Acton's blind eye

Readers may recall that at the Science and Technology Committee hearings into Climategate, Professor Acton told MPs that when he had discovered that the Russell inquiry had failed to investigate the question of breaches of FOI legislation, he had instituted his own inquiry which had determined that Jones and Briffa had not in fact deleted emails subject to FOI.

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Licensed to thrill - Josh 195

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H/t Joe D'aleo

Cartoons by Josh

The weirdest year ever?

Roger Harrabin takes a look at the recent furore over the Met Office's climate predictions and finds that some within the Met Office are none to happy with the organisation's PR performance.

The damage to Met Office credibility, though, was exacerbated by a couple of blunders in its own communication.

The first was to put the decadal report on its website on Christmas Eve - the traditional date for burying stories that the authorities don't want publicised. I was initially suspicious. But the Met Office since explained that the scientist responsible was due to finish the work by end of year and was about to go on holiday. That sounds plausible.

The second error was in the caption to a graph comparing the new temperature forecast with one from the past. It was badly-worded and led bloggers to conclude that the Met Office were trying to cover up the disparity between forecasts. (They seem to have accepted later that this is not the case).

Interesting stuff. The article also includes the remarkable claim that this has been the UK's "weirdest year of weather".

By applying inappropriate techniques, Bob Ward can prove that right is wrong

Bob Ward, writing at the Greenpeace website, (where else?) is getting into the statistics of temperature trends once again:

Dr Whitehouse, a former BBC science correspondent, has been churning out a steady stream of error-filled articles on the Foundation’s website to try to cast doubt on the evidence for climate change. His description of the Met Office’s latest findings was similarly flawed. He claimed, for instance, that there has been “a global temperature standstill (from 1997 to present)”, which is a favourite falsehood disseminated by climate change ‘sceptics’ and their promoters in the media, such as David Rose of ‘The Mail on Sunday’ and Christopher Booker of ‘The Sunday Telegraph’.

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BP talking down shale

BP is still desperately talking down the prospects for shale gas in the EU.

Europe has various problems: environmental concerns, outright bans on fracking, a lack of infrastructure and a long tradition of not minding so much having to import things.

If true, this is probably just as well for BP, who are pinning their hopes on bringing in gas to the UK from Russia. Frankly though, I find it hard to believe that any of these alleged problems need to be game changers. If shale gas starts to flow and the resource is as big as it looks it might be, the economics will start to look like an imperative.

Update on Jan 17, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Related news at Conservative Home:

“The relative price of coal and gas is crucial to the health of European utilities. At the beginning of November 2012, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research firm, power utilities in Germany were set, on average, to lose €11.70 when they burned gas to make a megawatt of electricity, but to earn €14.22 per MW when they burned coal.”

Hmm. I wonder which route they will take?

Pat Swords writes

Pat Swords sends this report on the most recent hearing in his case to halt the Irish government's renewables policy in its tracks.

Went in this morning and the state of play was reviewed between myself and the Barrister for the State, as it was set for preliminary review with both Parties before the High Court. We are now adjourned until the 13th March; they want to submit a written defense that there was undue delay, which I then have to prepare a written reply to before the 13th March. It's their only out of the case, so they are going to prepare it in writing, i.e. that Justice Peart should not have granted me leave back in November 2012 for the case to be heard. Their only hope is to get it thrown out on a technicality, i.e. they knowingly bypassed the necessary steps of assessment and democratic accountability back in 2010 and as nobody went straight into the High Court within a narrow timeframe (where access to justice procedures had not been implemented), then de facto it is legitimate to continue to implement the programme. This naturally ignores the later ruling now achieved in the UN that this whole process was non-compliant.

The hearing

I'm just going to write a couple of lines just to report how it went. Further thoughts will follow tomorrow.

It was very much David versus Goliath, just as it was for the Newbery case, with Holland up against teams of professional lawyers. Unlike Newbery's case, the panel today were exemplary in their handling of the case and in the consideration they gave Holland as litigant in person. In terms of getting a successful outcome, I would say the chances are slim, as I don't think there is enough hard evidence to support the position that UEA were running the show, which is what would be required for the information sought to be disclosable. Unless, that is, the court thinks that the failures of the Russell inquiry can be explained in no other way.

