A foot of hail in Spain

From the annals of WeathernotClimate, comes something rather unusual from Spain.

Tragicomedy

The winter season at London's Royal Court Theatre this year includes a must-be-missed-at-all-costs event for climate geeks:

The season continues with Duncan Macmillan and Chris Rapley's 2071, beginning performances Nov. 5 prior to an official opening Nov. 6, for a run through Nov. 15. It is co-produced with Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, where the show will run for six performances between December 2014 and February 2015. Writer Duncan Macmillan has been talking to Chris Rapley, Professor of Climate Science at University Collete London and Chair of the London Climate Change Partnership. Working with director Katie Mitchell, a new piece of theatre has been created where the science is centerstage.

H/T Barry Woods

A Very Important Commission

University College London has set up a grandly-named "Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science" and today the team, led by Professor Chris Rapley, has issued its much anticipated report.

Having scanned a few pages, it comes over as just what you'd expect: we learn that GWPF is a "right-wing think tank" and that "Riley Dunlap and Peter Jacques, based on a study of over 100 climate-change-dismissive books, identify strong links to conservative think-tanks".  (The latter paper was covered at BH here, where I noted its bonkers allegation that my publisher is "overtly conservative"). There is also an approving link to Suzanne Goldenberg's specious claim that we sceptics have a billion dollars a year to spend and another to Skeptical Science. Still, this sort of idiocy is no doubt good enough for a Very Important Policy Commission.

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Bacon - is there anything it can't do?

The ability of bacon to cure all known ills has long been recognised, but now, thanks to the global warming movement, its day of reckoning may be near. It seems that the humble bacon butty is causing global warming.

I kid you not.

Researchers have come closer to understanding why fatty acids, emitted in significant quantities by fast food outlets cooking meat, persist for so long in the atmosphere.

Yup, and these particulates cause global warming.

The presence of particulate matter in the atmosphere is a major health concern and may ultimately have significant climate change implications. Reports suggest that around a third of directly emitted aerosols above central London come from cooking...

But as a cloud looms in the shape of an imminent (no doubt) ban on the English breakfast, there is at least a silver lining because it seems that oil-based biofuels are also a major factor in the rise in oil-based particulates. So we might also ask: biofuels - is there anything they can't ruin?

Lew's downfall

Donna Laframboise is in town, so blogging will be slow for a couple of days.

In the meantime Geoff Chambers points me to the (almost inevitable) "Downfall" video to accompany Stephan Lewandowsky's recent demise. Enjoy.

+++Michael Gove responds to Climate Control+++

According to Breitbart London, Education Secretary Michael Gove has issued a statement in response to the Montford/Shade report on climate change education:

A spokesman for Michael Gove, has said that teachers who do not offer a balanced view on issues like climate change are breaking the law. The Department for Education's comments came after a report from The Global Warming Policy Foundation raised serious concerns about the lack of balance in British classrooms.

Read the whole thing.

Climate control

The following press release was issued by GWPF yesterday:

London, 8 April: A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation is calling for Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, to institute an official inquiry into the way environmentalism and in particular climate change are being taught in schools.

In the report, authors Andrew Montford and John Shade describe how environmentalism has come to permeate school curricula across the UK, featuring in an astonishing variety of subjects, from geography to religious education to modern languages. Passing examinations will now usually involve the ability to recite green mantras rather than understanding the subtle questions of science and economics involved.

The authors review in detail the climate change teaching materials currently used in British schools, with disturbing results. There is ample evidence of unscientific statements, manipulated graphs, and activist materials used in class and even found in textbooks.

The report also describes how activist teachers try to make children become the footsoldiers of the green movement, encouraging them to harass their schoolmates and pester their parents to bring about “behaviour change”.

The use of fear of climate change to alter children’s behaviour is also highlighted. This is undoubtedly having harmful consequences on children’s development and surveys indicate that fear of the future is widespread. The report quotes one child as saying:

"I worry about [global warming] because I don’t want to die."

Author Andrew Montford says: “The brainwashing of our children for political ends is shameful. Those responsible for education in the UK need to take action and take it quickly”

The report has been the work of many months and I must say I think the results are an appalling indictment of what is going on in schools. I just hope people take notice.

The full text is here.

Deliberately or otherwise, Slingo has misled the public

Almost every scientist who has said anything about the floods has said that there is no way to link them to global warming - Brian Hoskins was fairly clear about this on the Today programme. The latest is Matt Collins from the University of Exeter, quoted in the Mail on Sunday:

Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’

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About those Poles...

Marcin KorolecReaders who watched yesterday's questions in the Lords will have noted the noble and learned Baroness Worthington asking a question about what the government are doing about learning from the Poles on the shale gas front.

