Jennifer Marohasy

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Climate & Climate Change

The Drum on Climate Politics: Bob Carter

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AUSTRALIA’S national broadcaster, the ABC, has recently started a new online blog site called The Drum.  Very unusually (for the ABC), it then sought a contribution from a climate rationalist (me) for the site, which I provided – deliberately making it more opinion than science.

The response was a surprising rush of emails (more than 500 in 24 hours), most of which condemmed either the ABC or the article, or both. Out of this hive of activity then emerged the Queen Bee – in the form of former Labor government Science Minister Barry Jones, who proceeded to launch a fairly robust attack on my original article.

In turn, this provoked my colleague Alan Moran, of the IPA in Melbourne, to write a retort, which commented on the fact that the ripples of Climategate are running up on even Australia’s distant shores – in the form of Willis Eschenbach’s expose of probable tampering with the Darwin temperature record.

Overall, an astonishing number of more than 2,000 blog postings were made regarding these three articles, with the conversation also spilling over onto other blogs as well.

In order to try to restore some science into the conversation (silly, naive me), I have now written a reply to Mr. Jones, which is posted at Quadrant Online, at:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/12/why-barry-jones-is-wrong

This article contains links to the various The Drum pieces.

As a taster, one of my conclusions, with which I am sure some of your readers will agree, is:

“The practice, promulgated by the IPCC, of endlessly analysing short trend lines fitted in carefully selected ways through temperature data that is inherently cyclic has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics.”

Finally, though on an apparently unrelated (but actually quite closely related) topic, The Drum has also published an extremely thoughtful and insightful piece by experienced ABC journalist Jonathan Holmes, on the problems of separating “fact” and “opinion” in news and current affairs programs.

I suspect that Holmes’ article will be of even more interest to your readers than yet another cat-fight “he says, she says” squabble over AGW! It’s at:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/08/2764585.htm?site=thedrum?site=thedrum

With seasonal greetings 

Bob Carter

Web home page: http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/ <http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/

Sceptics Trespass on Greenpeace Ship

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Global warming skeptics from CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) yesterday pulled off an international climate caper using GPS triangulation from Greenpeace’s own on-board camera photos to locate and sail up long-side of the infamous Greenpeace vessel, Rainbow Warrior. Then in Greenpeace-like fashion, the CFACT activists unfurled a banner reading “Propaganda Warrior” which underscored how the radical green group’s policies and agenda are based on myths, lies, and exaggerations.

Earlier in the day the activists daringly boarded Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise with neither stealth nor force, but by baffling the crew with doughnuts, and unfurled a banner that read “Ship of Lies” off the starboard side.

“Greenpeace has been using these kinds of tactics for decades, and now they can find out what it’s like to have a little taste of their own medicine, “ said CFACT executive director Craig Rucker who masterminded the operation.

CFACT unfurled the banners for two reasons, CFACT president David Rothbard explained. “Greenpeace ships, like the Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise, have become global symbols for radical environmentalism, and we wanted to call attention to the harm these groups are causing. And second, it seemed appropriate to use one of Greenpeace’s favorite tactics to make this point.”

Greenpeace protesters frequently hang banners from factories and office buildings, paint slogans on smokestacks, and employ other publicity stunts. Some are relatively harmless, but others reflect a willingness to lie or even destroy property to make a point.

In 1995, Greenpeace launched a $2-million public relations campaign against Shell Oil, claiming the company was planning to dump tons of oil and toxic waste in the ocean by sinking its Brent Spar platform as an artificial reef. It was a full year before the group issued a written apology, admitting it knew all along that there had been no oil or chemical wastes on the platform.

Greenpeace has frequently destroyed bio-engineered crops, wiping out millions of dollars in research efforts designed to develop food plants that are more nutritious, withstand floods and droughts better, and resist insect infestations without the need for chemical pesticides. It has also waged an unrelenting campaign against insecticides and insect repellants that could prevent malaria, a vicious disease that infects 500 million people a year, kills over 1 million and leaves millions more with permanent brain damage.

“Greenpeace employs the same deceitful tactics in opposition to nuclear, hydroelectric and hydrocarbon energy, even though 1.5 billion people still do not have electricity – and thus don’t have lights for homes, hospitals and schools, or power to purify water and run offices, shops and factories,” Rucker says.
Rothbard acknowledged Greenpeace was launched for the best of reasons. “But it radicalized its mission. The more power it acquired, the more it abused that power,” he said. “Some of Greenpeace’s original cadre has left, feeling they can no longer associate themselves with its current agenda.”

Greenpeace claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing “dangerous global climate change.” Hundreds of climate scientists and thousands of other scientists disagree with that assertion, as frequently noted by Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and a CFACT advisor.

“The continuing scandal over falsified and destroyed temperature data, manipulated climate models, and a perverted scientific and peer review process further demonstrates that there is no valid basis for this anti-energy, wealth-redistribution, global governance Copenhagen treaty,” said Rucker.

Anti-energy policies represent a “clear and present danger to the health and welfare of billions,” he added. Mandates for wind and solar would send energy prices skyrocketing, sharply constrict economic opportunities and destroy jobs.

“People in developing countries simply want to improve their living standards, and give their children a chance to live past age five,” Rothbard said. “Greenpeace is diametrically opposed to giving them access to the modern technologies that would help them do that.”

