What Integrity?

Gleick, P. H. et al.. 2010. Climate change and the integrity of science. Science. 328: 689 - 690. DOI: 10.1126/science.328.5979.689.

The May 7 issue of Science Magazine contains a letter deploring "the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular." [emphasis added] The two hundred and fifty-five signatories are members of the National Academy of Sciences, which is once again sticking an activist snout into the public's business. One would think that the folks at Science would want to maximize the letter's accessibility. Apparently not. You can't read it at their website unless you're a subscriber. Fortunately, The Guardian has published the full text, here reproduced with commentary: Original in bold; comments, in square [ ] brackets. A follow-up post will focus on the signatories.

"We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet."

["Assaults" presumably refers to the email scandal, commonly referred to as "Climategate," and to the furor that ensued. To dismiss the latter, which does include investigations — this site hopes there will more — of the principals, as "political" is misleading. What the emails reveal is a small group of scientists conniving to promote their own work and to silence their critics. Further revealed are conscious, coordinated efforts to mislead the readers of the journals in which they published, i.e. their fellow scientists, the agencies that funded their research and the general public. The emails further show the principals conspiring to resist Freedom of Information requests that were legitimate, not only in the legal sense, but also in the sense that the individuals making the requests had both a genuine interest in the scientific issues and the requisite skills necessary to re-analyze the data. In some instances, the requesters were arguably better equipped by virtue of temperament and training to analyze the data than the scientists themselves.

All of this was done at taxpayer expense and with the purpose of promoting policies that, whatever their merit (or lack thereof), carry an enormous price tag. It was not, in short, an edifying performance, being, to the contrary, despicable, counter to the general welfare and detrimental to science.

"But wait," as the man hawking housewares says in the commercial, "There's more!" One of the files, Harry_Read_Me.txt leaked by the Climategate "hacker" documents problems with the methods by which East Anglia scientists, more accurately, their graduate students, attempted to measure the earth's temperature. One does not, after all, simply grab hold of a large rectal thermometer and ask the old girl to bend over. They don't make them large enough; and if they did, she probably wouldn't. Nope. What one does is to piece together weather station records, thousands of them, from around the globe. Problem is the stations were never intended to function as part of a world-wide network capable of estimating the earth's average temperature to ±0.2° C. The stations move around; cities grow up around them; instrumentation changes and, LOL, their identity codes change. Writes "Harry," a programmer brought in to clean up the code,

"Now, I admit the lats and lons aren't spot on. But c'mon, what are the chances of them being different? The two year 2000s are almost identical.

0	-1550	12450	12	KURI BAY	AUSTRALIA	2000	2006	-999	-999.00
9420800	-1548	12452	29	KURI BAY	AUSTRALIA	1965	1992	-999	-999.00

"Or:

0	-1550	12810	11	WYNDHAM	AUSTRALIA	2000	2006	-999	-999.00
0	-1550	12820	11	WYNDHAM AERO	AUSTRALIA	2000	2006	-999	-999.00
9421400	-1549	12812	11	WYNDHAM POST OFFICE	AUSTRALIA	1968	2000	-999	-999.00
9421401	-1547	12810	20	WYNDHAM (WYNDHAM POR	AUSTRALIA	1898	1966	-999	-999.00

"Come On!! This is one station isn't it."

Over at The Strata-Sphere, A. J. Stata reproduced additional gems. Try this one:

"But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless ... ."

Most important, the stations don't always report. As a result, the scientists felt compelled, to adjust, to average and to interpolate. And did they ever! There was raw data, original data, adjusted data, gridded data — Lord knows what else. To compensate for the urban heat island (UHI) effect, older temperatures were reduced, the consequence in some (many? most?) cases being to increase the apparent warming. Even worse, missing records were replaced with "synthetic" data. Get that? Numbers were invented; "-999" became the average of "nearby" stations, where "nearby" could mean hundreds of miles away.

As Richard Brook observed,

"The complexity of the calculations, and the considerable element of human judgment ... leave the process wide open to error and bias. Thus, the final results may actually reflect, to one degree or another, no more than the opinions of the scientists producing them."

Brooks' assessment is mild. Not only was the methodology ad hoc, but the computer programs implementing it, poorly documented and "buggy." At one point in the log that records his efforts to sort things out, Harry remarks,

"Had a hunt and found an identically-named temperature database file which did include normals lines at the start of every station. How handy - naming two different files with exactly the same name and relying on their location to differentiate! Aaarrgghh!!"

Often, sometimes on purpose, run-time errors, the bane of programing, were not trapped for, with the consequence that programs could continue merrily on their way, generating garbage with no one the wiser. "So with a somewhat cynical shrug," writes Harry,

"I added the nuclear option — to [allow the user to] match every WMO [World Meteorological Organization] possible, and turn the rest into new stations ... . In other words what CRU [Climate Research Unit at East Anglia] usually do[es]. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad ..." [hat tip HJS]

In short, there is staggering contrast between the cocksure comportment of the Climategate principals and the mess on which they based their conclusions. Like the rooster cock-a-doodle-doing from the highest dung heap in the barnyard, these self-appointed lords of the manor — dare I say, "manure" — didn't look down.

John Tierny, writing in the New York Times ("all the news that fits, we print"), put it this way:

"While Harry’s log shows him worrying about the integrity of the database, the climate scientists are e-mailing one another with strategies for blocking outsiders’ legal requests to see their data.

