March 1, 2010 
I’m at home with a sick child today and am listening to the Parliamentary Inquiry. Will post what I can when I have something below but my impression of the first panel after hearing the final panel?
Will re-listen to the inquiry and post my thoughts and select bits of transcripts. Suffice to say a very informative and professional discussion with the final panel, Beddington, Slingo and Watson. In stark contrast to the first panel, IMNSHO and all the more reason to be very very skeptical of the so-called skeptics. What a dog and pony show.
I’ve been involved in similar inquiries, although I am one of those who would have been sitting behind the officials, writing their speaking notes and background briefs and submissions rather than answering questions, thank the gods. As a bit of background, I did prepare briefings and submissions for both the Walkerton Inquiry in Ontario and the Ontario hearings for the Romanow Commission on behalf of my employer at the time (no longer my employer) and attended both inquiries. I don’t know UK politics and so will do a bit of research on the panel and also the witnesses as part of my assessment, and then look at the Qs and As as I finish over the next day or so.
The Policy Lass 
Thanks SheWonk. Hope the little one feels better soon.
SheWonk, stating the obvious here, but TomP and JBowers have some very relevant information on another thread “The Inquiry– submissions”
Looks like the contrarians, including McI did not do themselves any favours today.
Yes, I have been reading with interest the McI snafu. Seriously, the performance of the first panel was very sub-par. So much was debunked by the rest of the witnesses, so it was good that they went first. It will be very interesting to see the fallout of this because it was very bad performance on the part of the two skeptics. The scientists were very good, and the reinforcing the science was first rate.
There were real attempts at times to make big issues out of small ones — especially around “the decline” which was dealt with very well IMO by Prof Jones. But on the availability of data and methods and the ability to release data, and the normal conventions of science, etc. I thought Prof Slingo was very solid but so were the others. And Prof Acton was very good. I thought Prof Jones did a good job in a very difficult situation and there was only a small moment of awkwardness around the question of why he refused to make the data available to another colleague — the much quoted “Why should I make all my data available to you”. etc. What was pointed out in the first panel was that in many cases, it has not been the practice of sharing data until after publication, checking of data, and that it was not common in science for a scientist to be expected to photocopy his or her notebook for public consumption. Some real gems.
I look forward to going over this carefully but can’t get back onto the website — traffic is probably too high as every skeptic in the world tries to get online to watch.
Sounds like there’s room for a bit of optimism here. I was fearing a witch hunt …
The sceptics were shot down, Lawson’s assertions on other data showing a cooling, and Slingo shooting down Stringer with a look on her face that said, “What on earth are you banging on about?” was well worth the watch.
Phil Jones stood up well, all things considered, I thought. I was actually suprised that the question of vexatious requests even came up, and it came up a number of times.
The Three Wise People at the end were superb. Lawson, and possibly McIntyre, seem to have some questions to answer themselves.
Correction: Lawson said UAH and RSS showed significantly less warming trend.
Umm… doesn’t this say otherwise?:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/trend
Lawson was wrong. I posted this on another thread (sourced from NCDC):
30-yr trend for RSS (as of December 2009) for lower troposphere:
+1.5 C/century
30-yr trend(I think) for UAH (as of December 2009) for lower troposphere:
+1.3 C/century
30-yr NCDC global SAT trend as of December 2009:
+1.6 C/century
This also from NCDC:
“Data collected and averaged between the 850-300 mb levels (approximately 5,000 to 30,000 feet above the surface) indicate that 1958-2009 global temperature trends in the middle troposphere are similar to trends in surface temperature; 0.12°C/decade (0.22°F/decade) for surface and 0.15°C/decade (0.26°F/decade) for mid-troposphere. Since 1976, mid-troposphere temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.17°C/decade (0.31°F/decade).”
The independent data (SAT, MSU and radiosondes) corroborate each other very nicely thank you.
Lawsons been firmly in the bonkers denialist camp for years. Which is odd, given he was supposedly a numerate chancellor…