12 months on we have had three largely whitewashed ‘official’ inquiries that avoided asking the difficult questions, had narrow terms of reference, and excluded sceptics from the scientific panels. Lord Oxburgh had clear conflicts of interests as he is part of the global warming industry, the Sir Muir Russell inquiry was superficial and only the excellent New Labour MP Graham Stringer voted against the findings of the left-dominated parliamentary science and technology committee. Of course, the liberal-left in the media who use climate alarmism for political ends, and the downright stupid, have tried hard to play down the significance of the leaked emails and even portray the guilty scientists as ‘victims.’ The alarmists that dominate the climate science community, in influence rather than numbers, have adopted a ‘circle the wagons’ mentality to defend the indefensible, with Dr Judith Curry being the notable exception on the ‘consensus’ side.

Climategate has prompted a much greater scrutiny of the IPCC reports, which has revealed a significant number of fundamental ‘errors’ that always err on the side of alarmism and failed to be corrected by the IPCC process. We also learned that around one-third of the references cited in the IPCC report are NOT from peer reviewed sources.

So, despite the 20 or so alarmist climate science consensus ‘gatekeepers’  having an undue influence on the UN IPCC, US CCSP and the peer review processes, avoiding data sharing and the Freedom of Information Act, truncating inconvenient post-1960 tree ring data and replacing it with instrumental data, creating and promoting the statistically insignificant ‘Hockey Stick’ graph, which is a by no means a complete list of their transgressions, the fact that they remain unpunished is a sad reflection on the state of the climate science and political establishments in the UK and the USA. The silver lining in the climate science cloud is the fact that most of the general public are now sceptical about man-made global warming in the wake of the Climategate and IPCC scandals. In the words of Dr David Evans: “The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating.”

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 14 September 2010

The Global Warming Policy Foundation today publishes a detailed assessment of the Climategate inquiries set up by the University of East Anglia and others which finds that they avoided key questions and failed to probe some of the most serious allegations.

The report The Climategate Inquiries, written by Andrew Montford and with a foreword by Lord (Andrew) Turnbull, finds that the inquiries into the conduct and integrity of scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were rushed and seriously inadequate.

In particular, the report finds that:

none of the Climategate panels mounted an inquiry that was comprehensive within their area of remit

insufficient consideration in the choice of panel members led to a failure to ensure balance and independence

none managed to be objective and comprehensive none made any serious attempt to consider the views and submissions of well-informed critics

terms of reference were either vague or non-existent

none of them performed their work in a way that is likely to restore confidence in the work of CRU.

Andrew Montford, the author of the GWPF report, said:

“The lack of impartiality manifested itself in the different ways the panels treated CRU scientists and their critics. While CRU justifications and explanations were willingly accepted without any serious probing, critics were denied adequate opportunity to respond and to counter demonstrably inaccurate claims.”

“All in all, the evidence of the failings of the three UK inquiries is overwhelming. Public confidence in the reliability of climate science will not be restored until a thorough, independent and impartial investigation takes place,” Andrew Montford warned.

Lord Turnbull, who wrote the foreword to the GWPF report, said:

“The report by Andrew Montford clearly demonstrates that all three inquiries have serious flaws. The result has been that the three investigations have failed to achieve their objective, ie early and conclusive closure and restoration of confidence.”

“The new House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, which has rightly reopened the issue, would do well to study Andrew Montford’s report and take evidence from him. It needs to satisfy itself as to whether the criticisms made are valid and whether the exoneration claimed is justified.”

“Only if the integrity of the science is re-established and the strengths and weaknesses of the main propositions are acknowledged will there be the basis of trust with the public which policymakers need,” Lord Turnbull said.

Lord Turnbull also called on the Government to look at the serious criticisms of the IPCC made in the recent InterAcademy Council Report. He said: “The Government should demand that the fundamental reforms recommended by the IAC in the practice, governance and leadership of the IPCC are implemented immediately for its Fifth Assessment.”

The full report can be downloaded here

Hard copies can be ordered for £10.00 from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, 1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB, UK

About the author

Andrew Montford is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (2010), a history of some of the events leading up to the release of emails and data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. He writes a blog specialising in climate change issues at http://www.bishop-hill.net and has made many media appearances discussing global warming from a sceptic perspective.

