Comments on: FOI: the case for tighter regulation

By: Fred Levy

Fred Levy — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:41:19 +0000

Michael Meacher MP » Blog Archive » FOI: the case for tighter regulation: http://bit.ly/cUCvIT via @addthis

By: EJT

EJT — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:57:30 +0000

Thank you Mr. Meacher, well done.
On the political side, I wonder what is your reaction to this ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HesdOJdLN-k&feature=player_embedded
Regards,
EJT

By: Peter Dunford

Peter Dunford — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:55:16 +0000

Michael,
Good piece, well done. Spread the word with your ministerial colleagues please. I would quibble with one aspect, though. You say:
Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions,
The 42 stations issue is not of minute relevance. Prof. Jones used these in a paper which forms the basis for CRU’s lack of adjustment for UHI (urban heat island effect). Any fool with a dashboard external temperature readout can tell you that it’s warmer in large towns and cities than a couple of miles outside. (BTW, Airport Heat Island effect is just as big a problem in the GHCN dataset.) It is suspected that a large chunk of the warming “anomaly” is failure to properly account for this factor.
There are issues around the tree ring controversy too, in particular bias in selection of trees and undue weight given to a few tress to generate a “hockey stick”. All this is well documented now and well ignored by the Government and the warmists.
Humans cause climate change primarily through land use change. Take Kilimanjaro, people cut down most of the rainforest around it, the source of rain that replenishes the glacier was greatly reduced, the glacier retreated. Man-made climate change, but nothing to do CO2.

By: geoff Chambers

geoff Chambers — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:37:48 +0000

Dear Mr Meacher,
It’s nice to see someone who can’t be dismissed as a Sarah Palin fan in the pay of Big Oil expressing some sensible concern about this affair. The question as to whether we need to spend trillions to avoid a hypothetical danger in fifty years time is too important to be left to a few right-wing bloggers.
You say: “Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions..”
With respect, these questions are not of minute relevance. Without the Chinese weather station data, the only paper cited as demonstrating that the Urban Heat Island effect is trivial becomes worthless, which means that the official figure for observed warming last century (0.7°C) is unsupported. Without the data from just twelve living trees in Siberia, the latest version of the hockeystick (Briffa’s Yamal study) is worthless, and the historical reality of a mediaeval warming period is re-established. The evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming is demolished by the revelations of Climategate.
No-one expects a busy politician to be aware of all the arcane details of the science of this affair. For an interesting non-partisan view of the politics of the global warming movement, I do suggest you visit climate-resistance.org/ where a couple of British political science students are doing the analytical spade work which the Labour Party’s researchers are so miserably failing to do.
Best wishes
Geoff Chambers