Skeptics get a seat at the table.
IPCC 5th Assessment Review Meeting starts at 9.30am GMT
Witnesses
- Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, Professor Myles Allen, University of Oxford University, and Dr Peter Stott, Met Office
- Professor Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Lewis, Climate researcher, and Donna Laframboise, Author
Live feed link follows.
Purpose of the session
Topics being examined include:
- IPCC AR5 key findings on climate change;
- Consensus and uncertainty about climate change;
- Reliability of climate models used by the IPCC;
- Areas of scrutiny (climate sensitivity, the hiatus etc.); and
- The structure and practices of the IPCC.
Watch here: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=14741
The ECC home page: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/energy-and-climate-change-committee/
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No…It’s working fine.thank you.
M Courtney:
I write to make only one comment on your post at January 28, 2014 at 5:06 am which provides a very different opinion to mine.
For the benefit of non-Brits I respond with pertinent information.
Select Committees exist to scrutinise government policy. Parliament has two Chambers; i.e. the Commons and the Lords. Each Chamber appoints a Select Committee to consider the policies overseen by each government Department. The Sessions under discussion in this thread were public scrutiny of witnesses called to appear before the House of Commons Select Committee which oversees the Department for ‘Energy and Climate Change’.
Select Committees are formed from Members of a Chamber and consist of Back Benchers (i.e. MPs or Lords who are not Members of the government) who offer themselves to be Members of Select Committees which they specify themselves. The Chamber selects from the offers to appoint the Members of each Select Committee. Equal numbers are appointed to be Members of a Select Committee from the political party (or parties) of HM Government and from HM Loyal Opposition.
The Chairman of a Select Committee has to be a Member of the governing political party (or parties) and is elected by the Members of the Select Committee. The Chairman organises the business with the help of Civil Servants and Chairs meetings and Sessions of the Select Committee.
A Select Committee will often elect its lease useful Member as Chairman because that frees them from administrative duties so they are more able to do real work of the Committee.
Yeo is a prat and a Tory (so eligible as Chairman) and the Committee was certain to have made him Chairman.
Richard
Assuming WUWT readers are not complete duffers all your Parliament TV is here:
http://www.parliament.uk/
You will find live links and links to the archives.
OOPS!
I wrote
A Select Committee will often elect its lease useful Member as Chairman
I intended to write
A Select Committee will often elect its least useful Member as Chairman
Richard
Richard:
Members are all for lease, aren’t they, or at least for rent? Except those already owned outright.
To add to Richard Lindzen’s parting shot, I quote Ernest Benn, Tony Benn MP’s late uncle: ‘The art of politics is looking for trouble; finding it everywhere; diagnosing it wrongly and applying unsuitable remedies…’
milodonharlani:
re your post at January 28, 2014 at 5:47 am.
Thanks for that! Good one!
But, to be sure people are not misled by my enjoyment of the joke, I have known several MPs on both sides of the House who are honest, honourable and good. As example of an honest and principled politician I cite Nigel Lawson (now Lord Lawson). He was one of my greatest ‘hate figures’ when he was an MP. Indeed, the privatisation of the electricity supply industry (which led to the present mess in generating capacity) only happened because he was the only politician sufficiently competent to do it and he acted according to his principles; i.e. principles which I disagreed and I still disagree. I do not think he has ever been ‘for sale’ because he is honest to his principles. And I can cite similarly honest and principled politicians whose political principles I share.
Richard
Lindzen was brilliant as ever, and Laframboise too, but I think they could have nailed a few points down a bit harder, rhetorically. When the issue of a greenpeace-related chapter leader was discussed, they could have asked “so what would you have said if it turned out that the chapter head of a CAGW-critical chapter was related to big oil”?
Anyone know where can I find the names and CVs of those “heavyweight” politicians in the committee? (I’m not british, so I’m struggling to find out which one is who).
JP:
re your question.
Go here
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/energy-and-climate-change-committee/inquiries/
and follow the links.
Also, most MPs have their own web pages so you can search by name.
And remember that each country has a unique political system. As I am often puzzled by the US system which makes no sense, the peculiarities of our system may be incomprehensible to someone from a non-Brit culture.
I hope that helps.
Richard
How long till we can get a t-shirt with the best Lindzen one liners from today’s event. “Climate is serious” are climate models any good ” of course not!!!”
D.L. Was invited to be sneered at. The fat one quipping that she was here to plug her book, a-hole. Lewis was talking a foreign language, as far as the MPs were concerned. Tim Yeo ( trougher as he is known) The sort of person extradition treaties were designed for. Any takers?
Who’s Bill Cheney? 12:20:23
richardscourtney says:
January 28, 2014 at 2:30 am
Allen said, “Until we get CO2 emissions to zero we’re going to get continued warming”.
WARMING STOPPED 17 YEARS AGO. HUMANS CONTRIBUTE SMALL CO2 EMISSIONS. IF ALL CO2 EMISSIONS WERE ZERO EVERYTHING WOULD DIE.
