Environmental activism taints research

26 October, 2011 by

Environmental activism is tipping the balance

Environmental activist groups should not be allowed anywhere near scientific research. Such groups have a set of beliefs which will almost invariably skew any such research in which they are involved – whether intentionally or inadvertently.

WWF Australia’s web site sets out its policy with regard to climate change:

Today, because of greenhouse gas pollution, the planet is heating up at a much faster rate than ever before and our oceans are becoming more acidic. Temperature rises can appear small, but small increases translate into big changes for the world’s climate and natural environment.

Hotter days, more severe storms, floods, snowfalls, droughts, fire and higher sea levels are expected in the foreseeable future. These changes threaten jobs, agricultural production, water supplies, industries, human lives and, ultimately, the survival of species and entire ecosystems. Scientists predict that a global temperature rise of close to 2°C (above pre-industrial levels) could result in 25% of the Earth’s animals and plants disappearing because they can’t adapt fast enough. (source)

Leaving aside the obvious errors in those paragraphs, in the view of the WWF, there is no room for doubt. Humans are to blame for climate change and we must do something to stop it. The science is settled, and the debate is over. WWF Australia also strongly supports the “Say Yes” campaign for domestic action on climate change, with links on its home page. There is no ambiguity: WWF has a very rigid political and environmental agenda.

So how can you expect such an organisation to be impartial when assisting with or carrying out scientific research, which, by its very nature, should be impartial and apolitical? There will be little or no incentive to consider the possibility that man’s influence is less than they already “know” to be the case.

We have seen the close links between WWF and the IPCC exposed (see here), which severely damages the credibility and impartiality of the IPCC’s reports, and today we have another doom-laden report, liberally sprinkled with alarming imagery:

The Greenland ice sheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures don’t hit record highs, according to a new analysis by Dr. Marco Tedesco, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York. His findings suggest that glaciers could undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming that would be difficult to halt.

…

Professor Tedesco likens the melting process to a speeding steam locomotive. Higher temperatures act like coal shoveled into the boiler, increasing the pace of melting. In this scenario, “lower albedo is a downhill slope,” he says. The darker surfaces collect more heat. In this situation, even without more coal shoveled into the boiler, as a train heads downhill, it gains speed. In other words, melting accelerates. (source)

Sounds pretty dramatic. But what do we read at the very end?

The World Wildlife Fund is acknowledged for supporting fieldwork activities.

I am not making any suggestion of wrongdoing, or that WWF’s contribution to this work was anything other than entirely proper. What I am suggesting, however, is that not only should science be impartial and apolitical, it should be seen to be impartial and apolitical. There must be a level playing field and consistent standards applied to the involvement of advocacy and activist groups in scientific research. If it’s OK for WWF to be involved in the preparation of an alarmist report about Greenland ice sheets, it should also be OK for an oil company to assist with a report that challenges the consensus position.

That is clearly not the situation we find ourselves in today, which is more like “WWF – good, Exxon – evil.”

So, here’s the deal. Either vested interests (whether consensus or sceptic) should exclude themselves from involvement in scientific research altogether, or both sides must be treated equally. It has to be one or the other.

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US: no link between floods and climate change

25 October, 2011 by

No link to CC

But, but, but… we all know climate change causes more “extreme weather” – Bob Brown said so, it must be true! Unfortunately, a new study in the US has found no link between climate change and floods:

A new study conducted by federal scientists found no evidence that climate change has caused more severe flooding in the United States during the last century.

But [there’s always a “but” – Ed] scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who published their findings in the Hydrologic Sciences Journal Monday, said they will continue to examine the issue, noting that more research is necessary to better understand the relationship between climate change and flooding. [In other words they’ll keep torturing the data until it gives them the result they KNOW is right – Ed]

And where there is a link found, it’s in the wrong direction – oops:

[…] the study was able to identify a clear relationship between flooding and climate change in the southwestern portion of the United States. In that region, floods have become less severe as greenhouse gas emissions have increased, the study says.

It’s all meaningless – another classic case of correlation being interpreted as causation, as usual. And it should be noted that the study focussed on the link between flooding and concentrations of GHGs – meaning the whole thing is based on the flawed assumption that CO2 levels are a direct driver of “climate change”. Since CO2 may only be a very weak climate driver, it’s hardly surprising that there’s no link to flood severity.

