For the Sake of the Children

Climate crusaders urge us to Think of the children! But that can be used by anyone to advance any argument under the sun.

 Read the rest here.

This blog has relocated. You can sign up to receive an e-mail each time a new post is added under the "Email subscription" bar a little below the photo.

NoFrakkingConsensus has a Facebook page.

Our Man at the IPCC

A Q&A with Francis Zwiers, Canada’s most senior IPCC official, regarding his recent testimony in Washington, DC.

Read about it here.

This blog has relocated. You can sign up to receive an e-mail each time a new post is added under the "Email subscription" bar a little below the photo.NoFrakkingConsensus now has a Facebook page.

.

Was the Fix In Before the IPCC Existed?

In 1970s and 80s some scientists already believed human CO2 emissions would cause global warming. How do we know the IPCC’s 2007 conclusions weren’t preordained?

Read the rest here.

This blog has relocated. You can sign up to receive an e-mail each time a new post is added under the "Email subscription" bar a little below the photo.NoFrakkingConsensus now has a Facebook page.

.

The EPA and the Canadian Climate Modeler

Why did a Canadian expert fly 2,500 miles across three time zones to testify in Washington, DC this week when there are plenty of US experts? And who footed the bill?

Read the rest here.

This blog has relocated. You can sign up to receive an e-mail each time a new post is added under the "Email subscription" bar a little below the photo.NoFrakkingConsensus now has a Facebook page.

.

The Legal Disclaimers Behind the Climate Science

In December 2009 Swiss Re, one of the world's largest insurance companies, published a 32-page paper (PDF here) which attempts to rebut climate skeptic arguments. This is a perfectly legitimate exercise and the tone of the paper (which describes itself as a "fact sheet") is professional.

Whether such rebuttals are persuasive is another matter. On page 27, for example, the paper tries to explain away global cooling between 1940 and 1970 (a period during which CO2 emissions were increasing) by declaring that "aerosol emissions…counterbalanced the increasing greenhouse effect."

In truth, this explanation is highly controversial. It is a hypothesis, not a proven fact. Nevertheless, Swiss Re dismisses 30 years of inconvenient cooling by citing a single scientific document - the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In other words: The IPCC says it, so it must true. Next topic.

What's most interesting to me, though, is the very fine print at the very bottom of the very last page of that Swiss Re paper. We readers are supposed to have been persuaded by the time we get there that climate change is a serious concern, that it is humanity's fault, and that the entire world needs to take dramatic steps in response.

But this paper's fine print reveals that Swiss Re is not prepared to stand behind any of these claims. In fact, it accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of the paper's statements – and won't for one moment risk being held accountable for the information it is distributing. Thus reads the fine print:

The material and conclusions contained in this publication are for information purposes only and the authors offer no guarantee for the accuracy and completeness of its contents. All liability for the accuracy and completeness or for any damages resulting from the use of information herein is expressly excluded. Under no circumstances shall Swiss Re Group or any of its entities be liable for any financial or consequential loss relating to this publication. [bold added]

Isn't that fascinating? This company isn't prepared to even defend a lawsuit based on the foregoing information, but it thinks the rest of us should consent to a redesign of the entire fossil-fuel-based-economy.

Nor is that the only disclaimer out there. As Tom Fuller has pointed out, the US Environmental Protection Agency's decision to regulate greenhouse gases rests firmly on reports written by the IPCC. Onerous, expensive regulation is necessary, argues the EPA, because the IPCC has spoken.

So isn't it delicious that, on the EPA's own website, when one is about to click on a hyperlink that leads to the IPCC's website, an "exit disclaimer" appears (see three on this page) and more fine print ensues:

This little graphic means that you will be leaving the EPA.gov domain and entering an external link. The link provides additional information that may be useful or interesting and is being provided consistent with the intended purpose of the EPA Web site. However, EPA cannot attest to the accuracy of information provided by this link…

When it suits their purpose, the EPA portrays the IPCC as the authoritative last word on climate change. On other occasions, the EPA's legal department carefully advises us that the IPCC's accuracy can't be guaranteed.

