's methods and analysis from the start. In 1998, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published a paper in the journal Climate Research, arguing that there really had been a Medieval warm period. The result: Messrs. Soon and Baliunas were treated as heretics and six editors at Climate Research were made to resign. Still, questions persisted. In 2003, Stephen McIntyre, a Toronto minerals consultant and amateur mathematician, and Ross McKitrick, an economist at Canada's University of Guelph, jointly published a critique of the hockey stick analysis. Their conclusion: Mr. Mann's work was riddled with "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects." Once these were corrected, the Medieval warm period showed up again in the data. This should have produced a healthy scientific debate. Instead, as the Journal's Antonio Regalado reported Monday, Mr. Mann tried to shut down debate by refusing to disclose the mathematical algorithm by which he arrived at his conclusions. All the same, Mr. Mann was forced to publish a retraction of some of his initial data, and doubts about his statistical methods have since grown. Statistician Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada (a government agency) notes that Mr. Mann's method "preferentially produces hockey sticks when there are none in the data." Other reputable scientists such as Berkeley's Richard Muller and Hans von Storch of Germany's GKSS Center essentially agree. We realize this may all seem like so much academic nonsense. Yet if there really was a Medieval warm period (we draw no conclusions), it would cast some doubt on the contention that our SUVs and air conditioners, rather than natural causes, are to blame for apparent global warming. There is also the not-so-small matter of the politicization of science: If climate scientists feel their careers might be put at risk by questioning some orthodoxy, the inevitable result will be bad science. It says something that it took two non-climate scientists to bring Mr. Mann's errors to light. But the important point is this: The world is being lobbied to place a huge economic bet -- as much as $150 billion a year -- on the notion that man-made global warming is real. Businesses are gearing up, at considerable cost, to deal with a new regulatory environment; complex carbon-trading schemes are in the making. Shouldn't everyone look very carefully, and honestly, at the science before we jump off this particular cliff? Copyright 2005, The Wall Street Journal ============= (2) SCIENCE AND OPEN ALGORITHMS: "YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING WITH SECRET DATA AND ALGORITHMS" Jerry Pournell, 18 February 2005 [2]http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view349.html#hockeystick Science and Open Algorithms: You can prove anything with secret data and algorithms. There is a long piece on the global "hockey stick" in today's Wall Street Journal that explains something I didn't understand: Mann, who generated the "hockey stick" curve purporting to show that the last century was unique in all recorded history with its sharp climb in temperature, has released neither the algorithm that generated his curve nor the data on which it was based. I had refrained from commenting on the "hockey stick" because I couldn't understand how it was derived. I've done statistical analysis and prediction from uncertainty much of my life. My first job in aerospace was as part of the Human Factors and Reliability Group at Boeing, where we were expected to deal with such matters as predicting component failures, and deriving maintenance schedules (replace it before it fails, but not so long before it fails that the costs including the cost of the maintenance crew and the costs of taking the airplane out of service are prohibitive) and other such matters. I used to live with Incomplete Gamma Functions and other complex integrals; and I could not for the life of me understand how Mann derived his famous curve. Now I know: he hasn't told anyone. He says that telling people how he generated it would be tantamount to giving in to his critics. More on this after my walk, but the one thing we may conclude for sure is that this is not science. His curve has been distributed as part of the Canadian government's literature on why Canada supports Kyoto, and is said to have been influential in causing the "Kyoto Consensus" so it is certainly effective propaganda; but IT IS NOT SCIENCE. Science deals with repeatability and openness. When I took Philosophy of Science from Gustav Bergmann at the University of Iowa a very long time ago, our seminar came to a one-sentence "practical definition" of science: Science is what you can put in a letter to a colleague and he'll get the same results you did. Now I don't claim that as original for it wasn't even me who came up with it in the seminar; but I do claim Bergmann liked that formulation, and it certainly appealed to me, and I haven't seen a better one-sentence practical definition of science. Mann's work doesn't meet that definition, and those who use Mann's curve in their arguments are not making a scientific argument. One of