Bishop Hill GLOBE page at the House of Commons
Mar 25, 2010 Climate: Oxburgh The UK House of Commons register of all-party groups for GLOBE appears here. Not very interesting, but it looks as though the board may have changed recently. The officers of the Parliamentary group (Who may be different to the company board) are:
Stephen Byers
Graham Stuart
Barry Gardiner
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
Lord Oxburgh
Colin Challen
Eric Joyce
Readers have already noted Stephen Byers' recent problems. It's only fair therefore to note that Eric Joyce is a remarkable character - the first MP to claim more than £1m in expenses and on more than one occasion the most expensive MP in the house. He once famously claimed for three oil paintings on expenses "because they looked nice".
In 2009 Colin Challen called for all UK domestic flights to be phased out by the end of the year.
Reader Comments (22)
I should declare an interest here: I have sat through several seminars by Hunt - they were awful. Be that as it may, didn't he leave the Met Office under a cloud, something to do with financial malarkey?
So we have a publically funded private pressure group full of MPs at the heart of the expenses scandal and possibly the lobbying scandal all of whom are attempting to fiddle even more money out of the taxpayer in carbon trading schemes, and these same MPs are charged with giving an unbiased gloss of white paint to the shiny review of the CRU scandal.
This is shocking.
Actually this is beyond shocking, where are the good guys? Because we really, really need someone we can trust at a high enough level to root this out, as it stands we have no objective media bar a few exceptions and no MPs that don’t have a serious fatal case of climatitus or are running a variation of a cap and raid carbon trading get rich quick scheme on the side in secret.
Birds of a feather. All very dismal. But somehow encouraging for a bird-spotter interested in this neck of the woods. Keep up the good work, Bish!
This is so illuminating. I have worked in Management Consulting and have met various high-level politicans and private sector 'leaders'.
To have the light shone on this specific murky workd of lobbying and 'common interests' is informative. There is still a tendency to portray the friendly smiling eco-warrior lying down in front of Jeremy Clarkson's Aston. But these interest groups are where it is really happening - Big Oil? yeah right...
An investigative reporter would look at his and realise straight away this was a hook into something much bigger. But the MSM is part of this same process.
No wonder the politcal parties and MSM are all singing from the same Hymn Sheet re AGW, when you you something like this exposed. Science?
With billions in public funding the AGW industry and its climatologists have failed to find the definitive fingerprint of mankind in the climate signals.
With just a few crumbs deposited in his cookie jar, His Holiness The Bishop Hill and a worthy band of contributors, along with Richard North and notable few others have managed to find the definitive and grubby fingerprint of mankind just about everywhere else.
A recent Lords Hansard may be of background interest to readers here. You can see Lord Oxburgh arguing for a swifter implementation of CCS - he does declare his interests in wind and CCS - it is fascinating to see him and his fellow Lords discussing their James Bondian plans for vast networks of pipes taking CO2 out to vast undersea caverns :)
I recommend to anyone to pay attention to Lord Reay at the end of that page, the only glimpse of sanity I saw there:
I say vote for Lord Reay! Oh. We can't.
Thank you your Grace. This gets curiouser and curiouser.
I note that Colin Challen is standing down to make way for Ed Balls. I expect the price is a Peerage.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8568377.stm
might be worth a comment or 2 here...
Sceptics, whilst a few can be seen..
Even a recommendation to buy a certain book called ' The Hockey Stick Illusion"
If a comment does not appear, try complaining, referenceing the bbc trust, and a climate change bias enquiry going on, could cpy in your mp, as well, maybe a journo.
I know it is full of the usual suspects/silliness, but unless people make the effort, the bbc keeps pleading ignorance.
It always boils down to money.
If the press was not so conflicted and corrupted, this would be *the* story in the papers.
Your parliament is apparently, sadly, as corrupt as our Congress.
My thanks to both the Bishop and Cumbrian Lad for shining a light up the arse of the AGW scandal. It is reports such as the last few that will make a real difference.
