David Whitehouse and I have produced a few films for the GWPF on the subject of ‘extreme weather’.

There are two versions — one shorter, a second longer with more detail.

Short version:

Longer version:

The videos centre around interviews between David Whitehouse, and Jennifer Francis and Roger Pielke Jr.

Unedited versions of the interviews are also online.

Jennifer Francis:

Roger Pielke:

In today’s Observer, Robin McKie channels scientists…

Climate change: IPCC issues stark warning over global warming
Call to ‘stop dithering about fossil fuel cuts’ as expert panel warns entire globe is affected

This is now part of the ritual established by the Guardian whenever the routine, scheduled, planned, expected, and timetabled publishing of IPCC assessment reports or UNFCCC COP meetings occur. These events are in every case presented as always new, more comprehensive, deeper, and more ‘stark’ than previous pronouncements on climate change, even when the reports say very little or nothing at all that is new, and even suggest that things aren’t as bad ‘as previously thought’. McKie continues…

Scientists will this week issue their starkest warning yet about the mounting dangers of global warming. In a report to be handed to political leaders in Stockholm on Monday, they will say that the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation have now led to a warming of the entire globe, including land surfaces, oceans and the atmosphere.

The starkest warning yet? How can he know, when it has not yet been published — indeed, it is still being written.

The scientists’ warning – the most comprehensive and convincing yet produced by climate scientists – comes at a time when growing numbers of people are doubting the reality of global warming. Last week, the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) published a survey showing that the proportion of British people who do not think the world’s climate is changing has almost quadrupled since 2005.

The most comprehensive and convincing [warning] yet produced by climate scientists…? What evidence is there of scientists escalating their warning? McKie should be more cautious. After all, if he is worried about the rising proportion of British people who do not think the world’s climate is changing he might want to think about why some people might — on his view — stick their heads in the sand.

The Guardian’s regular coverage of the climate debate is notable for two reasons. One: its attempts to sustain the climate change narrative is unremittingly alarmist and increasingly shrill. Two: it polarises the debate into binary, opposing categories of scientist versus denier, truth verses falsehood, good vs bad, thus excluding any nuance, complexity or middle ground from the debate.

These two tendencies together explain why scepticism of climate change may be increasing. The problem for the Guardian is that, when you divide and polarise the debate as it does, when the alarmist story you tell turns out to be nonsense, you force people with the sense or intuition to see it as nonsense to the other, opposing camp. In other words, if you do not let people assent to the climate story by degree, you alienate yourself in an attempt to alienate ‘denial’. And the view that the climate has not warmed for over a decade and a half is no longer controversial — only people assembled at the Guardian argue otherwise, albeit they argue the point with (far too much) vehemence. The Guardian’s ire is too much for science to sustain, even if there are plausible hypotheses about where the warming is going. Those who are making the argument that the non-warming of the surface of the planet is not a problem for the climate narrative of 2006 — the ‘travesty’, to use the word of the most vocal proponent of the ocean warming theory of the missing heat — are simply shifting the goalposts, and the whole world can see them being hoist by their own noxious petards: bogus surveys intended to shine a light into the mechanisms of the sceptical mind, to measure the consensus, and to ‘frame’ the debate in such a way as to gently coerce non-believers into ‘behaviour change’ and ‘attitudinal adjustment’. They don’t recognise themselves as the cause of so much climate scepticism. They don’t understand that it is words like McKies…

But as the IPCC report underlines, scientists are becoming more and more certain that climate change poses a real danger to the planet.

… which prompt the reader to reflect on his intransigence, and the continued framing of the debate by the climate change establishment…

Many believe the disconnection between popular belief and scientific analysis has been engineered by “deniers” explicitly opposed to the lifestyle changes – including restrictions on fossil fuel burning – that might be introduced in the near future. “There are attempts by some politicians and lobbyists to confuse and mislead the public about the scientific evidence that human activities are driving climate change and creating huge risks,” said Stern.

Stern’s conspiracy theory, is not new, of course. But it looks like an increasingly desperate move when seen in the light of mainstream scientists scratching their heads about the global warming hiatus, and the non-manifest problems that climate change orthodoxy of yesteryear promised we should be expecting by today. There has been no warming. There is no observable increase in the frequency, intensity or longevity of storms. There has been no detectable increase in the number of floods and droughts. There are not tens of millions of climate change refugees escaping worsening conditions. There has been no increase in the prevalence of diseases allegedly attributable to global warming. There is no widespread loss of agricultural land. And of course, the objections raised by climate sceptics are not attempts to ‘confuse and mislead the public’, but are attempts to point out that that is precisely what Stern and writers at the Guardian have done.

Here are some previous headlines from The Guardian’s archive, where they have issued warnings seemingly on behalf of science, but are much more owed to their own misunderstanding — to put it charitably.

Scientists warn growing acidity of oceans will kill reefs
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 4 February 2005 10.20 GMT

Scientists have given warning of a newly discovered threat to mankind, which will wipe out coral and many species of fish and other sea life.

Climate scientists issue dire warning
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 28 February 2006

The Earth’s temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations’ team of climate experts.

Global warming study warns of vanishing climates
· Scientists warn of disaster in biodiversity hotspots
· Species ‘must evolve or migrate’ to survive
James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 27 March 2007

By the end of the century up to two fifths of the land surface of the Earth will have a hotter climate unlike anything that currently exists, according to a study that predicts the effects of global warming on local and regional climates. And in the worst case scenario, the climatic conditions on another 48% of the land surface will no longer exist on the planet at all.

UN scientists warn time is running out to tackle global warming
· Scientists say eight years left to avoid worst effects
· Panel urges governments to act immediately
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Saturday 5 May 2007

Governments are running out of time to address climate change and to avoid the worst effects of rising temperatures, an influential UN panel warned yesterday.

Scientists warn on climate tipping points
Alok Jha
The Guardian, Thursday 16 August 2007

Some tipping points for climate change could be closer than previously thought. Scientists are predicting that the loss of the massive Greenland ice sheet may now be unstoppable and lead to catastrophic sea-level rises around the world.

‘False optimism’ climate warning
James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 30 May 2008

Climate scientists have warned that a “false optimism” has infused international climate talks and that governments must work quickly to set tough targets for global carbon emissions or risk profound consequences for the planet.

Scientists to issue stark warning over dramatic new sea level figures
Rising sea levels pose a far bigger eco threat than previously thought. This week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen will sound an alarm over new floodings – enough to swamp Bangladesh, Florida, the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary
Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer, Sunday 8 March 2009

Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

Climate change warning: ‘We’re sick of having our messages lost in political noise’
David Adam reports scientists’ exasperation at the climate change conference
David Adam, environment correspondent
theguardian.com, Friday 13 March 2009 09.39 GMT

Blind date with disaster
We are constantly warned by scientists that our planet is in big trouble, so why can’t we change direction? David Suzuki, one of the world’s leading ecologists, on how humans have lost the vital skill of foresight
David Suzuki
The Guardian, Wednesday 12 March 2008

As I approach my 72nd birthday, I have reluctantly achieved the position of elder, and it is mindboggling to reflect on the changes that have occurred in my lifetime. The population of the world has tripled, while technology has exploded from early radio, telephones and propeller planes to the telecommunication revolution, computers, space travel, genetic engineering and oral contraceptives. And stuff! My biggest challenge is to staunch the flow of stuff into my life. But these great successes – economic growth, technology, consumer goods – have come at enormous cost: the degradation of our very life support systems – air, water, soil, energy and biodiversity.

Scientists warn carbon dioxide may soon make coral reefs extinct
Alok Jha
The Guardian, Monday 6 July 2009 19.22 BST

David Attenborough joined scientists today to warn that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already above the level which condemns coral reefs to extinction, with catastrophic effects for the oceans and the people who depend upon them.

Climate scientists warn of wild weather in the year ahead as El Niño begins
El Niño expected to increase drought, floods and other extreme events, and cause a hot summer in the UK
John Vidal, environment editor
theguardian.com, Monday 13 July 2009 16.30 BST

Climate scientists have warned of wild weather in the year ahead as the start of the global “El Niño” climate phenomenon exacerbates the impacts of global warming. As well as droughts, floods and other extreme events, the next few years are also likely to be the hottest on record, scientists say.

Climate change scientists warn of 4C global temperature rise
Team of experts say such an increase would cause severe droughts and see millions of migrants seeking refuge
Damian Carrington
The Guardian, Monday 29 November 2010

A hellish vision of a world warmed by 4C within a lifetime has been set out by an international team of scientists, who say the agonisingly slow progress of the global climate change talks that restart in Mexico today makes the so-called safe limit of 2C impossible to keep. A 4C rise in the planet’s temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse.

Extreme weather will strike as climate change takes hold, IPCC warns
Heavier rainfall, storms and droughts could wipe billions off economies and destroy lives, says report by 220 scientists
Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 18 November 2011 13.38 GMT

Heavier rainfall, fiercer storms and intensifying droughts are likely to strike the world in the coming decades as climate change takes effect, the world’s leading climate scientists said on Friday.

Agriculture needs massive investment to avoid hunger, scientists warn
Group of leading scientists urge investment in sustainable agriculture to solve hunger crisis and reduce global warming
Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
theguardian.com, Wednesday 16 November 2011 13.30 GMT

Billions more investment is needed in agriculture and food distribution systems around the world in the next few years, if widespread hunger is to be avoided, according to a group of leading scientists.

Food shortages could force world into vegetarianism, warn scientists
Water scarcity’s effect on food production means radical steps will be needed to feed population expected to reach 9bn by 2050
John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian, Sunday 26 August 2012 19.00 BST

Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.

These are just a random selection — the first results from a quick Google search. But in each case the story is the same — scientific opinion of variable provenance — has been uncritically reproduced, or wildly exaggerated, often to the point of actually contradicting the science, or to be later contradicted by scientists. Guardian writers use ‘science’ as a puppet to act out morality plays, in which their own fantasies are seemingly given authority by the invoking of ‘stark’ or ‘dire’ — typically, the ‘starkest’ or ‘direst’ yet — ‘warnings’ that things are ‘worse than previously thought’.

But that’s not how things have turned out. And it doesn’t look to any sensible perspective that things are going to turn out to be ‘worst than expected’.

The question that remains then, is, how come all this emphasis on ‘science’ — calls to put ‘science’ at the heart of policy-making and information provided to the public — hasn’t been able to change the quality of the pronouncements made by the likes of Stern and the Guardian? Why hasn’t it been able to challenge alarmist memes finding their way into cheap and shrill Guardian copy? And why is pointing out that the climate change pudding has been over-egged is still dismissed as ‘denial’ by the climate Great and Good? The reason the public switch off is that it is by now completely obvious that there is more to the climate debate than science vs denial, and anyone claiming otherwise is pulling your leg. The only people who don’t understand this are writing for the Guardian.

