CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology were set up to apply the best science to their research areas. I am sure that many readers will get lost in the subtle reasoning of Dr Ian Castles that the climate models don't have 100% confidence levels but the REPORT FINDINGS ARE PROBABLY CORRECT.

Billie “REPORT FINDINGS ARE PROBABLY CORRECT”

Not if the modeling is faulty.

I have been developing commercial computer models for over 25 years.

I know how faulty they can be but I also know how they can beguile an uninvolved observers.

The history of climate modeling is relatively short yet littered with the skeletons of failed models.

The history of economics is far longer, centuries compared to decades and we still lack a reliable “model of a national economy”, let alone a “global model”.

I could explain the reason for this but will not bore you

Wilson, one time prime minister of UK and economics lecturer used to use coloured water to ‘model’ the outcomes of monetary policy, great, he would have also benefited from being a plumber.

“Report findings” can only be based on the data collected and if that data has been processed through a climate model, the findings are probably as correct as the model

And that means they are likely to be crap.

One thing certainly a lot worse than making no decision is to make a decision based on faulty reports reliant on faulty or poorly processed data.

Like the article says “It is truly unfortunate that the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology did not undertake a prior evaluation of the models used in the first study of its kind in Australia in order to ensure that those models were able to reproduce the past situations that were relevant to the study.”

= CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology Sloppy amateur modeling the output of which is not worth a rats.

R. Castles: "The report’s findings were accepted without question by the government and by most commentators"

This throw-away comment is rubbish.

R. Castles: "However, Dr David Stockwell, author of Niche Modeling and host of the Niche Modeling website," ...

Pretty website, but ... but let's see his publications in peer-reviewed climate science journals where they can be debated/debunked by real climate scientists. Am I right that he is a biologist, not a climate scientist. Does he have any publications in peer-reviewed climate science journals? I don't think so.

Its one thing to launch attacks from a nice little blog that seems to exist purely to carry on climate change denial lobbing, its another to take on qualified climate scientists in peer-reviewed journals. Since Dr. Stockwell has chosen to former over the latter, one wonders at the veracity of his conclusions.

There have been other criticisms made of the CSIRO's report from highly qualified sources. A major concern however was the refusal of that organisation to publish the backup data until pressured over a considerable period from international websites, including those of eminent climate scientists. And this is not the first time there has been refusal to publicly to release backup and source data by climate researchers who fit into the alarmist category. The sheer arrogance of this action and the increasing attempts of AGW proponents to shut down debate are something we should all be concerned about. The more evidence that becomes available to debunk the IPCC's claims and the more scientists who shift camp from being AGW believers to being doubters, the more strident the proponents become. Cognitive dissonance is clearly becoming a factor. Maybe there is a case for the psychologists to become involved.

Sams, i laugh when you say "... to launch attacks from a nice little blog ..." and when you yourself are quite prepared to refer people to wicked pedia as your reference for climate alarm. However your alarm may be more valid if it shifted from climate and focused on the alarming state of what passes for science ...... particularly in OZ.

Your wicked pedia link in your recent post in the previous thread here, was to treat this fraud of the hockey stick graph as simply a controversy or even worse as nothing more than a dispute. Do you think people are completely stooopid? M Mann and co's attempted revision of the last millennium's climatic history with his "hockey stick " chart and hypothesis with its obvious "in house peer review" process, was accepted by the blinded climate alarmists lock stock and barrel "for one reason and one reason only - it told them exactly what they wanted to hear."

Most IMPORTANTLY, this was not some harmless oversight or mere mistake that can be brushed off. It says everything about the delusional alarmists and more accurately, the shonky and political IPCC with its enforced consensus mindset. This old fashioned worship of authority cannot work anymore for the IPCC because on this one issue we see an eclipse of reason and total loss of all credibility on climate as well as what they understand as "science".

I simply want good honest science getting the available tax payer funding not some bogus alarmism rorting the system and destroying the careers of especially young promising people entering the profession. We need to focus on hard science projects with open accountability processes. Honest science is all about discovery and it should be no surprise that the greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

malrob: "A major concern however was the refusal of that organisation to publish the backup data"

Having worked as a academic in universities in the past, I can tell you that these days they are over-the-top about intellectual property rights. This control is exerted by the university bureaucracy, rather than by the individual researchers or research teams, and seems to have been the delaying factor in this case. Deniers have seized on this, and reinterpreted it it as 'censorship' in shrill voices, but rest assured the source of the problem was most likely red tape.

malrob: "Maybe there is a case for the psychologists to become involved."

I wish they would. I'm sure they would have much to say on the twin topics of denial and paranoia.

Col_Rouge nothing about your failed Arts degree and stumbling into IT and calling yourself a business consultant gives me confidence that you have the theoretical knowledge to understand the statistics behind R Castles criticism of the methodology. I have more faith in integrity and predictions of scientifically trained CSIRO climate scientists who publish in peer reviewed journals than I do in pushy untrained self-made men.

Sams and Billie,

For clarification, my initial is ‘I’, not ‘R’. I'm the author of this article and I've been posting on OLO as IanC.

I was formerly the Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and am an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. As such I subscribe to the Institute’s Declaration of Professional Ethics, which holds that ‘A principle of all scientific work is that it should be open to scrutiny, assessment and possible validation by fellow scientists’. It urges particular attention to this principle when using computer software packages for analysis.

I welcome David Stockwell’s posting of his R programming and of links to the data sets to which he was finally given access - thereby giving those with the skill to do so the opportunity to scrutinise, assess and possibly validate his results. I hope that the authors of the report are among those who accept his invitation.

I don’t know why no prior evaluation of the models' fitness for purpose was not undertake3n, but it wasn't. That leaves Australia’s two leading climate science research organisations with a heavy burden of responsibility.

