Disinvited: IPCC will not be going to the UN COP18 Party in Doha

From the ‘pinch me; I’m dreaming’ dept. this news from the Gulf Times:

Climate Change panel chief says ‘not invited to COP18’
By Bonnie James
Deputy News Editor

Image Courtesy of joshcartoons.com Click image to visit. Buy a 2013 calendar while you’re there.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said.
“For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,” he told Gulf Times in Doha.
COP18 is to be held from November 26 to December 7.
The IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, former vice president of the US and environmental activist, is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. Currently 195 countries are members.
Dr Pachauri first hinted about his ‘anticipated absence’ at COP18, while speaking at the opening session of the International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands (FSDL) on Wednesday at Qatar University.
Later, he told Gulf Times he did not know why the IPCC has not been invited to COP18, something that has happened never before.

I don’t know what it is. The executive secretary of the climate change secretariat has to decide. I have attended every COP and the chairman of the IPCC addresses the COP in the opening session

As Pensioners struggle to heat homes Energy boss reveals 1500 pound-a-minute profits

From the Daily Record, something which won’t be forgotten.

SCOTLAND’S biggest energy company have announced profits of nearly £1500 a minute – weeks after hitting their customers with inflation-busting price rises.

SSE, parent company of Scottish Hydro, made £397.5million – up 38 per cent on the same period last year – in the six months to September.

They told their five million electricity and 2.4million gas customers a month ago that their bills were going up by an average of nine per cent.

Ninety-year-old Lily Kennedy, one of thousands of hard-up Scots pensioners struggling to pay SSE’s bills, said:

When I found out about these profits, it made me feel sick.

Great new blog started here by Ruth Dixon, bookmark it.

My Garden Pond

‘How will we cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050?’, ‘Will it destroy our economy?’ and ‘Why should the UK meet such stringent targets if the UK is responsible for less than 2% of global emissions?’

I have a set of 53 responses from 49 MPs to these questions from their constituents. In his column in the Sunday Telegraph in April 2012, Christopher Booker asked his readers to ask their MP those questions (paraphrased above) and to send him the replies. He reported on the results on 23 June and 21 July. I wrote via the Sunday Telegraph to ask if I could analyse the replies more quantitatively. Christopher Booker kindly agreed, and this is the result.

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“The science does not exist to make detailed forecasts for temperature and snowfall for the end of this month, let alone for December or even the winter as a whole”

Official blog of the Met Office news team

We wrote only last week that it seems that it is the time of year again for colourful headlines about an impending big freeze.

We had them at this time last year, which prompted our Chief Executive to write an opinion piece in The Times. Now we have very similar stories again, with the front page of the Daily Express declaring last week ‘Coldest winter freeze on way’ and warning that temperatures are set to plunge as low as -15C and again a week on we have another front page from the Daily Express which declares ‘Coldest winter for 100 years on way‘. with the UK expected to grind to a halt within weeks.

These longer range forecasts for December and January have not come from the Met Office and a look at our current 30 day forecast provides perhaps a more measured assessment of our weather prospects…

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Cartoons by Josh: 2013 Calendar now at the printers – Order now!

Our old friend Josh has sent me flyer for his 2013 calendar. This is great idea for a stocking filler, buy one (or more) for your climate friends (or foes) and support Josh’s fantastic (and mostly unpaid) work.See below the break for the description and ordering instructions. Humour is a powewrful force in shaping ideas, and Josh’s talent speaks volumes for his insight into the important factors in the climate debate.

Click to order your 2013 Calendar at Josh’s website

 

Limited Availability: Wind Controlled Climate: Thesis by Hans Jelbring

Hans Jelbring has kindly sent me seven copies of his successfully defended 1998 Doctoral Thesis ‘Wind Controlled Climate’ from Sweden. Nicely produced and bound, these are rare. I’m keeping one, and to cover production and postal costs from Sweden, these copies are for sale at the special introductory price of £12 inc VAT + postage to your location.

Given this historical moment as the momentum gathers around the new understanding of the causes of the atmospheric thermal enhancement, and Hans Jelbring’s authorship of an early paper pointing the way to a study of other planets as the correct method of confirming the effect of atmospheric mass rather than composition as the major cause of surface temperature level above grey-body baseline, this is a truly smart investment, and a bargain.

