I have never more wanted the BBC to be impartial on climate, because the comedy potential of these latest talks is just astounding. It would be a cross between blackadder, The thick of it, Dad’s army and that one on the olympic games organisers.
I would certainly have a character who spends the whole conference just losing their way and never arriving anywhere. The Aussies in T-shirts would be drinking beer and belching in the early hours. The British in their suits would be sweating as the Polish host turns up the heating.
Backstabbing and intrigue would be everywhere, developing countries would be like one of those crowds in Monty Python Life of Brian – following any Masiah who offered them money. And the official jargonese and press releases would be totally opaque to everyone including those writing them. Continue reading →

Reuters) – Several major environmental groups, including Greenpeace and WWF, have walked out of U.N. climate talks in Warsaw in protest at what they see as a lack of progress towards an international deal to curb rising global greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is one of the most ‘captured’ summits ever – by corporates and coal industry with the support of the Polish government,” said Dipti Bhatnagar at Friends of the Earth International.
“We are walking (out) to send a strong message due to the total inaction at the talks, due to lack of ambition and finance, at a time when we need the most action.”
It was the first time green groups had staged such a coordinated walk-out at U.N. climate talks.
Reuters
 

David Cameron has ordered ministers to ditch the ‘green crap’ blamed for driving up energy bills and making business uncompetitive, it is claimed. The Prime Minister, who once pledged to lead the ‘greenest government ever’, has publicly promised to ‘roll back’ green taxes, which add more than £110 a year to average fuel bills. But a senior Tory source said Mr Cameron’s message in private is far blunter. The source said: ‘He’s telling everyone, “We’ve got to get rid of all this green crap.” He’s absolutely focused on it.’ -–Daily Mail, 21 November 2013
Lets go back to November 3rd 2013

I hate to say “I told you so” but I did. I even wrote a whole section at the end of a report detailing it: Case Analysis: The effect of the End of Kyoto on Scotland and several posts including this one: Thoughts on what end for Global Warming?

Just as I predicted, the UK government are beginning to manoeuvre against the SNP to raise wind as a top political issue coming up to the referendum vote next year. The reason is simple: the SNP economic case for independence was based on North Sea oil but it faltered when oil started running out. Renewables were seen not only as an economic but a political fix. Independence was still viable when oil ran out because renewables would take their place.
(Game, set & match for Scottish Independence: Scottish Sceptic

I feel like some shepherd boy standing on a hill who’s has been flinging pebbles and shouting at the massed ranks of SNP supporter and green activist “I’ve won”. And there they were, laughing at me because they thought I was mad, because I said I could hear the massed ranks of boots behind me.

Well who’s looking stupid now?

Sceptics and the convinced clearly can’t agree even on very simple things like what to call Prof Salby. So if we can’t agree what we know, can we at least agree on what we don’t. The honest answer is no, because this will end up in another  “you/we don’t/do know – war, which I know will be like counting broken pencils – pointless.
So, can we agree on …. mmmm …. not sure how to put this as even this question could be fractious. I did wonder whether I could devise an HTML a button — and depending on whether you are a sceptic or other, you would get the appropriate question:

• Sceptics the question is: what could be done better?
• Academics the question is: where should we put funding?

But life is too short, … and eventually I think an appropriately neutral question** might be phrased thus:

“where should we put effort in climate science”?

**but I’ve lost confidence I can say anything without getting attacked so — maybe I should just issue a blanket apology right now?

My centigrade’s worth:
I’ll start by suggesting that a lot more funding should go into short-term regional forecasting aimed at predicting floods, famines and the progress of tropical diseases. This is a perfectly achievable aim with the potential to save millions of lives.
The next obvious one is that we need a lot more effort to understand the relationship between solar activity and climate.
And the last is that I’m fed up arguing about temperature records. Let’s stop these stupid arguments by spending say $1000 million on the most reliable network of surface sensors & ocean sensors for meteorology that us engineers can produce. And the reason it will cost so much, is not because I want some backpay, but because I’m not having any of this nonsense of debating how much the surrounding buildings & vegetation have influenced the readings. Most of the money will be to pay to flatten a one kilometer square with the sensor in the middle fenced in and filled with sheep to keep the grass down.
Obviously this might have problems in places and some of the sheep will need woolly hats in Antarctica – but I’m sure if we do enough research we will be able to genetically modify sheep to grow their own woolly hats.

