Climate cuttings 12

Welcome to the latest review of developments in the Alice in Wonderland world of climate science.

Hot off the press is the news that Steve McIntyre has been doing some fieldwork. Reconstructions of past temperatures are done using tree ring measurements, and sceptical voices have regularly pointed out that the databases of tree ring measurements haven't been brought up to date since the 1980s - something which would allow verification of the validity of the reconstructions. Arch-warmer Michael Mann has gone on record as saying that it's too expensive, something which seems just a little unlikely in view of the money poured into climate research in recent years. Now McIntyre has revealed that he has done the work to update one set of measurements from Colorado. The first set of rings show no increase in growth and while this is a very early result, it's not looking good for the warmers.

In the face of a freedom of information request, the secretive Hadley Centre have been forced to reveal the list of weather stations they use in their climate reconstruction. Among the interesting features noted are that they have eliminated every rural station in France from the record, that the number of stations in the list doesn't tally with the number reported in their published work, duplicate station numbers and so on. A shambles in other words.

Al Gore's scary movie, An Incontinent Truth, was found to be political and inaccurate by a UK judge. This didn't seem to be a problem for the Nobel Peace Prize committee who gave the award to the Goracle anyway.

One of Gore's most blatant exagerrations was his claim that sea levels are going to rise by 20ft. People are asking why, if that's so, he's currently buying real estate at the seaside. 

Also ignoring their own claims of coming sea level rises in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who are in the process of destroying sea defences near Southend. 

The BBC was strangely silent on a number of news items. The melting of the Arctic sea ice, which they were so excited about the other day, turns out to be due to wind conditions. And according to the satellites, this September was one of the coolest  on record.

Martin Juckes, whose paper attacking McIntyre I discussed in the last edition of Climate Cuttings, entered the fray in the comments of a follow up CA posting which was discussing the amusing way in which Juckes had managed to eliminate a set of records with a falling temperature trend from his analysis. He managed to avoid answering any questions at all. Someone noted that one of Juckes' co-authors had removed his name from the paper between the discussion and final drafts, presumably not wanting to be associated with this kind of work. 

And there it is. Climate science. Still crazy, after all these years. 

BBC Environment reporters

Incidentally to my research on the previous posting, I came upon the surprising fact that Roger Harrabin is a graduate in English.

I don't know about you, but I find it pretty gobsmacking that someone who is paid to interpret complex scientific papers and reports on our behalf doesn't actually have a flaming clue what any of it means. In fact take that back, he presumably doesn't read any of the papers at all because he is incapable of understanding them. He regurgitates press releases for a living.

He's semi-educated.

It does rather explain the quality of some of his reporting though. 

And what about the rest of the BBC's environment team?

• Margaret Gilmore was an environment correspondent until 2005. She studied English.
  
• Tom Fielden, science and environment correspondent - not sure what subject he studied, but it wasn't scientific. 
• Richard Bilton, previously environment reporter - studied Communication. 
• Matt McGrath and Julian Pettifer - I can find no record of them ever having been to university, although presumably they must have been.

So here's the challenge: can anyone find a BBC environment reporter with a scientific background?

Roger Harrabin

The Nameless One, writing at the Devil's Kitchen, notes with his customary gusto, a leaked BBC email which shows BBC environment reporter Roger Harrabin's attempts to develop a party line on the "Al Gore made it up" court ruling. (Well, it was words to that effect anyway). Harrabin's tactics for saving Gore's face are these:

In any future reporting of Gore we should be careful not to suggest that the High Court says Gore was wrong on climate.......

We might say something like: "Al Gore whose film was judged by the High Court to have used some debatable science" or "Al Gore whose film was judged in the High Court to be controversial in parts".

The key is to avoid suggesting that the judge disagreed with the main climate change thesis.

