Denialist Agenda (Part 4): Manufacturing a scientific scandal

Posted on February 24, 2010 by ovehblog

This is part 4 of an excellent series of articles on the denialist agenda by Clive Hamilton. Here, Clive outlines how ludicrous the claims are about the IPCC made by hack journalists such as Jonathan Leake (The Sunday Times). As to someone who has participated in the IPCC process, Clive’s account is accurate and Leake’s horribly twisted. It’s just a pity that much of the world’s media is so horribly gullible or complicit. Surely there are mechanisms that we should be using to combat this deceit?

Clive Hamilton, ABC Unleashed.

Although sceptics have been gnawing away at the credibility of climate science for years, over the last five months they have made enormous leaps owing to the hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the discovery of a number of alleged mistakes in the benchmark reports of the IPCC.

While the “revelations” have been milked for all they are worth, and a lot more, the science remains rock solid. If instead of cherry-picking two or three that lend themselves to spin, you read the 1000 or so emails that were posted on a Russian server the picture that emerges is one of an enormously dedicated group of men and women doing their best to carry out research of the highest quality.

If there were a conspiracy among scientists to manipulate the truth, you would expect the evidence to be there in spades in these private emails. But it’s not. Instead they show scientists working their backsides off to do good science, with email exchanges stopping briefly on Christmas Eve to be resumed on Boxing Day, with apologies to colleagues for taking time out to have surgery or get married, all with a sub-text of worry about the implications of their work for the future of humanity.

Rather than cover-ups, we read private emails from one scientist to Phil Jones, the CRU head who has been forced to step down pending an inquiry, saying he has been watching the sceptics blogs and, anticipating misrepresentation, says “this last aspect needs to be tackled more candidly in AR4 than in the SOD, and we need to discuss how to do this”. Others show them bending over backwards to be open.

Before the leak of the CRU emails, one colleague emailed others in response to attacks by sceptics on Phil Jones:

“The sad thing here is that Phil Jones is one of the true gentlemen of our field. I have known Phil for most of my scientific career. He is the antithesis of the secretive, “data destroying” character the CEI and Michaels are trying to portray to the outside world.”

And the emails reveal the enormous external pressure they were under. They show they were constantly accused of being frauds and cheats; their work was twisted and misrepresented; and they were bombarded with vexatious freedom of information requestsorchestrated by denialists. In short, they were caught up in a hot political debate that they did not really understand or want to be part of, yet they were the target of savvy, secretive and ruthless organisations ready to pounce on anything they said or wrote.

This is the real story exposed of “Climategate”. Instead, the scientists in question have seen their professional reputations trashed in the world’s media for no cause, to the point where Phil Jones has been on the verge of suicide. It has been the most egregious and unfounded attack on the integrity of a profession we have ever seen.

Yet the science remains rock solid

Since the leaking of the CRU emails the worldwide press have reported a series of “mistakes” in the IPCC reports that have allowed the denial lobby to claim that the entire IPCC process and the body of climate science should be junked. It turns out that almost all of the mistakes are fabrications. How could this have happened?

The first and only significant error identified in the IPCC report is the claim that 80 per cent of Himalayan glaciers are very likely to disappear by 2035. This was a serious mistake for a scientific report that should not have got through the review process. But let’s be very clear about its significance:

The error occurred in Volume 2 of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the volume on the impacts of climate change. Volume 1 reports and assesses the physical basis for climate science, including projections of warming. Chapter 4 contains an extensive discussion of glaciers, snow and ice. Projections for glaciers are also discussed in Chapter 10. No one has challenged any of the statements in these chapters, prepared by teams including the world’s leading glaciologists, which carefully lay out what is known.
The erroneous “2035” claim was nowhere highlighted by the IPCC. It appeared neither in the chapter summary, the report summary or the crucial Summary for Policymakers. In no sense was it a central claim of the IPCC report, as some newspapers have said.
It was a glaring error that should have been picked up earlier, but it was so deeply buried in the report that denialists around the world, with all of their supposed scientific expertise, did not pick it up for two years. In fact, they did not pick it up at all; it was first pointed out by Georg Kaser and others. Kaser is an eminent glacier expert who was a lead author of Chapter 4 in Volume 1.

Although mistakes like this one should not occur, to suggest that it has any bearing on the credibility of the science of AR4 is absurd. The more remarkable fact is that so few errors have been identified in AR4, and none at all in the crucial Volume 1 which sets out the physical basis for climate change. On page 493 of Volume 2, where the “2035” mistake occurs, I count 20 factual claims that are falsifiable. Multiply that by the 3,000 or so pages in AR4 and you can see how utterly trivial that single mistake is.

But haven’t many more mistakes been found in AR4? No. The only other claimed error that has any substance is the statement that “55% of its [the Netherlands] territory is below sea-level”. This figure was supplied by the Dutch Government. It is slightly misleading because the correct statement is that 55% per cent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding,although the Dutch Ministry of Transport says that 60% of the country is below the high water level. The confusion may have implications for the Netherlands’ dike planning but has no bearing whatever on the science of climate change.

There are three additional “errors” in AR4 that have attracted press attention and sparked denialist frenzies. They are analysed on the Realclimate website.

“Africagate” refers to the claim that AR4 overstated the potential decline in crop yields in Africa. The figures in AR4 have since been shown to be an accurate assessment.
“Disastergate” is the allegation that the IPCC erroneously attributed some of the rising costs of disasters to climate change. In fact, the section in question is hedged around with caution and the expert whose work was said to be misused by the IPCC has declared that the IPCC has fairly represented his findings.
“Amazongate”, a story that opened with the claim: “A startling report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise”. The story is plain wrong, with the expert on whose work the IPCC relied stating that the information is correct, although the referencing is incomplete.

Apart from the fact that these three “gates” are beat-ups with no basis in their criticism of the IPCC, they have one feature in common – the stories were all written by Jonathan Leake, science and environment editor of The Sunday Times.

Leake has close links with deniers and in fact based these stories directly on wild and unsubstantiated claims by sceptic bloggers, as uncovered by Tim Holmes. In the case of Amazongate, Leake had been informed by another expert that, while the referencing was inadequate, the claim in AR4 is correct and, if anything, an understatement. But Leake disregarded this and quoted that same expert in his story to exactly the reverse effect, as if he were a severe critic of the IPCC.

On the role of Leake I can do no better than quote Tim Holmes:

“While it is wholly unsurprising that the denial lobby should be attempting to push baseless and misleading stories to the press, what is surprising is the press’s willingness to swallow them. In this case, two experts in the relevant field told a Times journalist explicitly that, in spite of a minor referencing error, the IPCC had got its facts right.
That journalist simply ignored them. Instead, he deliberately put out the opposite line – one fed to him by a prominent climate change denier – as fact. The implications are deeply disturbing, not only for our prospects of tackling climate change, but for basic standards of honesty and integrity in journalism.”

Leake’s stories have been reproduced in the other Murdoch broadsheets, The Australianand the Wall Street Journal and of course have been amplified on Fox News, and are themselves now being referred to as “Leakegate”.

Bloggers and columnists, who attack climate science without ever opening an IPCC report or speaking to a real climate scientists, imagine that the body of climate science is a house of cards, and taking away one or two will cause it to collapse. In fact the scientific case for global warming is like a mountain built up by adding one rock at a time over many years. Even if all of the alleged errors were true it would amount to picking off a handful of rocks from the top of the mountain, leaving the rest unchanged and unmoved.

