An Independent contribution to the climate debate?

Posted by TonyN on 02/04/2008 at 6:13 pm The Climate No Responses »
Apr 022008

Yesterdays April Fool’s Day post doesn’t seem to have taken in too many people, and what follows in this post should put the record straight anyway. Incidentally the butterfly (or is it a moth?) in the picture that I took was collected in Kashmir by my late father-in-law while on leave from a posting in India during WWII. You can just see the pin that was used to mount it in its case if you look carefully. Sadly none of this is in quite the same league as the BBC’s superb flying penguins. See here.

When I read the article in The Independent that I posted about yesterday, my first reaction was that it could be reprinted verbatim as an All Fools Day spoof. If you didn’t know that it was a front-page story in Brittain’s greenest newspaper, it could easily be mistaken for satire.

Passing swiftly over the obvious fact that the changing behaviour of lepidoptera, common wild flowers and trees, tells us only that there has been a slight variation in temperature over the last century –a commonplace – what are we supposed to learn from The Indipendent’s story? This kind of ‘evidence’ says nothing about the cause of any warming, whether natural or anthropogenic, only that it has got warmer, and who would doubt that? Continue reading »

A climate sceptic comes in from the cold

Posted by TonyN on 01/04/2008 at 12:01 am The Climate 5 Responses »
Apr 012008

(Update 02/04/2008: Please note the date when this was posted!)

This is the last post that I will be making at Harmless Sky. It is very difficult to admit that you are wrong, but there are times when overwhelming evidence makes it impossible to do otherwise.

I started this blog after much research had led me to believe that some activists and scientists were exaggerating the evidence for human caused global warming and misleading perfectly harmless and respectable people about the effects that CO2 emissions were having on the climate. How wrong could I be?

Now I realise that I have been the victim of disinformation in the media spread by oil companies and tobacco salesmen. Their sceptical claims, backed up by plausible sounding but feeble and distorted scientific research seemed so convincing.

This ‘Damacus moment’ happened just before Easter, after reading a front-page story in The Independent. It was headlined, ‘How blurring of the seasons is a harbinger of climate calamity’. No other newspaper could have made such a profound impression on me, and instantly I knew that what they were saying was a blinding revelation of the truth.

To hammer the point home, the editor had thoughtfully provided a picture of a red admiral butterfly contentedly feeding on snowdrops. Yes really, snowdrops!


Martin Warren

Now we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that the camera never lies, so it was almost superfluous for the author to add, “Although many people see the changes as quaint or charming – butterflies certainly brighten up a January day – they are actually among the first concrete signs that the world is indeed set on a global warming course which is likely to prove disastrous if not checked. … It is undeniable confirmation that a profound alteration to the environment, the consequences of which are likely to prove catastrophic, is under way.” Continue reading »

Did the IPCC mislead the media about its own report?

Posted by TonyN on 27/03/2008 at 12:41 pm The Climate No Responses »
Mar 272008

It is now just over a year since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its most recent assessment of the scientific evidence that human activity is changing the climate. As a media event this was a spectacular success, with alarming global warming stories dominating the headlines for many months thereafter. But did the news services and papers report what the scientists actually said, or what the IPCC wanted policy makers and the general public think that they said?

On 2nd Feb 2007, the UN News Service launched the Summary for Policymakers (Working Group 1) of its Fourth Assessment Report with a press release that started like this:

Evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming – UN report

2 February 2007 – Changes in the atmosphere, the oceans and glaciers and ice caps now show unequivocally that the world is warming due to human activities, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in new report released today in Paris.
Here

Note that the headline uses the word unequivocal in quotation marks, indicating a direct reference to what was said in the report, but in fact the word unequivocal is only used once in the report, and not in this context. On page 4, the following paragraph refers to warming of the climate, but not to the cause: Continue reading »

News: Tony Blair - Return of a Shop-soiled Messiah.

Posted by TonyN on 18/03/2008 at 8:58 pm In the News, The Climate 3 Responses »
Mar 182008

According to The Guardian (14/03/2008) Tony Blair has found yet another retirement occupation to add to his assorted roles as a Middle East fixer, divinity lecturer and merchant banker. He is to spearhead a task force aimed at picking up the broken pieces of last year’s Bali World Climate Conference and broker an international deal that will lead to a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Welcome back to the politically safe ground of climate alarmism Mr Blair!

