Playing with fire

One of the consequences of the large current account surpluses being run by developing Asian economies - see related posts here and here - is that these countries have an increasing pile of foreign exchange they need to spend. Add to the fact that some of these countries have, let's say, a tenuous grasp on liberal market economics (let alone western democratic civil liberties) and we get some interesting stories. Like this one:

TWO senior Qantas employees prevented from leaving Vietnam after financial losses on fuel markets have done nothing wrong, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said in Sydney yesterday.

Jetstar Pacific chief operating officer Daniela Marsilli and chief financial officer Tristan Freeman were refused permission to leave Vietnam on December 19 and are being investigated over losses linked to a practice known as fuel hedging.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/australian-staff-in-vietnam-did-nothing-wrong-20100109-lzv2.html


As a main board director of a publicly listed company could you place your employees at risk of such behaviour from your supposed co-shareholders or business partners. I for one would feel that I had some responsibility for employees not being treated in such a fashion.


Should boards be factoring in their responsibilities in these areas and potential risks to themselves if nothing else before they get into bed with such unusual capitalist bed fellows?

Climate, meet economics. Economics, meet climate.

Who could fault government grants to foster research into clean energy technology?

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_details/article/92/2009/december/04/feds-give-clean-coal-projects-979m.html

Me actually.

Subsidies and grants of this nature do indeed create an environment of corporate innovation and discovery. Unfortunately, companies tend to use the money to discover increasingly innovative ways to harvest yet more money from taxpayers' pockets.

I met a climate scientist the other day...

...the conversation went sometihng like this...

Scientist: Look at my marvellous study. Do you see that squiggly line? It shows that temperatures 1000 years ago were not very high compared with today because tree rings show smaller amounts of growth then. The earth is much hotter now than it has ever been.

Me: Fascinating. What do those same tree rings show about recent history, say the last 50 years?

Scientist: Well, they show very little growth over the last 50 years.

Me: You mean just like the periods in the past where you claim they indicate low temperatures.

Scientist: Well, yes

Me: So, doesn't that imply that the tree rings indicate that temperatues over the last 50 years aren't higer than 1000 years ago?

Scientist: No, because I take them off the chart and you don't see them, so we can just ignore that.

Me: But isn't that, sort of, cheating?

Scientist: Of course not. It is a "trick" - that is a technical scientific phrase meaning a special adjustment.

Me: But doesn't this hide a decline in the tree rings that would indicate temperatures in the last 50 years aren't particularly high compared with 1000 years ago?

Scientist: It is very technical, but there is something in the data that has caused the decline which isn't related to temperature, so it makes sense to leave it out - hide it if you will. We call call this problem the "divergence problem"

Me: What is this "something" that is effecting the data over the last 50 years? What is the cause of this "divergence problem"?

Scientist: We don't know.

Me: Might this same "something", that you don't know about have affected tree rings in the past?

Scientist: We don't know.

Me: Doesn't this make your analysis all a bit, what is the technical term, ropey?

Scientist: Not at all, we can employ this trick. You see if we hide it then you can't see the decline.

Me: Didn't we cover this...?

Yet another vignette showing climate scientists at play.

What a lovely bunch they are. After reading his work and his communications with others, one can but admire a man like Roger Pielke Snr. He is someone who has been contributing to the science of climate in the way that Darwin intended. On merit rather than on the extent and influence of his academic coterie. Even as a layman observer of the climate science community, his looks like a lonely position.

In a recent blog piece Roger retraces a distasteful (but increasingly familiar) looking episode of climate science in action. In that post by Roger is one email that made my jaw hit the ground. I reproduce it in part below with the bits that caused my mandibular dislocation:

Subject: Chapter 6: an alternative? [email not for the faint hearted?]
Resent-From: CCSPTempTrendAuthors.NCDC@noaa.gov
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 13:22:32 +0100
From: Thorne, Peter

To: CCSPTempTrendAuthors.NCDC@noaa.gov

Dear all,

Health warning: This mail does not hold its punches as the youngest member of this panel I suppose that I have the most to lose through Chapter 6 in its current form in terms of future research career. I also suspect that I am the most likely to run around making a pain in the proverbial of myself. My apologies for that! I’ve tried over the past few weeks to help others in the Chapter 6 redrafting, but I really think that the structure we had just will not work. Therefore I took the liberty of spending 3 hours this morning developing an alternative, which I attach. I will caveat that David has looked at this, but the rationale and most of the text is my responsibility, not his (in other words the buck stops here).

[SNIP]

What does this say to you? I know that it is not in context, blah blah blah. But let's just cut to the chase. A young and (by all indications) ambitious researcher felt that a scientific report might not be good for his career advancement and so personally redrafted it as a replacement for the combined work of the team.

Just as background, this was a CCSP report. CCSP stand for Climate Change Science Program. They provide the scientific basis for the US, a bit like the IPCC role at an international level. So this was a biggish deal and should have had an objective and inclusive approach to the broad base of scientific views, including those represented by (NB not held by) Roger Pielke. Could it really be true that some young buck thought such an approach might stimey his scaling of the greasy pole of success and so, with or without the support of others, arranged to hijack proceedings? Hard to believe and yet hard to rationalise otherwise the self stated conflict of interest and resulting actions detailed in that email.

And it is the Climate Change preachers who constantly parrot on about how sceptics are compromised.

"proving" Dangerous Anthropogenic Cimate Change

I entangled myself in "discussion" with Richard Tol over on irisheconomy.ie. I say discussion, but Richard seems quick to jump to use of epithets.

