Memorandum submitted by Mike Haseler (CRU
30)
Creator of the Number 10 Petition
Regarding the Climatic Research Unit:
We the undersigned petition the Prime
Minister to suspend the Climate Research Unit at the University
of East Anglia from preparation of any Government Climate Statistics
until the various allegations have been fully investigated by
an independent body.
Submitted by Mike Haseler—
Deadline to sign up by:
24 February 2010—Signatures: 3,101
As the creator of the Number 10 petition
regarding the Climatic Research Unit, I felt I should try to do
justice to the 3,000 people who took the time to sign my
petition by making a submission to your committee.
Whilst it is clearly impractical to truly represent
the views of the signatories to the petition, I have consulted
other "sceptics" and read as many of the various comments
being expressed on the subject as I am able. I believe these show
the main area of concern to be the inappropriate attitudes shown
in the emails regarding the appropriate standards of integrity
for those involved in scientific research and a strong disquiet
with the "science" in this area.
There is a strong public feeling that there
is "no smoke without fire" and the further revelations
regarding the IPCC "dodgy dossier" seem to show this
to be true. Whilst it is possible to find excuses for the phraseology
used in the various emails, the overall impression remains that
there is something very rotten with the "science". A
closer examination of the available evidence would appear to support
this disquiet.
PERSONAL DECLARATION
OF INTEREST
As someone who used to work in the UK wind sector
and was even briefly selected to stand as a Scottish Green Party
candidate for the Scottish Parliamentary elections, I have done
more than my fair share to help convince the public of the real
and imminent threat of man-made "global warming".
Despite my scientific training, and very much
to my shame, I participated in what I now see as a campaign to
propagate bad science without ever really checking the scientific
basis for these claims assuming that "someone" must
have done the science. Only latterly did I try to assess the scientific
evidence myself and to be frank I was horrified by what I found.
But even then, despite the spin and clearly highly partisan use
of data, I thought with the UK Met Office being responsible for
compiling global temperature figures, at least the basic raw data
could be trusted. Climategate proved that wrong! It was my exasperation
that nothing in climate "science" could be trusted,
not even the Met Office who used to be one of the great scientific
institutions of the UK, that prompted me to create the petition
in the hope that we could stop the rot before it spread further.
(I have absolutely no financial interest except
a few "hobby" websites whose combined income does not
cover the cost of coffee consumed during their production.)
INTRODUCTION
The public are sick and tired of seeing exaggeration
used to "sex up" a situation, creating an atmosphere
of fear in order to manipulate us. We saw it with Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD), and now we see it in global warming. There
should be many submissions dealing with the extent of the evidence
and the quality of the scientific method. This submission will
focus on the apparent public deception being perpetrated by the
CRU and the wider climate community. We have no compunction in
suggesting climategate has all the hallmarks of the deception
over the (non-existent) Iraqi WMD as the similarities speak for
themselves:
Iraq-gate
(1) In Iraq, the overwhelming consensus
amongst the experts was: that there were WMD, the threat was "real
& imminent" and, the public was told the evidence was
"unequivocal". We were being told one thing in public
by a campaign using the fear of WMD to sway public opinion, whereas
in private experts like David Kelly were far from convinced.
"SIR WILLIAM EHRMAN:In terms of chemical
and biological, particularly through the spring and summer of
2002, we were getting intelligence, much of which was subsequently
withdrawn as invalid, but at the time it was seen as valid, that
gave us cause for concern,
... March 2002: the intelligence on Iraqi
WMD and ballistic missiles is sporadic and patchy." 1
(2) How did Parliament and the public come
to be so misled as to the certainty of WMD? Why did those against
the Iraq war have to disprove the negative: to provide proof that
every location in Iraq, where facilities for WMD might have been
installed, had been searched?
Climate-gate
(3) The world's climate is warming due to
mankind or so the public are being told. The threat, again, is
real and imminent, the evidence unequivocal. The onus is on opponents
to disprove man-made global warming not the scientists to prove
it. The public are being fed a daily diet by the likes of the
BBC, of sexed up weather stories intended to force through a political
imperative that requires a fear of climate change. How can the
hurricanes, droughts, fires, famine be described except as: Weather
of Mass Destruction?
(4) The truth, we learnt in November 2009,
was that the public face of this well orchestrated campaign, is
very much at odds with private reservations:
"The fact is that we can't account for
the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we
can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement
on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the
data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
(Email: Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann, October 2009)
(5) Is it happening again? Private, "sporadic
and patchy" evidence, being publicly spun as "unequivocal"?
