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BishopHill

Listed below are comments made by BishopHill between Friday, 14th August 2009 and Monday, 30th November 2009.

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Chris Graham interviewed on his plans as Commissioner 3:58pm on 30 Nov 2009 A civil service insider overseeing the civil service. Sounds about par for the course.
Global temperatures - and the future 06:40am on 10 Nov 2009 Am I undertanding those RealClimate links that Dr Steig links to?

The way I read it, there is no data for the Arctic. CRU assume it's doing the same as the average of the rest of the world, but NCEP have infilled using output from computer models. We are supposed to find the NCEP results more persuasive.

Colour me unconvinced.
Magnetic attraction of climate 'scepticism' 6:03pm on 31 Oct 2009 Richard

No, you have avoided the point. You refused, you said, to discuss the Yamal furore because it wasn't in the peer reviewed literature, but here you are discussing Corbyn's theories which aren't published anywhere at all. Either you have changed your policy or you are deliberately avoiding the Yamal issue.

Yamal has been THE big story on the climate front in the last six months, but you will not even mention it, presumably because it raises awkward questions over the integrity of mainstream climatologists. Corbyn's ideas are not even on the radar of the majority of people who follow climate science yet he is given full (sniggering) coverage.

Yamal is used in most of the paleoclimate reconstructions that are used to support the idea of modern temperatures being unprecedented. The modern sections of Yamal are based on just twelve trees. A reputable news organisation, a reputable journalist, would have reported this disturbing fact, which is not disputed, to its readers. The excuse that it is not in the peer reviewed literature is just that - an excuse.

We might also wonder why you have failed to report the comments of Professor Korhola:

"When later generations learn about climate science, they will classify the beginning of 21st century as an embarrassing chapter in history of science. They will wonder our time, and use it as a warning of how the core values and criteria of science were allowed little by little to be forgotten as the actual research topic — climate change — turned into a political and social playground."

A more damning indictment of the integrity of mainstream climatology is hard to imagine, and this from a man who is emphatically not a sceptic. This should have been at the top of every news bulletin since the time he said it. Can the BBC really not have noticed this? Were you not aware?
Magnetic attraction of climate 'scepticism' 3:57pm on 31 Oct 2009 It's odd, isn't it, that the BBC felt it couldn't report the Yamal furore because it wasn't in the published literature, but has now decided it can report on Piers Corbyn, while pointing out that his methods are not in the published literature?

This does rather seem to support the idea that this was an exercise in straw man argumentation.

Richard, would you be able to clarify for us which non-peer reviewed science is deemed suitable for discussion here and which is deemed unsuitable? Thanks.
Is anyone asking? 09:05am on 01 Oct 2009 I can't help agreeing with the first commenter. If you ask for anything meaningful they put up the shutters and then you have to wait for years to get the ICO to do anything.

I will repeat again what I've said before (and I know you can do nothing about it) but the BBC is one of the worst offenders. It treats the FoI Act with complete contempt and frankly heads ought to be rolling at the top.

Why don't you write something about this?

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/3/18/bbc-holds-the-law-in-contempt.html
How big is the Coins database? 05:59am on 26 Sep 2009 Clearly they are not telling the truth. I think I'm right in saying though that there are no penalties for civil servants giving deliberately mendacious responses.

In one of my own FoI requests, I had a response that I was later able to prove was not true. It will be interesting to see what steps the ICO takes if and when he finally gets round to it.
Plan B for Planet Earth 08:58am on 04 Sep 2009 Crikey, it's even worse than we thought - they've used the usual suspects in terms of proxies - Tornetrask, Yamal etc. It's fairly clear that the data has been cherrypicked to give the required answer. But then we know that paleoclimatologists cherrypick data, because many of them freely admit it.

Not that the BBC cares - the paper's on message so it gets top billing.

The Climate Audit post is well worth a read - the similarity between Kaufman's results and what you can get from red noise is amazing.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6932
Plan B for Planet Earth 07:15am on 04 Sep 2009 Many Summits

The Kaufman paper looks, ahem, amusing. I gather from Climate Audit that he has used at least one of his proxies upside down. Too funny.

There's a pattern here isn't there? Duff paper gets issued. BBC sounds fanfare. Flaws in paper pointed out. BBC doesn't notice.
India's unsustainable lesson 9:17pm on 14 Aug 2009 Many summits

I'm not sure what you are getting at. I pointed out to Richard that his criticism of one of his commenters should be extended to his colleague David Shukman. What's sauce for the goose and so on. If Richard chooses not to criticise David Shukman too we can conclude that his criticism of his commenter was partisan rather than scientific. That's all.
India's unsustainable lesson 09:00am on 14 Aug 2009 Richard Black

There's an article by your colleague David Shukman today examining the melting of a single glacier in Antarctica. I'm sure you are going to extend your criticism of drawing conclusions from isolated datasets to your colleague too.

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