Jasper Kirby explains the possible relationship between cosmic rays causing cloud condensation nuclei and the cloud albedo effect on temperature
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
CME Coronal Mass Ejection
A large solar flare seen on the sun on the 1st August 2010 has just hit the earth (3/4th August).
These sudden increases in the solar wind have the effect of temporarily depressing the amount of galactic cosmic radiation reaching the earth. The galactic radiation increases cloud condensation nucei and therefore cloud formation particularly over the oceans which has a cooling effect because of increased albedo.
When the formation of these cloud condensation nuclei is temporarily interrupted due to an increase in solar wind there is less cloudiness and therefore higher temperatures on earth it is hypothesised.
It would be interesting to see whether this latest “Forbush” event will result in an observable increase in temperature. This is the sort of empirical observation that climatologists should be studying. Sadly they are not, at least the IPCC hacks are not. It is astrophysicists and the like who are currently keeping this little flame of genuine scientific enquiry alive.
Brought you courtesy of ItstheSunStupid Department.
These sudden increases in the solar wind have the effect of temporarily depressing the amount of galactic cosmic radiation reaching the earth. The galactic radiation increases cloud condensation nucei and therefore cloud formation particularly over the oceans which has a cooling effect because of increased albedo.
When the formation of these cloud condensation nuclei is temporarily interrupted due to an increase in solar wind there is less cloudiness and therefore higher temperatures on earth it is hypothesised.
It would be interesting to see whether this latest “Forbush” event will result in an observable increase in temperature. This is the sort of empirical observation that climatologists should be studying. Sadly they are not, at least the IPCC hacks are not. It is astrophysicists and the like who are currently keeping this little flame of genuine scientific enquiry alive.
Brought you courtesy of ItstheSunStupid Department.
US ENERY BILL IS DEAD ON ARRIVAL IN SENATE
"Senate Democrats on Tuesday 3rd August 2010 abandoned all hopes of passing even a slimmed-down energy bill before they adjourn for the summer recess, saying that they did not have sufficient votes even for legislation tailored narrowly to respond to the Gulf oil spill.
Although the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, sought to blame Republicans for sinking the energy measure, the reality is that Democrats are also divided over how to proceed on the issue and had long ago given up hope of a comprehensive bill to address climate change."
Can it be that there is a tiny glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel that the world is coming to its senses re the AGW juggernaut scam?
I sincerely hope so.
Although the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, sought to blame Republicans for sinking the energy measure, the reality is that Democrats are also divided over how to proceed on the issue and had long ago given up hope of a comprehensive bill to address climate change."
Can it be that there is a tiny glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel that the world is coming to its senses re the AGW juggernaut scam?
I sincerely hope so.
-------
So, the EPA is left to pick up “climate change” via the Clean Air Legislation where Congress dropped the debate
David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin in the Washingtom Post
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con....0306366_pf.html
David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin in the Washingtom Post
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con....0306366_pf.html
Monday, 2 August 2010
I posted this message today on the BBC's Word of Mouth Board
| I would like to draw the attention of this board’s wordsmiths to something which I find interesting in the BBC's reporting of the recent floods in the North West Frontier District of Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was away on holiday last week and not following the news at all so the first I heard of the disaster was on the radio4 1 pm news yesterday Sunday 1st August. On this programme the lead statement was that the floods were “the worst in Pakistan’s history”. Later, on the radio4 10pm News this, to my mind, very peculiarly phrased statement, was replaced by “the worst for several decades” by the newsreader and Lyse Ducet later in the same bulletin described it as the “worst in a generation”. Having looked to see what other statement in this litany of misinformation might be on offer from the BBC I found “the worst in lving memory” on the BBC News web page here. www.bbc.co.uk/news/w... You can find the matter of the “timescale” raised here and discussed in some detail. www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mb... Since we are in an era of extreme sensitivity to the nuances of reporting weather because of the implications of what are now routinely called “extreme weather events” for the purported Anthrpogenic Global Warming scenario, I find this sloppy mish-mash of statements from the BBC (ALL of them wrong, as far as I can see) extraordinary. In fact the first statement I heard seemed positively designed to mislead. Did the news-writers (yes, indeed, some “creative writing" is clearly happening here) mean to say: 1) 1947, the date Pakistan’s ‘history” began, or 2) did they mean the slightly more precise “several decades” ( 20 to 40 years, say?) or 3) did they mean the “generational" space between a mother’s birth and the birth of her first grandchild which is very short, as we know, in that neck of the woods or 4) did they mean within the personal memory of the most ancient elder in the village, which could be almost a century, say? Is the BBC incapable of accurate research into the matter of frequency of severe floods in this region? Or do they think ANY statement about a disaster is as good as any other? I found the following level-headed