Steven Chu's Juvenile Score Keeping

When someone’s won a Nobel Prize, who cares how long they served in Cabinet?

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More on Stephen Emmott, Author of 'Ten Billion'

A new book appears to be a rehash of 40-year-old environmental scaremongering endorsed by that era’s men of science.

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Paul Krugman's Old Time Climate Religion

A Nobel laureate says people who question climate dogma deserve to be “punished in the afterlife.”

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Peer-Reviewed Medical Research Critiqued

An opinion piece in Scientific America alleges that, over the long term, a great deal of scientific research turns out not to be true. Independent replication of research findings is apparently far less common than we think.

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What the IPCC Learned from Press Releases

We now know that the UN's Nobel-winning, allegedly gold-standard climate bible bases factual assertions on dodgy source material like press releases.

For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is confident that "many genuine efforts" are being made to help the poor cope with energy price increases. Why? Because a press release talks about one initiative in one country: [read it here]

World Bank, 2005: An open letter to the Catholic Relief Services and bank information centre in response to the report ‘Chad’s Oil: Miracle or Mirage for the poor?’. News release no: 2005/366/AFR, Washington D.C. [IPCC reference listed here]

The IPCC declares that the United States decreased its greenhouse gas intensity by specific percentages during 2003 and 2004. There seems to be no need to verify these facts since a White House news release (no longer available at the supplied online address and, we might note, issued by an administration not usually trusted by climate change activists) apparently said so.

Snow, T., White House Press Briefing, 2006: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061031-8.html# accessed 31 October 2006. [IPCC reference listed here]

Although we all know that weather is not climate, the IPCC seems confused on this point when it discusses the 2003 European heat wave. In a report that's supposed to focus on the impacts of long term climate change, the IPCC thinks it's worth mentioning that "Wine production in Europe was the lowest in 10 years" in 2003. The evidence for such a claim? A press release issued by a lobby group for European farmers:

COPA COGECA, 2003a: Committee of Agricultural Organisations in the European Union General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union, CDP 03 61 1, Press release, Brussels. [IPCC reference listed here]

It's a similar story for the IPCC's claim that, also in 2003, "Forage production was reduced on average by 30% in France and hay and silage stocks for winter were partly used during the summer." According to an IPCC supplementary document (PDF - see p. 4), the above press release is actually the source of the hay claim, while the wine production data comes from a second press release that is cited thus: (see p. 6 of the above PDF)

COPA COGECA, 2003b: Committee of Agricultural Organisations in the European Union General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union, CDP 03 61 1, Press release, Brussels.

Since the European farmers' organization website only has press releases from the last three years online, if we want to sort out which of these 2003 documents actually says what, we'll need to submit a special request.

And then there's the case of the vanishing World Bank press release. Issued in 2002, apparently in Spanish, the IPCC cites it to backup two separate claims. It is used in this context:

Conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of ecosystem structure and function are important for climate-change adaptation strategies, due to the protection of genetically diverse populations and species-rich ecosystems (World Bank, 2002a; CBD, 2003);

and in this one:

According to the World Bank (2002a, c), some developing countries are losing 4-8% of their GDP due to productive and capital losses related to environmental degradation.

Unfortunately, while the World Bank website lists hundreds of news releases from 2002, this particular document remains elusive. The website's internal search engine doesn't seem to think a press release with the ID number 2002/112/S exists - even though that is how the IPCC identifies this source:

World Bank, 2002a: Desarrollo en riesgo debido a la degradación ambiental: Comunicado de prensa (Development at risk from environmental degradation: News release), No. 2002/112/S. [IPCC reference listed here]

Google seems unable to provide assistance, either. Has the IPCC made an error? It's unclear.

But never mind, the celebrated IPCC report demonstrates its commitment to top-notch scholarship when it relies on an amateurish press release during a discussion of the relative energy densities of new technologies such as ultracapacitors and Ni-MH batteries (see the bottom of this page). That a smallish company might have its own reasons - competitive kung fu, an upcoming round of capital-raising, entrepreneurial enthusiasm run amok - for embellishing or exaggerating in a release aimed at the media doesn't appear to have occurred to anyone at the IPCC.

