Auditing Climate “Science”

It is a long story why, but I was recently appointed to manage all the quality auditing within the company I work for, and of our suppliers. This is considered a vital role, for which I require training, and although I have been auditing for a while after an introductory course this week I am on a full Quality Manager’s course.

Learning to audit is eye-opening stuff, and very interesting that auditing is a general skill, not specific to the activity of the company; in fact the practice audit we completed was of the only part of our type of operation about which I know little, and it was no more difficult for me than it was for the guy who works in that area.

Also surprising is how vital auditing is to all activity if it is to be done well, how easily any organisation, even with the most competent and professional staff slips in quality. Any company of any size really should have a quality department, and typically companies involved in safety-related work are required to do so, either by a regulating authority or by their insurers (for the record, I believe insurance companies make the best regulators; that is the free-market libertarian in me).

The final surprise was that a good external audit will find about what is going wrong even the best-run organisation. The hosts for our audit were great, a very good company with an excellent auditing system of their own and frequent outside audits. Yet I still made findings.

So what does that have to do with climate research?

Publically-funded science is way behind commercial enterprise and even many government organisations in quality auditing. There is very little and what exists is done badly. Very badly. As in almost always breaking fundamental principles of auditing. Some of the requirements are listed here.

1. Auditing should be to objective questions which query whether stated, objective aims are being achieved.
2. Auditing should be carried out by independent people with training in quality auditing.
3. The auditor should be able to present objective evidence of compliance or non-compliance for which:
• the auditor should be able to state that any processes are suitable and are followed;
• the auditor must have access to samples of all information used or produced, selected by the auditor.

The only external auditing carried out in government-funded science, certainly in British universities, is in the peer review of the resulting papers and the post-publication study by interested parties. This is an audit because it is an examination and verification of the paper, and the science behind the paper.

So I will consider that in respect to climate “science”.

1. I am suspicious about the actual aims of climate science; I think they aim to prove that human activity causes climate change. A few of them start talking about “post-normal science”, which is by definition subjective. For those who still recognise science, an objective aim can be assumed, however if they are not honest about that aim, then they should fail every audit.
2. The “scientists” complain vociferously when independent scientists are used for peer review. After publication their papers are studied by independent minds, although they have not been conspicuously grateful when gaping flaws are found.
3. Objective evidence is where peer review falls down as an audit process within climate “science”:
• the processes are not available in full to the reviewer. The authors of the papers refuse to allow their computer code to be provided to reviewers, let alone to interested readers post-publication;
• the climate scientists conspire to break the UK Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations in order to keep the data they use secret.

So peer-review and study of papers post-publication is not sound auditing.

Without auditing no-one (not even the researchers themselves, I must stress) knows whether the results have any merit whatever.

It is certain that they don’t know if the data sources are reliable. They don’t know if the initial data are sound. They don’t know if the processes are correct. They don’t know if the processes have been followed. They don’t know if the published results bear any relation to the output of the process.

I will go out on a limb here, from my experience with being audited and with auditing. For every paper written by climate “scientists” some, and often all, of those aspects behind a new paper will be flawed. Some of those flaws will be serious.

So what is the quality of those papers?

Context

If any warmist ever mentions that “emails have been taken out of context” you might do worse than point them to Ross McKitrick at Climate Audit.

Escalation of Climategate

Something has struck me about he new “Climategate” emails, as they are gradually being mined for interesting and relevant comments.

These are worse, these are more damning even than the 2009 release.

Yes 2009 had the data, with the harry_readme.txt file which cast suspicion on the data. It had “hide the decline”, which despite all excuses was a terrible indictment of the whole process, if interpreted correctly and as broadly as I viewed it. But that is the point. It was up for interpretation; the excuses were sort of believable; you could accept that each one piece of evidence was only relevant to the sender, or occasionally the sender and recipient.

This new lot is dynamite. It is unequivocal. The web of deceit is much clearer.

I cannot possibly do it justice, I simple don’t have the time, so I am grateful to those that do. If you read Watts Up With That, Bishop Hill blog, Roger Pielke Snr, Roger Pielke Jnr and Junk Science then you can get a fair impression, although there are many other sources out there.

So we have a puzzle. This has been mentioned by others. What is the leaker’s motive? What is his aim? Considering these two questions, what is his intention?

There is another huge file there. It is encrypted. The leaker has released some embarrassing emails and data that the climate-change alarmists could, and did, cope with. Phil Jones was side-lined a little. No-one else really suffered more than a red face. Two years later (this man is more patient than my wife is, I’ll tell you that) more emails are leaked. The surprise is less, but the emails are more damning. A different league. If any real notice is paid to them there is no way that all the people involved are going to get away with this.

