Walport’s gloom

I think this article covers all the gloom and doom that can be rustled up on this topic, as yet another alarmist article leads us in to COP21.  

Any bets as to what the next article will be on - dying polar bears, melting Himalayan glaciers (or maybe melting polar bears and dying Himalayan glaciers), Maldives’ cabinet meeting under water again, shortage of water, shortage of heat (or increase in water and too much heat), increase in malaria,  increase in wars,  increase in immigration, reduction in size of … oh there’s lots to come.

Act now -the end may be nigh, but not of this nonsense unfortunately. TM

Walport: energy security is paramount

Launching the Institute of Chemical Engineers' new energy centre this morning, Sir Mark Walport has apparently said that:

...security of energy supply is paramount.

It was just a year ago that I noted that Walport had described the climate/energy policy as needing to be viewed through multiple lenses - of energy security, climate change, pricing and fuel poverty, and so on. Security was the first of these, but I wonder if we are now seeing a further subtle shift.

What is Truss being told?

Liz Truss, the new environment secretary has taken to the media to flaunt her green credentials.

Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss “fully agrees that climate change is happening”, saying evidence on the issue – like the extreme weather events that battered the Westcountry last year – is very strong.

Ms Truss, whose department is responsible for ensuring the country adapts to the impacts of climate change, said she agreed with Prime Minister David Cameron in drawing a link between global warming and extreme weather events such as the winter storms that swamped the Somerset Levels, severed the main rail link at Dawlish and caused the region millions of pounds of damage in January and February 2014, from which many people are still recovering.

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Quote of the day, precaution edition

[There has been] a drift of interpretation of the precautionary principle from what was, in effect, a holding position pending further evidence, to what is now effectively a stop sign.

Mark Walport comes over all real worldly

The EU dispenses with its CSA

The European Union has decided that it is going to abolish the role of chief scientific adviser. The usual suspects are outraged but in reality I can't see why this should be a problem for policymakers. There is no particular reason why the advice of a cell biologist like Anne Glover - the last incumbent of the role at the EU - should be important in the debate over, say, climate change. Many readers of this blog could lay claim to as much or more expertise than the good professor, brilliant individual though she may be in her own field.

Moreover, much of the demand for CSAs in government is driven by a wish to keep pressure on policymakers to fund science and scientists. CSAs end up as public-funded shop stewards, a shameful thing.

If policymakers want advice on particular subjects, let them go to experts in the area concerned.

The debate at the FST

A report of the recent climate change discussion at the Foundation for Science and Technology has been published here. Audio of the main speakers is available from the FST's website.

Featuring Mark Walport, Jim Skea, Peter Lilley and David Davies, the subject was "What is the right level of response to anthropogenic induced climate change?". From the report of proceedings, little new ground was broken. I was, however, interested to learn from Walport that it is "clear" that climate change is happening and that its impacts are already evident, a position of delicious imprecision: I imagine we are supposed to infer that he means manmade climate change, but of course manmade climate change is not "clear". As I have mentioned previously, I have put it to Walport that we are unable to demonstrate a statistically significant change in surface temperatures because of the difficulty in defining a statistical model that would describe the normal behaviour of surface temperatures, a claim that seems to have the support of the Met Office. I don't know of any other metric in which a statistically significant change has been demonstrated. Walport did not dispute my position on surface temperatures but suggested that seeing many observational metrics moving together led to a conclusion that manmade global warming was upon us.

This may be the case, but I wonder if there is a robust statistical analysis of to support Walport's position. Perhaps a letter is in order.

(Please could we avoid comments that are simply venting about Walport - stick to the issues please.)

Parliamentary links day

Updated on Jun 24, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Jun 24, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The House of Commons is having a "links day" in which MPs will get together with scientists to discuss the issue of trust in science. Mark Walport and Paul Nurse will be speaking. I've been following the tweets on the #linksday2014 hashtag and they are a mixed bunch so far.

For example, we learn that Nicola Gulley, the editorial director of the Institute of Physics opined that:

...peer review key to maintaining trust in science. No crisis but a lack of understanding of this process. 

You can see why someone working in the peer-reviewed journal sector might be keen on peer reviewed science, but for many readers at BH and many others uninvolved with the climate debate, peer review - its ineffectiveness, the superficial aura of "correctness" it gives, and the problem of gatekeeping - are the source of mistrust in science not a solution to it.

