Goodbye to 2008

Posted by TonyN on 31/12/2008 at 9:32 pm New Statesman, The Climate 68 Responses »
Dec 312008

As the final freezing hours of 2008 fade into history, this would seem to be a good time to look back at the year and also at the short history of Harmless Sky, which is now just over a year old.The first rather tentative pages went live on 17th December 2007.It would be tedious to rehearse all that has happened, so I am going to focus on just one topic which encapsulates much of what this blog is about and highlights issues that are now at the heart of the climate debate.At the beginning of the year I came across two articles published by the New Statesman, which had generated a huge number of comments on their website. The first was by Dr David Whitehouse, an astrophysicist who was the BBC’s Science Correspondent from 1988-98 and then science editor of BBC News Online from 1998-2006. During this period he must have been ideally placed to see how concern about global warming grew from being the preoccupation of a few scientists and environmental activists into a new scientific and moral orthodoxy. His article was provocatively entitled, ‘Has Global Warming Stopped?’

After describing the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, Dr Whitehouse pointed out that although CO2 levels have continued to rise during this century, temperatures have failed to do so. He then explored a weakness in the hypothesis, demonstrating that, although it can explain the warming of the last decades of the twentieth century very well, it cannot explain why temperatures have levelled off, and then fallen, without a commensurate decline in CO2 levels. Dr Whitehouse did not in any way suggest that the hypothesis was bad science, but merely probed the way in which it relates to recent temperature trends that are quite unexpected. He also suggested that this flaw in the hypothesis might indicate that there are natural influences on global temperature of which we are still unaware, and questions whether our understanding of the climate is adequate to draw firm conclusions about what is happening.

So we are led to the conclusion that either the hypothesis of carbon dioxide induced global warming holds but its effects are being modified in what seems to be an improbable though not impossible way, or, and this really is heresy according to some, the working hypothesis does not stand the test of data.

It is the use of the term heresy that puts this thoughtful, cautious and scrupulously argued article in context. The Environment Columnist of the New Statesman is Mark Lynas, one of the high priests of global warming alarmism, and that venerable publication’s editorial policy on climate change is set accordingly.

A month later, a furious and somewhat hysterical response from Mark Lynas appeared. It started like this: Continue reading »

Freedom of Information and the BBC climate change seminar: news from the front line

Posted by TonyN on 27/12/2008 at 12:47 pm BBC and Freedom of Information 23 Responses »
Dec 272008

The writer and political commentator Richard D North has very kindly sent me these recollections of an event that took place at the BBC Television Centre on 26th January 2006, (previously discussed here).

In a report published by the BBC Trustees the following year, this was described as a ‘high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts’ on climate change, and used to illustrate the care with which the impartiality of the corporation’s news and current affairs coverage of this very important subject has been safeguarded.

I did attend the BBC climate change seminar and my impression is that it was part of the ongoing efforts by Roger Harrabin (environment analyst at the BBC) to help the corporation wrestle with the problem of balance and impartiality and robust reporting of the climate change debate.

I think Roger Harrabin has not been a good reporter or analyst of climate change. He is not the worst by any means, but he has in my view missed many tricks. However, he has been serious if not very effective (actually often rather poor) in tackling the nature of the debate itself.

By the way, my own view is that the biggest media failure has been in discussing the policy response to the science of climate change. I mean that though the discussion of the science has been bad the discussion of the policy response has been mostly abysmal. The BBC is only the worst of the offenders on this score because (a) they are paid to be the best and (b) their efforts have fallen so far short of their stated ambitions in this area.

I found the seminar frankly shocking. The BBC crew (senior executives from every branch of the corporation) were matched by an equal number of specialists, almost all (and maybe all) of whom could be said to have come from the “we must support Kyoto” school of climate change activists. Continue reading »

Greetings

Posted by TonyN on 23/12/2008 at 7:44 pm Uncategorized 6 Responses »
Dec 232008

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Kemble's takeover of Llanbedr Airfield approved

Posted by TonyN on 16/12/2008 at 6:11 pm Llanbedr Airfield 4 Responses »
Dec 162008

There is good news tonight for all those in Llanbedr and elsewhere who have been hoping that the Snowdonia Society’s attempts to obstruct plans to get the airfield up-and-running again would come to nothing. Ieuan Wyn Jones, deputy first minister of the Welsh Assembly Government has approved the sale of the airfield to Kemble Air Services.