For an experienced and ruthless politician with a rather tarnished reputation, the climate bandwagon has so much to recommend it. No one is likely to criticise you for trying to save the planet. Scepticism about even your most ill-founded and exaggerated claims will be silenced by a sententious barrage from the media powerhouses of the green NGOs. Targets for CO2 reduction are so far in the future that there will be no need to kick them into the long grass; they are there already. If all else fails, and the media notice that you are not making any progress, then blaming the American and Chinese governments will win public approval and get you off the hook. As one wag said when asked why the Blair government was so keen on saving the planet, ‘Well, you know, it’s so much easier than saving the National Health Service’. Continue reading »

Warm Words II: When facts become fantasies.

Posted by TonyN on 05/03/2008 at 10:57 am The Climate 2 Responses »
Mar 052008

In a previous post (here) I described how recommendations in an Institute for Public Policy Research report called Warm Words were adopted by the government as a template for all communications on climate change. Even the most charitable reading of this spine-chilling document reveals it as a cynical strategy for misleading the public about anthropogenic climate change for political purposes.

In February 2005, a consultancy called Futerra prepared some recommendations for the ClimateChange Communications Working Group which comprises DEFRA and five other government departments and agencies. This is how Futerra describe themselves on their website:

Futerra is a communications company. We do the things communications companies do; have bright ideas, captivate audiences, build energetic websites one day and grab opinion formers’ attention the next. We’re very good at it. But the real difference is that we’ve only ever worked on green issues, corporate responsibility and ethics. Here

Their brief seems to have been to develop a climate communications strategy that would convince the public about the undeniable existence of anthropogenic global warming even if the facts don’t quite bear this out. With the government already beginning to introduce measures to ‘win the battle against climate change’, this was a matter of some importance if they were to avoid accusations of alarmism.

Recommendation 1: Objective

We recommend that the objective for the strategy be:
To use effective communications to encourage attitude change and acceptance of policy change for climate change in the UK.

Recommendations

The reference to ‘attitude change’ looks innocent enough on its own. A campaign to change people’s attitudes to drink driving, food hygiene or child neglect would be perfectly reasonable for any government to undertake; it is beyond doubt that drunk drivers, contaminated food and negligent parents do harm. But the situation with climate change is very different. The government’s intention in this case is to persuade the electorate that a threat undoubtedly exists, although it was tacitly acknowledged in Warm Words that there are uncertainties. And they are doing this after they have introduced policies to avert this supposed threat, apparently to retrospectively justify their proposed remedies. This is to be achieved by pretending that no uncertainties exist, when they are aware that the existence of the risk has yet to be verified.

An interview that Sir David King, the government’s very influential chief scientific adviser, gave to Radio4’s Today programme on 20th December 2007 throws some light on how policy was being formed at that time. Continue reading »

News: When science and politics mix

Posted by TonyN on 21/02/2008 at 11:45 am In the News, The Climate 2 Responses »
Feb 212008

Below is a comment that Dr Judith Curry posted recently on Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog which gives some insight into the close relationship between science and politics in the minds of many climate researchers.

The author is chair of the school of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US and a very influential member of the climate science community. She has published research papers that attempt to link an increase in hurricanes to climate change and she serves on various panels related to climate science including the National Academies’ space studies board and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate-research working group.