So why? With what aim? Considering perhaps close to 250,000 emails not yet released, with what intention?

Climate change conspiracy went further

Someone just replied to a comment I made on another blog over two years ago. That generated an email to inform me of the reply, so I went and looked. The blog author had expressed scepticism of the idea that there was a conspiracy at the heart of the global-climate-change industry.

I am quite pleased with my judgement. This was before even the original “Climategate” release.

But there is a conspiracy in Global Warming (sorry, it’s called climate change isn’t it, now the globe has stopped warming?). Those in the conspiracy have all but admitted that there is a conspiracy to keep the data on which the scare is based away from researchers who might challenge their interpretation of it.

…

As for undisclosed affiliation, what about the people who favour climate change panic? Well the scientists need to ensure their funding. There is far more money, by orders of magnitude, in claiming AGW than in refuting it.

So with the 2009 release of emails and data, and the 2011 release of emails from the CRU, further evidence of these conspiracies emerged, exactly along the lines I had stated, but also far further. What I commented on was only one of a web of conspiracies.

Did I underestimate the scope of conspiracy, or was I just commenting on those parts for which there was, at the time, evidence? I think a little of both. I certainly would not have guessed that the World Bank would be at the centre of things, but the involvement of a BBC reporter and at least some BBC management is not quite so unexpected.

[Update: edited to add extra hyperlinks]

Classic error in science – Climategate 2.0 (the revenge)

A quote from Phil Jones in the recently-released emails:

I too don’t see why the schemes should be symmetrical. The temperature ones
certainly will not as we’re choosing the periods to show warming.

You can say what you like about context, but my doubts are very slight that Mr Mann is making that classic scientific error, in cherry-picking data. Many erroneous scientific conclusions have been drawn in the past from scientist who found an excuse to disregard data that did not fit. Many theories have only stood after they should have been disproved as scientists ignored results showing they were wrong. Theories stood until some brave soul comes along willing to dispute the consensus.

Only it is not an error in this case, is it? This looks very much like blatant dishonesty. I look forward with great interest to the excuses Mr Mann and any recipient of this email can make.

To whom does “we” refer?

[Edited to correctly attribute the email]

The BBC lies – whichever side you take

The anonymous BBC “reporter” who wrote an article “No let up in greenhouse gas rise” either does not understand the subject or is dishonest.

The article claims that carbon dioxide is “the major contributor to climate change”. It is a lie not claimed by any scientist, but of course most people think this.

That is because they have been told that human generation of CO2 is causing a catastrophic rise in temperatures. What they have not been told is that this claim is based on an assumption of positive feedback, not only that but feedback that must have greater influence than the CO2. Heat trapping by CO2 just isn’t enough to support the claims of the warmists, and they randomly add large positive feedback to models. So even according to climate hysterics the carbon dioxide itself is not the major contributor, the putative feedback mechanism is.

This is not a trivial falsehood. How many times have we read that this is “basic physics”, and that “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas” so must be causing the rise in average temperatures? How rarely do the people who tell us this admit that without positive feedback CO2 cannot explain most of the warming since the 1970s? How many state that all the nightmare scenarios claimed in the press require a lot of feedback?

Feedback is very important to a lot of what I have studied and taught. It comes into a lot of physics, into geology and in aviation theory in the principles of flight (stability of an aircraft is determined entirely by feedback). What I can say is that positive feedback is that it is rare in natural systems and essentially unheard of in a stable system [correction: essentially unheard of in a non-linear system which shows long-term stability]. Positive feedback is the cause of instability.

Which thought brings us to an interesting place. Either the temperature has positive feedback, and is likely to be unstable, or else temperature is stable and shows little or negative feedback. The whole climate panic is based on the assumption that the temperature is stable (and so the recent fluctuations are unusual) but that temperature response to carbon dioxide shows positive feedback …

Update: thanks to an anonymous commenter for a useful correction. The comments now contain a brief discussion on stability.

Faster Than Light

I no longer read the New Scientist regularly. How can anyone trust a magazine that promotes “consensus” yet claims to be about science?

However if a particle can travel faster than the speed of light, or even if scientists can contemplate the idea that this is possible, then the bizarre notion of science by consensus disappears rather rapidly.

Where are the articles demanding silence from the dissenters? Where are the scientists condemning this research, claiming it must be funded by some random special-interest group (which is, conversely, actually funding consensus research)? Where are the politicians, the socialist journalists, the polemicists condemning the very suggestion that neutrinos might travel at more than c?