Yet these alleged mistakes – non-existent or trivial – with no implications whatever for the robustness of climate science have been deployed in a sophisticated campaign to blacken the reputations of the scientists responsible for alerting us to the perils of global warming.

Perception versus reality

Unfortunately, the chorus of declarations that the climate scientists got it wrong has had no impact on the earth’s climate. Indeed, those who study the climate itself rather than the bogus debate in the newspapers and the blogosphere understand that climate science and popular perceptions of climate science are diverging rapidly, not least because the news on the former is getting worse.

Soon after AR4 appeared in early 2007, those familiar with the science began to say that as a result of the consensus process and the natural caution of scientists, the Fourth Assessment Report had seriously understated the risks from climate change, particularly in its selection of scenarios and its estimates of likely sea-level rise.

Rather than rehearse the evidence for these warnings, well known to those who follow the science, let me make mention of a number of developments in climate science that have been published or reported in the five months since the leaking of the Climategate emails. It is evidence that warming is more alarming than previously thought yet which has been buried in the avalanche of confected stories claiming that climate scientists have exaggerated.

We have just had the warmest decade on record.
A new study concludes that an average warming of 3-4°C (which means 7-8°C on land), previously thought to be associated with carbon dioxide concentrations of 500-600 ppmv, is now believed to be associated with concentrations of only 360-420 ppmv, a range that covers the current concentration of 385 ppmv, rising at 2 ppmv per annum. If confirmed by further research, the implications of this are terrifying.
While news reports allege glacial melting has been exaggerated, the best evidence is that the rate of disappearance of glaciers is accelerating. The University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service reports that “new data continues the global trend in strong ice loss over the past few decades”.
The rate of flow into the sea of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, adding to sea-level rise. This augments the evidence that IPCC cautiousness led to significant underestimation of the likely extent of sea-level rise in the 21st century. The East Antarctic ice-sheet, previously believed to be stable, has now begun to melt on its coastal fringes. The West Antarctic ice-sheet continues its rapid melt.
Sharply rising temperature in the Arctic has, over the last five years, caused a rapid increase in the amount of methane being emitted from melting permafrost. The limit of the Arctic permafrost has retreated northwards by 130 kilometres over the last 50 years in the James Bay region of Canada.

I have tried to find some new studies that go the other way in the hope I can counterbalance this bleak story, but have not succeeded.
Over the last five months, a vast gulf has opened up between the media-stoked perception that the climate science has been exaggerated and the research-driven evidence that the true situation is worse than we thought.

Just when we should be urging immediate and deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, the public is being lulled into disbelief, scepticism and apathy by a sustained and politically driven assault on the credibility of climate science. For this we will all pay dearly.

Tomorrow: Where are the defenders of science?

Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain

Posted on February 23, 2010 by ovehblog

Jeffrey Sachs, guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 February 2010 12.47 GMT

In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence — and that the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), the global group of experts charged with assessing the state of climate science, has been accused of bias.

The global public is disconcerted by these attacks. If experts cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should governments spend billions of dollars to address it?

The fact is that the critics — who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks — are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.

Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. Merchants of Doubt, a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The authors show that the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.

Today’s campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing “acid rain.” Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too.

Later still, the group defended the tobacco giants against charges that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. And then, starting mainly in the 1980s, this same group took on the battle against climate change.

What is amazing is that, although these attacks on science have been wrong for 30 years, they still sow doubts about established facts. The truth is that there is big money backing the climate-change deniers, whether it is companies that don’t want to pay the extra costs of regulation, or free-market ideologues opposed to any government controls.

The latest round of attacks involves two episodes. The first was the hacking of a climate-change research centre in England. The emails that were stolen suggested a lack of forthrightness in the presentation of some climate data. Whatever the details of this specific case, the studies in question represent a tiny fraction of the overwhelming scientific evidence that points to the reality and urgency of man-made climate change.

The second issue was a blatant error concerning glaciers that appeared in a major IPCC report. Here it should be understood that the IPCC issues thousands of pages of text. There are, no doubt, errors in those pages. But errors in the midst of a vast and complex report by the IPCC point to the inevitability of human shortcomings, not to any fundamental flaws in climate science.

When the emails and the IPCC error were brought to light, editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal launched a vicious campaign describing climate science as a hoax and a conspiracy. They claimed that scientists were fabricating evidence in order to obtain government research grants — a ludicrous accusation, I thought at the time, given that the scientists under attack have devoted their lives to finding the truth, and have certainly not become rich relative to their peers in finance and business.

But then I recalled that this line of attack — charging a scientific conspiracy to drum up “business” for science — was almost identical to that used by The Wall Street Journal and others in the past, when they fought controls on tobacco, acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and other dangerous pollutants. In other words, their arguments were systematic and contrived, not at all original to the circumstances.

We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.

Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to “read” the Earth’s history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth’s systems) in order to advance our understanding.

And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth’s climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet.

The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.

When should we accept climate change as a reality?

Posted on February 23, 2010 by ovehblog

From the Washington Post

A Down-Under Journalistic ‘Wipeout’ In Covering Risks to the Great Barrier Reef

Posted on February 23, 2010 by ovehblog

By John F. Bruno | February 23, 2010 YALE FORUM ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE MEDIA

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA — Growing tensions between scientists and major news outlets in Australia center around scientists’ concerns over coverage of the potential effects of climate change on coral reefs.

Many of the environmental scientists point to what they see as biased and misleading reporting, leaving them frustrated and wondering how they can best engage in a public debate that seems to have left them behind.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Unlike anywhere else in the world, national media coverage of coral reefs in Australia is a near-daily occurrence. The primary reason? The close proximity of theGreat Barrier Reef (GBR), a natural wonder made by the accumulation of calcareous skeletons of countless billions ofcoral polyps over the last 8,000 years. The GBR is more than 2,000 km long and consists of thousands individual reefs. The biodiversity of the GBR is bewildering; a single reef can easily house many times more coral and fish species than the entire Caribbean Sea, the global center of biodiversity.

Across this vast island continent, citizens have a genuine and broad sense of national stewardship of the GBR, in part because this natural tourism magnet is valued at $51.4 billion, nearly 5 percent of Australia’s annual GDP.

A threat to the reef 40 years ago by exploratory oil drilling and outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns-starfish, a voracious coral predator, largely inspired the beginning of the now global reef conservation movement. Cars since the 1970s have criss-crossed the nation sporting “Save The Reef” bumper stickers. This popular movement led to establishment of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and to what is now in many regards the world’s largest and best managed marine reserve.

Over those three-plus decades, coral reefs around the world have declined as the result of a range of impacts. Local threats include activities like dynamite fishing and damage from boat anchors. Globally and in the longer-term, threats mount from ocean warming and from acidification.

Coverage of the GBR and reef science on radio and television programs of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and some other outlets is generally sympathetic to conservation efforts and in alignment with the findings and perspectives of reef scientists.

In contrast, the nation’s largest daily newspaper, The Australian, frequently reports on and champions aggressive opposition to coral reef science and management and to the Labor government’s proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A recent example is a front-page February 4 story bylined by reporter Jamie Walker and headlined “Report undercuts Kevin Rudd’s Great Barrier Reef wipeout.”

Australia’s pro-environment Prime Minister, Rudd recently spoke to the parliament of potentially devastating future effects of anthropogenic global warming on the Great Barrier Reef. Temperatures only 1 or 2 degrees C above normal summertime highs can cause “coral bleaching“. If such warming lasts for weeks or goes much higher than that, corals can die en masse, having cascading impacts on all the reef inhabitants.

