Monthly Archives: March 2010

John McLean still manipulating data

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Still waiting for John McLean and Bob Carter to comment on the Foster et al response published in JGR outlining exactly how they manipulated their dataset to give a false conclusion. According to McLean’s website, although the authors were well aware of the Foster response before it was published:

The informal nature of the Foster et al critique makes it inappropriate for me to respond in detail.

Right. Apparently the long delay between the original McLean et al publication and the Foster et al critique was in part due to the fact that the McClean et al were invited to respond to the critique prior to it being published in JGR, but ultimately declined.

So, while we wait for a formal response, here’s another lie from McLean’s own homepage: sea surface temperatures (SST’s) along the Great Barrier Reef are not increasing. In recent times, climate scientists have been blasted for using ultra-secret ‘tricks‘ to manipulate their data. It seems that McLean has gone one up on this in his analysis of SST’s, using statistical averaging to hide the any possible trends:

The data is in form of values for grid cells of 1 degree latitude by 1 degree longitude.  From it I extracted the data applying to the GBR Marine Park and calculated the average across the park for each month.

The GBR covers over 200,000km2, from 11’S to 24’S. By averaging surface temperatures across the entire region, McLean effectively destroys any warming trend, and presents the data as an average, with no indication of error or confidence intervals. In fact, here’s how spatially variable SST across the entire GBR Marine Park really can be (from Lough 1994):

Here it is again, this time using SST’s over the past 105 yrs (De’ath et al 2009):

Considering the seemingly obvious with latitudinal temperature gradients, why did McLean ignore spatial variability in SST’s and reach the conclusion that sea surface temperature isn’t increasing on the GBR?

These graphs make it abundantly clear that the sea surface temperature along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are not increasing at an alarming rate. The people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims. These sea temperatures might rise in future but the historical evidence suggests that this will most likely be due to the natural forces of El Nino events.

In case you missed it, here it is again: “The people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims“. Really? Instead of relying on website science*, let’s go to the published literature. Using mean annual sea surface temperature (SST) records were obtained from the HadISST1 for 1° grid cells, between 1900 to 2006, De’ath et al (2009) found clear temporal trends across 2° latitudinal bands:

We’ve tried replicating the results from McLean’s website results, but the methodology is (deliberately?) vague. Considering John McLean is an employee of “Applied Science Consultants” in Victoria, Australia, we can’t bombard him with FOI requests to show us his methods and data, so it seems only fair to ask McLean to be a little more transparent in his analysis. Otherwise, the conclusion that “.. people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims” seems particularly disingenuous. Should we expect a retraction on McLean’s behalf? As David Horton pointed out the other day: “This was never a scientific debate, always an ideological one, or, rather, it was always science versus ideology.”

Scientists have discovered 12 species of caterpillars that can survive for weeks underwater without ever breaking the surface. They don’t have gills and they don’t hold their breath.

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Here’s an interesting one: Hawaiian scientists discover a terrestrial caterpillar (that eats tree snails) has an innate ability to survive underwater for weeks at a time. It seems that this isn’t a survival mechanism (just in case they fell out of a tree and into a stream whilst munching on tree snails), but a deliberate mechanism and possibly part of their lifecycle. What’s even more interesting – scientists have no idea how they do it:

Rubinoff and co-worker Patrick Schmitz of the University of Hawaii did not find any water-blocking stopper over the caterpillars’ tracheae or evidence of gills. The animals drowned quickly when kept in standing water, so they seem to need the higher levels of oxygen present in running water, and probably absorb it directly through pores in their body, the scientists said.

The trait appears to have evolved more than once, Rubinoff said. After analyzing the DNA of the 12 amphibious species, the scientists found that three separate lineages of moth had developed the ability to breathe underwater at different points in the past.

“When the pressures on an environment are released, what crazy things are animals capable of doing?” said John W. Brown, a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“You just wonder . . . do all animals have that potential?”

Via reddit (link to PNAS article)

How Bob Carter diddled his data

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“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century.”

