Off

It's the Easter break and the family is going to take some time off. Blogging will therefore be light to non-existent for a few days. However, Today's Moderator and Josh may post topical stuff from time to time.

Science's pollution problem

Science Direct covers what looks like a very interesting paper by Arthur Caplan, which looks at science's "pollution problem", namely the ability of junk science to get published.

The pollution of science and medicine by plagiarism, fraud, and predatory publishing is corroding the reliability of research," writes Dr. Caplan. "Yet neither the leadership nor those who rely on the truth of science and medicine are sounding the alarm loudly or moving to fix the problem with appropriate energy.

A declaration of orthodoxy

When a mainstream climate scientist comes up with some findings that go against the narrative of impending catastrophe they usually feel obliged (or are obliged by others) to take steps to distance themselves from the implications - hiding them, issuing declarations of orthodoxy, or saying something rude about dissenters.

We saw something of this in Bjorn Stevens' recent paper on aerosol forcing, with the implications for climate sensitivity left to one side. Yesterday, however, Stevens went futher and issued a declaration of his absolute global warming faith.

Many scientists (myself included) believe that a warming of more than 2ºC from a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is consistent with both my new study and our best understanding. Some insight into our reasoning can be found in a number of excellent blogs reporting on a workshop on Earth’s Climate Sensitivities, which I co-organized just last week, e.g., http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/reflections-on-ringberg

Click to read more ...

Johansen's climate sensitivity estimate

April 1st is an interesting choice of date on which to release a new paper on climate sensitivity, but nevertheless that is the choice of Nature Climate Change. The new estimate has been produced by a team led a new name in this area: Daniel Johansen of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The only member of the team who may be familiar to readers is Claudia Tebaldi.

The article's headline conclusion is that ECS cannot be lower than 2°C.

Here we analyse how estimates of ECS change as observations accumulate over time and estimate the contribution of potential causes to the hiatus. We find that including observations over the hiatus reduces the most likely value for ECS from 2.8 °C to 2.5 °C, but that the lower bound of the 90% range remains stable around 2 °C. We also find that the hiatus is primarily attributable to El Niño/Southern Oscillation-related variability and reduced solar forcing.

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Twotalitarianism

I must say I am watching the behaviour of the Twitter management carefully, as it looks somewhat alarming. As Anthony reports, Tom Nelson has been suspended for asking if a Katharine Hayhoe graph was "crap". That's asking, not saying. Meanwhile Gavin Schmidt describes a different graph as crap (that's saying, not asking) and it's all fine and dandy.

Mike Hill: light

Some interesting developments on the Mike Hill front. In this post I will discuss an email received from Hill's wife, saying that I have maligned her husband. I am happy to bring her points to readers' attention.

She raises a number of specific issues, which I will address one at a time.

1.Articles to which you refer do not indicate a job application to Cuadrilla.

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Diary dates, find us some energy edition

In May, the Glasgow Science Centre is holding a debate which might be summarised as "OMG where is the energy going to come from?".

Join us and a highly-qualified guest panel, chaired by writer and broadcaster Iain Macwhirter, on Tuesday 5^th of May to discuss the challenges we all face as the energy sector moves into an uncertain future.

Challenges include:

•Tackling the impact of climate change and responding to carbon-cutting legislation
•Finding new sources of conventional energy including oil and gas
•Developing new renewable energy sources such as offshore wind and marine
•The future of nuclear.

The guest panel includes:

Peter McGregor, International Public Policy Institute, University of Strathclyde
Gordon Ballard, Chairman, Schlumberger UK
Ken Cronin, Chief Executive, UK Offshore Oil & Gas
Niall Stuart, Chief Executive, Scottish Renewables

 Tickets are free and available here.

We ♥ fracking

Ben Webster in the Times is having a lot of fun at the expense of Greenpeace, whose poll on public attitudes to unconventional oil and gas rather rebounded when it emerged that more people were in favour of developing a shale gas industry than were against.

Paywalled here.

