Video of the session 2 follows.
The committee for Energy and Climate Change must be in line for an award. Its performance this week was exceptional.
The mental level of Yeo’s committee is – well, the climate debate is so rancorous let’s try for decorum.
Suffice it to say that John Robertson’s questioning would have been a credit to a clever dugong. Albert Owen nearly grasped the idea that that a Greenpeace activist in charge of an IPCC Chapter might lack objectivity. And Tim Yeo’s chairing was as good as a golf club captain in a Saturday night lock-in.
The committee had just received three mainstream climate workers and now, to say they had looked at all sides, they had three sceptics.
No doubt their sceptical remarks are contentious, their facts arguable and their conclusions unusual – but the three of them certainly gave the lie to the claim that “the science is settled”.
Richard Lindzen, a professor at MIT, in his low-key, diffident manner, looked placidly into the committee’s apocalyptic future. How that annoyed them.
The Chairman asked a number of leading. loaded or frankly loopy questions .
Such as:
“So, you think the report should be compiled on a more slipshod basis?”
And:
“Are you saying the Government is deliberately appointing scientists who aren’t as good as others?”
And, here’s an exchange worth quoting at length.
Yeo pressed Lindzen to get a Yes to the question, “Was 2000 to 2010 the hottest decade on record?”
Lindzen: (Eventually) Of course it was.
Yeo: It’s interesting you’re using that as evidence that somehow global warming has stopped. That we’ve just gone through the hottest decade of all time (sic) and that this is actually evidence that global warming is not taking place.
Lindzen: You’re saying something that doesn’t make sense.
Yeo: Oh, so it is continuing!
Lindzen: How shall I put it? On a certain smoothing level you can say it’s continuing. It hasn’t done anything for 15 years.
Yeo: Except we’ve just had the hottest-ever (sic) decade . . . If I was clocked driving my car at 90 mph, faster than I’d ever driven it before, I don’t find that convincing evidence I haven’t broken the 70mph speed limit.
It dawns on Lindzen the chairman has special needs. He explains how a 16-year smoothing average means one thing, how a pause and plateau means another.
Yeo responds: Just because we’ve had the hottest decade on record doesn’t seem conclusive proof that global warming has come to an end.
After a chorus of contradiction:
Yeo: I thought Professor Lindzen was saying the upward trend has come to an end.
Lindzen: (quite sharply, for him) No! I never said it’s come to an end! I said for 16 years it hasn’t increased!
Yeo: I don’t think we’ll get much further on this. I’m happy to be judged by what’s on the record.
I bet he won’t be.
Read more here: SKETCH: Unsettling the “Settled Science” of Climate Change
Now compare that with what the execrable Bob Ward ( who’s paid by “Big Climate” to have an opinion, unlike Donna Laframboise who paid her own way there, and asked for help from the skeptic community to defray travel costs) had to say about it:
For example, Donna Laframboise, the world’s leading producer of conspiracy theories about the IPCC, was asked by Mr Stringer why she thought the organisation should be abolished. Her reply was extremely misleading: “When the IAC [InterAcademy Council] reported in 2010 it said that there were significant shortcomings in every major step of the IPCC process. That is not a mild criticism. That suggests that there are serious reasons to be very careful about the conclusions of the IPCC process.”
Conspiracy theories? He must be talking to Cook and Lew. Ward’s rant, complete with all the denigrating labels necessary for his craft, is here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2014/Jan/Blog-on-Select-Committee-Hearing.aspx
You can watch the session here, thanks to reader “Jabba the Cat”:
Sigh, I hoped this would be about the hearing not Tim Yeo but…
Tim Yeo was put on the Government payroll as PPS (assistant) to Douglas Hurd, then Home Secretary.
Under John Major, Tim Yeo was made Minister for the Environment during the privatisation of the UK energy system.
He is a capitalist. He is not a socialist.
People who are so right-wing that they can’t tell the difference between public ownership of utilities and capitalist ownership, should not bother to comment on politics. It is laughable.
Truly, if those people did not exist then Greenpeace would provide those voices for this forum.
Like GKell1, you are welcome to fill up the space here (and boost ad revenue) as that is the site policy.
