Petition to the President

Guest Post by David Holland

Dick Lindzen has sent to President Trump a letter and petition signed by some 300 scientists and experts (H/T Anthony Watts). The petition is for the US to withdraw from the UNFCCC. I had some difficulty accessing it but eventually located a pdf of the letter and the petition itself here.

I'm sure Dick speaks for many BH readers as well some of our MPs. Even at the high water mark in 2008 only a little over half of British voters thought humans were responsible for most global warming and less than half thought it a pressing problem. Recent opinion polls now show that barely 10% of the public regard climate change as a serious concern.  Few can now dispute the global agricultural benefits of increased carbon dioxide concentration, but in the UK and elsewhere we are seeing the chronic health damage resulting from the dash to diesel subsidised by foolish governments.

Hopefully when Parliament debates the Grand Repeal Bill some of our smarter MPs will push to dump any directives requiring reductions in carbon dioxide emissions or support for the UNFCCC.  

Upper Tribunal Decision

Guest post by David Holland

I have temporarily put on the Internet a scanned copy of the decision of the Upper Tribunal to refuse my appeal in regard to my request to the University of Cambridge.   I have also posted my oral arguments to that Tribunal.   Naturally I entirely disagree with this decision as well as the First Tier Tribunal refusal in regard to the ZODs held by the Met Office, which was discussed at CLB.   The Upper Tribunal refused me permission to appeal it.   Taken together these two decisions largely if not wholly exempt climate change information from the EIR.

I am not inclined to pursue either judgement and shall leave it to readers to make their own judgment as to why the climate scientists involved in these two cases do not want to disclose the environmental information they hold.

Tribunal Dates

This is a guest post by David Holland

BH readers may recall that I reported here that Tom Osborn had jumped the gun at CLB suggesting that I had not appealed the First Tier Tribunal decision to uphold the Met Office refusal to disclose the AR4 ZODs.

On Monday afternoon, 29 February if any BH readers are in London with nothing better to do they might look in at Field House, 15 Breams Building, EC4A 1DZ, before 2 pm to hear my oral request to the Upper Tribunal that it grant me permission to appeal.  I might also mention that my appeal to the Upper Tribunal on the University of Cambridge refusal to disclose Peter Wadhams RE report is also listed to be heard at Field House at 10:30 am on 15 April.

Osborn jumps the gun - and gets deleted

Guest post by David Holland

By chance I happened upon a guest blog post by Tim Osborn a few days ago.   Its not the way I found it, but if you google "david holland site:climate-lab-book.ac.uk" it is at the top of list today.   If you click on the link you get an error message but, as I write this, if you click the down arrow after the link you see the cached version, as of 15 November, which apart from my comment copied below is, I think, how it was when I last saw it.

Tim was reporting on the fact the First Tier Tribunal had upheld the Met Office refusal to disclose any and all historic Zero Order Drafts of any IPCC assessment.   I will let BH Readers comment upon the post, but I did not object to it, as I thought Tim came off second best.   Perhaps someone leant upon Ed and maybe on balance it could have been wise to snip any comments that were inappropriate.   However, to remove without trace of it, a published controversial blog is emblematic of the concerns I have with climate science.   Only squeaky-clean consensus views get, or remain, published.  

On 18 November, the Upper Tribunal agreed to hear my application for permission to appeal, which will be heard in London next year and I will let you know date and venue when I have it.   My comment at Climate Lab Book, which was made after the cached copy, is:

David Holland November 22, 2015 at 6:29 pm
Tim,

It might be a bit soon to signal the end of requests for environmental information on the IPCC assessments. The MO case could end up as marking the end of routine refusals.   As I am sure you know that the First Tier Tribunal decisions are not binding and this case has yet to be heard by the Upper Tribunal, the decision of which is binding upon the parties in the UK, but can considered by the Compliance Committee of the Aarhus Convention, which has previously reprimanded several Parties including the UK

The UK transposition of the Convention and Directive into UK law is in error in some important respects such as the ‘emissions rule’, and the application of the regulations.   There can be no dispute but that the raison d’être of the IPCC is to relate human emissions of CO2 to global temperature.   In its 2012 report to the Council and the European Parliament, the Commission described the ‘emissions rule’ as the “legal presumption that the public interest served by disclosure prevails if the request relates to emissions into the environment”.

