(pre)Cautionary Principles

Today, one of the headline items on the BBC news website was a warning about the apparently arctic conditions we're currently suffering in the UK. Now, it is damn cold here, but an extra layer of clothes and some moderately reliable central heating seems to have remedied that problem. I have not, as yet, gone out and bought a massive great CO2 emitting truck in the hope of inducing if not global warming then at least a little localised warming.

This year hasn't been great for the global warming lobby. Indeed, this decade hasn't been great for them, because there hasn't been any warming. That's not to say some places haven't gotten warmer - some places most certainly have. Just as others have gotten cooler. But the global temperature, something that only exists in the realm of statistics, has plateaued for ten years. Still, none of the media coverage of this particularly cold weather has contained any resultant questioning of the climate models that have been screaming at us about global warming. When the scientists were forced to admit the post-1998 cooling trend it was put down to the little understood El Nino/La Nina cycle of water temperatures along the equator off the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. But this only illustrates the point, that while we've been pumping out increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the climate has been cooling due to some significantly more powerful force, so our contribution of carbon dioxide can't have thrown the climate 'out of balance', cannot be the defining factor in global temperatures that Al Gore and the IPCC would have us believe.

Herein lies the intellectual hoax of global warming, that in times of warming the theory is proclaimed as indisputable, but in times of cooling the theory isn't questioned, and the anomalous temperatures are put down to something we don't understand. But this only begs the question that if at a time when we're putting out the highest emissions in known history, some other force is causing the climate to cool, how can we be 90% certain that those emissions drive climate change? The 90% certain claim was made in the February 2007 report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It was during the production of that report that Chris Landsea resigned from the IPCC, writing an open letter explaining his reasons:

"After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns." - Landsea letter

The particular issue concerned whether or not global warming was considered to have any influence on the number or intensity of hurricanes, hurricanes being Landsea's area of expertise.

"Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.

Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).

It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.

My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author; I was told that that the media was exaggerating or misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity. The IPCC leadership saw nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth's unfounded pronouncements to the media, despite his supposedly impartial important role that he must undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming AR4." - Landsea letter

These are serious charges, though ones familiar to sceptics of the IPCC's authority and work, and the more general propaganda of climate change. Essentially, we have a senior author within the IPCC not only ignoring the work of his colleagues but making publicly misleading statements to the press, abusing not only his own position of authority but the authority of the name of the IPCC. This letter is not altogether unlike the one written by Frederick Seitz in response to the IPCC's second assessment report of 1995. In a June 1996 letter to the Wall Street Journal, Seitz made a series of allegations about specific things that had been left out of the report and concluded:

"In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report." - Seitz letter

When you lack back to the founding document of the IPCC, however, these sorts of accusations aren't the slightest bit surprising. In May 1992, fully 15 years before the IPCC published its 90% certain claim, the UN opened for signatures the Framework Convention on Climate Change. It's stated objective is as follows:

"The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." - UN FCCC

Similarly, in 1992 we saw the initial draft of what would become the UN Kyoto protocol concerning greenhouse gas emissions. It is bound by the FCCC, and has been ratified by over 180 countries. This illustrates that well before even the UN's own dedicated scientific body was reasonably certain of anthropogenic global warming, the politics of cutting and trading carbon emissions was well established. Further illustrating this is the fact that it was only once Kyoto came into force that we've seen dramatic statements and surveys about a global scientific consensus on climate change.

Beyond the IPCC, other institutions have thrown their hat into the consensus ring on this issue. The American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, publishers of the journal Science, issued a statement in February 2007 saying:

"The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society." - AAAS statement

The main problem with this statement is that at the time the AAAS had no climatologist or meteorologist on their expert panel. Likewise, in January 2008 the American Geophysical Union published a statement:

"The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century." - AGU statement

The clearest problem with this is the rhetoric being used by a supposedly scientific group. The Earth's climate has never been in balance. As shown on Channel 4's recent Catastrophe series, the moon may well have formed when another planet crashed into ours, it seems the earth was once essentially covered in ice and we can only speculate how many species have been wiped out in mass extinction events, all well before the human industrial revolution in the 16th-18th century AD. Just as misleading is the statement that the climate changes we see are 'not natural', because even if they are caused by human industrialisation, that itself was only made possible by oil and iron, both of which occur and react naturally. Indeed, volcanoes emit large amounts of carbon dioxide along with other greenhouse gases, and they're usually considered natural. Likewise, mammals breathe out carbon dioxide when they respire, and they're usually considered natural. This is not scientific language, yet it comes from a senior scientific body well outside of the IPCC. This shows how deeply the problem of politics preceding science runs in today's institutions.

