This is what ambulance chasing looks like

Not wanting to be outdone on the disgusting specimen front, James Murray of Business Green is trying to make climate change hay out of the plight of Mediterreanean refugees.

Is there a competition on to see who can be the most revolting climate change activist at the moment?

Update on Apr 25, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Gaia Fawkes picks up the story too.

Lomborg and the Africans

Bjorn Lomborg argues that we should focus our spending on immediate problems, such as ensuring Africans have access to clean water. For this he is vilified, attacked and has his livelihood threatened.

His critics wish to see money spent on climate change mitigation measures instead.

A tragedy for the Africans.

For the environmentalist, lies are a way of life

Global warming is real - it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world.

Bjorn Lomborg on climate change

Now take a look at what environmentalists and lefties have to say. The tsunami of lies is quite, quite extraordinary:

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Climatologists and moral choices

Yesterday's posts seemed to generate quite a lot of heat, with several commenters reading rather more into them than they should. The object was not to blame climatologists for the actions that their climate models are used to justify, but to ask them what they thought about those actions. I had hoped that we might get some condemnation of the attempts to prevent Africans getting access to fossil fuels, but there was nothing along these lines.

As an aside, I should point out that it is my understanding that these attempts span more than just coal - it's the whole range of fossil fuels that politicians are now seeking to sideline, as this paper makes clear.

...under US Senate Bill S.329 (2013) the Overseas Private Investment Corporation – a federal agency responsible for backstopping U.S. companies which invest in developing countries – is essentially prohibited from investing in energy projects that involve fossil fuels...

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BBC joins Guardian divestment campaign

With Alan Rusbridger's divestment campaign being relentlessly hammered in the Guardian, it's no surprise to see Roger Harrabin answering the call to arms with an article at the BBC on the same subject. It's quite funny in parts:

Are we approaching the twilight of the fossil fuel era? A few years ago that question would have seemed absurd. But a combination of forces is squeezing carbon assets like never before.

The oil price remains stubbornly low.

And of course we can't burn the fossil fuels, blah blah.

The oil price is of course low because of a surge in production. I'm struggling to see oversupply of a commodity as the herald of its downfall. Readers should also rest assured that the consequences of divestment for the Third World are not addressed. For the BBC and the Guardian and their fellow travellers it is morally wrong to consider such unpleasantness.

Update on Apr 16, 2015 by Bishop Hill

I've adjusted one of the pics from the BBC piece slightly.

Rusbridger asks my question

In Nature, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger is calling on scientists to put pressure on organisations like the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation to divest from fossil fuels. Now I'm not sure about the idea of scientists taking up the activist cudgels in this way, but I'm certainly interested in the views of climate scientists on the moral dilemmas involved. A month or so ago I asked climate scientists a very similar question on Twitter.

Climate scientist followers: what is your response to people who seek to deny third world access to fossil fuels because of AGW?

— Bishop Hill (@aDissentient) March 15, 2015

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Science and power

A fascinating speech by New Zealand chemist Nicola Gaston on the subject of scientists relationship to the public reveals someone who is thinking deeply about the trials and tribulations of publically funded scientists and the role that power plays. I don't think she is quite there, but this certainly represents a step forward.

Gaston notes firstly that politicians have power over scientists in a way that often prevents the latter from speaking freely, but then moves on to consider the power that scientists have over the public:

[T]he use of expertise — or rather, the misuse of academic status as a proxy for expertise on a particular question of public interest, is an exercise of power. The exercise of such power is at its most blatant when it happens along the lines of ‘trust me, I’m a scientist’ and at its most useful when the scientist involved is willing to explain the science. But there is always a power dynamic in any form of science communication, and understanding that has to be a prerequisite to doing it well.

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Diary dates, not to be missed edition

I recently became aware of a seminar taking place in London at the end of the month. Run by the Central London branch of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association, it looks as if it absolutely should not be missed.

Central London BUIRA Seminar

Climate Change, Work, Labour and Trade Unions, with Professor Fred Steward (Policy Studies Institute, University of Westminster) on Labour and the Green Economy and Dr Paul Hampton (Fire Brigades Union) on Trade unions and climate change in the UK: prisoners of neoliberalism or swords of climate justice?

