Moscow hits 102 °F, July 30, 2010; goes over 100 °F for the first time in recorded history

Moscow hits 102 °F, July 30, 2010

From Jeff Masters' Wunderblog, July 30, 2010

At 4 p.m. local time today in Moscow, Russia, the temperature surpassed 100 °F for the first time in recorded history. The high temperature of 100.8 °F (37.8 °C) recorded at the Moscow Observatory, the official weather location for Moscow, beat Moscow's previous record of 99.5 °F (37.5 °C), set just three days ago, on July 26. Prior to 2010, Moscow's hottest temperature of all-time was 36.6 °C (98.2 °F), set in August 1920. Records in Moscow go back to 1879. Baltschug, another official downtown Moscow weather site, hit an astonishing 102.2 °F (39.0 °C) today. Finland also recorded its hottest temperature in its history today, when the mercury hit 99 °F (37.2 °C) at Joensuu. The old (undisputed) record was 95 °F (35 °C) at Jvaskyla on July 9, 1914. There is little relief in sight, as the latest forecast for Moscow predicts continued highs in the 90s for most of the coming week.

Figure 1. Russia's heat wave has contributed to a severe fire season this July. Fires on dry peat bogs east of Moscow are covering the city with smoke as this photo taken yesterday (July 28, 2010.) Tiny red dots indicate hot spots of high surface temperatures associated with fires, and multiple clusters of such dots appear east of Moscow. Dull gray smoke mixes with opaque white clouds east and northeast of the capital city. Air pollution levels in Moscow due to the smoke and smog are so high that residents have been warned to stay home rather than go in to work. Firefighters are battling 340 blazes across Russia covering 86,658 hectares (214,136 acres) amid a drought that led the government to declare weather-related emergencies in 23 crop-producing regions. Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said on July 23 that the drought had damaged 10.1 million hectares, or 32% of all land under cultivation, according to Bloomberg. Raging fires have destroyed hundreds of houses across Russia today and forced mass evacuations in the city of Voronezh, 300 miles southeast of Moscow, according to the Associated Press. Image credit: NASA's Aqua satellite.

Link:   http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1559

From Moscow, July 30, 2010: my best friend, Natasha Petrova reports on the heat and smoke

From Moscow, July 30, 2010:  my best friend, Natasha Petrova reports on the heat and smoke in Moscow

Via e-mail, this morning:

Em Moscou calor terrivel ontem fomos com neta num shoping grande perto da minha casa. Estamos la quase 6 horas , almosamos comprei para mim 2 vestidos boas para verrao . Com esta mudansa do clima eu nao sei o que esperar do verao no Brasil. Cada dia calor no sombro mais de 38-39 graus pode imajinar . Minha neta nao queria sair na rua , porque calor insuportavel .

"In Moscow, terrible heat yesterday we went with my granddaughter to the huge shopping center near my house. We were there almost 6 hours, ate lunch I bought two good dresses for me for the summer. With this climate change I do not know what to expect from the summer in Brazil. Every day heat in the shade of more than 38-39 degrees you can imagine. My granddaughter does not want to go out to the street, because the heat is insupportable."

More Currygate: Judith Curry has spread disinformation in Brazil. Interview from Época magazine, May 1, 2010

Arthur Smith's comment on Judith Curry's bizarre stances:

1. Judith Curry’s appeal (in #467) to Peirce’s classification scheme on “fixation of belief” is an interesting approach – but I think its application to this particular discussion would be far more enlightening than her rather cavalier classification of various blogs by it. Are we to trust her authority on this classification, which she seems to cling to with a striking “tenacity” despite the protests of many of her peers here?
   
   Let’s look at the issue of belief in three points straight from the title of Montford’s book:
   * is the “Hockey stick” an illusion?
   * is “climategate” significant?
   * is [any part of] science corrupt?
   
   On the method of “tenacity”, Peirce explained his meaning:
   

   why should we not [...take] as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it?

   Once you have formed any opinion on a subject, it’s a perfectly natural human tendency to cling to that opinion, and “both sides” do it here. From the start most of us with some scientific background and trust in the methods of peer review would have tended to the “No” answer on each of the three questions, though many of us may have had doubts on each point. Clearly on the McIntyre/Montford side, the tendency was to answer “Yes”.
   
   The question regarding Peirce’s classification is to what degree those beliefs were *fixed* by this method of simply clinging to them, despite contrary evidence. Tamino’s review here and past discussions (Mann 2008 in particular, but even all the other reconstructions like Loehle’s) clearly show a certain “robustness” in the “hockey stick” form and the conclusion regarding recent warmth being highly anomalous. What is the evidence on the other side? There were clearly some mistakes made in the analyses (in Mann’s papers, and far worse in Loehle’s) but there doesn’t seem to be any modern reconstruction published in the peer reviewed literature that shows anything other than essentially the picture in MBH98.
   
   So the weight of the evidence on question 1 is very heavily in favor of those who fixed belief in the “No” side of the question, and heavily against those on the “Yes”. Have any of those on the “Yes” side changed their minds in regard to this evidence? If not, then they are clearly stuck in Peirce’s “tenacity” mindset.
   
   Similarly on climategate and corruption, we’ve now had 5 reviews that found at worst some poor communication and data sharing practices. The weight of the evidence is very strongly on the “No” side of these questions. Have any of the “Yes” folks changed their minds as a result? There are some examples: The Guardian’s George Monbiot, for instance, at first thought climategate was significant and called for Phil Jones to resign, but has now stepped back from that (his concern seemed to be chiefly from a deep faith in the importance of FOI-type laws).
   
   Peirce’s method of authority referred to imposition of belief by government or other institutional agents. On the above three questions and in the present discussion it doesn’t seem to me to apply at all. I don’t believe he was referring to “authority” in the sense of expertise; in some sense the role of the IPCC in fixing belief around climate science is similar to Peirce’s “authority”, but it has no enforcement power and to me it seems far more like a step in the process of fixation and communication of scientific information, part of the publishing process, than anything like what Peirce was talking about in method 2.
   Peirce’s last two methods of fixation are perhaps the most interesting for scientific discussion: that which is “agreeable to reason” vs that which “coincides with fact”. What is the source of “fact”? Observation of the world around us – raw data, collected and prepared according to scientific standards of care, self-doubt, and open honesty. On top of that data we have analysis and interpretation, which again require scientific care.
   
   As an example of the “a priori” “agreeable to reason” method, Peirce takes an interesting example – classical economics:
   

   Take, for example, the doctrine that man only acts selfishly — that is, from the consideration that acting in one way will afford him more pleasure than acting in another. This rests on no fact in the world, but it has had a wide acceptance as being the only reasonable theory.

