False alarm

New Scientist in 2005:

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age.

The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.

The slow-down, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in Montreal, Canada, this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

The American Geophysical Union press release 2010

New measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.

The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

Update on Mar 26, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Doug Keenan in the comments gives some of the backstory to the Bryden paper that was the source of the original New Scientist piece:

A scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory noticed that the paper had a simple error in arithmetic—and that when the error was corrected, there was no evidence of slowing circulation. The scientist, Petr Chylek, published his criticism of the paper in the popular journal Physics Today [2007]. I asked Chylek why his correction was not published in Nature. Chylek replied: "Although they [Nature] did not deny that my criticism was correct, they decided not to publish as being of no great interest to Nature readers".

Simon Lewis and the PCC

The Guardian reports that Dr Simon Lewis, an expert in tropical rain forests from the University of Leeds, has made a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about Jonathan Leake's Amazongate article in the Sunday Times.

Leake's article said that the IPCC had reported that 40% of the Amazonian rainforest was very sensitive to changes in rainfall and might therefore be wiped out by global warming. Leake observed that this claim was based on a WWF report that cited in turn a Nature paper that had nothing to do with rainfall.

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Russell panel minutes 25th Feb

Another set of minutes of Sir Muir Russell's panel has been published. Not much has happened.

• They are going to give £1500 to the Science Media Centre
• They are going to appoint a project manager
• Peter Clark says BP has not funded CRU in recent years
• Evidence to be published
• Norton and Clark to meet Jones and Osborn 

Climategate report coming soon

The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology has announced that it will publish its report on the Climategate emails on 31st March.

Offline

I'm offline tonight. It's the school show. Apparently the delight I have in store is a sci-fi eco-fable of some kind.

Mrs Hill says I'm not allowed to heckle.

THES article

I have an article about Climategate in the Times Higher Educational Supplement. See here.

GLOBE page at the House of Commons

The UK House of Commons register of all-party groups for GLOBE appears here. Not very interesting, but it looks as though the board may have changed recently. The officers of the Parliamentary group (Who may be different to the company board) are:

Stephen Byers
Graham Stuart
Barry Gardiner
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
Lord Oxburgh
Colin Challen
Eric Joyce

Readers have already noted Stephen Byers' recent problems. It's only fair therefore to note that Eric Joyce is a remarkable character - the first MP to claim more than £1m in expenses and on more than one occasion the most expensive MP in the house. He once famously claimed for three oil paintings on expenses "because they looked nice".

In 2009 Colin Challen called for all UK domestic flights to be phased out by the end of the year.

GLOBE - a vehicle for avoiding FoI

Reader, Cumbrian Lad, has been doing a sterling job researching the GLOBE organisation mentioned in earlier postings today, and which counts Lord Oxburgh as a director. It was a bit of an oversight for Lord O not to mention this, as GLOBE turns out to be quite an interesting body.

GLOVE's corporate structure and funding are not clear from its website, but Cumbrian Lad has discovered that it is a private limited company. Interesting that  - an organisation of legislators,  run as a private company. He has also obtained copies of its accounts and other information from Companies House.

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James Delingpole on the Economist

James Delingpole takes a swipe at the Economist's coverage of global warming, saying some nice things about the Hockey Stick Illusion in passing.

Thanks James!

Global sea ice normal

Global sea ice levels are pretty much in line with their long-term average. (Source: Cryosphere Today)

More peer review gatekeeping

Icecap has an interesting new article by three sceptic scientists - John McLean, Chris de Freitas and Bob Carter - describing the successful attempts to deny them a right of reply in the peer-reviewed literature.

The practice of editorial rejection of the authors’ response to criticism is unprecedented in our experience. It is surprising because it amounts to the editorial usurping of the right of authors to defend their paper and deprives readers from hearing all sides of a scientific discussion before they make up their own minds on an issue. It is declaring that the journal editor - or the reviewers to whom he defers - will decide if authors can defend papers that have already been positively reviewed and been published by that same journal. Such an attitude is the antithesis of productive scientific discussion.

Read the whole thing (PDF).

Chris Rapley goes all fair and balanced

Chris Rapley used to be the director of the British Antarctic Survey, a position he used to great effect as part of the campaign to scare us all into believing in global warming.

He now runs the Science Museum in London and seems to have altered his views somewhat:

The Science Museum is revising the contents of its new climate science gallery to reflect the wave of scepticism that has engulfed the issue in recent months.

The decision by the 100-year-old London museum reveals how deeply scientific institutions have been shaken by the public’s reaction to revelations of malpractice by climate scientists.

The museum is abandoning its previous practice of trying to persuade visitors of the dangers of global warming. It is instead adopting a neutral position, acknowledging that there are legitimate doubts about the impact of man-made emissions on the climate.

What is more, he has come over all reticent about his own views on global warming, refusing to offer an opinion one way or the other.

The times they are a-changing.

The (missing) story of O

The Register is reporting that Lord Oxburgh forgot to declare another competing interest:

Lord Oxburgh, a geologist by training and the former scientific advisor to the Ministry of Defence, was appointed to lead the enquiry into the scientific aspects of the Climategate scandal on Monday. But Oxburgh is also a director of GLOBE, the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment.

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Small world

I'm grateful to reader, Cumbrian Lad, who has pointed out something rather interesting. 

The seminar mentioned in the previous post is being organised by the Science Media Centre, an organisation we have met before, since they also organised the "what shall we do about the sceptics" meeting reported here the other day.

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Climate science in the media

If anyone is going to a seminar called Climate Science in the Media I'd be interested to have a report on the proceedings. Details of the meeting, which are shown below, were apparently distributed by email only:

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