Curry in Scotland

I was picking up one of the sprogs from after-school hockey and switched on the radio to find none other than Judy Curry being interviewed on Radio Scotland.

Interviewer Bill Whiteford pushed pretty hard, but not unreasonably so and the result was, I think, pretty informative for the listener. It was nice to hear things moving on from the consensus-versus-denier thing that has corrupted public debate on global warming for so long.

Audio is below.

Curry Radio Scotland

The Alarmists return - Josh 268

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Cartoons by Josh

H/t John Whitman for the typo

Working Group II

Updated on Mar 31, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The Working Group II report is out today and should be available here, although the site appears to be down at the moment.

YOKOHAMA, Japan, 31 March – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report today that says the effects of climate change are already occurring on all continents and across the oceans. The world, in many cases, is ill-prepared for risks from a changing climate. The report also concludes that there are opportunities to respond to such risks, though the risks will be difficult to manage with high levels of warming.

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Dating error

Updated on Apr 1, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The difficulties of getting academics to correct errors is a regular theme on this blog, the Lewandowsky affair being just the latest in a long and shameful litany. Today's guest post by Doug Keenan describes a set of allegations he has submitted to the University of Oxford. Although not related to climatology, the parallels are obvious.

Research Misconduct by Christopher Bronk Ramsey

Submitted to the University of Oxford by Douglas J. Keenan 28 March 2014

NOTE: a draft of this report was sent to Ramsey; Ramsey acknowledged receipt, but had no comments on the contents.

The perpetrator

Christopher Bronk Ramsey is a professor at the University of Oxford. His main area of work is in a subject known as “radiocarbon dating”. Briefly, radiocarbon dating tries to determine how many years ago an organism died. For example, suppose that we find a bone from some animal; then, using radiocarbon dating, we might be able to determine that the animal died, say, 3000 years ago.

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On proportion

Yesterday the BBC hit us with the shock news that raptor poisonings in the Scotland have doubled.

To six.

The wind industry in the USA is estimated to kill about 83,000 raptors a year. The number in the UK would be smaller, but assuming proportionality to the USA, the death count for Scotland must be at least in the high thousands.

Kelly on engineering reality

Mike Kelly has a new briefing paper out, looking at decarbonisation in the context of previous technology changes.

A paper published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation and written by Professor Michael Kelly (University of Cambridge) shows that most of the ambitions to decarbonise the UK and global economy have not been put through an engineering reality test.

The paper reveals that the scale, scope, feasibility, cost, resources and other requirements of the decarbonisation agenda have never been tested against other calls on human and physical resources of the planet.

The fact that carbon emissions are going up inexorably in spite of many projects across the globe already raises a simple question ‘What are we getting for our money?’

Professor Kelly’s paper discusses the role of technology changes in helping meet the global decarbonisation agenda: success in the UK and failure elsewhere still represents failure.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that some of the more calamitous projects are rather less likely, raising the question of how much of this agenda is really necessary in short order.

The new paper is intended to bring out some key lessons from the realities of successful technology changes in the recent past as they bear on the global challenge of climate change.

It finds that the gap between rhetoric and reality is dangerously wide, on the basis of some of the simplest premises of engineering and technology.

The paper is here.

Creating perspective

Matt Ridley has braved the brickbats of the vested interests and the greens with another hard-hitting piece in the Wall Street Journal, this time looking at the forthcoming Working Group II report, its downgrading of alarm and the new perspective of climate change among a number of issues facing the world.

Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population "bomb," pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different.

This, I think is likely to enrage those whose livings depend on the maintenance of a state of alarm and the reaction will therefore be aggressive. Let's make sure that the voices of reason are heard too.

It's better than we thought

I have been conscious that I should have been trying to get to grips with the leaked WGII Summary for Policymakers but, with one thing and another, I haven't even made a start.

So it's just as well that James Delingpole is on the case, and making rather more than a start.

Previous reports - notably the hugely influential 2006 Stern Review - have put the costs to the global economy caused by 'climate change' at between 5 and 20 percent of world GDP.

But the latest estimates, to be published by Working Group II of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, say that a 2.5 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of the century will cost the world economy between just 0.2 and 2 percent of its GDP.

