Questions for a “jewel in the crown” of U.K. (and global) science

The Met Office is a jewel in the crown, of British science and global science. As a nation we should be more aware of that, and proud of it, than we are. [...] Your excellence is an asset for British diplomacy, enhancing our soft power leverage on climate change all over the world.

John Ashton, “Climate Change and Politics: Surviving the Collision“
Met Office, Exeter, 11 April 2013

I don’t know whether the U.K. Met Office’s Richard Betts was in the audience or not when E3G’s Ashton, who is “equally at home in the worlds of foreign policy and green politics”, delivered his epic exhortations to the troops at the Met Office on April 11. But I do know that he’s a nice guy; a climate scientist who – unlike his colleague Myles Allen – has sense of humour:

Be sure to visit http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com

Thanks Josh. Fame at last :-) I’ll print that out and put it over my desk on Monday. Jan 7, 2012 at 12:52 PM | Richard Betts

Betts is also a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s forthcoming 5th Assessment Report (AR5), Working Group II, Chapter 4 (WGII, Ch4). He’s definitely not a newbie to the IPCC process, having served in the same capacity for AR4′s WGI Ch2, and as a Contributing author for WGI’s Ch7 & Ch9 and WGII’s Ch3. Oh, yes, and a stint as an Expert Reviewer of WGI, Ch11.

So I found it somewhat odd, the other day, when I noticed that Betts had chosen to tweet the following:

@etzpcm @mammuthus @thirstygecko Steve McIntyre’s comment about “pressure” on Nature to accept PAGES2K seems to be entirely speculation

I cannot imagine that Betts was oblivious to the history of documented problems that preceded the publication of this just-in-time paper (with no less than 77 co-authors). But he has indicated to me in the past that his preferred mode of reading blogs is to “skim”. Consequently, he may well have missed the full context of Steve McIntyre’s observation:

The PAGES2K article has its own interesting backstory. The made-for-IPCC article was submitted to Science last July on deadline eve, thereby permitting its use in the Second Draft, where it sourced a major regional paleo reconstruction graphic. The PAGES2K submission used (in a check-kited version) the Gergis reconstruction, which it cited as being “under revision” though, at the time, it had been disappeared.

The PAGES2K submission to Science appears to have been rejected as it has never appeared in Science and a corresponding article is scheduled for publication by Nature. It sounds like there is an interesting backstory here: one presumes that IPCC would have been annoyed by Science’s failure to publish the article and that there must have been considerable pressure on Nature to accept the article. Nature appears to have accepted the PAGES2K article only on IPCC deadline eve.

In light of the above, it struck me that Betts’ tweet was “entirely” superfluous and hardly worth mentioning. In my view, it was the least important part of McIntyre’s posts on this paper.

I don’t often engage in “debate” via twitter, because I consider it to be a truncated version of the pre-web Internet Relay Chat, which was always far from conducive to dialogue. But I made a rare exception to my usual mode of lurk ‘n learn, and replied to Betts:

@richardabetts @etzpcm @mammuthus @thirstygecko @geschichtenpost Science rejected; Nature eve of IPCC deadline acceptance pure coincidence?!

To which Betts responded, in what appeared to me to be a total non sequitur:

@hro001 As I asked @etzpcm are you suggesting the review process at @NatureGeosci was not sound? @mammuthus @thirstygecko @geschichtenpost

So I gave my head a shake and replied:

@richardabetts @etzpcm No, but why is this even worth discussing?! “Easy, superficial excuse” to avoid Steve’s *main* points, p’haps?!

Which, evidently, led Betts to conclude:

@hro001 @etzpcm OK that’s good then. It was SM who seemed to query review process, but if it’s not an issue, great!

So, now you know why – for the most part – I view twitter as a considerably less than optimal platform for “dialogue”: The answers one receives quite often bear absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the question(s) one might have asked!

This is not the first series of disconnects I’ve seen emanating from Betts’ keyboard; nor, I suspect, will it be the last! Precision in posting is not what I would call his forté. But I digress …

Not mentioned in Betts’ Met Office bio is that he is also a member of the fairly recently formed “My Climate and Me” team.

If you scroll down the page, you’ll find a post dated March 12, 2013 with an outdated and very misleading title. Here’s a screen capture:

From My Climate and Me April 23, 2013

 

I don’t know how long the original post remained on the site, before they got around to taking it down, but I have yet to see a reasonable explanation from this “jewel in the crown, of British science and global science” as to why:

• they chose to post without examining the so-called “science” on which the press release was based
• they have chosen to leave this clearly alarmist “headline” intact, some six weeks after it was firmly established that it is not supported by the underlying paper

When asked about this Marcott et al paper (of which one of the co-authors just happened to be a fellow AR5 IPCC Lead Author), Betts’ first response [Mar 25, 2013 at 10:44 AM] was:

Don Keiller, Pharos, ZT:

I’m afraid Marcott et al is not a particularly high priority for me. I can see it’s of huge interest to readers of this blog, since it’s about palaeoclimate reconstructions and hockey-stick shapes, but there’s much more to climate science than that. If my aim was to try to convince the public one way or another on whether climate change is an urgent issue or not, then I might be more motivated to read up on it as it clearly is quite pertinent to the public debate there. However, this is not my aim, so Marcott remains merely of academic interest to me. As I say above, I’m more interested in improving the ability to assess the impacts of climate change and variability over the next few years to decades, and an 11,000 year reconstruction does not seem to be especially helpful there. [emphasis added -hro]

I’m not entirely sure how one might hold or maintain a “merely … academic interest” in a paper one has not been “motivated to read up on”. Nor does Betts’ apparent lack of interest in “paleoclimate reconstructions and hockey-stick shapes” quite square with his (relatively) instantaneous flight into the twitterverse with his superfluous “entirely speculation” tweet (about another just-in-time IPCC paper on “paleoclimate reconstructions and hockey-stick shapes”) But what do I know, eh?! I’m not a busy climate scientist!

For the record, when push eventually came to shove, Betts opted to praise with faint damnation [Apr 15, 2013 at 5:27 PM]:

Don

My (non-palaeo expert) view on Marcott is that it is an interesting attempt to reconstruct temperatures over the last 11000 years or so, but its significance has been over-sold. It does not appear to support claims of “unprecedented rates of warming” because the time resolution is too low. [emphasis added -hro]

<Sigh> Much as I dislike sounding like a broken record …

I have yet to see a reasonable explanation from this “jewel in the crown, of British science and global science” as to why:

• they chose to post without examining the so-called “science” on which the press release was based
• they have chosen to leave this clearly alarmist “headline” intact, some six weeks after it was firmly established that it is not supported by the underlying paper

In short, why is this “jewel in the crown, of British science and global science” participating in the passive perpetuation of the “over-selling” of an ‘apparently unsupported claim’ of “unprecedented rates of warming”?

