Booker on GLOBE

Christopher Booker picks up the GLOBE story for the Sunday Telegraph.

UEA says "who cares what you think!"

The University does not see any conflict of interest in Lord Oxburgh's affiliation with Globe UK, a small parliamentary body from which he receives no financial reward and whose members include well-known parliamentarians such as Ken Clarke, Chris Huhne, Lord Fowler, Simon Hughes and Tim Yeo.

Lord Oxburgh's  views on climate change are a matter of public record.

The University fully expects that Lord Oxburgh and the panel will question CRU's work in the most objective way, and is committed to taking whatever action is necessary following publication of his report.

Full story at El Reg.

GLOBE page at the House of Commons

The UK House of Commons register of all-party groups for GLOBE appears here. Not very interesting, but it looks as though the board may have changed recently. The officers of the Parliamentary group (Who may be different to the company board) are:

Stephen Byers
Graham Stuart
Barry Gardiner
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
Lord Oxburgh
Colin Challen
Eric Joyce

Readers have already noted Stephen Byers' recent problems. It's only fair therefore to note that Eric Joyce is a remarkable character - the first MP to claim more than £1m in expenses and on more than one occasion the most expensive MP in the house. He once famously claimed for three oil paintings on expenses "because they looked nice".

In 2009 Colin Challen called for all UK domestic flights to be phased out by the end of the year.

GLOBE - a vehicle for avoiding FoI

Reader, Cumbrian Lad, has been doing a sterling job researching the GLOBE organisation mentioned in earlier postings today, and which counts Lord Oxburgh as a director. It was a bit of an oversight for Lord O not to mention this, as GLOBE turns out to be quite an interesting body.

GLOVE's corporate structure and funding are not clear from its website, but Cumbrian Lad has discovered that it is a private limited company. Interesting that  - an organisation of legislators,  run as a private company. He has also obtained copies of its accounts and other information from Companies House.

Click to read more ...

The (missing) story of O

The Register is reporting that Lord Oxburgh forgot to declare another competing interest:

Lord Oxburgh, a geologist by training and the former scientific advisor to the Ministry of Defence, was appointed to lead the enquiry into the scientific aspects of the Climategate scandal on Monday. But Oxburgh is also a director of GLOBE, the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment.

Click to read more ...

More silliness

Daniel Cressey at Nature's Great Beyond blog seems to be adding his voice to those who support the idea of Lord Oxburgh being a suitable chairman for the Royal Society panel despite the noble lord's conflict of interest.

Daniel's case for the defence is almost as obscure as Fiona Harvey's but seems to consist of a belief that since Bob Ward, the public relations officer at the Grantham Institute, predicted that the appointment would be criticised, we should shrug our shoulders and move on. I hope I'm not misjudging Daniel's position here, because he doesn't make his position very clear. I do sense, however, that his article carries an air of criticism of those who are pointing out the conflict of interest rather than those who are behind it.

You have to laugh, don't you?

Startlingly silly

Fiona Harvey, the Financial Times' environment correspondent weighs in to the debate over Lord Oxburgh's appointment at the head of the Royal Society panel looking into the CRU-science, and the fact that the noble lord has a financial conflict of interest.

But already his appointment has been attacked by climate sceptics, as he has strong business interests in biofuels, is chairman of the wind company Falck Renewables, and a board member of Climate Change Capital, a major investor in carbon credits.

Critics say this is enough to ensure his view of the science is biased, and have called for his removal.

And roughly speaking, this is where we are coming from. So, what's Fiona's take on this argument?

Click to read more ...

The Times on Lord Oxburgh

I get a mention in Ben Webster's article in the Times about the Royal Society panel.

Oxburgh's conflict of interest

Commenters are also noting the background of Ron Oxburgh, the chairman of the RS panel. Lord Oxburgh is:

• President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association
• Chairman of wind energy firm Falck Renewables
• A member of the Green Fiscal Commission

So we have a chairman with a direct financial interest in the outcome. I'm not sure this is a surprise.

Update on Mar 22, 2010 by Bishop Hill

For the avoidance of doubt, the financial interest is in Falck Renewables - AFAIK, the Carbon Capture thing is an honorary position. I have no idea if Green Fiscal Commissioners are remunerated or not.

Emmanuel on the Climategate emails

Reader Mac notes Kerry Emmanuel's comments on the Climategate emails, delivered at an MIT debate on the subject:

"What we have here," says Kerry Emanuel, are "thousands of emails collectively showing scientists hard at work, trying to figure out the meaning of evidence that confronts them. Among a few messages, there are a few lines showing the human failings of a few scientists…" Emanuel believes that "scientifically, it means nothing," because the controversy doesn't challenge the overwhelming evidence supporting anthropogenic warming. He is far more concerned with the well-funded "public relations campaign" to drown out or distort the message of climate science, which he links to "interests where billions, even trillions are at stake..." This "machine … has been highly successful in branding climate scientists as a bunch of sandal-wearing, fruit-juice drinking leftist radicals engaged in a massive conspiracy to return us to agrarian society…"

I'm speechless. Even after the debacle of Philip Campbell's resignation from the Russell panel, no lessons appear to have been learned.

Royal Society panel announced

The Royal Society panel that is going to examine the scientific aspects on the Climategate affair has been announced. This is the press release from UEA (via a reader - it doesn't appear on the UEA website at the moment).

Lord Oxburgh FRS, a former chair of the Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, is to chair an independent Scientific Assessment Panel to examine important elements of the published science of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

His appointment has been made on the recommendation of the Royal Society, which has also been consulted on the choice of the six distinguished scientists who have been invited to be members of the panel.

Click to read more ...