The President of the NSW Farmers Federation, Mr. Jock Laurie, has said that the reporting of the results of this study had ‘added confusion and pressure to farm families at a time when they can least afford it’- and that the Federation had ‘received a number of calls from members who are extremely agitated, confused and upset about the reports of droughts every second year in future.’It's a matter of grave concern that this alarm has been triggered by models that don't pass standard validation tests.

The Minister's statement said that the study was the first of its kind in Australia. Surely the requirement to validate in this case is no less than it would be in the case of the results of a novel medical study.

CSIRO and BoM have been declining for some time; John McLean noted this in a 2007 article which exhibited some prescience in that he observed that CSIRO was relying on untried and untested climate models; his paper is here; http:mclean.ch/climate/CSIRO_review.pdf. Steve McIntyre has also observed problems with not only modelling by BoM but their collection methods as well; McIntyre notes the old methods of gathering data were more preferable, even if "thermometers (were) being seized by dingoes, taken by crows and being smashed by angry wives; his 3 part report is here; http:www.climateaudit.org/?p=1492.
A couple of commentators have seen fit to raise the old chestnut about peer-reviewed papers; apart from insulting Dr Stockwell's paper, which is in a peer-reviewed form, and his impressive qualifications, it ignores that there is a veritable blizzard of peer-reviewed papers about the total predictive failure of the IPCC's models; here are 2 of them;
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/850
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions?p=6

billie, billie, what can I say other than as the article said-

“It is truly unfortunate that the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology did not undertake a prior evaluation of the models used in the first study of its kind in Australia in order to ensure that those models were able to reproduce the past situations that were relevant to the study.”

That means (for you of so much faith and critical of my humble understanding), if historic data were passed through these models, the tested history would not present as the outcome of that data.

So why would that be – well

Unreasonable / inaccurate / unfounded or just plain wrong assumption to the relationship between the measured variables.

Inappropriate emphasis being placed on particular variables

Lack of data or data which was not representative as a sample of the whole

Theory based learning, lacking regard for practical observation, experience and spurious variability and collection error, caused when insufficient data has been collected over either as widespread an area as necessary or over an appropriate period of time.

So billie, You are entitled to your views. But since you are not paying me, I will not bother to illuminate your own dark, miserable little corner of ignominy beyond the above and leave you in the glimmer of your own ‘birthday-cake candle’ of brilliance.

I have no intention of giving credence or correcting what you write as your version of a supposed miniature bio of me.

However, I would rather be considered, as you call me, one of the “self-made men.”

Than one who is clearly “small minded, envious and in need of someone else to tell him when and how to wipe his backside”.

This is not surprising Ian, as both agencies now produce political press coverage in support of their prime ministerial funding allocations
The Bom in particular takes the short grab daily with no long term horizon past its own navel. (Indigo Jones, rip).

If you want to have a Historical point of view of drought in Australia written by a historian you can go no further than Michael McKernan's "Drought , The Red marauder" (Allen & Unwin 2005)
It describes the pain and suffering of people and the land under drought conditions very well.
It is incumbent on the CSIRO and BoM to be accurate as possible in its predictions on this reoccurring climatic condition.
But it is of no surprise that most scientific research is now being done in the Co-operative Research Centres nowadays.
CSIRO has certainly lost its gloss!

Col Rouge,
As someone who has both IT and Business with dual majors qualifications and a lengthy career in management of same I agree with the IT axiom “Garbage In Garbage Out” (GIGO). However experience has taught me that this can be an over simplification of an issue.

In areas as complex as the Economy and the Weather it is almost impossible to create retrospective Model as you suggest because the circumstances and conditions at play then are both different and unknown. i.e. if science didn’t know about it they couldn’t measure it. The ADITIONAL unknowns (not collected at the time) would require a less accurate result. There are published examples where current models are credible.

Computer modelling of this type is best for indications, probable outcomes. Current thinking is that they’re results can be better than 80%. Not perfect, but good enough to be considered for PART of the equation. Much of this work has been peer reviewed and largely accepted under the above limitations.

I also agree with the more Scientific principle of a conclusions reflecting complete information. The perceived flaw in Climate change ‘nay sayers’ approach is they tend to run hard on ‘discrediting’ bits of the evidence as a tactic rather than compete appreciation for what the weight of ALL the evidence indicates. This is often agenda or bias driven. If someone dares point out the obvious scientific failings or scientific credibility of a nay sayers the response is injured pride and/or a patronizing attack.

I have challenged the ‘nay sayers’ to put up an alternative Scientifically accepted model that addresses ALL the know evidence. Thus far the challenge is unanswered. I would suggest both sides be more realistic,less aggressive and more factual about defending their OPINION.

FTR: I don’t claim any authority on the subject I advocate harm minimization.

BTW There there are other models out there.

Examinator “As someone who has both IT and Business with dual majors qualifications”

Me too

“ and a lengthy career in management

Me too

“I agree with the IT axiom “Garbage In Garbage Out” (GIGO). “

Me too

“However experience has taught me that this can be an over simplification of an issue.”

We have a 350 word limit here

So if you agree with me, why not say so in one word, rather than stretch it out over several paragraphs?

Examinator says .."I have challenged the ‘nay sayers’ to put up an alternative Scientifically accepted model that addresses ALL the know evidence."

The AGW hypothesis seeks to hide/distort/ignore/minimise/disprove at every opportunity natural climate change by trying to oh so zealously slot human CO2 emissions into the data. In their zeal too, it is AGWers that deny human CO2 release as good for people by enhancing the biosphere/environment.

As the proposer of this anthropocentric hypothesis it is not the non-AGWers' task to prove a negative by offering "anything new" because it is the AGWers that are required to constructively/positively prove it correct. This they haven't done in twenty years along with tens of billions in funding. I might suggest that they are never going to find proof for what is a paradox. This is pretty simple stuff to comprehend because that is how science works and quite naive of you, Examinator, to ignore.

Scientists can be just as venal or fool themselves as anyone else in the community, especially when chasing funding, but the simple fact remains that scientists survive professionally by determining causality else they cease to be scientists.