And speaking of the Met Office and participation in the passive perpetuation of overselling hockey-sticks …

There’s another poster, “Marion” in this same thread at Bishop Hill, who had observed [Apr 19, 2013 at 3:22 PM]:

[...] the Met Office [...] produced in October 2009 the booklet entitled “Warming, Climate Change – the Facts” with the super-exaggerated hockey-stick on Page 4.

http://people.virginia.edu/~rtg2t/future/gcc/UK.Met.quick_guide.pdf

Betts’ response [Apr 19, 2013 at 7:31 PM]:

Marion

The brochure you link to is no longer used by the Met Office – it’s not on the website any more (which is why you had to link to a copy kept by elsewhere) and paper copies are no longer distributed. We accepted that there were errors in it, eg. the graph you mention didn’t show the uncertainties properly.

I’m not quite sure what Betts expected readers to do with this response. But I’ll take a wild guess and suggest he was hoping that his response would make this particular issue go away! However, as I subsequently posted …

I hadn’t actually seen this brochure before (although now that I have, I do recall seeing something shorter but similar on the Met Office site some years ago, and as I recall it was introduced by Julia Slingo and written by Richard Betts). But a very funny thing happened on my way to pasting the title above … after I had carefully selected the title with my mouse, my cat decided to intervene and instead of copying, I found myself searching Google for the selected text, which returned:

About 55,400 results (0.37 seconds)

It was even on e-bay! Well, at least for a while, but alas:

Item 360227229693 is no longer available.
50 items found similar to ‘WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE THE FACTS MET OFFICE

In light of this, perhaps Richard could tell us:

a) when were the errors recognized?

b) when was this (coincidental, I’m sure) just-in-time for Copenhagen document withdrawn from “paper” circulation?

But most importantly:

c) where on the Met Office website might one find the list of errors and omissions – and/or the replacement recitation of alarmist propaganda brochure?

As of this writing, my questions remain unanswered. And because that thread is no longer on the “front” page at Bishop Hill they can quite easily be overlooked, which is why I thought I’d post them here.

And in the meantime … “a jewel in the crown, of British science and global science”?! Really, Mr. Ashton! In light of the above, freebie papier maché ring at the bottom of a very expensive CrackerJack box strikes me as being somewhat closer to an appropriate metaphor for the U.K. Met Office;-)

P.S. Here’s a copy of that no longer on the Met Office website brochure (pdf). Be prepared to be very afraid of the dreaded CO₂ … and watch out for the peas under the thimbles ;-)

UPDATE: Richard has responded via comment below

The (un)sustainability of all climate all the time

[04/23/2013: Please note update, below -hro]

A few days ago, I was taking stock of the many framings of climate. I was also wondering about the various and sundry footprints with which enviro-activists are so concerned. Here, thanks to wordle, is an illustration of what I found:

I very quickly realized that I had forgotten “climate disruption”, so please imagine it included in the above; and I’ve no doubt that there are others I might have missed. But what I had never heard of until yesterday was “climate insecurity”.

There’s a chap by the name of John Ashton who recently delivered [h/t Tom Nelson] a rally the troops speech to the somewhat self-beleaguered of late, U.K. Meteorological Office (fondly known in climate concerned circles as the “Met Office”).

Climate insecurity (whatever this is supposed to mean) is obviously very much on Ashton’s mind, as he mentioned it no less than three times during the course of his 4,986-word peroration, which he had entitled, “Climate Change and Politics: Surviving the Collision”. Oh, and his total “climate” count was no less than 42, and included such memorable turns of phrase as “climate-exposed business sectors” (perhaps he had the UNEP’s B4E in mind?) and “climate diplomacy”.

The latter is something about which, presumably, Ashton knows a fair bit, because his previous day-job (2006-2012) was that of “Special Representative for Climate Change for three successive UK Foreign Secretaries”.

Along with the requisite alarmism, there’s an awful lot of ponderous, pompous and/or presumptuous propaganda in Ashton’s speech; for example:

[...] here is a challenge that is Promethean. We have stolen the secret of fire for our own use, unleashing punitive forces inherent in the system of which we are ourselves part. Dealing with this is imperative, because if we don’t the consequences could soon become unmanageable, perhaps even jeopardizing the system conditions within which civilization itself can flourish.

And as we look more deeply into the picture, it urges us to summon a response that is transformational, because the entire modern economy is organized around the energy system. Making that system carbon neutral will reconfigure the economy, and the power relations embedded within it. Furthermore we must accomplish this urgently, in little more than a generation, while building resilience to the climate insecurity we can no longer avoid.

Promethean, imperative, transformational, urgent. [emphasis added -hro]

Not unlike the UNEP, Ashton is obviously very big on “transformative/transformational” (eight mentions in his speech at the Met Office). But what is curiously and conspicuously absent is any mention of “sustainable” … as in “sustainable development”.

Ashton is one of three founding directors of a group called E3G, and served as the first Chief Executive of E3G in 2005-06. Ever heard of this group before? No? Neither had I! So here’s the scoop:

E3G is an independent not-for-profit organisation, established in 2004, that works in the public interest to accelerate the global transition to sustainable development.

We build coalitions to achieve carefully defined outcomes, chosen for their capacity to leverage change. E3G founders had been working together and developing their shared thinking for several years before the organisation was constituted in 2004.

[...]

E3G makes things happen. We work to deliver outcomes with strategic significance for the transition to sustainable development. [emphasis added -hro]

UPDATE: Alex Cull notes in a very enlightening comment below, there’s at least one, no doubt, “carefully defined outcome” that Ashton – presumably on E3G’s behalf – was not able to “make happen”. Alex concludes:

Whatever the cause, it looks very much as though Ashton and the Qataris had an irreconcilable difference of opinion and that on this occasion, British “climate diplomacy” did not “catalyse transformational change” but hit the buffers of geopolitical reality instead.

In 2004, Ashton made an appearance in the Climategate (CG2 2428.txt) emails. In response to an E-mail, about “getting the idea into [then Prime Minister] Blair’s mind”, Ashton had opined:

cc: “Mike Hulme” , “John SCHELLNHUBER”
date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 10:47:57 +010 ???
from: “John Ashton”
subject: Re: Moving this forward
to: “Peter Read” , “John Shepherd”

John, John and Mike heard much of my argument at the Tyndall Assembly. But I should clarify it a little in the light of Peter’s message.

The problem at present is not the absence of propositions that offer stabilisation and that are scientifically, technologically and economically, credible. Two such broad propositions are biomass energy and capture and storage: both deserve attention within a portfolio of possible responses.

[...]

That is, I am sure, why [Blair's] recent speech concentrated on putting across, more starkly than he has done before, the scale and urgency of the challenge. Abrupt climate change is a crucial piece of that jigsaw – and you can make more impact with it at present by simply highlighting the danger without going too far into any particular set of responses.
[...] [emphasis added -hro]

His E3G bio indicates that Ashton has a long history of having moved virtually effortlessly through the NGO/Government revolving door:

John is one of a new generation of diplomats equally at home in the worlds of foreign policy and green politics. Before moving outside government to establish E3G in 2005, John had a distinguished career in the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including founding and leading its Environment Policy Department.

A major theme of John’s career has been China. He speaks Chinese. He was an adviser to Governor Chris Patten in Hong Kong from 1993-7. His first diplomatic assignment, from 1981-4, was as Science Attaché in the British Embassy in Beijing. He also has experience at high level on a wide range of European and global issues, including as a political officer in the British Embassy in Rome from 1988-93.