   In this context, there are several groups that are practicing the scientific method in the sense of actually going out into the world and making observations. The people who study tree rings, those who study borehole temperatures, those who set up and monitor temperature stations, those who study glaciers, sometimes risking their lives, are gathering that basic factual data about the world. On top of that are folks like the CRU and Mike Mann, collecting that data together and analyzing it to see what it can tell us, what the larger-scale picture might be.
   
   That scientific method can have bearing on only the first question: is the “hockey stick” an illusion, an artefact, an accident of the way the work was done? And the only way to answer differently is to do your own reconstruction, go back to the raw data and see what difference it makes. As Tamino illustrates here, that seems to have been done repeatedly by others and they come back with the same answer. So the scientific method, as far as it seems to have been applied at all here, clearly shows a “No” answer to the first question.
   
   But the second and third questions are not matters where we can apply any observations of the non-human natural world to help fix our opinions. These are questions about what people said, what they meant, what in their hearts they honestly were feeling. Since the internal workings of another human being are fundamentally subjective and cannot be determined by any objective method, our only resort on this question, our best option, is to appeals to reason. The “facts” on scientific corruption may be eternally in dispute, but what conforms best to our understandings of the people involved, of reason in this matter? Conspiracy theories can certainly be logically self-consistent, but they are fundamentally destructive to human relationships and progress. The fundamental foundation of all of that has to return to the one question that can be answered by science here: “is the hockey stick an illusion”?
   
   If you want a scientific discussion, that is the only question of relevance. And Tamino addressed precisely that question in his review here. The answer is, No.
   
   Comment #512 by Arthur Smith — 30 July 2010 @ 10:12 AM  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/
   

Judith Curry has spread her brand of disinformation in Brazil.  Interview from Época magazine, May 1, 2010

Dear Readers, I will try to translate as much as I can, but it will take a while, so please be patient.

Here it is -- head vise warning in effect!
 

Judith Curry: “I am not afraid of the climate”

American researcher says that there is still a lot of uncertainty about global warming

by Alexandre Mansur, Época, May 1, 2010

Hurricanes are a speciality of Judith Curry, director of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S.A. Now she is in the eye of the storm. The confusion began at the end of last year, when Judith criticized the publications of researchers Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, and Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, in the U.K., accused of distorting scientific data, via the released e-mails. Jones and Mann were cleared by investigations of the universities and by a British scientific committee. But Judith affirms that the problem of credibility is not over. She does not question that the Earth is warming. Nor that this is caused by human emissions. But she affirms that the catastrophic predictions emitted by the IPCC, a panel of scientists put together by the UN, are exaggerated.

WHO IS SHE? She is the director of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in the U.S.  WHAT DOES SHE DO? Has recently published articles in which she criticized climatologists, members of the IPCC, the UN panel SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE Was on the board of the Society of American Meteorologists. Edited the Journal of Applied Meteorology. Worked for NASA, the American space agency

ÉPOCA – Do you have any fear of the consequences of climate change?

Judith Curry – There exist significant risks associated with them. This whole question of how “dangerous” is climate change has not been adequately evaluated. But I am not personally afraid of this. 

ÉPOCA – Are scientists fulfilling their mission to inform the public?

Curry – The public’s perception that global warming is a planetary emergency probably had its peak between 2005 and 2007, with Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore’s film.  Since then, interest has been falling. The skepticism of climate change now questions if the impacts of warming are large or predominantly adverse. And if anything can be done to improve the situation. The public debate has deteriorated into attempts to discredit or censor scientists. And what we see is propaganda in order to influence the politics, and not to inform the public.

ÉPOCA – What is the risk of this?

Curry – Many researchers, genuinely worried about the risks of warming, including myself, are disappointed by the political decisions for confronting the climate challenge. To begin with, I believe it is necessary to make changes to the IPCC, in order to reestablish its credibility. The process needs to be more open. It is necessary to improve the selection of authors and reviewers. A team of inspectors should supervise the process and investigate complaints. Due to the release of the e-mails, we must change the manner in which we evaluate the uncertainties. Many times, in the IPCC reports, the mere judgment of a specialist replaces the degree of uncertainty of the data of a rigorous scientific analysis. We are talking about the imprecision in the time of adjusting the temperature data in order to compensate for the effects of urban heat (the growth of cities, with a concentration of cement and asphalt, artificially increases the temperature of the region). Or to fill in regions of the Earth where there are no data available.

ÉPOCA – What do we still not know about climate change? 

Curry – There are still many uncertainties. They are associated with the records of temperatures in the past. And also the climate models that researchers run on their computers to simulate the behavior of the atmosphere and to make estimates of the future.

ÉPOCA – It possible that science will be able to establish the degree of seriousness of the climate crisis?

Curry – They do not know with certainty how much of the warming that occurred in the 20th century can be attributed to human activity. And the projections for warming for this century are not exact.

ÉPOCA – Do we need to wait until these uncertainties are reduced or eliminated before we make decisions that avoid the worst consequences of climate change?

Curry – This is not what I am suggesting. The uncertainties cannot be eliminated. We make decisions all the time in uncertain situations. It is that the degree of imprecision should be taken into consideration in the decision process. The chances of tragic consequences due to warming are at a minimum at least as great as arms of mass destruction in Iraq would have been. In the end, they did not exist, but we went to war anyway. We have a history of deciding to act in order to avoid bad things even when the probability is low.

“No one knows how much of the warming that occurred in the second half of the
twentieth century can be attributed to human action”

ÉPOCA – How can we tell the legitimate skeptics from the industry lobbyists who just want to increase confusion?

Curry – The fundamental question turns on the data and scientific models. A genuine skeptic puts forth arguments and will debate these in scientific journals or technical blogs.

ÉPOCA – Do you see a lobby campaign by the fossil-fuel industry to increase confusion?

Curry – This also exists. But I do not see it as an important factor in skepticism in general in relation to climate change. The majority of people who write against the control of emissions use political or economic arguments. They are not concerned with the science. You can’t even call them skeptics. There are other skeptics who have a background in science. But few of them receive any money from oil or coal companies.  Entities like the American Enterprise Institute or the Competitive Enterprise Institute are preoccupied with the politics that could affect the competitiveness of the U.S. and our economy. So, they spend time and money organizing conferences and demanding information from climate researchers.

ÉPOCA – How do you view the controversy generated by the e-mails that were taken from the University of East Anglia?

