Holy Melting Icecaps! Acknowledging the Treat
Mar 15th, 2007 by Donagh
Yesterday I received a couple of comments relating to the Behind the Swindle post below, one very gratifying and the other claiming that I was following ‘a well trodden green path, if you can’t attack the science attack the scientists’.
It was never my attempt to avoid the science and go after the scientist. So, it turns out there’s a tenuous link between a scientist who is being used to propagate a lie, which was the net effect of the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, and Big Oil. So What?
Well, I suppose I was surprised is all, especially as that scientist was being used again by a BBC news organisation, namely Newsnight, without an acknowledgement of the expert’s potential conflict of interest (I realise of course that Newsnight was looking at the idea that maybe there wasn’t a universal acknowledgement right across the scientific community that global warming was the result of human activity – but that’s a point I’ll return to later).
This morning, however, when I read the comments I realise I was wrong.
Professor Paul Reiter of the Institut Pasteur in Paris is not a member of The Cooler Heads Coalition. Instead he has just spoken at their 2004 conference “The Impacts of Global Warming: Why the Alarmist View is Wrongâ€Â held on Capitol Hill, in Washington.
So the link is even more tenuous. Or perhaps not. The original connection came from Exxonsecrets.org an invaluable resource when tracking down how people are fronts for other organisations. But another quick look at the Internet revealed that Professors Reiter’s association with Big Oil is old news. Daily Kos, from Jun 26, 2006, reveals all.
“Madhav Khandekar, Nils-Axel Morner, & Paul Reiter: They were all invited guest speakers to a congressional & media breifing set up by the Cooler Heads Coalition. And who runs the Cooler Heads Coalition? Guys like Myron Ebell and Marlo Lewis, Jr. They’re also both key figures in the leadership of the Competitive Enterprise Institute(CEI), which is the firm that’s running those TV ads against Al Gore’s documentary. CEI has received over $2 million from ExxonMobil since 1998, including $270,000 in both 2004 and 2005, and a whopping $465,000 in 2003. And this website only provides the money trail to ExxonMobil. No telling how much other oil companies gave to CEI. Khandekar was also a speaker at the APCO news conference in Canada. Reiter’s also a Tech Central Station writer.â€
Yesterday I quoted an article by Reiter in which he argues that the current favouring of non-specialist activists must be corrected ‘by promoting the participation of professional scientists in public debate.
The problem with the Global Warming debate is that inevitably so many non-specialist, non-scientists are throwing their oar in. They have to, because its not just a scientific debate, its also a political one. It requires immediate Government action; it affects how businesses conduct themselves and even how individual citizens live their day-to-day lives.
But for that debate to be informed it requires that the science be authoritive and its assessments to be as definitive as possible so that those responsible for making far reaching decisions can be confident they are doing the right thing. But science cannot declare universal truths. It is at best provisional, based on whatever assessments that can be carried out using the latest knowledge available. Even then it can be contested and indeed for the sake of its veracity it must be. That’s how science works.
Reiter’s position on the global warming debate has been stated most succinctly in a recent interview for the International Herald Tribune when he said: “I am not a climatologist, nor an expert on sea level or polar ice. But I do know from talking to many scientists in many disciplines that this consensus is a mirage.â€
But Reiter, although going under the banner of a scientist is acting politically. By lending authority to think tanks sponsored by Big Oil and by contributing without a quibble to the controversial Channel 4 documentary he’s suggesting that there is less scientific consensus that in fact actually exists. He is openly playing into the hands of the deniers, those in whose interest it is to counteract the FACT that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that increased carbon emissions due to human activity is responsible for global warming and is causing, amongst other things, the sea level to rise.
Reasic, who comments on the original post, is doing a great job. Last week he had a post which points to a 2004 Science article illustrating what sort of a consensus there is about global warming within the scientific community.
To begin with, the article’s author Naomi Oreskes, a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, lists the scientific organizations that have come to the conclusion that human activity is having a strong negative effect on the environment. These organisations include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of course, but there’s many others such as The American Meteorological Society , the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Oreskes points out that the drafting of such reports and statements by these organisations may have downplayed any legitimate dissenting opinions that cropped up while the papers in the peer review process were being reviewed. To check if this was the case an analysis of the “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change”†was conducted.
For the purposes of the study the 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position.
“Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.â€
This consensus with its inherent complications, is reinforced by perhaps the most high profile scientific contributors to the Great Global Warming Swindle. Writing in today’s Independent MIT Professor of Physical Oceanography Carl Wunsch said “I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component.â€
In the article Wunsch castigates Channel 4 for producing a film that was ‘one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading’ and clarifies in detail what it is about the current Global Warming debate that he has problems with.