Carl Sagan Part II : Climate “Science”

Well Carl Sagan’s comments on pseudo-science fit remarkable well with the methods and attitudes of the climate scientists. So what about the claims of the CAGW researchers that what they are doing is science? What does Sagan’s book say about science, and how does that fit with CAGW claims?

Every time a scientific paper presents a bit of data, it's accompanied by an error bar - a quiet but insistent reminder that no knowledge is complete or perfect. It's a calibration of how much we trust what we think we know.

…

We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error bars a little, and to add to the body of data to which error bars apply. The error bar is a pervasive, visible self-assessment of the reliability of our knowledge.

This is exactly what the climate guys don’t want us to know. They have so often ignored error bars, or been accused by reputable statisticians of poor error handling that I think they have forgotten that their data are not perfect. Considering some of the problems found in their original data … that is not promising.

I keep talking about the “idea” of catastrophic climate change being caused by human activity. That is because I have never seen it categorised, except in the vernacular as a theory.

… scientists are usually careful to characterize the veridical status of their attempts to understand the world - ranging from conjectures and hypotheses, which are highly tentative, all the way up to laws of Nature which are repeatedly and systematically confirmed through many interrogations of how the world works. But even laws of Nature are not absolutely certain. There may be new circumstances never before examined … where even our vaunted laws of Nature break down …

So in the scientific sense is CAGW a theory? An hypothesis? What? I would call it conjecture, but it is certainly not a law. Yet as Sagan says here even a law is not known to be immutable. How can anyone say the debate is over?

But our climate scientists are the great experts, are they not? Surely we should uncritically accept what they say, regardless of the complete lack of evidence.

One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.) Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.

Ah. So Carl Sagan says specifically that we should mistrust anything we have ever read in the mainstream press or heard on television about human activity, and CO₂ in particular, being an overwhelming factor in global climate. Every one of those pieces is an argument from authority. Not a single one is a presentation of evidence, because there is no evidence.

That I am asserting from authority, my authority as a graduate in Earth Sciences who has been following the media avidly for over two years on the issue. You should therefore distrust my assertion, and look for yourselves. Seek an article that discusses empirical evidence (not models, certainly not discredited models; not data twisted to show human influence as a statistical artefact) that humans cause significant climate change. If you find a single one, please post here. Free gig tickets, concert of your choice to the first to link such an article in the comments (my dear wife is in the music business, so I can usually acquire VIP or even AAA passes).

So what about the response in climate “science” to sceptics? Is calling the man who disagrees with your conclusion a “denier”, to link him with neo-Nazis and to avoid having to answer his substantive points good science?

Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don't reply to critics, wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I'm very fond of it; it's done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. The British physicist Michael Faraday warned of the powerful temptation to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in the favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them . . . We receive as friendly that which agrees with [us], we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.

So that’ll be a no then.

… I maintain that science is part and parcel humility. Scientists do not seek to impose their needs and wants on Nature, but instead humbly interrogate Nature and take seriously what they find. We are aware that revered scientists have been wrong.

Oh. Surely that can’t be right. The revered climate “scientists” have never been wrong, have they? Surely climate “scientists” need not be humble?

Of course not! Sagan is, of course, talking about real scientists, not climate “scientists”. Sagan did not know about post-normal science.

We are constantly prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.

Again, I think the problem is that Sagan died too early to hear about post-normal science. I am sure he would have sought fewer alternative explanations if he was alive today.

However Sagan did have some distinctly odd ideas.

In diverse ways, many other physicists are testing General Relativity, for example by attempting directly to detect the elusive gravitational waves. They hope to strain the theory to the breaking point and discover whether a regime of Nature exists in which Einstein's great advance in understanding in turn begins to fray.

These efforts will continue as long as there are scientists. General Relativity is certainly an inadequate description of Nature at the quantum level, but even if that were not the case, even if General Relativity were everywhere and forever valid, what better way of convincing ourselves of its validity than a concerted effort to discover its failings and limitations?

This is one of the reasons that the organized religions do not inspire me with confidence. Which leaders of the major faiths acknowledge that their beliefs might be incomplete or erroneous and establish institutes to uncover possible doctrinal deficiencies? Beyond the test of everyday living, who is systematically testing the circumstances in which traditional religious teachings may no longer apply? … What sermons even-handedly examine the God hypothesis?