Instead, the IPCC is prepared to base its analysis - and its reputation - on a reference that looks like this:

Power System, 2005: Press release 2005.6.27. Development of High Power and High Energy Density Capacitor (in Japanese). <http://www.powersystems.co.jp/newsrelease/20050627nscreleaser1-1.pdf> accessed 30/05/07. [IPCC reference listed here]

generated by a company whose motto appears to be: "For sustainable growth of the human beings" [sic].

Oh dear, oh dear. The closer one peers at the IPCC report, the more tawdry it all seems.

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COMING SOON: The press release that masqueraded as a news item before hitting the big time

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>> Climate bible gets 21 'F's on report card
>> The great peer-review fairy tale
>> What's left if we disregard non-peer-reviewed claims?
>> The water cannon of the climate debate

Systemic Failure: Invasion of the Drama Queens

I love the boys over at Climate-Resistance.org because they're big-picture thinkers. Their analysis emphasizes the ethical, philosophical, and political aspects of the climate discussion.

This week they've been saying that replacing Rajendra Pachauri as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won't solve our problems. Personally, I think he needs to go. But it's true we'd be having a totally different discussion had numerous parties not failed us.

You have to be a bit of a drama queen to interpret a few degrees increase in temperature over the span of a century as a catastrophe. The fact that this mindset has been adopted by so many people means the failure has been systemic.

That's it man. Game over, game over. sound bite Aliens sound bites

Private Hudson (Bill Paxton), Aliens

Let's look at those who are now tainted by their support for the outrageously flawed 2007 IPCC climate report:

1. The United Nations, the wicked stepmother of this sad story. The IPCC is a United Nations creation. But it has no conflict-of-interest guidelines. It has no checks-and-balances to prevent its hijacking by special interests. It is also exempt from the sort of Freedom of Information provisions now commonplace in democratic nations. In other words, it lacks accountability and is structurally a disaster.
   


2. The Nobel Peace Prize committee, which devalued its most precious resource. The Nobel committee bestowed its seal of approval jointly on the IPCC and Al Gore - even though there are significant discrepancies between what the IPCC says will happen and what Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, dramatically implies. Now that the government of India has established its own climate body, and the government of the Netherlands says the IPCC got basic facts wrong (regarding the percentage of its country that falls below sea level), the Nobel prize has never seemed more tarnished.
   


3. NASA, supposedly a purveyor of scientifically-sound info. Until late January of this year, NASA parroted on its website the absurd IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by the 2030s. According to Jeffrey Kargel, at the University of Arizona, this statement "was just so wrong it wasn’t worth discussing." Surely the question needs to be asked: if NASA is clueless about such matters, why should we pay attention to anything it says about climate change going forward?


4. The science academies of more than a dozen of the world's best-educated nations. Reputable organizations such as the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of the UK have endorsed the IPCC's climate analysis. This joint 2008 statement cites the IPCC as though it were the purveyor of gospel. Did it not occur to these folks that third-party verification of IPCC findings should be undertaken before they, too, declared that the entire world needed to "transition to a low carbon society"? Drug trial results are closely scrutinized. Corporate financial statements are routinely audited. Yet science academy bureaucrats told us to blindly trust IPCC reports.
   


5. Prestigious, influential science journals. While the public assumes such journals are devoted solely to rigorous scientific inquiry, one-sided political commentary regarding global warming has appeared in the editorials of these publications since at least 2001. In 2008, Nature (owned by Macmillan Publishers which is, in turn, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group) even endorsed Barack Obama for US president. We're naive to imagine that the science media isn't political. [more here]
   


6. The mainstream media, who've become a cheerleading squad. It's the media's job to hold governments accountable, to shine light on special interests and snake-oil salesmen, to promote informed discussion about vital issues of the day. Instead, journalists fell for some of the lamest lines imaginable: the "science is settled" and the "debate is over." Rather than providing their readers, viewers, and listeners with the opportunity to make up their own minds (in a democracy, voters get to decide for themselves, remember?), journalists gushed over Al Gore's eco crusade and ignored skeptics. This is called betraying the public trust.