Beyond the scientists, numerous public figures have leant their personal reputations to the cause of global warming and climate change. The most shameless of these is Madonna, a religious fundamentalist in her own right and key performer at last summer's Live Earth concerts.

Madonna "Hey You" (Live Earth 2007)

In the above video Madonna performs 'Hey You', a song which seems to have been specifically written to highlight her involvement in the climate change cause. Beyond the use of telling images in the official video, the sickening use of naive children in her stage performance, and the military drum beat underpinning the song, the lyrics also betray a rather nasty edge to this particular pop Queen's attempt at propaganda.

Initially, the listener is reassured, "Hey, you, just be yourself." But this quite rapidly shifts to the imperative "You've got to change this time," as though past calls to action may have proven false, but this time it's for real. However, this is immediately followed with " Hey you, Remember this, none of it's real, Including the way you feel." The chorus, despite this ostensibly being a song devoted a scientifically informed cause, reads and sounds far more like a religious incantation.

"First love yourself, then you can love someone else
If you can change someone else, then you have saved someone else
But you must first love yourself, then you can love someone else
If you can change someone else, then you have saved someone else
But you must first" - Hey You lyrics

When you combine this set of lyrics with those for the first single from the same Madonna album Four Minutes (featuring Justin Timberlake), in which we're warned that "we've only got four minutes to save the world," we can see how Madonna's devotion to this cause is less informed by scientific exploration than religious apocalyptic imagery and notions of salvation.

However, this is fitting since much of what is said about climate change is logically far closer to religious metaphysics than it is to empirical science. Karl Popper, a 20th century philosopher of science, explained a series of criteria by which we might distinguish rigorous science from weaker or at least non-scientific theories. He concluded:

"One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability." - Popper, Science as Falsification

The key here is that what should distinguish scientific knowledge and theories from other knowledge and theories is that it has to be possible that a scientific theory is false, and this has to be demonstrable by experiment and observation. So, a theory makes predictions about the general trends in temperature for then next two decades, just like the IPCC did in November 2007 in its Summary for Policymakers:

"For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios." - IPCC Summary for Policymakers

Then we find out that in fact, January is the coldest month globally for fourteen years, and the rest of the year follows suit. By May 2008 a new model has emerged saying that we may not see any temperature rise at all in the next decade. By September 2008, one major publication is predicting an extended period of cooling or 'little ice age'. Either the theory is not interpreted in the same way by the differing models (in which case it isn't the same theory at all), or the models are useless. This should be the point at which the predictions of the theory are shown to be wrong, so the theory has to be adapted or discarded, if Popper's ideal of scientific discovery is observed. Chris Landsea recognised the relevance of this to his resignation:

"It is certainly true that "individual scientists can do what they wish in their own rights", as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership suggested. Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress in climate science. However, this case is not an honest scientific discussion conducted at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC has used that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global warming, which is in direct opposition to research written in the field and is counter to conclusions in the TAR." - Landsea letter

However, many scientists and the media organs discussing their work have no such sense of logic or principle, willing as they are to declare that 'the debate is over'.
We also see scientific bodies resorting to the Precautionary Principle, the idea that we might not be able to wait for the confirming evidence of a threat to us before we must act against it, essentially that action without justification is merited.

"Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be." - AAAS statement

This notion originated in the green movement and as discussed in Adam Curtis' documentary 'The Power of Nightmares' was adopted by those seeking to peddle the War on Terror. Indeed, the two political philosophies are startlingly similar, as both involve a loosely defined global threat that can strike anywhere, without warning, and both can only be combated (so they tell us) by a series of increasingly globalised but centralised institutions and policies. However, the Precautionary Principle is a nonsense, as explained by Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a Social and Political philosopher:

"When the precautionary principle states that the "absence of certainties, given the current state of scientific and technical knowledge, must not delay, etc.," it is clear that it places itself from the outset within the framework of epistemic uncertainty. The presupposition is that we know we are in a situation of uncertainty. It is an axiom of epistemic logic that if I do not know p, then I know that I do not know p. Yet, as soon as we depart from this framework, we must entertain the possibility that we do not know that we do not know something. An analogous situation obtains in the realm of perception with the blind spot, that area of the retina not served by the optic nerve. At the very center of our field of vision, we do not see, but our brain behaves in such a way that we do not see that we do not see. In cases where the uncertainty is such that it entails that the uncertainty itself is uncertain, it is impossible to know whether or not the conditions for the application of the precautionary principle have been met. If we apply the principle to itself, it will invalidate itself before our eyes." - Dupuy, Rational Choice before the Apocalypse

If it were simply a case of the media being blinkered in its reporting then the allegations and evidence of corruption in scientific bodies might not seem so strong or reliable. But when you add to that the abandonment of a basic tenet of scientific discovery, and the application of a self-invalidating political principle and it looks more and more like a perverse ideology has either infiltrated or is placing pressure on numerous widespread institutions.

We've seen a widely respected botanist rejected by the BBC due to refusing to accept the mainstream view on climate change, and serious accusations thrown at Wikipedia for their censorship of the issue of global warming. Likewise, a rival theory of climate change based on sunspots and solar winds receives a fraction of the coverage in the media as the mainstream theory. One of the IPCC's own reviewers has written extensive critiques of the four assessment reports, and along with others formed a group working to hold the IPCC to account but this has barely been mentioned in the press. Tens of thousands of scientists signed up to a petition denying Al Gore's claims on global warming. While some critics have pointed out that very few of the signatories are climatologists or related specialists, very few of the members of the scientific groups issuing press releases are either. Following this petition, an Ipsos Mori poll found that 56% of those surveyed believed scientists 'were still questioning climate change'. According to the BBC:

"There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money." - BBC

Despite all this, some have become very aggressive in their attacks on those who don't believe the orthodoxy on climate change. The phrase 'climate change denial' or the even more meaningless and misleading 'climate denial' have become popular, notably by socialist ringleader and all round tosser George Monbiot. Even Wikipedia has a page devoted to it. The obvious parallel is with Holocaust denial, with the implicit allegation being that those who deny the importance of climate change now are responsible for the deaths of millions, perhaps billions, if our greenhouse gas emissions cause some immense environmental catastrophe. Some scientists have even received death threats because of their 'denial'.

Similar treatment was dished out in the direction of one of very few documentaries to have been broadcast that openly question or reject the anthropogenic global warming theory of the UN. The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast by Channel 4 in March 2007. It present the views of several scientists and a few others that contradict the anthropogenic global warming theory with which we've all become so familiar. Some of the interviewees dispute whether or not there's any warming, others accept the warming but dispute the cause.

The show received an exceptional level of criticism, though Channel 4 stated that they'd got six times as many calls in support of the show as they had complaining about it. The Royal Society, the foremost conservative scientific body in the UK, took a shot.

"Global temperature is increasing. This warming threatens the future health and wellbeing of many millions of people throughout the world. This is especially true of those in the developing countries who are the least able to adapt and who are likely to be the worst affected. Many factors play a part in global warming but there is significant scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2, are responsible for most of the temperature rise. If present trends continue the projected climate change will be far greater than that already experienced. Greenhouse gas emissions are something that we can and must take action on.

"Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future." - Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society

Debate will continue, but it must not be at the expense of action - the cry of a scientist, or a politician? The show attracted over 250 complaints to the regulator Ofcom, including this extremely lengthy one submitted by a group of scientists. Ofcom launched a lengthy investigation, and reported in July 2008. The show was reprimanded for not being impartial, and for treating interviewees unfairly. The first of these charges, while ultimately true, is ridiculous. I haven't seen an impartial documentary in my entire life, and I've watched hundreds. Also, given the very one-dimensional coverage of this issue you could forgive the filmmakers for being polemical.

As noted by Spiked:

Today, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) has published a lengthy document censuring Channel 4 for showing Durkin’s film on 8 March 2007. Yet what is striking about Ofcom’s ruling is that it slaps Channel 4’s wrists, not for any inaccuracies in Durkin’s film (of which, it is claimed, there are many), but for its ‘unfair treatment’ of climate change experts.