Are the politicians and public being misled?
A FAILED SCIENCE
(6) Far from being "unequivocal",
like WMD in Iraq, the evidence for man-made global warming is
entirely circumstantial. It is based on the coincidental increase
of CO2 and temperature in a period of just over three decades.
As climate takes around a decade to change significantly, that
period of 1970-2000 represents a mere three data points.
Furthermore its scientifically testable predictions have almost
all failed:
1. 2001 Prediction of Warming of between
1.4-5.8C/decade in 2001—Result so far: cooling at a rate
of 0.8C/century.
2. Met Office yearly Global Temperature predictions.
Nine out of 10 forecasts have been high with an average error
according to the Met Office equivalent to 6C/century which is
larger than the projected warming.
Year
| Met Office
Prediction* | At confidence
"better than"
| Actual**
Temperature (°C)
|
Result |
2000 | 0.33°C |
80.00% | 0.24°C | Lower
|
| 2001 | 0.42°C | 75.00%
| 0.400°C | Lower |
| 2002 | 0.47°C | 50.00%
| 0.455°C | Lower |
| 2003 | 0.50°C | 75.00%
| 0.457°C | Lower |
| 2004 | 0.47°C | 75.00%
| 0.432°C | Lower |
| 2005 | 0.48°C | 75.00%
| 0.479°C | Lower |
| 2006 | 0.45°C | 50.00%
| 0.422°C | Lower |
| 2007 | 0.49°C | 75.00%
| 0.402°C | Lower |
| 2008 | 0.37°C | -
| 0.325°C | Lower |
| 2009 | >0.4°C | -
| 0.438°C | Higher |
| |
| | |
Available data on Met Office global temperature predictions show
them to be consistently high
*Taking eg 2000, this should be read as: "the Met office"
predict with more than 80% confidence that the temperature will
be higher than 0.33C above the 1960-91 average. At 0.24C
the global temperature was lower.
**Reported historic temperature figures have changed (yet again)
since this table was originally compiled in 2008 so figures
are indicative. However the overall result, a failure to predict
the climate, remains the same
IMPLICATIONS OF
THE DISCLOSURES
FOR THE
INTEGRITY OF
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?—ORGANISATIONAL
Group think
(7) Groupthink: a mode of thinking that people engage
in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when
the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation
to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. 2
Causes of Groupthink
(8) Highly cohesive and isolated groups like the CRU
often develop what is known as groupthink. The cohesiveness which
can be so beneficial in unifying the organisation, takes control.
This creates a culture actively hostile to the diversity and self-questioning
that forces normal organisations to respect wider social norms
such as the openness and honesty that is the hallmark of good
science. The closer the group members are in outlook, the less
likely they are to raise questions that might break their cohesion.
The greater the stress on the organisation, the greater the pressure
on individuals to toe the line. According to Janis3, group cohesion
can lead to groupthink if:
— Structural faults in the organization exist: insulation
of the group, lack of tradition of impartial leadership, lack
of norms requiring methodological procedures, homogeneity of members'
social background and ideology.
— Provocative situational context exists: high stress
from external threats, recent failures, excessive difficulties
on the decision-making task, moral dilemmas.
(9) Social psychologist Clark McCauley's4 gives
three conditions for groupthink to occur:
— Homogeneity of members' social background and ideology.
— Isolation of the group from outside sources of information
and analysis.
(10) The CRU emails show us an insulated group, both
geographically and scientifically, lacking a leadership embracing
the scientific traditions of openness and impartiality. The members
of the community are all very alike in view, background and ideology.
The lack of any recent warming clearly caused huge stress on this
group and many references to resisting FOI requests (illegally)
clearly demonstrates their inappropriate response to the "high
stress from external threats". All in all the emails show
us that:
the CRU met all the preconditions for the development of Groupthink.
The Dangers of Groupthink
(11) The Challenger Space shuttle disaster has been cited
as a case study of groupthink. Roger Boisjoly, the engineer who
warned about the effect of cold weather on the O-rings, argues
that the caucus which resulted in a recommendation to launch,
"constituted the unethical decision-making forum resulting
from intense customer intimidation." Groupthink and poor
organisational quality go together:
"The unrelenting pressure to meet the demands of an
accelerating flight schedule might have been adequately handled
by NASA if it had insisted upon the exactingly thorough procedures
that were its hallmark during the Apollo program. … Between
that period and 1986, however, the program became ineffective.