That is how Bob Carter described the implications of the paper he coauthored last year (McLean et al. 2009). But a new rebuttal to the paper (Foster et al. 2010) describes how McLean et al diddled their data to create a bogus and very strong positive relationship between the ENSO index and global atmospheric temperature. Scientists have long known that ENSO cycles, El Nino and La Nino events, can drive short-term (year to year) fluctuations in global climate and temperature.  But Foster et al McLean et al argued that there was an extremely strong relationship between the two variables, and moreover, that an increase in the ENSO index explained 80% of the observed global warming since, i.e., they argued that ENSO caused global warming.

Foster et al. 2010 is currently in press at the peer-review journal Journal of Geophysical Research but a PDF preprint can be downloaded here. Some aspects of it are technical, but most of the paper is quite readable.

The primary problem Foster et al. 2010 identified in the McLean et al. 2009 is how they transformed or filtered their data before analyzing how related the two variables were.

their [McLean et al] conclusions are seriously in error because their analysis is based on inappropriate application of filters to the data used. It is well established that ENSO accounts for much of the interannual variability in tropospheric temperatures (Trenberth et al. [2002] and references therein). By filtering they have reduced the time series studied to a narrow frequency band, thereby exagerrating what is already well-known. Consequently, their estimates are at marked variance with essentially every other study of the connection between ENSO and large-scale temperature variability, particularly with regard to the role of ENSO in any long-term warming trends, that has been carried out over the past two decades. – Foster et al

It is only because of this faulty analysis that they are able to claim such extremely high correlations. The suggestion in their conclusions that ENSO may be a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature is not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in that paper,especially as the analysis method itself eliminates the influence of trends on the purported correlations. – Foster et al

Here Foster et al describe the diddling, in technical terms, that led to the bogus result:

For all monthly time series (the global and tropical MSU temperature estimates from UAH and the SOI from the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology), the analysis of MFC09 first takes 12-month moving averages of the data, then takes differences between those values which are 12 months apart. The first step filters the high-frequency variation from the time series, while the second step filters low frequency variation. The latter step is perhaps the most problematic aspect of their analysis. It approximates taking the time derivative of the smoothed series, and therefore any linear trend which may be present in the original data will be reduced to an additive constant. Since additive constants have no effect on the correlation between time series, any subsequent correlation-based analysis of the processed time series can tell us absolutely nothing about the presence or causes of trends in the original data. – Foster et al

McLean et al justify the filtering by stating:

“To remove the noise, the absolute values were replaced with derivative values based on variations. Here the derivative is the 12-month running average subtracted from the same average for data 12 months later.”

But as Foster et al point out:

taking the derivative of a time series does not remove, or even reduce, short-term noise. It has the opposite effect, amplifying the noise while attenuating the longerterm changes. Thus, the use of the differencing filter has not been justified, as it has precisely the opposite effect to that invoked by the authors. The noise due to short-term “forces” has already been reduced by the moving-average step. Yet even this noise should not have been removed if the authors truly wish to estimate how much of the total variation in GTTA is due to variations in the SOI.

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In spite of the extreme distorting effect of their filter, MFC09 consistently refer to the correlations and fractions of explained variation they derive as between the SOI and tropospheric temperature, both in the abstract and the conclusions. They make no attempt to draw attention to the fact, let alone emphasize, that the reported correlations are between heavily filtered time series, or between estimated derivatives of time series. This failure causes what is essentially a mistaken result to be misinterpreted as a direct relationship between important climate variables. – Foster et al

The second problem with McLean at el is their stitching together of temperature data from two sources in their Figure 7, as a way to suggest their statistical findings are also evident in the raw data trends.  Two aspects of this are fishy.  One, they failed to correct for an offset in one of the datasets, which effectively reduced a recent observed warming trend (see Foster et al’s discussion of this just below).  Two, they effectively hid this stitching wiith vertical lines in their graphic.