If the lower estimate is correct, then all it would take is an annual growth rate of 2.4 percent (currently it's around 3 percent) for the economic costs of climate change to be wiped out within a month.

Blimey.

[PS James - I know! I still haven't reviewed your book yet. I will!]

On consistency

In the wake of the Press Gazette "debate", I was watching an exchange of views on Twitter between BH reader Foxgoose and Andrea Sella, a University College London chemist who moves in scientific establishment and official skeptic circles.

Sella was explaining how persuasive he found the observational record of climate:

Think like a scientist! Temperature is only a proxy. Energy balance is real issue & C19 physics is alive and well.

Like Warren Buffett you mustn’t be affected by shorter term fluctuations.

As I said, don’t just look at surface temps. Look at sea level and global ice mass too. All part of same.

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AR5 inquiry followup

This is a guest post by Nic Lewis, describing the flurry of activity since he appeared before the Energy and Clmate Change Committee.

My comments on Myles Allen's oral evidence to the ECCC, and his response have been published.

Some things in Myles' response that might be worth pointing out:

1. Under Point 1:  "The IPCC Summary for Policymakers does not give “best estimates” of 2100 temperature, largely because they would not be policy relevant: the one thing that can be said with confidence about best estimate predictions is that the real world will not follow them. A best estimate of a strongly skewed distribution is particularly misleading".

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Press Gazette does "debate"

The Press Gazette, a sort of trade mag for the more disreputable members of the journalistic profession, has held a debate on science coverage in the media, particularly on the BBC, inviting familar names like Bob Ward, Fiona Fox and Steve Jones to take part plus other less well known but equally stern climate policemen.

The Gazette's editor, Dominic Ponsford, was effusive in his praise for their performance in what he called this "debate". There's something slightly Orwellian about it all isn't there?

Ponsford's report on events is here.

Update on Mar 26, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Alice Bell has a more nuanced take on the situation:

The 2011 BBC Trust report on science coverage is often wheeled out at this point, used to argue that too often fringe views are presented against scientific expertise. I worked on that report and it does happen. But by far the biggest worry is that they don’t ask enough questions of the various experts – whoever they are – that they put on air.

Or to put it another way, as George Monbiot wrote after the Australian climate sceptic and geology professor Ian Plimer appeared on the Today programme in 2009: “Let Plimer speak, but let his interviewers do some sodding research first.”

The Monbiot piece, from 2008 is quite amusing. One of the things that Monbiot thinks Plimer should have been pulled up on was this:

We've had a warming, up until the late 90s, now we're in a cooling phase."

To which the great George responded that 11 of the 13 previous years were the warmest on record, providing a helpful link to a Met Office press release, which indeed supports his claim finding explanations for the lack of apparent warming in El Ninos and the linke. It also includes this:

Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.

How things move on.

Causes for the pause

David Whitehouse has a new GWPF note out, examining all the different post-hoc explanations for the hiatus in global warming. To introduce it, there's a short film which can be seen here.

Climate scientists

Judith Curry appeared on the BBC World Service last night (podcast here, from 19:45). Of course, the corporation's new policy on who is allowed to appear opposite scientists only applies to when the scientist is not criticical of alarmist positions, so they could have picked anyone they want to face off with Judy. In the event they went for Bob Ward but, interestingly, and perhaps keen to lend an air of authority to a mere public relations man, they decided to describe him as a "climate scientist".

I guess we are all climate scientists now.

Some comments on the Royal Society report

Reader Alex Henney sends some comments on The Royal Society/National Academy of Sciences Report on Climate Change that he sent to the President of the Royal Society and the British authors of the report.¹

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, if it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

Richard Feynman

1. The document continues to espouse models which are flawed, see p. 5, even though the final draft of the 2013 SPM commented “Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10-15 years”.  John Christy² compared the performance of 39 climate model that were used in AR5 over the period 1975 to 2012 with measured temperature data.  The models over back-cast temperature significantly in a range 0-0.7^oC. 

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The WGII battle begins

With the Working Group II conference beginning today, upholders of the global warming consensus are drawing their knives to deal with inconvenient dissenters. The BBC's Matt McGrath describes the state of affairs here, revealing that Richard Tol has asked his name to be removed from the draft because of rampant alarmism that has been inserted:

[Tol] was involved in drafting the summary but has now asked for his name to be removed from the document.

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