Curry – The e-mails fed the concern about the methods used to construct the chronology of temperatures on Earth’s surface over the last 1,000 years. It is call the “hockey stick” (that shows a long period of lower temperatures and a sharp increase in the most recent years, like the end of a hockey stick).  Also, the e-mails raised doubts about the behavior of the scientists in relation to the process of evaluation by colleagues of each study, before it is published in scientific journals. And maybe there were even violations of the Freedom of Information Act (or FOA, as it is abbreviated in English, a law that gives a citizen the right to ask for access to secret government documents).

ÉPOCA – Do the messages exchanged between Michael Mann and Phil Jones demonstrate any sign of improper conduct?

Curry – There exist various investigations for evaluating this. From what I know, the answer would be “yes.”

ÉPOCA – The investigations by the British scientific committee and the University of Pennsylvania exonerated Mann and Jones.

Curry – I agree with the conclusion of the investigations that there was no evidence of incorrect scientific conduct. I did not see a sign of plagiarism or falsification of data in the work of the scientists. Not using all the data, selecting data arbitrarily and using inappropriate statistical methods do not fall under incorrect conduct. But also it does not inspire confidence in the product of the research. The behavior of these scientists, such as disqualifying critics and showing little transparency, delaying the public availability of the temperature data they used. But I think it is time to stop focusing on individual behavior and to start a reevaluation of the entire process of the IPCC’s scientific evaluation.

ÉPOCA – What needs to change in the IPCC?

Curry – It needs to be more open to different opinions and to external verification. There is a rush to publish articles in scientific journals just before the IPCC closes. Clearly, scientists want their work to be included. There is the perception that the best way to get your work included is to support the basic narrative of the IPCC. And the scientists of the IPCC tried to disqualify researchers who published articles with contrarian opinions. Thus, in order to continue to be relevant, the IPCC can no longer limit itself to summarizing the scientific literature every five years. It needs to open the range of scientific views about warming and the political options for confronting it.  

Original article in Portuguese:

Judith Curry: “Não tenho medo do clima”

Pesquisadora americana diz que ainda há muita incerteza sobre o aquecimento global

by Alexandre Mansur, Época, May 1, 2010

Os furacões são a especialidade de Judith Curry, diretora da Escola de Ciências da Terra e da Atmosfera, do Instituto de Tecnologia da Geórgia, nos Estados Unidos. Agora ela está no olho da tempestade. A confusão começou no fim do ano passado, quando Judith fez críticas públicas aos pesquisadores Michael Mann, da Universidade Estadual da Pensilvânia, nos Estados Unidos, e Phil Jones, da Universidade de East Anglia, no Reino Unido, acusados de distorcer dados científicos, a partir de e-mails vazados. Jones e Mann foram inocentados por investigações das universidades e do comitê científico britânico. Mas Judith afirma que o problema de credibilidade não acabou. Ela não questiona que a Terra esteja esquentando. Nem que isso seja causado por emissões humanas. Mas afirma que são exageradas as previsões catastróficas emitidas pelo IPCC, o painel de cientistas reunido pela ONU.

QUEM É É diretora da Escola de Ciências da Terra e da Atmosfera, do Instituto de Tecnologia da Geórgia, nos Estados Unidos O QUE FEZ Publicou recentemente artigos em que critica cientistas do clima, integrantes do IPCC, o painel da ONU ATUAÇÃO CIENTÍFICA Foi do conselho da Sociedade Americana de Meteorologia. Editou a revista Journal of Applied Meteorology. Já trabalhou para a Nasa, a agência espacial americana

ÉPOCA – A senhora tem medo das consequências das mudanças climáticas?

Judith Curry – Existem riscos significativos associados a elas. Toda essa questão de o que são as mudanças climáticas “perigosas” não foi adequadamente avaliada. Mas não estou pessoalmente amedrontada com isso.

ÉPOCA – Os cientistas estão cumprindo sua missão de informar o público?

Curry – A percepção pública de que o aquecimento global é uma emergência planetária provavelmente teve seu auge entre 2005 e 2007, com o Furacão Katrina e o filme de Al Gore. Desde então, o interesse vem caindo. O ceticismo com as mudanças climáticas agora questiona se os impactos do aquecimento são grandes ou predominantemente adversos. E se algo pode ser feito para melhorar a situação. O debate público se deteriorou para tentativas de desacreditar ou censurar os cientistas. E o que vemos são propagandas para influenciar a política, e não para informar o público.

ÉPOCA – Qual é o risco disso?

Curry – Muitos pesquisadores, genuinamente preocupados com os riscos do aquecimento, inclusive eu mesma, estão desapontados com as decisões políticas para enfrentar o desafio climático. Para começar, creio que é preciso fazer alterações no IPCC, para restabelecer sua credibilidade. O processo precisa ser mais aberto. É preciso selecionar melhor os autores e os revisores. Uma equipe de inspetores deve supervisionar o processo e investigar queixas. Diante do vazamento de e-mails, devemos mudar a maneira de avaliar as incertezas. Muitas vezes, nos relatórios do IPCC, um mero julgamento de um especialista substituiu a análise científica rigorosa do grau de incerteza dos dados. Estamos falando de imprecisões na hora de ajustar os dados de temperatura para compensar os efeitos de calor urbanos (o crescimento das cidades, com a concentração de cimento e asfalto, aumenta a temperatura artificialmente na região). Ou para preencher regiões da Terra para onde não há dados disponíveis.

ÉPOCA – O que ainda não sabemos sobre as mudanças climáticas?

Curry – Há muitas incertezas ainda. Elas estão associadas aos registros de temperatura no passado. E também aos modelos climáticos que os pesquisadores rodam no computador para simular os comportamentos da atmosfera e fazer estimativas para o futuro.

ÉPOCA – Será que a ciência já consegue estabelecer o grau de seriedade da crise climática?

Curry – Não se sabe ao certo quanto do aquecimento ocorrido na segunda metade do século XX pode ser atribuído à ação humana. E ainda não são exatas as projeções para o aquecimento previsto para este século.

ÉPOCA – Devemos esperar que essas incertezas sejam reduzidas ou eliminadas antes de tomarmos atitudes que evitem as piores consequências das mudanças climáticas?

Curry – Não é o que estou sugerindo. As incertezas não podem ser eliminadas. Nós tomamos decisões o tempo todo diante de situações incertas. Só que o grau de imprecisão nas previsões precisa ser levado em conta no processo decisório. As chances de consequências trágicas do aquecimento são no mínimo tão altas quanto as de que houvesse armas de destruição em massa no Iraque. No fim, elas não existiam, mas nós fomos à guerra assim mesmo. Temos um histórico de decidir agir para evitar coisas ruins mesmo quando a probabilidade é baixa.

“Não se sabe quanto do aquecimento ocorrido na segunda metade
do século XX pode ser atribuído à ação humana “

ÉPOCA – Como discernir os céticos legítimos dos lobistas da indústria que apenas desejam aumentar a confusão?