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Walport's Walker words

Mark Walport gave the annual Walker lecture at the University of Reading a couple of weeks ago, taking as his theme climate change communication.

H/T Barry Woods

Walport's presentation

Mark Walport's staff have kindly made available the slides he used in Glasgow. They can be seen here.

As I have suggested previously, the talk was a recitation of the standard case for alarm, but there were many aspects of it that piqued my interest. For example, I noted that while warming up to the first slide he spoke about energy security first, before moving on to climate. Later on in the talk he spoke of the three lenses through which the climate problem had to be viewed and the first of these was again energy security. Is this a new tack? Are backsides starting to be covered? Perhaps.

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Walport at the GSC

Last night found me at Glasgow's Science Centre to listen to Mark Walport talking about climate change.

In common with so many of these kinds of talks this had something of the air of a sermon about it. Almost everybody in the congregation was already convinced of the case for radical decarbonisation, right from the greenhouse effect, through the models, to the impacts, the economics and the wisdom of covering the country in windfarms. Walport said little that would have raised them from their complacency. The exceptions were when he pointed out to a questioner from gas-fields of Falkirk that natural gas was probably a good idea in current circumstances and when he spoke of the importance of having a conversation about climate change in a liberal society. Many in the liberal intelligentsia are of course deeply opposed to conversations on the subject of climate, or at least to those involving sceptics.

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Walport and his evidence

Updated on Mar 12, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Another entertaining episode in the hearings this morning was where Mark Walport was asked about Matt Ridley's suggestion that global warming would bring net benefits over 40-50 years. This conclusion is based on Richard Tol's metaanalysis of mainstream economic studies into such questions (see key figure below).

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Walport the soothsayer

Listen to this interview with chief scientific adviser Sir Mark Walport in which he describes the relationship between extreme weather and climate change (link below).

...we know that, statistically, in those parts of the world where there is rain there will be more rain, we know that as water levels rise there will be more flooding...

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, unmitigated tosh. We "know" nothing about future rainfall. We have a hypothesis coming out of a very iffy set of computer models. This sort of claim, made without even the merest hint of uncertainty, is why people are so suspicious of the utterances of chief scientific advisers.

Walport on Nicky Campbell show

Walport responses

Mark Walport's call for a grown up debate on climate change has prompted a couple of responses in the letters pages.

Sir, Sir Mark Walport (“Top scientist tells climate sceptics to grow up”, Jan 27) is right that we need a grown-up debate about what to do about climate change. However, that can only take place if some light is shone on the scientific uncertainties around the matter. Most scientists agree that man is affecting the global climate, but this agreement is insufficient to inform policy as there is no consensus about the degree of man’s contribution to rising temperatures compared with other natural factors beyond our control. Given the expense of many of the proposed climate mitigations, it is right that these uncertainties are discussed openly as part of Sir Mark’s grown-up debate. It may well be that we are best to do nothing for the moment.

Robert Birch

Brompton, N Yorks

Sir, I should remind Sir Mark Walport that there are more Fellows in the Royal Society who are sceptical of the ways of the IPCC than Fellows who work within the fields covered by that organisation. If the climate change case comes to be seen as having been oversold, and billions of pounds misinvested, the credibility of science advice will take a terrible blow.

Professor Michael J. Kelly, FRS

University of Cambridge

Walport's reverse thinking

Hidden behind the Times paywall, I gather that Sir Mark Walport is being rude:

Climate sceptics should stop attacking the science of global warming and have a “grown-up” debate, the Government’s most senior scientist has said.

Sir Mark Walport accused climate sceptics of questioning the scientific evidence in order to dodge the more challenging question of what to do about it.

OK, so let me get this right. The world hasn't warmed for 17 years or so. Climate scientists can only hypothesise as to the reasons why. We can't detect any significant changes in the surface temperature record. The evidence about climate sensitivity is that it's much lower than we had been led to believe (but the IPCC obfuscated the issue).

And Sir Mark thinks we are wrong to discuss the science?!

What does this tell you about our chief scientific adviser?

Walport and Ridley

Mark Walport has a letter in the Times, taking issue with an article that Matt Ridley wrote a few days before. Matt's article was about cherrypicking in science, and mentioned Briffa's Yamal series.

Sir,

Matt Ridley falls into his own trap in his Opinion column (Jan 6), though the title “Roll up: cherry pick your research results here” is apposite, because that is exactly what Ridley does with respect to the research evidence for global warming.

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