Over at the new-format Spiked, Rob Lyons has a short piece on the Australian elections.

One of the biggest issues in Saturday’s Australian election will be the ‘carbon tax’. Coalition leader Tony Abbott said this week: ‘If the Coalition wins the election on Saturday, the carbon tax will go. No ifs, no buts, it is gone… We will do whatever is necessary to abolish the carbon tax.’ He has declared the election to be a ‘referendum on the carbon tax’, which Labor has pledged to retain if it hangs on to power.

Lyons confidently predicts that Labor are going to be ‘getting a kicking over carbon’.

Climate policies suffer from a democratic deficit. If the Australian elections are, as Abbott has called it, a referendum on the Carbon Tax, this is perhaps the first attempt to measure the public’s appetite for climate policies in the Anglosphere. Canada, of course, fell out with the UNFCCC process last year, though not after a test of the public mood. In response to the withdrawal, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change said,

“Whether or not Canada is a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, it has a legal obligation under the Convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort,” she said. “Industrialized countries, whose emissions have risen significantly since 1990, as is the case for Canada, remain in a weaker position to call on developing countries to limit their emissions.”

But who is Figueres to tell Canadians what their priorities should be? After all, nobody voted for her. And nobody voted for the UNFCCC process. Climate politics were all about establishing political power above democracy.

This has led to the situation in which Labor are going to be ‘getting a kicking’. But let’s not be hasty…

There has been an obvious attempt to turn the climate debate into an issue of Left vs Right (in terms of party politics). In the UK, Australia and USA, it is the putative Left that has sought to champion the climate agenda. But the Right has been, at best, supine. In fact, in the UK, the Conservative Party argued for stronger climate targets than the then Labour-led government. When Julia Gillard back-tracked on her promise that there would be no climate tax, UK Conservative Party Leader and PM, David Cameron praised the move, saying,

I was delighted to hear of the ambitious package of climate change policy measures you announced on 10 July and wanted to congratulate you on taking this bold step.

Yep, lying to the public is certainly a ‘bold step’, alright. At opposite ends of the planet, unpopular leaders of weak political parties — parties not strong enough to form governments by themselves — slapped each other on the back, from across the political spectrum. What better demonstration of the contempt for the public and for democracy could there be?

In the USA, the Republican Party didn’t create as robust a response to climate politics as many wanted, or as the US Left claimed — a fact discussed in Marc Morano’s interview with Topher Field for the the 50-to-1 project. It has taken a long time for the problems caused by environmental policies to develop into an issue that really can divide politics on party lines.

But only just. And there might not be much else to celebrate about Left/Right party politics in the Anglosphere — which is probably why the climate issue somehow came to dominate, and cross-party consensuses formed, albeit by default.

It would be a good thing if the Australian result sent a message to other climate champions throughout the world that, if they want to be green, they must really seek the public’s consent before they press ahead with far-reaching and expensive policies. But an indication of what is more likely to happen is given in a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald… (H/t Paul S.)

How human psychology is holding back climate change action
[…]
Behavioral scientists have emphasized that in their private lives, people sometimes display a form of myopia. They may neglect the future, seeing it as a kind of foreign country, one they may not ever visit.

For this reason, they might fail to save for retirement, or they might engage in risk-taking behavior (such as smoking or unhealthy eating) that will harm their future selves.

In a political context, citizens might demand protection against a risk that threatens them today, tomorrow or next month.

But if they perceive climate change as mostly a threat to future generations – if significant sea-level rises seem to be decades away – they are unlikely to have a sense of urgency.

Climate change lacks other characteristics that spur public concern about risks. It is gradual rather than sudden. The idea of warmer climates doesn’t produce anger, revulsion or disgust.

Psychologists, much more than climate scientists, are going to be the experts that politicians consult to establish a basis for their policies and power.

Amongst a number of things going on in the climate debate, two things caught my eye last week.

The first is this video from 350.org

350 want to use the names of prominent climate sceptics, rather than an list of names in alphabetical sequence, to refer to tropical storms and hurricanes.

But their petition suffers from the fact that, as pointed out by the IPCC SREX report last year, there is no anthropogenic signal in the frequency, intensity or longevity of these weather events, according to observations.

There is however, a much stronger association between incautious climate and energy policies and a deleterious effect on human welfare. Should we propose, then, that events of mass human suffering be attributed to prominent environmentalists, because their backwards, anti-human and anti-developmental ideology has created a huge cost?

How about the Ed Miliband 27,000 excess winter deaths of 2008-9?

How about the 2002 Greenpeace Southern Africa famine?

And how about the 10 million annual deaths that are first order-effects of poverty each year… Let us call name them in turn, the Oxfam Slaughter, The Sustainability Massacre, the UNFCCC Mass Killing, the Save the Children Butchering, and the Friends of the Earth Genocide… and so on.

As I have pointed out before, supranational political institutions and transnational NGOs have an unchecked, undemocratic and self-serving control over the development agenda. Yet they do not prioritise development. They instead purposefully restrict it, limiting it with that fluffy-sounding prefix, “Sustainable-“. As Reuters recently reported:

The World Bank’s board on Tuesday agreed to a new energy strategy that will limit financing of coal-fired power plants to “rare circumstances,” as the Washington-based global development powerhouse seeks to address the impact of climate change.

People in developing economies are to be denied a tried, tested, cheap form of energy. Meanwhile, the country that has most championed green energy — Germany — has increased its coal use and has plans to open up to nearly 6GW of new coal-fired capacity by 2020.

An interesting passage at the bottom of the article demonstrates the toxic neocolonialism at play:

The World Bank last approved funding for a coal-fired power plant in 2010, in South Africa, despite lack of support from the United States, Netherlands and Britain due to environmental concerns.

It is one thing for the likes of Ed Miliband to determine energy policy in the UK. But the climate zealot is not troubled by such concepts as democracy and sovereignty, and would happily foist his preferences for energy production over others.

A second thing caught my eye. Referring to the 350.org campaign, Leo Hickman of the Guardian announced:

Of course, the campaign has zero chance of succeeding. Hell would glaciate before the WMO would consider such a request. 350.org knows this. It’s just their inventive, tongue-in-cheek way of further highlighting the US policy makers – predominantly Republicans – who “deny climate change and obstruct climate policy”.

Hickman might want to notice that Washington was one direction from which the World Bank has been pressured to change its policy towards finance for energy projects in the developing world, against the interests of poorer people and their own governments. Perhaps what provokes those who “deny climate change and obstruct climate policy” is the anti-development, anti-democratic and anti-human tendency and character of environmentalism and their preferred policies. It’s a possibility that Hickman shows little evidence of ever having considered.

Which is odd, in itself, because Hickman reminds us that this is is 16th and final year of covering environmental issues at the Guardian.

after 16 years working as a Guardian journalist, this is my final article. Next month, I will take up the role of chief advisor, climate change at WWF-UK. Journalism has undergone so many changes over this time, but one that has excited me the most has been the increased interaction with readers via comments under the blogs such as this, or through online platforms such as Twitter. (I can’t quite believe it is 13 years since I wrote the first-ever post for the Guardian’s “weblog”!) Even though the debate can be passionate at times, I have cherished this dialogue. I believe it only acts to strengthen journalism and, personally, has led me to develop collaborative reader/journalist initiatives such as the Eco Audit. So I just want to use this opportunity upon my departure to say a sincere thank you to all those who have taken the time over the years to engage constructively and that I hope to continue that debate from time to time here on the EnvironmentGuardian site once settled into my new role.

So what has Hickman learned over this time?

He cannot claim that he doesn’t know that there is, beyond the scientific questions about climate change, very real questions about democracy and development, and that there are more objections to climate alarmism than simply dissent from the putative scientific consensus on climate change. I’ve pointed it out to him on a number of occasions. Yet rather than investigate these arguments, Hickman chose instead to focus on my relationship with one of my clients.

Hickman’s mock-concern was a pretext for frustration that I received £2,000 a month for research into climate and energy policies, and that EU rules on transparency do not extend to researchers. They have neither power nor influence. Hence, they are accountable to the representatives they are employed or contracted to, not to the public. If they were, they would surely be pad more than £2,000 per month.

An equally ignorant hack writes, seemingly in the light of what Hickman has written:

Much of the scientific underpinning for UKIP’s climate scepticism comes from Ben Pile, a part-time researcher, who contributes to the contrarian Spiked journal, and runs an anti-environmental blog called Climate Resistance.

A cascade of bullshit begins at 90 York Way, London. I have never provided the ‘scientific underpinning for UKIP’s climate scepticism’. Nor have I been asked to. But making up facts never bothered the conscience of environmental campaigning journalists. Irony indeed.

Perhaps coincidentally, UKIP are mentioned in Hickman’s swansong:

What we are now seeing more of, though, are climate policy sceptics. Yes, some of these are the same characters as before, but who have subtly, artful repositioned themselves over recent years. So rather than claiming that climate science is a hoax, a fraud or fundamentally flawed, they now say the proposed climate policies will have little, if any, impact on the planet’s temperature gauge and are therefore a waste of time and money. They know that this is a more tenable (and electable?) position from which to argue their point. (In the UK, only two political parties – Ukip and the BNP – proudly state in their manifestos that they doubt, or reject, climate science; proof, if it were ever needed, that climate scepticism is predominantly built upon a foundation of ideology rather than science. Additionally, the work of James Painter at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford has also highlighted how cultural/media support for climate sceptics varies greatly from country to country.)

This blog has always identified itself as sceptical of environmentalism — environmental politics, especially climate politics — rather than climate science. Had Leo taken an interest in what was written here, rather than who the author associates with, he might better have understood the point. But moreover, he might have developed a better understanding of the concept of ‘ideology’. His misunderstanding of ideology reveals much about his failure to have developed his perspective over the course of his career, and sheds light on his own ‘ideology’.

Heaven forfend that political parties should be ‘ideological’. Hickman might just as well attack them for being ‘political’ or ‘parties’. What this squeamishness about ‘ideology’ reflects is a phenomenon that has been pointed out often, and in depth on this blog. Environmentalists like Hickman simply do not recognise their own perspective as ‘ideological’. ‘Ideology’ is what other people do. The conceit — in all senses of the word — being that the environmentalist simply takes ‘science’ at face value, whereas those he points his fingers at refuse to see the science because they are somehow blinded by ‘ideology’.

