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Scientists and Sceptics: Blogs, Climate Science and Reproducible Research

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Scientists and Sceptics: Blogs, Climate Science and Reproducible Research Scientists and Sceptics: blogs, climate science and reproducible research David Nichols Department of Computer Science University of Waikato Hamilton, New Zealand Scientists and Sceptics: blogs, climate science and reproducible research or Watching the sceptics attack the global warming consensus by accusing climate scientists of not being proper scientists or Blogs I’ve been reading for the past few years A longitudinal ethnographic observation of a networked community of practice Data Communities (TDCT) • Starbucks – 1. regular user, no talk, usual drink , not part of community – 2. meet colleague, use their infrastructure, not part of community, bring my own community, library-like • Cheers – Talk to customers and bartenders, serendipities • Gary’s Old Towne Tavern – Access same beer/data – Hate the Cheers community, think they are wrong Topic Overview • Global warming science • Sceptic Community: development & activities • Data and code access • Data quality detectives • Citizen scientists/sceptics: surfacestations.org • Who is in control of the data? • Reproducible research – Replicate or validate or verify or audit The start: MBH98 and MBH99 • Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K., 1998. “Global-Scale Temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries”, Nature, 392, 779-787. (GS: 815 cites) • Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K. 1999. “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations”, Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 759-762. (GS: 811 cites) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report, 2001, Summary for Policy Makers, Figure 1b, pg 3 HS in An Inconvenient Truth http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/gore_a1.jpg AIT DVD Faulty y-axis labelling is corrected in the book version http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/gore_a2.jpg Gore, A. (2006) An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. • “But as Dr Thompson's thermometer shows, the vaunted Medieval Warm Period (the third little red blip from the left below) was tiny in comparison to the enormous increases in temperature in the last half-century - the red peaks at the far right of the graph. These global-warming skeptics - a group diminishing almost as rapidly as the mountain glaciers - launched a fierce attack against another measurement of the 1000 year correlation between CO2 and temperature known as the "hockey stick", a graphic image representing the research of climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues. But in fact scientists have confirmed the same basic conclusions in multiple ways with Thompson's ice core record as one of the most definitive.” http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2328 • “It turns out that the Gore Hockey Stick has not derived from Thompson data at all; what it represents is a splicing of the MBH99 reconstruction (taken to 10-year averages) and a version of the CRU temperature history overlaid directly and merged with the MBH99 reconstruction. Thus the confirmation of MBH99 is ironically MBH99 itself.” http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2335 Sceptics’ Viewpoint • The AIT incident is typical: – ‘Consensus’ science (deliberately) misrepresents and overstates the (AGW) science – Computer models are full of unrealistic assumptions – Data selection is partial and biased – Temperature records are unreliable – Temperature proxy records are unreliable – IPCC process is basically a (biased) literature review – Climate scientists are poor statisticians • many ‘results’ are not actually results and are artifacts of dubious statistical methodology and ... • Many of the important results are – Not reproducible • Due to: – Poor methodological descriptions – Poor data descriptions – Lack of data sharing – Lack of code sharing – ‘club’ attitude which is biased against those who disagree with the consensus • Reviewing, data access In economics: • “the book by Giles and Tedds (2002) estimated the size of the Canadian underground economy to be 3.4% of GDP in 1976, rising to 15.6% in 1995. The policy implications of such a result are staggering. Yet, when this work was reanalyzed and replicated, it was found that ‘the overall level of their estimates is a result of numerical accidents’ (Breusch 2005). The experiences of economists who have sought to replicate published research suggest that Panglossian faith in economists’ commitment to the scientific method is unwarranted.” – Anderson et al (2008) Scientists’ Viewpoint • Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level – IPCC 2007 • And virtually all that happens on the sceptic blogosphere is irrelevant, uniformed etc. Sub-topics • Climate Audit blog – origin and sample issues • Data Detectives – finding errors in data sets • Access to data/code – archiving, IP, FoI • Data Misuse – poss. examples of data/code