“I am on record in a number of places as complaining about the over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts. Thus the notion that the Gulf Stream would or could “shut off” or that with global warming Britain would go into a “new ice age” are either scientifically impossible or so unlikely as to threaten our credibility as a scientific discipline if we proclaim their reality.â€
Like Reiter he argues that science is still working on climate change…
“The science of climate change remains incomplete. Some elements are based so firmly on well understood principles, or on such clear observational records, that most scientists would agree that they are almost surely true (adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous; sea level will continue to rise…). Other elements remain more uncertainâ€
However, Wunsch believes that as a scientist there is a civil responsibility to highlight the danger of climate change and, by implication, to avoid behaving in the interest of particular vested interests.
“we as scientists in our roles as informed citizens believe society should be deeply concerned about their possibility: a Mid-western US megadrought in 100 years; melting of a large part of the Greenland ice sheet, among many other examples.â€
Wunsch illustrates how blatantly his scientific opinion was distorted in the documentary:
“In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important - diametrically opposite to the point I was making - which is that global warming is both real and threatening.â€
Again, in response to ‘Matt’, the commenter to the last post, it’s all about the science baby. We have to be critically aware that science can’t provide a irrefutable universal truth. However, it is the responsibility of scientists to recognize ‘the reality of the threat’. And in a final word (at least from my point of view) to Professor Paul Reiter of the Institut Pasteur, Wunsch argues that ‘statements of concern do not need to imply that we have all the answers’.
Wunsch at least contested that his point of view was distorted in the Channel 4 program and to highlight the responsibility of scientists regarding the threat of global warming. Reiter has yet to do either.
You are missing Reiter’s point completely. His comments are on the quality of the scientists on the IPCC. As a known expert in the field of water-borne diseases (Reiter worked for 22 years for the CDC), Reiter knows about malaria and dende. The “lead experts” of the IPCC Human Health section don’t; none of them had ever published a paper on these topics. This is at complete odds with the notion that the IPCC is “the worlds leading scientists”. And when Reiter asked the IPCC why these lead authors were chosen, he was basically told “governments” did the selection.
So the “concensus” of the IPCC may turn out to be merely self-selection of like-minded scientists.
So the inference is that IPCC is determined by a political agenda which allows governments to handpick scientists who ‘favour’ the idea that climate change is caused by the increase in industrial pollutants and other aspects of human activity? Are these the same governments who have been slow to address the issue of climate change because it would mean regulating industries that have significant economic and political clout within their respective countries and who are understandably determined to resist any regulation which might affect their profit margin?
A few, as in a small minority of scientists, who were originally involved in the IPCC process have contested how the UN organization has come by its findings. However, they are outweighted by the majority who have published peer reviewed papers that indicate that human activity is a causal factor.
The findings of the IPCC and those who came by them are quite transparent and they continue to be part of an open debate. They state things using the terms ‘likely’ and ‘very likely’.
Reiter’s point is part of that debate, if only a minor footnote within it. However, because of his position as an expert he has allowed himself to be promoted by climate change deniers who want to use his minor quibble to blacken all the scientists and the science behind the IPCCs conclusions.
Thanks for the reply. Yes it is strange that governments who fail to act are selecting IPCC “selectively”. But I’m simply reporting the actual lack-of-expertise of IPCC members in the Human Health chapter. Your only rebuttal is to call this a “quibble”. Strange since the IPCC website says “Hundreds of experts from all over the world… They
are selected by the Working Group Bureaux …because of their special expertise
reflected in their publications and works.”
Someone with zero publications in human borne diseases does simply not meet this criteria. This is a disgrace to the IPCC and supporters like yourself should be *keen* to rectify it, lest it taint the other conclusions. The fact that you seem ok with non-experts making authoritative claims really does make me wonder how un-biased your views are.
I doubt that the primary chapters of the IPCC are staffed so questionably. Their lead authors *are* probably world experts. I would like to believe that they are being good scientists (observe then conclude), but the Human Health chapter tarnishes everyone’s work.
I’m not a climate scientist and I suspect neither are you (and for that matter Reiter isn’t one either). I don’t think there’s any point in trying to respond to the argument that IPCC are using dude scientists to make inaccurate claims because one scientist with connections to climate change denying organizations funded by oil companies says that he doesn’t like one of the conclusions.
Because I’m not a climate scientist I have to make a decision about who I believe and on this issue I wholeheartedly accept the opinions of the majority of credible scientists and the conclusions of the IPCC. And so should you.