John was the first Chief Executive of E3G in 2005-06, before returning to the UK Foreign Office as the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change. His role supported Ministers in building a stronger foundation for an effective response to climate change. He had the personal title of Ambassador with direct access to the Foreign Secretary. John played a key role in designing the FCO’s climate change network and strategy, with its focus on climate stability as a precondition for security, prosperity and equity, and on strategic political engagement with the emerging and other major economies. [emphasis added -hro]

One of the other “founding directors” – and the current Chief Executive – is Nick Mabey. If that name rings a bell, it probably should. Mabey hails from the WWF – and he even had a role in promoting Mike Hulme and Joseph Alcamo’s pre-Kyoto “Statement”.

Like Ashton (and many others in this “gently” grown E3G crop of propagandists), Mabey’s bio indicates that he, too, has passed through the NGO/Government “revolving door”:

Nick was previously a senior advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit leading work on national and international policy areas, including: energy, climate change, countries at risk of instability, organised crime and fisheries. Nick was employed in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Environment Policy Department, and was the FCO lead for the Johannesburg Summit in 2002 [...]

Before he joined government Nick was Head of Economics and Development at WWF-UK. He came to WWF from research at London Business School on the economics of climate change, which he published as the book “Argument in the Greenhouse”.
[...]
Among other appointments Nick is currently on the advisory board of Infrastructure UK, the independent commission reporting to the UK Conservative Party on the design of a Green Investment Bank, and the Advisory Council of the European Technology Platform for Zero Emission Fossil Fuel Power. [emphasis added -hro]

So, it should come as no surprise that movers and shakers at E3G (which evidently stands for Third Generation Environmentalism Ltd) receive funding from WWF as well as from the U.K.’s Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and Department for International Development. Big Oil (represented by Shell) is also on E3G’s funding roster.

Readers who have been following the various interwoven threads of this ongoing saga will have noted the (coincidental, I’m sure) inclusion of John [aka Hans Joachim] Schellnhuber in the recipient list of Ashton’s E-mail, above. It was thanks to Germany’s Schellnhuber that the “dangerous” 2°C first entered the propaganda scene. As he told Der Speigel‘s Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter in April 2010:

a group of German scientists, yielding to political pressure, invented an easily digestible message in the mid-1990s: the two-degree target. To avoid even greater damage to human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than it was before the beginning of industrialization.

[...]

Rarely has a scientific idea had such a strong impact on world politics. Most countries have now recognized the two-degree target. If the two-degree limit were exceeded, German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen announced ahead of the failed Copenhagen summit, “life on our planet, as we know it today, would no longer be possible.“

But this is scientific nonsense. “Two degrees is not a magical limit — it’s clearly a political goal,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated.”

Schellnhuber ought to know. He is the father of the two-degree target.

“Yes, I plead guilty,” he says, smiling. [emphasis added -hro]

More recently, Schellnhuber has declared [h/t dennisA]:

04/17/2013 – The preparations for the next climate agreement that is supposed to be reached in 2015 are already taking shape – and civil society [aka NGOs -hro] is being asked to accompany and support the EU’s development/decision process.

On invitation by Connie Hedegaard, the EU´s Commissioner for Climate Action, a number of experts and decision makers meet at a stakeholder´s conference in Brussels today.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has been asked to hold a keynote on the state of play in climate science.

The conference in Brussels was organized to shape the EU’s input into negotiations on a new international agreement to protect the global climate system.

“This is the starting signal for the hardest stage on the path to the world climate agreement 2015,” Schellnhuber says. “When it comes to the facts of climate change, there has been a lot of confusion in the public debates recently, which interested circles seek to exploit and deepen.

“Now it is up to science to bring light into this darkness and to draw a realistic picture of the challenges ahead for the public in Europe. On this basis citizens can make informed decisions.” [emphasis added -hro

Seems to me that those in the Ashton/Mabey/Schellnhuber circles of influence (not unlike BC's Andrew Weaver) have no qualms about putting the enviro-advocacy cart ahead of any evidentiary horses.

Do they care - or even realize - that the graphic images and icons (polar bears and hockey-sticks) based on flimsy "science" they have constructed to support them are being unravelled almost as fast as they come off the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s just-in-time assembly-line?

It was these flimsy "science" constructions, reconstructions (and rapid deconstructions, thanks to people such as Climate Audit's Steve McIntyre, Bishop Hill's Andrew Montford and Polar Bear Science's Susan Crockford) that were running through my mind when I came across the following video [h/t Digging In The Clay's Verity Jones]. The music isn’t exactly what I would have chosen (so you may want to turn down your speakers), but the images are quite compelling, wouldn’t you agree? ;-)

Alternatively, from a (turn up your speakers) musical perspective, the following [h/t my Dad] offers an equally amusing depiction of “footprints” and these inter-related enviro-activists’ endeavours. Enjoy :-)

UNEP B4E party’s over … Did Chatham House rule?

As I wrote yesterday (well I began writing yesterday and posted early today) the UNEP’s “Business for the Environment” (aka B4E) “8th annual B4E Global Summit” was scheduled to take place in Delhi, April 15-16.

Just in case you’ve forgotten, the theme was “EMERGING MARKET LEADERSHIP FOR GLOBAL GREEN GROWTH”.

So I was hoping that by now I’d be able to update you on the visions of “innovative”, “inclusive” whatevers that might have danced through the participants’ heads. And I know you’ll be as disappointed as I am to realize that it is now approx. 3:30 a.m. April 17 in Delhi, and – as far as I’ve been able to determine from the B4E website – radio silence seems to have descended approx. 18 hours ago, the time of their last tweet:

B4ESummit #B4E Day 2 – Insightful discussion panels on innovative #BizPractices, emerging markets’ #GreenGrowth, #CleanEnergy

I did, however, find the “draft” Agenda (which did not indicate whether or not any changes might have been made since its [undated] appearance).

According to this Agenda, the “facilitator” was a Charles Emmerson, “Independent Advisor and Senior Fellow, Chatham House”.

Emmerson was scheduled to be the Moderator of a Day 2 Session:

Report and proposals from Day One working group Chairs and dialogue on outcomes
Solutions for inclusive, green and sustainable urban development

He was also scheduled along with:

Ranjit Barthakur, Secretary-General / Chairman, Club of Rome India / Globally Managed Services (GMS)

to deliver “Closing Remarks”.

In case you were wondering, here’s some background on Chatham House:

Chatham House Rule

The Chatham House Rule originated at Chatham House with the aim of providing anonymity to speakers and to encourage openness and the sharing of information. It is now used throughout the world as an aid to free discussion. Meetings do not have to take place at Chatham House, or be organized by Chatham House, to be held under the Rule.

Meetings, events and discussions held at Chatham House are normally conducted ‘on the record’ with the Rule occasionally invoked at the speaker’s request. In cases where the Rule is not considered sufficiently strict, an event may be held ‘off the record’.

But the bottom-line “spirit” of the Rule, according to their FAQ, is:

Q. Can participants in a meeting be named as long as what is said is not attributed?

A. It is important to think about the spirit of the Rule. For example, sometimes speakers need to be named when publicizing the meeting. The Rule is more about the dissemination of the information after the event – nothing should be done to identify, either explicitly or implicitly, who said what.