7. Environmental groups, who've morphed into big business. Green activists say they're saving the world. They're also empire building. As Climate-Resistance points out, between 2003 and 2008 the World Wildlife Fund raised $3.1 billion dollars. Similarly, Greenpeace raised $2.4 billion over a 12-year period. To keep that kind of money flowing into their coffers, might some people be willing to exaggerate environmental threats?
   


8. Politicians from top to bottom, from one end of the spectrum to the other. Wrapping oneself in a green cloak is easy. But solving tough problems in the real world is what they're elected to do. In Toronto, where I live, public transit faces dramatic funding cuts and there isn't enough money to keep school swimming pools open. But ads in my community newspaper tell me that grants "of up to $25,000 are available" to environmental groups for projects that "reduce emissions... and help us adapt to climate change." The more I examine governments around the developed world, the more I find this pattern.
   


9. Ordinary folks like you and me. Yes, many of us have busy lives. We're focused on getting our families through the week, and through the school year. Some of us are coping with illness and injury. We don't have endless hours to untangle complicated political questions. But before we make up our minds about a matter as important as climate change, should we not spend some time listening to more than one side of the story? We wouldn't convict someone of a crime without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves. We shouldn't convict carbon dioxide emissions of triggering all manner of disaster before we've considered the opinion of one or two people who think this theory is nonsense.
   

We've all contributed to this train wreck. Now we need to stare down the drama queens and start behaving like grownups.

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>> NASA's mistaken glacier info
>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
>> Science says: hop on one foot
>> Scientific organizations: should we trust them?

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.

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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

Weekend Roundup: Climate Boss Pachauri

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who has been the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, is growing more controversial by the hour.

This past weekend a UK newspaper revealed that although he urges others to reduce their carbon footprint, he gets driven to work in a chauffeured vehicle. It's only a mile away, but rather than walking, cycling, or driving himself in an eco-friendly car, Dr. Pachauri chooses the most carbon-intensive option "most of the time" according to his driver.

Meanwhile, another UK newspaper revealed that the 2007 IPCC report - for which Dr. Pachauri, the IPCC, and Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize - relied on a mountaineering magazine article, as well as the equivalent of an unpublished MA thesis, to substantiate its claims regarding the extent of mountain ice melt.

A third media story describes a Pachauri-authored racy novel involving an amorous older gent and heaving bosoms that was released in India this month.

But the weekend's most significant development is this: two British newspapers are now calling for Pachauri's resignation. The Sunday London Times says: "Dr Pachauri...presided over the use of dodgy science in [IPCC] reports and ignored legitimate criticism of that science. He should go."

The Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, declares: "We need facts, not spin, in the climate debate." It continues:

In its zeal to persuade the world of the catastrophic consequences of man-made global warming, the IPCC has lost both its objectivity and the trust of the public. That is one of the main reasons why we, along with our sister newspaper The Daily Telegraph, believe that Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman, should step down. [bold added]

This is huge. The mainstream media's coverage of climate issues has been steadfastly pro-IPCC and far-too-friendly toward Pachauri. At last, the wheel is turning - in the UK, at least.

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h/t Tom Nelson

Greenpeace and the Nobel-Winning Climate Report

Considered the climate Bible by governments around the world, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is meant to be a scientific analysis of the most authoritative research.

Instead, it references literature generated by Greenpeace - an organization known more for headline-grabbing publicity stunts than sober-minded analysis. (Eight IPCC-cited Greenpeace publications are listed at the bottom of this post.)

In one section of this Nobel-winning report, climate change is linked to coral reef degradation. The sole source for this claim? A Greenpeace report titled "Pacific in Peril" (see Hoegh-Guldberg below). Here the report relies on a Greenpeace document to establish the lower-end of an estimate involving solar power plants (Aringhoff).

