Lawson lays down law

The GWPF has issued a press release about the putative meeting with some climatologists nominated by Paul Nurse.

Lord Lawson, the chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has invited five Fellows of the Royal Society to meet him and his team in the House of Lords to discuss issues surrounding climate science and policy.

The five climate scientists, nominated by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, refused an earlier invitation to meet with the Director of the GWPF, Dr Peiser, and a small group of experts nominated by the GWPF. Although they gave no reason for their unwillingness to engage, the Fellows stated they would be happy to ‘advise’ Lord Lawson personally.

Lord Lawson said he was willing to give the Royal Society a last chance to engage in a genuine dialogue, at which he would be personally present. “If this [invitation] is not acceptable, I can only conclude that, regrettably, you and your colleagues are unwilling to engage in genuine discussion and debate about this important issue.”

At the same time, the Foundation has published the correspondence between the two men, which is well worth a read. My report on the Royal Society is discussed.

See it all here.

The Krebs manoeuvre

Lord Krebs, the chairman of the adaptation committee of Lord Deben's Committee on Climate Change, has issued a report on how we are doing on preparing for the perils of climate change. The Independent has picked up on one of the themes of the report, noting breathlessly that British agriculture is in for a torrid time of it, with plants withering through lack of rain.

Within a decade, farmers could face a water shortfall of 115bn litres a year – almost half of the 240bn litres they currently use – with the south and east of the country, where most crops are grown, likely to be hit particularly hard. This could make it difficult – and more expensive – to grow water-intensive crops such as potatoes, carrots and fruit, the CCC warns.

Now future rainfall projections have been touched on from time to time at this blog, and once you get into the detail, it quickly becomes clear that nobody really has much of a clue whether it's going to get wetter or drier.

Click to read more ...

Another SciTech hearing

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee is to hold another hearing about the public understanding of climate. There are one or two familiar names:

Wednesday 17 July 2013

Committee Room 15, Palace of Westminster

At 9.30 am

• David Jordan, Director of Editorial Policy and Standards, BBC
• Ralph Lee, Head of Factual, Channel 4
• Fiona Ball, Head of Environment and Engagement, BSkyB Limited

At 10.30 am

• Ros Donald, Carbon Brief
• Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill Blog
• James Painter, Head of the Journalism Fellowship Programme, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

At this point it's hard to work out what the committee will be looking at. I get the impression that it's mainly going to be about media coverage rather than anything more substantial. I suppose that we can travel in hope that the BBC will be asked about 28Gate or that Climategate gets discussed. But not in expectation.

Climate of smear - Josh 229

Story on BH here, at WUWT here, with a response from the University here. Jo Nova has similar posts here and here too. 

Cartoons by Josh

Climate of fear

I'm still off duty, but this is too important to leave for later. I've been having some correspondence with Murry Salby in recent weeks regarding a BH reader's research. Prof Salby copied me in on this email, which needs to be widely disseminated.

Thanks for your interest in the research presented during my recent lecture tour in Europe. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/another-nail-in-the-climate-change-coffin.php Remarks from several make it clear that Macquarie University is comfortable with openly disclosing the state of affairs, if not distorting them to its convenience. So be it. Macquarie’s liberal disclosure makes continued reticence unfeasible. In response to queries is the following, a matter of record:

Click to read more ...

Light blogging

I'm away for a few days, so blogging will be light. Normal service should be resumed towards the end of the week.

No fossil fuel subsidies

From time to time this blog has discussed the retwardian* allegation that the UK heavily subsidises fossil fuels. It's therefore for good to see somebody else examining this allegation and concluding that it's nonsense

No significant subsidies for fossil fuels in the UK. NO SUBSIDIES. Anyone who says otherwise is pulling wool over your eyes.

<>*Adj. Pertaining to Bob Ward. You can guess the rest.

The Energy Swindle

If any UK readers have not written to their MPs about energy prices yet, take a look at the Taxpayers' Alliance Energy Swindle website.

Answers, non-answers

This is a guest post by Doug Keenan.

