Foaming at the mouth with me

Supposed link to "mt" doesn't work.

[Ha, I'm rubbish. rhef doesn't work too well... still, at least that means someone read that far -W]

Hey, thanks for the link to the Monbiot piece. I gave you a plug here (see the update).

Monbiot is making the point first argued so compelling by C. P. Snow: the "two cultures" science and humanists have no connection. You are one or the other and are apt to disdain the other.

[It is a valid point. It isn't clear that Monbiot adds anything to the argument that Snow hadn't said agees ago... -W]

I agree this is a failure of education. I am often surprised by the ignorance of non-scientists regarding science. I am also surprised by the general ignorance of law and how governments, or even corporate bureaucracies have to work.

I think rudimentary science should be incorporated into elementary education. It's easy to make interesting demonstrations for young children.

It's unfortunate that education fosters this separation. The U.S. system does not force a path at age 15, but still segregates humanities and science too early; it is a rare U.S college that requires students to have a good grounding in both. And yet, we all benefit from a broader sense of what humans think.

Monbiot has his chops involved in the FOI, and shows no appreciation of the harassment that climate scientists underwent from nasty nitwits. Jones was so bludgeoned by the harassment that he lacked appreciation for the FOI law, and failed to seek, or didn't receive, competent legal advice and adminsitrative support to handle the requests. (None of the people I've known that were harassed have been calm and patient about it.)

There is good reason for freedom of information acts. They provide a method for uncovering government abuses, among other reasons.

[I agree that there is good reason for FOI. However, their use in this whole matter has been badly misunderstood. The problems with data availability from CRU stem *from* the government - not from the scientists. JA has explained this - the cttee have, in a distinctly self-serving way, failed to note this important point -W]

The climate scientists have tried harder than most scientists to communicate to the general public that our world is changing rapidly and mostly unpleasantly due to carbon dioxide increases. I think they've done a better job than most scientists. They have the unusual challenge from the industries that stand to lose from a public that understands the threat to the world from anthropogenic global warming. And sow deliberate disinformation. The scientists need support from journalists. Even if they aren't perfect. We all live on this planet.

Apparently, commercial confidence may/should not stop FOI request fulfilment. I find this hard to believe, as I'm sure it's been used by the government to prevent PFI information from being released (see PE passim). Anyone able to confirm or deny this? Not sure I'd trust the source quoted there at face value and SE's response is also similar to mine.

Anyway, SE seems to have caused a fair retreat from specific issues to a general "moral high ground" entrenchment. I agree that GM didn't *add* much to the two cultures debate in that article, but he may be trying to extrapolate himself from an untenable original position, based on his belief that FOI is essential and should be unavoidable.

It would be hard to see him being able to complain about failures to respond by others in the future if he let this pass without some criticism. Vaguely related, I was reminded of the Durham fish oil "trial" and BG's attempt to get information. IIRC After no response, he got a load of Bad Science readers to also make FOI requests and the lot got labelled at vexatious. There are some big differences between the two cases, but to the public eye, that may be difficult to explain.

Either way, if he can't bring himself to exonerate PJ, GM may be best to stop digging, admit that there was more to it than met his eye, and move on really. He is, as SE rightly states, stuck in SM's frame.

Adam, at least on the federal side in the US, commercial confidence can stop FOIA requests, although there are rules, such as it must be declared up front, for example in proposals. Since the rules vary by country and by state in the US, YMMV and this is one that enriches lawyers.

Thanks Eli, but I think the UK & US FOIA are very different beasts. The US government tends to be a lot more open about many things (eg data) then the UK government, which still thinks it's involved in some war or other - probably the Boer one knowing their mindset.

Here's the relevant bit from the link I posted:

"Commercial agreements and non-disclosure agreements are not exempt from disclosure under the FoI Act and never have been. They are covered by what is known as a qualified exemption only, i.e. they can be disclosed if the public interest requires disclosure. All exemptions under the FoI Act are required to be interpreted under what is known as the Public Interest Test. A public body may disclose a commercial agreement, and may indeed have a separate statutory obligation to do so and this will be upheld by the courts. See: Veolia ES Nottinghamshire Ltd v Nottinghamshire County Council and Shlomo Dowen and Audit Commission [2009] EWHC 2382 (Admin).