In Figure 7 of MFC09, the authors plot actual GTTA (not filtered versions) against the SOI (using different axes) to illustrate the quality of the match between them. However the GTTA signal they plot is a splice of RATPAC-A data through 1979 followed by UAH TLT data since 1980. RATPAC-A data show a pronounced trend over the entire time span, which is visually evident from Figure 4 in MFC09, the temperature line rising away from the SOI line. It is especially misleading simply to append one data set to the other because there is a zero-point difference between the two. The mean values of RATPAC-A and UAH TLT data during their period of overlap differ by nearly 0.2 K, so splicing them together without compensating for this introduces an artificial 0.2-degree temperature drop at the boundary between the two. Unfortunately this is obscured by the fact that the graph is split into different panels precisely at the splicing boundary. – Foster et al

John Cook has a clear explanation of this problem too:

Another interesting feature of McLean et al 2009 is a plot of unfiltered temperature data (GTTA) against the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to illustrate the quality of the match between them. However the temperature signal is a splice of weather balloon data (RATPAC-A) to the end of 1979 followed by satellite data (UAH TLT) since 1980. RATPAC-A data show a pronounced warming trend from 1960 to 2008 with the temperature line rising away from the SOI line. This warming trend is obscured by substituting the weather balloon data with satellite data after 1980. It is especially misleading because the mean values of RATPAC-A and UAH TLT data during their period of overlap differ by nearly 0.2 K. Splicing them together introduces an artificial 0.2-degree temperature drop at the boundary between the two. Unfortunately, the splicing is obscured by the fact that the graph is split into different panels precisely at the splicing boundary. This splicing + graph splitting technique is an effective way to “hide the incline” of the warming trend.

McLean et al first author John McLean is an Andrew Bolt pal, who often gets Bolt into trouble by sharing misinformation with him. Second author Chris de Freitas has an ethically challenged reputation as well; as an editor at Climate Research he published the notorious (and debunked) Soon and Baliunas paper.  The lead editor and several additional editors at Climate Research resigned over the de Freitas flap (see a round up of this saga here in Scientific American). And third author, Bob Carter is a skeptic media darling, frequently appearing on right wing American talk shows like the Glenn Beck show and speaking at Heartland Institute conferences.

There was already a fair amount of analysis and discussion of the mis-deeds of McLean et al. 2009 even before the Foster et al. 2010 paper was published. Many think some of the anonymous bloggers who first noticed the problems with the study, e.g., Tamino, are indeed authors on the new Foster et al rebuttal paper. Brian Bahnisch has a recent roundup here, including:

Tamino’s explanation of the errors in the analaysis

Greenfyres list of a range of ethical lapses and other problems with the paper

Deep Climates very deep analysis of the problems with the analysis:

Finally, see John Cooks post Foster et al overview of the problems with McLean et al here

References

McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.

Foster, G., J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, K. E. Trenberth. Comment on “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter. In Press at Journal of Geophysical Research (download the PDF preprint here)

Bjorn Lomborg on why we shouldn’t act on climate change.

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Bjorn Lomborg has again been given prime space in The Australian.  Reading the article, one is struck by  Bjorn’s oversimplification of the issues perhaps exemplified by his claim that a sea-level rise of 5m would not be so bad.  For whom?  Is it just coastal people in developing nations? The recently released Department of Climate Change report on sea level rise points out that “Up to $63 billion (replacement value) of existing residential buildings are potentially at risk of inundation from a 1.1 metre sea-level rise, with a lower and upper estimate of risk identified for between 157,000 and 247,600 individual buildings.”  and that’s just residential buildings.  What about the fact that Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne airports will be inundated as well and have to be moved?

Why are such clear impacts ignored by Bjorn?  The book from Yale University Press (“The Lomborg Deception“) should be useful in outlining in detail Lomborg’s long and pathological history of deception.

Here is the article in The Australian.  Make sure you read the responses from some readers – they reveal that most Australians are not taken by such simplistic and downright deceptive garbage.

The Australian (March 19 2010)

FOR the better part of a decade, I have upset many climate activists by pointing out that there are far better ways to stop global warming than trying to persuade governments to force or bribe citizens into slashing their reliance on fuels that emit carbon dioxide.

What especially bugs my critics is the idea that cutting carbon would cost far more than the problem it is meant to solve.

“How can that be true?” they ask. “We are talking about the end of the world. What could be worse or more costly than that?”

They have a point. If we actually face, as Al Gore recently put it, “an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale preventative measures to protect human civilisation as we know it”, then no price would be too high to stop global warming. But are the stakes really that high?

The answer is no. Even the worst-case scenarios proposed by mainstream climate scientists, scenarios that go far beyond what the consensus climate models predict, are not as bad as Gore would have us believe. For example, a sea-level rise of 5m – more than eight times what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects, and more than twice what is probably physically possible – would not deluge all or even most of mankind.

