Deben admits the pause

Readers may recall that when Matt Ridley mentioned the IPCC's recognition of the hiatus in surface temperature rises, Lord Deben responded by issuing a rebuttal on the website of the Committee on Climate Change in which he disputed that there was a pause. It was only a slowdown, he said:

IPCC has always showed and discussed charts of up-to-date global annual average temperature records. In 2007, at the time of the IPCC’s last assessment, discussion of a pause since 1998 would have been irrelevant as this is much too short a period to measure any meaningful climate trend. In the latest assessment, it notes that the trend since 1998 has been lower, but still cautions against interpreting this as being significant in terms of climate.

Now it seems, the noble Lord has finally had to back down, sneaking what I believe is his first public recognition of the pause into a column (£) he has written for the Times.

The hiatus in surface temperature rise is real, but misleading. Warming and acidification of the ocean continues; so does the rise in sea levels and the melting of mountain glaciers.

A slow learner, it seems.

Failure to deny

Lord Deben and his team have issued a response to Owen Paterson's speech last night. There's plenty to take issue with. For example, readers will recall my amusement over their scientific travails over future rainfall, so it's fun to see that they are having similar problems with the temperature trends: they are touting a 0.05 degrees per decade rise as showing that surface temperatures have not stopped. Given that the error in the record appears to be considerably larger than 0.05 degrees in a single year, I think it's fair to say that the trend is indistinguishable from zero.

But perhaps of greater interest is the CCC's response to Paterson's central point, namely that we face a risk that the lights will go out. Here's what Lord D has come up with:

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I have a computer model

I have a computer model, which I use for predicting the weather. The algorithm is fairly straightforward and goes something like this:

It will rain tomorrow.

(Round where I live that's likely to be a pretty effective prediction.)

Anyway, if I run my computer model repeatedly, I find that 100% of the runs give the same result - "It will rain tomorrow". I conclude, therefore, that we can say with 100% confidence that it will rain tomorrow.

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The science of flooding

Anthony has an interesting report about a new paper that finds that increased flooding is mostly due to increased exposure - in other words that we are building homes closer to rivers than before. Flooding is therefore yet another area in which an impact from the warming at the end of last century is yet to be demonstrated.

Is there any justification for the kind of ambulance chasing exhibited by the Committee on Climate Change, for example this little gem from Lord Deben?

I hope floods will cause pause among dismissers. Can't forget "some woman Slingo" It revealed contempt they have for science.

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Lord Deben on namecalling

Lord Deben...said people like Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former chancellor, should not be classed as ‘climate change deniers’ but should instead be referred to as “dismissers.”

Lord Deben considers alternative names for his opponents, 27 May 2014

If you are seeking to establish a fact-based agenda when you're an interested party it's more effective to avoid name-calling.

Lord Deben's paternal advice to Greenpeace's Guy Shrubsole, six days later.

Kennedy departs

With UK energy and climate policy a demonstrable shambles and the lights set to go out in the next year or two, David Kennedy is departing the Committee on Climate Change for pastures new. The great man is heading off for a non-climate related role at DFiD. Lord Deben issued this parting eulogy:

David Kennedy created the team at the Committee on Climate Change, he established its reputation for scientific rigour and accuracy, and he has maintained that reputation throughout his seven years of service. He is the best kind of civil servant; intellectually robust and technically proficient, bringing sound judgment and careful evaluation to every issue. We owe him a great debt for a job well done. He leaves the CCC in a very good position and his successor will have the firmest of foundations from which to take the organisation forward.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

A Peer reviewed - Josh 263

 Evidence gleaned here.

Cartoons by Josh

The works of Lord Deben

This is a guest post by Matt Ridley.

Lord Deben is chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, a body funded by the British taxpayer. He draws a salary of more than £35,000 from you and me. On the masthead of its website the committee claims to give “a balanced response to the risks of climate change” and “independent, evidence-based advice to the UK government and Parliament”.