But do not expect to be taken seriously.
Chad Wozniak:
re your post addressed to me at January 30, 2014 at 9:06 pm.
It seems to have escaped your notice that
this thread is about THE UK HoC DECC SELECT COMMITTEE HEARING.
This thread is
NOT about American politics,
NOT about delusional views propounded by the American ultra-right, and
NOT about misrepresentations of socialism by American nutters.
Indeed, those things all work to discredit AGW-sceptics on this side of the pond.
In the Hearing one of the MPs said he visited the US and had learned their that opponents to the AGW-scare were well funded and politically motivated.
Thankyou, Chad Wozniak et al., for that ‘help’!
Please return to the subject of the thread.
Richard
The aspect I find most depressing is that politicians (and many others) clearly can’t be bothered to try to understand science, they just pick an expert view that coincides with their pre-conceived notions and run with that, ignoring any contrary views. I’ve written a blog post about it:
http://jonathanabbott99.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/why-is-ignorance-ok/
Jonathan Abbott:
Your post at January 31, 2014 at 4:29 am says
It is NOT the job of politicians to “understand” science, or economics, or military strategy, or energy issues, or public opinion, or ….
Politicians are responsible for obtaining information of many kinds from many sources and to evaluate all of it so their resulting synthesis provides the ‘best’ option for policy.
Civil Servants provide politicians with the information for evaluation. Clearly, the politicians cannot be sufficiently expert in everything for them to evaluate each piece of information. So, politicians rely on the Civil Servants to isolate ‘wheat from chaff’ and to only provide them with wheat.
But information from different ‘experts’ may conflict although it is all ‘wheat’. In that case politicians assess the credibility of the sources of the information. And politicians are all expert in evaluating people: they have to be to get elected. Hence, they judge conflicting evidence by – mostly – judging those who provide the evidence.
The present situation of the AGW-issue derives from two facts which affect existing policies pertaining to AGW. These are
(a) A successor to the Kyoto Protocol is now beyond reach so adherence to policies agreed between countries has reduced in importance.
(b) The ‘pause’ has reduced the credibility of assertions of need for imminent action to avoid catastrophic AGW.
Hence, politicians are reevaluating their existing policies. An EU Commissioner has openly stated that EU Energy Policy requires revision while UK politicians are starting to place AGW-sceptics and their arguments on the record for assessment. The DECC AR5 Select Committee Hearing is part of this reassessment of present policy.
Simply, the AGW-sceptics won at Copenhagen and nature has provided a siding in which to park the AGW policy ‘train’. AGW-sceptics are being heard because they never said the ‘pause’ would not happen, and they need to ensure the ‘points’ are switched to ensure the ‘train’ leaves the ‘mainline’.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 2:02 pm
DirkH:
Don’t flatter yourself. You don’t “irritate” me. Your untrue twaddle which side-tracks threads infuriates me. And, as a matter of historical fact, the right-wing Margaret Thatcher started the political AGW-scare; see this.
Hopefully you have cleared off so the thread can now return to its subject.
Richard:
WRONG Richard: it was Crispin TIckell who had nothng better to do at the time than find some cause for Mrs Thatcher to embrace. Tickell has much to answer for.
Dave says: @ur momisugly January 31, 2014 at 7:09 am
And Crispin TIckell is entangled with the United Nations ====> Agenda 21.
Richard:
I’m not expecting them to be experts, just to understand enough to know the difference between ‘warmer’ and warming’. They are mostly ignorant of even the most basic tenets of science on a fundamental level. Did you read my article?
Dave:
re your post at January 31, 2014 at 7:09 am.
Oh, for goodness sake! Another anonymous troll trying to disrupt the thread!
READ THE ITEM AT MY LINK IN THE POST YOU QUOTE.
Tickell gave Thatcher the idea and he told her why IT WOULD BENEFIT HER to start the AGE-scare.
Thatcher considered that, and she decided to start the scare which SHE DID.
Strewth! These cranks are a pain!
“H1tler was left wing”, “Socialism is a state of mind”, “Thatcher didn’t start the AGW-scare”…
There seems to be no end to the self-delusions of you lot.