report within a few seconds of googling “Pakistan history of flooding” here http://www.southasianfloods.icimod.org/contents.php?country_code=PK&c_id=11 Floods have been recognized as a major natural calamity and the country has a long history of flooding from the Indus river and its tributaries. Floods of 1928, 29, 55, 57, 59, 73, 76, 88, 92, 95, 96 & that of 1997 are the sad yet memorable events entailing tremendous damages to the life and property. A little further googling informs me that several other factors are also implicated in the perception and retailing of the severity of the flooding - first, the size of the population affected which is ever increasing within the same area and second, the response of the government to the emergency. Natural disasters happen but it is how they are dealt with that leaves the memory of just how disastrous they really were. We have here shades of the Hurricane Katrina Disaster, another “extreme weather event” laid by climate alarmists at the door of AGW. The damage was excessive certainly, but why? Because New Orleans city planners permitted the city to grow and grow in size and population on below sea-level land, protected only by ill-maintained levées. Hurricane severity is now routinely assessed in financial terms (claims on the Insurance Industry) rather than by actual climatic variables. Hurricane Katrina was nothing special as hurricanes go. It was the place it made landfall that was special, and the inadequacy of the subsequent response of Government of the richest country on earth. In the North West Frontier we have something similar affecting the perception of “severity”. Severe floods in this region are, sadly, rather common. What is different over time, whether it be in “Pakistan’s history”, or in time measured in “decades”, “generations” or “living memory” is that ever MORE people are affected by them due to population growth and ever MORE property damage is done because even this poor country is getting richer over time. The inadequacy of the response by a government famed for its incompetence, corruption and veniality will also play a part in the perception of the "severity" of this particular flood. I would hate to see poor old AGW getting it in the neck again for this latest installment of the region’s natural disasters so this post is something of a pre-emptive defense of Mother Nature and an attack on the BBC and Reuters, AP etc for sloppy use of alarmist rhetoric. The floods in Pakistan are bad but they should not become a source of unfounded alarm for the rest of us. That’s all today from the VocabularySection of the WeatherisnotClimateDepartment, folks. Cheerio. 00000000000 Yesterday I started a discussion on the same subject on the BBC Science Board, here http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio4/F2766778?thread=7660137&skip=0&show=20#p98975272 |
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Raw, cooked and Homogenised and ! don't mean milk
Saw this just now which sums up a lot of the criticisms of the global databases.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/07/20/demet....ing/#more-11488
Craig Loehle
Posted Jul 21, 2010 at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Reply
IF data homogenization/cleaning were done with publicly available codes, it might be ok to prefer the cleaned up data. However, in too many cases the “fixes” have turned out to be nonsense.
Early versions of the Hadley data claimed that they adjusted their data by eye.
We have seen GISS “adjust” perfectly good rural stations based on urban ones.
“Adjusted” and “homogenized” data end up having a bigger trend than pure rural stations.
The urban heat island effect is claimed to have been removed from the global data (GISS) or to be ignored (Hadley) when clearly it has not been removed and can not be ignored.
Rural stations have been dropping out of the database (the great dying of thermometers) (even though the stations still exist in most cases) and it is pretended that this can’t have any effect. etc.
In paleoclimate studies, we have seen evidence ignored that strip barks pines have anomalous growth , Tiljander proxies used upside down, lat-long locations transposed, and these errors are never acknowledged or fixed.
So people are not happy with the adjustments and would really like to see what is going on, in detail.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/07/20/demet....ing/#more-11488
Craig Loehle
Posted Jul 21, 2010 at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Reply
IF data homogenization/cleaning were done with publicly available codes, it might be ok to prefer the cleaned up data. However, in too many cases the “fixes” have turned out to be nonsense.
Early versions of the Hadley data claimed that they adjusted their data by eye.
We have seen GISS “adjust” perfectly good rural stations based on urban ones.
“Adjusted” and “homogenized” data end up having a bigger trend than pure rural stations.
The urban heat island effect is claimed to have been removed from the global data (GISS) or to be ignored (Hadley) when clearly it has not been removed and can not be ignored.
Rural stations have been dropping out of the database (the great dying of thermometers) (even though the stations still exist in most cases) and it is pretended that this can’t have any effect. etc.
In paleoclimate studies, we have seen evidence ignored that strip barks pines have anomalous growth , Tiljander proxies used upside down, lat-long locations transposed, and these errors are never acknowledged or fixed.
So people are not happy with the adjustments and would really like to see what is going on, in detail.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Cold snap freezes South America
Cold snap freezes South America – beaches whitened, some areas experience snow for the first time in living memory at the same time as NASA tells us the East Coast US heatwave is a “global phenomenon”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=44664
Does it matter that the NASA commentary and map part company in a big way?
Do they think saying there is a global heatwave will make people doubt the evidence of their eyes?