According to Hickman, the BNP and UKIP’s climate manifesto either doubts or rejects climate science, which is ‘proof’ that climate scepticism is ‘ideological’. Had parties which have attached themselves to ‘climate science’ successfully eschewed ‘ideology’, then he might well have a point. But unfortunately for Hickman, the old parties’ adherence to the scientific consensus is as ‘ideological’ as any manifesto. ‘Ideology’ is much less that which is not contested than that which is. A political consensus is a surer sign of ideology at work than is a disagreement over the interpretation of facts.

Putting it simply, the ‘ideology’ of the political establishment is a system of ideas that would put political institutions above democratic oversight, and under the direction of panels of technical experts. But one can agree or disagree with the scientific consensus independently of one’s view that political institutions should be arranged in that way. One can disagree with policies independently of the consensus. In other words, the idea that the scientific consensus is equivalent to the configuration of supranational and national political institutions and their respective policies is ‘ideological’. Indeed, as this blog has also pointed out, ad nauseum, the notion of the scientific consensus is used in political and policy debates at all levels, with no regard for the substance of the consensus. As I explain it elsewhere, it is a consensus without an object.

The consensus being an object of ideology at least as much as it is a product of scientific investigation (but not that the two are the same), it ought to have been more widely interrogated by the media, amongst others, who claim to be holding power to account. Hickman’s failure to do so, and his haste to say that, on the contrary, interrogating or challenging the consensus is ‘ideological’ is a perfect demonstration of an ideology in operation. For it is only if we’re driven by some ideology that we can take his claim for granted or give it any significance. That knowledge must be presupposed. UKIP’s 2010 manifesto in fact said only this:

UKIP accepts that the world’s climate changes, but we are the first party to take a sceptical stance on man-made global warming claims. We called for a rational, balanced approach to the climate debate in 2008, before the extensive manipulation of scientific data first became clear.

Whether or not one believes that it is (or was) clear that there had been ‘extensive manipulation of scientific data’ (my views, contrast with UKIP’s and are here) the view is not itself ‘ideological’. Granted, the manfiesto should say more. But the fact that it doesn’t say enough isn’t a licence to presume anything about what it says. It is perhaps a shortcoming of the manifesto that it refers only to ‘global warming claims’, but conversely, many claims made about global warming are equally ambiguous, lacking any precision or basis in science. Nothwithstanding the fact that there are a number of people within the UKIP fold who do take issue with the consensus proper, even they would identify a greater problem existing with the excesses of environmental alarmism. The substantial point here being that even if one denies climate science comprehensively, one can nonetheless be committed to the idea that such a perspective needs to make the argument, and to win it, in order for it to prevail over policy-making. Nobody hiding behind the consensus believes in winning the debate in that way.

IN any case, what would an ‘ideologically-motivated’ rejection of science really look like?

It’s a tough question, the toughness of which only highlights Hickman’s glib treatment of the climate debate. On the one hand, it seems possible to say anyone that doesn’t believe that something which is manifestly true because some other view clouds their judgement is a victim of ‘ideology’. The first problem, however, is whether or not ‘science’ can stand in for ‘manifestly true’. Clearly, on Hickman’s view it can. But what are the claims and counter-claims in question? Do UKIP claim ‘climate change is not happening’? No. Are UKIP denying the possibility of any anthropogenic climate change whatsoever? No. Is there room to interpret UKIP’s position as one consistent with criticism of manifestly undue alarmism? Absolutely. And even Hickman cannot deny that many NGOs, politicians, and activists have been found exaggerating the possibility of climate change and its effects — he admits as much himself, although, frankly more to effect some kind of impression of balance. While he might occasionally criticise Greenpeace’s statements, he isn’t able to criticise their politics, or the politics which has enabled the NGO to thrive. It’s not enough to say of one’s political opponents that they are driven by ideology; one must explain how the ideology causes a particular view to form. And it’s not enough to say that they reject a thing (science) because they prefer some other thing (profit, for example).

What we see operating in Hickman’s thinking is the tendency to turn the climate debate into sides, or binary, opposing categories: true and false, good and bad, ideology and science… because ultimately, it’s easier to lump ‘policy sceptics’ in with ‘climate sceptics’, and link climate sceptics to ‘ideology’ than it is to deal with the arguments in currency. It’s about arguing with empty nouns and categories — sceptic, denier, party, ideology — rather than the perspectives that give rise to them. Once you identify the nouns, you see, it’s much easier to let the ‘ideology’ do the work — to fill up those empty categories.

Ideology is a more complex idea than Hickman has the faculties to cope with. (When editors decided to appoint journalists to cover environmental issues, they confused passion with knowledge. This accounts for the quality of environmental journalism across the media.) When trying to understand ‘ideology’, some self-reflection is required. This failure to reflect was also loudly absent from the report, mentioned by Hickman, by James Painter of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Poles Apart claimed

climate scepticism is largely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, found most frequently in the US and British newspapers, and explores the reasons why this is so.

I asked Painter if he had considered the possibility that climate scepticism appeared to be an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon because climate alarmism, and the eco-centric perspective more broadly might be Anglo-Saxon phenomena. (In other words, that environmentalism, insofar as it is a cultural and political phenomenon, is ‘ideological’.) He agreed that he hadn’t.

But evidence that environmentalism is an ideological phenomenon, with a regional bias, is fairly obvious when we remember that Painter is married to the niece of none other than Crispin Tickell — a former senior British diplomat, a man credited with coining the term ‘climate change’, and having helped push climate change up the national and international agenda in the 1970s and 80s. Indeed, the Tickell family has spawned a number of famous environmentalists. Ideology is reproduced socially. We should note that environmentalism has not been nearly so successfully transmitted through less well-heeled strata of British society, much to the frustration of environmentalists, whose failure to build a mass movement has resulted in their turning against the masses.

The reason for the need for self-reflection is obvious. One cannot look at the phenomenon of climate scepticism apart from the object of that scepticism. But for Painter to ask questions about the object of climate scepticism and the parallel permeation of the environmental perspective throughout the British establishment would mean asking question about his wife’s uncle and the conditions that allowed his family to prosper. It cannot be sheer coincidence that so many Painters and Tickells have become part of the global warming Great and Good.

The problem is not now, nor has it ever been, ‘ideology’. Ideology has not itself turned people blind to science or anything else. ‘Ideology’ is nothing more than a system of ideas, or beliefs, much of which is embedded in, and transmitted through, culture. Yet the contest of ideology — especially in the first part of the previous century — gave rise to the view that ‘ideology’ was stuff like Communism, Fascism, or the Guardian’s favourite: ‘unbridled capitalism’. ‘Ideology’ is never applied to ‘nice’ political ideas, like Social Democracy, Environmentalism, or any of the preferences of the Guardian’s staff.

The problem is instead an inability to reflect — a lack of self-awareness, like Painter’s inability to see the perspective from which he attempted an analysis of the media. Rather than attempting to understand the categories of his own thought by interrogating them, his project — much as with the 97% survey and its attempt to make ‘the consensus a concrete object — was strategic. Such projects, then, turn strategies into ideology — they bring uncontested and untested ideas and prejudices into their view of the world. Not recognising their own perspective as thus formed ‘ideologically’, they see only other people and their arguments in terms of blind and arbitrary ‘ideology’, rather than arguments and ideas that might give rise to a different perspective on the same issue. The problem, then, is the same as with any religious zealot, ideologue, tyrant or bigot. Proponents of orthodoxies do not recognise themselves as vulnerable to ideology. Why should they, since prevailing hegemonies don’t need to justify themselves — their preferences and prejudices appear to them as manifestly ‘common sense’, and challenges to their authority seem impertinent and obtuse.

But back to Hickman, who, it should by now be obvious, does not know what he means when he utters the word ‘ideology’. What about his theory that climate sceptics have re-cast themselves as policy-sceptics?

John Abraham made an astute point the other day when he said that it rarely gets noticed that climate sceptics have actually conceded a lot of ground over recent years when it comes to the science. Many have begun to adopt a so-called “lukewarmer” position, which means they now accept the basics of climate science but don’t think it’s worth investing heavily today to prevent or limit a problem that will increasingly hit home in the decades ahead.

Even if we take the observation in question at face value, there is a contradiction here between arguing on the one hand that sceptics are blinded by ideology, but on the other hand arguing that they have changed their argument.

But there are other good reasons for believing that Abraham’s claims are nonsense. He sees a growth in the ‘lukewarm’, policy-sceptic argument because it is displacing the alarmist narrative, but the direction of migration is not from denialism/scepticism to lukewarmism.

The lukewarm camp was established by Lomborg in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In more recent years, following events such as Climategate, and fatigue with the over-stated messages from the environmental movement and world leaders, the disarray of the UNFCCC process, and a 17 year long hiatus in surface warming, this camp is now respectable. It now has the Pielkes,  Currys and Tamsin Edwards of the world, none of whom, contra Abraham’s claims, are crypto-deniers. But they do recognise a problem with the environmental narrative as it has led to the formation of policy, and with the quality of public debate about climate science and policy.

Abraham needs to lump this growing camp in with the sceptics because, like Hickman and Painter, he needs the world to resolve into binary, opposing categories. No such angry division is necessary across the lines of debate between the remaining perspectives. After all, the main object of concern for sceptics is not the fact of scientific claims, but the arguments — political and scientific — that are protected from interrogation by the putative consensus. A nebulous consensus, divorced from its substance, licences intransigence and an undemocratic tendency. Abraham and Nuccitelli’s 97% blog, after its namesake, is a rearguard action against a more nuanced and productive debate, where climate change might still be a problem, but one in which debate about a response is possible. It’s a difference between ‘there is no alternative’ and there being many options. Environmentalists have always needed to claim that the imperatives they assert are a necessary consequence of the science.

This rearguard action begins with the lumping together of sceptics and lukewarmers, but its most interesting manifestation is the Consensus Police. The likes of Abrahams and Nuccitelli and their blog-warriors descend on the lukewarm blogs the moment it looks like any ground is being conceded to ‘deniers’. For instance, my recent post at the Nottingham University’s Making Science Public blog, drew attention from the 97%-ers, not because they wanted to take issue with the argument, but because they wanted to sustain the notion of consensus according to their form of environmentalism. Nuccitelli’s ire, he admitted, owed less to the argument I offered than to the fact that it was reproduced on the website of a respectable institution — a strategic loss, on Nuccitelli’s view.

Nuccitelli’s and his colleagues’ rage intensified when the Guardian’s Political Science blog hosted views from Tamsin Edwards, Nottingham’s Warren Pearce and Robert Wilson, each of whom criticised the framing of the political debate with respect to science. The consensus police descended. How dare these people admit nuance into the debate that they had spent so much energy framing in simple terms of scientists and deniers?