This loss of effectiveness seriously degraded the checks and balances
essential for maintaining flight safety."5
(12) The parallels between climate "science"
and Iraq should be obvious to anyone reading the torrent of news
stories on poor quality science: from glaciers falsely claimed
to be melting by 2035, to claims made by the IPCC being partly
based on information from many dissertations by Masters students,
in an uncanny similarity to the dodgy dossier:
"Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of an
intelligence dossier heralded by Colin Powell at the UN yesterday,
was copied from three different articles—one written by
a graduate student." (C4 6 February 2003)
THE KEY
LESSONS FROM
IRAQ
(13) The lessons we should learn from Iraq, were not
that those who held the opinion that Saddam had WMD were wrong
to hold those opinions given the evidence they had. It is that
they were wrong to state the certainty of their conclusion, wrong
to allow the politicisation of the evidential process and wrong
to have a myopic focus on finding evidence to support the political
imperative. These led to the exclusion of proper evaluation of
the null hypothesis (that Saddam may not have WMD), the exclusion
of those who were sceptical (such as Dr David Kelly) and the eventual
distortion of the evidence through what the public know as the
"sexing up of the dodgy dossier".
(14) The process of gathering evidence (in the civil
service) had to be separated from the political interpretation
and campaigning on that evidence. Impartial advice can only come
from impartial experts, and if experts are set, or allow themselves
to seek, political targets to find evidence that fits that target,
they become ingrained in the partial political world which contaminates
their impartiality.
A FAILED CULTURE
IN THE
CRU
(15) The CRU and the wider climate community exhibit
all the failings of the Iraq "dodgy dossier" saga. They
have tried to adapt the normal peer review processes, that are
an essential part of quality control in science, to suit their
purposes and override true peer review. The CRU has been actively
partial, loudly and vociferously hostile to those who did not
share its orthodoxy. Can a culture that actively endorses: "hiding
the decline" be trusted? What are its boundaries of acceptability?
What else might they do or have done? With the dodgy dossier on
Iraq the experts gathering the data seemed impartial and though
the data were "sexed up", the politicians (and aides)
did so knowing the "impartial" evidence of the experts.
In contrast, the climategate experts were the ones "sexing
up" the data before anyone else had the chance to see it.
These "scientists" were so partisan, they even ran an
enviro-political campaigning website called realclimate.com.
(16) Climate "science" at the UEA is part of
a wider culture of climate "science" that permits abysmal
quality of research when it supports the groupthink, and rejects
everything which does not fit their groupthink mentality: the
"voodoo science", the head of the IPCC labelled scientists
who pointed out errors in an IPCC report. (The IPCC falsely claimed
Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035).
"The other paper by MM** is just garbage. […]
I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report.
Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to
redefine what the peer-review literature is!" (Phil Jones
to Michael Mann Jul 8 16:30:16 2004)
"The two MM**s have been after the CRU station data
for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information
Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send
to anyone." (2/2/2005, Phil Jones to Michael Mann )
**thought to be McIntyre and McKitrick
IMPLICATIONS OF
THE DISCLOSURES
FOR THE
INTEGRITY OF
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?—SCIENTIFIC
(17) According to some the "science is settled",
clearly they know nothing about science, because even Newtonian
Mechanics, or well formulated theories on the ether have given
way in the face of scientific experimental evidence. Far from
being "settled" the "science" lacks credibility;
science stands or falls on the validity of its predictions, science
is inherently sceptical and, science is based on proof, not the
absence of proof. The absence of an alternative explanation for
the warming at the end of the 20th century doesn't prove the unsubstantiated
theory of man-made warming must be correct. Particularly given
the lack of public funds looking at alternatives, the lack of
integrity of those involved, and the wholesale failure of their
predictions.
…within a few years winter snowfall will become "a
very rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going to know
what snow is" (Dr David Viner of the CRU, Independent
20 March 2000)
Science Requires a Control, a Null Hypothesis
(18) In science, predictions are tested (not voted on),
and in order to ensure that our predictions are not happen-chance
coincidental changes, science has the concept of the "control"
or "null hypothesis". The statement of causality requires
more than just that two variables changed together, but that one
had to cause the other. It is not sufficient to say that A seems
to cause B, it must be true that B would not have happened except
for A. That is the reason for the control, the control has all
the same experimental conditions except the stimulus A, and in
order to assert that A caused B, B must have happened with A,
and it MUST NOT HAVE HAPPENED without A. And what is the control
for man-made global warming on earth? If extra-terrestrial factors
affected temperature would they affect Mars?