Curry – A questão fundamental gira em torno de dados e modelos científicos. O cético genuíno fará argumentos e debaterá a partir disso nas revistas científicas ou nos blogs técnicos.

ÉPOCA – A senhora vê alguma campanha de lobby da indústria dos combustíveis fósseis para aumentar a confusão?

Curry – Isso existe também. Mas não vejo como um fator importante no ceticismo geral em relação às mudanças climáticas. A maioria das pessoas que escrevem contra o controle de emissões usa argumentos políticos ou econômicos. Elas não se importam com a ciência. Nem se poderia chamá-las de céticas. Há outros céticos com formação científica. Mas poucos recebem algum dinheiro das empresas de petróleo ou carvão. Entidades como o Instituto de Empresas Americanas ou o Instituto para Empresas Competitivas estão preocupadas com políticas que possam afetar a competitividade dos Estados Unidos e de nossa economia. Por isso, gastam tempo e dinheiro organizando conferências e exigindo informações dos pesquisadores do clima.

ÉPOCA – Como a senhora vê a controvérsia gerada pelos e-mails que vazaram na Universidade de East Anglia?

Curry – Os e-mails alimentam preocupação sobre os métodos usados para construir a sequência histórica de temperaturas na superfície da Terra nos últimos 1.000 anos. É o chamado “taco de hóquei” (que mostra um longo período de temperaturas mais baixas e uma elevação brusca nos últimos anos, como a ponta do taco). Além disso, os e-mails levantam dúvidas sobre o comportamento dos cientistas em relação ao processo de avaliação por colegas de cada estudo, antes de ele ser publicado em revistas científicas. E talvez haja até violações à Lei de Liberdade de Informação (ou FOA, na sigla em inglês, lei que dá ao cidadão o direito de pleitear o acesso a dados oficiais sigilosos).

ÉPOCA – As mensagens trocadas por Michael Mann e Phil Jones mostram algum sinal de comportamento impróprio?

Curry – Existem várias investigações para avaliar isso. A partir do que eu sei, a resposta seria “sim”.

ÉPOCA – Os inquéritos do comitê científico britânico e da Universidade da Pensilvânia inocentaram Mann e Jones. 

Curry – Eu concordo com a conclusão dos inquéritos de que não há evidências de conduta científica errada. Não vi nenhum sinal de plágio ou falsificação de dados no trabalho dos cientistas. Não guardar todos os dados, selecioná-los arbitrariamente e usar métodos estatísticos inadequados não configura erro de conduta. Mas também não inspira confiança no produto da pesquisa. O comportamento desses cientistas, como desqualificar críticas e mostrar pouca transparência, atrasou o levantamento dos dados de temperatura que eles usaram. Mas eu acho que está na hora de parar de focar no comportamento individual e começar a reavaliar todo o processo de avaliação científica do IPCC.

ÉPOCA – O que precisa mudar no IPCC?

Curry – Ele precisa ser mais aberto a opiniões diferentes e à verificação externa. Há uma corrida para publicar artigos em revistas científicas logo antes do fechamento do IPCC. Claramente, os cientistas querem que seus trabalhos sejam incluídos. Há a percepção de que a melhor forma de incluir seu trabalho é apoiar a narrativa básica do IPCC. E os cientistas do IPCC tentam desqualificar pesquisadores que publicam artigos com opiniões contrárias. Além disso, para continuar relevante, o IPCC não pode mais se limitar a resumir a literatura científica a cada cinco anos. Ele precisa abrir o leque de visões científicas sobre o aquecimento e opções políticas para enfrentá-lo.

Link:  http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Revista/Epoca/0,,EMI143938-16270,00-JUDITH+CURRY+NAO+TENHO+MEDO+DO+CLIMA.html

Currygate, again! Judith Curry just can't shut up!

Currygate, again! Judith Curry just can't shut up!

At RealClimate, July 29, 2010, comment #467 by Judith Curry with inline replies by Gavin Schmidt:

At the request of the many emails I’m getting, here is one more salvo about trying to remind people of science should be done and how arguments should be conducted, and how disagreements can be resolved, and conflicts avoided.

[Response: For a start, we could stop thinking of a discussion as a series of 'salvos'... - gavin]

Charles Sanders Peirce (from the Wikipedia) outlines four methods of settling opinion and overcoming disagreements, ordered from least to most successful:
1. The method of tenacity (sticking with one’s initial belief) and trying to ignore contrary information.
2. The method of authority, which overcomes disagreements but sometimes brutally.
3. The method of congruity or “what is agreeable to reason,” which depends on taste and fashion in paradigms.
4. The scientific method whereby inquiry regards itself as fallible and continually tests, criticizes, corrects, and improves itself.

Much of the disagreement is often about ambiguity of statements, and these are easily resolved if the situation has not elevated into animosity and conflict. In the course of rapid exchange blogospheric discourse, people tend not to present formal arguments with carefully crafted premises and conclusions drawn using a specified logic (including myself and the scientists that host this blog), its more in discussion mode. I would personally be interested in a blog that consisted only of formal arguments, queries about ambiguities, and formal rebuttals. But that is not what we have here. Further, when trying to develop a specific thesis in a blog comment stream, other comments hone in on ambiguities in one of the premises as an attempt to dismiss the entire thesis. Yes, lets try to eliminate the ambiguities, but more importantly lets try to understand the main thesis in someone’s points. In the blogosphere, when all this is laced with heavy snark and appeal to motive attacks, it is very difficult get anywhere.

[Response: Indeed, that's why we have the peer-reviewed literature. - gavin]

A critical element in avoiding conflict, justifying a thesis, and understanding someone’s statement or thesis is to ask the question “What would have to be the case such that this statement/thesis were true?” And then both the proponent and examiner should ask the reverse question: “What would have to be the case such that this statement/thesis were false?” The general idea is that the fewer positions supporting the idea that the statement/thesis is false, the higher its degree of justification. Verbal ambiguities can easily be resolved in this way. And it’s a good way to clarify scientific debates also. This is called looking at both sides of the argument and actually trying to understand them. Kudos to those of you who wandered over to climateaudit to try to see what was going on over there and understand their arguments.

When there is a great deal of uncertainty and ignorance on a scientific topic (paleo reconstructions certainly qualifies here), the problem arises when we have conflicting “certainties” by two sides. Conflicting certainties arises from differences in chosen assumptions and the natural tendency to be overconfident about how well we know things. Most of this conflict can resolved by acknowledging and understanding the uncertainties.
Conflicts about methodology can be more easily resolved than conflicts about scientific hypotheses (e.g. 1998 is the warmest year in the last millennia), although methodological issues are a key element required to support a scientific hypothesis.

