Declaration of interests.

Betts and his psycho-babble
This page is an addendum to the RCP-Page

Dear X

In truth, I was privately horrified to discover that you had begun a discussion some weeks ago with
Richard Betts of the UKMO about his writing up CBAT in a peer-reviewed paper.

He became part of the enemy for me in 2008 and things have only gotten worse since then.

I mentioned this new situation to others, some said tell him to get lost.
I was prevailed on by yourself and others to be biddable regarding the possibility that this was a good idea.
The reasoning was that he might have decided to change his attitude.

So for a while, this I showed a willingness to be biddable.

However, while I can understand that you had no idea about the long and unpleasant history here.
However, since 2008 I have not accepted for one moment the notion that he is the 'credible climate scientist' you clearly still believe him to be.
On the contrary, due to his false and often offensive argumentation since then, I continue to think he is anything but.

Despite the fact that I suspended my negative view of his competence and his motives, during the first stages of the recent set of email exchanges,
he has done nothing but demonstrate to me all over again why I hold that view (a view which you and I appear not to share).

Note, he denies his own RCP code to conceal its errors, while demanding CBAT code to prove it has an error.
As I was unwilling to go along with this charade he finally resorts to the 'my-wrong-perceptions-defence of the RCPs'.

Feedback is fully-interactive real-life web of interdependence. For UKMO Betts et al to choose only the ones they think they understand
and omit all the rest, is like mapping the sub-atomic particles in the standard model without gravity and then finding the Higgs Boson.

He appears to need psychiatric help and considering the peer-reviewed gibberish in the RCP-references he cites, maybe they all do.
In these circumstances, this message to you serves notice that I am no longer willing to come again to CAT to present CBAT this December.

While I do think and continue to think that CAT does really important demonstration work, walking the talk and acting out the 'zero-carbon vision,
I was looking for a lot more support from you with the Betts affair than I got I am afraid to say.

No matter - all the best

Aubrey Meyer


Hi Aubrey

I’m really sorry, but I do respect your decision. I remain as solidly in support of C&C and CBAT as I ever was.
I think we do disagree about some of this, and I still hope that can be resolved, but it obviously won’t be now.

I hope to be able to welcome you back to CAT in the future.

All the best,

X

Dear X

Thank you for your letter - comments all noted.

Best wishes Aubrey

Re the 'resolution' . . .

Transparently and in the greatest possible detail, as both dynamic graphs and tables under user-control, I have set out very clearly what CBAT is and why it is what it is.
It doesn't need 'peer-review' to prove it - it is what it is as anyone can see. ("Makes the unknowable knowable" you said).

Without any argument provided by anyone, certainly neither you nor Mr Betts, nowhere is it stated what the error he alleges actually is, let alone what the proof of it is.
Anyway why would you need to prove it, if you've already seen it in the completely transparent CBAT?

You simply asked me to accept that Mr Betts - as the expert climate scientist - had 'spotted an error'.
You also told he 'needed the CBAT code' to prove it was there and so he could correct it and write a peer reviewed article about it.

I hope you can see that my difficulty with this was brought into the open when you simply said I should trust him to do that.
This was in spite of the fact thathe was not prepared to look at the RCP code/spreadsheets to observe the 100% sink-efficiency in all 4 scenarios there.
This refusal wa sas usual laden with his insistence that 100% sink-efficiency is not there with more ad hominem directed at me.

At the end of yet another a long and tedious exchange of emails with him seeking to resolve this,
he finally (after seven years) admits that it is there (the numbers and the relationships between them) . . !

PLEASE NOTE THAT IS ALL I WAS ASKING FOR (and not all his diversionary and evasive waffle suggesting I had invented all this).
So please tell me why on Earth would I or anyone 'trust' a man who uses tactics like that?.

But then . . . . (INCREDIBLE THIS) . . . . it turns out it isn't really actually there because he now tells me that, 'it is only there as a function of your wrong perceptions'.
This is more of the UKMO's Science as Mumbo-Jumbo.

They appear now to believe that they can make what's there disappear with reflexive incantations (it is there because of their right perceptions?).
What do think - is it there or not? If - as they say - the sink-function as shown doesn't go to 0:100% and so 'isn't there',
then clearly the Sun goes round the Earth and the Earth goes round UKMO and they'll shortly be burning people at the stake.



