Message for Mr Montford

I have briefly been able to view the Bishop Hill blog and catch up with the comments there, thanks to a neat little widget called HideTheIP.  Montford has now blocked my proxy IP so I don't know whether this comment (left on BH blog at approx 8.52pm 25th March 2012) has been modded , answered or deleted. 

Mr Montford,
At 9pm you asserted that I had lied about how you had reported Heartland . Well lying is a very specific allegation, if I have lied I would be delighted to apologise to you, but I am flummoxed as to what you could actually call a lie.   
The next step therefore is for you to point out the supposed lie. What are the actual words at issue ? 
It should be noted that I had already attempted to address this question before you blocked me . At 8:19 pm I asked if you would care to enlarge on your characterisation of my contributions as 'dishonest'.  You have not done so . 
I have to also observe that despite blocking me from access to your blog last night commenters here have continued to make comments about me for some time afterwards. That is hardly conducive to grown up discourse is it ?
Blocking me from reading to your blog on my PC serves no one, except of course it positions  yourself as a gatekeeper to climate skepticism .  That does not sit easily with your oft repeated claim that climate science should be more open. 
Salutations
Hengist McStone


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Monty slams the door

In what appears to be some kind of fit of pique I have been blocked from viewing the blog Bishop Hill on my PC . 

The blogger who runs Bishop Hill Andrew Montford has also blocked me from following him on Twitter.

I was the subject of numerous ad hominem attacks in the comments on his blog, and I suggest, rather than curb the worst excesses of his loyal followers it became easier for Mr Montford to fake outrage at me and demand contrition. It's a tactic straight out of the ex cathedra toolbox.

So what could it have been that upset Monty? Well, all I've got so far is this tweet via Barry Woods. But when I asked for moderation Monty's response was that my contributions were dishonest. He was no more specific than that. It was immediately after I asked him for substantiation of that remark that I was blocked, first by pre-moderation, with a message that my comment would become visible after an editor had approved it. Needless to say Montford has not substantiated his claim that I was dishonest, so I do not know quite what he is supposed to be outraged about, nor why I should be apologising to him. 

So where does that leave all those claims that 'climate science should be more open' when Britain's premier climate skeptic blogger has to act as gatekeeper to his own blog ?


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Where are the skeptics ?

A stage magician cuts his assistant in half.  A skeptic would reason that some kind of visual trick is at work, that the girl has not really been chopped in two.

The climate blog-o-sphere is quite different though.  Andrew Montford makes a Freedom of Information request to the Met Office asking for Sir John Houghton's emails relating to AR3. The respondent answers that they do not hold any such emails. Monty then writes a blogpost concluding "it appears that Sir John has deleted historic records".

Observation nothing - conclusion scandal.

I've tried asking "How can you be sure that he holds emails relating to AR3 ?" Needless to say Monty meets that line of questioning with a stony silence.


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Climate *skeptics* rewrite Sagan. Can they sink any lower ?

Carl Sagan was one of the greats of science communication. Often remembered for his epic Cosmos (well worth revisiting, available on You Tube) he was also the instigator of the Pioneer 10 plaque which carries humanity's message across the galaxy. Thus long after you and I have turned to dust Carl Sagan's work will still be on it's interstelllar voyage . 

Vloggers have divided up much of Carl Sagan's work into bite sized chunks like 'pale blue dot' which gives an astrophyscist's perspective on our environment . Tear to the eye stuff.


Hat tip to Climate Crocks for finding this film which directly addresses the question of anthropogenic global warming .



Sagan died in 1996 at the age of 62.

2012 and a guest blogger on the Bishop Hill blog lifts a passage from chapter IV of Dr Sagan's book Cosmos and posits that Sagan would have opposed the AGW consensus and the IPCC.  A staggeringly cynical use of a widely respected dead scientist to attack the IPCC and make a partisan point. Does make one wonder what next for the Bishop Hill blog , Charles Darwin blogs on Dark Matter perhaps or Euclid's thoughts on the PIP implant scandal? 

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Bishop Hill largely in the absence of supporting facts

The deny-o-skept-o-sphere's take on the Hackgate scandal has posed a question I'd been meaning to ask for some time:

Which Andrew Montford sidesteps

This is in the context of a cop being arrested as part of the Hackgate police op. But has Monty made up the claim of bribery and corruption , or can he support it?