So, having given you a hint of my disdain and contempt for your trolling, I shall now return to the subject of the thread.
Richard
Geoff Sherrington says:
January 30, 2014 at 11:02 pm
“Sure, the evidence is lengthy, but it well worth the listen and study because some complex issues have been distilled into neat, useable expressions.”
I agree. I am looking forward to an official transcript becoming available as quoting from that will have much more gravitas.
Worth while taking the time to go through the whole presentation as the ‘Warmist’ side did not get off as lightly as they would have liked. MPs do tend to play ‘devil’s advocate’ in questions, so may come of as hard on the ‘sceptics’ side if you only look at that half of the questioning.
Jonathan Abbott:
Your post at January 31, 2014 at 7:54 am says to me
Your article is a good report of the Hearing. Why not copy it to here?
At present you have only linked to it and not told people that it is a report of the Hearing which is the subject of this thread.
‘Trougher’ Yeo did not understand “the difference between ‘warmer’ and warming’”. He is too thick to know the difference between now and then unless someone pays him to say he knows it. He is – and always has been – a Tory toll (and, yes, I intend both meanings of that word).
Richard
OOPs!
Tory tool
not Tory toll
Sorry
Richard
I’m glad you liked the article, Richard. I think it’s too long to post as a comment but yes, it is about the hearing but also touches on my frustration with the wider problem of scientific ignorance.
Jonathan Abbott:
Your post at January 31, 2014 at 4:29 am uses a different name and does not state where people to find the link to your commentary on the Hearing, so I take the liberty of copying it here to help others. Of course, this does not imply I agree all that it says
http://jonathanabbott99.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/why-is-ignorance-ok/
Richard
Thanks Richard. The different name is because WordPress won’t let me change it when I am using my phone.
Man, the desperation is evident on the warmist side.
I was thinking about the silly position of the Chairman on the ‘warmest decade evah’ and his aggression when trying to get some supporting confession out of Prof Lindzen (what an amazingly calm man!) that he could cite later and my thought on it is like this:
Chairman: Did we or did we not just have the warmest decade ever, 2000-2010?
Suggested response: The just completed decade was 2003-2013. Do you mean 2000-2010 or the most recent decade?
Chairman (seeking to cherry-pick the 2000-2010 decade): 2000-2010. Do you agree or not agree that it was the warmest decade ever?
Suggested response: The decade 2000-2010 was the warmest decade of the ‘instrumental period’…
Chairman (interrupting): That is all I wanted to hear…
Continued response: Of that we can be certain. The most recent decade 2003-2013 was not the warmest because it has cooled in the past 8 years.
Some of the other panelists were positively sensible. I hope it goes to a vote. Laframboise’ comments on the IPCC process were devastating (and appropriate). A couple of the panel members would clearly not have met her prerequisites for impartiality, methinks.
Crispin (not Tickell in spite of the uncommon name)
Crispin in Waterloo:
In your post at January 31, 2014 at 11:39 am you make a statement which needs important explanation for non-Brit readers. You say
No, there will be no “vote”: it is much more important than a vote.
I will explain by historical illustration which shows the importance of Select Committees and how British Policy has fashioned considerations of AGW over the last decade.
In 2005 the House of Lords Select Committee On Economic Affairs published an excellent Report titled “The Economics Of Climate Change”. It can be read here. It suggested complete reversal of Government Policy on AGW. Its recommendations included rejecting the IPCC as an arbiter of climate science, and UK Government abandoning mitigation policies in favour of adatation policies.
The government has to act in response to a Select Committee Report otherwise it would be challenging the Authority of Parliament. Clearly, the government had few options because it did not want to change policy.
The Blair government overcame the problem by a clever response to the Report. The government commissioned Lord Stern to do an economic appraisal which would assess the maximum possible costs if all worst case AGW possibilities were to come true and to compare that to mitigation costs. Stern did a fine job which included dubious – and subsequently often questioned – statistical practices to exaggerate costs even more. This produced the ‘Stern Report’.
