Read the rest here.
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Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Apr 18, 2013
A Few Crumbs of Pastry: More Nobel Nonsense
What happens when you slice half a pie into 9,000 pieces? You get a few crumbs of pastry.
Read the rest here.
Read the rest here.
Sep 24, 2010
The Politics of Fear
According to many commentators, conservatives are now ascendant because they have invoked the politics of fear. So where are the denunciations of the politics of fear employed by greens? They’ve played that hand for years – exploiting & targeting kids in the process.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
This blog has relocated. Hope you like the fresh, new look. 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.
Mar 11, 2010
Who's Concerned About the Climate Report?
It's a wonderful world, and technology makes it even more marvelous. On the evening of March 8th I called for volunteers to help audit the references cited in all 44 chapters of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
By last night, roughly 48 hours later, 19 people whose acquaintance I'd not made before had been in touch. By this morning, our ranks had grown further. These people live in different parts of North America but also in Australia, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK.
Many hold math, science, or engineering degrees. One is a medical doctor, another is a lawyer. Two have commerce degrees. Some are retired. Five of us are girls.
We are, therefore, an impressive random sample of citizens of the world who think the climate report requires a second look. There is no evidence to suggest we are anti-science - quite the opposite. There's no evidence to suggest, as someone unkindly implied on Twitter, that we're morons. Again, quite the opposite.
Without the World Wide Web, a project like this would have been difficult, expensive, and horrendously time-consuming. Instead, conducting a citizen audit of this kind is now relatively painless logistically speaking, allowing us to focus our energy on the important tasks.
Long live the Internet. And long live independent thinkers who refuse to accept the word of authority figures. We are experienced, intelligent, worldly adults who expect to be treated as such. Now we're examining the climate report for ourselves.
..
>> Help audit the UN climate report
>> The great peer-review fairy tale
>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists
>> Let there be no more scientific consensuses
Mar 2, 2010
The Battle for the Soul of Science
At long last, the giants have begun to stir. Like the ents in the film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, they've taken their time about it. While climate war wounded sway, buckle, and fall, the giants are are so ponderous they take days just to greet each another.
Now, however, they're stepping into the sunlight, making their voices heard in a battle over the future (indeed, the very soul) of science.
For too long we, the public, have been told that science academies don't just endorse the theory of dangerous man-made global warming, they also support specific political responses (including emissions reduction and transitioning to a low-carbon society). We've been told that science journals and magazines agree.
We've been lectured by scientists, politicians, journalists, filmmakers, and celebrities about how our lives need to become less pleasant and less free because "science says" so. We've been told that to doubt global warming is to be anti-science, that to question behaviour reminiscent of adolescent gamers is to "attack" climate scientists for doing their job.
But the distressing fact of the matter is that much of climate "science" has been conducted by people who - as evidenced by their refusal to share their data or explain their methods to third parties - are blatantly unscientific in their approach. Much of climate science appears to have been produced by people who would prefer to destroy their evidence instead of sharing it with critics. Who have tried to circumvent Freedom of Information laws. Who have advised other scientists to delete e-mails.
While this shocking behaviour unfolded in excruciating slow-mo in recent years, the science academies of the world averted their eyes. They refused to see or to hear – never mind investigate and call people to account. Instead, they inappropriately inserted themselves into the global warming debate by declaring support for one perspective. In doing so they abandoned their core mission – which is to defend and uphold the scientific method. They not only permitted people who'd abandoned the scientific method to speak with the authority of science – they stood behind them in public and thumped them on the back.
An investigation is currently being conducted by the Science and Technology Committee of the British Parliament. Yesterday Phil Jones, the head of Climatic Research Unit and a key participant in the UN's climate consensus process, testified. He confirmed that it hasn't been standard practice in climate change research to disclose all of one's data to third parties. (Which means we're just supposed to take the word of these researchers that abandoning the entire fossil-fuel-based world economy is necessary.) Jones also admitted that, during the peer-review process, no reviewers had ever asked to see his raw data.
(Incidentally, it's fascinating what different people watching the same proceedings see. According to Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, Jones "looked taut, nervous, often miserable. At times his hands shook." You "had to feel sorry for him," says Hoggart. Meanwhile, over at the London Times, Anne Treneman insists that Jones "seemed eerily calm," that his "face was immobile, eyes steady behind wire specs. He seemed, like a dead calm sea, almost glassy." Video of Jones' testimony appear HERE.)
In any case, those giants I mentioned begin with the Institute of Physics. A scientific charity with a worldwide membership of 36,000, it has submitted a formal statement to the British parliamentary committee. The statement says the Climategate e-mails raise "worrying implications" regarding the integrity of climate research and "the credibility of the scientific method."
According to the physics institute, it's vital that scientists "expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others." The institute also says it's concerned by the "intolerance" on display in the Climategate e-mails, since this attitude impedes "the process of scientific 'self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself."
The second giant is Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry, with its membership of 46,000. It, too, has submitted a formal statement to the parliamentary committee. The chemistry society reminds us that the "true nature of science dictates that research is transparent and robust enough to survive scrutiny." It points out that, since "advances in science frequently occur when the prevailing view is challenged by informed scepticism, this is fundamental to the scientific method and should be encouraged…"
The third giant is the Royal Statistical Society, with a membership of 7,000. Its submission to the parliamentary committee declares that "the data, the analysis methods and the models" used in climate research should all enter the public domain so that findings may be independently verified. The statistical society statement continues:
Do it soon - before disgraced climate scientists drag you down with them.
..
>> Let there be no more scientific consensuses
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Is this politics or science?
>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists
Pippin, Treebeard & Merry, The Two Towers
Now, however, they're stepping into the sunlight, making their voices heard in a battle over the future (indeed, the very soul) of science.
For too long we, the public, have been told that science academies don't just endorse the theory of dangerous man-made global warming, they also support specific political responses (including emissions reduction and transitioning to a low-carbon society). We've been told that science journals and magazines agree.
We've been lectured by scientists, politicians, journalists, filmmakers, and celebrities about how our lives need to become less pleasant and less free because "science says" so. We've been told that to doubt global warming is to be anti-science, that to question behaviour reminiscent of adolescent gamers is to "attack" climate scientists for doing their job.
But the distressing fact of the matter is that much of climate "science" has been conducted by people who - as evidenced by their refusal to share their data or explain their methods to third parties - are blatantly unscientific in their approach. Much of climate science appears to have been produced by people who would prefer to destroy their evidence instead of sharing it with critics. Who have tried to circumvent Freedom of Information laws. Who have advised other scientists to delete e-mails.
While this shocking behaviour unfolded in excruciating slow-mo in recent years, the science academies of the world averted their eyes. They refused to see or to hear – never mind investigate and call people to account. Instead, they inappropriately inserted themselves into the global warming debate by declaring support for one perspective. In doing so they abandoned their core mission – which is to defend and uphold the scientific method. They not only permitted people who'd abandoned the scientific method to speak with the authority of science – they stood behind them in public and thumped them on the back.