This is a very significant step forward, although there are still some issues concerning planning consent to be resolved.It is to be hoped that, by the time these matters are determined, the Snowdonia Society will have come to its senses. Its indifference to the needs of people who live in the national park has already done great harm to that once reputable organisation. Continuing to disrupt this project on purely ideological grounds would be both perverse and irresponsible.

Provided there are no further delays, Kemble hope to start operations sometime during the first half of next year.

At a time of general economic gloom it is wonderful to be able to post news of such a positive development. And for all those who have the best interests of the Snowdonia National Park at heart it will be reassuring to know that common sense has prevailed. Instead of lying idle, this valuable facility can once again contribute to the economic and cultural life of the area after a break of over four years.

For the people of Llanbedr this decision should herald of a new era; it looks as though we may soon get our airfield back!

Press report here

Tim Flannery and the test of time

Posted by TonyN on 09/12/2008 at 5:47 pm The Climate 14 Responses »
Dec 092008

The Autralian author and broadcaster Clive James once published a collection of poems under the title, ‘The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered’. This came to mind the other day when I found a huge stack of Tim Flannery’s ‘The Weather Makers’ selling for £2 each in a discount bookstore.As I didn’t own a copy of this seminal outpouring of global warming alarmism, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Opinion makers around the world had hailed its publication in 2005 (priced at £20) as a revelation, and I was interested to see whether this had stood the test of even such a short time.

So last night I settled down to get my two quids-worth with a quick flick through, starting at the back. You can learn a lot about a book in a very short time by reading the acknowledgements.

How would you react to a supposedly objective review of climate science if it had been funded by an American free market think-tank, enjoyed the support of the Bush administration’s energy minister, relied on Exxon’s research department for guidance, and the author was deeply indebted to Fred Singer for alerting him to the realities of global warming alarmism in the first place? If you are reasonably well acquainted with the climate debate, as I assume most people who visit these pages are, then you would probably not be expecting a wholehearted endorsement of the greenhouse gas hypothesis. Nor would you be surprised if environmentalists tried to discredit the book purely on the basis of who had assisted the author, without considering a word of what he actually had to say. Continue reading »

Have computers caused global warming?

Posted by TonyN on 02/12/2008 at 5:26 pm The Climate 19 Responses »
Dec 022008

The other day, someone asked me what I thought might have caused global warming, if it is not anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Flippantly, I said I thought that it was probably the development of the computer.

When we look around the world, convincing evidence of a rapidly changing climate is rather difficult to find. The historic temperature record endorsed by the IPPC indicates only a 0.6 ° C increase in temperature during the 20th century; hardly perceptible without a very sensitive thermometer. Most of our fears about climate change are actually based on predictions about what could happen in the future, not what has already happened, or even what is happening at the moment. So where does information about the climate come from?

It is tempting to think of climate scientists as hardy, open-air types, who bestride the globe fearlessly traversing Antarctic glaciers or sailing the oceans to make observations that will unlock the secrets of the natural world. But these are merely the foot soldiers of the discipline. The cutting edge research, which we so often hear about in the media, is undertaken in far more prosaic circumstances; in cosy offices sitting in front of computers which process arcane statistical procedures in an effort to make sense of observations that reveal only tiny variations in the data. Continue reading »

The BBC, Environmental Information Regulations and a very convenient loophole

Posted by TonyN on 24/11/2008 at 9:12 pm BBC and Freedom of Information, The Climate 30 Responses »
Nov 242008

When I asked the BBC for the names of what they described as ‘the best scientific experts’ who attended their 2006 seminar on climate change (here), I made the request under both the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations. Although these two pieces of legislation are similar in intent, to promote transparency in public life, there are some subtle differences in the ways that they apply;

FOI Act: Refers to information held by a wide range of government agencies and other organisations that are publicly funded. These are identified in schedules to the act and include both the BBC and universities. There are common sense exceptions that allow certain information not to be divulged; national security, the police, courts of law and some kinds of personal data among others. There is also a clause that overrides some of the exceptions if releasing the information is considered to be in the public interest.

