Diary date

Crispin Tickell is speaking in St Andrews on Thursday on the subject of  "Vulnerable Earth, Hits From Space and Other Disasters". Details here.

Unfortunately, I can't attend, but if anyone wants to write a report, I'd be interested.

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.

Charlie Flindt on the lights going out

BH reader Charlie Flindt has a comment piece up at Farmers Weekly about the possibility of the lights going out:

What's scaring me is that we are going to have to get used to power cuts. Too many years of energy policy being dictated by the "EcoTaliban" and their useful idiots in government mean that dark days - and nights - are coming

Read the whole thing.

Climate Dialogue on long-term persistence

The Dutch site Climate Dialogue has launched a debate on long-term persistence in climate records. It features Rasmus Benestad, Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Armin Bunde.

This could be interesting.

Judge expresses doubts over soundness of the Russell inquiry

The Information Tribunal has finally reached its decision over David Holland's request for access to the Russell inquiry's emails. The decision is that they should not be released.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that the decision seems to have been made on the grounds that David H failed to demonstrate that UEA were controlling the inquiry. These are the only grounds on which the Tribunal could have demanded that the emails be released. However, in the course of reaching that decision, the judge seems to have doubted the soundness of the inquiry:

...we find it surprising that there was no contractual document, and in particular, that there was no discussion between them about the information that would be received or generated by the ICCER. Professor Acton’s evidence is that he had the advice and input of other senior colleagues at the time he was setting up this inquiry. We would have thought, in any event, that it would be almost instinctive for Professor Acton, as an historian, to have taken an interest in the question of what would happen to the information after Sir Muir’s work was concluded, even if he wanted to ensure that it was held independently during the course of the inquiry itself. His evidence as to why there was no specific agreement on this issue, nor even any discussion, appears to be somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, he says that he and his colleagues did not turn their minds to it because they were focused on getting the inquiry up and running. On the other hand, he says that it was important that the UEA not have any claim to the information because that would have compromised the information people might have been prepared to give to the inquiry, and in turn, would have compromised its independence. The second position suggests that the issue was actively considered; the first suggests that it was not. Given that Professor Acton has stressed, throughout, the importance of the inquiry not only being independent, but being seen to be independent, we would have thought that a clear statement to the effect that the UEA would not have control over, nor even sight of the information received or generated by the ICCER, would have been important.

Click to read more ...

Oreskes and Conway do the end of the world

Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have penned a rather strange article in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540–2073); the dilemma being addressed is how we–the children of the Enlightenment–failed to act on robust information about climate change and knowledge of the damaging events that were about to unfold. Our historian concludes that a second Dark Age had fallen on Western civilization, in which denial and self-deception, rooted in an ideological fixation on “free” markets, disabled the world’s powerful nations in the face of tragedy. Moreover, the scientists who best understood the problem were hamstrung by their own cultural practices, which demanded an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind–even those involving imminent threats. Here, our future historian, living in the Second People’s Republic of China, recounts the events of the Period of the Penumbra (1988–2073) that led to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2074).

Click to read more ...

An encounter with a nobellist

In the comments, The Leopard in the Basement posts an excerpt from Nicholas Nassim Taleb's Antifragile in which the author encounters a Nobel prizewinner:

As I was writing this book, I overheard on a British Air flight a gentleman explain to the flight attendant less than two seconds into the conversation (meant to be about whether he liked cream and sugar in his coffee) that he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine “and Physiology” in addition to being the president of a famous monarchal academy. The flight attendant did not know what the Nobel was, but was polite, so he kept repeating “the Nobel Prize” hoping that she would wake up from her ignorance. I turned around and recognized him, and the character suddenly deflated. As the saying goes, it is hardest to be a great man to one’s chambermaid. And marketing beyond conveying information is insecurity.

We accept that people who boast are boastful and turn people off.

Davey demands less gas

According to a story in the FT, George Osborne wanted to release the British Geological Survey report on shale gas in time for the budget.

Apparently Ed Davey decided to ask the BGS to rework the numbers.

...the energy department is understood to have asked it to redo its calculations, a process that is taking several months. A final report is still a few weeks away and could see a downward revision to the estimates.

Now why would Ed Davey want the shale gas estimates to be lowered?

