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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MattS:
re your point at January 28, 2014 at 7:49 am.
Yes, of course you are right. I was one of the people trying to give a real-time report for people who were interested but could not obtain the live link. In terms of what I was doing I don’t think my rapidly-made point was wrong.
But I am grateful for your clarification which corrects my quick note. Thankyou.
Richard
Mr Green Genes:
Thankyou for your post at January 28, 2014 at 9:10 am which corrects a point I made.
As you say to me
Yes, the House appoints the Chairman of a Select Committee and normally does it according to the stated desire of the Committee.
There are three main reasons why a Committee desires a specific Chairman; i.e.
the choice is convenient and there is no Member of the Committee who is clearly preferred
OR
the choice has sufficient expertise and ability that they can be fully aware of everything so guide the Committee
OR
the choice is seen as a liability so they are made Chairman to consume some of the time they would otherwise spend interfering in the real work being done by the Committee.
It is an unwritten rule that the Chairman is a Member of the government’s political party. Most things in our system are unwritten rules which – being unwritten – are ignored when desired and nobody objects. It is such a breach of an unwritten rule when the choice of a Select Committee Chairman is made on the basis that the person’s guidance and judgement outweighs political party considerations.
I was providing an explanation for non-Brits to help them understand what a Select Committee is and does. Explanation of the nature and purpose of unwritten rules would have been impossible to explain to e.g. Americans and was not needed in my explanation of the Select Committee being considered.
Anyway, you are right. And I thank you for pointing out that my explanation was not completely true. It was also not complete.
Richard
Donna Laframboise hit a nerve with Albert Owen witnessed by this interchange:
12:28:42 Owen – ” .. back to you Donna on the objectivity of the IPCC .. remarks you’ve made or attributed to you with regards to documents linked to activist organizations – you’ve think it’s heavily weighted to the WWF and the Greenpeace and others of this world?”
Laframboise – “The problem is that there are those people who are involved and involved in very senior roles so, I know this about working group one, but working group two is about to come out in a couple months and there are three authors, lead authors not coordinators, ~?~ chapter leaders, who have very definite activist mindsets. Okay, one gentleman has worked for an activist organization for more than twenty years and, according to his official biography, he is still advising them. He’s not merely contributing, he is in charge of a chapter. We have another gentleman in charge of a chapter who has spent much of his career writing for pay for the world wildlife fund and greenpeace.
You know that is going to affect his view. He’s not objective, he has a very particular actvist world view and he has been put in charge of a chapter of what is supposed to be an objective scientific report.”
12:29:58 Owen – ” ~?~ young activism ~?~ whatever what role ~?~ mature ~?~ have different views as they progress when they see the evidence?”
12:30:08 Laframboise – “Well it’s possible but if we were….”
12:30:10 Owen interrupts her (doesn’t want to give her the chance for anyone to hear after the ‘but’) – “No, it’s kinda likely isn’t it?”
12:30:13 Laframboise – ” Well no, if you’re holding a criminal tr……”
12:30:15 Owen now becomes obnoxiously immature , interrupting her again, refusing to hear her answer – “Well I don’t hold exactly the same views as I did when I was 16 17 18 ~?~ and an activist in some organizations (~?~)”
12:30:20 Laframboise tries again – “If we were holding a criminal trial we would not … would not …”
12:30:23 Owen interrupts her yet again – “~?~ But this is not a criminal trial.” (something like that)
12:30:25 Laframboise – “Well but it is, it’s, the question is, is CO2 responsible for causing dangerous climate change. We would not …”
12:30:33 The b’tard Owen cuts her off again refusing to let her finish one sentence! – ” ~?~ but do you think that view should be ignored then, or that these people should be side-lined just because they have strong views or an activist background?”
12:30:39 Laframboise trys to answer him before he rambles on any further- “Yes, ~?~ … yes if you’re telling me this is an objective assessment you cannot put people who are bringing all this activist baggage.”