Uncertainty is complex beast, with multiple locations, different natures (imperfections of knowledge vs inherent variability), and different levels ranging from the unrealizable ideal of complete deterministic uncertainty to total ignorance. The IPCC has not done a very thorough job in characterizing uncertainties. In the first IPCC assessment reports, the executive summaries included lists of “we are certain of the following” and “we have confidence that”, and they included a list of four broad areas of uncertainty. For the IPCC third and fourth assessments, Moss and Schneider’s (2000) guidelines were followed, with a common vocabulary to express quantitative levels of confidence based on the amount of evidence (number of sources of information) and the degree of agreement (consensus) among experts. The actual implementation of this guidance in the AR3 and AR4 WG1 Reports adopted a subjective perspective or “judgmental estimates of confidence,” whereby a single term (e.g. “very likely”) characterizes the overall confidence. Now there have been all sorts of critiques of this method in the published literature, but lets accept the method for the sake of argument.

With this in mind, lets examine the following aspects of my statement in #167:

“3. The NAS North et al. report found that the MBH conclusions and “likely” and “very likely” conclusions in the IPCC TAR report were unsupported at that those confidence levels. How the hockey team interpreted the North NAS report as vindicating MBH, seems strange indeed.

This statement is ambiguous, it can be interpreted in several ways. The verbal ways that the strength of the arguments in MBH, the IPCC, and the North report were described differently, I attempted a generalization using words that the readers would identify as confidence levels. The ambiguity could have been resolved with a longer statement that was more clearly worded. Remember, the point of my summary was to describe the overall content and arguments in Montford’s book to support my earlier statement that Tamino had missed much of what the book is about. This statement was just one statement in a post that included many points to support my thesis regarding missing elements in Tamino’s review, my intent was not to reproduce these arguments in any detail or immerse myself in the technical battle on this issue. This ambiguity in my statement is easily clarified, and does not detract from my overall thesis, and does not in any way reflect on the accuracy of Montford’s book.

[Response: But your statement was based on false premises -- that IPCC TAR had made very strong likelihood statements about paleo-reconstructions, that North et al had found them unsupported, etc. Arguments that follow from false premises are just pointless -- they serve no purpose in resolving any point of scientific dispute, and indeed are only generally found when people are making points purely for rhetorical effect. Lesson to be learned? Don't predicate arguments on false premises, and don't be surprised when people correctly distinguish rhetorical tricks from actual discussion. - gavin]

Now on to the real point. My statement below is correct and unambiguous.

4. A direct consequence of the North NAS report is that the conclusions in the IPCC AR4 essentially retracted much of what was in the IPCC TAR regarding the paleo reconstructions. This is the only instance that I know of where the IPCC has reduced a confidence level or simply left out a conclusion that was in a previous IPCC report. This is discussed in the CRU emails.

A reminder, it is this statement in the TAR that is omitted from the AR4:

“It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year.” The word “likely” means a confidence level of 66-89%. Gavin and I both agree that this statement is unjustified. We disagree on the significance of this high level of justification in TAR and its retraction in the AR4. This is the only instance of a retraction in confidence from the IPCC. The statements that Gavin cites from Lindzen regarding uncertainties in clouds and aerosols are correct; the IPCC continues to acknowledge a high level of uncertainty and low confidence in these areas, and new uncertainties pop up as the frontier of the science is extended and the description of the nature of the uncertainties becomes more precise. The IPCC has never presented a statement of confidence at the very likely or likely level that has the words “cloud” or “aerosol” in it. The cloud-aerosol forcing/feedback includes much at the border of ignorance, which is acknowledged by the IPCC. But I argue that the ignorance surrounding global/hemispheric global temperature over the past millennia from paleo proxies is a topic where the ignorance level is even greater than the cloud-aerosol issue. I also suspect that the there will be further retraction of the confidence levels in the AR5 regarding global/hemispheric temperature reconstructions. This overconfidence in the IPCC reports on this topic is at the heart of the conflict described in Montford’s book.

[Response: I strongly disagree. Your first statement was not at all specific and therefore ambiguous. AR4 did not 'essentially retract' much of what TAR had to say. What is 'essential'? What is 'much'? This will read by many people with many different opinions and they will infer many different things. My response to you on the other hand was very specific. I did not say that the sentence you quote was 'unjustified', I said that I would have been happier with a 'more likely than not' designation. Saying it was 'unjustified' could equally imply that it was completely wrong or that there was no evidence for it in the slightest -- neither of which I agree with. Again, you are using language in a very ambiguous way which only adds to confusion. I would also add that using your own forecasts of what will be in AR5 as an argument to bolster your case is not useful. Finally, if you think that a difference in 4 words in the IPCC TAR is the only or even an important reason for this mess, you really have not been paying attention. - gavin]

So going back to Charles Sanders Peirce and how to overcome disagreement. On the subject of Montford’s book, Tamino’s review, and the larger issue of the state of the science of paleo reconstructions, what have we seen over the past few days in the blogosphere? CP relies almost exclusively on strategies #1 and #2, my statements rankle so much with Romm because I am an “authority” that he previously referred to. At RC we have seen a mixture of all 4 strategies, with a heavy dose of appeal to motive and ad hom attacks. Given that the RC moderators reject many comments, it is not to their credit that they have been letting these through.
BH tends to #3, they are very polite by blogospheric standards and Montford is amazingly snark-free, but not heavy on scientific arguments on the blog. CA scores highest on #4 (there are elements of the others, but they don’t dominate), they stick to mostly to arguments, evidence, identification and clarification of ambiguities, and ad homs and appeal to motives are snipped. With regards to snark, it is more evident in the main posts at CA than at RC, although the inline comments from McIntyre are relatively snark free, whereas those from Gavin are not. Snark is endemic to the blogosphere, makes it entertaining I guess, to some anyways. But snark neither adds nor detracts from scientific arguments, it merely distracts. So readers interested in the arguments should filter it out, and not keep tallies based on snarky gotchas that are minimally relevant to the argument.