Is Carl Sagan, the quintessential scientist, saying that climate “science” has a lot in common with religion? Surely he would never have written this if he knew that a new science would rise, one whose leaders do not “…acknowledge that their beliefs might be incomplete or erroneous and establish institutes to uncover possible doctrinal deficiencies”. A science that refuses to “systematically [test] the circumstances in which [its] teachings may no longer apply”. A science that refuses to “even-handedly examine the [CAGW] hypothesis”, or even acknowledge that such even-handed treatment could have any validity.

A science, no less, that is closer to a god, that we can worship, with sins, penance and the sale of indulgences, taxing people, paying the high priests to live in luxury while they interpret the world by declamation.

So we come to the bible, the great revelations of science. For centuries Christianity hid the “revelations of God” in the bible from common folk, by insisting it could only be published in Latin (and of course murdering the first man to publish it in a language commoners understood). Only a priest could interpret the word of God, and to ensure this remained so the common people would not be permitted to even read it or have it read to them by a literate friend.

Climate “scientists” also seem rather reluctant to part with the information they interpret. They hide their data, in the case of UEA breaking two completely separate laws to avoid disclosure. They openly declaim that this is so others cannot challenge their conclusions. Surely this is a normal part of science?

Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions.

That’ll be another no then. Not sure, but I think I’ll just have to put this one down to post-normal science too.

So I have in two posts shown some of Carl Sagan’s opinions on pseudo-science and then on science. I am convinced by these sections that Sagan would have seen today’s climate “science” as more akin to pseudo-science that to science.

I have provided no citations or page reference simply because this is an essay not a research paper. As such I want it to flow, and stimulate further reading rather than prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. I know that I have seen all the poor science and pseudo-science I claim in print from climate “scientists”. If you feel differently, look for evidence. If you can find any to the contrary, or cannot find the types of errors and claims I assert then post a comment, I will give more detail as to what I mean. If you want to know more about Carl Sagan’s views on science, read the book. It’s very good.

[Update from Climategate II] It's funny how the climate hysterics are bent on proving everything said against them. Remember what I said about error bars?

...any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think. (Wilson)

Carl Sagan, Part I: Climate Pseudo-Science

Climate “scientists” are not involved in science. They are peddling pseudo-science, and allowing others to use it to grind the rest of us into the dust. Incidentally that means they get their next grant approved, and have articles published not in journals but in well-known newspapers, as they get paid large sums for speaking engagements.

For several years I have believed that the idea of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is unscientific. I have described the Royal Society as anti-scientific for its official stance. However I am one person, a graduate in Earth Sciences and so more qualified to comment than most but with no reputation.

Carl Sagan, on the hand, was a revered and internationally-renowned astrophysicist and science communicator. Unfortunately he died before CAGW became such a huge issue, in fact around the time it should have died, when it was proved there was no warming in the upper troposphere at low latitudes. Let’s see what he has to say about pseudo-science in his book The Demon-Haunted World.

Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science. Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.

Well we could say that climate “scientists” thrive on errors; the problem is that they don’t recognise that they are capable of making errors. They think that admitting errors is a sign of weakness. Science’s great strength, as Sagan implies, is to admit to making errors – this means errors can be corrected.

Climate “scientists” don’t make tentative conclusions. They declaim, they make wild assertions. And they never cut away their errors. They hide them in the dark, they refuse to let anyone find those errors by conspiring to keep information secret, like a cabal.

Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Sceptical scrutiny is opposed.

Does this remind you of anything?

Sagan carries on:

When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced.

Even though so many scientists (possibly even a majority) accept the idea of CAGW the proponents still whine about conspiracies for which they have no evidence, while completely ignoring and even denying the conspiracies to push poor science which have sound, even irrefutable, evidence. You know, emails between conspirators discussing details of a conspiracy, which they admit are genuine.

Finally on pseudo-science, Sagan says

Perhaps the sharpest distinction between science and pseudo-science is that science has a far keener appreciation of human imperfections and fallibility than does pseudoscience … If we resolutely refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that error - even serious error, profound mistakes - will be our companion forever.

Indeed.

More on Global Cooling

This could be an important time, leading to great relief and perhaps great fear. It appears that the media are finally seeing the cracks in global warming. Much as I hate to link the Daily Mail, as I have said before sources that go off the deep end sometimes will also are sometimes go the whole way, where few others dare go so far.

So temperature records are falling in falling temperatures. Austria’s earliest recorded snows, an American town breaking record low by seven degrees.

Even the alarmists are admitting that temperatures might fall for two decades, although they insist that the rising trend will overcome that.

