UEA Culture of Corruption

After reviewing some of the links people have left here, my opinion on this is that Lulu is probably unable to substantiate his accusations.  This Parliament comment should probably be ignored until some substantiation is offered.

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It appears the Parliamentary submissions are heating up.  Reader Curious left a link to a postgrad from UEA who makes very strong accusations. I have to note that in the same post, this person appears to recommend bigger pre-corrupted Commuhagen style government whilst complaining about the obvious corruption of the official UEA organization.  It’s saying — ‘Gee this is corrupt followed by lets make more!!!’ I’ll never understand how people get so confused with political wrongthink but that’s the world these days.

Still the point about the culture of UEA appears valid.  When Mick Kelly can discuss openly with Phil Jones the clipping of data points from the end of a  temperature curve — something is culturally VERY wrong.  I try to imagine that back in my college lab days.  Hey Doc, these last points from this airfoil test don’t match my hoped for result. I’m going to clip them.    Can you even imagine?!!  Yet that’s exactly what was written in these emails.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc0702.htm

Copied in full below – my highlights:

EE Editor Submission to UK Parliament

Dr. Peiser’s complete submission to the UK Parliamentary Committee is complete below.  Dr. Peiser was editor of the journal which handled the fraud allegations on the urban warming papers by Jones and Wang.

These papers were used to present urban warming as having a minimal effect on the surface temperature record, which is something I disagree with.  I’m supposed to disagree as a skeptic, but the evidence of substantial urban warming bias in the temperature records is too great to ignore and requires a complete re-study, something Anthony Watts has taken on for the US in his surfacestations project.  In the Wang paper, the stations in question were stated to have well considered histories to prevent contamination caused by time of observations, station moves and instrument changes.  Keenan’s paper in particular alleged that these claims were not accurate.  When Jones failed to answer in a timely manner, the correspondence became contentious to say the least.   Here is a relevant quote from the emails.

Regarding the Chinese meteorological data analyzed by Wang et al. [GRL, 1990] and Jones et al. [Nature, 1990], it now seems clear that there are severe problems.
In particular, the data was obtained from 84 meteorological stations that can be classified as follows. 49 have no histories 08 have inconsistent histories 18 have substantial relocations 02 have single-year relocations 07 have no relocations Furthermore, some of the relocations are very distant–over 20 km. Others are to greatly different environments, as illustrated here:  http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1323#comment-102970 The above contradicts the published claim to have considered the histories of the stations, especially for the 49 stations that have no histories. Yet the claim is crucial for the research conclusions. I e-mailed you about this on April11th. I also phoned you on April 13th: you said that you were in a meeting and would get back to me. I have received no response. I ask you to retract your GRL paper, in full, and to retract the claims made in Nature about the Chinese data. If you do not do so, I intend to publicly submit an allegation of research misconduct to your university at Albany.

Douglas J. Keenan

My bold below.

H/T  John Pittman and Anastassia Makarieva.

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Memorandum submitted by Dr Benny Peiser (CRU 38)

1. I am the editor of CCNet and the co-editor of the journal Energy &Environment (E&E). Further details may be obtained from the CCNet and E&Ewebsites: CCNet: http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/CCNet-homepage.htmE&E: http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/121493/?p=5b7d9587cb4a4f608c91190241affac3&pi=0 . I am prepared to give oral evidence at the Committee’s evidence session in elaboration of my written submission. I have no declarable interests.

2. The CRU e-mails under investigation suggest that climate scientists (not only at CRU but also elsewhere) have actively sought to prevent a paper on alleged research fraud from being published in violation of principles of academic integrity.

3. In the following, I will outline the chronology of the CRU-Keenan affair as documented in the published CRU e-mails and according to unpublished e-mail correspondence between me and Dr Jones.

4. It should be noted that the CRU e-mails regarding the Jones-Keenan affair are incomplete. I am in the possession of e-mail correspondence with Phil Jones about the Keenan paper that is not included in the published CRU e-mails. The point is that the ‘unauthorised publication’ referred to in the terms of reference is by no means a complete publication. There is likely to be much more other CRU email traffic bearing on the question of the CRU’s scientific integrity, over and above the emails already disclosed. In the interest of veracity and transparency all correspondence by CRU researchers regarding the fraud allegations in question should be disclosed in full so the exact nature and extent of attempts to prevent the publication of Keenan’s paper can be established.

