Climate & Climate Change

The documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, in which former Vice President Al Gore explains the current “climate crisis” and how Australia must sign the Kyoto Protocol to stop global warming, last night won an Oscar Award for best documentary film.

The Oscars are awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles and considered the most presitigous and most watched film awards ceremony in the world.

The director of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, Davis Guggenheim, took the film’s star Al Gore on stage to accept the award with Mr Gore declaring:

“My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis.

“It’s not a political issue, it’s a moral issue.

“We have everything we need to get started with the possible will to act. That’s a renewable resource. Let’s renew it.”

Mr Guggenheim said he and the film crew were so inspired by Al Gore’s fight for 30 years to tell this truth on global warming.

I’m not sure that Al Gore was all that truthful in the film or that it is a moral issue. I wrote a column for the ABC radioCounterpoint program last year in which I suggested global warming was more a technological than a moral issue. There are related blog pieces here.

According to CBS News reporting on last night Oscar Award’s ceremony:

“Earlier in the evening Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio took the stage to unveil a series of efforts the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took to make this year’s awards more environmentally friendly…

“Oscar ballots were made from partially recycled paper and organic produce was served at the Governor’s Ball. The academy joined with the Natural Resources Defense Council to reduce energy usage and increase recycling.

“Other initiatives included rides for presenters and stars in hybrid vehicles. The academy said it had explored hydrogen-powered fuel cell buses to transport crew and other workers, but did not have enough time to do it this year.”

I’m surprised they didn’t just pay someone to plant a few trees to “off-set” the night.

Last night Australia’s “premier television current affairs program” Four Corners showed a documentary purportedly about the “campaign to deny the science of global warming”.

A regular reader and commentator at this blog, Luke Walker, emailed me the following comment on the program:

Hi Jennifer,

ABC Four Corners last night aired CBC’s news magazine show The Fifth Estate which panned Dr. S. Fred Singer, Dr Tim Ball, Exxon, APCO and others in the ” Denial Machine” a 40-minute documentary that gave context to anti-AGW politics in the USA and Canada.

Of particular interest was the careful use of language by media analysts and opinion pollsters. For example, a once Republican media strategist Frank Luntz dispassionately laid out how to use framing and language to create uncertainty from certainty and create public opinion on issues such as climate change.

Chomsky would have had a field day. We don’t say “global warming”, we say “climate change”. Global warming is too scary for the poll groups.

We were shown how words like “energy intensity” get seamlessly inserted into the rhetoric while having a different meaning and different outcomes to reductions in greenhouse emissions but the same public perceptions.

For Aussie audiences there was plenty of US style journalism and ‘Denial Machine’ had plenty of not-so-nice evidence, told-you-so’s and tut-tut’s for the AGW converted.

Indeed the AGW cheer squad would have loved it.

But in the end the issue of global warming/climate change has become a right versus left issue. Good versus evil, or evil versus good. The end of the world versus the end of the economy. Conservatives versus liberals. Dirty denialists versus scary alarmists.

Bizarrely the show’s last word was from the once Republican media strategist Frank Luntz who has incredibly become a convert to AGW. He now believes that the science is conclusive and that we must do something about it.

“Conservatives need to make much greater effort to talk about what’s happening in the environment, and Liberals should acknowledge the serious economic consequences of Kyoto,” Luntz said. He continued, “If you really care about global warming, take it out of the political sphere, don’t beat each other over the head, be honest, don’t yell, and focus on solutions that make a difference. Not everything in life is about politics”.

Global warming is too important an issue to be run by public relations, language manipulators and partisan politics.

Take note say the converted – and so – a very long road to travel, including for the inhabitants of this blog.

Cheers, Luke.

The Queensland Conservation Council and Mackay Conservation Group objected to the expansion of a coal mine in central Queensland, in particular they claimed that there would be an adverse environmental impact unless conditions were imposed such that it was to, “… avoid, reduce or offset the emissions of greenhouse gases that are likely to result from the mining, transport and use of the coal from the mine.”

The objection was brought in the Queensland Land and Resources Tribunal with The Decision handed down last Thursday.

Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe AO was an expert witness and indicated the over the life of the mine it would contribute to the cumulative impacts of global warming to the extent that it would add the equivalent of 0.24 percent to current annual global emissions.

