Yet another in the "Crock of the Week" series

The "crock" video embedded below is about the "Oregon petition" which was supposedly signed by 32,000 “leading scientists”. It goes into some detail about the background of the initiators of the petition and their dubious values. It also touches upon the past links that some major deniers have to the tobacco industry’s previous long term denial (and deliberate deception about) the risks of smoking. It does not, however, mention probably the most misleading aspect of the petition, the whole text of which follows.

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, [sic] 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

Firstly, even the re-circulated (in 2007) petition still uses this text which is clearly severely out of date. Secondly, the major deceit comes in the misrepresentation of what can be called scientific philosophy in order to fool the public. When they use the term "convincing scientific evidence" in this way it should be taken to mean there is no final and certain proof that man made emissions will definitely cause catastrophic heating and disruption of the climate. This is true!! What deceitful denialist propaganda like this fails to tell the suckers is that only by "running the experiment", and seeing what actually happens, can there be final proof of the theories. By the time the theories are scientifically proved, if we are then undergoing catastrophic disruption, it will be a bit late to do anything about it.

Another crock that the author is probably working on is the "it's just a fallible computer model" canard. Senator Ferguson loves this one. I'll get around to commenting on that in due course but the basic riposte to this argument is this: seeing as we do not have perfect knowledge of how climate systems alter with varying inputs, nor could we without hundreds of years, possibly thousands, of actual experimental science, the computer models we have, flawed as they may be, are our very best idea of what may happen.

When the best available peer-reviewed scientific prognostication method states that there will be a problem that will range from moderate to catastrophic, it should be basic risk/benefit analysis that we use to show us what to do. Are you feeling lucky, punks?

It is not simply that there is one model anyway - there are at least twenty and they all broadly agree. Even if they are all wrong, policy makers and people generally, and deniers in particular, have to take into account that they can be wrong either way when deciding what to do to mitigate the risk. The models and majority science may be wrong and global warming could turn out to be benign, even ultimately beneficial, compared with our current climate - or it could turn out to be the end of our civilisation and the prelude to one of those mass extinctions of species that happen when some major outside disturbance assaults the planetary systems, like an asteroid slamming in. It would be pretty stupid of the so-called intelligent human race to do that sort of destructive planetary engineering all by itself wouldn't it? Acts of God are one thing but how much dumber would be this “Act of Man”? Jared Diamond would be able to write a much more dramatic sequel to "Collapse”!

Copenhagen climate conference, Wimberley and Ferguson

Deputy Wimberley sent an email to all States members which included this link to a 13th March Telegraph article.

Senator Sarah Ferguson then emailed all States Members with a link to a report on a conference of climate change deniers that took place recently (sponsored by a far-right US "think tank"). These are my thoughts following.

The answer to Sarah's highly irresponsible garbage is to ask the question - what happens if her sources are wrong or what happens if the IPCC predictions are wrong? Scientific hypotheses, conclusions and predictions are forever tentative until tested by reality. It is possible to do a risk analysis on the various outcomes. Firstly, we have to remember that the climate has massive inertia. Changing emissions now will take at least a couple of decades to have an effect. If we halted all emissions now, the climate would carry on changing from the historic emissions since the 90's.

If Sarah is correct and global warming will be negligible or beneficial in the future then there will be a lot of eggs on many faces in 20 years or so but the action we would have already taken by then would have put us well on the way to transitioning away from oil and towards renewable energy (inevitable at some point anyway) so in no way would it be wasted effort or investment. If the IPCC is correct, then we are in for a lot of trouble and any delay in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be irresponsible. If both Sarah and the IPCC are wrong and the strongest "alarmists" like Hansen and Lovelock are correct, then delaying immediate strong action to severely reduce emissions will render the delayers criminally responsible for a Holocaust of unimaginable, unprecedented proportions and the probable destruction of human civilisation. Surely it's a no-brainer as to the sensible, prudent way to go?

The deniers make a lot of deceitful noise about the computer models being just models and that the predictions they make may well be wrong or well off. They are correct! The models' predictions can only be truly tested by running the experiment to see if the outcome matches the predictions. However, the denier assumption is that any putative errors in the models will come out in our favour which is just highly irresponsible and is wishful thinking! The laws of physics and philosophy state that the validity of such thinking absolutely cannot be proved in advance of us "running the experiment" - by which time it would be much too late if the result is dangerous. An analogous risk analysis would be rather like remembering Dirty Harry and the punk, neither of whom knew for certain whether Callahan had fired the last bullet or if his gun still had one bullet left...

"I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

People like Sarah are hoping, without certain knowledge, that there are no bullets in the climate change gun. Remember what happened to the punk? He felt lucky (and died). Sarah has a right to her belief but she has no right to allow that pernicious and risky set of beliefs to spread and expose the rest of us to a possibly severe risk. Her duty is to keep her mouth shut and stop muddying the waters and poisoning the well.

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Re Sarah's link
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3822

All you really need to know about the deniers conference (that is the subject of the link) is the bottom line.
"Videos of all conference presentations, lecture notes, and slides are being incrementally posted on the web site of the conference's main sponsor, The Heartland Institute"

Heartland is a rabid US libertarian/ultra-republican think tank source of at least misleading info - at worst, black propaganda. Now that even the oil companies do not sponsor the very small number of denier scientists, there are very few havens left for these deniers to get funding.

Remember, the vast majority of research and published peer reviewed climate science backs up the IPCC statements *AS A MINIMUM*. Some go further, like Hansen.

A useful exercise is to imagine that there are only two equally good scientists - one's work suggests that the globe is heating up, that it is primarily caused by humans and will almost certainly be dangerous. The other's work acknowledges that the globe is heating, that humans are partially responsible but it won't be a problem or may be beneficial. This last position is that of Richard Lindzen, the most credible of the denier scientists bar none - just about all of the rest mentioned are not credible to real climate scientists. The "Brussels journal" link mentions "A second keynote speaker at the Climate Conference -- Richard Lindzen, the Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology"

N.B. Lindzen the denier conference's "second keynote speaker" said this (in 2006) "We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 °C higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But – and I cannot stress this enough – we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. [T]here has been no question whatsoever that CO2 is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas – albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in CO2 should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed."

OK, so we have our two opposed scientists who are nowhere near as far apart as the deniers would have you believe. As there is an absence of certainty in any scientific future prediction, we have to use the techniques of risk analysis to decide what to do. It's like the "Dirty Harry" quote above. If we're lucky, there won't be a problem. If we're unlucky, there will be a problem. If we're very unlucky, billions will die and human civilisation will be just about destroyed. Big "ifs". We have to choose wisely based upon an uncertain outcome that cannot be definitively predicted.

As I'm sure you realise, in reality, it's not simply one scientist versus another, as in my example, but an overwhelming number, whose work supports the IPCC conclusions, versus a very small minority of frequently marginal scientists, most of whom haven't published any research in this area in recent years themselves. Also many well known deniers are non-scientists who masquerade as scientists (such as Monckton) by fooling people with rhetoric dressed up to look like science.

Not many people now believe that our States are capable of making too many sensible decisions but if the rest of the States give the "Sarahs" any credence they could pursue an incalculably destructive course out of ignorance and arrogance and ongoing delusions of their own adequacy.