NASA obviously received complaints because it has revised its alarmist wording about a "global phenomenon" a bit but not markedly, thus:
"Correction: This post originally stated the early July 2010 heat wave was a "global phenomenon." We have revised to make our meaning more precise: many places around the globe experienced heat waves in early July"
But, of course, still no concession that the majority of the world was cooler. How was that described? Oh, yes, with the throwaway “Not all areas are gripped by heat”. Well, thanks, NASA, that provides the required “objectivity” I guess (not).
MEANWHILE, from
Alexandre Aguiar
of MetSul Weather Center
20th July 2010
A brutal and historical cold snap has so far caused 80 deaths in South America, according to international news agencies.
Temperatures have been much below normal for over a week in vast areas of the continent. In Chile, the Aysen region was affected early last week by the worst snowstorm in 30 year. The snow accumulation reached 5 feet in Balmaceda and the Army was called to rescue people trapped by the snow.
In Argentina, the snow in the region of Mendoza, famous for its winery, was described by local meteorologists as the heaviest in a decade. The temperature in the morning of July 16th was the lowest in the city of Buenos Aires since 1991: -1.5C. The cold snap caused a record demand for energy and Argentina had to import electricity from Brazil. Many industries in Argentina were shut down due to gas shortage.
It snowed in nearly all the provinces of Argentina, an extremely rare event. It snowed even in the western part of the province of Buenos Aires and Southern Santa Fe, in cities at sea level. The most famous beach of Argentina, Mar del Plata, was whitened by the snow in the morning of July 15th, a scene only seen in recent memory in 1991, 2004 and 2007.
The snow was heavy even in Northern Argentina. In Santiago Del Estero, according to media reports, some areas experience snow for the first time .
In Uruguay, there were widespread reports of sleet and even snow mixed with rain in towns in the Southern and Eastern part of the country, even in the capital Montevideo. At leas two deaths have been blamed in Uruguay on the low temperatures. Hospitals were packed with patients with respiratory illness.
In Paraguay, at least nine people died due to the cold weather in only 3 days. Cattle were very affected and one thousand animals died of hypothermia. In Bolivia, dozes of people died in consequence of the very low temperatures. In some areas of the nation the cold period was described as the worst in 15 years. It even snowed in the Chaco of Bolivia, one of warmest areas of South America, where the local population never saw snow before. Classes were suspended in Bolivia for three days to prevent more cold related deaths (El Nacional newspaper from Bolivia).
Southern Brazil was also very affected by the cold air eruption from the Southern Pole. Last week the temperature dropped to -7.8C in the city of Urupema, Santa Catarina. In Rio Grande do Sul, in the hills of the state, temperature felt to -4.9C in the city of Cambara. In the state of Paran, the low was -6C. Only the nights were freezing, but the afternoons were very cold. In some days, temperature failed to reach 5C in many towns, the first time in a decade. Flurries observed in towns of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parana and sleet was also reported in Western Santa Catarina.
The most striking scenes came from the top of Morro da Igreja, a 1800 meters elevation in the state of Santa Catarina. The area recorded snow and freezing rain. As anyone can imagine, freezing rain is extremely rare in Southern Brazil. The event was witnessed and photographed by weather observers from MetSul Marcelo Albieri and Caio Souza.
On July 14th, in the afternoon hours, temperatures in the hills of Rio Grande do Sul state in Southern Brazil were lower than in Marambio, the main polar base of Argentina in Antarctica. In Central Brazil, in the tropics, the long streak of cold days was considered extremely rare. It was so cold that thousand of animals died in this region of Brazil known for its cattle, just South of the Amazon basin.
Maybe the most notable fact took place in North South America. The cold reached Amazon and temperatures felt to as low as 7C in towns in the Amazon Forest in the states of Acre and Rondonia. Temperature even felt in Roraima, where the state capital Boa Vista record 20C (normal lows are 25C) and the wind were blowing from the South.
Boa Vista is located at 2 degrees North of latitude, so the influence of the Antarctic cold blast crossed the Equator line and reached towns in the Northern Hemisphere. It would be the same of a cold snap from the Arctic crossing the entire North America continent, the Caribbean and reaching North Brazil in cities at 2 degrees South of latitude as Santarem, a bizarre situation. PDF
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HISTORICALCOLDSNAPFREEZESSOUTHAMERICA.pdf
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=44664
Does it matter that the NASA commentary and map part company in a big way?
Do they think saying there is a global heatwave will make people doubt the evidence of their eyes?
NASA obviously received complaints because it has revised its alarmist wording about a "global phenomenon" a bit but not markedly, thus:
"Correction: This post originally stated the early July 2010 heat wave was a "global phenomenon." We have revised to make our meaning more precise: many places around the globe experienced heat waves in early July"
But, of course, still no concession that the majority of the world was cooler. How was that described? Oh, yes, with the throwaway “Not all areas are gripped by heat”. Well, thanks, NASA, that provides the required “objectivity” I guess (not).