Attentive readers will remember that, according to Head of BBC TV news Peter Horrocks, that the BBC has no line on climate change. What the leaking of the memo shows is that either Horrocks is a liar or Harrabin is attemping to create an official line in contravention of BBC policy. I wonder which one of them will be disciplined?

As happens, I was looking into Harrabin myself when I read DK's story. According to his BBC website profile he is co-director or something called the Cambridge Environment and Media Programme, which is part-funded by the BBC (the rest of the funding being from private sources - I wonder who?). Apparently this organisation, which doesn't seem to have a website, tries to find ways to engage the media in debates on sustainable development.  

Now is it just me, or does it seem a bit odd that the BBC is using public money to persuade itself to engage in debate on environmental issues? Couldn't it just, you know, engage?

Doesn't it seem stranger still that the loot is being sent to an organisation run by one of its own employees? This seems to reverse the normal employer/employee relationship. Shouldn't the higher-ups at the BBC be telling Harrabin what to do?

And isn't it yet more bizarre that it is trying to promote inclusion of particular issues in the news agenda - an overtly political act if ever there was one? The BBC, remember, has no line on climate change (and presumably the whole question of environmentalism too). Is the BBC actually funding a campaign to promote environmentalism on the airwaves?

I don't know about you, but I smell fish.

Fallacio

There is a rather remarkable comment thread over at Real Climate right now. Invited to post rebuttals to a scientific paper which is sceptical of global warming, the commenters have unleashed a vertiable orgy of logical fallacy. They may well have broken the record for the highest number of uses of the genetic fallacy on a single thread.

Don't real scientists do logic any longer? 

Quote of the day

More brainwashing

Just last week, news consumers were engulfed in a tsunami of reports about the record minimum in the Artic Sea Ice extent. At around the same time, it was noted firstly that a record maximum extent in Antartic sea ice had also been acheived, but also shortly afterwards, and following a "surprise" adjustment to the figures, that actually the Antarctic maximum hadn't actually been beaten.

So far, so climate science.

Now, and with the lack of explanation familiar to those following the Alice in Wonderland world of climate scientce, all record of the adjustment has been removed from the Cryosphere Today website and, as of Monday, the record appears to have been reinstated.

The MSM have managed not to notice though, so it probably didn't happen.

Brainwashing guidelines

The Government has offered to rewrite the guidance sent to schools with Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth DVD, in order to head off an expected court ruling that the film is politically biased and/or scientifically suspect. It's interesting that they think that this will do the trick for them. They may even be correct. But if the film is genuinely biased or is based on incorrect science, it's surely going to take a bit of explaining as to why it is so vital that every secondary school child in the country sees it.

"This is a pack of lies and propaganda. But it's imperative that you study it carefully".

State education. Gotta love it. 

Subsidising al-Qaeda

There's an interesting article at Marginal Revolution looking at some of the unintended consequences of Pigou taxes as applied to the perceived need to keep fossil fuels underground. There seems to be a serious risk that the imposition of a Pigou tax will either simply redistribute oil to non-Pigou-taxing countries, or simply accelerate production as producers seek to avoid ever-rising tax levels.

The bottom line is this: paying countries to blow up their oil fields may be more effective than taxing the resource.

As Tyler Cowen notes, we know of several freelance groups who will do this kind of thing for free.

...which kind of makes you wonder how long will it be until the Greens call for al-Qaeda to receive state subsidies, in view of the selfless work they are doing in the fight to save us from global warming.

Bent Society?

This looks like it could be interesting - Bent Society? is a blog by a professional criminologist called Mike Sutton. There is a good piece here about government lead property marking schemes. Choice quote from one particular scrote interviewed by Dr Sutton:

Another interviewee said that he was never affected by property marking, saying that he stole it anyway:

“…the criminals is always one step ahead of them [police]. It doesn’t take long for someone to sit there with a bit of brain on ‘em and fuckin figure out how to fuckin decode it, get rid of markings or whatever. And you always know somebody like that. There is always going to be somebody like that [who could remove property marking or security features for the thief or fence]. When you’ve got a proper buyer [Commercial Fence] who spends money getting it sorted out he will.”