The well-documented temperature sensitivity of corals leads to theexpectation that if tropical ocean temperatures increase by 2-3 degrees C, as they are predicted to do even under the more conservative IPCC emissions scenarios, coral populations would be reduced and the overall reef ecosystem could be degraded.

A Journalistic Wipeout

The lead of Walker’s story was “Kevin Rudd’s insistence that the Great Barrier Reef could be ‘destroyed beyond recognition’ by global warming grates with new science suggesting it will again escape temperature-related coral bleaching.”

The new science purportedly undercutting Rudd’s warning came from theAustralian Institute of Marine Science, an internationally respected research institution. The report indicated that as of mid-January, there was no sign of mass bleaching on 14 reefs on the southern GBR. According to Hugh Sweatman, PhD, leader of the AIMS Long Term Monitoring Program, the absence of any mass bleaching is attributable to several recent cyclones and current atmospheric conditions having reduced local water temperatures.

The point is that the reef has not (yet) bleached this summer, a simple consequence of the fact that temperatures around the Reef had not increased to more than 1 degree C above the long-term average (the well-documented trigger for coral bleaching and the basis for the satellite “hotspot” detection program run by NOAA in Washington D.C.).

Furthermore, the first sentence of the second paragraph of the report states “median reef-wide live coral cover declined on the majority of sampled reefs [10 of 14] since previous surveys [in 2009].” That finding does not jibe with the rosy description of recovering and resilient reefs painted by the newspaper’s “wipeout” story nor in recent Australian stories tellingly titled “Scientists ‘crying wolf’ over coral” and “How the reef became blue again.”

Besides getting the science wrong, The Australian’s February 4 article illustrates what appears to be a new approach to media news coverage in Australia of climate change: The central interpretation was not corroborated by the text of the report or by any scientist. This fact and Walker’s tone make this front-page article better suited for the opinion pages.

These examples of recent coverage illustrate that the once-honored wall between news pages and opinion pages in Australia appears increasingly porous. This is probably not surprising given the strong influence of the British Broadsheet format on Australian papers.

Reporters around the world in fact appear to be getting more assertive and openly subjective in their role as arbiters of the frenzied debate over climate change science, further blurring the line that for many had long separated news and opinion pieces.

A typical example is coverage of the snowstorms in Washington D.C., suggesting (falsely) that such localized weather events indicate global warming has ended.

Among reporters seeing through the fog of weather/climate confusion,Washington Post political reporter Dana Milbank correctly wrote, “As a scientific proposition, claiming that heavy snow in the mid-Atlantic debunks global warming theory is about as valid as claiming that the existence of John Edwards debunks the theory of evolution.”

Journalistic Accountability

AIMS CEO Ian Poiner, PhD, in a letter to The Australian published online one week after the February 4 “wipeout” story, wrote, “This year the Australian Institute of Marine Science has observed that there is no mass coral bleaching on the southern Great Barrier Reef.” He said The Australian’s front-page story “uses these observations to contradict the view that the reef is threatened by climate change. This is not the case. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the healthiest coral reef ecosystems in the world, but climate change is a significant long-term threat … One or two seasons of no bleaching do not mean that the GBR is not threatened.” (AIMS has also issued an easy to read white paper on its home page, outlining its major findings related to coral reefs and climate change.)

Given the recent focus by some media on development and review processes of IPCC reports and of scientific peer-review more generally, scientists find the absence of rigorous review or accountability in the mass media ironic and frustrating.

Reacting to such coverage, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Brisbane said, “The recent unprofessional and unethical behavior of journalists has all of us very concerned. Not only does there seem to be a lack of accountability for telling fibs, but there seems to be a concerted effort to harass and intimidate some of our best scientists as well as the institutions to which they belong.”

Unequal Media Access

The only major news outlet in Australia regularly and responsibly reporting on climate science and openly challenging reporting by The Australian has been the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Veteran ABC reporter Jonathan Holmes followed up a hard-hitting segment of his Media Watch program that dissected the flaws in the newspaper’s story with a broader editorial about the disproportionate prominence in Australian mass media of climate change “deniers”:

There’s no denying that the climate change deniers, or sceptics, (the term you prefer depends which side you’re on) have succeeded, to a degree that orthodox climate scientists find baffling, in persuading a large proportion of the public that the science of global warming is, in the Opposition leader’s words, “absolute crap”.

The opinion pages – and as we showed on Media Watch last Monday, sometimes the news pages – of our only national broadsheet have heavily favoured sceptics over proponents of the scientific consensus.

The Melbourne-based Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt responded with an editorial of his own, disagreeing with Holmes’ assertion that journalists unfriendly to science are dominating Australian newspapers.

I’m flattered, but Holmes is kidding himself. Warmists have for years had unrivalled access to the mass media. Even better, they’ve had their cause taken up by the most powerful outlets … Every newspaper environment reporter pumped out warmist scare stories about polar bears and collapsing glaciers …

Perhaps. But the tide has clearly turned, and in the news columns and not solely on the editorial pages. The Australian has been running a campaign ofnear-daily articles and editorials sharply critical of the IPCC and evidence of anthropogenic climate change.

The relative frequency of “denialist” and “warmist” pieces in Australian media could be quantified. Yet that would miss Holmes’ central point: there is a big difference between merely describing the science in the dry and balanced tone of an environmental reporter and vehemently attacking it and its practitioners from a pulpit of populist outrage and scorn.

There is no Aussie media watcher comparable to the liberal climate analystJoe Romm, nor a nationally syndicated columnist like The New York Times‘Tom Friedman, forcefully advocating green energy policies, often from a centrist economic or national security perspective. Climate change scientists simply lack an adequate platform to communicate directly with the public the way agenda-driven critics of their research do. Like many of their science colleagues in the U.S. and elsewhere, they are also stuck on the defensive and are sorely in need of training on how to work more successfully with the media.

The battle of words among reporters and opinion makers in Australia goes on, with neither scientists nor the science playing any discernable role. Despite some knowledgeable media coverage of threats to the GBR and reefs around the world, scientists sense their findings are being drowned out and misrepresented by partisan and agenda-driven advocates with daily access to hundreds of thousands of readers.

The consequences are sobering, Hoegh-Guldberg cautions. “You might write bad journalism off as simply an acceptable consequence of our freewheeling society. The implications, however, are extremely serious. It threatens to undermine our ability to respond to the challenges of climate change. In my mind, the media must devise mechanisms to deal with such journalistic practices or we will all suffer the consequences.”

Denialist Agenda (Part 2): Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?

Posted on February 22, 2010 by ovehblog

Here is part 2 of Clive Hamilton’s series on the right-wing denial movement:

The floods of offensive and threatening emails aimed at intimidating climate scientists have all the signs of an orchestrated campaign by sceptics groups. The links are well-hidden because mobilizing people to send abuse and threats is well outside the accepted bounds of democratic participation; indeed, some of it is illegal. And an apparently spontaneous expression of citizen concern carries more weight than an organised operation by a zealous group.

Without access to ISP logs, it is difficult to trace the emails to a source. However, it is clear that hard-line denialists congregate electronically at a number of internet nodes where they engage in mutual reinforcement of their opinions and stoke the rage that lies behind them.

Those who operate these sites retail the “information” that reinforces the assertions made by their followers. They often post highly personal attacks on individuals who speak in favour of mainstream science and measures to combat global warming, knowing from experience that they will stimulate a stream of vituperation from their supporters.