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WWF squeals at IPCC links

24 October, 2011 by

Squealing

Donna Laframboise’s book The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert (see review here) has clearly touched a number of raw nerves. The WWF huffs and puffs in a press release:

“It is ludicrous to suggest that in seeking ensure that the observations of climate witnesses are consistent with the best scientific knowledge WWF is seeking to influence the IPCC,” said WWF’s International Climate and Energy initiative leader Samantha Smith.

“It is also ludicrous to suggest that IPCC reports are or could be influenced by the fact that some scientists have generously contributed some input to WWF’s climate witness scheme.” (source – h/t Bishop Hill)

But unfortunately, it is far from ludicrous. It is scandalous.

The IPCC is portrayed as this impartial, aloof body which calmly considers the state of climate science and issues pronouncements every five years or so. Governments then make policy decisions, costing billions (possibly trillions) of dollars, based on the recommendations in those reports. But, as Donna’s book reveals, the IPCC is nothing of the sort. Its sole purpose is to find evidence of human-caused climate change, as required by the UNFCCC – and it makes sure that it finds it with a broad range of tactics that undermine the integrity of climate science.

It is utterly scandalous and disgraceful that scientists involved in the IPCC process have anything whatsoever to do with an extreme environmental activist group like WWF. The WWF has a clear agenda on climate change – it is a blatant conflict of interest for lead authors of IPCC reports to be involved in any WWF project, such as the climate witness scheme. And the wilful blindness of the mainstream media and national governments around the world to this hypocrisy is staggering.

Can you even begin to imagine the hysteria that would result from an IPCC lead author being associated with Big Oil? It would be screamed and shouted from the rooftops 24/7. “How dare an IPCC author have such a clear conflict of interest?” they would shriek. “This is just more evidence of the influence of Big Oil and their band of well-organised climate deniers, spreading misinformation in order to derail the proper work of an impartial body like the IPCC.”

Or how about this as an alternative, if we turn it around?

“This is just more evidence of the influence of Big Green and their band of well-organised climate alarmists, spreading misinformation in order to derail the proper work of an impartial body like the IPCC.”

But we never hear that, ever. EVER. And Big Green has far deeper pockets than Big Oil when it comes to climate propaganda. The reason? Because it’s perfectly fine for the head of the IPCC to endorse Greenpeace documents, or for IPCC lead authors to cosy up to environmental advocacy groups – they have the politically correct high ground. They’re “saving the planet” after all!

The more one thinks about this, the more outrageous it seems.

The reality is the IPCC is utterly compromised, corrupted and politicised. Nobody should take the slightest notice of ANYTHING it says.

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ACM quoted in "The Sunday Age"

23 October, 2011 by

Set the agenda

As part of The Sunday Age‘s Climate Agenda (see here for ACM’s question), I was asked to comment on one of the other questions, concerning the issue of “fruitful public debate” on climate change.

You can read the article here.

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You can't be a sceptic anymore, sez warmist

22 October, 2011 by

Best or worst?

The blogosphere is abuzz with the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST), the stunning conclusion of which seems to be “the planet is warming”. Even more stunning is that this is somehow supposed to be the ultimate rebuttal to filthy sceptics and deniers the world over.

Er, sorry to disappoint, but no it isn’t. We all knew the world was warming, and has been since the end of the Little Ice Age. We accept that. So, what’s your point again?

BEST’s results, which are based on surface temperature records from thousands of land-based stations across the globe, also seem to magically “disappear” the Urban Heat Island effect, despite the fact that previous studies have shown it to be a substantial component of recent temperature rises. BEST also seems to be able to take the fat, hairy sow’s ear of shonky surface temperature stations (many of which are located close to man-made heat sources like airports and air conditioning units) and turn them into a dainty silk purse of accurate global temperature. Whether this is successful or not I will leave up to you to decide. A technical post at Watts Up With That? looks at the statistical methods employed.

Richard Muller’s article in the Wall Street Journal concludes thus:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

But let’s just look at that last sentence again:

How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

So the key issue that sceptics raise, the attribution of present day warming to human effects, is something not addressed by BEST. For Muller to claim that this puts the final nail in the sceptics’ coffin is ridiculous. We all agree the planet is warming, it’s a question of how much of that warming is due to man, and how much is due to nature.

Climate Depot takes the BEST project and Muller’s WSJ article to the proverbial cleaners here (with stacks of links to other criticisms)

Delingpole has a great piece here – it is well worth the read.