An investigation is currently being conducted by the Science and Technology Committee of the British Parliament. Yesterday Phil Jones, the head of Climatic Research Unit and a key participant in the UN's climate consensus process, testified. He confirmed that it hasn't been standard practice in climate change research to disclose all of one's data to third parties. (Which means we're just supposed to take the word of these researchers that abandoning the entire fossil-fuel-based world economy is necessary.) Jones also admitted that, during the peer-review process, no reviewers had ever asked to see his raw data.
(Incidentally, it's fascinating what different people watching the same proceedings see. According to Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, Jones "looked taut, nervous, often miserable. At times his hands shook." You "had to feel sorry for him," says Hoggart. Meanwhile, over at the London Times, Anne Treneman insists that Jones "seemed eerily calm," that his "face was immobile, eyes steady behind wire specs. He seemed, like a dead calm sea, almost glassy." Video of Jones' testimony appear HERE.)
In any case, those giants I mentioned begin with the Institute of Physics. A scientific charity with a worldwide membership of 36,000, it has submitted a formal statement to the British parliamentary committee. The statement says the Climategate e-mails raise "worrying implications" regarding the integrity of climate research and "the credibility of the scientific method."
According to the physics institute, it's vital that scientists "expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others." The institute also says it's concerned by the "intolerance" on display in the Climategate e-mails, since this attitude impedes "the process of scientific 'self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself."
The second giant is Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry, with its membership of 46,000. It, too, has submitted a formal statement to the parliamentary committee. The chemistry society reminds us that the "true nature of science dictates that research is transparent and robust enough to survive scrutiny." It points out that, since "advances in science frequently occur when the prevailing view is challenged by informed scepticism, this is fundamental to the scientific method and should be encouraged…"
The third giant is the Royal Statistical Society, with a membership of 7,000. Its submission to the parliamentary committee declares that "the data, the analysis methods and the models" used in climate research should all enter the public domain so that findings may be independently verified. The statistical society statement continues:
…science progresses as an ongoing debate and not by a series of authoritative and oracular pronouncements…the quality of that debate is best served by ensuring that all parties have access to the facts...The best guarantor of scientific quality is that others are able to examine in detail the arguments that have been used and not just their published conclusions. It is important that experiments and calculations can be repeated to verify their conclusions. If data, or the methods used, are withheld, it is impossible to do this.Amen and hallelujah. The forces defending the scientific method have begun to gather. Now it's time for others to step forward. Science academies, meteorological associations, science journals, science funding bodies – that means you.
Do it soon - before disgraced climate scientists drag you down with them.
..
>> Let there be no more scientific consensuses
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Is this politics or science?
>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists
Feb 24, 2010
Reuters' Climate Change Fiction
Is the average journalist completely clueless when it comes to climate change? Do they go out of their way to quote equally clueless "experts"? Do they ignore profoundly significant news events and instead write articles brimming with their own assumptions and prejudices? A look at the recent behaviour of Reuters - which forms part of "the world's largest international multimedia news agency" - suggests all of the above.
Remember the BBC interview with Dr. Phil Jones published 11 days ago? It was immensely newsworthy because Jones is not just the director of the Climatic Research Unit (the home of the explosive leaked/hacked Climategate e-mails), he has played a central role in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consensus process.
It is because of senior climate researchers like Jones that Time magazine told us last August: "the science is clear...we're boiling the planet." Except that, in the BBC interview (in which he was by no means ambushed, but was instead assisted by his university's press office), Jones made a startling admission.
He was asked: "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?" He responded: "Yes, but only just." He then continued on for four more sentences, arguing that the "trend is quite close to the significance level" and pointing out that statistical significance is more likely to show up when one examines longer time periods rather than shorter ones.
Some day that "Yes" may come to be regarded as the utterance that inexplicably failed to shake the world. If warming over the past 15 years has been so marginal that even people who believe firmly in human-caused global warming admit it isn't significant, what's all the fuss about? On what basis have news outlets advised us that "humanity faces a profound emergency"?
Jones' acknowledgment that things aren't nearly so dire is a HUGE story. So what has Reuters said about it? Not one word.
Check for yourself. Click on over to Reuters.com, type "Phil Jones" into the search box at the top right of your screen, scroll through the pages of results and you won't find a single mention of his name since the BBC interview.
Type "statistically significant" into that same box and you'll discover that Reuters journalists have used this term recently when discussing in vitro fertilization, pharmaceutical trials, energy efficiency, and premature births – but that it has not passed their lips in a climate change context since the Jones BBC interview appeared on February 13th until today.
What have they been writing instead? Well, yesterday Reuters published an article by journalist Ed Stoddard. Dubiously labeled an "analysis" piece, its central claim is that American climate change skepticism is at odds "with prevailing views in Europe."
Why does journalist Stoddard believe this to be the case? Partly because a Canadian pollster says so. Here's Stoddard's copy in all it's glory:
Anyone remotely familiar with the climate change debate knows that skepticism is alive and well in many nations around the world, including European ones. That a Canadian pollster would be so misinformed is disturbing. That a Reuters journalist would write down and distribute such fiction is inexcusable.
If climate skepticism is purely an American phenomenon:
So what's going on at Reuters? In the Stoddard piece US climate skepticism is linked to some of the same old bogeymen: "the influence of U.S. talk radio" and the "oil lobby." Despite the fact that America has long been the source of many of the world's most significant technological innovations, Reuters implies that it's home to anti-scientific bumpkins who fail to show academics sufficient respect:
In short, Reuters has published utter rubbish. It should hang its head in shame.
..
[Full disclosure. In my earlier life as a journalist I, too, have interviewed Canadian pollster John Wright. Moreover, my husband was employed by Ipsos between 2000 and 2005.]
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Science says: hop on one foot
>> What she said about the climate bible 3 months ago
>> Did IQs drop sharply?
Remember the BBC interview with Dr. Phil Jones published 11 days ago? It was immensely newsworthy because Jones is not just the director of the Climatic Research Unit (the home of the explosive leaked/hacked Climategate e-mails), he has played a central role in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consensus process.
It is because of senior climate researchers like Jones that Time magazine told us last August: "the science is clear...we're boiling the planet." Except that, in the BBC interview (in which he was by no means ambushed, but was instead assisted by his university's press office), Jones made a startling admission.
He was asked: "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?" He responded: "Yes, but only just." He then continued on for four more sentences, arguing that the "trend is quite close to the significance level" and pointing out that statistical significance is more likely to show up when one examines longer time periods rather than shorter ones.
Some day that "Yes" may come to be regarded as the utterance that inexplicably failed to shake the world. If warming over the past 15 years has been so marginal that even people who believe firmly in human-caused global warming admit it isn't significant, what's all the fuss about? On what basis have news outlets advised us that "humanity faces a profound emergency"?
