Sunday
Jan092011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Baroness Buscombe
Jan 9, 2011 Climate: Parliament Media 
Now here's a thing. Do you remember the various Press Complaints Commission decisions that have interested us sceptics in recent years? There was the Sunday Times sudden and rather odd decision to take down the Amazongate article apparently under PCC pressure. The other one that comes to mind is the highly odd decision that climate change is not a matter relating to current public policy.
So would it surprise you to know that Baroness Buscombe, the chairman of the PCC, is also vice-chairman of GLOBE UK? That's `Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment', for those of you who don't remember. She has occupied the latter position since 2007.
It's a very small world, isn't it?
Reader Comments (51)
Press complaints commission is defined as work, Globe is defined as Politics. Interesting.
Dear Bish,
The Sunday Times Amazongate takedown was not even adjudicated by the PCC. They merely 'brokered' an 'agreement'.
Anyone reading the second PCC ruling on North's complaint can clearly see what Orwellian weasel-worded chicanery had to be resorted to, to get North off their back.
Shub
Yes, I realise there was no adjudication. I didn't think I'd implied more than a significant involvement?
Not very much Buscombe evident from her picture. With the nature of the PCC (full of vested interests) it is not likely she would feel the need to decare an interest in any proceedings but interesting as you say.
I filed a complaint with the PCC last year. The complaint was pursuant to how Nature reported on my allegations against Jones and Wang. Some of the apparent problems with that reporting were blogged about at Bishop Hill and also WUWT.
The complaint seems to me to be entirely sound. The PCC, however, dismissed it. I assumed then that the PCC was corrupt.
Brooks,
Are you saying she doesn't meet your expectations of a "Buscombe Blonde"?
How can such people as the Baroness look any honest person in the eye? As the climate nonsense unfolds to almost continuously reveal totally unethical behaviour on the part of the good and the great, my understanding of why my forbears fled these ancient islands increases on roughly the same timescale as the unfolding occurs. Guy Faulkes seems like a very good idea in retrospect!
The world's large enough but the GLOBE does appear to be rather claustrophobic.
You'd think vice-chairman of of GLOBE UK would warrant a mention in her Register of Interests.
The interesting thing is how little effect the many uncoverings of conflicts of interest on the warmist side have had. What many people of an environmentally concerned bent seem to feel is 'so what? While they are all over any perceived conflicts on the sceptic side like a rash, they view examples like the one mentioned here with a shrug. 'Good causes', and 'corporate social responsibility' after all. The level of good will extended to the environmental movement by the general public (or at least an articulate and influential section of it) and media, in spite of countless demonstrations that all is not well, continues to be utterly remarkable. If the whole edifice does come crashing down, they can't say they lacked support.
This kind of thing illustrates what really infuriates me about the trolls who come here.
Despite the mountain of evidence, they will not accept that the game is bent.
From MBH98 via Climategate to this obviously dodgy PCC adjudication, people with agendas are distorting the facts and misrepresenting the science (something only lying/deluded sceptics do – according to the alarmists).
Yes, of course GAT is rising, and yes, CO2 is almost certainly part of the cause, along with land use change, black and brown carbon and possibly natural forcings.
But all uncertainties about climate sensitivity are re-processed as alarmist 'settled science'. And all the while the alarmists deny that activism is rife in key sectors of climate science and that everything is now distorted and exaggerated by the tireless activities of advocates, NGOs, self-interested business ventures, self-interested politicians, a partisan IPCC process and a vast, deafening claque of useful idiots blaring out climate alarmism from the treetops.
The constantly churning ‘debate’ completely obscures what really matters – that the alarmists for the most part do not even realise that they have crossed the line and left objectivity behind.
This is the line that defines the ‘raw’ physics of the radiative transfer equations from the output of a GCM.
Or the line between the GAT satellite record and statements like ‘4 degrees of warming now look inevitable by the 2060s’.
The line that separates settled science from predictions (sic) of catastrophe.
Or when you get right down to it, honesty from dishonesty.
I think the PCC unnecessarily significantly involved itself in the Amazongate decisions in partisan fashion. One the one hand, they managed to broker and browbeat a major news outlet to issue 'corrections' to a story, using missteps by the newspaper on matters materially far removed from the central point of the story. On the other hand, their verbal calisthenics with North's complaint about the retraction, about the meaning of the word "support", was mind-boggling.