Emmerson is evidently one of their “Experts” whose Expertise lies in:

• Global risk, foresight and strategy
• Security, geopolitics, natural resources and climate
• Arctic geopolitics and geo-economics
• Soft power and foreign policy
• Global governance

Oh, my … there they go again, talking about “global governance”. I wonder if this has been any better defined than TEEB’s “green economy”. And I also wonder why the UNEP’s media machine – always very quick to spin a UNEP sponsored meeting into the greatest thing since sliced bread – seems to be maintaining radio silence on the outcome of this “global summit”.

UNEP now pushing nature onto business balance sheets

A few years ago, I wrote about the birth of a new kid on the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)’s alarmist block: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s younger “sibling”, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

They were singing their favourite tune (i.e. the money song) even then (all emphases in quoted text throughout this post are mine -hro):

Developing nations say more funding is needed from developed countries to share the effort in saving nature. Much of the world’s remaining biological diversity is in developing nations such as Brazil, Indonesia and in central Africa.

So I can’t say I was entirely at all surprised to read in the latest and greatest UNEP Press Release (complete with requisite picture of doom and gloom):

OMG, it must be worse than we thought

New Study Shows Multi-Trillion Dollar Natural Capital Risk Underlining Urgency of Green Economy Transition

Mon, Apr 15, 2013

The report shows that the scale and variation in impacts provide opportunities for companies and their investors to differentiate themselves by optimizing their supply chains and investment strategies

[...]

Dr. Dorothy Maxwell, Director of the TEEB for Business Coalition states, “Understanding natural capital risk and opportunities is essential for businesses to position themselves in an increasingly resource constrained world.”

The report shows that the scale and variation in impacts provide opportunities for companies and their investors to differentiate themselves by optimizing their supply chains and investment strategies. Some recommendations for companies include implementing processes to measure and manage natural capital used; strengthening business models to mitigate exposure to global risks such as water scarcity, volatile energy and agricultural prices, rising GHG emissions and climate change impacts.

Pavan Sukhdev, Chair of the Advisory Board of TEEB for Business Coalition states, “We need undoubtedly to change how we do business, but we cannot manage what we do not measure – and at present only a handful of businesses measure their externalities. Resolving this is at the heart of the green economy and sustainability itself.”

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) states, “Forward-looking companies are already recognizing that the key to competitiveness in an increasingly resource-constrained world will hinge in large part on escalating natural resource efficiencies and cutting pollution footprints-the numbers in this report underline the urgency but also the opportunities for of all economies in transitioning to a Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”

Now, according to Steiner, we need to add a “pollution footprint” to our “carbon footprint”; although I’m not sure if our “pollution footprint” supercedes or subsumes what Sukhdev had previously called our contributions to the “global ecological footprint”.

There are “opportunities” in this particular “urgency”. What’s not to like, eh?! Mind you I’m fairly certain that I’ve heard this line (or a facsimile thereof) before. Yes, I remember now! It was a quote from the IPCC’s Chair, Rajendra Pachauri when he was talking to the NZ Herald in 2008:

Business should be thinking about the response to climate change not as a threat but as an opportunity.

Never let it be said that the UN does not encourage “recycling” – at least of slogans and buzz-phrases!

TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, in case you were wondering what this acronym stands for; tagline, btw, is “making nature’s values visible”) is the “new testament” of the Climate Bible – and was evidently “inspired by” Nicholas Stern, a member of the TEEB advisory board, whose infamous and discredited Stern Review has contributed to landing the U.K. into the mess in which it now finds itself. But I digress …

Do you suppose there is any any difference between Sukhdev’s “green economy” and Steiner’s “Green Economy”? Or perhaps more to the point, I suppose, would be whether or not the powers that be at the UNEP have finally succeeded in defining what they actually mean by this slogan term.

They certainly didn’t seem to have a … hmmm … consensus … during the run-up to Rio+20. As the Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) had observed during the course of a “High Level” meeting (the minutes of which UNEP’s Steiner had decided should not be for public consumption):

there was as yet no common agreement on a definition of the green economy.

This assertion did not come out of the blue, and could well have derived from another participant’s observation that:

reaching a common understanding on the meaning, scope and implications of the green economy had been generating considerable debate. Many agreed that the [Rio+20] Conference should first clarify what the green economy was not, in order to help define what it could be.

Sukhdev had coined his brilliant mantra (his word, not mine), “we cannot manage what we do not measure” some years ago. And no doubt he’s been flogging it far and wide – including, I suspect, during Stewart Elgie‘s so-called ‘charitable initiative’, Sustainable Prosperity (SP) generously hosted 2010 “three city speaking tour” by Sukhdev here in Canada.

SP’s Elgie showed remarkable forethought when he set up shop in Ottawa. As I had noted last June:

What kinds of changes does Sustainable Prosperity want?

We are seeking changes in policy – federally, provincially, and locally – to implement EPR across Canada. EPR means a change in the rules of the game, and a levelling of the playing field, so that cleaner goods and services become cheaper. EPR policies, also known as “market based instruments” (MBI) or “economic instruments,” include tax shifting, cap-and-trade emissions reductions, and developing markets for ecological services.

Fits right in with Sukhdev’s thinking, just like a dirty old shirt, eh?! And whatever SP wants, Elgie (as we have seen) mistakenly seems to think SP should get!

But wait … there’s more. I’m not sure what might have happened to IPBES – which is supposed to be assessing the “science” behind these new-fangled money-making-mechanisms opportunities. But according to the UNEP’s “Notes to Editors” in this Press Release of April 15 (here comes the scary stuff):

Background

Planetary boundaries are being approached at a reckless pace, and some argue that global biodiversity, nitrogen and climate thresholds have already been breached. Global economic direction and resource use is the underlying cause of this.

Corporations today account for two-thirds of our economy and resource use, and most of the global stressors of planetary boundaries (emissions, freshwater use, land-use change, chemical pollutants, etc) are in reality the negative externalities of “business as usual”.

These externalities have grown too large to ignore, and are estimated at close to US$2.1 trillion for the top-3,000 listed corporations (UN Principles for Responsible Investment, 2010).

To mainstream the measurement and management of externalities in business, the “TEEB for Business Coalition”, a global coalition of pioneering organizations on natural capital, was formed in 2012. It aims to create awareness of this issue amongst decision makers in business and support scaling ‘best-of-breed’ solutions from leading corporations to value, manage and report their externalities.

About the TEEB for Business Coalition – http://www.teebforbusiness.org

Launched in November 2012, The TEEB for Business Coalition is a global, multi stakeholder platform formed to develop and support the uptake of natural capital accounting in business decision-making. The vision of the TEEB for Business Coalition is to support a transformative shift in corporate behaviour to preserve and enhance rather than deplete natural capital.