12:30:49 Owen – “So you’ve gotta have a ~?~ process where everybody has independent views that come on this body; is that what you’re telling ~?~ ?”
12:30:55 Laframboise – “Yes I am.”
12:30:58 Owen then resorts to direct condescension – ” Do you think that’s a little naive? Has that ever been achieved anywhere?”
12:31:02 Laframboise – “If the future of our children and our grandchildren are at stake I think we should make an effort…”
12:31:08 Owen steps on her yet again. ” ~?~ thing these ~?~ have strong beliefs as well as the future of our children you can’t just dismiss somebody because they have been an activist in the past.”
12:31:17 Lindzen jumps in – “Nobody is dismissing them …”
12:31:19 Owen – “Well that’s the way I read it sorry and that’s the way I think it’s been explained.”
(Oh REALLY Mr. Owen? You never gave Ms. Laframboise the chance to finish a sentence let alone ‘explain’ anything you do not care to hear!)
12:31:17 Lindzen – “If you’re greenpeace or world wildlife fund you’ve made your views perfectly clear ~?~ massive advertising campaigns to now put yourself in a position where also determine the information that it used by the ~?~ .. is not very healthy.”
12:31:41 Owen with subterfuge -“Okay well we try to get a balance here” blah blah blah …
(more interchange…)
12:32:28 Owen – “….. I would just say that we need a good mix.”
Which of course was exactly what Donna Laframboise was trying to say Mr. Owen if you had allowed her. There is certainly NOT a “good mix” at the IPPC when you have activists on your side in charge of entire chapters and absolutely nobody supplying any “balance” against them!
Agnostic:
At January 28, 2014 at 8:11 am you say
Oh! That is A BIG ISSUE and WUWT readers who are Constituents of Members of the Select Committee may wish to lobby their MP about it.
There are three reasons for playing it down and all three were discussed in the Sessions. The justification for playing it down is the fear that when the politicians understand those issues then the AGW-scare is over.
Firstly, there is no possibility of significant AGW if climate sensitivity is low.
We know as certain fact that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will increase the GHE to raise global temperature ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL. But all other things are not equal in the complex Earth’s climate system: any change to one thing can change everything else.
So, the direct raise to global temperature from doubling atmospheric CO2 from present level would be about ~1.2°C if all other things remained unchanged. And that would not be a problem. But things will change in the climate system and that may increase the raise in temperature (positive feedback) or lower the raise in temperature (negative feedback).
I think the feedbacks are negative so the raise to global temperature from doubling atmospheric CO2 from present level would be less than 1.2°C; i.e. no problem at all.
The IPCC thinks the feedbacks are positive so the raise to global temperature from doubling atmospheric CO2 from present level would be more than 1.2°C; possibly enough more to be a problem.
Nobody knows the truth of this but there is much evidence to support my view that negative feedbacks provide very low climate sensitivity so AGW cannot be a problem.
Secondly, the ‘pause’ is forcing the IPCC to agree that climate sensitivity is much lower than was stated in the AR4. Recent papers suggest that feedbacks are positive but have little effect so doubling atmospheric CO2 from present level would be not much more than 1.2°C and not a problem.
Thirdly, the IPCC published high values of climate sensitivity in the recent AR5 SPM but later published lower values in the so-called scientific Report. And did NOT revise the SPM which is for politicians to digest.
Hence, in its Summary for Policymakers the IPCC has deliberately attempted to mislead politicians into thinking any AGW will be higher than its so-called Science Report says. Monckton provided an article about this on WUWT here
I hope that is adequate explanation.
Richard
I am left with the impression that the chairman was biassed, attempted to misrepresent what the sceptics were saying and prevent them from clarifying, and was seriously intellectually challenged especially on the issue of warm decades. It was apparent to me that Lintzen was doing his best not to put Yeo down.