[Response: We snipped a lot of comments that were inappropriate directed at you, this is not perfect, but there is a limit to how much time people have to moderate these things. As for whether people can get past the 'snark', we are going to have to disagree on that. I find continual insinuations of misconduct, lying, and 'hiding the pea under the thimble' offensive. I also find continual misrepresentation tiresome. For instance, I made a comment mentioning that the NAS report had cited Fritts (1976) as a source on the use of the RE statistic (which is true). This was completely misrepresented by SM. I also made a statement about what happens in the no-dendro/no-Tijlander case with the Mann et al. (2008) data and method -- which is true, and yet was interpreted as yet more perfidy from scientists. SM knows the PCA issue is moot, and yet keeps on bringing it up. You may think whatever you like about CA, but as a forum in which truth-seeking can be done, it fails miserably. - gavin]

And finally, since I am a glass half full kind of person, I am trying to see what we might have gained from this exchange across the four blogs. The insults that have been heaped upon me are irrelevant to me, if i want friends i can hang out on facebook. They are irrelevant to the arguments themselves, and are only of relevance if you are using Peirce’s #2 strategy, which isn’t very effective in any event. I am prepared to declare victory if anyone is seriously looking at both sides of the arguments, there are any new readers for Montford’s book, if people have wandered over to climateaudit to check it out, if people (especially the RC principals) are starting to get it that the watchdog auditors (e.g. McIntyre) are different from the merchants of doubt (I’m sure that CP won’t cede this). And most importantly I hope that the dialogue can change regarding uncertainty, to acknowledge that there is a high level of uncertainty in level 3 science (as per my previous post on Funtowicz and Ravetz classification), and still a significant level of uncertainty in level 4 science, and not too much of climate science is actually at level 5. The rebels who dispute the level 4 consensus are not irrational, and you need to differentiate rebels from cranks. An interesting case of this is Roy Spencer (a rebel) currently taking on the cranks that are denying that the greenhouse effect exists.

It would be much easier if the public could just trust the experts to be right. This doesn’t work, and again Feynmann said it best: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says, ‘Science teaches such and such,’ he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, ‘Science has shown such and such,’ you should ask, ‘How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?’ It should not be ‘science has shown.’ And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but be patient and listen to all the evidence) to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.”

[Response: No-one disagrees with Feynman, so I wish people would stop quoting him as if we have never read this. But this issue has nothing to do with anyone here saying that no-one should ask questions, or that everything that there is to be known is known, or that the IPCC or 'science' is perfect. At workshops, meetings and emails all of the issues are regularly being hashed out and looked at. It should go without saying (but obviously doesn't) that people should ask as many questions as they want, that there is a lot more to be learned, and that neither I, the RC contributors, the IPCC, 'science' or the NAS are perfect. (Though that does not imply that we know nothing.) Again (and this too should go without saying, but apparently it doesn't), no-one in the scientific community is against openness, or transparency or data availability. None of these things are points of contention in the slightest (though neither are they always simple). 

What is being pushed back against is the continual barrage of innuendo, accusations of corruption and fraud, and insinuations of misconduct because people had the temerity to do their jobs and publish results which some people do not like. This has happened to Ben Santer, Phil Jones, Mike Mann, and many others and follows in a long line of similar tactics employed by the 'merchants of doubt'. McIntyre might not fall exactly into that mold (almost certainly very different motivations), but he feeds that machine quite willingly -- and not just in relation to MBH: read his posts on Hansen or his accusations against Briffa on the Yamal issue, for instance. Every time there is a puzzle or ambiguity or something he doesn't understand, the first recourse is to accuse the scientists of bad faith. Montford's book is just more of the same paranoia ('the corruption of science'? Really?), and your championing of it simply further poisons the atmosphere of debate. Why is it so hard to realise that you can't have a dialogue between scientists and people who accuse them of lying all the time? 

If McIntyre wants to be taken seriously by scientists (and it is not clear that he does), he needs to eschew that kind of nonsense despite the adoring Greek chorus who egg him on for their own reasons. Indeed, in the past you have made exactly the same point. It isn't that these insinuations get in the way of understanding his points, it is that they appear to be his points. As I said earlier, science has indeed set up structures (peer-review, etc.) that allow arguments to be resolved efficiently. Those structures work remarkably well. It is time the 'auditors' started to use them. - gavin]

Link:  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/comment-page-10/#comments

Currygate: Judith Curry proved some time ago she has no analytical abilities

Currygate: 

Comment #435 by Judith Curry

I finally understand what is going wrong in this exchange, illuminated by SOD’s queries at climateaudit. To those of you who haven’t read Montford’s book, it is a history of science tome. It starts out with the rollout of the TAR report and how McIntyre got interested in the problem. It ends with a hastily added chapter on climategate, which broke just as the book was going to press. Its sort of who said/did what when, which is well documented, explanations of some of the technical details, along with a narrative that reflects on these events. The who said what when is accurate as far as i can tell, as well as explanation of the scientific details. The narrative is of course open to some spin.

Tamino reviewed the book like it was a review of hockey stick science and another salvo in the RC vs CA war. This isn’t what the book is about, which is why i gave Tamino the C- grade for his review. So given what the book is about, it is not to hard to imagine what i meant when i said Tamino’s review was inaccurate: it simply did not portray what Montford said nor did it catch what the book was all about. I was not in any way attempting to counter Tamino’s “review of the science”. Like i’ve said 10 times before, this topic is not my expertise, it is an immature field with many uncertainties, so I am not motivated to dig into any scientific nuances here and debate them publicly in a forum like RC that has a great deal of hostility on this topic owing to pent up frustration, battle scars, whatever.

The point of this history of science is to understand how this happened and why. In reading this, i saw many points where i said “if only something slightly different had happened, this would never have occurred.” This conflict is fundamentally different from a merchants of doubt conflict. Surely we all want to avoid such conflagrations in the future. So the issue that montford raises, and that i have raised in my posts, are general issues, about the integrity of science, how to avoid conflicts, how to deal with mistakes, how science should be conducted when there are alot uncertainties and the field is immature, when the situation is politicized, etc.

So I have no intention of debating any aspects of the science on this topic. In spite of the fact that most people on this thread thought the point of all this should be defending Mann’s science (and Amman, etc) and identifying scientific “truth” in all this. This is highly uncertain science in a young field. So get over it, we aren’t going to get “truth” on this anytime soon. The challenge is to avoid these crazy conflicts and move paleo reconstructions forward

[Response: Easy. Stop encouraging people who think that all climate science is corrupt and who refuse to make any constructive efforts to improve things. - gavin]

Comment by Judith Curry — 28 July 2010 @ 3:43 PM

Comment #457 by ccpo:

The point of this history of science is to understand how this happened and why. In reading this, i saw many points where i said “if only something slightly different had happened, this would never have occurred.” This conflict is fundamentally different from a merchants of doubt conflict.

I’ll likely regret this, but… what we know to be true is that McIntyre is well associated with what I am very comfortable calling the denialist machine. He takes pains to pick at what he cannot fail to know is irrelevant in the larger context. He associates with people who insult climate scientists and the body of work itself on a daily basis. You are known by the company you keep. And he refuses to, or is unable to, publish. Lastly, his work is virtually always shown to be in error and/or, as previously stated, irrelevant.

