Story time at the Guardian

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pperinik/171198564Nearly a week after Nic Lewis pubished his rather devastating critique of the Marvel et al paper, Dana Nuccitelli has decided it's time to tell the Graun readers about...the Marvel et al paper. Readers might be interested to compare excerpts from Dana's piece and Nic Lewis's one.

...even had Marvel et al.’s efficacy estimates and calculations been valid, they would have had no material implications for the Otto et al 2013 TCR and ECR estimates. That is because the underlying forcing estimates used in that study already reflect efficacies, contrary to what Marvel et al. imply.

Nic Lewis, in his article about the Marvel et al paper, 8 January 2016

Let's be fair, Otto et al. didn't account for forcing efficacies either, and most of the co-authors on that paper were top notch scientists.

Dana Nuccitelli today.

It's remarkable that Lewis has managed to refute Nuccitelli even before Nuccitelli started to write. I imagine this happens to Dana quite a lot though.

It's the greens, stupid

With the cold weather finally upon us, albeit in rather halfhearted fashion, ComparetheMarket.com has put out a press release reporting that old folk are going to be switching off the heating rather than switching it up. This has been widely reported: 

More than 60 per cent of elderly people will ration their heating this winter amid fears over high energy bills, according to a new survey.

As many as two in five (42 per cent) said they would also consider cutting back on food in order to meet the cost of heating their homes, comparison website comparethemarket.com said.

Hat tip then to Fenbeagle for pointing me to this report by the Competitions and Markets Authority, which found that much of the blame can be laid at the feet of environmentalists and their friends in high places:

...for electricity, the main drivers of 7 domestic price increases from 2009 to 2013 were the costs of social and environmental obligations and network costs...For gas, there has been a broadly even percentage increase in wholesale costs, network costs, obligation costs and indirect costs...

"Nothing in it is correct"

The eminent statistician (and occasional BH reader) Radford Neal has been writing a series of posts on global temperature data at his blog. There are three so far:

What can global temperature data tell us?

Has there been a pause in global warming?

and finally

Critique of "Debunking the climate hiatus", by Rajaratnam, Romano, Tsiang and Diffenbaugh.

Click to read more ...

Wanna bet?

A blog called "Professional Conflict Resolution" is calling for the two sides of the climate debate to resolve their differences by means of a positive spree of gambling. The author says that "What the climate community needs are objectively verifiable predictions", which is, I think, a position that few people on this site would disagree with.

The climate community is losing the battle because it has failed to put out objective measurable changes.  The climate community requires something akin to the Simon-Ehrlich wager. I myself see the argument as whether climate change is happening (it is) or whether the earth’s temperature is rising (it is).

The debate – indeed, the whole debate in Paris was about this – is about whether the effects of climate change will be beyond the ability of humans to adapt.  To quote a presentation by Mark Boslough, is global warming “inconvenient or catastrophic?” The future can only be projected.  We have no empirical observational data about 2025.  Or even about tomorrow.

Whether climate change is inconvenient or catastrophic must be demonstrated with predictions ahead of time

Thus I maintain that in order to obtain credibility, the climate community must provide objective benchmark predictions.  These predictions must not be subject to interpretation.  They must also be indicative of a trend and cannot be individual events like storms or droughts.

One caution: do not place bets on global temperature. This must not be about whether the world is warming. It must instead focus solely on impacts.  In order to demonstrate that there will be catastrophic things, there must be demonstrated that there was predicted these events.

The reaction should be interesting.

Green blob in control at Environment Agency

I can't help feeling that the resignation of Environment Agency chairman Sir Philip Dilley was all a bit overdone. As chairman, he doesn't presumably actually involve himself in the day-to-day running of the place; that's the job of the chief executive. The chairman is supposed to set the strategic direction, which is not something you even really want to be thinking about in the middle of a major crisis. Frankly a beach in Barbados was probably the best place for him while there were major floods around.

Now you can certainly take potshots at Sir Philip for the general state of the Environment Agency, which appears to be both thoroughly incompetent and riddled with corruption, but he was at least an engineer by background. Take a look at who has stepped into his shoes, at least on a temporary basis: the green blob personified. Emma Howard Boyd appears to have made a career in "corporate social responsibility" and is a director of a green investment fund as well as having roles in any number of green NGOs.

It will be interesting to see if they keep her on.

AEP and the GLCL*

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has an article in the Telegraph boldly declaring that the UK is backing away from wind power just as they become competitive with fossil fuels. The story seems to be that if only wind turbines could be made really, really huge, then everything would be OK.

Cue a barrage of graphs to support the (alleged) case.

Click to read more ...

How can the BBC help you advertise your wares better, Mr Green Blob?