READ ON

Sharon Begley on why scientists are their own worst enemies

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I have been sort of collecting these essays about how scientists are mucking up our attempts to communicate with the public.  This is, so far, my favorite.  Sharon Begley is a longtime and very talented science writer who recently returned to Newsweek.

I love a few of her lines. Read the full essay here.

Another factor is that the ideas of the Reformation—no intermediaries between people and God; anyone can read the Bible and know the truth as well as a theologian—inform the American character more strongly than they do that of many other nations. “It’s the idea that everyone has equal access to the divine,” says Harper. That has been extended to the belief that anyone with an Internet connection can know as much about climate or evolution as an expert. Finally, Americans carry in their bones the country’s history of being populated by emigrants fed up with hierarchy. It is the American way to distrust those who set themselves up—even justifiably—as authorities. Presto: climate backlash.

One new factor is also at work: the growing belief in the wisdom of crowds (Wikis, polling the audience on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire). If tweeting for advice on the best route somewhere yields the right answer, Americans seem to have decided, it doesn’t take any special expertise to pick apart evolutionary biology or climate science. My final hypothesis: the Great Recession was caused by the smartest guys in the room saying, trust us, we understand how credit default swaps work, and they’re great. No wonder so many Americans have decided that experts are idiots.

Climate scientist busted for fudging data

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Nope, it isn’t Phil Jones or Michael Mann. It is Bob Carter, a co-author on McLean et al. 2009 “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature”.

Last year, Bob claimed “We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century.”

Well a new paper (Foster et al. 2010) debunks these claims and shows the underlying analysis of McLean et al. 2009 to be totally erroneous. Oops.

See John Cooks technical overview here, but put simply, the authors transformed their data in a way that resulted in an erroneous conclusion. Their inappropriate treatment of their data greatly inflated the temporal relationship between ENSO (a natural cyclic phenomena) and warming of the lower atmosphere.

Basically, Bob and his mates used a few statistical tricks to smooth away the climate trend (have a look at Figure 3 and 4 in Foster and co. paper for how this works).

The Foster et al (2010) abstract states:  McLean et al. [2009] claim that the El Ni˜no/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as represented by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), accounts for as much as 72% of the global tropospheric temperature anomaly (GTTA) and an even higher 81% of this anomaly in the tropics. They conclude that the SOI is a “dominant and consistent influence on mean global temperatures,” “and perhaps recent trends in global temperatures”. However, their analysis is incorrect in a number of ways, and greatly overstates the influence of ENSO on the climate system. This comment first briefly reviews what is understood about the influence of ENSO on global temperatures, then goes on to show that the analysis of MFC09 severely overestimates the correlation between temperature anomalies and the SOI by inflating the power in the 2–6 year time window while filtering out variability on longer and shorter time scales. It is only because of this faulty analysis that they are able to claim such extremely high correlations. The suggestion in their conclusions that ENSO may be a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature is not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in that paper, especially as the analysis method itself eliminates the influence of trends on the purported correlations.

Bob is a well-known skeptic who also happens to be a university PhD scientist at James Cook University in Townsville Australia, also home of our friend Peter Ridd.

His rightwing affiliations are outlined by sourcewatch here:

He is a member of the right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs [8], and a founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation, a front group set up by the Institute of Public Affairs.

He has made countless outlandish and false claims about climate change, climate change science and the IPCC over the years, including these gems:

“atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent for temperature change”

“any cumulative human signal is so far undetectable at a global level and, if present, is buried deeply in the noise of natural variation”

If you have the time, you can peruse his impressive catalogue of denialist talks and essays here (including his appearances on the Glenn Beck show, talks at the Heartland Institute, you get the picture).