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IPCC: Integrity-challenged, Politicised, Compromised and Corrupt

21 October, 2011 by

Essential reading

Donna Laframboise’s new book “The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert” blows the lid clean off the biased and politicised organisation otherwise known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We have always known that the IPCC was a political construct. Senior figures at the World Meteorological Office and the United Nations had already formed the view back in the mid-1980s (based on virtually no evidence at all) that man-made carbon dioxide was damaging the climate, and all that was required was to find some science to back it up. Enter the IPCC. Established to find the evidence that was at the time so sorely lacking, the IPCC is manacled to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – a political agreement between nations signed in 1992 – which has been described by Rajendra Pachauri as the IPCC’s “main customer”.

Even from that short introduction, it is utterly baffling how anyone (including our deluded government) could possibly still believe that the IPCC is an impartial scientific body. And yet the majority of the world’s climate policies are based on this organisation’s pronouncements.

However, the story is far more complex and shocking than that. The Delinquent Teenager describes numerous examples of the scientific message being massaged and manipulated to fit the preordained outcome. Grey literature is welcomed when it fits the agenda (despite Rajendra Pachauri’s protestations that the IPCC is nothing but peer-reviewed literature) – but oddly that peer-reviewed literature is excluded or played down when it doesn’t. Lead authors in IPCC reports write articles in journals which are then cited in the report – even when those journals were published after the official cut-off date. But who cares if it helps bolster the case? The lack of scientific integrity would shame a senior school physics student.

A classic example from the book is the much-touted link between natural disasters and “global warming”. The 2001 IPCC report claimed such a link, but the conclusion was based on a report prepared by an insurance company (Munich Re, an organisation which is well known for peddling climate alarmism, see here for example) which, naturally, would benefit financially from the greater demand for insurance that such a link may generate. The fact that this presents a clear conflict of interest seems to have escaped everyone down at IPCC Towers (funny how conflicts of interest with sceptics and oil companies seem to be pounced on rather more eagerly – as Daily Bayonet puts it, even accepting a free mug from a gas station is enough!).

If that wasn’t enough, one of the Munich Re report’s authors was also a lead author on the IPCC report. But the story doesn’t end there.

In 2005, the journal Science published a commentary on the subject by Evan Mills, citing the Munich Re report and the IPCC report as separate, independent sources. A few years later, Barack Obama’s scientific adviser John Holdren later prepared a report on the impacts of climate change, which cited the Mills paper as the definitive source on disaster costs and climate change. In a pithy summary of this incestuous series of events, Donna concludes:

So a dubious finding that originated in a document written by an insurance company was included in the Climate Bible in 2001. It then made its way into the peer-reviewed scientific literature in 2005. By 2009 it was being treated as gospel by a US government report. Welcome to the confidence-inspiring world of climate science.

There is much, much more. Every MP and Senator in Australia (and every attendee at the Durban Climate Summit) should be forced to read this book from cover to cover. Then maybe they would think twice about accepting without any critical thought the partisan conclusions of the IPCC.

This is a must-read book, and it’s a bargain at only $4.99 on Kindle. It expertly and thoroughly exposes the IPCC for the compromised and corrupt organisation we always suspected it to be.

Buy it here.

Donna’s excellent blog, No Frakking Consensus, is here.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Round-up

21 October, 2011 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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CSIRO boss is director of carbon sequestration company

19 October, 2011 by

If there's a climate crisis, carbon may need to be sequestered…

But there isn’t any conflict of interest, they protest, despite the fact that CSIRO provides a never-ending flow of alarmist predictions about climate change which will force Australia (and the world) to consider mitigation measures which might include, er, carbon sequestration:

THE head of the CSIRO is at the centre of conflict of interest claims over her role as a director of a Tasmanian company that purchases land for carbon sequestration.

It was revealed in Senate estimates today that the peak science body’s chief executive Megan Clark is the director of Cradle Mountain Carbon Pty Ltd and is also on the board of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Cradle Mountain Carbon Pty Ltd is a private family company that sets aside land to store carbon as part of efforts to combat climate change.

Liberal senator David Bushby said at the very least the public perception of Dr Clark’s additional appointments “should raise conflict of interest concerns”.

CSIRO’s acting chief executive Mike Whelan said Dr Clark, who was absent from today’s hearing, was an officer of the highest integrity and the organisation’s board believed there was no conflict of interest issue.

