Feb 10, 2012 Josh Wind turbines 
With recent news that wind farms have been paid a secret £13 million compensation to shut down over the last few months it is no wonder all those in the industry are hearing the clink of cash above the roar of the turbines.
Feb 10, 2012 Royal Society James Delingpole has a blog post up on my GWPF report.
I've written about this several times before but because I was once the victim of a nasty stitch-up by the Royal Society's current president Sir Paul Nurse there's always a danger of it looking like sour grapes.
That's why I'm so heartened by the magisterially damning report on the Royal Society produced by Andrew Montford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
We all have different roles to play in the great climate wars and Montford's, unlike mine, is to write with cool restraint. But though he doesn't title his report quite as provocatively as "The Royal Society is a joke" – that, essentially, his conclusion.
Ouch.
Feb 10, 2012 Climate: WG2
Updated on Feb 10, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
The news that Himalayan glaciers are not melting at all, let alone being set to disappear by 2035 has been exercising all and sundry today. Tom Chivers at the Telegraph has a somewhat snide piece setting out the facts.
Well, some of the facts.
The particular aspect that I want to look at is that ideaa that the glaciers will have disappeared by 2035. The story has been set out in great detail by EU Referendum. We know
Feb 10, 2012 Climate: HSI Another Hockey Stick Illusion sighting, this time in political newsletter, Counterpunch.
Anyone who believes groupthink is not a problem in the insular self-righteous climate science community, should read the Hockey Stick Illusion or wade through just a few of the infamous emails hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.)
Feb 9, 2012 Climate: Pachauri Himalayas Josh 
IPCC head man Rajendra Pachauri famously dismissed criticism of the Himalaya's supposedly rapid ice melt as "Voodoo science". I think it has come back to haunt him.
Feb 9, 2012 Climate: HSI Jim Sillars is an influential Scottish political commentator and a former UK MP. His latest article in the Scotsman shows signs of having read the Hockey Stick Illusion:
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched its infamous 2001 report, its chairman did so in front of a huge blown-up poster of the hockey stick. It got six mentions in the text. It was hailed as proof of the link between CO2 emissions and higher temperatures.
The “stick” was garbage. The long handle supposedly showing no significant temperature movement over 1000 years, missed out the Medieval warming period, and the little ice age. Those who proved it garbage were subjected to vicious attacks.
He also uses the Atte Korhola quote that appears as the epigraph to Chapter 17.
Feb 9, 2012 Royal Society This has just been released:
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is calling on the Royal Society to restore a culture of open-mindedness and balanced assessment of climate science and climate policy.
In a new GWPF report, written by science author Andrew Montford, the Royal Society is urged to ensure that genuine controversies are reflected in its public debates and reports and that the full range of reputable scientific views are being considered.
“As the Society’s independence has disappeared, so has its former adherence to hard-nosed empirical science and a sober detachment from the political process. Gone are the doubts and uncertainties that afflict any real scientist, to be replaced with the dull certainties of the politician and the public relations man,” said Andrew Montford, author of the new report.
In his report, Andrew Montford describes the development of the Royal Society’s role in the climate debates since the 1980s. He shows the Society’s gradual closing of critical scrutiny and scientific impartiality and the emergence of an almost dogmatic confidence that climate science is all but settled.
In recent years, the Society has issued a series of highly political statements demanding drastic action on energy and climate policies from policy makers and governments. On the issue of climate change, it has adopted an increasingly political rather than scientific tone. Instead of being an open forum for informed scientific debate, the Society is at risk of turning into a quasi-political campaign group.
The GWPF report criticises the Society for being too narrow minded in its assessment of climate change and for failing to take into account views of eminent scientists and policy experts that do not accord with its own position.
In his foreword to the report, Professor Richard Lindzen (MIT), one of the world's most eminent atmospheric scientists, warns that "the legitimate role of science as a powerful mode of inquiry has been replaced by the pretence of science to a position of political authority."
The report itself is here.
Feb 8, 2012 Climate: Parliament Climate: Sceptics Philip Foster emails that the Lindzen talk has moved to a bigger venue: Wembley arena Committee Room 10.
Committee Room 10 (bigger!) but, as always, still could be changed again. Trace it at Westminster itself by looking for room booked by Sammy Wilson MP.
St Stephens Entrance for security, then head for main lobby and ask at desks for directions for the room number.
