Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
By now I'm sure you're all familiar with Jonathan Leake's practice of misrepresenting what his sources by quote mining them. In his story that misrepreseted what the IPCC report says about natural disasters, Leake quotes Muir-Wood:
Muir-Wood himself is more cautious. He said: "The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. "We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished."
That seems to imply that Muir-Wood thought that the IPCC report was wrong. But Muir-Woods has released a FAQ.
- Does RMS believe the IPCC has fairly represented the research findings?
Yes, RMS believes the IPCC fairly referenced its paper, with suitable caveats around the results, highlighting the factors influencing the relationship that had been discovered between time and increased catastrophe costs. We believe it was appropriate to include the RMS paper in the report because, at that time, it was the only paper addressing global multi-peril catastrophe losses over time that had been normalized for changes in the values and exposure at risk.
You can be sure that Muir-Wood also told Leake this, and Leake concealed it because it undercut his story.
Politics
Comments
Are you sure it's a Leake and not a hack?
I believe that in a normal world journalists like this would get sacked or at least reprimanded. Leake probably gets a pat on the back and a big fat bonus.
Posted by: Neven | February 15, 2010 6:38 PM
Actually I think this is the normal journalistic world!
There was a time many years ago when the newsmedia did cutting-edge reporting and journalistic investigation (eg, "60 Minutes" type stuff), taking months to check, interview, and compile the facts for a story. Those days are long gone. I've heard very respected old-school journos lament the "new breed" where it's done quick, dirty, and cheap.
Time is money. 10 second juicy sound-bites are what they're after. Fact-checking takes extra time and costs extra money.
Posted by: Mike | February 16, 2010 12:21 AM
It appears that Leake is a serial offender with evidence of his misquoting of scientists going back to at least 2004. Leake's Sunday Times article that verballed Richard Dawkins is reproduced here.
Posted by: MikeH | February 16, 2010 2:35 AM
Is there a bio of Leake (with his background) somewhere? I don't see him in SourceWatch or Wikipedia.
Posted by: Anna Haynes | February 16, 2010 3:25 AM
MikeH@3: Ouch! That one's a keeper. Thanks.
Posted by: JamesA | February 16, 2010 4:30 AM
Every time the msm come out with a new revelation its going to make it harder to plug the leak. This story has just hit the news stands - IPCC hurricane data is now being questioned.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/15/hattononhurricanes/
Posted by: el gordo | February 16, 2010 4:37 AM
el gordo: The Register, 'El Reg', an IT portal. A bastion of scientific impartiality on Global Warming. I'm going to take that story with a magnum helping of salt until I find it independently confirmed.
Besides, the MSM has come out with a big fat load of not very much at all in the way of 'revelations'. Haven't you been following Journalismgate? At the heart of all the hot air that's been blown in the past months lie one minor mistake in WG2 on Himalaya glaciers and a dubious reference to essentially correct information on the Amazon rainforest, also in WG2. So I'm bursting to know what revelations you're talking about.
Posted by: JasonW | February 16, 2010 5:44 AM
'Interesting' report el gordo http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/15/hatton_on_hurricanes/
The report claims:
Reads like there is a typo somewhere, so I checked the origianl paper here http://www.leshatton.org/Documents/Hurricanes-are-not-getting-stronger.pdf
The paper find statistical significance in the rise of more intense storms in the North Atlantic, supporting the IPCCs assessment.
But contrary to the above report, in his paper he does not find statistical significance decrease in more intense storms the Eastern Pacific (nor anywhere else) to counter balance this.
Besides finding support for the IPCC in the North Atlantic he finds a significant drop in the number of storms in the tropics of the Southern Indian Ocean. But a significant rise in the proportion of hurricanes which mature into major hurricanes in the same area. The IPCC point out there are concerns about the quality of data in these other regions.
Posted by: jakerman | February 16, 2010 6:00 AM
MikeH. A good find indeed. And only on the basis that certain folk don't follow links they might not want to read, I reproduce the following from your link so that all may see:
Posted by: P. Lewis | February 16, 2010 6:07 AM
Posted by: Dappledwater | February 16, 2010 6:15 AM
@ 9
Wow. What a lying scumbag Leake is turning out to be.
Posted by: WotWot | February 16, 2010 6:37 AM
Regarding the hurricanes thing, there is a real danger of semantic confusion here. The word 'hurricane' is used to refer to N Atlantic and NE Pacific tropical cyclones, as distinct from typhoons. Therefore, the statement that hurricanes are on the increase could still be construed as safe.
