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—an hir series—
Historical and Investigative Research; 6 August
2014; by Francisco Gil-White ‘Orwellian’ is an adjective reserved for a
media-imposed total inversion of reality, plus indifference to absurdity
equal parts boldness and nonchalance (so powerful in the rash assertion of
its plausibility as to convince the innocent). Loudly claiming that the
Antarctic ice-core evidence supports the AGW hypothesis—when it in fact
refutes that hypothesis—is Orwellian. The same goes for the manner in which
IPCC scientists describe themselves as the supposed persecuted party. We will
argue here that the balance of power is unequivocally on the IPCC’s side. █ Introduction █ On whose side is Big Business? █ Skeptical journalists bullied by the powerful ▄ Disagree with Al Gore, and get threatened ▄ Disagree with Al Gore, and beware the State █ Is anybody bullying IPCC scientists? █ Have skeptical scientists been bullied? █ Conclusion: The new Lysenkoism
Introduction The IPCC (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Science) is a creation of the most powerful Western
governments. About the IPCC and its promotion of the anthropogenic global
warming (AGW) hypothesis, sold around the world by Al Gore, we have seen the
following in earlier installments: 1) there
is a CO2 lag evident in the crucial Antarctic ice-core data (‘CO2 lag’ = temperature
always rises before CO2), so Al Gore and the IPCC have misled the public, presenting
the ice-core evidence backwards (Part 2); 2) the
world’s most prestigious science journal, Nature,
sets aside the most elementary principles of peer-review in order to assist
those who (falsely) claim that the Antarctic ice-core evidence supports AGW (Part 3); 3) the
major mainstream media outlets either ignore the CO2-lag scandal completely,
or else misrepresent the ice-core
record as supporting AGW (Part 4); and 4) the
most important IPCC scientists have been caught discussing how to use their
power in order to alter the normal scientific peer-review process to ensure
that articles challenging the IPCC will not get published (Part 5). Rather confusingly (given the above) the pro-IPCC
camp alleges that the balance of power is against
the IPCC. But what can the skeptics marshal against the powerful Western
governments and Big Media? According to one view, we skeptics—or ‘deniers’ as
they call us—are part of a supposedly massive campaign led by Big Business to
persecute IPCC scientists and their allies, corrupt the academic process, and
‘save oil.’ Thus, to ascertain where the balance of power lies,
we must first address this question: On
whose side is Big Business? On 13 August 2007 Newsweek’s Sharon Begley
(we met her in Part 4 and Part 5) wrote an article titled “The Truth
About Denial.”[1] This
label, ‘denial,’ is carefully chosen to suggest that skeptics suffer from a
psychopathology (as in ‘living in denial’), or are hate-filled liars (as in
‘Holocaust denial’). And what are these dreadful and allegedly powerful
‘deniers’ up to? They are creating “a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate
change.” “Since the late 1980s,” according to Begley, “a well-coordinated,
well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and
industry” has been “running at full throttle [to] shape both government
policy and public opinion.” And what is their strategy? “ ‘They patterned
what they did after the tobacco industry,’ says former senator Tim Wirth.” Since “former senator Tim Wirth” is the source of
this valuable intelligence, let us ask: Who is he? Begley shares that Wirth “spearheaded environmental
issues as an undersecretary of State in the Clinton administration.”
Obviously, then, as Wikipedia explains, “he worked with Vice President Al
Gore on global environmental and population issues, supporting the
administration’s views on global warming.”[2] But this is no follower—Wirth pioneered the “global warming” scare way back during the Reagan
administration. James Hansen (now advisor to Al Gore) was then virtually
unknown but Wirth turned him into the world-famous ‘NASA scientist’ promoter
of the CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) hypothesis. How? With
a stunning bit of political theatrics. Seeing his opportunity in the drought of 1988, Wirth
scheduled Hansen to testify before Congress on the day most likely to be the
year’s hottest, and—according to Wirth’s own account—personally sabotaged the
room’s air conditioning. The congressmen melted in their suits as Hansen
declared: “ ‘Gentlemen, I’m 99 percent sure that human beings are
contributing to climate change.’ ” 99
percent! Every bit the proud stage-manager, Wirth exults in
remembrance: “So it was
sort of a perfect collection of events that happened that day, with the wonderful Jim Hansen, who was wiping his brow
at the witness table and giving this remarkable testimony. ...[It got] so
much attention from the press—it was on every channel, Hansen was widely
reported.”[3] In context, then, Begley would have you believe that
skeptics are well-funded liars and cheats—and no better than tobacco
companies—because straight-shooting, non-manipulative, unbiased Tim Wirth
says so. According to Begley, skeptics are also no better
than oil companies. “[As] Sen.
