March 2010 Archives

The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has released its report on the University of East Anglia's (UEA) climate research unit (CRU), which was triggered by one of the university's email servers being hacked.

The MP's criticized UEA for not tackling a "culture of withholding information" among CRU staff but also said Phil Jones, the head of CRU, should have been provided better support from the university in dealing with the numerous freedom of information requests from climate skeptics and deniers. In that regard they cleared Jones and CRU of any wrong doing and said the scientific research produced by CRU was "untarnished."

The committee expressed displeasure over the "standard practice" among the climate science community of not routinely releasing all its raw data and computer codes, partly confirming controversial evidence provided to the committee by the UK Institute of Physics.

"Climate science is a matter of global importance," said committee chair Phil Willis. "On the basis of the science, governments across the world will be spending trillions of pounds on climate change mitigation. The quality of the science therefore has to be irreproachable."

"What this inquiry revealed was that climate scientists need to take steps to make available all the data that support their work and full methodological workings, including their computer codes," Willis added. "Had both been available, many of the problems at CRU could have been avoided."

Paul Guinnessy

Related link
The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia

Sandra Butcher from Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs provides in the Guardian three steps that the US, Russia, and the UK, could follow that would help move negotiations along at the upcoming nuclear nonproliferation treaty talks in May.

• Both countries could unequivocally state that the only purpose for nuclear weapons is to deter other nuclear weapons;
• They could signal their intent to cure the cold-war hangover of US nuclear weapons stationed throughout Europe, which would set a new principle that no country should base its nuclear weapons on foreign soil;
• Rather than counting on sanctions to fix the Iran situation, they could take solid steps to discuss ways forward on creating a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, a discussion many of the states in the region are eager to have.

Meanwhile, foreign ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrial nations called today for stronger action to be taken against Iran over its nuclear activities while keeping the door open to further talks.

Richard Stone reports in Science that science won a big boost in spending at this year's meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, or Liang Hui as the conferences tackled everything from budgets to carbon emissions.

Central government spending on science and technology is slated to rise 8% to $24 billion in 2010, of which $4 billion is basic R&D.

Little progress was made at the conferences on some of the most fundamental questions regarding China, for example, what exactly is the "real" GDP of the country (as outside observers believe its running higher than the official state figures, for example, the World Bank had to revise upwards China's official GDP figure in January) and how much pollution, such as heavy metals, carbon dioxide etc.. does China produce? Some new satellites developed by NASA, the European space agency and used by the Chinese may help answer some of these questions in the near future. The data will become particularly important as China races to become the biggest spender in low carbon emission energy sources, such as wind and solar power.

The US and Russia have finally agreed on a new 10-year nuclear weapons treaty three months after the last START treaty expired and after a year of negotiation, announced US President Barack Obama today.

Three federal agencies have announced formation of a collaborative research program aimed at developing more powerful computer models capable of predicting the regional impacts that will result from global warming. The new grant program—to be funded at $50 million annually for five years by NSF, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)—also aspires to create models detailed enough to allow predictions to be made on a decadal basis, instead of the century-long scale that is typical of today’s simulations.

The Decadal and Regional Climate Prediction Using Earth System Models (EaSM) program hopes to produce high-resolution models to guide decision makers in addressing the impacts that will be caused by a warming climate. While NSF (which is contributing $30 million per year) will manage the initial review of proposals to the joint solicitation, DOE (which has committed $10 million per year) and USDA (which will provide $9 million per year) will select which of the reviewed proposals they will fund. Arden Bement, NSF’s outgoing director, told reporters that his agency is particularly interested in developing models that take into account the influences of living systems and project how living systems will respond and adapt to climate change. “People live in regions, not on the global median. In order for decisionmakers to plan for change over the next 10 to 20 years, we must be able to predict how climate change will impact their regions over the next 10 to 20 years,” Bement said.

William Brinkman, director of DOE’s Office of Science, said the agency “has been on the vanguard of climate modeling,” and has “added enormously” to its modeling and simulation capabilities in recent years. Oak Ridge National Laboratory boasts the fastest computer in the world, according to one widely recognized independent scorecard. And climate research facilities at DOE labs have been upgraded with recovery act funds. Using computers such as ORNL’s Jaguar, which can achieve petaflop speeds, climate modelers could finally make headway in understanding the roles that aerosols and clouds play in the climate change equation, Brinkman said. “But we also need to improve our understanding so we can put the proper things into the models as a function of time. It’s important to have both these goals in mind,” he added.

