Curry: On the credibility of climate research
bo-no
Curry: On the credibility of climate research
by Steve McIntyre on November 22nd, 2009
Judy Curry writes in as follows: (please comment here)
Having been riveted for the last few days by posts in the blogosphere
on the HADCRU hack and the increasing attention being given to this by
the mainstream media, I would like to provide an "external but
insider" assessment and perspective. My perspective is as a climate
researcher that is not involved directly in any of the controversies
and issues in the purloined HADCRU emails, but as one that is familiar
with this research, the surrounding controversies, and many of the
individuals who sent these emails. While the blogosphere has
identified many emails that allegedly indicate malfeasance,
clarifications especially from Gavin Schmidt have been very helpful in
providing explanations and the appropriate context for these emails.
However, even if the hacked emails from HADCRU end up to be much ado
about nothing in the context of any actual misfeasance that impacts
the climate data records, the damage to the public credibility of
climate research is likely to be significant. In my opinion, there are
two broader issues raised by these emails that are impeding the public
credibility of climate research: lack of transparency in climate data,
and "tribalism" in some segments of the climate research community
that is impeding peer review and the assessment process.
1. Transparency. Climate data needs to be publicly available and well
documented. This includes metadata that explains how the data were
treated and manipulated, what assumptions were made in assembling the
data sets, and what data was omitted and why. This would seem to be an
obvious and simple requirement, but the need for such transparency has
only been voiced recently as the policy relevance of climate data has
increased. The HADCRU surface climate dataset and the paleoclimate
dataset that has gone into the various "hockeystick" analyses stand
out as lacking such transparency. Much of the paleoclimate data and
metadata has become available only because of continued public
pressure from Steve McIntyre. Datasets that were processed and
developed decades ago and that are now regarded as essential elements
of the climate data record often contain elements whose raw data or
metadata were not preserved (this appears to be the case with
HADCRUT). The HADCRU surface climate dataset needs public
documentation that details the time period and location of individual
station measurements used in the data set, statistical adjustments to
the data, how the data were analyzed to produce the climatology, and
what measurements were omitted and why. If these data and metadata are
unavailable, I would argue that the data set needs to be reprocessed
(presumably the original raw data is available from the original
sources). Climate data sets should be regularly reprocessed as new
data becomes available and analysis methods improve. There are a
number of aspects of the surface climate record that need to be
understood better. For example, the surface temperature bump ca. 1940
needs to be sorted out, and I am personally lacking confidence in how
this period is being treated in the HADCRUT analysis. In summary,
given the growing policy relevance of climate data, increasingly
higher standards must be applied to the transparency and availability
of climate data and metadata. These standards should be clarified,
applied and enforced by the relevant national funding agencies and
professional societies that publish scientific journals.
2. Climate tribalism. Tribalism is defined here as a strong identity
that separates one's group from members of another group,
characterized by strong in-group loyalty and regarding other groups
differing from the tribe's defining characteristics as inferior. In
the context of scientific research, tribes differ from groups of
colleagues that collaborate and otherwise associate with each other
professionally. As a result of the politicization of climate science,
climate tribes (consisting of a small number of climate researchers)
were established in response to the politically motivated climate
disinformation machine that was associated with e.g. ExxonMobil, CEI,
Inhofe/Morano etc. The reaction of the climate tribes to the political
assault has been to circle the wagons and point the guns outward in an
attempt to discredit misinformation from politicized advocacy groups.
The motivation of scientists in the pro AGW tribes appears to be less
about politics and more about professional ego and scientific
integrity as their research was under assault for nonscientific
reasons (I'm sure there are individual exceptions, but this is my
overall perception). I became adopted into a "tribe" during Autumn
2005 after publication of the Webster et al. hurricane and global
warming paper. I and my colleagues were totally bewildered and
overwhelmed by the assault we found ourselves under, and associating
with a tribe where others were more experienced and savvy about how to
deal with this was a relief and very helpful at the time.
After becoming more knowledgeable about the politics of climate change
(both the external politics and the internal politics within the
climate field), I became concerned about some of the tribes pointing
their guns inward at other climate researchers who question their
research or don't pass various loyalty tests. I even started spending
time at climateaudit, and my public congratulations to Steve McIntyre
when climateaudit won the "best science blog award" was greeted with a
rather unpleasant email from one of the tribal members. While the
"hurricane wars" fizzled out in less than a year as the scientists
recovered from the external assault and got back to business as usual
in terms of arguing science with their colleagues, the "hockey wars"
have continued apparently unabated. With the publication of the IPCC
4th Assessment report, the Nobel Peace Prize, and energy legislation
near the top of the national legislative agenda, the "denialists" were
becoming increasingly irrelevant (the Heartland Conference and NIPCC
are not exactly household words). Hence it is difficult to understand
the continued circling of the wagons by some climate researchers with
guns pointed at skeptical researchers by apparently trying to withhold
data and other information of relevance to published research, thwart
the peer review process, and keep papers out of assessment reports.
Scientists are of course human, and short-term emotional responses to
attacks and adversity are to be expected, but I am particularly
concerned by this apparent systematic and continuing behavior from
scientists that hold editorial positions, serve on important boards
and committees and participate in the major assessment reports. It is
these issues revealed in the HADCRU emails that concern me the most,
and it seems difficult to spin many of the emails related to FOIA,
peer review, and the assessment process. I sincerely hope that these
emails do not in actuality reflect what they appear to, and I
encourage Gavin Schmidt et al. to continue explaining the individual
emails and the broader issues of concern.
In summary, the problem seems to be that the circling of the wagons
strategy developed by small groups of climate researchers in response
to the politically motivated attacks against climate science are now
being used against other climate researchers and the more technical
blogs (e.g. Climateaudit, Lucia, etc). Particularly on a topic of such
great public relevance, scientists need to consider carefully
skeptical arguments and either rebut them or learn from them. Trying
to suppress them or discredit the skeptical researcher or blogger is
not an ethical strategy and one that will backfire in the long run. I
have some sympathy for Phil Jones' concern of not wanting to lose
control of his personal research agenda by having to take the time to
respond to all the queries and requests regarding his dataset, but the
receipt of large amounts of public funding pretty much obligates CRU
to respond to these requests. The number of such requests would be
drastically diminished if all relevant and available data and metadata
were made publicly accessible, and if requests from Steve McIntyre
were honored (I assume that many spurious requests have been made to
support Steve McIntyre's request, and these would all disappear).
The HADCRU hack has substantially increased the relevance of
Climateaudit, WUWT, etc. The quickest way for HADCRU et al. to put
Climateaudit and the rest of this tribe out of business is make all
climate data and metadata public and make every effort to improve the
datasets based on all feedback that you receive. Do this and they will
quickly run out of steam and become irrelevant ?. Gavin Schmidt's
current efforts at realclimate are a good step in the right direction
of increasing transparency.
But the broader issue is the need to increase the public credibility
of climate science. This requires publicly available data and
metadata, a rigorous peer review process, and responding to arguments
raised by skeptics. The integrity of individual scientists that are in
positions of responsibility (e.g. administrators at major research
institutions, editorial boards, major committees, and assessments) is
particularly important for the public credibility of climate science.
The need for public credibility and transparency has dramatically
increased in recent years as the policy relevance of climate research
has increased. The climate research enterprise has not yet adapted to
this need, and our institutions need to strategize to respond to this
need.