Davey explains

Ed Davey should take to the floor of the House of Commons in a moment to give the coalition's annual statement on energy.

The Parliament TV page appears to be down at the moment, but the BBC coverage is here.

Update on Oct 31, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Don't bother. It's a waste of time.

Miller light

Updated on Oct 31, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Intrigued by Andrew Miller having apparently complained about the BBC's giving airtime to sceptics I wrote to the Science and Technology Committee yesterday to find out if this was an official letter from the committee or Miller operating as an individual MP. The reply, from committee secretary Stephen McGinness, was as follows:

There was no letter written from the Chair, or the Committee, about sceptics being given airtime.

A letter was written to the BBC subsequent to their appearance before the Committee seeking clarification on several points.  It was nothing but a list of questions similar to those things we put in Committee session.

Click to read more ...

Keenan does AR5

Doug Keenan has written a critique of the IPCC's handling of statistics in AR5. Suffice it to say he is not impressed.

Temperatures on Earth ’ s surface — i.e. where people live — are widely believed to provide evidence for global warming. Demonstrating that those temperatures actually provide evidence, though, requires doing statistical analysis. All such statistical analyses of the temperatures that have be en done so far are fatally flawed. Astoundingly , those flaws are effectively acknowledged in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) . The flaws imply that there is no demonstrated observational evidence that global temperatures have significantly increased (i.e. increased more than would be expected from natural climatic variation alone). Despite this, one of the main conclusions of AR5 is that global temperatures have in creased very significantly. That conclusion is based on analysis that AR5 itself acknowledges is fatally flawed. The correct conclusion is that there is no demonstrated observational evidence for global warming.

You can read it here.

Cartoons by Josh Calendar 2014

The 2014 Calendar is now available to pre-order at Cartoons by Josh 

I anticipate it being ready to post in two or three weeks time. This is the UK edition and the US edition might will be available via Watts Up With That.

Cartoons by Josh

Update on Nov 14, 2013 by Josh

The Calendars have arrived! I will start shipping the pre-orders tomorrow.

Reckless endangerment of GIB

Mark Reckless, the Conservative MP for Rochester and Strood, has revealed on his blog that a group of his colleagues will potentially put a large spanner in the works of Vince Cable's boondoggle triumphant, the Green Investment Bank.

Today the House of Commons votes (in a deferred division between 11.30am and 2pm) on whether to restrict funding to the Green Investment Bank following the Prime Minister’s statement a week ago that we “need to roll back the green charges”.

MPs are normally only able to scrutinise taxation decisions, but the unusual structure of the bank means that they get the chance to cast an eye over this particular vested-interest creation scheme.

Atherton on Hinkley Point

Peter Atherton of Liberum Capital has written another devastating takedown of coalition energy policy, this time focused on the Hinkley point deal.

Although we have yet to see the full terms of the contract (and we may never do so), based on the disclosure so far this looks likely to be an outstanding deal for Edf and it s partners. Once again, the UK government is taking a massive bet that fossil fuel prices will be extremely high in the future. If that bet proves to be wrong then this contract will look economically insane when HPC commissions. We are frankly staggered that the UK government thinks it is appropriate to take such a bet and under-write the economics of any power station that costs £5m per MW and takes 9 years to build.

Windy miller

Andrew Miller, the Chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee has written to the BBC to complain about sceptics being given airtime.

The BBC has come under fire from the chairman of an influential committee of MPs for favouring climate change sceptics in its coverage – and, according to documents seen by the Guardian, replied by saying that putting forward opinions not backed by science is part of its role.

That has enraged MPs further. Andrew Miller, chair of the science and technology committee, told the Guardian: "At a time when poor editorial decisions have dented trust in the BBC, the organisation should be taking much greater care over the accuracy of its reporting – especially in the area of science where misreporting can cause disastrous results, as the MMR media scare has shown."

He seems particularly incensed over Andrew Neil's pressing of Ed Davey a few months ago.

It's not clear if this letter was written in his capacity as chairman of the committee or simply as a run-of-the-mill MP, but it does throw a certain light on the Committee's whitewashing of Climategate under Miller's leadership.

