AG #6 - 48 hours

Lord Oxburgh conduziu um inquérito ao climategate, concluíndo que estava tudo porreiro pá, não houve incompetências nem fraudes nem nada. Um inquérito muito divulgado por toda a blogosfera como a prova final de que os cientistas são, afinal, pessoas de carne e osso, mas desonestos não, que isso não é coisa de cientista...

Houve quem no parlamento inglês não ficasse convencido com o detalhe e competência de um relatório de cinco páginas gerido por alguém com claros conflitos de interesse não declarados sobre o aquecimento global, pelo que ontem chamaram o senhor Oxburgh para uma conversa.

Steve McIntyre transcreve:

Q: we all appreciate . can I just clarify this point – you said that all the committee members stayed in Norwich.

Oxburgh – [unintelligible]

Q – OK. Does that mean that they were spending all their time on this report over that 2 week period?

Oxburgh – Not over 2 weeks. Probably over 4 days, 5 days something like that. They’d done a lot beforehand.

Q- How much time did each individual spend working on this report?

Oxburgh – Gosh, you mean altogether, not just in Norwich,

Q- You said that it had happened over a 3 week period but most of the time was spent in Norwich.

Oxburgh – People had done an immense amount of work before, one of the most important things. They had a really tough work schedule before they arrived. Then in Norwich, when they were there, they worked continuously. Total number of person-days spent on this was around 15. Something like that. It was… does that answer your question?

Note-se a evasão. 15 dias, mais ou menos, tendo em conta que se fizeram, mais ou menos, 4 não sei, talvez 5 dias de trabalho em Norwich, já nem me lembro bem, Mas não se conte assim pois sabe como é isto de pessoas cheias de trabalho e de uma competência enorme que não olha a horários, coisa tão século XX, essa das nove às cinco, hoje em dia as pessoas trabalham no avião, no carro, usando todo o tipo de tecnologias que nos serviriam para nos libertar e não escravizar, mas é este afinal o resultado! Por isso não nos condenem logo à partida por eu dizer apenas 4, 5 dias. O que é facto é que nem sabemos de tão pouco sono que temos disponível...

Steve McIntyre:

Through FOI requests, we have obtained the actual schedule of the Oxburgh panel online here.

(...)

Travel arrangements (obtained through FOI) show that this schedule was adhered to. Oxburgh arrived in Norwich at 6:30 pm on the evening of April 6 and had a train reservation back to Cambridge at 3.40 pm on April 8.

(...)

Re-reading the schedule, it seems that the panel only spent a relatively small portion of its time actually interviewing Jones, Briffa and the CRU Team – who, by the way, seem to have been interviewed collectively rather than individually – and most of its time in “Discussion”.

No doubt Oxburgh was happy to do a favor for the UK government Chief Scientist, but surely Beddington should have thought twice about asking a favour from someone who is chairman of a subsidy-seeking wind utility (Falck Renewables).

In addition to the session of the full panel on April 7 and part of April 8, previously on March 30, Lisa Graumlich had visited CRU together with Hand and Oxburgh and met with Briffa in the morning from 9.15 to 10.45 and had panel discussions as well.

As to Oxburgh’s description of his ordeal in Norwich as “4 days, 5 days”, I’m highly sympathetic to the idea that spending almost 48 hours in Norwich seemed like “4 days, 5 days”, but using conventional time measurement techniques – such as checking the day of the week – the panel actually spent less than two days in Norwich, skipping town just as Geoffrey Boulton arrived for his one interview with CRU the next day about proxies, neither panel having bothered to compare itineraries, with Oxburgh and Hand spending an extra day in Norwich (and Graumlich only one).

Again, while Oxburgh didn’t correct the impression that the MP had been left with, Oxburgh himself didn’t expressly say that the panel had spent “most” of three weeks in Norwich.

Independentemente de todas as confusões nas descrições, as capacidades destes cientistas espantam-me todos os dias, o feito de levarem 48 horas a fazerem um trabalho de 3 semanas é algo que ficará nos anais da gestão laboral e, certamente, um case-study para qualquer outra actividade tão transparente, e obviamente competente como esta.

Update:

Steve McIntyre faz um apanhado da situação noutro post:

http://climateaudit.org/2010/09/09/new-light-on-actons-trick/

Um artigo de Harrabin (BBC) muito interessante sobre este inquérito, já de 5 de Julho, a ver aqui:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10507144

tem um pormenor interessante:

Since this article was published, the University of East Anglia has told the BBC that it asked the Panel chaired by Lord Oxburgh to consider whether "data had been dishonestly selected, manipulated and/or presented to arrive at pre-determined conclusions that were not compatible with a fair interpretation of the original data". The university says it is not true that Professor Davies subsequently asked Lord Oxburgh to adopt a "narrower brief" of any kind.

O problema é que Lord Oxburgh não cumpriu esta missão, de todo, avisando que o seu papel não era avaliar a ciência. Que fez ele então? Uma reunião formaleca com uns tipos porreiros, assinar uns papéis rapidamente de modo a não perder a oportunidade de um bom jantar na companhia de tão ilustres cientistas...