Pournelle's Laws states "You can prove anything if you can make up your data." I will now add another Pournelle's Law: "You can prove anything if you can keep your algorithms secret." ============= (3) OPEN SEASON ON HOCKEY AND PEER REVIEW Science Policy, 18 February 2005 [3]http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000355open_seaso n_on_hocke.html By Kevin Vranes The recent 2/14 WSJ article ("Global Warring..." by Antonio Regaldo) addresses the debate that most readers of this site are well familiar with: the Mann et al. hockey stick. The WSJ is still asking - and trying to answer - the basic questions: hockey stick or no hockey stick? But the background premise of the article, stated explicitly and implicitly throughout, is that it was the hockey stick that led to Kyoto and other climate policy. Is it? I think it's fair to say that to all of us in the field of climatology, the notion that Kyoto is based on the Mann curve is utter nonsense. If a climatologist, or a policy advisor charged with knowing the science well enough to make astute recommendations to his/her boss, relied solely on the Mann curve to prove definitively the existence of anthropogenic warming, then we're in deeper trouble than anybody realizes. (This is essentially what Stephan Ramstorf writes in a 1/27 RealClimate post.) And although it's easy to believe that national and international policy can hinge on single graphs, I hope we give policy makers more credit than that. But maybe we are in that much trouble. The WSJ highlights what Regaldo and McIntyre says is Mann's resistance or outright refusal to provide to inquiring minds his data, all details of his statistical analysis, and his code. The WSJ's anecdotal treatment of the subject goes toward confirming what I've been hearing for years in climatology circles about not just Mann, but others collecting original climate data. As concerns Mann himself, this is especially curious in light of the recent RealClimate posts (link and link) in which Mann and Gavin Schmidt warn us about peer review and the limits therein. Their point is essentially that peer review is limited and can be much less than thorough. One assumes that they are talking about their own work as well as McIntyre's, although they never state this. Mann and Schmidt go to great lengths in their post to single out Geophysical Research Letters. Their post then seems a bit ironic, as GRL is the journal in which the original Mann curve was published (1999, vol 26., issue 6, p. 759), an article which is now receiving much attention as being flawed and under-reviewed. (For that matter, why does Table 1 in Mann et al. (1999) list many chronologies in the Southern Hemisphere while the rest of the paper promotes a Northern Hemisphere reconstruction? Legit or not, it's a confusing aspect of the paper that should never have made it past peer review.) Of their take on peer review, I couldn't agree more. In my experience, peer review is often cursory at best. So this is what I say to Dr. Mann and others expressing deep concern over peer review: give up your data, methods and code freely and with a smile on your face. That is real peer review. A 12 year-old hacker prodigy in her grandparents' basement should have as much opportunity to check your work as a "semi-retired Toronto minerals consultant." Those without three letters after their name can be every bit as intellectually qualified, and will likely have the time for careful review that typical academic reviewers find lacking. Specious analysis of your work will be borne out by your colleagues, and will enter the debate with every other original work. Your job is not to prevent your critics from checking your work and potentially distorting it; your job is to continue to publish insightful, detailed analyses of the data and let the community decide. You can be part of the debate without seeming to hinder access to it. =============== (4) CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE: TIME FOR TEAM "B"? The American Enterprise Institute, 15 February 2005 [4]http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.21974/pub_detail.asp By Steven F. Hayward The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is currently working on its fourth assessment report. Despite the IPCC's noble intent to generate a scientific consensus, a number of factors have compromised the research and drafting process, assuring that its next assessment report will be just as controversial as previous reports in 1995 and 2001. Efforts to reform this large bureaucratic effort are unlikely to succeed. Perhaps the time has come to consider competition as the means of checking the IPCC's monopoly and generating more reliable climate science. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) moves toward the release of its fourth assessment report (fourth AR) in 2007, the case of Chris Landsea offers in microcosm an example of why the IPCC's findings are going to have credibility problems. Last month Landsea, a climate change scientist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), resigned as a participant in the producing the report. Landsea had been a chapter author and reviewer for the IPCC's second assessment report in 1995 and the third in 2001, and he is a leading expert on hurricanes and related extreme weather phenomena. He had signed on with the IPCC to update the state of current knowledge on Atlantic hurricanes for the fourth report. In an open letter, Landsea wrote that he could no longer in good conscience participate in a process that is "being motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and is "scientifically unsound."[1] Landsea's resignation was prompted by an all too familiar occurrence: The lead author of the fourth AR's chapter on climate observations, Kevin Trenberth, participated in a press conference that warned of increasing hurricane activity as a result of global warming.[2] It is common to hear that man-made global warming represents the "consensus" of science, yet the use of hurricanes and cyclones as a marker of global warming represents a clear-cut case of the consensus being roundly ignored. Both the second and third IPCC assessments concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record. Moreover, most climate models predict future warming will have only a small effect--if any--on hurricane strength. "It is beyond me," Landsea wrote, "why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming."[3] Landsea's critique goes beyond a fit of pique at the abuse of his area of expertise. The IPCC, he believes, has become thoroughly politicized, and is unresponsive to criticism. "When I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership," Landsea wrote, "their response was simply to dismiss my concerns."[4] Landsea's frustration is not an isolated experience. MIT physicist Richard Lindzen, another past IPCC author who is not participating in the fourth report, has written: "My experiences over the past 16 years have led me to the discouraging conclusion that we are dealing with the almost insoluble interaction of an iron triangle with an iron rice bowl." (Lindzen's "iron triangle" consists of activists misusing science to get the attention of the news media and politicians; the "iron rice bowl" is the parallel phenomenon where scientists exploit the activists' alarm to increase research funding and attention for the issue.[5]) And Dr. John Zillman, one of Australia's leading climate scientists, is another ex-IPCC participant who believes the IPCC has become "cast more in the model of supporting than informing policy development."[6] And when the IPCC is not ignoring its responsible critics like Landsea and Lindzen, it is demonizing them. Not long ago the IPCC's chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, compared eco-skeptic Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler. "What is the difference between Lomborg's view of humanity and Hitler's?" Pachauri asked in a Danish newspaper. "If you were to accept Lomborg's way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing."[7] Lomborg's sin was merely to follow the consensus practice of economists in applying a discount to present costs for future benefits, and comparing the range of outcomes with other world problems alongside climate change. It is hard to judge what is worse: Pachauri's appalling judgment in resorting to reductio ad Hitlerum, or his abysmal ignorance of basic economics. In either case, it is hard to have much confidence in the policy advice the IPCC might have. [...] Time for "Team B"? The time has come to question the IPCC's status as the near-monopoly source of information and advice for its member governments. It is probably futile to propose reform of the present IPCC process. Like most bureaucracies, it has too much momentum and its institutional interests are too strong for anyone realistically to suppose that it can assimilate more diverse points of view, even if more scientists and economists were keen to join up. The rectitude and credibility of the IPCC could be best improved not through reform, but through competition.... FULL PAPER at [5]http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.21974/pub_detail.asp =========== (5) BRING THE PROXIES UP TO DATE! Climate Audit, 20 February 2005 [6]http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=89#more-89 Steve McIntyre I will make here a very simple suggestion: if IPCC or others want to use "multiproxy" reconstructions of world temperature for policy purposes, stop using data ending in 1980 and bring the proxies up-to-date. Let's see how they perform in the warm 1990s - which should be an ideal period to show the merit of the proxies. I do not believe that any responsible policy-maker can base policy, even in part, on the continued use of obsolete data ending in 1980, when the costs of bringing the data up-to-date is inconsequential compared to Kyoto costs. I would appreciate comments on this note as I think that I will pursue the matter with policymakers. For example, in Mann's famous hockey stick graph, as presented to policymakers and to the public, the graph used Mann's reconstruction from proxies up to 1980 and instrumental temperatures (here, as in other similar studies, using Jones' more lurid CRU surface history rather