Some interesting reading for you, if you want it.
http://climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/#comments
Provides many links to those who have rebutted the GGWS program, which reinforces the conclusions drawn from the IPCC report.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/03/3924_james_hansen_te.html
Details how the White House interfered with science in order to downplay global warming
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/energy/story/0,,2038415,00.html
Discusses how ExxonMobil funds climate science departments in top US universities
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html
Provides an indepth report on the organizations behind the attempts to question climate change being a result of human action.
http://www.jri.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=83
John Houghton, former chair of IPCC, provides a detailed rebuttal of the GGWS
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414
A blog written by real climate scientists detail lots and lots of science, verifiable, true science.
Thanks for the links. Yes, I’m definitely no climate scientist and am trying to learn. But saying ‘trust us’ is not enough for a skeptical public, be it from oil company shills or “expert” scientists. Caveat emptor.
I’ve just been browsing your blog. I don’t want to jump in at the deep end, but I assure you that I have always tried to stick to my subject, the natural history and transmission dynamics of vector-borne diseases. In this field, at least, there are two sides, the specialists and the activists. Those of us who specialise in this field are apalled by the nonesense that is bandied about by persons who are clearly unaware of even the basics of our subject. Much of it is pure invention.
An example: Mr Gore’s assertion that Nairobi was founded in a healthy, malara-free place, but today the mosquitoes have moved up the mountains etc etc. (remember his animation of the little mozzies moving up the mountain?!).
I first wrote to counter this fabrication in The Lancet in 1996. The author of many such myths knows the truth, but ignores it.
The truth is that ‘Nyrobi’ was a watering place for Maasi herdsmen. It was chosen as a site for a hub in the construction of a railway that the British were building from Mobassa, on the coast, to Kampala, in Uganda.
The site was chosen because it was just before a major engineering challenge, the Kikuyu escarpment and the descent into the Rift Valley.
The site was a major mistake. Everybody came down with malaria, and the medical team tried hard to have the site abandoned.
In the 50 years that followed, there were at least 10 major epdidemics of malaria, and they extended up to at least 2250 meters. Nairobi is at 1600 m …
Check out “The Lunatic Express”, Penguin Books, for a fascinqting history of East Africa, and of the building of this railway.
Interestingly, when WAG TV asked me to go with them to Nairobbery to film for the docu,entary, I contacted colleagues who work on malaria in Kenya. They are the world’s tops in malaria research. I asked for guidance as to where to film malaria in Nairobi (without getting killed). My colleague replied: “what malaria? there’s bugger all malaria here!”
So, I was wrong to believe Mr Gore!
Some years ago; I wrote a review entitled: “From Shakespeare to Defoe, Malaria in Englnd in the Little Ice Age”. You will find it on the CDC web page. Check it out and then tell me whether I am corrupted by the oil industry (though I could do with a bit of dough!). So, next time you read, as in a previous IPCC report, that malaria cannot be transmitted in regions where the winter temperatures drop below 15 degC, think of the Bard. And next time the activists say malaria will move into southern Europe, remember that it was once transmitted as far north as Lapland! Think of Santa!
Best wishes to all, and please, please, read the scientific literature before believing what you are told. Make up your own minds.
Lastly, on the IPCC, the InterGOVERNENTAL Panel on Climate Change: each Chapter is written by a team (health has about 8 co-authors and 2 lead authors): at least two of these “worlds top 1500 scientists” must come from a country “of the South”, i.e. a very poor country, and at least one other must be from a country with an emerging economy (I think those are the terms). I have spent most of my career in very poor countries, so belive me I am not biased, but I ask you, how in the heck can they claim top class scientists from such countries for more than a 5th of the total. Check their bibliographies: many dont have a single published article …
Enough! I felt I had to put my own cards on the table. I am frightened of this situation. I/we are branded a holocaust deniers, stooges of Exxon Mobile, and all the rest. Were will it end? If activists come to dominate public perceptions, where will science end up?
Even if the Great Global … is refuted by others, do we not have the right to speak? Yet even the Royal Society has tried to get the DVD of the film bqnned!
And the Gore film/book. Truly, is it not worrying that Mr Gore has produced a blockbuster film, a lavishly illustrated boo, a simpler version of that book, for schoolchildren, and an even simpler one for 5-8 year olds? To me this is raw propaganda and indoctriination.
Lastly, check out the version for school children: look for the page on insect borne disease. Look carefully at the half page photo of a ‘mosquito’. Note that its proboscis is in its tail. Well, its not a proboscis, its an ovipositor. You see, its a parastic wasp, not a mozzy!
And check out the tse-tse fly. It is a tse-tse fly, but it must have died a horrible death; its only got 4 legs …
Hi Paul,
It seems strange to address someone who is unlikely to read this response but since you were kind enough to comment I should have the courtesy to reply. When I wrote this post back in March I didn’t expect the subject of it, Paul Reiter of the Institut Pastuer in Paris, to reply. My delay in replying is probably due to the fact that I was very skeptical that you were the self same international expert of vector-borne diseases, but your IP address was attributed to the Institut Pastuer, so I have to presume it is you.
