Well, there is a new paper in press in the Journal of Climate:

Improved methods for PCA-based reconstructions: case study using the Steig et al. 2009 Antarctic temperature reconstruction by Ryan O’Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Condon

The abstract states:

A detailed analysis is presented of a recently published Antarctic temperature reconstruction that combines satellite and ground information using a regularized expectation-maximization algorithm. Though the general reconstruction concept has merit, it is susceptible to spurious results for both temperature trends and patterns. The deficiencies include: (a) improper calibration of satellite data; (b) improper determination of spatial structure during infilling; and (c) suboptimal determination of regularization parameters, particularly with respect to satellite principal component retention. We propose two methods to resolve these issues. One utilizes temporal relationships between the satellite and ground data; the other combines ground data with only the spatial component of the satellite data. Both improved methods yield similar results that disagree with the previous method in several aspects. Rather than finding warming concentrated in West Antarctica, we find warming over the period of 1957–2006 to be concentrated in the Peninsula (≈0.35°C decade−1). We also show average trends for the continent, East Antarctica, and West Antarctica that are half or less than that found using the unimproved method. Notably, though we find warming in West Antarctica to be smaller in magnitude, we find that statistically significant warming extends at least as far as Marie Byrd Land. We also find differences in the seasonal patterns of temperature change, with winter and fall showing the largest differences and spring and summer showing negligible differences outside of the Peninsula.

Meanwhile, Ross McKitrick writes:

“NEW PAPER ON CONTAMINATED SURFACE TEMPERATURE DATA: In 2007 I published a paper with Pat Michaels showing evidence that CRU global surface temperature data used by the IPCC are likely contaminated due to socioeconomic development and variations in data quality. In 2009 Gavin Schmidt published a paper in the International Journal of Climatology claiming our results, as well as those of de Laat and Maurellis who independently found the same things we did, were spurious. My rebuttal, coauthored with Nicolas Nierenberg, has been accepted at The Journal of Economic and Social Measurement.

McKitrick, Ross R. and Nicolas Nierenberg (2010) Socioeconomic Patterns in Climate Data. Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, forthcoming.

Data/Code archive here. The paper provides a complete and thorough refutation of Schmidt’s critique. Why JESM? First, because it is a journal that focuses on the critical evaluation of policy-relevant databases, and its editors and reviewers have considerable econometric depth, and this paper is fundamentally an application of econometrics to the evaluation of data quality. Second, we submitted the paper to the IJOC in April 2009, on the assumption that, having published Schmidt’s paper, they were interested in the topic. Evidently their interest only extends to analyses that support IPCC views. After 10 months we found out that IJOC was rejecting our paper on the basis of some inane referee reports to which Nico and I were not given a chance to reply. We did anyway, and if anyone thinks the rejection by IJOC amounts to a knock against our paper, please read our response letter for some perspective. Whether or not the IJOC editors read it, they refused to reconsider our paper. Interestingly, we learned from the Climategate release that Schmidt’s paper, which focuses on defending Phil Jones’ CRU data against its various critics, was sent by the IJOC Editors to be reviewed by Phil Jones of the CRU. As you can imagine his review was shallow and uncritical, but evidently impressed the editors of IJOC. They didn’t ask deLaat or me to supply a review, nor did they invite us to contribute a response. Every interaction I have had over the years with the IJOC has left me very unimpressed.”

Summary of McKitrick & Nierenberg (2010):

To generate a climate data set, temperature data collected at the Earth’s surface must be adjusted to remove non-climatic effects such as urbanization and measurement discontinuities. Some studies have shown that the post-1980 spatial pattern of temperature trends over land in prominent climate data sets is strongly correlated with the spatial pattern of socioeconomic development, implying that the adjustments are inadequate, leaving a residual warm bias. This evidence has been disputed on three grounds: spatial autocorrelation of the temperature field undermines significance of test results; counterfactual experiments using model generated data suggest such correlations have an innocuous interpretation; and different satellite covariates yield unstable results. Somewhat surprisingly, these claims have not been put into a coherent framework for the purpose of statistical testing. We combine economic and climatological data sets from various teams with trend estimates from global climate models and we use spatial regressions to test the competing hypotheses. Overall we find that the evidence for contamination of climatic data is robust across numerous data sets, it is not undermined by controlling for spatial autocorrelation, and the patterns are not explained by climate models. Consequently we conclude that important data products used for the analysis of climate change over global land surfaces may be contaminated with socioeconomic patterns related to urbanization and other socioeconomic processes.