Chris Huhne: Moving as slowly as possible these days

Image Courtesy of Fenbeagle
Click for full cartoon.

An out of date update on the Crown vs Huhne & Pryce case from the Eastleigh News.

Eastleigh residents will be heaving a sigh of relief with the news that Chris Huhne, Eastleigh’s popular MP, will still be available to switch on the Town’s Christmas lights next month after a judge postponed his trial on charges of perverting  the course of justice which were due to start this week.

Huhne along with his former wife Vicky Pryce are accused of dodging speeding penalty points – charges he has strongly denied.

He resigned his cabinet post as Energy Secretary in February in order to defend himself and on Monday it is understood his lawyers attempted to get the case dismissed.

After a week of legal arguments it has been decided by Justice Sweeny to postpone the trial to January 14 for legal reasons, but Eastleigh News cannot report on the nature of these legal reasons due to legal reasons.  🙂

Read the rest here:
http://www.eastleighnews.org.uk/news/2012/10/05/huhne-ok-for-christmas-light-switch-on/

Double Standards: BBC seminar on impartiality in Economics Reporting vs the Climate TwentyEightGate Affair

Well now, here’s something worth flagging up. A fortnight ago, the BBC held a seminar on impartiality in economics reporting. Here’s Trust Vice Chair Diane Coyle’s comment on it, followed by the list of participants and an excerpt from the document describing the seminar. I invite readers to compare and contrast that excerpt with the BBC’s policy on excluding sceptics from the climate debate as presented by their output.

Date: 06.11.2012Last updated: 06.11.2012 at 18.03Category: Comment; Editorial standards; Impartiality

Diane Coyle, BBC Vice Chair

What is the most important issue facing Britain today?

Asked that question in September, over half of the participants in an Ipsos Mori survey named the economy. They put it well above unemployment, crime and law and order, housing, poverty, education, and a long list of other issues.

The importance that people attach to the economy has seen a huge increase in the last few years, according to the survey, an increase that can be traced back to 2006 when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit in the US. A poll for the Reuters Institute Digital News Survey this year showed a significant shift, too, in how often people seek out news about the economy online. Before the crash, most people were happy to keep up with financial matters about once a month, and 40 per cent never, or rarely. Now, one third are doing so daily and more than three quarters are doing so at least weekly, this survey shows.

This intense interest has important implications for BBC journalists. It’s all the more essential that the news the BBC provides about the economic situation is high quality, accurate, impartial, and above all explains what can often be extraordinarily complex stories in accessible ways. The BBC’s role is arguably more important than ever – asked in another recent survey where they would turn for news in a serious economic crisis, 55 per cent said the BBC would be their first port of call. That responsibility to audiences should never be underestimated and one of the jobs of the BBC Trust is to ensure that the BBC does everything it can to meet the expectations of its audiences, and is never complacent about doing so.

This context is why the BBC Trust chose economics for an impartiality seminar today, the first of this kind we have tried, bringing together economics experts, academics and economics correspondents from inside and outside the BBC, to discuss how the BBC can achieve impartiality when reporting economics issues in its news coverage. As both a BBC Trustee and an economist myself, I think the BBC’s journalists face a difficult challenge, given the many dimensions of the continuing economic and financial problems, and the fact that it is hard to disentangle technical, professional disagreement from political differences.

True Polar Wander: Shifting of the Earth’s Surface Relative to its Spin Axis

Here’s an interesting article from the IOP website; How Earth’s wandering poles return home. It takes the Solar System about 225–250 million years to complete one orbit around the Galaxy (a Galactic year), so there may be a relationship between this and the cycle of  the ‘tipping’ of the surface relative to the spin axis.

True polar wander (TPW) can be defined as the relative movement between the mantle (and so the surface of the Earth) and the Earth’s spin axis or its rotational axis. Incredibly, researchers believe that over the past one billion years, the Earth’s surface has “tipped over” and then returned to its original location six times along the same axis – this is the process of “oscillatory true polar wander”.

What has eluded researchers is a theory that clearly explains how and why the pole returns to its original location, or the “oscillatory true polar wander”. In the new work, graduate student Jessica Creveling, also of the Earth and Planetary Science Department at Harvard, along with Mitrovica and colleagues, provides an explanation.