On this count, the PCC line exactly mirrors Ofcom's response to Harmless Sky about the Al Gore movie.
@BBD:
Slightly surprised at your placing of 'possibly natural forcings' last in your list. It seems unlikely to me that anthropogenic factors such as land use change will have more impact than vast natural forces like ocean cycles and solar activity. Also, you say 'of course GAT is rising', but do you mean 'since the little ice age' (undeniable) or something else?
GLOBE, I recall, had Elliot Morley MP and David Chaytor MP and Stephen Byers MP among its recent members. And Lord Oxburgh.
I wonder the Baroness will be visiting her old friend David Chaytor in prison:
Or maybe they didn't overlap. Like Jonathan Aitken, though, I wish Chaytor well. Much more than membership of the climate elite, this could be the making of him.
Richard Drake:
Ouch!
All today's politicians remember the civil unrest of the 1980s. They could see that there was more coming unless jobs can be found. These jobs need not have any substance or meaning - they must simply be reasons for the population to get up in the mornings. That's why there will never be serious cuts to public services, we'll never leave the EU, and the Global Warming concept must be supported. They all supply hundreds of thousands of jobs - meaningless, interfering jobs that have to be carried piggyback by those of us in real jobs, but still jobs. Ho hum.
DougieJ – sorry, I’ve been getting Sunday dinner sorted out and it keeps me away from BH comments ;-)
The best discussion of the impact of ENSO, AMO and PDO on climate I have found is by Bob Tisdale, here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/08/introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-1.html
It’s a three-part analysis. The links to parts II and III are at the top of the first essay. If you believe that for example the PDO ‘drives’ GAT, you need to read this (especially part III). Tisdale is a sceptic BTW.
Solar is a vexed question. Excessively de-emphasised by the IPCC consensus from the TAR on; over-played by sceptics who won’t accept that the measured change in TSI (all spectra) doesn’t yield enough W/m2 to explain recent warming.
GAT is rising since the LIA (eg post-1850), agreed. But why did it rise so rapidly at the end of the C20th in the absence of clearly established forcings (other than CO2, black carbon etc) that would explain the increase in T?
The corollary to this question must be to ask why T has been fairly flat over the last decade, and where the ‘missing’ heat has gone since not even the ARGO floats can find it in the upper 700m of the major ocean basins.
I am no alarmist, but I am not a sceptic either. Far too much evidence pointing towards CO2 forcing as real. However, I do not accept (as I have said elsewhere in comments here) that the case for catastrophe is sound.
Rather, the alarmists are ‘torquing the science’ (in Judith Curry’s words) to provide support for an activist, politicised set of ‘environmental’ agendas.
BBD - thanks for the links - I'll have a look at them.
Do we really need any explanation though? You point out that 'T rose rapidly towards the end of the 20th century' (this of course assumes that the measurements and data are sound), and that it has now been fairly flat over the last decade. Isn't it just natural variability, as even Phil Jones appeared to accept with his agreement about the similarity of the rise to 1998 with previous warming periods?. Certainly, in Richard Lindzen's presentations / interviews, he always emphasises that it's no big deal either way in the scheme of things. That is my gut feeling too, for what it's worth.
DougieJ asks:
I don't know.
BTW Jones emphatically does not accept that the changes in GAT since 1950 are the sole result of natural variation. He sees a mix of natural variation and the anthropogenic CO2 signal with the anthropogenic forcing slowly emerging as dominant. Hence the stepwise increase in T - but always an increase since 1976.
I have read various of Lindzen's presentations and written statements and his position always seems rational and soundly-argued.
I hope he's entirely right, but like you I have a gut feeling. In my case it is that AGW is real and won't go away just because I don't like it. Like you, I place little external weight on my gut feelings (!) They are mine, and I will answer for them but I certainly don't expect anyone else to agree with me.
The only thing I draw the line at is nonsense: for example those who claim there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect, or that AGW violates the Second Law. Or that there will be a +4K increase in GAT by later this century and we're morally obligated to give billions to Africa because it's all the fault of capitalism etc.
Crap like that helps nobody.