Records kept over the years give us historical figures to make comparisons between average temperatures then and now. This sounds simple, but the very concept of an average temperature has no simple definition. First, we have to realise that temperature is what is known as an intensive property of matter. This simply means that it does not depend on the nature or size of the material for which it is measured.

So, for example, air and a body of water may have the same measured temperature at a particular moment, but their behaviour is very different. Air has a low thermal capacity (it take little heat to change its temperature), while water has a high thermal capacity and its temperature changes relatively slowly. In the present long cold spell in western Europe, ponds and lakes need a period of consistently sub-zero temperatures before they begin to freeze. Equally, as air temperatures rise, the ice may take many days to melt. A given volume of water has a very different thermal energy content than the same volume of air. This can be easily quantified and, in contrast to temperature, is an extensive property.

When trying to average temperatures, the first obvious rule is that the measurements must all be of the same material: you cannot average air and water temperatures, for example, and get a meaningful answer. This in itself is pretty obvious and, in discussing climate change, air and water temperatures are considered separately. However, the difficulties with averaging do not stop there.

Even if temperatures are measured under carefully controlled conditions as expected for official records, they will fluctuate quite rapidly depending on wind direction and strength, cloud cover, time of day etc. The convention is to measure a maximum and minimum shade temperature each day. These readings can then be used to provide average maxima and minima per month or year, or combined to give an overall ‘average temperature’. And the figures for individual stations can themselves be combined to give national, regional and global averages.

These figures tell us something, of course, but the desire to quantify also obscures the detail. Say, for example, that place X has an average maximum temperature of +15°C and an average minimum of +5° and place Y registers +25° and -5°. Both have an overall average of +10°, but the actual climate experienced would be quite different. In a similar way, measured air temperatures in the shade bear little relationship to the apparent temperature in the sun. Although the measured shade air temperature might be the same whether or not the sun is shining, the effect on the Earth’s surface of the sunlight is significant and, once the ground has been warmed, it will release its heat at night to keep the air somewhat warmer, at least temporarily.

Simple averaging can be deceptive in other ways as well. Depending on the weather conditions or time of year, either the maximum or minimum temperature might be more typical of the day as a whole, yet both are implicitly given equal weight. Nevertheless, it is arguable that such issues are not important when comparing time series of measured temperatures. For example, the Central England Temperature record (CET) is the longest continual record available, with monthly means being recorded from 1659 and daily means logged from 1722. Looking at this it is easy to see the recorded range and note that temperatures do indeed appear to have been higher in the latter part of the 20th Century, although they have dipped again since 2000. It is the changes which are significant rather than the absolute values, provided that all measurements are strictly comparable.

This, of course, introduces yet another concern. The same instruments would not have been used in the 17th Century as 300 years later and, with the best will in the world, it is difficult to guarantee that no artefacts have been introduced. Equally, it is hardly conceivable that the surroundings of the measuring stations will be unchanged over this period (although hopefully none of the weather stations is now in an urban area, on tarmac or near heat sources as some have been found to be in other countries).

A final problem to bring up with averages is that, to avoid giving a misleading picture, data should be taken from stations spread evenly over the Earth’s surface. This is certainly not the case. In particular, there are large areas of the Arctic and Antarctic with no data being collected. The same is true for the open oceans, where collecting surface water temperatures reliably is enough of a challenge, without trying to measure air temperatures.

What we are left with then is an incomplete record of imperfect data, from which conclusions about climate change are drawn. This is the basis of the ‘global warming’ message. But actually the concept of global average temperature is again a little misleading, since the summary of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report shows that the warming pattern is regional rather than global. Warming over the 20th Century was recorded on all continents apart from Antarctica, but was considerably greater in the northern than the southern hemisphere. Given the greater proportion of ocean in the south, this is not surprising.

