Jim’s Blog

As you doubtless know by now, the Institute of Physics gave a wonderfully politically incorrect report on Global Warming.

Predictably the boot came down on them hard.

Academia is indeed like a communist country.  They don’t shoot dissidents in Academia, but communist thought control seldom found it necessary to shoot  people.  It worked by quietly blighting the lives of troublesome people.  The greengrocer that failed to put up the sign “Workers of the World Unite”  was not sent to Siberia.  Rather, his job was redefined to be of lower status, and he was denied permission to holiday in Bulgaria.  For most purposes, this sufficed in the Soviet Union, and its equivalent suffices in Academia.  Climate “Science” is the norm.  It is the way Academia has worked since the seventies.

Does that sounds paranoid?   Here is some evidence for paranoia:

Every authority before 1970 that mentions Lamarck’s position on common descent says Lamarck proposed common descent, often quoting from Lamarck at length.  Every authority after 1970 that mentions his position on common descent says that Lamarck rejected common descent, without, however quoting anything substantial from Lamarck, or mentioning that past authorities disagreed.

To check this google for Lamarck and common descent before 1970, and after 1970.  You will find a couple of seeming counterexamples from after 1970, but if you look them up, you will see Google got the dates wrong.

After 1970, as part of the rewrite of Darwinism, they deprecated survival of the fittest as excessively racist, making it necessary to credit Darwin with something else – that something else being common descent.  Since Darwin was now credited with common descent, it was necessary to deny that Lamarck proposed common descent.

Similarly, when the Soviet Encyclopedia removed Beria from history, it was necessary to adjust the history accordingly Bergholz accordingly, and when Winston Smith removed an unperson from Big Brother’s speech, it was necessary to replace him with something else.  Since Darwin was now credited with common descent, it was necessary to deny that Lamarck proposed common descent. That the history of science is abruptly revised, and all academics everywhere docilely uniformly, and abruptly fall into line without a word of dissent, or the slightest interest in what the original documents said, is apparent in the abrupt Winston Smith style 1970 rewrite of the history of thought on evolution.

The Institute of Physics tells us.

The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.

In plainer words, climate science lacks credibility.  That climate scientists tell us we are doomed unless we repent of our sins against Gaea is not good reason to think we are doomed.

The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions … This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

Yes, they are condemning the entire field, not just Phil Jones, not just Hadley CRU

… proxy reconstructions are the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. Published reconstructions may represent only a part of the raw data available and may be sensitive to the choices made and the statistical techniques used. Different choices, omissions or statistical processes may lead to different conclusions. This possibility was evidently the reason behind some of the (rejected) requests for further information.

In plainer words, evidently the reason that Climate scientists refused to make their data available because if other people looked at the data, they would have concluded the climate scientists were full of $#@%. This is a reference to the alternate climate reconstructions in Steve McIntyre’s report on the CRU emails.

The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.

This is a reference to “Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline”

There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ’self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.

Peer review was in practice priestly review for theological correctness.

Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.

Climate researchers should make their data available as a matter of course.

The scope of the UEA review is, not inappropriately, restricted to the allegations of scientific malpractice and evasion of the Freedom of Information Act at the CRU. However, most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other leading institutions involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. In so far as those scientists were complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices, there is need for a wider inquiry into the integrity of the scientific process in this field.

As they said before, it is not just CRU, it is the entire field of climate research

How independent are the other two international data sets?

13. Published data sets are compiled from a range of sources and are subject to processing and adjustments of various kinds. Differences in judgements and methodologies used in such processing may result in different final data sets even if they are based on the same raw data. Apart from any communality of sources, account must be taken of differences in processing between the published data sets and any data sets on which they draw.

All one big conspiracy.

Nasa, as evidence that we are doomed unless we make sufficient sacrifice to Gaia and tithe to Gaia’s high priesthood, has long had on its web page

Mountain Glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres and may disappear altogether in certain regions of the planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030

Which web page has silently changed

So was it a lie, or an error?

I knew data hadn’t been verified … we thought if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take concrete action.

In other words, a lie. And if one lie, all lies.

As Patrick Archibald told us of an earlier scandal with the same lesson, the science is scuttled

The “Air Vent” follows the money:

The IPCC makes a hyperbolic claim about retreating glaciers, which claim originates from a for profit company owned by the chairman of the IPCC.  Millions of dollars are then granted to this company to investigate this purported disaster, to the personal profit of the chairman of the IPCC.

Hadcrut temperatures are fraudulent, for the Climategate files reveals that no one knows how they were constructed.

The Air vent attempts an honest reconstruction:

Of course, this reconstruction can only be as good as the data it rests on, which we now know from the Climategate documents directory to be poor.  I argue we should throw out all dubious data – which likely means we should rely on proxy indications of temperature for the early part of the century.

When science becomes a priesthood, it is no longer science.

Reference to authority is unscientific, indeed antiscientific, a rejection of the principles of
science.  One must appeal to evidence, not authority.  What authority says is not scientific evidence.

Independent replication is evidence.

If people all over the world have  made observations for the last 100 years about  temperature, I can’t replicate them; but other people at the time could replicate them.

The date at which Lake Winnipesaukee ice goes out, is the date at which people can go to their properties, and do go to their properties.  If the ice out date was wrong, they would notice and be mighty pissed.  I selected Lake Winnipesaukee, because that is the lake  whose ice outs receive the most attention unrelated to  estimating climate. Of all older climate data, Lake Winnipesaukee ice outs are the best replicated, thus, the most scientific.

And ice out dates on Lake Winnipesaukee indicate no twentieth century warming That I provide the data and method of calculation, and that this data is the most widely replicated data available means that this blog post is far more scientific than anything that could ever be permitted to appear in the journals “Nature” or “Science”.

This is the opposite of the Giss-Hadley-CRU approach, which uses vast piles of data whose validity no one can possibly know, and which there is every reason to doubt, and then capriciously excludes some of that data, includes other of that data, and whimsically adjusts what is included for reasons that are not only not revealed, but which the Climategate files revealed that Hadley-CRU themselves do not record, which large adjustments, even if justified rather than fraudulent, are an admission of the complete worthlessness of the data for the purpose.  No one can possibly know, not even Hadley-CRU, whether their adjustments are justified or fraudulent, not that it would matter since if the large adjustments are justified, the data is worthless for the purpose of estimating past climate.

If you have to estimate the veracity of the reports based on the authority of what you know about those making the reports, that is not science, but religion.  Those with the greatest authority are always the most religious, thus this approach guarantees acceptance of the most holy doctrine of the consensus of the most holy and eminent synod – which approach is anthropogenic global warming in a nutshell.

“The consensus” is not science.

Science is common sense, observation, truthfulness, and impartiality, with social mechanisms to enforce truthfulness and impartiality.  If science becomes a priesthood, if you hear the words “consensus” and “peer reviewed publication”, the mechanisms that enforce truthfulness and impartiality have failed.  “Peer reviewed”is only an indication of some connection to reality when people do not rely on it as evidence of connection to reality.