Roger Beachy, director of USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, said USDA wants to develop climate models that can be linked to crop, forestry, and livestock models. Such models will be used to help assess possible risk management strategies and projections of yields at various spatial and temporal scales.

Two types of interdisciplinary proposals will be considered for EaSM funding. Capacity and community building activities that address one or more goals, and last up to three years, are eligible to receive awards of up to $300,000 annually. A second type of proposal should describe large collaborative and interdisciplinary efforts that advance Earth system modeling on regional and decadal scales, and last three to five years; these proposals may receive $300,000 to $1 million in annual funding.

“If there ever is an issue that’s going to be hugely impacted if we have to do something about climate, it is energy,” Brinkman declared. “The knowledge base we’re trying to create [with EaSM] will play an absolutely essential role in understanding what we’re going to have to do in the future to remediate this situation.”

Brinkman and Bement stressed that EaSM is only one small component of their respective agencies’ programs in climate modeling. DOE, said Brinkman, has “worked hard” to get to petaflop-level computation, and expects to move soon to the 10–20 petaflop level. “We would love to be able to move to the exascale level—another 1000 times faster—but there are major challenges to doing that. “We believe that climate modeling is probably the driving force to continue in that direction, more than any other modeling that we can think of.”

But Bement cautioned that “it’s not just the heavy metal on the floor; it’s how you use the computing capability.” More sophisticated visualization equipment and mathematical algorithms are needed to interpret the models, while improved application software is required in order to operate at higher capacities. “It also takes education of the science community in how to use these computational tools,” he said. “One has to look at this as a total cyberinfrastructure problem, to include how to deal with the massive amounts of data, in terms of retrieving it and synthesizing it, as well as archiving it for future use.”

David Kramer

Physicist and Nobel prize winner Carl Wieman, has been nominated as Associate Director for Science, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

Wieman currently divides his time between the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado.

A former Stanford graduate, Wieman won the 2001 Nobel Prize in physics for his research on as "Bose-Einstein condensation".

His main interest in the last few years has been on improving undergraduate science education and it is in this role he will work at OSTP.

From 1984 through 2006, he was a distinguished professor of physics and presidential teaching scholar at the University of Colorado.

While at the University of Colorado, he was a Fellow of JILA (a joint federal-university institute for interdisciplinary research in the physical sciences) and he served as the Chair of JILA from 1993-95.

Wieman was the founding Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Science Education. He has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation's Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award (2001), the Carnegie Foundation's US University Professor of the Year Award (2004), and the American Association of Physics Teachers' Oersted Medal (2007) for his work on science education.

The University of East Anglia (UEA) has announced who will be on the panel to assess the science produced by UEA's the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), in the second of two investigations at the university instigated by public pressure in the media over the credibility of climate research after a hacker illegally releasing private emails from staff to colleagues on climate science.

There are just 60 researchers—mainly at the national labs—have experience in nuclear forensics, and none of them works full time on it, says Benn Tannenbaum of the Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to Peter N. Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor.

This now may change thanks to the Nuclear Forensic and Attribution Act, signed into law last month.

Although the main part of the bill aims to improve coordination and international cooperation among US agencies that probe cases of nuclear terrorism or nuclear smuggling, it has another goal—replenishing the human capital

The government will offer through the bill, scholarships for undergrads, fellowships for PhD candidates, and research awards to professors teaching in relevant fields as incentives.

In return for the PhD fellowships, graduates must work two years at a national lab or at other federal agencies that help investigate nuclear terrorism or illegal trafficking.

The UK's Institute of Physics (IOP) is facing a backlash to a 10 February statement submitted to the House of Commons Science and Technology committee on the recent climate research unit (CRU) emails that were released into the public domain after someone hacked their email servers.

As NASA struggles to implement the final four space shuttle flights, and the termination of the Constellation program—the Orion crew exploration vehicle and its Ares rockets—that was scheduled to replace it, lawmakers with districts containing a large number of NASA contractors are trying to scuttle the plans.

