Bishop Hill Government response to S&TC report
Oct 3, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Parliament Via a discussion thread at Wikipedia comes the government's official response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report. Some points of interest:
In the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data (although there is the question of whether they could have gone back to national meteorological societies to get permission to release data).
The Muir Russell Review concluded that the scientific practices used to produce the WMO graph were not misleading, but that it was misleading of the team not to have communicated the methods used more clearly...We welcome the findings of these reviews...
The Ministry of Justice will continue to work with the ICO to determine the extent to which offences have not been prosecuted as a result of the time limit currently in place. The case for any amendments to the legislation will be assessed in the light of these discussions.
The Government welcomes that UEA established two independent assessment bodies to investigate allegations arising from the data loss incident, and the key scientific publications of CRU.
...it is of great importance to us that the reviews have considered both whether CRU’s science was sound...The Committee’s findings are in agreement with the Government’s assessment that the disclosure of emails from CRU does not undermine the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change.
The Government also welcomes the Committee’s support for CRU and the scientific reputation of Professor Phil Jones
The response was produced under the auspices of the Departmen of Energy and Climate Change, so this is Chris Huhne's responsibility. It might be seen as rather embarrassing for Mr Huhne to speak of independent inquiries looking at CRU's science when it is already clear that the inquiries were not independent and didn't actually examine CRU's science either.
Reader Comments (74)
James P
That is exactly the same as Steig's post on realclimate:
Just because temperature leads warming by at least 800 years, doesnt mean that CO2 is not causing the warming.
Doh!
Mac
I don't suppose you totted up the recommends? One of 10:10's excuses was that 'most people found it funny but some didn't' which doesn't sound very convincing. The Grauniad must have the most sympathetic warmist audience of any UK daily, and yet I would guess that the approval rating for their piece, and the film, was maybe 2 or 3 percent, which is a strange definition of 'most'.
Doh! some more, I meant temperatuire leads CO2 ^.^
Barry - are 10:10 sending it to schools? IIRC, Al Gore's film was blocked because of inaccuracy, so it's hard to know where to start with Curtis's little gem. In a way, I'd like science teachers to see it and then have to return it as inappropriate. Perhaps we should ask Mr Huhne what he thinks?
ianl888
Forgive me if I gave the wrong impression, I didnt comment on your uncertainty points because I agree totally with what you said.
However I dont agree that Lindzen believes that "from this point in time" a doubling of CO2 will lead to a temperature rise of 0.8 C - 1.2 C.
If you point me at the quote I will go read it and eat humble pie np
I emailed my MP asking for a Ministerial response. The "beauty" of the 10:10 video is you do not have to go anywhere near climate change. Just keep it to the simple facts of a nasty video, made by activists supported by Government funds. With the FCO being a partner of people who think blowing up kids is humorous. The reality is that people in the Constituency Office will click on the link and the effect will be immediate (if you think about the sort of people who would work in constituency offices, especially Conservative ones.) The video sells itself, no hyperbole or faux anger or outrage is needed.
Phillip Bratby
I read the Schreuder paper and for what it is worth, that is the same as the stuff I have been reading. It seems that there is a window in terms of CO2 ppm, within which humans can survive comfortably. The lower limit is somewhere between 190 and 220 ppm because of the need for vegetation. The upper limit as I understand it is about 8000 ppm because at 10,000 ppm we start feeling drowsy, nauseous and dizzy (hangover territory hehe). At 100,000 ppm CO2 is lethal for humans.
Schreuder says aim for 1010 ppm because that is the best CO2 level for the vegetation we are used to However if the level rose to 6000 - 7000 there would still be vegetation but it would be different, we dont know if it would be better or worse for us.
The human race is most unfortunate in that it has flourished in the rarest and most short lived of climates, an interglacial (1% of 3.5 billion years climate history). This interglacial is already 14000 years old (which is long ). Unless someone understands the Milankovich cycles in greater detail than I have read about, it is not possible to see whether the Earth will return to Ice Age very soon or in fact will continue to warm to its normal (80% of 3.5 billion years) state which is about 10.0 C warmer than today.
I too emailed my MP last Friday asking for him to draw the 10:10 video to the attention of the PM and other Ministers.
10 10 invite schools to join the campaign..
