The IPCC: Looking 95% Foolish

As the gap between its models and reality has grown, the IPCC has become more adamant that its conclusions are correct – rather than more cautious.

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Why I Won't Be Speaking at the Heartland Conference

My reputation has been harmed by an odious ad campaign that equates climate concern with terrorists.

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Greenpeace Disses 'Covert Calculations'

Greenpeace has seen the light. Years after it became the norm in climate science to hoard & hide data, Greenpeace is now complaining about such behaviour.

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About My Book

My book has a new title – and will be available in September.

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A Powerful New Research Tool

A hyperlinked and annotated version of the 2007 climate bible gives us new ways of viewing this document. Produced by two dedicated volunteers, it’s a gift to the public as well as the research community.

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Wind and Solar in Fantasy Land

A + B = C

A: Certain companies produce wind and solar power.
B: The rest of us pay inflated prices for this power.
C: Politicians point to the above as proof that they’re green.

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Transformational Canadians

Please nominate Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick as “Transformational Canadians.” Help a Canadian newspaper understand the enormous contribution these gentlemen have made to the climate debate. Nominations close November 26th.

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See You in Mid-August

I'm currently on a writing retreat, working hard on my upcoming book, Decoding the Climate Bible: Almost Nothing You've Heard About the UN's Uber Report is True.

Until mid-August, therefore, this blog will be on hiatus. To those of you in the Northern hemisphere – enjoy your summer. To my friends in Australia, New Zealand, and other southerly locales, may winter treat you kindly.

Until we meet again, below are some of the submissions to the body currently examining the manner in which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conducts itself.

Keep in mind when you read these that the public has long been told that the IPCC's findings should be trusted because it is a paragon of virtue. We've been told its approach is rigorous, transparent, robust, and inclusive (see quote at bottom of p.7 of PDF). We've been told it employs a meticulous "peer-reviewed process." Indeed, according to its chairman, no one can imagine a better way of doing things since the IPCC's modus operandi is unparalleled on the planet.

Among those persons who beg to differ are:

• John Christy (scientist, USA) presentation (17-page PDF), interview here
• Marcel Crok (journalist, The Netherlands) submission
• David Henderson (economist, UK) submission, intro here
• Ross McKitrick (economist, Canada) presentation
• Roger Pielke Sr. (scientist, USA) submission
• Richard Tol (economist, Ireland) blog post about issues, submission here
• Hans von Storch (scientist, Germany) 17-page PowerPoint presentation

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See my IPCC-related blog posts in the right-hand column here.

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

IPCC Says Climate Prediction Impossible

On page 85 of their excellent book, Taken By Storm: the Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming, Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick call our attention to an astonishing line in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 Assessment Report:

The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. [bold added]

This statement appeared in the Executive Summary of Chapter 14 of the report produced by Working Group 1. (See the first bullet point on the right, page 3 of this 18-page PDF - or the third bullet point from the bottom here. The quote appearing in the book differs slightly from the IPCC version now online and reproduced above.)

The remainder of the page includes a great deal of gobblygook about the need to "project future climate changes" and the need to understand how probable some future scenarios may be when compared to others.

But there's no doubt about it. The IPCC admitted, a decade ago, that future long-term climate cannot be predicted. The system is chaotic. It is non-linear. It does not, and will not, behave the way we mere mortals expect it to.

So tell me again why we're scaring little kids witless by telling them there won't be a habitable world left by the time they grow up?

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>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
>> Ten-year snow prediction fails miserably
>> Global disaster is so 1976
>> We're always out-of-touch with the future

Earth Hour 2010

Tomorrow's the day we're all supposed to turn off our lights for an hour. The Earth Hour campaign is organized by the World Wildlife Fund. While the point of the exercise is apparently to "take a stand against climate change" it might be argued that Earth Hour is a wildly successful fundraising tool in which the WWF receives oodles of free publicity from media outlets, politicians, celebrities - even Google.

The high profile nature of Earth Hour is surely one of the reasons the WWF is now the world's wealthiest environmental organization. According to publicly-available figures compiled by Climate-Resistance.org, the World Wildlife Fund raised $3.1 billion in just six years (2003-2008). That's half a billion dollars annually.

The hype and silliness associated with Earth Hour 2009 was what finally pushed me, personally, over the edge. It was then I decided to begin researching the global warming debate in earnest. Too many things didn't seem to add up. Too much of what I was reading and hearing seemed to be mindless hype reported by people who had no real idea of what they were talking about.

This year I'll be joining those folks who are deliberately turning on all their lights during Earth Hour - to demonstrate that I am aware of Climategate and consider it an important matter.

Fellow Canadian Ross McKitrick teaches economics at the University of Guelph. After being questioned by a journalist regarding Earth Hour he has written up a short statement in PDF format explaining why he "abhors" this campaign. Two of my favourite quotes:

I don't want to go back to nature. Haiti just went back to nature. For humans, living in "Nature" meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance.

