Fred Pearce is obviously unrepentant over the unjust treatment he meted out to Phil Jones in his unfortunate series of artices on the UEA emails, one of which I commented on here. He has just produced an extraordinarily slanted account of Jones’ questioning from the Parliamentary committee set up to look into the affair. How’s this for openers?
“Jones did his best to persuade the Commons science and technology committee that all was well in the house of climate science. If they didn’t quite believe him, they didn’t have the heart to press the point. The man has had three months of hell, after all.”
Then Pearce offers two highly prejudicial descriptions of Jones’ actions, each linked to one of his own articles:
“Jones’s general defence was that anything people didn’t like – the strong-arm tactics to silence critics, the cold-shouldering of freedom of information requests, the economy with data sharing – were all “standard practice” among climate scientists.”
Pearce expresses disappointment that one of his own pet projects was not pursued by the committee:
“Nobody asked if, as claimed by British climate sceptic Doug Keenan, he had for two decades suppressed evidence of the unreliability of key temperature data from China.”
Gavin Schmidt has comprehensively dealt with this claim on Real Climate (see his comments on part 5). If Pearce is aware of what Schmidt wrote he is undeterred by it and again links to his own article as demonstrating the topic worthy of the attention of a parliamentary committee.
Then Pearce apparently leaves the scene of the parliamentary committee and offers his own account of what he claims Jones has conceded publicly about the 1990 China study, translating Jones’ ‘slightly different conclusion’ into his own ‘radically different findings’.
There are other important Pearce conclusions which the committee failed to investigate, again expressed in prejudicial terms:
“Nor did the MPs probe how conflicts of interest have become routine in Jones’s world of analysing and reconstructing past temperatures. How, as the emails reveal, Jones found himself intemperately reviewing papers that sought to criticise his own work. And then, should the papers somehow get into print, judging what place they should have in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where he and his fellow emails held senior positions.”
Pearce takes comfort from his feeling that the committee will have to pay closer attention to the issue in the light of the written submission from the Institute of Physics which is highly critical of the emailers. He doesn’t mention that John Beddington, the government’s chief scientific adviser, told the committee the institute’s view was “premature” and that they should wait until the Russell inquiry publishes its findings in the spring.
Pearce’s Guardian report is clearly an opinion piece but not presented as such. It is an extraordinary example of the authority some journalists have taken upon themselves to declare judgment on matters of which they have shown very little knowledge. Pearce is not a climate change sceptic, but he is hounding a group of climate scientists and seems fired up by the thrill of the chase. It’s a sad spectacle in a leading newspaper.
[GR adds: The Guardian's David Adam provides a more balanced overview here, and the paper's live blog of the session is worth a look.]
[GR update: Simon Hoggart's take: "Whatever your view on man-made global warming, you had to feel sorry for Professor Phil Jones.."]
Related posts:
- Dogged Pearce still hounding Jones
- Pearced to the heart: Fred gets it wrong
- Jones and CRU exonerated by parliamentary inquiry
- A new journalistic fiction
- Defending the indefensible: Guardian responds to RC critics
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I am a denialist troll, but I accept that humans are affecting nature.
But I have lost all faith in climate science, and many of the general public are of the same ilk
We are getting a bit sick of the peer reviewed literature we keep hearing about. It is as corrupt as the IPCC that drives it. The incessant bleating of the liberal left, who believe they are on the moral high ground.
No one can come up with a paper in the peer reviewed literature that doesn’t agree with the IPCC’s a priori AGW hypothesis.
It is not science. But what do I know. I am only a Cambridge educated mathematician with a PhD. Worthless, of course, because I not in the demi-god status of Climate “Scientist”
What I find tragic is that you actually believe this is science
Climate is a very complex issue and many scientists agree we are only at the start of the journey. It has been hijacked by Politicians who present the public with this simplified, and probably wildly inaccurate response.
I can’t write a paper in the “peer reviewed” literature that disagrees with AGW, because it won’t get published.
Climate change is the biggest money spinner of all time. Estimated to have cost $100 billion globally. We have very little to show for it, except a nation of brainwashed climate-bots.
I am wasting my time here. You all seem to accept that this fascism is acceptable. It is even endorsed in Hot Topic under the guise of an appendix on “skeptics”., with its patronising and anti-science message.
I will keep my head down. AGW is dying, and I really don’t need to do anything except watch the great ship sink, taking all the climate bots with it.
Goodbye
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So, Checkzor troll, you just wanted to waste other people’s time with your empty denialist rhetoric and your fake PhD?
At least you’ve generated some useful links for other readers who, unlike yourself, have retained their self-respect and integrity.
I’d like to say goodbye, but I suspect you’ll soon be back under another pseudonym…
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Checkzor – a troll and a jerk. But then – you just want to distract and annoy, don’t you.
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Checkzor, you keep saying where is evidence we are causing warming. Here is the evidence that I find personally compelling, and perhaps you can see why I dont have much time for the side shows. I hope it isnt too big for a blog comment. The philosophic basis is that the science is about creating a model consistent with fundamental physics and then
testing against observation. This is how I think science works.
So firstly, AGW comes out of a model of climate. This expresses an energy balance so that you can say that
surface T = F(solar, aerosol, albedo) + GHG in an EQUILIBRIUM (no forcings). The complexity arise from feedback and the complex heat redistribution systems in the atmosphere and particularly the ocean.
