Commissioners commission

Via Breitbart, I find an interesting interview with the EU's chief scientific adviser Professor Anne Glover, who is bemoaning the attempts by politicians within the commission to, ahem, "commission" scientific evidence to support their political goals:

“Let’s imagine a Commissioner over the weekend thinks, ‘Let’s ban the use of credit cards in the EU because credit cards lead to personal debt’. So that commissioner will come in on Monday morning and say to his or her Director General, ‘Find me the evidence that demonstrates that this is the case.’”

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Bengtsson and the left

As Judy Curry notes, the Bengtsson affair is going to be very damaging for the climatology profession. From the press reports today it seems clear that Bengtsson was threatened with ostracisation from the rest of the "community" because of his temerity in offering to provide scientific advice to GWPF. It seems that at least one climatologist demanded that his name be removed from a forthcoming joint paper with Bengtsson.

As a result, the word "McCarthyism" has been bandied about. The behaviour of climatologists does not carry an official stamp of course (although I can't say I've noticed any protests from Ed Davey either) but the effects look rather similar: you toe the line or you will be cut off. A senior scientist like Bengtsson could perhaps consider carrying on regardless - hard, but not impossible. For a younger scientist it would of course be the end of their career.

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Another scientivist

Anthony points out the eructions of an Exeter University geographer named Stephan Harrison, who says that debating sceptics is like wrestling with pigs. 

Ho hum - another day, another academic making a fool of themselves.

Nevertheless, Dr Harrison has an interesting CV. Apparently his research work on glaciers is centred on Patagonia although he previously worked on the Tian Shan mountains in Central Asia. Probably fair to say that he has a very large carbon footprint indeed. It's therefore no surprise to see that he is also an very keen environmental activist. He is:

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David King at the ECC

Sir David King, the chemist and former GCSA who now advises William Hague on climate change is to appear before the Energy and Climate Change Committee at around 9:45.

The direct link to the meeting is here, for those who want to try different players. I have emailed the committee about their continuing use of Silverlight, and they tell me they are going to discuss the point in future.

Walport at the GSC

Last night found me at Glasgow's Science Centre to listen to Mark Walport talking about climate change.

In common with so many of these kinds of talks this had something of the air of a sermon about it. Almost everybody in the congregation was already convinced of the case for radical decarbonisation, right from the greenhouse effect, through the models, to the impacts, the economics and the wisdom of covering the country in windfarms. Walport said little that would have raised them from their complacency. The exceptions were when he pointed out to a questioner from gas-fields of Falkirk that natural gas was probably a good idea in current circumstances and when he spoke of the importance of having a conversation about climate change in a liberal society. Many in the liberal intelligentsia are of course deeply opposed to conversations on the subject of climate, or at least to those involving sceptics.

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Walport and his evidence

Updated on Mar 12, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Another entertaining episode in the hearings this morning was where Mark Walport was asked about Matt Ridley's suggestion that global warming would bring net benefits over 40-50 years. This conclusion is based on Richard Tol's metaanalysis of mainstream economic studies into such questions (see key figure below).

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CSAs at the Energy and Climate Change Committee

Mark Walport and David Mackay are up in front of the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee in an hour's time. A second panel will feature Greg Barker and David Warrilow. The latter is the very long-standing UK representative on the IPCC and someone who keeps himself very much in the backgrounds, so it will be interesting to see what he has to say.

Watch here.

Direct link here.

Booker on the Somerset floods

Being a resident of Somerset, Christopher Booker is in a good position to get into the nitty gritty of the truth behind the floods this year.

This morning he has set out the full case that there was a cold-blooded government decision to allow the Levels to return to nature, with residents left to fend for themselves. The Levels were of course a creation of the state, having been drained and enclosed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at goverment command, and the residents therefore relied upon the state to maintain their waterways and the security of their homes. Now, on a green-tinged whim, the state has tossed them aside in favour of a few wading birds, lives and livelihoods wrecked in the process.

As someone once said, the state is not your friend.

EA working with Labour against government?

Inside the Environment Agency is reporting that he has received a letter from a potential whistleblower who claims to have evidence that Agency officials are conspiring with the Labour party to undermine the government.

