How many ethnic minority candidates stood for the LibDems in 1983?
Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as “settled”. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit. This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is so significant.Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the database that shows the “unequivocal” rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years on which Mann’s hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.
Some critics believe that the unit’s findings need to be treated with more caution, because all the published data have been “corrected” — meaning they have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were taken. Such changes are normal; what’s controversial is how they are done. This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original raw data.
David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.
Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit website.
A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: “I was rejected for an entirely different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only those who support the idea of climate change.”
IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week, reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed. There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “Over the last decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics and activist scientists.
“It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to. They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing scientific knowledge.”
Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”
There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see its data.
This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.”
No thanks.
UPDATE: Neil Hamilton has written a good column in this week's Sunday Express on this issue HERE.
How is it possible for Basildon University Hospital to be rated “Good” on the very same day that it was established that dozens of people had needlessly died due to the filthy conditions on its wards. Blood was found spattered on curtains and chairs in the A&E ward, patients were not being fed properly and patients were being treated on trollies. Mortality rates were a third higher than comparable hospitals. It is clear that the entire management of the hospital needs to be replaced quickly. But what it also shows is that hospital ratings are worth nothing. If Basildon is rated ‘Good’ be very worried about hospitals which are only rated ‘Satisfactory’.Today we had news that the Chairman of the Colchester PCT has been sacked after serious deficiencies were found in the area's general hospital. Tonight The Observer has revealed findings of a Doctor Foster's hospital report, which shows that 18 hospitals have equivalent or higher death rates than Basildon and 39% fail to investiagte causes of death properly. Assuming one can trust the results of this survey, this is all deeply worrying for everyone.
Consultant gynaecologist Daniel Poulter has this evening been selected to succeed Sir Michael Lord as Conservative candidate for Central Suffolk & North Ipswich. Graham Dines has the full story HERE on the East Anglian Daily Times website.
News has just broken that Lord Pearson has been elected leader of the UK Independence Party, succeeding the buccaneering Nigel Farage. Malcolm Pearson only joined UKIP a few years ago, having been a leading light (and donor) in the Conservative Party for many years.Lord Hunt of Wirral: I thank the noble Lord the First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Lord President of the Council for introducing this very important debate. I also welcome the latest expansion of his portfolio. I know that his role as Minister for Information has not yet been publicly confirmed but, having presumably become dissatisfied with the domain temporal, I understand that the First Secretary of State has now extended his remit into the domain spiritual as well. I apologise to him for not mentioning this before, and I sense a slight flurry of unease on the Bishops' Benches, but the noble Lord is to be congratulated on becoming a Church Commissioner.
From now on, BBC1 is to be rebranded DAVE. And here's the programme schedule for Day One*...
The British government never at any time suggested there was a link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Those two threats [terrorism and states with NBC weapons] have, of course, different motives and different origins, but they share one basic common view: they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life. At the moment, I accept fully that the association between the two is loose, but it is hardening. The possibility of the two coming together of terrorist groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction or even of a socalled dirty radiological bomb is now, in my judgment, a real and present danger to Britain and its national security.Blair quite clearly says the association is 'loose but hardening'. Lord Falconer put in an otherwise impressive performance last night in his defence of Tony Blair and the War in Iraq. But he should have been pulled up on this misleading statement.
Tony Blair, 18 March 2003, House of Commons"
Tonight I am interviewing former MP Martin Bell about his new book, A VERY BRITISH REVOLUTION.
Click on the image to enlargeDear Member attached are details of the visit by David Cameron this Friday. If any of you are available to apply for tickets please can you. So that there is a mixed audience that may give him some difficult questions.
Iain,
As an apolitical businessman but avid reader of political blogs I attended the Esher & Walton open primary last Saturday. The attendance was huge - over 700 people. This was the most energised political meeting I have ever attended. It was a joy to listen to 6 articulate committed candidates all of whom would have made excellent MPs.
The winner (certainly not my first choice prior to the meeting) was outstanding. Dominic Raab will make a great candidate.
This process is a great way of engaging the local community - I talked to Labour voters, Libdems and Tories and they were all enthused at local democracy in action.
One major criticism of the candidate list was that there were no local candidates - I actually think this made it a more interesting choice - all had to commit to moving their families and had to work hard to understand local issues.
It is a tribute to all of them how much effort they had put it.
Having experienced a bruising 18 months in business and being very cynical of all political spin this restored a modicum of faith in our democratic system. Dominic has a lot to live up to but I feel optimistic.
Regards
XX
I have an admission: prior to joining the New Statesman in June, I disliked Iain Dale.
Iain, you can remain a slave to political opinion. James [Macintyre] and I prefer to lead it.
Since the Kaminski row, Dale has turned on the New Statesman, and on James Macintyre and me.
1. Charlotte Gore's Top 10 Tips for Successful Twittering."Now it has been known, just occasionally, for Nick to speak a little faster than he thinks."
"Nick Clegg engages mouth before brain."