Bishop Hill
Regarding more places: could folk now email Fay Tuncay:
faykellytun roundthingy gmail dottything com
Please could people bear with us as the main aim is to get MPs and/or their researchers to come plus the Press (Leo Hickman of the Guardian already coming!). There are still only a total of 120 places for the room, though some standing room is presumably possible also.
We are getting a trickle of acceptances from MPs which could increase as the week goes by (they go on half term break next week so they could be bearded in their constituencies). So if people could also go to or write to their MP and urge them to come that would be a great help.
Would indeed we could have Wembley!! Or even the main chamber of the Commons!
Feb 8, 2012 Books 
Harold Ambler's Don't Sell Your Coat is a general introduction to global warming from the perspective of a card-carrying liberal who has had his eyes opened to all the problems with the AGW hypothesis.
This is one for the non-technical friend who needs a primer, an antidote to the propaganda that still seems to be all-pervasive. It's written with a lovely lightness of touch which should make it accessible to just about anyone. It has also been rather beautifully put together, with some very nice photos to pep up the inevitable graphs.
Here (with permission) is a chapter so you can see what I mean.
Buy it here.
Feb 8, 2012 Energy A nice letter from Nigel Lawson in the FT.
From Lord Lawson.
Sir, I would like, as a former energy secretary, to wish Ed Davey, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, the best of luck in his new job. He has the opportunity to enter the history books as the only minister to use his position to abolish it for the wider public good. The yoking together of energy and climate change has given this country the worst energy policy for a generation – bad for the economy, bad for industry, bad for the taxpayer and bad for the consumer. The time has come to put responsibility for climate change policy back into the environment department, where it properly belongs, and to put energy policy into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills from where Mr Davey has just emerged.
Nigel Lawson, House of Lords
Well, one can hope, I suppose.
Feb 7, 2012 FOI Just in time to distract from my blushes (see previous post), comes the news that the Information Commissioner has spoken out on the efforts by academics to get themselves exempted from FOI laws.
"Is academic research really threatened by the prospect of premature release of data sets? Are ministers living in fear?" Graham asked a government computing conference last week. "The Chicken Licken version of the FOI that the sky is falling is just that: it's a folktale – and the trouble with folktales is people start reacting to what the think is the case even when it isn't."
He didn't name names, but two particular chickens spring to mind: chiefs in Whitehall and academics such as those whose work has helped give climate research a bad name.
Feb 7, 2012 Some of you may have seen a story here about my forthcoming GWPF report. I'd missed the embargo date, so I've taken the story down. Ill repost on Thursday.
Apologies for the confusion.
Feb 7, 2012 Climate: Sceptics I've been remiss in not posting this notice earlier. I think four people have now pointed me to it:
You are invited to a free special seminar by MIT Professor Richard Lindzen
Global Warming: How to approach the science (Climate Models and the Evidence?)2pm-4pm 22nd February 2012
Grimond Room, Portcullis House Westminster, London
(Ask for Sammy Wilson MP's meeting and allow 30 minutes for security)Special guest speaker
Prof. Richard S. Lindzen
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyChairman: Philip Stott Emeritus Professor
Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the University of London, and former Editor-in Chief of the International Journal of Biogeography.
RSVP Eventbrite ticket required
See here.
Feb 7, 2012 Climate: HSI According to Pierre Gosselin, the Hockey Stick Illusion is influential in Germany, playing a part in the writing of a new book on global warming that is creating quite a stir over there.
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
Feb 6, 2012 BBC Climate: other A number of readers have emailed me pointing to Richard Black's latest offering, which seems to carry a rather different tone to what has gone before. He is discussing scientific consensus and whether such a thing is of any importance.
A couple of years back, at one of the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn, I had a long chat with Viscount Monckton. As a scholar of Classics, he was able to detail with Classical derivation the reasons why consensus matters far less than simply being right.
And he is surely correct; after all, in more recent times, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Hawking are among those whose work broke with the consensus, yet turned out to be correct.
But if the presence of a consensus is irrelevant, so, logically, is its absence; which makes the continued use by sceptics' groups of the "consensus is cracking" meme a bit mystifying.
After all, how many times can you say it's cracking before people start asking "so why hasn't it cracked, then?"
In both cases - consensus and breaking consensus - it's surely the evidence that should count, not the number of people you can get to sign your letter.
