The Chair and Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation appear before a Commons this afternoon. Left Foot Forward sets out 5 questions they must answer.
The Chairman and Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation appear before the Science and Technology Select Committee this afternoon. Left Foot Forward sets out five questions they should be asked.
1. Who funds the Global Warming Policy Foundation?
Lord Lawson has written in the Independent on Sunday:
“the GWPF was “funded entirely by voluntary donations from a number of private individuals and charitable trusts. In order to make clear its complete independence, it does not accept gifts from either energy companies or anyone with a significant interest in an energy company”.”
Who are these private individuals and charitable trusts?
2. Why is the GWPF sharing offices with the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining?
The GWPF are based at 1 Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5DB.
Also at this address is the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, which “exists to promote and develop all aspects of materials science and engineering, geology, mining and associated technologies, mineral and petroleum engineering and extraction metallurgy, as a leading authority in the worldwide materials and mining community.”
3.What links does Lord Lawson have with big oil?
Lord Lawson told Channel 4 News that, “I have no links to oil companies of any kind”.
But the Central Europe Trust – which he chairs and in which he has “significant shareholdings” – claim as clients BP Amoco, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Texaco, and Total Fina Elf.
4.Why does the GWPF’s academic advisory council include a number of climate sceptics?
The aim of the GWPF “is to provide the most robust and reliable economic analysis and advice”.
Why then does their small academic advisory council include well known climate sceptics including:
• Ian Plimer, the author of “Heaven and Earth – Global Warming: The Missing Science”
• Philip Stott who has written that “global warming is a faith“
• Sir Ian Byatt who has faced calls to be sacked as chairman of Scotland’s water regulator for his thoughts on climate change; and
• Professor Richard Lindzen who appeared on the Great Global Warming Swindle.
5. Why does the GWPF’s board of trustees include a known climate sceptic?
The Liverpool Daily Post quotes remarks made by GWPF trustee, the Bishop of Chester:
The row followed the Bishop of Chester’s speech in a House of Lords debate on energy, in which he said discussion about the causes of global warming was “still open”.
Describing himself as a “scientist in a previous incarnation”, Dr Forster – whose diocese includes Wirral – said there was no consensus among climate scientists that “carbon dioxide levels are the key determinant”.
And he told peers: “Climate science is a notoriously imprecise area, because the phenomena under investigation are so large.
“That makes precision difficult to achieve.”
27 Responses to “Five questions for Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser”
Anon E Mouse
Ned – Then why do the Climate Change oppressors keep announcing that whenever there is localised flooding, for example Boscombe several years ago in the South West, that if we don’t change our ways it’ll happen more often?
Why is it those delusional folk are allowed to make those claims but not the other way round? We all understand the difference between climate and weather but why is it OK for the climate change alarmists to *keep* doing this based on localised events but not sceptics?
For example the IPCC says warming temperatures cause an increase in hurricanes and they site Katrina and Dennis. By any definition these are localised *weather* events. The cause may be blah blah whatever but the effect is the hurricane.
So if it’s ok to show the effects (which are disputed by the leading hurricane experts in the field – how long before their characters are dragged through the gutter?) why not the other way round?
Seems it’s OK to mention specific localised weather events when trying to bully and scare people into accepting a minority opinion but not ok the other way round.
Oxford Kevin
In response to Mr Mouse’s comment March 1, 2010 5:00 pm
The UK has no control over foreign governments and their ownership of climate data, many of those met offices try and recoup some of the taxpayers investment in the metoffices by selling the data, that is the reason nothing more, nothing less. The UK metoffice as a result of this whole affair has requested that the various met offices around the world make their data available unrestricted. From what has been said all but 6 country metoffices have agreed. But until all do CRU cannot, because it is illegal is for them to release the data from the countries who have so far refused to agree to release their data. That is why they cannot release the data in full. Why is this so hard to understand? It is interesting that Canada with a climate skeptic prime minister is one of the countries that is still refusing to release its data.
What I still don’t understand though is when the data is available from the various mettoffices around the world, why did they keep badgering CRU for it, when they could have very easily purchased the data from those metoffices directly?
Any data that is owned by CRU should of course be subject to foi and I would expect CRU to comply with foi requests appropriately.
In response to Mr Mouse’s comment March 2, 2010 8:51 am
I take umbrage to your phrase, “Let’s stick to the facts please Kevin”. I work hard to keep to facts that have a basis, you know this, but others don’t and could take the meaning from your words that in the past I haven’t done so.
I would never have said anything about the Amazon implying that temperature changes in the Amazon could be used to suggest they were representative of temperature changes globally. Anything that I have written on the Amazon was related to an article, an IPCC report and poor reporting by Jonathan Leake when he had the correct information available to him. The article in question discussed the impact of Global Warming on the Amazon rainforest and the fact that for 40% of the Amazon the percentage of water content in the soil is very close to the level where even a small reduction means a collapse of the rainforest ecosystem. You have completely turned this around, from global temperature change and its possible impact on a locale to weather changes in a locale implying changes to climate.