MEANWHILE, from
Alexandre Aguiar
of MetSul Weather Center
20th July 2010
A brutal and historical cold snap has so far caused 80 deaths in South America, according to international news agencies.
Temperatures have been much below normal for over a week in vast areas of the continent. In Chile, the Aysen region was affected early last week by the worst snowstorm in 30 year. The snow accumulation reached 5 feet in Balmaceda and the Army was called to rescue people trapped by the snow.
In Argentina, the snow in the region of Mendoza, famous for its winery, was described by local meteorologists as the heaviest in a decade. The temperature in the morning of July 16th was the lowest in the city of Buenos Aires since 1991: -1.5C. The cold snap caused a record demand for energy and Argentina had to import electricity from Brazil. Many industries in Argentina were shut down due to gas shortage.
It snowed in nearly all the provinces of Argentina, an extremely rare event. It snowed even in the western part of the province of Buenos Aires and Southern Santa Fe, in cities at sea level. The most famous beach of Argentina, Mar del Plata, was whitened by the snow in the morning of July 15th, a scene only seen in recent memory in 1991, 2004 and 2007.
The snow was heavy even in Northern Argentina. In Santiago Del Estero, according to media reports, some areas experience snow for the first time .
In Uruguay, there were widespread reports of sleet and even snow mixed with rain in towns in the Southern and Eastern part of the country, even in the capital Montevideo. At leas two deaths have been blamed in Uruguay on the low temperatures. Hospitals were packed with patients with respiratory illness.
In Paraguay, at least nine people died due to the cold weather in only 3 days. Cattle were very affected and one thousand animals died of hypothermia. In Bolivia, dozes of people died in consequence of the very low temperatures. In some areas of the nation the cold period was described as the worst in 15 years. It even snowed in the Chaco of Bolivia, one of warmest areas of South America, where the local population never saw snow before. Classes were suspended in Bolivia for three days to prevent more cold related deaths (El Nacional newspaper from Bolivia).
Southern Brazil was also very affected by the cold air eruption from the Southern Pole. Last week the temperature dropped to -7.8C in the city of Urupema, Santa Catarina. In Rio Grande do Sul, in the hills of the state, temperature felt to -4.9C in the city of Cambara. In the state of Paran, the low was -6C. Only the nights were freezing, but the afternoons were very cold. In some days, temperature failed to reach 5C in many towns, the first time in a decade. Flurries observed in towns of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parana and sleet was also reported in Western Santa Catarina.
The most striking scenes came from the top of Morro da Igreja, a 1800 meters elevation in the state of Santa Catarina. The area recorded snow and freezing rain. As anyone can imagine, freezing rain is extremely rare in Southern Brazil. The event was witnessed and photographed by weather observers from MetSul Marcelo Albieri and Caio Souza.
On July 14th, in the afternoon hours, temperatures in the hills of Rio Grande do Sul state in Southern Brazil were lower than in Marambio, the main polar base of Argentina in Antarctica. In Central Brazil, in the tropics, the long streak of cold days was considered extremely rare. It was so cold that thousand of animals died in this region of Brazil known for its cattle, just South of the Amazon basin.
Maybe the most notable fact took place in North South America. The cold reached Amazon and temperatures felt to as low as 7C in towns in the Amazon Forest in the states of Acre and Rondonia. Temperature even felt in Roraima, where the state capital Boa Vista record 20C (normal lows are 25C) and the wind were blowing from the South.
Boa Vista is located at 2 degrees North of latitude, so the influence of the Antarctic cold blast crossed the Equator line and reached towns in the Northern Hemisphere. It would be the same of a cold snap from the Arctic crossing the entire North America continent, the Caribbean and reaching North Brazil in cities at 2 degrees South of latitude as Santarem, a bizarre situation. PDF
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HISTORICALCOLDSNAPFREEZESSOUTHAMERICA.pdf
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Stephen Schneider dies
17 Jul 2010
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/the-passing-of-a-climate-warrior/
The man who produced the PNAS blacklist of deniers as his parting shot, has died.
"In an odd way this is cheering news !" as they said in the CRU emails about John Daly's passing.
Climate Depot said:
Propagandist Stephen Schneider who worked on the Black List admits it was born of frustration with 'climate deniers' being granted 'equal weight' as IPCC or NAS
Morano Response: "Say What?! Schneider is upset that prominent skeptical scientists are granted 'equal weight' as IPCC or NAS? The IPCC is in disgrace and the NAS under Ralph Cicerone has descended into political hackery. Schneider actually seems to believe his own warmist propaganda. How sad."