Under guidance issued by the Office of Government Commerce all public sector FoI contract clauses are expressed such that the public body may disclose commercial data and may consult with its contractor beforehand, but is under no obligation to do so. This is a direct read across from the FoI Act. All contractors try to have this clause changed to make consultation mandatory, only very inexperienced public sector officers would agree to this."

*If* this is true, then it seems to me that just about every Government department has probably failed the above at least once when they've withheld commercial information from FOI requests.

Since the UK FOI was passed in what 2005, another thing in the mix is when the commercial contract clauses were entered into. As we both said, makes the lawyers rich.

"And they wonder why people don't like them"
Sadly, there are those that understand why people don't like us, and those that don't care why people don't like us. There are very few that wonder why people don't like us.

One of the odd little bits of information to come out is that these Apache gun camera video records are not archived or collected. I wonder how many more are circulating out there.

The motivation to make a video worth keeping must be scary bad.

> commercial ... exemption

Pfui. I used more words here:
http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=1593#comment-2291
and in the 2 immediately following comments.

The lawyer-person 'gladiatrix' learned nothing from last September through now and is banging the same idea everywhere.

IMHO, media coverage of the CRU hack went South when the whole FOI thing came to the fore. Once an issue speaks to the narrow self-interest of the journalistic profession, then watch out. You won't get any kind of balance out of them.

Watched the video, brought tears to my eyes.

Re George M., what a disappointment. Is he at least using the FOI to try and get some information on the antics of the deniers residing in the UK?

That video...........

Thanks Hank, I'd forgotten to visit SE's place. I'd assumed the debate was by email.

@bcl - yup.

Adam - as Gladiatrix says (assuming she's correct because I'm too lazy to go find a British law and read it), NDA's could be but aren't necessarily barriers to mandatory disclosure.

Eli - right about state by state variation, but only for state agency info. Federal agency info is a uniform legal standard (unless of course it's also shared with state agencies, then things can get fun). IIRC, Eli's also right about non-disclosure on the federal level (and I'd be amazed if it were otherwise).

Hank - I think FOIA is applied very differently to military info. As to your comments over at Easterbrook, a look at whatever agreement was signed with other national weather services could probably settle the issue.

Finally, I'll just note that I have twice used California's equivalent to FOIA to pry open an undisclosed collusion between a local government agency and a developer over what was supposed to be an impartial, scientific evaluation of the developer's environmental impacts. These laws are important.

The developer in both cases, btw, was a major university.

Two completely different thoughts above. To sort them out:
-----

Monbiot could have gotten this clear early on:
http://www.slate.com/id/2237253/ Dec. 2, 2009
"The question of whether CRU dumped "raw" data is a little deceptive, because CRU, NASA, and NOAA don't put together first-order temperature measurementsâthat's up to various national meteorological services .... Much of these data are then stored at the Global Historical Climatology Network's database.

East Anglia's research unit uses a subset of this very large pool of information, .... takes the public numbers but also integrates more fine-grained data, which are sometimes governed by nondisclosure agreements."

-----------

Apache helicopter gun cameras: if this is correct, they mostly can't be obtained by FOIA, they're kept at the unit level if at all, and not kept track of.

The military spokesperson said they don't usually collect them, and that they're stored at the unit level if kept at all; then said the higher-ups had collected that particular one for study but now don't know where it is. It sounded more like it'd been forwarded within the military than lost.

My point: Teenagers raised on video games were making live videos of themselves in action -- using explosive rounds. That's motivation to see everything as a target; worse if they do keep the videos they make at their own unit level.

Anyone know what recording media is used in those gun cameras, and how easy it is make copies?

For other examples google 'sniper video' -- and this:
http://everything2.com/title/I+Remember+Babylon

"... as his pièce de résistance, he reveals the "Can You Take It?" series. "Can You Take It" will show uncensored violence etc, that every "red-blooded American" man will watch out of pure machismo.

"History is on our side. We'll be using America's own decadence as a weapon against her, and it's a weapon for which there is no defence."

The story ends with Clarke's thoughts:

" 'History is on our side.' I cannot get those words out of my head. Land of Lincoln and Franklin and Melville, I love you and wish you well. But into my heart blows a cold wind from the past; for I remember Babylon."

Science reputations are made by publishing work that offers new insights, stands up to repeated scrutiny, is confirmed by various replications, not just rerunning the same code with the same data. Claims (especially unusual ones) that don't do that fall by the wayside, sooner or later.

