Bishop Hill IPCC seeks to influence UK FOI laws
Jul 26, 2012 FOI For much of the year, the House of Commons Justice Committee has been conducting a post-legislative review of the Freedom of Information Act, its work taking place in the face of a concerted effort by the bureaucracy to push it into accepting the idea that the Act should be neutered.
The review has now ground to a conclusion, and the news is, on the whole quite good. For example, from the recommendations comes the welcome news that the committee favours a tightening of the legal ramifications for breaches of the Act.
The summary only nature of the section 77 offence means that no one has been prosecuted for destroying or altering disclosable data, despite the Information Commissioner’s Office seeing evidence that such an offence has occurred. We recommend that section 77 be made an either way offence which will remove the limitation period from charging. We also recommend that, where such a charge is heard in the Crown Court, a higher fine than the current £5000 be available to the court. We believe these amendments to the Act will send a clear message to public bodies and individuals contemplating criminal action.
However, one of the other recommendations is less obviously welcome, with the committee concluding that England and Wales adopt the Scottish approach to research data. This allows exemption under two different grounds - a narrow one and a broad one. The narrow exemption is for data held for future publication, the narrowness coming from the requirement that the publication date cannot be more than 12 weeks in the future. The broader, and therefore much more worrying, exemption is for data held as part of an ongoing research programme. I'm not sure that this doesn't allow those who would rather their research was not examined by outsiders simply to say that they are still using the data and that it cannot therefore be disclosed.
The whole of the university sector seems to have been keen to get a much broader exemption in place. One submission of evidence, from Universities UK is a particularly interesting case in point, which shows that those champions of openness, the IPCC, have also been taking an interest.
[...] evidence of commercial partners being put off working with UK institutions is largely anecdotal. However, in a case involving the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) recently settled by the Information Commissioner for drafts of a published paper, the University of East Anglia highlighted that:
In another matter, we recently received exactly such representations from the IPCC TSU [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Technical Support Unit] based in Geneva, Switzerland in which they explicitly noted that release of such material would “[...] force us to reconsider our working arrangements with those experts who have been selected for an active role in WG1 AR5 [Working Group One, Fifth Assessment Report] from your institution and others within the United Kingdom.”
Reader Comments (76)
Jul 26, 2012 at 9:03 PM | acementhead
I stand in oar of your spelling prowess :)
Now my paperwork has been processed and my 3 ( actually 6 ) points are safe .Time to go Public
Couple of months ago i was driving up north and caught doing 35mph in a 30.
So i got a summons either 3 points or a Driving Speed awareness course.
So i live in South London and i picked the Driver Speed awareness course in Kent
Wont say where.
So these driver speed courses are very very thought provoking.Watch lots of videos and they work and they are worth it.Cant slate it.
Makes you change your driving and someways your outlook For the better.
So at the venue we had to divide into little groups and i gave our presentations .
Everyone else on my table was to shy to speak.A presentation bit of a lecture etc etc.Went on a few hours.But still very interesting.
Then it turned political .Eco driving.See where this is going.
Fair play to the teachers they are just normal driving instructors who also teach the course They re very knowledgabal good honest working people .From the outset they said basically "we only teach and the Syllabus and the Green politics nothing to do with us so please dont moan ".
So on the Power Point projector they stuck up this Eco Driving slide saying "Drive slower and save on fuel."Well okay fair enough".Then drive slower save Carbon Dioxide emissions which are causing dangerous Climate Change the effects of which we can see today".
I thought right i aint having that.
So i pipe up with "Whats Eco Driving got to do with a Driving safety course".
Then the instructor even asked me if i drove a Toyota Prious. Bloody cheek.
So the instructors "said that Eco Driving nothing to do with them" distancing themselfs.
To be honest everyone else in the room was pretty indifferent to it except angry me.
So i didnt get any mutiny going till i asked about speed humps.
And the instructor said if we wanted to get away early not to go there.
Reading between the lines and looking at the power point Slide this whole CO2 reduction Eco Driving thing was put in there by Kent County Council.Because i went on another Driver Speed Awarenes course in London a few week previous they didnt Know about and the TFL Met police speed awareness course didnt have the Eco Driving CO2 Reduction bit in it.