Secondly, as others have pointed out, the title of a book means something. The title is pejorative. Period. This is not something you can debate, nor will I do so with you. If you believe that book to be a reasonable exploration of a few little conflicts, you are either beyond your expiration date or being pulled over to the dark side. Your original comments here were pejorative, as well. Tamino and Gavin would be well within their rights to ask your superiors to have a quiet word with you. Or a very public one, all the better.

Your insinuation that the conflict lies anywhere but where it does, at the feet of the various denialist lackeys, think tanks and bloggers, is insulting to everyone making an effort to deal with this crisis, but mostly to the scientists doing the work.

Essentially, what I see here is the latest stage in denialist evolution. We had the, “It’s all a hoax!” type. That was followed by the, “It’s not much, and it ain’t us!” type. Then came the, “It’s not enough to worry about, and if it is, we can’t afford to do anything (and it is only a little likely it’s us)” type. Next came the, “It’s nasty, but it’s natural. One world Government led by Fat Al Gore!” type. Now there’s the, “We can only drill our way out! We need money, and lots of it, and energy and lots of it, to mitigate (although most places will be quite nice to live in. Think I’ll buy property in Canada)” type.

Now there’s Judith with the, “The Auditors will save us! They’ll stop all that… um… not really dishonesty, but, well, lying without REALLY being lying, ’cause I would never say you lied, tho you did… but *I* didn’t say that, that’s what the book said. And the book is right, though I don’t support the book on the details, just on this hyster…er historical look at all the wackiness that’s been caused by all this conflict because you guys lie… er… made some pretty big (yeah, right!) mistakes, so people had to check your work. And they’ve been ever so lovely in doing so!”

Please, Judith. The folks you are supporting have no intention of finding the truth. They are looking for blood, and blood only, so as to fit their agenda. Sometimes I think McIntyre must believe his own press, but he couldn’t possibly be that deluded, could he? To attack and insult for years and years and claim he’s just correcting a few mistakes? I suppose stranger things have happened. But that gets annulled immediately because he allows many others to attack in his name and with his blessing while taking no pains to hold them in check or correct *their* factual errors.

For whatever reason, you are feeling some satisfaction in poking your fellow scientists with sticks. It can’t be for good reasons, despite your twisted rationales.

I strongly suspect you represent the latest incarnation of denialist. Even if you don’t, personally, you have likely created the mold.

Cheers

Comment by ccpo — 29 July 2010 @ 12:33 AM

Currygate: More unbearably lame comments by Judith Curry on RealClimate, with replies by Gavin Schmidt

Currygate: More unbearably lame comments by Judith Curry on RealClimate, with replies by Gavin Schmidt

Link:  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/

Comment #414 by Judith Curry:

1. 
   
   Whereas I am through reading these threads (anyone wanting to discuss something, pls email me), I do want to clarify the issue surrounding my statement:
   
   
   7. The Mann et al. 2008, which purports to address all the issues raised by MM and produce a range of different reconstructions using different methodologies, still do not include a single reconstruction that is free of questioned tree rings and centered PCA.
   
   
   This statement is an inaccurate reflection of what is in Montford’s book.
   
   
   [Response: Thanks for clearing that up. It really serves us all well to make sure that the details of claims we make (or repeat) are accurate, because, as you can see, people can waste a lot of time dealing with claims that aren't true. - gavin]
   
   
   This statement has been source of much discussion both here and at climateaudit. I append here relevant excerpts from the discussion that clarify this statement and its rebuttal at RC in context of Montford’s book.
   
   
   Steve McIntyre: In respect to the published article, Mann et al 2008, it is my view that the published graphics in the original article and SI, including amendments in 2008, did not include a reconstruction showing a hockey stick that did not involve either strip bark bristlecones or contaminated Tiljander sediments. Andrew Montford’s point in HSI – a point previously made at CA – was the bristlecone rebuttal used Tilander sediments (contaminated and upside down); and to show that contamination of Tiljander sediments “didn’t matter”, used strip bark bristlecones. The point in the book was right. Judith’s point is consistent with the book.
   
   
   [Response: Logical fail. Making a criticism that is wrong is not 'consistent' with another criticism that might be made and might (or might not) be valid. - gavin]
   
   
   Steve McIntyre: Judith’s comment mentioning PCA in connection with Mann et al 2008 was an error that derived from her recollection, not from the book. Her point that there was something wrong with both alternatives in Mann et al 2008 was, I think, “correct in spirit”, but in these sorts of debates, it is important to be correct in letter, as any such missteps are pounced on to divert attention from the beam in the Team’s eye, as happened here.
   
   
   [Response: For once, we agree on something - people should strive to be correct. - gavin]
   
   
   Phil Clarke: In November 2009, just before Climategate, Mann placed a non-Tiljander non-dendro reconstruction on his website. He did not issue a Corrigendum at PNAS nor did he publish a notice of the new information at realclimate. That Mann did so in late 2009 long after the fact did not refute the claim in respect to Mann et al PNAS 2008.
   
   [edit - this from SM:] It’s very misleading for Gavin to pretend that a website addition in November 2009 was part of the corpus of Mann et al 2008, that should have been considered in CA commentary on Mann et al 2008 in late 2008 (which was what MOntford was reviewing).
   
   
   [Response: Pure spin. The additional graph was posted because of inaccurate claims that there was something wrong with the no-dendro reconstruction because of the inclusion of the already-acknowledged-to-be-problematic Tiljander proxies. The sensitivity studies in the original paper didn't include that the no-dendro/no-Tiljander combination but that does not justify the claims made by Montford that such a combination was impossible or was not included because it undermined the results. Indeed, you can do a no-dendro and no-Tiljander reconstruction with the code that was posted with Mann et al (2008), and that was what was added to the figure I showed. Montford was apparently happy to make up results and conclusions in late 2008 that were just not justified, and for this you give him a pass? Curious. For further information, the no-dendro/no-Tiljander sensitivity test is also part of the SI in Mann et al (2009) (figure S8), where it is noted that it doesn't validate prior to 1500 AD. Of course if you remove all data that is imperfect, you will end up with no results. But as Salzer et al point out, there is likely to be useful climate information in the tree rings so I wouldn't throw them out unnecessarily. - gavin]
   
   
   Judith Curry:
 Too bad Tamino’s review was posted during a period when I don’t have much time to put into blogging. I felt obliged to pipe in since I challenged RC to do the review. My mistake has been an unfortunate distraction. Which wouldn’t have been a distraction if this mistake hadn’t been used to mischaracterize and discredit my broader points.
Mistakes happen, and they shouldn’t be a big deal when they are identified, acknowledged, fixed. However, the politics of expertise that is the basis of the consensus demands that the experts be oracles and never admit mistakes. Ravetz’s statements about the “radical implications of the blogosphere” are challenging the power politics of expertise. Here’s hoping that a saner environment for dialogue and argument can evolve in the blogosphere.
   