Wilson is one of those contributors who give the lie to Abraham’s claim. “The green movement is not pro-science”, he pointed out, and that “If we are to win against climate change, greens need to replace spin with sober analysis”. A curious fellow, Wilson combines the shouty excesses of the 97%ers with the reason of the lukewarmers, though directs his ire at sceptics and environmentalists. To his discredit, he gives sceptics’ arguments zero consideration while pronouncing on them nonetheless, but his blog (now retired) offers many, very well-argued and in fact sober criticisms of green energy policies and incautious renewable energy evangelism. The ‘lukewarm’ camp is populated by many who mostly want some kind of political response to climate change, to a greater or lesser extent.

It’s not enough, you see, merely to lump the sceptics and lukewarmers together. Doing so comes at the expense of an understanding of the arguments. But the idea of a rigid, unequivocal, unimpeachable consensus needs to be sustained, as does the ideas that the scientific consensus reduces to a simple and robust statement, and that the consensus is contradicted in its entirety by ‘deniers’. The claim that Abraham makes, which Hickman dutifully reproduces, is an attempt to sustain the mythology — the strategy-cum-ideology — of the climate debate according to environmentalists. The growth of the lukewarm argument is not a sign of the climate sceptics changing their argument, it is a sign that the alarmist narrative is unravelling, making room for more perspectives in the climate debate.

The reason for its unravelling is unwittingly revealed in Hickman’s closing remarks, each of which epitomise environmental ideology, and demonstrate that 16 years of journalism have not led to his forming a more progressive analysis…

As I have noted many times before, I think this is a profoundly risky and irresponsible strategy. But, then again, I’m not a politician whose survival depends on a four-to-five year election cycle. Nothing exposes our species’ “future flaw” more than climate change – rarely, if ever, have the history books demonstrated a generation acting selflessly, or with sacrifice, for the sole benefit of generations to come. We are an extraordinary animal in so many ways, but one of our weaknesses is that we operate firmly in the present tense. We jump only when we are in imminent danger ourselves. If not, we prevaricate, delay or turn our heads away. Climate change requires us to fast overcome this flaw…

First there is the contempt for democracy, which is followed by contempt for humanity. Like some kind of eco-Taliban, Hickman believes he is so elevated that he can pass judgement on the rest of world and their shortcomings. From his vantage point, he has a long view, whereas the rest of us feckless scum are stuck in the immediate, driven only by selfish material impulses — Jahiliyyah. These are the ‘ethics’ of the Guardian’s ‘ethical’ correspondent.

But what a curious ‘ethics’ this is. The only way Hickman can conceive of selfishness in moral terms is to tell a story about planetary danger. For most of Hickman’s career, he’s been writing stories about how to follow an ‘ethical’ lifestyle. But rather than being about ‘ethics’, stories about how one must behave in order to avoid a catastrophe are no more than moral blackmail. The concept of right and wrong on this system of ethics correspond, once again, to those binary, opposing categories. Actions which are bad take us towards the apocalypse, whereas actions which can be judged good offer us only mere survival… And survival only in an austere world. Desire for anything else is selfish, after all. Moral stories in such stark, black and white, and shrill terms speak much more about the author’s degraded moral framework, rather than moral judgement. Environmental ethics are to the Good Life what painting-by-numbers are to fine art — the numbers in Hickman’s ‘ethics’ being supplied by carbon footprint calculators, not from the moral agent himself. The concept of moral autonomy has been abolished. (And yet some greens will still claim to be the true heirs of the enlightenment).

The real ‘ethics’ of environmentalism are perfectly crystallised by Hickman’s 16 year stint. The smug ‘ethics’ he evinces are nothing… zero… without the possibility of the looming disaster, from which there is no alternative course of action, but that seemingly issued by the cartoonish consensus. There must be a consensus, deniers, and an ‘ideology’ to drive the deniers, because without them, there is no overweening crisis, there is room for debate, and there are room for different perspectives. Such complexity is anathema to the ‘ethical’ journalist, who prefers his ‘ethics’ black and white, good and evil, right and wrong.

It seems entirely natural that the journalist who was so concerned about the £2,000/month I was paid to research climate and energy policy should take a position at the undemocratic and unaccountable WWF UK, which receives £millions each year from the EU and UK government to be their Chief Climate Advisor. It is entirely appropriate that someone who makes such a big deal about listening to scientific advice on climate change should take a role as a climate change advisor, even though he has no scientific background. And it is fitting that somebody who complains so much about other people’s ideology should work for an environmental activist organisation. Were these things to be seen as contradictions, it would be a sure sign that ideology had been transcended.

Hickman, of course, knows little of his specialist subjects. He doesn’t understand the debate. But he has got an address book. And he knows which journalists are sympathetic to the WWF’s agenda. Thus, he knows how to get WWF campaign press releases to fellow churnalists. It’s the same story with Richard Black, who went from the BBC to the Global Ocean Commission (which sounds official, but it’s a Pew Charitable Trust project), and Damian Kahya, who went from the BBC to Greenpeace. Environmental political activism isn’t about science; it’s about strategy.

In my post at the Nottingham Uni’s Making Science Public blog, I discussed the possibility of an empty consensus:

The consensus referred to by Davey and Nuccitelli, then, is what I call a consensus without an object: the consensus can mean whatever the likes of Davey and Nuccitelli want it to mean. Davey can wave away any criticism of government’s policy simply by invoking the magical proportion, 97%, even though those critics’ arguments would be included in that number. Consensus is invoked in the debate at the expense of nuance. A polarised debate suits political ends, not ‘evidence-based policy’.

Would a debate between two climate scientists, or an interrogation of climate scientists have produced anything more useful? At face value, a scientist seems less likely to make such a vapid appeal to scientific authority. But on the other hand, we often see many scientists in the climate debate doing precisely that –even chief scientific advisors — and equally failing to get a handle on the claims of climate sceptics as Davey himself. Moreover, one thing it would not reveal is the consensus without an object operating in government thinking on climate policy. Evidently, ministers are being briefed about developments in climate science partially, defensively, and strategically.

The consensus without an object is the thing that is wielded in debates about the climate, but which the wielder needs no knowledge of. In the remarkable case of Ed Davey, he was able to shut out data that may even be consistent with ‘the consensus’ — the temperature hiatus, etc — not on the basis of an engagement with the science, but by invoking the consensus. This shifts the debate from the substance of the science, to a battle of received wisdoms.

Some of the defenders of the Cook et al paper have found this idea troubling. To take issue with the consensus without an object is still seemingly to be taking issue with the science. But it isn’t. I think this idea can be extended further…

On the Shelagh Fogarty show on BBC Five Live today, Andrew Montford debated Greenpeace’s John Sauven about the death of a single polar bear. This prompted a discussion about the plight of polar bears across the entire Arctic…

John Sauven: If you look at the recent IUCN polar bear specialist group they said that of the 19 populations of polar bears, 8 are declining, 3 are stable, and one is increasing.
Andrew Montford: OK, well I’ve actually looked at that…
JS: IF you look at their previous study it shows that the rate of decline in terms of the number of polar bear species has increased. And I don’t think Andrew you can deny what is happening in the Arctic is quite dramatic. I mean it’s lost 75% of its volume in…
Shelagh Fogarty: Let’s allow him to reply John,
JS: Quite a radical change that’s happening in the Arctic today.
SF: John Sauven. let him reply, go on..
AM: I have actually read that study on the polar bear numbers. The problem is that it’s not based on counts of polar bears. It’s based on computer models. So where they have counted the polar bears, as I understand it, all but one sub-population of polar bears are increasing. And there’s one in which a small, and as I remember it, statistically insignificant decrease in numbers. Al the rest of it is computer simulations, based on ice-declines therefore the populations must have gone down. Again, this is a hypothesis, it’s not science.
JS: Well, this is what scientists, you can deny these scientific reports, Andrew, but this is scientists who are producing these reports, and they have the same,
AM: You can hypothesise all you like — create computer models that are as sophisticated and wonderful as you like, but they are only hypotheses.
JS: Well…
AM: So they’re, you know, it’s not denying anything; it’s me pointing out that they have come up with nothing more than a hypothesis.
SF: Hang on let John Sauven respond to that. Yeah, I’ll come back to you Andrew Montford.
JS: You know, Andrew can say the world is square and if all the scientists say the world is round, I have to accept the world is round even if Andrew thinks the world is square. I mean the thing is you can pick up every single scientific report there is and start trying to pull it apart. But these are reputable scientists who are saying these things and it’s also logical…
AM: No, I’m not denying they’re reputable… but they are inly hypothesising.
JS: And it’s also fairly logical and rational, even for an ordinary person who isn’t a scientist to understand that if polar bears need sea ice to hunt for seals and that sea ice disappears, then those polar bears are going to be in trouble. And that’s exactly what you are seeing is happening today.
AM: No, you’re not seeing it. That’s what I’m saying. They have hypothesised that this is happening, but we haven’t seen it. Where they count polar bear populations, the polar bear populations are largely going up. We know that a few years ago, there were many many few polar bears, but population, as you said yourself, is up to 25,000.
JS: Andrew I think you need to go away and read that report…

The issue of alleged polar bear population decline has been discussed on this blog before. At the end of 2011, and in the wake of the BBC’s series on the world’s poles had led to similar claims. But as I pointed out, there was no evidence for this decline. There is more data also at http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/dynamic/app/

Sauven’s comments to Montford are extremely irritating, not least because he cannot even pronounce the word ‘Arctic’, which becomes ‘Artic’ in his language.

But more significant is his deference to ‘science’. It is, like the consensus without an object, science without an object. Sauven has no idea what the substance of the science that he waves at Montford is.

But science should be about something. It is odd indeed that self-appointed proxies of science can emphasise the authority of science, but when an understanding that science is attempted, it is held by the proxy as a rejection — a denial — of science. The proxies of science are, paradoxically, anti-science. They deny that the scientific method can challenge scientific authority — that the institutions of science have more to say than the process of doing science.

Curiously, Sauven credits the layperson with sufficient capacity to join the dots…

it’s also fairly logical and rational, even for an ordinary person who isn’t a scientist to understand that if polar bears need sea ice to hunt for seals and that sea ice disappears, then those polar bears are going to be in trouble

… but not with sufficient capacity to read and understand the research itself, so as to criticise the claim that it seemingly produces: that polar bear populations are declining. To observe that the estimate of populations isn’t owed to observation, but to presupposition, is to claim that the world is square.