I have been following your blog for the last few months. You make some truthful claims but they are only the tip of the iceberg. I have been working for the Environment Agency as a team leader for six years. Your last post on political hypocrisy is what has prompted this email. I can give you the evidence you need showing senior managers in the South West conspiring with Labour MPs to discredit this government over the past two to three years, which I believe have made the floods far worse than they otherwise would have been. The MPs involved are: xxxxx (edited out for legal reasons - Labour MPs based in South West towns and cities)

There's always the possibility that it's not true, but it might be worth laying in supplies of popcorn, just in case.

+++Alas Smith+++

In his interview with the Today programme this morning, Environment Agency chairman Lord Smith was asked about the idea that it was the policy of the Agency to allow the Somerset Levels to flood (audio below; 7:00mins for key quotes). Smith was asked specifically about a policy document from 2008 which referred to the possibility - so-called option 6 - of allowing parts of the Levels to flood:

Policy Unit 8- Somerset Levels and Moors

Policy option 6 – Take action to increase the frequency of flooding to deliver benefits locally or elsewhere, which may constitute an overall flood risk reduction.

Note: This policy option involves a strategic increase in flooding in allocated areas, but is not intended to affect the risk to individual properties.

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Showing one's hand

Republican lawmakers in Washington have introduced a bill into Congress that would force the Environmental Protection Agency to reveal the science behind new regulations it puts in place.

“Public policy should come from public data, not based on the whims of far-left environmental groups,” Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, the author of the bill, said in a statement.

...

“For far too long, the EPA has sponsored regulations that have placed a crippling financial burden on economic growth in this country with no public evidence to justify their actions,”

The big EAsy

The attempts to link the flooding in the south of England to climate don't seemed to have gained much traction and attention is now turning to the performance of the Environment Agency, which is probably where it should have been all along.

The Sunday Telegraph says that agency chairman Lord Smith is under pressure, not least because he has no fewer than ten other jobs, while James Forsyth in the Mail on Sunday reckons that Owen Paterson is already looking around for a replacement. Even the organiser of the Glastonbury festival - an enthusiastic climate change campaigner - seems to think that the problem is more to do with the agency's refusal to dredge rivers than global warming.

Walport the soothsayer

Listen to this interview with chief scientific adviser Sir Mark Walport in which he describes the relationship between extreme weather and climate change (link below).

...we know that, statistically, in those parts of the world where there is rain there will be more rain, we know that as water levels rise there will be more flooding...

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, unmitigated tosh. We "know" nothing about future rainfall. We have a hypothesis coming out of a very iffy set of computer models. This sort of claim, made without even the merest hint of uncertainty, is why people are so suspicious of the utterances of chief scientific advisers.

Walport on Nicky Campbell show

Walport responses

Mark Walport's call for a grown up debate on climate change has prompted a couple of responses in the letters pages.

Sir, Sir Mark Walport (“Top scientist tells climate sceptics to grow up”, Jan 27) is right that we need a grown-up debate about what to do about climate change. However, that can only take place if some light is shone on the scientific uncertainties around the matter. Most scientists agree that man is affecting the global climate, but this agreement is insufficient to inform policy as there is no consensus about the degree of man’s contribution to rising temperatures compared with other natural factors beyond our control. Given the expense of many of the proposed climate mitigations, it is right that these uncertainties are discussed openly as part of Sir Mark’s grown-up debate. It may well be that we are best to do nothing for the moment.

Robert Birch

Brompton, N Yorks

Sir, I should remind Sir Mark Walport that there are more Fellows in the Royal Society who are sceptical of the ways of the IPCC than Fellows who work within the fields covered by that organisation. If the climate change case comes to be seen as having been oversold, and billions of pounds misinvested, the credibility of science advice will take a terrible blow.

Professor Michael J. Kelly, FRS

University of Cambridge

Walport's reverse thinking

Hidden behind the Times paywall, I gather that Sir Mark Walport is being rude:

Climate sceptics should stop attacking the science of global warming and have a “grown-up” debate, the Government’s most senior scientist has said.

Sir Mark Walport accused climate sceptics of questioning the scientific evidence in order to dodge the more challenging question of what to do about it.

OK, so let me get this right. The world hasn't warmed for 17 years or so. Climate scientists can only hypothesise as to the reasons why. We can't detect any significant changes in the surface temperature record. The evidence about climate sensitivity is that it's much lower than we had been led to believe (but the IPCC obfuscated the issue).

And Sir Mark thinks we are wrong to discuss the science?!

What does this tell you about our chief scientific adviser?