   
   [Response: Your comments here were wrong on a far more broad level than simply mis-remembering Montford's point 7, though I appreciate that you have tried to clear that up. But this has been very illuminating - we've seen exactly how technical issue after technical issue is used to paint a misleading picture of supposed malfeasance (which you appear to have bought into without ever looking into the issue itself). Paleo-reconstructions are not anything special in science - they are simply the result of lots of people trying to see what they can discern of the past through a rather murky lens. Your 'auditors' have decided that any judgement call in doing that must be challenged and insinuate continuously that every issue is being fixed for some ulterior motive. This is not a useful challenge to the science, because it undermines the making of any judgement in the analysis whatsoever. The 'auditors' do not produce alternatives because they too would have to make decisions about how to proceed which would open them up to their own criticisms. That is what needs to change if they are going to make a contribution. For an example of how that 'citizen science' can really work, look at what Ron Broberg and Zeke Hausfeather are doing with the weather station data - they aren't sitting around declaring that 'it can't be done' or that the GISTEMP/CRU/NCDC methods are fixed, they are going into the data, making choices, seeing what impact they have and determining what is robust. Indeed, that is science without the need for the quotes. Would that there would be more of that. - gavin]
   
   
   Salamano: Do you think it’s possible that there could be a ‘trading of hostages’ here..?
   Comment by Judith Curry — 28 July 2010 @ 11:29 AM
    
   Comment #415 by sturat:
   
   
2. 
   
   Intersting links HR @ 412
   I wonder if JC is aware of this:
   http://www.creationcareforpastors.com/science-info/
   Comment by sturat — 28 July 2010 @ 11:36 AM
   
   Comment #416 by Chris Colose:
   
   
3. 
   
   Judith Curry:
   At this point I have no idea how your credentials have carried you this far through everyone’s patience zone. There’s only so much tolerance you can be given for spewing nonsense just because you have expertise in other areas of atmospheric science.
   
   You have not addressed a single issue raised at RC, and when you post a comment, the responses by gavin have not been rebutted or accepted. Instead, you choose to outline sets of erroneous statements and then fall back on the line that they were not your opinion, you’re just summarizing what you got out of Montford’s book, or just link to what other people are writing. I call B*ll***t. All of your points so far have been ad hominem attacks on RC, and apparently you are not willing to come up with an independent though (which reflects that you actually read the back-and-forths of Mann et al), that you are willing to put up for cross-examination.
   Comment by Chris Colose — 28 July 2010 @ 11:41 AM
   
   Comment #417 by Matthew L:
   
   
4. 
   
   Anybody else noticed the interesting developments at Dr Spencer’s blog? He is currently finding himself defending greenhouse gas theory in the face of a tide of Dunning-Kruger zombies. Kudos to the guy, he is tryingvery hard.
   
   
   
   Curry goes out, crossing paths with Spencer coming in!
   
   
   
   Perhaps he is beginning to realise the implications of the steadily warming air temperatures that his satellite data is revealing. I think he still has a way to go (he has commented that the link between CO2 and global warming is “tenuous at best”) but nobody is beyond redemption.
   Comment by Matthew L — 28 July 2010 @ 11:43 AM
   
   Comment #418 by Judith Curry:
   
5. 
   
   p.s. in the midst of the deluge at RC, it took awhile for me to sort out what might be an actual error/mistake, especially since i don’t have time to read the threads in details (i am mostly relying on emails that point out something I should respond to). I am more than willing to admit and rectify mistakes when I make them, but in doing so I want to make sure that i do not further confuse the issue. The discussion on the climateaudit thread regarding this statement clarifies Montford’s point and McIntyre’s perspective on this issue.
   Comment by Judith Curry — 28 July 2010 @ 12:02 PM
   
   Comment #419 by Judith Curry:
   
   
6. 
   
   One more point, in case i haven’t made it over here. It was not the intent of my original posts (on this thread or the one a few months ago) to get involved in a technical debate on issues surrounding the hockey stick. Although I have read fairly widely on this topic, it is not my area of expertise. So if you choose to hang my overall worth as a scientist and my professional credibility on a mistake made in a summary of a book that is outside my field of expertise, well you are certainly entitled to that judgement.
   
   My main interest in this issue is the way that the conflict has played out, and utter senseless of it all, and this thread just reinforces the concerns that I had when I read Montford’s book. This is a young field, with many uncertainties and contested ideas. The participation of the extended peer community in this field is a good thing. The story told by Montford of this conflict is something everybody should read so that we can all ponder how to avoid such unnecessary conflicts in the future that are causing so much damage to the entire field of climate science. This is the point of Montford’s book, which Tamino missed in his review.
   
   This situation raises a whole host of issues related to the integrity of science, which is why I made that post that included Gleick’s testimony (I embellished the post at CP; gavin didn’t snip anything). There are other highly uncertain topics such as hurricanes and global warming and cloud/aerosol feedbacks, that are arguably more important for the global warming argument than the paleo reconstructions. And we don’t see this kind of protracted animosity in the other fields, where uncertainties get acknowledged and productive discussion among opponents take place, even though there are occasional flareups.
   
   So I’ll throw this challenge out there, to figure out how facilitate constructive scientific debate on the topic of paleo reconstructions, so that the field can move forward in a way that makes these reconstructions more useful and credible. I won’t hold my breath tho . . .
   
   [Response: Paleo-reconstructions are not my field either, but as I indicated above, it is obvious to me that the problem here is excessive personalisation of these issues, the constant insinuations of wrong-doing, and the inability of the critics to ever make a single point cleanly and acknowledge when it is shown to be irrelevant. No scientists can deal with that kind of attack in a constructive way. The practice of science has built up a number of mechanisms to try and ensure that arguments get dealt with constructively, and a big part of that is through the peer-reviewed literature where i's can be dotted, t's can be crossed, and where the snark gets put aside. As Phil Jones said "I wish they'd just publish a paper, I'd know how to deal with that". Papers are important (despite the sneers from McIntyre whenever this is brought up), because they do impose a discipline on the authors that simply doesn't exist on blogs. It forces people to dis-aggregate issues if they are going to get things passed the reviewers. And most of the time it forces people to stop insinuating fraud every time there is a dispute. The literature is where these issues are resolved, not in blogs. If the 'auditors' want to make a contribution, it has to be there. - gavin]
   
   Comment by Judith Curry — 28 July 2010 @ 12:19 PM