In many human activities, reputations are only maintained by secrecy, and FOI* laws were *supposed* to address that problem in government, but it applies elsewhere. For example, a few journalists have managed to write stories where they did interviews and wrote totally-misleading stories, and only got away with it because the interviewee hadn't recorded the interview and put it on the net as a podcast.

Some people really want *less science done*, and one way to do that is to divert more money from actual research into handling FOI* requests, and the overhead necessary for that, and government hearings, and people having to waste time replying to Internet-amplified (likely)-defamatory attacks or death threats.

Of course, it would be much easier on everybody to just call up {the Kochs, Scaife, ExxonMobil, and few others}, ask them what science they wish not be done, and defund that. To be fair, the tobacco companies should be offered the same opportunity.

[Quite possibly there is an unspoken desire to see less science done. But it is a silly thought: there is already more than enough science out there. Doing no more GW type science from now on would be bad, scientifically, but wouldn't affect the case for action on GW much -W]

There might be hope for Monbiot.

http://monbiot.com/archives/2010/04/08/debate-with-steve-easterbrook/

As for the purpose of requests for data and the rest under FOI, it could be considered a "Denial of Science" attack (TM), but not necessarily with the specific goal mentioned by John Mashey. That is to say, I'm not sure I agree that the point was to tie up and distract the researchers, although it certainly has had that effect.

In the beginning, I think Jones had it right - it was just armchair "investigators" trying to make a name for themselves. These were clearly in bad faith, and led to waste of time and energy for scientists like Mann to hand over research data from long-forgotten projects to folks like McIntyre who didn't really understand the domain.

Over time, the failure to deliver promptly or completely itself became a cause celebre and led to more requests which could be trotted out to show the scientists were "hiding" something. This was also accompanied by bizarre accusations of IP address blocking (McIParanoia).

Finally, in the last phase formal FOI requests were issued and even organized.

And what were these FOI requests? They were for the agreements that supposedly were in place preventing disclosure of the meteorological data. So once again the real goal was to demonstrate bad faith on the part of CRU, rather than explicitly to distract or waste time. (It goes without saying that the actual data long ago ceased being the point, if it ever was).

DC's comments are good as usual.
As I've noted before there are often multiple motivations fir anti-science behavior, and different mixtures. Some of my thinking us influenced by:

a) The US Data Quality Act and it's history via Chris Mooney in The Republican War on Science.

b) Various descriptions I've heard of McIntyre-ish escalations of requests.

Exactly what happens with any given event us sometimes unclear.

Meanwhile I note that Montford's book "The Hockey Stick Illusion" has already acquired a fine Wikipedia page of it's own. It must be a really important book,.

Understanding the honorable defense of a friend and with genuine sympathy for Dr. Jones, a decent fellow caught in a maelstrom, the endless attempt to identify the dark psychology that drives the "enemy" is the epitome of delay.

re: #16
Of course there is already enough science out there.

Likewise, there is rarely "one big explanation" for all the anti-science behavior (after all, I have ~30 different observed reasons for anti-science behaviors in my usual catalog).

Finally, nothing says that some behavior has to make any sense :-)
In talking to various scientists, some have directly volunteered the frustration that they simply are getting less actual science done. That may or may not be the intent or the only intent, but it is certainly an effect. I'm just glad the tobacco folks either didn't think of this or didn't have the tools (FOI, Internet) to do it well. For example, I'm sure they would have been ecstatic to have stopped research on secondhand smoke.

@ John Mashey #20

We are *very* fortunate that the tobacco industry didn't hit upon the techniques of the denial industry, or the web/FOX News etc. in order to mislead the public.

My fear is that the climate change denial "machine" is providing the template for other anti-science movements. Creationism, anti-vaccination, ID, alternative medicine. No doubt they will adopt similar tactics of astroturfing, experts for hire and the like to increase the effectiveness of their message.

Re you list of 30 contributing factors, I'd be keen to see what it is. I have a few myself.

Hi William,

OT, I know you like arcic ice and all around, so here are the effects of melting ice on the weather over continents:

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/impacts.html

Now I hear s(c)eptics to shout: "Colder weather has nothing to do with climate change!"

Alex

[And I was going to say, "global warming causes cooling...". I haven't read the Honda paper but it is only one; I wouldn't regard these impacts as definite -W]

So much to rant about, so little time. Where to start?