Barbara Boxer... left a meeting with the head of the international climate
panel [IPCC], ...a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank
long funded by ExxonMobil [the Competitive Enterprise Institute], she told
Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new
report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. ‘I realized,’
says Boxer, ‘there was a movement behind this that just wasn’t giving up.’ ” Begley has been senior editor at Newsweek and
is a recipient of multiple awards—this is mainstream journalism, folks. How
does it work? Begley repeats what certain politicians tell her. First it was
Tim Wirth. Now it’s Barbara Boxer who, fresh from her meeting with the IPCC
president (no less), shares some
gossip she got from one of her staffers. Suppose we accept this ‘documentation.’ Even so, the
“well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market
think tanks and industry” has boiled down to one oil company (partly) funding one think tank, CEI, to the tune of a few $10,000 checks. If Begley had anything better, she would mention it.
So this is it. Begley therefore does her best to allege that this implies a
crushing funding superiority for skeptics. And yet when Begley wrote all that, “Newsweek
knew better,” because “reporter Eve Conant,” who collaborated with Begley
on that article, “interviewed
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Ranking Member of the Environment &
Public Works Committee, [and] was given all the latest data proving conclusively
that it is the proponents of man-made global warming fears that enjoy a
monumental funding advantage over the skeptics. (A whopping $50 BILLION
to a paltry $19 MILLION and some change for skeptics…)”[4] This is a large difference. A 3 to 1 ratio would
already be worrisome. But $50,000,000,000 to $19,000,000 is a 2,632 to 1 ratio. Numbers expressed in digits can be difficult to
process, so consider the following graphical representation of the relative
difference:
Does this make sense? It does. Climate science costs
billions of dollars to conduct. Who has that kind of money? The Western
governments—the same Western
governments that created the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, to promote the anthropogenic global warming
(AGW) hypothesis. Against the $50 billion
that the intergovernmental research-fund cartel doles out to pro-AGW
scientists, how does it look that ExxonMobil hands out ten grand to skeptics?
Pitiful. Is this why Begley didn’t mention Inhofe’s research? But it gets worse for Begley’s case. A whole two months before her story
appeared the Economist wrote: “These days
very few serious businessmen will say publicly either that climate change is
not happening or that it is not worth tackling. Even ExxonMobil, bête
noire of the climate-change activists, has now withdrawn funding from the
CEI [Competitive Enterprise Institute] and appears to accept the need for
controls on carbon emissions.”[5] The above quote from the Economist is the sort of tidbit that is packed with lessons if
you only know what to do with it. In the Western system, to be taken seriously,
university-trained career professionals must
read the Economist. Some read it
carefully. Some will take out the magnifying glass; for instance, a senior
editor at a competing magazine, such as Begley—or, in fact, anybody in her
gigantic staff. This comes with the job. And yet in her article Begley
betrayed no awareness that ExxonMobil’s non-relationship
to CEI, plus ExxonMobil’s non-opposition
to “controls on carbon emissions,” had both just been reported in the Economist. This is a bit hard to
believe, given that ExxonMobil was the centerpiece of her entire case. Awkwardly, it fell to fellow editor Robert J.
Samuelson to correct Begley in the next Newsweek
issue (though, luckily for her, in a one-page piece buried in the middle
and thus unseen by most readers of Begley’s cover story). Samuelson wrote: “NEWSWEEK
implied... that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize
global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited,
and NEWSWEEK shouldn’t have lent it respectability.”[6] A whopper: even ExxonMobil’s pittance does not
exist. But that’s all Begley had! So where is the “well-coordinated,
well-funded campaign by... industry... running at full throttle [to] shape
both government policy and public opinion”? Oh, it exists. Fear not. But it lies on the other side. Consider what Begley herself reports: “[L]ast
September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing
California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by
2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey
passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent
below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including
Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on
Congress to ‘enact strong national legislation’ to reduce greenhouse gases.” I
didn’t say it. Begley did. Plenty
of greenhouse-gas reductions are being approved. And industrial giants
(“leading corporations”) such as “Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont,
and General Electric” want more—much more. And the sweet irony… You may have noticed that any connection to the oil
business—real or imagined—is routinely held up by AGW proponents to destroy
the credibility of skeptics. But I learn from the Economist that “BP”—British Petroleum, no less—is
“the most prominent corporate advocate of action on climate change.”[7] The
most. An oil company! It appears that Big Business—including the oil
industry—is with Al Gore and the IPCC. Food for thought. (But did you really
think that Big Business and the Western governments would be on opposite
sides?) Skeptical
journalists bullied by the powerful Given that Western governments, Big Media, and Big Business support the AGW
hypothesis, is it likely that supporters of this hypothesis will be
persecuted and harassed? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to expect, under such
circumstances, that skeptics will suffer
such treatment? I have seen exactly zero reports of harassment or
persecution against journalists who agree with the IPCC. In truth, the very
notion is implausible, since they are in such a strong majority—they are the mainstream.