A question Monty refuses to answer. Instead I recieve a few ad homs from Bishop Hill devotees. This is my personal favourite:

A troll I may be but asking for supporting facts is normal especially when serious allegations of bribery and corruption are made. So is his claim supported or not ? Or did Bishop Hill aka Andrew Montford invent his allegation of bribery of a police officer ? 

In a nutshell this is how climate *skeptic* blogs work. Andrew Montford is not used to being called to support his accusations , his blog followers will deal with the correspondence whilst he moves on to the next attack. It's only a week since this thread but already Monty has made at least one other claim of corruption . To date Bishop Hill has not addressed the question directly posed above . Bishop Hill is a blog that maintains serious allegations against some of the world's top scientists yet if it is not convenient the Bishop Hill blog (and the skept-o-sphere in general) will obfuscate and obscure rather than set the record straight and admit a false accusation has been made.

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Words to climategate made up by Monty

(retitled)

I've long nursed a notion that the climate denial narrative relies on an environment of chinese whispers, that explains how a large and robust scientific consensus is turned into a popular delusion of some pseudoscientific "hoax" or "fraud" or "myth" simply by the shaving of meaning between successive accounts. It's a point I must return to because it works in a temporal dimension too, like our generation teaching the "controversy" of global warming rather than the science.

Anyhow , an Andrew Montford interview spewed forth a couple of dubious claims that need putting to rights and I was putting together a blog post on those points when I realised his entire interview is evidence of the notion above.

Montford has no special experience to relate on this issue, he's simply read the emails himself and tells the reporter what he thinks ofit all. But would the story be any different if the journalist had read the CRU emails himself first hand, and checked the facts ? Getting to the truth is a collegiate exercise. So in the interests of getting to the truth lets put Monty's words under the microscope.

NS: What do you think motivated the Hockey Team to misuse the data, use unconventional statistical methods, etc?


Montford: It is clear that at least some members of the team felt themselves under pressure to produce, in the words of one of the Climategate emails, "a nice tidy story…as regards apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more". On the whole though the shenanigans seem to have been the result of "noble cause corruption" - they sincerely believed that there was a problem that required an urgent solution and that this justified cutting corners.

The question about motivation is somewhat loaded but Montford's answer is a clear misrepresentation. Reference to pressure to produce "a nice tidy story" does indeed appear in one of the emails, but the writer concludes that argument with the caveat that " the reality is not quite so simple". It's in an email from Dr Keith Briffa beginning with the line "Let me say that I don't mind what you put in the policy makers summary if there is a general concensus." But Monty leaves that out.  He also focuses on the four words (out of 848) which conjure up the impression that suits his purposes. Montford is cherry picking his quotes to create a narrative that suits him.

I've pointed this out to Montford but he washes his hands of all responsibility with the reply : Hengist   I was asked what made them do the things they did. I said they were under pressure to do so and quoted the words that showed this to be the case.  1

On closer inspection though we find the words that showed Monty's case weren't quite the same as those in the hacked emails. Dr Briffa used the verb 'to be' but in Montford's account it has been changed to 'to feel', and declined reflexively in the plural.   Montford's words "It is clear that at least some members of the team felt themselves under pressure" is pure sophistry. Briffa's reflection that 'pressure' exists has been turned into a complaint that he (and others) are under pressure.  

But it's Monty's suggestion that this affair is the result of "noble cause corruption" which should set alarm bells ringing, because they do not appear in any of the emails. Bear in mind that this interview was conducted by email , so the inverted commas (signifying the phrase can be found in the hacked emails) are Montfords.  Those words are in fact skeptic commentary, but he presents them as if they are to be found in the original emails, they are not. I've pointed this out to Monty 2  but answer comes there none.

1 Comment at Bishop Hill May 4, 2011 at 4:49 PM

2 Comment at Bishop Hill Jun 6, 2011 at 10:41 PM

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Monty's fib fest

A whopper from Andrew Montford who casually declares 'a finding that "hide the decline" was "misleading" .
Hang on a minute , I thought the enquiry into the CRU hack had cleared climate scientists over dishonestly manipulating data.

To climate geeks the three most contested words in the english language are probably "hide the decline". *Skeptics* tend to say it refers to a decline in temperatures (indeed they even managed to doctor the original email and get it broadcast on the BBC, but that's another tale) , whilst the author of the phrase Dr Phil Jones says it refers to inaccuracies in modern tree ring data. Now Monty is giving us a different definition.