=============================================================================
You are mistaken. In order for C02 emissions to drop to zero, everything would have to already be dead, including the micro-orginsms that drive organic decay.
If this is global warming, what the freak does global cooling look like? If it keeps warming like this, we’re all going to freeze to death.
Did anyone get an exact count of the number of times the ASH panel said “uncertain”, I lost count. Pretty impressive for a team of experts of a “settled science”. They are pathetic!
The best reponse and quote by far was the witty respone highlighted above
Albert Owen (Labour) “Doing nothing is not an option”
Lindzen “I don’t believe that”
i.e doing absolutely nothing and stop worrying is possibly the best course of action possible.
JP says: @ur momisugly January 28, 2014 at 6:49 am
they could have asked “so what would you have said if it turned out that the chapter head of a CAGW-critical chapter was related to big oil”?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I don’t think that would work. Ged Davis when VP of Shell Oil wrote scenarios for the IPCC.
Ged Davis E-mail
The next time someone yells skeptics are funded by Big Oil, had them this information.
had = hand (I wish we could correct our snafus.)
I watched the whole thing from beginning to end as well. I agree that in general the 1st panel came over a little bit better. And in fact they occasionally made some very good points. For example, Hoskins suggested the reason the models diverge since the FAR is because at that stage they far too simplistic and not able to capture sufficiently the internal variability at that stage, so it could never have predicted the hiatus. My problem with that argument is simply that, well – you could always say that any stage – you need to say what would falsify your understanding of the climate.
My problem with the second panel (and to the first to some extent) is that they often struggled to point out issues in a way that was relevant to them as policy makers, in a way that they could come to some clear understanding what is they need to know and take into account of when developing policy. I thought Richard Lindzen did the best in this respect, but also failed to help the grasp the scale of the issue. I think the reason for this is it is sometimes hard for an expert to remember what it is like not to know something.
For example, to a politician, some on the 1st panel (Hoskins again I think) made a valuable point regarding society’s vulnerability to climate change via extreme weather events. He wisely did not suggest that those events were not caused by climate change (necessarily) just that they remind us that we are vulnerable. Our society has developed within narrow parameters of climate that suit us, but these may change. A politician may regard emissions as a risk that should be responded too – and in a sense that’s fair enough. But they need some understanding of the scale.
I would have liked it pointed out that CO2 alone is not the cause for concern, it is feedbacks (climate sensitivity). I am pretty certain that with the possible exception of Graham Stringer, they may not realise that the effect of adding CO2 is logarithmic – that it requires more and more CO2 in order to have the same warming effect. Also some perspective on the scale of our contribution next to natures. If the climates response to the increase in CO2 is negligible, other than the effect of CO2 on its own, then there is little urgency wrt mitigating our emissions and our effort would be best spent on adaptation which is needed regardless of the cause of the change in climate.
I was very curious at the downplaying of sensitivity by Myles Allen. I am still mystified as to the justification for that.
Finally, a point that was not addressed by either panels, except extremely obliquely on the comsic rays question, was unknown unknowns and confidence that everything has been accounted for in the energy budget. It is self evident that the planet has seen warming and cooling periods on various time scales and if you can’t fully account for the cause of these in the past then it stands to reason you may not be fully accounting for them in the present. Some acknowledgement of that would have been good.
Gail Combs says:
January 28, 2014 at 8:01 am
Gail, in europe we have known about shell’s deep (very deep) involvement with the greenie beenis. They have funded several lavish ‘brainstorming’ sessions per year for the greens. They want to discredit oil and coal in order to promote their main product of gas. We all know that the major corporations have been funding less than fully legal activities for years to improve their profit magins and diversify their portfolios. Shell have struggled recently with their profit being hard hit and one of their major greens has left the company.
Lindzen was awesome I thought! Ditto Ms Strawberry. Lewis eventually got there! Wonder how much will make it to the BBC News desk – not probably!
Stephen Richards says: @ur momisugly January 28, 2014 at 8:16 am
….Gail, in europe we have known about shell’s deep (very deep) involvement with the greenie beenis….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Good to know but it is still a point worth pounding on.
I always try to be aware of WUWT’s unseen audience who may just have stopped by for the first time. This is why I try to repeat points old time WUWT people know by heart. My company always figured one complaint letter represented 100 unseen customers. I apply the same principle here at WUWT.
So all I’ve gathered thus far is that these men really, really love their computer models.
richardscourtney
Re your post at 5:35am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/28/the-ar5-hearings-live-stream/#comment-1552241
I wish to correct you on one point. Not all Committee Chairmen are from the governing political party (or parties). I give you Keith Vaz (Home Affairs) and Margaret Hodge (Public Accounts) as examples.
Your point about Yeo being a prat is, if anything, understated.
Here’s the counter: For a list of 20-plus things that would be happening (but aren’t) if climate contrarians were actually well-organized and well-funded,, see my WUWT guest-thread, “Notes from Skull Island” at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/notes-from-skull-island-why-skeptics-arent-well-funded-and-well-organized/