Collide-a-scape

I do feel bad for Phil Jones, the scientist caught in the maw of climategate. It’s obviously taken an enormous personal toll on him. But he appears to still be in the same bunker that got him in trouble in the first place. He comes off fairly defensive in this interview with Olive Heffernan in Nature. Here’s just one of the passages that is bound to raise eyebrows:

But he fears that the aftermath of the climategate affair is undermining the integrity of the scientific review process. “I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process,” says Jones.

That’s probably not a smart thing to say, given he’s the guy who wrote this (in one of those infamous emails) to Michael Mann:

I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

Here’s the kicker in Olive’s interview:

It is now essential for climate researchers to stand up for their science, he says. “[I'd] like to see the climate science community supporting the climate science more. Lots of them are trying but they’re being drowned out.”

By who? Those very same bloggers, I presume.

One of the more amusing (and popular) voices in the the enviro/peak oil doom-o-sphere is James Howard Kunstler, perhaps best known for his book, The Geography of Nowhere. Once a week, he issues a rambling missive on all issues related to society’s imminent collapse from his profanely titled blog, Clusterfuck Nation. People seem to eat it up. This week, his curmudgeonly schtick is about the biggest climate story of the year (pre-Copenhagen):

Against a greater welter and flow of incoherence jerking the nation this way and that way en route to collapse comes “ClimateGate,” the latest excuse for screaming knuckleheads to defend what has already been lost.

Chalk Kunstler up as someone who definitely thinks it’s a piddling story. But that’s mainly because he believes the train to societal ruination has already left the station:

My guess is that the undertow of entropy is now too great to provoke any meaningful unified change in behavior.  The collapse of the US economy is too close to the horizon, and the so-called developing nations will have problems equally severe.  In the meantime, it is unlikely that any of the major players will burn less coal and oil, or not cheat on each other even if they pledge to burn less.  People who are not knuckleheads will make the practical arrangements that they can. These will, by definition, be localized, small-scale, and non-global communities, doing what they would have to do anyway.

Practical arrangements? I don’t even have a key to get into the local community garden. Fuckin a, I’m stocking up on Coco Krispies, Yoo-hoo’s, and devil dogs. That’s what I was fed as a kid (okay, ring dings, too) and I’m still standing. That seems the perfect diet to survive a post-apocalypse landscape, no?

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Michael Tobis is among the most thoughtful climate bloggers out there. To really appreciate him, you have to see how his arguments unfold in the comment threads of his posts.

His latest post and related thread is a perfect example. I am certain some of his most loyal readers are utterly dismayed by it. Which is why I find Tobis so fascinating. So in this latest thread he gets into an eye-opening exchange on science bias with one regular reader, who seems to be trying to steer Michael back to a politically correct (climate advocate) position for political reasons:

But I do encourage you to clarify your thoughts as much as possible. You never know when someone will quote you to the effect that you think there is a strong case Mann and Jones suffered from “unconscious bias”, which is a possible, even plausible, interpretation of what you said. So please fix or clarify that, before Morano gets hold of it.

Tobis doesn’t oblige:

I think that walking on eggshells to avoid giving ammunition to the bad guys is a corrupting influence. In the end plays into their hands more than inadvertently giving them the juicy quotes to beat you up with.

In that very same comment, Tobis also offers this gem about the CRU hacker affair:

Scientific speech and political speech are very different beasts. The current situation tangles them up. I am trying to figure out how to disentangle them. I am not sure how.

That’s what I love about his blog. Sure, he’s got his convictions on climate change (especially what he regards as the moral imperative to act), which he is unafraid to convey. But he also struggles with the complexities of the science and the best way to communicate them, which he often articulates with refreshing candor.

Many of the people he admires are shrugging off “climategate” (yes, I don’t like the term either) as “a tempest in a teapot” or an “artificial” scandal. Not Tobis. He recognizes it’s much more than that, and to his credit, he’s trying to figure out how to engage it.

UPDATE 1: In an update to his own post, Tobis says I have misunderstood the meaning of his post.

UPDATE 2: In a comment below, Tom Yulsman takes up the gist of Michael’s post more thoroughly than I have, and is inclined to agree that I’m reading too much into Michael’s words.

There’s an interesting Q & A with Roger Pielke Sr. over at Pajamas media. The interviewer tried asking several times if the case for AGW was shot because of Climategate. He didn’t get the answer he wanted.

