Critical science journalism takes a different approach and focuses on providing a balanced assessment of the work, one that highlights specific strengths but also emphasises specific limitations or flaws. It is no big secret that the majority of research findings published in peer-reviewed scientific journals will probably not hold up when other groups attempt to replicate them. This lack of replicability can be due to research misconduct, systematic errors or other cognitive biases, which commonly occur even in the most conscientious and meticulous scientists.

Therefore, critical science journalism requires a careful analysis of all the data presented in a paper and is likely to uncover key limitations and flaws that scientific researchers themselves do not readily divulge. This form of science journalism can also encompass some degree of investigative journalism. Journalists lack the resources to check the validity of scientific data by performing experiments themselves, but they can track scientific research in a certain area over the course of months and years as multiple research groups attempt to replicate published scientific findings.

In the climate debate, critical commentary is of course par for the course, at least among the blogs. It's the newspapers that feel they have to act as cheerleaders, usually because the journalists have no scientific background and therefore struggle with any kind of critique.

The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is preparing to cut the number of civil servants working on climate adaptation from over 30 officials to just six, prompting outrage from green groups who have today accused the government of failing to take adequate steps to protect the UK from worsening climate impacts.

One can't help but wonder if Mr Hague is getting rid of all the FCO's network of climate change advisers too. I'm not sure that showing An Inconvenient Truth to the natives (which as far as I can tell is all they do) quite cuts the mustard as a priority for public spending.

Hansen opened with the most astonishing claim about global temperatures,

In the last decade it's warmed only about a tenth of a degrees as compared to about two tenths of a degree in the preceding decade.

a claim which completely contradicts Hansen's own GISTEMP dataset (H/T Ruth Dixon).There is a suggestion that he might have been referring to a land-only dataset, but this would still be grossly misleading since he says that land-only data overestimates trends.

Hansen also spoke of the climate sensitivity, making the bizarre claim that our understanding is based on  paleoclimate rather than models and speaking of the excellence of the data in this area. This is mind-boggling, since these datasets contain so little information that they can barely constrain the climate sensitivity at all. The weakness of the constraint provide by paleo data was noted by the IPCC in the last assessment report, and they decided to base the "consensus" figure largely on models - precisely the opposite of what Hansen said was done.

He also tried to blame the standstill on aerosols, ignoring the fact that the IPCC's best estimate now finds that their effect is small, and he described heat going into the oceans as "a detail" and "a diversionary tactic".

Quite disgraceful.

The guidelines for rating [the] abstracts show only the highest rating value blames the majority of global warming on humans. No other rating says how much humans contribute to global warming. The only time an abstract is rated as saying how much humans contribute to global warming is if it mentions:

that human activity is a dominant influence or has caused most of recent climate change (>50%).

If we use the system’s search feature for abstracts that meet this requirement, we get 65 results. That is 65, out of the 12,000+ examined abstracts. Not only is that value incredibly small, it is smaller than another value listed in the paper:

Reject AGW 0.7% (78)

Remembering AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming, or global warming caused by humans, take a minute to let that sink in.  This study done by John Cook and others, praised by the President of the United States, found more scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming than say humans are primarily to blame for it.

I'm speechless.

Read the whole thing.

THE leader of the Scottish ­Government review of landownership yesterday pledged to examine ways of redistributing the cash wealthy lairds make from wind farms to benefit the less-advantaged.

Alison Elliot, chair of the Land Reform Review Group (LRRG), said the issue would be investigated amid concerns that aristo­crats are benefiting from the renewables revolution while the poor grapple with fuel ­poverty.

This will be interesting. The poor will still be fleeced for the fuel bills, and then the money will be clawed back in some way and handed out, no doubt to "community groups" or other politically connected bodies.

The winners will be the bureaucrats, as ever.

We know the general theme of Conversation editorial - unadulterated left-wing activism - and the UK edition looks as though it's going to be just the same. For a start, look at the editorial team:

• Stephen Khan, ex-Guardian, Independent, Observer and Sunday Herald.
• Megan Clement, ex-Conversation Oz
• Will de Freitas, ex-Guardian
• Jo Adetunji, ex-Guardian
• Jonathan Este ex-Independent (as well as The Australian - wayhay!)
• Arshat Rathi, ex-Economist, The Hindu and Ars Technica

When the PM received a briefing on shale, Cuadrilla was excluded.