"While Harry is puzzling over temperatures ... the scientists are confidently making proclamations to journalists ... and plotting revenge against those who question the dangers of global warming. When a journal publishes a skeptic’s paper, the scientists ... focus instead on retaliation against the journal and the editor ... ."

The thermometer record is one of the principal pillars on which rests the argument for anthropogenic warming (AGW), and the problem is, not that there is "some uncertainty," but that it is utterly unconvincing. What about the other pillars? Well, there's the models and there's paleoclimatology. Regarding the models, I will comment below. As to paleoclimatology, three considerations undercut using it to justify anything with real world consequences.

1. Reconstructions of climates past rely on proxy variables: tree ring widths, isotope ratios, etc., all of which can be influenced by multiple factors. As such, the view they provide of temperatures past is "through a glass darkly."


2. Trying to distinguish "signal" from "noise" led to the use of esoteric statistics — calculations of the 'lies, damned lies and statistics" kind. This, in turn, resulted in considerable wrangling regarding over the calculations' legitimacy, the brouhaha surrounding the hockey stick, being a noteworthy example. Based on his own experience, admittedly limited, the present author believes that such techniques should be used with caution. Better to put time and money into searching for proxies with higher signal to noise ratios.


3. Paleoclimatologists have not been above resorting to deception when the results don't go their way. "Mike's Nature trick" to hide the infamous "decline" — see Marc Sheppard's explication — is one example; replacement of the hockey stick in IPCC3 by the "spaghetti graph" in IPCC4 is another.
   

It is worth emphasizing that these considerations interrelate in multiple ways — see The Hockey Stick Illusion by A. W. Mountford.

Bottom line: The precautionary principle cuts both ways. Failure to base policy on what the NAS signatories characterize as "compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence," far from posing a "dangerous risk to the planet," will, in the short term, avert catastrophic damage to the world's economy and its human population. As to the consequences fifty or a hundred years down the road, only the Fellow Upstairs, by virtue of expertise and experience, is qualified to an opinion.]

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modelling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial— scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."

[This is sophistry. To equate AGW with the discoveries of Galileo etc. betrays cynicism on a truly grand scale. Who, but the ideologically committed, blinded by faith — see Botkin on "Global Warming Delusions" — would believe it? And let's get this straight. There are no potentially falsifying experiments. The models are "tuned," their parameters adjusted to fit the data already in hand. By the time predictions begin to fail, the modelers have a new set of models, better ones, they tell us, better because they are bigger, because they incorporate more processes, each of which requires more parameters to be estimated, more fudge factors to be adjusted. Moreover, the complexity of the models is such that it is impossible to understand their behavior mathematically. What the climate modelers offer humanity are models that can't be understood as substitute for a system that isn't understood. And for this, mankind pays — today, in treasure; tomorrow, in blood.

Historians of science have debated whether or not Eddington fudged his data in the famous experiment that confirmed General Relativity. The current opinion is that he did not. But the important point is that the theory could have been falsified. Had things worked out that way; had the theory failed, had Einstein been obliged to concoct a new one consistent with discordant observations, what would would have been been gained? A new hypothesis, nothing more. And that is the critical point. The climate models are hypotheses. What comes out of them are predictions, not results.

Right now, those predictions aren't doing very well. From 1970, to 1995, if you believe the folks at East Anglia, the forecasts seemed to be holding: Atmospheric carbon was on the rise, and so was temperature. Since then, [CO₂]_atm has continued to increase, while temperatures have stabilized. Natural variability? Apparently. Soon to be overwhelmed by continuing greenhouse gas accumulation, maybe yes, maybe no.]

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today's organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

[More sophistry. In the first place, the theories with which AGW is compared are well established. AGW is a far weaker hypothesis. Gorian sturm und drang to the contrary, there is no convincing evidence that humans are causing climate change, nor, for that matter, that contemporary climates are in any way extraordinary. Second, note the spin. What is known and what remains problematic are blended together. Take the "fact of evolution," what Darwin called "descent with modification." For this, the evidence is overwhelming and continues to accumulate. But the pattern, common descent, should be distinguished from the mechanism that produces it, and about that matter, hypotheses continue to come and go.

Even if one accepts the reality of late twentieth century warming, and that's a big "if," one is left with question as to "Why?" And, if the mechanism turns out to be other than AGW, what then? What if today's stabilized temperatures are harbingers of tomorrow's cooling? What if we reduce our capacity to produce energy and wake up one morning to find the glaciers once more advancing? I'll tell you what: Should the future bring ice, not fire, today's proponents of carbon abatement will hang from lamp posts — from which vantage they can contemplate a freezing, starving and, yes, vengeful humanity, whose misery will have been exacerbated by science in the service of ideology.]

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.

