WWF resign from Zero Carbon Taskforce following policy change

WWF have released a statement today announcing their resignation from the Zero Carbon Taskforce with immediate effect following the Government's decision, released without announcement in documents accompanying the Budget, that the definition of Zero Carbon Homes will no longer include the emissions from unregulated energy use within the home. The organisation consider that by removing appliances and their energy use from the definition this policy can no now longer be defined as "zero carbon". They say that the change effectively transfers the task of providing clean energy for these homes from the housebuilder to the wider power sector.

The Reference Frame: BEST: surface warming since 1880 seems robust to me

Yesterday in the Congress, I liked an intervention of Scott Armstrong. A politician said that all the witnesses agreed that "global warming is happening". That's a very subtle and deliberately vague sentence! At the very end of the session, Scott Armstrong went through the hassle to point out that he disagreed that it "is" happening. It "was" happening in some periods in the past but what "will be" happening in the future is a different matter and an uncertain one.

Simon Singh: is there anything he doesn't know? – Telegraph Blogs

He resorted to that last refuge of the scoundrel: the Appeal to Authority.

The reason you should believe in AGW, he argued, is because most of the world’s expert scientific bodies do. Since Simon Singh apparently so reveres the thing he calls “science” (but which I would call the ruling science establishment hegemony: something altogether different from the disinterested pursuit of knowledge which I believe “science” properly is), let me invoke two great scientific thinkers to put him back in his box.