Followed by round table discussion on what trade unions can do with Sarah Pearce (Unison), Graham Petersen (UCU), Igor Diaz and Jairo Quiroz from the Columbian coal miners’ union SINTRACARBON, and Christine Haigh from Global Justice.

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Twotalitarianism

I must say I am watching the behaviour of the Twitter management carefully, as it looks somewhat alarming. As Anthony reports, Tom Nelson has been suspended for asking if a Katharine Hayhoe graph was "crap". That's asking, not saying. Meanwhile Gavin Schmidt describes a different graph as crap (that's saying, not asking) and it's all fine and dandy.

An unbalanced panel

I'm in Bath at the moment, appearing on BBC The Big Questions. The show was broadcast live at 10am here, but we are asked not to mention our involvement ahead of time. It should be on iPlayer in due course.

The subject is:

Are we right to impose environmental costs on future generations?

The show's panel also features Tony Juniper, Ben Harris-Quinney of the Bow Group and Hannah Martin of Christian Climate Action. This is what Helen Czerski would refer to as an "unbalanced" panel, no doubt.

Quote of the day, political power edition

I believe that climate moralists are impervious to the adverse impact of their policies because their morality is closely interwoven with misunderstanding of economics, distaste for capitalism, lack of interest in history and the overwhelming desire of their psychic elephants to dictate how other people should live.

The climate issue has to be seen as the latest chapter in the two century long battle to use the alleged moral shortcomings of capitalism to justify political power.

Peter Foster places the climate debate in its historical context

Peter Foster on morality, evolution and me

The text of Peter Foster's talk at the House of Lords yesterday has been published by the GWPF and it's a fascinating read, taking in subjects as diverse as evolutionary psychology, economics (particularly of the DIY kind), Climategate, and the books of AW Montford.

It can be seen here.

The Institute of Physics is corrupt

Richard Tol has posted up a review of the strange affair of the "97% consensus", as the second anniversary of Cook's infamous paper draws near. An edited version has apparently been published in the Australian.

The sample was padded with irrelevant papers. An article about TV coverage on global warming was taken as evidence for global warming. In fact, about three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsements had nothing to say about the subject matter.

Requests for the data were met with evasion and foot-dragging, a clear breach of the publisher’s policy on validation and reproduction, yet defended by an editorial board member of the journal as “exemplary scientific conduct”.

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A comment by Roger Pielke Jr

Roger Pielke Jr left this comment in the thread below one of his own posts. I have taken the liberty of reproducing it in full.

Over at Real Climate, Kerry Emanuel of MIT, has a post up with his views on tropical cyclones and climate change. Emanuel doesn't cite the IPCC, but what he reports is pretty much consistent with the AR5 (trends inconclusive, expected changes in the future, etc.).

Here I am not discussing the science presented by Kerry, but instead, I note this passage:

"When a 100-year event becomes a 50-year event, it may take a few destructive hits before we adapt to the new reality. This is of particular concern with tropical cyclones, where the application of existing damage models to projected changes in tropical cyclone activity predict large increases in damage, as documented, for example, in the recent Risky Business report commissioned by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson, and Thomas Steyer."

What Emanuel does not say is that he was in fact the one commissioned by Steyer et al. to produce the scary scenarios in the report (which are completely at odds with IPCC AR5 and KE's own published academic work - I've explored this is some detail).

Thus, Emanuel is (a) self-citing in stealth fashion, and (b) failing to disclose a big COI.

Two big non-nos in science, but which in the climate world get a free pass if you are perceived to be on the "right side." Another day in climate science.

Hunting the witchhunters

Shub Niggurath has been hard at work, following up some oddities in the disclosures Joe Romm and colleagues made in a journal article about their funding. It's fair to say that the chief witchhunter seems to have been well and truly hunted down himself:

Not only do Koomey and Romm fail to disclose funding, they expressly state the opposite trying to morally berate a fellow scientist.

Read the whole thing.