Category: Climate cranks

Well, I’ll be… blowed

The estimable Bomber Bradbury has been wondering why all the climate cranks have gone quiet since the exoneration of Phil Jones and the CRU by a British parliamentary enquiry — and, surprise, has since received something of a challenge from Cameron Slater at his Whale Oil blog. In normal circumstances I wouldn’t go anywhere near Slater’s site, but I did notice that a little while ago he was moved to post this…

Is Gareth Renowden a complete twat?

Is he a fraud as well?

Ok what about as deluded as “Quota” Smith?

Oh come that is too harsh for any one surely?

Can we mark believers with a tattoo so when they later claim they didn’t “really” believe they were just trick ing we can kick their lying balls real hard?

Distasteful, I think you’ll agree. Perhaps he has shares in a tattoing business? In any event, he’s earned a riposte. Let’s look at his “challenge” and see if it stands up to scrutiny.

Continue reading “Well, I’ll be… blowed”

Buying denial: Koch caught in the act

Greenpeace has been digging.  It has unearthed Koch Industries as a major funder of climate change denial groups. A new 44 page report tells the story. It fits well with  their more widely-scoped report Dealing in Doubt to which Gareth drew attention recently.

I was unaware of Koch Industries and, according to Greenpeace, that’s also the case for most Americans.

“This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the ‘climate denial machine’.”

 

The corporation is owned by the Koch brothers, two of the ten richest people in the US. Kansas-based Koch Industries is a conglomerate dominated by petroleum and chemical industries. The report details the roughly 40 climate denial and opposition groups receiving Koch foundation grants in recent years and notes this may be only part of the picture, since direct contributions from Koch family members, executives, or the company itself are not disclosed. Political influence is wielded in other ways as well, including $37.9 million from 2006 to 2009  for direct lobbying on oil and energy issues.

Greenpeace notes that around twenty of the groups Koch Industry supports were involved in the “ClimateGate” story of the supposed malfeasance of the climate scientists involved in the stolen UEA emails.  Between them they set up the echo chamber which repeated and rebroadcast the story, claiming the emails prove a “conspiracy” of scientists and cast doubt on the scientific consensus regarding climate change.

It’s familiar enough ground. What’s new is the major part Koch Industries has played and continues to play in it. The Greenpeace report is further confirmation that climate change denial is firmly grounded in the vested interests of those whose wealth might be threatened by a move away from fossil fuels.  Some of the denial campaign’s foot soldiers may consider that they have genuine intellectual reasons for their denial, but it’s hard to believe that the Koch brothers support is anything other than cynical.

For a short and engaging coverage of the issues involved it’s well worth having a look at this 8-minute video clip on DeSmog Blog.  It’s from the Rachel Maddow show and includes an interview with Jim Hoggan the author of Climate Cover Up. He extends the period covered by the Greenpeace report and says that over 13 years Koch Industries have spent more than $50 million dollars supporting the 40 organisations. Hoggan’s field is public relations.  He comments that the concerted attacks from apparently diverse sources poison public conversation and undermine public confidence in the science.

“The trick in public relations is always repetition…When you pour $50 million into the 40 organisations like this – and Koch Industries isn’t the only funder, Exxon and a number of other groups and companies are funding these 40 climate change denier outfits – that is an incredibly powerful influence over public opinion.”

Journalists still talk solemnly about the “damaged credibility” of climate science in the wake of Climategate.  Big money so far has every reason to be satisfied with the return on their investment in the campaign of denial. Much less expensive than doing science and still apparently more effective. Hopefully there will be an end to it.  James Hansen commented in a recent  communication to his email list: “On the long run, these distortions of the truth will not work and the public will realize that they have been bamboozled.”  But he feels obliged to add: “Unfortunately, the delay in public understanding of the situation, in combination with the way the climate system works (inertia, tipping points) could be very detrimental for our children and grandchildren.”

I often wonder whether these powerful vested interests give thought to the welfare of their children and grandchildren, who will share the common fate in a matter as fundamental as climate change.

Esquire on Morano: inside the denial machine

US mens magazine Esquire has published an excellent profile of of Marc Morano — formerly James Inhofe’s chief of staff, the man who started the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry, now running the climate denial news hub Climate Depot (funded by Richard Mellon Scaife). Author John H Richardson runs through Morano’s role in promoting the CRU email hack (a useful addition to DeSmogBlogs “Climategate” autopsy), and then describes the trip he took with Morano to Copenhagen. It’s a fascinating insight into the operations of the tight little cabal of inactivists that run the denial campaign. At one evening event he encounters the cream of the crop: Steven Milloy (“the godfather” according to Morano), Tom Harris and (how could he miss him), serial fabulist Christopher Monckton:

Morano drifts over to Monckton, who is telling a story about a trip to the University of Rochester. “I was there to give a speech on the application of probabilistic computronics to the identification and quantification of phase transitions and bifurcations in a chaotic object, as one does… .”