Everything is just sooooooo “transformative” in UN-speak, these days! And isn’t it amazing that this group should have produced an 86 page report (pdf) in such a short period of time. Well … actually, this group did not produce the report. It was evidently contracted out to an organization called TruCost. When I did a brief scan of the report, my eye stopped at “Munich Re”:

Reinsurance company Munich Re reported that crop losses have been US$20 billion.¹¹

So I followed the link to the reference:

Munich Re press release, Natural catastrophe statistics for 2012 dominated by weather extremes in the USA, 3 January 2013: http://www.munichre.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2013/2013_01_03_press_release.aspx, accessed 13 March 2013

Now I wonder why this rings a bell … Sounds remarkably like an episode of “science” by press release that Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. recently deconstructed. His conclusion:

Misleading public claims. An over-hyped press release. A paper which neglects to include materially relevant and contradictory information central to its core argument. All in all, just a normal day in climate science!

I also found one reference to the “Stern Review” and two to the “Stern Report” – although I believe the “Report” and the “Review” [pls. see above] are one and the same. These findings do not augur well for the validity of TruCost’s report. My layperson’s “elevator speech” (well tweet, actually, to Dr. Richard Tol and Pielke both of whom know far more about this kind of stuff than I do) on TruCost’s report:

I saw apples, oranges. assumptions and bafflegab amidst lots of uncertainties. wd appreciate yr “translation”

Incidentally, my scan of the 90+ references strongly suggests that this report is far from being rife with citations from “peer-reviewed” literature.

But the important thing, I’m sure, is that this report is just in time for:

The 8th annual B4E Global Summit in Delhi, 15-16 April is co-organised with the Confederation of Indian Industry and The Club of Rome in partnership with CNN, The Climate Group, Carbon Disclosure Project, World Agroforestry Centre, and other partners.

According to the B4E (how catchy is that, eh?!) website:

Under the theme ‘Emerging Market Leadership for Global Green Growth’, the 7th annual B4E Global Summit in Delhi will look at the role of emerging markets in driving the world’s transition to a global green economy, one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time.

Leaders from business, government and the NGO community will gather to explore inclusive green business models, innovation in finance and technology and propose industry commitments to action.

Two ingredients one can invariably count on in any UNEP sponsored meeting: the presence of NGOs and calls for “innovation in finance”. And who knows, perhaps scheduled speaker Ashok Khosla, President Emeritus, The Club of Rome will be able to come up with a definition of “green economy” (or “Green Economy”).

Stay tuned, folks ;-)

UPDATE: The U.K. Guardian is (predictably) onside, via their “Sustainable Business” blog:

Putting environmental impact on the balance sheet

Until now, “environmental externalities” have never made it onto the balance sheet, doing so would reveal many industries are generating huge net losses
[...]
Until now, these so-called “environmental externalities” have never made it onto the balance sheet. But what if that were to change? That’s the question raised in a new report released today by the TEEB Coalition for Business. The answers make for alarming reading.

[...]

The calculations represent one of the most comprehensive and geographically wide-ranging attempts at monetising natural capital to date.

[...]

The results are illuminating. For one, the numbers are colossal

[...]

Sceptics will no doubt be quick to question the maths. Alastair MacGregor, chief operating officer of Trucost, admits that there are methodological and data shortfalls. [...]

Yet MacGregor insists that the numbers are as robust as can be expected for what is still a very new accounting science. Trucost’s conclusions are based on 12 years’ of data on quantitative environmental disclosures from thousands of companies. “There’s still a need for more primary research around environmental valuations so that we can build up models that can be applied globally“, he concedes, expressing his hope that today’s report will act as a “catalyst” for just that.

Apart from the world’s nascent carbon markets, monetising non-financial externalities still remains a largely fictitious pursuit. Ecosystem services need to take on a fungible, tradable form if they are to have financial value in real, cash-in-hand monetary terms. Until then, it’s Monopoly money we’re talking about.

Just because natural capital costs are unpriced doesn’t mean they go away. The impacts of erratic weather provide a good example.

And of course, business has never had to deal with the “impacts of erratic weather” before, right?!

BC Auditor General confirms enviro-activist Elgie’s “resignation” claim unsustainable

Stewart Elgie is an environmental activist, as I have noted in the past (here, here and here), who runs a “think-tank” he calls “Sustainable Prosperity” (SP) which operates out of an office in Ottawa (for the renovation of which the University of Ottawa very generously donated $340,000 worth of “in kind contributions” along with $170,000 “in kind contributions” for … well, for who knows what!)

Elgie has dipped his fingers into many environmental pies – and has proven himself to be somewhat of a self-promoter with few, if any, qualms about being highly economical with the truth. IOW, transparency and full disclosure are not exactly high on his list of priorities. For example, SP purports to be a “charitable … initiative”; but – not unlike many “initiatives” which are beneficiaries of Tides Canada – SP is not a registered Canadian charity.

Around April 1, I became aware of the shameful campaign to discredit the BC Auditor General (AG)’s report on the BC government’s so-called “carbon neutrality”. Consequently, I was somewhat, well, skeptical when I read the following from the Canadian Press in the March 26 edition of the Vancouver Province tabloid:

Leaked letters show experts angered by B.C.’s carbon neutrality report, to be released today

VICTORIA — A set of leaked letters is undermining the credibility of a report to be released today by Auditor General John Doyle over B.C.’s carbon neutral experiment.

Environmental, legal and industry experts have roundly criticized Doyle’s upcoming report as “useless,” and an attempt to “wilfully misinterpret and misconstrue” the facts about the environmental tax plan

[...]

ADVISER (sic) STEPS DOWN

Another letter amounts to a resignation statement to Pacific Carbon Trust officer Scott MacDonald.

The March 23 letter to MacDonald is from University of Ottawa law Prof. Stewart Elgie, an environmental law expert.

Elgie’s letter states he stepped down as an expert adviser for Doyle’s carbon neutral audit and has terminated his position.

“It would not be appropriate to share the details of why I have taken this step,” states Elgie’s letter. “I will simply say that I have not been shown or reviewed any of the (auditor’s) draft reports for the past seven months.”

“Before that time, the materials I did review indicated that the audit findings were heading in a direction that was inconsistent with the expert advice I provided in several major areas, particularly concerning the Darkwoods project,” states the letter.

At this point, I had already read the AG’s damning (but relatively diplomatic) report, An Audit of Carbon Neutral Government, in which he had noted:

This audit examined two projects [of Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT)] which accounted for nearly 70 percent of the offsets purchased by government to achieve their claim of carbon neutrality: the Darkwoods Forest Carbon project in southeastern B.C. and the Encana Underbalanced Drilling project near Fort Nelson. However, this claim of carbon neutrality is not accurate, as neither project provided credible offsets.

The credibility of carbon offsets is the crux of the entire concept. [emphasis added - hro]

I was somewhat curious as to why “advisor” Elgie might have sent this letter of “resignation” to anyone at PCT. Was Elgie PCT’s designated “hit man” or was he a member of their board?! Or was this simply a case of sloppy – or deliberately foggy – writing on the part of whoever might have written and/or edited this CP piece? But then again, perhaps it was Elgie who was smothering his actions with a coat of deliberately misleading smog.

So I sat right down and wrote the AG a letter, in which I had cited the Province article. I didn’t expect that the AG would be able to confirm (or explain) Elgie’s letter to PCT, so I didn’t ask him about this; but I did ask if he could:

confirm whether or not Elgie’s depiction of his ‘role’ in your audit is an accurate reflection of reality.

