Bleak Midwinter

December is the cruelest month
But this time for once my cheeks are warm
After long years in the monkey-house
I am ready for the storm
Let them throw all their cannonballs
Let all their strongmen come
I’m ready to go anywhere
Through venom, sick and scum

(December, The Waterboys)

This sadly does not quite describe me. Although I have been greatly strengthened by three things in the past week - ten minutes of centred prayer, meeting a friend I had not seen for a while, and an act of kindness coupled with a nice smile - many obstacles remain. "I need thy presence, every passing hour; what, but thy grace, can foil the tempter's power?"

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Quote of the day, on the subject of drug-resistant bacteria: "It's more than a little embarrassing to be decisively losing a battle of wits to unicellular organisms." Indeed.

Headline of the day, from the Beeb: Man on 'chicken-licking' charge.

And today I found a blog with the fantastic title of Goat in the Machine ("this site is dedicated to his simple faith that what this world really needs is far fewer sheep and a bunch more goats").

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Readers of blogs will doubtless have noticed the "Climategate" events in the last week or two: a leading climate research institute, responsible for important work in discovering and analysing global warming, turns out to have been run (according to leaked emails which are not, it appears, being contested) by persons of dubious integrity. Worst of all, to my mind: an email in which the institute leader declares willingness to delete data rather than hand it over to global warming sceptics; and another in which scientists are warned against putting data on FTP in case of sceptics finding and analysing it. (Later, a freedom of information act request for raw, unmodified data got the response that the data had been, somehow, lost. H'mmmmm.) So a bunch of influential, high-ranking scientists, doing important research into a highly important potential problem (namely "do we need to spend vast quantifies of money to stave off global warming?") turn out to be absolutely paranoid about... people wanting to see their data. Anti-scientific denialists hounding the scientists to show their working, prowling their FTP sites, rejoicing (while the scientists weep) when they can scavenge a few scraps of data... what's wrong with this picture?

The question being bandied about is whether this damages the idea of manmade global warming. This depends on whether this behaviour is widespread, and whether it's corrected or ignored. If there is a concerted effort across the field of climate science to ensure more transparency in data analysis, this storm will blow over; if there is circling of the wagons and grumbling against anyone who dares notice and point out the problem, it may not. Judith Curry's article on the matter has it exactly right. (Amazingly, some people criticise her for engaging with the "denialists" or admitting the problem. These people are acting very stupidly. Actions speak louder than words, and in a more universal language. Phil Jones wrote to a sceptic saying he would not hand over his data because the sceptic wished only to find problems with it. He failed to understand that the problems the sceptic found would be comprehensible to few, whereas his own evasiveness and fear of criticism speak badly of him in a language understood by many. Conversely, Judith Curry's willingness to engage critics speaks well of her in that same language; by extension, she makes the theories she is confident in defending look good as well.)

It is entirely possible that the problems shown in the CRU emails have metastasised beyond the one institute - these are leading and influential scientists, after all. If this is the case, this may start a chain of dominoes, with similar revelations made about other institutes and individuals. If there are genuine objections that have been successfully suppressed, then previously-silent scientists may gain the courage to notice problems they were wary of discussing before. It may be that the entire global warming scare is a fever about to break. Or it may transpire that the theory of man-made global warming is resilient in the face of any amount of scrutiny and transparency. I am curious to see.

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While this scandal doesn't really weaken the case for man-made global warming too much (it just shoots out one tyre on an 18-wheeler), it does bolster the case of the sceptics: it shows that scientists are corruptible and can be induced to display behaviour and attitudes not geared towards rigorous uncovering of the truth. I was originally a little sceptical of Mencius Moldbug's analysis of global warming - his term "Puritan environmentalism" fits well, but just because the theory fits a certain mindset that you don't like doesn't mean that the theory is wrong or that those involved are distorting matters. In particular, his assertion that leading climate scientists deserve prison seemed utterly over the top. Now, it seems I gave him too little credit. (Moldbug is now having a field day on the issue.)

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Per the Beeb, Climate e-mail hack 'will impact on Copenhagen summit' - Saudi Arabia, which is eager to keep everyone using its oil (and which has the immense chutzpah to demand compensation for loss of oil revenues as people switch to renewable fuel sources) is planning on using this to derail the summit. This, children, is why integrity is a good thing: Michael Mann and Phil Jones have derailed their own cause here. The BBC actually quotes Michael Mann on why the Saudis are full of it:

"There is a consensus among the world's scientists that climate change is real and there's a need to confront it," said Michael Mann from Pennsylvania State University in the US, a leading palaeoclimatologist.

"Those who are advocating inaction, that don't want to see progress in Copenhagen, don't have science on their side.

"Instead they've manufactured this false controversy to distract the public and to distract policymakers, to try to thwart progress in Copenhagen."

Mann is under investigation by the university where he now works because of being implicated in this "false controversy". The BBC thinks this is not worth noting, for some reason, and is thus implicitly presenting an accused party as a disinterested expert when he says that the accusations are trivial. This is either dishonest or incredibly lazy; either way the BBC are not earning their licence fee (which, thankfully, I do not pay).

(I have begun to notice in recent times that the Beeb's interest in giving the reader facts rather than spin varies greatly from subject to subject. I followed the BBC reporting on the Honduran crisis closely, mostly out of curiosity as to what the BBC thought it was acceptable for its readers to know at any given point. Today they finally given their readership clearance to discover that Zelaya was deposed on the orders of the Honduran supreme court - albeit indirectly; Zelaya mentioned it himself, and a BBC article quoted him. Although this may have been a moment of carelessness, as the article has now been updated and rewritten to include US reaction, and this has crowded out Zelaya's complaint - which, from memory, was that Honduras is still a dictatorship because the military who removed him and the court which ordered him removed are still there.)

(I really do not understand this behaviour. I do not see what interest the BBC has in covering for Zelaya, nor why this is given higher priority than informing their readership of events, nor why they think it morally acceptable to screen their readers' knowledge, nor why they think they can do this in an internet age and not have people notice what they're doing. It is very bizarre.)