Science without an object dominates debates about climate science and the impacts of climate change. But the fact that so many activists really don’t know what they’re talking about has barely raised an eyebrow. Science is routinely divorced from its context, and turned into glib soundbytes that journalists, politicians and celebrities reproduce, largely to elevate themselves. But to my knowledge this extraordinary phenomenon is not the subject of many science and technology sociologists, nor of those with expertise in the field of ‘science communication’. Their attention is consumed by the conflict between climate scientists and sceptics. Yet the effect of green pseudoscience is arguably much further-reaching.

Even more curiously, many environmentalists have attempted to claim that climate sceptics are ‘anti science’. This needs some unpacking.

Being anti-science ought to mean standing against the scientific method. If climate sceptics were really anti-science, they would not making any claims about the particular evidence or the status of theories that are produced by climate science. They would instead say that recording observations, experiments, and the testing of hypotheses against data are futile. Conversely, being ‘pro-science’ means emphasising the value of the scientific method.

Warren Pearce recently asked ‘Are climate sceptics the real champions of the scientific method?‘, which was met by a colossal, world-wide whinge from climate activists. As Pearce pointed out, ‘sceptics cannot simply be written off as anti-science’.

However, I think the likes of Sauven and Greenpeace can be written off as anti science. The use of science without an object is anti science. Rather than emphasising the scientific method — of understanding the substance of the (seemingly) scientific claims he was making — Sauven instead appealed to the authority of the scientists. This gesture throws reason out of the window. Sauven had closed down any possibility of debate. He had surrendered his own rational faculties to a fantasy version of science. Much less Nuliius in verba than my science is bigger than your science.

Here’s another example of science without an object, this time being worn as an object:

The phenomenon of turning science into gloves is something I (co)wrote about at the time:

Back at Climate Camp, a final irony is that the ‘peer reviewed science’-cum-gloves worn by the protesters as a symbol of their unassailable righteousness wasn’t peer reviewed science at all. It was the front page of a report by the Tyndall Centre at Manchester University that developed policy recommendations for a low carbon future (Bows et al. 2006). Even more ironic, in the light of the fuss made over the corrupting influence of oil money, is that it was commissioned by Friends of the Earth and the Cooperative Bank. But again, don’t expect anyone to worry about such details. Because this isn’t really about science – it’s about climate science. And as the Heathrow protesters, the Royal Society, NASA, journalists and politicians demonstrate, climate science can be anything you want it to be.

World Write — an educational charity that produces excellent videos made by volunteers in East London — invited me to appear on their talk show about environmental movies and emotionalism recently. The three films discussed were The Age of Stupid, An Inconvenient Truth, and The Day After Tomorrow.

Movie chat has rarely captured what’s at stake so effectively as this bar room banter. In a discussion on three well known apocalyptic eco-films, An Inconvenient truth, The Day after Tomorrow and Age of Stupid, a trio of guest experts take us beyond the usual finger pointing at doom-mongers. A palette of emotions: fear; loss and regret, are used to shortcut politics and convince us to change our behaviour or be seen as morally circumspect. Worse still, we learn, these films portray us as unable to deal with problems altogether. This is environmental determinism summed up; what matters to ecologists is what the climate or science will make us do, not what we decide we want to do about our future. Our options to think big, take control and develop what we need to manage climate change should we want to, are closed down. Given their hysterical claims of looming catastrophe, planetary extinction and ice ages it’s revealing that all we are advised to do is change a light bulb. Treating us like children consigned to the ‘naughty step’, as a scourge on the planet and ultimately ‘stupid’, these films are profoundly anti-human. While these films resemble ‘the rant you’d get from an eco-warrior in a pub’ we’re told, they nonetheless represent ‘the full download of prevailing perceptions’. These films are worth discussing because they represent a political culture that needs to be challenged if we are serious about reclaiming the idea of destiny as something we should control.

Here’s the result.

My post over at the Nottingham University ‘Making Science Public’ blog has ruffled some feathers. This was caused in no small part by Mike Hulme’s intervention:

Ben Pile is spot on. The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?

We see now why many environmentalists are so hostile to debate. Permitting debate — even giving the possibility of debate a moment’s thought — shatters the binary opposing categories that have been established in lieu of an actual debate of substance on climate change and what to do about it. The division of the debate into scientists versus deniers is a strategy, but one which has worn thin, as Davey’s performance on The Sunday Politics show revealed, and which Hulme alludes to.

It gets worse for the polarisers. Judith Curry echoes Hulme’s remark:

Ben Pile’s characterization of ‘consensus without an object’ is spot on IMO; this has degenerated into the use of ‘consensus’ by certain individuals as a power play for influence in the policy and political debate surrounding climate and energy policy.

It’s long past time to get rid of the concept of ‘consensus’ on climate change. An excerpt from the Conclusions to my paper No Consensus on Consensus:

Judith Curry’s longer discussion about the consensus is here.

It has been somewhat gratifying that almost all of the criticism of my post I have seen so far is from angry trolls, mostly on twitter, but one or two popped up to comment on the post. From what I can tell their argument is circular: it is irresponsible to give air/blog time to sceptics because there’s a strong scientific consensus that says they’re wrong.

Martin Lack made a more reasonable (and more dignified) attempt to defend the paper. Nuccitelli himself turned up, after some demanding that he be given a right to reply… As though the comment boxes weren’t sufficient to make his case.

This entire blog post made my head spin. After reading nearly every sentence I thought to myself “I already addressed this misconception in the articles that Ben Pile claims to be responding to.” For example, quoting Roy Spencer claiming to be in the 97% after I already pointed out that Spencer is actually in the < 3%. That’s not speculation, that’s where he fell in the abstract ratings. Did Pile even read my articles? I don’t know if he only read a few sentences, or if he’s just ignoring the inconvenient bits (like 75% of what I wrote), or what, but this post is rather appalling.

I had read Nuccitellis articles, and his paper. And I explained to him why, even using his own categories, Spencer still doesn’t belong in the 3%.

This seems to be a theme. The authors of the Consensus Project and their supporters don’t seem to understand the paper itself.

Angered by Hulme, an anonymous and distinctly troll-like blogger going by the moniker ‘Wotts Up With That Blog’ has penned some kind of response, aimed mainly at Hulme…

I don’t want to say much about the actual post, but it does seem to be written be someone who thinks it’s more important to philsophize about science, than actually do science – or maybe, more correctly, someone who thinks they can judge science by philosophizing about science.

The author must have missed my point.

The consequence of excluding non-expert opinion (other than expert opinion’s cheerleaders) from the climate debate is, paradoxically, the undermining of the value of expertise. Rather than engagements on matters of substance, a hollow debate emerges about whose evidence weighs the most, whose arguments are supported by the most experts, and which experts are the most qualified. The question ‘who should be allowed to speak’ dominates the discussion at the expense of hearing what they actually have to say.

[…]

And those who shout most loudly about science turn out to be advancing an idea of science which, rather than emphasising the scientific method, puts much more store — let’s call it ‘faith’ — in scientific institutions. Hence, the emphasis on the weight, number and height of scientific evidence articles, and expertise, rather than on the process of testing competing theories.

The author then scratches his head, trying to understand Hulme, and comes up with this interesting account of the Consensus Project:

Cook et al. is {sic} not trying to claim that the science is settled because there is a consensus. It’s trying to point out that a “consensus” exists so as to address those claiming that it doesn’t.

If Anon. had read the post he would realise that the problem is not a question about the existence of the consensus, but the object of the consensus:

The consensus referred to by Davey and Nuccitelli, then, is what I call a consensus without an object: the consensus can mean whatever the likes of Davey and Nuccitelli want it to mean. Davey can wave away any criticism of government’s policy simply by invoking the magical proportion, 97%, even though those critics’ arguments would be included in that number. Consensus is invoked in the debate at the expense of nuance. A polarised debate suits political ends, not ‘evidence-based policy’.

It’s not a complicated point. If we all agree on a point, X, and then someone says ‘Y’, the consensus on ‘X’ still exists, it’s just been misrepresented. But it’s a point that Anon. seems unable to fathom. He continues…

I realise that many are using the Cook et al. paper to argue that science isn’t done by consensus and hence that the paper illustrates a fundamental problem with climate science, but I still think that such a paper has value. Eventually, the message will have to get out there and it will become clear that there is strong agreement about the science.

So, here Anon. unwittingly reveals that the consensus paper is a strategy. Still scratching his head, he asks his readers for help.

Tom Curtis (who is, as far as I can tell, a partner in the Skeptical Science blog enterprise) obliges, with archetypal green invective.

There is a large measure of idiocy in Ben Pile’s post, and in Mike Hulme’s endorsement of it.

The architects of the new consensus — Cook et al and their pals — really ought to understand the dynamics of a consensus. If you begin your defence of a consensus by calling those who might belong to it ‘idiots’, the only possible outcome is that the consensus will diminish. He moves on… Sort of. A long discussion about other people’s arguments about the Consensus Project’s methods follows – none of which relates much to my criticism. Then Cook says,

The fact is that claims of a low consensus bar are refuted by the classification system in the paper. Based on the paper, if you “explicitly minimize [or] reject AGW as less than 50%”, you reject the consensus. So, we now know, apparently that all those AGW critics believe that AGW is responsible for 50%+ of warming over at least the last 50 years (and possibly over the twentieth century). There is no other coherent way to read the paper.

This is a stunning revision of the paper. And it proves my point that the argument about the substance of climate science is obscured by second hand arguments about the consensus.

In fact, this is how the paper categorises abstracts:

(Click for larger version)

Curtis is wrong. The paper gives three categories of ‘endorsement’, and three of rejection. Of these six, only one makes a test as Curtis has described — and that is for ‘explicit rejection’: “Explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming”.

This leads to the possibility of paradoxes. You could argue in a paper that only 49.9999999999999999999999999999999% of global warming was caused by mankind, but as long as you said in the abstract something to the effect of Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change, your paper would be counted as an ‘endorsement’ (i.e. part of the consensus). But swap the two claims around — put the 49.9(etc) figure in the abstract, and the endorsement in the body of the paper — and suddenly you’re a denier.

So it would seem that Curtis doesn’t even understand this survey he is defending, and from this misunderstand he calls me — and worse, Mike Hulme — an idiot.

Curtis’s rant gets worse…

I know for a fact that many of those critics endorse very low climate sensitivities that imply that anthropogenic factors cannot be the cause of most of global warming, even since 1980. They routinely say as much, indicating that while anthropogenic factors may have contributed some part of the warming, the warming is overwhelmingly natural in origin. Therefore, I can only assume that their claim to belong to the “consensus position” of Cook et al it tactical. At best it is dreadfully misinformed.