Paul Vaughan: Comparing Sea Surface Temperature With Solar Data

Pual Vaughan has sent me an interesting plot indicating a strong relationship between SST and Solar Data, including curves derived from part of Leif Svalgaard’s homogenised SSN series and the current SIDC series. Hopefully he will be available for discussion.

On WUWT’s Isaac Held article by Alec Rawls, he adds a few notes:

Add your thoughts here… (optional)

Watts Up With That?

Welcome, for the next 24 hours, WUWT will be bringing you the counterpoint to Al Gore’s claim that “dirty energy=dirty weather” which you can watch over here.

To watch WUWT-TV live see below:

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Barack Obama: First post election statement on climate

Necessarily skyrocketing days may be over for Obama

There’s no doubt that for us to take on climate change in a serious way would involve making some tough political choices, and you know, understandably, I think the American people right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that, you know, if the message is somehow we’re going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don’t think anybody’s going to go for that.

I won’t go for that.

Shome Mishtake Shurely: Judy Curry’s Climate Etc Blog Shut Down by WordPress

I hope this is a temporary glitch. Judy Curry’s excellent blog Climate Etc has been shut down or suspended by WordPress. Back up your data people! –  H/T Vukcevic.

Günther Oettinger: “review national subsidy systems for certain energy resources”

“Your subsidy will be no larger than this”
Günther Oettinger demonstrates he means business with the energy price fixing business

H/T Fenbeagle for this story from Presseurop:

Is Europe preparing cuts in the green energy sector? EU Energy Commmissioner, Günther Oettinger, is about to send “an electric shock from Brussels,” headlines Süddeutsche Zeitung. According to the Munich daily, Oettinger wants “to review national subsidy systems for certain energy resources”.

The commissioner, annoyed by the provincialism of the 27 EU member states, rails at every opportunity against growing nationalism in the electricity sector. And much to the dismay of environmentalists, he particularly disapproves of the unregulated proliferation of green energy subsidies. Member states may soon face a ban on domestic subsidy initiatives, including some that are already well established. For Germany, the law on the promotion of alternative energies, which prompted a boom in wind and solar power as well as a hike in electricity prices in recent years, could be at stake.

International Broadcasting Trust: Submission to the BBC Trust’s Science Impartiality review

Over on the WUWT TwentyEightGate discussion, commenter ‘mfo’ has distilled the salient points from the IBT’s submission to the BBC trust’s Science Impartiality Review. I have number them for easy reference in comments. Who are the IBT?  They are the lobbying group led by Joe Smith of the Open University who set up the seminar where the BBC decided to stop giving the public balanced climate reporting which includes climate sceptical viewpoints.

http://www.ibt.org.uk/about_us.php

“The International Broadcasting Trust is an educational and media charity working to promote high quality broadcast and online coverage of the developing world. Our aim is to further awareness and understanding of the lives of the majority of the world´s people – and the issues which affect them.”
“Our work focuses on three main areas of activity:
– lobbying Government, regulators and broadcasters
– dialogue with the main public service broadcasters
– research on broadcast and online coverage of the developing  world”

BBC conflict of interest: Pensions relying on pushing alarmist climate agenda

From the WUWT TwentyEightGate discussion a disturbing revelation of a huge conflict of interest balance of reportage. To see that this has cost taxpayers billions beyond license fees, see this earlier post about a UBS report on the European Carbon Market:

Andrew30 says:

November 13, 2012 at 11:13 am

http://www.iigcc.org/index.aspx

“The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) is a forum for collaboration on climate change for European investors. The group’s objective is to catalyse greater investment in a low carbon economy by bringing investors together to use their collective influence with companies, policymakers and investors. The group currently has over 50 members, including some of the largest pension funds and asset managers in Europe, and represents assets of around €4trillion. A full list of members is available on the membership page”.

Did you catch that: Four trillion Euros!

TwentyEightGate: How the BBC justified breaking its charter commitment to impartiality

This is a followup to yesterdays post on 28gate, an emerging scandal at the BBC

 

The BBC is in crisis. Revelations over ex-employee and paedophile Jimmy Savile, and its false accusations of child sex abuse against top tory benefactor Lord McAlpine have led to the resignation of the Director General George Entwhistle after 54 days in post, and several top news executives; Helen Boaden – Head of News and Peter Rippon – editor of ‘The World at One’ and ‘PM’ among them.

