Bishop Hill A Walport in a storm
Nov 6, 2013 Climate: Parliament ;)
Mark Walport's appearance before the Science and Technology Committee this morning - part of the 'public understanding of climate science' inquiry I took part in a month or so ago - alternated between breathtaking platitudes and moments of real interest.
Walport gives the impression of being someone who is highly skilled at sounding plausible on subjects about which he knows little and the MPs seemed impressed on the whole. The impact on me was less favourable.
I've jotted down a few of Walport's more extraordinary statements:
- The unique feature of climate change is the depth of the metanalysis of the IPCC.
- [How do you separate anthropogenic warming from natural variation?] It's the speed of the change which is unprecedented.
- [Is climate change manmade? Clearly some of it is?] The answer to your question is 'yes'.
- [Does climate change have benefits?] Benefits in some part of the world are matched by disbenefits in others.
There is also a question in which Stephen Mosley MP said that the committee had struggled to get sceptics to take part in the inquiry. Interestingly, Bob Ward quickly tweeted that the question related only to media sceptics - i.e. the newspaper editors, some of whom were invited to appear - rather than sceptics as a whole but this was dispelled by a later question and answer, in which the subject was discussed in the broader context of "sceptics".
I believe that I am the only sceptic who was invited to appear. In particular, I think I am right in saying that GWPF did not receive an invitation. I have tweeted to the Committee asking who else was invited.
Bishop Hill
The sketchwriter at Guido's has a fun look at Walport's appearance, and introduces us to the useful new word bloffaling.
Reader Comments (37)
Dead from the neck up apparently.
It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a new Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked,
"Is the coming winter going to be cold?"
"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again.
"Is it going to be a very cold winter?"
"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again.
"Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"
"Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever."
"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.
The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy!"
It seems pretty clear that the Committee only invites those who it deems to be acceptable. It does not seem to want to hear any contrarian views. In that case it is never going to really challenge itself. The USA seems to be much better at doing this than the UK. Spencer, Christy, and several other well known sceptics have testified before the Senate. Why are our MP's so feeble?
There were 19 submissions from sceptics to the inquiry. No struggling required.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/6/12/public-understanding-of-climate-the-evidence.html
It seems pretty clear that the Committee only invites those who it deems to be acceptable. It does not seem to want to hear any contrarian views. In that case it is never going to really challenge itself. The USA seems to be much better at doing this than the UK. Spencer, Christy, and several other well known sceptics have testified before the Senate. Why are our MP's so feeble?
Nov 6, 2013 at 1:35 PM | Derek
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Um. Obama's just enacted Climate Change legislation was put in place by executive action. I.E. He ignored all previous testimony to Congress, the Senate etc. Indeed, he believes that the world is warming faster than ever, despite that fact that it isn't warming at all. So it's no different in the USA to here.
The problem is that for 20 years or so the old boys' network, this time linked to Fabian Corporatist politics, has been populating the senior administrators of most disciplines with the public school educated. Walport, St Pauls, is a typical example.
The problem is that although well educated he is none too bright. The same goes for Cameron, Letwin etc. Hence they were easily duped by Climate Alchemy and now can't admit it is junk science when they would be out of a job as the carbon traders reacted.
A further example is Nicholas Stern, Latymer Upper School, again none too bright as shown by hie economic non-prowess and propensity for persuading large corporations to commit suicide by carbon.
Think of Walport, following on from non scientist Beddington, Monmouth School, as part of the dinosaur elite whose brain is in the tail and will just blunder on until it runs out of food or is felled by clever, meritocratic mammals.
- 6 weeks ago on my blog I documented them choosing the tactic to blatantly LIE
and tweeted 12 SeptHow many times does the committee want to hear the same half truths and outright lies that didn't swing public opinion when it looked true? There ought to be a board where they mark off the old chestnuts - "it's warming faster than ever", "weather is becoming more extreme", "won't somebody think of the children", blah, blah, blah.
Anyone, British and allegedly educated, who uses the word disbenefits cannot be trusted in any way.
"It's the speed of the change which is unprecedented."
Nonsense.
"I thought I would look at the top 18 year warming trends at anytime in the 350 year history of HADCET. Why 18 years? Well, 1980 to 1998 was 18 years.