So we,re all adults and is teaching us left wing proper ganda on a Driving safety speed awareness course is that actually legal .
Can i complain to kent County Council And get the the Eco Driving CO2 bit removed because its political.
Drive to the correct speed limit and get better fuel economy and also save money and stress cant argue with that .
But being subjected to political properganda that i had to listen to for legal reasons perhaps a breach of my human rights?
If the RAC Foundation or the Taxpayers Alliance or UKIP or any lawyers or who ever. Can read this now.
If Richard Littlejohn ,Jeremy Clarkson, Dellingpole, Chris Booker printed this Speed reduction being taught as CO2 reduction in their newspaper columns .Could CO2 reduction become another reason for more Speed Cameras?.
It is another Political Correctness story gone mad .With the empahasis on political.
Thanks everyone, enjoy the Olympics, good luck Team GB. ( I caught the Torch Relay in Sutton Highstreet and now me old cynic ive gotten into it )
Jamspid
Interesting experience, many thanks for posting. Will have to think about the potential legal issues.
But speed bumps are intriguing, if you want to increase motoring CO2 there is nothing better. They also reduce the life cycle of any vehicle.
Also the moral issue that they persecute all instead of prosecuting the few.
Green Sand
Down in Kent/Sussex borders we have a great proliferation of speed bumps Mark II. Randomly, sometimes solitary, sometimes in strings, never with warning signs. Potholes.
Hasn't the University of East Anglia closed down yet? Who on earth would still want to study there?
Re: Jul 26, 2012 at 1:40 PM | DennisA
"The Potsdam Institute have former Greenpeace activist Malte Meinshausen installed at Melbourne University, he trained at Oxford, where Crispin Tickell set up Green College and made George Monbiot a Fellow. Co-incidentally, Tickell is "Advisor at Large" to the President of Arizona State University (2004 -present). Wheels within wheels, within wheels."
Interesting you mentioned Crispin Tickell - he was the guy who persuaded Margaret Thatcher that global warming was a serious problem -
"Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming, Under his influence, as she recorded in her memoirs, she made a series of speeches, in Britain and to world bodies, calling for urgent international action, and citing evidence given to the US Senate by the arch-alarmist Jim Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority on "human-induced climate change". "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html
She was later to recant but unfortunately too late, the damage was done, the architecture in place.
As for Tickell, I've recently been reading the book he wrote, unfortunately not the 1977 edition but the revised 1986 version.
Even then they had the 'solutions' planned -
"first, some form of international agreement on how to cope with future climatic crises, and set rules by which states avoid actions which, by affecting the climate, might do damage to others;
secondly, agreement to prevent modification of the climate for purposes of war;
and thirdly, the establishment of means to make effective the agreements and rules which have been reached"
They just had to wait for the science to catch up with the 'problem'.
http://www.crispintickell.com/page77.html
With massive funding in place not long before they had the scientists scurrying round to find every conceivable problem they could relate to global warming.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
But still never managed to find the empirical evidence.... so now are resorting to 'models'.....and data 'corrections'.
Re: Jul 26, 2012 at 11:51 PM | Chris S
"Hasn't the University of East Anglia closed down yet? Who on earth would still want to study there?"
Actually I've been told they do a very good Creative Writing course!!
Jamspid
Thank you for a hugely entertaing post.
If I may, I'd like to step back to look at FOI and scientist emails in a wide context. The following is not specific to the language of UK FOI statute, existing or proposed, but rather an example of why (1) FOI is extremely important, and (2) past obstructionism by certain climate scientists (aka "The Team") has been damaging to science and to the public interest. These are obvious points to BH readers, but I simply want to document something I had not seen discussed before in this regard.
This is one example but of course it sits within a large cluster of related issues. This is pertaining to an email by Ray Bradley (U. Mass.) in July 2000 which clearly indicated that at least he and Keith Briffa (plus now all who received this email) were well aware of serious weaknesses in the reconstructions of MBH98/99. In particular (and this of course is before any of the work of McIntyre, McKittrick and others), Bradley and Briffa knew that it could be extremely dubious at best to claim any confidence in "unprecedented" late 20th century warning (click for my comment and further link at Climate Audit):
Ray Bradley and Keith Briffa knew in 2000 that MBH98/99 was very weak (at best) on comparisons of MWP with present
Whether FOI would have succeeded in getting such needed info into the public realm for other scientists and interested citizens, bloggers, etc. to evaluate is uncertain, unless of course there is some total disclosure all the time rule. But at least the exchange of Bradley, Briffa et al makes clear (I think) that there is important info being withheld from the public AND many fellow scientists.
