Tuesday
Jul162013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill And they're off
Jul 16, 2013 Blogs I will shortly be heading off for the big smoke for the SciTech hearing tomorrow - not looking forward to the London heat but I'm sure the hearing itself will be interesting.
This seems like an opportune moment to do a tip drive. The donate button is over there on the right.
Reader Comments (22)
Check they haven't turned the air conditioning down before you give evidence.
Tip sent. Have a beer on me. Ice cold does the trick.
Probably worth checking that the room has air conditioning that hasn't been turned off / heating turned on etc. - you know what these guys are like :-)
"The Science and Technology Committee will hold the following oral evidence session in its inquiry into ‘Climate: Public understanding and policy implications’."
The public understand just fine - nothing is happening and the policy implication is that "scientists" claiming the end of the world is nigh are encouraging politicians to enact even worse policies than usual.
Good luck - take no prisoners! :-)
Suggest the Government "tell the truth"!! ie "We have insufficient information to come to a decision".
Who knows it may start a trend and before you know it democracy is born. - Sorry, I've taken the medication and I'll be OK shortly.
The false dichotomy being presented here is that the debate is between scientists and right wing, free market nuts like the GWPF.
This is the truth
James Hansen
Governments today, instead, talk of "cap-and-trade with offsets", a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
BP calls for ratification of Kyoto Protocol
The multinational BP has challenged the Australian Government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. BP's South Australia and Australasia president, Greg Bourne, has said that Australia's economy will suffer if the nation doesn't commit to ratifying the protocol which regulates greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s410744.htm
Shell Canada
The debate about climate change is over and we need to take action," says Ertel, Shell Canada's climate change expert.
here
International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)
The biggest lobbying group at Copenhagen was the International Emissions Trading Association which was created to promote carbon trading more than ten years ago.
Its members include :-
BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON (coal power stations owner), EDF (one of the largest participants in the global coal market), Gazprom (Russian oil and gas), Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley..
http://www.ieta.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=19%3Adefault&id=168%3Aour-members&Itemid=82
It would be a major achievement simply if the 'denier' label is fully recognised as a cynical ploy to avoid scientific debate and audit. The inevitable rise in public scepticism is a direct result of outrageous exaggeration and torquing of evidence to prop up dubious policy. The public are no fools, and it is futile to treat them as such.
More truth
This is the real reason why Britain has a plague of useless wind turbines. Do you think Greenpeace has bought all the politicians in the world and sprayed them green ?
Carbon credits bring Lakshmi Mittal £1bn bonanza
LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming. His company ArcelorMittal, the steel business where he is chairman and chief executive, will make the gain on “carbon credits” given to it under the European emissions trading scheme (ETS).
The scheme grants companies permits to emit CO2 up to a specified “cap”. Beyond this they must buy extra permits. An investigation has revealed that ArcelorMittal has been given far more carbon permits than it needs. It has the largest allocation of any organisation in Europe
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/industrials/article6945991.ece
Copenhagen climate summit: Carbon trading fraudsters in Europe pocket €5bn
Carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn) mainly in Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland, according to Europol, the European law enforcement agency.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6778003/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Carbon-trading-fraudsters-in-Europe-pocket-5bn.html
Climategate: George Monbiot, the Guardian and Big Oil - James Delingpole.
But who is it that sponsors the Guardian?s Environment pages and eco conferences? Why, only that famous non-fossil-fuel company Shell. (Though I notice their logo no longer appears on top of the Guardian?s eco pages: has the Guardian decided the relationship was just too embarrassing to be, er, sustainable?)
And which company has one of the largest carbon trading desks in London, cashing in on industry currently worth around $120 billion ? an industry which could not possibly exist without pan-global governmental CO2 emissions laws ? BP (which stands for British Petroleum)
And how much has Indian steel king Lakshmi Mittal made from carbon credits thanks to Europe?s Emissions Trading Scheme? £1 billion.
And which companies were the CRU scientists revealed cosying up to as early as 2000 in the Climategate emails? There?s a clue in this line here: ?Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday.?
And how much was Phil Jones, director of the discredited CRU, found to have collected in grants since 1990? £13.7 million ($22.7 million)
And why does this Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild?s bank sound so enthusiastic in this (frankly terrifying) letter about the prospects of the ?new world order? (his phrase not mine) which result from globally regulated carbon trading?
