Gareth – Page 169

Unreliable witness

During my appearance before the ETS Review committee earlier this month I was asked by committee chairperson Peter Dunne to comment on the evidence presented by the submitters who appeared immediately before me — McCabe Environmental Services, being one Bruce McCabe and Kathleen Ryan-McCabe. ACT member John Boscawen was clearly wondering how two sets of evidence could present such diametrically opposed interpretations of the basic facts.

The committee secretariat were kind enough to provide me with a recording of the McCabe’s oral evidence, as well as their written submission. My comments on the MEC submission were delivered to the committee on April 22nd, and are now available on the parliamentary web site here (direct link to PDF). The McCabe’s evidence is here. Not to put too fine a point on it, the MEC evidence is wrong in just about every material respect, choosing as they did to rely on Fred Singer’s Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change booklet as their primary source. You’ll find chapter and verse in my evidence, but I also took the opportunity to provide the committee with a quick list of arguments that signal the presence of cranks arguing for inaction:

Cooling since 1998, 2001, 2005, etc
There is no correlation between CO2 and temperature…
Climate models cannot forecast the future/are unvalidated…
Future warming from CO2 will be tiny/the greenhouse effect doesn’t work the way the IPCC thinks it does.
The hockey stick is broken.
The sun/sunspots/cosmic rays are the real cause.
“There is no consensus” or “The science is not settled”.
Any mention of Al Gore.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see how Bob Carter’s evidence (given today) stacks up against that list…

[PS: At the recent European Geophysical Union meeting Fred Singer’ announced his NIPCC is not yet dead. Apparently there’s an 800 page report due this year. Must be costing Heartland a fortune…]

350 ways to leave a mark

The Wanaka gig went well: a full house in the rather lovely “Crystal Palace” (a tent that thinks it’s a cross between a Victorian pub, a circus big top and a night club), to hear Bill McKibben and yours truly discuss the likely impacts of climate change on NZ and the world. Bill’s afternoon session was excellent, as he described the genesis and growth of 350.org, and the important role it has to play in the run up to the Copenhagen K2 climate meeting — giving the world’s politicians the popular backing to go for steep emissions cuts. This interview with Bill at Yale’s Environment 360 (10 ppm too many…) gives a good flavour of what he covered, but I would urge NZ readers to go and hear him for yourselves. There’s a full list of his talks here at the 350.org.nz site (Christchurch Friday May 1 at 9am, then Wellington in the evening, Raglan and Hamilton over the weekend, and finally Auckland on Monday – full details at the preceding link). It’s a pity we couldn’t get him in front of the ETS Review committee. Now, how do I come with a creative way to underline the 350 message come October 24th…? All suggestions gratefully received, or sign up and organise something yourself.

Sound of silence

The National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has fired climate scientist Jim Salinger for “unauthorised dealings” with the media. Salinger has been one of New Zealand’s leading climate scientists since the 1970s, and his sacking has shocked many in the scientific community. The Dominion Post reports:

The Crown agency’s long-serving principal scientist was dismissed earlier this week, reportedly for trying to help TVNZ’s weatherman Jim Hickey with some “climate-related inquiries” and for doing an interview with Radio New Zealand’s Checkpoint programme without permission.

He said he received a letter in March from management summoning him to a disciplinary meeting for an interview he did with TVNZ in February commenting on Auckland’s hottest day. The interview had not been approved and was labelled “serious misconduct”. He was also reprimanded for talking to TVNZ about glaciers for which he thought he had permission.

I covered the offending glacier story here: it was an excellent piece of journalism, reflecting well on both TV NZ and the NIWA staff working on the survey. Salinger was also one of the five NZ scientists who complained last year about being on Heartland’s list of people whose work didn’t support global warming: a move which gained Jim a lot of support in the NZ media — hardly surprising when for years he’s been one of the main “go to” men for a quotable opinion on climate and weather issues.