He recently penned a screed against James Hansen in which Bob related Hansen to soviet Lamarckian biologist Trofim Lysenko. (what?!) Carter argues for an investigation of climate science and scientists. Indeed. Since he is the first prominent climate scientists to be caught manipulating data to achieve a pre-determmined outcome, is it not obvious where the investigation should begin? Secondly, he also argues that the (mostly bogus and totally overblown) problems in some of the IPCC reports should result in a policy shift. Well the logic makes sense: science should in part drive the policy.  And when found to be incorrect, the policy should adapt. The same must certainly be true then of Bob’s policy prescriptions that he based on the results of his now debunked study. As Michael Tobis write, Carter made some wild policy arguments based on the McLean et al 2009 paper:

Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

MT links to the Climate Depot story about the paper from July 2009 which includes the press release, which in turn includes these statements:

Nature not man responsible for recent global warming

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

Also see MTs analysis and related coverage (that predates the new Foster et al paper) here and the RealClimate take here (an atrocious paper…).  Tamino, not surprisingly, picked up on this error a day after the paper was published. (so why isn’t he an author on Foster et al. 2010 – or is he?)

the real reason they note such strong correlation is that their analysis method removes all temperature variation which is due to trend — which of course makes it impossible for their analysis to indicate anything whatever about the trend.

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It’s certainly not true that their analysis shows “natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature.” It shows no such thing; their analysis removes all the effect of trends.

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Bob Carter’s statement in particular, that “The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions,” shows how little he understand the analysis he himself participated in. Of course, he wouldn’t be the first to fail to understand the impact of using estimated derivatives on correlation analysis.

read the rest here (warning, equations and graphs lay ahead)

The five things we want to know are:

1) Will McLean et al. retract the paper (and will Bob Carter admit fault or even discuss the errors publicly)?

2) Will the denial0sphere and the MSM give this story (a climate change scandal!) the same coverage it has recently showered on various IPCC hiccups?

3) Will there be an investigation as Bob Carter himself and so many other skeptics have insisted on over and over again, usually in response to bogus and unsubstantiated allegations.

4) Will Bob now reverse his policy positions and urge (vocally) politicians that may have been swayed by his bogus science to do the same?  After all Bob, shouldn’t the science drive the policy?

5) Will The Australian cover this pending scandal!  A scientist behaving badly!

In the CimateDepot post titled “Peer-Reviewed Study Rocks Climate Debate! ‘Nature not man responsible for recent global warming…little or none of late 20th century warming and cooling can be attributed to humans” Mark Morano (yes that Mark Morano, whom Randy Olsen describes as “arguably the loudest mouth in the climate skeptic movement with his increasingly popular website, www.climatedepot.com. He is a former field correspondent for Rush Limbaugh, helped to promote the Kerry Swift Boat Veterans story, and former spokesman for Senator James Inhofe“) makes the argument below:

Those who claim correlation using derivatives (differences) removes a linear trend miss the point. McLean et al use this method to construct Figures 5 and 6. It should be noted that detrended data was used purely to establish the time lag between the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and MGT in Figures 5 and 6. This time lag was then used in Figure 7 to show that close correlation between trends in temperature and changes in the Southern Oscillation Index seven months previously.
Figure 7 presents the data in its original form; namely, data that is not detrended, but with the time shift in SOI obtained from the detrended data. If an underlying trend existed, it would have shown up in Figure 7. One would see the temperature line rising away from the SOI line if, for example, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations had a significant influence. There is little or no sign of this.

Figure 4: Seven-month shifted SOI with (a) weather balloon RATPAC-A temperature data 1958–1979 and satellite UAH temperature data (b) 1980–1995. Dark line indicates SOI and light line indicates lower tropospheric temperature. Periods of volcanic activity are indicated.

Seem reasonable?  John Cook explains why it isn’t;

Another interesting feature of McLean et al 2009 is a plot of unfiltered temperature data (GTTA) against the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to illustrate the quality of the match between them. However the temperature signal is a splice of weather balloon data (RATPAC-A) to the end of 1979 followed by satellite data (UAH TLT) since 1980. RATPAC-A data show a pronounced warming trend from 1960 to 2008 with the temperature line rising away from the SOI line. This warming trend is obscured by substituting the weather balloon data with satellite data after 1980. It is especially misleading because the mean values of RATPAC-A and UAH TLT data during their period of overlap differ by nearly 0.2 K. Splicing them together introduces an artificial 0.2-degree temperature drop at the boundary between the two. Unfortunately, the splicing is obscured by the fact that the graph is split into different panels precisely at the splicing boundary.

A simple mistake?  A mere coincidence?

This splicing + graph splitting technique is an effective way to “hide the incline” of the warming trend.

Precisely. Time for a climate audit?

