Just back from a week away and enlightened but depressed by this thread.
Challenging the BBCI'm making slow progress on classifying climate scientists to check the view that the BBC are avoiding the serious debate between “activist” scientists and “official” ones but I've attended a couple of meetings this week where the “remaining carbon budget” was addressed.
The remaining carbon budget was taken to be the greenhouse gasses (or just CO2?) that can be emitted before we hit the 2 deg C “dangerous level” of global warming.
The first meeting was the UK All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group which included speakers from UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (
http://uksif.org) who were addressing the dangers to economic stability if the corporations holding carbon assets cannot realise them because of restrictions on carbon emissions. None of the panellists challenged my assertion that these budgets were calculated using underpowered climate models so were too generous.
The second meeting included a speech from an MEP that Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, had appeared before the European Parliament and said that we had used 65% of the allowable carbon budget.
I think the carbon budget idea far too simplistic – there are feedback effects not accounted for in the budget - and does a 2 deg C over pre-industrial keep below a dangerous climate change threshold? But carbon budget is a popular concept because it is easy for policy makers to use in the context of energy use for things like heat, power and transportation.
It has occurred to me that this idea would be a useful parameter in classifying opinions among climate scientists and climate commentators. i.e. Ask them “What is the size of the carbon budget that can be omitted before triggering dangerous climate change?”
Should I try to contact relevant scientists and commentators to help create a league table with the initial aim of challenging the BBC's coverage? My crudely guessed league table is below with the mentions of the candidates that have appeared on the BBC website in the past year. I do admit the counting needs much more sophistication. Advice/help very much appreciated - even "don't bother" advice.
The classifications below are my guesses. This is the state-of-play so far. I set the Google searches to be for the past year only.
Climate scientists and climate commentator searches.Activist 3 results
"Michael Mann" climate site:bbc.co.uk 2
"Kevin Anderson" climate site:bbc.co.uk 0
"James Hansen" climate site:bbc.co.uk 1
"Robert Watson" climate site:bbc.co.uk 0
"Peter Wadhams" climate site:bbc.co.uk 0
“Jason Box” climate site:bbc.co.uk 0
“Bill McKibben” climate site:bbc.co.uk 0
“Stefan Rahmstorf” climate site:bbc.co.uk 0
“Andrew MacDougall ” climate site:bbc.co.uk 0
Concerned 15 results
"Peter Cox" climate site:bbc.co.uk 2
"Jim Skea" climate site:bbc.co.uk 7
"David Mackay" climate site:bbc.co.uk 1
"Corinne Le Quere" climate site:bbc.co.uk 2
"Mike Lockwood" climate site:bbc.co.uk 3
Official 71 results
"Lord Stern" climate site:bbc.co.uk 13
"Julia Slingo" climate site:bbc.co.uk 10
"Myles Allen" climate site:bbc.co.uk 9
"Brian Hoskins" climate site:bbc.co.uk 8
"Mark Walpert" climate site:bbc.co.uk 9
"Rajendra Pasharui" climate site:bbc.co.uk 22
Skeptic 5 results
"Richard Tol" climate site:bbc.co.uk 2
"Piers Forster" climate site:bbc.co.uk 4
"Richard Lindzen" climate site:bbc.co.uk 1