Small child goes home, look up a trusted 10 1o website..
Thye would have seen that on the 10 10 website front page.
(
Me Homedad at the moment part time employee)
and all over youtube, links to twitter, facebook, all the cool edgy stuff...
From the 10 10, sorry page the comment section (beofre they removed them all, free speech only seems to apply when they are preaching to you
1. Carol Ann Cattell
Is that the best you can do, 10:10 leaders? Still no apology even to your supporters. Mention jokingly a "lively round on cake", which was about 5 out of 3000 comments? Like a finishing school dormitory girls' giggle? And your main statement still says "most" thought it funny but "some" didn't - but the truth is, as you know, the opposite - that globally, thousands found it crass and unfunny and authoritarian and just, well, crap in promoting your cause.
You. Just. Don't. Get. It.
And some - a handful of goodhearted souls - have loyally supported you, but not terribly well, all the time you were silent. All a bit of a laugh, was it? Going back to Mummy and Daddy and their contacts for a bit more money, now, are we?
God, you make me angry. And most of us were on your side, if you hadn't been so blinkered. No, the eco stuff is still there and serious and needs serious consideration, proper scientific facts, and effective action. But I hope to god you lot aren't anywhere near it. You're toxic. You can't even say sorry properly. You've no idea, have you? We're just plebs to be sniggered at, fodder for your little wanky games. For the earth's sake, just grow up, will you?
Yeah, I'm a smidgen cross.
2. Dan Woodfine
Dear 10:10
I'm a teenager who has spent the last year trying to convince my parents to be more aware of the environment, to put more effort into recycling, to save energy etc. And what's more - it was working.
They've now seen your video and have been interrogating me about who I'm associating with, warning me about "eco-terrorists" and other such nonsense.
In short, with this video, you've completely undone everything I've tried to do to help my parents. You've made them suspicious of me, and you've made them downright angry.
Thanks for nothing, you bunch of idiots.
3. Managing Director
Our corporate accountants alerted me this evening to the existance (sic) of this video and to remind me that we had made a financial contribution to the 10:10 campaign. Having viewed it, I find it personally repulsive in the extreme. You have had the last donation you will ever get from our business or any business with which I have any influence. What could you have been thinking?
4. Dear all at 10:10
I have supported your campaign to date, am pro-green, pro-cutting carbon emissions, and generally very environmentally conscious. I also grew up in a country where people were blown up and killed by terrorists on a daily basis. I know people who died in this way, and from this video, I imagine from this video that no one at your office, or on your creative team, has experienced this.
The mini-movie campaign indicates a total lack of sensitivity. Further, whatever the intended message might have been, it does implicitly suggest that those who disagree with you should be blown up. If this had been aimed at people who are of a different race, religion, sexuality, etc, it would have been evidently grossly unacceptable.
Sadly, the mini-movie makes me ashamed to have lent my support, and put my name to 10:10. I imagine your corporate sponsors may feel similarly. I am reluctant to continue to be associated with an organisation which can advertise its cause in this way, even if I support the underlying green cause.
This is compounded by what is somewhat obviously a non-apology. It is not a sense of humour failure (as you seem to imply) for people who may actually have seen children, friends, etc blown up, not to consider your mini-movie particularly funny.
The environmental cause will now to have to deal with the damage that you've managed to do it. Your supporters deserve a decent apology for the damage you have done to the general reputation of the green movement.
We will just have to continue onwards and upwards without you.
Dung
A couple of posts on Nigel Calders Updates blog, in case you haven't seen them.
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/next-ice-age/
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/milankovitch-back-to-1974/
Barry Woods
Good for you. Anyone with recollection of some of the insidious state propaganda fed to schools in the Soviet Bloc in the 60's would never have dreamt that such would be our fate 50 years on.
"9. We note that Norfolk Police are still investigating the process by which the emails were originally released and continue to condemn any illegal activity involved."
Anybody heard anymore from Norfolk's finest? The investigation seems to be taking an inordinate length of time.
Green Sand - not seen anything on this for a while. However I did note that earlier on in the report HMGov were quite certain that the release of emails was an illegal act:
"1. In November 2009, data including emails were illegally released from a computer server at the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The emails, which included exchanges between climate scientists, were used by critics to allege that data had been manipulated or deleted in order to support evidence on temperature change."