By contrast, it is not difficult to find cases of harassment, and even
threats, against those who publish skeptical views. I will consider two
cases. Disagree
with Al Gore, and get threatened Three weeks before Begley’s article was published,
an incident was reported in the Washington
Times under the heading Green
Bully that provides an interesting context to her accusations. [Quote from
the Washington Times begins here] The heat is
obviously getting to Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council On
Renewable Energy (ACORE). Two weeks ago,
this column published a threatening letter he wrote to Marlo Lewis,
senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), concerning
‘global warming.’ Then last week, Mr. Eckhart issued an apology, expressing
regret for calling Mr. Lewis disparaging names and threatening to “destroy”
his “career” as a “liar”—all because Mr. Lewis does not share Mr. Eckhart’s
opinions on the cause of climate change.[8] [Quote from Washington
Times ends here] As you will recall from above, CEI, where Marlo
Lewis is senior fellow, is the think tank supposedly getting money from
ExxonMobil to promote skepticism. Is Lewis a skeptic? He writes that “much of
the warming since the mid-1970s is likely due to rising greenhouse gas levels
from fossil energy use and other human activities.”[9]
This is Al Gore’s argument. So I
must correct the Washington Times:
Lewis in fact agrees with Gore and
the IPCC “on the cause of climate change.” What’s all the fuss about, then? Lewis doesn’t think
a catastrophe—as such—is looming and argues that economically viable
alternatives to fossil fuels do not exist. That’s it. But even such weak
differences with Al Gore and the IPCC are quite enough to send Michael
Eckhart spinning with rage, for he threatens to “destroy” Marlo Lewis if the
latter dares to write one more offending editorial. [Quote from Washington
Times continues here] Now, Inside
the Beltway learned that Mr. Lewis isn’t the only recipient of Mr. Eckhart’s
vitriol. He wrote to
Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred Smith on Sept. 25, 2006. “Following up
on our meeting at the Rocky Mountain retreat last spring with Al Gore, I am
writing to say that I am very unhappy to see this continuing false analysis
coming out of CEI, seeking to refute the issue of global warming. ...The only
explanation that I can see is that you are doing this because you are paid by
Exxon Mobil and other clients to do so. I find this outrageous, that my
children will have a lesser life because you are being paid by oil companies
to spread a false story. As I said to
you at the time, I would give you 90 days to show that CEI is reversing its
position on this, or I will take every action I can think of to shut you
down. ...I am
writing to demand that you and CEI reverse course on this, and do so loudly
and publicly, within 30 days, or I will personally file on Oct. 25, 2006, two
complaints: 1. A complaint
with the IRS to have CEI’s tax exemption revoked, on the basis that CEI is
really a lobbyist for the energy industry; 2. A complaint
with Phi Beta Kappa that your key should be withdrawn for using your
mathematical skills to do the world harm... You have 30
days to speak the truth, or face the IRS and PBK.” [Quote from Washington
Times ends here] Why would Eckhart behave this way? Aside from
certain personality traits, it is relevant that Eckhart—now ‘Environment
Chief’ at Citi [10]—was at the
time President of ACORE (American Council on Renewable Energy), a job that
called for him to get subsidies for ACORE members.
Thus, for example, when Congress and the Bush administration
approved a bill with “an array of tax and production credits that go to
either the consumers of renewable energy or to the estimated 20,000
companies... that harness renewable energy sources,” the New York Times
reported that Eckhart was not even close to satisfied. “Yes, some companies
will benefit, he concedes, but not enough for renewable energy’s share of the
market to grow.”[11]
Eckhart would like the US government to bend the market his way even more. What might help him achieve this? Public pressure. And what might
produce such pressure? A widespread belief that burning fossil fuels will
soon produce a global catastrophe. So Marlo Lewis’ editorials expressing
skepticism of onrushing catastrophe were a bit of a nuisance. Eckhart obviously thinks that he can wield as
weapons both Phi Beta Kappa and the IRS. Is he that powerful? I don’t know.
But according to Environment and Energy
Publishing, “ ‘Eckhart and
the ACORE membership... helped design the Department of Energy grant
programs’ that partly offset the loss of tax equity financing arrangements...
[which] had been Wall Street’s main vehicle for bankrolling large wind and
solar power plants...”[12] Nothing says power
like writing a federal program from which your member companies will
benefit. And ACORE members (650 total) are not small potatoes: Citi,
Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, General Motors, Volvo, and Duke
Energy all pay their dues (determined by organizational revenue).[13]
Plus, among ACORE’s members you will find—get this—the US Department of
Energy and the US Department of State.[14] Once again we see Big Business—conjoined with
government—in the IPCC’s corner. Can we get Big Media in this picture too? Why not. Just three weeks after the Washington Times embarrassed Eckhart
by exposing his threats, Newsweek ran
the cover story we examined by senior editor Sharon Begley. This story, as we
saw, gave credence to Eckhart’s groundless accusations about ExxonMobil’s
supposed funding campaign. So perhaps Eckhart can also wield Newsweek. To compare Newsweek—a newsmagazine with
worldwide distribution—to a regional US paper like the Washington Times
(not to be confused with the Washington Post or the New York Times)
is like comparing the Titanic to one of its lifeboats. Disagree
with Al Gore, and beware the State The Great
Global Warming Swindle is a British
documentary that aired on TV for the first time in 2007.[15]
Top climate scientists are interviewed expressing their disagreement with the
anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. The documentary is meticulous in exposing that
virtually every argument, assumption, and/or prediction—explicit or
implied—made by this hypothesis fails. But the scientists, in particular,
place great emphasis on the Antarctic ice-core data (the main focus of this
series), which shows that at every glacial
termination CO2 rises after the warming trend begins. This is known as
the CO2 lag, and it directly contradicts the view that CO2 drives global
temperatures (see Part 2).