Andrew #115, I agree with your statement. While I am not skeptical about increasing CO2 causing warming, there is much to be skeptical about in future projections regarding how much warming. The IPCC makes no pretense of having nailed down “how much warming”, it gives a range of temperature increases even for a specific scenario (Steve, your request for proof of 2.5C sensitivity doesn’t make sense in this context, which is why no one has responded). What do about the warming, given the scientific uncertainties, is a great challenge. However, decision making under uncertainty is something that is routinely faced in all aspects of our life, from government policy to individual decisions. The challenge is to come up with policies and strategies that make sense, even if the warming turns out to be less than expected and will cover us even if the warming is greater than expected. In the U.S. there is a national mandate for energy security, which is almost totally consistent with reducing greenhouse gases. There are numerous health concerns associated with continued pollution of our environment from energy generation. What can we do about it? There is much to be gained from energy efficiency and conservation (for georgia tech’s efforts in this, the largest power user in atlanta, see http://www.stewardship.gatech.edu/2007stewardshipV3.pdf). There are existing alternative energy technologies that are not quite cost competitive with the subsidized fossil fuels we currently use (change the carrots and sticks, and these technologies are cost competitive). There is much promise in a number of new technologies, that need further investment. The other thing we need to do is focus on the socalled adaptation strategies. Whether or not global warming is increasing hurricanes, surely it makes sense to make our coastal cities more resilient to hurricanes. Whether or not global warming is going to increase droughts, surely Georgia needs to figure out how to manage its water resources better and make it more resilient to drought. etc. The bottom line is that such policy decisions don’t hinge on the science of whether the sensitivity is 2 or 3 or 4 degrees.

Dr Curry appears to be saying:

1) We know that there is anthropogenic global warming, but we can’t quantify its extent.

2) We must do something about this even if our understanding of the problem is so limited that we do not even know whether it poses a significant threat.

3) Even if the threat turns out to be illusory, never mind. There will still be benefits from our mistaken and futile attempts at mitigation provided we ignore the economic and social knock-on effects.

This has nothing to do with science, but everything to do with politics, and even in that context it is not a basis for formulating public policy. The desire to address the very real problems associated with pollution and resource management are not reasons for persuading policy makers and the general public that human activity is changing the climate. There seems to be a belief among some climate scientists that AGW alarmism is a legitimate vehicle for drawing attention to these problems and is therefor justified. Again this has no part to play in scientific research, but draws climate science further away from its supposed purpose – to increase our understanding of atmospheric processes – and ever more deeply into the political arena.

If an astronomer who is engaged in research has, let us say, extreme racialist views, then it is unlikely to affect their work. This would not be true of a geneticist, anthropologist or historian. There is an obvious political bias towards environmentalist among climate scientists and it seems unrealistic to expect that this will not compromise their objectivity, however conscious they may be of this danger.

I am not equating racialism with environmentalism, simply using it as an example of a deeply held political belief that is likely to have a profound influence on a person’s world view. I also accept that certain aspects of climate research may lead to the belief that humans are destroying the planet, although this discipline is as likely to attract those who are already sympathetic to this hypothesis. But the risk of unconscious bias is still the same. Only sceptics can provide a counterbalance by questioning the scientific basis for anthropogenic global warming. It is increasingly important that their voices are heard and that their views, if rational, are respected and not dismissed out of hand. This rarely happens at the moment, although Dr Curry’s willingness to engage in discussion on a sceptical blog is a courageous and most welcome development.

Warm Words: the difference between ‘facts' and facts.

Posted by TonyN on 04/02/2008 at 3:20 pm The Climate 2 Responses »
Feb 042008

Here is an excerpt from a report published in 2006 by the Institute for Public Policy Research, one of the government’s favourite think tanks. It is called Warm Words: How are we telling the climate story and can we tell it better?

Many of the existing approaches to climate change communications clearly seem unproductive. And it is not enough simply to produce yet more messages, based on rational argument and top-down persuasion, aimed at convincing people of the reality of climate change and urging them to act. Instead, we need to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement.

To help address the chaotic nature of the climate change discourse in the UK today, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won, at least for popular communications. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.

The disparity of scale between the enormity of climate change and small individual actions should be dealt with by actually harnessing this disparity. Myth (which can reconcile seemingly irreconcilable cultural truths) can be used to inject the discourse with the energy it currently lacks.

Opposing the enormous forces of climate change requires an effort that is superhuman or heroic. The cultural norms (what we normally expect to be true) are that heroes – the ones who act, are powerful and carry out great deeds – are extraordinary, while ordinary mortals either do nothing or do bad things. The mythical position – the one that occupies the seemingly impossible space – is that of ‘ordinary hero’. The ‘ordinary heroism’ myth is potentially powerful because it feels rooted in British culture – from the Dunkirk spirit to Live Aid.