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/the-passing-of-a-climate-warrior/
The man who produced the PNAS blacklist of deniers as his parting shot, has died.
"In an odd way this is cheering news !" as they said in the CRU emails about John Daly's passing.
Climate Depot said:
Propagandist Stephen Schneider who worked on the Black List admits it was born of frustration with 'climate deniers' being granted 'equal weight' as IPCC or NAS
Morano Response: "Say What?! Schneider is upset that prominent skeptical scientists are granted 'equal weight' as IPCC or NAS? The IPCC is in disgrace and the NAS under Ralph Cicerone has descended into political hackery. Schneider actually seems to believe his own warmist propaganda. How sad."
.........
Stephen Schneider - by Steve McIntyre
Stephen Schneider was only a few years older than me and his death seems all too early.
I had a fair bit of contact with him by email in 2004. He seemed very cheerful – a characteristic that I respect – and certainly much more likely to be good company than the fellow climate scientists that I was then encountering – a point that Ross and I discussed at the time. Schneider recalled the exchange in his recent book – a recollection that, unfortunately, was totally inaccurate.
My original contact with Schneider came in the wake of MM2003. He had severely criticized Energy & Environment for not letting Mann review our 2003 article. In keeping with that premise, he asked me to review a 2004 submission to Climatic Change by Mann et al responding to MM2003 – consistent with his public representations. It seemed to me that there was an inherent conflict of interest in such a review but this was obviously known to Schneider and I attempted to separate out my interests as a disputant from my obligations as a reviewer as much as possible.
At the time, I was very fresh to academic exchanges – this was long before Climate Audit. I’d never reviewed an academic article and my approach was informed by ideas of due diligence that were not then characteristic of academic peer reviewing. In my capacity as a reviewer, I asked to see supporting data for Mann’s supposed rebuttal to MM2003 – the topic of his submission – and to see source code to document his allegations that we’d supposedly made grievous mistakes in implementing his methodology – again an important aspect of his submission. (BTW this was all shortly after our 2004 submission to Nature.)
Schneider replied that he had been editor of Climatic Change for 28 years and, during that time, nobody had ever requested supporting data, let alone source code, and he therefore required a policy from his editorial board approving his requesting such information from an author. He observed that he would not be able to get reviewers if they were required to examine supporting data and source code. I replied that I was not suggesting that he make that a condition of all reviews, but that I wished to examine such supporting information as part of my review, was willing to do so in my specific case (and wanted to do so under the circumstances) and asked him to seek approval from his editorial board if that was required.
This episode became an important component of Climategate emails in the first half of 2004. As it turned out (though it was not a point that I thought about at the time), both Phil Jones and Ben Santer were on the editorial board of Climatic Change. Some members of the editorial board (e.g. Pfister) thought that it would be a good idea to require Mann to provide supporting code as well as data. But both Jones and Santer lobbied hard and prevailed on code, but not data. They defeated any requirement that Mann supply source code, but Schneider did adopt a policy requiring authors to supply supporting data.
I therefore re-iterated my request as a reviewer for supporting data – including the residuals that Climategate letters show that Mann had supplied to CRU (described as his “dirty laundry”). The requested supporting data was not supplied by Mann and his coauthors and I accordingly submitted a review to Climatic Change, observing that Mann et al had flouted the new policy on providing supporting data. The submission was not published. I observed on another occasion that Jones and Mann (2004) contained a statement slagging us, based on a check-kiting citation to this rejected article.
During this exchange, I attempted to write thoughtfully to Schneider about processes of due diligence, drawing on my own experience and on Ross’ experience in econometrics. The correspondence was fairly lengthy; Schneider’s responses were chatty and cordial and he seemed fairly engaged, though the Climategate emails of the period perhaps cast a slightly different light on events.
Following the establishment of a data policy at Climatic Change, I requested data from Gordon Jacoby – which led to the “few good men” explanation of non-archiving (see CA in early 2005) and from Lonnie Thompson (leading to the first archiving of any information from Dunde, Guliya and Dasuopu, if only summary 10-year data inconsistent with other versions.) Here Schneider accomplished something that almost no one else has been able to do – get data from Lonnie Thompson, something that, in itself, shows Schneider’s stature in the field.
It was very disappointing to read Schneider’s description of these fairly genial exchanges in his book last year. Schneider stated:
"The National Science Foundation has asserted that scientists are not required to present their personal computer codes to peer reviewers and critics, recognizing how much that would inhibit scientific practice.
A serial abuser of legalistic attacks was Stephen McIntyre a statistician who had worked in Canada for a mining company. I had had a similar experience with McIntyre when he demanded that Michael Mann and colleagues publish all their computer codes for peer-reviewed papers previously published in Climatic Change. The journal’s editorial board supported the view that the replication efforts do not extend to personal computer codes with all their undocumented subroutines. It’s an intellectual property issue as well as a major drain on scientists’ productivity, an opinion with which the National Science Foundation concurred, as mentioned."
