Outside again

Some time ago, Graham Stringer MP tried to ascertain from the University of East Anglia how much was paid to its PR advisers, the Outside Organisation. Readers may remember that the boss of this company was arrested as part of the phone hacking scandal.

The university, not unexpectedly, refused to release the data, citing commercial interests and confidentiality, and in due course Stringer's request was passed to the Information Commissioner. Last week, in the face of a preliminary finding from the commissioner's office that they would find against the university, Professor Acton et al took a step back and finally released the requested information.

£112,870.71 was paid to the Outside Organisation for their services

It's an expensive business running a cover-up.

I have an outstanding appeal of my own with the commissioner, which with a bit of luck will reveal the related correspondence. The decision of the commissioner gives me at least reasonable hope of success.

Update on Apr 23, 2012 by Bishop Hill

The letter to Stringer is here.

Update on Apr 24, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Leo Hickman picks up on the story here.

Stern's wheat graph redux

Updated on Apr 23, 2012 by Bishop Hill

An anonymous commenter has posted an interesting observation about Lord Stern's graph of wheat yields, which was the subject of a posting a couple of days ago. For convenience, here's the graph as it appeared in the Stern report once again.

And here's how it appeared in the original paper by Wheeler et al.

Click to read more ...

FT on shale gas

The FT has a good review article on shale gas today. It's pretty balanced overall, but marred by the presence of Josh Fox, the director of Gasland. I wonder if the article's author, Sylvia Pfeifer, was unaware that his movie has been shown to be a fraud.

The article closes with this quote from Lord Browne, the former head of BP.

It is always a good idea to explore for and develop resources within national borders. It increases security, tax take, jobs and it might even reduce power prices,” says Lord Browne. “Nothing is perfect. This is pretty good.

Only might reduce power prices? Shale has caused power prices to crash in the US. It will be a stunning indictment of the political classes in the UK if they manage to engineer things over here in such a way that shale produces no changes in prices at all. I'm sure that is their intention though.

The second front

If the struggle to put climatology back on a scientific footing were not bad enough, the UN has just set up a new intergovernmental body, which will push biodiversity as the new excuse to "scare 'n' tax".

The former West German capital of Bonn has been chosen for the secretariat of a UN expert panel on biodiversity, the organisation announced on Thursday.

The decision was made at a plenary meeting in Panama City of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, according to an announcement on the platform's website.

Stern's wheat graph

For reasons that I can't quite recall, I found myself looking at Chapter 3 of the Stern report, where I noticed a graph on yield losses in wheat.

The text discussing the figure has this to say:

Click to read more ...

Madrid, 1995

This morning's must-read post is by Bernie Lewin, the first of a two-parter which attempts to pin the beginning of the corruption of climatology to a meeting of the IPCC in Madrid in 1995.

(H/T Aynsley Kellow)

Connect the dots - Josh 163

Anthony over at WUWT is requesting we write to our local paper's editor - read about it here

Cartoons by Josh

Strange fellows

 Via Leo Hickman I note a list of new fellows of the Royal Society. Familiar names are:

• Paul Ehrlich, best known for his hopelessly incorrect predictions of famine
• Steve Jones, familiar to readers here for writing an integrity-free report about science at the BBC
• Ralph Cicerone, also familiar from his role in trying to save the Hockey Stick for the IPCC.

It really confirms the case I made in my GWPF report on the Society's decline into a rather grubby advocacy outfit.

Update on Apr 20, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Brian Micklethwait thinks we should take away the "Royal" bit in the society's name. They would just be the "The Society".

It bears thinking about :-)

World series

I am appearing at a panel discussion in St Andrews next week. It's open to the public.

Channel Four on fracking

Channel Four TV covered the fracking story last night, but rather managed to blot its copybook by including the "flaming faucet" clip from the movie "Gasland".

Since this has long since been shown to be a fraud - there was methane present in the water long before fracking commenced - I queried the station's science editor, Tom Clarke, via Twitter. He didn't object:

Agreed. Included to show heated opposition to fracking in US. Which there is. Should have mentioned it was a campaign film.

To which I responded that they should have mentioned that it was misleading. I actually think this is a sufficiently big mistake that they should issue a correction, but I don't suppose this will be forthcoming.

A strange change in the sea ice data

The post to be reading this morning is Stephen Goddard's article about a strange change in the sea ice data.

ATI inches closer to Mann's emails

On Monday, there was another hearing in the American Tradition Institute's long legal battle to obtain Michael Mann's emails. Some of the details are reported in the Washington Times:

A judge is treading cautiously in a high-stakes case that pits the University of Virginia against a conservative institute seeking thousands of records related to climatologist Michael Mann.

Retired Arlington Circuit Judge Paul Sheridan, during arguments in Prince William County Circuit Court on Monday, denied without prejudice a motion filed by the American Tradition Institute that contended the university waived its right to the records when it released them last year to Mr. Mann’s lawyer and, in essence, Mr. Mann himself.

The ruling, while a defeat for ATI, means the group can make its case again at a later date.

Update on Apr 17, 2012 by Bishop Hill

The Washington Post also covers the story:

When the lawyer for renowned climate scientist Michael Mann said that the FOIA request for his e-mails by Rep. Robert Marshall (R-Prince William) and the American Tradition Institute was calculated to annoy and harass Mann, Sheridan interjected: “How does that affect their legal right to FOIA production? Do we have a ‘purity of heart test’ before we apply the FOIA acts?”

Later, when Mann’s lawyer said that the process of peer review for research was “the bedrock of science,” Sheridan responded, “But is it the bedrock of open government? ...Why does the general public have to trust scientists? Citizens wonder about open government. Why don’t we have access to the process? ... FOIA is saying citizens have a right to see what government is doing.”

Definitely worth reading the whole thing.

Has the UK government just killed the shale gas future?

I'm grateful to Don Keiller for pointing out what may amount to a hidden agenda in today's fracking announcement. Here's Don's comment:

I'm not at all convinced that this is a victory for common sense, more like a "stealth killing".

"Under a proposed "traffic light" control system, a "red light" would be triggered by any tremor measuring 0.5 local magnitude or higher, meaning fracking should stop and safety procedures such as allowing water to flow back to the surface should be carried out."

According to the Richter scale an earth tremor of less than 2 is described as "micro", "not felt" and "continual".

Hence fracking will be hamstrung by background tremors.

Marvellous!

Update on Apr 17, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Nick Grealy, the shale gas expert, tweets in response to my query about this issue:

Nick Grealy ‏ @ShaleGasExpert

@aDissentient Not a problem industry geologists tell me

Fracking to resume

In an extraordinary development, the UK government has made a sensible decision on fracking, ruling that drilling by Cuadrilla can go ahead.

An independent panel commissioned by the government said the controversial method of obtaining natural gas should no longer be permitted unless a strict new system is set up to detect warning tremors in the rock.

The controversial drilling method is now likely to be given the green light with Ministers set to accept the advice that it could be extended with new controls.

Expect any benefits to the consumer to be swiftly clawed back through tax increases.

Quote of the day

One climate modeller we interviewed explained that the climate is a ‘heterogeneous system with many ways of moving energy around from system to system’ which makes the theoretical system being modelled ‘tolerant to the inclusion of bugs'.

From the Pipitone and Easterbrook paper on validating climate model software, currently the subject of a guest post at Judith Curry's.