Lord Turnbull

Andrew Turnbull was Permanent Secretary, Environment Department,1994-98; Permanent Secretary to the Treasury 1998-2002, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service 2002-05. He is now a Crossbench member of the House of Lords and a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

GWPF Reports

Views expressed in the publications of the Global Warming Policy Foundation are those of the authors, not those of the GWPF, its Trustees, its Academic Advisory Council members or its Directors.

Press reaction to the report listed here

News broke on or around November 19 2009 that a large archive of emails and files from the Climate Research Unit had been released on the internet. The contents of the files were sufficiently disconcerting to the public, governments and university administrations to prompt the establishment of a number of inquiries. This paper reviews the official inquiries.

During the public uproar over the climategate emails, the main concerns that were repeated over and over could be distilled to the following questions.

1. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges manipulate, hide, invent or otherwise misrepresent evidence in IPCC or WMO reports so as to mislead readers, including policymakers?

2. Did the scientists involved delete emails or other documents related to the IPCC process in order to prevent disclosure of information subject to Freedom of Information laws?

3. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges express greater doubts or uncertainties about the science in their own professional writings and in their interactions with one another than they allowed to be stated in reports of the IPCC or WMO that were intended for policymakers?

4. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges take steps individually or in collusion to block access to data or methodologies in order to prevent external examination of their work?

5. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges take steps individually or in collusion to block publication of papers, or to intimidate or discredit journals, in order to prevent rival scientific evidence from being published?

My examination of the Climategate inquiries centers on the extent to which they succeeded in providing credible answers to these questions. As will be shown, the various inquiries reviewed evidence that leads to an affirmative answer in each case, and in many cases the inquiries reached affirmative answers, yet couched the conclusions in terms that gave the opposite impression. In other cases they simply left the questions unanswered. In some cases they avoided the issues by answering irrelevant questions.

The pdf of the entire paper is here.

The e-mail scandal forced CRU chief Phil Jones to temporarily relinquish his post. The university commissioned several supposedly independent inquiries in order to clarify the affair. The reports of these inquiries are now available and they largely exonerate the CRU researchers. In early July, the inquiry panel under Muir Russell stated that there could be no doubt about the ‘rigour and honesty’ of the CRU scientists. The panel found no indications that the researchers had manipulated data. One could at most accuse them of not being transparent enough with their research methods and not to be sufficiently open to criticism.

Two other inquiries – one conducted by the University of East Anglia with support from the Royal Society and one by the Science and Technology Select Committee of the British Parliament – had previously come to similar conclusions. In the published internal e-mails the name of the Canadian mathematician Stephen McIntyre appears very often. The retired mining expert has repeatedly revealed statistical fallacies by climate scientists and has thus become one of their sharpest critics. Researchers at the University of East Anglia do not like McIntyre. In their e-mails, they often discuss how to prevent him from getting access to more scientific data. Die Weltwoche met up with Stephen McIntyre for an interview in London.

Read the interview here.

That particular silence is the one that attends the publication of the Booker column on 11 July, revealing to the world that the IPCC did after all have feet of clay in its claims on the Amazon, with the source of “Amazongate” finally traced to a Brazilian website.

When you get an “exclusive” like that – especially as the original Amazongate story was rather high profile – other newspapers and news agencies tend to pile in and lift the story. This time, though, with only very few exceptions, there has been silence.

Read more at EU Referendum: No news is the news

Amazongate: At last we reach the source
The IPCC’s attempts to hide the truth about its exaggerated claims on the deforestation of the Amazon have ended in defeat, says Christopher Booker.

National Post, Lawrence Solomon: The IPCC’s First Test in “a New World of Openness”

This is my attempt to put the post into layman’s language. It’s rather long so you may want a cup of coffee to keep you company.

Read it at the link here.

Bishop Hill: A good trick to create a decline

UPDATES:

Curry: The Backstory

Curry: The Finale

Instead of focusing just on Mann the new video presents a generic scientist that represents all scientists embroiled in the Climategate controversy. The coalition has developed a white paper entitled, “Dr. Michael Mann: Defamed or Defined by Hide the Decline,” which defends the video.

Sign the petition here.

Here are the lyrics to the new version with links.

