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Diary date: correct messages edition

The Environmental Physics group of Institute of Physics has organised a meeting to look at how scientists and journalists can work together to convey "the correct messages". It's on 27 March in London.

The degree to which humans are influencing the physical mechanisms that are causing the Earth’s climate system to warm, remains a controversial subject that has caused passionate and heated debates in the news media.

As the public gather most of their information on these issues from newspapers, TV, radio and the internet, the way that evidence is communicated by scientists to journalists is a crucial factor in the public understanding of climate science.

Through group discussions and a number of keynote talks, the aim of this event is to bring together environmental scientists, journalists and science communicators to discuss the ways in which communications in climate science can be improved, and what each of the stakeholders can do to present their work more effectively.

The event will also cover how scientists work with public engagement officers and journalists to ensure that they are conveying the correct messages.

Details here.

Energy poll

As a measure of how successful the likes of Friends of the Earth have been in misinforming the public, take a look at Ipsos-Mori's latest poll on public attitudes to science, and in particular the section on energy (p.31 here):

• 76% of adults support offshore wind, 36% support shale gas
• 58% think that offshore wind will have a positive effect on the UK economy (about the same percentage as for shale gas)

I wonder how much of UK industry will be shut down before we see those figures change.

Do green claims hold up in court?

Friends of the Earth Scotland have an, ahem, interesting approach to informing the public about unconventional oil and gas.

Take this briefing note on coalbed methane (CBM):

CBM waste water is extremely salty and has been found to contain not only harmful chemicals from the drilling fluids used, but also highly toxic BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes) chemicals including known carcinogens, and naturally-occurring radioactive materials...

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Told you so

When The Conversation started up its UK edition, I pointed out that it was no more than a campaigning rag for superannuated teen-revolutionaries, funded almost entirely by the taxpayer.

By way of proving my point, take a look at today's offering from Lawrence Torcello, a professor of Philosophy at Rochester, in which our learned author cites the fake Gleick Heartland memo without apparently batting an eyelid.

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Harry Huyton and avian perception

In an email, reader Ron Hughes notes that RSPB climate guy Harry Huyton's warnings about the impact of shale gas infrastructure on wildlife:

There are risks associated with using lots of water, with causing the accidental contamination of water, but also from the infrastructure that is required by the industry. This could mean lots of well pads all around the landscape. All of these could have an impact on wildlife.

Ron's grandson has been wondering about this and asks how wildlife can differentiate between the pads for fracking wells, and those for wind turbines and solar panels.

A good question, young man, a good question.

Never trust a green

Updated on Mar 14, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust have just issued a joint report into the impact of shale gas development on the UK's environment. These being green organisations it's always fun to go and do some fact checking.

I picked on the "Wildlife disturbance" section, because in itself this seemed a bit unlikely. When I visited Dart Energy's sites near Stirling I noted their proximity to the M9 motorway. The iGas site near Manchester is right alongside the M6. And besides, the drilling process only lasts a few weeks, so it's hard to imagine any long-lasting impact.

The report makes this claim:

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Myles out of line

The reverberations from the Lewis/Crok report are still playing out in the blogosphere. In particular there are some interesting comments at Ed Hawkins' blog.

One of the memes that is being pushed by our climatological friends is the idea that the Lewis/Crok range for transient climate response (i.e. short-term warming) is similar to that of the IPCC models. Myles Allen was the first to promote this idea, in his comments at the Science Media Centre.

Their 5-95% range of uncertainty in TCR (kindly provided by Nic Lewis) is 0.9-2.5 degrees C, almost exactly in line with the range of the models shown in their figure (1.1-2.6 degrees C).

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Something a bit neffy

The New Economics Foundation are well known for their outlandish policy prescriptions and for their extreme reluctance to use economics to support them. This is all entertaining stuff but they have now decided to dip their feet into the climate change waters, with a new paper that purports to show that climate scientists are much better at predicting the future than economists.

They may well be right, but I was struck by some of the evidence they have used to support this view. They have taken some of the IPCC's predictions, apparently from the Second Assessment Report, and have tracked them against subsequent observations. Take the temperature one for example:

It's instructive to take a look at this post at Watts Up With That?, which looks at the predictions of each of the IPCC assessments and notes that SAR makes the coolest prediction of temperature increase and still came out too warm by quite a long way.

I'm not sure that nef picking the IPCC's best performing prediction and holding it up as representative is what you might call a credible assessment of climatologists' abilities.

The works of Lord Deben

This is a guest post by Matt Ridley.

Lord Deben is chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, a body funded by the British taxpayer. He draws a salary of more than £35,000 from you and me. On the masthead of its website the committee claims to give “a balanced response to the risks of climate change” and “independent, evidence-based advice to the UK government and Parliament”.

Yet the committee consists entirely of people who think climate change will be dangerous; no sceptics or lukewarmers are on it, even though most hold views that are well within the “consensus” of climate science. Under Deben’s chairmanship since 2012 its pronouncements have become increasingly one-sided. Deben himself is frequently highly critical of any sceptics, often mischaracterizing them as “deniers” or “dismissers”, but has never to my knowledge been heard to criticize anybody for exaggerating climate alarm and the harm it can do to disadvantaged people. These are not the actions of an impartial chairman.

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Walport and his evidence

Updated on Mar 12, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Another entertaining episode in the hearings this morning was where Mark Walport was asked about Matt Ridley's suggestion that global warming would bring net benefits over 40-50 years. This conclusion is based on Richard Tol's metaanalysis of mainstream economic studies into such questions (see key figure below).

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Naming names

There was a fascinating exchange at the Energy and Climate Change Committee this morning when Graham Stringer asked Gregory Barker about the climate consensus. Barker opined (10:58) that

...the number of people who are refusing to accept that the climate is changing or that man has a role in that are diminishing and are given disproportionate airtime in the media.

Pressed to identify the people involved, Barker seemed to back down on the insinuation of his remarks a few seconds earlier that those involved were some kind of refuseniks:

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CSAs at the Energy and Climate Change Committee

Mark Walport and David Mackay are up in front of the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee in an hour's time. A second panel will feature Greg Barker and David Warrilow. The latter is the very long-standing UK representative on the IPCC and someone who keeps himself very much in the backgrounds, so it will be interesting to see what he has to say.

Watch here.

Direct link here.

Lewis on Shindell

Updated on Mar 10, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Nic Lewis has a post up at Climate Audit, looking at the new paper by Gavin Schmidt's colleague Drew Shindell.

Shindell, the lone author of the paper, looks at CMIP5 models and claims to show that there are distinct differences between the climate's sensitivity to different forcings. Once these are taken into account, and once a lot of adjustments are made to them too, it is possible to show (allegedly) that low climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is not possible.

These adjustments are not trivial, as Lewis explains:

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Climatese whispers

A new comment piece in Science by Clement and DiNezio (£) reviewing support for the idea that Trenberth's famous "missing heat" is lurking in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. This is a fairly unobjectionable paper, delivered in a moderate tone, with only the inevitable profession of the faith at the paper's close - "Greenhouse gases are warming the planet, and will continue to do so" - distracting from the main thrust.

The support for the idea that the Pacific is key seems to come chiefly from climate model studies, for example the "mind-blowing" Kosaka and Xie study and a paper by Meehl. Observational evidence seems rather harder to come by:

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