Gordon Brown's education

Gordon Brown has been holding forth on the subject of education.

We've moved our schools from being below average to being above average. We've now got to make them world class.

Whatever Gordon Brown studied at Edinburgh, I'm quite certain it wasn't mathematics because his understanding of the word "average" seems a little, shall we say, hazy. We know this because the BBC reports in the same article that the government has been stung into action by 

a controversial report earlier this year from Unicef, which put the UK at the bottom of a league table of children's well-being among 21 industrialised nations.

Climate cuttings 11

After the hectic pace of the last few weeks, things have quieted down a bit on the climate front, but there's still plenty to cause a bit of shock and awe for those whose scientific training was in fields where "post-modern science" is less the vogue.

IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth took pot shots at Syun-Ichi Akasofu of the International Arctic Research Centre. He tells us that the Hockey Stick has been confirmed (choosing not to discuss the findings of Professor Wegman which confirmed that it was broken).

Global warming sceptics are soon to be non-persons. The Wikipedia list of those opposing the hysterical outlook on the planet's climate has been flagged for deletion. Perhaps it was getting too long?

Robert Corell, a director of Mrs John Kerry's Heinz Centre in Washington, said that melting glaciers were causing earthquakes. Jose Rial, a professor of geophysics at the University of North Carolina said that this was scaremongering.

A group of Italian scientists compared 19 climate models used in the IPCC's 4th report. The outputs are apparently entirely inconsistent with each other, thus confirming the view that climate models are currently, and possibly inherently, unreliable. 

People are still chucking rocks in the direction of NASA's bungling AGW cheerleader, James Hansen. Lubos Motl says he was involved in the 1970s global cooling scare too. Meanwhile there was a brouhaha about the fact that he appears to have been receiving money from George Soros. This follows his being showered in cash by the aforementioned Mrs John Kerry - Teresa Heinz. Why are these left-wing luminaries so generous to a public servant? The Soros story has been brought up to date by Paul Biggs writing at Jennifer Marohasy's blog.

There was lots of interest in the climate history of Wellington, New Zealand. Hansen has managed to adjust his way from a gently cooling trend to a sharply warming one. Oh, and the city seems to have disappeared altogether after 1988. Only climate scientists can make major conurbations disappear before your very eyes, it seems. Climate Skeptic's take on the affair here. Climate Audit here. 

Those who follow the AGW debate know that in the ice core records, increases in temperature lead increases in CO2 by about 800 years, implying what we might call an inconvenient causality. The hysterics try to shrug it off by saying it's all to do with feedbacks. They were very excited by a new paper which claimed that the lag was less than the 800 years previously thought. Unfortunately another paper a few days later suggested a lag of 1300 years.

An online journal called Credibility Climate of the Past published a paper by prominent climate scientist (and Green party councillor) Martin Juckes, attacking McIntyre & McItrick's refutation of the hockey stick. They managed to do this despite this involving their breaching their own policies on review comments and having an editor who had a clear conflict of interest, again in breach of their stated policies. They also didn't seem to mind that the content of the paper was wrong. Cue much blustering from the bigwigs at the journal and claims that "it's very hard to find an unconflicted editor". Cue also McIntyre pointing out that almost any other member of their editorial board would not have been conflicted in the same way. Full story here. Do read the comments thread too.

One of the key reconstructions of the historical climate is that of Osborn and Briffa who say that the 20th Century was abnormally warm. Their work has been the subject of much attention from Climate Audit in recent years. Now another researcher, Gerd Berger of Berlin’s Institut für Meteorologie, has reported that Osborn & Briffa have not done their statistical tests correctly. This will not be a surprise to regular readers. Berger has gone on to recreate their work using the correct tests and says that doing this makes the 20th century temperatures look pretty normal.