You're telling me! The worst part, to me, is that even the very climate institutions themselves seem to be reluctant to defend their own scientists to the fullest extent possible.

If even they can't be bothered, then why should I?

> We are *very* fortunate that the tobacco industry
> didn't hit upon the techniques of the denial industry,
> or the web/FOX News etc. in order to mislead the public.

The tobacco industry _had_ the secret archive documenting their decades of lying -- it got made public in the big settlement; it's here: http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco

It's an outsider-insider switch. The outsiders now assume the climate scientists are the insiders with the secrets.

And they're using FOI like the old union organizing tactic of "working to rule"
http://libcom.org/organise/work-to-rule
(using the rules repeatedly to tie up their time and effort).

They don't give a damn about the value of FOI to journalists, and probably will be happy if they get FOI rewritten to be more restrictive as collateral damage.

re: #21

List of ~30 reasons for anti-science is Figure 2.6 in PDF @ DeSmogBlog. that's p.14 of V1.0, may change in V2.0.
The set of reasons is then condensed in a matrix versus organizations and people's backgrounds in Figure 2.5.

I'm pleased to see the WmC is doing noble battle over at Montford's "Hockey Stick Illusion" WIkipedia page.

[Ha, feel free to join in. What is lacking is any real reliable sources about it -W]

Interesting that the same data miming techniques can be used to analyze both climate and the denialosphere.

The first organizing event for my replacing fossil fuel club is this Friday in Chicago. We hope to reach our goal of one hundred total members by the end of the month. The event is made possible by Chicago Style StandUps community involvement partnership. Thanks to local sponsors, some ticket sales are dedicated to the club.

We live in interesting times. Enough technology exists to begin the leap to wholly new energy sources and uses. This is something many of us have dreamed about since childhood. Almost everybody I talk to thinks it's a great idea.

I believe in all the analysis of what energy transformation will require, there is a missing wedge. I call it the people's wedge. The only impediment to rapid deployment is the high cost of installation vs the time of payback. The people's wedge is a way to exert downward pressure on prices.

Hank Roberts: "The lawyer-person 'gladiatrix' learned nothing from last September through now and is banging the same idea everywhere."

She's over at the Guardian doing it, too (on Monbiot's latest digging in), even after a few of us posted various FOIA/EIR quotes clearly stating commercial IPRs are exempt from FOIA requests, as well as excerpts from the license agreements where they say things on the lines of, "We will sue you if you hand over data without permission". The solution is easy as far as I'm concerned; license the data yourself. Some people want everything for nothing, or are completely detached from reality, or are plainly and simply lying.

Yeah, I couldn't convince Steve Easterbrook or Monbiot to look at what 'commercial' means there. Monbiot says "commercial" is what they're talking about. Easterbroook says it's a trivial legalism.

As I read it no commercial data was involved between the national weather agencies and UEA.

FOI refers to _subcontracting_ work to a private company, acquiring some of that company's proprietary data in the result -- which there may be reason to disclose.

Feh. I'm not a lawyer. I just read what's on the page.

On a purely off-topic note, according to GISTemp the first 3 months of this year have been the hottest ever (over land) or equal hottest ever (land/sea). But that's OK, as online skeptic acquaintances assure me that this is a sign of cooling.

[Sounds fair enough to me :-) -W]

Even further OT, except that it's related to denialists and gave me a moment of frothing rage.
An ex-boss of mine retweeted something by Lubos Motyl about Pachauri. I sent said ex-boss a short message that Lubos has a bit of an idee fixe on AGW and is not reliable. He answered me:

"Lubos is my friend and I think he is approximately 10 times smarter than both of us together. His social and political skills are not perfect but I still appreciate fact-based arguments before politically correct BS from various climate businessmans. ;-)

"I don't know about Klaus connection (although Lubos is Klaus's supporter) but Lubos is as anti-BS in other non-AGW areas (like cosmology) too."

I actually had to go have a drink to calm down after that one. And I don't want to get into an argument, because LM is this guy's friend and I may need to work with him again sometime.

[Well, Lubos is undoubtedly clever; why that makes him knowledgeable about AGW is a mystery, because the evidence is that he isn't. If you feel like pursuing it, then I guess "I still appreciate fact-based arguments" would be your entree: most of Lubos's "facts" tend to collapse when viewed closely -W]

"... climate businessmans."???