Diary date - FOI tribunal edition

This is a guest post by David Holland

At 10 am On Friday 17 April, in Northampton, I have the dubious pleasure of squaring up for the second time against the Met Office over Zero Order Drafts of an IPCC Assessment Report. I am no Perry Mason and the hearing was not my idea, so I am not recommending that anyone turn up for a stellar performance from me. But if anyone in the area is contemplating an appeal of an FOI decision, it is an opportunity to see an oral hearing.

As you may know at the first oral contest with the Met Office, over the seven AR5 ZODs that had not been leaked, I lost.

Click to read more ...

Candidate Stocker?

I have heard rumours that Thomas Stocker might be a candidate to take over from ‘Pachy’ as the next Chairman of the IPCC. This now seems more likely than not (H/T Judith Curry). I’m not sure how many decision makers will see this but perhaps some letters to MPs might be in order.

For some of us Stocker first came to our notice in Climategate 2009. In May 2009, Phil Jones told Peter Thorne at the Met Office:

I did send an email to Thomas Stocker alerting him up to comment #17.[on ClimateAudit] These are all about who changed what in various chapters of AR4. I expect these to get worse with AR5.

Then, in July 2009, Tim Osborn asked Stocker for a letter to convince the Information Commissioner to refuse my information requests. Several letters were sent to the UEA and Met Office referring to an “overarching principle of confidentiality” and a vague threat to UK institutions. These resulted in their refusal to disclose critically important information and the notorious statement in the evidence of Universities UK to the Justice Committee

Click to read more ...

The human rights of Professor Wadhams

This is a guest post by David Holland.

I recently received the Information Tribunal decision in respect of my request to the University of Cambridge for Peter Wadhams' AR5 Review Editors’ reports.  It is short and to the point. The Tribunal dismissed my appeal on two separate grounds. As I read the decision, if unchallenged, it means that no employee of a public authority participating in any IPCC assessment, even if entirely at the public’s expense, can be required under the EIR to disclose environmental information created or received in connection with it, if their work was entirely voluntary.

Firstly, the Tribunal decided, based solely on Aarhus article 5(1)(a) that the Commissioner was entitled to re-interpret what I thought were the clear plain English definitions of “information held” in the Convention, Directive and Regulations to mean the opposite of what the Secretary the State’s statutory code of practice states.

Click to read more ...

Informality in the ICO

This is a guest post by David Holland.

When the Information Commissioner's Office investigate a complaint its recent practice is for the case officer to outline what he or she proposes to do, beginning with,

Where possible the Information Commissioner prefers complaints to be resolved informally and we ask both parties to be open to compromise. With this in mind, I will write to the public authority and ask it to revisit your request. It may wish to reverse or amend its position. If it does, it will contact you again directly about this.

However, in the case of Peter Wadhams' Review Editor's reports as discussed here in April, the next thing that happened was a Decision Notice arriving by post. The key paragraph 11 of the Decision Notice reported that the University of Cambridge...

Click to read more ...

Ends and Means

Guest Post by David Holland

The tragic event of Friday reminded me of a lunch-time chat that I had with a Russian, at the London meeting at which Ross McKitrick presented the Fraser Institute’s independent analysis of AR4 in February 2007.   Like others, I had been disappointed that the Russians had signed up to Kyoto and even more disappointed at the horse trading over gas prices that had led to it.   I had heard of Andrei Illarionov and knew he had been a close advisor to Vladimir Putin.   However, I must confess that I thought some of the shocking and frightening things that he said of Mr Putin might have been sour grapes.   Over the years since, and particularly after Friday, I have realised that Dr Illarionov was perhaps too soft on him.

It's worth looking back at the Guardian of 22 May 2004 with its headline “Putin throws lifeline to Kyoto as EU backs Russia joining WTO”

President Vladimir Putin yesterday reversed months of fervent opposition to the Kyoto protocol and agreed to speed up Russia's ratification of the treaty.