Col Rouge

No I don't agree with you! I agree with some of your premises but not your methodology, conclusion or the overtones of delivery. I took the time to explain what I meant your interpretation that we agree isn't based on what I said.
In essence, I said CONTEXT is the key when dealing with cumulative and nuanced (scientific) data, right or wrong determinations miss the point as do one word answers. THIS IS NOT A MANAGEMENT ISSUE IT IS A SCIENCE ONE.
I don't accept that business' confrontatious, expedient, minimalist, short-term perspective is valid in this log-term issue. Nor do I believe that Business' profits is our primary concern.

Ian Castles wrote: "I was formerly the Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and am an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. As such I subscribe to the Institute’s Declaration of Professional Ethics, which holds that ‘A principle of all scientific work is that it should be open to scrutiny, assessment and possible validation by fellow scientists’. It urges particular attention to this principle when using computer software packages for analysis."

As a PhD-qualified former scientist I fully agree with that declaration. But I extend that to say that the proper place for scientists to report that scrutiny, assessment and validation (or not) is in the relevant peer-reviewed journals, in this case the journals of climate/atmospheric science.

When scientists opt for popular media instead of taking on their peer scientists, it warrants suspicion of their conviction, motives and the veracity of their results. Pons and Fleischmann and their the ill-fated cold fusion research results are a good example.

You should extend the argument further again, Sams. The proper place for 11 Australian scientists to have reported the findings of the first study of its kind in Australia was a peer-reviewed journal.

Unfortunately, their employing organisations chose to accept funding for the research from a Government which was in urgent need of some policy-based evidence (evidence-based policy being out of favour). They were therefore obliged to publish their research as an official report.

On 7 July the Minister for Agriculture said in a radio interview that 'to think that something that's only been happening every 20 to 25 years happening every year or two … is frightening.' He explained that 'The brief that I gave them [the scientists] was simply: "These droughts have been occurring every 20 to 25 years, can you tell us how often it's going to happen into the future?" They looked at the data, they did the scientific projections, and these are the answers' (http://www.maff.gov.au/transcripts/transcripts/july_2008/csiro-bom-climate-report).

It's too bad that many farmers were distressed at 'the answers' and made their feelings known to (for example) the NSW Farmers Federation, which received many calls from members 'who were extremely agitated, confused and upset about the reports of drought every second year in future' (see 'Farmers unhappy at CSIRO's 'alarmism'' at http://www.inquit.com/ ).

What happened to the Government's responsibility to exercise due diligence? The Minister acknowledged that they'd decided on increased funding for R&D for agriculture 'today' (7 July) 'in the light of the information WE RECEIVED YESTERDAY' ( http://www.maff.gov.au/transcripts/transcripts/july_2008/climate-change, emphasis added).

Your statement that 'When scientists opt for popular media instead of taking on their peer scientists, it warrants suspicion of their conviction, motives and the veracity of their results' reads as if the target of your criticism might be David Stockwell.

In my opinion, it is the CSIRO/BoM authors who deserve criticism. They knew the Government would trumpet their findings in the media but chose not to subject them to basic statistical tests and not to seek review comments from outside CSIRO/BoM. They now owe David Stockwell a response to his serious critique.

Col_Rouge I doubt you have ever worked with a computer model that's any more complex than a mortgage brokers financial plan for low-doc customers, or may be you are the architect of the superannuation funds data base.

There is a world of difference between financial modelling and the climate modelling.

Is the Lavoisier Group paying the author $20,000 for this article?

Ian Castles wrote: "You should extend the argument further again, Sams. The proper place for 11 Australian scientists to have reported the findings of the first study of its kind in Australia was a peer-reviewed journal."

Firstly, I thank Ian Castles for endorsing my argument and providing a surprisingly easy endgame for this debate.

Let's revisit my point again:

Me: "the proper place for scientists to report that scrutiny, assessment and validation (or not) is in the relevant peer-reviewed journals, in this case the journals of climate/atmospheric science.".

That would include, would it not, the papers that the report draws upon for its conclusions (referenced in the report) such as:

Mpelasoka, F Hennessy, K., Jones, R. & Bates, B. "Comparison of suitable drought indices for climate change impacts assessment over Australia towards resource management." International Journal of Climatology (2007)

and several others *by the authors of the report*. Yes, these people are respected climate scientists with a considerable bibliography of published material in top-tier climate research journals. Unfortunately, you cannot say the same of David Stockwell and his one-man anti-climate change lobby blog. Couple this with the report being prepared by 11 different scientists, across two organisations, and I'd say that the peer-review safety net is firmly in place. Ian Castles, by his own argument, has cast doubt upon Stockwell's findings and on his own judgement of what constitutes good science.

Sams, You say that Mpelasoka et al, International Journal of Climatology (2007) is one of 'the papers that the [DEC] Report draws upon for its conclusions …'

No it's not: if you'd read the Report, you'd have discovered that Mpelasoka et al (2007) is explicitly cited therein as one of six 'previous studies ... that have NOT adequately done this analysis' (p. 13, third sentence, emphasis added). And if you'd checked the reference you'd have found that the citation in the DECR is wrong. The citation there, reference 25, isn't to Mpelasoka et al - it's to Bates et al (2007): 'Effect of GCM bias on downscaled precipitation and runoff projections for the Serpentine catchment, Western Australia.'

I went through all this, and much more, in my post #35 of 27 July on the 'CSIRO: A Limited Hang Out??' thread at Climate Audit. I thought you'd have known of the error, especially because Andrew Bolt linked to my post at CA in his piece 'Dud studies behind Rudd's freakish claims' on 5 August. Don't you read these blogs?

You say that 'the peer-review safety net is firmly in place' and pour scorn on David Stockwell's blog. Perhaps you didn't notice that David's critique of the DECR cites Botkin et al, 'Forecasting the effects of global warming on biodiversity' 'BioScience' 57(3):227-236, 2007? And that he (David) was a co-author of that paper? And that David Hilbert, principal research scientist and officer in charge at the CSIRO Tropical Forest Research Centre in Queensland was also a co-author, as was Chris Marguks, leader of the Tropical Landscapes Program of CSIRO's Sustainable Ecosystems Division?