Not tired of climate change

As readers here are aware, Joe Smith's chief claim to fame is that in the first years of the 21st century he managed to pervert the BBC's environmental output, ensuring that the green political agenda was adhered to across the corporation's output, from comedy to current affairs.

During today's BBC World Service show  Are We Tired of Talking About Climate Change?, Smith seemed to admit that this had been a "tactical error" with the narrative of gloom and doom apparently switching the public away from the desired political programme and inducing little more than an extreme case of apathy. You have to admire his chutzpah.

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Graunocrisy -Josh 319

Well £600 million is a lot of money, you have to act responsible and stuff.

Cartoons by Josh

A lack of self-awareness

I caught most of Costing the Earth today, in which some of the problems with mainstream climate science were discussed. It featured a bunch of alarmists and ex-alarmists discussing aspects of the science that they had until quite recently decried sceptics for mentioning. Towards the end they wondered whether sceptics shouldn't perhaps be admitted to the debate. I'm not sure that they quite grasped the irony of this position and certainly, when the presenter asked about sceptics being presented as crackpots, nobody deigned to answer.

It's definitely worth a listen.

The Guardian backs big oil

Barry Woods points us to the transcript of a most amusing Guardian podcast on the subject of that organ's latest bit of posturing. It seems that the divestment campaign has yet to actually have any impact on the Guardian's own investments:

Amanda Michel: You know, there are big questions about asking people to do something that we ourselves have not done.

Aleks Krotoski: What Amanda is talking about is sorting out the Guardian's own pots of money, their investments.

Amanda Michel: It will seem like hypocrisy.

Alan Rusbridger: We have about £600 million invested at the moment, and I don't think our fund managers could say exactly how much was invested in fossil fuel. But it is there, we haven't said that it shouldn't be, so we have got money invested. And so, if we're going to be calling on people to divest, people are bound to ask "Well, is that what the Guardian's going to do?"

I have to say I agree with Ms Michel: it will indeed seem like hypocrisy for the Guardian to keep backing big oil in this way.

The perils of over-promotion

Prominent anti-fracking campaigner and prospective parliamentary candidate Mike Hill has been very good at promoting himself in recent years. But media attention can be a double-edged sword, as Mr Hill has found to his cost in recent days. Last week he was the subject of a two stories at Guido Fawkes blog, when it emerged that he had once applied for a job at Cuadrilla, that he had pretended spun things so as to present himself as an adviser to the European Union, the Royal Society and DECC, when his role had been little more than to be involved in discussions with them.

Today he is in the Times, which reveals that Mr Hill helped produce a report on fracking that persuaded a doctors' organisation to take a stand against fracking. However, Mr Hill's anti-fracking background was not revealed and with his colourful background now revealed to all it could be argued that the doctors' statement is now a dead letter.

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Simon's Caribbean climate capers

The BBC really is ramping up the pressure on climate change. Having made my way back to the episcopal palace late yesterday afternoon I collapsed in a corner to catch up on my reading. Meanwhile, on the TV in the corner was Simon Reeve's Caribbean, a travelogue show which this week featured visits to Venezuela and Colombia.

I wasn't paying any attention until, towards the end, I was forced to sit up by the (perhaps inevitable) introduction of the climate debate. This centred upon Reeve's visit to the Sierra Nevada mountains of Columbia and an Amerindian tribe called the Kogi. You got a hint of what was coming when the first Kogi interviewed told the camera that her people did not damage the Earth (from 51:00). But it really kicked off from 54:30 when the same interviewee asked:

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An unbalanced panel

I'm in Bath at the moment, appearing on BBC The Big Questions. The show was broadcast live at 10am here, but we are asked not to mention our involvement ahead of time. It should be on iPlayer in due course.

The subject is:

Are we right to impose environmental costs on future generations?

The show's panel also features Tony Juniper, Ben Harris-Quinney of the Bow Group and Hannah Martin of Christian Climate Action. This is what Helen Czerski would refer to as an "unbalanced" panel, no doubt.