misuse • Citizen science – surfacestations project • More data access examples (journals) • UHI data fraud allegations • CA post title sampling Climate Audit blog www.climateaudit.org Steve McIntyre • MBH ‘Hockey Stick’ – Used by IPCC, AIT and many others • In 2003 he emailed Mann Hockey Stick as backdrop to to get a copy of MBH98 IPCC press conference proxy data http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20070815/160_to_blogger_070815.jpg 2003 http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3099 Michael Mann (Penn State) • “All of the proxy data (tree- rings, coral, ice cores, and historical documents) used in Mann et al. (1998) has been available since May 2000 on this public website: Link rot note: Mann ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.e moved to Penn State so all the Virginia URLs du/pub/MBH98” are dead http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/Mann/home/mann_treering.jpg Mann (2005) http://www.realclimate.org/Mann_response_to_Barton.pdf Bitter dispute about data access • “The spreadsheet file they used was a complete distortion of the actual Mann et. al. proxy data set, and was essentially useless, particularly in the earlier centuries. The authors had access to the full data, which has been available on a public ftp site for nearly two years” - Mann • “It is self-evident that Mann’s comments are a pastiche of false statements. (1) We requested an FTP location, not an Excel spreadsheet. (2) The FTP site location is anonymous. At no point prior to the identification of the FTP site on Oct. 29, 2003 by David Appell, was the site identified for us nor did we have access to the full data. ” - McIntyre & McKitrick – Mis-use of ‘anonymous’ to mean unidentified http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-nov12-part1.pdf So • Data/code was not archived at publication with Nature (though there was an SI) – or in a single coherent location elsewhere – or for 5 years after (or 2 years) • Depending on who you believe • No-one had asked for the data before – From the authors • No-one had replicated MBH98 – Using the original data or code • ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/TREE/ITRDB/NOAMER/pca- noamer.f • “The question presumes that in order to replicate scientific research, a second researcher has to have access to exactly the same computer program (or “code”) as the initial researcher. This premise is false. The key to replicability is unfettered access to all of the underlying data and methodologies used by the first researcher” Mann (2005) http://www.realclimate.org/Mann_response_to_Barton.pdf Mann “It also bears emphasis that my computer program is a private piece of intellectual property, as the National Science Foundation and its lawyers recognized ... Whether I make available my computer programs is irrelevant to whether our results can be reproduced. And whether I make my computer programs publicly available or not is a decision that is mine alone to make.” C Back transformation IF (NU .EQ. 0) GO TO 510 DO 500 KK=1,N K=N1-KK IF (B(K) .EQ. zero) GO TO 500 Q=-A(K,K)/CdABS(A(K,K)) DO 460 J=1,NU 460 U(K,J)=Q*U(K,J) DO 490 J=1,NU Q=dcmplx(zero,zero) DO 470 I=K,M 470 Q=Q+dCONJG(A(I,K))*U(I,J) Q=Q/(CdABS(A(K,K))*B(K)) DO 480 I=K,M 480 U(I,J)=U(I,J)-Q*A(I,K) 490 CONTINUE Excerpt from: http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/research/MANNETAL98/METHODS/multiproxy.f “And neither McIntyre nor McKitrick is a trained climate scientist. According to the biographical data on their websites, Mr. McIntyre is a mining industry executive with no formal training in any discipline related to climate research and Mr. McKitrick is an economist with no scientific training, hardly credentials that lend force to their academic arguments” Mann response to Barton Data access dispute • V. Complicated • Lots of heat and light – and little clarity • Dispute about both data and code – Accusations of incomplete and data containing errors – Lack of code access – Code implementation not matching the description in the code – “More importantly for efforts to verify MBH98, the files pcproxy.txt and pcproxy.mat show that collation errors were embedded at Professor Mann’s UVA site long before our request for data” M & M Archive Malleability Accusations • “On November 8, 2003, we re-visited this site and discovered the following changes: (1) the file pcproxy.mat had been deleted from Mann’s FTP site; (2) the file pcproxy.txt no longer was displayed under the directory, although it could still be retrieved through an exact call if one knew the exact file name; (3) without any notice, a new file named “mbhfilled.mat” was inserted into the directory.” Materials Complaint to Nature “We have sought such clarification from Professor Mann without success. With reference to the policies stated at http://www.nature.com/nature/submit/polici es/index.html, in particular item number 6, we are writing to advise you of a persistent refusal to comply with the guidelines and other issues.” Nov 2003 http://www.climateaudit.org/correspondence/nature.031117.htm “..
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