Institute of Irony

Maybe, Tim, but the Guardian has spilled the beans - "Climate emails inquiry: Energy consultant linked to physics body's submission
Evidence from Institute of Physics drawn from energy industry consultant who argues global warming is a religion"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/05/climate-emails-instit…

:-)

Has to rank with a time that Pielke Sr. ran a guest article about how the 'debate' should remain 'open'. But comments on Pielke's site are disallowed, including on that article. (See comments at my note about about icecap.us for the details and links.)

It's a standing amusement, or annoyance, that the people calling for 'openness' hide behind anonymous or psuedonymous names, and make their 'open' comments on sites that don't allow comment or question. They truly do not believe in openness. They just want the people they consider their enemies to wear great big targets on their backs. And to not shoot back.

Robert @2 yup, Pielke Snr likes to throw stones, but allows no comments. Same with Spencer, and if you challenge Watts he investigates your IP and makes threats. CA is also going that route.

Anyhow, very interesting revelations about the IOP. This parliamentary investigation so far has backfired on the contrarians, between the IOP fiasco and McIntyre's gaffe, and Lawson making erroneous statements about the satellite temp. record.

People still need to dig deeper wrt IOP and Lawson's group

Really, though, you can't expect "skeptics" to argue without hypocrisy. That would be like asking monkey to fight without throwing feces. It may be unpleasant, but it's who they are.

MapleLeaf@3, McIntyre seems quite gaffe-prone at times. What did he do on this occasion?

Really, though, you can't expect "skeptics" to argue without hypocrisy.

Yeah, now about that hypocrisy, would that come under "I don't know much about statistics but I know what I like" or "I might write a lot of awful emails but why should I release the codes?"

Lotharsson,

probably this:

Spangled Drongo, true to your own particular brand of form.

@Lotharsson:
wrong graph in his submission (not supporting his conclusion), and a few other problems with his analysis.

Tom P has made some comments on CA, and also put them on The Policy Lass' homepage.

Must. Not. Submit. Freedom of Information request. Must. Not. Submit. Freedom --

I predict we'll be hearing an awful lot more about this in the coming weeks.

I highly doubt the IOP's members are particularly impressed about being spoken for.

Ah, drongo, [you're still here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/institute_of_irony.php#comment-…)!

In case you haven't noticed, you have [overdue homework](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_australians_war_on_science_…).

For this one, follow The Stoat, as there are numerous loose ends lying around, including Peter Gill LinkedIn, read carefully, or his dandy talk, which had plaudits for E-G Beck's work.

Various other names were brought up, and Guardian's David Adam participates there.

By odd chance, I happen to know various high-up folks in the British science establishment, and I do not think they are amused, especially as some people are only digging themselves deeper.

The hypocrisy is both blatant and breathtaking. You need to indulge in some serious cognitive dissonance to persistently and publicly behave that way.

Q196 Dr Naysmith: (member, Science and Technology Sub-Committee, in minutes of evidence into THE DISCLOSURE OF CLIMATE DATA FROM THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH UNIT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

So do you think the Institute of Physics has been a bit premature when talking about the emails? "Worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field," they say, "and for the credibility of the scientific method as practiced in this context." Do you think they are prejudging things?

Professor Beddington: (Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government)

I think they are, in the sense that there is a danger of prejudging things taken out of context. What I certainly intend to do is to have detailed discussions on climate change with colleagues, to have them as open.

Full transcript with other interesting tid-bits here

Bernie,

Back from the beach already? Check any SLs? Check how high the tsunami was? No? Want me to tell you?

Speaking on behalf of WattsUp and ClimateAudit, Lambert has refused to comply with our FOI requests for documents and material evidence in Gingerbreadgate. Worse, we suspect he and his associates destroyed some of the evidence.

In particular, he's complied with none of the requests from outside Australia, including those from watchdogs in Ruritania and Utopia.

There's an ongoing effort to distract from the IoP incinsistencies in the blogosphere's comments discussing the issue, raising the seeming contradiction of Peter Webster at Georgia Tech being handed the data by Phil Jones, but restrictions on the data being cited for not giving the data to McIntyre.