“She is driven on the basis of values and integrity,” Mr Whelan said.

“I don’t see, on the face of it, any issues there and I have no doubt the board has assured itself of the fact there is no conflict of interest.”

Well that’s OK then. Silly of me to even think such a heresy! Move along, nothing to see here. Just like there’s nothing to see at the IPCC, packed to the rafters with environmental activists… But we’re really unbiased – honest! Just trust us! Nothing can go wrong!

And look at Whelan’s immediate reaction – to defend Clark, and dismiss criticism with an arrogant wave of the hand. Instead, perhaps he should think, yes, it doesn’t look good does it? Perhaps Clark should consider whether her directorship of this company really sends the right message, which may compromise the impartiality of the organisation, whether there is any real conflict of interest or not. Ha – fat chance of that.

Read it here.

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Occupy this…

18 October, 2011 by

Right on

Given the popularity of “occupation” at the moment, I have a few suggestions of my own. Wall Street and the Bank of England are so last year, therefore we proudly present ACM’s list of people and places to #occupy, for their generous and selfless contribution to the mess in which we presently find ourselves:

  • The United Nations: has singlehandedly done more to damage wealth creation and the alleviation of poverty in the developing world than any other organisation in the history of the civilised world, thanks in no small part to its hysterical, dangerous and destructive climate policies (there are a thousand and one other reasons why the UN is a COMPLETE AND UTTER waste of space, but there simply isn’t time to go into them all…)
  • The IPCC: high school students have more scientific integrity than this discredited bunch of environmental activists – just ask Donna Laframboise
  • The Department of Climate Change: more spin than a launderette, the DCC happily lies and misrepresents the science behind Labor’s climate policy, to the extent that it calls CO2 “carbon pollution”, to deceive the Australian public into believing Labor’s climate policy will actually achieve something. Point blank refuses to acknowledge there may be uncertainties in the science, and shuts its ears to any contrary evidence.
  • Tim Flannery: more failed predictions than Nostradamus, Flannery warns of catastrophic sea level rises… but has a house on the waterfront. Hmm.
  • Anthony Albanese: narrowly wins the award for most obnoxious Labor front-bencher (in a very tough and hard fought field), having insulted a great many decent, hardworking Australians with his “Convoy of No Consequence” jibe,

and last but not least…

Occupy that.
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Big Green at work

18 October, 2011 by

Where's my Big Oil cheque?

Which puts Big Oil in the shade. It’s a nice cosy arrangement isn’t it? The Labor government hands out millions of dollars to environmental activist groups so they can spread misinformation and propaganda about Labor’s climate change and carbon tax policies. All the usual suspects are represented, the Climate Institute, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, all paid for by your taxes.

LABOR has handed $3 million in grants to supporters of climate change action to promote efforts to cut global warming and support the government’s clean energy package as it seeks to head off Tony Abbott’s anti-carbon tax campaign.

A Senate estimates committee hearing has also been told the Gillard government’s multi-million dollar carbon tax advertising campaign has reached almost $24 million, after a $4 million blow-out.

The almost $24 million in advertising includes $16 million on carbon tax advertising – up from $12 million – $3.9 million on developing the ad campaign and $4 million on household leaflets. Details also emerged about a series of ad-hoc grants to green groups.

The groups benefiting from grants included the Climate Institute, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Climate Works Australia. Some of the groups have been part of the “say yes” coalition and have backed Labor’s package to fight off the Opposition’s campaign against the policy.

In evidence to Senate estimates today, it emerged that:

The Australian Conservation Foundation received $398,000 to fund a series of [misre-]presentations on climate change from people trained by the movement started by former US vice president Al Gore;

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition received $271,000 for two forums in Brisbane and Perth on combating climate change;

The Climate Institute received $250,000 to produce an independent assessment of the impacts of the carbon price on the cost of living. It is working with ACOSS and Choice on the study;

Climate Works is negotiating with the Climate Change Department for a $460,000 grant aimed at raising community awareness to cut carbon emissions and;

The CSIRO has received $500,000 as part of a program aimed at cutting energy consumption in low-income households. (source)

It’s always the sceptics that are accused of being the highly organised, well-funded denial machine, paid for by Big Oil, when in reality the pay cheques of Big Green are far, far larger.

And with so much taxpayer money being wasted on distorting the message, no wonder Julia and Greg believe the debate’s over!

 

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