Greenery grubbery

Taxpayers might as well hand over their credit cardsThere have been some appalling shenanigans going on in the House of Lords during their examination of the Energy Bill. In order to understand what has been going on, one needs to wind back a few weeks to a ruling in the Court of Session in Edinburgh.  In that case, Lady Clark ruled that wind farm operators need an Ofgem license under the terms of the Electricity Act 1989 and since operators have never bothered themselves with actually going through these hoops, the decision seemed to force the SNP administration to slam on the brakes - at least temporarily - in their headlong rush to cover the country in wind turbines.

Remarkably, however, Mr Salmond and his colleagues decided that they would continue to rule on wind farm planning applications anyway, pending an appeal that will be heard next year. Their grounds for doing so were apparently "the national interest" (a position that seems to me to be of dubious legality, although I confess I am no expert on the law in this area).

Click to read more ...

Energy Bill report stage

The House of Lords is once again considering the Energy Bill. In particular, this afternoon noble Lords discussed Lord Oxburgh's decarbonisation amendment.

There is a really interesting dynamic at play, with the scientific big guns on the "let them eat carbon" side, namely Lords May and Krebs, interrupting Lord Ridley repeatedly. Watch from 15:49 for Lawson, then 16:00 for Krebs, 16:19 for May, followed by Ridley and Deben.

Update on Oct 28, 2013 by Bishop Hill

GWPF just tweeted that the amendment has been defeated.

Green Deal No Deal - Josh 243

Sunday before last there was an interesting story by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times. He writes "The Green Deal, the government’s flagship home energy-saving scheme, which was meant to create up to 60,000 jobs by 2015, has instead caused up to 7,000 redundancies, with more likely to follow."

You can read more The GWPF here or at the Sunday Times here.

Cartoons by Josh

Mad about the girl - Josh 242

Tamsin Edwards has been 'in the tweets' again for flagrantly trying to communicate with sceptics. 

Apparently this is a 'bad' thing to do, and she has been roundly criticised both on Twitter and on the somewhat confessionally titled blog 'Hot Whopper'. This feels slightly odd as we are often assured that the only problem with sceptics and Climate Science is one of communication. 

You would think that actually communicating might be a good thing but apparently not. Mad. As mad as a well hatted mad hatter with mad hats on a mad hat day. Doing some Mad Hatting.

Cartoons by Josh

Diary dates, Scotland edition

A couple of dates for readers north of the border.

First up, Murry Salby has added a Scottish date to his UK speaking tour. He will be appearing at the The Links Hotel, Edinburgh on Thursday 7th November,7 - 9pm. Entry is free, but please early booking is advised. Contact: Mike Haseler, tel 0845 10 88 500 or by email.

Then on 24 November, Scotland Against Spin are having a conference in Stirling

The Cost of Wind Energy: How much will we really have to pay…?

• Professor Gordon Hughes, School of Economics, Edinburgh University
• Jeremy Nicolson,  Director of the Energy Intensive Users Group
• Dr Mike Hall, President of Friends of Eden Lakeland & Lunesdale Scenery
• Mike Stigwood, Director of MAS Environmental

and

• Keynote Speaker Fergus Ewing (MSP)* Scottish Government Minister for Energy, Enterprise & Tourism

Tickets: £10 (registered SAS Supporters)/£15 (non-registered). Includes a light lunch, and refreshments. For further information and to book tickets, please contact Sarah at info@scotlandagainstspin.org or on 07715 106032.

Since Ewing hasn't actually confirmed that he's going to appear I think readers should only rely on the first four names actually showing up on the day. That said, I'm sure it will be fun.

Hudson on the ice

Ice on the HudsonAfficionados of the "ice age now" hypothesis are going to be cock-a-hoop over Paul Hudson's latest blog post. The BBC man has been looking into the idea that the current very low levels of activity in the sun are going to cause us all to freeze and he seems to have found some support in the somewhat unlikely shape of Mike Lockwood:

Click to read more ...

Transparency and culpability

I return to the blogging saddle to find little changed. The Guardian's campaign to put the lights out continues apace, promoting a campaign to get universities to divest from fossil fuel companies and trying to pin the blame for power system chaos on the big six energy firms.

Looking on the bright side, there are at least the hint of some changes in the government line:

Some green charges will be scrapped while others will be taken off bills and instead funded by Government directly. If extra public money is needed to pay for this, that will be provided by additional spending cuts.

I imagine that no charges will be scrapped, although at least we might get some transparency over costs if they become direct rather than hidden in power bills. If so, it would be interesting to see if the Guardian's campaign against the energy companies holds water.

Saturday open thread

In my absence, here is an open thread for any climate and energy news today.