The posts on these sites often provoke an outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and vilification of individuals. There is no restraining influence and, in the middle of one of these frenzies, it would be a brave sceptic who called for caution and moderation in the ideas expressed or the language used.

In Australia, a handful of denialist websites stand out. They include the blog of Herald-Suncommentator Andrew Bolt, Bolt’s stable mate Tim Blair at the Daily Telegraph, the website operated by sceptic Joanne Nova (a pseudonym for Joanne Codling), and the community forum site operated by the Queensland farmers’ organisation Agmates. Denialists also flock to the e-journal Online Opinion.

On these sites discussion of the “global warming conspiracy” seamlessly segues into a hodge-podge of right-wing populist grievances and causes, including defending rural property rights, the martyrdom of farming hunger-striker Peter Spencer, the errors of the Club of Rome, blood on the hands of Rachel Carson for causing DDT to be banned, the evils of Al Gore, the plan by the United Nations to dominate the world, and the need to defend freedom and democracy from these threats. Sceptics are explicitly or implicitly portrayed as freedom fighters battling attempts by scheming elites to shore up their power or impose a world government.

Recently, this stew of paranoia has been given a boost by the media exposure granted to Christopher Monckton in his recent Australian tour. Monckton propounded his extraordinary theory about climate change being a conspiracy by communists – assisted by the Hitler Youth and a craven scientific establishment – to seize power through a world government hidden in a climate treaty. A few months ago a fantasist like Monckton would have attracted only eye-rolling from news editors.

I am not suggesting that the individuals and organisations I have mentioned are responsible for organising the cyber-bullying attacks on scientists and others. However, they do create an environment that encourages them. The effect of these sites is three-fold.

They supply the ammunition that confirms and elaborates on climate deniers’ beliefs.

They provide a forum in which deniers can participate in a like-minded community that reinforces their views.

And they identify the individuals responsible for promoting climate lies, stimulating participants to make direct contacts with “warmists”.

Andrew Bolt’s blog deserves special mention both because it has become the most popular meeting place for deniers in Australia and because it is sponsored by a mainstream media outlet, Melbourne’s Herald-Sun, a Murdoch tabloid.

Bolt specialises in posts of angry ridicule directed at climate scientists and any others who publicly accept the science. Recent targets have included Ove Hoegh-Guldburg, Andy Pitman, and the CSIRO as a whole.

Bolt has admitted that his posts bad-mouthing climate scientists have incited his readers to send abusive emails to them.

Mainstreaming denial

It might be thought that vilification of climate scientists and others engaged in the climate debate is confined to the nether-world of the Internet. In truth, the most influential source of misrepresentation and ridicule resides in the “heritage media” in the form of the Murdoch broadsheet, The Australian. I will consider its long-running war on science later, but here it is important to draw attention to its role in identifying hate figures for deniers and fueling their aggression.

As an illustration of the newspaper’s tactic, at the Copenhagen conference in December an Australian named Ian Fry, representing the Government of Tuvalu, made an impassioned intervention from the plenary floor that captured the mood and made headlines around the world. Fry is a shy man who has for many years devoted himself to representing the tiny island state for minimal financial or reputational reward.

The day after his intervention The Australian published a story ridiculing his “tear-jerking performance” and suggesting he is a self-seeking hypocrite because he lives a long way from the sea. The story appeared on the front page alongside a photograph of Fry’s house.

At a time when climate campaigners were receiving grisly death threats, the editors of the national daily decided to expose Ian Fry and his family to danger by publishing information about where he lives that enabled people to work out his address. When challenged, the journalist responsible for the story showed no understanding or remorse.

In 2005 The Australian used the same tactic on Indigenous leader Mick Dodson, publishing a photo of his house under a headline claiming he lived comfortably in the suburbs while depriving other Indigenous people of the opportunity to own a house. Dodson, already the subject of death threats, said he feared for the safety of his family.

The Australian‘s grubby tactic was unwillingly revealed by one of its journalists, Caroline Overington. During the last election campaign, a Labor candidate decided he did not want to be interviewed and photographed, so she threatened to send a photographer around to stake out his house. She sent the following text message:
“Either you say yes to a photograph smiling and happy and out campaigning, or we stake you out at … Bondi Junction, and get you looking like a cat caught in a trap, in your PJs. Your choice.”

What drives denial?

What motivates the legion of climate deniers to send hate-mail? In recent years a great deal of evidence has come to light linking fossil fuel corporations with organisations that promote climate denial, but it would be a mistake to believe that the army of sceptical bloggers is in any sense in the pay of, or directly influenced by, the fossil fuel lobby.

Climate denialism has been absorbed by an older and wider political movement, sometimes called right-wing populism. Emanating from the United States, and defined more by what it fears than by what it proposes, the movement’s enemies were helpfully listed in a 2004 TV ad attacking Democrat Howard Dean, whose supporters were characterised as a:
“tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show.”

Although the targets are adapted to Australian conditions, in both countries the movement is driven by feelings of angry grievance. Those who identify with it see themselves as anti-liberal, anti-elitist and anti-intellectual. They are resentful of their exclusion from the mainstream and at the same time proud of their outsider status.

Since the mid-1990s, anti-climate forces associated with the Republic Party and oil-funded conservative think tanks have successfully linked acceptance of global warming and the need for greenhouse policies with those groups despised by right-wing populism.

In more recent years, the denial movement has been joined by some hard-line conservative Christian groups, including the notorious Catch the Fire Ministries and its witch-hunting pastor Danny Nalliah. According to Paul Colgan, these groups were heavily involved in the lobbying to have Tony Abbott elected as Liberal Party leader.

As this suggests, becoming a denialist does not follow from carefully weighing up the evidence (that is, true scepticism) but from associating oneself with a cultural outlook, taking on an identity defined in opposition to a caricature of those who support action on climate change. It is the energy in this wider movement that has seen climate denialism morphing into a new form of political extremism.

Some active climate deniers possess a distinct “mindset” comprised of a certain worldview, including a narrative centered on secretive forces – variously encompassing elected leaders, scientists, scientific organisations, environmental groups and the United Nations – that are using climate science and climate policies as a cover to accumulate power with the objective of creating a world government that overrides national sovereignty and deprives citizens of their rights.

Those who hold to this worldview often feel marginalised and persecuted. It attracts the unstable and fanatical as well as those with more legitimate political grievances. For political leaders so inclined, the energy being mobilised by climate denial is a golden opportunity. Although it remains necessary for these leaders to evince a concern for the environment, and even to pretend to accept climate science, they can speak to the denialist minority using dog-whistling techniques to signal that they are really on their side.

This explains the decision by new Opposition leader Tony Abbott to meet Monckton when even one of the country’s most conservative columnists wrote of the dangers of associating with his extreme views. Although he had been forced to repudiate his pre-leadership claim that climate science is “absolute crap”, in meeting Monckton Abbott sent the message that his real views have not changed. Of course, he can respond to accusations of giving succour to denialism with the dog-whistler’s device of “plausible deniability” – he is happy to hear all views.

A more subtle message was sent by Abbott earlier this month when he gloated over the recent recall of the Toyota Prius; for him and others hostile to environmentalism, the tarnishing of a green icon is a reason for celebration.

Tomorrow: The Exxon-funded think tanks that feed climate denial.

Part 1: Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial

Denialist Agenda (Part 1): Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial

Posted on February 21, 2010 by ovehblog

Clive Hamilton has uncovered some disturbing information on how the right-wing climate denial movement operates through the bullying and threating of Australia scientists. This article should be of great concern to anyone who believes in the freedom of speech and our ability to heed the inconvenient truth about climate change. This is the first of five articles examining the sordid underbelly of the denialist movement. Read on …

Two years ago the Labor Party won a decisive election victory in part by riding a public mood demanding action on climate change after years of stonewalling.