Tisdale is a proper scholar BTW. Time spent at his site might give you a headache, but it's worth the pain. You get used to the graphs after a while ;-)
Jones on the significance or not of the rates of warming during 20th century
A- Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I've assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
And why the last warming period is different from the rest you may ask
D - Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.
This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period.
Which boils down to 'We can;t think of any other reason so it has to be CO2'
H- If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm
So the whole AGW rests on 'We can't think of any other reason for the warming despite it being no different from before'
And so Billions will be spent !!!!!
Re Alexander K's comment about Guy Fawkes.
As it says in '1066 and All That',
"Although the plan failed atteempts are made every year on St.Guyfawkes' Day to remind Parliament that it would have been a Good Thing."
BBD/DougieJ
Between you you're making the argument that most sceptics (in my limited experience) want made and which has become impossible for the reason that you, BBD, make in your 3.38 posting. The game is bent. The "scientists" have stopped doing science and cannot disentangle themselves from the bind they've got themselves into. God knows what the "useful idiots" (aka trolls) that turn up here and positively infest the likes of Delingpole and Booker at the Telegraph think they're doing.
I don't know who is right. I suspect nobody does. You say you're not a sceptic, BBD. Pielke père et fils say they're not sceptics; McIntyre says he's not a sceptic. Even so the warmists and their hangers-on are out for the blood of all four of you and all the others who don't sign up to the paradigm, lock, stock and barrel.
But even they cannot agree on what the paradigm is!
I admire the honesty of McIntyre and others in simply saying 'I don't know' and resisting the opportunity to grandstand. The trouble is, as BBD points out, it's not a fair fight. That leaves the field wide open for fanatical warmists to say 'well if we don't know we'd better not take the chance'.
Maybe Josh could produce some artwork showing all the links and financial interests of people such as Ms Buscombe, members of inquiries, heads of "scientific institutions, Met. Office, government science advisors etc. A large canvass would be necessary.
BBD
Paraphrasing:
"Solar is a vexed question. ... over-played by sceptics who won’t accept that the measured change ... doesn’t yield enough W/m2 to explain recent warming."
Is this not also true:
"CO2 is a vexed question. ... over-played by warmists who won’t accept that the measured change ... doesn’t yield enough W/m2 to explain recent warming."
BBD - I acknowledge your rationality on CAGW being a non-starter, but the issue is not as simple as you suggest. Most sceptics do not dispute the greenhouse effect, nor the 2nd law. But there are many like me who see no evidence that an increase of atmospheric CO2 from 285ppm to 385ppm (or 0.0285% to 0.0385%) will have any significant greenhouse effect what-so-ever. One because CO2 is only a minor greenhouse gas (irrc about 7% compared to 80% for water vapour) and two because of the law of diminishing returns (or Beer-Lambert's Law to be more precise) means that once CO2 levels get to 300ppm further increases have feck all effect, because the existing CO2 and water vapour are already bouncing virtually all the cosmos bound IR back.
On top of this, it seems very likely from Anthony's work, that UHI can account for at least 0.25C of the apparent warming in the last 30 years, and from the Chefio's and others' work, dubious station selection, data homegenisation and blatant adjustments can account for at least another 0.25C. So that's most of the 0.7C rise in the last 100 years accounted for. And frankly I can live with another 0.2C rise in global temperatures - I'd much rather they are rising than cooling given how overdue the end of this interglacial is - http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/vostok.png .
I don't dispute that the 1990s and early 2000s were warmer than previous decades, but it was due milder winters rather than blazing summers, at least here in Scotland. And now we seem to be in a run of cold winters again (not to mention poor summers). Sure the AO and NAO swings may be random, but my gut feeling is that there are short and long term ocean and solar-magnetic cycles we don't even begin to understand.
And if I am wrong about this, I still fail to see how things got so warm in the MWP (+1-2C), Roman (+2C) and Minoan (+2-3C) compared with today, not to mention the Holocene optimum 8000-6000 years ago, when there is good evidence for there being open seas along the north coast of Greenland (raised beaches with carbon dated driftwood). There clearly is a significant driver for such warming periods, which given the paucity of industrialisation in these times, has nothing to do with atmospheric CO2 levels. Which makes Jones et al's explanation that the warming of the 20th century must be due to CO2 because they can't think of anything else, even more laughable.
