Climate incentive, climate invective

Clive James has made another of his intermittent forays into the climate debate. In the course of a review of Brian Cox's Science Britannica programme he had this to say:

Fronting Science Britannica on BBC Two, Professor Cox visited the Royal Society and Bletchley Park in his quest for examples of the scientific method. Finally he dropped in on the Royal Institution, where he and the editor of Nature puzzled together, but not very hard, over how there has come to be an “overwhelming scientific consensus” favouring the concept of dangerous man-made global warming.

Neither of them asked what kind of scientific consensus it was if, say, Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies declined to join it. Isn’t the overwhelming scientific consensus really just a consensus between climate scientists, and therefore no more impressive than the undoubted fact that one hundred percent of gymnasium attendants believe that regular exercise is vital to longevity?

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CCC in Parliament. Again.

Yet again, Parliament has decided that it will take evidence from the bigwigs at the Committee on Climate Change. On Wednesday, just after appearing in front of the Science and Technology Committee, Lord Deben will give evidence to the Energy and Climate Change Committee on his work at the CCC, accompanied by his sidekick David Kennedy.

I have no idea what the committee is intending to achieve with this hearing. I'd like to see them exploring issues such as how Lord Deben manages to provide independent advice on renewables while occupying a management role within a company that will gain massively from expansion of renewables and also how he can provide independent advice on recycling (something the CCC offers up on a regular basis) while occupying the role of chairman in a recycling business.

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Travels

I've had a late invitation to speak at a conference in London, so I will be on the road today. Blogging will therefore be light.

GWPF TV

GWPF has launched couple of videos on extreme weather events. A long version and a short version are embedded below. Benny Peiser was wondering if BH readers would like to comment and/or make suggestions for improvement.

Enjoy.

Diary date: liturgical edition

Ever keen to hear the climate change liturgy intoned, the Science and Technology Committee have invited a group of senior prelates to hold confession at the House of Commons.

Wednesday 9 October 2013
Thatcher Room, Portcullis House

At 9.15 am

• Rt Hon the Lord Deben, Chairman, Committee on Climate Change, and
• David Kennedy, Chief Executive, Committee on Climate Change

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Next Steps in Climate Science - Cartoon notes

Updated on Oct 4, 2013 by Josh

Following Katabasis report here are the first of my cartoon notes from the 'Next steps in climate science' meeting at the Royal Society today. I will add to this page and update with colour as and when I can. I am already looking forward to tomorrow - today was a blast!

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Costing the Earth resumes normal service

Costing the Earth resumed normal service at the BBC this week, with a panel of six adherents to the Working Group I orthodoxy discussing, erm, the Working Group I report. Featured voices were Julia Slingo, Mark Walport, Bjorn Lomborg, Mike Hulme, Mark Lynas, and Tony Grayling, Head of Climate Change and Communities at the Environment Agency. The decision to invite

• Walport, whose every appearance in the media in recent days has featured a regurgitation of the same somewhat irrelevant talking points, making it sound as if he is simply repeating the contents of his introductory briefing paper on climate, and
• Lynas whose claims to fame seem to revolve around having been wrong about nuclear, GM and the pause

... look kind of weird when viewed in the context of their decision that Nic Lewis was unworthy of consideration for any media appearances, either because (like Lynas) he is not an academic or because he was (like Slingo) mentioned in a David Rose article.

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A report from the Royal

The Royal Society is holding a two-day meeting to discuss the Working Group I report of the IPCC. Reader Katabasis was there and send this report.

So the first day of the meeting at the Royal Society to discuss the IPCC AR5 report was quite an eye-opener.

The tone was set from the start with the first two speakers wringing their hands over the issue of "communicating the message", pointing out that sceptics were apparently "very good" at it.  According to Mark Walport, chief scientific adviser to the Government, we sceptics (sorry, those who "deny the science") are "single issue, great communicators." Thomas Stocker followed in the second talk emphasising the "Key 19 messages" in the SPM report.

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New blogs on the block

A couple of new blogs for readers to bookmark

Paul Matthews needs no introduction as a regular BH commenter and general scourge of the IPCC. His new blog is here.

Also new is Euan Mearns' blog. Euan was at the important, but now defunct Oil Drum blog for a long time but has just started up his own outlet. This extract from his first article sounds intriguing:

Together with fellow climate blogger Dr Clive Best, I have spent several months this year analysing the impact of cloud cover on variance of the surface temperature record and we have two papers under review on this topic [6,7]. The conclusion of both studies is that Earth’s climate can be simply modelled using combined cloud cover and CO2 variance (with no feedbacks) pointing to an equilibrium climate sensitivity close to 1.3˚C.

No sceptic scientists in the UK?

I was struck by a thought just now. Although I didn't hear the report myself, I gather that the BBC claimed last week that it had been unable to find any sceptic scientists in the UK.

This is odd, because I had an email from a prominent BBC journalist at the end of August seeking scientists who would give the sceptical side of the argument. This was apparently with a view to finding alternative views to present at the time of AR5.

Given the importance of the pause, the obvious candidate was Nic Lewis and, having ascertained that he would be willing to talk to the BBC, I put his name forward. Nic obviously doesn't work in the university system, but he has published in the key area of climate sensitivity, and given that other people in the area now seem to be adopting his methodology it would be hard to make a case that he is not expert.

I didn't get a response, although I recall Nic asking if anything had come of it.

The BBC's claim is therefore something of a mystery.

Working Group II leaked

An anonymous correspondent has sent me the IPPC WGII Second Order Draft and the reviewer comments, together with a few other related documents.

I've uploaded them here.

The Fifth's first fiddle

The full text of the Fifth Assessment Report has been out for less than 24 hours and the tales of malfeasance are flowing already. Steve McIntyre has already blogged about some misleading behaviour by senior scientists involved in the review, but his post this morning is amazing, revealing how the discrepancy between climate models and observations was systematically hidden between the final review of the draft and the report issued to the public.

For the envelopes from the first three assessments, although they cite the same sources as the predecessor Second Draft Figure 1.4, the earlier projections have been shifted downwards relative to observations, so that the observations are now within the earlier projection envelopes. You can see this relatively clearly with the Second Assessment Report envelope: compare the two versions. At present, I have no idea how they purport to justify this.

None of this portion of the IPCC assessment is drawn from peer-reviewed material. Nor is it consistent with the documents sent to external reviewers.

Read the whole thing.

Hysteria

Environmentalists are a never-ending source of fascination for me. There is hardly a day that passes without them whipping themselves into a frenzy over something somebody said somewhere.

Take Owen Paterson's unexceptionable observation that there will be upsides to any global warming as well as downsides, which has been greeted by industrial-scale hysterics from the usual suspects:

Professor Kevin Anderson, of Manchester University, told the Independent: “His view that we can muddle through climate change is a colonial, arrogant, rich person’s view.”

And Professor Myles Allen of Oxford University, one of the authors of the report, said: “I find it very worrying that this person is charged with adapting [Britain] to climate change. I do think it is a good idea for whoever is planning for adaptation to have a realistic understanding of what the science is saying.”

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