To be clear, there is no way to discern the intentions of the authors from the published manuscript.  This could all be a series of mistakes that just happened to produce a surprising result that aligned with the ideology of the authors.  The only way to possibly determine why the authors chose the method of data transformation they did, stitched together disparate data, then effectively hid that data-melding in their figures is to ask them and/or to obtain their lab notes and correspondence about the paper. This would be invasive, but is precisely the type of scrutiny the Bob Carter’s of the world continually demand.

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References

McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.

Foster, G., J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, K. E. Trenberth. Comment on “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter. In Press at Journal of Geophysical Research (download the PDF preprint here)

UN fails, once again – Bluefin slaughter to continue

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The UN has failed for a second time to pass legislation to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna from over-explotation and commercial extinction. The news came from a UN conference on endangered species, where the body also voted against ending the international trade in polar bear parts, shark parts and plans to vote to re-establish the trade in elephant parts and will consider bans on tiger and rhinoceroses “products” later this week. Wait, what is this conference about?  It sounds more like a trade show for animals pieces and parts. Maybe those progressive contrarians over at the Breakthrough Institute are right about the UN being the wrong place to develop international conservation regulations.  After all, a two-thirds majority vote is needed to pass anything meaningful. Is it any wonder this group is failing to simply pass legislation? And people fear a UN-run one world government?!

Atlantic bluefin tuna are listed by the IUCN as ‘critically endangered’.

From wikipedia (here): The Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), also known as the northern bluefin tuna, giant bluefin tuna(for larger individuals exceeding 150 kilograms or around 300 pounds) and formerly as the tunny, is a species of tuna native to both the western and eastern Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. Atlantic bluefin have been recorded in the Black Sea in the past, but are now believed to be extinct there. The Atlantic bluefin tuna is a close relative of the other two bluefin tuna species – the Pacific bluefin tuna and the southern bluefin tuna.

Today, the Atlantic bluefin tuna is the foundation of one of the world’s most lucrative commercial fisheries. Medium-sized and large individuals are heavily targeted for the Japanese raw fish market, where all species of bluefin are highly prized for sashimi. This commercial importance has led to severe overfishing. TheInternational Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) affirmed in October 2009 that Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks are declining dramatically, by 72% in the Eastern Atlantic, and by 82% in the Western Atlantic.[1] On October 16, 2009 Monaco formally recommended Endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna for an Appendix I CITES listing and international trade ban.

See our recent post on the bluefin travesty and the ICCAT here, where Jez says:

I’ve often wondered whether people who eat tuna from a can have any idea what a tuna fish actually looks like? How does a can of tuna still cost less than a dollar? Mainly because the average tin of tuna comes from smaller and less tasty species (usually albacore or skipjack at roughly $25 per pound), which are still plentiful* in the oceans as they require less resources to survive and reproduce. In contrast, the closely related southern bluefin tuna commands upwards of $350 per pound, yet is IUCN listed as ‘critically endangered’. With commercial extinction looming on the horizon, who will be the last person to eat a southern bluefin?

March 18, 2010, from the NYT, read it here

U.N. Rejects Export Ban on Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

By DAVID JOLLY

PARIS — Efforts to ban international trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were rejected Thursday by a United Nations conference on endangered species, as delegates in Doha, Qatar refused to back the U.S.-backed measures.

A proposal by Monaco to extend the highest level of U.N. protection to the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin, a fish prized by sushi lovers for its fatty belly flesh, failed by a lopsided vote of 20-68, with 30 abstentions, Juan Carlos Vasquez, a spokesman for the U.N. organization, said.

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The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora counts 175 member governments, though far fewer were represented for the votes in Doha. European Union nations, whose fleets are most responsible for the overfishing of the bluefin, abstained from voting after the bloc’s own watered-down proposal failed earlier in the day.

The rejection was a defeat for environmentalists and a clear victory for the Japanese government, which had vowed to go all out to stop the measure. Japan, which consumes more than three-quarters of the Mediterranean bluefin catch, argued that the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or Iccat, an intergovernmental organization, should be responsible for regulating the stock, not the United Nations.

While there is near-universal agreement that bluefin stocks are in danger, Japan’s argument resonated with other fishing nations, which were uneasy about what would have marked the first intrusion by the convention into a major commercial fishery.

