His transgression cannot be condoned, regardless of his motives.

In the latest EOS (oh, and also here on the web):

The success of the scientific enterprise depends on intellectual rigor [sic], truthfulness, and integrity on the part of everyone involved. The vast majority of scientists uphold these values every day in their work. That’s why opinion polls show that public trust in scientists is among the highest of all professions. Public trust is essential because it provides the foundation for society’s willingness to invest in scientific exploration and discovery. It is the responsibility of every scientist to safeguard that trust.

And more besides, from the President, Michael McPhaden.

I encourage all those who are still trying to defend Gleick's actions, to read and consider the article before posting any more...especially those who are desperately clinging on to the faint hope that his "confession" was actually honest. Which seems pretty implausible from where I'm sitting. Don't forget the first rule of holes!

Tokyo Marathon

The official 26.2 mile event is today, but we aren't stupid enough to run that far, so entered a rather low-key 10km race yesterday instead, twice round the Imperial Palace, which is an almost exact 5km route which is very popular with joggers. It was pouring with rain in the morning, so we nearly didn't bother going, but the rain stopped at lunchtime right on cue and although the pavement was slippery on one part of the course, conditions were otherwise pretty good.


[Milling about before the start]

After the last slightly disappointing effort in Chiba I wanted to test myself a bit harder so set off rather enthusiastically (just for the record, my half lap splits were about 9:30, 19:40 and 30:00 respectively) and finished in 40:28 which was 2 mins faster than my previous best. And I'm certainly feeling the worse for it today - the bike ride to Yokohama and back was a bit of a struggle.


[The start of the 5K]

Jules ran 51:49, taking exactly 3 mins off her previous Shonan time, and coming in 4th woman!

Considering the route follows beside the moat, it's surprisingly hilly - at least 30m of height gain (and loss) per lap, which according to this site suggests I could have scraped under 40 mins on a flat course. Oh, it's also 48m short (over two laps) according to these guys, but that's a minor detail :-)

[The scenery round the route was quite pleasant, considering it was in Tokyo]

[jules' pics] Local Cooling

It's been a loong coold wiinter. At the end of last January I'd already been photographing ume for a couple of weeks. We are almost at the end of February and the ume near our house are not yet apparent. The photo above was taken in a warm part of Kamakura last weekend.

--
Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 2/24/2012 09:49:00 PM

[jules' pics] Let's park

There is a strange tradition on the posh Motomachi street in Yokohama. Every Sunday morning, sports cars come and ... err ... park outside Starbucks. Are they fuelled by coffee beans? Well of course they are all tin boxes to me, but sometimes they are quite bright coloured - just normal Lamboginies and the like. But last Sunday was different. As I walked down the street several rather interesting olde fashioned cars overtook me. I thought to myself - "I bet they're off to park at bucks". Sure enough when I passed Starbucks there they were all - parked. I had my camera ready.


This one was actually later in the day on a different part of the street, after all the vintage ones had finished refuelling but how could I not photograph an MG in British Racing Green?

--
Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 2/23/2012 09:45:00 PM

A(nother) climate sensitivity estimate using Bayesian fusion of instrumental observations and an Earth System model

The mode of the climate sensitivity estimate is 2.8C, with the corresponding 95% credible interval ranging from 1.8 to 4.9C.

Note that this is a 95% interval, meaning that the upper bound is at the 97.5% level rather than the commonly-quoted 95th percentile (for a 90% "very likely" range).

As I said previously, it will be interesting to see what approach the IPCC takes to this increasing number of "moderate" estimates appearing in the literature (bear in mind that a sensitivity of 3C still means a fair bit of climate change, but not as much as a sensitivity of 6C or 11C would...).

Is for-profit publishing dead?

I'm talking about academic journals, of course. People have been grumbling for ages about what a scam it is: academics not only provide the material for free but even pay the journal handsomely for the privilege of appearing in their hallowed pages, then other academics review and edit the material for free, and finally yet more academics pay to be allowed to read it. In these days of electronic transmission and powerful searching and indexing facilities, the added value provided by the publisher appears limited at best, and indeed strongly negative when you consider the sums of money involved. So I am following this initiative with some interest. I haven't signed up yet because I haven't checked how many relevant journals are run by Elsevier, nor whether they are a particularly egregious offender.

