The Hockey Stick Illusion

#146437Tue 13/04/10 10:59

Climategate and the Corruption of Science
By A.W. Montford
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Illusion-Climategate-Corruption-Science-Independent/dp/1906768358/ref=sr_1_1?

I've just started reading this highly praised book. Has anybody else here read it; or is reading it? It's currently second bestseller for Global Warming:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/922416/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_3_4_last

Andrew Montford's blog:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/

#1635Tue 13/04/10 11:53

AARRRGGHH ! ! ! !
Another 'gate'. 'Climategate'. I am sick of the word 'gate' being stuck on the end of any kind of scandel.

#146437Tue 13/04/10 12:24

quoting > "Another 'gate'. 'Climategate'. I am sick of the word 'gate' being stuck on the end of any kind of scandel."

THIS isn't just "any kind of scandal". And calling it a "gate" doesn't do it justice.

#1635Tue 13/04/10 12:33

quoting > "THIS isn't just "any kind of scandal". And calling it a "gate" doesn't do it justice."

My comment is about the annoying putting 'gate' on the end of the name of a scandal, not about the scandal itself.

deleted:lenvdbTue 13/04/10 12:48

So a Scandal on OUT would be OUT-Gate
and a church scandal would be a Churchgate?

#146437Tue 13/04/10 14:12

quoting > "So a Scandal on OUT would be OUT-Gate"

Storminateacupgate

polymathTue 13/04/10 14:29

And here's another's blogger's review of that book:

http://climateopinions.blogspot.com/2010/03/w-montford-hockey-stick-illusion.html

Y'know, just in case people are interested.

polymathTue 13/04/10 14:29

Aagh!:

*another blogger's*

#146437Tue 13/04/10 16:56

quoting > "And here's another blogger's review of that book:

http://climateopinions.blogspot.com/2010/03/w-montford-hockey-stick-illusion.html

Y'know, just in case people are interested."

It's an interesting review. Do you know who the author is? The author is clearly knowledgeable about the Hockey Stick. He states in conclusion:

From reading his blog I have always felt that Steve McIntyre viewed his role as scientific and he has made many attempts to reach out to the scientific community. Andrew Montford definitely has a political agenda and would probably be sceptical about climate change whatever the science said. I am not sure that McIntyre is well served by this book.

The suggestion being that Steve McIntyre is politically naive.

polymathTue 13/04/10 17:06

And that Mountford is politically motivated.

#146437Tue 13/04/10 17:26

quoting > "And that Mountford is politically motivated."

Of course it's political. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Like the tide into a breach, and all that!

polymathTue 13/04/10 17:45

And distorting the facts to suit an agenda is equally political... This means that claims and counter-claims about political agendas are not a very helpful way to discern where the truth lies, although they're a routine part of scientific disputes (which have always been politicised - most especially when those participating in them claim that science properly done is apolitical and value-free).

The scientific enterprise establishes truths provisionally, and over time, and in the form of a coalescing consensus of the expert community. Mistakes are made - scientists are human and fallible - and claims are overstated - everyone is encouraged to exaggerate what they mean in order to be heard and to produce a response. But vast conspiracies to conceal the truth or distort the evidence are improbable. Unfortunately, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that the climate change sceptics are on the side of the truth.

#146437Tue 13/04/10 18:04

quoting > "And distorting the facts to suit an agenda is equally political... ... Unfortunately, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that the climate change sceptics are on the side of the truth."

Are you suggesting that Andrew Montford has "distorted facts"?

If yes, can you be specific about which facts you're referring to?

polymathTue 13/04/10 18:56

The climate change sceptics accuse the climate change scientists who put the case for anthropogenic climate change of distorting the facts, yes? This much is evident from the title of Montford's book.

Equally, the climate change scientists who put the case for anthropogenic climate change accuse the climate change scientists of distorting the facts.

Both parties - and their supporters - routinely accuse the other side, collectively or individually, of having a sinister political agenda, a personal interest, or some other non-scientific reason for taking the stance that they do.

What is an individual member of society to do in order to decide who to believe in this situation? We could each aspire to become experts and make our mind up. But that's hardly efficient - being a climate expert is a full-time occupation. We could make a conscious decision about what to believe on the basis of what we would like to be true. But while that may be emotionally satisfying, it's not a very sound method for arriving at the truth. Or we could make a decision about what is likely to be the case on the basis of our understanding of the scientific and political processes and the way the media works to represent them to the wider society.

