Warm weather - Josh 142

George Monbiot's hilarious article 'Do the weather forecasters used by the Daily Mail actually exist?' is well worth reading. Although we know that weather is not climate (except when it is) one can't help but see some parallels.

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Brisbane floods redux

Remember last year's floods in Brisbane? There were some interesting exchanges in the comments on my posts on the subject, with some differences of opinion between those who thought that the dams had been mismanaged, perhaps in response to green-initiated concerns over droughts - and those who thought otherwise (see here, here and here).

Earlier in the week, it was revealed that the dam in question was operating on a low-release strategy on the eve of the floods, rather than seeking to lower levels in the reservoir ahead of the deluge. Interestingly, evidence has also emerged that the official inquiry into the affair was not what it should have been, overlooking several key documents.

Now why does that sound familiar?

Off topic threads

The threads are getting out of hand again. I have imposed a timeout on BBD until Monday.

Quote of the day

A man may stand to gain a great deal of peace and quiet from telling his wife that he loves her. But he may really love her nonetheless.

Jamie Whyte on the motivational fallacy (H/T James D)

Huhne file goes to CPS

Guido reports that Essex police has passed a file about Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne, to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Climate scientists want no oversight

Revkin reports on the involvement of an organisation called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in a legal defence fund for climate scientists. I was interested in this bit about the application of FOI to universities:

Q: Finally, when the issue is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), there’s a murky line between what is fishing and what isn’t. Many FOIA requests of green groups over the years could be cast as such. This is one reason the Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, has walked a fine line in its statements on abuse of FOIA. Should a researcher using a state university e-mail address and working under federal grants be entitled to presume his/her correspondence is “private” (as described below)?

A: The central issue is whether the subject of the inquiry is public business. Generally, scientific articles submitted in the author’s name with a disclaimer that the work does not represent the institution falls outside what is official business. Our main concern is that industry-funded groups and law firms are seeking to criminalize the peer review process by obtaining internal editorial comments of reviewers as a means to impeach or impugn scientists.

The grants themselves and the grant reports are public but a federal grant does not transform a university lab into an executive branch agency – which is the ambit of FOIA.

By the way, as an adjunct to our whistleblower practice, PEER makes extensive use of FOIA to force disclosure of matters other wise buried in agency cubicles. A good example of one our science-based FOIA [requesets] is this.

"...seeking to criminalize the peer review process by obtaining internal editorial comments of reviewers as a means to impeach or impugn scientists"? Huh?

It can't be said often enough. If you want public money you have to accept public oversight.

War of words

The Express is covering the ongoing war of words over GWPF.

Lord Lawson had barely removed his microphone when the vitriolic attacks began.

The veteran politician had just taken part in a calm debate about the merits of extracting gas from shale. During the discussion on the BBC’s Today programme he stated his firmly held view that there has been no global warming so far this century.

It was the catalyst for an outpouring of venom on message boards and social networking sites. In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”

Update on Jan 25, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Ben Pile has an article covering similar ground over at Spiked.

Cameron's climate connections

Leo Hickman has a fascinating report about a series of "networking" meetings at which businesses paid up to £1800 a head for access to ministers, government officials and special advisers.

Among the public sector employees to have attended the networking evenings is Ben Moxham, David Cameron's special adviser for energy and the environment and a former employee of BP, who was at an event on climate change in November.

The club charges senior executives from energy companies, consultancies and technology businesses between £1,300 and £1,800 per person for each event, although it invites some from the public sector to attend for free.

Senior executives from companies including BP, Shell, and the Russian oil giant Gazprom have attended the company's climate change events, while Apple, Google and Citigroup executives were among those at other networking evenings.

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Ofgem's maths

The Telegraph is reporting that the UK's energy "regulator", Ofgem, has authorised capital expenditure of £7.6bn to allow windfarms in Scotland to be connected to the electricity grid (H/T Lord Beaverbrook).

Ofgem said on Monday it had fast-tracked proposals for infrastructure spending by energy companies ScottishPower and SSE and expected to make a final decision in April, following a consultation.

The investment will be paid for through energy bills and is likely to add 35p to a typical household bill each year from 2013 to 2021.

Eight years, 35p per year, and say 30 million households. By my reckoning the cost to consumers over eight years is £84 million, (£10.5m per annum).

8 × 0.35 × 30 million = 84 million

So who is paying the difference between the £7600m spend and the £84m recouped from consumers?

Or have they got their maths wrong and they mean that the cost per household per year will be £32?