Tim Yeo is Chairman of TMO Renewables and non-executive chairman of Eco City Vehicles plc and AFC Energy plc so sadly his bias is to be expected.
Thank you for your efforts Richard. I cannot watch the session, as, apart from being in France, I cannot watch anything with Trougher Yeo in it without hurling my laptop into the fire. Your commentary was most useful.
Also thanks to: M Courtney says:
January 28, 2014 at 4:39 am…the person who introduced “oleaginous” to my vocabulary in referring to Myles Allen.
The pathetic few groats that I managed to scrape together for Donna’s travel were well rewarded.
These days Select Committee Chairmen are elected by MPs rather than being appointed.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2010/06/Candidates-for-Commons-select-committee-chairs-announced/
@richardscourtney says:
January 28, 2014 at 10:16 am
Richard, thank you very much for your response. Yours is one of the voices here I pay attention to as you clearly know your stuff and are measured and reasonable in general.
I have been following the debate for a long time now (i got involved in order to try to refute grumblings of my skeptical father and ended up becoming skeptical myself) and I am fully aware of the consequences of low climate sensitivity and negative feedbacks being generated by forced warming such as that from anthro-emissions.
To my mind, climate sensitivity has always been the main measure of whether there is concern, and I was surprised to see it down-played. But I am struggling to believe that the 1st panel would be so wilful as to deliberately downplay it in order to hide the suggestion of low sensitivity and the implications for policy. There may be other reasons why uncertainty surrounding it might be unhelpful to policy makers in determining whether there is something they need to act on, such as other “lines of evidence” that indicate there might be something to gauge the scale of the problem. I just didn’t here what they might be – that is to say, downplaying it felt unjustified to me.
I’d be interested to know if there are any arguments that support viewing metrics other than sensitivity in gauging the degree of the problem human emissions may cause.
I learned from Dr. Lindzen that the lower the climate sensitivity of CO2 the shorter Transient Climate Response. And then he pointed out in that regard that the current empirical record indicates a climate sensitivity on the low end of the scale.
I did not know this, and now I do (-:
My last thought on this.
There were two big losers here today:
Tim Yeo (Conservative) – looked stupid, dishonest and clearly embarrassed his fellow committee members when he got confused between “warmest” and “warming” decades.
John Robertson (Labour) – out of his depth
All the witnesses and other MPs left without shame.
But note the details that were conceded.
1) Prof Myles Allen got the facts wrong about the political independence of the SPM. He looked incoherent a few times when you inspect his words in detail. Often he got confused between models and reality.
2) The issue of climate sensitivity must be lower if the cooling impact of man is lower was understood by the committee and at that point he whole concept of climate sensitivity was downgraded. That’s the end of the climate models basic aim.
3) The hockeystick was questioned and it was conceded “mistakes were made”
Mann overboard!
It doesn’t add up…
Thankyou for your post at January 28, 2014 at 10:48 am with its link which confirms my statement that said
Thankyou.
Richard
I think the hearing failed to question more thoroughly Prof Hoskins and Allen and Dr Stott on what evidence they had to discount that the 0.74C rise in global temperatures during the past century could not have been partly or primarily due to natural variability changes (like the warming leading up to the Medieval warm period and other warm past periods ] They seem to imply that natural variabilty could account for the decadal changes but not for the steady slow warming over the 20th century, implying wrongly that natural variability is on a decadal level only . Natural variabilty can have multitude of cyles and of varying length
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard
For the love of all that is worthy, no, this is one question that absolutely should not have been asked unless one’s purpose in asking was to demonstrate beyond any doubt that one is an idiot. Fortunately, Lindzen is an actual physicist and would never ask a leading, irrelevant question about something he understands perfectly well and that is utterly divorced from the questions being discussed.
Let’s see, can I guess that you’ve been banned and are back with a new login (or are trying to fly under moderator radar by using a new id anywa)? In that case, please don’t. In fact, don’t ever, every bring up sidereal and synodical time again until you actually understand it.
rgb
Agnostic:
At January 28, 2014 at 10:50 am you say to me
I do not know of any, and I fail to understand how there could be any.
