Entries from September 1, 2013 - September 30, 2013
Bishop Hill What should scientists tell the public?
Sep 30, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: Oceans Climate: Surface In particular, what should they tell the public about what is not understood? Richard Allan, of Reading University, clearly feels that the answer is "as little as possible". So in this video, about ocean heat content and the pause, we are given to believe that a network of ocean-going bouys has been measuring a vast warming, the insinuation being that this explains the pause. Hands are (metaphorically) waved furiously and "natural cycles" frantically invoked. There is a great deal of spin, and very little light.
And all paid for by you.
Bishop Hill Hulme on the IPCC
Sep 30, 2013 Climate: Hulme Climate: Models Climate: WG3 Mike Hulme has done a podcast on the Fifth Assessment Report, which is published at the website of his new employer, King's College London and is embedded below. There is a measure of common ground, although in Hulme's view the difficulties with the science don't seem to obviate a demand for policy responses to it. This makes it hard to to determine if the science is leading to demands for policy responses or whether it is merely an excuse for them.
(H/T Alan)
Bishop Hill What's in the papers?
Sep 30, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: grid A couple of excellent pieces in the morning papers. Both fall into the category of "not news to BH readers", but they are great none the less.
In the Mail, Peter Atherton sets out his despair at the energy policies of the government and opposition
Labour’s price freeze idea is bad for investment, bad for security of supply, and bad for consumers. But if it forces the political class in this country to wake up and tackle the reasons why costs are actually rising then some good may come of it.
Meanwhile, in City AM, Peter Lilley examines what the IPCC and the political class didn't say about the global climate last week:
...Miliband, who was environment secretary when the Climate Change Act committed future governments to replace fossil fuels by renewables costing two or three times as much, promises to freeze energy prices. The fact that even he didn't mention his Act, which is incompatible with his pledge, shows it is politically indefensible.
Bishop Hill The Neglected Sun
Sep 30, 2013 Books 
This review of Vahrenholt and Luning's The Neglected Sun is a guest post by Thomas Cussans.
In June 1997, addressing the United Nations, Bill Clinton made a dramatic assertion. ‘The science is clear and compelling,’ he said. ‘We humans are changing the global climate.’
In fact, Clinton was behind the curve. Well before his claim, the belief in a ‘settled science’ that human CO2 emissions would produce an unprecedented and catastrophic rise in the Earth’s temperatures had become an unchallenged truth. Governments across the world, most obviously in the West, embraced it with a kind of masochistic delight. Green activists were similarly frantic in their assertions of impending disaster. Scenting cheap profits courtesy of immense government grants to produce ‘renewable’ energy, a series of multi-nationals made clear their determination to climb on board the global warming express. No less important, the West’s media took as read that this ‘consensus’ represented an obvious truth.
Bishop Hill Stott and Shuck - the transcript
Sep 29, 2013 Climate: other ;)
Reader Lapogus sends this transcript of the interviews of Emily Shuckburgh and Peter Stott on Friday. Both Lapogus and I were struck by some of the statements made, and felt they were worthy of fact-checking.
BBC Radio 5 Live, Shelagh Fogarty Show, 27.09.2013: Matt McGrath (BBC Environment Correspondent) interview with Peter Stott (UK Met Office) in Stockholm on release of the IPCC SPM5.
Source: http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/FogertyshowAWM.mp3
Shelagh Fogarty (studio, 2.10) … where does this report fit into the IPPC’s history, because it has been an interesting history, not without its issues and not without its attackers…
Bishop Hill The startling foolishness of David Cameron
Sep 29, 2013 Climate: Parliament 
Take a look at this quote from our prime minister, Mr Cameron:
It’s worth looking at what this report this week says – that [there is a] 95 per cent certainty that human activity is altering the climate. I think I said this almost 10 years ago: if someone came to you and said there is a 95 per cent chance that your house might burn down, even if you are in the 5 per cent that doesn’t agree with it, you still take out the insurance, just in case.”
Do you see how he equates strong certainty that mankind is affecting the climate with strong certainty that this means disaster? This is a statement of such startling foolishness that it almost defies belief to hear it from someone who wields such power.
Bishop Hill Slingo writes to Lewis
Sep 29, 2013 Climate: MetOffice Climate: WG3 ;)
There has been another exchange in the flow of correspondence between Julia Slingo and Nic Lewis. Slingo wrote to Lewis at the end of last week, her letter not addressing the points made in Lewis's rebuttal last week, but instead moving the discussion onto the observationally constrained estimates of climate sensitivity.
As a physicist who has worked extensively on using observations to understand climate processes and natural climate variability, and subsequently to model them, I would like to understand in more detail how you estimate equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and aerosol radiative forcing from the observational base.