The issue I (quite politely) took Richard up on was a statement he made about the efficacy of the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Climate Change. Note I have remove the "Dangerous", because I don't believe that the issue had been extended to that (additionally hoary) question.

Richard's contention was that because, using the DACC hypothesis, we could mathematically model past temperature changes we had all the "proof" we need.

Here is where I introduce some terminology and two important concepts:

NECESSARY condition:
This is something that must be true (i.e. is necessary) in order to support a particular hypothesis. As in test of the statement "Serena Williams won the Ladies Singles title at Wimbledon in 1999". If I wanted to test the truth of that statement, I could start with a necessary test - is Serena Williams a woman? Answer: yes (cut the giggling up the back there Thompson!). What does that information prove? It proves that Serena William could have won the Ladies Singles title. Another NECESSARY condition would be was she entered that year? But again, this only proves that she could have won, not did.

So what do we need to move from a helpful could to more useful did. For that we need a SUFFICIENT condition. If this condition holds then that is all we need to prove the claim. So, did Serena Williams collect the All England Club Ladies Singles trophy in 1999? If she did, then we can say she did win.

So what use are NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT conditions? In mathematics, statistics or everyday logic a NECESSARY condition is something you can use to falsify an hypothesis. You can rule things out. A very useful tool and vital in science. A SUFFICIENT condition is used to move an hypothesis in the territory of a theory - not only can we not rule it out as an explanation, but we must rule it in. Exclusively.

Back to Richard and the hypothesis of DACC. Richard presented a claim that modelling past climate is SUFFICIENT to test the hypothesis. The problem is that this is only a NECESSARY condition. I have posted on this blog before about modelling hypotheses and the long and short is that only by making correct predictions (correctly modelling future and otherwise unknowable events) with our model can we meet NECESSARY conditions.

Don't believe me? Here is someone who isn't an "anonymous lizard" who agrees with me.

So there you have it and it deserves repeating, and repeating and repeating. DACC will not be "proven" until they start accurately modelling future climatic outcomes. And the track record on that isn't good to date.

I'm just wild about Harrrryyy....

One of the hacked/leaked/lost files from the Climate Research Unit is one called HARRY_READ_ME.txt

It opens with this line:

READ ME for Harry's work on the CRU TS2.1/3.0 datasets, 2006-2009!

Note the exclamation mark (!).

Even for non programmers like me it provides some mild chuckle moments as you scan down the code and comments as the programmer codes their building exasperation into posterity via comment lines, like this:

As a glutton for punishment I then looked at the tmin/tmax db format. Looks like two extra fields (i6,i7) with mvcs of 999999 and 8888888 respectively. However *sigh* inspection reveals the following two possibilities:

It makes you wonder who Harry is, as I came to pity him so. Maybe this is him?

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/#Research%20Staff

More on the IPCC

What a treasure trove of intrigue can be found in the leaked CRU emails. Here is another one that is an eye opener for anyone of a trusting nature. First the background. We all know the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is an august body that is the authority on "the science". Here is how the IPCC describes itself:

The IPCC is a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Thousands of scientists from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC on a voluntary basis. Review is an essential part of the IPCC process, to ensure an objective and complete assessment of current information. Differing viewpoints existing within the scientific community are reflected in the IPCC reports.

My bold; I just wanted to draw your attention to the complete and objective nature of the work of the IPCC as well as its welcoming attitude to different views.

OK, that's enough of the bedtime stories (they all lived happily ever after). The R rated (X rated for any North American readers) can be gleaned from this email from Phil Jones of the CRU:

Quote:

From: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx To: "Michael E. Mann" mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004 Mike, Only have it in the pdf form. FYI ONLY - don't pass on. Relevant paras are the last2 in section 4 on p13. As I said it is worded carefully due to Adrian knowing Eugeniafor years. He knows the're wrong, but he succumbed to her almost pleading with himto tone it down as it might affect her proposals in the future ! I didn't say any of this, so be careful how you use it - if at all. Keep quiet alsothat you have the pdf. The attachment is a very good paper - I've been pushing Adrian over the last weeksto get it submitted to JGR or J. Climate. The main results are great for CRU and alsofor ERA-40. The basic message is clear - you have to put enough surface and sondeobs into a model to produce Reanalyses. The jumps when the data input change standout so clearly. NCEP does many odd things also around sea ice and over snow and ice. The other paper by MM is just garbage - as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is alsolosing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well - frequently as I seeit. I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! Cheers Phil Mike, For your interest, there is an ECMWF ERA-40 Report coming out soon, whichshows that Kalnay and Cai are wrong. It isn't that strongly worded as the first authoris a personal friend of Eugenia. The result is rather hidden in the middle of the report.It isn't peer review, but a slimmed down version will go to a journal. KC are wrongbecausethe difference between NCEP and real surface temps (CRU) over eastern N. America doesn'thappen with ERA-40. ERA-40 assimilates surface temps (which NCEP didn't) and doingthis makes the agreement with CRU better. Also ERA-40's trends in the lower atmosphereare all physically consistent where NCEP's are not - over eastern US.I can send if you want, but it won't be out as a report for a couple of months. Cheers Phil Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx NR4 7TJ UK

HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL indeed!

Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth?

That's right, the "Coordinating Lead Authors". The guys who "coordinate" the "complete and objective assessment of the different views from the scientific community"


Pardon my French, but what a load of bollocks.