Yeo tells Davey that DECC misled Parliament

Tim Yeo has finally written to Ed Davey about Lord Deben's conflicts of interest.

We appreciate your words of reassurance about the measures put in place to guard against conflicts of interest or perceptions of them, by Lord Deben and all the members of the Committee on Climate Change. These are welcome. However, the lack of clarity on this specific point has caused ongoing media criticism and speculation. We can only conclude therefore, that the measures put in place, and the reassurances you have given, are not sufficient to effectively address the perception of conflict of interest in the public domain.

This bit is completely damning:

Your most recent letter implies that the role of Veolia in energy infrastructure work was clearly known by DECC and Cabinet Office officials at the time of Lord Deben ' s appointment and "it was felt that the potential for any real conflict was remote as the company was mainly involved in infrastructure connection projects.  

The fact remains however, that it was not made clear to the Committee at the time of its pre-appointment hearing, despite there being ample opportunity (extracts of evidence again attached) , the extent of Veolia's energy infrastructure role, and the potential for the company to make considerable profits in respect of that work.

Unfortunately, there is little indication that they intend to do anything about it. I guess we have to wait to see whether Davey is going to try to kick the issue into the long grass or whether he will try to do the right thing.

Pointman on the infowars

Pointman has written another of his incisive analyses of the climate debate, this time looking at the failures of the alarmist public relations strategy.

On one side you had the alarmists, who had all the politicians in their pocket, a massive PR budget which was usually and still is replenished by governments grants, all the mainstream media including the crypto-state television channels like ABC, CBC, PBS and BBC, pretty much the whole of the journalistic establishment, all the activist prominenti of climate science, the EU, NASA, NOAA, BOM, EPA, IPCC, pretty much anything you can think of which has an acronym, the seamier side of the investment industry, every environmental organisation right down to the smallest fruit loop loony tune outfit, all the major science journals, presidents, prime ministers, the world, his brother, his sister, their dawg and even the frigging cat, never mind their bloody hamster.

On the other side you had us and we had, umm, well, as a matter of fact we’d bugger all beyond the wit to point out the teensy-weensy cracks, nay yawning crevasses, in the science, and in a political sense, sound the alarm bell about the sort of Armageddon the hysterical bandwagon was slouching towards.

Given that match up, the obvious question has to be – how the hell did they ever manage to lose and why are we doing so well, while their once soaring ambitions now lay in smoking ruins?

Hansen before the Environmental Audit Committee

The Environmental Audit Committee is rather like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, being entirely uninterested in auditing anything. It's an environmentalist talking shop with greens taking "evidence" from greens and concluding that more greenery is required to green the planet. Or something like that.

Last month they took evidence from James Hansen as part of their inquiry into carbon budgets. This was presumably just because Hansen happened to be in town rather than because of any great insights he might be able to give on UK energy policy.

The uncorrected transcript is here.

Marshalling the most bizarre arguments

This TED talk by American Meteorological Society president Marshall Shepherd is hilarious. You might have expected the big man to marshal some of the most powerful and incisive arguments around. Instead, El Pres cites what he calls "The Hockey Stick", but is actually the Marcott paper: you remember, the one with what the authors diplomatically call a "non-robust" blade (critics are much, much ruder). We get The Day After Tomorrow cited, apparently in all scientific seriousness, we get biofuels lauded as core to an "energy renaissance". I'm completely bemused as to how he thinks that saying "climate and weather are different" slays an argument that you can't trust climate models.

Amazing stuff.

Myles, CCS and the T3 tax

Myles Allen has another article in the Guardian today, advocating extensive use of carbon capture and storage. Understandably, he seems to be taking something of a pasting in the comments.

One of his other comments struck me as interesting though:

The very fact that so many have come to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the climate response is at the low end of the range of uncertainty provides us with an opportunity. Rather than targets for arbitrary years, we should aim for a policy explicitly linked to rising temperatures. If George Osborne really believes global warming has stopped, he would have no reason to object.

Ideas like this have been floated before, but too often they amount to kicking the can down the road. There is no point in "wait and see" if – after another decade or two of research into solar and nuclear power, or a modest carbon tax – we find ourselves in exactly the same position as now: fossil fuels dominating global energy supplies and far cheaper than any alternative, only with another couple of hundred billion tonnes of fossil carbon dumped, irreversibly, into the atmosphere.

This would appear to be a reference to Ross McKitrick's T3 tax proposal, linking the level of a carbon tax to tropospheric temperatures. I'm not sure I would agree with Myles' characterisation of it as a "wait and see" policy though. Given that tropospheric temperatures are meant to be a leading indicator of climate change at the surface, it's precisely the opposite.

All change

The government has announced that it is going to change the planning rules for onshore windfarm developments. Local communities are going to be given more say in where windfarms are sited, and they will get much larger bribes from developers too - five times larger in fact.

It's hard to tell at this stage how important this is. The new planning rules are to be outlined in a forthcoming document from the relevant government department (DCLG). Only once we have these will we be able to assess them impact.

Watch this space.