than the more moderate increases shown by satellite measurements). Usually (but not always), a different color is used for the instrumental portion, but, from a promotional point of view, the juxtaposition of the two series achieves the desired promotional effect. (In mining promotions, where there is considerable community experience with promotional graphics and statistics, securities commission prohibit the adding together of proven ore reserves and inferred ore reserves - a policy which deserves a little reflection in the context of IPCC studies). Last week, a brand new multiproxy study by European scientists [Moberg et al., 2005] was published in Nature. On the very day of publication, I received an email from a prominent scientist telling me that Mann's hockeystick was yesterday's news, that the "community" had now "moved on" and so should I. That the "community" had had no opportunity to verify Moberg's results, however meritorious they may finally appear, seemed to matter not at all. If you look at the proxy portion of the new Moberg graphic, you see nothing that would be problematic for opponents of the hockey stick: it shows a striking Medieval Warm Period (MWP), a cold Little Ice Age and 20th century warming not quite reaching MWP levels by 1979, when the proxy portion of the study ends. (I'm in the process of examining the individual proxies and the Moberg reconstruction is not without its own imperfections.) In the presentation to the public - see the figure in the Nature article itself, once again, there is the infamous splice between reconstruction by proxy (up to 1980) and the instrumental record thereafter (once again Jones' CRU record, rather than the satellite record). One of the first question that occurs to any civilian becoming familiar with these studies (and it was one of my first questions) is: what happens to the proxies after 1980? Given the presumed warmth of the 1990s, and especially 1998 (the "warmest year in the millennium"), you'd think that the proxy values would be off the chart. In effect, the last 25 years have provided an ideal opportunity to validate the usefulness of proxies and, especially the opportunity to test the confidence intervals of these studies, put forward with such assurance by the multiproxy proponents. What happens to the proxies used in MBH99 or Moberg et al [2005] or Crowley and Lowery [2000] in the 1990s and, especially, 1998? This question about proxies after 1980 was posed by a civilian to Mann in December at realclimate. Mann replied: Most reconstructions only extend through about 1980 because the vast majority of tree-ring, coral, and ice core records currently available in the public domain do not extend into the most recent decades. While paleoclimatologists are attempting to update many important proxy records to the present, this is a costly, and labor-intensive activity, often requiring expensive field campaigns that involve traveling with heavy equipment to difficult-to-reach locations (such as high-elevation or remote polar sites). For historical reasons, many of the important records were obtained in the 1970s and 1980s and have yet to be updated. [my bold] Pause and think about this response. Think about the costs of Kyoto and then think again about this answer. Think about the billions spent on climate research and then try to explain to me why we need to rely on "important records" obtained in the 1970s. Far more money has been spent on climate research in the last decade than in the 1970s. Why are we still relying on obsolete proxy data? As someone with actual experience in the mineral exploration business, which also involves "expensive field campaigns that involve traveling with heavy equipment to difficult-to-reach locations", I can assure readers that Mann's response cannot be justified and is an embarrassment to the paleoclimate community. The more that I think about it, the more outrageous is both the comment itself and the fact that no one seems to have picked up on it. It is even more outrageous when you look in detail at what is actually involved in collecting the proxy data used in the medieval period in the key multiproxy studies. The number of proxies used in MBH99 is from fewer than 40 sites (28 tree ring sites being U.S. tree ring sites represented in 3 principal component series). As to the time needed to update some of these tree ring sites, here is an excerpt from Lamarche et al. [1984] on the collection of key tree ring cores from Sheep Mountain and Campito Mountain, which are the most important indicators in the MBH reconstruction: "D.A.G. [Graybill] and M.R.R. [Rose] collected tree ring samples at 3325 m on Mount Jefferson, Toquima Range, Nevada and 11 August 1981. D.A.G. and M.R.R. collected samples from 13 trees at Campito Mountain (3400 m) and from 15 trees at Sheep Mountain (3500 m) on 31 October 1983." Now to get to Campito Mountain and Sheep Mountain, they had to get to Bishop, California, which is hardly "remote" even by Paris Hilton standards, and then proceed by road to within a few hundred meters of the site, perhaps proceeding for some portion of the journey on unpaved roads. The picture below