Oxford Kevin

Leo Hickman of the Guardian interviewed James Lovelock about climate change and other related issues and summarized the interview in the Guardian. Summary of James Lovelock’s interview.

Lovelock annoys me in so many ways but his comments on Democracy leave me spluttering and I responded in the comment section after the summary of the interview, I am now posting that response below.

As someone who has been convinced that AGW is happening. I have never had much time for Lovelock and this piece doesn’t make me warm to him any further.

I don’t agree that Democracy is the problem. Actually I think it is a lack of real democracy that is part of the problem. We need a democracy that encourages active involvement of all citizens rather than making cynics of us all by this only just representative democracy that is corrupted by the need for large corporate financing of political parties and the need to return favours. So I am not at all in favour of giving up even the limited democracy we have but instead think we should be fighting for more.

Clearly he has not had the opportunity to actually get a balanced view of the CRU UEA e-mail saga because if he had he would have realized that nowhere in the e-mails or files that were stolen was there any evidence of actual fraudulent “fudging” the data. If there had been, whoever was responsible would have at very least been sacked by now and the reasons for their sacking would have been shouted the length and breadth of the blogosphere.

Requiem of a Species is a recently published book by Clive Hamilton a Professor of public ethics at the Australian National University.

If the edited extract of Requim of a Species recently published in the Guardian is anything to go by then the book is a must read.

The Guardian has just reported on the 2nd of 3 inquiries of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

The conclusions of the inquiry:

1. No evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice.
2. The internal procedures were rather informal. (Not unusual for a small research group)
3. They agreed with the CRU view that the authority for releasing unpublished raw data to third parties should stay with those who collected the data.
4. Criticized the Government’s policy of charging for access to data. (UK Mettoffice data)
5. That CRU did not always use the best statistical approach to analyzing their data, and that professional statisticians should have been involved in the analyzing of the data. Professor David Hand President of the Royal Statistical Society one of the members of the inquiry panel said that “this had not made a significant difference to their conclusions”.

I think it is great that the Scientists at CRU have been shown to have not committed scientific fraud. I am pleased that they have been vindicated on these issues.

Most importantly for me is that I am waiting for the outcome of the 3rd inquiry. I believe the remit of the final inquiry includes addressing the issue of deletion of data subject to a FoI request. Phil Jones has specifically stated that he has not deleted any data subject to a FoI request which is at odds with what he wrote in his e-mails. This is quite possible since Jones has demonstrated on at least 2 other occasions that the writing of the e-mails seems to have been his way of letting off steam and that what he wrote and how he behaved where two different things.

For me, the issue of whether Jones did or did not delete data subject to a FoI request has been the one issue that needs to be resolved, as the evidence for all the other issues to do with climategate even before the reporting of the inquiries suggested that there was a lot of noise generated about very little. I am waiting with bated breath for the results of the Muir Russel Inquiry.

BBC Report

Report+of+the+Science+Assessment+Panel

George Monbiot once again finds evidence to confirm my prejudices. I’d always felt that this was the solution and here is some evidence: Windfarms are stricken by Brits refusal to share.

The skeptics keep telling us that the science is uncertain, nothing is proven and that more data needs to be collected and more research is needed. But what happens when they get in power, well in Canada now we know. We get the lovely PR spin of clean tar sands, that the carbon emissions from the production of the oil from tar sands will be captured and stored. But in the meantime funding for research projects is being cut, not just a little, whole research projects are being closed down, funding for data collection projects in the Canadian Arctic is being pulled and the Canadian Climate Scientists are being muzzled with their access to the media seriously curtailed.

The Canadian Government now requires that all media interviews by Canadian Scientists on Climate Change must get the approval of central government before they can go ahead. Secondly written responses prepared before an interview must first be vetted before being sent to journalists. Because journalists are on a short time frame to generate stories this effectively muzzles the communication of climate science leaving the field wide open to climate change skeptics whose opinions go unchallenged in the Canadian press.

So we know that the talk and the walk are two different things. They are so frightened of the science that they’ll cut their funding and muzzle the scientists. This is the world that the skeptics want for us.

For more information go to the climate action network and climate progress.

Thank you Steven Harper, now we know what to expect when a skeptic gets into power.