You might expect them all to be around 1980 to 1998 wouldn't you? Well, if believe in global warming you might. But if you haven't been taken in, you might not.
Only one recent month made it in the top. February 1983 to 2000. 2.53C per decade. Helped by the 5th coldest February in 1986 and the 3rd warmest February in 1998. That was an 8C rise.
But the next closest was January 1959 to 1976. And five of the trends start in the 1600s! One in the 1700s. And four in the 1800s.
There is nothing unusual about the warming in the 1980s to 1990s."
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/hadcet-top_18-year/
SCEF wasn't invited.
Carbon Brief has a blog about it.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/11/mark-walport-we-need-more-communication/
Apparently Walport thinks that more communication is needed , to get the message across.
Completely clueless.
Walport needs to talk face to face with a professional scientist/engineer who has looked in detail at the IPCC climate fraud. Then he might appreciate just what a fool he is making of himself.
No professional can accept a perpetual motion machine, the basis of the modelling.
Nov 6, 2013 at 2:27 PM | stewgreen
Is it possible to FOI such invitations and subsequent corresponce?
No, it is much worse in the US. Our President has successfully done something very rare in our history: Effectively shut down the checks and balances that our intricate form of goverment relies on.
The prognosis is very dim on multiple fronts. The first casualty, critical thinking amongst his followers..
In the immediate wake of the IPCC's AR5, Walport was interviewed on the Today programme. Due deference was paid to his position as the chief scientific advisor to the government. An air of solemnity prevailed. The great man was primed to speak.
He went on to make a statement that even at the time I found astounding. In retrospect, it seems all the more extraordinary. Yet, so far as I know, it has never been challenged despite being demonstratively wrong.
The evidence behind the belief in man-made global warming, opined Walport, was 'rock solid'.
But there is no such evidence. None at all. Not even a wisp. Not so much as a fragment.
There are plenty of theories. There are even more assertions. And there are of course the computer models.
But there is precisely no evidence in the sense of real, verifiable, observed observations.
How can a man who purports to represent the world of science make such patently untrue assertions and be allowed to get away with them?
I was, as I remain, dumbfounded. Is Walport a fraud? Or merely deeply ignorant? Either way, he has no business advising the government.
But if his services should be dispensed with forthwith, so should those who appointed him.
The whole sorry business stinks of self-interest, arrogance and a kind of properly dismissive attitude towards the truth that reminds me of the nastiest kind of 18th-century jobbery.
Dave S
No. Parliament is exempt IIRC.
@Dave_S I'm not the expert of FOI the Bish and other knows
- Note How it's similar tactic to their other stooge Harrabin a rhetorical trick, which creates a lie in the brain of the hearer
"I mean, for instance, we've been trying in the UK to find one 'climate change sceptic' who is a working scientist, in this field, and we can't find even one."
- Plug in another object :
"I mean, for instance, we've been trying in the UK to find 'one person who doesn't have some doubts about the IPCC' who is a working scientist, in this field, and we can't find even one."
Guido Fawkes sketch is very good on this.
I suppose he couldn't outright lie, like he did in his ... whatever it was... at the Welcome Institute last month.
Gardner: Thanks. I didn't know that Guido now uses the excellent Simon Carr. Does he still write for the Independent? The sketch is called The Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and Bloffal and includes this little gem:
Carr finishes up:
I was reminding Paul Matthews and a few others this week of the first time (that I know of) Simon Carr expressed scepticism about CAGW - after Phil Jones and Professor Calculus had been interviewed by the then Commons Science and Technology select committee about Climategate on 1st March 2010. It will always be the Professor Calculus moment for me. Steve McIntyre called it Opening Night Reviews in the UK Press. All five parliamentary sketchwriters are worth re-reading from that day.
But Carr's education in the subject didn't end there. He bothered to turn up and listen to Richard Lindzen speak at the House of Commons on 22nd February 2012 and penned the remarkable Is catastrophic global warming, like the Millennium Bug, a mistake? the next day.
That's the problem for the worried apparatchiks of conventional wisdom like Walport. The crowd is no longer gullible. Yet they still try to gull.