illustrates the taking of a tree ring core. While the equipment may seem "heavy" to someone used only to desk work using computers, people in the mineral exploration business would not regard this drill as being especially "heavy" and I believe that people capable of operating such heavy equipment can be found, even in out-of-the way places like Bishop, California. I apologize for the tone here, but it is impossible for me not to be facetious. There is only one relatively remote site in the entire MBH99 roster - the Quelccaya glacier in Peru. Here, fortunately, the work is already done (although, needless to say, it is not published.) This information was updated in 2003 by Lonnie Thompson and should be adequate to update these series. With sufficient pressure from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the data should be available expeditiously. (Given that Thompson has not archived data from Dunde drilled in 1987, the need for pressure should not be under-estimated.) I realize that the rings need to be measured and that the field work is only a portion of the effort involved. But updating 28 tree ring sites in the United States is not a monumental enterprise nor would updating any of the other sites. I've looked through lists of the proxies used in Jones et al. [1998], MBH99, Crowley and Lowery [2000], Mann and Jones [2003], Moberg et al [2005] and see no obstacles to bringing all these proxies up to date. The only sites that might take a little extra time would be updating the Himalayan ice cores. Even here, it's possible that taking very short cores or even pits would prove adequate for an update and this might prove easier than one might be think. Be that as it may, any delays in updating the most complicated location should not deter updating all the other locations. As far as I'm concerned, this should be the first order of business for multiproxy studies. Whose responsibility is this? While the costs are trivial in the scheme of Kyoto, they would still be a significant line item in the budget of a university department. I think that the responsibility here lies with the U.S. National Science Foundation and its equivalents in Canada and Europe. The responsibilities for collecting the proxy updates could be divided up in a couple of emails and budgets established. One other important aspect: right now the funding agencies fund academics to do the work and are completely ineffective in ensuring prompt reporting. At best, academic practice will tie up reporting of results until the publication of articles in an academic journals, creating a delay right at the start. Even then, in cases like Thompson or Jacoby, to whom I've referred elsewhere, the data may never be archived or only after decades in the hands of the originator. So here I would propose something more like what happens in a mineral exploration program. When a company has drill results, it has to publish them through a press release. It can't wait for academic reports or for its geologists to spin the results. There's lots of time to spin afterwards. Good or bad - the results have to be made public. The company has a little discretion so that it can release drill holes in bunches and not every single drill hole, but the discretion can't build up too much during an important program. Here I would insist that the proxy results be archived as soon as they are produced - the academic reports and spin can come later. Since all these sites have already been published, people are used to the proxies and the updates will to a considerable extend speak for themselves. What would I expect from such studies? Drill programs are usually a surprise and maybe there's one here. My hunch is that the classic proxies will not show anywhere near as "loud" a signal in the 1990s as is needed to make statements comparing the 1990s to the Medieval Warm Period with any confidence at all. I've not surveyed proxies in the 1990s (nor to my knowledge has anyone else), but I've started to look and many do not show the expected "loud" signal e.g. some of the proxies posted up on this site such as Alaskan tree rings, TTHH ring widths, and theories are starting to develop. But the discussions so far do not explicit point out the effect of signal failure on the multiproxy reconstruction project. But this is only a hunch and the evidence could be otherwise. The point is this: there's no need to speculate any further. It's time to bring the classic proxies up to date. ============= (6) CARELESS SCIENCE COSTS LIVES The Guardian, 18 February 2005 [7]http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1417224,00.html Dick Taverne In science, as in much of life, it is believed that you get what you pay for. According to opinion polls, people do not trust scientists who work for industry because they only care about profits, or government scientists because they suspect them of trying to cover up the truth. Scientists who work for environmental NGOs are more highly regarded. Because they are trying to save the planet, people are ready to believe that what they say must be true. A House of Lords report, Science and Society, published in 2000, agreed