As an example of what it actually costs to run a professional outfit, the EGU journals generally charge a publication fee of €24 per "page". The "page" size for this calculation is unusually small (1900 characters), but a typical paper is still only around €600 in my experience, and a previous short comment was the princely sum of €170. This is the total price, after which the resulting paper is open access. Compare to AGU journals, where the basic fee is already often larger (GRL is $500 for 4 pages, and longer JGR papers $1000) even when the final article is paywalled, and the open access option is another $2500-$3500 on top - an obvious indication of the value of our work that we have simply been giving away. I suppose at least with the academic societies the profit might be going to reasonably good causes (such as funding the sterling work of their Ethics Task Force, I presume), but even with their low fees the EGU publication empire runs at a modest profit level, sufficient to fund gradual expansion.

Previously I have grumbled about the EGU stable of journals having a gaping hole in that papers on climate change and prediction - surely one of the largest constituencies of their community - do not have a suitable home (CP and ACP have taken a few climate change papers, but the fit seems tenuous). However, a couple of years ago, they started up "Earth System Dynamics". This looked initially according to its blurb like it might be a bit too Earth-systemy for my tastes, but it's also had a steady stream of more conventional (primarily physical) climate change research. One paper that looks like it could kick off a bit of a bunfight is this one here about diagnosing climate feedbacks from satellite measurements, (which refs previous Spencer+Braswell vs Dessler spats) for which Andrew Dessler was quick to get in a somewhat critical review. I haven't looked at the manuscript carefully enough to judge for myself. Anyway, I'll certainly bear the journal in mind for future manuscripts, and hopefully it will take some business away from the leeches.

Incidentally I think a commenter previously pointed to this paper some time ago, but I can't find where. It seems that enough reviewers noted the somewhat woolly logic behind the climate sensitivity calculations that it did not progress to the final peer-reviewed publication stage. There is also this manuscript which got somewhat similar comments.

AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics

The Scientific Ethics Task Force is responsible for reviewing and guiding the Union’s standards, principles, and code of conduct on ethics and integrity in scientific activities.

Committee Charge

• Review the current state of AGU's scientific ethical standards in the geophysical sciences and those of other related professional/scholarly societies;
• Based on this knowledge, update AGU's protocols and procedures for addressing violations of its ethical principles;
• As appropriate, revise and augment AGU's current ethical principles and code of conduct for AGU meetings, publications and for interactions between scientists with their professional colleagues and the public;
• Propose sanctions for those who violate AGU's ethical principles, and
• Consider whether AGU should adopt a statement of ethical principles as a condition of membership or for participation in certain activities of the Union. If so, develop a recommendation on how the principles would be applied to AGU members and or participants in AGU activities.

Work Plan

To be determined

Let me look into my crystal ball and predict its first action will be to elect a new Chair.

Update: well to those who didn't click fast enough and might have missed the point, it seems that a new Chair has already been appointed.

Well this is fun

I know I said it was boring. But not any more!

My instinctive response is:

Peter Gleick, you are a complete and utter twat of the highest order.

It still leaves open the question of the "forged" memo. It does seem more plausible that it was mailed to him, than that he actually wrote it, referring as it does to "high profile climate scientists (such as Gleick)". Rather, his mention on the doc might explain why he was selected as the recipient. OTOH an hour ago I'd not have thought it plausible that he would have actually been the one who obtained all the other files.

I'm laying in stores of popcorn.

Yawn

I wasn't going to bother commenting on the "Heartland" leaked documents. I mean, what is the actual story here:

"Morally and intellectually bankrupt right-wing-nut so called `think tank' caught engaging in morally and intellectually bankrupt behaviour shock horror."

Or is it

"Washed up has-beens and never-wases well outside the fringe of science get paid to say things that are demonstrably false."

Hold the presses. On second thoughts, don't bother. I challenge anyone, skeptic or otherwise, to say with a straight face that they actually thought that Heartland has ever been engaged in a genuine good-faith effort to improve the quality of public understanding of climate science.

But on the other hand, since they are threatening to sue anyone who dares to mention the documents...

Go ahead, make my day.

[jules' pics] Climbing Myoujingatake

Starting at Daiyuzan
We climbed a lot of steps



sneaked passed the scary guardians of the mountain

found fungi

and snow

and more snow

and Fuji-san! This is the 4th time we have done this route, but the only time we have had a really clear view of Fuji-san from the top.

Down in Hakone, an onsen and then a beer. No photo of the former, unfortunately so you will have to imagine the beautiful naked ladies relaxing together in a steamy pond surrounded by trees.


--
Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 2/20/2012 01:02:00 PM