Tag: cranks

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.

Requiem for a Species

Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change

Eighteen months ago Clive Hamilton finally admitted to himself that we’re not going to act with the urgency needed to meet the action required by the science.  Hence his new book Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change .

It is now too late to prevent far-reaching changes in the earth’s climate. An  optimistic outlook could see global emissions peaking in 2020 then declining by 3 percent each year, with emissions in rich countries falling by 6-7 percent.  It’s not enough.  Drawing particularly on the 2008 paper by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows from the UK’s Tyndall Centre Hamilton concludes that this would see the greenhouse gas concentration rise over the century to 650 parts per million, far in excess of the ‘safe’ 450 ppm talked about. Four degrees of warming is more likely by the century’s end than two degrees. The assumptions on which international negotiations and national policies are proceeding have no foundation in the way in which the Earth’s climate system actually behaves.

After that grim assessment of the science Hamilton turns to topics for which he is well known through previous writing, as he seeks to explain why we failed to respond in time to the threat.  The first is growth fetishism.  All of the arguments for the sanctity of growth have been marshalled to resist measures to cut carbon emissions. Even the small decreases in GDP growth posited by Nicholas Stern if we take measures to reduce emissions are too much for governments to contemplate.  In the rich countries growth has become an unreasoning obsession.  Hamilton has no argument with growth to lift people out of poverty, but notes that in China and India the process is creating a vast army of middle-class consumers, like their counterparts in the West unreflective materialists whose desires are insatiable.

The consumer self is his next topic: “…our individual sense of self has become bound up with how we consume.” This makes the task of persuading citizens of affluent countries to change their behaviour in response to the climate crisis more intractable. When we ask the affluent to change their consumption behaviour we are asking of them much more than we realise. The campaign to maintain a livable climate may be a war against our own sense of who we are. This is not unfamiliar ground.  I always read it with dismay and, I confess, a pinch of scepticism.  Part of me thinks (or is it hopes?) that if people really understand what is at stake most of them would be able to transcend their consumer self. Hamilton is made of sterner stuff.

He moves on to considering the many forms of denial. For the roots of climate denial he turns to American conservatism’s anxiety over national sovereignty and disquiet at environmentalism’s destabilisation of the idea of progress and mastery over nature. This is the context for the break from their mainstream science colleagues of three prominent physicists who joined the anti-environment movement in the 1980s. Frederick Seitz, Robert Jarrow and William Nierenberg founded the George C. Marshall Institute in 1984. Initially a Washington think tank devoted to defending Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ programme, in the 1990s it moved to attacking climate change science, and Exxon began providing funding. Various other groups, especially The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition also funded by Exxon and other oil companies, have since joined the campaign. Climate denial and political conservatism have become entwined, at least in the US. Neo-conservatives do not accept the elevation of matters of fact over matters of belief.

On the personal level denial is an understandable part of our psychology, which has made it easier for the organised campaign of denialism to succeed. Hamilton writes of the fear of uncertainty and of the difficulties humans have in responding to risk through cognitive processing rather than immediate feelings. He covers some maladaptive strategies for coping such as downplaying the threat, pushing it into the vague future, escaping through pleasure-seeking, resting in blame-shifting. Optimism comes under scrutiny: the observations of climate change have taken such an alarming turn in the last few years, and global action remains so inadequate, that maintaining optimism seems more and more like a disconnection from reality.

But setting aside talk about consciousness are there not prosaic things that can be done immediately to avoid climate disruption?  Hamilton considers three of those commonly advanced. Carbon capture and storage he dismisses as a fossil industry delaying tactic. It’s expensive, it’s too slow to be of use and it’s not being funded by the industry itself but by governments. Renewable energy combined with energy efficiency is feasible technically and at reasonable cost, but he fears that no government is willing to undertake the emergency response needed over the next decade. Nuclear energy he has no objection to in principle but questions its costs and timing.  The fall-back of climate engineering is fraught with dangers. A unilateral deployment of geoengineering techniques is a frightening prospect and should be pre-empted by international agreement.