Instead of arguing about what the temperature is and when it was, we are now looking at the real issue of the "who, what, where, why and how" of the reason behind AGW. Now all we have to do is get the press to report it. That may be difficult but it is worth the effort.
And Hunter, as the recent Health Bill proves, you are absolutely right. Flush them all down the toilet of history.
I don't comment here much but always read. You have been doing some very nice work. Stay on these dogs.
OT, but congratulations on the THES article (available online).
Don Pablo: I think that Richard North and Christopher Booker will be on the case.
At the web page of Globe Internationel under the titel Globe International Board I noticed that the president of GLOBE EU is Anders Wijkman, the "Al Gore" of Sweden.
He is a former MP who has made the trip from the conservative party to the libera partyl to the christain democratic party to....? (the green?)
You will find him in numerous organisations heavily funded by swedish taxpayers.
It gave me great pleasure to draw the attention of one of the very few honest MPs (Douglas Carswell) to this scandal.
Not sure that anything will happen before the election, though ...
Phillip
Don Pablo: I think that Richard North and Christopher Booker will be on the case.
I thank you for pointing them out. I will be looking for it in coming weeks.
While it is nice to have a scientific argument, the real issue is political. Several days ago one contributor (paulm? or perhaps paulz or pauls?) who pointed out that those who are skeptics go to their blogs for information and those support AGW go to theirs. (Of course there are a few interlopers like FOD, but generally he was correct.) Then he pointed out we need to get the rest of the world informed by getting this into the popular press.
I must confess that he had made a very valid point. I see one way of doing that would be to expose the political and financial shenanigans going on such as GLOBAL.
We must remember that we are dealing with a cabal, organized much like a drug cartel. Those at the bottom, such as Phil Jones and the rest of the AGW "scientists" are just street runners, doing the bidding of those behind it who control the power and money. GLOBAL appears to be a middle to upper level of that cabal. They are the ones that need to be exposed. People like the AGW "scientists" are disposable. They are easily replaced. The top echelon is what we need to address. The best way of doing that is with a nice juicy scandal on page one. Newspaper publishers are whores, they will peddle a story if it sells papers.
I don't think http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8568377.stm "It's still real and it's still a problem" is accepting comments any more. While it was I posted a few points contradicting the claims made, ending with "Was it ever real, was it ever a problem", but it wasn't accepted (at least it never appeared).
I agree with Don Pablo - essentially political. Do the people at UEA have no conscience, or are they so ashamed that they only submit to an inquiry by supporters? The GLOBE piece was revealing and quite frightening -"the tragedy of the Commons" from Stephen Byers of all people.No doubt, he hopes that it was a good time for bad news to be released, hidden by the revelations on 'Dispatches'.
A political leader, scientifically literate and non-poltical (!?), is desperately needed to coordinate and bring all the 'balls' together; enormous harm is about to be inflicted on both the European and US economies. At the very least force, somehow, a science debate on MS TV.
UEA continues to undermine public confidence in climate science with this sort of gamesmanship. The reason they are in trouble is because the arrear to have rigged the peer reveiw process. Now they appear to want to rig the inquiry. Its patently obvious to any dispassionate observer that Lord O is (1) already convinced that the science is settled and (2) has pecuniary interests in making sure the financial markets continue to believe that the science is settled. There could be no more obvious conflict.
If climate scientists really want to improve the public perception of their field, then they should speak out about this sort of thing -- demand that Lord O resign. But so far, all we hear is ... crickets.
A question that needs to be answered is whether Oxburgh is paid by GLOBE, and if so, how much? Does anybody know the answer, or whether this information can be found?
PaulM
There is no directors' remuneration statement in the 2007 accounts, so my guess would be that directors are no remunerated. He also would have to be lying in his register of interests for the House of Lords.
I suggest a new FOA application to the VP of EAU, requesting all correspondence, emails, minutes and other documentation in respect to the choice of Lord O's appointment and of the members of his committee; with emphasis on the VP's endevours to ensure that the committee was well balanced as to supporters and critics of the AGW hypothesis.
The response of whatever form, should be of great interest to the mainstream press.