[Ah yes! The fabled thousands! But, as those familiar with the IPCC process know full well, the folks who write the reviews and those who write the literature on which the reviews are based are far fewer in number. And guess what? Surprise! Surprise! The folks who do the reviewing and the folks who do the research are often the same. Let's be clear. I'm not speaking of camp followers. I'm speaking of the Mann's, the Briffa's, the Jones's, etc. For it is on their shoulders that all else rests. Of course, there are thousands of others — mainly environmental scientists of one stripe or another — who piggyback on the process. I call these people "what-iffers;" they do "what if" studies: what are the consequences to X if the climate warms, where X is a species, a renewable resource, an ecological process, etc. Like the birds that follow army ants, "what-iffers" rely on beaters to flush out the next meal. In the case of the birds, the beaters are the ants, whose passage through the forest is marked by an eruption of insects leaping out of the foliage to escape being being devoured by the advancing column. In the case of "what-iffers," the beaters are climatologist fear mongers, who stir up taxpayer dollars. An acquaintance tells the following story: A prospective graduate student walked into her office announcing that he intended to study the consequences of global warming to some ecological process. "And if the climate cools?" my friend inquired. The student, unnerved by such heresy, mumbled something incoherent and fled.]

But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

[See above. See also recent studies supporting the reality of the Medieval Warm Period (hotter than now, but without concomitant elevations in [CO₂]_atm), and that of the Little Ice Age from which we are now recovering. See studies (below) suggesting that most of the late twentieth century warming may be artifactual (UHI). See studies suggesting the existence negative feedback (adaptive iris) omitted from most (all?) general circulation models (GCMs). See studies suggesting the importance of fluctuating solar output, etc.

With regard to UHI, Roy Spencer recently posted the graph shown at the right. Here, raw data are used to sort rates of twentieth century warming (° C / decade) by population density (persons / Km². Unsurprisingly, the least densely populated regions manifest the least warming, less than half than the 0.2 ° C / decade estimated by Jones. If one extrapolates the curve back to zero density, the estimate of the "true" warming is 0.06 ° C, less than a third of Jones' estimate and well within the range of observational error. Of course, this was posted on a blog — no peer review. We'll see if Spencer gets it past the lions defending the gate.If he doesn't, I'd like to read the reviews.

And note the spin. Evidence contrary to AGW is not a recent phenomenon. It has been emerging at a steady pace, the efforts of the Climategate correspondents to suppress it notwithstanding.]

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

[Studies of Pleistocene deglaciation suggest that increasing [CO₂]_atm follows, rather than precedes, increasing temperatures. To say that this is consistent with AGW is like arguing that lynx, by virtue of being predators, exert a negative effect on hare populations even were the latter to increase when there are more lynx. Were this the case — it's not, the example is hypothetical — one can imagine explanatory scenarios: maybe lynx eat other predators that prey on the hare; maybe lynx eat animals that compete with the hare for food. But they don't just eat "wabbits." Nor would assuming such allow you to predict the consequences of ordering a halt to the taking of lynx for their pelts.

Once again, note the spin: No significant warming for the past 10+ years — Jones now says since 1995 — and unpredicted in simulo, becomes "a snowy winter in Washington."]

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

[If one accepts the reality of past temperatures in excess of those currently observed, the correct conclusion is that increasing [CO₂]_atm isn't the principal driver of temperature.]

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

[This is a postulate, more accurately, the cardinal precept of AGW canon. For the past 10-15 years, temperatures have been stable, whereas [CO₂]_atm has continued to increase.]

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

[These and related claims are all subjects of dispute. Most recently, tropical upper ocean heat content appears to have declined precipitously. Regarding this observation, Roger Pielke Sr. writes as follows:

"An interesting question is to where this heat has gone. It could have moved north and south in the upper ocean, however, to the extent the sea surface temperature anomalies map to the upper ocean heat content, there is no evidence of large heat transfers except, perhaps, in the tropical Atlantic see [here].

The heat could have been transferred deeper into the ocean. However, if this is true, this heat would have been seen moving to lower levels, but, so far, there is no evidence of such a large vertical heat transfer.

The heat could, of course, be lost to space. This appears to be the most likely explanation." [Emphasis added.]

So we are back to my friend's question: "And if the climate cools?"]

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

[More what-iffing.]

Much more can be, and has been, said by the world's scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business- as-usual practices. We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.

[Two points: First. The world's scientific societies, etc. need to get out of the business of promoting policy and back to the business of doing science, which is figuring out how Nature works, as opposed to predicting the unpredictable. The climate system is the mother of all nonlinear dynamical systems. It is undoubtedly chaotic — where else could all those cycles: AO, PDO, etc., come from? And predicting the time evolution of chaotic systems is effectively impossible. Failure to get back to doing science will result in the scientific community's being perceived as what it has already become — another interest group sucking the public teat, concerned principally with the promotion of its own agenda: power, money, influence; power, money, influence; ... .

Second. The burning of fossil fuels is what makes civilization as we know it possible. Shut down the coal mines; stop the flow of oil and calamity is certain and immediate, not probable and not prospective.]

We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.

[Pulease! Whether or not the behavior of the Climagegate principals was illegal, it stinks to high Heaven. What they did, they did with taxpayer money. When you feast at the public trough, your business becomes public business. Neither the climatologists, nor the "what-iffers," etc., were forced to become scientist-activists. They did this on their own, worked hard at it and, having done so, became public figures subject to public scrutiny. As to the "good news," sober economic analysis suggests that if one accepts AGW premises, carbon abatement will achieve little beyond wrecking the world economy. The NAS signatories, being men and women of intelligence, one can only wonder if that isn't what they really want: consigning H. sapiens to his proper place, the diminution of his works and especially his numbers — go search on "Optimum Population" if you think that's a stretch.]