This was untrue in important particulars and a very unfair account of our 2004 exchange. At the time, Schneider did not express any hint that the exchange was unreasonable. Indeed, the exchange had the positive outcome of Climatic Change adopting data archiving policies for the first time.
To further evidence Schneider’s lack of objection to my conduct as a reviewer at the time, a year later, Schneider invited me once again to act as a reviewer, this time as reviewer of Wahl and Ammann 2004 2005 2006 2007. Needless to say, this once again featured heavily in the Climategate letters. Its story was nicely told by Andrew Montford as “Caspar and the Jesus Paper” – an account that preceded the Climategate Letters. In this case, the experience was not as cordial. (Schneider’s cancer had been reported publicly just before the invitation to review Wahl and Ammann, but I was unaware of his illness until his death.)
Once again, the role of a reviewer was an odd one due to the conflict of interest. Again, I tried to separate as much as possible my adverse interest as someone being criticized from my obligations as a reviewer. In this case, there was much in Wahl and Ammann that could be objectively criticized. (e.g. the check-kiting of Ammann and Wahl, submitted to GRL and rejected, and the later replacement of all references to this article by a later article, Ammann and Wahl 2007, not even submitted as at the time of the supposed acceptance of Wahl and Ammannm which was in the last few hours of the last day, with the references to the still unaccepted and soon rejected Ammann and Wahl companion paper very much a loose end.)
Climategate documents show that Phil Jones was also a reviewer of Wahl and Ammann, observing: "This paper is to be thoroughly welcomed and is particularly timely with the next IPCC assessment coming along in 2007."
My review was less positive. Schneider terminated me as a reviewer and I didn’t have much further correspondence with him. I did write to him recently pointing out that, although I was included on his blacklist of scientists who had signed various petitions that he disapproved of, I had not actually signed any of the petitions. He replied, in effect, that the public blacklist at Anderegg’s website differed from the private blacklist used for the PNAS article and that I had not been included in the private blacklist, as though that resolved the matter.
Schneider repeatedly invoked medical metaphors in order to urge deference by the public to climate scientists.
In one of his last statements, he said:
"It is completely inappropriate, if there’s an announcement of the new cancer drug for pediatric leukemia [with] a panel of three doctors from various hospitals, to then give equal time to the president of the herbalist society, who says that modern medicine is a crock. They wouldn’t even put that person on the air, so why put on petroleum geologists—who know as much about climate as we climatologists know about drilling for oil—because they’ve studied one climate change a hundred million years ago?”
In his recent book, he made a similar point:
"If all scientists are created equal, then all MDs are likewise equivalent. So I’ll ask my podiatrist to prescribe my heart medicine and ask my cardiologist – who hasn’t touched a scalpel in 30 years – to take off my bad toe nail. My point, of course, is that these are not climate experts, as they do not represent a community expert in the details of climatology. A petroleum geologist can no more tell us about cloud feedback than a climatologist could competently tell us about oil reserves(p. 146.)"
Nonetheless, in his own valiant battle against his disease, Schneider did not passively accept dicta from authority, but sought to understand the details as best he could, describing himself as “The Patient from Hell”:
"To increase the odds against the disease, mantle cell lymphoma, Dr. Schneider, 60, involved himself in every aspect of his treatment. How he pushed his doctors to experiment with new techniques to control the cancer is the subject of a book he has just completed, tentatively titled “The Patient From Hell: Getting the Best That Modern Medicine Can Offer.” Da Capo Press/Perseus is to publish it in the fall.
As I noted above, at his best, Schneider was engaging and cheerful – qualities that I prefer to remember him by. I was unaware of his personal battles or that he ironically described himself as “The Patient from Hell” – a title that seems an honorable one.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/07/20/stephen-schneider/
Stephen Schneider was only a few years older than me and his death seems all too early.
I had a fair bit of contact with him by email in 2004. He seemed very cheerful – a characteristic that I respect – and certainly much more likely to be good company than the fellow climate scientists that I was then encountering – a point that Ross and I discussed at the time. Schneider recalled the exchange in his recent book – a recollection that, unfortunately, was totally inaccurate.
My original contact with Schneider came in the wake of MM2003. He had severely criticized Energy & Environment for not letting Mann review our 2003 article. In keeping with that premise, he asked me to review a 2004 submission to Climatic Change by Mann et al responding to MM2003 – consistent with his public representations. It seemed to me that there was an inherent conflict of interest in such a review but this was obviously known to Schneider and I attempted to separate out my interests as a disputant from my obligations as a reviewer as much as possible.
