CRU Email Hack - what do we know?

Posted by TonyN on 26/11/2009 at 10:05 am CRU Email Hack, The Climate 6 Responses »
Nov 262009

I happened to be online when The CRU email hack story broke and immediately downloaded a copy of the zip-file from a Russian server, all 63mb of it. Part of Friday was spent poking through the Mail folder, finding tantalising snippets, and being frustrated by the lack of context that made it difficult to interpret some of them.Then I had to go away and it was difficult to keep in touch with the developing story, so on Monday I started a long catch-up process that is hardly completed now.

The following are just a few notes. For a anyone who is still unaware of what is in these emails which have become so controversial, there is no better place to look than on Bishop Hill’s excellent blog here .

When unzipped, the file which mysteriously turned up in Russia amounts to nearly 170mb. Inside FOI2009.zip is a folder named FOIA containing two subdirectories: Mail and Documents.  Freedom of information seemed to have been very much on someones mind, either the person who named the main download file or Phil Jones of CRU who named the main folder within it or perhaps both. If Jones did give the main folder its name then I wonder why he call it FOIA (Freedom of Informaton Act) when a great deal of the contents does not refer to this piece of legislation? Certainly there is much material here that it would have been most embarrassing to have to release under the Act. Is it possible that Jones kept sensitive – perhaps even incriminating  – emails carefully in one place so that deleting a single folder would purge his computer of potentially dangerous material if danger loomed? This seems unlikely, as he would be aware that backups are likely to exist elsewhere beyond his reach.

The sizes of the two sub-folders within the FOIA folder are 9.7mb and 158mb.  The one called  ‘Mail’ contains 1073 files, but this does not represent the number of emails. Many contain strings of emails received and sent as well as copies of emails that are being referred to. So there are many more than 1073 emails in total.

I do not know how many words are involved, but assuming an average of a hundred words per email – and most are longer than that – that makes over a hundred thousand words. This is a vast amount of verbiage and most of it is ‘insider-speak’; exchanges between fellow professionals who know each other and the subject matter that is being discussed very well. Much of it is likely to be opaque to even a well-informed outsider. The task of making a detailed analysis of just the material in the Mail  folder is enormous and, even if this is split up between various people with the necessary expertise, it is likely to take weeks or months. In the meantime, what is emerging at the moment are a few obviously sensational quotes. Only a systematic analysis will fully reveal what is there.

The Documents folder has eleven sub-folders, most of them hierarchical, and the largest one, named Code, is over 30mb. That is an enormous amount of code. Already there are estimates on the net that suggest that it could run to millions of lines. Continue reading »

Plimer's London lecture: what happened

Posted by Peter Geany on 13/11/2009 at 3:06 pm The Climate 23 Responses »
Nov 132009

[Peter has very kindly sent me his impressions of the lecture. Many thanks, TonyN]

I went to the Plimer Lecture organised by The Spectator and thought I would share some of my first impressions.I arrived early with my son Leo and we were ushered into the reception area for drinks; not free I may add. Whilst standing there I spotted Lord Monckton, and as he was not at that moment chatting to anyone we boldly walked up and introduced ourselves. We were joined by Roger Helmer MEP and a number of others. My overriding impression from this chat is that politicians are so far out of touch with their electorate that I fear for Democracy itself. More to come from this chat.

On to the lecture, which  was very well presented in the form of a plotted history of the earth from 5.4 billions years last Thursday until today.  It was delivered with humour, and it was obvious that Ian Plimer knew his stuff.  For me I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know, but I didn’t expect to, having read his book.

We then had questions from the audience.  In the main these were in the form of a thank you and questions on how or what can be done to ge the message across to politicians and the “masses” for want of a better word. There were a few requests for qualification and I thought that Ian was less at ease when answering questions not directly related to his work.  There was nothing revealing coming out from these early questions. Continue reading »

Plimer's London lecture sells out

Posted by TonyN on 12/11/2009 at 5:57 pm The Climate No Responses »
Nov 122009

At a time when we are all meant to be good disciples of the new climate change orthodoxy you would think that a lecture by a leading sceptic filling a large lecture hall in London might be newsworthy. Well it certainly isn’t at the BBC.