Jones' acknowledgment that things aren't nearly so dire is a HUGE story. So what has Reuters said about it? Not one word.
Check for yourself. Click on over to Reuters.com, type "Phil Jones" into the search box at the top right of your screen, scroll through the pages of results and you won't find a single mention of his name since the BBC interview.
Type "statistically significant" into that same box and you'll discover that Reuters journalists have used this term recently when discussing in vitro fertilization, pharmaceutical trials, energy efficiency, and premature births – but that it has not passed their lips in a climate change context since the Jones BBC interview appeared on February 13th until today.
What have they been writing instead? Well, yesterday Reuters published an article by journalist Ed Stoddard. Dubiously labeled an "analysis" piece, its central claim is that American climate change skepticism is at odds "with prevailing views in Europe."
Why does journalist Stoddard believe this to be the case? Partly because a Canadian pollster says so. Here's Stoddard's copy in all it's glory:
"It's a very different debate in Europe, where there is no discussion about whether climate change is occurring. But in the United States it is about whether it exists," said John Wright of pollster Ipsos.As blogger/aggregator Tom Nelson pointed out almost immediately, however, Ipsos employees in different parts of the world apparently don't read each other's polling results. It so happens that a headline in yesterday's Guardian smartly contradicts Wright: "Sharp decline in public's belief in climate threat, British poll reveals." Here are a few snippets from the article:
The proportion of adults who believe climate change is "definitely" a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%, in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori.So while Langley of Ipsos Mori tells a newspaper that only 1 in 3 UK adults believe climate change is real and only one in five believe humans are responsible for it, Wright of Ipsos Reid gets quoted by Reuters declaring that, in Europe, "there is no discussion about whether climate change is occurring."
… Another finding…is a significant drop in those who said climate change was caused by human activities. One year ago this number was one in three, but this year just one in five people believes global warming to be man-made, according to Edward Langley, Ipsos Mori's head of environment research. [bold added]
Anyone remotely familiar with the climate change debate knows that skepticism is alive and well in many nations around the world, including European ones. That a Canadian pollster would be so misinformed is disturbing. That a Reuters journalist would write down and distribute such fiction is inexcusable.
If climate skepticism is purely an American phenomenon:
- why did the largest daily paper in The Netherlands run a story recently vindicating a prominent climate skeptic? ("He was right after all" declared the headline)
- why did the weekly left-leaning, one-million-circulation German news magazine Der Spiegel recently run a two-part series titled "Can Climate Forecasts Still be Trusted?"
- why did Harris poll results released last October find that, when you total them up, the exact same number of Germans as Americans believe climate change poses either "no threat" or only a minor one? (see the first blurb of red text on page 2 of this PDF)
- why does every last one of the top 10 conservative blogs in the UK embrace climate skepticism - even though the British Conservative Party says man-made climate change is real?
- why did 6,000 Australians attend the sold-out public speaking engagements of British climate skeptic Christopher Monckton recently? (on at least one occasion he went out into the parking lot to deliver a short version to the overflow audience)
- why did Australia's federal minister for Climate Change and Water devote so much time in a speech last week to bad-mouthing skeptics?
- why did Open Magazine, an English-language publication in India, splash "The Climate Change Fraud" in large text across its front cover on January 30th, followed by a story inside titled "The Hottest Hoax in the World"?
So what's going on at Reuters? In the Stoddard piece US climate skepticism is linked to some of the same old bogeymen: "the influence of U.S. talk radio" and the "oil lobby." Despite the fact that America has long been the source of many of the world's most significant technological innovations, Reuters implies that it's home to anti-scientific bumpkins who fail to show academics sufficient respect:
Science can be controversial in a country where evangelical Christians make up a quarter of the adult population. Many, for example, doubt the theory of evolution..."In other countries academics hold a more revered position...And so some of these Europeans look at America and say there is all this evidence, why don't you believe?..." said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston.A quote from the Sierra Club adds insult to injury by suggesting the American public is easily befuddled:
"I don't think it's that Americans are confused about global warming, it's that they're being confused," said the incoming executive director of conservation group Sierra Club, Michael Brune, who blames big spending by oil, coal and other energy industries.Curiously, the only European poll numbers Reuters bothers to quote involve France (in addition to non-European Brazil and Japan). This is hardly convincing support for the claim that the American situation is dramatically different from the one in Europe.
In short, Reuters has published utter rubbish. It should hang its head in shame.
..
[Full disclosure. In my earlier life as a journalist I, too, have interviewed Canadian pollster John Wright. Moreover, my husband was employed by Ipsos between 2000 and 2005.]
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Science says: hop on one foot
>> What she said about the climate bible 3 months ago
>> Did IQs drop sharply?
Feb 22, 2010
Independent Bloggers vs Corporate Environmentalists
[desktop wallpaper version available here]Another day, another smarmy accusation that people who are skeptical of climate change are being funded by a shadowy conspiracy connected in one manner or another to big oil, big coal, big tobacco or - horror of horrors - right-wing think tanks.
These accusations are tiresome. They're ugly. They're almost entirely unsubstantiated. Most of all, they're a waste of time. They amount to shooting the messenger rather than addressing the bleeping message.
So why do they keep getting repeated? I think I've sorted out two reasons. First: the lavishly-funded corporate nature of the environmental movement circa 2010. Second: modern technological wonders such as personal computers and the Internet.
Environmental organizations today bear little resemblance to the shoestring operations of yesteryear. As a book published 14 years ago observed:
While Greenpeace used to be a pair of bell-bottomed blue jeans, today it is more like a three-piece pinstripe suit.Indeed. In 1971, Greenpeace was an "upstart peace group from Vancouver" that held meetings in a Unitarian church. After it chartered a 30-year-old "creaking fish boat" to protest a US nuclear arms test, it could barely afford to pay for the boat's fuel.
Last month, however, when The Guardian reported that Greenpeace had commissioned a brand new £14 million ($22 million US) mega-yacht, it observed that "cost should not be a problem for the group, which, with nearly three million supporters, is extremely wealthy."
How wealthy? According to publicly-available figures compiled by Climate-Resistance.org, over a 12-year period Greenpeace raised $2.4 billion. That works out to $200 million a year in resources.
If you think that's impressive, take a moment to ponder the fact that the World Wildlife Fund raised $3.1 billion in just six years (2003-2008). Which means that that organization has ready access to half a billion dollars annually.
When you're that big – and that loaded – suddenly everything costs a small fortune. Want to start a new blog? That'll require a series of meetings. You'll need to invite web design folks, IT folks, a contingent of in-house PR people, an ad agency person or two, a corporate strategy person, and probably someone from legal. You'll meet in shiny offices in a fashionable part of town and order-in sandwiches from the pricey, organic, fair-trade café at the end of the street.