But besides all that, it sounds like El Reg (along with the Daily Fail and many others) needs a lesson in was 'statistical significance' means.
Posted by: JamesA | February 16, 2010 6:48 AM
El Reg reports
Hatton has thirty years of experience of getting scientific papers published, but describes this one, available on his personal website, as "unpublishable".
Well yes.
Here is a hint el gordo - read his conclusion in point 1 followed by his conclusion in point 5.
The link to Hatton’s paper is at 8 above.
Posted by: MikeH | February 16, 2010 6:57 AM
MikeH, there's probably even more of a hint in the "paper's" title 1999-2009: Has the intensity and frequency of hurricanes increased?
The WMO uses climate normals for a reason, and they don't just happen to be applied for temperature measurements.
Of course, hurricanes may well be assessed differently to other climate measurements, as IIRC WMO normals should strictly be arithmetic means calculated for each month of the year from daily data. Perhaps hurricane data don't quite fit that procedure. Even so, 11 years as a period for studying hurricane climate phenomena is probably way too brief a period to return any meaningful results.
Posted by: P. Lewis | February 16, 2010 7:11 AM
Some food for thought on that topic from page 17 of the Copenhagen Diagnosis:
I think much of the debate is really what counts as 'statistically significant' and how you pick your data. Given that the IPCC made it abundantly clear that the increases in tropical storm severity and frequency was one of their less certain predictions in AR4, I wouldn't think this one is gate-worthy.
Posted by: JamesA | February 16, 2010 7:38 AM
Here is a better reason why Les Hattons article is unpublishable. Hatton is trying to falsify the studies of storm intensity with different measures to those used by current studies. Hatton is using ordinal categories of intensity where as the leading science have employed scale measures of intensity.
Hatton is correct that his paper is unpublishable. Its like trying to disprove that the Hubble telescope can see changes on surface of Pluto based on the fact that your backyard Refractor can't see those changes.
Posted by: jakerman | February 16, 2010 7:46 AM
I read TheRegister daily, for breaking IT news. I ignore their climate reporting, because most of it is by Andrew Orlowski, a committed denier. You can rely on him to propagate the most egregious anti-scientific rubbish at every opportunity.
Posted by: Mal Adapted | February 16, 2010 3:29 PM
I published a rant about the Telegraph. Don't read unless you have time to waste, there's nothing insightful just me ranting. http://climatewtf.blogspot.com/2010/02/pits-they-dwell-in-register.html
Posted by: TheBlob | February 16, 2010 4:03 PM
The quote maybe inaccurate but i dont think it misrepresents John Houghton views...
“God tries to coax and woo, but he also uses disasters. Human sin may be involved; the effect will be the same.”
· “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”
These quotations are from an interview entitled “Me and my God” in the Sunday Telegraph on 10 September 1995.
Posted by: Marred | February 17, 2010 4:13 PM
Marred replicates Bolt's distortions.
And shows us a glimpse inside mind of a delusionist.
Posted by: jakerman | February 17, 2010 4:29 PM
It seems, from the little experience i have on this blog, that most posters resort to name calling to refute statements. It is even stranger that this quote is being compared to "climategate", like it was in anyway on the same scale of deception and poor science. I suppose, and its just a supposition, that is all there is left to support that CO2 is the end of the world. Here are a few things more dangerous to our survival: Factory Farming; chemicals spill offs into our waters; The loss of the manufacturing industry in Europe, America, and Canada. Just to name a few.
Posted by: Marred | February 18, 2010 8:42 AM
Marred, the main point Tim is making that, if one was to add up all of the lies, deceptions, distortions and manipulations by those intent on us doing nothing about AGW, the furore over climategate would become utterly insignificant; a footnote. The media hardly challenges the ways in which powerful vested interests are funding groups who lie and twist science to promote a pre-determined worldview and political agenda; at the same time, scientists who argue that AGW is a reality are put under a magnifying glass and everything they say or do is relentlessly monitored in order to catch them out if they make any kind of slip-ups.
I have been there. I know all too well as a scientist that I am subject to attack if I put one foot wrong. It seems like many of those abusing science by disputing the empirical evidence for AGW can say whatever they like and get away with it. One side in this debate lies through its teeth and is habitually give a free pass; the other must be scrupulously honest or there will be hell to pay.
As with respect to environmental threats, you left out two of the most important ones: habitat destruction and the loss of biodiversity. Climate change will exacerbate both.
Posted by: Jeff Harvey | February 18, 2010 9:02 AM