NIWA have not commented on the dismissal, and they are unlikely to in the short term given that an employment court case is in the offing. Whatever the ins and outs of employment law, the Crown-owned research institute is going to have to work hard to avoid the suspicion that — in an echo of attempts by the Bush administration to muzzle Jim Hansen — management fired Salinger because he was refusing to be gagged.

The Green Party has already called on NIWA’s shareholding ministers, Wayne Mapp and Bill English, to ask the CRI’s board to investigate the sacking, but Mapp has refused according to the DomPost:

Dr Mapp said he would not intervene. “The matter is an employment dispute, which must be handled by the chief executive and the board,” he said.

I think Mapp has this wrong. Salinger’s dismissal raises questions of free speech and academic freedom, and if the government is to avoid suspicions of censoring inconvenient truths — at a time when cranks are being given time to spout nonsense before the ETS Review committee — then it needs to act swiftly to reaffirm that New Zealand scientists are not being muzzled. The international reputation of our science could be at stake.

See also: Stuff, Herald on Sunday, and for a critical take on the burgeoning role of bureaucrats in NZ science, an opinion piece by Doug Edmeades in Australasian Science this week (via the Science Media Centre).

[Simon & Garfunkel]

With friends like these…

Next week sees the publication of Ian Wishart‘s latest book, Air Con — The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming. After trying to trash Helen Clark in Absolute Power, proclaiming the end of Western civilisation in Eve’s Bite and arguing a creationist line in The Divinity Code, Wishart has latched on to global warming. And just in case there’s any doubt about his position, here are some quotes from the blurb on the back cover:

The UN, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jacques Chirac, and other world-government wannabes are plotting to establish nothing less than a global, bureaucratic-centralist dictatorship under the pretext that it is necessary to â€˜Save The Planetâ€™. Ian Wishart’s book demonstrates that there is not the slightest scientific reason for the new, quasi-religious belief that The Planet needs Saving. The new religion is merely an excuse for world government. World government will not, repeat not, be democratic government. […]

I commend this timely book, which makes the scientific arguments comprehensible to the layman. Those who read it will help to forestall the new Fascists and so to keep us free. â€“ Lord Christopher Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, former adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Wishart clearly believes that a recommendation from the potty peer is going to help him sell copies. It may (in certain limited circles) — but it does nothing for his credibility (nor does his mangling of Monckton’s title). And who’s this?

The book is brilliant. The best I have seen which deals with the news item side of it as well as the science. He has done a very thorough job and I have no hesitation in unreserved commendation. It has come along at the time we most need it and I hope it is published and publicized widely.

Back in March, Wishart was touting Air Con in comments to one of Bomber Bradbury’s posts at Tumeke!, and trotted out the above quote to show how esteemed his book was amongst experts — but was coy about identifying the author. And now we know why: the purple prose was penned by none other than Vincent Gray, diligent proofreader of so many IPCC reports. Someone guessed correctly at the time… I wonder who that was? 😉

I will be reviewing Air Con in coming weeks. Something to look forward to, perhaps…

Cracking up

With the “pin” to Charcot Island gone, big cracks that first formed in 2008 are are opening up in the Wilkins ice shelf, and a new break up is taking place close to Latady Island. The animation above uses ESA “webcam from space” images captured on April 18 and 21 (the latter has black corners). Latady Island is bottom left. Judging by the scale on the NASA image below, the big crack above bottom right has opened up by a couple of kilometres, and the whole assemblage of chunks of shelf are moving northwards. It’ll be interesting to see if new cracks form deeper into the shelf (bottom right) as the new bergs move away. Meanwhile, NASA’s Earth Observatory helpfully provides a new photo-like image of what was the base of the ice bridge, captured by the Terra satellite on April 12:

And while we’re on the subject of ice, the Earth Observatory has just posted an excellent new feature article on sea ice, covering both ends of the planet and illustrated with some spectacular imagery. Well worth a read for anyone wanting an in-depth introduction to the state of play before the Arctic melt season really gets underway.

[Nick Lowe]