UEA/Russell transcript

The transcript for last week's Science and Technology Committee hearing is now available here.

(H/T Pharos in the comments)

Comments

[Anoneumouse]

It would appear that the great unwashed can read and navigate the interwebthing ee be bob to the parliament web cast of which makes the professional stenographer redundant.

Another saving on the public purse

Lidems say Fuck 'stenographers'

[Anoneumouse]

Bugger.. the previous relied on the word LIBDEM

but hey...we cant get it right all of the time

[pat]

O/T but this call for the public to demand action on "climate change" is a bit desperate:

Tele: Louise Gray: Why the United Nations (UN) climate change talks are now largely irrelevant
A debate organised by Oxfam earlier this week asked: Will the UN climate talks save the planet or is it time to look elsewhere?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8105844/Why-the-United-Nations-UN-climate-change-talks-are-now-largely-irrelevant.html

[ZT]

Here Davies admits in his answer that the Oxburgh papers were selected by the UEA, forgetting the need to pretend that there was RS involvement. It is difficult keeping track of all those invented facts, after all.

Q59 Stephen Metcalfe: Was Professor Jones involved in the selection of those documents at all?

Professor Trevor Davies: No, not for the Oxburgh Panel. The discussions were internally at UEA between me and Professor Liss. Professor Jones and his colleagues were told which publications would be sent in and would be recommended to the Oxburgh Panel, but they had no decision-making role at all.

[Anoneumouse]

BH

Slap my legs for the previous bad language

Please clip my previous posts and replace with.....

Stenographers cant describe the existence of the 'half a crown sixpence' damp patches that Russell, Acton and Davies left on the commons committee green chairs.

[GrantB]

Fair go Anoneumouse. My wife was a stenographer in her younger days and she could certainly tell you a few stories about what went on in the ...etc.

And now for something completely different - the Guardian has found the definitive collective noun for climate deniers. It is apparently a slew

[HaroldW]

From the Grauniad article mentioned by GrantB above:

But it was an expensive win, with opponents of Proposition 23 spending $31m to assure its defeat. The oil companies put up more than $10.

So what is the collective noun for alternative energy hucksters?

Plus, it makes Schwarzenegger's statement even more laughable:

"Even though they spent millions and millions of dollars, today the people will make up their mind and speak loud and clear that California's environment is not for sale."

Evidently, it's California's coffers which are for sale instead.

[Scottie]

ZT

I think this is yet another case of having to watch the pea under the thimble. I did watch this live, but missed the significance of the following exchange at the time.

Q56 Stephen Metcalfe: Good morning. Professor Acton and Professor Davies, Lord Oxburgh told us that the 11 publications that were the basis of his report were chosen by him but came via the university. Do you know who chose those 11 publications?

So, Oxburgh told the predecessor Committee that he chose the papers himself, but that they came from "the university."

Acton replied:

Professor Edward Acton: The core of them-I think possibly all of them-appear amongst those papers listed in the evidence that we gave to your predecessor Committee in our 3,000 words. It would seem very odd to draw Lord Oxburgh’s eyes away from that list when they seemed to be bang on the issues at stake.

Watch carefully! The papers that Oxburgh chose were the from the list given in evidence to the predecessor Committee.

A few minutes later, Davies is asked:

Q59 Stephen Metcalfe: Was Professor Jones involved in the selection of those documents at all?
Professor Trevor Davies: No, not for the Oxburgh Panel.

What appears to be being said is that Jones was not involved in the selection of documents specifically for the Oxburgh Panel because Oxburgh chose them himself from a possibly identical list prepared by "the university" in evidence for the predecessor Committee.

Slippery or what?

[Lord Beaverbrook]

Link to the transcript not working, ' Hide the dec line' possibly?

[Jane Coles]

As Lord Beaverbrook observes, the link provided is no longer working. But there's currently a Google cache version here. I wonder if one of the participants has sought to provide 'corrections' to the "uncorrected transcript" that was posted. It may be interesting to do a diff when the final version appears.

[Frank]

Q58 Stephen Metcalfe: At what point was the Royal Society asked to approve the list? Was that before or after it had been sent to the Oxburgh Panel?

Professor Trevor Davies: I and Peter Lewis, the Acting Director of the Climatic Research Unit, had a verbal discussion with Lord Rees some time at the end of February, beginning of March. The list was sent to the Royal Society for approval or for further comment on 4 March. The Royal Society responded on 12 March saying that it was content with the list. I am aware of the fact that there are allegations in the blogosphere that the Royal Society responded within 20 minutes. That is not the case. It had the list for a week. Indeed, the anticipated list, as the discussion with the Royal Society was going on, was posted on our website. On our website we indicated that the starting point reading list for the Oxburgh Panel would likely be based on our submission to your predecessor Committee. That was posted on our website on 22 March, and there were no objections that we were aware of at that point. Objections, or claims about the fact that the publications were chosen selectively, were made after the event.

So, were the "allegations from the blogosphere", presumably originating from ClimateAudit, incorrect? Presumably there was an FOIA request for correspondence between the UEA and the Royal Society about the papers chosen for Oxburgh Panel that allowed Steve to know that a reply was received within 20 min. Did Steve omit mentioning earlier correspondence revealed by the FOIA? Or is Davies testimony "incorrect"? (I refuse to believe that Davies read the list of papers over the phone, thus accounting for the lack of a written record and UEA should have disclosed the alleged communications from a week earlier.)

The most interesting and controversial papers would be those that had to be sent to the predecessor Parliamentary Committee to address their questions, but were not given later to the Oxburgh Panel. This list of those papers would show exactly how the UEA directed the attention of the Oxburgh Panel away from the true controversies