Ofcom rejected complaints that Durkin’s film was factually inaccurate on the basis that it did not ‘materially mislead the audience so as to cause harm or offence’ (1). Yet it upheld or partly upheld complaints by Sir David King (Britain’s former chief scientific adviser), Professor Carl Wunsch (of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all of whom say they were treated unfairly by the film. - Brendan O'Neill, Spiked

Indeed, Ofcom did not uphold the literally dozens of allegations of factual inaccuracies or misleading representations of data that had been made. O'Neill goes on to point out that:

Part of King’s complaint is that during a lively interview in The Great Global Warming Swindle one of its contributors, Professor Frederick Singer, said we had now reached the mad situation where: ‘[T]he chief scientist of the UK [is] telling people that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the earth will be the Antarctic. And humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic.’ (2)

King says he didn’t say that. Well, not in so many words. What he actually said during a testimony to a House of Commons Select Committee in 2004 was this: ‘Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals, because it was the coolest place, and the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot. It is estimated that it [the carbon dioxide level] was roughly 1,000 parts per million then, and the important thing is that if we carry on business as usual we will hit 1,000 parts per million around the end of the century.’ (3)

In short? If we keep on driving, flying, building and consuming then the earth in 90 years’ time will resemble the earth 55million years ago – when the Antarctic was ‘the most habitable place for mammals’. Okay, King didn’t say the Antarctic would become the ‘only habitable’ place for humans but he did very strongly imply it would become the ‘most habitable’ place.

And in a speech to the Climate Group in April 2004, he reportedly went a step farther. The Independent on Sunday of 2 May 2004 reported: ‘Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the government’s chief scientist Sir David King said last week.’ (4) [Emphasis added.] King never complained about that report.

If you look up the article in the Independent on Sunday it's a relatively run of the mill global warming tale about some speculative futuristic vision of the earth. So it seems that sloppy reporting in a pro-global warming theory article is alright, but the exact same sloppy reporting in a film that is anti-global warming theory must be complained about. Hypocrisy on the part of King, or a more political maneuver?

Part of the IPCC’s complaint is that one of the film’s interviewees – Professor Philip Stott – said: ‘The IPCC, like any UN body, is political. The final conclusions are politically driven.’ (7) I’m sorry, but that is simply legitimate political criticism, whether the IPCC likes it or not. Why is a UN body, which is staffed by hundreds of people and funded by millions of pounds and which has access to thousands of normally compliant journalists, complaining to Ofcom about a 90-minute documentary shown on Channel 4? What is it saying exactly? That no one may criticise it, ever? - O'Neill, Spiked

While I was going through the long complaint to Ofcom I came across the oft-repeated ad hominem criticism against sceptics of anthropogenic global warming - that you do/must work for for the oil industry. This is raised against Frederick Seitz and there's no disputing that he was head of the George C Marshall Institute, funded by the fossil fuel industry. This is not only a personal attack on his reputation and credibility, and therefore not cricket, but also a very blinkered view. All science is funded by someone, so if you're going to discredit people's views on the grounds their employers have vested interests then you must, if you have any consistency, apply the same criticism to members of the IPCC, AAAS, Royal Society and so on. To fail to do this (as typically left-leaning global warming fanatics usually do) is wanton and blatant bias. To be biased in one's accusations of bias is a pretty shoddy state of affairs, but sadly that is the state of the mainstream debate on climate change.

Of a similar quality was Channel 4's followup show, The Great Green debate, where an audience of 'green sceptics' (who turned out to be inarticulate cretins essentially reading statements and questions from cards) were provided with a debate between four 'eco experts'. So the debate that took place what precisely how bad the global warming situation was, or rather, how concerned the four panelists could all make out they were about the issue. To call it a debate was intentionally misleading, and it was an utterly one-sided and partial programme, but curiously Ofcom didn't have anything to say about that.

One last point on the issue of oil companies - while they have rather openly funded research and researchers to try to disprove anthropogenic global warming theory, since the major media barely touches rival theories or the scepticism of what may be the majority all such funding would do is sow a little discord in the scientific community. However, the world's richest firm and oil giant ExxonMobil have consistently phased out their support for anti-global warming research over the last two years. It appears a revolt was led by major shareholders the Rockefeller family, who suddenly appear to have changed their minds on the issue. However, the powers that be clearly had this in mind for a while. The Rothschild-Rockefeller hybrid JP Morgan Chase bought Climate Care in March 2008 (a leading British carbon credits firm) and has been moving further into the carbon economy already worth tens of billions of dollars. They are also reported to be leading the way in reducing their own business's output. Perhaps most tellingly of all and as a taste of things to come, they have launched the world's first bond index designed to address the risks of global warming.