Perhaps the most sobering chapter of the book is a short account of a conference Hamilton attended in Oxford in September 2009 when some 100 climate scientists met to discuss the implications of a 4 degrees global change for people, eco-systems and the earth-system.  When the conference was mooted the objective was to explore the end of the probability distribution that people don’t like talking about. By the time the conference came round 4 degrees had moved to the middle of the probability distribution. This would be hotter than any time since the Miocene era 25 million years ago. We are staring into the abyss. “The future looks impossible,” said Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre.

However that future has to be faced. We will have to allow ourselves to enter a phase of desolation and hopelessness, “in short, to grieve”. Hamilton explores the likely elements of our mourning for a lost future. That is the stage of Despair. Beyond that he hopes for a resurgence of resourcefulness and selflessness, for the emergence of values of moderation, humility, and respect for the natural world. That stage he calls Accept. His third stage is Act. Here he speaks of vigorous political engagement to build democracies that can ensure the best defences against a more hostile climate, protect the poor and vulnerable and restrain the rich and powerful who may well try to control dwindling resources for themselves.

It’s a sombre picture.  Whether Hamilton has correctly located the reasons for our failure to meet the crisis may be arguable. There’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter. The weight of the book for me was not so much in its analyses of society as in the author’s acceptance that we are not going to avoid major and frightening climate disruption, his description of the turmoil that such a recognition involves for the psyche, and his sketching of how we may best carry on into a diminished human future. This thread in the book is less formulated than the critiques of society, but will nevertheless carry a lot of interest for others who feel themselves on the brink of hopelessness.  Not least because Hamilton sees things worth doing and ways worth being on the other side of despair.

The man who loved beer: Skeptics in the pub talk next week

Christchurch readers might like to know that I’m talking at the local Skeptics in the pub meet up next Tuesday evening (23 March) — working title is Sceptics, skeptics and septicsâ„¢. Should be a lively evening… 😉 Meet at The Twisted Hop from 5-30pm, talk begins at 6pm, probably over the road at CPIT before returning to the pub. Keep an eye on the Skeptics MeetUp page for final details.

[â„¢ as coined by Stoat, headline by David Byrne.]

Carterist “science”: Bob’s self-plagiarism, misrepresentation and misquotations

homer.jpgThe crank web is all atwitter with the news that Bob Carter’s been censored by Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC. But an exclusive Hot Topicinvestigation reveals that the supposed “censorship” looks a lot more like prudent quality control. Carter’s submission plagiarises his own writings, misquotes and misrepresents James Hansen, and joins the recent baseless attacks on the NZ temperature record.

When the ABC’s Unleashed site turned down Carter’s offering — supposedly a reply or counterbalance to their recent five part series on climate denial by Clive Hamilton — it was quickly picked up by his frequent publisher, Aussie website QuadrantOnline. Titled Lysenkoism and James Hansen – Is Hansenism more dangerous than Lysenkoism?, it’s a crude attack on Hansen, currently visiting Australia. But it’s not only crude, it’s unoriginal.

 

Carter opens his ABC/Quadrant piece with an account of Hansen’s 1988 testimony to Congress:

On June 23, 1988, a young and previously unknown NASA computer modeller, James Hansen, appeared before a United States Congressional hearing on climate change. On that occasion, Dr. Hansen used a graph to convince his listeners that late 20th century warming was taking place at an accelerated rate, which, it being a scorching summer’s day in Washington, a glance out of the window appeared to confirm.

But back in 2005, in a talk to the Melbourne Rotary Club titled Global Warming Hysteria and the Deadly Disease of Hansenism (and in a paper available on his web site since), he had this to say about Hansen’s testimony:

Why Hansenism? Because James Hansen was the NASA-employed scientist who started the climate alarmism hare running on June 23, 1988, when he appeared before a United States Congressional hearing on climate change. On that occasion, Dr Hansen used a misleading graph to convince his listeners that [words cut here] warming was taking place at an accelerated rate (which, it being a scorching summer’s day in Washington, a glance out of the window appeared to confirm). [My emboldening of identical words.]

Strikingly similar, I think you’ll agree. The next two paragraphs share strong similarities with his 2005 paper, although he attributes a quote from Hansen somewhat differently: Here’s the Quadrant/ABC piece:

Fifteen years later, in the Scientific American in March, 2004, Hansen came to write that “Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic”.