The President of the Tribunal, Mr Koppenol, suggested it more appropriate to compare annual global emissions with annual output of the mine and that the figure was thus 0.001098 percent and that Professor Lowe’s figure was 218 times too high.

The other expert witness for the environment groups Mr Jon Norling relied heavily on the finding of the British Government’s 2006 ‘Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change’ and also the assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The President of the Tribunal again found evidence of exaggeration noting in the judgment that Mr Norling converted Sir Nicholas Stern’s ‘if’ to ‘when’ with reference to sea level rise.

Interestingly, the President, took it upon himself to read up not only on the Stern Review but also the latest IPCC summary, and also avail himself of the recent published critique of ‘The Stern Review: A Dual Critique’ * by Professor Robert Carter et al and Proessor Sir Ian Byatt et al.

President Koppenol noted in his decision that the Carter-Byatt critique of the Stern Review concluded that it was scientifically flawed and a vehicle of speculative alarmism and not a basis for informed or responsible policies.

In defending his decision to make reference to these documents, President Koppenol noted that the Tribunal is empowered by statute to inform itself of anything in the way it considers appropriate and that having become aware of these papers and regarding them as relevant, “it would have been in appropriate for me to have just ignored them”.

The final recommendation in The Decision by President Koppenol was for the expansion of the Xstrata coal mine to go ahead without any of the conditions sought by the environmental groups.

How refreshing it is to read a document from someone in a position of authority and to see that all the evidence has been considered.

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* Update: It has been suggested to me by email that this link does not work and that a better link to the critique is here
http://www.katewerk.com/temp/sda_WE.pdf .

Hi Jennifer,

My greatest success as an “expert reviewer” to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I (WGI) Science Reports was with the first draft of the 1995 Report.

There was a Chapter entitled “Validation of Climate Models”

I commented that this was incorrect. No Climate Model has ever been “validated” in the sense understood by computer engineers, and the Chapter included no discussion on how it should be done, let alone any of the necessary procedure, on any model.

They ageed with me. They changed the words “Validation”, or “Validate” to “Evaluation” or “evaluate” no less than fifty times, throughout the Chapter. They have done so ever since. The word “validate” or “validation” does not appear anywhere in their Reports, and, notably, in the recently issued “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers”

One of the major objects of science is to simulate observable phenomena with a mathematical representation which can not only provide an explanation for the phenomena, buit also make it possible to predict future behaviour.

This task has a long history. “Stonehenge Decoded” by Gerald S Hawkins shows how before 1600 BC it was possible to build a system which would enable prediction of the movements of the sun and moon.

Ptolemy in the second century AD published the “Almagest” which predicted the movements of the planets with a system of “epicycles”. Newton and Galileo replaced this with a better, simplified theory, and Eistein with a refined version. Nobody would even have heard of these people if there was not abundant positive evidence that their predictions actually work. Without them, we could never have sent rockets to the moon.

Let me spell out what is needed for “validation”, the procedure without which no mathematical representation, or computer model, could possibly be capable of future prediction.

First, the model must be capable of simulation of past behaviour to a satisfactory level of accuracy. Computer models of the climate have usually failed to do this. Indeed, their only attempt has been on the so-called “global surface temperature anomaly record”:which I showed, in my last Newsletter, to be subject to huge, unknown biases and inaccuracy because it is based on unrepresenrative and statistically flawed data. The claimed successful simulation of this flawed record could only be made by leaving out both consideration of these inaccuracies, and also one of the main “natural” contributors to the temperature record, the recently more frequent sudden warming peaks caused by the El Niño ocean oscillation behaviour.

The models are unable to simulate almost everything else.

They cannot explain why there has been no “warming” for the past eight years, even when measured by the unsatisfactory “surface record”.

They cannot explain why there has been no warming at all on the Arctic continent.

They cannot explain why methane concentrations in the atmosphere are falling instead of rising. They even devote learned papers trying to find out why this behaviour is “anomalous”.

A recent study by Douglass et al 2006 Geophysical Reserarch Letters 33 L19711 on the climatic effects of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo showed that it could only be expalined by a model iwith very low figures for “climate sensitivity” the basic parameter of the models.

The models therefore fail at the first requirement for “validation”. They cannot reliably simulate past climate behaviour.

Suppose for one moment that Newton and Einstein had never lived and they were launching a rocket to the moon from Cape Kennedy. They ask the people who prepared the computer programme to guide the rocket “How reliable is it” Imagine if the reply was ‘ Our boys think it it is very likey to hit the moon, but we have no idea where”

We are taking all sort of drastic measures to damage our future energy policies based entirely on just such an “opinion” of partisan “experts”.

The second important necessity for validation is successful predictioin of future behaviour under a variety of conditions to a satisfactory and measurable level of accuracy.

There has not been even a single attempt to meet this requirement for any computer model of the climate. They do not even discuss how it might be done.

The models are therefore worthless and should be discarded until validation has actually happened.

But why is it that so many people, not only Prime Ministers, US Presidential Candidates, Senior Economists, but also senior scientists and even winners of Nobel Prizes, seem to be convinced that those providing models have even MADE predictions, let alone provide a measures of their reliability.

It is even claimed that a large majority of scientists involved in climate research accept these false assumptions, and this claim might even be true.

Since the IPCC have accepted that no model has ever been validated, they have also accepted that they are unable to make predictions and they have never done so after the First Report (1990) The word “prediction” never appears anywhere in the recent IPCC Reports. The only thing the models can do is to provide “projections”. This word implies that the figure obtained is purely a result of assuming that the data, parameters and equations in the model represent reality: but there is no evidence that they actually do.

How have they succeeded in fooling the world?

The answer is, that they have devised a whole series of tricky procedures designed to cover up the truth, and give the impression to casual readers and all but the intensive critic (which I claim to be) that they really have overcome the absence of validation, and provided definite figures which some people can pretend to be “predictions”, and even provide what seems at first sight to be some measure of accuracy.

Their main tool is to pretend that they can replace scientific evidence with the opinions of “experts”. The “experts” in this case are people who are mainly financed by Governments who promote the certainty of the greenhouse idea. I would not wish for a moment to suggest that these scientists could possibly be other than impartial, or that they could be influenced by pressure from their employers, even when they represent them at international conferences. But, all the same, most of them know that there might be undesi\rable consequences if any of them failed to endorse the value of models.

At this point let me say that the idea that scientific opinions can be influenced by employers is not just a myth. In my long scientifc career such pressure was applied to myself on several occasions, and on one of them, I was dismissed.when I resisted,

Because of the opinions I express in this newsletter I am sometimes accused of being influenced by mythical employers, For example Professor Neil Curtis, formerly from Victoria University of Wellington, and currently Patron of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, has accused me of being in the pay of oil companies. Vanessa Atkins, Greenpeace representative in New Zealand, says I am paid by Exxon, and the same accusation has been made recently on the “Real Climate” website.

I have never been employed by any oil company, or received finance from one. Campaigning for truth in climate science is not exactly financially rewarding. I might tell you about two of my recent contributions.

Last Year, I was invited to the Beijing Climate Center as a Visiting Scholar. I was welcomed by the Director General and I gave three well attended lectures. They paid my fare and accommodation Yet the Senior scientist there is Co-Chair if Working Group I resposible for the 2007 IPCC Report about to be issued.

The people in Beijing appear to be willing to listen to different points of view on climate change, but in New Zealand I could never be invited to address a meeting sponsored by NIWA, and Victoria University of Wellington now seems out of bounds. The Wellington Branch of the Royal Society .replies with an excuse. But I must admit I have recently address the Ohariu Branch of the Univesity of the Third Age, two Wellington Rotary Clubs, and a “Freedom Summit” Conference

Another recent source of income has been two book reviews in the Christchurch “Press” In the first I came down heavily on “The Weathermakers” by Tim Flannery, currently “Australian of the Year”. He is a biologist with no knowledge of physics, since he thinks the greenhous efffect is caused by the heating of trace gases by the sun, instead of the more orthodox theory that they are heated from radiation by the earth. His only credit is that he demolishes the “hydrogen economy” because it ends up emitting more greenhouse gases than before. But that seems also to be true of “biofuels” so perhaps it does not matter

But. I digress. The “opinions” of the IPCC “experts” are graded in levels of “likeliness”, and they are given spurious “probability” levels which bear no relationship to probability that most scientists recognise.

