Donoughue's parting gift

[Lord Donoughue] to ask Her Majesty’s Government if they still accept the opinion of their Government Chief Scientific Adviser, given in 2004, that by the end of this century the most habitable place on Earth will be the Antarctic, and if not what were the grounds for the change

Click to read more ...

Polite discourse shocker

The Guardian has thrown all my preconceptions into disarray by printing an article about sceptics that is not only thoughtful, but is polite too!

Sceptics such as Andrew Montford and Anthony Watts agree with the mainstream view that the greenhouse effect brings about atmospheric warming as a result of carbon emissions, but dispute levels of climate sensitivity. However, others offer far more fundamental challenges to climate science, such as fringe sceptic group Principia Scientific whoreject this orthodox view of atmospheric physics.

A new look at the carbon dioxide budget

As readers are probably aware, I don't spend a lot of time on new hypotheses about global warming. Apart from intermittent looks at Svensmark's cosmoclimatology work, I've tended to concentrate on mainstream science and its relationship with policy, as well as a lot of "meta" stuff like peer review. 

However, I was recently sent a paper by reader David Coe that piqued my interest. It seemed to me to be put together pretty well, and was about an area of the science that I knew nothing about. Being somewhat wary about this kind of thing though, I've sought expert opinion, and this suggests that at least some of what is said is good and new and interesting. So I am going to post the paper up, with the caveat that it is only a discussion paper and parts of it may be wrong. Readers are cordially invited to throw stones at it.

The paper is written in four parts, which I will post at a rate of one every 3-4 days.

Here is the first part, which sets out the problem.

Coe Part 1

Cuadrilla's PR fail

As expected, the greens are trying to use physical coercion to prevent Cuadrilla going ahead with their test drilling at Balcombe. Over the weekend Sussex police reported that a number of people had been charged, most of them subsequently charged with one offence or another.

Ezra Lynch, 31, a circus employee; Samantha Duncan, 29, of Beaconsfield Villas, Brighton, and Marcin Swiercz, 35, a handyman from London, have been charged They will appear before Crawley Magistrates on 14 August along with Mark Mansbridge, 51, a voluntary charity worker, of Paddock Road, Lewes; Nancy Walker, 25, of Over Street, Brighton; Richard Millar, 29, of Upper Gloucester Road, Brighton; Frances Crack, 31, a teacher, of Taffs Well, Cardiff, and Justin Preece, of Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan.

Click to read more ...

Le whirling dervish

New Scientist's Michael le Page is spinning so furiously on the subject of climate sensitivity he looks more like a whirling dervish than a responsible journalist.

Le Page asks whether there is any truth to sceptics' claim that climate scientists now believe that climate sensitivity is lower. He first cites Reto Knutti, as a co-author of the Otto et al paper, saying that climate sensitivity is 1–5°C and most likely 2°C. This is interesting. Let me quote directly from the Otto et al paper:

The most likely value of equilibrium climate sensitivity based on the energy budget of the most recent decade is 2.0 °C, with a 5–95% confidence interval of 1.2–3.9 °C ... compared with the 1970–2009 estimate of 1.9 °C (0.9–5.0 °C...).

Click to read more ...

John and Dana in trouble at school. Again. Josh 232

Click the image for a larger version

 Worth repeating from this post.

The prominent climatologist Mike Hulme has slammed the Cook et al 97% "nonsensus" paper in a comment at the Nottingham University Making Science Public blog.

The blog post at Nottingham University and the subsequent comments are well worth reading. 

(If you want to know where the 'Tree Hut' nickname comes from you can see its origins here)

Cartoons by Josh

Tech issues

A few readers are saying they can't see the comments on "The lords do battle" post. Can you let me know what browser and OS you are using. It's fine for me in FF22 and IE10 (win)

Update on Jul 27, 2013 by Bishop Hill

I think this is fixed now.

What goes on in schools?

Earlier this week I had a very pleasant lunch with John Shade of the Climate Lessons blog, who was down in my neck of the woods for a holiday.

Our conversation turned to what is taught about climate change and environmentalism in schools. While we are both aware of plenty of dodgy stuff in curricula, course materials and school-facing activist websites, we were less able to put our hands on evidence of what is actually said in the classroom, or the extent to which activist material is used.