I refer you back to my post which stated the VERY IMPORTANT political point which I think merits lobbying of Members of the Select Committee. And I strongly suggest that you read the article it links from Monckton. To help you find my post again I provide this link
Richard
PS No need for the flannel. I always try to answer posts addressed to me if can.
Otherwise, BTW, I think it is very promising that some competent skeptics were present at the hearing and gave a credible reason to doubt the IPCC party line, especially the SPM. I’m guessing that they were still way too easy on the GCMs, but it is difficult to do the failure of the GCMs justice without having an audience that understands statistics pretty well (and without graphs and charts and so on).
One really has to deconstruct figure 1.4 of the AR5 SPM by showing before and after pictures, showing how the figure was altered to hide the fact that there has been no warming and that this is significant to the question of the believability of the GCMs under a massive tangle of spaghetti. It also wouldn’t hurt to show the unreliability of GCMs compared one to another on identical problems. I actually think it would be pretty easy to completely shred almost anyone’s confidence in the predictions of GCMs in general, at least at this time.
rgb
Lindzen needing to explain the difference between a continued warming trend and the warmest decade on record basically sums up the Warmist’s understanding of the debate. How do you explain something as complex as global climate to someone that doesn’t even understand that difference? I don’t think you can.
“M Courtney says:
January 28, 2014 at 12:57 am
So panel 1 starts at 930am (about 30 minutes time).
The Grauniad is already up in arms about this. Panel 2 should be enlightening.”
…………………………………………………………………………….
Wow… visited the website and there are a huge number of comments being deleted by the moderators. Looks to me a lot of censoring going on against the non-koolaid drinkers. Is the Guardian is taking the tactic of censoriing out anyone who doesn’t agree with them now?
I watched with interest. I never studied climate science because I was rather good at mathematical physics. I didn’t know any climate scientists at university but also those studying economics, politics etc were not as clever as me and my maths/science mates. That was clearly reflected in the climate committee today where apart from the chemist and the physicist on the committee, the rest were poor, very poor.
Alan the Brit: If you then insist on making bad jokes about Donna Laframboise’s name, it’d be RASPberry, not strawberry 🙂
I guess he hasn’t mastered the fraise yet…
PM – “We need a colorful mix” of opinions in the IPCC report.
Really? How many scientists that work for energy companies are lead authors on the report?
Committee hearing available on BBC iplayer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03t7lhw/Select_Committees_Live_Climate_Change_Committee/
If outside UK you may require a VPN to access.
One last thought: I have been saying that those that go into climatology are not the cream-of-the-crop for some time now as it is reasonable to assume that most of the intellectual talent has gravitated to where there is money to be made. Hearing Dr. Lindzen say this was quite unexpected and assuring to know that I wasn’t a complete arse when making this assumption.
Robert W Turner said at 11:38 am:
Lindzen needing to explain the difference between a continued warming trend and the warmest decade on record basically sums up the Warmist’s understanding of the debate. How do you explain something as complex as global climate to someone that doesn’t even understand that difference? I don’t think you can.
Lindzen could have been more direct and have said, “Of course the last decade is the warmest decade on record” right off the bat and then explained how it could not be. But he tried some weasel words first which didn’t cut it.
Folks on the skeptical side of the debate should should simply state that it is warmer. Then add how much warmer, then that it’s much less than the models predict, then that it is overwhelmingly a good thing, that trying to change the direction is a fool’s errend, costly and detrimental to our civilization.
The available iplayer link supplied unfortunately is not the whole committee hearing, it finishes after 2 hours, I don’t know how long the actual session was.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03t7lhw/Select_Committees_Live_Climate_Change_Committee/
Perhaps Anthony could supply a link at the top of the post so those able to view can?