There's the science and there's the Vatican science

I was sent a link to this statement by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the subject of climate change. It's gloriously over the top, as you would expect from something authored by Schellnhuber and Sachs, among others.

This century is on course to witness unprecedented environmental changes. In particular, the projected climate changes or, more appropriately, climate disruptions, when coupled with ongoing massive species extinctions and the destruction of ecosystems, will doubtless leave their indelible marks on both humanity and nature.

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Green policy - complicity in genocide?

Matt Ridley has republished his Times column from yesterday at his blog. It picks up many of the themes that have been the focus of BH in recent days, particularly the curious moral corner into which the greens have worked themselves:

Without abundant fuel and power, prosperity is impossible: workers cannot amplify their productivity, doctors cannot preserve vaccines, students cannot learn after dark, goods cannot get to market. Nearly 700 million Africans rely mainly on wood or dung to cook and heat with, and 600 million have no access to electric light. Britain with 60 million people has nearly as much electricity-generating capacity as the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, minus South Africa, with 800 million.

His post also contains the valuable information that Britain has, like the USA, banned investment in fossil fuel power stations in developing countries.

Matt is an admirably polite writer, even in the face of gross provocation from environmentalists. Tom Fuller, who has also been discussing these matters, is much blunter about what it all means:

[T]o be agonizingly clear, there is a case to be made for saying the aggregate effect of Green policy in the developing world is perilously close to being complicit in genocide.

That's about the size of it.

On encyclicals

This is a guest post by Cumbrian Lad.

Climate change and the coming encyclical

Today we see another set of meetings in Rome. One is that of the Pontifical Academy of Science, and the other the Heartland Institute. Both organisations are hoping to influence the widely heralded encyclical from Pope Francis that will include references to climate change. Given that the text of the encyclical has already been finalised, and is currently being translated, there may not be much that either party can do to affect its content. The headlines they are making will be building up expectations on both sides, and it's worth having a closer look at the background to an encyclical. 

What is an encyclical?

Simply put, it is a circular letter written by the Pope to the Church which forms a part of the Ordinary Magisterium or teaching of the Church. It is not a formal statement of the type that is regarded as infallible doctrine, as it usually deals with moral guidance and the application of existing doctrine to current matters. In the past encyclicals have dealt with such subjects as war and social issues of all types.

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The morality of the green academic

A few days ago, I mentioned Professor Corey Bradshaw, the University of Adelaide academic who was being extremely vocal in his attempts to get Bjorn Lomborg defunded and ostracised.

I was blocked by Professor Bradshaw soon after my post appeared, but I gather that he is still hard at work demonstrating his willingness to sacrifice other people's careers to his own political imperatives:

Last week I was asked to exam a @uwanews PhD thesis. After the #LomborgDebacle wp.me/phhT4-4rC, I refuse. Apologies to the student.

What a lot of collateral damage the environmentalist academic can tolerate!

Update on Apr 27, 2015 by Bishop Hill

While we're on the subject of greens, how about Vivienne Westwood's comments about David Cameron's dead son?

Or what about the guy who thinks that Bjorn's Lomborg's call for spending on clean water for Africans is "warped" and "blinkered"?

Labour's energy solution

Nick Butler in the FT reports that Labour's big brains (allegedly) Ed Balls has come up with an innovative solution for the impending energy crisis: a new layer of bureaucracy in the shape of an energy security board.

Details are, according to the FT, "sketchy" and I'm certainly somewhat uncertain whether a group of environmentalists and Labour party stooges are going to achieve anything beyond the inflation of their own bank balances. Nevertheless, Butler seems to think it's a step in the right direction:

The complexity of the challenge is why a security board is potentially a good idea as part of a much needed renewal of energy policy.

You would have thought that the FT would have understood that when you are in a complex situation, the last thing you need are freeloading bureaucrats.

The shonky cost of carbon

A new paper has appeared in Nature Climate Change which puts a social cost of global warming at $200 per ton of carbon dioxide. The authors are Frances Moore and Delavane Diaz of Stanford.

The SCC is of course is a figure that greens can manipulate pretty much to their hearts' content - witness Frank Ackerman's hilarious $1000 figure of a few years back. The entertainment comes in working out what particular dodges have been pulled to hike the figure upwards and the new paper explains that it is picking up on an earlier study by Dell et al, which sought to make revised estimates of the damage that climate change would cause by examining the effect of short-term fluctuations in the weather on economic output.

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Another unthinking BBC correspondent

Helen Briggs, the BBC's latest environmentalist recruit has decided to throw herself - and the thus the corporation's considerable weight - behind the greens' divestment campaign. Her advertorial today appears to have been written for her by someone in Greenpeace or the Guardian, without even the pretence of having any news value.