Or why not try this blog, in which a German Green party MP is revealed being given hefty donations by a solar power company?
Or how about this tiny $7o million donation to the climate change industry from the Rockefeller Foundation?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019523/climategate-george-monbiot-is-in-the-pay-of-big-oil/
another esmiff yawn-post....
I was living in London in the summer of 1975. I remember it being over 90F for nearly two weeks (in Jun/Jul?). Can't find any reference to it anywhere.
Can anyone confirm this or have a link?
(I know there was a heatwave/drought in summer 1976).
Ian - sounds like August was the hot one:
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/46192-summer-1975/
There is a fantastic documentary about Hunt vs Lauda on iplayer just now. Summer 1975 was a soopa scotcha !!
Thanks nby for that link.
I arrived in the UK in 1974 and experienced the 1975 "phew wot a scorcher". The old man flew planes around in the UK and nearby countries from 43-45 and informed me before I left that you had summer on a Wednesay. It didn't seem like that in 1975.
Tip sent. Keep up the good work. I don't know if you're following events in Oz, but the carbon tax/ETS extravaganza is turning into an hilarious shmozzle.
I thought it was the summer of '76 - I seem to recall swotting for my first year exams in London in the stifling heat, so May/June 76?
1975 was hot, 1976 was hotter, if I remember correctly.
Summer of 75 was very nice, but not very long lasting. July similar to this year, and into August as well.
Summer of 76 was a much longer dry spell, from May to October, except for 2 weeks in August when I was on holiday in Torquay, when is was cool, cloudy, and windy, but the drought didn't really break.
IanG
Yes, I remember 1975.
Snow the first week of June: wall-to-wall sunshine for weeks afterwards. For some reason it always gets eclipsed by 1976 but the two together were the best summers for decades. 1977 on the other hand ...
Andrew on now (10:45)
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=13643
One pseaker quoted sceptical headline by Telegraph as a problem...
But:
#scitech that Telegraph Sea Level Lie article. refered to Gore's 20ft by 2100.
Telegraph then cited IPCC science(59cm) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html …
I managed to watch almost all the two panel events this morning, and I was generally impressed by them.
The first panel. Better questions, more signs of sharpness in the Committee, reasonable replies. This all seemed satisfactory to the passing observer. But they did not dig deeply enough for my tastes. What could they have done? I think they might have sought a common definition of that they are referring to under the label ‘climate change’. I think the next is to expose the flaky 97% statistics and how well that has been explained by the tv channels. Next, some of the counter-examples that show the weakness of the case for alarm might have been raised. Instead, we never got past the notion that the broadcasters were trying to explain science and that dissent against ‘climate change’ is largely from poorly-informed people or people with hidden agendas. The second panel, almost entirely thanks to Andrew’s contributions, made some progress away from that luvvy-level simplicity. What it is missing, and it is a point which Andrew made more than once, is that there is a very respectable position in climate science that is not at all alarming about human impacts. Or, as I would prefer, the case for alarm over those impacts has failed to convince some very well-informed people in science. As a moderately well-informed, imho, outside observer of that science, I have not been convinced either for what it is worth. Not worth much by itself of course, but I think there are many well-informed people with that view.
I was far more impressed by the committee this time than in earlier viewings, although the Chair spoiled their otherwise good levels of gravitas with his cheep jibe about the Neil/Davey interview near the end of the first panel. I thought there were lots of very good questions from them. I guess the Committee is charged with drawing conclusions, but the only one I think they can reasonably take is that they are at the beginning, not the end, of their investigation. This should have happened two decades ago, and it might just have helped save the BBC from their descent into blatant bias on climate as revealed by their docility in the face of lobbying such as described in ‘The Propaganda Bureau’. And if, two decades ago, such deliberations if pursued with vigour had led to a calmer and more considered view of climate variation in the media, we might well have been spared the embarrassment and harm of the Climate Change Act. I hope the Committee will find ways to pursue their current deliberations, as they might yet reduce the probability of even more harm in the future.
Andrew was excellent. The Committee must surely have been impressed by the high calibre of his contributions. I certainly was. His fellow-panelists were reasonable and civil, although both clearly not quite ready to enter the ranks of the enlightened!
Hint taken.....tip sent.