FOI: the case for tighter regulation
February 4th, 2010If in the hackneyed phrase information is power, and it is, the rules governing this power need to be far more tightly drawn than at present, as several current issues illustrate. It is dreadful that the FOI requests made to the scientists at the UEA climactic research unit were so disgracefully blocked (albeit that some of the climate change sceptics demanding the information may have been obsessive and partisan themselves). Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions, but it should still have been made readily available. The evidence about the ‘hockey stick’ is much more serious and should certainly have been provided in full. Scientific data should be a free resource to all who seek it. But that of course applies much more widely than just to contentions about climate change.
John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientist, called on scientists today to share data freely “so that people can do the challenging in an unhindered way”. He should apply his strictures to the Government’s own use of data about GM crops and food (which he supports) where the GM companies only publish trials data favourable to their cause and prevent researchers getting access to any data that undermines their commercial interests. Indeed where scientific claims are being made, FOI transparency should be made applicable equally throughout the private sector, especially in the field of pharmaceuticals. Recent cases about the use of injunctions to prevent disclosure, and in addition super-injunctions as in the Trafigura case, also reveal the need for strengthening the law to open up access where there is a clear public interest to do so.
Whilst the suppression of information that should be in the public domain by deliberate evasion of FOI requirements should be punished as a serious offence, the opposite case – the unlawful interception of messages where no genuine public or scientific interest in disclosure can be made – should equally be treated as a serious offence with deterrent penalties. Most notably the involvement of News of the World journalists in extensive phone hacking, plus unlawful requests by them and other newspapers to the Information Commissioner for intimate details on an allegedly endemic scale, is a serious invasion of privacy that cannot be justified and should be stamped out by much more significant penalties.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Dear Mr Meacher,
It’s nice to see someone who can’t be dismissed as a Sarah Palin fan in the pay of Big Oil expressing some sensible concern about this affair. The question as to whether we need to spend trillions to avoid a hypothetical danger in fifty years time is too important to be left to a few right-wing bloggers.
You say: “Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions..”
With respect, these questions are not of minute relevance. Without the Chinese weather station data, the only paper cited as demonstrating that the Urban Heat Island effect is trivial becomes worthless, which means that the official figure for observed warming last century (0.7°C) is unsupported. Without the data from just twelve living trees in Siberia, the latest version of the hockeystick (Briffa’s Yamal study) is worthless, and the historical reality of a mediaeval warming period is re-established. The evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming is demolished by the revelations of Climategate.
No-one expects a busy politician to be aware of all the arcane details of the science of this affair. For an interesting non-partisan view of the politics of the global warming movement, I do suggest you visit climate-resistance.org/ where a couple of British political science students are doing the analytical spade work which the Labour Party’s researchers are so miserably failing to do.
Best wishes
Geoff Chambers
February 9th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Michael,
Good piece, well done. Spread the word with your ministerial colleagues please. I would quibble with one aspect, though. You say:
Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions,
The 42 stations issue is not of minute relevance. Prof. Jones used these in a paper which forms the basis for CRU’s lack of adjustment for UHI (urban heat island effect). Any fool with a dashboard external temperature readout can tell you that it’s warmer in large towns and cities than a couple of miles outside. (BTW, Airport Heat Island effect is just as big a problem in the GHCN dataset.) It is suspected that a large chunk of the warming “anomaly” is failure to properly account for this factor.
There are issues around the tree ring controversy too, in particular bias in selection of trees and undue weight given to a few tress to generate a “hockey stick”. All this is well documented now and well ignored by the Government and the warmists.
Humans cause climate change primarily through land use change. Take Kilimanjaro, people cut down most of the rainforest around it, the source of rain that replenishes the glacier was greatly reduced, the glacier retreated. Man-made climate change, but nothing to do CO2.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Thank you Mr. Meacher, well done.
On the political side, I wonder what is your reaction to this ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HesdOJdLN-k&feature=player_embedded
Regards,
EJT
March 8th, 2010 at 5:41 am
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