Books
Click images for more details
Bishop Hill Mar 27, 2013 Climate: Models GWPF David Whitehouse's response to the CCC blog post is pretty devastating:
If this kind of data were from a drugs trial it would have been stopped long ago, even allowing for the little understood stopping bias effect which occurs when looking for the first signs of effectiveness or harm in such trials.
Bishop Hill Mar 25, 2013 GWPF Royal Society Well this looks like good news - Paul Nurse has offered to arrange a meeting between GWPF and some (so far unidentified) climate scientists, and Nigel Lawson has accepted.
On behalf of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Lord Lawson has accepted an offer by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, who has offered to arrange a meeting between the GWPF and climate scientists.
In a recent letter to Lord Lawson, the GWPF chairman, Sir Paul suggested that the Foundation needed more mainstream and expert climate science advice and offered that the Royal Society “would be happy to put the GWPF in touch with people who can offer the Foundation informed scientific advice.”
In his response, Lord Lawson writes that he is “happy to accept your offer to arrange a meeting and look forward to hearing from you about this.”
“I hope this marks the start of a more productive dialogue with the Royal Society,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the Director of the GWPF.Letter By Sir Paul Nurse to Lord Lawson
Letter By Lord Lawson to Sir Paul Nurse
see also: Lord Lawson’s initial letter to Sir Paul Nurse
The offer and acceptance of talks is welcome. I hope this marks the end of the public war of words and the beginning of something a bit more interesting. I'm slightly concerned, however, that Nurse is going to remain on the outside of that dialogue. I really think he should attend any talks in person - I think his understanding of what sceptics are arguing is a bit of a caricature.
Nevertheless, there is much cause for optimism here.
Bishop Hill Mar 15, 2013 Climate: Surface GWPF In the latest report from GWPF, David Whitehouse has examined the 21st century temperature standstill and the history of attempts to, ahem, deny its existence.
A new report written by Dr David Whitehouse and published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation concludes that there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures since 1997.
After reviewing the scientific literature the reports concludes that the standstill is an empirical fact and a reality that challenges current climate models. During the time that the Earth’s global temperature has remained static the atmospheric composition of carbon dioxide has increased from 370 to 390 ppm.
Bishop Hill Feb 27, 2013 GWPF Royal Society Nigel Lawson has responded to Paul Nurse's wild accusations of cherrypicking, accusing the Royal Society president of lying:
You claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie.
and continuing with a withering put-down
I hope that, on reflection, you will recognise that there should be a difference between the behaviour appropriate to a President of the Royal Society and acting as a shop steward for some kind of scientists’ closed shop.
Ouch.
Bishop Hill
Interestingly, Nurse's comments about Lawson appear to have been added at the last minute. This version of his speech, which seems to have been prepared on the day of the lecture itself, does not seem to mention Lawson at all.
Bishop Hill
The transcript as broadcast is here.
Josh Feb 24, 2013 Energy Energy: costs GWPF Greens Josh Wind turbines
It's an all-out media war against the Green Energy Lobby says The GWPF
Excellent, carry on!
(and spelling corrected, thank you!)
Bishop Hill Feb 16, 2013 GWPF Royal Society Paul Nurse has used the occasion of a speech to the University of Melbourne to make an extraordinary attack on Nigel Lawson . Discussing people's concerns over global warming, he suggested that this was causing some to attack the science.
We saw that in Britain with a politician, Nigel Lawson, who would go on television and talk about the scientific case. And he was trained as a politician - you made whatever case you can to convince the audience. So he would choose two points and say "look no warming's taking place", knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case, but he was just wanting to win that debate on television.
Strong stuff. Very strong stuff.
The audio file is here. Key quote at 42 mins.
Bishop Hill
There is a transcript of the whole talk here (h/t Tallbloke)
Bishop Hill Jan 28, 2013 Climate: Sceptics GWPF Matt Ridley has a new paper out at GWPF.
I have written about climate change and energy policy for more than 25 years. I have come to the conclusion that current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself. This is not the same as arguing that climate has not changed or that mankind is not partly responsible. That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept. What I do not accept is that the change is or will be damaging, or that current policy would prevent it. For the benefit of supporters of climate change policy who feel frustrated by the reluctance of people like me to accept their assurances, here is what they would need to do to change my mind.
Bishop Hill Nov 12, 2012 BBC Climate: other GWPF The former head of the BBC has given a lecture at Oxford about science and rhetoric and the problems of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
An extraordinary document. Read it here.
Bishop Hill Sep 9, 2012 GWPF David Henderson sends this note on the review of GWPF reports.