In the case of the BBC and ITN, these bodies are only subject to the FOI Act where information is not held for the purposes other than ‘journalism, art or literature’. Providing a degree of confidentiality to journalists is understandable. Who would speak off the record to a reporter if they thought that what they said might be brought into the public domain as a result of an FOI Act application? On the other hand, the act does not define ‘journalism, art and literature’, a shortcoming that the BBC seems only too willing to exploit.

The FOI Act came into effect in 2000 and is UK legislation, as opposed to EU law.

EIR: The type of information that must be disclosed is obviously more specific here, but the regulations apply not only to all the bodies specified in the FOI Act, but to many that are not. For instance even contractors used by publicly funded bodies are subject to the regulations, as are utility companies and major contractors used by such bodies. There are also fewer exceptions than in the FOI Act.

The EIR is not British legislation, but European Union legislation that the UK has signed up to.

When I applied to the BBC for information about the climate change seminar, I was under the impression that they must be subject to the EIR, as were many others, including the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which oversees compliance with both the FOI Act and the EIR. In a letter to the BBC about my appeal against their decision not to provide me with the information I wanted, dated 28th July 2008, the ICO said: Continue reading »

The Anthropogenic Global Warming Debate

Posted by Peter Martin on 17/11/2008 at 10:28 am The Climate, Uncategorized 61 Responses »
Nov 172008
(For nearly a year now, Peter Martin has been a regular contributor to a remarkable thread which started at the New Statesman and is now, nearly 6000 comments later, hosted at Harmless Sky. By energetically representing a point of view that most of the other contributors disagree with, he makes sure that none of us get complacent. Thanks Peter!)

There are many thousands of posts on numerous websites, both arguing for and against the scientific consensus position on global warming, or climate change if you prefer. There is probably no precedent for such a scientific controversy. Previous disputes about smoking and health, or evolutionary theory seem relatively tame by comparison. There have been other scientific controversies over the years, which have been settled, as they should in the way that science should settle them, by a process of discussion and acceptance. Famously, Einstein had conceptual problems with the ideas of quantum mechanics that were emerging in the 1920s and 30’s. Schrodinger, himself a pioneer of quantum mechanical theory, was uncomfortable with some of the philosophical implications, expressed doubts, asked difficult questions and was happy to test his own theories against the general scepticism of many physicists at the time. Continue reading »

Can global warming survive a global recession? Part 2

Posted by TonyN on 11/11/2008 at 12:40 pm The Climate, Uncategorized 2 Responses »
Nov 112008

In the first part of this post, I suggested that the global banking crisis, and an economic downturn that may lead to years of recession, will bring about a change in the general public’s attitude to global warming.

Concerns about climate change are hardly likely to compete for our attention with real day-to-day fears about employment, the cost of living, pensions, and even the security of our savings and our homes. Exhortations to have blind faith in a ‘scientific consensus’ are likely to fall on deaf ears, and appeals for self-sacrificing compliance with costly schemes to save the planet will prompt question about what these measures are likely to deliver.

Of course, this applies mainly to the domestic sector of the economy, but what will be the reaction in the commercial world and in the public sector? Will the currently fashionable acceptance of the doctrine of climate alarmism continue to be the norm, or will there be a growing scepticism here too?

When a recession bites, plans for long-term capital expenditure come under scrutiny; uncertainties are likely to be reassessed and particularly the credibility of predictions that underlie plans for the future. Here are some examples of how predictions about the future climate influence decision makers who need sound guidance if they are to avoid making very expensive mistakes.

In the wake of the West Country floods last summer, the Environment Agency launched a campaign to publicise the need for a new Thames Barrier to protect London from flooding.

The BBC reported the story in these apocalyptic terms: Continue reading »

BP's record profits and the Climate Change Bill

Posted by TonyN on 03/11/2008 at 11:34 am The Climate 1 Response »
Nov 032008

The oil giant BP has reported a record profit of £6.4bn, and among the gloom and carnage of the stock markets the company’s share price has soared dramatically.

In the face of renewed calls for a windfall tax on oil companies, a pundit on Radio 4’s World at One news programme patiently explained that the markets were not just reacting to the size of the profit; when oil prices are volatile, such companies will inevitably make large profits or losses. What made BP’s financial results special was that they showed that managers had controlled costs more effectively than any of their competitors. During a recession, it is this ability to operate efficiently that particularly distinguishes the winners from the losers.

Contrast this piece of good news with a potentially far more important story that received hardly any media coverage at all. Continue reading »

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