We can check the allegation 1, and the all important finding 2 . There is no 'finding that "hide the decline" was "misleading"'. That statement relies on the temperature graph on a 1999 World Meteorological Organization Report being synonymous with 'hide the decline' . Muir Russell did have a criticism of the graph , and the 'hide the decline' email was clearly about the graph on the WMO Report. We know that because the subject of that email was Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement. But Muir Russell did not say that "hide the decline" was "misleading". Why do climate *skeptics* find this so difficult?

Interpretation is at the heart of the climategate dispute. If Montford can't stop himself playing fast and loose with the wording of the Muir Russell Report could he be misinterpreting the original emails too?


1 Muir Russell Chapter 7 Paragraph 9
2 Muir Russell Chapter 7 Paragraph 26

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Is climate skepticism pseudoscience ?

From a *skeptic* blog

"My (admittedly inexpert) understanding of the impact of global warming on hurricanes is that  because the poles are expected to warm the most, the temperature difference between poles and equator will be reduced and there will be less energy to transport between them. In other words there will be fewer, weaker hurricanes."

From NOAA

 " The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the earth's climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. "

Hmmmm. Skeptics like to remind us that theirs is a dispassionate search for truth and that nobody is right all the time. But if their position is supported by ignorance, as the above statement by Andrew Montford would appear to be , then at what point has it crossed in to the realm of denialism ?

Consistency with Andrew Montford

How much weight should be placed on a particular type of evidence? For  Andrew Montford the answer depends on whether the evidence is good or bad for your case . 

"The latest bright idea" writes  Montford "from CAGW subscribers is to use opinion polls to measure climate change. I kid you not... " Well Montford may not be kidding but he is certainly being economical with the truth. He is referring to researchers taking evidence from remote villagers in the Darjeeling Hills and suggesting that amounts to 'opinion polls' .  It's Montford's way of ridiculing a scientific study that produces evidence he disagrees with.

Last month, in his write up of the Spectator debate there was no doubt about the most impressive argument "Benny Peiser's talk was the one that intrigued me. He essentially argued that the science is irrelevant - that the public have made their minds up and that they vote out any party that pushes the green line too far."  Doctor Peiser's argument relied solely on opinion polls .  And on that occasion Montford found opinion polls very impressive.

Email to Benny Peiser

Subject: Fact or opinion or fiction at the Spectator Debate


Dear Dr. Peiser,


I am writing to ask how you support a statement you are said to have made at the recent Spectator Debate at the Royal Geographical Society. I rely on Andrew Montford’s account , who writes:


“Benny Peiser's talk was the one that intrigued me. He essentially argued that the science is irrelevant - that the public have made their minds up and that they vote out any party that pushes the green line too far. He also noted that they have moved on to other issues, such as the economy.”


I don’t mean to argue with your opinion, but I do ask commentators to distinguish between their own opinion and what is an accepted fact. I suggest that the statement “the public have made their minds up” whilst appearing as fact by way of completeness is unsupportable and is ergo opinion . There has been no referendum in this country, nor anywhere in the world (to my knowledge) to support such a statement. In order for the the public have made their minds up a proposition needs to have been put to them and the matter needs to have been considered. In a democracy there is always some formal way of assessing the public’s will, a plebiscite resulting in a counting of votes. No such formality has ever been attempted on this issue and the statement attributed to you appears to usurp the vox populus and bypass the democratic process.


I would be very grateful if you could affirm that your statement is not fact but your own opinion and offer anything else in support of this statement.


Salutations ,

Hengist McStone

Did Benny Peiser make this bit up ?

This week a debate on global warming was held at The Royal Geographical Society. Sponsored by The Spectator magazine, it included  a couple of notable names from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Benny Peiser and Nigel Lawson.

Now I've been watching the climate scene for long enough to know that "debate" isn't really happening. Mudslinging , yes.  So I wasn't tempted to shell out thirty quid to watch something that was unlikely to really challenge my perceptions or inform me. Even though the line up also included the excellent Dr Simon Singh, whose book on codebreaking I am reading right now.

Instead I rely on Andrew Montford's account who writes: "Benny Peiser's talk was the one that intrigued me. He essentially argued that the science is irrelevant - that the public have made their minds up and that they vote out any party that pushes the green line too far." 

I wonder how Dr Peiser arrived at the line that 'the public have made their minds up'. No plebiscite has ever been called, nor any proposition put to the public. So how could any reasonable person reach this conclusion?  Dr Peiser, a sports psychologist with a background in anthropology is affiliated to the Global Warming Policy Foundation but he has not been elcted to speak for the public. And I am pretty sure I am right when I say that 'the public have made their minds up' is unsupportable.