When discussing solar energy elsewhere, the report references two Greenpeace documents in one sentence. Here it uses a Greenpeace paper as its sole means of documenting where the "main wind-energy investments" are located globally (Wind).

On this page, the report notes that while some research suggests wind power will generate between three and five percent of global electricity by 2030, a more optimistic forecast places this number at 29%. The six times more favorable estimate comes from GWEC, 2006 - a 60-page, photo-rich report co-authored by Greenpeace and the Global Wind Energy Council. (The latter describes itself as "the global wind industry trade association.") In fairness to the IPCC, even it rejected Greenpeace's numbers, choosing instead to use 7% in its analysis.

But the fact that this report relies on Greenpeace-generated copy isn't the only reason for concern. Here is an IPCC graphic:

[h/t to Roger Pielke Jr. and Ben Pile]

The idea that 2,500 "scientific expert reviewers" provided feedback about the report during its pre-publication phase sounds awesome. But many of those people aren't scientists at all. They're professional activists in the employ of environmental organizations.

The expert reviewers who had input into just one portion (Working Group III) of the IPCC report are listed in this 8-page PDF. They include three Greenpeace employees, two Friends of the Earth representatives, two Climate Action Network reps, and a person each from activist organizations WWF International, Environmental Defense, and the David Suzuki Foundation.

One of these expert reviewers is Gabriela von Goerne - who holds a PhD in geology and works as a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Germany. Von Goerne is co-author of a 2008 report that employs colourful, less-than-clinical language. Carbon capture and storage "will arrive on the battlefield far too late to help the world avoid dangerous climate change” it declares on page six.

(Incidentally, although this Greenpeace report begins with a declaration that it is "based on peer-reviewed independent scientific research," footnotes 48 and 53 cite only a non-peer-reviewed source to support statements of fact:

• Hannegan, B, 2007. Testimony for Hearing of the Science, Technology and Innovation Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. 110th Cong., 1st Sess. 7 November 2007.

Moreover, footnote 153 cites a Greenpeace-published document authored by von Goerne herself. Greenpeace, it would appear, has a definition of "peer-reviewed" that is as elastic as the IPCC's.)

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. sound bite Princess Bride sound bites

Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), The Princess Bride

As a Greenpeace employee, von Goerne gives interviews to the media. In 2007 she expressed her organization's policy preferences to MSNBC: "What we see is a diversion of money away from renewables toward CCS and coal, and that's not the way we want to see things move forward... [italics added]

A 2005 BBC article about a Swedish company exploring clean-coal technology, quotes her thus:

I don't think [this company] is taking climate issues seriously. They want to move on with coal technology, which ultimately is a dead end. The best choice would be to concentrate on renewable energies...

And in 2004, when von Goerne was part of a three-person Greenpeace delegation that testified before a committee of Australia's Parliament, her demeanor was so combative that she was admonished by the chair, who told her: "We are not having an ideological argument."

All of this suggests that von Goerne is no neutral, disinterested party. It's difficult to believe that, in her role as an IPCC reviewer, she confined herself solely to science-based objections.

Nevertheless, according to this bio, during the same time she would have been performing her reviewer role for the 2007 Nobel-winning report, von Goerne was also serving as a lead author of an IPCC special report examining the issue of carbon sequestration.

The second Greenpeace "scientific expert reviewer" is Steve Sawyer. A Greenpeace bio describes him as a "seasoned campaigner on board Greenpeace boats and a tireless lobbyist." In 2005 he spent his time "lobbying governments and corporations on energy policies."

Sawyer is a former director of Greenpeace USA, a former executive director of Greenpeace International, and has two children with former Greenpeace Antarctic campaign director Kelly Rigg. In 2007, he became the secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, the lobby group that produced the wildly-optimistic wind power estimate mentioned above.