But an independent review commissioned by Iccat shows that its own record on managing the fish“ is widely regarded as an international disgrace.” The agency has presided over more than two-thirds decline in the stock since 1970 — with much of that drop coming in just the last decade with the onset of huge industrial fishing operations and tuna “ranching.” And while the organization, which has no effective enforcement mechanism, has the authority to set quotas, year after year it has set the catch above the level that its own scientists say is safe to ensure the health of the species.

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This is the second time Japan has defeated a proposal at the conference to protect the bluefin. A similar proposal by Sweden failed at 1992 UN convention in Kyoto. While the bluefin vote was held by secret ballot, Japanese officials said this week that China and South Korea also opposed the measure, and Canada openly opposed it.

In a joint statement, Janez Potocnik, the European environment commissioner and Maria Damanaki, the commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries, said they were “disappointed” with the outcome, and called for Iccat to “take its responsibility to ensure that stocks are managed in a sustainable way.” If no action is taken, they warned, “there is a very serious danger that the bluefin tuna will no longer exist.”

The proposal to ban trade in polar bear parts and skins failed on the first vote, by a margin of 48-62, with 11 abstentions.

read the full article here

Same old Andrew Bolt, same old slanderous story.

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Andrew Bolt’s latest slander claims that CSIRO, BOM and the Australian government are in a conspiracy.   Who is the fraud here?   Thousands of scientists or Andrew Bolt?
Update:  Here we go again.  When will Mr Bolt be honest about the actual facts of the matter!  Either he isnt reading the responses to his fraudulent accusations or he is doesnt care about truth.  This piece was first published back on Feb 10th, 2009 – I thought it would be worth bringing up to the top to highlight Andrew Bolt’s ongoing war against science.
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After last nights airing of the Australian Story the columnist Andrew Bolt has decided to play the wounded soldier, accusing ABC Australian Story of bias.  Like me, you might find this a little amusing coming from someone who spends most of his time spinning the truth on all number of issues at the expense of his unable-to-respond victims.  Apart from failing to tell you that the ABC went to great lengths to put up the full video of our exchange (which is up on their website, and the fact that he got the last word), he continues to accuse the ABC of bias and scientists like me of being eco-alarmists.  In a very tiresome way he has trotted out the same old accusations despite the fact that he has been corrected endlessly.  So much for his adherence to the truth!

Monbiot on the unpersuadables and the revenge of the humanities students

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George Monbiot has a nice article on “the unpersuadables” here.  I have been thinking about this a lot. Is there any point in public outreach, in blogging, etc?  Has everybody already made up their mind regardless of what the rationale science says?  Randy Olson thinks not. Neither does Juan cole. I change my mind on this daily. Ove says he once changed someones mind using the raw power of facts, something I have never experienced, at least outside of university teaching.

By George Monbiot

from here

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us. The new study by the Met Office, which paints an even grimmer picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(1), will do nothing to change this view.

The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more.”(2)

Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company – and precious few journalists – with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world. But the problem is compounded by complexity. Arthur C Clarke remarked that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”(3).

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Popular mythology – from Faust through Frankenstein to Dr No – casts scientists as sinister schemers, harnessing the dark arts to further their diabolical powers. Sometimes this isn’t far from the truth.

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There’s a possible explanation in an article published by Nature in January(7). It shows that people tend to “take their cue about what they should feel, and hence believe, from the cheers and boos of the home crowd.” Those who see themselves as individualists and those who respect authority, for example, “tend to dismiss evidence of environmental risks, because the widespread acceptance of such evidence would lead to restrictions on commerce and industry, activities they admire.” Those with more egalitarian values are “more inclined to believe that such activities pose unacceptable risks and should be restricted.”

These divisions, researchers have found, are better at explaining different responses to information than any other factor: race, gender, class, income, education or personality type. Our ideological filters encourage us to interpret new evidence in ways that reinforce our beliefs. “As a result, groups with opposing values often become more polarized, not less, when exposed to scientifically sound information.”(8)

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Perhaps we have to accept that there is no simple solution to public disbelief in science. The battle over climate change suggests that the more clearly you spell the problem out, the more you turn people away. If they don’t want to know, nothing and no one will reach them. There goes my life’s work.