5. In the summer of 2007, I was a guest editor of a special issue of E&E (“The IPCC: Structure, Process and Policy,” – E&E Volume 18, Number 7 – 8 / December 2007).http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/n2541g9607j1/?p=5be0956c6848417c85c79247097c97ad&pi=0

6. On 29 August 2007, I received an e-mail from Doug Keenan with his paper titled “The Fraud Allegations against Wei-Chyung Wang.” In this paper, Keenan accused Wei-Chyung Wang (State University of Albany, SUNY, New York, USA) of scientific fraud. In his paper, Keenan documented evidence that Wang had fabricated information about Chinese meteorological weather stations. His allegations concern two publications: a) Jones P.D., Groisman P.Y., Coughlan M., Plummer N., Wang W.-C., Karl T.R. (1990), “Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land”, Nature, 347: 169-172; and b) Wang W.-C., Zeng Z., Karl T.R. (1990), “Urban heat islands in China”, Geophysical Research Letters, 17: 2377-2380.  The study by Jones et al (1990) has been a corner stone in multiple IPCC reports about the allegedly minimal role of the effect of urban heat islands on the global temperature record. The latest (2007) assessment report by the IPCC concluded that urbanization effects are insignificant with regards to global warming. One of the key papers to underpin this conclusion is the study by Jones et al. (1990). To refute Keenan’s claims of scientific fraud would have only required the release of documentary information about the Chinese weather stations in question which Wang has long claimed to possess.

Evil Denialist Blog Polls

I’m curious what the readers here think about the effect of CO2 on global warming.  Writing a poll which will please a bunch of natural skeptics is about as likely as the moon exploding tomorrow but I’m going to write one anyway.  The purpose of this isn’t to pick which item exactly fits your views but rather to pick one which is closest.  Blogger Tim suggested a petition for skeptic bloggers to sign onto which stated a belief in some warming.  It left me wondering just what the makeup of this group of a couple thousand people is like. Polls stink, but I wonder if there aren’t a bunch of lurking believers, skeptics or evil deniers running around.

Global Gridded GHCN Trend by Seasonal Offset Matching

This post employs global gridded data using Seasonal Offset Matching.  RomanM’s recent posts on the topic might even become standard method in climate science.   Certainly the Met office should at least pay attention to his methods if they are planning on redoing the dataset.  Of course this example is just the incredibly lacking GHCN dataset, full of station dropouts, weak metadata and urban warming but it provides a good example set to apply the methods toward.  In my previous versions of the GHCN the code spent a fair amount of time to determine if the data was from the same instrument or not.  This method does a good job combining the station info either way.  With that said, this is still a preliminary result but it is getting closer to a finished set.

The way the algorithm is applied here, stations with multiple copies of the same data are weighted more in the averaging.  Also, this temperature series is only for land based data.

Roman’s station combination code is explained here. - If you’ve not read up on it, this is the best description to date of what he has proposed.

The concept is to provide 12 months of offsets for each temperature series when combining data.  It maximizes corrections for missing data when combining multiple incomplete temperature series.  The function he wrote is deceptively simple.

calc.offset = function(tdat) {
  delt.mat = !is.na(tdat)
  delt.vec = rowSums(delt.mat)
  co.mat = diag(colSums(delt.vec*delt.mat)) - (t(delt.mat)%*%delt.mat)
  co.vec = colSums(delt.vec*delt.mat*tdat,na.rm=T) - colSums(rowSums(delt.mat*tdat,na.rm=T)*delt.mat)
  offs = psx.inv(co.mat)%*%co.vec
  c(offs)-mean(offs)}

### generally assumes that tsdat starts in month 1 and is a time series.

monthly.offset =function(tsdat) {
  dims = dim(tsdat)
  off.mat = matrix(NA,12,dims[2])
  dat.tsp = tsp(tsdat)
 for (i in 1:12) {
    dats = window(tsdat,start=c(dat.tsp[1],i), deltat=1)
    offsets = calc.offset(dats)
    off.mat[i,] = offsets }
  colnames(off.mat) = colnames(tsdat)
  rownames(off.mat) = month.abb
   nr = dims[1]
   nc = dims[2]
  matoff = matrix(NA,nr,nc)
 for (i in 1:nc) matoff[,i] = rep(off.mat[,i],length=nr)
  temp = rowMeans(tsdat-matoff,na.rm=T)
  pred =  c(temp) + matoff
  residual = tsdat-pred
list(temps = ts(temp,start=c(dat.tsp[1],1),freq=12),pred =pred, residual = residual, offsets=off.mat) }

Climate Scientists — Stand up or be run over by the god of physics.

