David Henderson: Deutsche Bank’s Green Politics

It would be interesting to know whether the Deutsche Bank officials who sponsored and approved this deeply flawed initiative took the precaution of submitting a draft for expert review to persons not already firmly convinced that the 'skeptics' have been refuted.

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: The $82 Billion Prediction

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has an revealing article today about the creation in 2006 of a "short-term" hurricane risk prediction from a company called Risk Management Solutions. The Herald-Tribune reports that the prediction was worth $82 billion to the reinsurance industry. It was created in just 4 hours by 4 hurricane experts, none of whom apparently informed of the purposes to which their expertise was to be put.

Climate change: science's fresh fight to win over the sceptics | Environment | The Observer

In other words, all is not lost for climate sciene – though the tasks facing its practitioners should not be underestimated, a point stressed by Professor Trevor Davies, pro-vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia and a former director of its climate-research unit. "This affair has showed just how difficult it is to get over rational, objective arguments to people who are just not prepared to listen. It is going to be very, very difficult to engage and converse with some of these people."

Nevertheless, climate researchers will have to do just that in the coming years. The one criticism levelled by those groups who investigated and reported on climategate was their concern that its researchers had failed to answer properly the many requests for information that they had received from the public and from climate-change deniers. "We are going to have deal with that. We accept that," said Davies. "In future we will have to be utterly transparent in our undertakings. We will have to go out and engage with the public and justify our stance. That is the real lesson of this affair."

Vicky Pope, head of climate-change advice at the UK Met Office, agreed. "We are currently collecting vast sets of data for our studies of the climate and we are going to have make these available in forms that can be used by interested groups. They can then see for themselves that our analyses are sound and correct. It means a lot of extra work but if that is the price for making sure we demonstrate the dangers posed by climate change then we will have to pay it."