The new Government promised to spearhead world efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today it’s on the run, retreating from a surge of militant anti-climate activism that believes climate science is a left-wing plot aimed at promoting elites, wrecking the economy and screwing the little man. What happened?

Part 1: Climate cyber-bullying

Australia’s most distinguished climate scientists have become the target of a new form of cyber-bullying aimed at driving them out of the public debate.

In recent months, each time they enter the public debate through a newspaper article or radio interview these scientists are immediately subjected to a torrent of aggressive, abusive and, at times, threatening emails. Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features – it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated.

The messages are typically peppered with insults. One scientist was called a “Loudmouth, arrogant, conceited, ignorant wanker”.

The emails frequently accuse the scientists of being frauds who manipulate their research in order to receive funding, such as this one to Ben McNeil at the UNSW:

“It’s so obvious you are an activist going along with the climate change lie to protect your very lucrative employment contract.”

They often blame the recipients of being guilty of crimes, as in this one received by Professor David Karoly at the University of Melbourne:

“It is probably not to (sic) extreme to suggest that your actions (deceitful) were so criminal to be compared with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. It is called treason and genocide.

“Oh, as a scientist, you have destroyed peoples trust in my profession. You are a criminal . Lest we forget.”

Receiving emails like these is unsettling and at times disturbing, which of course is the point. They become worrying when they cross the line to personal threats, such as these sent to Professor Andy Pitman at the UNSW:

“There will be a day of facing the music for the Pitman type frauds… Pitman you are a f**king fool!”

And this one:

“If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you.”

When Pitman politely replied to the last, the response was more aggressive:

“F**k off mate, stop the personal attacks. Just do your science or you will end up collateral damage in the war, GET IT.”

All threats have to be taken seriously, and at times warrant calling in the police. The police are able to trace anonymous emails to their sources and take action against those who send them. The police are now advising those who received abusive and threatening emails to resist the immediate urge to delete them and keep them in a separate folder for future reference.

Climate campaigners have also noticed a surge in the frequency and virulence of this new form of cyber-bullying. The following was received by a young woman (who asked that her name not be used):

“Did you want to offer your children to be brutally gang-raped and then horribly tortured before being reminded of their parents socialist beliefs and actions?

“Burn in hell. Or in the main street, when the Australian public finally lynchs you.”

Another campaigner opened her inbox to read this:

“F**k off!!!

“Or you will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f**king neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!

“F**k you little pieces of sh*t, show youselves in public!!!”

Greens Senator Christine Milne told me that senators’ inboxes are bombarded every day by climate deniers and extremists, so that now they are running at least 10 to one against those who call for action on climate change.

She describes it as a “well-organised campaign of strident, offensive and insulting emails that go well beyond the bounds of the normal cut and thrust of politics”.

It was widely reported that in the days before the Liberal Party leadership challenge last November, MPs were blitzed with emails from climate deniers. Some MPs were spooked into voting for Tony Abbott, the only one of the three contenders who had repudiated climate science. Australia’s alternative government is now led by climate deniers.

Journalists hit

Journalists too have become the victims of cyber-bullying. I have spoken to several, off the record, who have told of torrents of abusive emails when they report on climate change, including some sufficiently threatening for them to consult their supervisors and consider police action.

One was particularly disturbed at references to his wife. Another received the following from someone who gave his name and identified himself as medical representative at major pharmaceutical’s company:

“You sad sack of s**t. It’s ok to trash climate change sceptics yet, when the shoe is on the other foot, you become a vindictive, nasty piece of s**t not able to face the fact that you’re wrong about climate change and you’re reputation is now trash.”

Anonymous emails are usually more graphic.

“Your mother was a goat f**ker!!!!!! Your father was a turd!!!!!!! You will be one of the first taken out in the revolution!!!!!!!! Your head will be on a stake!! C**t!”

Few of those on the receiving end of this hatred doubt that the emails are being orchestrated. Scores of abusive emails over a few hours are unlikely to be the product of a large number of individuals spontaneously making the effort to track down an email address and pour forth their rage.

While some individuals act alone, increasingly the attacks are arranged by one or more denialist organisations. It’s fair to assume operatives in these organisations constantly monitor the media and, when a story or interview they don’t like appears, send messages out to lists of supporters, linking to the comments, providing the scientist’s email address and urging them to let him or her know what they think.

One or two of the cyber-bullies have hinted at the level of organisation, with one following an abusive rant with the comment: “Copies of my e-mails to you are also being passed out to a huge network for future reference.”

Net rage and free speech
The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate or to change what they say. While the internet is often held up as the instrument of free speech, it is often used for the opposite purpose, to drive people out of the public debate.

Unlike the letters pages of newspapers, on the internet anonymity is accepted and the gate-keepers, where they exist, are more lax, so the normal constraints on social discourse do not apply. On the internet, the demons of the human psyche find a play-ground.

If a group attempts to have a considered discussion about climate science on an open forum it is very soon deluged with enraged attacks on climate science, sometimes linking for authority to well-known denialist websites. Most scientists long ago stopped attempting to correct the mish-mash of absurd misrepresentations and lies in web “discussions”.

Is the new campaign of cyber-bullying working? Receiving a large number of offensive emails certainly wears most people down. Some scientists and journalists probably do change what they say or withdraw from debate. Others have strategies for dealing with the abuse-never replying, deleting without reading or swapping loony emails with colleagues, and cultivating a thick skin.

The effect of the cyber-bullying campaign on some scientists-including those I have mentioned-is quite opposite to the intended one. The attempts at intimidation have only made them more resolved to keep talking to the public about their research. Their courage under fire stands in contrast to the cowardice of the anonymous emailers.

Tomorrow: Who is behind the cyber-bullying campaign?

There’s no denying climate change scientists are being overwhelmed by the sceptics

Posted on February 11, 2010 by ovehblog

Amen. That is precisely how I feel. Overwhelmed and outgunned. Still, this great editorial by veteran ABC producer and reporter Jonathan Holmes of Media Watch is uplifting. The only thing I think he got wrong was to suggest Andrew Bolt “knows far more about the science than most other journalists, environment reporters included”. Bolt has certainly been very vocal in the debate and is making a comfortable living disparaging the science and scientists. But almost entirely by spewing misinformed nonsense that he picks up on denier blogs. See Bolt’s silly response to Jonathan’s piece here.

Journalists weather the changing climate

By Jonathan Holmes

Posted Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:34am AEDT
Updated Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:09am AEDT

Link to the original editorial here.

Just a few years ago, when I was making programs about climate change policy for Four Corners, it was legitimate for journalists to argue that the science of climate change was settled. The issue was what should and could be done about it.

Boy, has the climate changed!

There’s no denying that the climate change deniers, or sceptics, (the term you prefer depends which side you’re on) have succeeded, to a degree that orthodox climate scientists find baffling, in persuading a large proportion of the public that the science of global warming is, in the Opposition leader’s words, “absolute crap”.

An even larger number of folk apparently take the view that there is so much doubt around the science that to take action that would be in any way painful is premature.

It’s true that the failure of Copenhagen has made it hard to argue that Australia should take drastic action on its own. But that was a political failure. It had nothing to do with the science.

It’s true that some stupid exaggerations, unsupported by peer-reviewed science, have been identified in the 2007 IPCC report. They’ve done a lot of harm to its credibility.