Ben Pile should have known this. He certainly should have suspected it, given the known position of his informants. He absolutely should not have only taken the opinions of known critics of AGW and Cook in forming his view of how the consensus was defined in Cook et al. Doing so shows him either to be entirely partisan in his outlook, or idiotic.

I certainly do know for a fact that some people’s estimates of climate sensitivity are so low as to at least imply, contrary to the IPCC statement, natural variability might account for more than 50% of the warming in the second half of the C20th. My argument, however, was that the Consensus Project is too clumsy to capture such a position.

For instance, I point out in my reply to Martin Lack that Roy Spencer’s paper has been misclassified. The abstract read as follows:

“We explore the daily evolution of tropical intraseasonal oscillations in satellite-observed tropospheric temperature, precipitation, radiative fluxes, and cloud properties. The warm/rainy phase of a composited average of fifteen oscillations is accompanied by a net reduction in radiative input into the ocean-atmosphere system, with longwave heating anomalies transitioning to longwave cooling during the rainy phase. The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by ice clouds, potentially supporting Lindzen’s “infrared iris” hypothesis of climate stabilization. These observations should be considered in the testing of cloud parameterizations in climate models, which remain sources of substantial uncertainty in global warming prediction.”

Notice that the abstract makes absolutely no statements about the relative contributions to C20th warming of natural variation and anthropogenic CO2. Yet the paper was categorised as being an ‘implicit rejection’, the definition of which is:

(5) Implicit rejection – Implies humans have had a minimal impact on global warming without saying so explicitly E.g., proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of global warming. Example: “‘. . . anywhere from a major portion to all of the warming of the 20th century could plausibly result from natural causes according to these results.”

Of course we know that Spencer is a critic of the IPCC. But one must abandon such prior knowledge if one is to execute such a test of abstracts as the Consensus Project’s intended.

The point here is not just about this prior knowledge influencing a subjective reading and classification of the paper — i.e. the method and its execution. The point is that there is something wrong with the categories themselves — the research design. These categories aren’t useful to the debate. Even if we were to find some better categories, they would still obscure the substance of the debate.

Curtis concludes much as he started, just in case anyone had forgotten he was calling Mike Hulme an idiot for agreeing with me.

And in endorsing Ben Pile’s comment, Mike Hulme (who is certainly not partisan) shows his intervention to be idiotic and ill informed. He has merely accepted the propaganda of climate science deniers and treated it as straightforward fact. He has done so without any attempt to check with the original authors as to whether or not the opinion was fair. Frankly, from a scientist, such ill informed and inflammatory comments are a disgrace.

It’s all about endorsing with these guys, isn’t it… Endorsement and rejection. Hulme should have rejected Pile and endorsed Cook et al, because Pile rejects the consensus, whereas Cook et al endorse it, as do most climate scientists. They want agreements and disagreements to be black and white, yes and no, true and false, science and denier.

Curtis continues his attack on Hulme further on in the comments…

Unfortunately his insistence that the policy debate is not determined by the science (which is true) clouds him to the fact that you can’t have the real policy debate while one side of politics is determinedly ignoring the science.

Again, we see here the circular argument, which is itself preoccupied with cartoonish antagonisms: ‘sides’. One side of politics is ignoring the science. The evidence for half of this statement is, of course, the study.

But as I explain in the post, in the case of Davey, the science is being ignored by a politician, it having been displaced from the debate by the 97% figure. Moreover, as we have seen in Davey, his predecessors, and his superiors, you can say anything you like about climate change, as long as it doesn’t contradict this view of sides. You could say, for instance, that there will be 10 metres of sea level rise by 2100 and that therefore climate policies are necessary. This claim would exist far away from ‘The Science’. But it would seem to be correct according to the tests applied to it by the Consensus Project. This is disappointing, because Curtis is nearly on to something…

Further, he appears to have picked up that strange censorial attitude noteworthy also in von Storch which presumes that because they do not believe that AGW will lead to catastrophe (which is a respectable position inside the consensus), that therefore scientists who do believe that it will (also a respectable position inside the consensus) must not state that belief in public.

Surely this is a frank admission that there is no consensus on catastrophic climate change? If so, then Curtis is now in a real bind, because this deprives the ‘warmist’ crowd of their moral imperatives. Moreover, most complaints from sceptics are that the catastrophism we are all too familiar with is undue — not that there is no such thing as climate change. And what Curtis seems entirely oblivious to is the extent to which catastrophic stories have political utility. Curtis then descends to simple transference:

Perhaps it is a weird reflection of the pernicious practice of reporting (or claiming) that “science says” this or that, as if science was an independent person. Science says nothing, but scientists say much, and much that disagrees with each other. It appears that Hulme and von Storch want to maintain that monolithic voice, while insisting it be as cautious in its claims as they are.

Curtis should have read my post more carefully:

Some might still sense no problem with such an expertisation of politics, and may even prefer it to what appears to be the arbitrary landscape of politics and ideology. But what the squabble over the Sunday Politics interview reveals is that political debates descend to science; they are often not improved by science and evidence as much as they degraded by undue expectations of them. Being an advocate of science seems to mean nothing more than shouting as loudly as possible ‘what science says…’, second hand.

And those who shout most loudly about science turn out to be advancing an idea of science which, rather than emphasising the scientific method, puts much more store — let’s call it ‘faith’ — in scientific institutions. Hence, the emphasis on the weight, number and height of scientific evidence articles, and expertise, rather than on the process of testing competing theories.

Finally, in a third attack on Hulme, Curtis makes some extraordinary claims:

As to what is said, for somebody who prattles on about the importance of different ways of knowing, and the need to include humanities within the ambit of the IPCC, Mike Hulme is pretty clueless. Had he a slight clue he would know about such important matters in the humanities as conversational implicature, and context.

The first is a simple point dressed up in so much verbiage:

So the first thing that is evident is that Hulme, in his comparison of supposedly distinct statements, is simply ignoring conversational implicature. In consequence he is treating two phrases which convey the same information to anyone who has not set out ab initio to score rhetorical points as being entirely distinct.

In essence, Curtis is excusing the Consensus Project’s word play by saying that Hulme is playing with words. But, as has been shown, the wording of the specification of categories in the paper was problematic. It was ambiguous, and it was a transparent attempt to project its authors prejudices into the debate. They are meaningless categories, and the defence that an attempt to point out that they are meaningless categories is semantic play is dishonest, since it ultimately depends on nothing more than Curtis’s claim that the authors are honest. Sadly for Curtis, we are allowed to believe that they are not honest, and to demand a higher level of argument.

But this is even more incredible, given Curtis’s own misconception of the study’s categories: (emphasis added)

Second, and this is an inexcusable lapse as interpretation in context is a cardinal rule in all academic disciplines, he ignores context. In this case the essential context is the actual definitions of the ratings categories, and the need to interpret them (if at all possible) as mutually consistent and non-overlapping. Given those constraints, any abstract indicating that that “Humans cause global warming”, and therefore “Humans cause global warming” is seen to be short hand for “Humans have caused most of recent global warming.”

As was shown above, by reference to the paper itself Curtis is wrong to say that the categories divide the abstracts according to the 50% measure. Moreover, as was shown above, the categories are not mutually consistent, and do overlap. There are many arguments that could belong to one or more of the categories, on both putative sides of the division. For example, one could very easily construct an argument that met the definition of an “Explicit endorsement without quantification” (category 2) and an “Explicit rejection with quantification” (category 7). The test of this would be a contradiction in the following statement:

‘Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change’ BUT ‘The human contribution to the CO2 content in the atmosphere and the increase in temperature is negligible in comparison with other sources of carbon dioxide emission’

Does this hypothetical statement belong in category 2 or 7? It meets the criteria of both, but doesn’t contradict itself. It is only seen as a contraction when an attempt is made to force it into the papers’ schema: bogus categories. The authors impose their own prejudices and misconceptions of the debate on to the debate. QED.

Worse, even than that projection is this statement…

In fact, there exists a concerted disinformation campaign one of whose key strategies is to underplay the level of scientific agreement about global warming. Given that, it is perfectly appropriate for somebody to what to actually assess the level of that agreement; and perfectly reasonable to want to counter the false arguments that the level of scientific agreement is small. And whether or not the level of agreement in the literature to the claim that humans have caused greater than 50% of recent warming is near 97% or closer to 50% is very relevant to that issue (and the correctness of my ascriptions of which side is indulging in disinformation.)

Curtis cannot demonstrate a “concerted disinformation campaign” exists, nor that it intends “to underplay the level of scientific agreement about global warming”.

But what we can see now is that there vividly exists a campaign — and it looks like a “concerted disinformation campaign” to me — to OVERSTATE the “level of scientific agreement about global warming”. Some climate scientists seem to agree. Curtis’s response is to call them idiots.

Then there is the special pleading. “it is perfectly appropriate for somebody to what to actually assess the level of that agreement”, says Curtis. But wait, hasn’t he been calling anyone who has tried to establish what the level of agreement is, and more importantly what the agreement consists of, an idiot? Curtis doesn’t want anyone to know what the substance of the agreement is. He just wants them to know that the agreement is substantial. That way, as I pointed out in the post, it can mean whatever he wants it to mean.

Finally, then, who is Tom Curtis?

According to the about page on his own blog,

I have noticed at least one person refer to me as a scientist, which I am not. […] But if not a scientist, what am I? By training, I am a philosopher, with a particular interest in ethics, logic and epistemology (in that order).

So, not a climate scientist. And a bit of a failure at logic and epistemology, too.

If this survey had not influenced the arguments of Obama and Davey, and thus perhaps influenced UK policy, I might actually feel sorry for the paper’s authors and their fans. Instead, seeing for myself just how shallow their thinking is, and how transparent their politicking is, I am more terrified that it is so easy for such a collection of mediocre minds to achieve such prominence, merely by flattering politicians with such rank pseudo science.

UPDATE.

Tom Curtis has a response to the above over at the site in question. His defence is rather interesting…

tlitb1, I have read that appalling piece of crap. It may convince those who want to be convinced, but not any discerning critic.

At one point Pile argues against my contention that his interpretation of “endorses global warming” is incorrect because it makes the classification system unnecessarily inconsistent by simply asserting the classification system is inconsistent. Apparently he has never heard of the principle of charity in criticisms, ie, that in interpreting the works of others you construe them as consistent if it is possible to do so. In this case it is certainly possible to do so so choosing the inconsistent interpretation so that you can criticize the paper for inconsistency merely indicates that you are determined to criticize the paper regardless of its actual merits.

I’m glad to discover that Tom Curtis is in favour of a charitable reading of other people’s arguments. But if being ‘charitable’ means calling Hulme (and me) ‘idiots’, I would hate to see what being uncharitable looks like.