Paul and the pug dog

Under Paul Nurse's stewardship, the Royal Society has taken some, ahem, interesting decisions. Its latest though is quite extraordinary. The society has hilariously decided to award the lucrative Wolfson Research Merit award to Stephan Lewandowsky! Jo Nova has the story.

He’s the psychologist who is expert in an imaginary group of humans called “Climate deniers”. Neither he, nor anyone else has ever met one but he discovered their imaginary motivations by surveying the confused groups who hate them. As you would, right?

It's hard to imagine anything funnier. If Manchester United signed up a three-legged pug dog to play centre forward you wouldn't laugh any less.

First Erlich, now Lewandowsky. What next? Homeopaths? A fellowship for Kim Jong Il? A cabbage patch doll?

I wonder what the fellows make of it?

Update on Apr 29, 2013 by Bishop Hill

The story was actually broken by Geoff Chambers here.

ECC committee on shale gas

The House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee has issued its report on shale gas, concluding that exploration should be encouraged.

...if companies can demonstrate that they can meet the required standards the Government should encourage exploratory shale gas operations to proceed in order to improve current estimates, providing that public concern over environmental impacts is recognised and taken into account.

However, they also conclude that various market-fixing mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that gas is not too successful and note that regulation should be so tight as to prevent any nasty shale gas revolution taking place here (or words to that effect).

Click to read more ...

Climate sensitivity in AR5

The assessment of equilibrium (or effective - let's not involve ourselves with the difference here) climate sensitivity depends not only on the empirical and semi-empirical studies that have been discussed at this blog in recent days, but also on the climate models. As the second order draft of AR5 shows, most of the models sit within the IPCC's preferred 2-4.5°C range (represented by the shaded area). There are some models that run hotter, but I don't think anyone takes these seriously.

Click to read more ...

Thin Ice

H/T to Rob Wilson for pointing us to Thin Ice, a documentary movie about climate scientists. 

The aim from the outset was to give people from all walks of the life the chance to see the astonishing range of human activity as well as scientific endeavour that is required to help us understand our changing climate. Our idea was then we would all be better able to decide both individually and collectively how we might deal with it.

There's a website here, where you can pay a modest sum to watch the movie. The trailer is below:

Click to read more ...

Bruckner's opus

Yesterday I was at the House of Lords for the launch of Pascal Bruckner's book on environmental catastrophism, which was sponsored by GWPF.

Bruckner, a prominent philosopher and author, gave a very impressive talk introducing some of the themes from his book, which is entitled The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse. French philosophers can overpower with their intellectualism, and while Bruckner is no slouch on this front I was pleasantly surprised by his easy wit, and how approachable he made his argument; it's hard to take against anyone who opens with a discussion of Tintin.

There was a great deal to enjoy. I kept having to pick up my pen to jot down things Bruckner said that had never occurred to me before or older ideas that were explored from new angles:

• The idea of catastrophe has replaced the idea of progress
• Racial minorities, women and slaves have been replaced as principal victims by Mother Earth
• Fear has become something to be desired.
• We are being transformed into children, ready to obey the orders of an enlightened elite.
• Friends of the earth have become the enemies of mankind
• Environmentalism is universal but "end of the worldism" is purely western.
• Environmentalism is about keeping the world for the bobos (bohemian bourgeois)

I've started working my way through the book and it's not an easy read (although much more straightforward than most works by philosophers). But I think Bruckner's view on greenery is rather penetrating and it's a valuable counterblast against apocalyptism. If you like struggling with ideas, it could well be worth a look.

Data in the Raw - Josh 217

With several questions from MPs recently, see here, here and here,  on the statistical analysis supporting the Met Office's claims about recent warming, it is probably time for the Met Office to do some revealing of evidence. Julia Slingo holds up the relevant papers on the subject.

Cartoons by Josh

Update on Apr 24, 2013 by Josh

H/t Anthony for the 'Gut instinct' quote and story here.

Another MP develops an interest in statistics

Further questions about just what statistical analysis supports the Met Office's claims about warming have been tabled.

Mr Lilley: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (1) whether the claim that every year since 1998 has been significantly warmer than the temperatures to be expected if there was no warming made by the Met Office in a climate science briefing sent to the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser on 8 February 2010 was supported by any statistical time-series analysis; [151411]

(2) whether the claim that for the last three decades the rate of temperature increase is significant which was made by the Met Office in a climate science briefing sent to the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser on 8 February 2010 was supported by any statistical time-series analysis. [151412]