I’ve been trying to stay out of the climate wars, but I really can’t resist commenting on this. There’s an interesting Greenpeace article discussing the UK government’s frustration with climate “sceptic” pressure (I added the inverted commas, as they seem necessary here). The thing I wanted to comment on were the alleged personal attacks on Met Office scientists

“In one email which was particularly concerning, [Keenan] accused Professor Slingo of deliberately misleading Parliament. Having taken legal advice, Professor Slingo took the decision no longer to engage personally with Mr Keenan.” Bernard Silverman, Chief Scientific Adviser for the Treasury, had previously warned Professor that “attacks on her were being promulgated in the paper authored by Mr Keenan that he has sent to DECC and has been circulating internationally and has also placed on his website.”

So, who is this Mr Keenan? If you want to read his own site, it is here. I’ve discussed the problems with his ideas here, here, and here. Richard Telford has numerous posts about Doug Keenan and his tactics. I’ve even tried to explain the issue to Doug Keenan directly, twice.

My good friend Andrew Montford discusses this issue without – as far as I can see – mentioning that Doug Keenan is alleged to have personally attacked Met Office scientists. Doug Keenan appears in the comments, apparently also oblivious to this claim. If you want to get some idea of Doug Keenan’s general mindset, you really can’t do better than this

… the best time-series analysts tend to be in finance. Time-series analysts in finance generally get paid 5–25 times as much as those in academia; so analysts in finance do naturally tend to be more skillful than those in academia—though there are exceptions.

The only polite way that I can describe Doug Keenan’s views is not even wrong. We need a better class of climate “skeptic”.