This is a useful read:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/08/mcintyre_versus_jones_c…

Webster was working on a publication with Jones. Pretty straightforward I'd say.

[Drongo](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/institute_of_irony.php#comment-…)

1. Yep - it doesn't take a whole week to see the passage of three days. Count your fingers...
2. You betchya.
3. Yes indeedy.
4. What, can't you read? See (3) above.
5. No, I do not need you to do so (you're still having difficulties reading, huh?), and anyway it has nothing to do with your long overdue homework.
6. If you have anything further to say, take it to the thread where your abyssmal performance requires a curtain call. Spreading your irrelevant O/T drivel around many threads does not absolve you from your inability to answer basic questions.
7. If you persist in avoiding your homework, I will feel justified in concluding that you have entered into an agreement that I have the right to call victory over you on the matter of sea level rise. And a note to all of your very silent Old and New Bog mates... I know that many of you are reading these threads, so your collective capitulation in assisting drongo will, by extension, subject each of you to the same declaration of having been defeated.

Just in case anyone missed it, a short Monbiot v Delingpole debate from yesterday which ends up with Delingpole looking annoyed - not surprising, given the way Monbiot shows him up :

The Daily Politics

I blogged about this issue too!
http://anarchist606.blogspot.com/2010/03/one-sided-transparency.html

How about the IoP setting a good example by starting with how this disputed statement came to be?

Correcting the nature blog link from J Bowers above

Hard to tell which is the more nauseating - 'gimme gimme gimme Steve' or his towed gaggle of yesmen and cranks.

@9 Thanks Marco. Sorry Lotharsson, Ive been offline since last night.

Drongo said, refering to an article in the Independent:
>Yeah, now about that hypocrisy, would that come under "I don't know much about statistics but I know what I like" or "I might write a lot of awful emails but why should I release the codes?"

Interesting to note that the Labour MP, Graham Stringers, (one of the interviewers of Phil Jones mentioned in the article) voting record on climate change policies.

http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpid=1704&dmp=1030

>Graham Stringer voted strongly against the policy 'Stop climate change' by scoring 5.0%

Housing Bill â Improvements in Energy Efficiency - disagrees with policy
Climate Change â new sense of urgency â disagrees with policy
Energy Bill â Renewable energy feed-in tariff â disagrees with policy
Planning Bill â Consideration of climate change â disagrees with policy
Government to sign up to 10:10 climate change campaign â disagrees with policy
Climate Change Bill â Second Reading - absent

Last bit from the Nature climate blog linked above says:

> Jones wants McIntyre to produce a global temperature
> record. âScience advances that way. He might then realize
> how robust the global temperature record isâ, says Jones.
> Asked if he would take on the challenge, McIntyre said that
> itâs not a priority for him, but added âif someone wanted
> to hire me, Iâd do itâ.

Please, someone, set up a tip jar and make him the offer.
Payment contingent upon successful publication in a refereed science journal of course:
http://lib.calpoly.edu/research/guides/peer.html

Hang on a minute. The IOP submission is all about how science should work, it doesn't say anything about the veracity of AGW one way or another.

There is no doubt that CRU and others have not operated in the way one would expect science in the 21stC to operate.

And,David Horton, whilst the Guardian's Adams went over the top today about Peter Gill and his energy consultancy, I note he has never commented on the fact that BP, and some electricity producers, have been sponsors of CRU in the past.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/

hankroberts,

Jones' comment is pathetic, an appeal to 'authority' which has now been found to be seriously wanting. Jones and others obviously can't stand the heat when their methodologies are questioned.

Too long dining at the trough!

The person/s who drafted the IOP submissions are breaking the very rules that they are accusing CRU of. The fact that CRU may have received funds from BP over 20 years ago is irrelevant to their recent work on AGW. Besides, they, unlike IOP are being transparent about funding. Not to mention that there is a huge difference between the FF industry funding Fred Singer and Marc Morano and friends to undermine, discredit, misrepresent and attack climate science and climate scientists, and them paying CRU money to do science. Is that much not obvious to the denialists. Again, applying uni-directional skepticism, and cherry-picking.