Judging by the comments, Dr. Pielke did not give the audience what they wanted to hear, either.

The current issue of Nature carries an editorial on the CRU email controversy. Here’s one passage that I agree with:

Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

End of story? Not quite, as I’ve suggested here and here. More specifically, we don’t know the who (stole the emails), why, and how.  So far, press coverage and endless blog chatter has largely focused on divining the significance (or lack thereof) of what’s been revealed. That game will run its course in due time, unless there are more disclosures and developments, which there are bound to be.

But back to the Nature editorial. Roger Pielke Jr. says

it is just seething in anger.

To borrow my favorite philosopher’s favorite weasel term, I’m going to be charitable and say it is quite a spirited defense of the embattled climate scientists. (Hey, cut me some slack.) On the other hand, this larger observation from Roger seems spot on:

One consequence of the emails will be to open up new fault lines within the scientific community as issues that have percolated below the surface emerge now that the ground has shifted. Nature and the broader scientific community needs to tread carefully in taking sides on issues that there is a wide diversity of opinion on within its own community as well as among the broader public. Nature would do well to distinguish a defense of science from a defense of a few individual scientists.

If there is a sunnier flip side to both Roger’s anticipated “consequence” of “new fault lines” and the indignant posture in the Nature editorial, then perhaps it is best expressed in this WSJ op-ed by Mike Hulme, who writes:

If climategate leads to greater openness and transparency in climate science, and makes it less partisan, it will have done a good thing. It will enable science to function in the effective way it must do in public policy deliberations.

The most immediate one is the vigorous debate Climategate has engendered between individuals of all political, ideological, and scientific stripes. Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology deserves much of the credit for kickstarting this, first in speaking directly to Steven McIntyre’s audience at Climate Audit, and then shortly after that with another essay posted over at Climate Progress.

Following this, Andy Revkin at Dot Earth generated a lively exhange by also highlighting Curry, as well as Mike Hulme, another distinguished climate scientist. Unlike the majority of their peers, Curry and Hulme have not downplayed the significance of the CRU email controversy. On this note, I’m disappointed that William Connolley has failed to use his influential corner of the climate blogosphere to foster a healthy discussion of the salient issues, be it the integrity of the peer review process, FOIA evasion, CRU data storage, or the “tribalism” that Curry notes. Connolley appears to be taking a nothing to see here, move along attitude.

That seems to be the position taken by many environmental and science journalists as well. (Notable exceptions include George Monbiot and Tom Yulsman.) Incredibly, nobody at Columbia University’s The Observatory has yet commented on Climategate. The journalism site’s motto is: “A lens on the science press.” I guess their “lens” has found nothing noteworthy (or lacking) about the media coverage thus far.

More typical are the shrugs exhibited by Kevin Drum (”As near as I can tell, ClimateGate is almost entirely a tempest in a teacup”) and David Roberts, who can’t be bothered to see what all the fuss is about:

I haven’t read the emails. I’ll leave it to others to determine whether a few scientists or a few papers deserve a newly critical eye.

Contrast this willful ignorance with Megan McArdle’s serious grappling of the affair. After exploring the most serious charges (some of which, McArdle acknowledges, merit further investigation), she concludes:

I see an indirect problem, which is that these scientists allowed themselves to become politicized and hostile to outsiders in a way that may have compromised the quality of their work.

As near as I can tell, liberal pundits like Drum and important voices like Connelley and Roberts are wearing blinders, while press watchdogs like The Observatory have gone MIA on the biggest global warming story of the year.

As for a larger upside to the scandal, Will Wilkinson provides a good guess here:

I predict that the overall response from the scientific community will be healthy and invigorating. Climate science will become more transparent and more rigorously by-the-book because climate scientists are becoming more fully aware that the impulse to jealously protect a public perception of consensus can undermine itself by producing questionable science and a justifiably skeptical public.

Well, if that happens, it won’t be because of the role played by liberal journalists or (with the notable execption of Revkin and a few others), the science media.

UPDATE 1: Mike Hulme has an absolute must-read op-ed in WSJ Europe.

UPDATE 2: Bud Ward wrote a prescient post on the then emerging controversy on November 22, in which he said:

Take those who see this event as the end of days when it comes to anthropogenic climate change with a huge grain of salt. And take those dismissing it as much ado about nothing with an equal dose.

UPDATE 3: Curtis Brainard at The Observatory has posted a lengthy article analyzing coverage of Climategate.