The change of heart - which provides the ratification necessary for the protocol to come into effect - follows a decision by the EU at a summit in Moscow yesterday to drop its objections to Russia joining the World Trade Organisation.

“The fact that the European Union has met us halfway at the negotiations on membership in the WTO cannot but influence Moscow's positive attitude towards ratification of the Kyoto protocol. We will accelerate our movement towards ratifying this protocol,” Mr Putin said at the summit.

In September 2004 Businessweek reported ‘Russia’s path to Kyoto’:

When the EU asked Russia to join in on Kyoto, not surprisingly, “Russia said: What's in it for us?” explains Annie Petsonk, international counsel for Environmental Defense (ED). Russia wanted more than the dollars from emissions trading, it wanted EU support for its entry into the World Trade Organization.

“But the EU wanted Russia in Kyoto badly enough to compromise and support its WTO membership bid. Europe will allow Russia to keep natural gas prices lower at home -- as long as Russia agrees to slowly raise them. The Continent's companies also realized that having Russia sign on to Kyoto would help them because they could meet their own Kyoto targets more cheaply by buying Russian emissions reductions.”

In fact no one bought many Russian emission credits but much of Europe became dependent on Russian gas.   Whether we realised it then or not, gas is a political weapon that we gave Russia in exchange for Kyoto.   Russia has abandoned Kyoto but still has its weapon unless we follow suit, and reopen our coal-fired stations and 're-life' our nuclear power stations in the short term.     For the longer term we need to get fracking and developing safe, socially acceptable and economic low carbon energy sources including nuclear. 

Dr Illarionov came in for some harsh words but I think history may judge him better.

Help needed

This is a guest post by David Holland

Readers may be aware that after WGI’s AR5 Report was released last year, I requested the Review Editors’ Reports from DECC, and from the Universities of Reading and Cambridge. The officials at DECC, who had moved across from Defra, followed their custom of making sure they do not to hold anything they might have to disclose. They took no steps to possess them and denied holding them. Reading appeared to have learnt from its AR4 experience and released the ones it held without a fuss. But Cambridge refused. I did not choose the title, “Regulator Capture”, in the Bishop Hill post on this matter, but now as I deal with my Tribunal written submission on Cambridge, it looks appropriate. The University of Cambridge claim that Professor Peter Wadhams’ records were not held to any extent for its own purposes because he had served the IPCC in a private capacity - just as Met Office Chief Scientist, John Mitchell, and others had claimed, unsuccessfully, in 2008. For this excuse Cambridge are relying on a relatively new Advice Note that I hope to convince the Tribunal has no basis in law.

Click to read more ...

Stocker in Action

This is a guest post by David Holland

Simon Anthony’s excellent report on Thomas Stocker in Oxford reminds me that I should add a postscript to the piece that Andrew and I posted after the 33rd IPCC Session when the IPCC decided to make the drafts and comments of its Assessment Reports confidential. We did not say so at the time but that was the handiwork work of Thomas Stocker. How he did it is a good story in the style of the "hockey stick" and I have posted a rough draft of it here. In short, it was achieved by the sort of chicanery that we have come to expect from the "directing circle". However for the first time to my knowledge the British Government seems to have has woken up to what’s going and in a letter sent to my MP, has stated,

We are aware that this new text would mean that reviewers would not have the opportunity to see how their comments had been addressed by IPCC authors before acceptance of the final report. It was not the IPCC’s intention to change the procedures in this way and it is likely a drafting error. Indeed, the intention of the update in the procedures was to increase openness in the way that IPCC reports are prepared. We understand that the IPCC is aware of this issue and intends to address it at the next appropriate opportunity.

We shall see - but I will not be holding my breath. If the rule is agreed to be that Expert Reviewers get to see the responses to their comments before each draft of the AR5 Report is published what is to stop them from blowing the whistle if we have another bit of chicanery?

Update:  As Paul points out in the comments, Steve McIntyre did a great forensic post on Stocker's earmark in January this year.