Ivo on George

Ivo Vegter has written a brilliant analysis of the phenomenon that is George Monbiot.

[Monbiot] divides the world into two stereotypes: people like him – who care about things like intimacy, kindness, self-acceptance, independent thought and action – and the rest of us – who don’t think for ourselves, fear other people, hate ourselves, are cruel and cold, and couldn’t care less about nature. We’d sell our own mothers if a toff with a demagogic streak told us he’d get an immigrant to wax our banger, because that’s how common we are. (And by “banger” I mean “old car”, of course.)

So, now Monbiot has discovered that he was wrong about that too. Without any apparent self-consciousness about his own opinion of last month, he writes: “We've tended to assume people are more selfish than they really are.”

Yes, you have tended to assume that, George. That’s why people don’t like you. That’s why people don’t listen to you. You’re wrong all the time. You insult people for saying so. And you’re condescending enough to think they can be manipulated by some shiny new spin.

If there is any justice in the world the article will put an end to George's career. However, the ability of the tofu-eating classes to stand behind and indeed celebrate any harebrained megalomaniac, no matter how often they are proved wrong, will no doubt win out as it always does.

The big news down under

I hope everyone is reading the series of posts by David Evans and Jo Nova about their new hypothesis on why variations in solar irradiance apparently have such a limited effect on the planet's temperature. It's probably fair to say that many sceptics have scratched their heads on this subject from time to time, but the team from down under have gone the extra mile, coming up with what is starting to look like a fascinating explanation, namely that there is a delay between the change in irradiance and subsequent changes in temperature. They hypothesise further that this may be something to do with changes in the Sun's magnetic field.

It's too early to say whether this all holds up of course, but I'm certainly going to be keeping a close eye on it.

On entering the climate arena

This is a guest post by "Lone Wolf", who is an academic at a UK university.

A few years ago, I was looking for something for a final year student project/dissertation where the student did some statistical modelling type work on a large dataset. I came across the CDIAC data for the Vostok Ice Core. I looked at it myself first, and decided there was enough there for the student to get their teeth into.

During the analysis, we noticed many interesting features, especially during the present interglacial, which seems to have a 'seasonality'. We estimated the seasonality and proceeded to remove it, using a technique I teach in their course, in order to find the underlying trend.

Click to read more ...

On Lord Stern and Wayne Rooney

Lord Stern is back into the climate fray, breathlessly telling us that...wait for it...it's worse than we thought. Isn't it always?

Lord Stern, the world’s most authoritative climate economist, has issued a stark warning that the financial damage caused by global warming will be considerably greater than current models predict.

This makes it more important than ever to take urgent and drastic action to curb climate change by reducing carbon emissions, he argues.

It's hard to credit the idea that Stern, alone among people working in this area, should merit a full-page article in a broadsheet newspaper, apart from the fact that his public pronouncements are reliably hysterical. It's also amazing that when climate economists like Nordhaus and Tol have, respectively, pooh-poohed the Stern review as a political document and as being devoid of academic merit, the Independent should choose to describe its author as "the world's most authoritative climate economist". This is like describing Wayne Rooney as the world's most glamorous ballet dancer.

Details on what Stern and colleagues have done in this new paper are thin on the ground, but they have clearly been upping the ante on the climate sensitivity front:

Whereas the standard model usually assumes a single temperature for climate sensitivity of about 3C, the new model uses a range of 1.5C to 6C, which the authors say more accurately reflects the scientific consensus.

If climate sensitivity is 6°C, how much warming should we have had since the middle of last century? It does look very much as a case of garbage in, garbage out.

Greenpeace has a bad week

It has been bad week at the office for Greenpeace. Last week the government of India decided that they were not conducive to the public good or the kind of people that a poverty afflicted nation like themselves should give too much time to.

An Intelligence Bureau report on foreign-funded NGOs “negatively impacting economic development” in India has called Greenpeace “a threat to national economic security”, citing activities ranging from protests against nuclear and coal plants and funding of “sympathetic” research, to allegedly helping out an Aam Aadmi Party candidate in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

This story, which emerged last week, was bad enough but there is a scandal about to break over the organisation tonight which might prove harder to explain away (translated from the German by yours truly and Google Translate, so it's worth checking).

