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Extent of ‘carbon outsourcing’ revealed

Extent of ‘carbon outsourcing’ revealed

Posted for Richard Van Noorden from The Great Beyond More than one-fifth of the carbon dioxide produced by China in 2004 was emitted to provide goods and services for non-Chinese consumers, mainly in western Europe, the United States and Japan. The statistic comes from the latest study to look at an alternative style of carbon accounting — one that assigns CO2 emissions to the consumers responsible for them. By contrast, inventories such as those reported under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) simply tally the amount of gas each country produces. Ken Caldeira and Steve Davis, of  … Read more

Climate Change in Quotes

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond It’s been a busy week for climate change watchers. We had the British parliamentary hearing into climate-gate, the IPCC announced it was reviewing its procedures, American politician James Inhofe waded in with his own report, and then there was the usual plethora of yes-it-is, no-its-not back and forth. In case you missed any of it. Here’s the point/counter point. Parliamentary Engagement Written evidence from the Institute of Physics to the parliamentary inquiry is critical of the scientist at the centre of the affair – Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU).  Read more

How a computer expert corrected the Met Office

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond Another day, another fault discovered in the climate change catechism? This time it’s not the usual suspects claiming a grand global conspiracy though. It’s a bit more interesting than that. At the heart of this story is professional computer programmer John Graham-Cumming, who decided to write some software to number crunch temperature data released by the UK’s Met Office. “I thought it would be a fun hobby project to use those records to reproduce the worrying charts that show the increase in global temperatures,” he wrote on his blog last week. “Because  … Read more

Nature editor resigns from ‘climate-gate’ review

Nature editor resigns from ‘climate-gate’ review

Cross posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond Nature’s editor in chief has stepped down from the Russell Review inquiry into aspects of the ‘climate-gate’ emails, just hours after the inquiry team was unveiled. Philip Campbell stood down after it emerged he told a Chinese reporter last year that the scientists at the centre of the climate-gate row “have behaved as researchers should”. A key aspect of the review headed by Muir Russell is whether scientists at the University of East Anglia followed proper scientific procedures. In a statement released to the media yesterday, Campbell said “I made the  … Read more

Head of climate-gate inquiry defends independence

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond The team reviewing allegations of poor scientific practice at the University of East Anglia set out its stall today, and immediately faced questions about its own independence. The review was triggered by emails purloined from the university’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which trigged the so-called climate-gate brouhaha. Review head Muir Russell staunchly defended the independent nature of the review when questioned about the fact that it is funded by the university itself. Russell, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow, also faced questions about the inclusion of Nature’s editor in chief  … Read more

New climate centre email incident

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond Climate change researchers in the UK have been subjected to a new cyber-attack. Last month staff at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, part of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), were sent fake emails that purported to come from Nicholas Stern, the head of the institute. “The attacker did not gain access to any e-mail messages. The attack was identified very quickly by members of the school’s IT security team who took steps to prevent it from causing any damage,” says Bob Ward, policy  … Read more

Climate-gate, scepticism, and Pachauri’s potboiler

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond Just in case you think that the IPCC/climate-gate story has petered out in the last few days… Phil Jones, the University of East Anglia scientist whose stolen emails caused the worldwide ‘climate-gate’ kerfuffle, has told The Sunday Times he contemplated killing himself. “I did think about it, yes. About suicide,” he says. “I thought about it several times, but I think I’ve got past that stage now.” Full post on The Great Beyond…  … Read more

Quotes of the day

Cross-posted from Mark Peplow on The Great Beyond “Sanjay put his arms around her and kissed her, first with quick caresses and then the kisses becoming longer and more passionate.” UN climate change supreme Rajendra Pachauri gets physical in a line from his novel, Return to Almora, published last month. The Telegraph has some more – ahem – graphic extracts. “We need to work differently, making more data available and making our assumptions clear. Everything needs to be more and more open and we will be striving to do that in the future.” Phil Jones, former director of the Climatic  … Read more