The author notes to Botkin et al identify David as 'a research scientist working jointly at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara ... and the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California-San Diego.' And he's the author of 'Niche Modeling.' In my view his credentials to review the DECR are more than adequate, and his critique warrants a response from the Report's authors.

With climate changed being so politically charged, and having such a huge effect on future policy, it should be subject to greater scrutiny than other scientific publications.

If as the author suggests, that the models used do not even meet the simplest test of matching past results, this should be a cause of great concern and should cast significant doubt on the predictions.

However, as I generally have a fair amount of faith in the CSIRO, I would be loath to write off their analysis, but their reluctance to release their core assumptions is worrying, and I would certainly like to see the brief on which they worked.

This issue with climate, not unlike the all important cosmological issue, has for myself become such an interesting study in human behaviour. Both go deeply to all questions and the problems that really prepossess all others. As an unexceptional lifeform we need to know where we came from, what are the limits, what are our goals, to what do we tend to, to what do we have control over, to what are the possibilities, to what is determinable and to how much we desire the indeterminable. In this respect we need to be concerned about purposeful behaviour which is the control of input variables. Our behaviour does not come from the stimulus-response model nor the cognitive science model because behaviour is the CONTROL of perceptions.

It is our connected control of perception that creates purposeful behaviour like a will to truth driven by a curiosity as well as an altruism and the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived as well as the will not to deceive. My question is why should we allow some vested interest, or cult of high priests or some arrogant designer try to codify their domination by seeking to take over our control of perception and substitute their fake model of the world?

As an example of how a fake model can take over, consider high priest Einstein who considered that empty space is a possibility, then postulated this "mystical matterless motion" oxymoron along with this next bit of nonsense called curved space. Like how can anyone, even myself fifty years ago, be expected to believe that "nothingness" exists, that everything in the vast expanse of the known universe came from "nothingness" and the clincher, that this "nothingness" is curved even though it contains nothing at all. This major regressive philosophical move by Einstein has been detrimental to physics ever since. Very simply, if scientists are not interested in causality as with much of Einstein's work, then they are not scientists. With climate we see similar faulty, initial assumptions.

Ian Castles: "You say that Mpelasoka et al, International Journal of Climatology (2007) is one of 'the papers that the [DEC] Report draws upon for its conclusions. No it's not"

On the contrary, it is, unless perhaps you don't understand the academic process. The role of this particular reference is to highlight a gap in the coverage of previous studies. There are several other references by the report's authors to choose from if for some reason you don't like that one, but really you are just grasping there.

Ian Castles: "Andrew Bolt linked to my post at CA in his piece" ... "Don't you read these blogs?"

So Andrew Bolt is your other source of "scientfic" information is it? The fact that you give credence to Bolt's dribble I find highly amusing, but confirms my suspicion that you will hold valid any piece of garbage that happens to agree with your prejudices. The front page today of Bolt's blog is replete with before and after pictures of Amy Winehouse, ridiculing her appearance. Do you care to comment on that as well?

No I don't read Climate Audit either or any other amateurish crank blog that comes along. The tin-foil hat club might enjoy that sort of thing, but I simply don't have the time to waste.

Ian Castles: "Perhaps you didn't notice that David's critique of " ..

Perhaps you don't understand the term "climate science" (here's a clue: its not biological science). What I asked was where is David Stockwell's list of publications in peer-reviewed *climate science* journals?

Examinator “I agree with some of your premises but not your methodology, conclusion or the overtones of delivery”

I did not realize I had presented “my” methodology here.

My only conclusion is GIGO. Which tends to make any other conclusion redundant.

As for ‘overtone of delivery’ – not interested in your subjective sensitivities.

But on that point, I don’t much care for your either, although had you not mentioned it, I would not have bothered to say.

Billie “Col_Rouge I doubt you have ever worked with a computer model that's any more complex than a mortgage brokers financial plan for low-doc customers, or may be you are the architect of the superannuation funds data base.”

Keep guessing billie.

“There is a world of difference between financial modelling and the climate modelling.”

You obviously know more than I would ever give you credit for ….

However, regardless of the object of the model, financial, operational, network planning, queue theory and traffic flows or ‘climate’, all models are subject to the same observational constraints…

To use the words of examinator

Garbage in, garbage out.

. . . much like your posts, billie.

Kieran

Perhaps I’m naïve as you say. I know that Scientists are human with all that it implies. Philosophy aside.

All good scientific paper include some element of doubt e.g. confidence percentages less than 100.
Therefore determinations have the same/lesser confidence. Absolute conclusions are at best assumptive.

Logically all these scientifically agreed adverse related events (multiple disciplines) must contribute to some cumulative consequence. As it stands in the absence of a scientific alternative Global Climate Change (not Global Warming) is a working hypothesis that tries to identify this cumulative consequence.

My point has always been that ‘games’ get in the way of meaningful reasoning.
Practically speaking we have two issues to consider:
• What do these events mean and what will be the cumulative effect? ( a drop of water won’t kill you, but you can drown in 4cm )
• What do we do to protect ourselves from these consequences what ever they are?

Do we believe in self proclaimed experts (business, journalists and other “nay Sayers”) all with no or limited expertise in the various disciplines they’re commenting on? Therefore both their OBJECTIVITY if not Skill must subtract from the confidence level of their conclusions.

Given the Scientifically agreed Possible /Probable consequences of any one of these events let alone the cumulative effect. We need to plan harm minimumization strategies at the very least. To do that intelligently we need an over arching idea of what we’re preparing against.

Therefore it’s reasonable to ask “what are the alternative hypotheses?
• Natural events? Who cares if its natural or anthropogenic, catastrophes have the same effect regardless of their origin.
• “She’ll be right, mate”? Strewth that approach ignores a cornucopia of “bell weather” events that increase daily.
• Panic? Hell No!
If there are better explanations what are they?