Compare and contrast to how independent individuals of utterly modest means from all over the world currently behave. They sign up to a service like Blogger.com (which is owned by Google) and, within a few hours at most, for no cost whatsoever, have launched themselves as a blogger. Alternatively, for well under $10 in hosting fees a month, they can publish their own website.
For no money, therefore, climate skeptics in the early 21st century are in a position to theoretically communicate online with as many people as is Greenpeace. From their basements and their attics, in often non-trendy geographical locations, it isn't their funding that matters - it's their skill sets.
Many skeptical-leaning bloggers have scientific, mathematical, and statistical training - not to mention decades of real-world experience under their belts. Others have been professional communicators (I, myself, am a former print journalist). Some are speed-readers, others have photographic memories. Many, like the folks who rendered the Climategate e-mails fully searchable within a matter of hours, have impressive information technology skills. Some are retired, with plenty of time on their hands. Others devote as many hours to reading and writing about climate issues in a week as they'd otherwise spend on knitting or golf.
From the perspective of environmental organization staffers, research agency employees, and tenured university professors it must appear as though skeptics have access to deep pockets. In the universe those people inhabit, even the simplest tasks can end up as budget line items. There are layers of bureaucracy, paperwork, office politics, and regulations to consider.
For the small and growing army of skeptical climate bloggers, however, none of that applies. The equivalent of a battered fishing boat will do nicely, thank you.
Those vessels are now everywhere. They're being sailed by real people and fueled by grassroots concern, outrage, and passion. And they're not going away.
..
>> Slurs, smears & money
>> Al Gore's tobacco hypocrisy
>> Greenpeace and the Nobel-winning climate report
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Green time capsule: 1970 eco ideas not pretty
Feb 20, 2010
Newsflash: Snowless in Vancouver is Perfectly Normal
Oh, for heaven's sake. If the President of the United States is going to lecture people about the science of climate change, could someone on his staff do a bit of homework beforehand?
The fact that snow is conspicuously absent from some of the venues at the Vancouver winter Olympics was held up by President Obama yesterday as evidence that global warming is, in fact, occurring. Responding to a question, the President declared:
I know, therefore, that they don't own many winter coats in that part of our vast country - and that mowing their lawns is a perfectly ordinary February activity. Vancouver's weather is much like Seattle's and, as a friend of mine who lives in the American city mentioned this week, her daffodils have begun to bloom.
Online advice aimed at those planning to travel to Canada correctly points out that February in Vancouver "is especially mild," which means one should be "prepared for rain on any given day in Vancouver in February." [bold added]
Furthermore, a 2003 article from the Vancouver Sun plucked from the archives demonstrates that everyone knew back on the day Vancouver was awarded the Olympics that snow would be in short supply:
Nevertheless, did he really need to misrepresent our weather?
One last thing: if this is the quality of the evidence being used to support the theory of global warming, is it any wonder that increasing numbers of people have begun to doubt it?
..
h/t Tom Nelson
see also: The Olympic Global Warming Onslaught is Starting over at Watts Up With That
>> A bogus 21-year-old climate prediction
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> The climate bible and the home inspector
>> NASA's mistaken glacier info
>> Climate psychics: 10-year-old snow prediction fails miserably
The fact that snow is conspicuously absent from some of the venues at the Vancouver winter Olympics was held up by President Obama yesterday as evidence that global warming is, in fact, occurring. Responding to a question, the President declared:
I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn't mean that every place is getting warmer…But...Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees… [bold added]Excuse me, but I happen to not only live here in Canada, but to have had family and friends who resided for years in or near the breathtakingly gorgeous (not to mention murderously expensive) city of Vancouver.
I know, therefore, that they don't own many winter coats in that part of our vast country - and that mowing their lawns is a perfectly ordinary February activity. Vancouver's weather is much like Seattle's and, as a friend of mine who lives in the American city mentioned this week, her daffodils have begun to bloom.
Online advice aimed at those planning to travel to Canada correctly points out that February in Vancouver "is especially mild," which means one should be "prepared for rain on any given day in Vancouver in February." [bold added]Furthermore, a 2003 article from the Vancouver Sun plucked from the archives demonstrates that everyone knew back on the day Vancouver was awarded the Olympics that snow would be in short supply:
…no city with a climate as mild as Vancouver's has ever hosted the Winter Games…sports fans who turn on their TVs in 2010 will probably see the kind of winter Vancouverites know all too well: a cloudy, rainy city full of people carrying umbrellas...We Canadians are often accused of having a bit of an inferiority complex. We live next door to the economic powerhouse of the world and benefit from this fact immensely. But because our population is only one tenth the size, we aren't in the same league and therefore can't expect the President of the United States to pay us much attention.
"The typical view of a Winter Games is snow," said Alex Carre…a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee…People will come here and say, 'Gosh, where is the snow?'"…While there are likely to be at least a couple of nice, sunny days during the two-week event, there could also be plenty of days of driving rain... [bold added]
Nevertheless, did he really need to misrepresent our weather?
One last thing: if this is the quality of the evidence being used to support the theory of global warming, is it any wonder that increasing numbers of people have begun to doubt it?
..
h/t Tom Nelson
see also: The Olympic Global Warming Onslaught is Starting over at Watts Up With That
>> A bogus 21-year-old climate prediction
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> The climate bible and the home inspector
>> NASA's mistaken glacier info
>> Climate psychics: 10-year-old snow prediction fails miserably
Feb 19, 2010
Is This Politics or Science?
When someone makes a statement about global warming it's important to ask ourselves: are they informing us about a scientific issue or are they taking bits of latex, inflating them with lots of hot air, and presenting us with a bouquet of political assumptions?Everyone does the latter, to some degree. We interpret the world according to our beliefs, experiences, and values. (Hopefully, we also strive to be fair-minded.) But a problem arises when certain people insist that the processed, dyed, manufactured, and inflated balloons clutched in their hand are actually a cup of unadulterated liquid sap fresh from the rubber tree.
I've now been researching the global warming debate for the better part of a year. I've read a variety of perspectives and encountered all sorts of political spin. I find it curious that those who believe humanity has set in motion catastrophic global warming deny vociferously that they themselves are in any way political. They believe their perspective is simply the truth - and that the very existence of alternative viewpoints shows that science has been corrupted by politics.
This week's news contains flagrant examples of such thinking. I'm going to discuss just one [more here and here]. In an interview published yesterday, Dr. Michael Mann, (who has revealed himself, via the Climategate e-mails, to be a less-than-attractive human being) accused climate skeptics of creating a "poisonous atmosphere." This, he says, is:
…similar in many ways to that poisonous atmosphere we saw last summer in those healthcare town hall meetings — irrational sort of conspiracy-driven lunatics, frankly…Now I'm not an American, but even I recognize Democratic Party rhetoric. Those who exercised their free-speech right to criticize proposed health care measures at public meetings have been written off by fans of the party in power as irrational nutcases.
