440 FOI requests in one day! From one person!

The Australian Age has highlighted the practice by climate change deniers/contrarians/skeptics of using freedom of information requests to harrass scientists ansd insitutions invovled in climate change research (see Think tank warned over climate information requests).

“RIGHT-WING think tank the Institute of Public Affairs has received a warning from the Department of Climate Change after it submitted more than 750 freedom-of-information requests in four months.

The institute, which strongly opposes carbon pricing, has made more than 95 per cent of FOI requests lodged with the department since April.

The department last week wrote to the institute’s director of climate change policy, Tim Wilson, and asked that he stop submitting requests so it could deal with the backlog.”

The shear numbers of  these FOI requests show that they are uses as harassment and are politcally motivated.

“It is believed Mr Wilson submitted about 440 information requests on one day in late July and more than 140 on one day last week.

A government source said it took about 39 hours of staff time to process each application.

”He is conducting a political campaign against the government’s policy on climate change and this is coming at significant cost to taxpayers,” the source said.”

The local, New Zealand, equivalent of The Institute of Public Affairs is The NZ Centre for Political Research. They are closely aligned with the NZ ACT Party and local climate change denier/contrarian groups like The Climate Conversation Group and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. These last groups have been doing a little FOI harrassment of their own. Of course, they also hope this sort of activity will create an illusion that the scientists or their insitutions are guilty of something. A sort of “When are you going to stop beatin g your wife?” type tactic.

With thanks to Graham Readfearn (@readfearn)

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Shonky climate-change denial “science”

I have often accused the local climate change denial group of shonky science in their treatment of data for their report “Are we feeling warmer yet?“ (see for example New Zealand’s denier-gate). There is the clear issue of their presenting temperature data which had not been corrected for changes in station location, etc. (And of course their unwarranted accusation that our climate scientists were guilty of fraud in using the necessary adjustments). And some of the data they used did not appear to correspond to that on the NIWA database.

Richard Treadgold (the only publicly acknowledged author of the report) consistently refused to clarify any issue I raised with him on the data. He also refused to make his data or methods available. (Although he assured me that his report was backed by his own “science team which wished to remain anonymous”). Read the emails for a summary of his attempts to avoid revealing his data and methods.

However, Treadgold seems to have inadvertently let some of his data slip by providing  a link to a spreadsheet (Summary AWFWY RTreadgold.xls which is in a directory for his blog). This provides an opportunity to check in detail the level of scientific competence in this group.

After NIWA, God?

Local blog Imperator Fish has a nice little satirical comment on the impending legal case being taken against NIWA by New Zealand critics of climate change science (see A desperate plea to be noticed?). If They Win is a fictional news report of legal action taken by the  Climate Science Coalition (CSC) alleging breach of a court order that ruled climate change was not occurring. That is it assumes the CSC will be successful in its current case.

The CSC sued the Crown Research Institute NIWA over weather data issued by the institute, and obtained a ruling by the court last year that NIWA’s data was invalid.

But the CSC are concerned that global temperatures may have risen, in defiance of the court order.

CSC spokesman Terry Dunleavy said the recent atmospheric activity was concerning.

“It may just be an anomaly, but we would certainly be very concerned if temperatures were on the rise, in defiance of the judge’s order.”

Problem is who is responsible? Who do they sue now?

Auckland University Associate Law Professor Nigel de Blath said it was not absolutely clear who or what was behind the recent temperature changes. But if it was God He may have a case to answer.

“On the face of it He appears to have breached the spirit of the court order, if not the actual express language of it.

“I think we all accepted when the ruling came out last year that climate change was at an end. The judge made his views very clear on the subject.”

Mr de Blath said the latest temperature anomalies made a mockery of the entire judicial process.

I nice little story, illustrating the stupidity of thinking one should take legal action in an attempt to change reality.

The rickety bandwagon of climate change denial

OK, this cartoon is lampooning extremest attitudes within the US Republican Party. But I think it is also very relevant to this whole “climategate” hysteria.

Relevant because some of the most extreme pronouncements from climate change deniers do smack of McCarthyism. To be honest they also remind me of the campaigns against scientists and intellectuals launched by Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot.

Have a brief look at some of the pronouncement in denier blogs and twitter tweets. The description of climate change science as a conspiracy. The accusations that honest scientists have lied, hidden and distorted data and interfered with scientific publication processes. And all on an international scale. The huge and authoritative IPCC reviews are being discarded unread as rubbish and lies.

The accusations that these honest scientists are criminals, that they should be prosecuted. Some of these bloggers and tweeters want immediate  punishment – they can’t wait for a trial, let alone an investigation.

And as for the official investigation of charges of violation of freedom of information laws, let alone scientific ethics, these critics scream “whitewash” beforehand. Justice and truth is the last thing they want.

Persecuting climate scientists

The label “McCarthyism” is so obvious, down to McCarthy’s tactics of persecution of victims and hearings. US Senator James Inhofe is actually demanding criminal investigation of climate scientists. He has even named 17 US and UK climate scientists he wants to prosecute.

Michael Mann, one of the US climate scientists Inhofe wishes to imprison or otherwise punish, has warned about the climate denier hysteria:

“I think the following quote characterises the situation best: ‘Continuous research by our best scientists … may be made impossible by the creation of an atmosphere in which no man feels safe against the public airing of unfounded rumours, gossip, and vilification.’ The quote wasn’t made during the last few months. It was made by US president Harry S Truman in 1948, in response to politically motivated attacks against scientists associated with the dark era of McCarthyism.”