NB. My posts are usually multilayered unlike the usual myopic one off comment. Likewise their context often lies in a cumulation of a commenters related posts rather than one single exchange.

Col Rouge. Neither you or I has a monopoly an right or wrong difference is I admit it. end

Virtually all scientific and economic research depends on application of statistical method. Ian Castles has been a global leader in this field for decades, highly respected by his peers and formerly head of their leading international body. His work, and that of the ABS under his guidance, has been a major input to development of international statistical standards, e.g. in national accounting and use of parity purchasing pricing for international comparisons, work which was ignored by the IPCC in the economic modelling which underpins all of their climate projections. I can think of no one better suited to commenting on statistical aspects of the AGW debate. No one in CSIRO or BoM will have remotely comparable credentials in statistics.

I am not an economic modeller, but as an economist was involved in, directed and analysed such modelling at various times from 1966-2002, and have taken relevant courses at LSE, University of Essex and ANU.

Kieran, you say that "behaviour is the CONTROL of perceptions." Nothing could be further from the truth. Our behaviour is driven by our so-called sub-conscious mind, which evaluates and reacts to everything which impacts on our sense doors (eyes, ears etc) and develops deep-seated cravings and aversions; these result in entrenched habit patterns which largely determine our response to stimuli. That is, our reactions to the inputs we perceive control our behaviour.

And, yes, I do have some expertise in this field as well as in economics etc (see my previous post), expertise based in part on deep self-observation since 1972 as well as external wisdom.

I'm not with you Sams. You 'fully agree' that 'A principle of all scientific work is that it should be open to scrutiny, assessment and possible validation by fellow scientists', but then say you don't have time to read amateurish crank blogs such as Climate Audit. But the fact is that if it hadn't been for the blogs the DECR couldn't have been scrutinised, assessed or possibly validated BY ANYONE. Steve McIntyre posted 'Some Quick Thoughts on CSIRO Drought Info' in Canada, and scholars around the world can take it from there. Why couldn't CSIRO and BoM have provided that information?

The authors of the DECR are doubtless able scientists, but the DECR episode shows yet again that under present arrangements it's the Australian Government that decides whether and when the non peer-reviewed findings of publicly-funded scientific research bodies are published. You say that the DECR 'draws on' previous peer-reviewed work but it's the Australian Government, not me, that's touted this Report as 'the first of its kind in Australia' and literally tries to blind the community with science.

Thanks Faustino for your comments. It's the ABS and the legislation under which it operates, not the successive Heads of the Bureau, that deserve the credit. Unlike CSIRO and the BoM, the ABS hasn't and won't yield to government the right to decide what will or won't be published. The legislation obliges the Statistician to 'publish and disseminate the results of any such ... analysis' and those results are published irrespective of the wishes of the government of the day, subject only to statistical considerations. Does anyone believe that the results of the DECR would have seen the public light of day if standard validation tests had shown that they lacked statistical significance? CSIRO and the BoM would have been told to try again.

The DECR's results can now be tested, not just by David Stockwell and Steve McIntyre but also the authors of the Report and any others who care to take a hand. Let a thousand flowers bloom

IanC,
Good Post.

On a more global perspective on GCC. I am torn between the reductionist approach and that of the greater than the sum of the parts.
I wonder how relevant is public validation given that their expertise(s) aren't in relevant disciplines?
It seems to me that making definitive decisions on one 'scientific' conclusion (of less than 100% confidence) is some what presumptuous if not bad logic.

Is it more prudent to take the legal precept “preponderance of the evidence”?

Total reliance solely on meteorological models given that many relationships are not fully understood must have a limited confidence factor. (rather it is PART the preponderance). To me this is the end model once we have determined the probable contributing factors and their ultimate effects on the factors that influence weather. There is ample evidence that we are facing multiple failures of natural systems. It seems self evident that that lots of bad things don’t equal good outcomes. (i.e. bad cumulative effects)

I guess what I see is that squabbles over labelling or minutiae are both myopic and pointless. Therefore surely our scientific approach should be to define what the problem is and probable outcomes, so we can institute at least harm minimization using multiple models from multiple sources then addressing the one that fits the observable evidence best. This is opposed to concentrating on proving one side or the other is wrong?
Surely this is the purpose of management (government) and their expertise.

"But the fact is that if it hadn't been for the blogs the [report] couldn't have been scrutinised, assessed or possibly validated BY ANYONE."

That's called an 'assumption' - its not a "fact", despite your use of capital letters. If I look over my wife's shoulder and see a mistake in her PhD thesis, does that immediately make me an expert in homocide law? I don't think so. You don't seem to have anything new to add so I think our dialogue ends here.

Faustino: "an Castles has been a global leader in this field for decades" ... "No one in CSIRO or BoM will have remotely comparable credentials in statistics."

I'll grant that Mr. Castles was a top-level bureaucrat in the area of statistics back up until 1994. However ...

Googling around at statistics conferences proceedings and peer-reviewed statistics journals over the years, his name is consistently absent. Don't you think that that people with actual PhDs in mathematical statistics and climate science might have better credentials?

Furthermore, according to Wikipedia and Sourcewatch, he publishes papers for the 'Lavoisier Group', a secretly funded group with strong links to the mining and fossil fuel industries.

According to the same sources, he has appeared at events for the 'Institute of Public Affairs' and 'Centre for Independent Studies' - both fossil fuel industry funded. The IPA is also funded by the tobacco industry.

And he uses Andrew Bolt's blog as a serious supporting reference .. hmm.

Faustino, it is not unusual for most people to assume like yourself ..".... our reactions to the inputs we perceive control our behaviour." Most people in fact interpret behavior as if it were caused by events outside an organism acting on a mechanism that merely responds. It is only when we think of control that the true picture emerges. By not recognising a control process when you see one, many people i feel have become drastically misled by some side-effects of control.