Adams, Robert McCormick, University of California, San Diego

Amasino, Richard M, University of Wisconsin

Anders, Edward, University of Chicago

Anderson, David J, California Institute of Technology

Anderson, Wyatt W, University of Georgia

Anselin, Luc E, Arizona State University

Arroyo, Mary Kalin, University of Chile

Asfaw, Berhane, Rift Valley Research Service

Ayala, Francisco J, University of California, Irvine

Bax, Adriaan, National Institutes of Health

Bebbington, Anthony J, University of Manchester

Bell, Gordon, Microsoft Research

Bennett, Michael V L, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Bennetzen, Jeffrey L, University of Georgia

Berenbaum, May R, University of Illinois

Berlin, Overton Brent, University of Georgia

Bjorkman, Pamela J, California Institute of Technology

Blackburn, Elizabeth, University of California, San Francisco

Blamont, Jacques E, Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales

Botchan, Michael R, University of California, Berkeley

Boyer, John S, University of Delaware

Boyle, Ed A, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Branton, Daniel, Harvard University

Briggs, Steven P, University of California, San Diego

Briggs, Winslow R, Carnegie Institution of Washington

Brill, Winston J, Winston J. Brill and Associates

Britten, Roy J, California Institute of Technology

Broecker, Wallace S, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University

Brown, James H, University of New Mexico

Brown, Patrick O, Stanford University School of Medicine

Brunger, Axel T, Stanford University

Cairns, Jr John, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Canfield, Donald E, University of Southern Denmark

Carpenter, Stephen R, University of Wisconsin

Carrington, James C, Oregon State University

Cashmore, Anthony R, University of Pennsylvania

Castilla, Juan Carlos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Cazenave, Anny, Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales

Chapin, III F, Stuart, University of Alaska

Ciechanover, Aaron J, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Clapham, David E, Harvard Medical School

Clark, William C, Harvard University

Clayton, Robert N, University of Chicago

Coe, Michael D, Yale University

Conwell, Esther M, University of Rochester

Cowling, Ellis B, North Carolina State University

Cowling, Richard M, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Cox, Charles S, University of California, San Diego

Croteau, Rodney B, Washington State University

Crothers, Donald M, Yale University

Crutzen, Paul J, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry

Daily, Gretchen C, Stanford University

Dalrymple, Brent G, Oregon State University

Dangl, Jeffrey L, University of North Carolina

Darst, Seth A, Rockefeller University

Davies, David R, National Institutes of Health

Davis, Margaret B, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

De Camilli, Pietro V, Yale University School of Medicine

Dean, Caroline, John Innes Centre

DeFries, Ruth S, Columbia University

Deisenhofer, Johann, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

Delmer, Deborah P, University of California, Davis

DeLong, Edward F, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

DeRosier, David J, Brandeis University

Diener, Theodor O, University of Maryland

Dirzo, Rodolfo, Stanford University

Dixon, Jack E, Howard Hughes Medical Center

Donoghue, Michael J, Yale University

Doolittle, Russell F, University of California, San Diego

Dunne, Thomas, University of California, Santa Barbara

Ehrlich, Paul R, Stanford University

Eisenstadt, Shmuel N, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Eisner, Thomas, Cornell University

Emanuel, Kerry A, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Englander, Walter S, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Ernst, W, G, Stanford University

Falkowski, Paul G, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey

Feher, George, University of California, San Diego

Ferejohn, John A, Stanford University

Fersht, Sir Alan, University of Cambridge

Fischer, Edmond H, University of Washington

Fischer, Robert, University of California, Berkeley

Flannery, Kent V, University of Michigan

Frank, Joachim, Columbia University

Frey, Perry A, University of Wisconsin

Fridovich, Irwin, Duke University Medical Center

Frieden, Carl, Washington University School of Medicine

Futuyma, Douglas J, Stony Brook University

Gardner, Wilford R, University of California, Berkeley

Garrett, Christopher J R, University of Victoria

Gilbert, Walter, Harvard University

Gleick, Peter H, Pacific Institute, Oakland [corresponding author]

Goldberg, Robert B, University of California, Los Angeles

Goodenough, Ward H, University of Pennsylvania

Goodman, Corey S, venBio, LLC

Goodman, Morris, Wayne State University School of Medicine

Greengard, Paul, Rockefeller University

Hake, Sarah, Agricultural Research Service

Hammel, Gene, University of California, Berkeley

Hanson, Susan, Clark University

Harrison, Stephen C, Harvard Medical School

Hart, Stanley R, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Hartl, Daniel L, Harvard University

Haselkorn, Robert, University of Chicago

Hawkes, Kristen, University of Utah

Hayes, John M, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Hille, Bertil, University of Washington

Hökfelt, Tomas, Karolinska Institutet

House, James S, University of Michigan

Hout, Michael, University of California, Berkeley

Hunten, Donald M, University of Arizona

Izquierdo, Ivan A, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul

Jagendorf, André T, Cornell University

Janzen, Daniel H, University of Pennsylvania

Jeanloz, Raymond, University of California, Berkeley

Jencks, Christopher S, Harvard University

Jury, William A, University of California, Riverside

Kaback, H Ronald, University of California, Los Angeles

Kailath, Thomas, Stanford University

Kay, Paul, International Computer Science Institute

Kay, Steve A, University of California, San Diego

Kennedy, Donald, Stanford University

Kerr, Allen, University of Adelaide

Kessler, Ronald C, Harvard Medical School

Khush, Gurdev S, University of California, Davis

Kieffer, Susan W, University of Illinois

Kirch, Patrick V, University of California, Berkeley

Kirk, Kent C, University of Wisconsin

Kivelson, Margaret G, University of California, Los Angeles

Klinman, Judith P, University of California, Berkeley

Klug, Sir Aaron, Medical Research Council

Knopoff, Leon, University of California, Los Angeles

Kornberg, Sir Hans, Boston University

Kutzbach, John E, University of Wisconsin

Lagarias, J Clark, University of California, Davis

Lambeck, Kurt, Australian National University

Landy, Arthur, Brown University

Langmuir, Charles H, Harvard University

Larkins, Brian A, University of Arizona

Le Pichon, Xavier T, College de France

Lenski, Richard E, Michigan State University

Leopold, Estella B, University of Washington

Levin, Simon A, Princeton University

Levitt, Michael, Stanford University School of Medicine

Likens, Gene E, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Lippincott-Schwartz, Jennifer, National Institutes of Health

Lorand, Laszlo, Northwestern University

Lovejoy, Owen C, Kent State University

Lynch, Michael, Indiana University

Mabogunje, Akin L, Foundation for Development and Environmental Initiatives

Malone, Thomas F, North Carolina State University

Manabe, Syukuro, Princeton University

Marcus, Joyce, University of Michigan

Massey, Douglas S, Princeton University

McWilliams, Jim C, University of California, Los Angeles

Medina, Ernesto, Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research

Melosh, Jay H, Purdue University

Meltzer, David J, Southern Methodist University

Michener, Charles D, University of Kansas

Miles, Edward L, University of Washington

Mooney, Harold A, Stanford University

Moore, Peter B, Yale University

Morel, Francois M M, Princeton University

Mosley-Thompson, Ellen, Ohio State University

Moss, Bernard, National Institutes of Health

Munk, Walter H, University of California, San Diego

Myers, Norman, University of Oxford

Nair, Balakrish G, National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases

Nathans, Jeremy, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Nester, Eugene W, University of Washington

Nicoll, Roger A, University of California, San Francisco

Novick, Richard P, New York University School of Medicine

O'Connell, James F, University of Utah

Olsen, Paul E, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University

Opdyke, Neil D, University of Florida

Oster, George F, University of California, Berkeley

Ostrom, Elinor, Indiana University

Pace, Norman R, University of Colorado

Paine, Robert T, University of Washington

Palmiter, Richard D, University of Washington School of Medicine

Pedlosky, Joseph, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Petsko, Gregory A, Brandeis University

Pettengill, Gordon H, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Philander, George S, Princeton University

Piperno, Dolores R, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Pollard, Thomas D, Yale University

Price Jr. Buford P, University of California, Berkeley

Reichard, Peter A, Karolinska Institutet

Reskin, Barbara F, University of Washington

Ricklefs, Robert E, University of Missouri

Rivest, Ronald L, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Roberts, John D, California Institute of Technology

Romney, Kimball A, University of California, Irvine

Rossmann, Michael G, Purdue University

Russell, David W, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center of Dallas

Rutter, William J, Synergenics, LLC

Sabloff, Jeremy A, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology

Sagdeev, Roald Z, University of Maryland

Sahlins, Marshall D, University of Chicago

Salmond, Anne, University of Auckland

Sanes, Joshua R, Harvard University

Schekman, Randy, University of California, Berkeley

Schellnhuber, John, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Schindler, David W, University of Alberta

Schmitt, Johanna, Brown University

Schneider, Stephen H, Woods Institute for the Environment

Schramm, Vern L, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Sederoff Ronald R, North Carolina State University

Shatz, Carla J, Stanford University

Sherman, Fred, University of Rochester Medical Center

Sidman, Richard L, Harvard Medical School

Sieh, Kerry, Nanyang Technological University

Simons, Elwyn L, Duke University Lemur Center

Singer, Burton H, Princeton University

Singer, Maxine F, Carnegie Institution of Washington

Skyrms, Brian, University of California, Irvine

Sleep, Norman H, Stanford University

Smith, Bruce D, Smithsonian Institution

Snyder, Solomon H, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Sokal, Robert R, Stony Brook University

Spencer, Charles S, American Museum of Natural History

Steitz, Thomas A, Yale University

Strier, Karen B, University of Wisconsin

Südhof, Thomas C, Stanford University School of Medicine

Taylor, Susan S, University of California, San Diego

Terborgh, John, Duke University

Thomas, David Hurst, American Museum of Natural History

Thompson, Lonnie G, Ohio State University

Tjian, Robert T, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Turner, Monica G, University of Wisconsin

Uyeda, Seiya, Tokai University

Valentine, James W, University of California, Berkeley

Valentine, Joan Selverstone, University of California, Los Angeles

Van Etten, James L, University of Nebraska

Van Holde, Kensal E, Oregon State University

Vaughan, Martha, National Institutes of Health

Verba Sidney, Harvard University

Von Hippel, Peter H, University of Oregon

Wake, David B, University of California, Berkeley

Walker, Alan, Pennsylvania State University

Walker John E, Medical Research Council

Watson, Bruce E, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Watson, Patty Jo, Washington University, St. Louis

Weigel, Detlef, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology

Wessler, Susan R, University of Georgia

West-Eberhard, Mary Jane, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

White, Tim D, University of California, Berkeley

Wilson, William Julius, Harvard University

Wolfenden, Richard V, University of North Carolina

Wood, John A, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Woodwell, George M, Woods Hole Research Center

Wright, Jr Herbert E, University of Minnesota

Wu, Carl, National Institutes of Health

Wunsch, Carl, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Zoback, Mary Lou, Risk Management Solutions, Inc

Note.