I was doing he usual start-of-day things this morning, while listening with half an ear to the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme, when I heard something astonishing. Justin Webb, one of the presenters, introduced an interview with an eminent scientist who is also a leading climate change sceptic. Here’s what he said: Continue reading »

The 'corporatisation' of environmental activism

Posted by Peter Taylor on 06/11/2009 at 11:30 am The Climate 26 Responses »
Nov 062009

In the first part of his new book, Peter Taylor scrutinises the scientific research that underpins concern about global warming and finds that it is unconvincing. This extract, taken from the second part of the book, looks at the political dynamics that have promoted global warming to the top of the international agenda. As a life-long environmental campaigner Peter is well placed to consider the role that activist organisations have played in this process.
Many thanks to Peter for allowing Harmless Sky to use this material. Click on the image to find out more about Chill.

_____________________________________________________

In addition to the world of science institutions, governmental influence and media bias, there has also been a growing and powerful environmental lobby pressing for an unequivocal commitment from the scientists. NGOs well appreciated that governments will not move when there is major uncertainty and a lobby has evolved out of a coalition of interests on the part of environmental campaigners and those industries standing to gain from a shift in policy. Naturally, there is also an opposing lobby from oil, gas and coal interests. The nuclear lobby has remained somewhat hidden, but has benefited enormously from the climate issue. Some campaign groups have allied directly to renewable energy interests, especially wind turbine manufacturers and solar collectors, whereas others have remained independent of commercial interests but used the projections of technology and capability to underpin their campaigns.

In addition to these straightforward political alliances, there has been a growing corporatisation of the environmental sector. NGOS have grown from a few small back-street offices into a multi-million dollar international organisation – in the case of Greenpeace, with a fleet of ships, modern office suites, staff and pension funds. Such organisation requires a steady income stream and does not have the option, as for example at the end of a successful ocean pollution campaign to simply pack up and go home. When an organisation’s ethos is essentially combative, it seeks out problems and threats.

Which is fine, as long as there really are serious threats that cannot be dealt with by trusted government.  But in my view, as a seasoned campaigner, the game changed significantly after Rio in 1992. The ‘enemy’ metamorphosed from being the dumpers and polluters ably supported by a science- industry alliance (including the modellers), to a more subtle menace. As a result of the shift to the Precautionary Principle, industry and the regulators began to move in another direction – Clean Development Mechanisms were set in motion and large amounts of money shifted toward preventative strategies. This shift required a different type of environmental organisation, and although the campaign groups made significant efforts to provide ‘solutions’, they were still ruled by the old ethos of campaign and combat. Continue reading »

Ofcom to investigate government's ‘dodgy' climate adverts

Posted by TonyN on 30/10/2009 at 7:48 pm The Climate, TV Adverts 70 Responses »
Oct 302009

Last week it became clear that the Advertising Standards Authority had launched an inquiry into the Government’s £6m TV advertising campaign aimed at climate change sceptics. Now it appears that the UK broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, will also investigate complaints that the advert is politically motivated and therefore breeches the ban on broadcasting political adverts. They would seem to have good reason for deciding to do so.

This is what the advert tells viewers about climate change:

(If the video viewer does not appear on your computer then use this link)

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So far, the ASA has received over 650 complaints and rising. That score ranks with the most complained about advert of 2008, which attracted 840 complaints. According to a letter that I received from the ASA this morning the following points will be investigated: Continue reading »

No warming: why scientists become sceptics

Posted by Dr David Whitehouse on 23/10/2009 at 2:19 pm The Climate 6 Responses »
Oct 232009

[Back in December 2007, Dr David Whitehouse, who was for many years a science correspondent and then science editor at the BBC, wrote a very controversial article for the New Statesman entitled ‘Has Global Warming Stopped?’. This sparked a heated blog debate that accumulated some 3000 comments before the New Statesman closed it and the discussion then transferred to Harmless Sky. A further 7000 comments have been posted since then. 

This is an update to that article and was written in response to a report by the BBC’s David Shukman which can be found here. It’s worth looking at this before reading on, and also noting that David Whithouse’s article pre-dates Paul Hudson’s What happened to global warming? story on the BBC website]

=

It took quite a while for the fact that global annual average temperatures haven’t altered for a decade to become accepted by mainstream science, even if there are many who still doubt that it is either happening or important. Likewise one must also be glad that the media is catching up. Especially glad because it is the BBC.

One should take encouragement from the broadcast version of the Met ffice’s “Four degrees of warming ‘likely'” in that when referring to the recent temperature standstill it says that scientists have questioned it. The report did not call these questioners sceptics. Lets hope this nomenclature is applied consistently in the future by the organisation that said in 2005 that the science was settled.

However, the report did let a scientist get away with a biased interpretation of why the standstill has occurred, or rather bypassing the problematic nature of its existence. Dr Myles Allen said that one should look at the figures that are relevant, that is decade to decade changes. He said that temperatures are rising exactly as predicted as long as 30 years ago.