Hey, what's a few mixed messages between friends?

..

>> We trusted too completely
>> More IPCC mischief
>> The big picture: the Y2k lesson
>> Ten-year snow prediction fails miserably

The Story That Should Be on the Front Page

Lawrence Solomon has an eye-opening column over at the National Post today. It describes how a ridiculous Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule prevented a speedier, more aggressive cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

It seems the Dutch government owns its own oil-spill cleanup brigade and has developed impressive expertise and technology to deal with such matters. While the US lacks equivalent resources, it nevertheless spurned an offer of help from The Netherlands because the EPA appears to live in a fantasy world rather than the real one.

This bizarre situation has been made even worse by US authorities who are now apparently more concerned with labour union rules than with implementing as quickly as possible measures to protect the coastline.

As I've argued elsewhere, we've all been conditioned, by decades of green talk, to believe that nature is fragile and that the BP oil spill is therefore a calamity. Evidence that suggests Mother Nature will rebound within a few short years is simply ignored.

But if you sincerely believe, as the Obama administration appears to, that the Gulf oil spill is an eco-castrophe why would you behave so foolishly?

..

>> The media, Mother Nature & oil spills
>> Scientists & science journalists - please grow up
>> BP, Greenpeace & the big oil jackpot
>> Earth Day & the media

The Water Cannon of the Climate Debate

Whenever I've tried to ask questions about climate change I've practically had to run for cover. Greens have responded by rolling out a weapon intended to disperse all opposition.

That weapon is known as the climate bible. Most people have never heard of it, but the current version is 3,000 pages long and was published in 2007. It was written by an organization called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the IPCC, for short.

The IPCC is a child of the United Nations. The idea is that United Nations countries send representatives to this panel which then writes a report (it's actually three smaller reports) about what the world's leading scientists think about climate change, what the consequences of climate change are expected to be, and what humanity should do about it.

People who want to ask questions are told the experts have spoken, that the gospel is contained in the climate bible, and that that book identifies carbon dioxide as the Great Satan. So shut your mouth, stop impeding attempts to save the world, and get with the program we're told.

Aside from the fact that adults in democratic societies resent being treated like children, there's another big problem: much of what has been said about the climate bible turns out to be a myth.

The biggest myth of all is that this report is based entirely on impeccable source material that was published in scientific journals beforehand and was therefore rigorously vetted via the academic peer-review process.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, has spent years telling everyone that this report is based only and solely on peer-reviewed literature. Important, influential organizations such as the US Environmental Protection Agency have deflected criticism of their own positions by pointing to the climate bible and to Pachauri's insistence that it "relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment."

The myth has been disseminated most effectively, however, by the media. Some of the most reputable outlets imaginable have told their readers and viewers over and over again that the climate bible should be trusted because it is based 100 percent on peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The citizen audit report I released yesterday puts this myth to rest. More than 5,000 of the sources cited in the climate bible are not peer-reviewed. Many turn out to be press releases, discussion papers, and working papers. These are all informal documents, whose veracity has not been tested. In numerous cases, they were produced by advocacy groups - or by political and bureaucratic bodies with their own agendas.

Politics, in other words, is part of the very fabric of the climate bible. This document is not 100 percent pure science. It was produced by a political organization, an intergovernmental panel, set up by the granddaddy of political organizations - the United Nations. Politicians and bureaucrats have their fingerprints all over it.

Let us therefore be clear about one thing: the 100 percent peer-reviewed science claim is not true. It is bogus. A fabrication. A marketing ploy. So when will the IPCC chairman be held accountable for misleading us?

..