But global averages are still the main measure and this is the time of year when preliminary conclusions are drawn about the current year, as the annual meeting of the UN Convention on Climate Change takes place. So far, the message being put out by the World Meteorological Organization is that 2010 is likely to be among the warmest three on record. Based on the temperature record, this is doubtless correct, but how meaningful is this?

The WMO points towards record high temperatures in Russia, China and Greenland to support its case. Meanwhile anyone mentioning record lows and pointing out that new records are set nearly every day somewhere in the world is told that this means nothing. In practical terms, life has to go on and adapt to whatever climatic conditions turn out to be. Measuring temperatures remains a useful thing to do, but we must be careful not to read too much into the average figures. And we should never forget that, whatever the temperature is, we still have only a hazy idea about what controls it.

The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre,
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Cambridge CB4 0WS
Tel: +44 1223 421242

This sort of campaigning pushes the case for green taxes and distorts decision making in favour of greater regulation. It is a form of taxpayer funded lobbying and, particularly at a time when there are cuts in other areas of public spending and tax rises, it should be stopped.

This new research details the groups receiving funding and how they use their resources to lobby and campaign on environmental issues.

Key findings:

A total of £10.1 million was given to a range of environmental groups by the UK Government and the European Union in 2009-10.

The total includes £2.5 million from various UK local councils, departments and quangos.

It also includes £7.6 million in European Commission grants to environmental NGOs.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office made the largest UK payment in 2009-10 of £342,929 to WWF UK.

Hackney council made the largest payment in 2009-10 from a UK council at £141,246 to Global Action Plan.

Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“Environmentalist campaigns are politicised groups so it’s unfair and undemocratic that they are getting taxpayers’ money. If people want to give their own cash that’s one thing, but with ordinary families facing higher taxes the last thing they want is for politicians and bureaucrats to give on their behalf or put contracts to such groups. Taxpayers pay twice, once for the money given to green groups and then again when they campaign for regulations that push up electricity bills and other costs. The expensive scandal of taxpayer funded environmentalism in Britain and the EU has to end.”

Click here to read the full report

Click here for the full press release

Northern Ireland hit a new low of -9.5C (15F) at Lough Fea, Co Tyrone, and in Wales, a record minimum of -18C (0F) was reached at Llysdinam, in Powys.

Snow is still falling in Scotland, Northern Ireland and north-east England, and Edinburgh, Glasgow and Derry airports have been closed.

Forecasters say the cold spell will continue well into next week.

BBC News website, 28th November 2010: Coldest November night on record in parts of UK

An unprecedented 45,000 delegates registered to attend. 22,000 of these were from NGOs, and there were a further 5,000 journalists. Not all these people will have travelled for the conference but, since the conference centre held only 15,000 people, it was inevitable that many thousands would be left queuing for hours, only to find they were not admitted. This would have been frustrating enough on a balmy summer’s day, but winter in Copenhagen must have added another layer of misery.

Not only were there major logistical problems, but it rapidly became clear that no binding agreement would be reached. The negotiating text simply had too many basic issues unresolved and national interests of key players meant that a workable compromise was impossible. The final result was the Copenhagen declaration, agreed by a small group of world leaders in a back room at a meeting which President Obama had to gatecrash.

Many reasons have been put forward for this failure. The climategate emails were seen by many as a deliberate spoiler, although their real effect was probably minimal. An early version of a Danish draft agreement, apparently being put together in good faith by the hosts in an attempt to overcome the barriers presented by the official negotiating text, was leaked to the press near the start of the conference. Michael Jacobs, a former UK government adviser, is quoted by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin as saying “I am confident it was a deliberate tactic to destroy the conference. It’s a shame that we didn’t expose the fact that representatives of all of the major countries – including those who’d said ‘we’ve never seen this text’ were actually at a meeting to discuss it the previous week.” Again, the real impact was negligible.