The "pros and cons" section has to be seen to be believed. If you can credit it, the BBC has an employee who doesn't seem to realise that people in Africa are dying in their hundreds of thousands for lack of access to fossil fuels. Does Ms Briggs think that dead Africans are not a "con" of her campaign?

SMH - the voice of the hidden vested interest

The Sydney Morning Herald is giving much publicity to the anti-Lomborg rantings of someone called Professor Ray Wills.

Adjunct Professor Wills, who has been a spokesman for the university on climate change issues for the past seven years, said there was a lot of disquiet among the university ranks about the centre.

"The appointment tarnishes the reputation of the university," he told Fairfax Media.

"It's like appointing Brian Burke to look after your economics.

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Lewis on the SciAm article

This article, by Nic Lewis, is crossposted from Climate Audit.

A Scientific American article concerning Bjorn Stevens’ recent paper “Rethinking the lower bound on aerosol radiative forcing” has led to some confusion. The article states, referring to a blog post of mine at Climate Audit, “The misinterpretation of Stevens’ paper began with Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist.”. My blog post showed how climate sensitivity estimates given in Lewis and Curry (2014) (LC14) would change if the estimate for aerosol forcing from Stevens’ recent paper were used instead of the estimate thereof given in the IPCC 5th Assessment Working Group 1 report (AR5 WG1). To clarify, Bjorn Stevens has never suggested that my blog post misinterpreted or misrepresented his paper.

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This is what ambulance chasing looks like

Not wanting to be outdone on the disgusting specimen front, James Murray of Business Green is trying to make climate change hay out of the plight of Mediterreanean refugees.

Is there a competition on to see who can be the most revolting climate change activist at the moment?

Update on Apr 25, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Gaia Fawkes picks up the story too.

Lomborg and the Africans

Bjorn Lomborg argues that we should focus our spending on immediate problems, such as ensuring Africans have access to clean water. For this he is vilified, attacked and has his livelihood threatened.

His critics wish to see money spent on climate change mitigation measures instead.

A tragedy for the Africans.

When drilling isn't drilling

In a startlingly misleading article today, the Telegraph is trying to insinuate a link between oil and gas drilling and earthquakes. It's one of those articles that is so bad that nobody wants to own up to having written it. It's an agency piece, but without even the name of the agency!

Richard Black and co are trying to hype things up of course:

Scientists more certain than ever that oil, gas drilling causes earth tremors

...but you wouldn't look to ECIU if you're interested in the facts. If you read a little further it seems that this is an article about wastewater injection.

"The picture is very clear" that wastewater injection can cause faults to move, said USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth.

Until recently, Oklahoma - one of the biggest energy-producing states - had been cautious about linking the spate of quakes to drilling. But the Oklahoma Geological Survey acknowledged earlier this week that it is "very likely" that recent seismic activity was caused by the injection of wastewater into disposal wells.

They are beyond redemption.

SciAm's climate sensitivity car crash

Updated on Apr 25, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Apr 25, 2015 by Bishop Hill

When the climate alarmist is struggling to make his case, he tends to reach for either the ad-hominem argument or some other rhetorical technique from the depths of the propagandist armoury.

Readers will recall the Bjorn Stevens paper on aerosols, which I suggested at the time gave alarmism "one helluva beating", as indeed it does. My headline seemed to amuse others and it was echoed by James Delingpole at Breitbart, his article later reproduced at Fox News.

The inevitable response was a statement by Stevens that sought to calm the troubled waters, suggesting that unidentified parties were claiming that it was the end of the global warming hypothesis. This was a fairly obvious straw man argument, but one that was sufficiently robust for Scientific American, which has now picked up the story in rather embarrassing fashion.

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For the environmentalist, lies are a way of life

Global warming is real - it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world.

Bjorn Lomborg on climate change

Now take a look at what environmentalists and lefties have to say. The tsunami of lies is quite, quite extraordinary:

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The climatologist's privilege

The BBC has infamously decided that climatologists should not be challenged on air. They are, in the corporation's considered view Science Personified; the very voice of truth. As if to emphasise the point, the Today programme this morning invited Sir Brian Hoskins on air to talk about climate change. Ostensibly this was to allow him to air his grievance that the election debate has largely eschewed consideration of the subject, but also gave him plenty of time to discuss his views on climate policy and what he sees as the need to prioritise climate over wealth creation. And all without a word of challenge from anyone.

The climatologist's privilege is creeping ever wider by the looks of it.

Audio below.

Hoskins, Today 22 April 2015

Update on Apr 22, 2015 by Bishop Hill

In Unthreaded, reader Harry Passfield notes that James Lovelock was invited onto Today last weekend to make the same point as Hoskins about the lack of climate change on the election agenda.