I support the academics. To help them get the most out of the data, we should help them concentrate on the important work of torturing the data by not allowing any further grants until they have gleaned all the wisdom from the precious data. To help them remember that they are not done, all the publications except the last one should be labelled "preliminary and unjustified speculation".
Hi Marion:
Like his namesake in the Mr Men, Mr Tickell has a very long reach. He is on the advisory council of Lead International with Maurice Strong, Rajendra Pachauri, Bjorn Stigson, WWF and many significant others. http://www.lead.org/about/advisory-council. (Also there is Geoffrey Lean of theTelegraph, who is the editor of the UNEP magazine.)
Sir Crispin is a senior advisor to the group, Global Leadership for Climate Action, which is a joint venture of the UN Foundation, headed by former senator and Hansen promoter, Timothy Wirth and funded by Ted Turner to the tune of $1 billion. Wirth and Turner are both members of GLCA, as are Jose Maria Figueres, brother of Christina Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCC, Klaus Töpfer, former executive Director of UNEP and James Wolfensohn, former President of the World Bank, George Soros, Gro Harlem Brundtland and more significant others. Also an advisor with Tickell on GLCA is the ubiquitous Rajendra Pachauri. http://www.globalactionnow.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=53
Tickell was an early member of the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development, with Rajendra Pachauri, Achim Steiner, Bjorn Stigson, Yvo de Boer, WWF and many more significant others, with major input from Maurice Strong. http://www.cciced.net/encciced/
He is still working with John Houghton behind the scenes: http://www.in.boell.org/downloads/Delhi_Final_Report.pdf
Tickell is a member of the advisory board of the James Martin School for the 21st Century, at Oxford, affiliated with the Oxford Environmental Change Institute. Lord Stern is also on the advisory council with many more significant others, including Martin Rees of the RS. The Director is Prof Ian Goldin, former vice-president of the World Bank, and former Director of Development Policy, World Bank.
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/advisory-council/
There is much, much more at "United Socialist Nations"
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/un_progress_governance_via_climate_change.html
Re: Jul 27, 2012 at 10:48 AM | DennisA
Hi Dennis, Many thanks for the links, I shall peruse those with interest when I get back.
But now off for a weekend trip ;-) and banned from blogging :-(
O/T
The Guardian are trotting out one of the usual smears: 'Deiners are likely to be conspiracy theory nutters'. These do come around periodically.
The article is the kind of absolute garbage that passes for comment over at the Guardian these days, hence the huge losses they make.
Just thought folk would enjoy a good laugh.
Well, one final thought before I go (and thanks for the headsup, Henry) -
I live in the EU so am not so distracted by ‘Conspiracy theories’ as most. I am but one of almost 500 million people who have been denied a direct vote on whether they want to be part of this transnational organization or not. (For the Lisbon Treaty which finally cemented us together under a political construct only the people of Ireland were allowed a direct vote and their NO vote was ignored – they were made to vote again after a massive propaganda campaign. Elsewhere it was only the politicians who were allowed to vote on the political gravy train!)
As a UK citizen I am used to our politicians lying to us – even now they talk of ceding no more ‘areas of power’ to the EU when it is difficult to think of any ‘areas of power’ left to cede!! Or our leaders weekly proclaim that they will 'renegotiate' the terms that bind us when Lisbon itself was supposedly a 'renegotiation' and yet further entwined us.
This organization which is so devoid of any true democratic legitimacy was brought into being by bureaucrats and politicians. The EU has evolved far beyond the 'Common Market' we thought we had joined but they knew what it would become and disguised it from us.
For the background -
http://www.acasefortreason.org.uk/index.php/sovereignty-and-the-european-communities
But one always prefers to go to source documents, and they can be found here -
http://www.acasefortreason.org.uk/index.php/the-evidence-files/fco-30-1048
So no I am not diverted by talk of ‘conspiracy theories’.
Real science has much to teach us but so too does history!!