After the movie aired, the British broadcasting
regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), received “a 176-page
detailed complaint co-authored by a group of scientists,” which became
Ofcom’s basis for ruling that the film “had unfairly treated Sir David King,
the IPCC, and Professor Carl Wunsch,” and “had breached several parts of the
Broadcasting Code regarding impartiality.” Ofcom also wrote that “the
discussion about the causes of global warming was to a very great extent
settled by the date of broadcast (8 March 2007). [...] In Ofcom’s view the
link between human activity and global warming also became similarly settled
before March 2007.”[16] Quite interesting. The British government makes sure
that privately-funded movies do not ‘dishonor’ the IPCC, and rules that
“global warming caused by human activity [is] a settled fact.” Since the formal complaint filed with Ofcom by “a
group of scientists” was the basis for its ruling, I took a look at the
complaint. I wished to see if these scientists had a comeback for the movie’s
discussion of the CO2 lag—for this is the
key issue. In The Great Global Warming Swindle, Al Gore is shown posing before
his giant graph of the 650,000-year Antarctic ice-core record, with two sawtooth
curves, one for CO2 and another for temperature.
Gore says: “The
relationship is actually very complicated, but there is one relationship that
is far more powerful than all the others, and it’s this: when there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.” The Great Global Warming Swindle replied to this as follows: [Excerpt from The
Great Global Warming Swindle begins here] Narrator: Al Gore says that the relationship
between temperature and CO2 is complicated; but he doesn’t say what those
complications are. In fact there was something very important in the ice core
data that he failed to mention. ... Professor [Ian] Clark and others have
indeed discovered, as Al Gore said, a link between carbon dioxide and
temperature. But what Al Gore doesn’t say is that the link is the wrong way
round. Prof Ian
Clark: So here we’re looking at the ice core record from
Vostok, and in the red we see temperature going up from early time to later
time. At a very key interval when we came out of a glaciation; and we see
the temperature going up, and then we see the CO2 coming up. The CO2 lags
behind that increase – it’s got an 800[-year] lag. So temperature is leading
CO2 by 800 years. Narrator: There have now
been several major ice core surveys. Every one of them shows the same thing.
The temperature rises or falls, and then after a few hundred years CO2
follows. (NOTE: transcript and a link to the video segment in footnote [17]) [Excerpt from The
Great Global Warming Swindle ends here] The complaint to Ofcom quoted the above excerpt and
then replied as follows: [Excerpt from
the complaint begins here] “This
accumulation of consecutive interviewee statements, taken together with
statements by the narrator, amount to a highly misleading narrative coverage
of the lag of historical CO2 increases behind temperature increases. The ‘CO2 lags
temperature’ argument against anthropogenic global warming theory has been
discussed in the literature and rebutted many times, for example see:
http://tinyurl.com/2g4cq8 [UK Met Office], and http://tinyurl.com/27lfdu
[RealClimate].”[17] [Excerpt from
the complaint ends here] Did you notice? The complaint concedes that there is a “lag of historical CO2 increases behind
temperature increases”: the CO2 lag: temperature
always rises first. But any notion that this finding inconveniences the
AGW theory, they say, has been “rebutted many times.” And where? “In the
literature.” The phrase, “in the literature,” when used by
scientists, means in the scientific,
peer-reviewed literature. And yet these scientists give us not one
reference to “the literature.” They give us this: 1) a
link to the webpage at the UK Met Office’s press office (whose URL
yields a “PAGE NOT FOUND” notice); and 2) a
link to RealClimate—the URL is to Jeff
Severinghaus’s piece, the same one we examined and refuted in Part 2. Ofcom ruled that the IPCC was dishonored (“unfairly
treated”) and that AGW is “settled fact” on the basis of what RealClimate
says. The world has never seen such a powerful blog. But it’s a tight little circle, because RealClimate
was set up by—drum roll...—IPCC scientists (Part 2). Is
anybody bullying IPCC scientists? CRU/IPCC scientists have complained about supposed
persecution and harassment, so let’s define the words: Persecute: to treat (someone) cruelly or
unfairly, esp. because of religion, race, etc. (WordReference.com) Harass: to trouble, torment, or confuse by
continual persistent attacks, questions, etc. I take this trouble because CRU/IPCC scientists, it
appears, really could use some help with definitions. At the American
Geophysical Union fall meeting in 2013, for example, some of the usual
suspects (including Naomi Oreskes, Kevin Trenberth, and Michael Mann) held a
special session about “climate scientists under attack”—in reference to themselves. According to meteorologist
Anthony Watts, a prominent skeptic in attendance, the session “was mainly
just a big whiny gripe about FOIA [Freedom Of Information Act] requests.”[18] FOIA requests are meant to enhance transparency.