It’s true leaked emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia have exposed a disturbing unwillingness on the part of its scientists to share raw data, and apparent attempts by them to prevent sceptical views from being published in reputable journals.

But the vast majority of climate scientists (and for that matter, of scientists in other relevant disciplines), supported by the vast preponderance of peer-reviewed research, still maintain that human-induced climate change is an unassailable reality: rapid global warming will continue, not just for the next hundred years, but far into the future, unless and until human beings drastically reduces the emission of greenhouse gases.

So why are their views being overwhelmed, in the public arena, by the tiny number of ‘sceptics’ with scientific credentials, and their non-scientist supporters?

The simple answer, it seems to me, is that it’s been the doubters who’ve had the passion, and the commitment.

Think what you will of the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt, he’s industrious. He starts posting on his blog at around 6:00am, and his last posts are often past midnight. If there’s truth in Annabel Crabb’s famous observation that he cherry-picks articles from the University of East Bumcrack, he does so repeatedly, and obsessively, and to his growing army of devoted fans, convincingly. He’s made global warming his specialty. He knows far more about the science than most other journalists, environment reporters included.

He’s supported by the usual army of conservative columnists. The Devines and Pearsons and Albrechtsens and Akermans, with barely a science degree between them, have been able to satisfy themselves that a global scientific consensus is in fact a global political conspiracy, fuelled by capitalist-hating greenies.

The opinion pages – and as we showed on Media Watch last Monday, sometimes the news pages – of our only national broadsheet have heavily favoured sceptics over proponents of the scientific consensus.

Far more influential, I would guess, are the commercial radio talk back hosts. At least half a dozen of the most influential have been enthusiastically espousing the sceptic cause for years.

After all, it meshes perfectly with the general message that makes talk-back radio work for its audience, which goes roughly like this: “The politicians/bureaucrats/bosses are idiots or scoundrels. They pretend this problem (any problem) is complicated when it couldn’t be more simple. You and I can see the answer. Blind Freddie can see the answer. But they can’t because they’re stuck in their ivory towers/on the take/too clever by half/out to take your money from you.”

As we said on last week, these gentlemen (and they are all men) don’t like to trouble their listeners with both sides of a question. The proponents of global warming science (such as they are) seldom get a guernsey on their shows. The Lord Moncktons of this world get literally hours of unopposed air time.

And their listeners, as anyone who argues against them in public knows, are vociferous and passionate. Just look at the posts at the bottom of this article.

Lastly, of course, there’s the simple fact that people would rather believe those who tell them “she’ll be right,” than those who tell them their way of life is leading the world to hell in a hand-basket.

Of course, the mainstream media (with the notable exception of The Australian) has reported climate change science extensively, and on the whole, uncritically. The sceptics are quite right about that.

But reporting scientific findings, and convincing people they are true, are two different things. If the public is to be galvanised, the science needs selling. But where are the salespeople? Who has been out there arguing passionately and compellingly that climate change is real, and urgent?

As everyone agrees, the Prime Minister has been missing in action for a year or more. His minister, Penny Wong, is robotic. Peter Garrett has been sidelined. Only Greg Combet has summoned up any discernible passion on the topic.

There’s Bob Brown and his Green cohort, who preach strictly to the converted. And Malcolm Turnbull, whose sermons are magnificent; except that nobody’s listening to him any more.

The scientists themselves can’t be expected to do the job. Very few have a talent for public advocacy. It’s not their role.

They know that winning a public argument on television or radio, where there’s little time for anything but assertion on either side, has little to do with the ability to compile and assess evidence in the field, or meticulously to program computer simulations that attempt to predict the future.

They’ve been reluctant, too, to dignify people they regard as cranks or self-serving controversialists by taking them on in public debate.

And, as that debate has become more and more stridently political, they’ve been even less inclined to get embroiled.

So it’s no coincidence that the most compelling public arguments for the reality of global warming have been made by people who aren’t themselves climate scientists: people like former US vice-president Al Gore, or mammal palaeontologist Tim Flannery, or ‘public intellectuals’ like Robert Manne.

But Al Gore is a long way away, and Flannery’s been pretty quiet of late.

NGOs like Greenpeace and WWF have plenty of passion, but they’ve produced no public advocate who’s really broken through. Perhaps the Australia Institute’s Clive Hamilton has come nearest, but he’s hardly a household name outside the chatterati.

Our left-wing columnists, like Phillip Adams and Mike Carlton, have no pretensions to detailed knowledge of the science. Our environmental and science journalists largely stick to news reporting and avoid advocacy.

What we don’t have in Australia – have never had – is someone like The Guardian’s George Monbiot: a journalist with the same access to the mainstream as Andrew Bolt, who has made it his or her business to be as thoroughly on top of climate change science, and who’s willing to mix it with the sceptics at any and every opportunity.

It may have made little difference. Rationality doesn’t necessarily win arguments like this. Yet it still feels to me as though the pass has been sold without a fight.

Of course, it may turn out that the sceptics are right. In twenty years time we may all be laughing at the great global warming scare, as we do now at Y2K.

If that happens, the scientists, and the journalists who accepted their findings, will have a lot to answer for, and the sceptics will have every right to crow.

But if the opposite is true, and we find ourselves facing climate change that by then can’t be reversed before much of this continent becomes uninhabitable, it will be small comfort to be able to blame the sceptics.

If the science is as compelling as the climate change advocates would have us believe, then this was an argument that should have been won long ago. For want of champions, it’s perilously close to being lost.

Jamie Walker’s response to Media Watch

Posted on February 9, 2010 by ovehblog

Editorial writer, AKA “journalist” for The Australian Jamie Walker has responded to reports (e.g., see the coverage by Media Watch here) of inaccuracies in his piece last week on the GBR and climate change. We noted many of these problems and the broader media is now taking a second look at Jamie’s work and the editorial policies of The Australian. (For those of you living outside Oz, The Australian is a local Murdoch/NewsCorp-owned right-leaning paper.)

Reporters, particularly working for Murdoch/NewsCorp vehicles such as Fox News, regularly lie about the science of climate change. (see the roundup on this over at Media Matters here). There are countless newspaper “reporters” whose writing is driven largely by their political ideology, e.g., see George Will. Such denial of fact and science is harmful to society. But it is usually restricted to the editorial pages where ideologues of all varieties are free to spout off and help sell newspapers. What is so surprising about Jamie’s GBR story is that it was clearly a barely disguised editorial published on the front page as a regular news story. Jamie has now admitted as much in a letter to the paper’s editor (see below), saying that the main point of the article was based merely on his opinion. What disciplinary action the paper will take or what internal editorial policy changes will occur are unclear. As is typically the case, the repsonsibility lies as much with the editor Paul Whittaker himself for deciding to put the piece on the front page as a “news item” rather than on the editorial page where opinion-based articles belong. Yet Whittaker is also the one responsible for disciplining Walker and to do so would be an admission of fault and an acceptance of responsibility.

This same issue has flared up again and again in the MSM, e.g., see the well-covered examples in the Washington Post, where editorial page editor Fred Hiatt has gotten hammered (also see here) over allowing George Will to publish nonsense about climate change. Yet an important difference is that even the WaPost restricts such foolishness to the editorial section. The papers serious reporters regularly contradict and correct Will’s false claims. Due to their ideological alignment and the conflict of interest, Hiatt has never corrected any of Will’s mistakes. Will Paul Whittaker follow suit or stand for the standards and ethics of honest and professional journalism at The Australian?