One of your commentators has posed the question: ‘If short journal articles are peer reviewed, why not longer GWPF pieces?’
There is a misunderstanding here. The ’longer GWPF pieces’ have taken the form of reports: up to now, nine of these have so far been published, with Peter Lilley’s as the latest. All of them have been peer reviewed by members of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, of which I am chairman. The members of the Council are publicly listed. I have personally reviewed all nine reports, and commented in writing on all but one.
Bishop Hill Sep 3, 2012 GWPF Royal Society The New York Times carries a profile of Paul Nurse, and mentions my GWPF report in the process.
Of late, too, conservative critics have attached themselves like barnacles to the society’s hull. The Global Warming Policy Foundation treated the society as a nest of alarmists in a recent report, “Nullius in Verba: The Royal Society and Climate Change.” (The Latin expression is the society’s motto; it translates roughly as “Take nobody’s word for it.”) James Delingpole, the waggishly influential conservative blogger for The Telegraph, lampoons Dr. Nurse as “easily my favorite Nobel Prize winner after Yasir Arafat, Al Gore and Barack Obama.”It’s fair to say his mortar shots have not rattled the windows of the Royal Society. Dr. Nurse hiked his eyebrows and shrugged: “We can’t sit by without exposing bunkum.”
I can't actually think of any occasion when the Royal Society has "exposed bunkum" on the subject of climate change. There was obviously a certain amount of covering up for those implicated in the Climategate affair and those very silly and unscientific papers that went out in the bad old days. But apart from that they have just acted as cheerleaders.
Bishop Hill Aug 28, 2012 Climate: Parliament Energy: wind GWPF When Gordon Hughes gave evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology COmmittee the other week, I was struck by the vehemence with which his evidence was denounced as "balderdash" by Grantham Institute policy wonk Robert Gross. Unfortunately, Dr Gross's explanation of precisely why he thought this eluded me, as his subsequent narrative seemed to me to be little more than handwaving.
Being an inquiring sort, I decided to delve a little bit into Dr Gross's positions on wind power and started to read some of his publications. While I haven't got to the bottom of the dispute with Prof Hughes over the effect of wind on carbon emissions, I did find some interesting bits and pieces about just how you reduce intermittency of wind power by installing lots of turbines - a "wind carpet" in the jargon.
Bishop Hill Aug 18, 2012 Climate: McIntyre GWPF Andrew Orlowski has published a report on Steve McIntyre's recent talk at GWPF. It's good, strong and clear stuff:
The entire rationale of policy in US and Europe has been to ignore what's happening in China and India and hope that petty acts of virtuous behaviour in both countries will cure the problem," he said. "Even if you install windmills you're not going to change the trend of overall CO2 emissions."
Bishop Hill Aug 17, 2012 Energy: wind GWPF Greens Gordon Hughes' GWPF report on the costs of wind power contains the following claim:
Meeting the UK Government’s target for renewable generation in 2020 will require total wind capacity of 36 GW backed up by 13 GW of open cycle gas plants plus large complementary investments in transmission capacity – the Wind Scenario. The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants with a capital cost of £13 billion – the Gas Scenario. Allowing for the shorter life of wind turbines, the comparative investment outlays would be about £120 billion for the Wind Scenario and a mere £13 for the Gas Scenario.
This seems clear to me. The capital cost - see the words there in the middle? -of wind energy is much higher than that of gas.
Now look at how BusinessGreen reports Hughes' work (the article is written by Maria McCaffery, the chief executive of RenewableUK (formerly the British Wind Energy Association):
Among the more absurd assertions put forward in this paper is the contention that wind energy is 10 times more expensive than gas, but his comparison is flawed. He fails to include the cost of gas itself and only includes the cost of building a gas-fired power station and the infrastructure to go with it. As most right minded people know, a gas-fired power station without any gas does not generate any electricity. Perhaps his calculations exclude the cost of gas because the costs of this fossil fuel are so difficult to predict and very volatile. The comparison is certainly not like-for-like and is very misleading.
I think we have established something about the integrity of Renewables UK.
Bishop Hill Aug 16, 2012 GWPF GWPF and Jo Nova have both apparently been hacked. I am endeavouring to get in touch with the GWPF guys.
Bishop Hill Aug 14, 2012 GWPF A couple of readers have emailed to say that GWPF's website is down. I emailed Benny Peiser and he says that there are technical issues of some kind. The site will remain down for a couple of days. I gather that email is also affected, so anyone wishing to contact them should telephone instead.
I'll post a report on my trip south tomorrow.