Peter Lilley in the Spectator last week

...bizarrely, [Lilley] claims that Cuadrilla were excluded from an inquiry on shale gas conducted by the select committee of which he is a member.

Will Straw, letter to the Spectator today

The reason Will Straw has gone astray is that Lilley's next sentence was "The select committee instead had to listen to an array of bodies from the Committee on Climate Change to the WWF". You can see how confusion would arise. But I think Straw can be taken to task for firing off a letter without checking his facts.

The problem of the contribution of cosmic rays to climate change is a continuing one and one of importance. In principle, at least, the recent results from the CLOUD project at CERN provide information about the role of ionizing particles in ’sensitizing’ atmospheric aerosols which might, later, give rise to cloud droplets. Our analysis shows that, although important in cloud physics the results do not lead to the conclusion that cosmic rays affect atmospheric clouds significantly, at least if H₂SO₄ is the dominant source of aerosols in the atmosphere. An analysis of the very recent studies of stratospheric aerosol changes following a giant solar energetic particles event shows a similar negligible effect. Recent measurements of the cosmic ray intensity show that a former decrease with time has been reversed. Thus, even if cosmic rays enhanced cloud production, there would be a small global cooling, not warming.

It will be interesting to see if Svensmark has anything to say.

You can probably work out where he stands on climate change issues, but if you were in any doubt here's his eulogy to the "beauty" of the 10:10 campaign, of exploding children notoriety.

A always think it's interesting to analyse where the BBC recruits externally and where its staff go to when they leave. I'm thinking of Polly Toynbee's departure for the Guardian for example. Perhaps readers can suggest other examples of revealing departures and arrivals.

In his piece, Dana Nuticelli links to his earlier article "Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome, Nic Lewis Edition" at a climate change/global warming blog he is associated with. As the author of the paper "An objective Bayesian, improved approach for applying optimal fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity" (Journal of Climate, in press) that Dana Nuticelli's earlier article is about, I would like to take this opportunity to put on record my rebuttals of a number of misrepresentations he made of my paper, to avoid any Guardian readers who follow the link being misled. I apologise in advance for the length of this comment.

Advisory panel of APPG Unconventional O&G announced: Consumer Focus, WWF, PWC, Richard Davies, Peter Atherton, IOD, Ineos, UCOG #appgUCO&G

'We are not holding back the #shale industry, our job is to create the right framework to accelerate it in a responsible way' says Fallon

Fallon stresses UK has "similarities" to the UK [sic] geological situation, and says BGS study will be published pre-recess #appgUCO&G

'Unconventional gas and oil can attract inward investment, contribute to exchequer, reduce coal usage and boost energy security' says Fallon

'Shale gas development here is part of a historic continuum of our domestic resources' says Michael Fallon #appgUCO&G

Interestingly, he is ex-UKIP, but BG reports that he is sound (from their perspective) on environmental matters, despite having opposed windfarms in his own constituency.

One source said that while he was clearly opposed to the perceived over-development of renewables in his own constituency, he was nevertheless well informed on the overall climate and energy debate and was broadly positive towards the green economy.

The penny is taking a long time to drop with Mr Cameron.

My view is, increasingly, that there is no point in making moral demands. People will not do something on this scale because they care about others, even including their own more remote descendants. They mostly care rather too much about themselves for that.

[It's surprising that an economist like Wolf doesn't seem to have read Adam Smith on bakers, don't you think?]

Most people believe today that a low-carbon economy would be one of universal privation. They will never accept such a situation. This is true both of the people of high-income countries, who want to retain what they have, and the people of the rest of the world, who want to enjoy what the people of high-income countries now have. A necessary, albeit not sufficient condition, then, is a politically sellable vision of a prosperous low-carbon economy. That is not what people now see. Substantial resources must be invested in the technologies that would credibly deliver such a future.

A technological fix to the problem eh? Let's dump all the windfarms and biofuels and feed-in tariffs, and all the corruption that goes with them? Let's shut down the biomass plants and dump all the climate advisers and recycling watchdogs? Let's bring back the incandescent lightbulb too?

OK, I'm interested.