BBC preparations for the arrival of the Green BlobMy thanks to Stewgreen for pointing me to this excerpt from Jeremy Leggett's new book, describing a meeting with Roger Harrabin:

In the headquarters of the Britsh Broadcasting Corporation, I sit talking with veteran environment correspondent, Roger Harrabin. I am accompanied by my Solarcentury colleagues Frans van den Heuvel and Sarah Allison. We want to explore with Roger whether there are ways that solar energy can be better covered on television.

Click to read more ...

Captain Marvel comes unstuck

While everyone else was out partying on Hogmanay, Bob Ward was hard at work writing tweets about global warming. Let noone say he is not a strangely obsessive personality.

A new paper on climate sensitivity that @mattwridley and other peddlers of denial will pretend does not exist: https://t.co/RJWJFNODkR

— Bob Ward (@ret_ward) December 31, 2015

This was a bit of a silly thing for Bob to say though because I had written a post about the said paper, by Marvel et al, some two weeks earlier, noting that it looked a bit unphysical in places.

Click to read more ...

Sustainable science - Josh 356

New Year is always a time to resolve to do better and maybe recycle stuff from 2015 that's lying around doing nothing useful. Happy 2016!

H/t to golf charlie for the inspiration ;-)

Posted by Josh

Holyrood smothers another new industry at birth

Cluff Natural Resources has stopped all work on its plans for underground coal gasification in the Firth of Forth. There seems to be a strong hint that the are turning their backs on the development for good.

The Holyrood administration's moratorium has killed off coalbed methane development north of the border completely. It now looks as if they have done for UCG as well.

It's hard to imagine any unsubsidised industrial business wanting to invest in Scotland when the administration is at the beck and call of the greens.

The BBC and the chief scientist

Ben Pile highlights a fascinating comment at Guido's blog:

In 2010, I was on a research trip to an area north of Svalbard. We were lucky enough to have a So-Called BBC journalist along for the ride. Unfortunately, my cabin was very close to his which meant that I had to listen to him editing his riveting reports about Climate Change™ before they were broadcast on BBC Climate Change 24. He'd just interviewed a Danish glaciologist that we had with us who explained a process with the sea ice that was "a negative feedback" (contrary to climate change bollox). I heard Mr X, the journalist, rewind and replay the tape about 5 times before he finally rang the chief scientist for advice because "I'm not sure this is putting out the right message...."

This raises a few questions: is this the government chief scientist that is referred to? And who was the BBC journalist? I'm struggling to find a BBC article about Svalbard around that time.

It would be extraordinary if the BBC was contacting the GCSA for "lines to take".

Update on Jan 8, 2016 by Bishop Hill

A possible candidate seems to be Richard Hollingham.

Update on Jan 8, 2016 by Bishop Hill

Hollingham's show is here. From 13:30 he discusses how sea ice formation can capture CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing AGW. No discussion of what kind of a feedback this might be though - ie does the effect increase or decrease in a warming world.

Teaching values

There is a rather interesting article in Times Higher Education about Joanna Williams, an academic who has taken it upon herself to criticise the close-mindedness of the academy. She has this to say about global warming and environmentalism.

I am not a climate-change denier, but I think it should be discussed and not placed beyond discussion – and I certainly don’t think that the response we have as a society is beyond discussion,” she says. “Sustainability is one solution, but there might also be more technological solutions. But, within higher education, sustainability has become a major topic and is taught as a moral value. You assess ‘Are your students demonstrating sustainability?’ rather than ‘Is sustainability the only response?’…You can see even in the titles of some courses that sustainability is the answer…As soon as you present something as a value and assess students on that value, you are putting things beyond debate.

Yup.

Sticking one's neck out

Updated on Jan 7, 2016 by Bishop Hill

I avoid making predictions about the evolution of surface temperatures over the period of a few years. Those who choose to do so are frequently get themselves into trouble. James Annan lost his bet with GWPF's David Whitehouse and it looks as if GWPF's Sir Alan Rudge will lose out to Chris Hope on another wager.

Click to read more ...

The inner Duce

My review of Liberal Fascism the other day provoked a very long comments thread and lots of strong views. I was therefore interested to see this article by Joel Kotkin - a Democrat, albeit a conservative one.

Today climate change has become the killer app for expanding state control, for example, helping Jerry Brown find his inner Duce. But the authoritarian urge is hardly limited to climate-related issues. It can be seen on college campuses, where uniformity of belief is increasingly mandated. In Europe, the other democratic bastion, the continental bureaucracy now controls ever more of daily life on the continent. You don’t want thousands of Syrian refugees in your town, but the EU knows better. You will take them and like it, or be labeled a racist.

Quote of the day, El Nino edition

In the UK, [El Nino's] impact is likely to be subdued, although past experience suggests that a colder winter could result.

Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus in Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL