After Holiday Round-up

Posted by TonyN on 14/10/2009 at 11:33 pm The Climate Add comments
Oct 142009

When I am watching the day-to-day unfolding of the AGW controversy it often seems that things are moving slowly and not much is happening. All that changes if I come back after three weeks away and try to catch up.

Here are a few things that have caught my eye.

At Climate Audit, Steve McIntyre’s remarkable blog, a whole new scandal over the failure of climate scientists to make data available for review has blown up. In this case it concerns the Yamal tree-ring series that has played an important role in reconstructions of past climate as it imparts a fashionable hockey stick configuration to scary graphs.

You can unravel just what has happened at Climate Audit if you are at home with heavy-duty statistical analysis, or for an excellent summary for the layman see Bishop Hill’s post here.

This is an important story, as much for what it says about professional standards in climate research as for the doubts that it casts on the integrity of the data. Palaeoclimatology is never likely to be quite the same again; without those hockey sticks it has nothing to contribute to AGW alarmism.

The Tyndall Centre has a bright idea for winning the war on climate change:

Britain will have to stop building airports, switch to electric cars and shut down coal-fired power stations as part of a ‘planned recession’ to avoid dangerous climate change. A new report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research says the only way to avoid going beyond the dangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020. This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a “planned recession”.
Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 30 September 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6248257/Planned-recession-could-avoid-catastrophic-climate-change.html

In the days when Mike Hulme ruled at the Tyndall Centre I doubt whether such a suggestion would have seen the light of day. But now Prof Robert Watson is the director of strategic development, as well as being Defra’s chief scientific adviser. He’s best remembered for being Dr Ravendra Pachauri’s predecessor as IPCC chairman until he resigned amid controversy over exaggeration in the Second Assessment Report.

Perhaps Clive Hamilton, Professor of public ethics at the Australian National University would be able to help the Tyndall Centre sell the idea of a ‘planned recession’ on top of an unplanned one to the British public. In a paper delivered to an Oxford University conference he suggests that,

“There is a view we should not scare people because it makes them go down their burrows and close the door but I think the situation is so serious that although people are afraid they are not fearful enough given the science,” he said. “Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6253912/Most-people-in-denial-
over-climate-change-according-to-psychologists.html

Apparently he considers that there are only three reactions to risk: denial, apathy and action. He seems to have missed out on what is actually happening; the public can smell political manipulation and scare tactics even if they do not have a very firm grasp of the scientific arguments.

It will be interesting to see how this strategy will play out. There is evidence that the warmist lobby is ramping up the fear factor ahead of the Copenhagen Summit in December, and I suspect that it is likely to have precisely the opposite effect to that which is intended.

A now famous report on the BBC website has acknowledged, at last, that the global temperature trend over the last decade is flat or even downwards. What really startled those of us who have marvelled at the BBC’s reporting of AGW over the last five years is that the report ends with these words:

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global
warming is far from over. Indeed some would say its hotting up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.stm

The author is a certain Paul Hudson using the job title Climate Correspondent; a new name to me. Here is a thumb nail portrait sent to me by a friend:

He was previously – for many years – the weather forecaster for Yorkshire Television.

The good news is that he does have a relevant science background, a first in geophysics and planetary physics from Newcastle.

The bad news is that he is a firm warmist. He has written a book That’s The Forecast, published by Great Northern, which the blurb states:

“At the other extreme the book ends on a serious note, Paul explaining in succinct and readable way the likely consequences of the present climate change. He makes a personal plea: ” We will reach a point in the not to distant future when we have no control over our ever warming climate with its enormous implications for mankind. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to take that sort of risk with our future. This is why we must try and curb carbon dioxide emissions as a matter of urgency”.

His book was published four years ago, just when AGW was beginning to play a part in UK government policy and such sententious warnings were becoming common. It sounds as though Hudson may be between a rock and a hard place. Will his scientific background triumph, or will he be the victim of pressure to follow a more politically correct line in future? If the BBC ever let him near their website again that is.

Just after I got back, the Energy Regulator dropped a bombshell.

Domestic UK energy bills could rise by 60% by 2016 in a worst-case scenario identified by the energy regulator.

However, most other estimates outlined in the Ofgem report would see prices rise between 14% and 25% above inflation by 2020.

The review also said that up to £200bn of investment was needed to secure supplies and to meet carbon targets. [my emphais]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8297882.stm

A chart on the BBC web page, provided by Ofgem, portrays conversion to a low carbon economy as the best way to minimise price increases, but even a cursory look at the small print below it suggests that this has only been achieved by some very nimble manipulation of economic scenarios. Their chief executive, Alistair Buchanan, made it very clear in interviews that moving to less carbon intensive forms of generation will be a very significant component in both rising prices and the massive investment that is needed if power cuts are to be avoided.

With the Institute of Fiscal Studies warning that we face at least one decade of austerity and possibly as much as two decades just to clear up the economic mess that we are in at the moment, will consumers accept such a burden if they are not genuinely convinced that by doing so they will be saving the planet?

Looking at all this, and much, much more that I have had to read-up after a very pleasant break in the Pyrenees, I get the impression that the tempo of the AGW debate is changing rapidly now. No longer is there a lethargic drift towards acceptance of whatever we are told about global catastrophe. Both sides seem to realise that the Copenhagen summit will be a pivotal moment and are making a special effort to capture the political and media high ground.