This conversion to honesty came too late, however, for in the intervening years thousands of other climate scientists had meanwhile climbed onto the Hansenist funding gravy-train.

Once again, here’s Carter’s original version:

Much later (20032), Hansen came to write “Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate …. scenarios consistent with what is realistic”. But this astonishing conversion to honesty came too late, for in the intervening years thousands of other climate scientists had meanwhile climbed onto the Hansenist funding gravy-train.

Carter’s use of this quote is intended to show that Hansen had been dishonest. What else can a “conversion to honesty” be taken to mean? But the dishonesty is entirely Carter’s, and the many other climate deniers (Patrick Michaels prominent among them) who have ripped Hansen’s words from their context. Firstly, the quote is not accurate, the relevant sentences as published are:

Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions. Scenarios that accurately fit recent and near-future observations have the best chance of bringing all of the important players into the discussion, and they also are what is needed for the purpose of providing policy-makers the most effective and efficient options to stop global warming. [Missing words emboldened]

Secondly, as in so many things, context is all important. Hansen is discussing the details of the forcing scenarios put together by the IPCC for use in climate model runs. The standard scenarios assume no actions to reduce emissions. Hansen is arguing that to be useful for policy makers, scenarios that include emissions reductions need to be developed, to provide an idea of what might happen if action were taken. No change of mind, no admission of dishonesty — just a call for policy-relevant emissions trajectories and forcing scenarios. Misquotation and misrepresentation in the same breath — nice one, Bob. [Interesting too to note that the AR5 modelling will be based on new, more realistic scenarios that will include emissions reductions]

Let’s move on to the next par in the Bob’s samizdat article:

Currently, global warming alarmism is fuelled by an estimated worldwide expenditure on related research and greenhouse bureaucracy of more than US$10 billion annually. Scientists and bureaucrats being only too human, the power of such sums of money to corrupt not only the politics of greenhouse, but even the scientific process itself, should not be underestimated.

That’s a lot of money. What did he tell the Rotarians five years ago?

Currently, global warming alarmism is fuelled by an estimated worldwide expenditure on related research and greenhouse bureaucracy of US$3-4 billion annually. Scientists and bureaucrats being only too human, the power of such sums of money to corrupt not only the politics of greenhouse, but even the scientific process itself, must not be underestimated.

Crikey Moses, that’s some climate inflation! Not a Hansenist gravy train, but a Carterist scary ghost train.

The sections on “Lysenkoism” in the two pieces are also more or less identical, but in the more recent article, Bob moves on to deliver his wisdom on the state of climate science and policy advice in Australia, and can’t resist a dig at the NZ temperature record:

And, across the Tasman, NIWAgate is developing apace, as the N.Z. National Institute of Water & Atmosphere battles to provide a parliamentary accounting for its historic temperature archive, which may yet prove to include the “dog ate my homework” excuse for the apparent absence of some records.

Bob’s clearly channelling Treadgold and Wishart, and just as clearly out of touch (or perhaps that should be unwilling to be in touch) with reality.
So what are the basic tenets of Carterist science, as revealed by the writings of the great communicator himself? Bob describes them perfectly in his Rotary Club talk:

HansenistCarterist climate hysteria is driven by relentless, ideological, pseudo-scientific drivel, most of which issues from greenright wing political activists and their supporters, and is then promulgated by compliant media commentators who are innocent of knowledge of true scientific method. Opportunistically, and sadly, some scientists, too, contribute to the HansenistCarterist alarmism.

Quite right Bob. I share your sorrow, if not your shame.

Merchants of doubt: Oreskes on the history of climate denial

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global WarmingScience historian Naomi Oreskes, well known for her work on consensus in science (and climate science in particular) has a new book, Merchants of Doubt, due out in a couple of months. Helpfully sub-titled How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, it digs deep into the historical roots of the campaign to create doubt abut the need for action on a host of environmental issues. The video above is of a talk she gave at Brown University recently, outlining the material in the book. If you’re interested in the roots of the campaign against action on climate, this is an excellent overview. We’ll have a review of the book soon after it’s available.

[Hat tip to Deltoid and Resilience Science]