It is easy to see the fatal flaw in their argument, it is mentioned in the Daily Mail article, “…the global cooling from 1945 to 1977…”. So the globe was cooling until 1977, and the warmest year since 1934 was 1998, and the world has been at an even temperature then cooling since, and now might cool for two decades.

So let me see if I have the sequence right, starting in 1947. The world cooled for three decades, then warmed for two decades and then is about to cool for another two decades before returning to a warming trend. Ooooookaaaaaay. Errrrrrrmmmmmm, I am not sure if you’re getting this, but I don’t see any consistent trend at all here. I see a pattern of rising and falling temperatures, probably therefore dominated by a factor that itself rises and falls.

Since the alarmists have been going on at us for 15 years now about the fact that CO2 levels have been rising exponentially, I am getting the idea that they don’t fit the pattern. I am not sure what physics these guys have, but mine is a little rusty; I did leave university 14 years ago. Can an exponential rise in CO2 really trigger oscillations in temperature? I reckon  it’s possible, but I also am damned sure that is not what those little models predicted.

With the hockey-stick curve having fallen for a second time, and no sign of sea-level rises the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is looking remarkably thin.

So How Are Those IPCC Predictions Working Out?

The IPCC did a lot of detailed work, in fact a surprising amount considering the lack of contributors who had actually published anything in peer-review literature before. A lot of this was to support the central ideas required to convince people of climate change. Since Carbon dioxide does not actually absorb much energy that has previously escaped absorption by water or existing carbon dioxide levels, it was important to deal with other greenhouse gases.

One of the powerful greenhouse gases associated with human activity is methane, biogenic methane being produced by farming among other sources. Of course anyone modelling future climate would need to estimate the levels of methane, so how were the predictions now we can predict them against actual changes seen in the atmosphere?

Well I’m convinced that the IPCC could avoid arse/elbow confusion, although some are not.

Thanks again to those Small, Dead Animals.

Global Cooling (updated)

I am doing a bit more work now, so posting has been and will be light.

However there is bad news on the climate front. The world is not warming, to bring us into a new era of prosperity and plenty. It appears it is cooling, and we might be in for a tough time here at the mid-latitudes.

You might have heard of the infamous ‘hockey-stick’ graphs of Mann et al 1998. That paper has been at the core of climate alarm, and has been prominent in every IPCC report since and the graphic of the hockey-stick time/temperature graph prominent in global-warming propaganda. It has also been attacked for many years by a Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre.

It will not surprise readers of this blog that Mann refused to release his data for McIntyre to confirm. Until recently he had managed to publish peer-reviewed articles without releasing the original data. How that can be correct peer-review even I as a humble science graduate with no post-graduate studies cannot grasp. It seems fundamental to me that in order to allow criticism of work (the core of science) the original data must be widely available.

However finally Mann’s collaborator, a Professor Briffa of the Hadley Centre for climate research in Exeter published in a journal that has not lost its balls (and I am pleased to say it is Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, a prestigious British publication) and insists on archiving raw data from any research published.

McIntyre has them. They had simply picked the data to show what they wanted. The oldest con in the in science. A perpetual worry at the back of the mind of any conscientious scientist, that they must not discard results just because they don’t fit, and if they discard one for sound reasons they must have an extra few that do fit to justify that decision.

No, for Mann and Biffa, taking 12 samples and leaving out 34 was fine, just so long as it shows warming.

So what do the data show if all of them are used in a graph? That is the down side to this story. The Earth is not warming, but it might well be cooling. Which is far, far worse, and if the CO2 that we’re pumping out now isn’t helping then we probably can’t do a lot about it!

Basically red line = Mann et al. hockey-stick curve, with the 12 specially-picked ‘good’ results, the black line is McIntyre’s assessment with all the results, including ‘naughty’ ones that refuse to agree with communists. Actually that red is a good colour choice.

Hat tips: Biased BBC, Icecap and Watts Up With That?

Update: The Register has a very readable article.

Update: it seems that my post is a massive over-simplification of an intriguing, truly scandalous story. The Register article has a link to Bishop Hill Blog which goes into all the dishonest, anti-scientific details of this con.

Is Climate Catastrophism Harming the Environment?

“We can’t save everything, but we have to save the richest places, and the richest places on Earth are forests like this”

This is a quote from the documentary programme about New Guinea, “Lost land of the Volcano”. Obviously it is a point that I think can be debated, but I think it has as good a claim to a valid environmental concern as any. Personally I would argue that it has a greater claim than most.