Fond of dramatic statements, Sawyer has declared that "Future generations will not forgive us if we delay" emissions cuts. He has warned that Manhattan is at risk of being "under water" due to climate change. And then there's this quote from a press release issued prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq:

It's clear [the US and the UK]...intend to wage a reckless war which would make the world a much more dangerous place...If it wanted the world to be ruled by the cowboy with the biggest guns, the international community wouldn’t have created the UN...

In short, Sawyer's career has focused on political activism and environmental lobbying. How does that qualify him to be an IPCC "scientific expert reviewer"?

The third Greenpeace representative given official standing as an IPCC reviewer is Sven Teske. When a Greenpeace protest vessel shut down Europe's largest coal port in 2005, Teske was on board. Described as a renewable energy expert, he declared:

Climate change is now the single biggest threat facing our planet...Greenpeace is here today to expose Europe's dangerous addiction to coal.

Elsewhere, he insists that: "Renewable energy is the true answer" to coal's shortcomings [italics added]. According to this bio, Teske has a BSc in engineering and a masters in "wind energy technology." Curiously, a 1995 Greenpeace press release described him as a "nuclear expert" [screengrab here].

In April 2009, Teske was one of two speakers at a "Public Forum on Climate Justice" held in Ottawa, Canada. Although he resides in Amsterdam, a month later he was quoted in a Greenpeace press release calling for Canadian "political leadership" on green issues. A month after that, he called Australia "a global climate change pariah."

Teske is a co-author of a Greenpeace publication titled "New Zealand Energy Revolution: How to Prevent Climate Chaos". It features a forward by (and photograph of) Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman.

In 2006, Greenpeace released another report in conjunction with the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (a solar power lobby group). Teske is described as the "Greenpeace Co-ordinator and scenario analyst" in its credits and his name is one of two appearing at the end of that document's forward.

This attractive, 50-page publication is an extended brochure of the sort distributed by solar energy marketing departments. Although it is data and graph-intensive, it contains a grand total of four footnotes. Although it mentions external documents in passing, no list of full citations is provided.

Thus, we read on page 14 that, "According to a WHO study, as many as 160,000 people are dying each year as a result of climate change." Should we care to double-check this claim, we're on our own. [a critique of the WHO study]

As incredible as it sounds, this publication/brochure is itself cited in the Nobel-winning IPCC report as evidence that a particular statement is true. Appearing in the list below as Greenpeace 2006, it is one of two references mentioned in a single sentence, as discussed above.

Which begs an important question: how did it get into the same room with serious scholars? Why would it even be under consideration by a scientific body tasked with producing an assessment of the latest scientific research?

There appears to be an interesting chronology here. First Teske is granted "scientific expert reviewer" status by the IPCC. Second, a non-academic, non-peer-reviewed document in which he was closely involved gets added to the climate change research canon by virtue of it being cited by the Nobel-winning report.

Third, Teske co-authors a new Greenpeace report that receives an extra measure of prestige when it features a forward authored by the high-profile IPCC chairman. Fourth, in a final flourish, Teske - like his Greenpeace colleauge von Goerne - gets elevated to lead author status of yet another IPCC special report (on renewable energy) due to be published this year.

Where does Greenpeace stop and the IPCC begin? Sometimes it's difficult to tell.