Now I'm not quibbling that this is how things are working out,  but I suggest Dr Peiser is misrepresenting the public's view. I argue that the public have been largely misled, but the fact is there has been no plebiscite or referendum to support Dr Peiser's assertion. And I figure we really ought to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps it is more opinion dressed up as fact. Perhaps Montford's account was a little wide of the mark. Whatever , it looks like I shall have to email the great man himself.

Recyclists cover up emissions figures (only they don't)

Not normally noted for caring about the environment The Adam Smith Institute weighs in that recycling has a higher carbon footprint than landfill.

In an article strangely titled "Good sense on recycling at last"  libertarian blogger Tim Worstall predicts that a Scottish Government initiative looking at the emissions cost of recycling will be suppressed.  "Indeed, I have a very strong feeling that this will be quietly dropped and not spoken of again" confides Tim. So can we hope for the stripey shirted blogger to return to the topic when the matter is 'quietly dropped'?

Perhaps not, because Tim's ingeniously found a way to make the suggestion of a cover-up without any actual evidence whatsoever.

Tim's erudite analysis doesnt quite add up either . "[W]hat they're going to find is that ...we already recycle too much. For example, we crush up green glass to be used as underlay for roads" says Tim as if the Scottish Government didn't know that already .  But paragraph 5 of Zero Waste Scotland's press release talks of "giving higher weighting to glass which is recycled back into glass rather than that which is used for aggregates or insulation materials." So clearly the Scottish Governemnt did know that already.

When I pointed out that his is not an evidentiary viewpoint and is purely suggestive Tim answered "Yes because I think that the results will be so embarrassing that they will be suppressed. I'll be pleasantly surprised if they're not, of course."

Of course. But on closer inspection we find that the initiative by Zero Waste Scotland is merely a way of measuring and setting carbon emissions targets . The suggestion that results are to be published (and hence covered up) is purely the work of Tim Worstall.

So not only is it more opinion dressed up as fact. It's also a prediction that is not falsifiable.  Tim, you haven't got the hang of the clairvoyant gig have you ?


Hat tip to Bishop Hill for this one.

Move along , nothing to see here.

This is an email I've sent to a blogger in Canada who is critical of many aspects of mankind's understanding of the climate, the backstory can be gleaned by clicking the hyperlinks.


Dear Ms Laframboise,
Ive been reading your piece about Dr Kovats, and I think there is something missing. Who has been passed over in favour of Dr Kovats ?
It's especially relevant because you say on Bishop Hill "If we had not been advised for those same 16 years that the IPCC is comprised of the world's top scientists and best experts, there'd be no story here."
Since you conclude that Kovats, the IPCC, and the British government all know she is 'far from being a world-class scientific expert' and should resign you must be able to point to superior scientists passed over in favour of Dr Kovats . Ive read your piece several times but there is no indication nor mention of who the world class scientific experts who were better suited to inform the IPCC might be.
Either Dr Kovats has somehow displaced a superior scientist or Dr Kovats is a world class scientific expert (to whom it would seem you owe an apology) and there is no story here.
I very much look forward to your reply.
Have a good weekend
Hengist McStone

Don't let this put you off your Weetabix

Never one to let facts get in the way of a good story Andrew Montford morphs a BBC article entitled  "Food sold in recycled cardboard packaging 'poses risk' " into the absurd (and unsupported) suggestion of environmentalists trashing the environment . The BBC article he relies on contains no mention of environmentalists.  Nor does it mention environmental damage . But, never mind. It is about a questionable industrial process in the packaging of breakfast cereals. Apparently there are toxins in printers inks. The industrial process involves recycling, and recycling is favoured by environmentalists. And that's good enough for Montford . File under 'tenuous calumny' and  'assertions neither supported nor withdrawn'.

Montford misrepresents ...

Just a quick note to record Andrew "Bishop Hill" Montford's latest straw man. He seems to have it in for Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute , so he posts a thread for his devotee's to attack Bob's latest article in the Grauniad .  But I am puzzled by this bit from montford " it's hard to take the article seriously when Ward and his ilk consistently refuse to engage in debate with sceptics because the science is settled." So I've asked "The Bishop" for an explanation , answer comes there none.

Hang on a minute though, isnt this the same Bob Ward who debated with Bjorn 'skeptical environmentalist' Lomborg on Panorama only last summer? There's Bob in the middle, debating, with a skeptic, case closed.

It's hard to take the deny-o-sphere seriously when Montford and his ilk consistently misrepresent their opponents.