There's nothing measured or good-natured about this. It's an example of partisan politics at its ugliest. It demonstrates that, rather than dealing with the content of people's concerns, Democratic Party hardliners prefer to hurl insults and name-call. No one who values diversity and inclusiveness can regard this as admirable.
Mann has therefore advertised – as surely as if he'd splashed it on a Times Square billboard – his own political orientation. He's made it clear that he personally buys into this profoundly partisan view of the world. He isn't merely a Democratic, he's hardcore.
Which is important to have clarity about since he then declares that: "The science community isn’t organized — it doesn’t have a single politically driven motive as the climate change deniers do." [bold added]
That sound you hear is me spitting up my chai latte. Does Mann mean climate scientists are never politically motivated? Or does he regard people whom he nastily denigrates as "climate change deniers" to be unified around a single motivation?
Both ways of interpreting this statement render it absurd. If science were conducted entirely by robots on a remote planet, politics-free science might be possible. But scientific research is undertaken by human beings – very few of whom could ever be described as not having "a single politically driven motive."
It's equally preposterous to suggest that the millions of people who have reservations about the current state of climate science can be viewed as any sort of monolith. Humans are never motivated by one thing alone. Declaring that a geographically and professionally diverse group are all propelled by a single doctrine is psychology too simplistic even for comic books.
It's clear that Mann - the hardcore Democrat - regards his own viewpoint as the unadorned truth, the equivalent of unprocessed liquid latex collected moments ago from the rubber tree. In his mind, other people exaggerate and twist the facts while he just tells it like it is.
Yet not once does he acknowledge that some criticisms of current climate science are valid, that other viewpoints deserve a hearing, or that climate skeptics have identified legitimate research shortcomings. In his opinion, anyone who sees the world differently is engaging in "a war…against the climate science and scientists". Tellingly, he speaks of the climate science rather than of competing perspectives.
But there are always multiple points-of-view. In his collection of thoughtful essays, The Scientist as Rebel, renowned physicist Freeman Dyson describes science as "a mosaic of partial and conflicting visions." No one has all the answers. Two different researchers, with different areas of expertise, will inevitably assess the same scientific question differently. It may be that both of them are at least somewhat correct – or that both of them will be proved wrong in the fullness of time.
As Tom Fuller wrote yesterday:
…the [global warming] argument isn't really about CO2. Most people with a bit of a scientific background understand…that more CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to elevate temperatures. The argument is really about water vapor. Does doubling CO2 then create enough extra water vapor to amplify this heating by a multiple, and if so, what is that multiple? How sensitive is the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2?Mann approaches climate science the way he approaches the health care debate. If you're not on his team, you deserve neither respect nor consideration. He's all about scoring points, trashing the opposition, and winning at all costs.
The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] thinks it's moderate. The alarmist extreme thinks it's high. Lukewarmers think it's low. Real skeptics think it's non-existent, or even negative. The argument before the court is that we don't know. And until we do know, what right does one faction have to blacken the names and reputations of those with opposing views?
For those of us who think science is about being open to new ideas and new perspectives, Mann isn't the kind of scientist we'd want our kids to grow up to be.
..
>> Bullies need not apply
>> If we don't agree, you're crazy
>> The cult of the expert
>> Bias: how the media distort the news
Feb 16, 2010
The Cult of the Expert
This is a delightful book, the kind that can be opened at random for a good chuckle. Titled The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation, it devotes 340 pages to documenting the fact that expert opinions are often spectacularly wrong.
This is an important idea because, as the book's editors observe in an introduction, "the mainstream media, and particularly television, have as their principal narrative convention the...interviewing of experts."
Benjamin Franklin apparently said: "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see." For years we have been badgered by experts who think humans are causing dangerous global warming. But as this book demonstrates, experts are often influenced by the widely-held beliefs of their historical period.
The Experts Speak devotes entire chapters to confident expert pronouncements on the innate intellectual deficiencies of non-whites and women. There are sections about sexuality, menstruation, and masturbation that make it clear expert opinion can have far more to do with the era than with clinical facts. The book also does a good job of demonstrating that even the brightest among us can suffer from a lack of imagination.
Writing in 1762, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (then the author of the most widely read child-rearing manual of the time), declared that it was "Nature's law" that half of all children should die before their eighth birthday. "Why try to contradict it?" he asked.
In 1842, the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain (whose credentials looked like this: K.C.B., M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.R.A.S) dismissed an early ancestor of the modern computer as "worthless." In 1956, another Astronomer Royal declared the idea of space travel "utter bilge."
After participating in a 1876 trial call, the President of the United States acknowledged that the telephone was "an amazing invention" but wondered: "who would ever want to use one of them?" In 1878 a committee of the British Parliament dismissed Edison's light bulb as "unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men." And in 1895, Lord Kelvin, a mathematician and physicist who was then also President of the British Royal Society (the crème de la crème of British science), decreed that airplanes were "impossible."
The scientific press has also been wrong. In 1891, Scientific American declared the Panama Canal "a thing of the past" and predicted that nature would "soon obliterate all traces" of it. In 1909, it mused that "the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development." A year later, it characterized as "wildest exaggeration" the idea that aircraft would revolutionize naval warfare.
In 1915, Scientific American backed the wrong horse in a discussion about the future of bi-planes versus single-winged monoplanes. In 1940, it denounced a physics professor's ideas about rocket-propelled bombs as "too far-fetched to be considered" – even though they inspired the V-1 and V-2 German rockets used during World War II.
In his autobiography Mark Twain observed:
Either way, it's clear that accepting the word of experts – rather than thinking things through for ourselves - is a really dumb idea.
..
>> Scientists' opinions are sometimes irrelevant
>> Scientific organizations - should we trust them?
>> NASA's mistaken glacier info
>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
This is an important idea because, as the book's editors observe in an introduction, "the mainstream media, and particularly television, have as their principal narrative convention the...interviewing of experts."
Benjamin Franklin apparently said: "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see." For years we have been badgered by experts who think humans are causing dangerous global warming. But as this book demonstrates, experts are often influenced by the widely-held beliefs of their historical period.
The Experts Speak devotes entire chapters to confident expert pronouncements on the innate intellectual deficiencies of non-whites and women. There are sections about sexuality, menstruation, and masturbation that make it clear expert opinion can have far more to do with the era than with clinical facts. The book also does a good job of demonstrating that even the brightest among us can suffer from a lack of imagination.
Writing in 1762, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (then the author of the most widely read child-rearing manual of the time), declared that it was "Nature's law" that half of all children should die before their eighth birthday. "Why try to contradict it?" he asked.
In 1842, the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain (whose credentials looked like this: K.C.B., M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.R.A.S) dismissed an early ancestor of the modern computer as "worthless." In 1956, another Astronomer Royal declared the idea of space travel "utter bilge."
