Jul 28, 2011 at 3:19 AM | Ecclesiastical Uncle

After being convinced by RB that he is powerless to rein in the unbridled verbal excesses of Huhne/Hendry/Barker, I assumed that the person with that duty would be the Chief Scientific Advisor to the DECC.

The CSA was appointed by Edward Miliband MP on 01 October 2009, that is, 11 months after 463 MPs voted for the Climate Change Act 2008, on 28 October 2008.

Thus, far too late to give advice before the CCA was put on the statute book.

Never mind (!), the CSA was there during the final knockings of the last government and for all of the period of the "greenest goverment ever".

However, my assumption proved to be incorrect because the summary of his duties does not include reining in the verbal incontinence of his Ministers, rather, anything but that.

see: http://tinyurl.com/3qyzsdc

So, who is supposed to make sure that Ministers mention that there are scientific uncertainties surrounding the topics upon which they speak? The Prime Minister? The Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of Huhne's party? The President of the Royal Society? Apparently no-one.

That only leaves the electorate, at the next general election.

General info.

And the committee took notice. In its report today, it calls for serious action, not on peer review but on fraud. "Although it is not the role of peer review to police research integrity and identify fraud or misconduct," the committee's chair, Labour MP Andrew Miller said yesterday, "we found the general oversight of research integrity in the UK to be unsatisfactory and complaisant."

Complaisant? It means eager to please or obliging. But eager to please whom? Well, scientists. It's like another cosy community where institutional advantage breeds indifference to misconduct down the line.

"Employers must take responsibility for the integrity of their employees' research," the committee says, in words that eerily echo the storm over ethics in red-top journalism. "However, we question who would oversee the employer and make sure that they are doing the right thing."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/28/scientific-fraud-regulation

Richard thnks for your answers, I`m away to digest them. Our contacts with real climate scientists are rare and most papers are behind fire walls, so I have lots of things that puzzle me. One is chaotic systems, especially ones where we don`t have an understanding of a very large pecentage of the drivers, and no idea how many "unknown unknowns" there are.

I chose 8000 fee because the adiabatic lapse rate is roughly 2C per 1000 feet and the average temperature of the earth is 14C Im aware that temperatures vary, but the generalit is that it`s below 0C around that height. (100,000 flying miles per annum, boredom and the flight information channel on the in flight entertainment systems. I`d share my data with you but there are IPR issues)

Richard Betts

There is no concern at all between you and your colleagues of the effects that a solar minimum could bring to Global temperatures?
No reliance on historical events in the Northern Hemisphere from the Maunder and Dalton minimums?

Am I correct in thinking then that the best scientific knowledge being passed to the Government is still that the Earth will continue to warm in the next decade?

Green Sand

Fair comment - thanks. My colleagues and I can (and do) advise on the potential errors / uncertainties in the climate science, but that's only half of what you are referring to, I think - the other half concerns the economic (and other) consequences of whichever course of action is chosen in terms of decarbonisation (or whatever). That's really not my area I'm afraid - I can only contribute the part of the advice for which I'm qualified.

Hi Richard, very much appreciate your involvement.

“My job is just to try and advise them on the possible consequences of different courses of action to the best of our current understanding, so they can make decisions which are as informed as possible. In many cases this does of course come down to hedging their bets. As I believe I have said before, if you don't like the policy, tell your MP not me!”

Eloquently said Richard and many, many thanks for your involvement here. However I have a problem with your comment above and it is a problem to which I do not profess to have an obvious solution.

You profess to try to “advise them on the possible consequences of different courses of action to the best of our current understanding”

Then “In many cases this does of course come down to hedging their bets”

What exactly are these “bets”? Are they scientific or political? If they are “their” bets then I take it that they are political?

In what position are you as a scientist capable of appreciating their ability to assess such bets?

Next “if you don't like the policy, tell your MP not me!” At what stage, and I am very sorry for the way that this may sound, do you stand up to be accounted for if the “political hedged bets” bastardise your science?

If you are going to let them “hedge their bets” then it is your obligation as a scientist to quantify the potential errors of the risks that they are taking.

At present I find myself asking questions of scientists and being referred to politicians and when I ask politicians I am referred to scientists.

There are a few examples of such in recent history, of which I am sure you are aware. I am not yet prepared to go there.

Richard Betts

I'm no expert in glaciology, just an old geologist, but my logic leads me to deduce that in glacial high altitude terrain, the importance of sublimation and ablation, moderated by humidity, solar irradiance and wind speed, may prevail as the dominant cause of wastage, rather than air temperature. Thus the topography of the local terrain, for example south facing icefields in the N hemisphere, insolation angle and topographically funnelled fierce winds may prevail as controls compared to ambient temperature.

Not sure I really understand those last 2 comments by Ronald Reagan and Lord Beaverbrook. Yes I think the world is probably going to get warmer as a result of ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases - I don't know how much warmer, and I don't know what the impacts will be, but I think it's worthwhile trying to find out. What the elected government of the day does about trying to stop it, or adapt to it, is their concern (and of course that of the voting public). My job is just to try and advise them on the possible consequences of different courses of action to the best of our current understanding, so they can make decisions which are as informed as possible. In many cases this does of course come down to hedging their bets. As I believe I have said before, if you don't like the policy, tell your MP not me!

Richard Betts

I would of thought it to be just as important to know what effects a cooler climate would have. Especially if it is the intention to try and force a stop to rising temperatures by Government policy. We wouldn't want to spend trillions trying to force an issue that we didn't know the outcome of, that just wouldn't be wise now would it.

@Richard Betts: "...was going to do under a warming climate..."

There you go again. ;-)