US cold caused by warming

It looks as though they just couldn't resist the urge to link every known weather event to climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists has apparently said that this winter's crazy weather in the USA was caused by global warming:

This winter's heavy snowfalls and other extreme storms could well be related to increased moisture in the air due to global climate change, a panel of scientists said on Tuesday.

This extra moisture is likely to bring on extraordinary flooding with the onset of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, as deep snowpack melts and expected heavy rains add to seasonal run-off, the scientists said in a telephone briefing.

Why code should be published

Nick Barnes has written an interesting article on why scientific code should be published, with particular reference to John Graham-Cumming's work on the Russell review code.

This report included a good algorithmic description, and has been accompanied by source code. We greatly welcome both of these departures from the norm, as setting a good example and following the report’s own recommendation. These facts also allow us to illustrate particular reasons why code release is important, and why science software skills should be improved.

The four separate bugs – in the description, in the code, in the configuration, and in the expectation of the reader – are, in this case, trivial and unimportant – they do not affect the broad results of the report in any way. However, each is characteristic of problems with science software which can be more serious, and which are impossible to discover unless code is released.

Tip jar again

Tip jar is live again. As always, thanks to them that contributes!

Johnny Ball

TV mathematician and AGW sceptic Johnny Ball is on the BBC's Daily Politics show today, discussing scaremongering.

The long death of environmentalism

A long, long article by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus looking at where the green movement went wrong.

Yet today, environmental efforts to address climate change and build a green economy lie in ruins. The United States Congress this summer once again rejected climate legislation that even had it succeeded would have had virtually no impact upon U.S. carbon emissions over the coming decade. The magnitude and consequence of this defeat are poorly understood outside of Washington. Greens had the best opportunity in a generation -- a Democratic White House and large Democratic majorities in Congress. But they banked everything on a single bill and walked away with nothing -- or rather worse than nothing, since today environmental credibility with lawmakers of both parties is today at an all-time low.

Meanwhile, green stimulus investments ended up creating very few jobs. Those that it did create were low-wage and temporary custodial jobs -- not the high-wage manufacturing jobs that created the black middle-class after World War II. And today, the clean tech sector-- the darling of high tech VC's at the height of the green bubble-- is in a state of collapse as stimulus funds expire, large public deficits threaten clean energy subsidies both here and abroad, and Wall Street firms short clean tech stocks.

Econowoo

The Royal Society of Edinburgh has produced a report on how Scotland should move to a low-carbon economy. This seems to demonstrate that the spirit of Chairman Mao's `Great Leap Forward' is alive and well and living in Auld Reekie. Yes folks, the answer to all our problems is a plan to be developed in Holyrood.

Here are the report's recommendations:

1. The UK Government should urgently improve the infrastructure and management of the electricity grid in Scotland to optimise the development of renewable energy and to permit the export of surplus renewable energy.

Click to read more ...

Bob Carter in Quadrant

Bob Carter has an article up in Quadrant, which is worth a look:

Run that past me again, Professors Garnaut and Flannery – your advice to government still remains that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming?

Do you understand the meaning of the phrases “empirical science” and “hypothesis testing”?

Do you understand that the correct null hypothesis is that gentle warmings, such as that which occurred between 1979 and 1998, and equivalent coolings, are to be viewed as due to natural causes unless and until evidence indicates otherwise. Gentlemen, where is that evidence, and why is it not presented in the voluminous reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that you and the government so often refer to?