A few hours ago, I received a reply from the Assistant Auditor General. The following is a screen-cap of the pdf I received, to which I have applied “white out” to my E-mail address and their office phone number and fax:

Lest Mr. Sydor’s message (which I share with his knowledge and permission … no FOI request was required;-)) get lost in webification of this image, here are the salient parts of his response (with my emphases added):

I understand that you are looking for confirmation of the accuracy of comments made by Professor Stewart Elgie to the Media regarding his participation in our report An Audit of Carbon Neutral Government.

It is not the practice of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) to identify or comment on advisors for a specific report, however because Mr. Elgie publically identified himself as an advisor, I can tell you that he did act in that capacity, but the OAG never discussed report contents or a draft report with him. We were unable to use our advisors as resources during the drafting of the report, due to the letter writing campaign that coincided and was directly related to the report.

Mr. Elgie’s contract expired in the summer of 2012 and was not renewed. Upon advising Mr. Elgie that his input would not be included in the report, he sent the OAG a withdrawal letter (by this time, the drafting of the report had been concluded, discussed with government representatives, and the government response had been provided).

While Sydor’s “Upon advising … [Elgie] sent” is somewhat less than clear or grammatically correct (I would have written, “After we advised Mr. Elgie … he sent …), the bottom line, so to speak, is that Elgie’s claim may result in furthering his “prosperity” but as a “fact” one could take to the bank, it is far from even approaching supportable – or “sustainable”.

Reading between Sydor’s diplomatic lines, it seems to me that if Elgie had “been shown or reviewed” any “draft reports” they must have been shared with him by PCT. As the AG had noted in the conclusion of his scathing introductory comments:

Of all the reports I have issued, never has one been targeted in such an overt manner by vested interests, nor has an audited organization ever broken my confidence, as did the senior managers at PCT by disclosing confidential information to carbon market developers and brokers. The orchestrated letter-writing campaign from domestic and foreign entities which followed this disclosure demanded considerable staff time, and resulted in the delay of this report. I cannot sufficiently express my surprise and disappointment that a public sector entity, with a fiduciary duty to the people of British Columbia, chose to expend its time and energy in this manner, rather than addressing the concerns raised in the audit – and that they did so with the knowledge of their governing board.

Clearly Elgie did not “resign” (unless it was from the PCT board); he was – in effect – fired for cause! And deservedly so, IMHO. And if he cannot be trusted to be honest about this, why on Gaia’s green earth should we trust any of SP’s “reports” – least of all SP’s June 2012 report on the “success” of BC’s carbon tax.

IPCC-nik Andrew Weaver riding waves of suspect Tides?

As readers of this blog will know, Andrew Weaver is the Deputy Leader of the BC Green Party – and also a candidate in the forthcoming Provincial election. He’s also very much a green-heart-on-sleeve activist, and supposedly an “objective” Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s forthcoming 5th Assessment Report.

In my previous post I had observed that he was, in effect, a “midwife” at the birth of BC’s over-hyped and under-performing carbon offsets scheme.

Before he slammed the virtual door to his twitter-feed, I had posed some questions that he declined to answer (for example, here, here and here).

And now it seems that he and his party have the (not surprising) support of (at least) one of the tentacles of the Tides Foundation [h/t Tom Nelson]:

Green Party Leads the Way to Effective Climate Policy

Clean Energy Canada at Tides Canada today released a B.C. Climate Leadership Position Summary indicating where the major political parties planning to run candidates in the British Columbia May 14 provincial election stand on the carbon tax. Of the major parties in BC, the Green Party was noted as the only one fully committed both improving and expanding the carbon tax program.

“We are delighted that Clean Energy Canada has recognized our strong leadership position on climate change and our commitment to working to make the carbon levy an effective solution for carbon emissions reduction,” said Dr. Andrew Weaver, Deputy Green Party Leader and candidate for Oak Bay-Gordon Head.

“It is exciting that we’re starting to see a recommitment to climate leadership,“ said Merran Smith, director of Clean Energy Canada at Tides Canada.

Considering the many questions about this organization’s foreign funding and activities, if I were a candidate for election, I doubt that I’d be touting an endorsement from such a tainted source.

But then, I’m from a different generation: I learned how to use critical thinking skills and exercise sound judgment. Qualities that have not been in evidence from the utterances of alarmist-activist Andrew <don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater> Weaver. Or Andrew <barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles> Weaver if you prefer.

But on a somewhat related – and far more realistic – note, here’s an interview with Ross McKitrick speaking about his recent report on Ontario’s Green Energy Act – and the follies contained therein.

Ross McKitrick on his recent report on renewables

You can read his report here

And you can also read an amusingly predictable “response” from the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CANWEA) here. One of CANWEA’S complaints:

The report relies excessively on the widely criticized 2011 Annual Report by the Auditor General of Ontario [emphasis added -hro]

I guess CANWEA wasn’t too happy with the Ontario AG’s findings which included (p. 97 of this pdf)

• no independent, objective, expert investigation had been done to examine the potential effects of renewable-energy policies on prices, job creation, and greenhouse gas emissions; and
• no thorough and professional cost/benefit analysis had been conducted to identify potentially cleaner, more economically productive, and cost-effective alternatives to renewable energy, such as energy imports and increased conservation.

Sounds like yet another environmental advocacy cart way ahead of any evidential horses with not a qualified “driver” in sight.

So what is it with these green dreamers and their assumption that they know better than Auditors General, eh?!

One can hardly wait for the wrath of the green dreamers to descend on The Economist. How dare they publish an article (as they did on April 6) in which they concluded:

Environmental lunacy in Europe

A fuel and your money

Over the past few years, scientists have concluded that the original idea—carbon in managed forests offsets carbon in power stations—was an oversimplification. In reality, carbon neutrality depends on the type of forest used, how fast the trees grow, whether you use woodchips or whole trees and so on. As another bit of the EU, the European Environment Agency, said in 2011, the assumption “that biomass combustion would be inherently carbon neutral…is not correct…as it ignores the fact that using land to produce plants for energy typically means that this land is not producing plants for other purposes, including carbon otherwise sequestered.”

Tim Searchinger of Princeton University calculates that if whole trees are used to produce energy, as they sometimes are, they increase carbon emissions compared with coal (the dirtiest fuel) by 79% over 20 years and 49% over 40 years; there is no carbon reduction until 100 years have passed, when the replacement trees have grown up. But as Tom Brookes of the European Climate Foundation points out, “we’re trying to cut carbon now; not in 100 years’ time.”

In short, the EU has created a subsidy which costs a packet, probably does not reduce carbon emissions, does not encourage new energy technologies—and is set to grow like a leylandii hedge.

Green dreamers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose! Well, nothing but the respect and blind obeisance of those who choose to investigate and think for themselves.

Of advocacy carts, evidence horses and Andrew Weaver’s carbon “baby”

British Columbia’s Climate Action Team was established in November 2007 to help the government reduce provincial greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent by 2020. It was made up of some of the province’s best minds, including nine world leaders in the climate sciences.