--
GREENPEACE-GENERATED LITERATURE CITED BY THE 2007 NOBEL-WINNING CLIMATE REPORT

• Aringhoff, R., C. Aubrey, G. Brakmann, and S. Teske, 2003: Solar thermal power 2020, Greenpeace International/European Solar Thermal Power Industry Association, Netherlands
• ESTIA, 2004: Exploiting the heat from the sun to combat climate change. European Solar Thermal Industry Association and Greenpeace, Solar Thermal Power 2020, UK
• Greenpeace, 2004: http://www.greenpeace.org.ar/cop10ing/SolarGeneration.pdf accessed 05/06/07
• Greenpeace, 2006: Solar generation. K. McDonald (ed.), Greenpeace International, Amsterdam
• GWEC, 2006: Global wind energy outlook. Global Wind Energy Council, Bruxelles and Greenpeace, Amsterdam, September, 56 pp., accessed 05/06/07
• Hoegh-Guldberg, O., H. Hoegh-Guldberg, H. Cesar and A. Timmerman, 2000: Pacific in peril: biological, economic and social impacts of climate change on Pacific coral reefs. Greenpeace, 72 pp.
• Lazarus, M., L. Greber, J. Hall, C. Bartels, S. Bernow, E. Hansen, P. Raskin, and D. Von Hippel, 1993: Towards a fossil free energy future: the next energy transition. Stockholm Environment Institute, Boston Center, Boston. Greenpeace International, Amsterdam.
• Wind Force 12, 2005: Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace, http://www.gwec.net/index.php?id=8, accessed 03/07/07

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>> More dodgy citations in the Nobel-winning climate report (WWF-generated literature)
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Green time capsule: 1970 eco ideas not pretty
>> Climate psychics: 10-year-old UK snow prediction fails miserably

More Dodgy Citations in the Nobel-Winning Climate Report

At its heart, the Himalayan glacier scandal that has recently shaken the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) involves a document created by the WWF.

The WWF is an activist organization. Much of its funding comes from public donations. The more successful the WWF is at persuading the public that there's a crisis, the more likely people are to give it money. (In North America, WWF stands for World Wildlife Fund. Elsewhere, it stands for World Wide Fund for Nature.)

Many of those associated with the WWF are lovely human beings. But that doesn't change the fact that the WWF is not a neutral, disinterested party. It has an agenda, an ax to grind, a definite point-of-view. Rather than being a scientific organization, it is a political one. In the UK, the media aptly calls the WWF a "pressure-group."

That's an Opinion - Not Evidence sound bite Star Trek: Voyager Season 7 sound bites

Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran),
Star Trek Voyager, Season 7, "Repression"

The IPCC, on the other hand, describes itself as "a scientific body" that provides "the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change" by assessing "the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information." [bold added]

Many people would consider it improper for a science-focused organization to rely on a document created by an oil company, since the oil company can't be counted on to provide the whole story. Surely, therefore, it is equally improper for the IPCC to consider a statement to be true solely because an activist group says it is.

Surely scientists working for a scientific body - and tasked with producing a scientific assessment - would endeavor to keep their distance from political spin of all kinds.

But that is not how the IPCC behaves. AR4 is the shorthand name for the 2007 Nobel-winning IPCC report. When one types "WWF" into an AR4 search box dozens of results are returned.

For example, a WWF report is cited twice on this page as the only supporting proof of IPCC statements about coastal developments in Latin America. A WWF report is referenced twice by the IPCC's Working Group II in its concluding statements. There, the IPCC depends on the WWF to define what the global average per capita "ecological footprint" is compared to the ecological footprint of central and Eastern Europe.

Elsewhere, when discussing "mudflows and avalanches" linked to melting glaciers, the oh-so-scientifically-circumspect IPCC relies on two sources to make its point - an apparently still unpublished paper delivered to a conference five years earlier (Bhadra, 2002) and a WWF document.

Similarly, the only reason the IPCC can declare that "Changes in climate are affecting many mountain glaciers, with rapid glacier retreat documented in the Himalayas, Greenland, the European Alps, the Andes Cordillera and East Africa" is because a WWF report makes this claim.

In a section on coral reefs and mangroves, a WWF report is the IPCC's sole reason for believing that, in "the Mesoamerican reef there are up to 25 times more fish of some species on reefs close to mangrove areas than in areas where mangroves have been destroyed."

When the IPCC advises world leaders that "climate change is very likely to produce significant impacts on selected marine fish and shellfish (Baker, 2005)" it doesn't call attention to the fact that the sole authority on which this statement rests is a WWF workshop project report (see the "Baker" document below).