Oh, on the subject of solar magnetic cycles, the Chefio took a look at Prof. Oliver K. Manual's Iron Sun theory last week - http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/iron-sun/ - well worth a read - another case of consensus science about to be turned on its head by good observational data and critical thinking.
For some reason, I read the headline as: "Baroness Buncombe."
bunkum, buncombe [ˈbʌŋkəm] n
1. empty talk; nonsense
2. (Chiefly US) empty or insincere speechmaking by a politician to please voters or gain publicity
[after Buncombe, a county in North Carolina, alluded to in an inane speech by its Congressional representative, Felix Walker (about 1820)]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
Lapogus; Graphic Conception
Think strategically. We don't agree on the fundamentals but we do agree on the need to argue the case against climate alarmism.
Let's get on and do that rather than endlessly and destructively debate each other.
@DougieJ Jan 9, 2011 at 7:57 PM
agree re SM, he has never IIRC pushed his case other than "give us the data so we/i can have a look & confirm your findings"
until this happens, as you say, how can it be fair.
anyway Dougie, as Bish says "It's a very small world, isn't it?"
BBD - sorry, I do not wish to perpetuate this, but in your post at 4.56pm you stated there is "Far too much evidence pointing towards CO2 forcing as real."
The problem I have is that I keep hearing this statement, from the Science Museum, the Royal Society, The Met Office, SEPA, Watson, Jones etc. They regularly repeat it, but never actually cite any evidence, just that there is "so much evidence", and then the gullible and compliant media regurgitate it, ad nauseum. When on the rare occasion they are pressed by Roger Harrabin or Jon Snow, all the supposedly men of science can come up with is "it must be CO2 because we can't think of anything else", and that is accepted, presumably only because the journalists are too gullible and scientifically illiterate to question any further. So I can't let this "there is just so much evidence" bollocks pass unchallenged, for me life is too short to tolerate such illogical groupthink.
Lapogus says:
Fair enough. But I ask you again to consider co-operation. What have either of us go to lose by collaborating in a common cause - arguing against climate alarmism?
Indeed so, sir (dougieh that is).
@BBD. Absolutely agree that resisting destructive alarmism is the key objective. However, I still think we should be able to discuss and debate the fundamentals of 'the science' among 'ourselves' rather than just fending off committed true believers. I'm a frequent visitor here and an occasional poster. When I do post, it's usually about references to CAGW in popular culture and (a phrase I gleaned from Delingpole) bien pensant thinking rather than pure science. But your comment made me seek clarification. I suppose I'm trying to anticipate questions from less AGW obsessed friends / colleagues. Seems to me an obvious one is 'well, if we don't know, shouldn't we err on the side of caution?'
This seems to me to get to the nub of the issue, and explains why (clear as day) conflicts of interest such as the one Andrew highlights do not cause as much of a stramash as they do on the sceptical side.
BBD - yes I am pragmatic enough to have no problem with us both arguing against climate alarmism. But this is not the only key objective, at least for me. I would like to see the restoration of intellectual rigour and honesty to science, and honesty and common sense to politics (I accept that expecting intellectual rigour from politicians is a bridge too far). I'd also like to see politics kicked out of science. Winning the argument over climate alarmism would offer no certainty that the main advocates of the CO2 thesis and their brain dead disciples were deposed. I want them gone, they are a waste of space and public money. And it is not me who started it; Monbiot has argued that it is fine to slur us with the denialist label, and he has also said that people who fly in planes are akin to child abusers. Milliband was happy to declare 'war' on sceptics, and Gordon Brown called us flat earthers. AFAIK the none of the moderate warmists in the scientific community raised an eyebrow at any of these offensive remarks. Meanwhile my country is being covered with hideous bird mincers which produce no electricity when we need it most, my energy bills will double to pay for them and the subsidies to the landowners, no-one is building any pumped storage to make use of the energy when the wind does actually blow, no-one is building any backup for when it doesn't, and hence we are only a few years away from widespread brownouts and blackouts. I don't just want an end to climate alarmism, I want a full and unconditional apology from everybody and every organisation which has gone along the complete pish that is the CO2 thesis. Heads need to roll.
I am surprised that UHI has been raised at so late a time in this discussion.
