Hansen before the Environmental Audit Committee

The Environmental Audit Committee is rather like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, being entirely uninterested in auditing anything. It's an environmentalist talking shop with greens taking "evidence" from greens and concluding that more greenery is required to green the planet. Or something like that.

Last month they took evidence from James Hansen as part of their inquiry into carbon budgets. This was presumably just because Hansen happened to be in town rather than because of any great insights he might be able to give on UK energy policy.

The uncorrected transcript is here.

Comments

[kim]

Jaccard, ideally, we have a world government.
=======

[Athelstan.]

Loony scientists gossip with and talk to sock puppets of greenery, strewth what a waste of time and our money, for gawds sake - they should all seek immediate help and psychiatric counselling.

Professor Jaccard: Thank you. I am an energy economy modeller and have worked with the intergovernmental panel on climate change, but also with international groups of modellers.

With those qualifications, no worries - a career serving big Macs is a given.

[Don Keiller]

Can't we "adjust" and "homogenise" Hansen's data to make it more realistic? i.e in an inverse way to that typically performed by climate psientists?

[DennisA]

Next week (12th) they have Myles Allen, Aubrey Meyer and Julia Slingo

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-archive/environmental-audit-committee/

[eSmiff]

Hansen is a has been.

I noticed that the most credible AGW skeptic, Roger Pielke Jr has been promoted at work and is being published in the Guardian. There are many signs of a major retreat since Copenhagen and the collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange and near collapse of the ETS.

The Groaniad is saying positive things about fracking and the XL pipeline is a racing certainty.

[Geckko]

This is a pretty astonishing vignette:

Q1 Chair: That UK carbon budget regime is based on the objective of limiting global temperature rises to 2°C. Is that still the right objective?

Professor Hansen: Well, 2°C is the limit. The community has agreed that 2°C is an upper boundary that we should avoid penetrating.... etc...

Q2 Chair: Would you agree with that, Professor Jaccard?

Professor Jaccard: My area is in energy policy economic analysis, so I will defer to Professor Hansen. However, thank you for asking me.

So we have the energy economist deferring to the atmospheric physicist on a point of economics (i.e. welfare and cost/benefit analysis).

These types of committees and politicians and governments in general are all too willing to take advice and information from the wrong sources. Let Hansen talk about what he thinks is the likelihood of a 2 degree+ warming and what the atmosheric physics or climate might look like.

Then turn to someone else for the economic or policy "so what?"

[The Leopard In The Basement]

@Jun 7, 2013 at 10:38 AM | eSmiff

I would have to correct you and say that RPJ is most definitely not an AGW skeptic ;) Though I agree his voice does seem to get heard more often in places like the Graun and is a sign that his more reasonable stance, offering genuine debating positions rather than cheap caricatures, is being seen as more accepted.

[Geckko]

@eSmiff.

Roger Pielke Jnr is no AGW sceptic.

In fact as a policy wonk, he is gung ho for designing an implementing all manner of "climate policy", regulation and taxation. He simply has his own take on what he thinks is best (essentially he doesn't think mitigation is a politically achievable goal)

[Hilary Ostrov]

Jaccard is not only a "modeller", but he models his behaviour on Hansen!

Last year he pulled a very silly PR stunt in my neck of the woods:

Mark Jaccard: Why I'm stopping coal trains on May 5

This Saturday, May 5, at dawn I'm joining other British Columbians in White Rock at the pier to stop Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal trains from reaching our ports. Like others, I'm willing to engage in civil disobedience and risk arrest on Saturday to emphasize how important it is that we take urgent action to stop the actions that cause climate change.

See also, Donna's Mark Jaccard, Counterfeit Nobel Laureate

[Paul Matthews]

Another candidate for #greensgobyair.

And another example of the climate echo chamber.

"Q9 Zac Goldsmith: There is a report in The Guardian today saying that according to an assessment of all the scientific papers on climate change, where there is a verdict on whether we are responsible or not, more than 99% seem to be of the firm view, which Professor Hansen takes, that we are very much the dominant force for the changes that we are seeing. "

So it's gone up from 97 to 99, and up to 'dominant force'.

[Geckko]

I hate class wrafre politics, but billionaire boy Zac Goldsmith makes my blood boil.

[Billy Liar]

I think they should have asked Hansen about things he's good at, such as protesting, getting arrested and jetting around the world.