First of all, if I suggested that you should be persecuted as a type of ‘holocaust denier’ then I apologize. I certainly don’t want to be thought of as someone who is trying to vilify someone who is simply attempting to question what they see as an increasingly dominant, yet erroneous orthodoxy. Apart from this brief foray I’ve largely stayed out of the debate on global warming, one because there are those better informed and more articulate to do it for me and secondly because, through blogs at least, there is much reactionary hysteria on both sides that simply produces a kind of white noise rather decent, intelligent, well informed debate.
Which leads me to ask why you should feel the need to counter my post? I imagine there have been many who have pointed out your various contributions to organization that have a vested interest in challenging the increasing consensus that global warming is man made. Certainly when researching the post I came across many, some of which I linked to in the post above. I can’t imagine you tried to refute them all.
My post was originally inspired by your appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight, where it was clear to me that that news organization was trying to suggest that there where two sides to the story of whether global warming was man made or not. Whether unwittingly or otherwise, you were representing the view that it was not man made, an argument that was perpetuated in the completely discredited scandal of a documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. In the article I asked why you continue to allow your name to be associated with media events and organisations such as the GGWS and Tech Central, Cooler Heads etc, whose principle aim is to not clarify but muddy the debate on global warming.
You attack Al Gore’s book for perpetuating inaccuracies about global warming and declaring that it is ‘raw propaganda and indoctrination’. Yet, you have been the willing contributor to another propaganda machine, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which has been shown to have falsified the testimony of those who have contributed to it, modified graphs and illustrations, used discredited scientific data (the sun spots being responsible for global warming theory has also been recently refuted, although the data the original theory was based on was shown to erroneous) and whose director is connected to The Revolutionary Communist Party that have steadfastly and inaccurately attacked anti-global warming campaigners.
You seem to have two arguments. One that the IPCC findings that the transmission of malaria is not going to occur where temperatures are below 15°C (interestingly, from a local perspective you say in a letter on the Center for Disease Contol site: “Ae. aegypti is common where winter temperatures of -15°C are not unusual and epidemics of dengue and yellow fever have occurred as far north as Boston and Dublinâ€). And, connected to this, the relative worth of the scientists used to write the report.
The other is that IPCC is a political organization that is being mis/used by Al Gore and other activists who are determined to perpetuate their own agenda in the name of ‘science’ and in doing so undermine the real Science, which contains within the means for intelligent, well researched dissent.
On the first point, on malaria, some of which has been raised here, I can’t really argue. You are one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, and I’m thoroughly bemused that you should try use that extensive knowledge when its clear I can’t possibly counter it. As you say, you’ve been making the point since 1997, coming down to the level of a non-expert blog to reiterate it is kind of self-defeating.
About checking the bios of the scientists who are signees of the IPCC report, I have yet to do that. What I did do, however, was check the bios of those signatories of the letter to sent to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in April last year, of which you were one. The information is courtesy of the DeSmogBlog, admittedly, but there’s every reason to presume it’s accurate. While you have published many papers, over 30 according to DSB, there are many who have published considerably less and some who have published none at all. This is despite the fact that the letter starts with the line: “As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines.â€
In the letter its states: “Observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.â€
I find this curious as another paper has been published recently that also takes issue with IPCC findings. Not by saying that the IPCC have rushed to judgment. Rather to argue that their findings are too conservative.
In a paper published by the NASA climate research scientist James Hansen, uses ‘empirical data on trace gas histories and climate change…history also provides our best indication of the level of global warming that would constitute ‘dangerous interference’ with climate. The empirical data, abetted by appropriate calculations, imply that control of trace gases must play a critical role in preserving a planet resembling the one on which civilization developed.
According to George Monbiot, the authors try and show that “Rather than taking thousands of years to melt, as the IPCC predicts, Hansen and his team find it “implausible†that the expected warming before 2100 “would permit a West Antarctic ice sheet of present size to survive even for a century.â€
On the second point, Al Gore did little about climate change while Vice President, and is responsible for Live Earth for which he should forever be castigated. The IPCC is a political organization and as an international organization like the UN it is ultimately a servant of its masters, which similar the UN, are the stronger Industrial nations. Up to now those masters haven’t really been very enthusiastic about implementing the changes needed to try and curtail global warming, no matter how much they talk about carbon offsetting.
Another ad hominem attack by an uneducated unscientific mind. Those in the alarmist religion with their multi-billion dollar governmentally funded “Scientific” research into AGW have no room to talk of scientists with cash heavy pockets. Who is richer/more powerful oil companies or all the governments pushing AGW?