After a TV interview in which Morano outfoxes a climate scientist, Richardson describes the tactics being used in this information war:

So that’s how it’s done, Morano says later. He’s the turd in the punch bowl, that’s all he is and all he can be. But that might be enough. If they can use the echo chamber to reach enough people, they can confuse them enough to change the narrative. It’s asymmetrical warfare updated for the age of the Internet.

That’s what reality is up against: a happy little band of people skilled in the new techniques for derailing debates and delaying effective action, and unashamed of using them to their utmost extent. It’s a chilling article, required reading for anyone who wants to understand who is framing “debate” in this field.

IPCC’s Pachauri fights back

“We have a very apt saying in Hindi, which essentially translates as: ‘When a jackal is threatened, he starts moving toward the city.’ In other words, he becomes more visible. I think some of these guys are speaking out volubly because they read the writing on the wall.”

That was IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri in an interview nearly a year ago, speaking of the increase in the decibel level of contrarians.  Even so he was probably not prepared for the strength of the attack they mounted as the year proceeded.

But he is more than ready to defend the IPCC against the attacks it has been receiving.  The Guardian has just published a forthright article written by him.

“To dismiss the implications of climate change based on an error about the rate at which Himalayan glaciers are melting is an act of astonishing intellectual legerdemain. Yet this is what some doubters of climate change are claiming. But the reality is that our understanding of climate change is based on a vast and remarkably sound body of science – and is something we distort and trivialise at our peril.”

He reminds readers of the scale of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The IPCC mobilised 450 scientists from all over the world to write it. An additional 800 contributing authors gave specialised inputs and about 2,500 expert reviewers provided 90,000 comments.

“In this mammoth task, which yielded a finished product of nearly 3,000 pages, there was a regrettable error indicating the Himalayan glaciers were likely to melt by the year 2035. This mistake has been acknowledged by the IPCC.”

He reaffirms that the major thrust of the report’s findings provides overwhelming evidence that warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and draws attention to our responsibility to ensure that future generations do not suffer the consequences.

“We cannot ignore the fact that the impacts of climate change, which are based on actual observations, are leading to ‘increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global sea levels’…

“Altered frequencies and intensities of extreme weather, together with sea level rise, are expected to have mostly adverse effects on natural and human systems. Even more serious is the finding that human-induced warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible. For instance, partial loss of ice sheets on polar land could imply metres of sea level rise, major changes in coastlines and inundation of low-lying areas, with the greatest effects in river deltas and low-lying islands.”

He acknowledges that the choices for stakeholders and the economy are difficult, but they should not ignore the IPCC’s findings, which are the work of thousands of scientists from across the world who “have worked diligently and in an objective and transparent manner to provide scientific evidence for action to meet the growing challenge of climate change.” Ignoring those findings “would lead to impacts that impose larger costs than those required today to stabilise the Earth’s climate.”

Pachauri moves on and presumably refers to Senator James Inhofe when he speaks of

“… the effort of some in positions of power and responsibility to indict dedicated scientists as “climate criminals”. I sincerely hope the world is not witnessing a new form of persecution of those who defy conventional ignorance and pay a terrible price for their scientifically valid beliefs.”

Inhofe is a long-standing climate sceptic, who last month called for a criminal investigation of climate scientists. He published a minority report from the Senate committee on environment and public works that claimed climate scientists involved with the controversy over emails from the University of East Anglia “violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws”. He named the scientists, who included Phil Jones and Keith Briffa from the University of Esast Anglia and Peter Stott of the UK Met Office.  Michael Mann was, of course, among the US scientists named.

Mann, in response, as reported in the Guardian, has quoted President Harry Truman way back in 1948 in the dark age of McCarthyism:   ’Continuous research by our best scientists … may be made impossible by the creation of an atmosphere in which no man feels safe against the public airing of unfounded rumours, gossip, and vilification.’

Mann added:

“I fear that is precisely the sort of atmosphere that is being created, and sure, it impacts research. The more time scientists have to spend fending off these sorts of attacks and dealing with this sort of nonsense, the less time is available to them to actually do science, and to push the forefront of our knowledge forward. Perhaps that is the intent?”

But to return to Pachauri.  He has not had an easy time himself in the wake of the acknowledgement of the error in the report. I have no interest in the personal accusations made against him, but it’s worth setting the record straight about his “voodoo science” comment.  It was not made in relation to the discovery of the error in the IPCC report, but in relation to a discussion paper authored last year by a retired official of the Geological Survey of India which said it would be premature to state the glaciers were retreating as a result of periodic climate variation until many centuries of observation were available. It concluded by raising the possibility that the retreat of Himalayan glaciers today was a delayed reaction to the Medieval Warm Period rather than a response to current warming.

However almost anything that Pachauri has ever said or done will become grist to the denialist mill. It is good to see him seemingly not dismayed and steadily persisting in conveying the message that there is every reason to trust the IPCC reports and it would be a dereliction of responsibility not to heed their warning.

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.