One has to bow to your expertise on this subject as a leading poster of the “constructed narrative.”

re: “because a researcher won’t give information to someone trying to besmirch their name”

Perhaps one should add “robust” to your inquiry of definitions (e.g. “improper”)? Setting aside your inflammatory and absurd implication, in your dictionary does “robust” have an escape clause for valid arguments made by “besmirching” statisticians in search of enough data for replication? Or worse, does the NSF now need to codify existing policy and procedure with exceptions of those judged not intending to “besmirch” the author? Was this exception covered in: Bürger, G., and U. Cubasch (2005), Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23711, doi:10.1029/2005GL024155.

While editing the dictionary and NSF’s policies and procedures, make sure “hooey” gets a redefinition too.

Will be showing periodically over the next days
http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html

The hockey stick was very prominent in this NOW:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/etc/graphs.html

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I saw 30 minute episode tonight — mostly spoke about “the consensus,” the politics and the funding.. There was little/no science at all — some ice cores and ocean temps (not much detail in either discussion). The was the (IMO) biased implication that government funded reasearch — GOOD … industry funded research — BAD (or suspect).

Arguable interpretation of why there is an RFI. But accepting of the premise, the information was supposed to be archived and available in the first place. And regardless of motive, what better way to demonstrate “robustness” – aren’t “robust” and “adversarial” in your dictionary? Would it be constructed narrative (bowing to your experience), to say that the besmirch-fearing researcher has either a shallow interest in being robust, or a disbelief in the adversarial system and the discovery process? What do you think Bürger and Cubasch ’05 meant by the term robust? Bürger, G., and U. Cubasch (2005), Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23711, doi:10.1029/2005GL024155.

As TCO pointed out, M&M make the information available. Ross McKitrick even fulfills information requests to Tim Lambert — we all know Dr Lambert isn’t out to confirm any of Dr McKitrick’s results. I’d say that separates the two camps in terms of access policy in a rather obvious way — wouldn’t you?

Up until today, apparently, that tactic wasn’t in your discourse mode.

In case anyone is confused, just because a researcher won’t give information to someone trying to besmirch their name doesn’t mean they are not real scientist-truth-seekers.

That’s just hooey, at best.

Best,

D

Dr. McKitrick raises some interesting points about peer-review, however I believe that he misses the bigger picture in terms of what the Hockey Stick Debate means for the future.

One of the interesting things about climate science, is that the field is broad enough for almost anyone to focus in on an area of their strength. Consequently, the field of paleoclimatology tends to attract those who are interested in fields such as statistics, and proxy indicators. However, my own view of climate science is based on my background in engineering and physics and thus from my point of view the Hockey Stick Debate does not matter.

I think we are approaching the point where we can measure greenhouse effect directly such as has been done by Rolf Philipona. He has two papers out that first discuss the direct measurement of downward shortwave and longwave radiation.(1) and another that looks at water vapor and in particular its source(2). While this work is restricted to central Europe, as we start to gather this information from over the globe it should become apparent what is the role of GHG in driving climate. This approach is independent of the results of the Hockey Stick Debate.

However I will add a specific comment on Dr. McKitrick’s emphasis on the Barton Investigation. While he seems to feel that this is significant from a science point of view, I feel that the facts actually show it to be a fairly crude attempt at directing hostility towards scientists who produce results that are not palatable to certain political stands. As I have argued on ClimateAudit the request from Barton was either poorly worded or excessively onerous. I find it highly unlikely that the wording was an accident, which would lead me to believe that it was based on political intimidation tactics. This is further backed-up by the amount of work that the committee has done since receiving Mann’s and others responses. From a WSJ article at the end of October: “Mr. Neal said the committee staff hasn’t yet begun a detailed analysis of the information it collected from scientists.” They received responses in July so they have been sitting on it for 3 months.

I would like to close with a personal observation. While the exchange often appears heated, I have exchanged e-mail communications with individuals from both M&M and the Hockey Team. Without fail, I have found these communications with individuals to be both helpful and courteous no matter which side of the debate they are on.

John Cross

References:

1) Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L03202, doi:10.1029/2003GL018765, 2004

2) Anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and strong water vapor feedback increase temperature in Europe, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L19809, doi:10.1029/2005GL023624, 2005

Here’s a challenge for them. Stake your reputation and say that you believe the Hockey Stick to be 100% correct.

Or if, as you say, the Hockey Stick doesn’t matter, it won’t matter if you say it’s incorrect will it?

As it happens, it was the hockeystick that first got me interested in global warming. I sw the chart on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, thought “WTF?” and started googling.

I, for one, resent having been “sold a pup”, and I’m sure that many others (if they knew) would feel the same way.