The trip

At least one commenter has correctly surmised that the purpose of my trip south has been to watch David Holland questioning Sir Muir Russell and Edward Acton about the details of the Climategate inquiries at the Information Tribunal. That's tomorrow's excitement. I've also had some discussions today which may turn out to be just as important in the long run.

Interesting times.

Travelling

I'm off on my travels this morning, so the level of posting depends on whether I can get an internet connection.

Proper wrong - Josh 194

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Cartoons by Josh

Debent

The Mail on Sunday has a story about conflicts of interest in individuals involved in renewables policy. In fact, it is our old friends Lord Deben and Bernie Bulkin.

When quizzed by MPs before his appointment was confirmed, he was asked about his chairmanship of the £500 million company Veolia Water UK. Lord Deben insisted it did no energy-related business and only dealt with water. If it had ‘even a remote connection’ with the environment or climate change, he promised, he would step down.

In fact, Veolia – of which Lord Deben remains chairman – boasts on its website of supplying ‘large electrical grid connections for renewable energy producers’, and illustrates this with a large photograph of wind farms.

The firm also publishes a ‘case study’ of how its engineers ‘braved the Scottish gales’ to install 12 miles of high-voltage cable to connect the national grid to the Dalswinton windfarm near Dumfries.

You read it here first.

Update on Jan 13, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Another must-read in the MoS is David Rose's look back at the reaction to his "global warming has stopped" article last year, in the light of the Met Office's prediction that we shouldn't expect any warming for a few more years yet.

Lewis on Schmidt on climate sensitivity

This is a guest posting by Nic Lewis. Nic has cross posted this to the comments at RC, with the normal style of response from Schmidt.

Gavin Schmidt

I am glad to see that my input into the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages has prompted a piece on climate sensitivity at RealClimate. I think that some comment on my energy balance based climate sensitivity estimate of 1.6–1.7°C (details at http://www.webcitation.org/6DNLRIeJH), which underpinned Matt Ridley's WSJ op-ed, would have been relevant and of interest.

You refer to the recent papers examining the transient constraint, and say "The most thorough is Aldrin et al (2012). … Aldrin et al produce a number of (explicitly Bayesian) estimates, their ‘main’ one with a range of 1.2°C to 3.5°C (mean 2.0°C) which assumes exactly zero indirect aerosol effects, and possibly a more realistic sensitivity test including a small Aerosol Indirect Effect of 1.2–4.8°C (mean 2.5°C)."

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Scotland's green energy policy in the balance

A legal challenge to the Scottish government's green energy policy could kill off Alex Salmond's dream of utterly destroying the Scottish countryside. In a move that parallel's Pat Swords' challenge to Irish policy, Christine Metcalfe's challenge to Holyrood policy was recently given a hearing by the Compliance Committee at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe:

The question of the Scottish Government’s Renewables Routemap came up. The committee was shocked to discover that, despite the pronouncements of Fergus Ewing MSP and First Minister Alex Salmond, the Scottish Government’s Renewables Routemap 2020 and Energy Policy Statement are still officially only drafts.

So officials have relied on these drafts in giving the go-ahead for more than 3,500 wind turbines, granting planning without proper scientific justification based on a draft.

Phil Trans B says end of world nigh

The Royal Society's elevation of Paul Ehrlich to the ranks of the fellowship last year was a surprising development, given the great doomsayer's predeliction for being entirely wrong about everything. Many noted at the time that Ehrlich shares Paul Nurse's interest in the global population figures and wondered whether Ehrlich's election as a fellow was connected to Nurse's election as president. As I understand it, however, new fellows are appointed after a vote of the existing fellowship, so presumably there was in fact broad support for Ehrlich's candidacy. There is no accounting for taste.

Anthony Watts recently noted the publication of a new Ehrlich paper in the Royal Society's Phil Trans B, in which full vent is given to the tale of environmental doom that he has been getting so badly wrong for the last 30 years. Is this kind of millenarian nonsense new for Royal Society Journals? I certainly have no conception of their stable of publications as being particularly full of woo in the way that, say, Nature is. Have I missed anything?

The Kraken wakes

Having slept for most of the last two days I now seem to have emerged none the worse for wear. With a bit of luck normal service will resume over the weekend.