A few weeks ago, my new publishing company, Biteback, published The Yes Minister Miscellany by Sir Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the creators of the popular series. It's a fabulous Christmas stocking book, full of wonderful wit and repartee, with quotes and extracts from the series as well as some new material including obituaries of the three main characters, Jim Hacker, Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard. Antony Jay wrote about the series in Saturday's Daily Telegraph.Some Labour people may think I'm sounding too gloomy, but those who have been privy to recent private polling are a lot more than gloomy. This suggests that Labour could return to the Commons with just 120 MPs or thereabouts, taking the party back to 1930s territory. As ministers look for jobs to keep themselves going after politics, a Miliband move to Europe looks sensible.James Macintyre, New Statesman, November 23rd
Now, some of us have been arguing this is likely for months, and my colleague Mehdi Hasan and I went into it in some detail back in June, when Mehdi was if anything surer (I thought then and -- shock horror still think now -- that a small overall majority for Labour is the most likely outcome). Indeed, yesterday's poll and the apparent trend reminded me that, after I dared to suggest in my new year predictions (some wrong, some right), that the two main parties' positions in the polls would switch by the end of this year...In fact, private polling commissioned by Number Ten is today showing just that.
Then only days later a poll in yesterday's Observer (carried out at the same time as the Guardian poll) shows that Labour has closed the gap to only 6 points (with 31 per cent against the Tories' 37).It is the poll Gordon Brown has been waiting for. Suddenly and belatedly as usual, it has become conventional wisdom to talk of a hung parliament. Now, some of us have been arguing this is likely for months, and my colleague Mehdi Hasan and I went into it in some detail back in June, when Mehdi was if anything surer (I thought then and -- shock horror - still think now -- that a small overall majority for Labour is the most likely outcome). Indeed, yesterday's poll and the apparent trend reminded me that, after I dared to suggest in my new year predictions (some wrong, some right), that the two main parties' positions in the polls would switch by the end of this year Iain Dale, the aimiable and popular partisan Conservative blogger, reacted with "cackling laughter" and said "In your dreams, sunshine".
Actually, I have always felt a hung parliament was a real possibility after the next election, and it is only latterly that I have swung to the view that a reasonable Tory majority is the most likely outcome.In fact, private polling commissioned by Number Ten is today showing just that.
I am writing to you to confirm that I shall not be contesting the West Suffolk constituency again, and will be leaving the House of Commons when the General Election is called.
I have taken the decision with very mixed feelings. I will have been the local Member of Parliament for eighteen years by the time the General Election takes place next year. It has been the greatest possible honour to have been the parliamentary representative for West Suffolk. I have enjoyed this role immensely. It has been a huge privilege to defend and promote local electors’ interests both in Suffolk and in the House of Commons.
I am most grateful to you for the way you have chaired the Association, and in particular pay tribute to you and Dorothy Whittaker, my constituency agent. It would not have been possible to fulfil my duties without your guidance and support.
It goes without saying that I shall give my fullest support to the future prospective parliamentary candidate for the constituency, who I confidently believe will be the next Member of Parliament for West Suffolk.
Richard has been one of the few MPs to really embrace blogging. He told me he regarded it as 'liberating'. Perhaps he will feel the same about his decision to leave Parliament. He would have certainly been a minister in a Cameron government but I guess he feels he wants to do something else while he is young enough to do so.
Parliament will be the poorer without him.
Perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.Here are a few tasters. (So far, we can only refer to them as alleged emails because – though Hadley CRU’s director Phil Jones has confirmed the break-in to Ian Wishart at the Briefing Room – he has yet to fess up to any specific contents.) But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:
Manipulation of evidence:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
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. Our observing system is inadequate.
Suppression of evidence:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:
Next
time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat
the crap out of him. Very tempted.Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….
And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”
Is this all conclusive evidence of a conspiracy by climate change scientists to silence some of their colleagues and suppress evidence which is inconvenient to their case? Maybe, or maybe not. But what it does show is that there are serious questions to be answered by the scientific community. Devil's Kitchen concludes...
What these emails show is that members of The Club have presented, as fact, data which privately they have acknowledged to be, at best, flawed.
Further, many members of The Club are editors of the reports submitted to the IPCC, and the emails show that they have deliberately cherry-picked those that agree with their position—and conspired to discredit or reject those that do not agree with their political position.
The Club has also conspired to suborne journals, and to oust editors of other journals who are perceived as being unsympathetic to their cause. And they have been successful.
The emails show that, whilst claiming that sceptics' papers are not peer-reviewed, The Club have actively and deliberately used blackmail and smears to prevent such peer-review or, when review is unavoidable, to have conspired to skew the review process to discredit their opponents.
All of these actions render the scientific reports produced by the IPCC extremely suspect. At best.
And they most certainly destroy the concept of the "scientific consensus".
None of these emails disprove anthropogenic climate change: but they do shatter the idea that there is no dissent and, crucially, they absolutely annihilate the idea that scientists are impartial and uncorrupt.
And these emails most certainly explode the proposition that we should reorder the world economy because of an impending climate disaster.
Cynics will say that, whichever party is in power next year, the nation will benefit from it being kept on the short leash of a hung parliament. The cynics will be wrong. Not only are minority administrations prevented from taking the long view that good government requires, but they are also constantly required to compromise their beliefs.
What our democracy needs, above all else, is the politics of conviction.
Hear, hear.
