Watching Phil Jones testify to the UK’s Parliament yesterday and claiming how ‘Climate Scientists’ are the only scientists in the world who do not follow the scientific method of openness, transparency, skeptical analysis and independent validation is stunning enough. Everyone should know you cannot have ‘scientific consensus’ when the scientific method is not even applied.

But then you read a historical review of how Jones used to be a scientist and used to followed the method, until it was becoming evident that the core data, algorithms and code laying at the foundation of AGW theory was full of errors and unverifiable, and the picture gets much worse. Only then do you realize how much damage Climategate did to the cadre of global warming alarmists and their ‘fans’.

As part of the UK Parliamentary hearings (wonder when the US media will wake up on this one) submissions were made by the many leading scientific organizations rejecting the corrupt methods and practice of ‘climate science’. That too should be headline news.

First to weigh in was in the Institute of Physics:

The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of over 36,000 and is a leading communicator of physics-related science to all audiences, from specialists through to government and the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics.

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The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

The IOP is clear: without the scientific method there no science is produced.

The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.

They go on to remind everyone that the manipulation of data, or the misrepresentation of data, is not science. They have many other concerns, which you can read about. This is the view of a huge scientific organization with a honorable and lengthy history, not some bumbling UN panel of ideologues, activists and politicians.

Then came the Royal Society of Chemistry:

2. The RSC is the UK Professional Body for chemical scientists and an international Learned Society for advancing the chemical sciences. Supported by a network of over 46,000 members worldwide and an internationally acclaimed publishing business, our activities span education and training, conferences and science policy, and the promotion of the chemical sciences to the public.

3. The document has been written from the perspective of the Royal Society of Chemistry. It is noteworthy that the University of East Anglia is a member of the RSC Partnership Scheme, however this in no way constitutes a conflict of interest. The RSC’s Royal Charter obliges it “to serve the public interest” by acting in an independent advisory capacity, and we would therefore be very happy for this submission to be put into the public domain.

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6. The dissemination of scientific information is central to progressing scientific developments, as it is based on a sound knowledge of preceding research.[1] Access to reliable, up-to-date information is vital to advancing research and enabling the discovery or development of solutions to global issues. Sharing information is especially important in multi-disciplinary research, where progress is very much dependent on willing and effective communication between different speciality areas.

7. It is also imperative that scientific information is made available to the wider community for scrutiny: the validity and essence of research relies upon its ability to stand up to review. In fact, advances in science frequently occur when the prevailing view is challenged by informed scepticism, this is fundamental to the scientific method and should be encouraged, even if controversial. The RSC firmly believes that the benefits of scientific data being made available and thus open to scrutiny outweigh the perceived risks. To this end, scientific information should be made available on request as outlined in the Freedom of Information Act. Furthermore, research needs to be presented in an accurate and reliable manner in the correct context in order to optimise this process. It may also be necessary to incorporate an independent auditing system into peer review with the ability to demand access to raw data sets to ensure best practices are being adhered to.

Clearly this organization also is rejecting the claims of Phil Jones and the other scientists at the core of the IPCC alarmists who have refused to subject their claims to validation and test.

Then came the Royal Statistical Society:

The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is the UK’s only professional and learned society devoted to the interests of statistics and statisticians. Founded in 1834 it is also one of the most influential and prestigious statistical societies in the world. The Society has members in over 50 countries worldwide and is active in a wide range of areas both directly and indirectly pertaining to the study and application of statistics. It aims to promote public understanding of statistics and provide professional support to users of statistics and to statisticians.

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4. The RSS believes that the debate on global warming is best served by having the models used and the data on which they are based in the public domain. Where such information is publicly available it is possible independently to verify results. The ability to verify models using publicly available data is regarded as being of much greater importance than the specific content of email exchanges between researchers.

5. The position of the RSS regarding public dissemination of scientific data is that where the results of scientific analyses have been published or are otherwise in the public domain, the raw data, and associated meta-data, used for these analyses should, within reason, also be made available.

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9. More widely, the basic case for publication of data includes that science progresses as an ongoing debate and not by a series of authoritative and oracular pronouncements …

That last line is especially refreshing and should remind everyone that Al Gore and the UN’s IPCC are not scientific bodies, and they cannot direct or determine scientific consensus. As is this line from the same citation:

It is well understood, for example, that peer review cannot guarantee that what is published is ‘correct’. The best guarantor of scientific quality is that others are able to examine in detail the arguments that have been used and not just their published conclusions. It is important that experiments and calculations can be repeated to verify their conclusions. If data, or the methods used, are withheld, it is impossible to do this.

Peer-review does not bestow correctness or fact to a claim. The UN IPCC and others have found this out the hard way. A scientific fact, like gravity, evolves out of the challenges of skeptics who determine independently the robustness of a theory. Speculative theories, like AGW and the origin of the Moon have supporting and conflicting evidence as theories come and go. They are not ‘facts’ like gravity, which has been established to the point it is a law of physics.

AGW is unfounded and unproven speculation. It will continue to fall under the scrutiny of skeptics and the reality of the real world as it continues on its path, ignorant of the arrogance of mankind. And this should be the story of the century, if there were any real journalists still plying that dying trade.

Update: More on this at WUWT

Update: And more here at Hot Air

Tags: CRU, Global Warming, UK Parliament