—

Jamie’s letter is addressed to Paul Whittaker, Editor of The Australian and starts out by citing Ove’s post about the article:

February 7, 2010

Mr Paul Whittaker Editor The Australian

Dear Paul,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond to the issues raised by Media Watch. I note that the language used by the Media Watch representative is uncannily similar to that of Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who blogged on my piece last week. https://climateshifts.org/?p=4329

Then quickly gets into trouble:

A few points:

We contrasted comments by the Prime Minister against latest research findings on coral bleaching.

Scientist often wonder whether the science is really that confusing or whether biased “journalists” are purposefully confusing things. Media Watch got this story exactly right. Jamie Walker took the AIMS report totally out of context and the inferences he made are not supported by the science or the scientists nor by logic. AIMS found that a handful of reefs on the southern GBR did not bleach as expected last summer. They explained why (storms cooled the water down). Simple, right? Somehow Jamie took this as evidence that FUTURE global warming/increases in ocean temperature would not harm the GBR. Huh??? Do I need to explain the fallacy in that logic? Well here is it anyway;

1) The reef didn’t warm, due to storm activity, as expected, so not much can be learned about future warming (obvious right?)

2) Even if it did warm and corals didn’t bleach, so what? This would not have nullified the large body of science that the report Rudd was citing is based on. It is an easy, child-like experiment. Warm corals up in a tank by 1C and they bleach, by 3C and they die. Questioning that this happens or would happen more frequenty if the ocean warmed by 4-6C is idiotic; it isn’t a sign of skepticism, it is instead demonstrating a striking degree of truculence and denial of establish fact. Sometimes warmed corals in nature don’t bleach due to a variety of other factors that influence bleaching severity, e.g., the species and genotypic composition of the coral assemblage, current velocity, light, cloudiness, the recent thermal history, etc. Scientists know this and we have considered all that in our projections of future bleaching under AGW.

3) Not a single scientist or anyone at all backed up Jamie’s faulty interpretation of the AIMS report. In fact AIMS wrote the Australian to complain (here) that Jamie misrepresented their science and to explain why Jamie’s broader argument was flawed; “AIMS has found that the science is pointing to potentially severe consequences for the Great Barrier Reef from climate change. Current observations of the state of the Reef this year do not contradict this.” Neither Jamie nor The Australian have responded in print. Since the argument is based merely on Jamie’s non-expert judgement, is it not obvious that this is editorialism rather than journalism?

Perhaps Media Watch should ask the PM’s office his sourcing: I certainly referred to the IPCC in my report, and also detailed the basis of the concern about long-term bleaching of the reef.

The story said Mr Rudd’s assertions “grate with’’ the findings that the reef was likely to escape bleaching, again, this year; it did not say it undermined the “view’’ that global warming could destroy the Great Barrier Reef.

The point here is unclear (the writing is tortured), but I think Jamie is suggesting that the main point of his article was not to cast doubt on whether AGW is a threat to the GBR and coral reef in general. Really?

Rudd’s “assertion”, i.e., communication of published findings by scientists, does not “grate” / contradict the finding that last year, a handful of reefs didn’t bleach as expected. Magic Johnson has lived with HIV for 19 years, but that doesn’t “grate” against the fact that HIV is a human travesty or predictions that it will kill millions of people in the future. [Although given the lack of warming on the reefs in question, the more appropriate analogy would be to argue that a guy who didn’t contract HIV and didn’t die from AIDS was proof that HIV-AIDS is not a threat]

I “could’’ get hit by a bus tomorrow; that does not mean this will happen.

True, but I doubt Jamie walks into the street without looking both ways, i.e., he applies the precautionary principle to avoid a bad outcome.

Furthermore, Jamie seems to be portraying the science here as mere speculation; imagine evil-left-wing scientists sitting in pub, dreaming up bad stuff that could happen (OK, we actually do do that).

There is concern, modelling and various projections as to how the reef could be destroyed as early as 2030 under worst case scenarios for climate change.

We are actually exceeding the “worst case scenarios” Jamie speaks of in terms of the rate of CO2 output and concentration increase, which is what the IPCC emissions scenarios are based on. So these aren’t somehow outlandish predictions from a Hollywood movie. They are merely the worst case, in relative terms. I think the more conservative (and comforting to governments) emissions scenarios like the A1 are unlikely – at best – to occur. Here are some of the assumptions underlying the A1:

The A1 scenarios are of a more integrated world. The A1 family of scenarios is characterized by:

Rapid economic growth.
A global population that reaches 9 billion in 2050 and then gradually declines.
The quick spread of new and efficient technologies.
A convergent world – income and way of life converge between regions. Extensive social and cultural interactions worldwide.

Exactly how realistic does that sound, even to an optimist?

I think, however, it is a long bow to present this outcome as a certainty.

Jamie has a right to think that or anything else. But what he or anyone “thinks” in no way influences or questions the science at hand. And basing a newspaper article, not clearly labeled as an editorial, on his opinions is journalistically unethical and fraudulent.

A number of senior scientists working on the reef argue this – and we quoted some of them last December.

A point on the semantics here: if you really asked reef scientists whether “this outcome is a certainty” I suspect a large majority including me would say no. But not because we don’t think it is highly likely. Nearly all do. Science never provides certainty about anything. It only deals with probability. Future projections are all probabilistic by nature, thus their outcome cannot by definition be “a certainty”. Point being, if Jamie cleverly phrased the question this way, he might get honest scientists to agree “yes we are not 100% certain of this outcome”.

Also note, none of the scientists Jamie mentions were asked about the AIMS study at hand or about the inferences he took from it, as he seems to imply. The issue now under investigation is whether Jamie misled his audience in his Feb 3 article, which took things a lot further than his article in December. His is trying to sidestep the issue and questions about his Feb story by focusing on his earlier piece.

At that time, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said the Great Barrier Reef had never been healthier (as per my feature article of Dec 19, 2009).

GBRMPA did not in fact state this and I have published science showing this clearly is not the case as have many other more esteemed and locally-knowledgable scientists.

This is a free country, and maintaining a healthy scepticism about doom and gloom projections about anything, including climate change, is entirely in order with engendering informed and full debate.

I fully agree. Fair point. But that is Jamie’s right and duty as a citizen. As a reporter, his duty and ethical responsibility is to report the truth and not lie about or otherwise misconstrue the facts and scientific issues.

I have invited Dr Hoegh-Guldberg to be interviewed; he was to phone me at 10.30am last Friday, but didn’t. I had a response from him by email yesterday, in which he suggested it would be easier for him if I email him questions to which he will respond. I will continue to seek to interview him.

Good. I am sure Ove and hundreds of other reef experts (and probably most of his readers) could explain why the main point of Jamie’s story was mistaken. I mentioned to Ove last week that it would be fun to have Jamie over to UQ for lunch and beers. Maybe we could talk some sense into him. (But I may have killed that opportunity with this sarcastic and somewhat mean-spirited post.)

What led me to say the findings will entrench scepticism about the effects of climate change is, in part, that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority issued a publicly warning last summer that a mass coral bleaching episode on the reef was imminent, but this never happened.

I do see Jamie’s point here and I think he is correct. The public wrongly takes short-term weather events as evidence refuting that the earth is even warming and to question forecasts of future impacts of AGW. We have covered this phenomena recently extensively (e.g., see here and here). But a trained, educated science reporter should know the difference between science and weather. Here is an anecdote to hopefully illustrate the logical flaw in Jamie’s argument: Scientists say that tobacco and alcohol are likely to shorten your life. My maternal grandfather “Gap” was a life-long heavy smoker and drinker, but lived well into his 80s. Does this observation “grate” against the predictions of epidemiologists?