that motives matter. It argued that science and scientists are not value-free, and therefore that scientists would command more trust "if they openly declare the values that underpin their work". It all sounds very plausible, but mostly it is wrong. Scientists with the best of motives can produce bad science, just as scientists whose motives may be considered suspect can produce good science. An obvious example of the first was Rachel Carson, who, if not the patron saint, was at least the founding mother of modern environmentalism. Her book The Silent Spring was an inspiring account of the damage caused to our natural environment by the reckless spraying of pesticides, especially DDT. However, Carson also claimed that DDT caused cancer and liver damage, claims for which there is no evidence but which led to an effective worldwide ban on the use of DDT that is proving disastrous. Her motives were pure; the science was wrong. DDT is the most effective agent ever invented for preventing insect-borne disease, which, according to the US National Academy of Sciences and the WHO, prevented over 50 million human deaths from malaria in about two decades. Although there is no evidence that DDT harms human health, some NGOs still demand a worldwide ban for that reason. Careless science cost lives. Contrast the benefits that have resulted from the profit motive, a motive that is held to be suspect by the public. Multinationals, chief villains in the demonology of contemporary anti-capitalists, have developed antibiotics, vaccines that have eradicated many diseases like smallpox and polio, genetically modified insulin for diabetics, and plants such as GM insect-resistant cotton that have reduced the need for pesticides and so increased the income and improved the health of millions of small cotton farmers. The fact is that self-interest can benefit the public as effectively as philanthropy. Motives are not irrelevant, and unselfish motives are rightly admired more than selfish ones. There are numerous examples of misconduct by big companies, and we should examine their claims critically and provide effective regulation to control abuses of power and ensure the safety of their products. Equally, we should not uncritically accept the claims of those who act from idealistic motives. NGOs inspired by the noble cause of protecting our environment often become careless about evidence and exaggerate risks to attract attention (and funds). Although every leading scientific academy has concluded that GM crops are at least as safe as conventional foods, this does not stop Greenpeace reiterating claims about the dangers of "Frankenfoods". Stephen Schneider, a climatologist, publicly justified distortion of evidence: "Because we are not just scientists but human beings as well ... we need to ... capture the public imagination ... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have." But in the end motives are irrelevant to the validity of science. It does not matter if a scientist wants to help mankind, get a new grant, win a Nobel prize or increase the profits of her company. It does not matter whether a researcher works for Monsanto or for Greenpeace. Results are no more to be trusted if the researcher declares his values and confesses that he beats his wife, believes in God, or is an Arsenal supporter. What matters is that the work has been peer-reviewed, that the findings are reproducible and that they last. If they do, they are good science. If not, not. Science itself is value-free. There are objective truths in science. We can now regard it as a fact that the Earth goes rounds the sun and that Darwinism explains the evolution of species. A look at the history of science makes it evident how irrelevant the values of scientists are. Newton's passion for alchemy did not invalidate his discovery of the laws of gravitation. To quote Professor Fox of Rutger's University: "How was it relevant to Mendel's findings about peas that he was a white, European monk? They would have been just as valid if Mendel had been a Spanish-speaking, lesbian atheist." · Lord Taverne is chair of Sense About Science and author of The March of Unreason, to be published next month Copyright 2005, The Guardian ========== LETTERS ========= (7) RE: MORE TROUBLE FOR CLIMATE MODELS Helen Krueger Dear Dr. Peiser, I just want to let you know how much I am enjoying being included in your list so that I can benefit from your astute handling of alarmist information personally and with my students. Thank you so much! Regards, Helen A. Krueger Educational Consultant Phone: 203-426-8043 FAX: 203-426-3541 =========== (8) HOW TO HANDLE ASTEROID 2004 MN4 Jens Kieffer-Olsen Dear Benny Peiser, In CCNet 18/2005 - 11 February 2005 you brought an interesting article on the possible breakup of NEA 2004 MN4 in the year 2029: > But there's another reason for concern. According to Dan > Durda, another SWRI astronomer, 2004 MN4 is likely to be > a "rubble-pile" asteroid, consisting of material only > loosely held together by gravity. Because the asteroid > will pass us at just 2.5 times Earth's diameter, tidal > forces could tear it apart. The result would