After participating in a 1876 trial call, the President of the United States acknowledged that the telephone was "an amazing invention" but wondered: "who would ever want to use one of them?" In 1878 a committee of the British Parliament dismissed Edison's light bulb as "unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men." And in 1895, Lord Kelvin, a mathematician and physicist who was then also President of the British Royal Society (the crème de la crème of British science), decreed that airplanes were "impossible."
The scientific press has also been wrong. In 1891, Scientific American declared the Panama Canal "a thing of the past" and predicted that nature would "soon obliterate all traces" of it. In 1909, it mused that "the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development." A year later, it characterized as "wildest exaggeration" the idea that aircraft would revolutionize naval warfare.
In 1915, Scientific American backed the wrong horse in a discussion about the future of bi-planes versus single-winged monoplanes. In 1940, it denounced a physics professor's ideas about rocket-propelled bombs as "too far-fetched to be considered" – even though they inspired the V-1 and V-2 German rockets used during World War II.
In his autobiography Mark Twain observed:
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.These comments surely apply to the global warming discussion (which contains elements of both religion and politics). One hundred years hence, the experts who are now promoting a catastrophic view of global warming will perhaps be proved correct. Alternatively, this entire topic may be reduced to an embarrassing historical footnote.
Either way, it's clear that accepting the word of experts – rather than thinking things through for ourselves - is a really dumb idea.
..
>> Scientists' opinions are sometimes irrelevant
>> Scientific organizations - should we trust them?
>> NASA's mistaken glacier info
>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
Feb 11, 2010
Just One Cotton-Pickin' Minute
A column appeared in the Toronto Star (Canada's largest circulation daily) yesterday, under the ridiculous headline: "Questions for climate change skeptics."
It should have been titled: Questions for asleep-at-the-wheel journalists.
The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently finds itself mired in scandal over erroneous glacier info, frequent use of material produced by green advocacy groups (not to mention newspaper and magazine clippings), patently false claims regarding the non-existent link between climate change and hurricanes, etcetera, etcetera.
After bloggers performed a good deal of the spade work concerning these matters, reputable UK newspapers are finally calling for the resignation of the IPCC's chairman - and urging that its findings be subject to an audit.
Yet the Toronto Star, which appears to have done absolutely nothing to inform its readers about these controversies (despite UK papers reporting on them non-stop for weeks) doesn't feel it should be held accountable. Rather, its senior political columnist, Carol Goar, thinks it is skeptics who now deserve to be peppered with questions.
"Suppose the scientific consensus on climate change is wrong," she began yesterday's column. Suppose arctic ice melts naturally, that greenhouse gases pose no risk, and that climatologists are misguided in their concerns about "rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, longer droughts [and] more violent storms."
Doesn't it make sense "to set tougher emissions standards for the vehicles that pollute the air we breathe" anyway, she asks. Doesn't it also "make sense to stop burning up and selling off non-renewable resources as if there were no tomorrow?"
Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute. Everyone thinks fighting pollution is a good thing. Most of us also believe in using natural resources wisely.
But those are not the measures media outlets such as the Toronto Star have been telling us we need to adopt. On December 7th, 2009 - that's 66 days ago - the Star was one of 56 newspapers worldwide that jointly ran the same alarmist climate change editorial [full list here]. The Star took the unusual step of printing said editorial on its front page [photo here], beneath large type that declared:
As Bjorn Lomborg points out, however, "nobody emits C02 for fun." Emissions occur when we use energy. Energy refrigerates and cooks our food. It keeps us warm. It gets us to work and to church. It powers our hospitals and lights our schools. It is required to design, manufacture, and transport virtually every consumer good. In other words, it makes our world go round.
People who slip into energy poverty start burning books and furniture to protect themselves from winter's merciless bite. They perish from both the cold and their inability to access medical and social services. Their children are denied the opportunity to attend an arts school across town, because the cost of a transit pass is beyond their means.
This cramped, small, meagre, miserable existence is what the Star's editorial board told us was absolutely necessary 66 days ago, when it was urging us to "shop, eat and travel" less, and telling us we'd have to get used to paying more for energy while using it sparingly.
Near the end of her column yesterday, Ms. Goar acknowledges that:
This is marvelous news. It means that a lot of little kids have been told a lot of scary stories about ghastly things that might not happen, after all.
Now what really needs asking is this: How did the Toronto Star manage, within a period of 66 days, to go from telling us our very survival was at stake due to global warming to arguing that, well, fighting pollution is a good idea anyway?
Where are the soul-searching examinations of how this happened? Where are the front-page mea culpas? Where are the solemn promises to be more critically-minded (not to mention open-minded) in the future?
It isn't climate skeptics who have some explaining to do.
..
(Full disclosure: my first regular gig during my 10-year stint as a journalist was a weekly opinions-page column in the Toronto Star that ran from 1992-1996. It was a great job, I was lucky to land it, and it paid the handsome sum of $200 a week.)
..
>> What she said about the climate bible 3 months ago
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Science says: hop on one foot
It should have been titled: Questions for asleep-at-the-wheel journalists.
The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently finds itself mired in scandal over erroneous glacier info, frequent use of material produced by green advocacy groups (not to mention newspaper and magazine clippings), patently false claims regarding the non-existent link between climate change and hurricanes, etcetera, etcetera.
After bloggers performed a good deal of the spade work concerning these matters, reputable UK newspapers are finally calling for the resignation of the IPCC's chairman - and urging that its findings be subject to an audit.
Yet the Toronto Star, which appears to have done absolutely nothing to inform its readers about these controversies (despite UK papers reporting on them non-stop for weeks) doesn't feel it should be held accountable. Rather, its senior political columnist, Carol Goar, thinks it is skeptics who now deserve to be peppered with questions.
"Suppose the scientific consensus on climate change is wrong," she began yesterday's column. Suppose arctic ice melts naturally, that greenhouse gases pose no risk, and that climatologists are misguided in their concerns about "rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, longer droughts [and] more violent storms."
Doesn't it make sense "to set tougher emissions standards for the vehicles that pollute the air we breathe" anyway, she asks. Doesn't it also "make sense to stop burning up and selling off non-renewable resources as if there were no tomorrow?"
Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute. Everyone thinks fighting pollution is a good thing. Most of us also believe in using natural resources wisely.
But those are not the measures media outlets such as the Toronto Star have been telling us we need to adopt. On December 7th, 2009 - that's 66 days ago - the Star was one of 56 newspapers worldwide that jointly ran the same alarmist climate change editorial [full list here]. The Star took the unusual step of printing said editorial on its front page [photo here], beneath large type that declared:
The world must kick its carbon habit and we'll have to change our lifestyle...Our survival depends on it. [bold added]Within the body of this editorial, the Star told its readers that:
- climate change "will ravage our planet"
- climate change consequences "will endure for all time"
- our prospects for fighting climate change "will be determined in the next 14 days" (at the Copenhagen climate summit)
- farmland would be turned into desert
- half "of all species could become extinct"
- "millions of people would be displaced"
- entire nations would be "drowned by the sea"
...every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level. [bold added]This is a strange argument, of course. It says we must, by applying the brakes to virtually all economic activity, deliberately embrace the kind of hardship we'd only otherwise experience during a severe recession/depression. Moreover, the reason we must endure this permanent hardship is to prevent speculative bad things from happening to not-yet-born humans at an unspecified time in the future.