(my emphasis)

The first paragraph provides a clear admission that rational arguments have failed to convince the public that anthropogenic global warming is happening. This will surprise few people who have taken an interest in the scientific evidence and the political froth with which it is presented. The IPPR suggest that simulated conviction will be much more effective than being frank with the public; a very ‘shrewd and contemporary way’ of misleading people. All this is chillingly reminiscent of Tony Blair’s claim in parliament that evidence for Iraqi WMD was ‘extensive, detailed and authoritative’, when the Joint Intellect Committee had already warned him that it was ‘sporadic and patchy’. Continue reading »

News: Met Office global temperature forecasts

Posted by TonyN on 22/01/2008 at 12:27 pm The Climate No Responses »
Jan 222008

I posted (here) about the rather strange way that the Met Office uses reference periods when it announces record breaking weather events. As New Year is the time when they make their annual global temperature forecast for the next twelve months, I thought that it would be worth looking at what they predicted for 2007, and then what they are predicting for 2008.

Here’s the Met Office’s first press release of 2007 issued last January:

4 January 2007

2007 – forecast to be the warmest year yet

2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, say climate-change experts at the Met Office.

Each January the Met Office, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, issues a forecast of the global surface temperature for the coming year. The forecast takes into account known contributing factors, such as solar effects, El Niño, greenhouse gases concentrations and other multi-decadal influences. Over the previous seven years, the Met Office forecast of annual global temperature has proved remarkably accurate, with a mean forecast error size of just 0.06 °C.

Met Office global forecast for 2007

  • Global temperature for 2007 is expected to be 0.54 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C;
  • There is a 60% probability that 2007 will be as warm or warmer than the current warmest year (1998 was +0.52 °C above the long-term 1961-1990 average).

The potential for a record 2007 arises partly from a moderate-strength El Niño already established in the Pacific, which is expected to persist through the first few months of 2007. The lag between El Niño and the full global surface temperature response means that the warming effect of El Niño is extended and therefore has a greater influence the global temperatures during the year.

Katie Hopkins from Met Office Consulting said: “This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world. Our work in the climate change consultancy team applies Met Office research to help businesses mitigate against risk and adapt at a strategic level for success in the new environment.”

The reference to El Niño is important. These periodic and unpredictable convulsions in the Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures can have a dramatic effect on climate across much of the world. A major El Niño event was partly responsible for the very high global temperatures of 1998. In fact about a third of the temperature anomaly that made that year the warmest recorded for the 20th century can be attributed to this effect. So the Met Office is relying on a perfectly natural, but unpredictable event to boost global temperatures towards a new record. But the problems with predictions, particularly if you base them on phenomena that are not well understood, is that things can go very badly wrong. Continue reading »

News: 2007 second warmest year since when?

Posted by TonyN on 04/01/2008 at 2:10 pm The Climate No Responses »
Jan 042008

A Happy New Year to everyone.

The BBC’s Today progamme celebrated New Year’s Day, in spite of a little confusion about what year we are in, by introducing a news item with the following words:

Now this year [2007] is likely to be the second warmest for England and Wales on record. Figures released by the Met Office show that average temperatures reached 9.6° C, that’s just over 49° F, and overall the last six years have been the warmest since records began in 1914.

Listen Again: item at 08.39

As someone who has become sceptical about pronouncements that add to public concern over warming, this lead-in to what promised to be a thoroughly depressing prelude to the New Year presented a happy hunting ground in which to pose awkward questions. Continue reading »

News: Sea levels of the future

Posted by TonyN on 31/12/2007 at 2:50 pm The Climate 2 Responses »
Dec 312007

A link on Planet Ark‘s website happened to catch my eye when I was looking for something else on Google recently. This is one of the oldest and most evangelical of the environmentalist websites and it has been very successful in spreading the message of global warming. Sadly Planet Ark seems to be unable to do this without straying into the realms of exaggeration and speculation.

A Featured Link from Planet Ark leads to a page on the University of Arizona website that is rather like Google Earth. There it is possible to see the extent of land areas that would be inundated if sea levels rise as a result of anthropogenic, or any other kind of climate change (here). This would seem to be a perfectly reasonable way of drawing attention to the vulnerability of low lying land, a recurrent theme of advocates of impending global catastrophe. Indeed Planet Ark’s owes its name to fear of rising sea levels; we might all end up in the same boat as Mr Noah. Continue reading »

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