If a successor to Kyoto is agreed in December, then the momentum of the warmist cause is likely to become unstoppable, but nowhere can I find any objective commentator who is expecting this to happen now. Only the form of words that can be devised to try and conceal failure seems to be at issue. Even the UN and the eNGO’s seem to have accepted that a deal is impossible.

If the summit is a failure, then the new year is likely to bring new reality to the debate. Sceptics will seize on the standstill in global warming to force both politicians and the general public to listen to their arguments, and if this happens there can be little doubt that the media will fall into line. Gone will be the days when anyone one who attaches ‘environment’ or ‘climate’ to their job descriptiom can expect an easy time when they are invited to do an interview.

Even The Independent, frequently accused of publishing ‘climate porn’ on its front page, carried a sceptical article by Dominic Lawson recently. Apparently they have been haemorrhaging readers recently, with financial losses mounting.

6 Responses to “After Holiday Round-up”

  1. While Steve McIntyre’s analysis of the Briffa Yamal tree-ring paper is undoubtedly the scientific event of the global warming year, his latest post
    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7411
    adds something equally important to the meta-scientific debate.
    McIntyre’s understandable reluctance to indulge in ad hominem accusations means that his potential killer punches on Mann and the hockey team frequently remain without effect. This latest post treats, not the science, or the statistics underlying the science, but the way the science has been discussed in exchanges between Mann and McIntyre. It is here that Mann’s mendacity is evident to even the most statistically challenged observer.
    By chance, Maurizio Morabito at
    http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/the-ipcc-is-never-wrong-2-settled-science-of-chinese-whispers/
    performs a similar dissection of the IPCC’s treatment of solar forcing. Again, it’s not the science which is in question, but its interpretation, and the result is devastating, revealing – to anyone with a minimum of statistical knowledge – the fragile foundations of the conclusions of AR4.
    The importance of such meta-scientific analysis is that it reaches out beyond the small world of climate experts to the far wider constituency of numerate citizens.
    This task – the forensic dissection of climate science’s claims – should be being performed by philosophers of science and the science correspondents of the serious press. Their absence from the debate, and the fact that their role has been assumed by amateur bloggers, is one of the minor scandals of the whole AGW affair.

  2. Interesting thread over at WUWT: Daily Mail joins BBC in writing about climate skepticism:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/13/daily-mail-joins-bbc-in-writng-about-climate-skepticism/#comment-204288

    I posted the following there:

    Cooling detected on global warming fears, Australia. (News report extract) :

    “Australians’ anxiety about climate change is falling substantially, even as the issue dominates political debate in Canberra.

    The latest Lowy Institute poll shows that tackling climate change is viewed as only the seventh-most important of 10 foreign policy goals, and global warming the fourth of a dozen “threats to Australia’s vital interests”, just a point or two above other threats.
    In 2007, tackling climate change was perceived as the joint top foreign policy goal, together with protecting the jobs of Australian workers.

    In 2007, 75 per cent of those surveyed said climate change was a very important issue. Last year, this fell to 66 per cent, and this year to 56 per cent.
    Global warming was viewed as “a critical threat” by 68 per cent in 2007, 66 per cent last year and 52 per cent this year…”

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26202152-11949,00.html

    BTW, it looks like the official snow ski season was closed rather prematurely this year, and Melbourne’s water reserves are already better than last year..… only a few short bursts of spring so far.

  3. Bob

    I’m seeing similar polling results from N. America and the UK. When asked whether they think that AGW is a serious threat, respondents seem to say what they think that they are expected to say. It’s the more nebulous questions about what their priorities are that reveal that their conviction is tenuous. What interests me is that the political parties private polling and focus groups must be telling them the same story.

  4. TonyN and Bob_FJ

    To what Tony wrote in #3, add that you can get almost any answer you want in a poll by asking the right questions. (It also depends on where you are asking and whom you choose to ask.)

    In just talking to people whom I know here in Switzerland, I would say that most realize that alpine glaciers have been retreating since the 19th century but far less than half believe that there has been any human cause for this.

    Almost everyone knows that it has been much colder than today a few hundred years ago and that it was warmer than today during an even earlier period.

    Most have also learned that mountain settlements have moved up and down the mountainside as these long term temperature swings occurred.

    Every Swiss schoolchild has heard about Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants (most don’t know it wasn’t in Switzerland, but in France), and have read about the Roman soldiers crossing the Alps into what was then Helvetia and Rhaetia.

    So if you were to ask most Swiss whether we are living in unusually warm times, you would get more “NO” than “YES” answers.

    And everyone is aware that, after a few years of poor snow for skiing, the quantity, quality and duration of the snow has been much better the last two seasons.

    Like I say, it’s important to ask the right questions.

    Max

  5. TonyN #3 & Max #4

    Whilst these polls may not be reliable, as far as I’m aware they all show the same trend of diminishing support for AGW, which suggests that they may well be meaningful.

    In the case of Oz it also seems that ‘climate change’ is seen as more important than AGW, suggesting that there is awareness that the recent droughts and bushfires etc are probably not unprecedented as loudly claimed. (Re extract from my #2:

    “…In 2007, 75 per cent of those surveyed said climate change was a very important issue. Last year, this fell to 66 per cent, and this year to 56 per cent.
    Global warming was viewed as “a critical threat” by 68 per cent in 2007, 66 per cent last year and 52 per cent this year…”

  6. Bob:

    In the case of Oz it also seems that ‘climate change’ is seen as more important than AGW, suggesting that there is awareness that the recent droughts and bushfires etc are probably not unprecedented as loudly claimed. (Re extract from my #2:

    That is a very nice point indeed.

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