George Dvorsky, a director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies put forward five reasons for the failure at Copenhagen (http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky20100110/):

1. Nation states are far too self-serving
2. Democracies are too ill-equipped and irresolute to deal with pending crises
3. Isolationist and avaricious China
4. The powerful corporatist megastructure
5. Weak consensus on the reason for global warming

Although I am loathe to characterise all true believers in man-made climate change as primarily left-ish politically, this analysis does encapsulate much of the narrative which comes from that part of the political spectrum, driven by a certainty that something has to be done and that people cannot be allowed to decide for themselves.

Mr Dvorsky summarises his preferred way forward as follows “Given the failure of Copenhagen, Im inclined to believe that semi-annual conferences are not the way to go. Instead, Id like to see the United Nations assemble an international and permanent emergency session that is parliamentary in nature (i.e. representative and accountable) and dedicated to debating and acting on the problem of anthropogenic climate change (a sub-parliament, if you will). The decisions of this governing board would be binding and impact on all the nations of the world.”

Setting aside the politics and ethical judgements, his view of human nature and selfish interests (in the non-pejorative sense) is as good a rationale for what happened as we are likely to get.

But whatever your view of the world, the failure of Copenhagen was something of a watershed in the climate change saga. Expectations have inevitably been dampened. Negotiations over the past months in preparation for COP16 in Cancun seem to have been fractious and inconclusive. Many fewer delegates have registered to attend the conference and media coverage has been far less intense. Nevertheless, thousands will still turn up, whether to do the negotiating or to encourage others to reach an agreement.

Some still seem to be hopeful. Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, says in the organisation’s newsletter “I am confident that Cancun will be a success, where the stage is set for a concrete, positive outcome.” But note that there is no reference to arriving at a binding post-Kyoto agreement. With statements like this, any form of agreement can be hailed as a success.

And the public mood is still being massaged in the run up to next week’s conference. Mikhail Gorbachev had an article in the New York Times headlined “Let’s get serious about climate change talks”. The World Meteorological Organization has talked of record levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (a continuation of the current inexorable upward trend) and there are expectations of 2010 being a record warm year, publicised this week by the UK Met Office.

But the consensus seems to be that the only real hope is to keep the momentum of talks going. In the current economic environment, it is clear that any slowing of the process would be hard to reverse. The situation could end up like the stalled Doha round of WTO talks, with the difference being that there is a good chance these will be revived at some stage. If UNFCCC negotiations were to stop, the chances of restarting them without some unassailable proof that rising carbon dioxide levels are driving dangerous climate change would be effectively zero.

It looks likely that the climate change agenda will make little further progress over the next few years, but certainly not for want of trying by those committed to the cause. The ‘fact’ that our species is a blight on the planet will continue to drive many of them. Recently, for example, the primatologist and UN peace messenger Jane Goodall spoke to a group of Belgian schoolchildren and teachers at the European Parliament. Her message, as reported under the headline UN envoy says humans are ‘destroying’ the planet, was that protecting tropical forests was both good for wildlife and one of the most important ways of slowing climate change.

But, as for many activists, her message is supported by dubious ‘facts’ (“. . . more and more people eat more and more meat, they want cheap meat. The animals are fed unnatural diets so they produce huge amounts of methane gas which is a big contributor to the greenhouse effect.”) and has more than a hint of double standards (“‘I travel 300 days a year on aircraft that spew C02 into the atmosphere so I am clearly contributing to the production of greenhouse gas emissions’, she said. She hoped, however, that increased environmental protection measures would help ‘absorb’ her personal impact on the environment.”)

Beyond Cancun, and as we enter the post-Kyoto period in just over a year, we can expect to see little progress towards the binding international targets which have long been the goal of the talks. But the momentum of policy changes will mean that mitigation activities continue. Politicians will still take the opportunity to raise ‘green’ taxes, large amounts of taxpayers’ money will be sunk into renewable energy projects which do little to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and financial institutions will continue to make money from emissions trading.

Eventually, chickens will come home to roost. Either the whole ambitious project to force a reduction in fossil fuel use will turn out to be a failed, costly and unnecessary detour in global development or hard evidence (not the output of computer models) will give conclusive support to the enhanced greenhouse effect hypothesis, at which stage resources can be used to implement the necessary policies. In the meantime, the debate about evidence and appropriate responses has to continue.