As Bjorn Lomborg points out, however, "nobody emits C02 for fun." Emissions occur when we use energy. Energy refrigerates and cooks our food. It keeps us warm. It gets us to work and to church. It powers our hospitals and lights our schools. It is required to design, manufacture, and transport virtually every consumer good. In other words, it makes our world go round.
People who slip into energy poverty start burning books and furniture to protect themselves from winter's merciless bite. They perish from both the cold and their inability to access medical and social services. Their children are denied the opportunity to attend an arts school across town, because the cost of a transit pass is beyond their means.
This cramped, small, meagre, miserable existence is what the Star's editorial board told us was absolutely necessary 66 days ago, when it was urging us to "shop, eat and travel" less, and telling us we'd have to get used to paying more for energy while using it sparingly.
Near the end of her column yesterday, Ms. Goar acknowledges that:
Revelations about the shoddy research techniques and suppression of inconvenient information have cast doubt on the alarmist forecasts of the International Panel on Climate Change.She also admits that: "Global warming may not be the greatest threat facing mankind."
This is marvelous news. It means that a lot of little kids have been told a lot of scary stories about ghastly things that might not happen, after all.
Now what really needs asking is this: How did the Toronto Star manage, within a period of 66 days, to go from telling us our very survival was at stake due to global warming to arguing that, well, fighting pollution is a good idea anyway?
Where are the soul-searching examinations of how this happened? Where are the front-page mea culpas? Where are the solemn promises to be more critically-minded (not to mention open-minded) in the future?
It isn't climate skeptics who have some explaining to do.
..
(Full disclosure: my first regular gig during my 10-year stint as a journalist was a weekly opinions-page column in the Toronto Star that ran from 1992-1996. It was a great job, I was lucky to land it, and it paid the handsome sum of $200 a week.)
..
>> What she said about the climate bible 3 months ago
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Science says: hop on one foot
Jan 23, 2010
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."
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:
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:
..
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Global disaster is so 1976
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."
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 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
..
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Global disaster is so 1976
Jan 16, 2010
Silly Earthquake Commentary
The earthquake in Haiti this week was devastating. Since then, matters have grown ever more grim.
The impulse to try to make sense of calamitous natural disasters by imbuing them with spiritual significance is an ancient one. Televangelist Pat Robertson's belief that Haitians brought the earthquake upon themselves by making a pact with the devil during the late 1700s has outraged many. His remarks to that effect start at about 32 seconds in this video:
Meanwhile, actor Danny Glover thinks the earthquake is Mother Nature's way of sending us all a message. There's a connection, he says, between the failure of the world's leaders to reach an accord at last month's Copenhagen climate summit and the fact that the capital city of one of the world's poorest nations has been reduced to rubble.
“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m saying?” Glover declared in a telephone interview. Those remarks begin at about 1 minute 55 seconds:
The television station that interviewed Glover describes him as an "activist, actor and producer." Which equips him, how exactly, to comment on the reasons there's been an earthquake?
Celebrities are entitled to their opinions. The problem is that they - and often we - imagine that these opinions are more significant than those of a bus driver or a fast food attendant.
All of this brings to mind a brief exchange in the 2008 slapstick comedy Get Smart. Two villains discuss their diabolical plan to set off a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. "Still," one of them says, "it's too bad about all the dead movie stars."
"Yes," replies the other sarcastically, "what will we do without their razor-sharp political advice?"
..
see also: How "Nature's fury" replaced God's fury by Brendan O'Neill over at Spiked Online
The impulse to try to make sense of calamitous natural disasters by imbuing them with spiritual significance is an ancient one. Televangelist Pat Robertson's belief that Haitians brought the earthquake upon themselves by making a pact with the devil during the late 1700s has outraged many. His remarks to that effect start at about 32 seconds in this video:
Meanwhile, actor Danny Glover thinks the earthquake is Mother Nature's way of sending us all a message. There's a connection, he says, between the failure of the world's leaders to reach an accord at last month's Copenhagen climate summit and the fact that the capital city of one of the world's poorest nations has been reduced to rubble.
“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m saying?” Glover declared in a telephone interview. Those remarks begin at about 1 minute 55 seconds:
The television station that interviewed Glover describes him as an "activist, actor and producer." Which equips him, how exactly, to comment on the reasons there's been an earthquake?
Celebrities are entitled to their opinions. The problem is that they - and often we - imagine that these opinions are more significant than those of a bus driver or a fast food attendant.
All of this brings to mind a brief exchange in the 2008 slapstick comedy Get Smart. Two villains discuss their diabolical plan to set off a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. "Still," one of them says, "it's too bad about all the dead movie stars."
"Yes," replies the other sarcastically, "what will we do without their razor-sharp political advice?"
..
see also: How "Nature's fury" replaced God's fury by Brendan O'Neill over at Spiked Online
Jan 13, 2010
The Big Picture: the Y2K Lesson
I spend a lot of time doing photography. Often, my camera takes a close, intimate look at everyday objects - highlighting texture and detail.When I'm involved in a writing project though, when I'm analyzing a subject as massive and complex as the climate change debate, I frequently employ the opposite strategy. I step back. I try to understand context and history. I strive to see the big picture.
It's easy to lose perspective when one is in the thick of things. Imagining how the situation will appear to a disinterested observer ten - or 100 - years hence is immensely helpful.
Certain ideas resurface again and again throughout human history. One of these is the notion that the world as we know it is on the brink of collapse. That the gods, Mother Nature, or our own technology, will wreak havoc - will, in essence, punish us for our transgressions.
Yesterday I read a number of news reports written prior to January 1, 2000 - the day the Y2K computer glitch was supposed to bring the world to its knees. I've long assumed that the reason we didn't encounter massive problems was because lots of time and money was devoted to preventing such an occurrence. But in recent months more than one source has argued persuasively that countries that paid almost no attention to the matter escaped similarly unscathed. [See, for example, the opening pages of Flat Earth News]
Those pre-2000 news reports are fascinating. A cover story published by Newsweek in June 1997 is titled "The Day the World Shuts Down." Readers are told that, by one estimate, half of all US businesses won't have their computer code fixed in time. Three paragraphs later, they're advised:
"It's staggering to start doing mind games on what percentage of companies will go out of business," says Gartner's Hotle. "What is the impact to the economy of 1 percent going out of business?" Or maybe more: Y2K expert Capers Jones predicts that more than 5 percent of all businesses will go bust. This would throw hundreds of thousands of people into the unemployment lines...A bit later, the article quotes a tech expert saying there are two kinds of people: "Those who aren't working on [fixing the Y2K bug] and aren't worried, and those who are working on it and are terrified."