The team’s mandate was threefold:

• to offer expert advice to the province’s Cabinet Committee on Climate Action on the most credible, aggressive and economically viable targets possible for 2012 and 2016;
• to identify further actions in the short and medium term to reduce emissions and meet the 2020 target; and
• to provide advice on the provincial government’s commitment to become carbon neutral by 2010.

Source

And you’ll never guess who one of the Climate Action Team members just happened to be: Yep! None other than the illustrious Andrew <climate change is a barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles> Weaver; he who remains silent when it is falsely claimed that he “shared the Nobel Peace Prize”; an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Lead Author who also remains silent when asked how his BC Green Party Deputy Leadership (and Oak Bay Gordon Head candidacy) could be squared with the “objectivity” required of an IPCC Lead Author.

The very same Andrew Weaver who has, in effect, acted as a PR agent for Greenpeace – and who can’t stand the heat in his twitter kitchen!

Here’s how Weaver is billed on the Climate Action Team:

Dr. Andrew Weaver is a professor and Canada research chair in atmospheric science in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at UVic. His contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jointly won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. He joined UVic in 1992, having spent three years as a natural sciences and engineering research council university research fellow in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at McGill University. He has written over 120 peer reviewed papers in climate, meteorology, oceanography, earth science, policy and education journals. He was involved as a lead author in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change second and third scientific assessments of climate change. Weaver presently serves on the United Nations World Climate Research Program Working Group on Coupled Modelling, and the United States National Academy of Sciences Climate Research Committee as well as the NAS Panel on Climate Feedbacks. He is co-chair of the UN WCRP CLIVAR-PAGES Intersection Panel and is an editor of the Journal of Climate.

So, I doubt that many will be surprised to learn that this marvellous 2008 Climate Action Plan (132 page pdf which contains the seeds of BC’s legislated lunacy and which appears to have been authored by the Climate Action Team) describes “The Challenge” (p. 11) as follows:

We’ve all seen signs that our climate is changing – from devastating storms, to longer summer droughts, to the warmer winters linked to the mountain pine beetle epidemic threatening Interior forests. Some people argue that these changes are natural; that the earth’s climactic patterns have always varied from year to year and decade to decade. However, in November 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – representing the most respected climate experts worldwide – issued a report with the most decisive evidence yet to support three key conclusions:

• the earth’s climate is changing
• the change is being caused by human activities, and
• its effects will worsen if no action is taken.

The Problem Is Real

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the world’s foremost authority on the subject, drawing on the expertise of more than 2,500 scientists from 130 countries. [emphases added -hro]

As anyone who has conducted her/his own due diligence will know, the above is Chapter and Verse straight from the pages of the PR version of the Climate Bible – which had earned no less than 21 F’s on a citizen audit Report Card issued three years ago.

Furthermore, as Donna Laframboise has meticulously documented, in her exposé, the IPCC has a long history of acting more like a delinquent teenager than a body whose “expertise” and pronouncements are deserving of public trust.

Considering that much ado has been made of the need for “mechanisms” that will lead us to the promised land of “The Future We [don't need or] Want” – and in particular those “mechanisms” upon which “climate finance” (their phrasing, not mine) depends – I found a recent “bulletin” from the IPCC & UNFCCC’s “parent”, the UNEP’s Global Environmental Alert Service (GEAP) to be somewhat amusing – albeit quite pathetically so. Some excerpts (all emphases mine -hro):

Thematic focus: Environmental governance, Climate change

The impact of corruption on climate change: threatening emissions trading mechanisms?

This bulletin provides an overview of recent discussions about the impact of corruption on environmental governance, with a focus on emissions trading. It reviews new definitions and the latest corruption assessment methodologies in order to illuminate the broader challenges faced by GHG trading mechanisms and climate finance.

Why is this issue important?

The trading of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has recently emerged as one of the most dynamic and promising areas of global environmental governance. According to the latest assessment by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), global GHG emissions must peak, if not decline, by 2015 in order to limit global mean temperature increases to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The Panel predicted that without a reduction of GHG emissions, the globe would experience an overall temperature rise of 6.4°C by the end of this century, which is a catastrophic scenario.

[...]

Emissions trading systems are often hailed as a powerful and cost-efficient approach to dealing with the multi-faceted challenges posed by climate change (Kossoy and Guignon, 2012). The UNFCCC estimates that these systems will contribute a significant portion of the funds necessary for climate change mitigation (UNFCCC, 2007).

Well, there you have it folks … Emissions trading systems are the great panacea for all that ails our planet because, well, because the UNEP said so. But alas, there are a few flies in this “powerful and cost-efficient” ointment:

Corruption impacts the success of emissions trading schemes by reducing the overall reliability and effectiveness of GHG markets. The implementation of cap-and-trade systems in both developed and developing countries has been recurrently tainted by cases of fraud and bribery, abuses of power, and other conventional forms of corruption. Corruption in this sector has also taken more original forms, such as the strategic exploitation of ‘bad science’ and scientific uncertainties for profit, the manipulation of GHG market prices, and anti-systemic speculation (Lohmann, 2007; TI, 2012a; Wara, 2007). The challenge that corruption poses to climate finance also contributes to broader debates about the impact of corruption in environmental governance. Over the past two decades, domestic and international anti-corruption initiatives have proliferated, with the process being largely driven by the increasing recognition of the impact of corruption on the quality of environmental governance.

Although he did not call it such, one might consider that the recent findings of the BC Auditor General on the fruits of Weaver and the Climate Action Team’s 2007 labours, i.e. the disgraceful actions of the Pacific Carbon Trust – and its “partners” – are tantamount to corruption.

In his Report, An Audit of Carbon Neutral Government, the Auditor General had noted:

This audit examined two projects which accounted for nearly 70 percent of the offsets purchased by government to achieve their claim of carbon neutrality: the Darkwoods Forest Carbon project in southeastern B.C. and the Encana Underbalanced Drilling project near Fort Nelson. However, this claim of carbon neutrality is not accurate, as neither project provided credible offsets.

The credibility of carbon offsets is the crux of the entire concept. [emphasis added - hro]

Candidate Weaver’s carefully considered response:

Media Release
April 2, 2013 | Victoria, British Columbia

South Island Green Candidates Support A New Path to Carbon Neutrality

Provincial Green candidates Dr. Andrew Weaver, Deputy Leader, and Adam Olsen [another Greeen Party Candidate -hro] announced today that they support the concept of Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT) despite the criticism by the Auditor General, and will be purchasing PCT offset credits for their own carbon neutral campaigns. The candidates want to see public sector offset revenues fund public sector projects, to begin the gradual transitioning from fossil fuels to a low carbon economy.

“We should be investigating every opportunity for PCT revenues to directly benefit British Columbians by investing in locally-based public projects—if we adhere to international carbon offset accounting standards, we will reduce our GHG emissions,” says Andrew Weaver.

[...]

“Carbon offset project assessment is a highly sophisticated process, and while I acknowledge there are bound to be difficulties with a new organization, we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” says Weaver.

Does Weaver acknowledge that he was – in effect – a “midwife” at the birth of this precious little “baby”?! Not bloomin’ likely. Weaver’s glasses are so dark green that he failed to notice that no suggestion was made by the Auditor General – or anyone else with any influence, as far as I know – that this “baby” (or its bathwater … unless one considers the PCT Board to be “bathwater”) be thrown out!

