Houston, we may have a sceptic problem

I get a mention in an article in Chemistry World. Written by Philip Ball, the piece considers why (in the author's opinion) so many chemists are sceptics and concludes that its because we all have a contrarian streak.

If I were asked to make gross generalisations about the character of different fields of science, I would suggest that physicists are idealistic, biologists are conservative, and chemists are best described by that useful rustic Americanism, ‘ornery’. None of these are negative judgements – they all have pros as well as cons. But there does seem to be a contrarian streak that runs through the chemically trained, from William Crookes and Henry Armstrong to James Lovelock, Kary Mullis, Martin Fleischmann and of course the king of them all, Linus Pauling (who I’d have put money on being some kind of climate sceptic). This is part of what makes chemistry fun, but it is not without its complications.

It then wonders if the prevalence of scepticism could be "serious".

It's all a bit silly, and the author doesn't seem to have the faintest idea of what the global warming debate is about, but it might be worth a look.

Boudreaux says no

The economist Don Boudreaux writes to the New York Times about the latest scare doing the rounds of the left-wing media.

You report that "Climate change will pose sharp risks to the world’s food supply in coming decades" ("Climate Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies," Nov. 2) - with the premise that this impending calamity requires aggressive government curtailment or modification of industrial capitalist activities.

Color me skeptical. Wherever industrial capitalism has flourished over the past three centuries it has eliminated for the first time in human history the millennia-long curse of recurrent famines. Today, food is in short supply only in societies without market institutions and cut off from global trade. (The people suffering the greatest risk now of fatal shortages of food are true locavores, such as the North Koreans and the Somalis.) Relatedly, some of the worst famines in modern times - most notably, in Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China - have been caused by the hubris of government officials curtailing market forces with command-and-control regulations.

The greatest risk to the world's food supply is not the industrial capitalist activities that environmentalists are keen to curtail. Rather, the greatest risk is the trust that many currently well-fed westerners blithely put in government to rein in the only force in human history that has proven successful at eliminating starvation: market-driven capitalism.

Looking at what government planning has done to the energy market in the UK, you can see his point.

Davey knew Deben was conflicted

A few weeks ago I came across some new correspondence between the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) and Lord Deben relating to his appointment as chairman of the advisory Committee on Climate Change. This was on the committee's web server, but didn't appear to have been linked from the publications page.

Click to read more ...

The Secret Science Society

Michael Mann and Stephan Lewandowsky have a typically overwrought article at the website of the Association of Psychological Science. Also on the roster of authors are Linda Bauld and Gerard Hastings - anti-tobacco scientivists from the University of Stirling - and a psychologist from the University of Irvine.

One of the principal themes in the article is that bad people keep asking to see scientivists' data and correspondence. This, apparently, is unacceptable behaviour - not a position for which I have much sympathy, or indeed any sympathy at all.

However, it's interesting to see this cross-disciplinary enthusiasm for secret science. Perhaps these paragons of scientific integrity should form a "Secret Science Society" (although the name is already taken). Most of the scientific establishment would sign up.

Quote of the day, research edition

In the modern British university, it is not that funding is sought in order to carry out research, but that research projects are formulated in order to get funding. I am not joking when I say that a physics lecturer called Einstein, who just thought about the Universe would risk being sacked because he brought in no grants.

From a letter to the Times by Prof Sir Fergus Millar.

Working Group II government draft

The report of Working Group II has now been issued to governments and my mole has kindly sent me the relevant documentation.

You can read it here.

Welsh shale transcript

The Commons Welsh Affairs Committee took its first lot of evidence in its inquiry into shale gas last week, and I've now had a chance to look at the draft transcript, which can be seen here. The committee is chaired by David TC Davies, the Welsh Conservative who gained plaudits for his involvement in the Climate Change Act debate the other day, so there was at least the opportunity for some robust questioning, particularly because, alongside the expert witnesses we had Kevin Anderson to beat the green drum regardless of his lack of expertise in shale gas.

This is very interesting stuff, which desperately needs some follow up, for example over questions such as:

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Parliamentary dates

A few interesting bits and pieces on the climate-in-Parliament front.

While I was away on my break, the Energy and Climate Change Committee announced that it is to have an inquiry into the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report.

The most recent – the fifth assessment report (AR5) – has begun to be published. The first instalment of the report, Climate change 2013: the Physical Science Basis, was published on Friday 27 September. A total of 209 Lead Authors and 50 Review Editors from 39 countries and more than 600 Contributing Authors from 32 countries contributed to the preparation of Working Group I AR5. The report concluded that, ‘it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.’ But it reduced the lower bound for likely climate sensitivity and for the first time did not publish a best estimate of it because of lack of agreement

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