"for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen
carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous
year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress."6
The Null Hypothesis (Natural Variation) is Consistent with
Global Temperatures
(19) The null hypothesis of man-made global warming is
that the warming is natural7. As can be seen from the top left
plot, it is very easy to randomly produce a signal just like the
global temperature data.
(20) Normal variation in the climate before and after
CO2 levels rose have been around a tenths of a degree between
decades. Out of the 15 decades of recorded global temperature
data, we have seen a few runs of decades with warming, a few runs
of cooling, and then at the end of the 20th century we saw a run
of three decades of warming (1970s, 1980s, 1990s) followed by
a decade of pause. As can be seen from the various random sequences
it is highly likely that we will see a run of three decades of
warming or cooling in a random sequence of 15 warming/cooling
decades. Unless the warming in these decades far exceeded the
normal inter-decadal change in global temperatures, the mere fact
of three decades of warming is in itself entirely consistent with
the null hypothesis of natural variation. Indeed a similar warming
period occurred pre WWII.
(21) According to the IPCC8 long-term climatic variation
is dramatically higher than short-term variation. This means there
are natural increases & decreases in temperature over periods
of up to a century which are larger than the inter-decadal or
year to year variation. So there are natural long-term fluctuations
in the climate which may easily be misinterpreted as man-made
forcing on the climate. Such long term variation is perfectly
natural and present in all kinds of systems and there is no excuse
for "scientists" to suggest long-term fluctuations can
only be explained by external forcing. Another implication is
that long-term global forecasts are inherently more difficult
than short-term. Contrary to the protestations of the Met Office,
if they can't predict the climate even a year in advance, then
there's little chance of longer term forecasts being correct.
(22) To highlight the similarity of the global temperature
to natural noise, a section of 1/f noise (pink noise) is shown
with lines in blue modelling the yearly average and red the decadal
average. The section shown represents 200 years. It has been
selected from a noise sample equivalent to 2,000 years, being
the section most like the global temperature record in the first
150 years. The next 50 "years" shows the typical
pattern of temperature.
Noddy Science: Triple Glazing can't work
(23) We are told that CO2 must heat up the atmosphere
so the science is "unequivocal". This is bogus "Noddy
science". Similar hand-waving arguments suggest triple glazing
must be worse than the same window without the centre layer. Glass
has a much higher thermal conductivity than air, so, replacing
some insulating air with thermally conductive glass will reduce
the overall insulation. But, if the space between the two panes
of glass is sufficiently large to allow the air to move in a convective
cycle, convection dominates and the air, heated in contact with
the warm pane, rises due to convection and falls down the cold
pane, transferring its heat across the insulation gap. Contrary
to the "Noddy science", introducing a correctly spaced
central thermally conductive layer of glass, decreases heat loss.
Noddy Science: CO2 Warms the Planet?
(24) The complex bond structure within CO2 means
that it can readily absorb and emit radiation in the infra-red
(IR) band where thermal radiation is given off by a blackbody9 at
the temperature of the earth. Much of this IR is at wavelengths
at which other atmospheric constituents do not interact, so if
CO2 is exposed to a warmer surface like the earth, it will
absorb radiation that would otherwise pass through into the cold
of space AND likewise if CO2 is exposed to the cool of outer
space it will emit vast quantities of IR at wavelengths which
other gases cannot emit.
(25) When CO2 is present low in the atmosphere, it tends
to block transmission of these wavelengths into space and reduce
heat loss to space. When CO2 is present high in the atmosphere,
it helps emit IR, so causing cooling of the atmosphere acting
as a vector by which other gases can lose heat into space. Like
triple glazing, the system is complicated by the movement of air.
Air warmed at the surface naturally tends to rise above the majority
of the (blocking) atmosphere and it cannot descend until it has
cooled by the emission of IR into the cool of outer space. CO2 cooling
is as natural as CO2 warming, the atmosphere being a highly
dynamic and complex system: a natural cooling system taking heat
from the surface of the earth up into space via convective currents.
(26) Simple physics could suggest CO2 is a cooling gas
as easily as warming and "obvious" assertions must be
validated against real evidence, not the preconceptions of "scientists".
CO2 could impact the atmosphere in other ways: changes in
specific heat capacity, density, interaction with water droplets
and cloud formation. Other gases like water vapour also have their
effects. It would be wrong to say that increases in CO2 can
not affect the climate, but it is equally absurd, in such a complex
system, to say this or that effect must dominate in the absence
of the normal rigorous testing required by science.