As a young boy i was, for some reason, particularly sensitive to the concept of control ... like was i in control of myself or was something/someone controlling me? It became pretty apparent that if i wanted to be a good golfer i needed to control perception big time. i.e. My score card became the measure of my control of perception ... hence our control of the inputs we perceive, is our behaviour.

Many years later i came across the work of William T. Powers who seemed to be speaking the same language. People, if interested, can google him for some interesting reading on the subject. Incidentally this control of perception is not just limited to humanity but to all living organisms.

Dare i say, anyone interested in financial markets would be completely blind not be familiar with behaviour as the control of perception. I can suggest a reading of Warren Buffett as a means to help out. With climate it is much the same ..... as many of my OLO posts attest.

exterminator: I wonder how relevant is public validation given that their expertise(s) aren't in relevant disciplines?

I think this is an important and relevant question. How much confidence would we have in validation of fortune-telling by fortune-tellers? How about company information from companies? Climate models from climate scientists? There are recognized benefits of being outside a discipline. Major works projects deliberately set up independent validation (sometimes called hold-points) in order to protect all concerned.

In my study, one model, the Japanese miroc_h, had similar return period (or drought frequency) to observations over most areas. So progress is possible I believe. But in my view the validation methods in the DEC report were inadequate, or absent. As Penny Whetton, leader of the Climate Impacts and Risk research stream at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research said in Assessment of the use of Current Climate Patterns to Evaluate Regional Enhanced Greenhouse Response Patterns of Climate Models:

"However, a model that performs well for a target variable, season and location, may perform poorly for another variable, season or location, in which case model processes would be suspect."

The remedy for models failing validation is for the DEC report team to be sent back to the drawing board.

Sams the Sophist,

Having read this exchange, what a despicable display. It's hard to know where to start. You engage in the exchange, and only when you have been pummelled, and I mean pummelled, had shreds torn off you, rings run around you, flogged (Penrith and Melbourne did better in their repsective codes on the weekend than you did here), instead of being gracious, you revert to talking about Dr Castles in the third person asnd throw the smear around like a petulent child who says, well you were never my friend to begin with. (I "love" "your" "use" "of" "quote marks" "when" "you" "say" "absolutely" "nothing" "of" "substance".) If you had no repect, why did you question him in the first place? I think Castle had the generosity to engage a mediocre thinker and cowardly weakiling like yourself, and this is your response. You contradict yourself and make it up as you go along (eg study 'drawn upon" and then study highlighting a "gap"). You patronize with comments about understanding the academic process (I've googled too, Castles was previous head of Aust Academy of Social Sciences so I think he may have some idea). WHat have you done dweezil? Even with CAPITALS, you miss the point and talk about you wife's Phd in homicide law, whicvh living with you, may come in handy in the future. You have some infatuation with PhDs and peer-review, but when you actually meet authority you act like a child and show your insecurity, throwing mud and running away. If you are in some sort of old people's home for dementia, then I appluad the staff for letting you contribute here as some sort of distraction and I wish you all the best. Otherwise, you are an embarrassment.

Well said Dogstarr - couldn't have summed it up better. Talking to a mate who got his PhD in the early 80s, he says they are literally giving away Phd's these days. Phd's today show a poor standard of analysis, are full of grammatical errors and lack proper statistical analysis. He says people are not choosing to do PhD's and University are getting desperate. Just because Sams says he has a Phd only proves to me he knows a lot about nothing. It certainly doesn't mean he has a higher authority than anyone else to comment on climate science.

I read a lot of articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and a fair percentage are not worth the paper they are published on. And I blame the reviewers of those articles. IMHO I reckon the peer-reviewed industry is a cosy closed shop between fellow scientists to assist each other to share in the gravy train of public funding.

Tragedy the reason why there were so few PhDs in earlier generations was that until about 1965 you couldn't undertake PhD studies in Australia. In the good old days supervisors were paid by the number of students who started PhDs and some were appalling managers of people, teachers and supervisors and I suspect a few were protective of their turf and so not inclined to see students pass, in fact, PhD completion rates used to be 6% of those who started.

PhDs are almost mandatory in some fields like microbiology, agricultural science and largely irrelevant in other fields like IT. I imagine climate scientists usually have PhDs and as they say "No ticket, no start".

Climate scientists are confident that they have good modelling for southern Australia and they know it is drying, the modelling for northern Australia is not as well developed and the outcomes are less predictable. Do you want to discount the predictions for southern Australia while you wait for modelling to be completed for northern Australia or do you want to start ameliorating the effects now.

The owners of coal mines and oil companies want continuous growth in product demand to maximise their profits they believe they are rich enough to cushion themselves from the effects of global warming. The Bush ranch in Crawford Texas is a survivalists dream having its own water supply, power supply, solar passive dwelling etc.

Kieran, not an assumption but an observable fact. A human being is a flow of physical and mental phenomena, arising and passing away with great rapidity [cf my post on Richard Castle’s 11/8 article]. There are several parts of the mind; consciousness, which notes phenomena at our sense doors – eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind; perception, where each phenomenon – say a sound - is recognised and evaluated as good, neutral or bad; the sound generates a sensation in the body, which perception evaluates and, depending on the evaluation, is pleasant or unpleasant. Finally, there is a mental reaction to the sensation, liking for pleasant, disliking for unpleasant; these reactions develop into intense craving and aversion.

This process is constantly at work in our so-called subconscious, the major part of our mind, which in fact is always conscious, always evaluating, always reacting. To come out of ignorance, delusion, suffering, we must learn to observe the sensations with detachment and to understand their nature, which is impermanence, substanceless.

The process of detached observation, with no reaction, brings to the surface the products of old reactions, deep-rooted habit patterns and complexes, and dissolves them. With this process, we have control; without it, we are the sum of our reactions.

This process, taught by the Buddha but not “Buddhist”, is called Vipassana meditation. With a few days of practice in a conducive environment, you can see these processes for yourself, within your own mind and body. They are observed facts rather than assumptions or “learned” (and therefore very limited) wisdom.