The recent Bishop Hill post “Questions, questions” lists eight Parliamentary Questions that were tabled by Lord Donoughue, pursuant to suggestions in the Bishop Hill Discussion “Questions to suggest to Lord Donoughue”.  The eight Questions have now been answered, as shown below.  Lord Donoughue happily thanks those who suggested Questions and he would be grateful for ideas on how to proceed further.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Newby on 22 April (WA 358) which stated that "it is the role of the scientific community to assess and decide between various methods when studying various time series", what mechanisms exist within the Government to ensure (1) appropriate oversight of scientific advice, and (2) that scientists advising them are accountable to (a) Ministers, and (b) Parliament. [HL966]

Click to read more ...

The biomass industry is nervous

Energy giant RWE has announced that it is suspending work on a biomass plant at Tilbury:

RWE npower has suspended development of a dedicated biomass power plant at Tilbury Power Station blaming lack of detail in the Energy Bill and difficult market conditions.

The company announced the move in a statement released yesterday, confirming work would be halted while "options on project feasibility are assessed and reviewed".

Click to read more ...

Ross responds

Ross McKitrick has responded (in considerable detail) to some of the criticisms of his T3 tax proposal in a paper posted at his website.

TPA fights green taxes

The Taxpayers' Alliance is doing a sterling job fighting green taxes, with the Mail covering a new campaign launched today.

Punitive green taxes will help inflate the average family energy bill by almost a third to £1,900 by the end of the decade.

By 2020, green charges and tax will make up £620 of the typical annual bill for gas and electricity, according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

The group will today launch a campaign to persuade ministers to ‘stop the energy swindle’ as households struggle with record charges.

Ross McKitrick: an evidence-based approach to pricing CO2 emissions - cartoon notes by Josh

Here are my cartoon notes of a paper presented today by Prof Ross McKitrick, hosted by The GWPF in one of the committee rooms in the House of Lords, Westminster, London, UK. The title is "An evidence-based approach to pricing CO2 emissions". It was intellectually stretching, intriguing and elegant. Ross' brilliance is that he makes the complicated sound simple.

Click to read more ...

Ducking, diving, dodging, weaving

There was an interesting written answer in the House of Lords yesterday, with Baroness Verma singularly failing to answer a question about falsifying climate models.

Lord Donoughue (Labour): To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Met Office has set a date by which, in the event of no further increase in global temperatures, it would reassess the validity of its general circulation models.

Baroness Verma (Whip, House of Lords; Conservative): General circulation models developed by the Met Office are continually reassessed against observations and compared against international climate models through workshops and peer reviewed publications. The validity of general circulation modelling has been established for over four decades, as evident in the peer-reviewed literature. Such models are further developed in light of improvements in scientific understanding of the climate system and technical advances in computing capability.

Short term fluctuations in global temperature do not invalidate general circulation models, or determine timelines for model development. The long term projection remains that the underlying warming trend will continue in response to continuing increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

It was Baroness Verma who was on the receiving end of Lord Donoughue's questions on surface temperature trends, and her ability to duck, dive, dodge and weave, often at the same time, was something to behold. It was many, many weeks before Lord D was able to pin her down to an answer.

Here we go again.

The T3 tax redux

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has issued a paper in which Ross McKitrick sets out his idea of a carbon tax calibrated to temperatures in the tropical troposphere. The press release is as follows.

London, 3 July: A new paper, published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, proposes a radical new climate policy approach that offers to be the most cost-effective means of curbing CO2 emissions, while automatically adjusting the stringency of the policy to the severity of the problem.

The paper 'An Evidence-Based Approach To Pricing CO2 Emissions' written by Professor Ross McKitrick (University of Guelph, Canada) proposes to link the level of a tax on CO2 emissions to temperatures in the tropical troposphere, and to create a 30-year futures market for tax-exemption certificates. Investors would then have long term certainty about the carbon price, and the future tax rates would incorporate all known evidence of the likely path of global warming.

Click to read more ...