...through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s despite the expansion of industry and the power supply. If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children...then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations. No thanks. I like visiting nature but I don't want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization is something to be ashamed of.

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See also, Canadian newspaper columnist Lorrie Goldstein's views here

>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists
>> Green time capsule: 1970s eco ideas weren't pretty
>> Global disaster is so 1976
>> That's it, I've had it

Let There Be No More Scientific Consensuses

[desktop wallpaper version available here]

It's good news that Rajendra Pachauri's leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is now going to be scrutinized. His behaviour has been conspicuously less-than-professional and it's difficult to imagine informed people taking the IPCC seriously as long as he remains at the helm.

But climate science problems extend far beyond one man. In my view, they can be traced in large part to a phrase that should be struck forever from the scientific and journalistic vocabulary: "scientific consensus."

Science is about doubt – not certainty. Journalism is supposed to reveal – not conceal. When scientific organizations claim there's a consensus, they step over the line into political advocacy. When media outlets trumpet said consensus they "disappear" highly-qualified, dissenting scientists.

There's nothing wrong with saying there's a prevailing or dominant view among scientists on a particular topic. There's nothing wrong with saying there's a preponderance of opinion in one direction. But those phrases do something the term "scientific consensus" does not. They acknowledge the existence of alternative points-of-view.

The IPCC has spent years striving to establish what Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick refer to as "Official Science" (see pages 34-40 in their book, Taken By Storm):

Official Science may serve many functions, but it is most important to understand that Official Science is not science. Moreover, those involved with it represent only a minority of people involved with science, and they are not appointed by scientists to speak on their behalf...while scientists are skeptical of their own work and that of others, Official Science speaks with the simple confidence that good politics requires and journalism demands, but which science abhors.

When we're told about an alleged scientific consensus therefore, what's being described is not certainty or unanimity among all scientists – but merely the opinion of a small group of people who, via a political process, managed to get a seat at the table during the meetings at which, via another political process, the Official Science was decided upon.

When I began examining the climate change debate I was shocked to discover a huge disconnect between how the media described matters and what a few hours of independent research revealed. The Economist, a publication I normally trust and respect, spoke of a "consensus on global warming" as though it were gospel that had been hand-delivered by Yahweh himself.

The once stodgy Time magazine insisted there was "a clear scientific consensus connecting the rise in man-made greenhouse gas emissions" to physical changes in the natural world. Wired magazine, which is aimed at an educated, tech-savvy audience, illustrated beautifully what happens when we think and speak as though scientific consensuses are meaningful. The next step is to proclaim, as a journalist in that publication did in June 2008, that: "No one with any scientific sense now disagrees about the severity of the climate crisis."

But here's the catch. Freeman Dyson (one of the world's most accomplished, admired, and famous theoretical physicists) does disagree. Below are just three relevant Dyson quotes:

The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm.

Just because you see pictures of glaciers falling into the ocean doesn't mean anything bad is happening. This is something that happens all the time. It's part of the natural cycle of things.

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories.

Let's revisit the Wired writer's declaration: "No one with any scientific sense now disagrees about the severity of the climate crisis." Dyson, despite his enormous stature, is thereby reduced to a no one. He doesn't exist. He has been journalistically "disappeared."

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying Dyson's views are correct. That's a different discussion. What I'm saying is that his presence in this debate must be acknowledged. His opinions must be heard. It is wrong and it is dishonest for anyone to behave as though he isn't part of the landscape.

Dyson is a blue-chip intellect with a distinguished career. He's one of hundreds of similarly eminent scientists from around the world who have loudly and publicly dissented from the alleged scientific consensus on climate change. Two dozen such scientists are profiled in Lawrence Solomon's The Deniers. Indeed, thousands of scientists have expressed their reservations. Yet for years, the media has told us such people are less substantial than ghosts. They are invisible. Absent. Simply not spoken of.

This is the sort of thing that happens under totalitarian regimes. It is not an activity that journalists in democratic nations should in any way be party to. Pretending that these scientists don't exist is not only disrespectful, it's a profound betrayal of the public's trust. Journalists are supposed to inform the rest of us about current events and important debates. They aren't supposed to conceal an entire class of highly-relevant participants from public view.

Never again, therefore, should any journalist tell her readers about a "scientific consensus." Never again should any scientific body make use of that term.

By all means, tell me that a majority of scientists believes something to be true. Tell me that most indicators suggest that X is more likely than Y. Tell me there's a high probability, based on the available evidence, that a certain event may take place.

But never, ever talk to me about a scientific consensus. Those two words don't belong together.

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h/t to Jeff at the Air Vent, whose post yesterday sparked this one


>> Reuters' climate change fiction
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Global warming and My Cousin Vinny
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists