- Bishop Hill blog - Monbiot on [chief scientific advisers]

To my mind, the position of a CSA is a nonsense. Ministers need to hear advice from people they trust and who have expertise in an area. Why should any minister have trusted the climate science advice of Beddington, a population biologist who openly declared that he saw part of his role as promoting the interests of the scientific community in Whitehall? The minister's role is to promote the interests of the public, not of scientists.

In return for their lobbying work on behalf of scientists, CSAs fleece the taxpayer for enormous salaries and preposterous pension packages. There is therefore a huge saving to be made: close down the network of scientific advisers and take advice on an ad-hoc basis from trusted third parties.

Sad news for green lobby: Natural gas is even cleaner than we thought « Hot Air

...natural-gas opponents aren’t going to be pleased with the EPA’s new report that includes a dramatic downward revision in their estimate of how much heat-trapping methane is released during gas production.

Obama's climate credentials face test at UN talks in Bonn | RTCC - Climate change news

Many are not convinced the US position has budged an inch. Veteran UK analyst Tom Burke says little has changed in the fundamentals of the USA’s approach to climate change – describing it as the “Bush policy with green ribbons”.

Twitter / billmckibben

Going to sleep in a nice hotel bed and thinking of the brave kids camped out in the pres. ofc. at RISD tonite--such admiration!  [Can college kids really prevent bad weather by camping out in some office?]