Green racketeers?

I came across this story a couple of days ago and then forgot to post it - it's been a bit crazy here recently. It's written by Phelim McAleer and describes an attempt by Chevron to take legal action against a bunch of environmentalists for racketeering:

Chevron is suing lawyer Steven Donziger and a number of activist environmental groups in a civil-racketeering suit, claiming that his landmark $19 billion award against the oil company in an Ecuadorean court was the product of a criminal conspiracy.

Ironically, much of the company’s evidence comes from footage shot for “Crude,” an award-winning pro-Donziger documentary that premiered with much publicity at the Sundance Film Festival.

Read the whole thing.

Economist on science

The Economist has a fascinating article on the failings of science and peer review which is a nice synthesis of many of the principal critiques that global warming sceptics have been expounding for years. So we hear about Ioannidis's suggestion that most scientific papers are wrong, Fiona Godlee's famous study that showed that peer review was largely a waste of time, and the lack of replication of most studies. It's almost a rewrite of Chapter 15 of The Hockey Stick Illusion.

While it's nice to have one's positions supported by such an august journal, you do have to wonder how the powers that be at the Economist can continue to support revolutionary policy changes on the basis of a system as pathetic as academic peer review. Don't get me wrong - if academics find it useful to peer review each others' work that's OK with me, but we need a much, much higher hurdle before academic papers are deemed worthy of affecting public policy. Independent replication is only the bare minimum required.

Disagreement over nothing

One of Matt Ridley's ancestors was burnt at the stake for refusing to toe the line on the religion of the day, and those in positions of power today seem to have the same distaste for dissent as the Marian persecutors of yesteryear.

The ire of the metropolitan "liberal" elite has been prickled by Ridley's article in the Spectator, which describes the consensus among economists that the effects of small amounts of global warming will be beneficial.

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Valentine's day

Over the weekend I received a copy of Phil Valentine's An Inconsistent*Truth. There was no covering letter, but I assume it came from the publicity people for the film.

At a loose end, I took a look and although "Documentary presented by American conservative talk radio host" is a genre that I would tend to be a little suspicious of, in fact it was a very amusing way to pass an hour or so. Valentine has none of the bombast that I was expecting, coming across as a wryly amusing, very straight kind of guy, ready to have a laugh with anyone about anything. I really warmed to him.

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On advice to government

Updated on Oct 15, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Dec 11, 2013 by Bishop Hill

In the email this morning I find a copy of the presentation Sir Mark Walport will give to the cabinet today, purportedly on the subject of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. It's a pretty interesting read (see bottom of post for link), although in fact when you get into it there is very little about what the IPCC had to say.

It starts unexceptionably enough, with a slide about surface temperature warming, including not only the IPCC's "Let's hide the pause behind decadal averages" graph, but also the annual averages. 

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Buckle up

During the Energy and Climate Change Committee hearing last week, Peter Lilley asked the men from the Climate Change Committee what evidence would cause them to change their minds about global warming, a question that was fairly studiously avoided. Interestingly, Simon Buckle of the Grantham Institute has written to the FT (not online) to suggest what the reply should have been:

As a physicist, I would modify my view that we are conducting a dangerous experiment with the Earth’s climate if one or both of the following hypotheses were strongly supported by evidence.

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Investment freeze

The latest briefing note from Liberum Capital makes for fairly terrifying reading. According to authors Peter Atherton and Mulu Sun, energy investors have now digested Labour's announcement that it is going to institute a price freeze if it wins the next election and they are, not to put to fine a point on it, appalled:

As we noted at the time this is a dramatic intervention that immediately increased the political risk faced by all participants in the UK power market, not the suppliers themselves. We warned that a price freeze would chill investment in new generating capacity, something confirmed today by SSE who have said that moving to FiD on any major new generation investment was not possible until the outcome of the election was known.

And as the note makes clear, since Miliband made his intervention, investors have been selling out of UK energy utilities just as fast as they possibly can. This should kill off any new investment in capacity for the foreseeable future.

Suppliers of emergency operating reserve - diesel generators in other words - will be rubbing their hands in glee.

Update on Oct 14, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Scottish Power are dropping fairly unsubtle hints that they will freeze new investment too.

Consistent industrial policy

Winnington works by Berit Watkin (click image for full size and details)It is said that a consistent industrial policy is important, providing certainty for investors as governments come and go. In the UK, we have certainly been sending businessmen a consistent message of "Go away" and "Not wanted here".

The message seems to be getting through:

A chemicals factory which has supplied industries such as glass and soap-making for 140 years is to close because of "massive" energy bills, costing 220 jobs.

Tata Chemicals Europe said it was shutting its soda ash factory at Winnington in Northwich, Cheshire, which has produced the chemical since 1874, as it was being squeezed by rising gas prices.

Job losses will be split across Winnington, support services and Tata's nearby Lostock plant, which will continue making soda ash and sodium bicarbonate - used in baking, detergents and reducing power station emissions.

