Author: Gareth

Dealing in doubt: 20 years of attacks on climate science

homer.jpgThe carefully planned and coordinated campaign to attack climate science, scientists and the IPCC is documented in detail in a compelling new report released today. Dealing in doubt [PDF], published by Greenpeace International, looks back at the history of the 20 year attack strategy, names the key players and outlines the techniques used. From the introduction:

The tobacco industry’s misinformation and PR campaign against regulation reached a peak just as laws controlling it were about to be introduced. Similarly, the campaign against climate science has intensified as global action on climate change has become more likely. This time, though, there is a difference. In recent years the corporate PR campaign has gone viral, spawning a denial movement that is distributed, decentralised and largely immune to reasoned response.

I shall be reading the report with great interest, and with my copy of John Mashey’s excellent dissection of the US campaign, Crescendo to Climategate Cacophony [PDF] close to hand. Solve Climate has a good overview of the report here. And if anyone wants to pretend that people like Michaels, Lindzen, Soon, Christy and Balling have any credibility left, take a look at this map (included in the report) of their ties to the think tanks coordinating the attack.

Talk in the town

Last night’s session with the Skeptics in the Pub in Christchurch was an interesting experience (some nice feedback too, thanks). It gave me a chance to develop a few of the thoughts that have been running through my mind recently — and it’s good to do that by presenting them to an audience willing to explore and challenge ideas. The question session at the end ran for about 40 minutes, and the best moment came when one sceptic (no “k”, he was clearly of the “not persuaded” variety) had been pushing me for a worst case. I said that it was conceivable that climate change could end our civilisation. The questioner turned to the rest of the audience and asked them if they really believed that, to receive a chorus of agreement and nods. That’s what happens in the real world: when sceptics leave the comfortable certainty of Wishart-world or Treadgold territory, µWatts or Morano’s depot, they find that the rational world is coming to terms with the real risks.

I promised the group I would make my slides available: they’re here [3.3MB pdf]. The first half of the talk dealt with some basics, and ended with a Katey Walter earth fart lighting session. I then moved on to explore some of the reasons why there is so much manufactured doubt about the reality or seriousness of climate change. The slides are reasonably self-explanatory, happy to discuss in comments.

References/credits:

Many thanks to John Cook at Skeptical Science for making so much of the necessary material so easy to find and use. And for the iPhone app…

[The (older) Pretenders]

Business Roundtable lies about climate, according to The Economist

You might expect the Business Roundtable to be avid readers of that august weekly news magazine The Economist, and yet BR head honcho Roger Kerr was happy to write this in an op-ed published last month, apparently relying on British tabloid the Daily Mail as a source:

On top of all this is Climategate, which started with the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Its suspended director Phil Jones has admitted that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years.

No he didn’t. Here’s The Economist on the subject:

Since I’ve advocated a more explicit use of the word “lie”, I’ll go ahead and follow my own advice: that Daily Mail headline is a lie. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995; he said the opposite. He said the world had been warming at 0.12°C per decade since 1995.

The Economist’s writer goes on to note that:

Anyone who has even a passing high-school familiarity with statistics should understand the difference between these two statements

One must presume, therefore, that Roger Kerr lacks that attribute, or is perhaps prepared to allow a good story to trump the facts. Not surprising when he lists in a Dominion Post opinion piece the experts the BR has brought to New Zealand to “balance” the debate:

Over the past 15 years the Business Roundtable has brought Richard Lindzen, Robert Balling, Patrick Michaels, David Henderson, Bjørn Lomborg and Nigel Lawson to New Zealand in an effort to inject some balance into the debate.

By their friends shall we know them.

Carterist science meets its Cartergate

homer.jpgThe peer-reviewed rebuttal to last year’s infamous McLean, de Freitas and Carter paper which claimed that the El Niño Southern Oscillation could explain most recent warming (see Mother Nature’s Sons and Big Guns Brought To Bear), has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Geophysical Research (Comment on “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” Foster et al, 2010). Co-author James Annan has the details (and full text of the rebuttal), but what is perhaps most remarkable is that despite being given the opportunity to reply to Foster et al’s comment — normal practice in these circumstances — McLean et al’s offering has failed to pass review and will not be published by JGR. Tim Lambert at Deltoid has more feedback, and draws attention to the comments by Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at Climate Shiftswho demands:

The five things we want to know are:

  1. Will McLean et al. retract the paper (and will Bob Carter admit fault or even discuss the errors publicly)?
  2. Will the denial0sphere and the MSM give this story (a climate change scandal!) the same coverage it has recently showered on various IPCC hiccups?
  3. Will there be an investigation as Bob Carter himself and so many other skeptics have insisted on over and over again, usually in response to bogus and unsubstantiated allegations.
  4. Will Bob now reverse his policy positions and urge (vocally) politicians that may have been swayed by his bogus science to do the same? After all Bob, shouldn’t the science drive the policy?
  5. Will The Australian cover this pending scandal! A scientist behaving badly!

Those look like damned good questions to me. New Zealand’s science community has been reluctant to publicly criticise Carter — he was once a respected and influential scientist who encouraged many talented students to forge their careers in the earth sciences — but surely this display of academic turpitude puts him beyond the pale. What it says about de Freitas is probably unprintable. I encourage readers to remember the extravagant claims being made for this paper by Carter and de Freitas, and the uncritical acceptance of those claims by a pliable media. High time the boot was on the other foot.

[This song’s for Bob: h/t caerbannog in comments at Deltoid]

[Update 23/3: Skeptical Science explains the rebuttal here. Worth a read.]

Fabulous bad weather

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A little uplifting singing for the weekend, from the Reverend Billy Talen and the Gospel Choir of the Church Of Life After Shopping, the new environmental church that’s sweeping the globe, or perhaps Brooklyn. From the Rev Billy’s pulpit:

We are finding a faith inside “Environmentalism” and “Earth Justice” and “Climate Change Activism.” A faith can support multiple movements, and carry hundreds of issues. […] Earth-a-lujah! Life on Earth is not the object, receiving our civilized activity. The Earth is the subject. The Earth is all of us, is more than us, and includes us. Feel the Earth’s wave inside us, the good tsunami. We can’t fight it or improve on it. We will be saved as the Earth saves itself.

Just in case it’s not obvious: Billy Talen is a performance artist and environmental activist.

[H/t – Jo Abbess]