Where did he get all that from? If this is expert trustworthy science from a 'scientist, God save us from it.
Its ludicrous: - he wouldn't even get peer-reviewed in Hallo Magazine let alone 'spot an error in CBAT'.

The truth is: -

• UKMO are now fighting for the preservation of their food-chains (not civilization)
• that extremity of disclosure and denial reveals they know it &
• that they don't know what to do about it as
• the flawed methodology they used is there for all to see
  
  and at the same time . . .
  
  
• I have no time or sympathy for people who are stupid or for
• people who think lying is a good defence a
  
  it is not, including when this clueless strategy is deployed against me personally and CBAT

Now Mr Betts says he didn't want to do it anyway and I should stop asking him to as he stamps his little foot.
WHAT!! I didn't ask for any of this other than the confirmation of authorship of the RCPs a published.

Though attacking me suggests otherwise, they are tarnishing their reputation without any help from me.
I have no need to to entertain any of his psychobabble?

This was sent out by Mayer Hillman to quite a wide list about this affair.

Dear Colleagues

Probably many people will share the view from a lawyer’s perspective.

After all the years of wrangling about this issue, I well understand Aubrey Meyer’s frustration,
but I agree it is probably better that he limit his use of colourful language not least owing to the prospect of climate-related litigation
and the risks attached to it being exploited at some date in the future.

That said, I can clearly see the attractions for Richard Betts of closing down further discussion on the subject.
It is noteworthy that it was his peer-group rather than he himself who produced the spreadsheets. Could he be constrained by ‘peer-group-loyalty’?

The incorporation of the RCP 8.5 scenario is absurd. This can be readily recognised by testing it in the CBAT model.
Being able to do so in this type of application can be cited as one of the reasons and justifications for CBAT’s development
and why I and some others here, have been and continue to be its passionate supporters.

Consider the following: -

1. At a value of 1,962 PPMV, RCP 8.5 reaches nearly twice the highest value in AR2, 3 & 4!
What can be thought to be justification for considering 1000 PPMV insufficiently high?

2. With the carbon budget integral published with RCP 8.5 – as with the RCP 6.0 & RCP 4.5 scenarios – in the time-series for its ‘sink-function’,
RCP 8.5 goes precisely to what Aubrey has dubbed ‘100% sink-efficiency’ by a given date. Indeed, in RCP 2.5, it goes to more than 100%.
While Richard is quick not to disagree with that scenario, his denial of the rest may reflect a desire to avoid rational consideration of its published feedback-free functions and facts.

3. Considering that hundreds of ‘all the world’s top climate scientists’, referred to elsewhere by Richard, apparently generated these results,
it cannot be claimed that this methodological uniformity came about by accident.

4. Furthermore, this completely gives the lie to the claim stated elsewhere that “feedback and climate-sensitivity are emergent properties of the models.”
Who are they trying to fool?

5. Moreover, the weight of carbon that will be emitted from the year 2000 to 2500 in the RCP 8.5 scenario is about 5.4 trillion tonnes.
This is around 5 times the weight of recoverable reserves of fossil fuels on the planet! How is it possible to consider this relevant?

6. Amazingly, this budget integral is around 20 times what it is deemed safe to burn if the international agreement for not exceeding 2°C is to be met!

7. On top of all this, the upper limit of 13 Watts per square metre formed part of the 'policy guidance' used in the RCP scenarios fed to IPCC AR5.
That translates into an utterly genocidal upper temperature value of an around 10°C average global temperature rise!

8. Finally, in the peer-reviewed literature that Richard Betts refers to describing the ‘school of RCP scenarios’, these come several years later than the spreadsheets published by the modellers.
Not one author or reviewer or publisher apparently thought it necessary/relevant/advisable at any time to even mention, let alone draw attention to any of this. This is extraordinary.

I do not think that any of those of us who are concerned to see an early resolution of the exchange between Aubrey and Richard wish for it to ‘close down’.
That resolution is essential if we are to avoid reaching a disturbing conclusion of compromised competencies and perceptions among ‘all the world’s top climate’ scientists’.

Mayer

Dr. Mayer Hillman
Senior Fellow Emeritus
Policy Studies Institute
c/o The Coach House
7a Netherhall Gardens
London NW3 5RN
Tel. 020 7794 9661

www.mayerhillman.com