1. The signatories are all members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences but are not speaking on its behalf. [Signatory affiliations, originally available as a supporting document, added by The Guardian, along with links to signatory web pages — hat tip.]

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ClimateGate Gleanings III: Maybe Religion.

John Ray, the "father of English natural history," believed that the wisdom of the Creator could be comprehended by studying His Creation. Today, the John Ray Initiative seeks "to bring together scientific and Christian understandings of the environment in a way that can be widely communicated and lead to effective action."

Onward Christian Soldiers. Tim Mitchell was one of the graduate students at East Anglia responsible for the code discussed in the Harry_Read_Me file. As sleuthed by "Wearedoomed" (post # 832 at Tickerforum.org), Mitchell is a devout Christian who believes that doing the Lord's work necessitates participation in the fight against Global Warming. In an article published in Evangelicals Now, he wrote as follows:

"What can individual Christians do? ... [W]e all have the vote, and environmental issues ought to be among those that we weigh up carefully before casting our vote. We are also each responsible for a small part of the daily emissions of greenhouse gases. ... The government urges us to reduce our energy usage so that we may indulge ourselves in other ways, but we have a higher motive for reducing waste (1 Timothy 6.17-19). ... [H]uman pollution is clearly another of the birth pangs of creation, as it eagerly awaits being delivered from the bondage of corruption (Romans. 19-22)." [Emphasis added]

That was back in 2000, and the article identifies its author as working "at the Climatic Research Unit, UEA, Norwich." Mitchell continued to publish in Evangelicals Now. In 2001, the identification changes to "Dr. Tim Mitchell, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research;" in August, 2004, to "Dr. Tim Mitchell, Climate Scientist;" in July of 2006, to "Dr. Tim Mitchell, formerly a scientist, now a student at LTS [London Theological Seminary (evangelical)]" and later that year, to "Dr. Tim Mitchell, Highbury Baptist Church." Evidently, Mitchell received his Ph.D. in 2001, worked at CRU for several years, probably as a post-doc, and then abandoned climatology in favor of a higher calling.

Immediate Controls. In 1997, Mitchell promoted a statement calling for immediate controls on carbon emissions. To Tom Wigley he sent the following request:

"Attached ... is a Statement, the purpose of which is to bolster or increase governmental and public support for controls of emissions of greenhouse gases in European and other industrialised countries in the negotiations during the Kyoto Climate Conference in December 1997. The Statement was drafted by a number of prominent European scientists concerned with the climate issue, eleven of whom are listed after the Statement and who are acting as formal sponsors of the Statement."

In Wigley, Mitchell apparently hoped to find a supporter for speedy action, and, in this, he would be disappointed. "Dear Eleven," Wigley wrote (Email - 880476729.txt) the statement's authors in a letter copied to Mitchell,

"I was very disturbed by your recent letter, and your attempt to get others to endorse it. Not only do I disagree with the content of this letter, but I also believe that you have severely distorted the IPCC 'view' when you say that 'the latest IPCC assessment makes a convincing economic case for immediate control of emissions.' In contrast to the one-sided opinion expressed in your letter, IPCC WGIII SAR and TP3 review the literature and the issues in a balanced way presenting arguments in support of both "immediate control" and the spectrum of more cost-effective options. It is not IPCC's role to make "convincing cases" for any particular policy option; nor does it. However, most IPCC readers would draw the conclusion that the balance of economic evidence favors the emissions trajectories given in the WRE paper. This is contrary to your statement." [Emphasis added].

One is tempted to say "bully for Wigley," until one remembers that, like the other Climategate principals, he wore multiple hats: scientist, IPCC poohbah, Lord knows what else.

Ironically, Wigley's present-day enthusiasm for the IPCC 's prescriptions is decidedly tepid. A decade after the exchange with Mitchell, he would argue (Pielke, R. Jr., Wigley, T. and C. Green. 2008. Dangerous assumptions. Nature. 452: 531-532.) that the IPCC had greatly understated the difficulties in achieving meaningful carbon reduction. Had this opinion already begun to form in 1997? And if so, was Mitchell aware of it? If yes to both questions, the latter's decision to approach Wigley would be explained.