So many parallels can be drawn between what the EU has become (an economic 'basket-case' on the brink of bankruptcy where politicians sought to 'buy' votes with unsustainable promises and the proliferation of a highly dependent benefits class and ever-expanding public sector) and what the Globe is in danger of becoming.
And how much worse this could become on a global scale for that indeed is the intent as announced by our own EU President von Rompuy
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100017487/herman-van-rompuy-today-the-eu-tomorrow-the-world/
For the background we can look toward the UN and see how much pressure they put on the countries leaders to help solve 'climate change' this 'global problem' that requires a 'global solution'.
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/ga10618.doc.htm
Such actions will indeed "Define the Global Legacy left for Future Generations"
And as they seek ever more funds for subsidies that will be doled out on a global scale why do they ignore the advice they have been given -
"subsidies are manifestations of rent-seeking, which, in turn, is part of a wider category of unproductive activity in economic systems. Rent-seeking involves redirecting economic resources to special interest groups rather than using resources productively. Interest groups then use those resources to reinforce their privileged positions.
Subsidy reform will inevitably conflict with those special interests. The idea that subsidy reform is a “win-win” policy is therefore misleading – there will always be losers, even if they are undeserving losers. In many cases, the most harmful subsidies will be those that are least easy to remove."
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/resources/res_pdfs/publications/sdt_fin/nairobi_meeting_part3.pdf
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/24/35215571.pdf
It seems to me that subsidies once given are not easily relinquished and haven't we already seen the damage being done in developing countries -
http://www.eureferendum.com/results.aspx?keyword=REDD
Nor can we ignore what occupies the 'brightest and the best' in our society, the richest and most powerful, one would assume that their time is too precious to indulge in mere idle speculation. And many of heir topics of interest seem to have been strangely predictive -
"The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100055500/global-cooling-and-the-new-world-order/
They were certainly accurate in the explosion of social networking as a means for communicating particularly as indulged by many of our govt depts. NGOs etc., as for financial 'reform' - what a mess, we in the UK can testify to that! The list goes on.....
So one can't help feeling a little uncomfortable at the prospect of a world where massively increased fuel bills, is leading to a huge downturn in the economy of developed countries and the preference for biofuels doing untold harm in the developing countries and who in future able to provide the huge subsidies on which they have become reliant?
And too hideous to speculate what will be the effect of 'global cooling' on those peoples of the world as opposed to 'global warming'.
So how about it Met Office, where is 'Global Cooling' in those 'What If' Projections of yours?
Marion
That was one hell of a good last thought!
Jamspid/Pharos, Good points, totally with you on this. Even TfL acknowledges that speed bumps contribute to CO2 emissions, but seem to be totally reluctant to remove them and/or replace them. BTW, the entire route from Lewisham to Hither Green is studded with speed bumbs, despite the fact that it is a 30mph limit and not 20mph, try working that one out!
Y'know, it would be interesting to know whether Stocker sought any authorization from IPCC bureau to issue his threat against UK science.
I doubt that he had the authority to threaten to expel UK scientists from IPCC if the UK complied with FOI legislation.
David Holland has spotted an important issue regarding the precise authority of WG1.
Jamspid/Pharos, Good points, totally with you on this. Even TfL acknowledges that speed bumps contribute to CO2 emissions, but seem to be totally reluctant to remove them and/or replace them. BTW, the entire route from Lewisham to Hither Green is studded with speed bumbs, despite the fact that it is a 30mph limit and not 20mph, try working that one out!
OT, but WUWT is shut until Sunday. Wonder if FOIA has struck again?
No idea about the scoop, but a little help with time zones:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=217
Can I just ask: If anthropogenic global warming is such a serious issue, why are we still carrying out huge events like the olympics and soccer world cup? I would like to see London's carbon offset plan audited once the olympics are done.
Stupid politicians. You tell the public one thing but you do the exact opposite.
So much for anthropogenic global warming:
London Olympics Drops Carbon-Offset Plan
Organizers of the London 2012 Olympic Games dropped a plan to cut carbon emissions during the sporting showcase, abandoning a pledge made when it defeated eight other cities to host the event.