The environmentalist as a speculator: Greenpeace worker loses donor millions

A worker in the finance department racked up losses of millions through foreign exchange speculation, according to Spiegel sources. The money originated from donations.

Whoops.

(H/T Omnologos)

Obama and the abusive analogy

Chapter One of How to Win Every Argument, Madsen Pirie's systematic survey of the use and abuse of logical fallacies, is on the abusive analogy. This is a wonderful book for those seeking to enhance their rhetorical skills through underhand means, but I sense that President Obama is one man who could have written the book himself. This conclusion is based on his speech to an audience of college graduates in California during which he discussed dissenting views on climate change:

"It's pretty rare that you'll encounter somebody who says the problem you're trying to solve simply doesn't exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course to the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn't be worth it," he continued.

"But nobody ignored the science. I don't remember anybody saying the moon wasn't there or that it was made of cheese," Obama said.

I would have thought that someone who was trying to deal with an existential crisis would have been moving heaven and earth to unite people rather than divide them. Using fallacy - and abusive fallacy to boot - makes him look more like someone who sees global warming as a useful wedge issue than someone who really thinks he is trying to save the planet.

The inhumanity of the environmentalist

Further to my post this morning about progressives firing Caleb Rossiter for his temerity in putting the needs of Africans today ahead of concerns over global warming, it's interesting to consider a couple of other stories from the last couple of days:

• a report of Greenpeace rejoicing after getting huge renewable powerplant cancelled in Chile
• a report of the alarming number of environmentalists who would have allowed a disaster like the Irish potato famine to continue unabated rather than deploy GM technology to combat it.

What seems to link these stories is a passionately pursued collective goal and an almost inhumane willingness to accept individual suffering as a price worth paying to achieve it. I wonder if Greenpeace leaders ever gave a thought to the Chileans or if those greens gave a thought to the horror of the potato famine. And I wonder if John Cavanagh, the man who fired Rossiter, ever considers the suffering of sub-Saharan Africans. I hope so, but if he does it's hard to understand his wanting to disassociate himself from someone who merely wanted to do something about it.

Margaret Thatcher famously saw individual men and women where others saw only "society". I think John Cavanagh and the greens probably exemplify the opposite view. Perhaps this helps us understand why they behave the way they do. It must be much easier to turn a blind eye to society than to living, breathing individuals.

Update on Jun 13, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Take a look at some of Cavanagh's writings on Africa. "Climate Justice" appears to mean letting Africans rot.

Mischief making at the Graun

Next week metropolitan bigwigs are off to the Foundation for Science and Technology for a debate on the correct level of response to manmade global warming. Speakers include Mark Walport and sceptic MPs Peter Lilley and David Davies and it's sure to be an interesting occasion. With an influential audience, the debate could prove quite important. 

One can't help but wonder, therefore, if a wish to set the tone of Monday's debate is not a factor behind some rather disreputable journalism at the Guardian today. The article in question considers Walport's views on the subject of responses to climate change, which is fair enough, but bizarrely goes on to suggest that Benny Peiser, of all people, is right behind he chief scientist's views.

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More climate McCarthyism

Climate Depot reports another sad case of climate McCarthyism, this time from the USA:

Dr. Caleb Rossiter was “terminated” via email as an “Associate Fellow” from the progressive group Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), following his May 4th, 2014 Wall Street Journal OpEd titled “Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change,” in which he called man-made global warming an “unproved science.” Rossiter also championed the expansion of carbon based energy in Africa.  Dr.  Rossiter is an adjunct professor at American University. Rossiter holds a PhD in policy analysis and a masters degree in mathematics.

In an exclusive interview with Climate Depot, Dr. Rossiter explained: “If people ever say that fears of censorship for ‘climate change’ views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.’”

