Shameless

Get a load of this nonsense from a week or so ago: campaigners against fuel poverty trying to prevent the one thing that might bring energy prices down - concentrating on gas.

"Renewable energy would be cheaper but they're refusing to make that transition because their profits depend on gas."...

Elizabeth Ziga, from Fuel Poverty Action, said: "While we freeze in our homes and millions of us choose between heating and eating, the Government is snugly in bed with the big six energy companies.

"Hand in hand, they're plotting to increase our dependence on dirty and expensive gas power, which will mean even higher fuel bills as well as rising food prices due to climate change.

It's a bit of an indictment of the education of these kids that they can't work out that if renewables genuinely were cheaper they would not require a subsidies, feed-in-tariffs and renewables obligations. I really isn't rocket science.

Wait a minute. It turns out that Fuel Poverty Action is a project of the Climate Justice Collective. They are campaigning against the results of their own policy demands.

OK, uneducatable then.

Ingratiating interactions

Paul Hardaker has moved from running the Royal Meteorological Society to the Institute of Physics, an august body that has attracted the attention of yours truly from time to time.

Interactions is the institute's magazine for members, and although some have unkindly suggested that its title is facetious, I'm sure it's a gripping read. The current edition (attached below), shows that Hardaker will fit right in with his new colleagues.

Interactions Jan 2013

Detection, attribution, disintegration

James Annan hit the climate blog headlines the other day, with a post that not only wrote off the possibility of high climate sensitivities but also revealed that one climate scientist had been so sure of the omerta among his colleagues that he openly admitted to lying to promote political action on climate change.

Annan has now written another potentially blockbuster post, which discusses recent publications in the area of detection and attribution (D&A) - the bit of the climate change science that assigns guilt. What Annan reveals is that the studies that have supported the claim of "the majority of recent warming is manmade" are fatally flawed.

Click to read more ...

Light blogging

I'm away for a few days. Blogging will therefore be light, although I have a few posts lined up for while I'm away.

Friends of Richard

Anthony Watts reports that private email accounts scandal - the Richard Windsor affair - which is currently engulfing the US Environmental Protection Agency is about to get even wider.

New emails show acting Administrator Perciasepe used non-official email to conduct official business. EPA Region 8 Administrator, who is resigning this week, is being investigated for the same problem.

Read the whole thing.

Nursing prejudice

I have a post up at the Spectator Coffee House blog.

Read it here.

What next?

The energy regulator has repeated the point I made here a few days ago. With a swathe of coal-fired power stations ready to close in March, the chances of avoiding power cuts looks very slim.

Alistair Buchanan, chief executive of Ofgem, said the combination of UK power plants closing, foreign gas supplies shrinking, and demand rising, has made British energy reserves “uncomfortably tight”.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph ahead of an industry lecture today, Mr Buchanan has warned: “We have to face the likelihood that avoiding power shortages will also carry a price.”

Click to read more ...

Schooling the Royal

Ben Pile explains the limits of science to Paul Nurse, and asks him to consider if maybe he isn't missing the point rather.

Brendan Montague

I had an email from Don Keiller the other day. He had been contacted by a “freelance journalist”, Brendan Montague, who wanted to know about his connections with GWPF and what he knew about their funding sources. Don seems to have sent him on his way fairly quickly, advising him that his time would be better spent looking at WWF and Greenpeace.

Strangely, Montague's name has come up in conversation a few times in recent weeks, although in fact I've known of him since 2010. Near the first anniversary of Climategate, I got an email from him, again claiming to be a freelance journalist, and saying he wanted to interview me about a story about the anniversary for the Sunday Times.

Click to read more ...

Sue and settle

This is a pretty extraordinary story from Larry Bell, writing at Forbes. It seems that bureaucrats and environmentalists are agreeing between them that the latter will sue the former for breach of environmental law and regulation.

“Sue and Settle “ practices, sometimes referred to as “friendly lawsuits”, are cozy deals through which far-left radical environmental groups file lawsuits against federal agencies wherein  court-ordered “consent decrees” are issued based upon a prearranged settlement agreement they collaboratively craft together in advance behind closed doors. Then, rather than allowing the entire process to play out, the agency being sued settles the lawsuit by agreeing to move forward with the requested action they and the litigants both want.

The taxpayer then pays the costs of both sides, with green lawyers picking up tens of millions of dollars over the years.

Curtain call - Josh 204

Prompted by Shub

Cartoons by Josh 

A tale of two textbooks

Two new university level text books have hit the shelves, both coming from the Springer stable. I thought it rather interesting that the publisher had turned out too such contrasting takes on the climate debate almost simultaneously. Also, both books take interesting diversions from their main subject matter.

Cornelis van Kooten is a resource economist from the University of Victoria in Canada and his book is entitled Climate change, climate science and economics. Although Springer bill it as a research level text it's written in highly accessible fashion. The focus is very much on the economics, looking at emissions scenarios and climate models, cost-benefit analyses, impacts assessments, and the whole gamut of more or less sane policy responses. But the first few chapters focus on the science, with solid discussions of the temperature records and the paleoclimate studies, and with diversions into the discoveries of the blogosphere. Names familiar to those in the climate blogosphere abound: McIntyre and McKitrick, Watts, Mosher and even someone called Montford, who is cited more than once.

Click to read more ...

Closing the curtain

David Rose called to say that some of the people involved in the Bloomberg meeting that I posted about the other day were unhappy with it being publicised. David has asked that I take it down again and on due reflection I have decided to accede to his request.

Nurse accuses Lawson of cherrypicking

Paul Nurse has used the occasion of a speech to the University of Melbourne to make an extraordinary attack on Nigel Lawson . Discussing people's concerns over global warming, he suggested that this was causing some to attack the science.

We saw that in Britain with a politician, Nigel Lawson, who would go on television and talk about the scientific case. And he was trained as a politician - you made whatever case you can to convince the audience. So he would choose two points and say "look no warming's taking place", knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case, but he was just wanting to win that debate on television.

Strong stuff. Very strong stuff.

The audio file is here. Key quote at 42 mins.

Update on Feb 18, 2013 by Bishop Hill

There is a transcript of the whole talk here (h/t Tallbloke)

The new president

Roger Pielke Jr has had an interesting exchange of views with the new president of the American Meteorological Society:

Roger Pielke Jr: In briefing to US Senate AmerMetSoc Prez @DrShepherd2013 links increasing costs of disasters with climate change. OK, I'll bite, evidence?

Marshall Shepherd‏: i try to be measured on such issues. Even some of your own work noting coastal growth adds cost as coastal haz like sandy hap...btw annual meeting in 2014, my theme will address links to soc infrastructure and hopefully you are willing to participate

Click to read more ...