Paterson stands by science

David Cameron's foolish linking of the recent floods to climate change has left him in a bit of a pickle. With the Met Office having already said there is no evidence of an increase in flooding storminess the Prime Minister finds himself having to oppose the massed guns of mainstream science.

I have no problem with arguing with mainstream scientists of course, but it's fun to watch Mr C's discomfort as he tries to extricate himself from the mire into which he has blundered. Owen Paterson must be feeling rather smug now, and has refused to change his tune and back the PM's position. This has created all sorts of problems for the greens, who have been running a rather active Twitter campaign to unseat Paterson in recent weeks. If they argue on the one hand that we should trust the scientists on global warming then they are going to struggle to say we should jettison their views on the floods.

Interesting times.

Flooding risk

A reader sent me this. Take a look at the Environment Agency flood risk map. Zoom in on a bit of coastline of your choice. My reader points out that the areas between a the high and low tide marks appear to be flagged up as being at risk of flooding.

True, but misleading?

Met bashes Cameron

The Met Office, ever ready to knock back climate alarmism, has taken issue with David Cameron's linking of floods and climate change yesterday.

Nicola Maxey from the Met Office said the Prime Minister failed to draw the crucial distinction between weather and climate change.

“What happened at the end of December and at the beginning of January is weather,” she said.

“Climate change happens on a global scale, and weather happens at a local scale. Climate scientists have been saying that for quite a while.

“It’s impossible to say that these storms are more intense because of climate change.”

Deben and 'the deniers'

In yesterday's exchanges in the Energy and Climate Change Committee there was an interesting exchange between Peter Lilley and Lord Deben, with the latter expressing outrage at the suggestion that a scientist might have said that their results had no effect on the broader global warming hypothesis simply so as to ensure they didn't lose their grant funding.

Deben's outrage quickly switched onto a subtly different point, namely the idea that scientists might be motivated solely by the need to keep grant funding moving on. He then sought to occupy the moral high ground by saying that he didn't engage in such behaviour himself:

Click to read more ...

Bean holds forth

I chanced upon this interview of Richard Bean, the author of The Heretic. It covers the whole of his body of work but includes discussion of global warming, the influence of the Guardian, the substitution of abuse for argument and also mention of the author of a sceptical book.

listen to ‘Richard Bean in discussion with Melanie Phillips’ on Audioboo

Deben and Kennedy sinking fast

This morning Lord Deben and David Kennedy of the Committee on Climate Change were questioned by the Energy and Climate Change Committee on the Fourth Carbon Budget.

It has everything - climate sensitivity, stadium waves, bickering over funding, and the splendid sight of the two witnesses flailing around for answers.

Start watching at 10:14.21. It's unmissable.

Update on Jan 8, 2014 by Bishop Hill

If you are on a mobile device, you may need to view the video via this link.

King's credibility

Updated on Jan 8, 2014 by Bishop Hill

In an article in the Guardian last year, Fiona Harvey described Sir David King's concerns over shale gas development. The great man was apparently not impressed.

Sir David King warns against fracking

Former UK scientific adviser says gas from unconventional sources could have huge environmental consequences

That was the headline, and the impression that he was against shale development was repeated right at the start of the article:

Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the government, has warned of the "enormous environmental consequences" of attempting to fulfil the UK's gas needs by fracking...

Click to read more ...

How to make money doing nothing

The Times has a big front-page splash on windfarms today. I haven't seen the full story, but the headline is: "Windfarms will be paid billions to switch off".

That should set the cat among the pigeons.

In related news, the Telegraph has been reporting that factories will be paid to operate at night so as to use energy from windfarms.

Update on Jan 8, 2014 by Bishop Hill

I've now located the underlying report that the Times has reported. Here's an excerpt:

On the basis of the NG figures, which show that 13 projects with a connected capacity of 600MW* generated £17m of constraint payments in the three months ending 30th June 2013, what total value of constraint payments can we expect from a contracted connection of 36.5GW on average five years#ahead of the system being capable of transmission? A simplistic calculation is (36,500MW/600MW) x £17m x 20 quarters = £20,700,000,000 (£20.7bn). There is not, so far, any other calculation to dispute this.

That’s TWENTY POINT SEVEN BILLION POUNDS.

For a few details more

This is filched from the comments at WUWT and contains, at one remove, a few thoughts from one of the attendees at the Royal Society meeting with GWPF.