Interestingly, today we learn that the Polish prime minister has sacked his environment minister Marcin Korolec and is to bring in someone who is going to work a bit harder to accelerate the pace of shale gas development:

"It is about radical acceleration of shale gas operations. Mr Korolec will remain the government's plenipotentiary for the climate negotiations," Tusk told a news conference.

Ground shifting

Is that a shift in the climate change ground I feel? Japan has backed away from its renewables targets. Rich countries seem to be on the verge of reneging on their climate change promises to poor countries. The Science and Technology Committee Energy and Climate Change Committee is to undertake an inquiry into the scientific integrity of the Fifth Assessment Report. And they have invited Donna Laframboise (and to my certain knowledge some other sceptics) to give evidence.

Wishful thinking? We shall see.

Update 12.17pm, 17.11.13 Donna has clarified her post to make it clear that she has been invited to give written evidence.

The IBT: the same, but different

The International Broadcasting Trust is an environmentalist-funded group that has tried, mostly successfully, to encourage broadcasters to become advocates for the green movement. It is best known as one of the co-hosts of the 28gate seminar. It recently issued a report on the state of green TV which can be seen here. Along the way they interviewed a number of people involved in the climate debate, including many of the usual suspects - Joe Smith, Nick Pigeon, Steve Jones, John Beddington. However, in what looks to me like a change in tack, they have also included a couple of sceptics - David Whitehouse of GWPF and Martin Durkin of Great Global Warming Swindle Fame - although the impact of the latter two is hard to discern.

They seem to be worried:

..most concerning, in the light of the importance of non-news TV in helping to inform and educate the audience, is the fact that during our year’s research we found no factual long form programme dealing head on with the issue of climate change or the growing debate about how to mitigate or adapt to it, and none dealing with another major issue, population growth. This finding raises serious questions about broadcasters’ will or ability to reflect some of the most important scientific research and policy decisions we face today.

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The voice of ex-corporate man

The former head of TV at the BBC, Roger Mosey, has hit out at groupthink at the BBC:

"The BBC Trust speaks the language of diversity but in its edicts it promotes conformity, whether its about an agreed approach to the science of climate change, 'correct' terminology in the Middle East or the way a documentary about benefits should be constructed," he said.

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Climate incentive, climate invective

Clive James has made another of his intermittent forays into the climate debate. In the course of a review of Brian Cox's Science Britannica programme he had this to say:

Fronting Science Britannica on BBC Two, Professor Cox visited the Royal Society and Bletchley Park in his quest for examples of the scientific method. Finally he dropped in on the Royal Institution, where he and the editor of Nature puzzled together, but not very hard, over how there has come to be an “overwhelming scientific consensus” favouring the concept of dangerous man-made global warming.

Neither of them asked what kind of scientific consensus it was if, say, Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies declined to join it. Isn’t the overwhelming scientific consensus really just a consensus between climate scientists, and therefore no more impressive than the undoubted fact that one hundred percent of gymnasium attendants believe that regular exercise is vital to longevity?

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Stott and Shuck - the transcript

Reader Lapogus sends this transcript of the interviews of Emily Shuckburgh and Peter Stott on Friday. Both Lapogus and I were struck by some of the statements made, and felt they were worthy of fact-checking.

BBC Radio 5 Live, Shelagh Fogarty Show, 27.09.2013: Matt McGrath (BBC Environment Correspondent) interview with Peter Stott (UK Met Office) in Stockholm on release of the IPCC SPM5.

Source: http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/FogertyshowAWM.mp3

Shelagh Fogarty (studio, 2.10) … where does this report fit into the IPPC’s history, because it has been an interesting history, not without its issues and not without its attackers…

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My letter in The Australian

I have a letter in The Australian rebutting various aspects of John Cook's response to my critique of his "Consensus" paper. It's paywalled, so I can't see exactly what made print, but this is what I sent them.

Sir

Having no defence to my observation that the global warming consensus identified in his paper amounts to little more than the everyday observations that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that it will cause some warming, John Cook (article, 21 September) seeks to find solace in an opinion poll he conducted, in which he found that the vast majority of scientists rated their own papers as supporting the idea that mankind is causing most global warming.

Readers should note that Mr Cook is making a new claim – his original paper only spoke of claims about mankind causing some unspecified quantity of global warming and my observation that the consensus it reveals is a shallow one is therefore true.

One assumes that the reason he did not make the stronger claim in his paper is that his poll of scientists is not scientifically robust. Most sceptics would surely have ignored his request, and so the results are almost certainly biased.

Yours etc