Scientists demand transparency because otherwise skeptical examination of
claims—the very basis of science—is impossible. So when others ask to see
data and methods they are not making unreasonable demands, much less
“tormenting” anybody “cruelly or unfairly”—especially not when people are
asking to examine research conducted with public funds. This is not an
“attack.” Michael Mann, a recipient of large fortunes in US
federal funds, and author of the infamous, error-infested temperature
reconstruction known as the ‘hockey stick’ (see Part 5), has complained bitterly about
Congressman Joe Barton’s (ultimately successful) efforts to force him to
share his data and methods. In The
Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars Mann points out that important
scientific institutions agree with him, and writes triumphantly that in
response to Barton’s 2005 queries, “the journal Nature published an editorial,
‘Climate of Distrust,’ expressing concern that ‘by requesting information on
research that does not fit his world view, Barton seems determined to use his
political influence to put pressure on the scientific process.’ ”[19] Wait just a minute. Is the most prestigious science
journal in the world saying that we should trust? Isn’t trust (or
‘faith’) what religion calls for?
Any scientist must labor under the “pressure” of distrust, also known as skepticism. It is normative. And who
is a skeptic? Anybody for whom a claimed result “does not fit his world
view.” So how can Nature complain
that Barton asked to see Mann’s data and methods? How else can a skeptical examination
of his work be attempted? But my surprise is feigned. It was Nature, after all, that published Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick.’ And Nature—take note—did so on faith, without really looking at
Mann’s work, even though it contradicted a mountain of prior research (Part 5). “It seemed clear,” writes Australian geologist Ian
Plimer, “that no
reviewer of the Mann et al. paper in Nature had requested the
original data upon which the paper was based, for otherwise Nature would
not have published a paper using such incomplete data.” It seems that Nature’s
editors, when Barton began conducting the skeptical examination that should
have been their responsibility,
understood that any embarrassment for Mann would also be for them. This can easily explain why Nature came to Mann’s defense. But doesn’t this mean that Nature’s editors are the ones playing politics? Is this why they published
Mann without reviewing his data? On this question Plimer was equivocal. “This is not
the place to speculate on whether this was a lapse in editorial standards or
whether Nature was following another agenda.”[20] Nature
did something in 2009 that could have helped Plimer settle this
question—but too late, for Plimer’s book also appeared in 2009. In that year Nature published a study, co-authored
by Michael Mann, that invented data
in order to claim—against a mountain of contrary evidence—that Antarctica was
supposedly warming (Part 5).
It does appears that Nature bends over backwards to assist and protect Michael Mann,
even to the point of doing away with the normal peer-review process (for more
on Nature’s standards, see Part 3). And this question of peer-review
brings me to Phil Jones, who, like Mann, is at the center of the Climategate
scandal. Climategate, you may recall, exploded when hackers
broke into the Climatic Research Unit’s servers, at the University of East
Anglia (UK), and released on the internet thousands of emails from the CRU
scientists who control the IPCC process. For many, these emails confirmed
suspicions of unethical behavior intended to distort science and convince the
public that global warming is anthropogenic. In one of the exchanges, CRU
director Phil Jones promised to Michael Mann that, if necessary, the
scientific peer-review process would be tampered with in order to further the
IPCC agenda (Part 5). Jones was not simply being ‘generous’ to Mann—he was
helping himself. For Jones contributed key data to Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ and
co-authored with Mann an influential 2000-year temperature reconstruction. Well before Climategate, Phil Jones had made it
clear that he considered requests for data and methods a form of oppressive harassment. He simply
refused to meet formal FOI (Freedom Of Information) requests for his data,
producing a string of excuses later shown by his Climategate emails to have
been falsehoods.[21] In a rare
moment of candor, Jones explained the real reason for the refusals to Warwick
Hughes of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, after the latter asked
to see the data: “ ‘Why should I make the data available to you, when your
aim is to try and find something wrong with it.’ ”[22] Once again: a scientist unclear on the concept. What
business does Phil Jones suppose that he is in? Trying to find something wrong with a claim is the same thing as
‘doing science.’ In the wake of Climategate, the University of East
Anglia (UEA), where the Climate Research Unit (CRU) is located, launched two
investigations of itself: the Oxburgh panel, and the ICCER (Independent
Climate Change Emails Review), better known as the Muir Russel Inquiry. These
hardly qualify as real investigations. The Oxburgh panel, as climatologist Tim Ball points
out, had the following defects: 1) There
were no written terms of reference; 2) It
did not investigate the science; 3) Oxburgh
and his committee of six were recommended by the Royal Society, a major
promoter of IPCC and CRU claims; 4) Oxburgh
himself is Fellow of the Royal Society, CEO of Carbon Capture and Storage
Association, and Chairman of Falck Renewable Resources, whose business
depends on the claim that CO2 causes global warming; 5) Oxburgh
has promoted the AGW hypothesis as UK Vice-Chair of GLOBE International, a
consortium of Industry, NGOs’ and government that lobbies for policy to
reduce CO2; 6) There
were no public hearings; 7) There
was no call for evidence; 8) Only
11 academic papers vetted by Phil Jones were examined. 9) Only
unrecorded closed interviews with CRU staff were held. 10) There were no meetings with CRU critics. 11) UEA had effective control of the Inquiry
throughout. Small wonder that “The UK House of Commons Select
Committee grilled Oxburgh on the shallowness of his study and report and its
failure to review the science as promised.” As for the Muir Russel Inquiry, “It was
compromised from the start through conflict of interest of members. One person
appointed was Philip Campbell, editor of Nature.
He resigned when his bias was revealed. Another
appointee, Geoffrey Boulton, had two major problems. He had signed a petition
from the UK Met Office declaring full support for the CRU and IPCC science.
He had been employed at UEA when the Inquiry said members had no links to the
university.”[23] Neither investigation produced the sought-after
data, for, in the wake of Climategate, Jones has now claimed to have lost it
(Part 5). It hardly seems to me that Phil Jones is being persecuted; it appears, rather, that
he is being protected. And the protection extends beyond. Despite the
Climategate emails suggesting malfeasance by the top CRU/IPCC scientists generally, the only ones even
cursorily ‘investigated’ were Mann and Jones.[24] Have
skeptical scientists been bullied? Dr. Richard Tol is among the top economists in the
world and one of the 25 most-cited climate researchers. Since 1994, he has
participated in the IPCC process. In May 2014 he gave testimony before a US congressional committee tasked with “Examining the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process for the Fifth Assessment
Report.” This testimony amounts to whistleblowing on the IPCC. [Excerpt from
Richard Tol’s testimony begins here] “Governments
nominate academics to the IPCC – but we should be clear that it is often the
environment agencies that do the nominating. Different countries have
different arrangements, but it is rare that a government agency with a purely
scientific agenda takes the lead on IPCC matters. As a result, certain
researchers are promoted at the expense of more qualified colleagues. Other
competent people are excluded because their views do not match those of their
government. Some authors do not have the right skills or expertise, and are
nominated on the strength of their connections only. ...Academics who research
climate change out of curiosity but find less than alarming things are ignored,
unless they rise to prominence in
which case they are harassed and smeared. ...Not all
IPCC authors are equal. Some hold positions of power in key chapters, others
subordinate positions in irrelevant chapters. The IPCC leadership has in
the past been very adept at putting troublesome authors in positions where
they cannot harm the cause. That practice must end. …[there are]
close ties between IPCC authors and [Environmental Organizations such as] the
Environmental Defence Fund, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace or the World
Wide Fund for Nature.[25] [Excerpt from
Richard Tol’s testimony ends here] This is important testimony, coming as it does from
an IPCC insider. Tol is saying that real
harassment follows for any scientist important enough to challenge the
IPCC leadership. But can Tol point to anything specific? Indeed he
can. “The hounding of Lennart Bengtsson,” he says, “is a recent example.” Who is Bengtsson? The Financial Post explains that “Professor
Bengtsson has had a long and distinguished international career in
meteorology and climate research. He was head of the Max Planck Institute for
Meteorology in Hamburg from 1991 to 2000. In 2000 he became a professor at
the University of Reading. Since 2008, he has been Director of the
International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland. He has won
numerous awards, is a member of many learned societies, and has over 200
publications to his name.”
What happened to him? Bengtsson “[came] under
assault from supposed ‘colleagues’ all over the world.” Why the pressure?
Because Bengtsson had dared to join the Global Warming Policy Foundation
(GWPF), a leading skeptical organization founded in Britain by Nigel Lawson. “Professor
Bengtsson, who is approaching 80, said he was concerned not only for his
health, but for his safety.” Bengtsson
thought he was in physical danger. This allows us
to infer the level of harassment this elderly scientist was subject to. “Professor
Bengtsson said that most protests about his decision to join the GWPF came
from the U.S., where the administration of Barack Obama has become almost
deranged on climate, which the president has picked as a ‘legacy issue.’ ” Bengtsson became so agitated that he decided to
resign from GWPF, which he had joined only three weeks earlier. “In his letter
of resignation, he noted that he did not see how he would be able to conduct
his normal work if the onslaught continued. ‘Colleagues are withdrawing their
support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no
limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about
the time of McCarthy.’ ”[26] This was a reference to the postwar
witch-hunts—known as McCarthyism—in the United States, when anybody who
disagreed with the US power-elite was dragged before a tribunal and accused
of ‘communism’ (and coerced to reveal the names of ‘accomplices’). Another comparison is also apt—perhaps more so. Conclusion:
The new Lysenkoism What happens when heads of state decide scientific
issues? We have historical case data on this. For example, we have the
stagnation of scientific progress in the European Middle Ages, when the
Church, joined to the State, ruled doctrinally on the nature of the Universe
and persecuted (sometimes with torture and death) those who disagreed. In more recent memory, soviet scientist Trofim
Lysenko argued—against the evidence—that acquired traits were genetically
heritable. Stalin loved it. In
1948, “the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that from
that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as ‘the only correct theory.’ ” The
State and its media fully supported Lysenkoism, and “Soviet scientists were
forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko’s research.”[27]
Soviet biology stagnated while free Western biologists advanced by leaps and
bounds. Stalin was no biologist. But today the roles, amazingly, appear to have been reversed.
