With science apparently settled in 1999, the bid was to work on “solutions.”
The e-mail is below.
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date: Mon, 09 Aug 1999 21:03:58 +0100
from: Mike Hulme
subject: UK national climate change centre
to: j.Rotmans@icis.unimaas.nl
Dear Jan,
This may well not be news to you, but the UK government has recently
requested bids from UK universities to house a new ‘National Climate Change
Centre’. The Centre would receive funds of 2 million pounds sterling per
year for (at least initially) five years. The role of the Centre would be
to compliment existing work on climate modelling and data analysis (IPCC
WGI areas) by focussing on ‘solutions’ (mitigation and adaptation options
and their implementation), specifically for the UK government and business
community, but within a global context. The emphasis appears to be on IPCC
WG3 area with a strong commitment to integrated research, but with some
overlap with WG2. The Centre would carry out independent research, but
would also be expected to make use of, and to integrate, exisiting UK
research and expertise. It would be expected to contribute to and to
foster interdisciplinary research that underpins sustainable solutions to
the climate change problem.
UEA is planning to make a bid for this Centre. Applications are due by
mid-October. UEA is well-known for CRU, but it also has strengths in data
distribution to the climate impacts community, in impacts research, and in
environmental economics (CSERGE). While these areas are fundamental
foundation stones for the science that the Centre is expected to develop,
the Centre would need to expand significantly beyond these areas. We have
an embryonic Consortium in place with contributions from UMIST (Engineering
and Management Studies – e.g. Shackley), Southampton, Cranfield (Peter
Allan), AEA Technology, Cambridge Economics, and a number of other research
and business partners.
If UEA were to succeed in its bid for the Centre, then it would seek to
develop strong links with other institutions abroad in order to strengthen
its own intellectual base and, through such links, to contribute to the
development and implementation of the science. We would see the
International Centre for Integrative Studies as one of these institutions.
What I would like you to do is to write a letter to Prof. Trevor Davies,
Dean of the School of Environmental Scienes at UEA which is co-ordinating
the bid, expressing your willingness to collaborate with UEA should it be
successful in its bid for the Centre. We would also like you (personally)
to agree to our invitation to join a small Advisory Panel to whom we can
refer in our bid and to whom we will circulate our draft document for
comment. If successful, this Advisory Panel may take on a more permanent
role in the Centre. It would be necessary, of course, for you to agree to
make this an exclusive promise, i.e, if you were approached by any others
then you would refuse to make a similar commitment to them.
Your letter to Prof. Davies will be used to strengthen UEA’s bid. As such
it would help if the letter were to contain some initial statement
recognising UEA’s outstanding qualification for housing the proposed
Centre, and for example pointing out our long history of collaboration back
to the original ESCAPE integrated climate assessment for DGXI.
Please contact me if you would like to discuss this suggestion further. We
are very excited about the opportunity the initiative gives us and believe
that UEA is by far the best place in the UK to house the new Centre.
I hope you feel able to support is in the this way.
Many thanks and best regards,
Mike
*****************************************************************************
Dr Mike Hulme
Reader in Climatology tel: +44 1603 593162
Climatic Research Unit fax: +44 1603 507784
School of Environmental Science email: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk
University of East Anglia web site: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~mikeh/
Norwich NR4 7TJ
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Annual mean temperature in Central England for 1999
is currently about +1.4 deg C above the 1961-90 average
***************************************************
The global-mean surface air temperature anomaly for 1998
was +0.57 deg C above the 1961-90 average, the warmest year yet recorded
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There is more background to this here:
Dr Pachauri And The IPCC – No Fossil Fool
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/no_fossil_fool.html
“Professor Mike Hulme, described then as a Reader in Climatology, but soon to become founding Director of the new Centre, explained the details in an e-mail requesting support from the Tata Energy Research Institute in 1999. He wrote to Dr Pachauri’s associate, Dr Sujata Gupta.
The conversation between Gupta and Hulme continued in February 2000, with him seeking preferential TERI support, because of UEA’s early approach to TERI, quite some time before Imperial or TERI-Europe appeared on the scene.
By this time, it seems Pachauri had intervened and decided to cover his options. The outcome was that TERI wished to be “part of the project”, (the new UK Climate Centre) whoever was successful and therefore supported both on a “non-exclusive” basis. As it turned out, UEA were the eventual bid winners, with some support from TERI and the Tyndall Centre was formed with Mike Hulme at its head. The centre had been in operation for less than two years when the question of electing a new IPCC chairman arose in April 2002. The successful candidate was Dr Pachauri.
A grateful Dr Mike Hulme, now happily ensconced as Director of his Tyndall Centre, was quite supportive of the new appointee:
“Phil, (Jones)
I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about Watson – why should he be re-nominated anyway? Why should not an Indian scientist chair IPCC.
Watson has perhaps thrown his weight about too much in the past. The science is well covered by Susan Solomon in WGI, so why not get an engineer/economist since many of the issues now raised by CC are more to do with energy and money, than natural science.”
Of course, Pachauri was not and never has been a scientist and Hulme quite rightly points out that Climate Change was not about science.
The whole point of the funding issue is objectivity. Here, they get money for reporting a problem and more money for working the solution. Not likely to be independent about whether or not there is a problem. Professional standards in other professions require independence in fact and independence in appearance. This is neither and both should apply to something claiming to pass for an independent research facility.
An email about potential funding. I’m not sure this is anything new, since academics are in a continuous chase for funding. The only point to be made is the comparison of the dollars gained for finding AGW and solutions to the dollars from the evil oil companies.