So what is the best way to protect rainforests? There have been many methods tried, with mixed results at best. However there are some ideas to consider that might point to a long-term strategy that might be of great indirect benefit to the rainforests.

Rainforest destruction is usually connected to economic activity. Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and crude mineral extraction is primitive economic activity, of a kind that tends to reduce importance to the community as the economy develops.

Environmentalists’ claims that economic development increases environmental destruction is not as obvious as they claim. Vaclav Klaus has pointed out that the Czech environment, destroyed by the Communist economy, only improved with the developments in the economy of a free Czech Republic and Slovakia. Developing economies not only allow resources for clean technology, but also for activities not essential to everyday survival, such as the leisure to take interest in long-term environmental protection.

In the UK, and I believe other western economies, the number of trees has increased in the last few decades. Outside areas with direct population pressure the forest land has all but stopped retreating, and in many areas is being managed to either keep its extent or even spread. This is after massive destruction of forests for centuries. In Britain continuous forests once stretched from the south coast to the Scottish Highlands.

Economic development also tends to lead very quickly to population stability and even reduction, reducing environmental pressure. Human populations explode when they have western medicine available and food aid or improved agricultural technology but not education and other cultural changes which lead to family planning. The most economically-developed nations are almost all suffering from reducing populations.

Is the solution to the preservation of the rainforests as simple as economic development? I doubt it. Rule of law and property rights will be essential both for that economic development, but also for ensuring that someone has an interest in the forests beyond short-term gain, and that those guardians are able to protect their wards.

Unfortunately environmentalists seem to have a knee-jerk reaction against economic development. There are many connections with communism, with many former communists and fellow travellers prominent in the environmental movement. They have a dislike of economic independence and also of property rights and the strict rule of law.

I would argue then that for many years the environmental movement has opposed development that might have helped protect the environment. However without authority they brought attention to important issues, but struggled to make a great impact until a few years ago. A weak hypothesis, supported by models that skated over the most critical issues using fudge factors made up by true believers, was trumpeted as The Great New Truth.

Politicians with little understanding of the science or of scientific process used this claim to their own ends, to take power over people, and to keep themselves in office. The science is uncertain; the politicians bought the certainty of scientists, and distorted the channels of communication until they only heard what they wanted to hear. That might just seriously damage some of the wonders of nature, not just in parallel with but because of condemning billions to poverty.

More Climate Politics

It is difficult to decide what the UK Meteorological Office hopes to achieve in predicting future climate. What seems certain is that they have politicised their science.

Christopher Booker writes in the Daily Telegraph about the refusal of the Met Office to release the data on which its climate predictions are based. I have talked before about the conspiracy to withhold those data. However the Met Office appears to have given an even more bizarre and telling excuse than Professor Jones’s.

To release that information might

"damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector"

As Mr Booker explains that trust is already damaged. However I think there is far more to this statement than that. If releasing the data might damage trust in the scientists then there is something in that data set that runs against the conclusions the scientists are reaching.

Trust will not, as they suggest, be damaged because the scientists “…happen to be employed in the public sector” but because of their conclusions and the unstated problem in the data. This statement implies that other scientists would disagree with the conclusions reached by the public-sector scientists. This is in effect an admission that those scientists in the public sector are reaching a conclusion because they are in the public sector.

It is widely known that even though scientists are not, senior politicians are all but unanimous in believing in man-made climate catastrophe (with a glorious exception). Therefore employment in the public sector depends on reaching conclusions in line with this view.

To sum up, that one statement suggests both that the conclusions reached by the UK Met Office, one of the major contributors to the IPCC, are not in line with the data and that those conclusions are influenced by politics.

Why Should We Protect The Environment?

We are told to protect the environment, but first we need to ask why

I did say after a discussion on the science that I would discuss the politics of climate change. However first I want to take issue with the rational basis of environmentalism, which strengthens the case that the whole idea is political.

The Earth is one planet in a universe probably populated with many millions of billions, roughly 4.65 billion years old. There is evidence of life in rocks older than 3.8 billion years. During that time there has been one dominant form of life, prokaryotes, basically bacteria. They make up most of the Earth’s biodiversity and even biomass. Eukaryotes evolved much later, and form everything else, including some single-cell organisms more complicated than bacteria.

Macro-organisms, larger creatures, evolved much later still, perhaps about 650 million years ago. Since then different forms appear and disappear in the fossil record. The greatest mass extinction known (the end Permian, since you ask) seems to have wiped out perhaps 95% of all species identified by fossils. Other times creatures just evolve to be something distinct, or die out.