Before Christmas I attended an area joint Mech E/IET lecture on Climate Change, given by Professor John Shepherd CBE FRS, a Professorial Research Fellow at the National Oceanographic Centre, University of Southampton, and a leading member of the Royal Society Climate Change Committee. I was quite staggered at what he had to say, and if he is part of the group of people advising Ed Davey I can quite understand why Davy is so convinced that disaster will befall us all if we fail to limit CO2 emissions. In his introduction he told us that he had been one of the six Royal Society “climate scientists” that had met Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation in the House of Lords at the end of November. According to Lawson, although the RS had insisted that would not participate unless journalists were kept away, Shepherd went out of his way to tell us that the meeting was not secret; its purpose apparently was to convince the Global Warming Foundation principals of the seriousness of increasing CO2 emissions. He admitted there had not been a meeting of minds!

Almost at once Shepherd told the audience to take no notice of “sceptics” as they didn’t know what they were talking about, which as far as I was concerned set the tone for his lecture! He began with a graph showing the relationship between CO2 and temperature that was identical to the one in the Al Gore film that purported to show how very high levels of CO2 had caused very high global temperatures on four occasions in history, showing the two to be co-incident, when of course an expanded timescale shows CO2 levels lagging the temperature rise. He then showed the infamous Jones/Mann/Biffa hockey stick that had been the subject of the “hide the decline” emails and which they concocted by being very selective in which tree samples they, and particularly Biffa, had used. The current pause he dismissed as just a little blip; such blips had happened in the past and inexorable warming would start again very soon he said. And so it went on, and I cannot see him ever rowing back from the position he has taken. Further, if his five colleagues are as bad, then heaven help us. I must say I expected a little more integrity from an FRS. Another illusion shattered!

Top Tories trumpet top trougher

Michael Gove and George Osborne have put their considerable political weight behind Tim Yeo's campaign against his deselection as the Tory parliamentary candidate for South Suffolk.

In his letter Mr Osborne described Mr Yeo, who has been the MP for South Suffolk since 1983. as a “politician of principle”, who has “a deep understanding of the countryside and farming”.

That could be seen as sticking two fingers up at the electorate. However, I'm not sure if Gove's support isn't just slightly lukewarm:

Tim is a highly respected and immensely experienced member of parliament. In the time that I have known him his work, firstly as a member of the shadow cabinet and latterly as the chair of two select committees, has been extremely valuable.

Mackay and King on shale

David Mackay, chief scientist at DECC, and David King, Foreign Secretary's climate change adviser will give evidence to the Lords' Economic Affairs Committee on shale gas this afternoon at 3:30pm. The video will appear below.

Julian Huppert says the Met Office has it all wrong

...we are seeing a changing climate, partly due to manmade CO2 emissions, we are seeing changes in the weather patterns which are bringing more storms. It's no accident that this is the stormiest December that we've had for 40 years or something and we're seeing around the world changes like that.

Julian Huppert, the UK Parliament's only PhD scientist, on the Daily Politics (around 3 mins)

Climate models provide a broad range of projections about changes in storm track and frequency of storms. While there’s currently no evidence to suggest that the UK is increasing in storminess, this is an active area of research under the national climate capability.

The Met Office, a couple of days ago.

In stark contrast, the Telegraph's Tom Chivers has an admirably sensible take on the issue.

Accelerated depreciation

This article at a blog called Billo The Wisp is important if true. Turbine gearbox failures apparently happen typically after 5-7 years rather than the 20 years that we are normally led to believe wind turbines last for. Moreover, their failure can be completely catastrophic, leading to the destruction of the whole turbine.

Billo has discovered that a group of US scientists has been commissioned by Washington to look into the problem, but they don't seem to have come up with anything since they started work in 2007.

The fatal contradiction

The FT looks at the EU's latest interventions in the energy market, wondering where it leaves the idea of nation states having their own energy policies. In particular it points out the possibility of the government's bonkers nuclear deal at Hinckley point being ruled illegal, shale being regulated away to nothing, and exemptions for energy intensive industry being axed.

You can see an interesting (if that's the right word) dilemma appearing here. The environmental bureaucracy in Brussels looks as though it may make fossil fuel use impossible. The single market bit may drive renewables to the wall.

The future's dim. The future's black.

King says Met Office has it all wrong

Climate models provide a broad range of projections about changes in storm track and frequency of storms. While there’s currently no evidence to suggest that the UK is increasing in storminess, this is an active area of research under the national climate capability.

The Met Office, a couple of days ago.

"The important thing to get across is the simple notion that storms and severe weather conditions that we might have expected to occur once in 100 years, say, in the past may now be happening more frequently," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Sir David King, yesterday

OK, so he didn't say so in as many words, but he clearly thinks that there is evidence of an increase in storminess in the UK. The Met Office is unequivocal that there is none.

Who is right?