The text of the press release is as follows:

Click to read more ...

Cameron sceptical of CCS?

This exchange from Prime Minister's Questions today is interesting:

Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab): The north-east has renewable energy industries ready to invest, but they need certainty. Yesterday MPs from all parts of the House voted for a decarbonisation target. Given that the Prime Minister’s majority was slashed to just 23, will he show some leadership, think again and back British industry and green jobs?

The Prime Minister: I understand completely the point that the hon. Lady makes and I agree that businesses need certainty. That is why we have given them the certainty of a levy control framework of over £7 billion. That is why we have given them the certainty that if they sign contracts now, they get the renewables obligation for 20 years. We have given them the certainty of a green investment bank, but does it make sense to fix a decarbonisation target now, before we have agreed the carbon budget and before we even know whether carbon capture and storage works properly? It does not work and the businesses that I talk to say that it is not their priority.

If Cameron is sceptical of CCS then that's welcome, but it's hard to take much comfort from anything else that he said.

Reactions to the Energy Bill debate

Updated on Jun 5, 2013 by Bishop Hill

There are a couple of interesting reactions to yesterday's Energy Bill debate this morning. Christopher Booker in the Mail stands back and surveys the scene of devastation that the government was wrought:

Sadly, most people still have very little idea just how dangerously crackpot Britain’s energy policy has become, not least because so few people in positions of influence — MPs and journalists much among them — have been prepared to do enough homework to ask precisely the sort of searching questions which Mr Davey thinks we shouldn’t be allowed to ask.

Click to read more ...

The names you need to know

These are the Tory MPs who voted in favour of Yeo's "economic suicide" amendment to the Energy Bill.

• Peter Aldous (Waveney)
• David Amess (Basildon)
• Peter Bottomley (Worthing West)
• Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park)
• Jason McCartney (Colne Valley)
• Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North)
• Matthew Offord (Hendon)

Plus Yeo himself

Climatologists raise the shutters again

About a year or so ago, the Met Office and CRU announced the release of the CRUTEM4 temperatures series. As John Graham-Cumming noted at the time, they were positively gung-ho in their enthusiasm for transparency:

Given the importance of the CRUTEM land temperature analysis for monitoring climate change (e.g. Trenberth et al. 2007), our preference is that the underlying station data, and software to produce the gridded data, be made openly available. This will enhance transparency, and also allow more rapid identification of possible errors or improvements that might be necessary (see e.g. the earlier discussion of homogeneity adjustments in the SH).

Click to read more ...

Decarbonisation amendment defeated

Tim Yeo's rebel amendment to get a mandatory decarbonisation target included in the Energy Bill has been defeated, by 23 votes.

Economic suicide has therefore been averted, at least temporarily. Yeo is calling for the amendment to be resurrected in the Lords.

Damian and the two-degree target

Lord Lipsey, chairman of the Parliamentary Group on Statistics, has fired a shot across the bows of Damian Carrington, accusing him of making wild claims about the climate without citing any sources:

In what sense is 400 parts a million a milestone and what does the word add, save opinion, to the intro? By whom are these conditions 'expected to return in time' and who says the consequences will be 'devastating'? By whom is catastrophic warming 'thought to be unstoppable' at 2 degrees (and does this mean that at 1.99 degrees it is stoppable)? …it may well be that everything in this piece is true. But it is not enough for the reporter to assert that on his own authority without citing sources.

Click to read more ...

Iain Dale is shocked

Iain Dale has been shocked by Ed Davey's attempts to have global warming sceptics silenced, and even tried to get the great man onto LBC radio this evening so that he could explain himself.

Davey, it seems, suddenly had a pressing appointment elsewhere.

Dale, meanwhile, is also pretty disturbed by some of the things his callers are saying to him about the slow strangulation of the school curriculum by environmentalists. Read the whole thing.

Explaining liberalism to "liberals"

Toby Young has an excellent reponse to Ed Davey in the Telegraph, explaining some of the basics of liberalism to the (ostensibly liberal) climate change secretary. "John Stuart Mill", Young seems to be saying; "might be worth a read".

Even if we put the moral objections to state censorship to one side, there's a good practical reason for not muzzling your intellectual opponents. As JS Mill points out in On Liberty, either they are right, in which case you shouldn't try and suppress the truth, or they are wrong, in which case you have nothing to fear from the publication of their views since their wrong-headedness will then be plain for everyone to see. If Ed Davey really believes that the truth is on his side in this debate, he should encourage his opponents to air their views in public as often as possible, not criticise "some sections of the press" for giving them a platform.

28gate gets a mention.

The Empty Shibboleth

For some time now I have shuddered every time a politician or activist says that "climate change is real" or its variant "climate change is manmade".

The utterance of either of version is of no relevance to the global warming debate. The climate changes; that is undisputed. Mankind has affected the climate since he started clearing the forests with stone axes. As always the question is how much the climate might change, if at all.

I think we need a shorthand to express the fact that such a statement is a shibboleth of the green tribe rather than a meaningful contribution to a public conversation.

Would "The Empty Shibboleth" work?