Natalia Shakhova lays the smackdown on the Royal Society
In the summer of 2014, a group of over 80 scientists from several countries (sorry, can't find a list) sailed on the Swedish ice-breaker Odin to study the arctic ocean, Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and Igor Semiletov from the Russian Academy of Science. Shakhova and Semiletov have been studying the arctic for over 20 years and were back to look at the methane plumes coming from the East Siberian shelf.
They found OMG amounts of methane spewing into the atmosphere.
Once you get past that, here's the interesting thing: Gavin Schmidt, NASA director of GISS and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Mode and blogger at Real Climateis very dismissive of Shakhova and Semiletov's work.
Then, last September, the Royal Society held a very prestigious meeting in which Shakova and Semiletov where conspicuously absent:
The event, held a fortnight ago, is still causing controversy beyond the negative tweeting by NASA Goddard Director, Dr Gavin Schmidt. Schmidt aimed his presentation at discrediting the Russian’s work, using theoretical models, without expertise in methane, or credible data. The end result is that the Russian team have composed a letter to Royal Society President, Sir Paul Nurse, asking for an opportunity to present their findings, including contributions from over 30 scientists working in the region for over 20 years.
Shakova and Semiletov and more that 30 other scientists fired off a letter to Royal Society President Sir Paul Nurse: (excerpt)
To date, we are the only scientists to have long-term observational data on methane in the ESAS. Despite peculiarities in regulation that limit access of foreign scientists to the Russian Exclusive Economic Zone, where the ESAS is located, over the years we have welcomed scientists from Sweden, the USA, The Netherlands, the UK, and other countries to work alongside us. A large international expedition performed in 2008 (ISSS-2008) was recognized as the best biogeochemical study of the IPY (2007-2008). The knowledge and experience we accumulated throughout these years of work laid the basis for an extensive Russian-Swedish expedition onboard I/B ODEN (SWERUS-3) that allowed > 80 scientists from all over the world to collect more data from this unique area. The expedition was successfully concluded just a few days ago.
To our dismay, we were not invited to present our data at the Royal Society meeting. Furthermore, this week we discovered, via a twitter Storify summary (circulated by Dr. Brandon), that Dr. G. Schmidt was instead invited to discuss the methane issue and explicitly attacked our work using the model of another scholar, whose modelling effort is based on theoretical, untested assumptions having nothing to do with observations in the ESAS. While Dr. Schmidt has expertise in climate modelling, he is an expert neither on methane, nor on this region of the Arctic. Both scientists therefore have no observational knowledge on methane and associated processes in this area. Let us recall that your motto “Nullus in verba” was chosen by the founders of the Royal Society to express their resistance to the domination of authority; the principle so expressed requires all claims to be supported by facts that have been established by experiment. In our opinion, not only the words but also the actions of the organizers deliberately betrayed the principles of the Royal Society as expressed by the words “Nullus in verba”.
complete letter is here.
I think that Schmidt, and Hanson as well, have made the decision or been convinced that policy makers and the public are best kept in the dark about what's happening with methane. Because if policy makers and the public knew what was happening with methane, they'd just give up. As one anonymous scientists put it, the projections look "not as bad as Waterworld by worse than Mad Max."
This is so repulsive to me. It reminds me of a decision that I experienced in South Dakota, where a family decided to not tell their parent that she had terminal cancer with less than a few months to live. I just... ffs.
They found OMG amounts of methane spewing into the atmosphere.
Once you get past that, here's the interesting thing: Gavin Schmidt, NASA director of GISS and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Mode and blogger at Real Climateis very dismissive of Shakhova and Semiletov's work.
Then, last September, the Royal Society held a very prestigious meeting in which Shakova and Semiletov where conspicuously absent:
The event, held a fortnight ago, is still causing controversy beyond the negative tweeting by NASA Goddard Director, Dr Gavin Schmidt. Schmidt aimed his presentation at discrediting the Russian’s work, using theoretical models, without expertise in methane, or credible data. The end result is that the Russian team have composed a letter to Royal Society President, Sir Paul Nurse, asking for an opportunity to present their findings, including contributions from over 30 scientists working in the region for over 20 years.
Shakova and Semiletov and more that 30 other scientists fired off a letter to Royal Society President Sir Paul Nurse: (excerpt)
To date, we are the only scientists to have long-term observational data on methane in the ESAS. Despite peculiarities in regulation that limit access of foreign scientists to the Russian Exclusive Economic Zone, where the ESAS is located, over the years we have welcomed scientists from Sweden, the USA, The Netherlands, the UK, and other countries to work alongside us. A large international expedition performed in 2008 (ISSS-2008) was recognized as the best biogeochemical study of the IPY (2007-2008). The knowledge and experience we accumulated throughout these years of work laid the basis for an extensive Russian-Swedish expedition onboard I/B ODEN (SWERUS-3) that allowed > 80 scientists from all over the world to collect more data from this unique area. The expedition was successfully concluded just a few days ago.
To our dismay, we were not invited to present our data at the Royal Society meeting. Furthermore, this week we discovered, via a twitter Storify summary (circulated by Dr. Brandon), that Dr. G. Schmidt was instead invited to discuss the methane issue and explicitly attacked our work using the model of another scholar, whose modelling effort is based on theoretical, untested assumptions having nothing to do with observations in the ESAS. While Dr. Schmidt has expertise in climate modelling, he is an expert neither on methane, nor on this region of the Arctic. Both scientists therefore have no observational knowledge on methane and associated processes in this area. Let us recall that your motto “Nullus in verba” was chosen by the founders of the Royal Society to express their resistance to the domination of authority; the principle so expressed requires all claims to be supported by facts that have been established by experiment. In our opinion, not only the words but also the actions of the organizers deliberately betrayed the principles of the Royal Society as expressed by the words “Nullus in verba”.
complete letter is here.
I think that Schmidt, and Hanson as well, have made the decision or been convinced that policy makers and the public are best kept in the dark about what's happening with methane. Because if policy makers and the public knew what was happening with methane, they'd just give up. As one anonymous scientists put it, the projections look "not as bad as Waterworld by worse than Mad Max."
This is so repulsive to me. It reminds me of a decision that I experienced in South Dakota, where a family decided to not tell their parent that she had terminal cancer with less than a few months to live. I just... ffs.