Some interesting work has been published by a statistician/blogger called Jonathan Lowe. While the AGW community looks at daily max/min temperatures, JL has looked instead at temperatures throughout the day and finds that night time temperatures in Australia show no trend. It's only daytime temperatures that are rising - when the sun is out.

And that's it folks. As always, thanks to everyone who sent links, even if I didn't use them. Keep them coming.

Law on self-defence

So the law on self-defence is going to be clarified (again), says the BBC. "Have a go" Jack Straw reckons that citizens need to know that the law is on their side, and that they can use "reasonable force". Nick Clegg for the Lib Dems says everyone knows that "proportionate, reasonable force" can be used.

I wonder if either of these two gentlemen would care to let us all know what force it would be "proportionate" and "reasonable" for a pensioner to use when confronted with a drug-crazed twenty-something in the dark in the middle of the night?

Also could they let us know if such pensioners can keep weapons by their beds for purposes of self-defence?

And must these aged homeowners ascertain the identity and/or intentions of the intruder before acting, or can they strike first and ask questions later?  

Or must we consider the aged as dispensable? 

Jane Garvey

The BBC is asking listeners to send in their favourite Jane Garvey moment to mark the presenter's departure from her Radio 5 Live show. Mine is probably a bit too rude for them to accept so I'm posting it here. I remember a truly awe-inspiring cock-up which I think was one of JG's. It went something like:

JG: "And now we're just going to get the latest results from the English Cunty Cricket matches.....oh, I'm most dreadfully sorry...er..and ...er moving swiftly on....".

Never show regret. Never apologise.

Ozone hole - conviction unsafe

Nature has reported that there is now strong evidence that the current understanding of how the hole in the ozone layer comes into being is wrong.

Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, did a double-take when he saw new data for the break-down rate of a crucial molecule, dichlorine peroxide (Cl2O2). The rate of photolysis (light-activated splitting) of this molecule reported by chemists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was extremely low in the wavelengths available in the stratosphere — almost an order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted rate. "This must have far-reaching consequences," Rex says. "If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being."

Dodgy thing, scientific consensus, wouldn't you say?

(Via Jennifer Marohasy) 

Lib Dems and internationalism

The Nameless One, guestblogging at the Devil's Kitchen has fired off a few rounds at the Liberal Democrats by way of wishing them well at the end of their annual conference.

The Liberal Democrats are little more than a debating society for those who want to appear worthy and want to appear “right on”. The party is a talking shop for those who don’t want to make hard, realistic policy choices.

Tristan Mills in the comments shoots back:

I agree, there's a lot wrong with LibDem policy, but at least they start from a decent posistion of individualism and liberty unlike Labour - collectivism and the state, or the Tories - collectivism in service of the state and other vested interests.

Most people who visit this site will find themselves nodding in agreement with the criticisms of the Tories and Labour, but will still be struggling to reconcile themselves with the idea that the Liberal Democrats are interested in individualism, which is the mark of a liberal party - something the Liberal Democrats are not (yet?).

Here's an example. The Lib Dems call themselves an internationalist party. - as Stephen Tall puts it:

We are, by collective instinct, an internationalist party, perhaps the only one left in the British political mainstream.

It's worth asking ourselves exactly what is meant by "internationalist". The Wikipedia definition is this:

Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all.

 and goes on to say

Internationalists advocate the presence of a United Nations type organization, and often support a stronger version of a world government.

This appears to me to be just about as far away from Tristan's professed position of "individualism and liberty" as it's possible to get. Hard as it is to believe, internationalism embodies a belief that we need more government. That if we can just come up with some political structure to agree the correct course of action, out problems will be over. No matter that some of us might disagree with the chosen course - in a world of superstates it's hard or sometimes impossible to vote with your feet. We will be forced to go along with what our political masters decree.

It's not that internationalism is hard to reconcile with individualism. Internationalism is individualism's antithesis.