“I have tried to get [IPS] to discuss and explain their rejection of my analysis,’ Rossiter told Climate Depot. “When I countered a claim of ‘rapidly accelerating’ temperature change with the [UN] IPCC’s own data’, showing the nearly 20-year temperature pause — the best response I ever got was ‘Caleb, I don’t have time for this.’”

There are many issues swirling round here - the good intentions of the "progressives" and the evil that flows from it, their startling ability to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Africans, their inability to deal with dissent, their closed minds. What a depressing scene with which to start the day.

Another green committee

The House of Lords has established a committee that will specialise in the Arctic. It will perform its work over the next twelve months.

The issues to be explored will include the potential impact on shipping routes, energy resources, mineral extraction, the environment, international relations, security, tourism, fisheries and indigenous people.

Headed by the LibDem peer Lord Teverson, who could best be described as "a bit of a fruitcake", it also features Lord Oxburgh and former head of the Met Office Lord Hunt.

Why do I get the feeling they are up to no good?

Interconnecting confusion

In a new report published today, the think tank Policy Exchange examines the case for building a whole lot more interconnectors so that we can import electricity from overseas, in particular availing ourselves of hydro power from Scandinavia and geothermal from Iceland. The existence of a big pipe between the UK and Norway would also allow us to store energy generated in windfarms here in pumped hydro stations up there.

According to the authors, interconnectors are super-duper and will give us access to much cheaper power prices from these overseas markets. But the idea that we can interconnect our way out of trouble all starts to fall down when you read the chapter on barriers to building new interconnections. Given the opportunities for arbitrage, people should be building interconnectors on their own initiative - the profits available should be enormous. Unfortunately this doesn't happen. Reading between the lines the reason is that nobody in the investment community is going to place a massive bet on a UK electricity market which is built on a premise of fleecing the consumer for the forseeable future - they simply do not believe that politicians are going to be able to sustain such a policy. So in order to get investment politicians have to guarantee returns, an approach that is common in Europe.

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Desperation stakes

From time to time I have discussed Peter Lilley's interests in Tethys Petroleum with people on Twitter and have asked people to suggest reasons why it should be seen as a conflict of interest given that Tethys doesn't operate in the UK. I've never had a suggestion put forward in reply, let alone a good one.

For that reason, the news that a formal complaint has been registered against Lilley with the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards appears to me to be of little more than academic interest. As I understand it, a conflict arises if one could be thought to be operating in furtherance of one's private interests rather than the public interest. The complaint apparently relates to speeches Lilley made attacking renewables. It's hard to see how the quantity of renewables in the UK can have any connection to fossil fuel operations in Kazakhstan, and therefore the complaint looks fairly empty.

Desperate stuff, I would say.

The SNP's energy policy

So, the subsidies have flowed, the markets rigged, the countryside has been besmirched with windfarms, the coal-fired power stations closed or switched to biomass and the rooftops have been tiled with solar panels.

And the result?

The Scottish Government has missed its greenhouse gas emissions target following a rise in pollution last year.

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Polar bears and the media

At the Breakthrough Institute, Zac Unger looks at past misconceptions over what was known about polar bear numbers and seeks to lay the blame on the way these figures were reported:

What’s news isn’t the idea that polar bear totals are a best-guess estimate. Of course they are. What’s new is the emerging understanding by established polar bear scientists that they may have done themselves a disservice by tacitly allowing the public to treat their good-faith estimates as rigid facts. In proceedings, papers, and press availabilities, polar bear scientists have repeatedly referenced the 20,000+ number. But what was never made clear was that the PBSG has been assigning a zero value to the unstudied areas, territory that encompasses as much as half of the bears’ geographic range. A casual observer, even one who is fully invested in protecting polar bears, would be justifiably upset at discovering that the total count has been consistently under-estimated...

In fact, the standfirst to the article suggests that we don't even know whether populations are going up or down:

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Liberally Dim - Josh 278

We did of course already know that the UK was planning on using diesel to compensate for renewable energy fluctuations, cartoon here. But Ed Davey's latest bright idea is to use diesel for just about any kind of hiccup in energy. And, of course, to have us, the public, pay for the privilege. See here, here and here.

Proper mad.

Cartoons by Josh