Wednesday
Jan082014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Deben and Kennedy sinking fast
Jan 8, 2014 Climate: Parliament Climate: sensitivity This morning Lord Deben and David Kennedy of the Committee on Climate Change were questioned by the Energy and Climate Change Committee on the Fourth Carbon Budget.
It has everything - climate sensitivity, stadium waves, bickering over funding, and the splendid sight of the two witnesses flailing around for answers.
Start watching at 10:14.21. It's unmissable.
Update on Jan 8, 2014 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
If you are on a mobile device, you may need to view the video via this link.
Reader Comments (56)
Couldn't take more than about six minutes..
As brilliantly put by someone in respect of Ed dAvey's performance on another stage, and if I may be permitted to borrow that phrase:
'Deben would be out of his depth on a wet pavement...'
Thanks for the YouTube posting, ZT - I'm curious how you "grabbed" it (if you're prepared to disclose!). I am struggling to watch through this meeting and have just heard (at 1:20:45) Gummer say (whilst referring to China):
"This is a country that has not caused climate change up to now, we have, in this part of the world"
So not only is the science settled, but he can even say which countries are/are not the cause, and where it occurs?
My mind is truly boggled...
Thanks for the reference, Kim.
I have found it on the internet. I have only skimmed it quickly, but I could not find anywhere in the paper where Curry and Wyatt state that their Mexican Wave theory in no way negates AGW theories as claimed by Deben and Kennedy.
Far from it they say natural processes explain the "pause" which the models are not predicting.
I will have to listen to Deben and Kennedy again to check what they said about the paper and then read the paper more carefully. Can anyone else advise?
@Dave Ward
Saving the video is nothing special - 'mplayer' on Linux (and probably other operating systems I haven't checked) has an option to save video to a file.
No doubt the civil 'servants' prefer to use the most expensive and inconvenient video distribution system possible - but they are using other people's money - and they think the CRU is staffed by scientists! (i.e. they are ripping off UK taxpayers - what else is new?)
I agree that Deben's logic on China warrants additional scrutiny: He wants to reduce AGW, by allowing China to make AGW worse, by destroying the UK's economy, and making himself richer in the process. Is that the simple summary?
At one point around half way Lilley asked them if they accepted that the models exaggerated the warming; Kennedy replied to Lilley that the CCC did not rely only on climate models, but also used "the historical record and energy balance models". Surely the climate models should themselves take into account the other two "lines of evidence" as they were described. I thought Lilley in particular did an excellent job of probing them, but the questioning moves on so quickly that even Perry Mason would struggle to find a killer question. Kennedy and Deben are also adept at slithering away from giving a straight answer. On the whole I thought the session gave us cause for hope. It will still take some time before the whole thing is ridiculed, but it is slowly starting to happen.
Kennedy is truly moving the goal posts at 10:20:20 as he claims that the models do not involve short times scales under 50 years. Up til now the time window for falsification of the models was supposed to be 17 years (per Santer):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/19/santers-17-years-needed-for-a-sign-of-climate-change-compared-against-the-ipcc-models/