Further info: www.dhamma.org

Sams, just popping in.

You may wish to look at this thread in a site run by a statistician, well versed in climate science. The particular post by Lazar (and some that follow) relate to Stockwell's report.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/open-thread-5-2/#comment-20905

I would be interested in reading your comments (if not on OLO then at 'Open Mind'). If you are new to the site, you could check out other threads by entering keywords in the search field.

While I thought my undergraduate degrees covered stats in a comprehensive manner, not until I did postgraduate doctoral work did they start to play a significant part.

However, I certainly am not an expert in statistical analysis and prefer to look and learn from someone like Tamino, particularly when it comes to climate change issues.

Sams, You said at 8.39 a.m. that I (Castles) didn’t seem to have anything new to add ‘so I think our dialogue ends here’; but by 3.23 p.m you’d abandpned your self-imposed vow of silence and had weighed in with a new round of criticisms. Allow me to make a few points in response.

You argue that ‘people with actual PhDs in mathematical statistics and climate science might have better credentials [than me].’ Yes they might, but for some issues they might not. For example, in 2005 Stephen Schneider of Stanford, who has an actual Ph D, forwarded to a wide mailing list a letter I’d sent to the World Bank’s Chief Economist under cover of a note saying ‘Hi all, in case you haven’t seen Castles latest ride on the PPP horse. Any reactions? ...’ The immediate reaction of Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, FBA, FRS, Professor of Economics at Cambridge was ‘Castles is, of course, quite right.’ Who’s the expert here: Dasgupta or Schneider?

You question my statement that the data underpinning the models used in the DECR would not have been released but for the pressure from blogs. Surely that’s the only possible explanation of the chain of events. David Stockwell asked Kevin Hennessy of CSIRO for the data. Hennessy declined to provide it, citing ‘Intellectual Property’ constraints. Stockwell published the correspondence on his website. Andrew Bolt picked up the story on his blog and attracted over 150 comments in 24 hours. And CSIRO phoned Bolt (not Stockwell) to say that the data would be published ‘within a couple of days.’ What conceivable reason did CSIRO have to change their minds, other than the heat from the bloggers?

That uses up my 350-word allowance for this post. I’ll reply to some of your other slurs tomorrow. Please don’t come in again until after my next instalment

dogstarr: "you revert to talking about Dr Castles in the third person"

Do you think that might be because I was responding Faustino in that context? It was right under where I quoted him.

If you think it was so clear that I lost the debate, why do you feel the need wade in to come to Ian Castle's defence? Do you feel that he has been such a high-ranking bureaucrat that he deserves to be above criticism?

dogstarr: "Castles was previous head of Aust Academy of Social Sciences".

Social science isn't the same as atmospheric sciences, now is it?

dogstarr: "You have some infatuation with PhDs and peer-review".

I think it is a good framework for establishing scientific fact. Pretty much all scientists would agree.

dogstarr: " If you are in some sort of old people's home for dementia"

These days I'm the managing director of an IT company, and am in my early 40s. Back when I was doing science (80s and early 90s), my PhD is in the area of quantum chromodynamics. So nice of you to ask, and what do you do?

tragedy: "It certainly doesn't mean [Sams] has a higher authority than anyone else to comment on climate science"

I never said I was, although I expect I have a better handle on the physics aspects than most. Evidently though, I've also got a better idea of what constitutes scientific method and sources than Ian Castles does. I felt it was necessary to comment on that.

tragedy: "Phd's today show a poor standard of analysis, are full of grammatical errors and lack proper statistical analysis"

You've checked them all, have you? :-)

Sams, You acknowledged my bureaucratic experience in statistics ‘up until 1994’, but implied I’d done nothing in the succeeding 14 years.

That’s not quite true. The current OECD/EUROSTAT ‘PPP Methodological Manual’ says that “Castles’ review of the Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme [submitted in 1997] was an important milestone in its history.’ The report of an expert committee set up by the UN Statistical Commission in 2000 to examine my criticisms of the UNDP’s Human Development Report (HDR), including in a peer-reviewed paper, upheld my main criticisms and said that the HDR had made ‘material errors’. This was accepted by the HDR Office and led to substantial improvements in its statistical reporting.

I’ve made many submissions and given presentations or been a panelist at meetings on climate change issues convened by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), the IPCC, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) and the Garnaut Climate Change Review.

I was a member of the Organising Committee for two conferences on climate change convened by the Joint Australian Academies, and of the Committee of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) which supervised the commissioning and publication of ASSA’s ‘Uncertainty and climate change’, incorporating peer-reviewed contributions from three Australian experts.

I was a co-author of several climate change-related papers that have been published in the leading UK journal World Economics, including one that was republished electronically by the ANU with the publisher’s permission ‘because of its importance’
.
I’m surprised that, after excoriating blogs, you have a naïve faith in Wikipedia and Sourcewatch. So I’ve appeared at an event for the IPA which is supposedly fossil-fuel and tobacco industry-funded? Quelle horreur! The event was supported by the Australian Greenhouse Office and other speakers included Minister David Kemp (now at University of Melbourne), Dr. Jonathan Pershing (then at the International Energy Agency, now at the World Resources Institute), Professor Warwick McKibbin (ANU and Brookings Institution), Professor Ian Rae (Melbourne University) and Professor Chris Fell (Macquarie University). It's revealing that you pick on me.

IanC and other factual posters
Researching this issue has lead me (someone not in the relevant disciplines) to the following perceptions.
• The debate on the CSIRO models is that they are inconclusive and flawed in absolutist terms.
• The specific criticisms are focused on specific parts and open to debate.

Moving on there appears to be some debate about: the real world effect of the CO2 cycle as mechanism for GW.
• The effect of anthropomorphic CO2 @ 3% of the whole being the issue.
• The overall increase in CO2 is comparatively slight.
• Science for the causal link isn’t that clear in real world science.
• That water vapour (higher %) is a factor or has a combined effect.
Then the scientific internecine squabble over Modelists V Climatologists. Is that about it?

