The Economist on surfacetemperatures.org

The Economist has an article on Peter Thorne's open temperatures project. Apparently us sceptics should be trying to help more. I'm not sure I accept some of the criticisms here but on the other hand I'm not sure they're worth bickering over either.

Signed copies of HSI

Stairway Press is now offering North American readers signed copies of The Hockey Stick Illusion. Get them here.



Message from the Guardian

This article was amended on 20th August 2010 following a complaint from Andrew Montford to make it clear that we did not mean to imply that Andrew Montford deliberately published false information in order to support the arguments made in his book. We apologise if such a false impression was given. 

See it here.

Cleaning coffee from PC screen

Jo Abbess has complained about me to Newsnight. This is too funny. As Ms Abbess puts it:

I don’t expect much from it in terms of any kind of sensible, relevant reply...

No indeed.

Where's Roger?

A couple of people have wondered where Roger Harrabin has got to these days. The answer may be here:

In a special Radio 4 series the BBC's Environmental Analyst Roger Harrabin investigates whether the arguments surrounding climate change can ever be won. He questions whether his own reporting - and that of others - has adequately told the whole story about global warming.

Roger Harrabin has reported on the climate for almost thirty years off and on, but last November while working on the "Climategate" emails story, he was prompted to look again at the basics of climate science.

He finds that the public under-estimate the degree of consensus among scientists that humans have contributed towards the heating of the climate.

But he also finds that politicians often fail to convey the huge uncertainty over the extent of future climate change.

Read the whole thing.

Prospect on the Hockey Stick (again)

There's a new review of the Hockey Stick Illusion at Prospect Magazine's blog. Two reviews from the same magazine!

This one is a critique, by Professor Richard Joyner of Nottingham Trent University.  He hasn't really got anything to say apart from saying he doesn't like it. It's good though to see that he has no issues with the facts as presented, just like several  of the other critiques. I think we can probably say that there is now a "consensus" that the facts are accurately presented in the book.

Click to read more ...

Wiki wars

A correspondent writes to tell me that Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee are currently examining the conduct of people involved in the ongoing saga of edit wars over climate change articles. The allegations and counter-allegations over who did what and when can be seen here.

There has now been a draft decision issued and it looks as though, hot on the heels of losing his SysOp privileges, Dr Connolley may be up for a ban. He will be accompanied by at least one sceptic.

(As always with Wiki, please don't get involved if you are not already)

Newsnight reactions

Mixed reactions to my performance last night, and I guess from a sceptic point of view I was probably slightly off-message. A few thoughts though. Firstly my main objective last night was not to cock up. Ahead of the GWPF report that would have been a disaster. So to that extent I was successful.

In terms of the content of the Newsnight report, the whole thing was covered in what I thought was a reasonably nuanced way that was difficult to take umbrage with. In terms of getting the message over - that you can't point to the Pakistan floods and say they were caused by climate change, I think commenters here agree that everyone on Newsnight seemed to concur that you can't say this, so to that extent it went well. If the BBC and other media outlets are now going to eschew climate porn because everyone is saying it can't be attributed then that's quite an important victory. I would have liked to take a pot-shot at the "consistent with global warming" argument but they moved on so quickly I didn't get a chance.

The second question, on what to do about it was slightly odd - a bit of a no-brainer really. If you are prone to flooding, then, yes, take mitigation steps - provided they are economically sensible of course.

And finally the inevitable sceptic/denier question. I'd growled at the BBC researcher earlier in the day when he was doing the rehearsal. Then, he put the question in terms of something like "it must be hard being a denier". I think he was slightly taken aback when I (very gently) put him right on his terminology. So when it came to the question at the end, they had everything fixed and just asked whether I acknowledged that mankind was affecting the climate. This again is a pretty easy question, because of course mankind has always affected the climate. If I had my time over again, I would have made this point more clearly. I don't think you can get away from the radiative physics arguments for AGW. It seems likely to me that it has some effect, but as I tried to make clear in my 10 secs, we just don't know how big.

Newsnight

I've been invited to appear on Newsnight tonight to talk about the Pakistani floods and climate change. Should be interesting.

Update on Aug 23, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Well that was OK, I think. I'm pretty sure it was cut short - there was a delay on the line to Seattle which made things quite difficult for everyone. I did half wonder if the lack of hyperbole didn't make for very good telly, but in terms of the science I agree with commenters that the whole thing portrayed a pretty good balance.

Enjoying Wiki

I'm thoroughly amused by the latest contribution to the Wiki talk page on the Hockey Stick Illusion. As previously, please don't get involved. Leave this to those who are already there. This avoids trouble with Wiki's canvassing rules.

Just get some popcorn and have a good giggle.

Helmer withdraws apology to Houghton

Roger Helmer MEP writes to the Telegraph today.

An apology withdrawn

SIR – Sir John Houghton (Letters, August 15), the former IPCC Chairman, challenges the use of the quote, widely attributed to him that: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.” He insists he said (and the record confirms this) that: “If we want a good environmental policy, we’ll have to have a disaster.”

This is a distinction without a difference. Either way, he is saying that the IPCC needs disasters to convince the public of the need for climate mitigation.

As someone who used the slightly incorrect quotation (in my Bruges Group book Cool Thinking on Climate Change), I now feel vindicated, and I withdraw an apology I made to Sir John for misquoting him.

Roger Helmer MEP (Con)
Market Harborough, Leicestershire

I think there is actually room for doubt over what precisely Houghton meant in his original statement. People's opinions will depend on whether they feel he deserves the benefit of that doubt.

Josh 32

Judy C meets the SciGuy

Judith Curry is interviewed by Eric Berger, the SciGuy, covering her recent Antarctic paper and Climategate amongst other things.

Why have you been so conversant with some of the so-called skeptical sites, sites that are certainly outside mainstream climate science?

One of the other positives that I think has come out of Climategate is a realization of what other bloggers like (Steve) McIntyre (of Climate Audit) are actually up to. This isn't a Merchants of Doubt, oil-company-funded effort. It's a grassroots effort. These are people who are interested, they want to see accountability. They have a certain amount of expertise and they want to play around with climate data. There's no particularly evil motives behind all this.

We really don't understand the potential or impact the blogosphere is having. I think it's big and growing. The sites that are growing in popularity are Watts Up With That, which really have huge traffic. I think there's a real interest in the subject. I think there's a hunger for information. I think there's a huge potential here for public education. People say it's polarizing, and sure, you have Climate Progress and Climate Depot on the two extremes, but in the middle you've got all these lukewarmer blogs springing up. So I can also see a depolarizing effect. There seems to be a lot more stuff building up in the middle right now. With the IPCC, and the expectation that scientists hew to the party line, it was getting pretty evangelical. When I speak up about maybe there's more uncertainty, some people regard that as heresy. That's not a good thing for either science or policy. We've got to lose that.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

Interacademies report coming

The Interacademies Council report into IPCC procedures will be published on 30 August.

H/T Marcel Crok.

Progress...

Some changes have been made to Bob Ward's article.

More news soon, I hope.