The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reports that the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) on Ellesmere Island, which is only 1000-km from the North Pole, is to close after the federal government refused to refinance a key climate-change research foundation.

According to Shawn McCarthy,

For many in the research community, the budget decision merely confirmed the view that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government remain skeptical of climate-change science and hostile to those who provide evidence that aggressive action must be taken to avert catastrophic global warming.

“It's quite clear we have a government that says they believe this is an issue but really don't care about it,” said Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria.

Related links
Arctic research centre scrambles to survive
Toronto researcher breathes new life into remote Arctic lab

Richard Jones of AIP's FYI summarizes the Obama Administration FY 2011 budget request.

Jones notes that Obama asks for significant increases in science and technology funding.

Funding for the DOE Office of Science would increase 4.4 percent.

National Science Foundation funding would increase 8.0 percent, while that for NASA would see a 1.5 percent increase.

The Department of Education’s Mathematics and Science Partnerships program would be renamed, and would receive a 66.2 percent increase.

The budget for the National Institute of Standards and Technology would increase 7.3 percent.

Funding for the science and technology programs of the Department of Defense would decline 12.5 percent.

US Geological Survey funding would increase 2.0 percent.

The budget for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering would increase 3.0 percent.

The National Nuclear Security Administration would see an increase of 13.4 percent in its funding.

Paul Guinnessy

Schools in three US states—Louisiana, Texas, and South Dakota—have been told to teach alternatives to the scientific consensus on global warming, says Debora MacKenzie in New Scientist.

The moves appear to be allied to efforts to teach creationism in public schools. Such efforts have in the past been thwarted when courts ruled them unconstitutional, but those advocating the teaching of sound science may find it harder to fight misrepresentations concerning climate change.

An article in the New York Times highlights the advantages and dangers of relying on government intervention, particularly subsidies, to support emerging energy technologies.

Elisabeth Rosenthal surveys Puertollano, a mining town in the middle of Spain that took advantage of generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start the solar energy industry.

The subsidies led to construction of two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and silicon wafers, and clean energy research institutes. But as Rosenthal reports:

Farmers sold land for solar plants... But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain's plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own.

In September the government abruptly changed course, cutting payments and capping solar construction. Puertollano's brief boom turned bust. Factories and stores shut, thousands of workers lost jobs, foreign companies and banks abandoned contracts that had already been negotiated.

The story isn't as bleak as the opening paragraphs suggest, for half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain, and unemployment in Puertollano, though now around 10%, is half what it was before the solar industry moved into the city. Moreover, the plants acted as a magnet, attracting more high-tech industry to the area.

In fact, adaption is at the heart of the story, for as the Spanish subsidies disappeared, the solar power industry switched from the domestic to the export market—Denmark, Germany, and elsewhere—to turn what were losses into profit.

Paul Guinnessy

On the heels of it's recently released report showing a surge in high-tech investments by China and other Asian nations, the National Science Foundation's National Science Board has urged the Obama administration to gauge the quality of federal research programs and to create a new cabinet-level council to address US innovation and competitiveness issues. In a report released last month, NSB also called on the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to lead a government-wide assessment of key research areas, benchmarking the quality of those programs against those of other nations’.

As MIT released a new analysis which concludes that there is now a 9% chance that the global average surface temperature would increase by more than 7°C by the end of this century, compared with only a less than 1% chance that warming would be limited to below 3°C, the House of Commons science and technology committee held hearings yesterday on the University of East Anglia's climate research unit.

It is one of five investigations into the so-called "climategate" emails which have put climate scientists under intense focus since someone hacked into UEA's email server five months ago and published the CRU staff emails. Another investigation was announced by Edward Acton, UEA's vice chancellor at the hearing, this one to look into the science the CRU has produced.

A pro-science government

The UK parliament has generally supported the governments efforts to combat climate change—only 3 MP's voted against last year's climate bill but the mood was different in the hearing.

The questioning was pointed and direct, both to climate skeptics, and to former head of the CRU Phil Jones and Acton. The change is tone came mainly from the only former scientist on the committee, MP Graham Stringer, an analytical chemist.