Hide the Decline II

Makin’ up data the old hard way
Fudgin the numbers day by day
Ignoring the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

“I just completed Mike’s Nature trick”
And now your chart looks like a Hockey Stick
By deleting the tree ring data’s downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Oh Climategate
I think you have sealed your fate
It isn’t “about truth at all” its about sounding plausible
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

The tree ring data was very thin
You shoulda chopped more trees instead of hugging them.
Ignoring the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Oh Climategate
Medieval Warming now is gone
And the Maunder Minimum
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Minnesotans for global warming.com: No Cap And Trade Coalition Unveils “Hide The Decline II”

Climate Audit: Hide the Decline II

Climategate.tv: Mann Threatens Lawsuit Against Video Exposing His Hockey Stick

The above figure is taken from the Science perspectives paper by Trenberth and Fasullo entitled ‘Tracking Earth’s Energy’

The summary reads:

By measuring the net radiative incoming and outgoing energy at the top of Earth’s atmosphere, it is possible to determine how much energy remains in the Earth system. But where exactly does the energy go? The main energy reservoir is the ocean, which sequesters energy as heat. Because energy is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean, this heat can resurface at a later time to affect weather and climate on a global scale. A change in the overall energy balance will thus sooner or later have consequences for the climate. Existing observing systems can measure all the required quantities, but it nevertheless remains a challenge to obtain closure of the energy budget. This inability to properly track energy—due to either inadequate measurement accuracy or inadequate data processing—has implications for understanding and predicting future climate.

The missing heat in  the climate system is discussed at length over at Roger Pielke Sr’s blog  here:

Is There “Missing” Heat In The Climate System? My Comments On This NCAR Press Release

and here:

Further Feedback From Kevin Trenberth And Feedback From Josh Willis On The UCAR Press Release

Roger Pielke Jr also blogs about ‘The Missing Heat’  and concludes:

First, there was ample indication of issues associated with the divergence of model projections and accumulated heat years ago, but for whatever reasons, it was not openly discussed, with the exception of the 2008 NPR story (perhaps I’ve missed others).

Second, it took the released CRU emails to open up a public scientific dialogue on this subject, which suggests that there are some issues with either model projections or observations. Judging from the Pielke-trenberth-Willis exchange, I’d put my money on problems with the models.

Third, none of this should alter how we think about the policy issues, as uncertainties have always been with us and always will. But getting uncertainties out in the open is a new thing for the public face of climate science and undoubtedly some will likely try to reassert the old ways of suppressing uncertainties.

The story of the missing heat does not indicate that climate science is a fraud or that we need not worry about a human influence on the climate system. What it does tell us is that there have been some unhealthy goings on in the climate community and we should all bask in the new found sunshine.

So where is the missing heat? Apparently no one knows, but I hope they find it soon.

The primary frustration with these investigations is that they are dancing around the principal issue that people care about: the IPCC and its implications for policy. Focusing only on CRU activities (which was the charge of the Oxbourgh panel) is of interest mainly to UEA and possibly the politics of UK research funding (it will be interesting to see if the U.S. DOE sends any more $$ to CRU). Given their selection of CRU research publications to investigate (see Bishop Hill), the Oxbourgh investigation has little credibility in my opinion. However, I still think it unlikely that actual scientific malfeasance is present in any of these papers: there is no malfeasance associated with sloppy record keeping, making shaky assumptions, and using inappropriate statistical methods in a published scientific journal article.

The corruptions of the IPCC process, and the question of corruption (or at least inappropriate torquing) of the actual science by the IPCC process, is the key issue. The assessment process should filter out erroneous papers and provide a broader assessment of uncertainty; instead, we have seen evidence of IPCC lead authors pushing their own research results and writing papers to support an established narrative. I don’t see much hope for improving the IPCC process under its current leadership.

The historical temperature record and the paleoclimate record over the last millennium are important in many many aspects of climate research and in the communication of climate change to the public; both of these data sets are at the heart of the CRU email controversy. In my opinion, there needs to be a new independent effort to produce a global historical surface temperature dataset that is transparent and that includes expertise in statistics and computational science. Once “best” methods have been developed and assessed for assembling such a dataset including uncertainty estimates, a paleoclimate reconstruction should be attempted (regional, hemispheric, and possibly global) with the appropriate uncertainty estimates. The public has lost confidence in the data sets produced by CRU, NASA, Penn State, etc. While such an independent effort may confirm the previous analysies, it is very likely that improvements will be made and more credible uncertainty estimates can be determined. And the possibility remains that there are significant problems with these datasets; this simply needs to be sorted out. Unfortunately, the who and how of actually sorting all this out is not obvious. Some efforts are underway in the blogosphere to examine the historical land surface data (e.g. such as GHCN), but even the GHCN data base has numerous inadequacies. Addressing the issues associated with the historical and paleo temperature records should be paramount.