Following Ed Davey’s somewhat silly comments about the climate debate, I recently submitted an FOI request for more information.

From: Ben Pile
Sent: 22 June 2013
To: deccfoi
Subject: Foi Request – Davey speech 18 June.

Dear Sir,

On 18 June, Ed Davey made a speech at at Residence Palace, Brussels, which is published on the DECC website at https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/edward-davey-speech-ambitious-and-flexible-europes-2030-framework-for-emissions-reduction

Davey: “The science is solid and accepted by pretty much every government on earth. Of course there will always be those with a vested interest in the status quo. Who seek to create doubt where
there is certainty. And you will always get crackpots and conspiracy theorists who will deny they have a nose on their face if it suits them. But the truth is this: while forecasts of the future rate at which the world will warm differ, and while many accept we will see periods when warming temporarily plateaus, all the scientific evidence is in one direction.”

Davey’s comments — now published by DECC — seem to refer to arguments made by individuals or organisations in the wider debate about climate and energy policy. However, these parties were not named. Moreover, nor were any specific claims made by these parties addressed by Davey given any substance.

I am sure that the comments made by Davey in his speech reflect the best scientific advice and research, and an impartial view of the arguments for and against the policies he is advancing.

However, in the interests of clarity and an informed debate, I believe the Secretary of State should be more candid about who he is addressing his arguments to, and what the substance of their arguments is. I would like the following questions to be treated as a FOI request.

1. Who are the parties with ‘vested interests’ referred to by Davey?
2. By what means was Davey made aware of these ‘vested interests’?
3. Who are the ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’ referred to by Davey?
4. By what means was Davey made aware of these ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’?
5. What is the science, referred to by Davey, which is contradicted by the ‘vested interests’ and ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’?
6. How do the arguments advanced by ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’ and ‘vested interests’ contradict the science?
7. What is Davey’s (or the department’s) evidence that ‘vested interests’ and ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’ have had an impact on the wider debate?
8. Has the department had an internal discussion, or commissioned any research — internally or externally — that identifies these ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’ and ‘vested interests’, and evaluates their arguments? If such discussions or research exist, may I see them?

Many thanks,

Ben Pile.

Here is the reply…

Your request has been considered under the terms of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000. However, some of the information which you have requested constitutes environmental information for the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIRs). As such, to the extent that the information requested is environmental your request has also been considered under the EIRs.

Your request is in relation to the following two sentences of a speech made by Secretary of State Edward Davey on 18th June 2013:

Of course there will always be those with a vested interest in the status quo.

And:

And you will always get crackpots and conspiracy theorists who will deny they have a nose on their face if it suits them.

In answer to your questions 1-5, we do not hold recorded information within scope of these questions. As is made clear in the statement Edward Davey’s intent was not to point to any particular group or party, but to the practice of public relations and lobbying in all areas of public governance, some arguing for change, some arguing for no change, and how it can sometimes be reflected unchallenged in some sections of the media. His comments were informed by his personal experience, including as a member of Parliament.

The scientific evidence that Edward Davey referred to in his speech comes from the published peer-reviewed work of many research groups in the UK and around the world and from the published assessments undertaken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other organisations, including the Royal Society, the US National Academies of Science and the Committee on Climate Change.

In answer to your questions 6 and 7, Edward Davey did not make the specific claims to which you refer in his speech, and we do not hold recorded information within scope of these questions.

DECC has not commissioned any research internal or external for the purpose you suggest. However the Department holds some information in scope of your question 8. It regularly monitors arguments and debates on climate change and the general results are often discussed internally via email or meetings. The Department also regularly publishes scientific advice and documents and commentary on its policies and is transparent in the advice it receives. The scientific advice and documents are freely available from the DECC website at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-energy-climate-change

After careful examination of question 8 we have determined that Regulation 12(4)(b) applies to that part of the question that concerns DECC’s internal emails, briefing papers or meeting notes where climate change issues are discussed. Regulation 12(4)(b) provides that a public authority may refuse to disclose information to the extent that the request for information is manifestly unreasonable. In applying the exception, we have considered the public interest test in respect of your request and applied a presumption in favour of disclosure (as required by Regulation 12(2) of the EIRs). We acknowledge that greater transparency makes the Government more accountable to the electorate, increases trust and also enables the public contribution to policy making to become more effective. Gathering the information you requested would require a search of the Department’s electronic and paper records, personal email accounts and devices of staff concerned. Determining, locating, retrieving and extracting the requested information would take longer than 24 working hours. This would involve a significant cost to the Department and diversion of resources from the teams concerned and the Department’s other work. Given that a lot of the information the Department holds is already in the public domain we consider that the public interest there may be in disclosing documents through this request, and any associated benefits in increasing transparency, are outweighed by the cost of meeting the request.

It would be interesting to know what happens at DECC. For example, we know that amongst DECC’s advisers is this chap

I am Professor of Environmental Psychology and Director of the Understanding Risk Research Group within the School. I work on risk, risk perception, and risk communication and as such my research is interdisciplinary at the interface of social psychology, environmental sciences, and science and technology studies. I am currently researching public responses to energy technologies (e.g. nuclear power, renewable energy), climate change risks, and climate geoengineering. I have in the past led numerous policy oriented projects on issues of public responses to environmental risk issues and on ‘science in society’ for UK Government Departments, the Research Councils, the Royal Society, and Charities. I am currently a member of the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Science Advisory Group (SAG), and theme leader for the Climate Change Consortium for Wales.

DECC’s SAG consists of these people

Professor John Shepherd FRS (Chair) – School of Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton
Chris Mottershead – King’s College London
Professor Nick Jenkins – Cardiff University
Professor Tadj Oreszczyn – Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL
Professor Stuart Haszeldine – University of Edinburgh
Professor Peter Cox – College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter
Paul Watkiss – Paul Watkiss Associates (independent research consultancy specialising in climate change, environmental and economic policy advice)
Dame Sue – Imperial College London
Professor Nick Pidgeon – Cardiff University
Professor Jon Gibbins – Institute of Materials and Processes, University of Edinburgh

The stuff they get up to can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/policy-advisory-groups/science-advisory-group

DECC currently spends around £25 million annually on scientific evidence-gathering. This work supports the department’s policies, helps meet UK, EU and UNFCCC reporting obligations, and feeds into the committee on Climate Change and DECC’s work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). DECC also works in partnership with the research councils and academic community where their work has policy-relevant outputs.

What’s hard to understand is how a minister with such a brief, and such budgets for expertise, could have produced such a poor argument that his own department couldn’t get behind.

I have a post up at the Nottingham University/Leverhulme ‘Making Science Public’ blog, run by Warren Pearce.

What’s behind the battle of received wisdoms?

Andrew Neil’s interview with Ed Davey on the Sunday Politics show last week caused an eruption of comment. For sceptics, it was a refreshing change of scenery: a journalist at the BBC, a stronghold of environmental orthodoxy, challenging the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, an office which is rarely held to account. But perhaps because of this, it upset many of a greener hue.

Read more at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/

Ed Davey’s comments have been causing a stir this week. First, there is this exchange between Andrew Neil and the Energy Secretary on the Sunday Politics show…

It’s good to see Davey finally getting a grilling about the basis for the government’s policies. And it’s even more refreshing to see it on the BBC. However, the over-emphasis on science doesn’t help the debate. As others have pointed out. Davey just returns to the same old argument, about majorities of scientists — the bogus polarisation of binary, opposing categories of ‘scientists’ vs ‘deniers’. Although Davey claims that ‘climate science is incredibly complicated – it’s new, innovative science’, he reduces it to a simple story of goodies and baddies.

The debate about the ‘science’ has been going on for years. Even if the alarmist interpretation of climate science is weakening, it won’t end environmental alarmism and the shoddy thinking that underpins government policy. There are many problems with the government’s policies and thinking, just one of which I pointed out in the previous post.

This is most concisely demonstrated by a tweet from Richard Tol, in response to the interview, in which the subject of rising energy bills was too briefly mentioned.

I particularly like the bit where @EdwardDaveyMP claims that they’re putting up energy prices to combat energy poverty. @afneil

Davey is facing a real challenge, and the fact of his impatient comments about his critics serve only to demonstrate that he is steepening his rhetoric because he is losing the argument. It turns out that the ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’ aren’t so easy to dismiss as such. Hence, his open letter to the Taxpayers Alliance (TPA).

(And it cannot help poor old Davey that his predecessor at DECC, the disgraced Chris Huhne, who, barely out of prison is intent on developing tensions between the Treasury and DECC, and between the Tories and the ailing junior partners in the coalition).

Davey was taking issue with the TPA, who are running a campaign called Stop the Energy Swindle. Said Davey, about the TPA’s argument:

… it is disingenuous to seek to pin the blame on government policies using inflated assessments of their impacts while ignoring the main driver for price increases – rising global fossil fuel prices. It’s the global gas price, not green subsidies, that has primarily been pushing up energy bills. 60% of the increase in household energy bills between 2010 and 2012 was caused by this.

It is incredible that Davey should argue that the government is not to blame for rising energy bills, but that rising fossil fuel prices are. If prices can be brought down or stabilised, as Davey argues, by building wind farms and other renewables, why can’t they be brought down by building more capacity in conventional energy production? After all, the wind above our heads is as ‘free’ as the coal, oil, gas and uranium beneath our feet. The cost comes from turning something useless into something useful, and getting it from where it is to where it is needed. Emphasising restraint, and disincentivising conventional and cheaper production of energy (or conversely, incentivising renewable energy) will have the inevitable consequence of limiting the capacity of conventional energy production, pushing prices up. The scarcity of conventional fuels is a product of policy, not a fact about the world. Davey’s and DECC’s do not count the opportunity cost created by their policies.

The TPA’s reply is here.

The Liberum Capital estimate of the likely increase in total power costs is realistic. Their estimate is based on reasonable assumptions about the amount of investment needed; the higher profits in the energy sector needed to pay for that investment; and the higher prices needed to pay for those profits. Given the challenges facing the nuclear programme and the high costs of offshore wind, their estimate seems conservative.

Liberum’s analysis is pretty solid. In summary, it argues that the EMR bill will transfer risk from investors in renewable energy to the consumer. Investors have not been persuaded by the (current and previous) government’s claims that they will continue to support them, nor by the performance of renewable energy technology or policies where they have been tried (and they have failed) elsewhere. Although many wind farms and other green energy projects have been developed in the UK, the UK’s progress towards meeting its emissions reduction and renewable energy targets are short of expectations. Hence, the constant refrain of ‘investor certainty’ in the Houses of Parliament.