The climate skeptics questioned at the beginning of the hearing, none of whom were climate scientists, played to their strength by not questioning the science but the methodology and procedures put in place at CRU.

They’d stressed that if Jones and colleagues had behaved properly, there would have been no freedom of information requests, implying there would be no leak and no inquiry, and putting the media scandal on climate scientists, not the people who hacked into UAE's email servers.

Jones' evidence

MP Ian Stewart, a well-known pro-science MP in the UK, started Jones's grilling by askeing some softball questions to allow Jones to make his main case: that the emails were personal; raw climate data was available from NASA and NOAA, it didn't have to come from CRU; all temperature series from other sources show similar increases in the last 100 years; and the global average temperature for the last three decades are the highest on record.

Jones started off by stating all his research was published in peer reviewed literature, the gold standard for checking scientific results.

An outside review

The crucial points for the scientific community rose however over comments made by the committee over the ability of outside researchers and members of the public to check CRU's scientific papers.

Jones explained that is what the peer review process for publishing papers was for, and that reanalyzing raw data wasn't traditionally done in the scientific community, particularly when weather station data is often covered by confidentiality agreements. Nor had any reviewer ever asked for the raw computer codes as a standard practice. "Maybe it should be, but it's not," he said.

In response Stringer quoted from Jone's emails to Warwick Hughes, a noted climate skeptic, in which Jones refused to provide Hughes the raw data. "Why should I make the data available when your aim is to find something wrong with it?" It said.

Stringer followed up by getting Jones to admit that the raw data that CRU used wasn't available to outside researchers, contrary to the initial statement that said the raw data was available from NASA and NOAA. So how can researchers replicate Jone's results? asked Stringer.

Jones admitted that he had “obviously written some very awful emails” but added "I don't think there is anything [in the emails] that supports the view I've been trying to pervert the peer-review process."

On questions related to why raw data at universities do not have to be permanently kept, Acton drew attention to the fact that universities do not have a remit to be "a national archive." Most universities follow a 3-5 year rule when archiving raw data unless researchers request otherwise.

The chair of the committee, Phil Willis, said “We can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to,” archive raw data permanently.

Next witness

Former information commissioner Richard Thomas, was asked to put the 60 freedom of information requests that Jones delayed or blocked into context in the hearing. “Sixty doesn't strike me as a large number," he said. “The simplest approach where the requirements generate a defensive attitude… is proactive disclosure in the first place. Where there is no good reason, why not disclose it and avoid the hassle?"

Acton disagreed. The CRU only has 3 full-time employees, he said. "It is a very small unit...We are not a national archive, but a research unit. The manpower involved [in responding to FOI requests] is very considerable."

When Acton's turn came to talk about the UEA inquiry, by emphasizing the credibility of UEA's integrity as the heart of climategate in his responses to the MP's questions and in his written submission before the hearing, Acton upset Willis. "Surely scientific integrity on the world's leading global question should be the question. Have you not miserably failed?” he asked.

Muir Russell, former vice chancellor of Glasgow University, is heading UEA's inquiry into the hacked emails. MPs asked why the UEA’s own internal enquiry into the climate scandal wasn’t broader, and wasn’t questioning “the science” of climate change. Why was there a separate inquiry into the science?

“The reason this has caused so much interest around the world, is that it challenges the basic assumption of the majority of scientists," said Willis. "Yet you’ve ruled out an appraisal of the science work of CRU, although the vice chancellor is going to do that separately?”

Russell said he was asked to focus on the processes, and looked surprised that the Willis wanted the inquiry to look at the science. “Where would it end? What kind of questions would people ask?” said Russell.

A critical response

But it was written evidence submitted by the UK-based Institute of Physics that gathered attention in the media.

"The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context," said the IOP submission.

"The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honorable 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 committee's report is expected before the UK's general election, scheduled sometime in June.

Paul Guinnessy

Related links
Climategate hits Westminster: MPs spring a surprise The Register
Phil Jones survives MPs' grilling over climate emails The Guardian
Climategate scientist questioned in Parliament New Scientist
Scientist admits leaked emails were 'pretty awful' The Independent