"From the late 1970s through to the collapse of oil prices in the late 1980s, CRU received a series of contracts from BP to provide data and advice concerning their exploration operations in the Arctic marginal seas. Working closely with BP's Cold Regions Group, CRU staff developed a set of detailed sea-ice atlases, covering estimates of data quality and climate variability as well as standard climatological means, and a series of reports on specific issues, such as navigation capabilities through the Canadian Archipelago. Assessment of the wind energy resource over the UK led to the development of predictive schemes to assess the potential power production at candidate wind turbine sites."

More at link provided by the denier above.

No Dave Andrews, it's not an appeal to authority at all - if anything it's an appeal to see some evidence of competence. Stevie isn't competent, much as you like to imagine he is.

He has experience in a single field which is only one tool of climatology. Leaving all questions of motivation aside for the moment, any ability to see the big environmental (as opposed to economic) picture is severely hampered by his fundamental lack of background knowledge, experience or training.

Ducky, why do you bother here? It's not like you listen to anyone- I mean, you did notice the third word in the title of this post, right? Could that have been a hint as to what it's point was (as differentiated from anything related to your latest silliness)?

And it's not like anyone isn't going to notice just how unreconstructed is your dumb-in-the-headness. So what is it then? Do you just get off on the attention your nitwit posts generate? Is that it? Or is it that you don't like the lefties but aren't smart enough to do anything about your angst other than antagonise? Please, enquiring minds want to know.

Bernie,

Funny, I thought it was you who brought up SLs on this thread. [as cryptically as possible of course]

Having lost that core argument you rush about setting me "homework" to restore your ego. I do hope your thesis is a bit more logic based.

But you can ask me about that sustained tsunami level. I know you're dying to know.

The quote from McIntyre (Hank Roberts post #25) is along the lines of this post - highly ironic. McI's implying he doesn't have the time to put in significant effort unless paid. Doesn't he spend countless hours slandering climate scientists, making excessive FOI requests, making grandiose claims of "hockey stick debunking", and delivering consistent red meat for his followers...all for free? Seems all that work and effort could be directed towards something useful.

Dave Andrews - you are trivially correct, insofar as the IOP submission doesn't say anything specific about AGW being real. However you are missing the real point which is that in amongst the hand wringing about how science aught to be done are outdated opinions and misdirections, vis:
- reconstruction reliability, when in fact there is no such evidence of any issues in the e-mails.
- intolerance to challenge, when even you would get fed up being challenged by people claiming you are lying to them at the same time as demanding all your data.
- the claim is made that the information commissioner says the emails show evidence of failure of proper action regarding openness, when the actual reality is that the assistant commissioner made an off the cuff remark to the press which has since been clarified. The information commissioner has made no ruling or judgement of the case.

Aside from that, we're all in favour of more openness, better funding and databases and so on, but people need to actually work to create such things.
Like the clear climate code people, who've done more useful work in the last 6 months than Watt, McIntyre or anyone else who is moaning on the internet.

32 MarkB,

Certainly the volume of McFraudit's posts shows that it is:-

1. A consuming passion;

2. Something that must take a lot of time.

I wonder what his ClimateFraudit average daily wordcount comes out at?

Thanks Marco & MapleLeaf - who audits the auditors?

Once I would have thought McIntyre's followers would have tired of being punked by him - don't you start getting a little skeptical after hearing "we've found the smoking gun that disproves it all" for the hundredth time? It reminds me of Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown just before he kicks...

Now I've figured out that evidence of his more-frequent-than-expected incompetence doesn't reduce his competence in their eyes because he's telling them what they want to hear.

'The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isnât statistically significant.'

Phil Jones to John Cristy July 5, 2005 email 1120593115

Technically its only weather, but I have this feeling we are about to be 'king-hit' by a lump of ice.

el thicko:

>I have this feeling

Well that settles it for me. Never mind what the science says, el thicko has a feeling.

" It reminds me of Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown just before he kicks... "

Although in Skeptiverse, Charlie Brown always believes that he actually hit the ball..

Although in Skeptiverse, Charlie Brown always believes that he actually hit the ball..

Touché! :-)