Alice Bell has written a trailer for Brian Hoskins' lecture at Imperial last Monday - if everything goes technically to plan this should be available as a podcast shortly. The trailer includes Hoskins' recommendations for climate reading - at a newbie level.
Among the documents recommended by Hoskins is the Green Alliance's introduction to climatology, published last year. This was prepared by their own Rebecca Willis, with input from Hoskins and Simon Buckle of the Grantham Institute (the sciencey bit at Imperial, as opposed to the naked-green-activism bit at LSE), and Joanna Haigh of Imperial.
The paper starts with discussion of the rise in CO2 levels and then says this:
Increases in atmospheric GHGs have enhanced the natural greenhouse effect.[19] There is unequivocal evidence that warming is occurring.[20] The Earth’s global mean temperature has increased by 0.8˚C, with an uncertainty of plus or minus 0.2˚C and considerable year-to-year variability, since 1850.[21] This evidence has led scientists to conclude with a high level of certainty that human activities are having a significant effect on the Earth’s climate.[22] It is noteworthy that the 2010 review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the InterAcademy Council made no criticism of the most recent and comprehensive assessment of the physical science basis of climate change provided by the IPCC Working Group I (see more on this below).
So CO2 is up. Temperatures are up. Therefore with a "high level of certainty", mankind is to blame.
Forgive me, but this is embarrassingly bad. Risible really. And this paper is being recommended by Brian Hoskins, knight of the realm and fellow of the Royal Society? Sheesh.
I also noted this bit about the Russell panel:
The Independent Climate Change Email Review, established by UEA, and chaired by Sir Muir Russell, looked at the work of the CRU scientists. It concluded that their rigour and honesty as scientists was not in doubt, and that their behaviour had not prejudiced the advice given to policy-makers, but that the scientists had failed to display a proper degree of openness.[4]
Now, having just written a book about the Climategate inquiries, I was surprised to read that CRU scientists' behaviour had "not prejudiced the advice given to policymakers". I seem to have missed something important (easily done since there is a lot of material to wade through on Russell). Can anyone point me to where Russell said this? The bit I remember about advice to policymakers was the WMO report (and by implication the IPCC TAR spaghetti graph) being found to be "misleading".
In closing, I note a couple of interesting biographical details. Firstly Simon Buckle is "policy director" at the Grantham Institute. From his webpage, he doesn't seem to write learned papers or supervise students to any great extent. I wonder what he actually does all day? Secondly, the report's author, Rebecca Willis, as well as working for the Green Alliance, is on the council of NERC, the UK's main funding body for the environmental sciences.
Bishop Hill
Thanks to PaulM in the comments for pointing me to the relevant section in the Russell report. I'm slightly confused by the contradiction between Russell's finding of "misleading" on the hide the decline graph and a clean bill of health on "prejudicing advice to policy makers".