A little commentary on Judith Curry’s attempt at bridge building seems in order.  First, it’s impressive that she took the time to make the effort and stick her neck out a bit, she is one of the few climate scientists who has begun to come to grips with the breadth of the  problem created.  For her efforts she was uniformly blasted across blogland, the advocates at RC wouldn’t even post her article despite being involved in the development.   Climate fraudvocate, Joe Romm tore  her up as hard as he could.  Willis Eschenbach, wrote an excellent piece at WUWT on the matter which I encourage everyone to read and Lucia has her own take on how to fix the science.   None of our commentary was particularly gentle.

In Willis’s excellent post (which had a rant quality only a  focused outraged mind can achieve) he let loose with these fine paragraphs of insight.

Because we don’t want scientists who are advocates. We’re not interested in scientists who don’t mention their doubts. We’re sick of your inane “simplified dramatic statements”. We laugh when you cry wolf with your scary scenarios. Call us crazy, but we want scientists who are honest, not scientists who balance honesty and effectiveness. You want trust? Get honest, kick out the scoundrels, and for goodness sakes, get a clue about humility.

Because the truth is, climate science is one of the newest sciences. The truth is, we know little about the climate, we’ve only been studying it intensely for a couple decades. The truth is, we can’t project the climate of the next decade, much less that of the next century.  The truth is, we have no general theory of climate. The truth is, we don’t know if an average temperature rise of a couple degrees will be a net benefit or a net loss. The truth is, all of us are human, and our knowledge of the climate is in its infancy. And I don’t appreciate being lectured by infants. I don’t appreciate being told that I should be put in the dock in a Nuremberg style trial for disagreeing with infants. You want to restore trust? Come down off your pedestals, forsake your ivory towers, and admit your limitations.

And through all of this, be aware that you have a long, long, long climb back up to where we will trust you. As Lincoln warned, you have forfeited the confidence of your fellow citizens, and you will be damn lucky if you ever get it back.

It’s very difficult to follow that kind of quality.  There is so much truth to what he wrote and so much wrong with what climate science is.

Roman, Seasonal Offset Matching

Roman has an interesting mathematical post here. Last night I  finished a gridded GHCN global dataset based on his work but wasn’t able to write it up.  That late at night it wouldn’t make sense anyway, but there will be something new on it shortly.  His new post explains some of the reasoning behind this approach.

Mike Hulme – Consensus Science

This is a paper written apparently by Mike Hulme, UEA climatologist on the consensus arguments of the IPCC.  I’ve copied it here in its entirety and have several things I’d like to say but no time right now.

H/t Reader RB – Keep it civil please.

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The IPCC, Consensus and Science

In all of the claims and counterclaims made in recent weeks about climate change, climate scientists and the IPCC, one aspect of the debate which rarely gets examined in any detail is what is meant by the idea of ‘consensus’ in science. Advocates say that there is a strong scientific consensus about the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Detractors will say that scientific knowledge is not produced by consensus. Mike Hulme examines the different meanings that people attach to the idea of consensus in science, and how it is used by the IPCC.

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One of the more frequent criticisms made of the IPCC is that it works to create a scientific consensus about climate change. Critics claim that science doesn’t work by consensus, but rather by testing and refuting hypothesis on the basis of evidence. Just because 95 per cent of scientists agree about something doesn’t make it true.
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Rebuilding Trust

Guest post by Dr. Judith Curry.  This post was offered to many of the climate blogs, we were given an opportunity to comment and changes were made from the original.  Almost as interesting as the article itself was how it evolved and how it will be carried by different websites.  tAV, isn’t even mentioned in it but I was included in the list of those who could carry it.

There are substantial issues in this post which require some discussion.  I’ll leave my comments below.

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On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust

Judith Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology

I am trying something new, a blogospheric experiment, if you will.  I have been a fairly active participant in the blogosphere since 2006, and recently posted two essays on climategate, one at climateaudit.org and the other at climateprogress.org.  Both essays were subsequently picked up by other blogs, and the diversity of opinions expressed at the different blogs was quite interesting.  Hence I am distributing this essay to a number of different blogs simultaneously with the hope of demonstrating the collective power of the blogosphere to generate ideas and debate them.  I look forward to a stimulating discussion on this important topic.

Losing the Public’s Trust

Climategate has now become broadened in scope to extend beyond the CRU emails to include glaciergate and a host of other issues associated with the IPCC. In responding to climategate, the climate research establishment has appealed to its own authority and failed to understand that climategate is primarily a crisis of trust.  Finally, we have an editorial published in Science on February 10 from Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Science, that begins to articulate the trust issue: “This view reflects the fragile nature of trust between science and society, demonstrating that the perceived misbehavior of even a few scientists can diminish the credibility of science as a whole. What needs to be done? Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.”  While I applaud loudly Dr. Cicerone’s statement, I wish it had been made earlier and had not been isolated from the public by publishing the statement behind paywall at Science. Unfortunately, the void of substantive statements from our institutions has been filled in ways that have made the situation much worse.

