More emails

Chris Horner has just had another batch of emails released to him, this time from the University of Arizona, where Hockey Team members Overpeck and Hughes are based. It's early days on the analysis of the content, but one message was sufficiently amusing for him to forward it to me.

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Sir John's emails

A few weeks back, readers may remember, the Information Commissioner ruled that where public servants used private email accounts to conduct public business, their messages were still subject to FOI. With this in mind I decided to ask the Met Office for Sir John Houghton's emails relating to the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. I copied my message to Sir John's email address at the John Ray Initiative - the evangelical programme which now appears to occupy much of his time.

Attentive students of the Climategate emails will have noticed that Sir John appeared to use a private email address for all of his work on this most controversial of reports.

A week or so ago, the Met Office replied.

I am writing to advise you that, following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established that the information you requested is not held by the Met Office. Sir John Houghton has also confirmed that he does not hold private e-mails relevant to your request.

So it appears that Sir John has deleted historic records relating to his work on the Third Assessment Report - work that was funded by the UK taxpayer.

Greens trash national parks

Tony at Harmless Sky is highlighting a new planning document introduced by the Welsh Assembly, which will allow windfarms to be built in national parks. There is a petition afoot to try to stop it.

Sir John Houghton and George Monbiot both live in Wales if I recall correctly.

Update on Jun 11, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Tony emails to point out that the document is not new, but that it is having an increasing effect.

The IPCC goes closed and opaque

Without a fanfare the IPCC has made a significant decision about the way it conducts its business. Tucked away in an eight-page page document that it has just put on its website is this:

At its 33rd Session, the Panel decided that the drafts of IPCC Reports and Technical Papers which have been submitted for formal expert and/or government review, the expert and government review comments, and the author responses to those comments will be made available on the IPCC website as soon as possible after the acceptance by the Panel and the finalization of the report. IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.

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More on disasters

Anthony Watts has picked up the Houghton quotes story, and I thought it was worth expanding on what makes me uneasy about these links between disasters and global warming.

It seems clear to me that the original misquoted version hinted that Sir John was in favour of inventing catastrophes. His true words don't carry anything of that meaning.

The question then become one of whether his true words suggest creating links between disasters and global warming. Again, I'm not sure they do. A commenter here points out the rest of the quote in which Sir John says

It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.

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UEA Literary Festival

The University of East Anglia is holding a literary festival in November. Strangely, they haven't invited me to speak, but there is at least one event that should prove interesting:

Sir John Houghton, Phil Jones and Sir David King - Friday 12 November 2010.

If anyone is going, a report would be welcome.

From the archives...

Sir John Houghton and George Monbiot discuss global warming with Melvyn Bragg at the start of the Millennium.

Listen to all the carefully expressed statements of uncertainty...:-)

Helmer withdraws apology to Houghton

Roger Helmer MEP writes to the Telegraph today.

An apology withdrawn

SIR – Sir John Houghton (Letters, August 15), the former IPCC Chairman, challenges the use of the quote, widely attributed to him that: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.” He insists he said (and the record confirms this) that: “If we want a good environmental policy, we’ll have to have a disaster.”

This is a distinction without a difference. Either way, he is saying that the IPCC needs disasters to convince the public of the need for climate mitigation.

As someone who used the slightly incorrect quotation (in my Bruges Group book Cool Thinking on Climate Change), I now feel vindicated, and I withdraw an apology I made to Sir John for misquoting him.

Roger Helmer MEP (Con)
Market Harborough, Leicestershire

I think there is actually room for doubt over what precisely Houghton meant in his original statement. People's opinions will depend on whether they feel he deserves the benefit of that doubt.

Sir John Houghton in the Times

Sir John Houghton is the former head of IPCC WG1 and also key figure in the story of the Hockey Stick's use as a promotional tool. He has been given some space in the Times today, in which he seeks to defend the integrity of his creation and the honour of climalogists in general.

It's well worth a read, but it's amusing to note that he accepts the glaciergate errors, which you will remember involved the use of claims from a WWF report. At the same time Sir John also claims that:

...a report from Greenpeace or any other campaigning body would not be included because the science would not be considered robust enough.

Whoops.

There are also some interesting claims about the recent lack of warming being a function of El Nino and natural variation. Lucia might have something to say aon thios subject.

No, he did say it....

...or something very like it.

I'm referring to the recent kerfuffle over whether Sir John Houghton did actually say the controversial words that have been ascribed to him for many years. These words:

Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.

A few days ago, after years of this quotation doing the rounds of sceptic blogs, Sir John suddenly denied that these words had ever passed his lips, pointing out that they didn't actually appear in his book, to which early citations had pointed as the original source. Cue much gnashing of teeth and wailing about "deniers".

There has now been another development in this story, reported by Benny Peiser, who took a certain amount of stick for repeating the quotation over the years, including a demand from Sir John that he issue an apology. In a posting on the GWPF website today, Benny relates how Professor John Adams has unearthed from his archives an clipping from the Daily Telegraph, dating right back to 1995. In it, Sir John is quoted as follows:

“If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”

Oh dear.

The story was originally broken on Professor Adams' blog here. More here.

[Update: Benny asks me to make absolutely clear that he is passing the story on and the credit is due to Professors Adams and Stott]

[PS: If you ever get the chance to read Professor Adams' Risk, it's well worth it. It's one of those books that makes you smile with its deliciously counter-intuitive thinking.]

He never said it

Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen

Well, well, well. According to the Independent, Sir John Houghton's best-known aphorism never actually passed his lips.

It's not the sort of thing I would ever say. It's quite the opposite of what I think and it pains me to see this quote being used repeatedly in this way. I would never say we should hype up the risk of climate disasters in order to get noticed.

The source appears to have been an Australian journalist who said it appeared in Houghton's 1994 book on global warming. This appears not to have been true.

I wonder why Sir John kept mum for all these years?