Besides the completely uncertain nature of the “projections” of climate models it is imposasible to provide a measure of their possible acuracy or reliabity. If there were such measures it would be possible to grade the models in order of success. Since this cannot be done all the models are given equal credence. They even hold occasional meetings to try and avoid too much difference between models, since too wide a “projection” might destroy the impression of plausibility.

It means also that the IPCC never has the embarassing task of telling any model maker that his model has a “failure” mark, since they have no way of marking them.The result is that the models are a free for all and the more extreme the “projections” are, the better some polticians or activists like them, and the better the chances for future funds. Many of the models can give low or even negative figures if you fit the right parameters, but the fate of those who have tried this is best not revealed.

Having managed to provided a half-way plausible “estimate” for a a model output, they then had to find a procedure to provide accuracy estimates of this figure, beyond that of the levels of “likelihood”

They do this by combining a restrictive choice of models with a restrictive choice of “emissions scenarios”. Both of these are chosen so as to give a “range” of outcomes acceptable to the Governments who pay them. They carefully avoid outcomes that are too high ar too low. The “range” is then presented as if it were a scientific nmeasure of the accuracy of the combined model/scenario package.

The “scenarios” themselves are supposed to provide a range of plausible assumptions of what could happen to climate in the next hundred years.They do not have the confidence, however to carry out any checks to find out whether the assumptions are confirmed by what actually happens. This means they have no way of grading their plausibility. The scenarios are thus regarded as equally plausible, but like the animals in Orwells’s “Aniumal Farm” some scenarios are more equally plausible than others.

My paper Gray, V R 1998 “The IPCC future projections: are they plausible”Climate Research 10 155-162 showed that the earlier scenarios were not plausible, and Chapter 7 of my book “The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of ‘Clmate Change 2001” showed that the 2001 scenarios are also not plausible. They could not even get right the figures for the year 2000. So they cannot even predict the past.

Several senior economists have criticised the economic forecasting methods used by the IPCC, but with little response. One of these David Henderson, former Head of the Economics and Statistics Department of the OECD is addressing two meetings in Wellington next week, which I will be attending.

The First Draft of the 2001 IPCC Report had a “projection” graph for temperatures by the year 2100 which gave a maximum temperature rise of 4ºC. This figure must evidently have been considered to be not high enough, because the second draft, and the final one, had a figure of 5.8ºC which had been achieved by inventing an extra extreme “scenario”. A1F1.

The latest “Climate Change 2007: Summary for Policymakers” gives the “projected” “Best Estimates” and spurious “ranges” for six different “scenarios”. The most extreme one, which is still A1F1. gives a “Best Estimate” figure for a “projected” temperature rise by 2100 of 4.0ºC, with a “range” of 2.4ºC to 6.4ºC. You can bet your bottom dollar that the only figures anyone will quote is the 6.4ºC. All the rest, which go down to 1.1ºC, will be ignored.

The world is in the grip of “climate change” hysteria. Today”s BBC News gave an interview with the Mayor of San Francisco who is walking to work instead of taking the car. Next, perhaps, he will give up walking as well so that he exhales less carbon dioxide.

Down here in New Zealand they are so keen to get us to use public transport that they are scouring the museums to find 30s style railway carriages to put back into service to cope with the demand, and bus drivers currently have to ask passengers where the bus is supposed to go.

Cheers,
Vincent Gray
Wellington, New Zealand

“The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it” H. L. Mencken

It is not enough to say “excuse me” when you next fart. According to a new company ‘Easy Being Green’, if you really care about the planet you should be prepared to pay something. That’s because flatulence contains methane, a greenhouse gas thought to be contributing to global warming.

The front page of today’s The Australian, features a story today about a grandmother who’s whose daughter spent A$20 to offset two years’ worth of flatulence.

So now, when Mrs Cracknell farts she feels OK because the damage to the planet has been offset.

It seems a rather Catholic approach; the idea that it’s OK to do something as long as you pay some sort of penance and in this way is pardoned.

That’s what it’s really all about isn’t it? That you can buy the right to fart?

Some diets are likely to result in more farting. At least I think I have more flatulence when I’ve eaten a lot of lentils. Maybe we should ban lentils?

Maybe we should just ban capitalism? It has after all created the wealth to support a large intellectual class with nothing better to do than count the number of times its members fart over a two year period.

I mean how else would Mrs Cracknell know that $20 was enough?