It is not sensible to project localized short term temperature variations when looking at global temperature change. Because for every anecdote there is a counter anecdote, for example Perth in Western Australia has just had its joint equal hottest summer on record, and in Southern Brazil they had an unprecedented heat wave with temperatures of 46.3 degrees centigrade combined with high humidity in February. This is the reason why if you want to see whether the planet is warming it is necessary to look at the global temperature picture, not at specific bits of it, or over short time periods like a season.
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/extreme-heatwave-hits-parts-brazil
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6872077/summer-scorcher-a-freak-event/
Turning this around, once you know that the planet is warming you might want to consider what the global, localized or short time scale effects might be as a result of that warming. The study on the Amazon rainforest was one of those, other studies have looked into localized flooding events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which provides the potential for heavier rainfall events. You can never say a particular very heavy rainfall event is proof of global warming, but it is perfectly reasonable to say that global warming can make heavy rainfall events worse and to do research as to where this might happen.
Having said that I would never ascribe a single weather event to be caused by AGW, attribution is impossible.
As to Phil Jones, of course as he said himself he wrote some awful e-mails, but writing an e-mail full of hyperbole at the heat of the moment is different from actually doing what you have said. Phil Jones demonstrates this when it comes to his e-mails to do with keeping certain papers out of the IPCC reports, where since those papers where fully discussed in the reports, what he wrote obviously at a time of frustration and his actions are two different things. This is again demonstrated with comments by him about stopping certain papers from being published in journals, where once again those papers where published. This demonstrates that Jones had used e-mail as a form of casual communication where it would seem the writing of the e-mail was more about letting off steam rather than a statement of action that he was going to take.
Having said that one e-mail in particular relating to destroying information is damaging and I fully agree that it should be properly investigated. Since Jones has demonstrated that his casual communications and his actions aren’t the same I think the best thing to do is wait for the result of the investigation. Making statements about this issue prior to the results of the investigation is speculation and character assassination.
Having said all this there is nothing in all of the e-mails and data files that have been released that there is even any hint of cooking the temperature data books, absolutely none whatsoever.
Leading climate sceptics: CRU emails did nothing to question the science | Left Foot Forward
[…] the science In an astonishing but largely unreported u-turn yesterday, two of Britain’s leading climate sceptics, Lord Lawson and his colleague Benny Peiser – both of the Global Warming Policy Foundation […]
Anon E Mouse
Kevin – Data released by the CRU has been used as part of the overall picture of this so called global warming and if that data has been destroyed or manipulated then that is wrong – and regardless of your protestations people do believe manipulation has taken place.
I have never read anything you have written on global warming other than your response to my inability to find anything conclusive regarding the MWP and the fact I believed it was around one and one half degrees warmer than today – I still do but cannot find data to prove it.
You must also be aware that my comments regarding the Amazon was just to show the wild claims made by these people with a vested interest to do so. I could have used the glaciers melting, the hurricanes, UK flooding or whatever.
Finally you have no way of knowing if the CRU has or has not manipulated data in this issue any more than I do since not all the data has been released but if those people had kept the raw data and published what they had before they put it through their software (which discounts solar activity btw) we could all judge for ourselves. It’s just sloppy science.
If our lives weren’t being affected by their claims I wouldn’t care but they are and I do.
Finally my mentioning of keeping to the facts is purely because, on this site you get claims from other Greens – specifically one Rupert Read – that are frankly outlandish, feel like something from a science fiction movie and do nothing to further his cause.
To date you have been the only supporter of AGW that actually argues his point rather than simply saying I refuse to debate it or you’re a denier – well you get the point.
I also reserve the right to my opinion of Phil Jones as you do with Peiser. To date Jones’s attitude to dissent has been disgraceful, his record keeping unsatisfactory and his whole approach to evidence based science questionable (by virtue of his working practices).
Oxford Kevin
Why would CRU include in the code they have written for making adjuestments to the temperature data include the effect of solar activity. Their code doesn’t include the effect of greenhouse gases either should that be taken to mean that they don’t think greenhouse gases do anything to the climate, I don’t think so.
Of course I have no way of knowing either way whether Phil Jones changed the data to give a particular result, neither do you. The released e-mails were all in areas which were highly contentious for the Climate Research Unit and obviously the person who obtained them used search terms on these contentious topics when selecting which e-mails to include. if there was going to be any evidence of cooking the data then it would have been in these e-mails and there is none.
If you have a particular beef with any commenter, don’t generalize and assume that other “Greens” will behave in the same way.
As I keep on saying the raw data is available from the original metoffices and can be purchased from them. It would not be impossible to do and if a bright young grad student was given it as a project they could make a real name for themselves if they showed that CRUs analysis was incorrect. It would be the making of a scientific career. If the grad student was doing the work at a University they could get the data for free from the necessary metoffices but like CRU they would not be allowed to publish the raw data.
Kevin