>> Climate bible gets 21 'F's on report card
>> The great peer-review fairy tale
>> Let there be no more scientific consensuses
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens

Yes Virginia, the Climate Bible Relies on Newspaper Clippings

We don't pick up a newspaper article sound bite Rajendra Pachauri sound bites

In 2008, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco [video here - relevant passage starts at 1 minute, 15 seconds]. In response to a question, he explained how his organization works:

The point is you have a transparent, comprehensive, extremely widespread process involving the best scientists and experts from all over the world telling you that climate change is for real. And this is not something that the authors working on IPCC reports have invented. This is based on peer-reviewed literature. That’s the manner in which the IPCC functions. We don’t pick up a newspaper article and, based on that, come up with our findings. This is on the basis of very rigorous research which has stood the test of scrutiny through peer reviews.

In actual fact, at least three newspaper articles made it into the 2007 Nobel-winning climate bible. In a section of the report that discusses the role the insurance sector would play should we need to adapt to dramatic climate change, a newspaper from the Bahamas is cited:

With expectations for rising levels of flood risk in developed countries, political pressures demand that if private insurance is withdrawn, state-backed alternatives should be created...In the northern Bahaman islands...in 2005 flood insurance was withdrawn for some residential developments, ending the ability to raise a bank-loan mortgage. Without a state-backed alternative, houses became abandoned as their value collapsed (Woon and Rose, 2004).

This is the full citation:
Woon, G. and D. Rose, 2004: Why the whole island floods now. Nassau Guardian and Tribune, November 25, 2004. [Accessed 09.05.07: http://www.unesco.org /csi/smis/siv/Caribbean/bahart3-nassau.htm.]

Remarkably, however, this newspaper article makes no mention of insurance - neither private nor state-sponsored. The word "mortgage" doesn't appear, either. And the only banks under discussion are the underwater limestone Bahama Banks. Really. This article is mostly about physical landscaping changes that have led to a particular area now being prone to flooding.

In another instance, a Wall Street Journal article is one of two sources cited by the IPCC to backup the claim that "Insurance companies are introducing incentives for homeowners and businesses that invest in loss prevention strategies (Kim, 2004; Kovacs, 2005b)."

Full citation:
Kim, Q.S., 2004: Industry Aims to Make Homes Disaster-Proof. Wall Street Journal, 30 September2004.

That article doesn't seem to be available online, although what appears to be a short excerpt appears here.

As Anthony Watts has pointed out, a third newspaper article is cited by the IPCC (as the sole reason to believe an idea is true) when it writes: "Unreliable electric power, as in minority neighbourhoods during the New York heatwave of 1999, can amplify concerns about health and environmental justice (Wilgoren and Roane, 1999)."

The New York Times article is here and the full IPCC citation reads:
Wilgoren, J. and K.R. Roane, 1999: Cold Showers, Rotting Food, the Lights, Then Dancing. New York Times, A1. July 8, 1999.

Finally, there's the Economist citation. While this publication looks like a magazine to me, it refers to itself as a newspaper. It turns out that, rather than independently verifying a straightforward factual matter, the IPCC instead relied on a media report when discussing Oxfam. Writes the IPCC: "According to The Economist (2000), a quarter of Oxfam’s US$ 162 million income in 1998 was given by the British Government and the EU."

That citation appears in an IPCC list of references like this:
The Economist, 2000: Sins of the secular missionaries. January 29, 2000.

Do these newspaper citations really matter? Yes, they do. Taken together they demonstrate that Pachauri's frequent claim that the IPCC relies solely on peer-reviewed literature - and then subjects its every assertion to rigorous scrutiny - is false.

As Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit highlighted recently, important institutions tend to believe Pachauri when he makes such claims. A December 2009 document from the US Environmental Protection Agency deflected criticism of the IPCC with the following:

As IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri recently stated:

IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment...The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts... [p. 7 of this PDF]

When newspaper clippings are cited as evidence, when there's a discrepancy between what an article says and what the IPCC claims it says, when IPCC writers rely on media reports rather than verifying facts directly - neither the process nor the end result is anything like what Pachauri has advertised.

A great many government institutions need to wake up and smell this stinky coffee.

..

h/t to The Dog Ate My Data for the Commonwealth Club video
see also: ClimateQuotes.com

>> Greenpeace and the Nobel-winning climate report
>> More dodgy citations in the Nobel-winning climate report