All this talk of sueing the cyber bullies has led onto an interesting subject.
In  the good old days when I ran a small business designing off-grid power systems and temperature control equipment, I set the business up as a company in order that my own personal liability was minimised to the assets of the company. That should have meant  that if one of the temperature controllers went faulty and burnt down a University, then the University should not be able to take our family house. I also had insurance, but that did not cover my advice or consultancy for which I needed indemnity insurance.
For your average engineer, particularly those working in safety critical areas, it is a real and present threat that if we do not do our job properly, that we could end up in court.
So, when we talk about people being sued for bad advice it appears quite natural. so I was initially taken aback today when two commenters (Wottsupwiththat and Rachel) were highly indignant at any suggestion that climate academics might find themselves in court. Yes, the discussion was whether any of them could face the death penalty, but I had a strong feeling the indignation was as much the idea that any academic should face court as that they should face the death penalty.
Which got me thinking.
Crossing the line between academia and consultation
Have climate academics inadvertently crossed a line. That between the normally safe and secure world of academia where their views are extremely unlikely to face any form of penalty … and the world outside of consultants, engineers and investment advice where professionals (like sceptics) have to be very careful of the advice they give. Advice that can land them in hot water because there are real and serious implications for other people – and even their own livelihood and assets (like their house) if their advice proves wrong?
Are they liable and legally at risk of being sued?
As I’m not a lawyer, and have only ever done one term of Scottish commercial law as part of my MBA, I do not really know at what point someone crosses the line from being an academic into being a consultant. But I seem to remember that if advice is relied on by the person being advised, that the person giving that advice can be liable if that advice is wrong.
As the climate models increasingly look like they cannot predict the climate, at a time when the IPCC have increased their certainty and words like “unequivocal” are commonly stated, it does seem very possible that anyone who relied on that “unequivocal” advice could have a case against one or all of those climate academics who made those statements.
What is their risk Continue reading →

Because sceptics are culturally resistant to seeing themselves as victims.
Sceptics are loners … not social loners but intellectual loners. We do not need our views endorsed by our peers. We are resilient, self-reliant we have often worked in time-critical high-risk industries where the pressure of work means that tempers can fly and so we are pragmatic and tolerant of others.
Non-sceptics value group identity. Unlike sceptics they see loners as being weak and needing to be brought into line within the social consensus. As such non-sceptics feel it is legitimate to attack those who reject their social consensus.
But sceptics don’t value their group identity and instead argue the facts.
Such behaviour is extremely frustrating to the non-sceptic. They cannot understand how sceptics can reject their group, but neither can they attack our arguments because we state the facts which cannot be attacked. So non-sceptics find themselves having to attack the people for not arguing in a way that allows us to be attacked.
But, the fundamental reason for this cyber bullying is that in a culture where this bullying has been legitimised by every authority figure from government ministers to the BBC to the moderators of the Independent and Guardian as well as every University in the land …
… even sceptics have grown to believe it is justifiable.

It is not

Sceptics have a right to be treated with respect, to have our legitimate views heard without being insulted and attacked. Likewise sceptics should try to recognise that others may not share our views and that not accepting their views or concerns about CO2 and the environment may be taken as a personal attack on their values.

Last night in the Independent I spotted several more libellous comments about “deniers”,

plus one about “in the pay of oil”

Of course I reported these posts. But even after about an hour they were still sitting there. So, I posted a comment along the lines that “As Chairman of the Scottish Climate & Energy forum I would like to make it clear that Sceptics are not deniers because as “the Sceptic View” we do not deny global warming, we do not deny the climate changes nor do we deny that CO2 has risen and much of it could be due to mankind. And we certainly do not deny the science of CO2 warming, etc.”

Imagine my horror, when not only didn’t they remove the libel on their comment page, but my own comment was removed!
But the last straw and the reason I realised I had to contact the police was when I saw this:

The police came around within a few hours and were quite sympathetic. They (and later I learned the Independent) agreed that it was beyond the pale. But I learnt is is quite a difficult part of the law to prosecute and it would be difficult until we had more evidence of a sustained campaign or specific emails containing abuse or threats as there is better law in this area. However I was encouraged to come back if it continued and they were keen I spoke to a solicitor as the standard of proof is lower in civil cases.

To those who condone this

At this point most non-sceptic who have not been subject to this campaign of hate are going to be thinking to themselves: “that’s an over reaction”. The only way I know to show how serious this campaign of hate has been is to list of just some of the high profile comments that are  found on line:

• “…every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.”—–George Monbiot, Continue reading →