Pharos
Many thanks for those links and I found many really interesting points that arose ^.^
Firstly the paper at the end of the first link talks about Insolation (the amount of sun falling on polar ice during the summer months) as being directly linked to the volume of ice.
Coincidentally when I asked Prof Watson a question at the Guardian debate in the summer (about interglacials and CO2 lagging temperature) he answered with some total gobbldygook about you are bountdto get lags and CO2 feeding into the magic roundabout etc. Interestingly Doug Keenan asked to be able to comment and he gave me a reference to a paper by a scientist called Gerard Roe who is mentioned in the paper at the end of the second Link ^.^ This paper was about insolation and Keenan contradicted Watson saying that this paper showed the direct link between insolation and ice volumes and that there was no lag involved.
Secondly I agree about Kukla's theory about the Milankovich cycle having an influence but I think it is only half the story. I am surprised Calder did not mention a book he co-authored with a guy named Henrik Svensmark which I think adds more to the picture.
The Milankovich cycle deals with changes in the earth's orbit around the sun (which seems logical) and also changes in the Earth's axis (which does not seem logical but then I dont have the science hehe).
Svensmark's book is about his (proven in the lab and currently being proved in the hadron collider thingy) theory that Cosmic rays entering the atmsosphere affect the formation of low level (cooling) cloud.
More Cosmic rays = more low level cloud = more cooling.
The Cosmic rays are controlled by the Solar wind, Solar wind is controlled by the Sun's magnetic cycles and the Cosmic rays are also controlled by the position of the earth in our galaxy. (I apologise for the totally illogical application of capital letters, it just happens).
According to Svensmark the Earth's position in the galaxy is not constant and he says we move around the galaxy core.
During our journey around the core we sometimes enter regions where there are a large number of Super Novae, the intensity of the Cosmic ray bombardment increases and although the Solar Wind still deflects much, more gets through.
At other times we are far removed from such events.
So for me it seems like it works as follows:
The Ice Age/Warm Period (10 oC warmer than today) state of the climate is governed by our position in the galaxy.
Within an Ice Age the change in our orbit around the Sun (The Milankovich Cycles) gives us our interglacial brief warmer periods.
Within the very warm periods which is our climate's natural state, the Milankovich Cycles can not return us to Ice Age.
I am saying the next Ice Age will depend upon both the Milankovich Cycles AND our position in the galaxy.
Also interesting is that Kukla's ice age/interglacial graphs do not agree with the ice core records which I have seen in many papers including AR4 hehe
"The investigation seems to be taking an inordinate length of time."
It always takes longer when evidence has to be constructed retrospectively...
not banned yet & James P
Everything to do with the email release is described as illegal, whilst the following are breaches.
“There is prima facie evidence that CRU has breached the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It would, however, be premature, without a thorough investigation affording each party the opportunity to make representations, to conclude that UEA was in breach of the Act.”
“The decision found breaches of Regulation 5(2) and 14(2) of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR); the ICO is unable to comment further whilst the other investigations are still live.”
Interesting how an incident where a law is known to have been broken is a “breach” and the one that 11 months later the police cannot report upon is “illegal”.
Dung
This is the stuff of which climate science should be studying first and foremost. And it appears there is a great deal of data, in the NASA deep probes, from Ulysses onward, not being studied for lack of research funding. Also hundreds of deep sea drill cores in every ocean, carefully located to obtain sections through relatively uninterrupted sedimentary sequences through the late Quaternary-Tertiary. It is a disgrace of the first order, and a shameful reflection on politicisation of academic research today, that so much of this material seems to be unprioritised in favour of shallow propaganda message-worthy trivia.
The great thing about this site is that the majority of contributors still persevere with applying logical arguments against the hysterical responses of the truly convinced.
I love your optimism as much as I despair of the possibility of swaying the faith of the already persuaded.
They know they are right and no amount of evidence will sway their righteousness.
Green Sand - excellent observation! I must say when I realised that November 2010 is approaching I did wonder if there might be some sort of anniversary event that could help crystallise matters..... :-)
OT - but linked to comments on the questioning at the HoCSTC evidence sessions - Roy Spencer's account of his participation in "A Mock Global Warming Trial in the Big Easy" might be of interest:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/10/a-mock-global-warming-trial-in-the-big-easy/
Nothing is going to be done to seriously evaluate the science of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming until the devastating effects of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming legislation hurts or Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming legislation is confronted in a United States courtroom.
