Walport's platitude and attitude

Mark Walport's lecture at the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy is now available on YouTube. It's simultaneously fascinating and infuriating and I encourage readers to watch, although it's an hour long and there's half an hour of questions afterwards, so you will need a clear diary.

Walport is new to his post and to the climate debate and so we should probably cut him some slack, but it has to be said that the scientific part of the lecture was very shallow stuff - much more in the rally-the-troops mould than a serious look at the science of global warming. So we got lots of stuff about carbon emissions and atmospheric lifetimes but nothing - and I mean nothing - about climate sensitivity. This could be seen as an astonishing oversight, but it makes sense if you see his lecture as trying to shore up support for the global warming hypothesis rather than informing the audience.

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Monbiot on CSAs

George Monbiot is worried about the integrity of government chief scientific advisers. Very worried. In fact one would go so far as to say that he is slightly hysterical on the issue, accusing Mark Walport of being a lobbyist (and all manner of other sins), despite the poor chap having been in his job for only a few weeks.

Among the official duties of the chief scientist is "to ensure that the scientific method, risk and uncertainty are understood by the public". Less than a month into the job, Sir Mark Walport has misinformed the public about the scientific method, risk and uncertainty. He has made groundless, unscientific and emotionally manipulative claims. He has indulged in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in support of the government's position.

This righteous anger is slightly strange, when one considers Monbiot's previous silence on the subject. The weird-beard era CSAs (May, Watson, Beddington et al.) were plainly men with a cause and were pretty much open in their lobbying activity, whether on behalf of scientists or environmentalists. One can only conclude that Monbiot is in favour of lobbying by CSAs when the cause is his own.

To my mind, the position of a CSA is a nonsense. Ministers need to hear advice from people they trust and who have expertise in an area. Why should any minister have trusted the climate science advice of Beddington, a population biologist who openly declared that he saw part of his role as promoting the interests of the scientific community in Whitehall? The minister's role is to promote the interests of the public, not of scientists.

In return for their lobbying work on behalf of scientists, CSAs fleece the taxpayer for enormous salaries and preposterous pension packages. There is therefore a huge saving to be made: close down the network of scientific advisers and take advice on an ad-hoc basis from trusted third parties.

Update on Apr 30, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Pielke Jr and James Wilsdon respond to Monbiot in similar vein.

The pilgrim's progress

Sir Mark Walport, who runs the Welcome Trust, has been appointed the new government chief scientific advisor. He takes over from Sir John Beddington, whose term of office comes to an end in December. There is an excellent article by Pallab Ghosh reviewing the implications of the appointment here.

Walport's appointment is the latest installment in a meteoric rise to prominence, having been knighted in 2009 and elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011. The appointment is quite surprising, since he seems to be more of an administrator rather than a researcher. Ghosh's article might give you the impression that Walport's political acumen, and in particular the expectation that he might be able to protect the scientific civil service from spending cuts, is the main reason that he won out over more research-orientated candidates.

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