Adventures in the Deny-o-sphere

Been upbraided by Andrew Montford for calling his website the deny-o-sphere.  "Hengist" writes the man who styles himself Bishop Hill and whose followers address him as Your Grace "I discourage use of terms like denier and ecofascist. That includes variants like denialsphere and so on. Please don't - it just makes the threads deteriorate." Trouble is the thread has already deteriorated from the get-go, Montford called mainstream science the warm-o-sphere in his original post.

All in the context of the Lisbon Conference on Reconciliation I have posted

What an utter sham. It's supposed to be a conference on reconciliation , yet what gets discussed is why mainstream scientists don't attend. A mainstream scientist (Dr Schmidt) has been decent enough to give his reasons and that gets interpreted by tallbloke who passes it on to the press (Pearce) and it's the main story coming out of the so-called "conference on reconciliation". There's no reconciliation going on here, it's really a conference (funded by fossil fuel according to Eli) between a few skeptics and deniers who put together a cheap stunt to discredit Dr Schmidt . A lot of time is wasted but please don't pretend this is anything to do with science or indeed reconciliation.


None of that has been refuted but I've had to deal with an army of the Bishop's trolls taking me on on such matters as big oil funding and the protocol of the word denier. A saturday afternoon spent on the deny-o-sphere seems wasted. But hang on, my complaint that Bishop Hill is using an assymetric argot goes unanswered. The deniers are basically dishonest because they paraphrase to their advantage. The thread is here if anyone cares. I am entirely unrepentant, I have been told by one commenter to 'sling your hook'. So much for reconciliation.

Thud!

Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion lands on my doormat. I've bought it because there are a couple of points I want to look up. Does Montford display any moral anchorage whilst prying into other people's emails?  There's nothing in the intro to the relevant chapter. Perhaps it's to be found elsewhere in the book but first impressions indicate Montford seems to think it's fair game to read whatever one likes into other people's private correspondence.

Dissing the peer reviewed work of  Mann et al is Montford's stock in trade so I'm curious to read why Montford's work hasn't been peer reviewed . I've recently cribbed this  PDF from Sense about Science which says "Peer review is an essential dividing line for judging what is scientific and what is speculation and opinion. Most scientists make a careful distinction between their peer-reviewed findings and their more general opinions."  Andrew Montford disagrees by omission . A passage entitled So what is peer review for then?  makes no reference to this crucial distinction, instead drawing attention to famous scientific work that wasn't peer reviewed. The passage closes with "Yet peer review is the only oversight there is of the validity of the scientific case for catastrophic manmade global warming and on this flimsy basis governments make far reaching policy decisions that affect everyone and will continue to affect our children for decades into the future."  Hmmmm, if only there were an ounce of truth in Andrew Montford's words.

High priest of climate deniers claims moral low ground

It's snowing all over the UK which for most people means snowmen and sledging, but climate deniers can't resist suggesting this means the globe isn't warming.

Trouble is this conflicts with their summer arguments. This summer saw an unprecedented heatwave in Russia and a deluge in Pakistan. Whilst the real story was of a humanitarian disaster at a time when the death toll was uncertain BBC TV's Newsnight asked if the Pakistan flood could be said to be due to climate change.  No, came the answer, a trend is more than a single event .

It's both sad and ironic that despite millions being left homeless by the deluge in Pakistan, that answer was given by an accountant living in Scotland thousands of miles away.

Andrew Montford didn't lose his home in the inundation, indeed, Montford takes a picture of his backyard to prove the world isn't warming.



Scottish snow which disproves AGW

 When I suggested that his winter argument conflicts with his summer argument and that as a result he should consider donating his disturbance fee from the BBC to victims of the flood Montford's absurd reply is "it's not obviously any of your business." Montford is the man who produced the GWPF's report into the three enquiries exonerating scientists implicated by the UEA hack.  Quite where the boundaries lie between personal privacy and public interest is a moot point but hopefully the answers will be found in the chapter of Montford's book dealing with the climategate emails.  If not, how can Montford pretend that those private emails are anybody's business other than the intended recipients?

The upside down world of Andrew Montford doesn't finish there though, ''you are talking bollocks'' Montford writes ''If you think I am carving a career out of any of this, think again. It's costing me a lot of money.'' Little point in asking for supporting evidence for that because Andrew Montford will probably fall back on his earlier statement "it's not obviously any of your business." So , poor Andrew Montford, the victim in all of this also argues in his book that much of climate science is driven by a desire for funding.