Until legislators have to layoff staff, cut hospital & school budgets, cut unemployment and social services there will be no will in the public to beat down the doors of politicians and demand honest inquiry.
Food prices continue to rise and electricity bills are predicted to soar. As more and more often people are confronted by the deep freeze of winter and the choice of paying the heat & electric bill or putting food on the table the tolerance for this "green" pipe dream will wither. Reality can be held at bay only so long.
There are signs that people are feeling the GREEN PAIN and beginning to wake up to reality:
SPENDING on schools, hospitals and other key services is set to be hit by the estimated £8 billion cost of Scotland's world-leading climate change laws, the government have admitted.
Climate change law to rip £8bn hole in budgets - Scotsman.com News
Published Date: 12 September 2010
By Eddie Barnes
In a paper obtained by Scotland on Sunday under Freedom of Information laws, officials declare that cuts to all other portfolios will "inevitably result" from the new climate change targets.
Officials have placed an £8bn price tag on achieving the target to reduce by 2020 emissions harmful to the environment by 42 per cent below 1990 levels. But the scheme comes as departmental budgets are set to be reduced by as much as 40 per cent between 2010 and 2014, putting unprecedented pressure on services.
Passed by the Scottish Parliament last year, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act was hailed as the most ambitious attempt to cut emissions anywhere in the world. Ministers will set annual targets to reduce emissions and all public bodies must comply.
The paper on the cost of the Act, written by the Scottish Government's Climate Change Division, sets out provisional costings on how much would need to be spent up until 2022. The biggest cost would be transport, where £3.9bn has been pencilled in for emissions-cutting measures such as moves to strictly enforce 70mph limits and to build new cycle paths and footpaths. The paper also suggests that up to £3.2bn will go on energy efficiency plans, the bulk of it on home insulation subsidies.
A further £800m will go on planting an extra 15,000 hectares of forest every year.
The paper notes: "Scottish government funding of action to achieve our emissions targets would, at a time of overall budget reductions, inevitably result in an impact on spend across all portfolios."
The £8bn estimate was published earlier this year by the Independent Budget Review group. The report said that the country's ageing population and the climate change laws were the key extra cost pressures that taxpayers in Scotland would soon have to face.
The IBR report noted that the "extremely ambitious" target would have "significant implications for the whole of the economy, including public sector budgets."
Derek Brownlee, finance spokesman for the Scots Tories, said: "We need to make sure we are not reducing emissions by wrecking the economy."
http://news.scotsman.com/news/Climate-change-law-to-rip.6526829.jp
Public pain is one inevitable road but the other road is the tried and sometimes true legal path.
One day Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming legislation is going to make it to a United States courtroom. When it does we will find that years of whitewash are no match against the caustic substances that make up the US legal establishment.
Philip Bratby re Hans Schreuder
I totally agree with Schreuder's sentiments, and the 1010 figure, but I mistrust his science, or at least, the way he states his evidence. It's not nearly rigorous enough IMHO and leaves the door wide open for dismissal. Steve McIntyre's strength is to only build on what he can study and verify directly, with effective peer-review and audit from his blog, and exact references to the official material. Nasif Nahle may be right, but can I be sure, especially if I am not totally sure I understand him? Has he been effectively peer-reviewed anywhere in the sceptics' community? Can I trust warmists' apparently-well-argued condemnations? And so on. I realize Schreuder wrote his material when sceptics were only just starting to come together - when many dubious pieces of science could get through and fool people like myself who truly want to give everything a fair hearing and then end up at times looking like an idiot and feeling totally exhausted.
I still long for a skeptics' climate science wiki, that could deconstruct (a) the latest Royal Society statement (b) John Cook's 119-odd sceptics' issues that he believes he rebuts at Skeptical Science - but lack the IT skill or, now, the time to oversee it.
Lucy
The CO2 information is all on Wiki, apart from the 1010 target. However information on minimum levels of CO2 needed to support plant life plus the levels of CO2 needed to cause problems to human life.
Lucy
My apologies, I misunderstood your post.