Trust

Blogging has been very difficult since Climategate.  So much wind is taken out of the discussion when everything ends the same way.   A lot of bloggers have written their opinions on what the event meant to them, in my opinion it has a lot of different meanings.  It has permanently changed the landscape of climate science.  No longer will we have to hear about the perfect integrity of the scientists in blogland.  We no longer need to question why good papers have been blocked from publication.  After the initial Copenhagen proposal, Chavez’s Copenhagen speech, and raucous applause of the audience, we don’t need to wonder about the political intent of the “scientists” and world governments any longer.

The Scam Side of Global Warming

I received this link from a reader, unfortunately at work I can’t hear video – no sound  on the computer.  Inhofe is just another politician in my view and would say anything to defeat the scam side of global warming and perhaps gain some funding from someone.   The scam side is of course the disaster prediction followed by the leftist whacko environmentally destructive, humanity destructive, freedom destroying, and just plain stupid, big government solutions.

In a rare twist of what can only be random fate, the science behind his comments seems accurate.

H/T – to whomever sent the link.

I thought we didn’t need new series

Climategate continues to pay off. There is a new proposal to create an open temperature dataset.   At least we won’t have to listen to the bullcrap verification that it matches other series – which happen to be from the same data.

Lucia has a post on it here.

I wonder how they will resolve those ever so difficult confidentiality agreements.

Independent Bloggers vs Corporate Environmentalists

Article by Donna Laframboise reposted with permission.

Proprietor of the well thought out yet unrelated URL ; ) —  http://www.noconsensus.org/

Click the title below for the original article.

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Another day, another smarmy accusation that people who are skeptical of climate change are being funded by a shadowy conspiracy connected in one manner or another to big oil, big coal, big tobacco or – horror of horrors – right-wing think tanks.

These accusations are tiresome. They’re ugly. They’re almost entirely unsubstantiated. Most of all, they’re a waste of time. They amount to shooting the messenger rather than addressing the bleeping message.

So why do they keep getting repeated? I think I’ve sorted out two reasons. First: the lavishly-funded corporate nature of the environmental movement circa 2010. Second: modern technological wonders such as personal computers and the Internet.

Trend Calculation Incorporating Seasonal Offsets

In this post, RomanM has proposed an interesting concept which was explained in very much approachable terms for us technical folks, I’ve attempted to employ it and explain it further below.  Rather than using a fixed offset value or no offset for averaging sevearal temperature anomaly series, he’s used a seasonal method which calculates a different offset for each month of each series.  The goal of this method is to combine multiple temperature stations into a more accurate trend curve.

When Propaganda Goes Mainstream

Today the guardian put an article up which was absolutely packed with detail that can only be called lies.  It’s so far left and so extreme, it left my jaw in my lap.  Anthony Watts was apparently invited for input into the article which he referred to in a scathing post here as slime.  I had a recent experience where I asked another reporter to leave my first name out of an article.  He agreed and said my name was easy to come by but he wouldn’t say how, the next thing I know it’s in the article several times.  He apologized and blamed his editor which prevented the blasting post by me, which was to follow shortly, but let’s just say that newspapers are pretty good about taking care of the sources they like while the rest are chucked to the wolves.   I’m not really buying the story.  Now today Anthony Watts wasted his time on a different reporter/professor who can be accurately described as a denialist himself.

The headline for the article can only be described as propaganda and the article is worse.

Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain

What are the rules of propaganda? Marginalize your enemy through false comparisons and innuendo?  I dunno, cause I’m not a paid propagandist, Jeffrey Sachs is.

Regular Science

Certainly the link below is not the most honest title I’ve ever read but we’re supposedly the denialists right?

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

I’m not sure what happened with this paper.  If someone has a copy please send it to my email on the left. Either way one comment in the article caught my attention.

h/t Jon Rappoport and hjbange.

“Retraction is a regular part of the publication process,” he said. “Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances.”

Ah, I didn’t realize this was a ‘regular’ part of the process.  So the steps in real science are now:

1- conclude result

2- collect data

3- remove denialist data

4- publish proof of conclusion.

5- celebrate.

6- press conference,

7- new funding

8- retract

It’s to bad that Mann08 got stuck at  step 6.