But you don’t even need to take Liberum’s word for it. The Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change’s own dyscalculia should be enough to persuade you…

During his grilling by Andrew Neil, Davey made the following comment:

Ed Davey: If our policies were as expensive as you suggested, we would obviously want to look at them, but – the figure you gave at the top of the programme. You said that our policies are putting £112 on people’s bills. well, let’s look at that.

Andrew Neil: That’s your figure.

Ed Davey: I’m about to – I’ll give you the breakdown of that. The vast majority of that £112 is tackling fuel poverty, making people’s homes warmer. That’s a no-regrets, because it reduces energy bills long-term. That’s what I mean. A lot of the policies we’re doing you should do anyway. Only a small part of that £112 that you mentioned, which you tried to say was the cost of climate change – completely falsely, I have to say – only a small amount is in subsidising renewable and low-carbon energies. That’s why we’re taking a very rational, sensible, moderate approach to this.

Davey is trying to claim that his policies will reduce bills, given the fact of rising prices on energy markets. Even leaving aside the problems of this assumption, we can see that this is nonsense. Not even Davey is talking about an absolute reduction in bills, but a reduction only relative to their hypothetical scenario of rising energy prices.

Davey is right to say that the contribution of ‘subsidising renewable and low-carbon energies’ to prices rises is small. It is, in absolute terms. But fundamental to his broader argument is the claim that energy bills will be reduced by reducign demand through energy efficiency measures. Hence ‘The vast majority of that £112 is tackling fuel poverty, making people’s homes warmer.’

Some people, living in some kinds of accommodation will be entitled to ‘free’ energy efficiency measures. But this means someone else has to pay for them. Another failed policy — the Green Deal — that only launched this year is the government’s attempt to get even more people to reduce their energy needs.

Bus as has been argued here before, ‘efficiency’ is a fickle concept. Efficiency depends on what we count as good and bad. Clearly, on the green measure, ‘efficiency’ is measured only in terms of energy. But what if it was, in the final analysis, better to have cheap energy and energy inefficient homes, than to have expensive energy and efficient homes? This is the calculation I made last year in response to demands from Quango, Consumer Focus, that a whopping £55 billion be spent on improving the energy efficiency of the UK’s poorest 9 million homes. It turns out it would be much cheaper just to build some power stations and give those people electricity for ‘free’.

The Green Deal allows homeowners to take out a loan, attached to the property, to fit energy saving measures such as insulation and heating. But, noting the caveat about how ‘efficiency’ is measured above, the loan is conditional:

The key principle, or golden rule, for accessing Green Deal finance is that the charge attached to the bill should not exceed the expected savings, and the length of the payment period should not exceed the expected lifetime of the measures. This is not a government guarantee, but a guideline for customers that, typically, they should be able to expect to gain more efficient, less wasteful properties with no additional net cost from the Green Deal.

The cost of Green Deal loans is 7%. So if you borrowed £8,000 over a period of 25 years, you’d be paying back your original £8,000 plus £8,635 interest — a total of £16,635, or £56 a month for 300 months.

That means you’d have to use £56-worth less electricity and gas every month to make the loan worthwhile — or £672 a year. This is roughly equivalent to a half an average domestic energy bill for a year.

Let’s assume that it is possible to find a 50% reduction in a home, for a £8,000 investment in efficiency measures — though you wouldn’t have much change after some insulation and a new boiler. Notice that — HURRAH! — your energy bill has gone down, but the amount you pay every month has not. The home owner is now paying the gas and electricity companies, and the loan company.

And then, that’s before we’ve taken into account any future price rises. You may have cut your energy use by half, but you still have to pay for increases in energy prices. If the TPA’s claim that energy bills will increase to £2000/year by 2020 is correct, your bill will still rise by a further £400 or so.

Some perspective on historic prices may be useful here.

Up until 2005, the average bill for electricity and gas for a domestic consumer, paying by direct debit was £600. It’s now more than twice that. And between now and 2020, it will be three times that. And into the 2020s, it may even be four times the amount paid in 2005. The energy minister may want to deny responsibility for it, but now energy companies are beginning to refuse the blame put on them by Davey and his colleagues. According to the Telegraph today,

A household’s energy bill will rise from £1,247 today to £1,487 by 2020 in real terms – not taking into account inflationary increases – if usage remains static, npower warns in a report. Costs caused by government policies such as subsidies for new wind farms and energy efficiency schemes will be the main driver, adding £144, it claims.

Admittedly, NPower’s claim is substantially lower than the TPA’s. Nonetheless, it demonstrates that fewer people than ever think that the government’s policies are likely to reduce bills.

And it’s not as if Npower are against the government’s policies. NPower announced:

“Government and energy suppliers need to be much clearer about the facts behind rising energy costs, so we can present one clear message to consumers: energy costs will rise, and the only way to control of this is taking action to reduce consumption.”

So, NPower really only have themselves to blame for the government’s attempts to explain energy companies as the reason for rising energy prices.

“Government policy is rightly delivering the transformation we need to address the UK’s poor housing stock and encourage investment required in new infrastructure – but achieving these aspirations comes at a cost, and this is what needs to be clearly communicated to consumers. The fact is that if people don’t take action to reduce energy consumption, their bills are going to rise. If we can’t be upfront about that, we won’t be able to convince people to make big changes to be more energy efficient.”

Who are NPower to say that the government’s policies are ‘rightly delivering the transformation we need’? The idea that the energy company is concerned about rising energy prices is far-fetched indeed. It is manifestly the case that a return to 2005 prices would do more to improve housing stock than would be done by transforming that stock itself. There should be democratic debate about the government’s priorities

Instead, there are edicts from the annointed. The possibility of increasing productive capacity, or to prioritise lower energy prices is not given consideration by NPower, who take as ‘rightly’ the government’s policies. And it’s not given consideration by the Government, whose Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change instead invents counter-factual arguments about rising energy prices that have no basis in fact, and who resists criticism by recourse to words like ‘crackpots’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’. And when that fails, he goes on TV to reveal he really doesn’t have a grasp of the debate.

The people left out of this of course, is the public. And their attitudes towards energy companies, the government and policies has been measured by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) in a new report out today. According to UKERC, the research,

… funded by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and carried out by a team from the Universities of Cardiff and Nottingham, reveal that people in Britain are fully supportive of the idea of energy system change.

Professor Nick Pidgeon, who led the research team, said: “Our participants saw the bigger picture of energy system transformation, and they were overwhelmingly committed to moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable forms of energy production, and to lowering energy demand”.

The research highlights key factors that influence public assessment of proposed changes. From examining these factors, the research shows that the public favours changes that are: energy efficient rather than wasteful; protect the environment and nature; are reliable, accessible and safe; allow consumers a certain amount of autonomy and power; are socially just and fair; improve on what has gone before; score well in terms of quality and performance; and, fit with a long-term, sustainable trajectory, rather than being just a short-term fix.

The research is so much waffle about opinions on Motherhood and Apple Pie. But there you have it… According to independent academic researchers, the public apparently supports the UK’s climate and energy policies…

But wait… Who are the authors? Well, according to Professor Nick Pidgeon himself:

I am Professor of Environmental Psychology and Director of the Understanding Risk Research Group within the School. I work on risk, risk perception, and risk communication and as such my research is interdisciplinary at the interface of social psychology, environmental sciences, and science and technology studies. I am currently researching public responses to energy technologies (e.g. nuclear power, renewable energy), climate change risks, and climate geoengineering. I have in the past led numerous policy oriented projects on issues of public responses to environmental risk issues and on ‘science in society’ for UK Government Departments, the Research Councils, the Royal Society, and Charities. I am currently a member of the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Science Advisory Group (SAG), and theme leader for the Climate Change Consortium for Wales.

Why didn’t UKERC just ask Ed Davey to do the research? This is transparently polic-based evidence-making.

The fact that Pidgeon’s academic and activists lives converge rather more than they probably ought to is well known. Moreover, the academy has ever more sought the academy’s authority.

For instance, what Pidgeon doesn’t admit on his staff profile page, nor in his evidence to the Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry on “Climate: public understanding and its policy implications” is that he is also on the Public Interest Research Centre’s Climate Change Communication Advisory Group (CCCAG). The PIRC claim to be a ‘an independent charity studying & communicating vital global issues’, but are, on any definition, an activist organisation.

CCCAG’s aim is to use current academic research and practitioner-based expertise to best inform government and non-governmental climate change communications and engagement.

in 2010, CCCAG’s advice to the UK government included the following:

Private-sphere behavioural change is not enough, and may even at times become a diversion from the more important process of bringing political pressure to bear on policy-makers. The importance of public demonstrations of frustration at both the lack of political progress on climate change and the barriers presented by vested interests is widely recognised – including by government itself. Climate change communications, including government communication campaigns, should work to normalise public displays of frustration with the slow pace of political change. Ockwell et al (2009) argued that communications can play a role in fostering demand for – as well as acceptance of – policy change. Climate change communication could (and should) be used to encourage people to demonstrate (for example through public demonstrations) about how they would like structural barriers to behavioural/societal change to be removed.

In other words, the CCCAG’s advice to government was to actively encourage the public to actively encourage the government to encourage the public… etc.

The infinite recursion of environmentalism’s logic reflects the extent to which environmentalists have their heads stuck up their backsides. Here is Pidgeon, trying to explain how climate alarmism can be made to work:

In the video, Pidgeon evinces a set of theories about the public that have become known as ‘nudge’ — a practice that seeks to elicit the public’s obedience with policies. This varies from ideas about how to construct social norms, through to strategies to ‘communicate’ ‘information’ to people who might otherwise ignore it. There are two problems with this. First, it demonstrates a very cynical view of the public — that they can be ‘engaged’ given only the correct strategy. Second, it seems to posit an idea of politics in which the public must respond to the political establishment’s desires — a total inversion of normal politics.

As I’ve pointed out to Adam Corner, Pidgeon’s colleague at the Understanding Risk Research Group in Cardiff, it seems odd indeed that the Understanding Risk Research Group do not understand the predominance of risk in contemporary politics as a political, or problematic phenomenon. As the video shows, Pidgeon’s only criticism of ‘climate porn’ is that it might not be an effective strategy in ‘communicating’ or ‘engagement’. Thus, Pidegon and Corner are oblivious to their own politics. They believe that the compact between the state and the academy in the era of fear and risk-based politics is a Good Thing. They don’t want there to be a debate about policies, and the science and values that underpin them.

So there we have it — the muddled minister, being advised on energy policy by activists academics, and energy companies who are more than happy to get behind any policies that promise ‘investor certainty’.