be a trail > of rocks drifting slowly apart with the passage of time. > One or more of these might hit Earth in the more distant > future, creating a spectacular fireball as it burns up > in the atmosphere. > --Bill Cooke, Astronomy Magazine, 10 February 2005 First of all, a 300m asteroid could break into 100 pieces each larger than the Tunguska impactor. Secondly, the years for which a TS rating of 1 already exist for the object are NOT in the distant future, but 6, 7, and 8 years later. That reminds us that neither the Torino nor the Palermo scale takes into account the possibility of such a MIRV'ed approach. Furthermore, the Palermo scale is designed to take into account the lead time. Even if 2004 MN4 were not to break up, the lead time to virtual impact in 2029 would be down to one sixth of the time to-day. In other words, if the post-2029 orbit is not being resolved before then, we may as well up the PS rating accordingly. If my math is correct, we should add 0.78 to its Palermo Scale rating, ie. log10(6), for a total of -0.65. Yours sincerely Jens Kieffer-Olsen, M.Sc.(Elec.Eng.) Slagelse, Denmark ========== (9) AND FINALLY: EUROPE FURTHER FALLING BEHIND IN TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH EU Observer, 10 February 2005 [8]http://www.euobserver.com/?aid=18382&print=1 By Lucia Kubosova BRUSSELS / EUOBSERVER - Europeans are still failing to show world leadership in technology and research, a new report shows. The paper, published on Thursday (10 February) has evaluated the EU research and development programmes and their impact on Europe's knowledge-base and potential for innovation. While it argues that EU funds for the programmes make a "major contribution", it suggests that more resources, industry participation and simplified administration are needed for them to have a greater effect in future. "We have somehow lost momentum", said Erkki Ormala, chair of the panel issuing the report. "The EU is falling behind. And we are now under pressue not only compared to our traditional rivals like the US or Japan, but also China, India or Brazil. We are facing a much tougher competition in talent and knowledge than we are used to". Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik considers the paper's results as a reason for doubling the funds in his portfolio within the next budgetary period of 2007-2013. "We don't want to achieve our economic growth by lowering the social or environmental standards. So to compete globally, we need to focus on knowledge", Mr Potocnik said to journalists, adding that the EU programmes should "make a bridge between practical innovation and research". The report has listed several possible solutions for tackling outlined setbacks. It argues that the EU must attract and reward the best talent, mobilise resources for innovation and boost cooperation between governments, businesses and universities in research. It supports the idea of setting up a European Research Council to promote excellence and encourages more industry involvement, mainly on the part of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, SME representatives complain that their ideas about EU research and innovation funding are not taken into consideration. "It's not about how big the budget is for SMEs and their involvement in such projects. It is rather about the allocation of the funds. Most of them are granted for huge long-term projects which cost millions of euro and they can hardly attract smaller companies", according to Ullrich Schroeder, from UEAPME, the main umbrella organisation. He argues that while several reports have already pointed out that SMEs must be more involved if the "Lisbon agenda" goal of 3 percent of GDP to be invested in research and development in the EU by 2010 is to be achieved, in reality they are not as well supported as huge transnational companies. "It is not that the EU member states invest much less in universities than the US, but the greatest difference is that European SMEs are only investing 8% of the US amount, and it is simply not enough". Mr Schroeder also said that while "there is a lot of rhetoric from politicians, that the SMEs should get involved, innovate and compete, when they come up with good projects, they are not sufficiently supported". "The European Commission is more concerned about big companies and hightech areas, while innovation is needed also in more down-to earth sectors", Mr Schroeder told the EUobserver. © EUobserver.com 2005 ------ CCNet is a scholarly electronic network. To subscribe/unsubscribe, please contact the editor Benny Peiser . Information circulated on this network is for scholarly and educational use only. The attached information may not be copied or reproduced for any other purposes without prior permission of the copyright holders. DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the articles and texts and in other CCNet contributions do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the editor. -- Professor Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784 [9]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/ Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------