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Bishop Hill Sep 11, 2012 Climate: Models Climate: Parliament This briefing prepared for Lord Marland is, if anything, even worse than the last. It is perfectly acceptable for DECC to discuss a claim about the possibility that recent temperature changes are natural. I find it extraordinary that they would try to do so with a graph of changes in various atmospheric constituents.
Bishop Hill Sep 11, 2012 Climate: Parliament Climate: Sceptics This document, outlining how DECC should respond to Lord Turnbull's GWPF report on climate policy is fascinating. The scientific briefings that ministers get from DECC officials are indistinguishable from Greenpeace press releases.
Bishop Hill
Now this is interesting. Note on page 9 this bit about the Hockey Stick:
In 2006, the US National Academies of Science carried out a full review of the evidence of temperatures in the last millennium, including the so-called ‘Hockey Stick’ diagram. They found that for the Northern Hemisphere at least, the rapid warming of the past half century has resulted in a level of warmth not seen in at least 500 years, and likely for at least the past 1300 years.
Close followers of the Hockey Stick saga will know of course that this is what the IPCC said about the Hockey Stick; the NAS were much more cautious, saying that it was merely "plausible" beyond 500 years.
Perhaps more intriguingly, we have seen these exact words before, in the paper that Julia Slingo prepared for Sir John Beddington in the wake of Climategate (see my earlier post here).
So the falsehood passes from Slingo to Beddington to DECC officials to ministers.
The finest scientific minds in the country and not one of them spotted it.
Bishop Hill Sep 11, 2012 Climate: Parliament Leo Hickman has unearthed a repository of DECC documents on climate change. I'm not clear if this is as a result of a FOI request or something else.
He is posting interesting snippets on his Twitter timeline. This internal briefing by a not-very-literate DECC insider is interesting.
[Update: author names are in the document properties. This one appears to be by P Munro; a google suggests P is for Paul]
Bishop Hill
It's an FOI request - the full response is here.
Bishop Hill Sep 11, 2012 Deben Energy: other Greens Last Friday I wrote to the House of Commons Energy and Climate CHange Committee about Lord Deben's interests in Veolia. I received an acknowledgement from the committee noting that my email had been circulated to committee members. My email was as follows:
Dear Sirs
I want to bring to your attention some information regarding your recent hearing with Lord Deben.
Bishop Hill Sep 10, 2012 Climate: Sceptics ;)
Richard Bean's sceptic play The Heretic is opening at the Lowry Theatre in Salford at the end of this month.
Details of where to get tickets here.
Bishop Hill Sep 9, 2012 GWPF David Henderson sends this note on the review of GWPF reports.
One of your commentators has posed the question: ‘If short journal articles are peer reviewed, why not longer GWPF pieces?’
There is a misunderstanding here. The ’longer GWPF pieces’ have taken the form of reports: up to now, nine of these have so far been published, with Peter Lilley’s as the latest. All of them have been peer reviewed by members of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, of which I am chairman. The members of the Council are publicly listed. I have personally reviewed all nine reports, and commented in writing on all but one.
Bishop Hill Sep 9, 2012 Climate: Sceptics One of Anthony Watts' readers is attempting to replicate the Lewandowsky survey study, an interesting development in my humble opinion. Details here.
Also fascinating is Steve McIntyre's dissection of Lewandowsky's results.
Bishop Hill Sep 8, 2012 Climate: other Another diary date, this time for readers in the West Midlands. This is a fringe event for the Conservative party conference I think.
Join us for a discussion on Conservative approaches to tackling climate change and what climate and energy policies the Government should implement to make this the "greenest government ever".
Speakers include:
• Greg Barker MP, Minister of State for Energy & Climate Change
• Matthew Sinclair, Director, Taxpayers' Alliance
• Sir John Houghton, Former co-chair of the IPCC and former CEO of the Met Office
• Guy Newey, Head of Environment and Energy, Policy ExchangeDate: Sunday 7th October 2012, 17.45-19:00
Venue: Exec Room 1, Birmingham ICC
RSVP: Please RSVP to invites@brightblue.org.uk
Bishop Hill Sep 8, 2012 Climate: Surface Eric Steig has responded to Nic Lewis's letter in the Guardian, which I mentioned here. Lewis had pointed out that warming in Antarctica is restricted to the West Antarctic Peninsula. Here's Steig's response:
Nicholas Lewis (Letters, 28 August) complained that your report (Arctic ice melt likely to break record, 24 August) gave the impression that typical temperatures in Antarctica have risen as much as on the Antarctic peninsula. While he is correct about this, his letter also refers to an outdated study of his, which argued that previous estimates of overall Antarctic warming were too high. In fact, the work of Lewis and co-authors has been proven wrong.
Bishop Hill Sep 7, 2012 This is a guest post by Shub Niggurath.
So we can't engage in the dishonest tactics that those looking to discredit us may be willing to engage in. But we can try to become better communicators of the science; try to find novel ways to explain to the public the fact that the science is solid …
Background
Readers are aware of John Cook’s secret forum whose contents leaked, exposing material he and his followers would rather, not see the light of the day (see e.g. here, here and here). Most of it was the puerile fantasies of climate alarmists who need private space to admit and confess to what they cannot in public. However, there are actions undertaken behind the scenes that impact the public sphere. Again, Cook and his followers have every right to carry out these as well, but scrutinize them we can.
Bishop Hill Here are a couple more dates that may interest readers here. I'm sure all my readers in the Northern Isles will be interested in this courtroom-style confrontation on 10 September between upholders of and dissentients from the IPCC consensus, and featuring Benny Peiser and BH regular, John Shade:
A courtroom format in Orkney next week will tackle the question of climate change.
For many years the debate has raged in newspaper columns and internet blogs – Is the climate really changing? And are we the cause?
Now as part of the Orkney International Science Festival the courtroom method is bring applied. The aim is to get at the truth by bringing the two sides together, gathering the evidence from each, and subjecting it to examination and cross-examination.
Bishop Hill Sep 7, 2012 Climate: other Owen Paterson is far from a household name, but the significance of his appointment as Environment Secretary has not been lost on the green lobby groups. As far as they’re concerned, this is war. They are already denouncing him as a “prominent hater of wind turbines” and overall climate change sceptic.
It is just as well, then, that Paterson has spent two years at Northern Ireland, learning the art of political combat. For his critics are quite right to detect a shift in policy. According to Downing Street, his mission is to revive the rural economy – and the main species he has been asked to protect is the humans trying to make ends meet. As for his leader, the man once photographed being pulled by dogs over a Norwegian glacier is tiptoeing away from his old policies as he might do from embarrassing photographs of his student exuberance.
Bishop Hill Sep 6, 2012 Climate: Parliament Energy: wind Having rejected the idea of standing in the Corby by-election as a UKIP candidate, Delingpole has now apparently decided to stand after all, but as an independent anti-windfarm candidate.