The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS
Tel: +44 1223 421242

Rupert Soames, chief executive of Aggreko, said no industrialised country planned to lose so much of its current generating capacity as fast as Britain.

And he ridiculed government targets for renewable energy as “unrealistic”.

Mr Soames was speaking at Holyrood, during a Business in Parliament conference.

He said Britain was not looking an attractive place to invest when other nations were also wanting to renew their power stations.

Glasgow company Aggreko has grown rapidly in recent years by providing temporary power units, assembled in Dumbarton, to developing countries where electricity blackouts have held back economic growth.

Mr Soames now worries one of those countries may soon be the United Kingdom.

BBC News website: ‘Urgent action’ needed to secure energy supply

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore. — Ottmar Edenhofer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010

Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide. –former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom, 2000

Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.–Stephen Harper, Canadian Prime Minister, 2002

A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources. — Emma Brindal, Friends of the Earth, 2007

Blindly accepting Western science’s prognosis could have social and economic costs for India. Climate science today is not just a scientific enterprise, but also a political enterprise. — Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, The Hindu, 17 November 2010

In order to let people (media, politicians, scientists, ordinary people) we organize – parallel to Cancun – the  III. international climate & energy conference in Berlin at dec 3.  & 4. It will be held in english and german with simultaneous translation.

I would be glad if you would accept our invitation for this conference in Berlin at dec 3.  & 4. See details in attached leaflet below. An online application form you will find here:

http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/registration-3rd-international-conference-on-energy-and-climate-berlin-2010/

12 months on we have had three largely whitewashed ‘official’ inquiries that avoided asking the difficult questions, had narrow terms of reference, and excluded sceptics from the scientific panels. Lord Oxburgh had clear conflicts of interests as he is part of the global warming industry, the Sir Muir Russell inquiry was superficial and only the excellent New Labour MP Graham Stringer voted against the findings of the left-dominated parliamentary science and technology committee. Of course, the liberal-left in the media who use climate alarmism for political ends, and the downright stupid, have tried hard to play down the significance of the leaked emails and even portray the guilty scientists as ‘victims.’ The alarmists that dominate the climate science community, in influence rather than numbers, have adopted a ‘circle the wagons’ mentality to defend the indefensible, with Dr Judith Curry being the notable exception on the ‘consensus’ side.

Climategate has prompted a much greater scrutiny of the IPCC reports, which has revealed a significant number of fundamental ‘errors’ that always err on the side of alarmism and failed to be corrected by the IPCC process. We also learned that around one-third of the references cited in the IPCC report are NOT from peer reviewed sources.

So, despite the 20 or so alarmist climate science consensus ‘gatekeepers’  having an undue influence on the UN IPCC, US CCSP and the peer review processes, avoiding data sharing and the Freedom of Information Act, truncating inconvenient post-1960 tree ring data and replacing it with instrumental data, creating and promoting the statistically insignificant ‘Hockey Stick’ graph, which is a by no means a complete list of their transgressions, the fact that they remain unpunished is a sad reflection on the state of the climate science and political establishments in the UK and the USA. The silver lining in the climate science cloud is the fact that most of the general public are now sceptical about man-made global warming in the wake of the Climategate and IPCC scandals. In the words of Dr David Evans: “The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating.”

One such is Judith Curry of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. She adheres to the mainstream view that climate change is at present primarily caused by burning fossil fuels and that the consequences are potentially very damaging. However, she has also tried to engage with sceptics, rather than dismissing all criticism and attacking the messenger. In particular, she has been criticised by colleagues for inviting prominent sceptics such as Steve McIntyre to her Institute. She sees this as a legitimate way to engage and win the argument; critics say this gives sceptics undue credibility.

Dr Curry now has her own blog (Climate Etc. at judithcurry.com). On this, she has recently posted Reversing the direction of the positive feedback loop and a follow-up piece. The concept of positive feedback is, of course, the basis for the entire edifice of current climate policy: the IPCC, the EU’s 2020 objectives, the lot. There is little concern about serious adverse effects from higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide unless the principle of positive feedback created by increased water vapour is invoked. It is this which leads to the headline figures of average temperatures rising 6°C or more as CO2 levels rise. In this context, to use the term in relation to climate policy and politics, as Dr Curry does, is guaranteed to raise a few hackles.

