stoat

Or, perhaps more politely, 'National interest' halts arms corruption inquiry. From the grauniad article: A major criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE Systems and its executives was stopped in its tracks yesterday when the prime minister claimed it would endanger…

I was at the NCAS conference today (since it was in Cambridge it would have been impolite not to go). Tim "Da Man" Palmer spoke about, ermm, sort of a merge of NWP and climate scales. But thats not the point... the point is that he showed a stratification of the Staniforth CP.net PDF in terms of…

Having had a couple of comments on this, I realise that some of the required background on Bayesian statistics is waaaay over some peoples heads. This is probably no fault of theirs. Let me make some faint attempt at explanation, and James can correct me as needed, and doubtless Lubos will leap in…

Says the latest Oxfam missive through our door. And their website has similar, sourced to the Stern report: ..the unfair way climate change affects people living in poverty. They are least responsible for the problem, have benefited less from levels of carbon use, but are paying the biggest price.…

This post is just to get you to read James Annans post about: An Inconvenient Truth. Which is his (& Jules) attempt to get his paper about climate sensitivity published. Since the paper is sound, and sensible, and very clear and readable, and of clear wide interest, the question is why isn't…

I've listed a few of Moncktons mistakes in previous posts; and RC has a nice article about his misunderstanding climate sensitivity. Adam points out in a comment that Monbiot is now saying (in the comments) ...what happened to the debate with Christopher Monckton. A good question. So far my…

The Cambridge Energy Forum organised a day-conference on Sustainable Energy - 1 Dec.2006. Sadly I had a program meeting in the morning and children to pick up after school so I only got to go to bits of it: which was: Mr Karl Carter Director of Operations, British Sugar and Biofuels; and Professor…

The "dams produce lots of methane" arguement has come up again, in Nature (subs req): In the specific case of Balbina, there is now a rough consensus: in terms of avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions, a fossil-fuel plant would have been better. Balbina is a dam in Brazil. Opinions seem to vary on just…

Climate change sceptics lose vital argument says the New Scientist. This is a novel twist on a paper in Nature: Gulf Stream density structure and transport during the past millennium; David C. Lund, Jean Lynch-Stieglitz and William B. Curry; doi:10.1038/nature05277. The editor says of it: an…

There is a fun wiki user page collecting a rebuttal of Moncktons nonsense. Mostly I'm impressed by peoples patience in bothering to follow it all through. One thing sticks out to me: Moncktons apparent use of references that totally fail to support his claims for them. For example, Monckton says "…

From Science 17 November 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5802, p. 1064 DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5802.1064a: A closer look at the Atlantic Ocean's currents has confirmed what many oceanographers suspected all along: There's no sign that the ocean's heat-laden "conveyor" is slowing. The lag reported late last…

The BBC reports The Global Carbon Project says that emissions were rising by less than 1% annually up to the year 2000, but are now rising at 2.5% per year. And then provides various reasons why this is so, including a switch from oil to charcoal as oil prices rise (is this plausible, on the large…

Of the Green blogs in the UK. Hmm, am I green? Maybe... Sadly since I'm not in the top 10 I don't get listed on the main page only in the see-also bit.

Via Prometheus, I find a review of Stern by Nordhaus. First an aside: N is the first mainstream commentator I've seen to point out that the Great War on Terror was undertaken "with no discernible economic analysis"... as I've pointed out, both Lomborgs "Consensus" and Pielkes recent re-run have…

We had a brief holiday on the Norfolk coast this weekend; and were lucky to have two days of near-perfect weather. Or at least blue skies - it was still pretty cold and somewhat blowy. Here you see our shadows marching off into the distance. Castle Rising was good, too. The first time I've ever…

I mean, of course, the recent UNFCCC conference, not the city. There is a very negative BBC report. It seems to me that this is one of those scheduled meetings that has to be held even though nothing will come of it other than a pile of CO2 emitted by the delegates. So... does anyone have a good…

The AMS has a Draft statement on climate change, vn 7.0. I found it via RP Sr, who dislikes it, for the obvious reasons: it fails to reflect his hobbyhorses: which are, as ever, downplaying the role of CO2 in favour of land-use changes, aerosols, etc (of course it does mention them, but naturally…

So says... yes you guessed, its the Guardian again. My first thought was, oh how typical, not "because its right", but for electoral reasons. But thats probably wrong thinking: if the grass roots are pushing for it, then splendid. However... the details are poor (there is a little bit more here.…

Nude Scientist (thanks Eli) has a feature on wot bits of AR4 will be controversial. Which I think is a bit premature and maybe a bit silly too, but I guess they have to write something in the absence of a quotable draft. Anyway, the bit that stuck out to me was: Michaels has analysed publications…

Todays grauniad has a piece by Monckton, "This wasn't gibberish. I got my facts right on global warming". Its in the "response" column, where people get a chance to reply. Sadly its all more gibberish. But also somewhat sadly the piece it responds to by Monbiot also contains some mistakes, and is…

JA wigs me on having said Stern appears to have got one thing right... he has taken the IPCC view as standard, slightly updated. That was pre-report, based on a quick flip through the consultation paper. But on closer inspection I now see that he is touting the CP.net stuff even there... although…

It looks now rather unlikely that I'll bother read much more Stern, and will instead lazily rely on others. Tim Worstall seems to be doing some reading, and (surprise!) doesn't believe Sterns economic numbers. SR is getting lots of good press at the moment. I do rather wonder if it will survive in…

For those old enough to remember the Oreskes-Peiser controversy, Deltoid makes interesting reading.

Though of course I havent read the whole thing or anywhere close. I wonder if anyone ever will. Maybe it will be fun reading for Christmas! Or maybe not... Looking at Part I. First science nugget: "a doubling of pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases is very likely to commit the Earth to a rise…

The IPCC TAR has gone awol. Try http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm . OTOH http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/ is still there. How odd.

It seems to be open season on pre-posts on the Stern Review, so I'll pick some bits out of the Beebs coverage. To start with: Even worse, these costs will not be shared evenly. There will be a disproportionate burden on the poorest countries. I'm sure this is meant to make us all feel guilty. But I…

Daniels half-term homework included seeing a Tudor building, which we only discovered rather late... Sunday in fact. But since it was a lovely day, perhaps the last of a rather extended summer (so I sneaked down to the end of the garden before lunch to remove the Bayvarol strips from the hives, it…

From the Grauniad: Cold weather's 25,000 deaths toll is scandal, say charities - so bring on global warming, they said. Except, of course, they didn't. The article doesn't even mention global warming. But if people die in heatwaves its all rather different. From the same edition: Figures reveal…

Its a week for re-runs, now the gives us Sea change: why global warming could leave Britain feeling the cold / No new ice age yet, but Gulf Stream is weakening / Atlantic current came to halt for 10 days in 2004. Most alarmingly, the data reveal that a part of the current, which is usually 60…

Just a quick pointer towards an article in Newsweek (which now appears under MSN? Odd...) Remember Global Cooling? quoting yours truly. The article isn't entirely satisfactory, in that it doesn't really point out the errors Newsweek made then - indeed, it rather suggests that it didn't make errors.