Games administrators will “no longer pursue formal offsetting procedures” to mitigate Olympics-related emissions, documents posted on the London Olympics website said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/olympics-drops-carbon-offset-plan-to-focus-on-u-k-benefits.html
Google "UEA Creative Writing Alumni" and you might be quite impressed. I haven't heard of most of them — though the list does include the likes of Ian McEwan and Ben Ockrent — but that probably says more about my taste in literature than their writing ability!
Jul 28, 2012 at 11:56 AM | Mike Jackson
" "Actually I've been told they do a very good Creative Writing course!!"
Actually, they do.
Google "UEA Creative Writing Alumni" and you might be quite impressed. I haven't heard of most of them — though the list does include the likes of Ian McEwan and Ben Ockrent — but that probably says more about my taste in literature than their writing ability!"
Yes it's been mentioned quite a few times on the sceptic blogs already, UEA have been awarded several prizes for their Creative Writing - the irony is simply too good to miss!!
Below is the FSA reply to our FOI request which was of course declined BUT with the FSA making some shocking statements.
Freedom of Information freoinf@fsa.gov.uk
Oct 25, 2012
to me
Our ref: FOI2723
Dear Mr Rea & Mr de Caluwe Hemelrijk
Freedom of Information: Right to know request
Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) for the following information..
“Copies of all complaints filed against RBS and or RBS employees from 2010 – 2012.”
For your information, the FSA as an organisation does not deal with consumer complaints and any such enquirer that expresses dissatisfaction is referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service. You may find it helpful to visit the FOS website (http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/) for more information. It is therefore possible that we may hold a record of such enquiries.
Your request has now been considered. I am sorry to inform you that we estimate that to comply with your request in full would exceed the 18 hour time limit. This is because the information requested is likely to be spread across a number of files and the information is not indexed in such a way to identify whether it is a complaint or an enquiry about the firm and we would need to review and assess all of the files that we hold to extract the information relevant to your request, and therefore the following exemption applies.
Section 12 (Costs of compliance exceeds appropriate limit)
In order to extract the information we would need to consider and review all the records that we hold in our Contact Centre for Royal Bank of Scotland (“RBS”) for the period quoted (2010 to 8 October 2012 - the date of receipt of your request) to establish whether they are complaints. This is because we are not able to readily identify those items that may be a complaint or an enquiry without reviewing the individual correspondence. .
You should also note that under the document retention policy for the Contact Centre copies of electronic documents are held for 7 years and hard copy documents for twelve months. We would also need to contact other areas of the FSA that may hold information relevant to your request.
For the period from 1 January 2010 to 8 October 2012 (the date of receipt of your request) we hold approximately 4,000 electronic and papers records in our Contact Centre in relation to RBS. We would need to review each of these records to establish whether or not they fall within the scope of your request. In this context, we conservatively estimate that it would take well in excess of 18 hours to undertake this exercise and exceed the £450 limit. Since our policy is not to divert our resources from our regulatory functions in order to meet requests under the Act in excess of the cost limit, we will not be able to carry out this exercise.
In reaching the conclusion that your request exceeds the appropriate cost limit we have not considered whether any other exemptions apply. However, you should be aware that any information that the FSA has received from or about a firm is likely to be prohibited from disclosure under section 348 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 as it would be confidential information received for the purposes of carrying out our regulatory functions and supervision of those firms and individuals. Such information is therefore likely to be exempt from the Act by virtue of section 44 (prohibitions on disclosure) of the Act. Other exemptions under the Act may also apply to that material.
When we refuse a request because the appropriate limit has been exceeded, it is our general policy to provide advice and assistance to the applicant to indicate how the request could be refined or limited to come within the cost limit. In this case, as explained above, due to the volume of information that we hold across the FSA, we are unable to assist you with providing a way in which to refine your request in order to obtain the information you are interested in. Any refinement that we suggest is likely to exceed the statutory time limit.
If you have any queries or are unhappy with the decision made in relation to your request you have the right to request an internal review. If you wish to exercise this right, you should contact us within three months of the date of this letter.
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you also have a right of appeal to the Information Commissioner at:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 01625 545 700
Website: www.ico.gov.uk
Yours sincerely
Sandra Collins | Associate - Information Access Team | Finance and Operations Division
Financial Services Authority, 25 The North Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HS
Tel: 020 7066 7120
www.fsa.gov.uk