At the time, I was very fresh to academic exchanges – this was long before Climate Audit. I’d never reviewed an academic article and my approach was informed by ideas of due diligence that were not then characteristic of academic peer reviewing. In my capacity as a reviewer, I asked to see supporting data for Mann’s supposed rebuttal to MM2003 – the topic of his submission – and to see source code to document his allegations that we’d supposedly made grievous mistakes in implementing his methodology – again an important aspect of his submission. (BTW this was all shortly after our 2004 submission to Nature.)
Schneider replied that he had been editor of Climatic Change for 28 years and, during that time, nobody had ever requested supporting data, let alone source code, and he therefore required a policy from his editorial board approving his requesting such information from an author. He observed that he would not be able to get reviewers if they were required to examine supporting data and source code. I replied that I was not suggesting that he make that a condition of all reviews, but that I wished to examine such supporting information as part of my review, was willing to do so in my specific case (and wanted to do so under the circumstances) and asked him to seek approval from his editorial board if that was required.
This episode became an important component of Climategate emails in the first half of 2004. As it turned out (though it was not a point that I thought about at the time), both Phil Jones and Ben Santer were on the editorial board of Climatic Change. Some members of the editorial board (e.g. Pfister) thought that it would be a good idea to require Mann to provide supporting code as well as data. But both Jones and Santer lobbied hard and prevailed on code, but not data. They defeated any requirement that Mann supply source code, but Schneider did adopt a policy requiring authors to supply supporting data.
I therefore re-iterated my request as a reviewer for supporting data – including the residuals that Climategate letters show that Mann had supplied to CRU (described as his “dirty laundry”). The requested supporting data was not supplied by Mann and his coauthors and I accordingly submitted a review to Climatic Change, observing that Mann et al had flouted the new policy on providing supporting data. The submission was not published. I observed on another occasion that Jones and Mann (2004) contained a statement slagging us, based on a check-kiting citation to this rejected article.
During this exchange, I attempted to write thoughtfully to Schneider about processes of due diligence, drawing on my own experience and on Ross’ experience in econometrics. The correspondence was fairly lengthy; Schneider’s responses were chatty and cordial and he seemed fairly engaged, though the Climategate emails of the period perhaps cast a slightly different light on events.
Following the establishment of a data policy at Climatic Change, I requested data from Gordon Jacoby – which led to the “few good men” explanation of non-archiving (see CA in early 2005) and from Lonnie Thompson (leading to the first archiving of any information from Dunde, Guliya and Dasuopu, if only summary 10-year data inconsistent with other versions.) Here Schneider accomplished something that almost no one else has been able to do – get data from Lonnie Thompson, something that, in itself, shows Schneider’s stature in the field.
It was very disappointing to read Schneider’s description of these fairly genial exchanges in his book last year. Schneider stated:
"The National Science Foundation has asserted that scientists are not required to present their personal computer codes to peer reviewers and critics, recognizing how much that would inhibit scientific practice.
A serial abuser of legalistic attacks was Stephen McIntyre a statistician who had worked in Canada for a mining company. I had had a similar experience with McIntyre when he demanded that Michael Mann and colleagues publish all their computer codes for peer-reviewed papers previously published in Climatic Change. The journal’s editorial board supported the view that the replication efforts do not extend to personal computer codes with all their undocumented subroutines. It’s an intellectual property issue as well as a major drain on scientists’ productivity, an opinion with which the National Science Foundation concurred, as mentioned."
This was untrue in important particulars and a very unfair account of our 2004 exchange. At the time, Schneider did not express any hint that the exchange was unreasonable. Indeed, the exchange had the positive outcome of Climatic Change adopting data archiving policies for the first time.
To further evidence Schneider’s lack of objection to my conduct as a reviewer at the time, a year later, Schneider invited me once again to act as a reviewer, this time as reviewer of Wahl and Ammann 2004 2005 2006 2007. Needless to say, this once again featured heavily in the Climategate letters. Its story was nicely told by Andrew Montford as “Caspar and the Jesus Paper” – an account that preceded the Climategate Letters. In this case, the experience was not as cordial. (Schneider’s cancer had been reported publicly just before the invitation to review Wahl and Ammann, but I was unaware of his illness until his death.)
Once again, the role of a reviewer was an odd one due to the conflict of interest. Again, I tried to separate as much as possible my adverse interest as someone being criticized from my obligations as a reviewer. In this case, there was much in Wahl and Ammann that could be objectively criticized. (e.g. the check-kiting of Ammann and Wahl, submitted to GRL and rejected, and the later replacement of all references to this article by a later article, Ammann and Wahl 2007, not even submitted as at the time of the supposed acceptance of Wahl and Ammannm which was in the last few hours of the last day, with the references to the still unaccepted and soon rejected Ammann and Wahl companion paper very much a loose end.)