Perhaps Media Watch would care to explore why GBRMPA has been more circumspect this year, when conditions were broadly similar to those early in the summer of 2008-09.

Well for one, the name of the series is Media Watch not Scientist Watch.

A bit of legwork by Media Watch would have pulled up a piece The Courier-Mail published on December 19, 2009, warning that coral bleaching was likely this summer.

Right, and given the warm El Nino conditions, that is a reasonable expectation.

You can’t have it both ways, especially in the context of the issues that have emerged with the IPCC’s 2007 report on the Himalayas and Amazon rainforest.

Oh boy. Here we go. Emailgate, the IPCC is corrupt, the earth is really cooling, the glaciers aren’t meling… Is any more evidence needed that Jamie is a committed ideological climate change denier?

And I don’t understand what “You can’t have it both ways” refers to.

Professor Peter Ridd, who we quoted in my December articles on the reef, and who has conducted research on issues involving the reef for 25 years,

Right. Peter Ridd. Reef expert. See our posts here, here and here on Peter Ridd’s view of the GBR.

has said that he was concerned about scientists “crying wolf’’ over threats to the reef. This, he said, had happened in relationto the crown of thorns starfish, and projections about the impact on the reef of sedimentation and pesticide runoff.

Peter Ridd’s “concerns” and what Jamie Walker “thinks” are totally irrelevant to the issue and debate. This is a scientific debate. It is supposed to be based on science, i.e., facts, scientific findings, published and peer-reviewed scientific studies, etc. NOT on what Crocodile Dundee thinks.

Hopefully, the representative of Media Watch had bothered to read my lengthy coverage on December 19.

Well we read it. See Jez’s coverage of it here.

If so, she would know that in addition to quoting Professor Ridd,

Don’t know what “she” he is referring to here…

the coverage in news and the Inquirer section set out at considerable length how water temperature increases do pose an acknowledged threat to the reef. The piece, however, detailed how the Keppel reefs had bounced back in a much more robust way than was generally expected after bleaching in 2006.

Somewhat fair point, but again, see Jez’s point about that study, on which he was a coauthor here.

Further, we took the time to go out on to those reefs off central Queensland with Dr Ray Berkelmans of AIMS, who is highly regarded for the work he has done on these systems, dating back to the 1980s.

True. Ray Berkelmans is a great scientist.

He had absolutely no problem with what I reported – I know that, because I checked back with him.

In summary, No one is suggesting that the potential threat to the reef should be underestimated.

Really? Because, that is precisely the message I got from Jamie’s two stories on the GBR and climate change.

However, it is quite in order to question some of the more breathless forecasts about its imminent demise.

If Media Watch wants to review my work – that is fine and entirely appropriate; the Climate Change debate will be all the better for it. To premise its questioning on one self-interested view, however, is quite unreasoanble. I stand by my reporting.

Of course you do.

Best wishes,

Jamie Walker Queensland Bureau Chief The Australian

Rolling Stone magazine weighs in on climate change

Posted on January 9, 2010 by ovehblog

This month’s issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a serious exposé about the politics of climate change titled “As the World Burns: How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming” (link to the article here).

The issue also includes an article profiling 17 environmental villains, titled “The Climate Killers“. Among the 17 are several politicians and “journalists” we have profiled (to put it kindly) here, including George Will (also see this post), James Inhofe, and Joe Barton.

This is just a sample of what our republican leaders have to say about climate change:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel said on 6 March 2009:
“We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process.”

Republican Congressman John Shimkus said on 25 March 2009:
“If we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere”

John later elaborated

“…the earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood…. I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith, and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect. Today we have about 388 parts per million in the atmosphere. I think in the age of dinosaurs, when we had the most flora and fauna, we were probably at 4,000 parts per million. There is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet — not too much carbon. And the cost of a cap-and-trade on the poor is now being discovered.”

Joe Barton, from a March 10 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing: “Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.”

Why do deniers think the earth is cooling?

Posted on January 1, 2010 by ovehblog

Given how obvious the evidence for continued global warming is, how can so many people insist the earth is cooling? Even some scientists are making this argument (which just proves you don’t need to be all that smart to be a scientist).

For example, in a recent comment on Climate Shifts, Ron Henzel said:

The track record of global warming kool aid pushers isn’t exactly a sterling one. The decade which is now closing was supposed to be the hottest on record, and we all know how that went. Geologist Dr. David Gee, chair of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress and author of 130 plus peer reviewed papers said, “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” (Dr. Gee is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.)

Ron questions the precautionary principle and the application of it to climate change on his blog (see our post on this here). Further he suggests that his readers go here for “real information on issues pertaining to climate change”

Climate Depot (a kind of “Drudge Report” for climate issues).

Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre is the man who demonstrated that Al Gore’s infamous “hockey stick” graph was a statistical absurdity.)

Watts Up With That? (one of the best global warming skeptic blogs, edited by former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts).

“U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Scientists Continue to Debunk ‘Consensus’ in 2008 & 2009″

Cornwall Alliance (a conservative evangelical response to global warming alarmism).

If you are remotely familiar with the AGW debate, you know how fully debunked the wacky claims made on these sites are.

Also see this article by Christopher Booker in the “Hawaii Reporter”, excerpted below:

2008: Another Grim Year for the Global Warmers
By Michael R. Fox Ph.D., 1/2/2009 10:45:23 AM

The year 2008 marked the tenth consecutive year of no global warming. This is not widely reported or known. In fact the Earth has been cooling for the last 6 years.

“Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the U.N.-IPCC. … The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium … which is why ‘global warming’ is now called ‘climate change.'” – Climatologist Dr. Richard Keen of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado.

The irrepressible Christopher Booker has noted the large changes in the global warming events during 2008 (http://tinyurl.com/8p7d83).

These include:

1. Global temperatures continue to decline. Booker says “The decline in global temperatures was wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.”

So, why do deniers think the earth is cooling when it clearly isn’t?

(1) They base their opinions on proclamations of others, rather than examining factual evidence and making up their own minds.

(2) They fundamentally misunderstand what is being predicted about the earth’s temperature. Nobody has ever predicted that it will warm every year, with each new year being warmer than the last. Given all the factors that determine climate and global temperature, that would be an idiotic prediction. The prediction is that there will be a warming trend of climate, i.e., on average, over long periods of time (decades to centuries) the earth will warm on average (not everywhere to the same degree).

(3) They simply confuse weather and climate (as has been pointed out here and countless other places over and over again).

Whatever the reason, they are lying about the climate record and deceiving the public with statements like these “Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions” “The track record of global warming kool aid pushers isn’t exactly a sterling one. The decade which is now closing was supposed to be the hottest on record, and we all know how that went.”

Compare these lies with the evidence, such as this figure from the WMOs recent report which stated “The decade of the 2000s (2000–2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989)”:

See some of our many posts on this here, here, here and here.

Climate Shifts

Life in a rapidly changing climate

Category Archives: Science & Politics

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When should we accept climate change as a reality?

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Denialist Agenda (Part 2): Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?

Denialist Agenda (Part 1): Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial

There’s no denying climate change scientists are being overwhelmed by the sceptics

Journalists weather the changing climate

Jamie Walker’s response to Media Watch

Rolling Stone magazine weighs in on climate change

Why do deniers think the earth is cooling?

So, why do deniers think the earth is cooling when it clearly isn’t?