Greenpeace is one of the “most unethical and irresponsible corporations on Earth,” said Christina Wilson, a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. “It’s time to expose it for what it is, and help promote real environmental justice. So I was really excited to participate in this human rights effort.”

“The ‘Ship of Lies’ and ‘Propaganda Warrior’ banners are part of CFACT’s long-term effort to bring sense and balance back to the environmental debate,” said Rothbard.

Marc Morano
http://cfact.org/a/1674/CFACT-drops-the-banner-on-Greenpeace-ships-in-daring-land-and-sea-raids

Recent Papers at ‘Science and Public Policy Institute’

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Climategate: Caught Green-Handed!                     
Written by Christopher Monckton 
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climategate.html

 Climategate: Is Peer-Review in Need of Change?                       
Written by Chip Knappenberger 
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/climategate_peer_review.html

A Simple Proof that Global Warming is not Man-made                    
Written by Dr. David Evans
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/simple_proof.html

Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation                
Written by Christopher Booker
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/worst_scandal.html

In Praise of CO2: ‘Earth is the Greenest its been in Decades, Perhaps in Centuries’           
Written by Marc Morano
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/blog_watch/co2_praise.html

Climate Challenges                    
Written by Representative John Linder
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/climate_challenges.html

Global Warming’s New Clothes                  
Written by Rosslyn Smith
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/new_clothes.html

The Climate Science Isn’t Settled                     
Written by Richard S. Lindzen
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/science_isnt_settled.html

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme                     
Written by Senator Steve Fielding
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/carbon_scheme.html

Copenhagen Climate Concerns                   
  Produced by Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/copenhagen_climate_concerns.html

Three Speeches by Michael Crichton                    
By the late Michael Crichton
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/crichton_three_speeches.html

Climate Conspiracy                    
Written by Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/c_conspiracy.html

My Top 10 Annoyances in the Climate Change Debate                     
Written by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/blog_watch/top_10.html

What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?                      
Written by Ross McKitrick 
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/hockey_debate.html

Extreme Heat vs. Extreme Cold, Which is the Greatest Killer?                  
Written by Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/greatest_killer.html

===========================
Robert Ferguson, President
Science and Public Policy Institute
www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org

Editorial The Guardian: Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation

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TODAY 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

• How the Copenhagen global leader came about
• Write your own editorial
• The papers that carried the Copenhagen editorial
• In pictures: How newspapers around the world ran the editorial

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

[This editorial is free to reproduce under Creative Commons]

Climategate Update: Kenneth Haapala

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Climategate is now clearly established as part of the public domain similar to the Pentagon Papers or the Watergate reports. The issue of who is responsible, a whistleblower or a hacker, may be legal issue but not a scientific one. The contents of the emails, particularly how they apply to scientific integrity, are clearly a scientific issue.

For a CBS news comment please see “Fallout over ‘ClimateGate’ Data Leak Grows”: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/02/taking_liberties/entry5860171.shtml

For a report on the temporary resignation of Phil Jones the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia please see “Climate-Change Scientist Steps Aside Amid Probe”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125970198500271683.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEThirdNews

For a report from the Sunday Times please see “Climate change data dumped”: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

For an article in the Washington Times including Michael Mann’s defense of his actions please see “Climate Researcher defends actions, claims ‘smear’”:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/05/climate-research-furor-might-not-stop-us-deal//print/

For an editorial in the Journal Nature please see “Climatologists under pressure”:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html

For an editorial in the New York Times by John Tierney please see “E-Mail Fracas Shows Peril of Trying to Spin Science”: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01tier.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

For another editorial on the general issues please see “The Dominoes Fall”:  http://www.investors.com/News and Analysis/Article.aspx?id=514128

For comments from Mike Hulme, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, please see “The Science and Politics of Climate Change”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574571613215771336.html

And more…

The Climate Science Isn’t Settled – Richard S. Lindzen, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703939404574567423917025400.html#mod=todays_us_opinion

A Conundrum That Awaits in Copenhagen – Eugene Robinson, Investors Business Daily, Dec 1 – A view from a non-skeptic
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=513983

The Real Copenhagen Agenda – The Wall Street Journal, Dec 3
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574567921682049840.html

Climategate: Science Is Dieing – Daniel Henning, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566124250205490.html

Climategate: Follow the Money – Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566124250205490.html

NASA-Gate – Investors Business Daily, Dec 4
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=514429

The Mathematics of Global Warming – Peter Landesman, The American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_mathematics_of_global_warm.html

And more…

As governments prepare for Copenhagen, western governments are being urged to ignore climategate and its possible effects on the science of human caused global warming. For example, President Obama’s science advisor, John Holgren, urges climate action (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125977808310373065.html). Yet skeptics including some US Senators are pressing for the opposite: (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/05/skeptics-press-obama-on-climate-summit//print/). Of course these skeptics include Fred Singer. At the same time it appears that Cap and Trade in the US is dead for now (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703499404574558070997168360.html).

From Kenneth Haapala
http://www.sepp.org

Working to Develop More Reliable Methodology: Keith Briffa

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keith briffa 2007THE United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most others who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), have been influenced by the work of climatologists relying on tree-ring data to reconstruct past climate because the thermometer record only goes back to about 1850.  The claim that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years making 1998 the hottest year of the last thousand years, has for example, been based on reconstructions from tree-ring data.

In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa, from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.  

Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri,  to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the development of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.

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