Mann added:

“I fear that is precisely the sort of atmosphere that is being created, and sure, it impacts research. The more time scientists have to spend fending off these sorts of attacks and dealing with this sort of nonsense, the less time is available to them to actually do science, and to push the forefront of our knowledge forward. Perhaps that is the intent?”

He is right to warn us about the nature of the current anti-science hysteria.

But I think the cartoon also conveys an important point. These days McCarthyism (and Stalinism, Maoism and Pol Potism) is a sign of weakness. It is an extremely weak and rickety bandwagon to jump on to. These extremists sail so close to the wind that they will inevitably be exposed. Their whole edifice will collapse.

I suspect this collapse will become more and more obvious as we get the results from the current investigations into the “climategate” issue. It is likely that any real unethical or illegal activity found will be no greater than interference with freedom of information requests. And these may relate only to emails rather than data. After the dust is settle, after any real inappropriate behaviour has been dealt with, many people are going to look ridiculous.

Demand transparency from deniers

I only hope that we can spend some time investigating these people. What has been their attitude towards revealing their own sources of funding and treatment of data? How have they responding to information requests? How have they behaved ethically toward reporting scientific facts, let alone reporting the behavior of honest scientists?

Some of these people are journalists. Others bloggers. The there are the denier organisations and their websites. Should we place any trust in such people in the future?

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• Rajendra Pachauri: Climate scientists face ‘new form of persecution’ (guardian.co.uk)

Can science solve all problems?

First – I love this latest cartoon from Jesus and Mo. Certainly typical of some conversations I have had with creationists. (Currently, though, it seems to be even more typical of  the more extreme local climate change deniers).

But, my main message is about the question “Can science solve all problems?” Of course no scientist claims it can, although our critics sometimes attibute that hubris to us. Yet there are certainly some questions we won’t be able to solve.

This post from It’s Only a Theory (Tales in a subdued palette of chestnut and white) illustrates an important aspect. That just because we don’t believe that we can know everything using science (or anything else) doesn’t mean we should assume that knowledge in a specific area is impossible. I believe that is an arrogant claim. Anyway – read on:

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“Charles Sander Peirce observed that it’s a poor bet to insist that science will never be able to solve some question. Make the bet, he says, and

“[t]he likelihood is that it will be solved long before you could have dreamed possible. Think of Auguste Comte who when asked to name any thing that could never be found out instanced the chemical composition of the fixed stars; and almost before his book became known to the world at large, the first steps had been taken in spectral analysis.*

Yet there are certainly some questions we won’t be able to solve. The problem, of course, is identifying which facts those are.

Traces of the past have been effaced, and so there are some facts about what the past was like that are unrecoverable. In explaining underdetermination to people, I use the colour of dinosaurs as an example. It may just be that the fossil record has not preserved enough for us to figure it out.

And yet researchers claim to figure it out based on microscopic bits responsible for extruding pigment; see the NYTimes article. The Sinosauropteryx, we are told, had “had a head-to-tail feathered mohawk in a subdued palette of chestnut and white stripes.”

The story goes on to indicate that other scientists challenge the result, that the data set is small, and so on. And I only ever used the example in a conditional way, to say that the relevant evidence might not exist in the fossil record. I only meant say that this kind of underdetermination will arise in historical sciences. Of course we can’t know with certainty which questions will be underdeterminated in this way.

Still, I need a new example.

* I give the full citation and more commentary in an old paper.”

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Climate change deniers’ tawdry manipulation of “hockey sticks”

Warning: This post abounds in “hockey sticks.”

Poneke’s recent blog post, 13 years of Climategate emails show tawdry manipulation of science by a powerful cabal at the heart of the global warming campaign, precipitated a lively discussion. Well, perhaps “discussion” is too kind because it was dominated by extreme deniers.

Now, I don’t want to label people unjustly. I respect those who are sceptical of the IPCC climate change conclusions, but are willing to stick with the science in discussing them. I reserve the term “deniers” for those irrational souls who grab at anything they can (cold days, snow, 1998 temperatures, IPCC mistake on Himalyan glaciers, etc., etc.). No interest in the science – just in using “sciencey” claims to advance their preconceived conclusions.

But my point in this post is to deal with one of Poneke’s claims which is demonstratively untrue.

Climate change deniers live in glass buildings

There seems to be a big mobilisation of climate change deniers at the moment. Someone on Twitter described selective use of stolen emails, “Climategate”, as pre-Copenhagen smears. They added a quote from Churchill which I think is very apt: “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth can get its pants on.”

Most of the local media seems to be taking a relatively balanced approach to the Climategate email issue (see for example A climate scandal, or is it just hot air?). However, we now have  a “controversy” manufactured by the local Climate Science Coalition an Climate Conversation Group. A group of climate change deniers, none of them climate scientists themselves, who attempt to cast doubt on the science produced by real climate scientists. This started with a press release (Are we feeling warmer yet?). picked up and promoted by Ian Wishart (a local conspiracy theorist and climate change denier) and some local conservative and religious apologist blogs (see for example I confess I now believe in manmade Global Warming, Climate scientists caught lying and New Zealand not warming?).

Basically, it was a manipulation of raw data from NZ weather stations to support their preconceived claim of no temperature change over time. Accompanied by a claim that NIWA has dishonestly adjusted the same data to produce a temperature change.

The issues, and the scientific facts, are well covered by Garth at Hot Topic (NZ sceptics lie about temp records, try to smear top scientist) and items at the NIWA web site. I recommend reading these.