Climategate documents show that Phil Jones was also a reviewer of Wahl and Ammann, observing: "This paper is to be thoroughly welcomed and is particularly timely with the next IPCC assessment coming along in 2007."
My review was less positive. Schneider terminated me as a reviewer and I didn’t have much further correspondence with him. I did write to him recently pointing out that, although I was included on his blacklist of scientists who had signed various petitions that he disapproved of, I had not actually signed any of the petitions. He replied, in effect, that the public blacklist at Anderegg’s website differed from the private blacklist used for the PNAS article and that I had not been included in the private blacklist, as though that resolved the matter.
Schneider repeatedly invoked medical metaphors in order to urge deference by the public to climate scientists.
In one of his last statements, he said:
"It is completely inappropriate, if there’s an announcement of the new cancer drug for pediatric leukemia [with] a panel of three doctors from various hospitals, to then give equal time to the president of the herbalist society, who says that modern medicine is a crock. They wouldn’t even put that person on the air, so why put on petroleum geologists—who know as much about climate as we climatologists know about drilling for oil—because they’ve studied one climate change a hundred million years ago?”
In his recent book, he made a similar point:
"If all scientists are created equal, then all MDs are likewise equivalent. So I’ll ask my podiatrist to prescribe my heart medicine and ask my cardiologist – who hasn’t touched a scalpel in 30 years – to take off my bad toe nail. My point, of course, is that these are not climate experts, as they do not represent a community expert in the details of climatology. A petroleum geologist can no more tell us about cloud feedback than a climatologist could competently tell us about oil reserves(p. 146.)"
Nonetheless, in his own valiant battle against his disease, Schneider did not passively accept dicta from authority, but sought to understand the details as best he could, describing himself as “The Patient from Hell”:
"To increase the odds against the disease, mantle cell lymphoma, Dr. Schneider, 60, involved himself in every aspect of his treatment. How he pushed his doctors to experiment with new techniques to control the cancer is the subject of a book he has just completed, tentatively titled “The Patient From Hell: Getting the Best That Modern Medicine Can Offer.” Da Capo Press/Perseus is to publish it in the fall.
As I noted above, at his best, Schneider was engaging and cheerful – qualities that I prefer to remember him by. I was unaware of his personal battles or that he ironically described himself as “The Patient from Hell” – a title that seems an honorable one.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/07/20/stephen-schneider/
| Stephen Schneider—Death of an Unrepentant Hypocrite |
| Written by Phelim McAleer |
| Monday, 19 July 2010 16:49 |
 Stephen Schneider, a Global Warming scientist, has died. According to reports he suffered a heart attack whilst flying into London.Professor Schneider's death is a shock and a tragedy for his family and we at Not Evil Just Wrong offer our condolences to his relatives for their personal loss. His death was sudden and must have come as a shock to his family and colleagues. However, it has to be said that Professor Schneider died as he had lived—a completely unrepentant hypocrite. Global Warming alarmists, of which Professor Schneider was one of the most prominent, all agree that aviation and flying is one the biggest causes of Global Warming—which they believe is going to wipe out hundreds of millions of lives and make large parts of the planet uninhabitable. But just like Professor Schneider they fly and they fly and they fly. Often they will fly to conferences that come to the conclusion that others must not be allowed to fly. Of course important people such as Professor Schneider must fly because they are doing an "important" job. But people from middle America, who work hard and want to go on vacation or to visit family they must be kept at home. And the people of the developing world, they must forget about living in a modern economy burning fossils fuels or having a modern business infrastructure which involves airports and business flights. No—according to the late Professor Schneider and his colleagues they must continue to have a pre-industrial existence because industry will destroy the planet by causing Global Warming. Of course the recent Global Warming scare is not the first time that Professor Schneider wanted to call a halt to the modern industrial world. In the 1970's Prof Schneider was one of the main Global cooling alarmists—he warned we were about to enter a new Ice Age and the only solution was to end industrial output. Professor Schneider posed as an academic but hated tough questions and debate. He used Stanford's lawyers to try and censor our documentary when we interviewed him about his scientific flip-flopping. As a small film production company we had to remove his interview from our film. When I tried to push him further at the Copenhagen Climate Conference—he called an armed security guard to have our cameras switched off. But that is not why I am breaking the long standing tradition of not speaking ill of the dead. I am a journalist and used to the powerful not wanting to answer awkward questions. I am speaking strongly and truthfully about Professor Schneider because he was a hypocrite who wanted to deny the benefits of modernity to hundreds of millions across the globe whilst enjoying those benefits himself Professor Stephen Schneider died at a relatively young age. He was just 65. Perhaps if he had lived longer he would have come to realize just how the ideology, he pretended was science, would have destroyed the lives and hopes of hundreds millions in the developing and developed world. http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/blog/general/464-stephen-schneiderdeath-of-an-unrepentant-hypocrite |
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