[David Chappell]

Slightly OT (for which apologies) but Kevin Trenberth is another like Jaccard - a fraudulent Nobel Laureate. See his cv at http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/cv.html - scroll down to Awards.

[eSmiff]

Zac Goldsmith comes from a family of extreme right wing fascists. Typical greenies.

[eSmiff]

Geckko

More or less everything Roger Pielke Jnr writes on his blog is sceptical of CC. He has to be very careful or the yobs will get him.

[Geckko]

Sorry eSmiff, you are wrong. I don't know where you get the idea that Pielke is a sceptic.

Here is only the most recent column he linked in his blog:

Today, more than 85 percent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. Despite centuries of growing use, these fuels remain abundant. Powerful economic and political interests are organized around the fossil-energy system, as are complex social arrangements (consider, for example, the dependence of rapidly expanding cities on conventional electrical grids).

These realities have made a mockery of the 20-plus years of international efforts to wean the world off oil, coal, and natural gas. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying; when it comes to climate-change mitigation, a shift to carbon-free energy remains the Platonic ideal. Yet it is past time to acknowledge that on any given day, “Drill, baby, drill!” is in fact a highly effective strategy for continuing to deliver the many benefits of cheap energy.

As a result, it’s also past time to explore more seriously a parallel path to reducing greenhouse gases—one focused not on moving off fossil fuels, but on capturing the carbon that these fuels emit

All the hot topics:

- We have to reduce carbon emissions
- The is a strong fossil fuel industry lobby
- Carbon free enrgy remains the deal

From his book The Climate Fix:

Why has the world been unable to address global warming? Science policy expert Roger Pielke, Jr., says it’s not the fault of those who reject the Kyoto Protocol, but those who support it, and the magical thinking that the agreement represents.

In The Climate Fix, Pielke offers a way to repair climate policy, shifting the debate away from meaningless targets and toward a revolution in how the world’s economy is powered, while de-fanging the venomous politics surrounding the crisis.

The debate on global warming has lost none of its power to polarize and provoke in a haze of partisan vitriol. The Climate Fix will bring something new to the discussions: a commonsense perspective and practical actions better than any offered so far.

Althought Pielke is cagey on his view of the science (his standard response is he accepts the IPCC, but in terms of policy it doesn't matter - we should reduce CO2 emissions anyway), he is very pro action.

[eSmiff]

Geckko

I follow and comment on his blog. He is a near 100% sceptic and the stuff about Platonic ideals is really taking the p*. The reason he knows the science is nonsense is that his father is a climate scientist !

This is the crucial line.

“Drill, baby, drill!” is in fact a highly effective strategy for continuing to deliver the many benefits of cheap energy.

Here is his latest Groaniad effort. The title says it all.

Have the climate sceptics really won?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/political-science/2013/may/24/climate-sceptics-winning-science-policy

His message to the green lobby is basically 'DOOM'. or as I described it 'Welcome to Stalingrad, Mr Hitler'.

They have lost and there is nothing they can do about it because NO ONE in America is prepared to pay for clean energy. The only senate vote (Kyoto) was 95-0 against. Explaining the science is a total waste of time.

Carbon trading died and AGW is effectively dead too.

[michel]

The killer quote is in fact

Q1 Chair: That UK carbon budget regime is based on the objective of limiting global temperature rises to 2°C. Is that still the right objective?

Because the idea that you can in some way limit global temperature rises by limiting UK fossil fuel use is completely insane. Of course you cannot. We are only 5% of global emissions and falling. Nothing we can realistically do is going to make any measurable difference to global temperatures, so we need to stop fooling ourselves.

If anyone in the UK sincerely wants to do anything about global warming he or she needs to start thinking seriously about how to change Chinese policy. Because nothing he or she can do to change UK policy is going to make the slighest difference.

[eSmiff]

michel

As I predicted, there are people in China who haven't seen the house next door for 3 years thanks to filthy smog. We exported clean production and they converted it to dirty production . No one seems to care.

Over to you, Reichsfuhrer Monbiot.

[shub]

It's an environmentalist talking shop with greens taking "evidence" from greens and concluding that more greenery is required to green the planet.

Ouch.

[Patagon]

Some years ago I read the memories of an intellectual ex-ambassador to the Vatican who mentioned, as a matter of fact, that any potential Pope was assumed to be an atheist.

Would that be applicable to these new Climate Cardinals?

(Sorry Bishop...)