For someone who thinks the mainstream view of the science is broadly right, she is remarkably open-minded and honest about the problems with the current situation. Indeed, she acts as all scientists should, but so few actually do.

Take this quote, for example:

“There has been a particularly toxic positive feedback loop between climate science and policy and politics, whose direction has arguably been reversed as result of Climategate. The scientists provided the initial impulse for this feedback loop back in the 1970′s and 1980′s.  The enviro advocacy groups quickly saw the possibilities and ran with it, with the scientists’ blessing.   The enviro advocacy groups  saw the climate change issue as an opportunity to enlist scientific support for their preferred energy policy solution.”

She then develops the argument about the nature of the IPCC and policymaking. The conclusion of the first IPCC assessment report, in 1992, was “The size of this warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability. . . The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.”

Her take on this is “Nevertheless, the policy cart was put before the scientific horse, justified by the precautionary principle.  Once the UNFCCC treaty was a done deal, the IPCC and its scientific conclusions were set on a track to become a self fulfilling prophecy. . . at the heart of the IPCC is a cadre of scientists whose careers have been made by the IPCC.  These scientists have used the IPCC to jump the normal meritocracy process by which scientists achieve influence over the politics of science and policy.  Not only has this brought some relatively unknown, inexperienced  and possibly dubious people into positions of influence, but these people become vested in protecting the IPCC, which has become central to their own career and legitimizes playing power politics with their expertise. . . When I refer to the IPCC dogma, it is the religious importance that the IPCC holds for this cadre of scientists; they will tolerate no dissent, and seek to trample and discredit anyone who challenges the IPCC.”

Coming from someone who has been regarded as one of the climate change establishment, this is pretty damning stuff. Those who see themselves as the object of Dr Curry’s criticism have not been slow to respond. According to her blog, suggestions for why her behaviour has been so treacherous include:

* I been duped by big oil and/or right wing think tanks
* I have opened my mind so wide to skeptics that my brains have fallen out
* I’m in the pay of big oil or right wing think tanks
* I’m being blackmailed
* I have become either physically or mentally disabled

To accuse an honest, open-minded colleague of such things speaks of something seriously amiss in the scientific world. But for those who are committed to the cause, this kind of questioning is beyond the pale. It places researchers such as Dr Curry in league with ‘Big Oil’ which, in the narrative favoured by many activists, orchestrates or funds the campaign to call the orthodoxy into question.

For example, Donald Brown, Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science and Law,  has recently posted on the Penn State Climate Ethics site a piece entitled A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?: The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Disinformation Campaign on Climate Change. In it, he says, for example “Although it may be reasonable to be somewhat skeptical about climate change models, some corporate sponsored participants in the climate change disinformation campaign have been spreading deeply misleading distortions about the science of climate change. These untruths are not based upon reasonable skepticism but outright falsification and distortions of climate change science.”

This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon view in some circles. One of Dr Brown’s colleagues at Penn State is Michael Mann, now director of the Earth System Science Center but best known for the controversial ‘hockey stick’ graph of 20th Century temperature change. He has a New Scientist article headlined Professional climate change deniers’ crusade continues. Although focussed on the legal challenges brought by Virginia state Attorney General Cuccinelli, his final sentence reads “While professional climate change deniers continue their crusade against climate science, this year is likely to go down as either the warmest or the second warmest on record.” There seems little chance of any meeting of minds with people such as this.

The argument from people at this end of the spectrum is not only that the ‘disinformation’ campaign has reduced politicians’ willingness to act, but that ‘climategate’ played a significant role in derailing last year’s Copenhagen climate summit. More open-minded observers would say that the likelihood of a binding post-Kyoto agreement emerging were slim at best.

The question is whether the breaking of ranks within the climate change establishment is one of the first signs of the return of objectivity and a true scientific debate, or whether the wagons will be circled by the diehards and the war of attrition continued. The best hope is for the extremists of all colours to be marginalised. I’m not holding my breath just yet, but there are certainly signs of movement in the right direction.

The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS
Tel: +44 1223 421242