The Russian Academy of Sciences has denounced political meddling in climate
science.[28] Meanwhile, the most powerful Western governments
have created the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which claims to speak for a ‘scientific
consensus.’ Almost president of the world superpower, Al Gore, not a climate
scientist, has become a world-traveling salesman for IPCC claims, supported
by Western Big Media. And sitting president of the world superpower Barack Obama—not
a climate scientist—recently called to mind non-biologist Joseph Stalin,
declaring in his State of the Union address (January 2014) that “the debate
is settled,” by way of supporting his second-term priority: to curb CO2
emissions.[29] There are some differences between the current
Western case and the earlier Soviet one, which I express in the following
table.
The differences between the Soviet Lysenkoist state
and the current Western situation derives, in my view, from the fact that
power elites pretending to run a free and democratic society must keep
themselves within certain bounds, lest they awaken the citizenry to revolt.
Absent such shackles, we would be precisely in the same boat. And this raises a final question. What is the interest? Obviously, given that the evidentiary support for
anthropogenic global warming is nil, there must be a powerful interest behind
the awesome concentration of political, business, media, and academic power
that seeks to force-feed us the lie that the world will end if we don’t
drastically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and heavily subsidize
‘alternative’ energy. So what is that interest? That will be the topic of our next investigation. Footnotes
and further reading [1] “GLOBAL WARMING: The Truth About Denial”; By Sharon
Begley | NEWSWEEK, From the magazine issue dated Aug 13, 2007 Note: You may read the Newsweek article online here (for reasons unknown to us, in
the online version the byline to Begley was removed): [2] Tim Wirth | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[consulted 25 July 2009] [3] The following is from an interview that Tim Wirth
gave to Frontline PBS: [Quote from
Frontline PBS begins here] Frontline: What
else was happening that summer? What was the weather like that summer? Wirth: Believe it or not, we called the Weather Bureau and
found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was
June 6 or June 9 or whatever it was, so we scheduled the hearing that day,
and bingo: It was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it. It
was stiflingly hot that summer. [At] the same time you had this drought all
across the country, so the linkage between the Hansen hearing and the drought
became very intense... Frontline: And did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room
that day? ...[We] went
in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right? So that
the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room... So Hansen’s
giving this testimony, you’ve got these television cameras back there heating
up the room, and the air conditioning in the room didn’t appear to work. So
it was sort of a perfect collection of events that happened that day, with
the wonderful Jim Hansen, who was wiping his brow at the witness table and
giving this remarkable testimony. [Quote from
Frontline PBS begins here] SOURCE: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/wirth.html
[4] Newsweek’s Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic
Standards of Journalism; US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works;
August 5, 2007; by Marc Morano [5] “Cleaning up”; The Economist, June 2, 2007, SURVEY,
1386 words [6] “Greenhouse Simplicities”;
Newsweek, August 20, 2007, ROBERT J. SAMUELSON; Pg. 47, 849 words, By Robert
J. Samuelson [7] “Can business be cool?; Companies and climate
change”; The Economist, June 10, 2006, BUSINESS, 1383 words [8] The Washington Times, July 24, 2007 Tuesday, NATION;
INSIDE THE BELTWAY; A10, 838 words, By John McCaslin, THE WASHINGTON TIMES [9] “Presentation to the Republican Study Committee of Colorado
On Global Warming and Climate Policy”; By Marlo Lewis, Jr., Senior Fellow,
Competitive Enterprise Institute; April 27, 2007 [10] http://www.citigroup.com/citi/about/leaders/mike-eckhart-bio.html [11] The New York Times; September 22, 2005 Thursday; “In
an Oil Squeeze, Attention to the Alternatives”; By KENNETH J. STIER; Section
C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; SMALL BUSINESS; Pg. 7; 1342 words. [12] “ ‘Green’ Lobbyist Who Shaped Energy Dept. Policy
Hired by Bailed Out Bank. Hmmm. At what point does this sort of admission
warrant investigation by Congress?” PJ Media; 9 February 2011; by Christopher
Horner [13] Membership Prospectus, ACORE (2013) [14] http://www.acore.org/membership/memberdirectory?sid=6:government&site=2 [15] You
may watch the full movie here: To buy the DVD: To watch a trailer: [16] The Great Global
Warming Swindle; Wikipedia [consulted 28 November 2009] [17] Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global
Warming Swindle”; Lead Authors: Nathan Rive, Dr Brian Jackson, Dave Rado;
last updated 11/06/2007; pp.44-45 The following excerpt from The Great Global Warming Swindle is quoted in the complaint: [Excerpt from The
Great Global Warming Swindle begins here] [Narrator]
Former Vice President Al Gore’s emotional film “An Inconvenient Truth” is
regarded by many as the definitive popular presentation of the theory of
man-made global warming. His argument rests on one all-important piece of
evidence taken from ice core surveys in which scientists drilled deep into
the ice to look back into earth’s climate history hundreds of thousands of
years. The first ice core survey took place in Vostok in the Antarctic. What it found, as Al Gore correctly points out was a
clear correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. [Cut to Al Gore
speaking on the film “An Inconvenient Truth”, with a graph of CO2 vs.