Bishop Hill The calming influence of the Mail on Sunday
Sep 29, 2013 Climate: Surface Climate: WG2 ;)
Amid all the efforts to create panic over climate change it's good to have the calming influence of the Mail on Sunday. This morning, David Rose returns to the climate fray with an article looking at start dates for measuring the pause:
A footnote in the new report also confirms there has been no statistically significant increase since 1997.
Last night independent climate scientist Nic Lewis – an accredited IPCC reviewer and co-author of peer-reviewed papers – pointed out that taking start years of 2001, 2002 or 2003 would suggest a cooling trend of 0.02-0.05C per decade, though this would not be statistically significant.
Bishop Hill Lindzen on AR5
Sep 28, 2013 Climate: IPCC Climate: Sceptics 
Mark Morano has obtained a statement from Dick Lindzen on the AR5 Summary for Policymakers. It's short, so I have taken the liberty of reproducing the whole thing here. Fair to say, Lindzen is not impressed:
I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.
Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans. However, it is this heat transport that plays a major role in natural internal variability of climate, and the IPCC assertions that observed warming can be attributed to man depend crucially on their assertion that these models accurately simulate natural internal variability. Thus, they now, somewhat obscurely, admit that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified.
Finally, in attributing warming to man, they fail to point out that the warming has been small, and totally consistent with there their being nothing to be alarmed about. It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.
Bishop Hill Keenan writes to Slingo
Sep 27, 2013 Climate: MetOffice Climate: Statistics Doug Keenan has just written to Julia Slingo about a problem with the Fifth Assessment Report (see here for context).
Dear Julia,
The IPCC’s AR5 WGI Summary for Policymakers includes the following statement.The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C, over the period 1880–2012….
(The numbers in brackets indicate 90%-confidence intervals.) The statement is near the beginning of the first section after the Introduction; as such, it is especially prominent.
Bishop Hill AR5 press cuttings
Sep 27, 2013 Climate: Cuttings Climate: IPCC Marcel Crok says that the good news in AR5 is being hidden.
Bob Tisdale says that the way the pause is being shown is comical.
Matt Ridley was on the Daily Politics, up against some of the slimiest creatures in British public life.
Judith Curry has fun explaining to a journalist how the IPCC gets to that 95% certain figure. She also gets a mention in the WSJ coverage.
The Today programme featured a piece with Chris Rapley and Lord Stern and another with Chief Scientist Sir Mark Walport, who thinks (believe it or not) that climate science needs new communication strategies. I kid you not. In a later section, John Ashton (former Foreign Office climate bod) and Connie St Louis (sci journalism person) discussed a range of issues on the periphery of the climate debate. Mostly this was a case of publicly funded officials trying to silence dissenting voices.
Bishop Hill
More links added:
The Shelagh Fogerty show on Five Live featured Emily Shuckburgh, Peter Stott of the Met Office and yours truly.
Benny Peiser was on BBC World News Today (from 9mins), up against Jeremy Leggett.
Meanwhile I was on Good Morning Scotland, up against Richard Dixon of Friends of the Earth.
FiveLive Drive had two slots, one with Jo Haigh and another featuring Ed Hawkins and Tamsin Edwards.
Tamsin E. has posted a page of all her media appearances here.
Josh Intergovernmental AR5 patch up - Josh 240
AR5 has landed and the press conference didn't disappoint, it was laugh out loud at times.
Bishop Hill Thoughts on the SPM
Sep 27, 2013 Climate: IPCC Ducking, diving, bobbing and weaving are the general themes of the Summary for Policymakers, just released this morning.
You would imagine that the document would review what was said last time round and how things have changed since that time, but you'd be wrong. This is, after all, the bureaucracy at work: difficulties have to be brushed under carpets and stones left unturned.
It would, for example, have been interesting for AR5 to discuss the increase in hurricane intensity that the AR4 SPM said was "likely" on the basis of the climate models. Instead, we get a veil drawn over the subject, with not a word on the hurricane drought in recent years.
Bishop Hill Science Media Centre hits new lows
Read this from the Science Media Centre.
...the slowdown has risked becoming the bête noire of climate science. It has been unfairly framed as (another) nail in the coffin for global warming – ‘You said it would get warmer and it hasn’t!’ – as though the failure of the temperature record to conform each year blows the whole evidence base out of the water. Triumphant claims are made – erroneously – that the failure to warm has finally been revealed and that scientists (part of the conspiracy, naturally) have been keeping quiet about it.
"..conform each year"?! "Conform at any point since the turn of the millennium" is the criticism.
