I’ve found it fascinating and the story is still developing but I’m not planning to comment much more here unless something truly momentous emerges from the forthcoming waste of money at Copenhagen.
I have found myself in a slightly reflective mood over the last 24 hours. First of all, for someone who hasn’t been paying much attention I find myself in the grip of real rage over the revelations – reflected in the number of posts here. Why ?
Since the ozone hole (remember that ?) dropped of the radar, we’ve been subject to an increasingly shrill campaign of ‘warming is your fault’ from a green movement that far from being an opposing voice is very much part of the establishment. This has recently culminated with the following two campaigns. I’m very hard put to state which one is actually the most offensive.
Plummeting Polar Bears ?
Or scared children ?
Now the truth of the matter is that I personally can claim quite a lot of expertise in computer science and computer models (and brewing), but I don’t know for certain whether man made global warming is happening or not. However, what’s been revealed in the last few days is that nobody else, not the IPCC, the CRU, or indeed any of the usual suspects, know either. Anyone claiming that the science is ’settled’ is a best deluding themselves and at worse, lying.
If the current global temperature profile was unprecedented you might, just might, be justified in restructuring the world economy on the offchance. As it is, we know that it’s been warmer within living memory during the thirties, historically during the medieval warm period, and that the temperature trend in the last 10 years have seen cooling rather than warming.
This story is now reaching the point where I’m tempted to pour myself one of our beers – perhaps a Ropetackle Golden Ale – and get in a bag of nacho’s and a jar of salsa to enjoy while I goggle at the developing story.
First of all an allegation that New Zealand’s reported warming trend may have been exaggerated.
And* from just next door in Australia, WUWT reports extraordinary events in parliament:
On Friday, 12 Liberal members of parliament resigned their frontbench positions rather than be forced into a party line vote for ETS.
ETS is ‘Emission Trading Scheme’, carbon trading in other words.
..this video has been making the rounds, and I wonder what the parallels are in the UK.
Do you remember the summer of 1998 ? As it happened, we spent a week or so driving around the UK in a hired car and I was very glad that it had air conditioning. It was so hot that getting out of the car was actively unpleasant.
The story at the time was that this was the hottest summer ever recorded in Britain and I can well believe it. A bit later the rather more disturbing story began to circulate that “of the top ten warmest years in this country, eight have happened since 1997″. This was repeated recently in the Times.
Except that story is now in doubt The reasons are a bit complicated but it seems to boil down to urban heat islands and the growth of cities since the thirties. Several of the hottest years seem to have occurred in the thirties before the second world war (lucky Grandad!).
Fortunately the Royal Society is now on the case. That’s the Royal Society that appears convinced that man made global warming is unquestionably happening. So that’s all right then.
Update
This is very helpful in describing why the whole Climategate thing is so important.
I don’t really ‘do’ climate change, either here on the blog or in private life, except as an interesting topic of conversation with one of my colleagues. I have a long standing bet with him that withing 4 years one of the poles will be completely free of ice. I win if this is not true, and I try and keep up with the news and technical details.
Although it’s not one of the things I concentrate on, climate change has real impact on the brewery and other similar businesses. For example, I know of at least one local company that makes wine in the UK. They have excellent skills, excellent equipment and I believe that their products will be award winning when they are released to the public. However the business harvests grapes in the south of England. If global warming develops as predicted then this is no problem – but suppose for a moment that it wasn’t happening ?
The brewery itself is impacted at a rather more prosaic level, we pay a climate levy on our electricity, and inevitably some of our taxes are spent financing the various branches of government that concerns themselves with climate change. If global warming wasn’t really happening then that proportion of cash that goes towards financing this activity is wasted. Perhaps it could be wasted on something else instead ?
So the subject is important as a purely business matter, which is why the recent revelations at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia have caught my attention. There’s far more about this on the Internet than in the main stream media although the steady drip of revelations means that even the BBC has been unable to completely ignore it. To summarize the story, a very large amount of computer files has been stolen (there’s really no nice way to put it) from the CRU and posted to the internet. The files are apparently copies of private emails and computer model code. I say apparently because I’m still not absolutely convinced that the files are not a hoax. If they are not a hoax then they are explosive.
Most commentary has centered on the emails which are easy to understand and fun to dissect. What they purport to show is the basic humanity of the scientists, with rivalries, petty politics, and a certain amount of leverage being applied to scientific journals. For anyone that’s been involved in an academic or research institution none of this will come as much of a surprise.
The real revelations belong in the computer code and data, which by all accounts are a mess.
The conclusion is that if the files were shown to be authentic they would imply that at best the CRU is claiming far more certainty about the facts than they can possibly justifty, and despite my restrained language that would be a huge deal.
Members of the CRU are lead authors of the reports of the UN body the IPCC, and the IPCC is one of the cheerleaders behind the accelerating attempts to restructure the global economy away from carbon. In short, literally trillions of dollars/pounds are at stake.
As far as I’m concerned the most significant quote from the files is this one:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. (http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=1048).
Apparently it was decided yesterday. Steyning Threshers will shut its doors on December the 20th I’ve been told.
Very bad news for the staff and of course bad news for Steyning itself. There’s only the restricted choice of the Co-op or Somerfield (actually the same people now) left.
I got back after a spectacularly blowy market at Shoreham to discover the wind had brought down our phone line and consequently our internet access.
BT spent some time tracing the fault but eventually isolated it to the telephone pole with the missing wires at the end of our drive. Sigh. Still, I’m back online now.
It’s Shoreham Farmers Market tomorrow. We are expecting gale force winds so the whole market is probably going to be held indoors at the Shoreham Center instead.
They say the first step of ridding yourself of an addiction is to admit to it.
My name is Andy and I’m an Archerholic.
It started when I was a student, Radio Four was broadcasting Lord of the Rings on a Sunday morning and since I had a tendency to forget I’d casually switch on the radio early, just in time for the Sunday omnibus edition. Within weeks I was hooked. Shula’s on again off again engagement, meetings at the bull, Nelson Gabriel (who could forget his plan to make a fortune with lettuce soup?) etc. I actually had to join an order of mendicant programmers and leave the country to kick the habit.
Just recently I’ve been doing a lot of beer deliveries around the county and Radio 4 on longwave is one of the few station’s that Grendel’s antediluvian radio can reliably receive.
I find that once again the Archers has ensnared me in its net. I find myself worrying about Matt Crawford’s court case (will Lillian get in home in time for the court hearing ?). What will happen to the land Brian Aldridge has donated to the parish council ? Will Ed and Will ever make up ?
Today I, (sob), I visited their website. (breaks down).
Frankly, this stuff is more dangerous than Heroin. Shouldn’t it be illegal or at least heavily taxed ?
Politically I’ve got a problem. Labour are quite simply, horrible. They’ve flown the country’s finances into the side of a cliff (as usual), diminished our liberties to the point where we can begin to compare our situation to old East Germany, and for the last twelve years presided over the signing away of much of our sovereignty to the EU*.
The Tories have wimped out over Lisbon and there is little evidence that – once in power – they have the backbone to deal with any of the problems that beset the body politic. Styling yourself as the ‘heir to Blair’ tells you all you need to know.
Fundamentally I believe the country needs two immediate remedial steps. The current bunch of incompetents must be dismissed forthwith and we need a referendum on our status within the EU. Our public finances are amongst the worst in the developed world but while we remain a mere province of Europe we are highly restricted in the actions that can be taken to improve matters.
Consequently, and parliamentary candidate that is part of the Albion Alliance will have my vote at the next election.
*It would be easy to put links in to evidence for each of these assertions but frankly, the paragraph would be a sea of blue.
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