Well, I will leave the comment about as long as 30 years ago for your perusal in the context of climatic variations.

Dr Allen is wrong. The latest spell of warming began about 1980 following 40 years of standstill (still not adequately explained) and 90 prior years of warming. His decade to decade change is a less than two decade spell of warming, to the mid 1990’s, during which the warming increased at a rate much faster than the IPCC estimated the CO2 effect could account for. Since then there has been no change although of course it is warmer than it was in the 70s. This is another example of scientific double standards. The recent standstill is, of course, natural variability, the recent rise is, of course, man-made. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around? (Computer models can explain the recent trends, or more accurately, it is possible to select a few models that do from amongst the many that do not.)

Let’s look at decade-to-decade variability. In the past 15 decades it has warmed in 10 of them and stayed static in 5. But 8 of those decades were pre-1940 when we are told that man-made climate change had not taken effect. Since it has taken effect – a review of papers suggests a consensus of 1950 as a starting point – there have been 4 decades of standstill and 2 of warming. The recent warm decade is also no further above the mean global temperature than the cold Victorian age was below it.

It is alarming that the argument is moving away from real-world data and its inconvenience. The computer models point decades ahead and cannot be refuted. The UK Met Office says that global warming will resume 2009-2014, other scientists disagree. But even if the Met Office is proven wrong in its 2009-2014 forecast then it can still look to future decades and say it’s easier to predict 50 years ahead than 5!

The IPPC’s next assessment is due in 2014, but since the last one did not take into account the overwhelming major aspect of climate change of our time – the recent standstill – a more urgent review is needed.

[Dr Whitehouse’s comments were originally addressed to Benny Peiser of CCNet and I am posting them here with David’s kind permission.  Another article by David Whitehouse, dealing with the controversy at the New Statesman, and particularly with the reaction of its environment columnist Mark Lynas, will be posted here shortly.]

Government's £6m advertising campaign targets sceptics

Posted by TonyN on 15/10/2009 at 11:21 am The Climate, TV Adverts 130 Responses »
Oct 152009

From the TIMESONLINE website:

Climate change sceptics are to be targeted in a hard-hitting government advertising campaign that will be the first to state unequivocally that Man is causing global warming and endangering life on Earth.

The £6 million campaign, which begins tonight in the prime ITV1 slot during Coronation Street, is a direct response to government research showing that more than half the population think that climate change will have no effect on them.

Ministers sanctioned the campaign because of concern that scepticism about climate change was making it harder to introduce carbon-reducing policies such as higher energy bills.

The advertisement attempts to make adults feel guilty about their legacy to their children. It features a father telling his daughter a bedtime story of “a very very strange” world with “horrible consequences” for today’s children.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6867046.ece

You can also watch the advert using the link above to the TIMESONLINE website

Some  Harmless Sky readers have made complaints about the advertisement and I have started this thread because there is obviously going to be a lot of discussion about how the regulators react.

Alex Cull’s complaint can be found here

The full text of Robin Guenier’s complaint is here

Robin has also written to his MP, Peter Lilley, who was the only member of the House of Commons to speak out strongly against the Climate Bill.

I have received the following updates form Robin. Things seem to be moving very rapidly.

14/10/2009 16:13

I called Karen Harms [at the ASA] to discuss this. My fear was that, by turning this into a “political” issue the ASA might wash its hands of the affair & simply dump it on Ofcom – who, in turn, would prevaricate as they have with you, even deciding in the end that it isn’t political after all. But her line was busy & I left a voicemail. Then she called me, but I was on another important call &, this time, I missed her. However, she sent me an email with more detail which, to some extent, allays my fears. In my complaint, I cited ASA’s TV Code section 4 (d) [it’s interesting that they’ve already considered my complaint in some depth to get down to this detail!] – Section 4 is about “Political and Controversial Issues” and 4 (d) says that “No advertisement may show partiality as respects matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy”. That seems to distinguish “current public policy” from “political controversy” and I was concerned with the former not the latter.  She now (her latest email) relies on a note to Section 4 that says (para 2) “The term ‘political’ here is used in a wider sense than ‘party political’ – e.g. “campaigning for the purpose of influencing legislation or executive action …” and goes on to say (para 3) “The … investigation of complaints in relation to political advertising … remains a matter for Ofcom.”

She is (per her latest email) relying on that to say the 4 (d) part of my complaint is a matter for Ofcom not the ASA. Essentially that meets my concern – I refer to about 16 other sections of the Code and they stay with the ASA so my “dumping” fear is unfounded. But I’m unsure about 4 (d) anyway – I’m talking about “partiality” re “current public policy” and that, if I read ASA’s Code correctly, is not a “political” matter (see above) – unless they argue that the ad is designed to “influence” “executive action”. Why would the Government wish to influence its own action.

