(Lack of) warming since 1995

At the end of their chat about global warming the other day, Andrew Neil asked James Delingpole and Andrew Pendleton of FOE to send him their understandings of global temperature changes since the end of the last century. The responses have now been posted at Neil's blog.

I'm not sure they leave us any the wiser. The problem (well, one of the problems) with discussing statistical significance is that you have to have a model for what the climate does normally. Since nobody knows what model should be used, it's not clear to me that we can say anything very much about the significance of the changes in temperature in the last decades or the last hundred years.

It won't work because we won't let it

Via Leo H, here's a press release from University of Leicester geographer, Mike Bradshaw. It announces a speech he's giving today at the Royal Geographical Society conference in Edinburgh.

“There is a high degree of risk and uncertainty associated with every element of the UK’s energy strategy – whether that’s energy efficiency, renewable energy, or carbon capture and storage. “Coming together these could result into an ever greater reliance of gas, at a time when its price is likely to increase because of growing demand from countries including China and India.” Some commentators present shale gas extraction as the solution to these future gas and energy security issues. Yet, Professor Bradshaw does not agree, commenting that significant levels of exploitation are unlikely for many years, due to substantial logistical and environmental challenges. “Shale gas is unlikely to be a game-changer in the UK” concluded Professor Bradshaw.

If I remember the Deutsche Bank report correctly, the logistical challenges are merely a shortage of horizontal drilling rigs in the UK, something that can, no doubt, be fixed by manufacturing more of them. The bigger question is, of course, over the "environmental challenges" and the efforts by greens to prevent anyone from even trying to exploit shale resources.

Bottoms up

Rajendra Pachauri is in the news today, arguing that citizens should be taking action on global warming into their own hands, bypassing governmental stasis in favour of a bottom-up approach.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that the experience of Rio proves that the political will to take action simply isn’t there – and argues that a new form of activism is the only answer.

“I would submit that the time has come that we shouldn’t really wait for governments,” he said.

“Governments will of course have to play their own role – but what we really need to rely on is creating awareness among the people, so that each one of us in our own way should start treating this problem as serious – and meeting the challenge that confronts us today.

Of course, nobody is going to object if environmentalists take steps to address their concerns - perhaps by a cessation of their jet-setting lifestyles or abjuring their advocacy of grossly inefficient technologies. Provided it's voluntary, everyone will be happy. It's only their forcing of their beliefs onto others that is objectionable.

Interestingly, today's Guardian also has an article making a call for a bottom-up approach to global warming. Anyone might think that they were more of a green mouthpiece than a serious newspaper.

The pilgrim's progress

Sir Mark Walport, who runs the Welcome Trust, has been appointed the new government chief scientific advisor. He takes over from Sir John Beddington, whose term of office comes to an end in December. There is an excellent article by Pallab Ghosh reviewing the implications of the appointment here.

Walport's appointment is the latest installment in a meteoric rise to prominence, having been knighted in 2009 and elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011. The appointment is quite surprising, since he seems to be more of an administrator rather than a researcher. Ghosh's article might give you the impression that Walport's political acumen, and in particular the expectation that he might be able to protect the scientific civil service from spending cuts, is the main reason that he won out over more research-orientated candidates.

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