The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation. Tim Mitchell isn't the only environmentalist inspired by Christian Faith. Another such individual is Sir John T. Houghton, presently chairman of The John Ray Initiative. JRI describes itself as "an educational charity with a vision to bring together scientific and Christian understandings of the environment in a way that can be widely communicated and lead to effective action." Houghton, a former professor of atmpspheric physics at Oxford, was the lead author of three IPCC reports and the former chief executive officer of the Met Office, which organization's "warm, warmer, warmest" forecasts were recently reviewed by Richard North. "From a fuddy-duddy organisation created in 1854 to provide a service to mariners, and then aviators when the aeroplane was invented," North writes, "the Met Office ... has since transmuted into a powerful advocacy unit that sees its main mission to convince the world that we are prey to 'dangerous climate change'. Much of this," North continues,

"is down [sic] to one man - John Houghton (now Sir John) who was the director-general and later chief executive of the Met Office between 1983 and 1991.

"It was he, way back in 1988, who attended the first World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in Toronto and later became the first scientific chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"It was Houghton who, with one of her senior advisers, Sir Crispin Tickell, convinced the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to fund a new Met Office unit called the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. Opened in 1990, it is now based in Exeter and employs more than 200 staff, having become a temple to what many regard as the climate change 'religion'."

Houghton's take on climate change and the need for theologically-inspired activism is summarized in "An Urgent Call to Prayer" issued by himself and the Bishop of Liverpool. "There is therefore an inescapable moral imperative," they write,

"for rich countries to avoid further damage by rapidly reducing their carbon emissions and to share their wealth and skills with developing countries to enable them to adapt to climate change and to build their economies sustainably."

There follows discussion of the need to limit the rise in world temperatures to 2 deg. C., condemnation of America's lack of leadership and a consensus-view summary of the consequences of failing to act:

"By the second half of this century, there could be hundreds of millions of environmental refugees whose homes are no longer habitable either because of rising sea level, gross flooding or persistent drought. The impact on the world’s ecosystems will also be large. Many species are already threatened by the destruction of tropical forests; climate change is adding to this. Millions of species are likely to be lost in the coming decades. Even if the global average temperature rise is contained below 2 deg C the damages are likely to be serious. Above that target level, the damages will be increasingly more devastating in many parts of the world."

Nowhere in any of this is there mention of the chance that mainline climate scientists might just possibly have it wrong, of the fact that the last 8-15 (depending on how you count) years of stable / cooling temperatures were unpredicted in simulo, of the uncertainties surrounding paleo-temperature reconstructions, etc. Indeed, the authors' religious fervor is exceeded only by their faith in the infallibility of contemporary science.

Worth noting is the fact that JRI and its contributors do not shy from getting down to brass tacks. A recent post on their Forum Page links to Climate Prayer on Twitter, from which, I reproduce the following:

"Pray for a good energy & climate bill in US in 2010. Can loving our neighbours trump politics?"

"Pray birders realise impact climate change will have on birds. 'Some will run out of habitat'"

"Pray asset managers understand climate risks when investing. Report says many don't."

"UK government offers scrappage deal on household boilers. Pray many get new efficient boilers."

"Indonesia - 3rd biggest CO2 emitter - says will cut emissions by tree-planting. Pray their sums are right."

Amusing to this author is an exhortation to "Pray for China to take climate seriously." That the "60 year snow record," to which this suggestion also refers, may be a harbinger of things frigid to come seems not to have occurred to the supplicant.

Considerably less cause for mirth is the hope for a "good energy & climate bill in US." By this is meant legislation that cripples the American economy, puts millions out of work and, as I have written elsewhere, consigns the old and the infirm, to the mercies of Sarah Palin's "death panels." Already, pensioners in England are burning books to keep warm, the per pound cost of the printed word, at least when purchased second hand, being less than that of coal. And this circumstance, these people seek to export to "the Colonies" — thank you very much!

JRI takes its inspiration from the notion of "stewardship." As stewards of the earth, they believe, humanity has an obligation protect God's Creation — to leave the planet, if not in its pre-human condition, then at least as we, the present generation, found it. The earth in their view is a garden, which must be tended. "The Genesis stories," they write, "contain a beautiful description of this partnership when they speak of God ‘walking in the garden in the cool of the day’ (Genesis 3.8). We may wonder what God and Adam and Eve talked about on those evening walks. They would surely have talked about the garden and how humans were getting on finding out about it and caring for it." [Emphasis added]

A Supernatural Punisher. Whereas Mitchell and Houghton appeal to our better natures, Robert May contemplates the need for a harsher tack. May is the Baron of Oxford, the former Chief Science Advisor to her Majesty’s Government, former President of the Royal Society, current President of the British Science Association, etc. Arguably – they don’t do polls on this sort of thing – he is the best known and most influential scientist in Britain. By training a mathematical physicist, May switched fields in the early nineteen-seventies, thereafter becoming one of the world’s pre-eminent theoretical ecologists. More recently, he has been out-spoken on the issue of climate change, in which regard he holds human activity responsible for late twentieth century warming. Like other warmists, May predicts catastrophic environmental collapse absent the stabilization of atmospheric carbon.

Unlike, Mitchell et al., May is a self-proclaimed atheist: "I think I was eight years old," he reminisced, "when I first encountered, and was disturbed by, the biblical injunction, relating to the doubting St Thomas: 'blessed is he that seeth not, yet believeth'." May detests resurgent fundamentalism, which he regards as a threat to civilization generally, to the fruits of The Enlightenment, in particular. Nonetheless, as reported in the press, he has recently pondered the possibility that organized religion might be usefully enlisted to help make the world green."