Is anyone able to throw any light on this question, either through personal experience or, better still, from data?

The Lords do battle

Updated on Jul 26, 2013 by Bishop Hill

After the House of Lords debate on the Energy Bill, Lord Deben wrote to a group of peers attacking the statements made by Matt Ridley in the debate. The letter and the ensuing correspondence was as follows:

Deben's first letter was sent on 4 July 2013:

My Lords,

During the debate on July 2, on the Energy Bill, I stated that the arguments on the science presented by my noble friend Lord Ridley were at variance with the views of the overwhelming majority of scientists whose expertise bears on these issues. I owe it to Lord Lawson, upon whom I intervened, and the noble Viscount to justify that statement. I therefore list the basis for that assertion and append two recent articles which address the points that he raised.

Click to read more ...

Wasted energy - Josh 231

From the video yesterday. Around about 16:49:45 - kind of summarises the whole debate ;-)

Cartoons by Josh  

Hulme slams 97% paper

The prominent climatologist Mike Hulme has slammed the Cook et al 97% "nonsensus" paper in a comment at the Nottingham University Making Science Public blog.

The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?

This is an interesting development since nobody is going to finger Hulme as any kind of a sceptic.

Deben will not be consulted

In one of his recent appearances in the House of Lords, Lord Deben said that he had put in place arrangements to ensure that his involvement in Veolia Water did not represent a conflict of interest for his position as head of the Committee on Climate Change.

This was intriguing and I decided to write to DECC to find out exactly what these steps were. Here's the response:

Lord Deben has informed DECC of the steps he has taken to guard against any conflict of interest, perceived or actual, with regard to Veolia Water UK.

He has explained that activities in relation to connection of electricity supplies are undertaken by a subsidiary of Veolia Water UK, Veolia Water Infrastructure Limited, which has a separate Board of Directors on which Lord Deben does not sit. Lord Deben has informed the Secretary of State that, while no matter in relation to the operations of this subsidiary has come before the main Board of Veolia Water UK during his tenure, he has now given instructions that he is not to be consulted on any matter connected with these operations, nor receive any papers were it to come before Veolia Water UK’s main board in future.

As the Energy and Climate Change Committee is aware the Department’s view is that there is not a conflict of interest in these circumstances.

This is truly bizarre. It is not the decisions taken within Veolia that are conflicted by Deben working in the CCC. It's exactly the other way round. He needs to ensure that as chairman of the CCC he is not consulted on anything that affects Veolia. Since pretty much everything that happens within the CCC potentially affects Veolia, his position seems to me to be untenable.

What's the next step, I wonder?

Ladies of misrule

The Lords Grand Committee on the Energy Bill met again yesterday and there were a couple of bits that were well worth watching, both revolving around Bryony Worthington, who seems to be in danger of losing the plot.

There's a bit of a catfight between her and Baroness Verma (16:48 onwards) which is lots of fun. Look out for Worthington's reaction at 16:53 when she realises that her amendment is going to be rejected.

It's impossible to see the noble baronesses' performances as anything other than a pair of incompetents steering the country towards disaster. I wonder if this is what Worthington is starting to realise. A couple of years ago, she implied that the reductions in carbon intensity produced by the switch to gas in the 1990s were somehow invalid because they were not a function of government policy. At the time she described how she had helped get government onto a path of decarbonisation through explicit policy measures.

Now, she seems to be realising that politics is hard to control and that explicit policy measures have unintended consequences. Perhaps she would have been better just letting the dash for gas take place.

My response to Slingo

I few weeks back I noted Julia Slingo's appearance before the Environmental Audit Committee, and in particular her misrepresentation of the evidence for low climate sensitivity.

I wrote to the committee, setting out my concerns, and my letter has now been published here. The committee undertook to pass my letter on to Prof Slingo and to obtain a response. This response, such as it is, is here. It doesn't seem to address the points in my letter, but appears to be an adaptation of some of the points in the briefing papers published yesterday. The ones that Nic Lewis refers to as a misrepresentation of the paper he co-authored with Otto et al.

Pulled

I've pulled a story I had up briefly. On reflection, it needed more confirmation before posting.