Bravo Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg; bravo Mr Miliband.

Energy wave in the Telegraph

Not now, can't you see we're saving the planet?The cost of energy is all over the Telegraph this morning.

First up, Iain Martin outlines the whole sorry history of Britian's energy policy over the last twenty years. In the same outlet, Booker reviews the week's developments, and reiterates the point that the decision to balance energy supply with diesel generators is going to be very expensive indeed. Meanwhile, Robert Colvile and the paper's cartoonist manage to find something to laugh about.

This will of course have precisely no impact on the thinking of Ed Davey, Greg Barker and the other grandees in DECC.

Merchants of advocacy

Reiner Grundmann has written a fairly damning review of Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Doubt. I guess it's fair to say that he is not desperately impressed.

It is disappointing to see professional historians reduce the complexity to a black and white affair where it goes without saying what the preferred colour is. The social science literature relevant to the understanding of policymaking in the face of uncertainty is largely absent. The authors mention just one study, about rational decision theory, which is probably cited because it supports the authors’ claim that scientific uncertainty helps to prevent or delay political action. They missed the opportunity to confront their historical material with approaches that have examined the same case studies but did not come to the same conclusions. Reading Merchants of Doubt gives the impression that no such work exists. This raises the question of what epistemological status it can claim. Its authors have been critical of the scientific credentials of the contrarians, quoting the lack of peer review or selective use of information. This book has all the hallmarks of science (there are many footnotes) and perhaps it was even peer-reviewed. But it is what the title and subtitle suggest: less a scholarly work than a passionate attack on a group of scientists turned lobbyists and thus itself a partial account. I wonder if it does not do a disservice to the cause it is advocating.

 I haven't troubled to read Merchants of Doubt before. I can't really see that changing in the near future.

Baling out? Probably not

Updated on Oct 12, 2013 by Bishop Hill

After years of trying to load us with green taxes and beating their chests about saving the planet from global warming, politicians are rushing to tell us how worried they are about the cost of living (readers will probably want to be quite rude about this volte face, but let's try to maintain a little dignity, shall we?)

Today, The Mail is reporting that David Cameron has responded to Miliband's call for a government mandated price freeze by ordering a review into the cost of living, including green taxes.

The Coalition was riven by bitter infighting over green taxes last night after David Cameron ordered a review to stem the rise in energy bills.

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Cook’s consensus: standing on its last legs

A bird reserve hires a fresh enthusiast and puts him to do a census. The amateur knows there are 3 kinds of birds in the park. He accompanies an experienced watcher. The watcher counts 6 magpies, 4 ravens and 2 starlings. The new hire gets 6 magpies, 3 ravens and 3 starlings. Great job, right?

No, and here’s how. The new person was not good at identification. He mistook every bird for everything else. He got his total the same as the expert but by chance.

If one looks just at aggregates, one can be fooled into thinking the agreement between birders to be an impressive 92%. In truth, the match is abysmal: 25%. Interestingly this won’t come out unless the raw data is examined.

Suppose, that instead of three kinds of birds there were seven, and that there are a thousand of them instead of twelve. This is the exact situation with the Cook consensus paper.

The Cook paper attempts validation by comparing own ratings with ratings from papers’ authors (see table 4 in paper). In characteristic fashion Cook’s group report only that authors found the same 97% as they did. Except this agreement is solely of the totals – an entirely meaningless figure

Turn back to the bird example. The new person is sufficiently wrong (in 9 of 12 instances) that one cannot be sure even the matches with the expert (3 of 12) aren’t by chance. You can get all birds wrong and yet match 100% with the expert. The per-observation concordance rate is what determines validity.

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Reign of madness

Paul Homewood's analysis of expected future increases in household electricity bills is sobering stuff. Buried in the back of a House of Commons report on electricity prices we find that the cost of greenery is currently 10% of the average household bill (say £1200). This is expected to rise to 33% by 2020, which would make the bill £1450 or thereabouts, and to 41% (£1540) by 2030.

However, the costs of all this greenery fall, in the first place, mainly on non-domestic users - two thirds in fact. But the charges to industrial users simply gets passed onto consumers anyway (some of them being overseas consumers, but the majority are in the UK). So while domestic users are picking up an extra £450 in green costs (1540 - (1200/1.1)), in fact they are also eventually going to have to pick up most of the tab for the £900 charged to industrial users as well. That means by 2030, costs to consumers will have doubled.

Ivo Vegter on green misinformation

Simply fantastic

More eco-destruction by greens

Where has all the wildlife gone?A must read letter from the head forester at Balcombe Estate has been published in the Mid-Sussex Times:

When a colleague was questioned by a ‘protector’ as to why there was no wildlife to be seen, he suggested it could have something to do with the hundred plus tents, people and drums (of course this was the one noise that could be heard over all else once the helicopters were excluded from the equation). Whilst the burning of wood as a renewable energy source should be applauded, I would have preferred that the dead wood left to enrich the woodland environment had not been burned.