AR5 open thread

This is an open thread for anyone wanting to discuss the Summary for Policymakers. We gather that it was only approved an hour ago but that journalists were issued with a press release shortly before 8am UK time. Suggestions of a reining back on the alarm.

Update on Sep 27, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Headlines seem to speak of 2°C warming by 2100. If true this is a big reining back from AR4 which was talking of 1-4°C.

If rumours are correct, the pause is not part of the headlines.

Update on Sep 27, 2013 by Bishop Hill

The pause is apparently being written off as insignificant, a result of the 1998 start date chosen. If true I will be truly gobsmacked.

Diary date: Keeping the lights on edition

This is a sponsored post

Let's just imagine that the IPCC really has backed itself into a corner over what it is going to say about the extent of future global warming, and that they are forced to say something much closer to "dunno" than "we're all going to fry". What if, as Fraser Nelson suggested in his leader article last week, sanity really is starting to return to the climate change debate? 

If he's right, then our attentions need to be turning to how we get out of the appalling pickle we have got ourselves into, a pickle that Ed Miliband's prognostications earlier in the week seem to have made infinitely worse. This being the case, the Spectator conference on energy futures looks like it will be a useful step in the right direction.

Appealingly entitled, "How do we stop the lights going out", the conference is described as follows:

Click to read more ...

Steve Jewson on Bayesian statistics

Steve Jewson is the statistician whose trenchant comments on climatologists' use and misuse of Bayesian statistics was discussed here some months ago.

This presentation he gave to a conference at the University of Reading is in similar vein, but goes beyond Bayes' theorem to areas such as the UKCP09 climate predictions.

UKCP

• unashamedly uses subjective methods

• Includes subjective beliefs that go beyond the models and the data

Nic Lewis has analysed the impact of these additional subjective factors:

• And it seems that they push the rate of climate change higher than that suggested by the evidence
• If true, then UKCP predictions of future temperatures would be higher than their own models and data would suggest
• And should not be expected to be ‘reliable’

Oh dear.

His conclusion - that the Met Office could easily strip the subjectivity out of their predictions - seems to me to be of critical importance. Time, I would say, for the empanelling of the review that Nigel Lawson called for.

BREAKING! IPCC responds - Josh 239

We are all very excited about the IPCC Summary for Policymakers coming tomorrow, Friday 27th September, but today we can reveal an exclusive pre-press conference handy crib sheet to all your questions. Yes, all of them. Thanks to all those who asked 5 questions - here are the 5 answers...

Click to read more ...

BBC links to BH

The BBC has linked to the BH in one of its online articles.

But there are also sceptical bloggers such as Anthony Watts and Andrew Montford who accept the basic science that adding carbon to the atmosphere can affect the temperature. They contest mainstream findings on the sensitivity of the climate to carbon and the future impacts on temperature.

I'm trying to remember if this has ever happened before.

Met Office concedes the error

Over the last day or so, Julia Slingo has sent a polite, but somewhat evasive response to Nic Lewis regarding his critique of the UKCP09 model. It can be seen here.

Nic Lewis's reaction is here. I don't think he is very impressed. The key exchange relates to the following paragraph in Slingo's paper:

Having said that, it is true that the relationship between historical aerosol forcing and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) depicted in your Figure B1 is based only on the PPE. But we disagree with your assertion that the results from HadCM3 are fundamentally biased. It is certainly the case that versions of HadCM3 with low climate sensitivity and strongly negative aerosol forcing are incompatible with the broad range of observational constraints. But the key point is that the relationship between aerosol forcing and ECS is an emergent property of the detailed physical processes sampled in the PPE simulations.

Click to read more ...

The failure of the climate models

Bob Tisdale's new book on the failure of climate models is just out and comes recommended by no less an authority than Roger Pielke Sr.

There's an introductory post on Bob's blog here, with details of where to buy.

Cuadrilla 1, Greens 0

In a welcome development, Caroline Lucas has been charged for breaching a police order relating to the protests at Balcombe the other week (via Guido).

“Following an investigation by Sussex police, the Crown Prosecution Service has received a file of evidence in relation to Ms Caroline Lucas MP, who was arrested during the anti-fracking demonstrations at the Cuadrillia drilling site in Balcombe last month.

After careful consideration, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence and that it is in the public interest to prosecute Ms Lucas for breaching a police order on public assemblies and wilful obstruction of the highway.”