Recent papers (Roy Spencer and others) show how potent it is.
Probably enough to explain the whole of the reported rise since 1880 in the NCDC data.
Next - I do not see much recognition of the numerical impact of the regular 60 odd year zigzag wave going through the data. Seeing temperature history as a chart creates a visual illusion.
For example, in the period 1944 to 1975, the down wave of that zigzag was working against the long term upward trend, so it makes the cooler reaction look very weak.
In contrast, the 1976-2008 upswing was a period when the long term trend and the zigzag were working in the same up direction, so the up trend APPEARED to be much stronger. But was not.
Next: It is pointless and quite unscientific to talk about the PHYSICS as if it was an iron fisted, invinceable argument. We all know about how heat energy is absorbed and expelled from CO2 molecules in a closed vessel. We know nothing about how heat moves through the atmosphere, about atmospheric currents nor the various feedbacks from other constituents. If you ASSUME positive feedback then AGW is true. Recent research indicates that feedback may be net negative.
Finally: there has been too little acknowledgemnt in this threat of the well established cosmic ray / solar magnetic flux/ cloud formation/ theory which is now under practical test at CERN. Can anybody report details of any practical tests of the CO2 theory?
I am being called away, so please excuse my typos, which by now should have made me quite famousssssssss.
More on UHI (now that I have returned).
I have examined rainfall records in ten widely dispersed locations in Australia.
With one or two exceptions, there has been no trend in the rainfall for periods of up to 150 years.
Rainfall in Australia is extremely chaotic and variable.
But the long term trend is flat.
Now temperature.
I have found that rainfall is a good proxy for maximum annual temperature, except in locations where the temperature record is contaminated by UHI.
In Sydney for instance, the temperature trend was flat for the 90 year period from 1866 to 1957.
In March 1958, there was a major change to the built environmnet and the roadway over the Sydney Harbour Bridge was brought to within 10 metres of the thermometer.
From then, the recorded temperature started to rise at the rate of approximately 1 degree per ten years.
In Adelaide, a slightly different story, with the thermometer being moved from South Terrace to Kent Town, in the heart of the city, in 1978. Before that, the temperature trend was flat and followed the rainfall up and down. After that it began to rise steadily, up up and away from the rainfall. However, I have found another longish temperature record near Adelaide, where the temperatue matches the rainfall up and down and does not appear to be affected by UHI.
So that is why I am skeptical that the global temperature has been rising in a significal fashion. That plus reports of constant temperature records in rural locations in other continents, and also from research papers (Roy Spencer on UHI and others).
Now I do not regard myself as a flat earther or a denier. I just need to see the evidence and explanations as to why my analysis is wrong.
AusieDan
This is why I avoid surface temperature data and rely on the satellite record (as interpreted by both UAH and RSS).
But everything you have observed makes for fascinating reading. The UHI scrap will run and run, with obfuscatory papers like Jones 2008 keeping the pot boiling...
lapogus
A fine, impassioned summary, which I pretty much agree with. Especially the latter part about how and over-focus on CO2 alarmism has led to disastrous energy infrastructure planning decisions by two successive governments.
It seems we do indeed have much in common - including an enemy and a goal.
AusieDan observes:
This sounds very much like Akasofu 2008 (Summary 2MB pdf) (Full paper – NB 50MB pdf).
Akasofu’s analysis has always struck me as one of the most persuasive arguments for natural forcings running the show. Anyone who hasn’t come across it should definitely have a look at the short version (first link).
Agreed, which is why I don’t. I always stress the disconnect between ‘blackboard physics’ (RTEs) and what actually happens in the real-world climate system.
I’ve said all this in comments here repeatedly.
No substantive disagreement except in square brackets:
[Off topic]
[Off topic]
[Off topic]
brent
Why are you carpet-bombing this thread with off topic cut'n'paste stuff about oil and gas?
Just asking.
[Off topic]
brent
What has this to do with the last ~20 comments on this thread?
Or the headpost, come to that?
[Off topic]
So all the above cut'n'paste verbiage was sparked by the fact that Oxburgh is on the board of GLOBE?
This was pointed out quite near the beginning of the thread.
Your point is?
Ideological incest: for some, it's all relative - all the time!