I choose the latter option. I am not going to engage with Montford's book directly, nor indeed with the climate science directly, because I have chosen, in effect, to delegate responsibility for understanding the climate to the scientific experts. On that basis, I believe it overwhelmingly probable that anthropogenic climate change is a real phenomenon and a real problem.

#146437Tue 13/04/10 23:42

quoting > "The climate change sceptics accuse the climate change scientists who put the case for anthropogenic climate change of distorting the facts, yes? This much is evident from the title of Montford's book."

viz:

The Hockey Stick Illusion - Climategate and the Corruption of Science

Apart from being a marketing device (hence the pithiness) the title is a premise, a conclusion, and a charge against the scientific and political establishment. These could be laid out properly as a doctoral thesis, but it probably wouldn't get widely read.

I'm only up to page 63, and I'm reading several books at the same time, so it may be a while before I personally reach an opinion as to how well Montford makes his case. But the book has the backing of a number of experts.

The charge against the establishment is that of fraud and corruption. Montford's book is one of many vehicles for this charge, but it appears to be growing in prominence. In answering this charge, the establishment is going to have to do better than the tired old ad hominems and appeals to authority. Having followed this debate for the last couple of years, my view is that the establishment has no substantive defence.

polymathWed 14/04/10 00:53

quoting > "These could be laid out properly as a doctoral thesis, but it probably wouldn't get widely read."

Such a thesis would be read by two or more experts in the field who would decide whether or not it was worthy of a doctoral award. A commonly used gauge of worth is that the thesis should contain material of sufficient merit and originality for two publishable articles in peer-reviewed journals. To be published, those articles would have to be read by a several people, including the editor and two or more referees, usually acting blindly (a thankless task, usually, generating no credit for the scholars who undertake it). Once published, the articles can be read, challenged, supported, cited by the wider community. They may inspire further work using the same techniques, or the use of different techniques to tackle the same questions; they may be built upon by others, and subsequently found to be flawed, prompting a revision of a great deal of work. Over time, through being published in an appropriate outlet, the PhD student's work would - if deserving - receive a great deal of expert attention and his/her conclusions would be tested to destruction. This is how scholarship (and not just science) is conducted.

The processes are fallible because people are fallible. But as a system for knowledge-production, its remarkably robust. It's also slow. Most scientists are too occupied doing all the above, and the lab-work / data collection, and the processing and interpretation, and the applying for grants to continue doing their work - plus, for the majority who work in an academic institution, teaching, examining, and university administration - to spend much of their time responding to the climate change sceptics, the people who think MMR causes autism, those who deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS, the anti-evolutionists, the eugenicists, the homeopathists, the cold-fusionists, outside of the arenas in which these issues are are already settled, done and dusted, over, which is to say the scientific conferences and publications. If they do engage, passionately, they are accused of being 'unscientific'; if they retain the mask of dispassionate objectivity, they are expected to serve up their considered opinions to politicians - who will say 'thank you very much' and then do what is politically expedient - and to a media that is generally poorly equipped to understand them and prone to overstate everything in the interest of the 'story'. And then they discover that, even if the politicians and the media don't get in the way, people's willingness to modify their idiosyncratically-acquired beliefs because they, the experts, say that such-and-such is the case, is extremely selective. Red wine is good for you in moderation 'tis claimed; cheers, say the reading public, raising a glass. Burning fossil fuels is bad for us it is announced; nonsense, they say, and turn up the volume on Jeremy Clarkson.

Call it a complacent reliance on authority if you will - but I'm going to persist in supposing that anthropogenic climate change is real and a problem until I see that announcement from the Royal Society letting me know that the expert opinion has moved on, the community consensus has shifted. I'm also going to keep on relying on my doctor when it comes to my health, my dentist when it comes to my teeth, my lawyer when it comes to the law, and the good folks at Apple for my IT - but if they suddenly give me reason to doubt their competence, I'll ask another member of the same expert community for a second opinion.

#146437Wed 14/04/10 08:04

quoting > "Call it a complacent reliance on authority if you will - but I'm going to persist in supposing that anthropogenic climate change is real and a problem until I see that announcement from the Royal Society letting me know that the expert opinion has moved on, the community consensus has shifted."

You saved me the trouble. Ignorance is strength as they say in Oceania.