ICO calls to extend FOI-case time-limits

The Information Commissioner's Office has just tweeted that the Commissioner himself has just told the parliamentary Justice Committee that the time limit for s77 prosecutions should be extended - this was what let UEA officials off the hook for their Climategate-related FOI breaches.

The commissioner also called for custodial sentences for breaches of the Data Protection Act. In fact, I think custodial sentences should be required for breaches of FOI too. At the moment public bodies don't take the Act very seriously.

Richard B at the BBC

Richard Betts has an article up at the BBC, which I'm sure readers here will find of great interest:

Climate "sceptics" accuse climate scientists of exaggerating the evidence for human-caused climate change in order to secure their own funding; but actually I think that any vested interests in talking up the problem lie elsewhere.

The focus on climate change is now so huge that everybody seems to need to have some link to climate change if they are to attract attention and funding.

Hence the increasing tendency to link everything to climate change - whether scientifically proven or not.

The question is: do climate scientists do enough to counter this? Or are we guilty of turning a blind eye to these things because we think they are on "our side" against the climate sceptics?

Update on Sep 13, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Oops, this an old article.

Windy-day power

A reader asked how the windfarms did yesterday in the UK - we caught the tail end of a hurricane so there was plenty of puff around.

The answer is, not desperately well, but well enough that one can almost feel the money being sucked out of one's pockets:

With many thanks to Rob Schneider for the data from his iPhone app.

All in a Davies' work

Last year George Avery of Purdue University wrote an article in World Medical and Science Policy about politics perverting scientific conduct and raising the ugly spectre of Climategate (paywalled here).

Science is increasingly being manipulated by those who try to use it to justify political choices based on their ethical preferences, and who are willing to act to suppress evidence of conflict between those preferences and the underlying reality. This problem is clearly seen in two policy domains, healthcare and climate policy. In the area of climate policy, recent revelations of emails from the government-sponsored Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia reveal a pattern of data suppression, manipulation of results, and efforts to intimidate journal editors to suppress contradictory studies and indicate that scientific misconduct has been used intentionally to manipulate a social consensus to support the researchers’ advocacy of addressing a problem that may or may not exist.

This seems to have been followed by a rebuttal from Trevor Davies of UEA (paywalled here) and then a response from Avery in the current issue (paywalled here).

I gather that Davies' position was that the article should be retracted, citing the Deutsche Bank report (!) as evidence that nothing untowards happened.  Apparently the editors are dutifully going to re-review the paper. Expect them to resign shortly ;-)

(H/T Ross McKitrick)

FOI fail

Much amusement at this response to a (non-climate-related) FOI request: the government department involved inadvertently copied their internal discussion about how to respond to the requester:

There is another, wide-ranging FOI request for all unpublished reports. I have provided Peter Parr with a list of relevant documents from across the Directorate, with the exception of the Bill Team where Georgina has said that it would take in excess of the time limit to conduct a search. Peter is putting up a draft response to Ministers on that basis.

I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with the idea of responses to FOI requests being run past ministers. Should ministers be involved in legal compliance matters?

Why energy taxes will fail

Tim Worstall writes at the Adam Smith Insitute blog:

What the DEC is really saying is that energy demand is highly elastic to price: change the price and you'll get quite large changes in behaviour and demand. What Moxham is really saying is that this is tosh, energy has a low elasticity. We don't change our behaviour much when energy prices change. So, who is right?

Find out here.

The power of laughter

I was gently taken to task by a commenter for my levity in linking to the Newsbiscuit story yesterday. I think this is wrong. The importance of having people laugh at one's opponents cannot by underestimated in my view, which is why I'm grateful to Jane Coles for this image of the latest fashion accessory for "right-on" kids everywhere.

Click to read more ...

'Let's Kick Climate Change Denial Out of Football' campaign

Football fans who make offensive chants about wind turbines could face stiff jail sentences under plans by the government and the Football Association to ‘get tough’ with climate change deniers.

Read the whole thing here.

What's all this then?