In my travels since 8:21 PM I've returned to an excellent article by Simon Carr in the immediate aftermath of Climategate: So, scientists are just as political as the rest on the last day of November 2009. The four we now have to consider on this thread (thanks again Gardner) suggest a really fascinating journey of one honest and perceptive journalist. As Carr began on 23rd February last year:
It takes time, this revealing of the climate con, but the efforts of the many are not wasted.
The challenge of communication:
"human beings are emitting into the atmosphere approximately 10 gigatonnes of carbon each year"
Which of course they are not - he probably means carbon dioxide. As inaccurate as calling water "hydrogen".
Any proper scientist would communicate more accurately. If he can't get that right, what else is wrong?
You fellows often speak about your well educated elites. Equally often you speak of of your elites being intelligent. Then again these intelligent and educated elites just don't understand. Then again these intelligent well educated but uncomprehending elites are not so bright.
Is it possible to be to be intelligent, well educated and uncomprehending and not so bright? In my corner of the world such a thing is not possible. But in Britain... who knows.
@ George Steiner
I'm an engineer who has worked with scientists over the years. I've certainly had experience of people, unquestionably brighter than me, talking absolute b****cks. I've noticed that people who are undoubtedly experts in their own field sometimes have an unconscious ignorance of their ignorance in other fields. So they open their mouths and talk nonsense.
A bit like this Walport bloke really :-)
"the committee had struggled to get sceptics to take part in the inquiry"
What - by not inviting them?
but @gareth they are chosen for "their ignorance" the "useful idiots"
- every specialist scientist in the climate business is supposed to be right behind the IPCC
..there should hundreds/thousands of them. Well where are they ?
- the few scientists in climate fields that are let out of the box are carefully cossetted so they can't be challenged
.. if you do hear any then often there's a positive check for Greenpeace & GreenBiz/NGO conflicts of interests.
but the people mostly SELECTED as the interface to the public who are actually questioned are USEFUL IDIOTS with no technical ability to challenge
- Instead of finding scientists working in that field, the people pushed forward onto the media are politicians/activists or scientists well out of their field like geneticist Steve Jones.etc.
(oh BTW in September I personally told the No 10 policy bod about this problem of including activists (the fundamentalist 5%) & excluding skeptics .. so add that into your judgements)
There is an expression in an other language which roughly translates as " a trained barbarian".
You must have many of these.
You'd think that MPs, of all people, would be able to spot someone who hadn't a clue bluffing after two or three words. Apparently not unfortunately.
Oh dear, this is not a good scientist speaking. Question: "[How do you separate anthropogenic warming from natural variation?] Answer: It's the speed of the change which is unprecedented." The answer has no relation to the question. Scientists tend to speak of velocity rather than speed. "the change" is not specified; what is changing? Until it is specified, it cannot be examined for unprecedentedness. (Yep, I just invented that last noun).
........................
"The unique feature of climate change is the depth of the metanalysis of the IPCC". (If this is the unique feature, then no other can be unique). Sir Mark, never mind the depth, look at the veracity. If the quality is poor, the depth scarcely matters.
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In the first 10 minutes or so, I detected that Sir Mark was careful not to endorse much as being good science. Is he secretly worried about the quality?
"...the depth of the metanalysis of the IPCC"
Apart from sounding impressive, does that actually mean anything?
Geoff: I agree about Walport's doubts. When will he have the courage to give proper voice to them? And that's a great catch about the unspecific change speed non-sequitur.
Martin: It means that you and I are far too out-of-the-right-circles to nod sagely and be impressed.
You really have to wonder how government functions at all, if Mark Wallport is typical of the people advising it...
Martin: It means that you and I are far too out-of-the-right-circles to nod sagely and be impressed.
Nov 7, 2013 at 12:44 PM Richard Drake
Thought so.
"S.L.B.T.M" went through my mind.
You really have to wonder how government functions at all, if Mark Wallport is typical of the people advising it...
Nov 7, 2013 at 1:16 PM Sherlock1
Sherlock1 - do you have any evidence that it functions at all?
A very precise skewering of Walport's performance can be found on Guido:
http://order-order.com/2013/11/06/sketch-the-governments-chief-scientific-adviser-and-bloffal/
About sums up the nonsense of this very silly man.
Did Walport not take a few seconds to debunk the myth that a denier is someone who refuses to accept Nick Clegg is a serious politician?