In related news, it seems that there was some oil at the bottom of Cuadrilla's drill hole:

Andrew Quarles, Cuadrilla’s Exploration Director, said that “the well was a success and we are very encouraged by the findings so far.”

My letter in The Australian

I have a letter in The Australian rebutting various aspects of John Cook's response to my critique of his "Consensus" paper. It's paywalled, so I can't see exactly what made print, but this is what I sent them.

Sir

Having no defence to my observation that the global warming consensus identified in his paper amounts to little more than the everyday observations that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that it will cause some warming, John Cook (article, 21 September) seeks to find solace in an opinion poll he conducted, in which he found that the vast majority of scientists rated their own papers as supporting the idea that mankind is causing most global warming.

Readers should note that Mr Cook is making a new claim – his original paper only spoke of claims about mankind causing some unspecified quantity of global warming and my observation that the consensus it reveals is a shallow one is therefore true.

One assumes that the reason he did not make the stronger claim in his paper is that his poll of scientists is not scientifically robust. Most sceptics would surely have ignored his request, and so the results are almost certainly biased.

Yours etc

Newsnight on AR5

BBC Newsnight featured a long segment on the Fifth Assessment Report last night, featuring Ed Hawkins, Myles Allen, Anastasios Tsonis, and Emily Shuckburgh. (From 22 mins)

The crisis starts here

Peter Atherton at Liberum Capital has written another of his trenchant newsletters about energy markets, today responding to Labour's new policy proposals (if I can dignify the party's grandstanding with that name).

Yesterday the affordability crisis that we have foreseen in our April report became a reality. In response to rising gas/electricity costs, the Labour party promised to impose an arbitrary price freeze on energy suppliers from May 2015 to January 2017 should they win the next general election. Labour predict a £4.5bn hit to suppliers. In other words Labour are proposing that the supply companies pick up at least £4.5bn of the cost associated with government policy implementation.

The implications are horrifying. Read the whole thing, it's staggering.

Meanwhile, Joss Garman of Greenpeace tweets that Atherton's views are 'utter bollocks'. He seems to actually believe that investors are going to be forthcoming with the vast sums of money required to meet decarbonisation targets and, more critically, to keep the lights on, while all the time operating under a price cap! This is so otherworldly as to almost defy belief.

Two years after

With the pause in global warming all the rage, it's fun to recall what BBC journalists were being taught just a couple of years ago.

Obsessive talk of deniers at the Met Office

This is a guest post by Ken Bosomworth.

Obsessive talk of deniers by some at Met Office headquarters

An afternoon, which included plans to grab foreign met equipment, ends with a bang

It was a chilly November afternoon when I made my most recent visit to the UK Meteorological Office headquarters at Victory House, London.  (This description of my visit is, incidentally,  entirely true, and it is unlikely that any of the Met Office staff involved will deny it.) As on previous visits I accompanied my father who had worked there as a met officer, and had now received a couple of promotions.  On this particular occasion he was involved, I gathered, in an important and hush-hush plan relating to the future coordination of observations and forecasting of winds and temperatures in the extreme North of Europe, particularly Norway.

Click to read more ...

Political murder

The political classes do seem hell-bent on murder don't they? The murder of the UK economy I mean.

Today Labour leader Ed Miliband apparent promised a two-year price freeze on energy prices as well as proposing the total decarbonisation of the UK economy. I wonder if readers can spot the flaw in Miliband's reasoning?

There are some clues here, from Peter Atherton of Liberum Capital, whose job it is to analyse the deepest thoughts of our political leaders and consider the impact on the City:

This is a call to dis-invest. Price controls are a rubicon not to be crossed

Price cap must be illegal. If govt picks up cost I estimate it will cost at least £3bn. Also drives horse through EMR

Question for DECC - is govt imposed price cap a foreseeable law change under CfDs? If so then no one can sign them. EMR dead on delivery!

If anybody thought it was impossible to come up with a worse energy policy than that of the coalition, you now know better.

Dead on launch

The FT reports that there is to be a kind of global Stern Report next year.

The UK has teamed up with Norway, Sweden and four other nations to launch an $8.9m assessment of the economic costs and benefits of tackling climate change.

In what some are calling “Stern 2.0”, the study is expected to build on the 2006 UK review of the economics of climate change by British economist, Lord Nicholas Stern, who will act as a reviewer of the new work.

The team also includes Michael Jacobs, who was at the centre of the Stern report project. I guess they don't want anybody to believe a word of it then.