The point I am trying to make is that we can split life into small, simple but vastly abundant things that we could not wipe out if we tried (with the exception of those that are dependent upon us, like smallpox, or on another organism that we wiped out) and large organisms that go extinct as a normal part of the changes in the world. More importantly new creatures evolve, and biodiversity is always different but it is always there.

So what is the point of environmentalism? To ‘save the Earth’ many would say, but the Earth is not under threat. The Earth is 6000 billion billion tons of rock that has been here for over 4 billion years, not a kitten we are drowning. Gaians might believe differently, but then Gaian hypothesis was just made up from very little, it makes no sense, and the truth might be the very opposite.

Other environmentalists would say that they are trying to save animals and plants, keep biodiversity. The fact that they tend to save the cute and the majestic animals before the rest is suspect. In fact once humans have gone then whatever damage has been done the Earth will recover. That process will take a trivial time, in terms of the Earth’s history.

Cruelty and stress to animals is another answer given, but that is the way of nature. Life in the wild is harsh, and basic ecology tells us that species will expand to fill their range to the limit of available resources. Breeding will always put pressure on range and resources, and individuals will suffer and die. Human activity simply changes the size of the range and available resources, not the fact of a limit. Species cannot feel suffering.

None of this says that we should not protect the environment, or protect species, but simple pat answers don’t tell us why, and ‘why’ turns out to be critical. The rational reason for protecting the environment is human needs and human morality, as nothing else on Earth has needs that we should rationally put above our own.

We are occupying an infinitesimal amount of time in an infinitesimal amount of space in the universe. The only reason we believe Earth is special and should be preserved is that we occupy it.

This turns environmentalism on its head. We should be working for a good human environment. It does not excuse us stewardship of the Earth, but it means that we are looking after the environment for humanity and for human morality. So any higher imperative for human existence or of human morality must take preference. Whereas traditional ‘greens’ put animals and nature on a par with or more often above humanity.

The most extreme greens have indeed called for humanity’s destruction. We can see how irrational that is in that the only possible reason for that could be human morality (rendered inane as soon as the solution is achieved) or to help nature recover, which is pointless on the scale of the existence of humankind.

Down the scale of environmentalists almost all the serious activists advocate action that would seriously damage human comfort of life. The most widespread of those being massive reductions in carbon dioxide demanded by global warming alarmists. This would not only seriously restrict human lifestyle (an important consequence trivialised by those who advocate carbon restrictions, either because they think temperature is more important than people or because, like Al Gore, they know their own lifestyles will not be harmed) but it will kill millions. It is already increasing the desperate poverty in Africa, not only grinding poor people into the dust but killing them as well.

None of this makes any sense to the human environment. No moral choice to keep climate constant* is more important than the immoral act of the harm done.

The net result that can be claimed though is damage to western economies, damage to the integrated global market, political harm to large companies now unwilling to defend their activity, suppression of free economic growth and implementation of draconian rules, restricting individual freedom. All of these are aims of communists.

The connections between socialism and the hard-core environmental movement have been widely explored, and even publicised by the communists. Now the US President has appointed an avowed communist as a green adviser, most ridiculously to try to create jobs.

So the fundamentalist green movement is run through with red, and the results of the climate panic constitute a wish-list for socialism, but do more harm than good to the environment. Can anyone seriously doubt that the climate change debate is almost pure politics?

*This is the political discussion, so I am not trying to break the scientific case for anthropogenic climate change, just show that the case is politicised.

Update: I forgot to relate the politics behind this to Critical Theory, the back-door attempt to spread communism through a variety of apparently unrelated left-wing causes as detailed in the most important video I posted a link to last week. The important common factor in in the causes linked by critical theory was to attack western values and strengths. Fundamentalist environmentalists certainly aim for that.

Update: More evidence of politics in climate science.

Conspiracy: The Exception Proves The Rule

Most conspiracy theories don’t hold up well to scrutiny for very simple reasons. People are not that efficient, and it is not that easy to persuade all the people who have to know into silence. Some either want no part in a conspiracy of silence or are arrogant enough to be unaware that what they are saying exposes them. The conspiracy would become obvious.

To prove that rule there is a genuine conspiracy, and it is becoming ever more obvious as inefficiency causes leaks and as some of those in the conspiracy tell all.

Last week The Register published an article about the refusal of various organisations involved in climate research to release their raw data and data processing information. The excuses given beggar belief from confidentiality clauses (why are the UK and Danish Met Office keeping data secret?) to losing data, some of which might have been made verbally and not written down. So a research organisation is seriously suggesting we forego tens of trillions of dollars, yet they cannot be bothered to write the numbers down.