Subsequently, the UK government and subsequent UK governments have hidden behind the Stern Report whenever there is mention of the Report from the House of Lords Select Committee On Economic Affairs. And all AGW-supporters around the world have proclaimed the Stern Report as being the definitive study of the future effects of AGW.
So, perhaps you can see what I meant when I wrote above saying, “The eventual HoC DECC Select Committee Report promises to be interesting as does the response to it from HM Government”.
Richard
The hearing has just been repeated on the BBC Parliament channel, and I caught the last hour or so. Prof Lindzen was excellent, Donna Laframboise was ok, Nic Lewis didn’t add very much while I was watching but perhaps he was better earlier. The politicians were for the most part awful, especially Tim Yeo who acted like a boor and a bully.
The MP for Ynys Mons seemed typical of politicians. Apparently ready to listen to the arguments, his view was actually totally electorate-focused. While scientists like Prof Lindzen provide a balanced, non-dogmatic and carefully worded perspective, the politicians just want to be seen to be doing what’s right with the support of the science. No wonder an indication of consensus is so attractive to them, as it allows them to be seen to be doing something which they can’t be criticised for later. Prof Lindzen’s statement — sadly rather late into the hearing — that doing nothing for the next 50 years is the best option didn’t go down well with politicians for whom “doing something, anything” is what gets them re-elected.
I feel that the two sides were generally talking past each other because their worlds are so different. One thing the “climate scientists” have achieved is to be able to wrap up their opinions into politician-friendly chunks. While the skeptic opposition remains so fair and reasonable, politicians won’t see the need to change.
Peter Ward:
At January 31, 2014 at 2:12 pm you say
It is still available on BBC i-player if you want to see some more.
Richard
Also on YouTube as I posted above (and the full 3 hours!).
richardscourtney says:
January 31, 2014 at 8:32 am
“So, having given you a hint of my disdain and contempt for your trolling, I shall now return to the subject of the thread.”
======================
You need your own blog.
Then I could not visit it.
u.k.(us):
re your post at January 31, 2014 at 3:30 pm
You need your own brain then you could learn to use it.
Richard
The disappointing thing is that DirkH (and other, I’m sure) have valuable things to say. He isn’t always a monomaniac like Gkell1 or a pure troll trying to derail a thread.
But on politics he is so angry that he never realises that other opinions can be in error too.
DirkH has demonstrated that he has good insights into the corruption of the political process by the influence of venality.
But then he always says that such corruption is due to socialism (meaning, as I read him, not prioritising private ownership as the highest Human Right).
But the problems are vaguer; corruption and distorted interests.
Socialism is not necessarily corrupt or perverting.
He won’t accept that. This leads to destructive conflict.
Well, true. Socialism itself is not corrupt nor venial nor (by itself) directly and deliberately killing people by the hundreds of millions (the last 140 years) ….
It is, however, the people IMPLEMENTING socialism who ARE always greedy (for power, for money, for recognition, or for all of those), who are too often themselves evil, who are very, very seldom wise, knowledgeable, capable, all-knowing, infinitely patienec and forgiving, and so fully in control of everything that THEY are capable of stopping the greed, corruption, political evil and falsehoods that exist below them.
Were we all saints, socialism might work. We are not, thus socialism fails. Kills. Hurts. Harms. Limits improvement to what the government allows, wants, and desires. More government.
richardscourtney says:
January 31, 2014 at 3:40 pm
u.k.(us):
re your post at January 31, 2014 at 3:30 pm
You need your own brain then you could learn to use it.
Richard
=================
You’ve made mistakes, but never been wrong.
A fair assessment ?
[Both of you. Focus. State on the topic or be quiet. Mod]
M Courtney says: @ur momisugly January 31, 2014 at 3:40 pm
The disappointing thing is that DirkH….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually I agree with E.M. Smith. A Mixed Economy is probably best. As much individual freedom as possible with enough laws and protections to keep things civilized. This is best done at as local a level as possible to keep the politicians responsive to the people as those of you in the UK, having to deal with the EU and the UN can understand.
As someone else said the political spectrum is not linear and I do not think DirkH has figured that out. Also very nasty people hide behind various political names and give those names a stench. It does not mean they actually believe in the names they use.