All these three were present  at the IBT organised seminar: ‘Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting’ which was held at the BBC’s Television Centre in White City London on 26 January 2006. The seminar ran from 9.30am to 5.30prn. Later the BBC said, concerning what happened at this meeting:

“The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change].” From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, Page 40

So who were these “best scientific experts” that the BBC would entrust with the almighty responsibility of deciding that balanced reporting would be abandoned and that sceptics of man made climate change would be effectively silenced, allowing AGW advocacy to become dominant in BBC reporting?

Tony Thomas: Nobel winners here, there, everywhere!

My thanks to Tony Thomas for sending in this piece from Australia, where alarmism and hyping of the global warming meme is rampant in the media and government:

Nobel winners here, there, everywhere!

by Tony Thomas

November 12, 2012

The CSIRO has been suckered by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, into lauding eight of its climate scientists as Nobel Laureates. The eight celebrated by the CSIRO on October 16, 2007 were Kevin Hennessy, Roger Jones, Penny Whetton, Ian Watterson, Barrie Pittock, Bryson Bates, Nathan Bindoff, and Mark Howden.

The CSIRO claims were via its press release:

Climate scientists share in Nobel Peace Prize

Australian scientists who have been leading contributors to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been recognised for the crucial part they played in the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC.

In a letter to lead and convening lead authors, the Chair of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, wrote: “I have been stunned in a pleasant way with the news of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for the IPCC.

“This makes each of you Nobel Laureates and it is my privilege to acknowledge this honour on your behalf. The fact that the IPCC has earned the recognition that this award embodies, is really a tribute to your knowledge, hard work and application,” Dr Pachauri said…

The leader of CSIRO’s Climate Change Impact and Risks group, Dr Penny Whetton, said Australian scientists have made a substantial contribution to the present level of understanding concerning climate change and the influence of rising greenhouse gas concentrations…

Joe Smith: Dangerous News – TwentyEightGate begins to hot up

The BBC recently won its case against Tony Newbery, denying him his FOI request for a list of attendees at the infamous BBC Seminar. The list has now been found on the wayback machine by talkshop regular Maurizio ‘omnologos’ Morabito, who got Anthony to break the story over at WUWT. Maurizio says

This is for Tony, Andrew, Benny, Barry and for all of us Harmless Davids.  

Well done Maurizio! 🙂

Joe Smith of the Open University was one of the 28 ‘specialist’ attendees at the IBT ‘Seminar’  described by the BBC Trust as “a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts”. Have a read of the paper he wrote in 2006. Joe’s Open University page says:

Dr Joe Smith
The Open University

My research and teaching interests centre on the politics of environmental change. This is explored through three discrete strands of work:

• the politics of consumption, pursued through a study of biographies of food in Poland and the Czech Republic
• media representations of environmental change, centred on a programme of action research in collaboration with the BBC
• experimental reframings of environmental change, pursued mainly through the Interdependence Day project

Through the course of my CRASSH fellowship I will be drawing on more than a decade of working with media and other organisations to offer an account of the cultural work demanded by our unfolding understanding of human-induced climate change. I will also take the opportunity to reflect on the distinctive roles and responsibilities of social science and humanities researchers in helping societies to make sense of and act on climate change.

Prof Richard Lindzen: Fear based science

My thanks to Ned Nikolov, who has sent me a paper by Richard Lindzen, recently retired professor of Meorology at MIT. This work is of prime importance to those interested in the issues surrounding the development of science in society, and the outcome in climate science. Names are named, and some dirty washing hung out to air.

Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?
Richard Lindzen 2012 www.euresisjournal.org

Abstract:

For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible. Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. By cultural factors, I primarily refer to the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition  between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs. The latter serves to almost eliminate the dialectical focus of the former. Whereas the former had the potential for convergence, the latter is much less effective. The institutional factor has many components. One is the inordinate growth of administration in universities and the consequent increase in importance of grant overhead. This leads to an emphasis on large programs that never end. Another is the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations whereby a small executive council can speak on behalf of thousands of scientists as well as govern the distribution of ‘carrots and sticks’ whereby reputations are made and broken. The above factors are all amplified by the need for government funding. When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of.