So how does it support AGW and how do model prediction tie to observation? Lets do this step at a time.
First we ARE warming. No way to fudge this.
Now what are the forcings causing the change? Everything from todays weather to ice ages have a physical cause, whether natural or man-made. Picking the obvious candidate is GHG. Is the increase in GHG manmade? Yes, we can determine this for certain because the isotope signature of our emissions to different to the carbon cycle CO2. CO2
and methane are both forcings AND feedbacks from temperature rise, but for this moment, the GHG increase is due to us. What about other causes? Solar isnt trending over the warming period; nor are cosmic rays (not that I think that mechanism likely even as a past cause of climate change); land use change is predominantly a negative feedback; which leaves aerosols. Now here is another issue. At same time as we started pumping CO2 into atmosphere, we also pumped out aerosols ( especially sulphates) so you warm with one and cool with the other. Aerosols are short-lived in atmosphere whereas CO2 isnt and aerosols have dropped. We would love more accuracy in estimating past (1940s) aerosol levels but now GHG overwhelm aerosols. So lets pollute more – China is trying – but if you dont bring down GHG at same time, then you cop the warming with a year or two of when you reduce emitting.
There are a number over other lines of evidence for CO2 being the cause which I think are robust.
How about direct empirical measurement of the GHG effect? This is the vital one for me. Two ways to do this – look at the spectra of long wave radiation leaving the earth measured by satellite looking at bands due to emission from CO2 and CH4. Compare early reading to late ones. This matches what you calculate the measurement should be from the GHG equations. Actaully this has been done several times with different satellites. Harries 2001, http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....355a0.html; Griggs 2004, http://spiedl.aip.org/getabs/s.....amp;ref=no; and Chen 2007, http://www.eumetsat.eu/Home/Ma.....ries_v.pdf
Problem, you have to trust NASA isnt making up the data from their satellites. Cant trust those commies scientists in NASA. Oh well, how about do same kind of thing but on the ground but measuring the longwave re-radiated by greenhouse effect as it directly warms the earth? This is the direct measurement of the heat from GHG on surface temperature. Also been done by several people. Philipona 2004,
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-co.....iation.pdf; Evans 2006, http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annu.....100737.htm and another approach by Wang 2009, http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossr.....1800.shtml.
You get nearly 4W/m2 of extra energy warming the surface as direct result of increased GHG. This more than 3 times the variation in solar from solar min to solar max.
The models dont just predict global temperature but also predict the PATTERN of warming which is different for different forcings. Significant and easy to understand without the models are:
1/ Arctic warms more than tropics (Antarctic changes very slowly because of local factors). A solar forcing would warm bits closer sun (tropics) more than arctic.
2/ Stratospheric cooling – this is smoking gun of CO2 but complicated. Best explanation I know of is at
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html
However, the upper stratosphere is not well observed so at best we say the observation to date show cooling. The importance of this observation is all other forcings will warm the stratosphere.
3/ Warming owes more to milder, shorter winters, warmer nights rather than higher day temperatures – a characteristic of enhanced GHG effect.
4/ Land temperature anomalies stronger than sea anomalies. This one is important in the context of the “natural cycle” argument. External cycles are ruled out so the only internal source of this much heat has to be the ocean. El Nino events are example of that heat being released again. Could there be another cycle also releasing heat that somehow has escaped detection? The trouble with this is (besides where is the evidence for it) is that then you expect overall sea anomalies to be stronger than land. Solar and GHG forcing by contrast both cause strong land anomalies. Now the ocean is overall accumulating heat not exchanging it back to atmosphere.
The final issue here is the CO2 sensitivity – how much will the temperature rise for a doubling of CO2? This is not a fixed number (eg when all the ice is melted then you dont have much an albedo feedback) but useful for short range (100 years). The simple, direct calculation number of CO2 + CH4 plus water is about 1.5. To get a number less than that you have to find negative feedback that significantly overwhelm the positive feedbacks. Models to calculate it and the number they produce in the current generation is 3.
Of course, if you have decided that you trust no science researcher and all published papers are part of conspiracy than obviously I have no way to dispute you. I also fail to understand what basis you have then for understanding the world we live in.
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Attempts to continue fudging the undeniable warming continue – that well-known expert-on-everything Roger Kerr has repeated the misstatement that Jones “admitted there has been no warming in the last 15 years”. He did nothig of the sort, as has been already noted in these columns. Some should skewer this reticulator of climatological claptrap.
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C,
Nothing for Noah, I see. Disappointing. Such an easy question and, frankly, no answer for Noah amounts to no philosophy either. Personally or professionably. Chicken does not suit you, so weigh the risk and take your chance. Don’t let it be as a chicken before—objecting to KP when you were there for the links and facts.
Perhaps other folks here see no relevance to their take on science and Noah. Be that as it may to philosophers there is a very obvious connection.
Phil Scadden above almost says it for you and others assist. No seeing is, however, your problem. No one elses.
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RW,
this fellow has been skewered – whether like other deniosaurs he knows it or not is another matter – on his home ground of economics. Insofar, I recall, of Mark Thoma @ economistsview presenting Adam Smith as a morally bound monetary man rather more than RK has him constantly appear his own preferred seer.
Anyway, do I take it that a kebab job will do the trick.. as and when..
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