Anyway, I called her to discuss all this. And, once again, had to leave a voicemail – asking her to call me back. I’m waiting.

14/10/2009  16:33

I’ve now spoken to Karen. She was very helpful. She listened to my interpretation of their Section 4 and understood my points, saying she wasn’t herself able to agree or disagree with me although she appreciated my logic on the matter. She said, therefore, that she would contact Ofcom herself and get their view and contact me when she had done this. In the meantime, she confirmed that ASA (i.e. Karen) would be considering my overall complaint with specific reference to my other 16 Section references, noting that this would not preclude her from referring also to other relevant Sections that I might have missed.

I.E. she could hardly have been more helpful.
This seems, so far, to be moving remarkably quickly. I’ll keep you posted.

I am also moving relevant comments to this thread from the New Statesman thread. The problems with references to comment numbers are unavoidable I’m afraid.

UPDATE: It’s proved impossible to move the comments because the vast size of the NS thread makes the software I use fall over. If you want to refer to them you can create links by right-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘link location’ and then pasting in a link in the usual way.

Discussion of the adverts on the NS thead starts here

Updates: 16/10/2009

If, after viewing the advert, you want to complain about it, then you can do so at the Advertising Standards Authority here:

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/complaints_form/

It was broadcast again on Thursday 16th October 2009  on ITV1 between 8.00 – 8.30 PM.

There is discussion of the government’s reaction to a flood of complaints about the advert at The Guardian website here.

Update 18/10/2009:

 Robin has received another response from the ASA. See his comment here.

Update 24/10/2009:

You can sign a petition against the government’s TV climate change adverts on the Downing Street website here:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/climate-ad/sign

 TonyB, A regular contributor here, has written a paper that adds  very interesting context to the governmen’s TV advertising campain. It can be found at Air Vent here:

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/crossing-the-rubicon-an-advert-to-change-hearts-and-minds/

This has also been picked up by WattsUpWithThat as well.

After Holiday Round-up

Posted by TonyN on 14/10/2009 at 11:33 pm The Climate 6 Responses »
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: Continue reading »

Tumbling towards Copenhagen

Posted by TonyN on 06/10/2009 at 1:00 am The Climate 1 Response »
Oct 062009

In December of last year I posted about the efforts at the Poznan Conference (here)  to prepare the way for a successor to the Kyoto Treaty. This was scheduled to be agreed at Copenhagen this December. I suggested that at a time of economic crisis, politicians and activists would find it very difficult to carry public opinion with them on this issue. But in an address to the 11,000 delegates at Poznan, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said:

The economic crisis is serious, yet when it comes to climate change, the stakes are even far [sic] higher. The climate crisis affects our potential prosperity and our people’s lives both now and in the future.

Un Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the Poznan Conference, Dec 2008

At that time, the developing nations main objection to signing up at Copenhagen was that they wanted to see the US committed to reducing greenhouse gases, through legally binding regulation, before they would do the same. The inauguration of President Obama in the following month unleashed a wave of optimism in the climate alarmism camp, but this was short lived. Continue reading »

Are there Taliban in our green and pleasant land?

Posted by TonyN on 28/09/2009 at 1:00 am The Climate, Uncategorized 1 Response »
Sep 282009

The other day I was talking to a friend who had a serious problem with a large quango that is supposed to look after the countryside. He is unfortunate enough to have a remarkably robust species of lichen on his land that ecologists are interested in, and a Site of Special Scientific Interest has been created to ensure its protection, although there is absolutely no indication that the lichen is in any danger, or is ever likely to be.He needed to do some work in the area concerned and, although there was no question of the lichens being harmed, it was necessary to get permission from the quango. Letters and phone calls got him nowhere, so a site visit was arranged. He had assumed that, as is usually the case, once he met someone face-to-face common sense would prevail and an agreement which accommodated everyones interests would be quickly reached. He is rather proud of his lichens and is keen that they should continue to flourish.

At this stage I should say that the quango is very, very environmental and so is my friend. He moves in environmental circles, does environmental things, and is happily convinced that humans are destroying the planet, which gives him even more environmental things to do. On the other hand, there is a part of him that still takes a very levelheaded view of bureaucracy, activism and extremism.

When I spoke to him he said that the person from the quango and he had spent several hours walking the land, examining, considering and discussing everything. “And did you managed to sort it all out?” I asked. Continue reading »

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