The blogospheric dissection of the papers by Spencer and Braswell and by Dessler continue apace. In fact the pace is a bit of a problem, as I have been left rather behind - radiative physics is an area I need to get up to speed on. This is a pity because it looks as though today's excitement is all going to be focused the effect of clouds on the earth's energy budget.

Firstly there is this comment by Bart at CA. Then there's this post by Tallbloke, which is essentially just a reposting of a comment by Bill Illis at WUWT.

The Bill Illis/Tallbloke piece seems rather more straightforward to me - if I understand it correctly, it shows that the variability in the amount of heat escaping the earth is driven to a large extent by changes in cloud cover. As one commenter puts it:

But the [climate models] only assign a single, constant value for all clouds, at all latitudes, for all periods of day and night, for all seasons of the year, across all elevations for all values of humidity and rainfall and percent CO2.

Right?

I can see that this is a problem, although perhaps I haven't quite got my head around the implications yet.

The Bart comment at CA is, however, more tricky and I haven't made head or tail of it yet. Given that there seems to be general agreement that it may be significant, maybe readers here can explain.

Maths do better - Josh 118

H/t Chuckles who, on the Make haste more slowly post, wrote:

"Does this mean that John Abrahams comments, reported in the Guardian and Daily Climate, about Dr. Spencer constantly having to correct errors and revise work, are in fact correct?

Just not in the way Abrahams originally intended?"

Cartoons by Josh

New paper supports Svensmark hypothesis

Nigel Calder reports on a paper by Dragić et al.. The paper considers the effects of Forbush decreases - when solar flares cause reductions in the number of galactic cosmic rays reaching the Earth. According to the Svensmark hypothesis, this should cause a reduction in cloudiness.

Dragić and his co-authors have looked at the diurnal temperature range - the difference between daytime maxima and nighttime minima after Forbush increases. If clouds are indeed reduced, then the diurnal temperature range should increase, ie colder nights and warmer days.

The results look good for Svensmark's ideas.

The results [are] hard (impossible?) to explain by any mechanism except an influence of cosmic rays on cloud formation.

(H/T Pharos in Unthreaded)

Bradley on the Hockey Stick 2

Time after time when reading Bradley's defence of the Hockey Stick, I was struck by how he avoided the criticisms that were actually made of the paper, preferring instead to knock down a series of strawmen. There are also parts that are grossly misleading.

Take this next excerpt for example, where Bradley describes McIntyre and McKitrick's Nature submission in 2004.

Click to read more ...

Cuccinelli on hold

From HamptonRoads.com:

An Albemarle County judge has put Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's latest demand for documents related to a former University of Virginia climate-change researcher's work on hold.

Circuit Judge Cheryl Higgins granted a stay today until the Virginia Supreme Court rules on a related case.

Cuccinelli is investigating whether Michael Mann defrauded taxpayers by using manipulated data to obtain government grants. A judge ruled last year that Cuccinelli was not specific enough about how Mann might have broken the law, and that he lacks authority to investigate federal grants.

Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic, appealed that ruling to the Virginia Supreme Court and filed a new, more specific demand pertaining to just one state grant. Higgins put that demand on hold.

Make haste more slowly

What fun - readers point out that some revisions are to be made to the Dessler paper in the light of comments made by Roy Spencer. I wonder if Steve M's comments will have an effect too?

Paul Nurse on geoengineering

Paul Nurse has a letter in the Guardian (where else?) on the subject of geoengineering. It's less bad than you might expect.

A time may come when mankind will need to consider geoengineering the climate to counteract climatic effects of greenhouse gases. If that time comes, we need to have a good understanding of whether such efforts will work and, just as importantly, whether they will have any negative side effects. Those who oppose such exploratory research on the grounds that we do not know what its effects may be ... are missing a fundamental point of research, which is to allow us to potentially rule out any technology that would have negative effects that outweigh the positive.

Researching stuff probably does little harm, although one can certainly question whether geoengineering research, or indeed any scientific research, should be a priority for government spending at the moment. Outside the ivory tower, times are hard, but it is not obvious that Sir Paul has noticed.

Click to read more ...