temperature in the background] We’re going back in time now
650,000 years. Here’s what the temperature has been on our earth. Now one
thing that kinda jumps out at you is: ‘Do they [temperature and CO2] ever fit
together?’ Most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. The
relationship is actually very complicated, but there is one relationship that
is far more powerful than all the others, and it’s this: when there is more
carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer. [Narrator] Al
Gore says that the relationship between temperature and CO2 is complicated;
but he doesn’t say what those complications are. In fact there was something
very important in the ice core data that he failed to mention. Professor Ian
Clark is a leading Arctic palaeoclimatologist, who looks back into the
earth’s temperature record tens of millions of years. [Prof Ian
Clark] When we look at climate on long scales we’re
looking at geological material that actually records climate. If we were to
take an ice sample for example, we use isotopes to reconstruct temperature;
but the atmosphere that’s imprisoned in that ice, we liberate it and then we
look at the CO2 content. [Narrator]
Professor Clark and others have indeed discovered, as Al Gore said, a link
between carbon dioxide and temperature. But what Al Gore doesn’t say is that
the link is the wrong way round. [Cut to Prof
Ian Clark in front of his laptop, on which he’s demonstrating a graph. Cut to
a separate animation of the graph.] [Prof Ian
Clark] So here we’re looking at the ice core record from
Vostok, and in the red we see temperature going up from early time to later
time. At a very key interval when we came out of a glaciation; and we see
the temperature going up, and then we see the CO2 coming up. The CO2 lags
behind that increase – it’s got an 800[-year] lag. So temperature is leading
CO2 by 800 years. [Narrator]
There have now been several major ice core surveys. Every one of them shows
the same thing. The temperature rises or falls, and then after a few hundred
years CO2 follows. [Dr Frederick
Singer] So obviously carbon dioxide is not the cause of
that warming. In fact we can say that the warming produced the increase in
carbon dioxide. [Prof Ian
Clark] CO2 clearly cannot be causing temperature changes –
it’s a product of temperature – it’s following temperature
changes. [Dr Tim Ball]
The ice core record goes to the very heart of the problem we have here. They
said: “if the CO2 increases in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, the
temperature will go up.” But the ice core record shows exactly the opposite;
so the fundamental assumption, the most fundamental assumption of the
whole theory of climate change due to humans is shown to be wrong. [Excerpt from The
Great Global Warming Swindle ends here] [18] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/30/quote-of-the-week-dirty- [19] Mann, Michael E. (2012-01-24). The Hockey Stick and
the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (Kindle Locations
3137-3140). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition. [20] Plimer, I. (2009). Heaven and Earth: Global
Warming, the Missing Science. New York: Taylor Trade Publishing. (pp
89-98). [21] An Open Letter to Dr. Phil Jones of the UEA CRU;
Posted on November 27, 2011; by Willis Eschenbach [22] Memorandum submitted by Warwick Hughes (CRU 35); UK
Parliament; Commons Select Committee; Science and Technology. [23] Ball, Tim (2014-01-17). The Deliberate Corruption of
Climate Science (Kindle Locations 2614-2635). Stairway Press. Kindle Edition. [24] “Unfortunately, universities and governments
participated in whitewashing the behavior of prominent individuals like Phil
Jones and Michael Mann among others. Nobody else involved with the scandal is
facing even biased internal investigation. Many are not mentioned in the
limited media reports on the scandal. People like Mike Hulme, Tom Wigley,
Benjamin Santer, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes, Raymond
Bradley, John Holdren, Jonathan Overpeck, Caspar Amman, Michael Oppenheimer,
Tom Crowley , Gavin Schmidt, William Connolley, Tim Osborn, Thomas Karl,
Andrew Weaver, Eric Steig and all names on the CRU emails require
investigation. They had to know what was going on, partly because they all
used the same vehicles of attack and deception. By investigating only two
individuals, the collective culpability of the CRU and the IPCC goes
unchallenged. Investigation of two individuals underscores the false claim
there are one or two “bad apples” but the overall science is unaffected. The
IPCC received a Nobel Prize collectively; they must bear the collective
blame.” SOURCE: Ball,
Tim (2014-01-17). The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science (Kindle
Locations 2534-2541). Stairway Press. Kindle Edition. [25] Testimony by Dr Richard S.J. Tol to the hearing
entitled ‘Examining the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process
for the Fifth Assessment Report’; Committee on Science, Space and Technology;
US House of Representatives; Thursday, May 29, 2014 [26] “Eminent Swedish scientist latest victim of Climate
McCarthyism”; Financial Times; 15
May 2014; by Peter Foster [27] Lysenkoism |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [28] http://notrickszone.com/2013/04/11/russian-academy-of-sciences-experts-warn-of-imminent-cold-period-global-warming-is-a-marketing-trick/ [29] “ ‘Climate
change is a fact,’ Obama declares”; The Hill; 14 January 2014; By Laura
Barron-Lopez |
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