Is it safe?

The UEA seems to be much better at losing data than they are at maintaining it.

This is a bad joke. Supposedly this is the most important problem of humanity, and these jolly good chaps think it is their gentleman's game, and that they better keep out the plebs while they go about their business.

Hitting the Proverbial Nail

Steve McIntyre, as always slightly sarcastic, hits the nail on the head:

Mann himself was honored as a new AGU Fellow for his achievements in orientation-neutral and low-verification paleoclimate reconstructions, with special citation to his innovative use of upside-down sediments and success in popularizing reconstructions with verification r2 of 0.

Warning: Contains Gleick.

Save The Poor From Climate Change!

Willis Eschenbach asks "exactly which poor are they supposed to be saving, and from what?"

How To Lie With Statistics – Climate Edition

Willis Eschenbach - Keep doing that and you’ll go blind:

… So it is absolutely unsurprising, and totally lacking in statistical significance, that in a comparison with 28 variables, someone would find that temperature is correlated with one of them at a p-value of 0.05. In fact, it is more likely than not that they would find one with a p-value equal to 0.05.

They thought they found something rare, something to beat skeptics over the head with, but it happens three times out of four. That’s what I found so funny. …

[Update] And of course William M. Briggs has written something on the statistical quality of that paper as well.

How To Lie With Statistics – Climate Edition

Wonderful.

Bad Joke

Steve on the latest about the climate policy of the BBC:

…
Several years ago, the BBC stated in a report:

The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change].

Tony Newbery (see Harmless Sky blog) was curious as to the identity of these “scientific experts”, and filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Rather than simply complying with the request, the BBC refused the request. Tony appealed to the ICO and lost. The ICO agreed that the BBC was a “public authority” but held that the information was held “for journalistic purposes” and exempt
[…]

Tony appealed to the Information Tribunal. The BBC appeared with six lawyers. BBC official Helen Boaden argued that the meetings had been held under Chatham House rules and that the identity of the participants was therefore secret. Tony was again given short shrift, with the members of the Tribunal being surprisingly partisan, as reported by Orlowski.

Out of left field, Maurizio located the information on the Wayback machine here. Rather than the participants being the “best scientific experts” as claimed, they were almost entirely NGO activists. …

The best of the best of the best, sir.

Unprecedented

Acutally, no. Really, no.