Heated Climate Change Politics in the UK

Here’s a collection of excerpts and links from the UK. The ones at the very end are quite telling. h/t to Benny Peiser of the GWPF for their newsletter. – Anthony

MPs Slam ‘Secretive’ Climategate Probes

Two inquiries into claims that scientists manipulated data about global warming were yesterday condemned by MPs as ineffective and too secretive. MPs on the Science and Technology Committee have now concluded that both probes into the scandal had failed to “fully investigate” claims that scientists had deleted embarrassing emails. –John Ingham, Daily Express, 25 January 2011

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Graham Stringer, a Labour MP on the Committee, said there are questions over how the scientists chose the figures they used to back up the case for global warming. He said the ‘missing email’ may refer to how researchers tried to further influence how their science is accepted by the scientific community. He said both reports had failed to answer these questions.  “It is not a whitewash, it is the establishment looking after their own. They are not looking hard enough at what went wrong.” — Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2011

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The release of the e-mails from CRU at the University of East Anglia and the accusations that followed demanded independent and objective scrutiny by independent panels. This has not happened. No reputable scientist who was critical of CRU’s work was on the panel, and prominent and distinguished critics were not interviewed. The Oxburgh panel did not do as our predecessor committee had been promised, investigate the science, but only looked at the integrity of the researchers. This leaves a question mark against whether CRU science is reliable. We are now left after three investigations without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.—Graham Stringer, MP, Member of the Science and Technology Committee, 17 January 2011

Mr Stringer is saying what many critical observers think. The inquiries were inept, biased and have not closed this affair. The MPs’ report says we should move on but you cannot if you have unfinished business.—Benny Peiser, Daily Express, 25 January 2011

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“We find it unsatisfactory that we are left with a verbal reassurance from the vice-chancellor [of UEA] that the emails still exist,” the committee says.

The Russell panel was also remiss for not holding its evidence sessions in public and for allowing UEA to read its report before it was published – a move that left the inquiry open to allegations that it was not sufficiently independent.

The committee calls on researchers to release “sufficient detail of computer programs, specific methodology or techniques used” to allow others to check their analysis of data. This will “help guard against not only scientific fraud but also the spread of misinformation and unsustainable allegations”.

The Information Commissioner’s Office should also release “clear guidance” on how FoI legislation should be applied to scientific research by the start of the next academic year.

But the committee endorses the UEA reports’ “clear and sensible” recommendations. “It is time to make the changes and improvements recommended and, with greater openness and transparency, move on,” the committee concludes. Paul Jump, Times Higher Education, 25 January 2011

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How Two Tory MPs Saved CRU

Bishop Hill, 25 January 2011

In the formal minutes that appear at the end of the SciTech report, it is possible to read a paragraph that was proposed as an amendment by Graham Stringer. This is important:

“There are proposals to increase worldwide taxation by up to a trillion dollars on the basis of climate science predictions. This is an area where strong and opposing views are held. The release of the e-mails from CRU at the University of East Anglia and the accusations that followed demanded independent and objective scrutiny by independent panels. This has not happened.

The composition of the two panels has been criticised for having members who were over identified with the views of CRU. Lord Oxburgh as President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and Chairman of Falck Renewable appeared to have a conflict of interest. Lord Oxburgh himself was aware that this might lead to criticism. Similarly Professor Boulton as an ex colleague of CRU seemed wholly inappropriate to be a member of the Russell panel.

No reputable scientist who was critical of CRU’s work was on the panel, and prominent and distinguished critics were not interviewed. The Oxburgh panel did not do as our predecessor committee had been promised, investigate the science, but only looked at the integrity of the researchers. With the exception of Professor Kelly’s notes other notes taken by members of the panel have not been published. This leaves a question mark against whether CRU science is reliable. The Oxburgh panel also did not look at CRU’s controversial work on the IPPC which is what has attracted most [serious] allegations. Russell did not investigate the deletion of e-mails. We are now left after three investigations without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.”

This was voted down by the Tories Stephen Mosley and Stephen Metcalfe and the Labour MP, Gregg McClymont.

In other news:

Totally Uncool: Young Britons Least Concerned About Global Warming –

The survey revealed that young people were least concerned about climate change which came last in the average rating of issues, with one in four rating it as the “least important” and 7.1% saying it was the most important issue for them. Only 12% of all respondents believed they had been “adversely affected” by climate change in 2010.

Media Trust, 14 January 2011

Peter Sissons: ‘The BBC Has Completely Lost It’ –

The BBC became a propaganda machine for climate change zealots, says Peter Sissons… and I was treated as a lunatic for daring to dissent.

This attitude was underlined a year later in another statement: ‘BBC News currently takes the view that their reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made.’ Those scientists outside the ‘consensus’ waited in vain for the phone to ring.

It’s the lack of simple curiosity about one of the great issues of our time that I find so puzzling about the BBC. When the topic first came to ­prominence, the first thing I did was trawl the internet to find out as much as possible about it.

Anyone who does this with a mind not closed by religious fervour will find a mass of material by respectable scientists who question the orthodoxy. Admittedly, they are in the minority, but scepticism should be the natural instinct of scientists — and the default setting of journalists.

Yet the cream of the BBC’s inquisitors during my time there never laid a glove on those who repeated the ­mantra that ‘the science is settled’. On one occasion, an MP used BBC airtime to link climate change ­doubters with perverts and holocaust deniers, and his famous interviewer didn’t bat an eyelid.

Meanwhile, Al Gore, the former U.S. Vice-President and climate change campaigner, entertained the BBC’s editorial elite in his suite at the Dorchester and was given a free run to make his case to an admiring internal audience at Television Centre.

His views were never subjected to journalistic scrutiny, even when a British High Court judge ruled that his film, An Inconvenient Truth, ­contained at least nine scientific errors, and that ministers must send new guidance to teachers before it was screened in schools. From the BBC’s standpoint, the judgment was the real inconvenience, and its ­environment correspondents downplayed its significance.

Daily Mail 25 January 2011