Yet the committee consists entirely of people who think climate change will be dangerous; no sceptics or lukewarmers are on it, even though most hold views that are well within the “consensus” of climate science. Under Deben’s chairmanship since 2012 its pronouncements have become increasingly one-sided. Deben himself is frequently highly critical of any sceptics, often mischaracterizing them as “deniers” or “dismissers”, but has never to my knowledge been heard to criticize anybody for exaggerating climate alarm and the harm it can do to disadvantaged people. These are not the actions of an impartial chairman.

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More cesspit

Lord Donoughue has had an interesting answer to a question to Baroness Verma

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made on whether members of the Committee on Climate Change have or have had financial interests which may conflict with their independence. [HL4496]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con): The Department’s assessment is that members of the Committee on Climate Change do not have and have not had financial interests which may conflict with their independence whilst in post. Members are bound by a code of practice and with the rules relating to the use of public funds and to conflicts of interest, set out by the Cabinet Office. One of their responsibilities is to ensure that they must not misuse information gained in the course of their public service for personal gain or for political profit, nor seek to use the opportunity of public service to promote their private interests or those of connected persons or organisations.

It's hard to know what to make of this. If you take the noble baroness's words at face value, she is saying that under the code of conduct you must not take advantage of any conflict of interest. What she doesn't say is that public officials should not have conflicts of interest.

This seems to be borne out by the Cabinet Office code of conduct, although it is somewhat contradictory:

You have a duty to declare any private interests relating to your public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest.

You must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between your public duties and your private interests – financial or otherwise.

You must comply with the rules of the body on handling conflicts of interests. As a minimum, these will require you to declare publicly any private interests which may, or may be perceived to, conflict with your public duties. The rules will also require you to remove yourself from the discussion or determination of matters in which you have a financial interest. In matters in which you have a non-financial interest, you should not participate in the discussion or determination of a matter where the interest might suggest a danger of bias.

And they wonder why we think Westminster is a cesspit.

CCC - the write-up

Ed Davey has just issued the triennial report into the performance of the Committee on Climate Change.

"Conflict of interest" might be expected to be an important issue in the report. However in terms of the conducts of the current members we learn only that the committee has been compliant with the "specified conduct and behaviour requirements". One can only assume that avoidance of conflicts of interest has not actually been specified. That said among the recommendations are the suggestion that the committee's register of interests, previously only available on request, be published on their website.

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Deben and 'the deniers'

In yesterday's exchanges in the Energy and Climate Change Committee there was an interesting exchange between Peter Lilley and Lord Deben, with the latter expressing outrage at the suggestion that a scientist might have said that their results had no effect on the broader global warming hypothesis simply so as to ensure they didn't lose their grant funding.

Deben's outrage quickly switched onto a subtly different point, namely the idea that scientists might be motivated solely by the need to keep grant funding moving on. He then sought to occupy the moral high ground by saying that he didn't engage in such behaviour himself:

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The Veolia affair - who knew?

David Rose tweeted last night that Lord Deben has resigned from his position at Veolia Water UK:

It seems from company records that @lorddeben of CCC has resigned as chairman of Veolia. Strange he hasn't announced it, to my knowledge.

Deben's position at the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) was clearly incompatible with working for a company making money from grid connections. What remains unclear is how we got to the situation where his position was deemed acceptable in the first place.

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Lights out please

This morning the green movement is making an enormous and apparently coordinated attempt to force the government to switch the lights out.

First up, Lord Deben et al have published a report saying that we must stick to the path of insanity, regardless of the consequences:

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Deben has explaining to do

Lord Deben was on the Toady programme this morning discussing whether other countries were doing as much as us on the renewables front (audio below). This statement grabbed my attention.

If you look at what China's doing...China's actually moving a lot faster than we are now, and it's actually moving towards a peak in its emission in the mid, maybe even in the early, 2020s...

This is pretty bizarre when you think about it. Per capita emissions have been falling in the UK for decades, as has the carbon intensity of the economy. How has China been doing? Not so well actually, as this graph of per capita carbon dioxide emissions shows (source).

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Davey knew Deben was conflicted

A few weeks ago I came across some new correspondence between the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) and Lord Deben relating to his appointment as chairman of the advisory Committee on Climate Change. This was on the committee's web server, but didn't appear to have been linked from the publications page.

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