What due diligence studies of engineering quality have been carried out in respect of both the science basis for energy policy and for the energy policy itself?

(the IPCC reports are assessments, not due diligence studies)

To the Met Office:

"To summarise any empirical evidence that carbon dioxide, produced by human activity, could significantly change the climate of the Earth, or cause disruption to regional weather (and in doing this accepting the IPCC conclusion that it is impossible for computer models to simulate a coupled, non-linear chotic system)"

|I would ask for the engineering feasibility study that enabled Ms. Worthington to put together the CCA.

I would then ask for the engineering road map to achieve the targets set out in the act. That is the road map which shows energy generation capability coming on line and energy generation capability being decommissioned.

Thirdly I would ask for the name of the person who had overall responsibility for delivery of the road map in such a way that there would be no energy shortfalls.

I know the answers to those questions. To all three the answer is the same: "There isn't one".

I believe the British public should be made aware of the recklessness of politicians of all parties in embarking on a programme that without a feasibility study, a plan, and manager. So let's get it out there for the public to see.

It's worth emphasising the point about due diligence.

In the commercial sector, if you were planning on spending of millions, or in this case billions, on a venture, you would perform due diligence studies. These would check everything you think you know about the subject in question. You would need all the research, you would have to check that everything in the research that the venture relied on was correct, that the sums were right, that the assumptions and references that the research relied on was correct, that the measurements were correct, that the instruments taking the measurements were not faulty or were used correctly.

Such studies are typically very costly, and require vast teams of disinterested contractors, from all sorts of disciplines, but they are designed to ensure that bias's are eliminated as much as possible, which in turn ensures you don't ask investors to sink money on something that won't work (or is unnecessary). To my knowledge, no such study has ever been undertaken by anyone on the issue of nothing less than the entire re-structuring of the worlds energy economy.

Simply asking the question whether anyone has actually checked to make sure that the science basis that the policy is based on is sound, to the rigorous degree that would be required in the commercial sector, ought to illuminate that no, no one has actually checked. The IPCC is an assessment of the science surrounding the possibility and implications of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is not a study checking to make sure that the highly co-dependent nature of the science is correct to an an engineering level of detail.

It should also be noted that peer review is NOT due diligence either. In general it is a coarse filter to ensure that nothing egregious is being unjustifiably claimed and that it contributes something to the body of knowledge.

If the government wanted to spend £1 trillion to put all of the country's houses onto pneumatic stilts, I would want to know for sure that it was a) necessary b) the best solution.

Nice response Mike,

But I prefer to be "Agnostic" about this as possible. I appreciate it looks like a serious but hugely premature scientific issue was raised, which caught on, and then was promulgated and supported by vested interests, but I think it has mostly been victim of group think and hubris.

It doesn't help that US right-wingers view it as entirely about big government restricting personal liberty, and defining the argument along political lines, rather than entirely about justification of extreme policy based on premature science. I think Lord Donaughue's position is exactly right - as was FOIA who posted the climategate emails. The evidence doesn't justify the policy implications, but nobody has actually properly checked it!

Agreed. My suggestion was just a starting point.

You are right about General Circulation Model, though I have seen Global used occasionally and it stuck in my mind:
http://www.cmmap.org/learn/modeling/whatis1.html
http://www.ccafs-climate.org/downloads/docs/Downscaling-WP-01.pdf

Apologies all,

Coming to this a little late, but I thought the main thrust of the questions from Stringer thru to Donoghue was whether

"the Met Office in a climate science briefing sent to the chief scientific adviser on 8 February 2010 was supported by any statistical time-series analysis."

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/17/not-answering-the-question.html

The Met Office answer seems to be NO. From the blog post (http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/a-response-on-statistical-models-and-global-temperature/)

"Using statistical tests in the absence of this other information is inappropriate, particularly when it is not possible to know, definitively, which is the most appropriate statistical model to use."

Further, they indicate the briefing was based on their "judgement"

"Our judgment that changes in temperature since 1850 are driven by human activity is based on information not just from the global temperature trend, or statistics, but also our knowledge of the way that the climate system works, how it responds to global fossil fuel emissions and observations of a wide range of other indicators, such as sea ice, glacier mass, sea level rise, etc."

Which all seems a rather roundabout way of saying the briefing was not supported by any satistical time series it was just their opinion/judgement, for all that that is worth.

I'm sure there is more detail to the conversation, but isn't that what the questioning was trying to determine?