GIGO is true in absolutist terms therefore given the complexity of the issue climate model can, at best, only give probabilities.
As one person said it’s a bit like ‘describe the world and give two examples’.

My concern is that the debate is scientific navel gazing providing an opportunity for vested interests to argue for doing nothing. What the non-scientific ‘nay sayers’ are not recognizing deliberately are the LINKS and the effects by cherry picking and deliberate misinformation as the conclusions are “inconvenient” to their financial interests.

Literal Global Warming is irrelevant. Hence Most of the scientists I know have always argued Global Weather Change (the real problem)

In real world terms we have a number of issues.
• Melting of the tundra
• Melting of the Greenland ice sheet, artic.
• Melting of landlocked Glaciers
• Species (flora) moving to higher levels. And the top ones going extinct.
• Changes in Sea chemistry and associated effects
• Etc. ad nausium
The causal link of many of these events has been established to be anthropomorphic.
Surely the issue has to be the cumulative effect of all these scientific observed occurrences and harm minimumization. Comparisons with Y2k are bogus as it had no observable related occurrences, GCC does. Comments please.

Yee-ouch! dweezil. Seriously dude get out of the ring. This is getting hard to watch. I mean I'm lovin the spectacle but there are safety issues. Or are you doing thw whole Ali Rumble in the Jungle bit, where your going to come out swinging with something that actually connects soon? From here an apology looks like all you've got left. I like backing the underdog but if their just blowhards, i love seeing a champion belt the wind out of them. Pum-mel-led.

Davids
Thank you for your comments more info on hold points please.
However you analogy is inappropriate. The examples you gave are true but would you take serious medical advice from someone other than a doctor? I wouldn't but I do have a daughter who's into the whole 'alternative thingy'.

Many of the individuals who have harsh anti things to say are akin to your "self interested" examples. The puzzle is who to trust what are opinionated amatuersin highly techical fields.
In most cases on most sites including this one the trick is to follow various commenters to understand their bias. There are rarely clear accessable unbiased comments.

My post are usually based on what I know and utilize the skills I have.Hence In my other post today to IanC I again point out that debate on Literal Global warming is moot and that we NEED a solution to the scientifically endorsed problems and their cumulative effect.
Thanks
Andris

exterminator: I feel the issue of independent validation is in danger of being trivialized by our comments. This is a serious issue that is treated seriously in all areas of endeavor. Of course qualified people are assigned to hold-points, and in my experience they take the independence of their job seriously.

I think people understand that there is a human tendency to let sub-optimal performance slide if the only person checking it is yourself. And so, people opt voluntarily for independent checks. It adds value to their product. However, this process is being spurned and some take it as an affront.

Part of the problem is that when climatologists use models and data processing they are no longer in their area of core expertise and really need more input from statisticians, modelers, computer scientists. Peer review in many cases is no more that a check for 'readability', unless someone is upset enough to take you seriously to task.

I think the worst statistical offenses are in the climate regional effects modeling. The IPCC and global warming domain are another issue. However, it all comes down to regional effects eventually. So it is important to check those studies too.

It is nice to see the sceptics with something. Hopefully the latest idea will leave the peanut gallery and enter the ball park soon. I think it would be great if the models were wrong and Southern Australia wasn't set for more drought.

But what if this latest challenge to the science turns out to be a fizzer like all the others? At what point would sceptics like Ian Castles stop trawling the blogosphere and accept that there might be some truth in the AGW hypothesis?

With due respect,

The issue is not about the science (which is robust, notwithstanding Ian Castles' article)... but rather about how the world’s governments, businesses and communities deal with sustainability problems that they all recognise humanity has.

Current climate change is but a symptom, dealing with it is but an important means to an end.

The difficulty we have is in informing and educating the populace - the policy makers know why we have to deal with it, they (collectively) just don’t know how.

Some try, the latest being Oz's own Professor Barry Brook:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/07/welcome-to-a-brave-new-climate/

Thanks David Stockwell for your incisive post (14 August 8.36 am). As Sams maligned you earlier for running a 'one-man anti-climate change lobby blog' (9 August, 8.07 pm) I think that it's worth pointing out for the benefit of those who have been following this discussion that Nick Stokes contributed three posts to Niche Modeling's 'Effects of global warming' thread on 7 and 8 August, and six posts to its 'Linear regression example' thread on 14 August – and that Nick Stokes, BSc MSc PhD is listed on CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences website as a Post-retirement Fellow in the Computational Fluid Dynamics Group within that Division.

So far as I can judge (I’m not able to follow the detail), you have responded with civility to the issues that Dr. Stokes has raised. I’m left to wonder what is achieved by the name-calling in which some posters here have indulged.

Q&A makes this vacuous observation ... "Current climate change is but a symptom". What does he mean exactly ..... that change when it comes to climate or weather is a sickness or something sinister that can be avoided? lol

Barry Brook is out and about with his upcoming free public seminar series preaching ... "out to educate and raise awareness" with naivety like “Will it cost the earth to avoid climate change?”. What does he mean ..... that change when it comes to climate can be avoided or has never happened before or can be stopped? lol

I simply see our mind, our spirit, as inseparable from our body, which is inseparable from our environment, our geography, our planet, our solar system and the universe. Q&A, Brook and Al-AGWers are exceptions for there we see a disconnected virtuous humanity as like a parasite living on a host. This mind only belief, assumes with anthropogenic grandeur a virtuous but blinded task of dismantling all the elements of legitimate science. Obfuscation, manipulation, dishonesty and silencing of dissent are not elements of legitimate science. All we see here involves an outcome directed pseudo science trying to force/fudge raw data to conform to something that is expected to be seen and only i might add, with an hypothesis based expediently on but twenty years of the late 20th century warming.

We will never have politicians or scientists of substance, integrity and intellect unless the public have the same.