7600 ÷ (30 × 8)  =  32

I guessing they have got this wrong by a factor of 100.

Green Alliance on AGW and Russell

Updated on Jan 24, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Alice Bell has written a trailer for Brian Hoskins' lecture at Imperial last Monday - if everything goes technically to plan this should be available as a podcast shortly. The trailer includes Hoskins' recommendations for climate reading - at a newbie level.

Among the documents recommended by Hoskins is the Green Alliance's introduction to climatology, published last year. This was prepared by their own Rebecca Willis, with input from Hoskins and Simon Buckle of the Grantham Institute (the sciencey bit at Imperial, as opposed to the naked-green-activism bit at LSE), and Joanna Haigh of Imperial.

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Smaller than we thought

H/T to Anonym in Unthreaded, for pointing us to this report at Bloomberg. It seems that extractable reserves in the Marcellus Shale are much lower than previously thought:

The U.S. Energy Department cut its estimate for natural gas reserves in the Marcellus shale formation by 66 percent, citing improved data on drilling and production.

About 141 trillion cubic feet of gas can be recovered from the Marcellus shale using current technology, down from the previous estimate of 410 trillion, the department said today in its Annual Energy Outlook. About 482 trillion cubic feet can be produced from shale basins across the U.S., down 42 percent from 827 trillion in last year’s outlook.

I wonder how important that caveat - "with current technology" - is.

A major FOI victory

This post is a jointly written effort by myself and Don Keiller.

Readers may remember the Information Commissioner's ruling last year that UEA had to release the CRUTEM data sent by Phil Jones to Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. This had been requested by Jonathan Jones and Don Keiller.

This ruling was obviously very welcome, but in fact it was not the end of the story. UEA had put forward an argument that CRUTEM data was held under agreements with national meteorological services and could not therefore be disclosed to outsiders. Along with his request for the data, Keiller had therefore also requested the covering email that Phil Jones had sent to Webster, which should presumably contain caveats about reuse and disclosure. However, when the Information Commissioner ordered UEA to release the data,  UEA's non-disclosure of the email was upheld, on the grounds that the information was, on the balance of probablilities, 'not held'.

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What the greens spend their money on

Leo Hickman reports that a group called the Request Initiative is pursuing an FOI request against the Charities Commission, trying to force them to release details of who is funding GWPF.

Request Initiative is an organisation that places FOI requests on behalf of charities and NGOs. It is run by a chap called Brendan Montague who, by strange coincindence, came to interview me in at the end of 2010, on the first anniversary of Climategate. At that point he explained that he was a freelance journalist and was writing a story about the Climategate anniversary. Strangely, nothing ever appeared. I therefore note with interest that he placed his first FOI request to the Charities Commission about GWPF in 2010. I wonder if the "freelance journalist" bit was therefore not entirely true. I can't remember whether we discussed GWPF and its funding at all but I wouldn't have been able to tell him anything about it anyway. My recollection is that we talked mainly about Climategate.

In passing, I note that the use of an intermediary such as Request Initiative essentially conceals the identity of the requester. I wonder which NGO is so bashful about its activities? When I chanced upon the original FOI request on the web, I asked Bob Ward - the most obvious source - if he was involved. He appeared to be very reticent about replying but eventually said that he had nothing to do with it.

As for the FOI request, it has now apparently worked its way up to the Information Tribunal. I can't see that it will meet with any success there. I'm no expert in the DPA, but I can't see an argument that there is a public interest in disclosing donors' names because GWPF are a bunch of liars (or word to that effect) meeting with much success. In fact I would have thought that GWPF the Charities Commission would have a good case to ask for their costs to be paid.

Update on Jan 23, 2012 by Bishop Hill

On Twitter, FOI blogger Bainsey points us to the Information Commissioner's original decision and comments that the argument for the information to be withheld under s40 looks strong.

Bizarre science - Josh 141

Tom Watson on the battle for FOI

Tom Watson MP, best known as the man who has uncovered so much of the UK's phone hacking scandal, gave the PA Annual Lecture on "Parliament and Phone Hacking". The lecture is here, with the discussion of FOI from 30 mins. In it he makes the case that his revelations of misbehaviour and outright corruption around the phone hacking scandal were entirely dependent on the Freedom of Information Act. He points out that the mandarinate and much of the political class are now seeking to restrict the scope of the Act and that we will now have a fight on our hands.

Climategate is mentioned briefly - referred to as a "scandal".