Bishop Hill Why does Lord Deben misreport the science of extreme weather?
Nov 17, 2014 Climate: WG2 Deben The appointment of Lord Deben as the government's chief adviser on climate change matters was always something of a nonsense. As somebody who knows little or nothing of science, let alone climatology, his appointment was always more about sending out messages to target voters than the provision of meaningful or useful information. As if to underline the point, the noble lord has sent out a tweet today on the subject of extreme weather:
Pity it takes American to tell #Abbott truth about Australia. Climate change makes extreme weather worse & #coal is a cause.
If climate change makes extreme weather worse, then you would think the planet would have experienced more extreme weather, given that we have been experiencing global warming for decades and climate change forever. Unfortunately for Lord D's case increases in extreme weather are not what the IPCC reported in its most recent assessment report or in the earlier SREX report, for almost any extreme weather phenomenon you care to mention. The best they could come up with was a claim that there were more areas with increases in extreme precipitation than decreases, and the possibility that heatwaves were happening more often. A look at the evidence behind these claims suggests they are decidedly iffy too.
Meanwhile, droughts and hurricanes are refusing to toe the line at all. As if to emphasise the point, a new paper in BAMS has confirmed that tropical cyclones are not increasing.
So when Lord D says climate change makes extreme weather worse, he is not exactly reporting the science. This being the case, you have to wonder about the advice that the government is getting from the CCC. Does anyone in government actually pay it any attention? Or do they know that this is just an expensive way of Cameron buying a few green votes and ignore Lord Deben's utterances accordingly?
Bishop Hill
By way of doubling down, Lord D is now reporting that
Climate change means less food. Aid Agencies united in seeing it as the biggest driver of poverty.
Here are the World Bank figures on grain yield
And here is the Food Production Index
Reader Comments (54)
Does dirty PR agency Futerra write Debdens tweets ? I just looked at his Twitter profile, for someone who i supposed to be working he churns out a hell of a lot of tweets. So wouldn't surprise me, that if you checked the IP address that it comes back to some PR agency or other. The account is described as :
Nov 19, 2014 at 9:29 AM | stewgreen
That wouldn't surprise me at all. Tweeting from authority - the modern version of argument from authority.
... it might be a form of 'reverse passing off':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off
Interesting to speculate whether that law could be applied if the reverse passing off were the case.
On the question re why Deben is so anxious to promote CAGW hysteria....
These are his vested interests--as of a short while ago, anyway...
Chairman, Forewind Ltd;[ which won a huge contract for an offshore wind farm]
Chairman, Sancroft International Ltd;
Chairman, Valpak Ltd;
Chairman, Veolia UK.
......all climate-related , and the Gummer [Deben] extended family has substantial interests in them.
He had also hoped to make billions out of the Severn Barrage , with one of his firms being involved----before it was canned.
He's also President of Globe International, which is heavily involved in, promotes and maintains at a high level, CAGW hysteria amongst the governments of the world.
And of course there are the government appointments.