So: Antiquated Tory:
Is it fair to say that your ex-boss believes LM?
(When he says he is LM's tweets, and exchanging email?)
Does LM ever write anything that might be considered libel in the UK?

New procedure announced for anyone planning to publish in a science journal:

"Those who seek to find something wrong with your data are the first people who should have access to it, not the last."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/apr/08/hacked-…

Remember, before sending that submission off to Science or Nature or the Association of Nutpickers Annual Review, first, send it to WUWT and M'n'M.

They'll vet it for you.

"... climate businessmans."???

You know: those climatologists who have banded together with thousands of other nerds to perpetuate a known lie (one that everyone on the face of the planets wants not to be true) to use an environmental cause to weasel grant money out of various governments; money that they'd get anyways and can't spend on anything other than research.

If you project stupidity and greed onto climatologists, it all makes sense.

Thanks, guys. Yeah, my ex-boss clearly believes Lubos but because they're personal friends, not because of LM's actual arguments. I really don't expect my ex-boss has the time to pursue the facts on AGW. He didn't have the time to see his kids when I worked for him.

@ Hank post 24

Thanks mate, very informative!

re: #35 thanks.
This is new data: LM has at least one personal friend.

[To be fair to Lubos (much as I hate to) and with the caveat that I've never met him... I am told he is quite persnoable, in person -W]

re: #37
That is certainly plausible. I don't know if there have been formal studies (probably) but people speculate that the Internet is sometimes not so good for civility as in-person discourse, such that individuals may have quite different behaviors. Some behaviors work similarly both places (as evinced by interested studies of real-life versus Secopn-Life behavior of interest to Stanford researchers a while ago), but others seem not to.

mrs.marry TESTIFIER

My Name is Mrs. Marry, I was married to my husband for 14 years and we were both bless with three children, living together as one love, until 2011 when things was no longer the way the was [when he lost his job]. but when he later got a new job 6 months after, he stated sleeping outside our matrimonial home. only for me to find out that he was having an affair with the lady that gave him the job. since that day, each time called him, he no longer pick up my calls and he donât want to see me around him and he also deleted me from his facebook account.
I reported him to harry SPRINGER ON NATIONAL TV [MESSY AFFAIRS], i did many things all just to see if i can just get my husband back. but nothing since to come out good. yet my husband just still keep on seeing the lady.
Until I met a very good friend of my who was also having a similar problem, who introduced me to a very good love spell caster. but i told her that if it has to do with money that i am not interested, but she said that it has nothing to do with pay first. but the only thing she was ask to do was just to go and TESTIFIER, and that was what she did. And she gave me the spell caster e-mail address and phone number.
When i contacted him, i was so surprise when he said that if i have the faith that i will get my husband back in the nest three [3] day, and off which it was really so. but i was so surck that i did not pay any thing but my husband was on his knells begging me and the children for forgiveness. this testimony is just the price i have to pay. This Mr.Dr.rivers is good and he is the author of my happiness.this is his e-mail Dr.rivershebalisthome @gmail.com

mrs.marry TESTIFIER

My Name is Mrs. Marry, I was married to my husband for 14 years and we were both bless with three children, living together as one love, until 2011 when things was no longer the way the was [when he lost his job]. but when he later got a new job 6 months after, he stated sleeping outside our matrimonial home. only for me to find out that he was having an affair with the lady that gave him the job. since that day, each time called him, he no longer pick up my calls and he donât want to see me around him and he also deleted me from his facebook account.
I reported him to harry SPRINGER ON NATIONAL TV [MESSY AFFAIRS], i did many things all just to see if i can just get my husband back. but nothing since to come out good. yet my husband just still keep on seeing the lady.
Until I met a very good friend of my who was also having a similar problem, who introduced me to a very good love spell caster. but i told her that if it has to do with money that i am not interested, but she said that it has nothing to do with pay first. but the only thing she was ask to do was just to go and TESTIFIER, and that was what she did. And she gave me the spell caster e-mail address and phone number.
When i contacted him, i was so surprise when he said that if i have the faith that i will get my husband back in the nest three [3] day, and off which it was really so. but i was so surck that i did not pay any thing but my husband was on his knells begging me and the children for forgiveness. this testimony is just the price i have to pay. This Mr.Dr.rivers is good and he is the author of my happiness.this is his e-mail Dr.rivershebalisthome @gmail.com