The worst excuse might be,

“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Well maybe because that is science, Professor Jones. Interesting that The Register considers him an “activist-scientist”. The two terms are mutually exclusive; I know which I think he is.

In any other field a scientific paper with a novel conclusion is an invitation for others to try to replicate the results. Until someone can do so then the original paper is considered highly speculative. If other groups are not able to do so then it is generally concluded that the original research was flawed in some way. So if the data are not available then the science can never be judged to have solid grounding, let alone settled beyond all debate.

It is clear from the article that there is a conspiracy to keep the raw data from being studied by scientists who might challenge the conclusion that human activity is changing the climate in a predictable way. This seems to be part of a wider conspiracy. Notice how difficult it is to conceal such a conspiracy, even with the collusion of the UN, of most of the news media and of almost all politicians in the democratic nations? Professor Jones did not remain silent, and the CRU made an error, leaving information on a server, that makes the conspiracy obvious.

Hat tip Small Dead Animals.

Of Polar Bears and Partiality

Science is supposed to be objective. Of course as a human endeavour it is imperfect, and so will always be subjective, but as such it should be a recognised hazard that scientists try to minimise.

That is where the study of climate has gone so wrong.

A picture which illustrates where climate study has lost impartiality. Taken because of pretty ice formations, it was used to ‘prove’ the threat of ice melting to polar bears. The bears photographed were in no danger and the evidence of any reduction in polar bear numbers is disputed, where such disputes are allowed. © Amanda Byrd

In today’s Daily Telegraph there is a comment article about a committee which refuses to allow one of the world authorities on his subject because he does not agree with their pre-determined conclusion. Dr Mitchell Taylor, an expert on polar bears, believes that polar bear numbers worldwide are increasing, and that Arctic melting is caused by influences other than the greenhouse effect.

So he cannot attend a UN group for which he is well-qualified and has funding, because his views “counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful” and his signing a letter alongside 500 other sceptics was “inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG [Polar Bear Specialist Group]”. So it appears that the PBSG has determined its position before even sitting or discussing any evidence, remarkable efficiency in a publically-funded body.

Another polar bear picture, just because they’re cute; vicious predators of course, but cute ones © Steve Amstrup, US Fish and Wildlife Service

It is interesting to note how anthropogenic climate change believers – we cannot say global warming since evidence has shown that much of the world started to cool - try to demonise those that are more sceptical by transferring their own faults onto those with whom they disagree.

First is of course language, using the term ‘denier’ not because it is accurate (many so-called deniers are doubters like I am) but because being a sceptic is supposed to be a good thing in science, but a denier is not only to be thought of alongside holocaust deniers but also too certain for good science, which is questioning. In fact those claiming that the increased level of greenhouse effect of 0.28% has a significant effect on climate are themselves so certain that they will not accept debate, as this article shows.

The other demonising is to claim that ‘deniers’ are paid by the oil industry. Of course a few might have taken oil-industry funding, after all the oil industry funds much geological research which can include palaeoclimatology (study of pre-historic climate). However many have not, and there is far, far more money (hundreds of times as much) being spent on climate and atmospheric research by organisations that have already decided that humans are harming the climate than by oil companies. Not only that but many studies in other fields work on the assumption that humans cause climate change, because funding is easier to obtain if the application makes such a connection, even if completely irrelevant. The climate panic lobby has been bought, so they assume that deniers have also.

As any economist will know, incentives are far more persuasive and insidious than most other people recognise. In this case the incentives are very strong, not only positive to encourage research to support climate concern but negative to suppress any challenge. The case of Mr Taylor is not unique; researchers have found much more serious consequences of questioning the orthodoxy, and often it is impossible to publish in peer-review publications papers which do not presume anthropogenic climate change.

Yet what is science but the questioning of orthodoxy? How can we be certain of any theory if it has never been tested by the doubters?

Variation and competition are the driving forces of research as they are of business and evolution. Evolution is itself a strong theory partly because of research to answer challenges from religious fundamentalists. We can be confident that the dinosaurs probably died out due to meteor impact thanks to to the challenges of Charles Officer and Charles Drake, two well-known palaeontologists who believed in a different theory, so constantly challenged the orthodox belief. How can we have any confidence that human activity is causing climate change, when no challenge is allowed? That this is so obvious in a UN group reporting in the lead up to the climate conference in Copenhagen demonstrates that UN reports cannot be assumed to be scientific.

That is the science. One day I will post my ruminations on the politics of climate change.