All told, an extensive list of documents created or co-authored by the WWF is cited by this Nobel-winning IPCC report:

• Allianz and World Wildlife Fund, 2006: Climate change and the financial sector: an agenda for action, 59 pp. [Accessed 03.05.07: http://www.wwf.org.uk/ filelibrary/pdf/allianz_rep_0605.pdf]
  
• Austin, G., A. Williams, G. Morris, R. Spalding-Feche, and R. Worthington, 2003: Employment potential of renewable energy in South Africa. Earthlife Africa, Johannesburg and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Denmark, November, 104 pp.
• Baker, T., 2005: Vulnerability Assessment of the North-East Atlantic Shelf Marine Ecoregion to Climate Change, Workshop Project Report, WWF, Godalming, Surrey, 79 pp.
• Coleman, T., O. Hoegh-Guldberg, D. Karoly, I. Lowe, T. McMichael, C.D. Mitchell, G.I. Pearman, P. Scaife and J. Reynolds, 2004: Climate Change: Solutions for Australia. Australian Climate Group, 35 pp. http://www.wwf.org.au/ publications/acg_solutions.pdf
• Dlugolecki, A. and S. Lafeld, 2005: Climate change - agenda for action: the financial sector’s perspective. Allianz Group and WWF, Munich [may be the same document as "Allianz" above, except that one is dated 2006 and the other 2005]
  
• Fritsche, U.R., K. Hünecke, A. Hermann, F. Schulze, and K. Wiegmann, 2006: Sustainability standards for bioenergy. Öko-Institut e.V., Darmstadt, WWF Germany, Frankfurt am Main, November
• Giannakopoulos, C., M. Bindi, M. Moriondo, P. LeSager and T. Tin, 2005: Climate Change Impacts in the Mediterranean Resulting from a 2oC Global Temperature Rise. WWF report, Gland Switzerland. Accessed 01.10.2006 at http://assets.panda.org/downloads/medreportfinal8july05.pdf.

• Hansen, L.J., J.L. Biringer and J.R. Hoffmann, 2003: Buying Time: A User’s Manual for Building Resistance and Resilience to Climate Change in Natural Systems. WWF Climate Change Program, Berlin, 246 pp.
• http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change/our_solutions/business_industry/climate_savers/ index.cfm
• Lechtenbohmer, S., V. Grimm, D. Mitze, S. Thomas, M. Wissner, 2005: Target 2020: Policies and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. WWF European Policy Office, Wuppertal
• Malcolm, J.R., C. Liu, L. Miller, T. Allnut and L. Hansen, Eds., 2002a: Habitats at Risk: Global Warming and Species Loss in Globally Significant Terrestrial Ecosystems. WWF World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, 40 pp.
• Rowell, A. and P.F. Moore, 2000: Global Review of Forest Fires. WWF/IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 66 pp. http://www.iucn.org/themes/fcp/publications /files/global_review_forest_fires.pdf

• WWF, 2004: Deforestation threatens the cradle of reef diversity. World Wide Fund for Nature, 2 December 2004. http://www.wwf.org/
  
• WWF, 2004: Living Planet Report 2004. WWF- World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), Gland, Switzerland, 44 pp.
• WWF (World Wildlife Fund), 2005: An overview of glaciers, glacier retreat, and subsequent impacts in Nepal, India and China. World Wildlife Fund, Nepal Programme, 79 pp.

• Zarsky, L. and K. Gallagher, 2003: Searching for the Holy Grail? Making FDI Work for Sustainable Development. Analytical Paper, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Switzerland

I've only spent a few hours tracking these down, so there may be more.

I haven't yet fully explored the Greenpeace citations, but two occur in the first paragraph on this page.

Finally, there are these authoritative sources cited by the IPCC - publications with names such as Leisure and Event Management:

• Jones, B. and D. Scott, 2007: Implications of climate change to Ontario’s provincial parks. Leisure, (in press)
• Jones, B., D. Scott and H. Abi Khaled, 2006: Implications of climate change for outdoor event planning: a case study of three special events in Canada’s National Capital region. Event Management, 10, 63-76

This, apparently, is how you win a Nobel prize.

..

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