TERMS OF
REFERENCE AND
SCOPE OF
THE INDEPENDENT
REVIEW ANNOUNCED
ON 3 DECEMBER
2009 BY UEA.
(27) In the eyes of most "sceptics", this is
a wholly partial review carried out by, and for, the Universities
who make so much money from their threats of Weather of Mass Destruction.
The only public faces of this review are the University Press
Release and the statement of the scope on the committee's own
website. Attempts to contact Sir Muir Russell have received no
reply. The findings will be the usual formula: "a few bad
eggs, but the science (and grant money) are safe". This review
seems to serve no real purpose except the PR of the University
to appear to be doing something. From the public's view, and from
the wider view of worldwide confidence in the output of the CRU,
this secretive internal review is most likely a waste of the time
of a good person like Sir Muir Russell.
CONCLUSION
(28) A precautionary principle is at the very heart of
science: science is inherently precautionary or sceptical about
claims or assertions until they are fully substantiated by the
evidence. The oft cited "precautionary principle" is
not part of science. It belongs in the realm of political policy
making based on science. It is policy makers, not scientists,
who must decide how and when to invoke the "precautionary
principle" not data-gathering scientists. But in climate
"science" the precautionary principle is being used
to force the public to accept bad, unsupported science unless
contrary evidence can be found. This is contrary to all the principles
of science forcing the burden of proof not on those making assertions
but on those who are sceptical of these assertions. This is wholly
unscientific, completely unacceptable by people claiming to be
scientists and smacks of a blatant attempt to use science to provide
a thin veneer of undeserved scientific respectability to hide
an enviro-political campaign dressed up as science.
(29) Whether or not one believes in man-made global warming,
we should all be able to trust the raw temperature data. If we
cannot trust those who are trusted with the raw data, we cannot
trust their many adjustments to the raw data. If we cannot trust
the adjusted data, we have no trustworthy figure on global temperature.
If we cannot trust the global temperature figures, we cannot draw
conclusions as to the effects of temperature change, and so, if
we cannot trust the raw data we simply cannot trust anything in
the area of climate "science".
(30) The evidence is key because although different experts
may interpret this evidence differently, we should all be able
to agree on the validity of the original data. Global temperature
data cannot be reproduced, there is no second chance to understand
the global temperature within our lifetime. By their own PR, the
climategate "scientists" have told us that there is
no issue more important, and certainly no more costly in terms
of public expenditure. They have raised their own status as keyholders
to the data to such importance that trillions of dollars are riding
on their integrity.
(31) But, for years, the reports of "sexing up"
the data in the area of climate "science" have been
legion: now those allegations have been found to stem from those
right at the centre of the subject in the CRU. They had not only
the means, the method, but as the emails show, they had the motive
to adjust the data.
(32) Whether or not they did what they did with the best
of intentions, the result of the actions of the CRU has been to
undermine the credibility of the basic climate data to such an
extent that no one really knows how much "man-made"
global warming is the result of their "adjustments"
(whose nature remain a mystery) or how much is real temperature
change. For those who believe that mankind is heating the globe,
for those like the CRU who say that there is no more important
issue facing mankind, their crime is all the worse: there is no
doubt that their failure to maintain due scientific impartiality
led in part to the failure of the Copenhagen conference and the
growing public scepticism on the subject.
NOTES AND
REFERENCES
1. http://www.iraqinquirydigest.org/?p=6286 Iraq Inquiry
2. One who uses the scientific method: the systematic pursuit
of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem,
the collection of data through observation and experiment, and
the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
3. Janis, Irving L. Victims of Groupthink. Boston. Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1972, page 9.
4. http://www.brynmawr.edu/psychology/McCauley1.html
5. Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle
Challenger Accident, Chapter 7.
6. Nasa Press Release 20 September 2005.
7. Strictly speaking the opposite of man-made warming is non-man-made
and not natural the difference being the possibility aliens-caused
warming.
8. IPCC climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical
Science Basis Figure 9.7. Comparison of variability as a function
of time scale of annual global mean temperatures (°C2 yr-1).
9. The term blackbody is a commonly used term in physics and
refers to the scientific concept of an "ideal" body
loosing energy (heat) by radiation. At the temperature of the
sun this "blackbody" radiation is in the visible spectrum.
At the temperature of the earth the main radiation is in the infra-red
band where CO2 has strong absorption and emission.
February 2010
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