SCOTUS to hear climate case

Via the blog of the Supreme Court of the United States comes the news that the court will hear the appeal by five businesses that have been sued under the law of common nuisance for emitting carbon.

five entities that were claimed to be the largest sources of greenhouse gases — four electric power companies and the Tennessee Valley Authority — were sued by eight states, New York City, and three land conservation groups.  Their lawsuits were filed under the federal common law of nuisance, a judge-made theory.  The Second Circuit agreed that the lawsuit could proceed on that theory.  The case, however, has not yet gone to trial.

When the electric generating companies appealed to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, speaking for TVA, urged the Supreme Court to send the case back to the Circuit Court for another look instead of ruling on it now.  The Department argued that the EPA was now moving on several fronts to regulate greenhouses gases under the Clean Air Act, so this activity might displace any claims made under common-law theories.  The Court, however, chose on Monday to take on the case itself at this point, presumably with the aim of deciding whether such a nuisance lawsuit may now go forward as a way of attacking global warming.

Nature's take on the story here.

Josh 59

Dellers on Durkin on Cox

James Delingpole introduces Martin Durkin's reponse to Prof Brian Cox's RTS lecture.

Cox equates scientific truth with the consensus view of the scientific establishment.  His justification for doing so is the revered practice known as ‘peer review’.  Cox tells us, ‘a peer-reviewed consensus is by definition impartial’.  Now this is an extraordinarily stupid thing for anyone to say, let alone someone like Cox who likes to pretend he’s clever.

AGW indoctrination becomes obligatory?

The bigwigs in Cancun appear to have agreed that global warming propaganda will become compulsory in schools worldwide. That appears to be the gist of this story:

The 16th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP16) on Saturday reached its first consensus by approving a proposal on education, training and consciousness as part of efforts to mitigate climate change.

...

The proposal commits signatories to promote formal and informal education strategies covering the climate change phenomenon.

HSI - big in Canada

Donna Laframboise's recommendation seems to have had an effect - the Hockey Stick Illusion seems to have leapt up the Amazon Canada chart - currently at 1270. Also another Canadian blog has picked it up here and given it a good plug.

Thanks again Donna.

Update on Dec 5, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Just noticed that Donna needs cider. Please provide cider vouchers now.

More on Nature's data policy

Last week I looked at Nature's data policy and was corrected by Eli Rabett on the existence of a formal policy. ER pointed to Nature's advice to authors at the time of Phil Jones' 1990 paper on urban heat islands:

Nature requests authors to deposit sequence and x-ray crystallography data in the databases that exist for this purpose.

As he notes, this paltry sentence doesn't support the idea that there was a formal policy in place requiring authors to make data available. However, Shub Niggurath has been doing some research, and I think his findings put this lone sentence in some perspective, which is quite interesting.

Click to read more ...

Climate cuttings 44

With quite a lot of climate and weather stories around, here is another roundup for you.

David Rose in the Mail on Sunday sticks the boot into the Met Office, noting the failure of reality to keep up with their incessant predictions of warming.

Strangely enough, comedian David Mitchell - a man who would normally expected to be "right-on" on these issues - is also letting off a few pot-shots at Britain's weather forecasters, wondering if they would "get it right more often if it stuck to the facts rather than suppositions."

Click to read more ...

Climate cuttings 43

Welcome to another edition of Climate Cuttings, in which I round up some global warming links you may have missed.

First up is Judith Curry, who has had a letter from Congress following up on her earlier testimony. The theme seems to be - do you think we should listen to scientists who don't release their data?

Things don't seem to be going so well for the Campaign against Climate Change, who are suffering, along with many other charities, from a lack of donations.

Click to read more ...

Good news

Prince Charles has backed CRU scientists. In view of some of his other causes (homeopathy and the like) this is probably good news.

La papa snowbound

Via Steven Goddard

Graun on best green books

Damian Carrington looks at best selling books on the environment. Apparently the top seller for 2010 was The Vanishing Face of Gaia, which shifted 5200 copies.

I did a double take since The Hockey Stick Illusion has sold slightly more than this, although I'm not sure we are comparing like with like - the 5200 figure may be UK-only and many of my sales have been to the US.

It will certainly be interesting to see whether I get a name-check in any of the "books of the year" articles that are coming our way.

The Orwellian solution

As readers know, I have been keeping a close eye on the BBC's review of science coverage, to which TonyN and I have made a submission.

Science coverage on the television was also the subject of a recent lecture at the Royal Television Society (H/T Martyn in the comments) and it's hard to believe that the timing is coincidental.

The speaker was Professor Brian Cox, who, for viewers outside the UK is something of a rising star in the world of TV science. His day job is in physics - he plies his trade at CERN - and if he has something of a retired pop star about him, this is because earlier in life he was the keyboard player in a chart-topping band.

Click to read more ...

Matt Ridley on weather and climate

Matt Ridley has an op-ed in the Times, the gist of which can be seen here.

Like everyone else he's laughing at Dr David Viner.

Steig in the dump

A team of Climate Audit regulars have finally had their paper refuting Steig et al's headline grabbing Antarctic temperature record accepted by Journal of Climate. The big story is not that Steig has been dumped but that the team are still moving heaven and earth to keep critical papers out of the literature.

Read about it at CA.

Update on Dec 3, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Ryan O's take on it is in a guest post at Jeff Id's.

THES on FOI in universities

The Times Higher Ed Supp has a leader on Freedom of Information in universities, calling on the academy to open up.

Researchers need to start with the basic assumption that it is right for others, including those outside the academy, to be able to test and challenge their methods and results. But they also need to take responsibility for providing the context that makes their raw material intelligible.

In short, they need to learn not only to live with FoI, but also to embrace it.