"Religious leaders should play a frontline role in mobilising people to take action against global warming … [R]eligious groups could use their influence to motivate believers into reducing the environmental impact of their lives. The international reach of faith-based organisations and their authoritarian structures give religious groups an almost unrivalled ability to encourage a large proportion of the world's population to go green … ." [Ian Sample, The Guardian (7 September, 2009)] [Emphasis added]"

"Lord May ... said religion may have helped protect human society from itself in the past and it may be needed again. … [T]he committed atheist said … the world was on a ‘calamitous trajectory’ brought on by its failure to co-ordinate measures against global warming. ‘Maybe religion is needed,’ said Lord May … . ‘A supernatural punisher may be part of the solution. … Given that punishment is a useful mechanism, how much more effective … if you invested that power … [in] an all-seeing, all powerful deity … . Such a system would be ‘immensely stabilising.’" [Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph. (7 September, 2009)] [Emphasis added]

There are three reasons why May's views merit careful consideration and serious concern.

1. He is terribly well connected, politically adroit and a prime mover in the world of science. When May speaks, others listen. More importantly, what he says usually represents the views of the community, dare I say, cabal, of elite scientists who control which papers get published in prestige journals such as Nature, and, more generally, which opinions are deemed "respectable." Like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, scientists "move in herds." People like May, to a far greater extent than most on the outside imagine, determine whither the herds tend.
   


2. He is no fool. The policies he endorses will cause pain, suffering and death on a planetary scale. His ruminations on controlling peoples actions via fear of a wrathful God should therefore serve as a wake-up call for just what the environmentalist community has in mind.
   
   Recently, Stehr and von Storch have written about the impatience with which climate scientists view the democratic process:
   

   "Within the broad field of climatology and climate policy one is able to discern growing concerns about the virtues of democracy. It is not just the deep divide between knowledge and action that is at issue, but it is an inconvenient democracy, which is identified as the culprit holding back action on climate change. As Mike Hulme [director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research and one of the Climategate correspondents] has noted, it can be frustrating to learn that citizens have minds of their own." [Emphasis added]

   Stehr and von Storch identify specific calls for carbon abatement policies by authoritarian fiat. Thus, while May mulls persuasion via the pulpit, important climatologists prefer the counsel of Smith and Wesson.
   


3. The most important reason for taking May's words to heart is that they indicate the environmental movement's fallback position if the evidence goes against anthropogenic warming. In two recent addresses, the first to Autralia's Lowy Institute Institute for International Policy, the second to the British Science Association, May argues that climate change is a "multiplier" that exacerbates a more fundamental problem, which is that mankind's current "ecological footprint" exceeds the earth's biological capacity. "I find it astonishing," he writes
   

   "that more than half the atoms of nitrogen, and also of phosphorus, incorporated into green plants today come from artificial fertilisers (produced with a fossil fuel energy subsidies) rather than the natural biogeochemical cycles which constructed, and which struggle to maintain, the biosphere." [Emphasis added]

   "The planet’s biological capacity," he continues,

   "ultimately depends on the number of people multiplied by the average per capita footprint. It could thus correspond to more people each casting a smaller footprint, or alternatively to fewer people with larger footprints." [Emphasis added]
   

The alternatives (not mutually exclusive) that follow from May's analysis boil down to impoverishment (reduced per capita consumption), limits to procreation (reduced recruitment of newborns) and murder (accelerated losses, of the elderly and the infirm, for starters).

Coming soon to a planet near you. The environmental movement's real prescription for "sustainability."

Optimum Population. If the foregoing sounds extreme, check out the Optimum Population Trust [OPT]'s website. Here, we find the following:

"For a 'modest' world footprint of 3.3 gha/cap [global hectares per individual] (without allowances for biodiversity or change of biocapacity), the maximum sustainable population is 3.4 billion; the optimum population would be around 3 billion." [Emphasis added]

Of course, OPT would allow for biodiversity, but, on the scale being considered, that is a triviality. The principal point is this: Currently, the world's population is something in excess of 6 billion, and it will rise to around 9 billion by 2050 before beginning a slow decline in response to diminished fertility. What OPT is calling for is thus a two thirds reduction in the human population that will obtain absent intervention or catastrophe. For the present, I leave it as an exercise to calculate just how such a reduction might be obtained. But the qualitative conclusion is that, in the short-term (which I take to be decades), human numbers can only be reduced to such an extent by dramatic reductions in fertility and / or increases in mortality. Even though world fertility has now dropped below replacement levels, the simple fact is that humans live too long for natural mortality to do the trick on the time scale of interest.

This is the conclusion that few dare to speak, save by allusion to the need for third world "family planning." That it is nonetheless widely held, I would argue, explains much. It is the reason, I believe, environmentalists are untroubled by the possibility that climate scientists may be wrong, the reason they are are undismayed by the scandals of malaria control and prospective health care rationing, the reason they are uninterested in the use of nuclear energy. The countering arguments of course, speak to other things: scientific consensus, environmental degradation, etc. But the unstated commonality is that the diminution of humanity's numbers, by whatever means, is, in their view, a step in the right direction. Significantly, China is already demanding monetary compensation for souls not born — the result of its one child policy.

"'As a result of the family planning policy, China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year,' Zhao [Vice-Minister of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission] said."

The next step down this road is the valuation (in global hectares, of course) of "life years" and monetary reward for their abbreviation. God save us all!

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