Another Newsweek story published in late 1998, tells of a San Diego doctor who quit his practice, moved his family to a farm, and began lecturing about Y2K preparedness because he was convinced he could "save more lives getting people to make contingency plans."
Yet another news account tells readers that the "chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities in New York, puts the odds of a [Y2K-triggered] global recession at 70 percent."
None of the really bad things happened, of course. Not even close. The power grid in big cities did not fail. Nor did large numbers of businesses. Nor did the economy. No matter how certain the well-educated consultants, economists, technology experts, and doctors were in their opinions - no matter how persuasive they sounded when quoted by the media - their fears were overblown by a wide, wide margin.
It's important to recognize that not everyone got caught up in Y2K end-of-the-world thinking. In May 1999 Newsweek published an admirable essay by technology expert Danny Hillis who declared: "I have come to believe that the Y2K apocalypse is a myth." He felt "like a traitor," he said, "for breaking ranks with my fellow computer experts and admitting what I really think." In his view, Y2K would cause little more than inconvenience.
Ten years later it's clear that Hillis' sober-minded, quiet assessment was the correct one, that he was the voice of reason in a roomful of alarmists. He ended his essay with an observation that's highly applicable today, when we're being encouraged to believe in an impending global-warming-induced catastrophe:
There are no real experts, only people who understand their own little pieces of the puzzle...
Dec 19, 2009
Science Says: Hop on One Foot
Vanity Fair's coverage of President Obama's visit to the Copenhagen climate conference is chock-a-block with the usual silliness. The summit, we're told, was "widely regarded as humanity’s last good chance to preserve a livable climate."
The term "catastrophic climate change" is used twice, with a reference to "catastrophic impacts" thrown in for good measure. We're warned about "mass extinctions" without anyone pointing out that species extinctions are normal and have occurred frequently on planet Earth. We're told glaciers might melt without anyone acknowledging that glaciers were advancing and receding long before industrial pollution was a twinkle in a capitalist's eye.
There are two quotes from Greenpeace, one from the Center for Biological Diversity, one from a scientist associated with the Stockholm Environment Institute, one from author/activist Bill McKibben (see my recent post on said gentleman), and another from a person who advises the German government on environmental issues.
In other words, we're bashed over the head with the perspective of a tiny sliver of the population - people whose careers depend on the view that human-caused global warming is a crisis.
There isn't a single quote in this article from a skeptical scientist, economist, or policy analyst. Nor is there any hint that some smart people who think global warming is a problem nevertheless consider emissions cuts a wrong-headed approach that's doomed to failure. (For example, see here and here.)
Most disturbing however, is that this 1,200 word article contains four separate slimy attempts to justify certain views as being determined by science and therefore not open to debate. We read that:
First of all, science is performed by human beings - who are fallible. All science, therefore, has the potential to be biased and mistaken. When scientists observe, they make choices about what is worth noticing and what is not. When they calculate, they choose to employ one mathematical approach rather than another. When they write reports, they highlight some issues while sidelining others.
All these decisions, choices, assumptions and biases are part of the process that produces what we think of as scientific knowledge. There is no God of Science reaching down from the heavens with THE TRUTH carved into stone tablets.
Second, while scientific investigation can produce certain facts, even when we have full confidence in the accuracy of those facts we must still choose how to respond to them.
Do we put our faith in high-tech to solve our energy problems over the next few decades before matters become acute? Do we reinforce sea walls and levees? Do we make huge efforts to ensure clean and adequate water supplies in the Third World in order to minimize drought-related harm? Or do we continue to put pretty much all our eggs in one basket by pursuing grandiose international Kyoto-style emissions treaties - even when there's little evidence that such treaties accomplish anything?
There are always a variety of responses to any given situation. These responses - whether at the local, national or international levels - should be examined, debated, and negotiated out in the open. We all deserve a voice in these discussions. We should all participate in making these choices.
Science does not tell us what to do. When political activists insist otherwise, they are attempting to preempt important discussions, to silence our voices, to substitute their own views for those of the community.
..
short url for this post: TinyUrl.com/science-says
The term "catastrophic climate change" is used twice, with a reference to "catastrophic impacts" thrown in for good measure. We're warned about "mass extinctions" without anyone pointing out that species extinctions are normal and have occurred frequently on planet Earth. We're told glaciers might melt without anyone acknowledging that glaciers were advancing and receding long before industrial pollution was a twinkle in a capitalist's eye.
There are two quotes from Greenpeace, one from the Center for Biological Diversity, one from a scientist associated with the Stockholm Environment Institute, one from author/activist Bill McKibben (see my recent post on said gentleman), and another from a person who advises the German government on environmental issues.
In other words, we're bashed over the head with the perspective of a tiny sliver of the population - people whose careers depend on the view that human-caused global warming is a crisis.
There isn't a single quote in this article from a skeptical scientist, economist, or policy analyst. Nor is there any hint that some smart people who think global warming is a problem nevertheless consider emissions cuts a wrong-headed approach that's doomed to failure. (For example, see here and here.)
Most disturbing however, is that this 1,200 word article contains four separate slimy attempts to justify certain views as being determined by science and therefore not open to debate. We read that:
- certain policies are "what science says is required to avoid catastrophic climate change"
- "science says reductions of at least 25 to 40 percent are necessary"
- such and such is "consistent with what science demands"
- there's a need "to set a science-based national pollution cap" [bold added by me]
First of all, science is performed by human beings - who are fallible. All science, therefore, has the potential to be biased and mistaken. When scientists observe, they make choices about what is worth noticing and what is not. When they calculate, they choose to employ one mathematical approach rather than another. When they write reports, they highlight some issues while sidelining others.
All these decisions, choices, assumptions and biases are part of the process that produces what we think of as scientific knowledge. There is no God of Science reaching down from the heavens with THE TRUTH carved into stone tablets.
Second, while scientific investigation can produce certain facts, even when we have full confidence in the accuracy of those facts we must still choose how to respond to them.
Do we put our faith in high-tech to solve our energy problems over the next few decades before matters become acute? Do we reinforce sea walls and levees? Do we make huge efforts to ensure clean and adequate water supplies in the Third World in order to minimize drought-related harm? Or do we continue to put pretty much all our eggs in one basket by pursuing grandiose international Kyoto-style emissions treaties - even when there's little evidence that such treaties accomplish anything?
There are always a variety of responses to any given situation. These responses - whether at the local, national or international levels - should be examined, debated, and negotiated out in the open. We all deserve a voice in these discussions. We should all participate in making these choices.
Science does not tell us what to do. When political activists insist otherwise, they are attempting to preempt important discussions, to silence our voices, to substitute their own views for those of the community.
..
short url for this post: TinyUrl.com/science-says
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