Does Weaver have any comment on the atrocious behaviours of those who participated in the campaign to discredit the AG’s report?! Not bloomin’ likely.

Two of these campaigners are quite, well, interesting: Stewart Elgie is a carbon crusader with a long history of green-heart-on-sleeve advocacy. James Tansey is described as the “chief executive officer of Vancouver-based Offsetters Climate Solutions” – which (although not mentioned, surprise surprise, just happens to be a partner of Pacific Carbon Trust.

Both Elgie and Tansey have claimed that they were part of some “expert” advisory group to the Auditor General. Considering that the AG made no mention in his report of any “expert” advisory group – as is customary in such reports if, in fact, such a group had contributed – I’m more inclined to think that Elgie and Tansey (and who knows how many other advocacy-tainted and/or interest-conflicted “experts”) have perhaps “revisionized” the following from p. 16 of the AG’s report:

The audit focused on the actions of the Climate Action Secretariat and the Pacific Carbon Trust. In confirming the credibility of offsets purchased by the Pacific Carbon Trust, we also extended our work, as necessary, to obtain evidence from agencies outside of government involved with the offset projects development and approval.

We carried out our work between January and August 2012. Subsequently, we went through an extensive clearance process with a number of organizations involved in these projects. We conducted the audit in accordance with section 11(8) of the Auditor General Act and the standards for assurance engagements established by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Tansey has shown himself to be a whining smear-artist who could rival Michael Mann, as evidenced by a recent “reporter” facilitated irrelevant and diversionary screed in the Georgia Straight.

But I digress … Here’s how one BC reporter described this campaign:

Greenhouse gas leaks from trust

By Tom Fletcher

VICTORIA – The Pacific Carbon Trust orchestrated a months-long campaign of calls and letters to discredit a report from B.C.’s Auditor General on its first two big carbon offset projects, before it could be released.

Just as the audit report was about to be made public, the trust, a Crown corporation created at taxpayer expense, participated in the leaking of selected critical letters to media outlets.

As Donna Laframboise has recently concluded:

The government of BC needs to make it clear that greens will be held to the same standard as everyone else. It needs to send a clear message that there is a proper way to respond to an Auditor General’s report – and that the Pacific Carbon Trust failed that test. Spectacularly.

Public confidence needs to be restored. This entire board of directors must be replaced.

In a subsequent post, Laframboise highlighted the most damning parts of the AG’s report, including:

…Pacific Carbon Trust has not purchased credible offsets. [pp. 5, 6, 16, 19]

The report says the Trust paid well above market rates when it purchased the 2010 offsets – and that it agreed to conditions that, in the view of the Auditor General, “raises questions” about the Trust’s “ability to be objective” (pp. 6 and 30).

And as Fletcher had noted in his article:

Here’s the next Pacific Carbon Trust project that should be audited. In a complicated transaction, the trust bought offsets from something called the Great Bear Carbon Credit Limited Partnership. Yes, this is the world-famous forest on B.C.’s North Coast that was subject to a preservation deal hammered out between the Coastal First Nations, the B.C. government and three U.S.-backed environmental groups.

That was in 2006. The offset purchases were in 2009 and 2010, years after detailed preservation areas were mapped and codified in law.

Again, the trust paid for forest that was already preserved.

The Globe and Mail‘s Gary Mason has also weighed in on this shameful story:

After smoke clears, taxpayer-funded boondoggle revealed

[...]
There is much about this story the public should be concerned about, not the least of which is the dubious efficacy of carbon offsets themselves. The idea that we have struggling schools paying $25 a tonne for the carbon dioxide they emit while having to forgo the hiring of teachers and the purchasing of books is preposterous. Especially given that in many cases this money is going to highly profitable private-sector companies.

[...]

It all has a certain smell of desperation about it, the embedded worry that the report might expose carbon offsets as a taxpayer-funded boondoggle.

[...]

I believe the carbon-offset program was conceived with the best of intentions. But I also think it quickly attracted a potpourri of consultants and entrepreneurs and savvy corporations that smelled easy money. While the endeavour allowed the government to feel righteous and moral, the truth about what it was really accomplishing seems to be something else.

YMMV, but it seems to me that Weaver’s carbon “baby” was obviously ill-conceived and that what Weaver and his over-eager allies like to call a “highly sophisticated process” is more likely an instance of putting an environmental advocacy cart way ahead of any evidential horses with no qualified “drivers” in sight.

Mason had concluded:

Whoever forms government after the May 14 election should immediately halt the program until it can be properly assessed by a credible independent body. While carbon neutrality is a worthy goal, it can’t be achieved through smoke and mirrors or campaigns intent on intimidating those who dare question its validity.

Are you listening, Candidate Weaver?! The problems identified represent far more than mere “difficulties with a new organization”. In fact, if this is an example of your “assessment” skills in action, I shudder to think what we might expect from your Lead Authorship of the IPCC’s forthcoming AR5 WG1 Chapter 12.

Perhaps if the best pap your “passion for politics” is capable of mustering is of “babies and bathwater”, you would do well to step down from your ivory tower and reflect on what your green dreams have wrought.

CBC still censoring comments?

[Please note update below -hro]

Canada’s (taxpayer funded) CBC has a long history of unquestioningly promoting Big Green’s agenda. As I’ve noted previously, they seem to be following in the footsteps of Auntie Beeb (the U.K.’s BBC).

As I’ve also mentioned previously, I rarely watch (or listen to) CBC programs. But I do subscribe to their twice daily “News Digest”. Some days when an item catches my eye, I’ll take a look. And this sometimes leads me to a featured article (demonizing Israel or promoting the agenda of Big Green).

Yesterday was one of those days. Here’s what appeared as a “feature” on the March 25 10:00 p.m. National News:

Hidden cameras tell a tale of two lunchrooms

A group of students wanted to know whether nice digs mean better recycling habits

After dutifully watching this video, I posted the following in the comments (of which at the time of my posting there were none!):

Interesting story, but … what are the “demographics” of those who frequent the two cafeterias? How far apart are their physical locations? What are the most likely courses of study of those who frequent these cafeterias?

Could these non-attributed factors have had some influence on the recycling behaviours of the students studied?

Until we have these additional details, it seems to me that one should add this “study” to the ever-increasing list of papers that claim an influence of “climate change” – without acknowledging that even if this is the case, there is absolutely no empirical evidence that whatever “climate change” – formerly known as “global warming” – may or may not be occurring is primarily “caused by” human generated C02 (known to be a very small percentage of the total 3% of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere).

For those who mistakenly believe that the output generated by (the increasinngly ubiquitous) “computer models” = data, it isn’t. Furthermore, those who describe such exercises as “experiments’ [as such modellers, including Canada's green-heart-on-sleeve Andrew Weaver**, are inclined to do] can only do so if they have arbitrarily redefined “experiments”.

** see http://hro001.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/ipccs-andrew-weaver-cant-stand-the-heat-in-his-tweet-kitchen/

As I said, an interesting story.

But I do so miss Barbara Frum who would most certainly have questioned the “fudge” factors in this lightweight contribution to the sad, long history of CBC’s annals of promoting Big Green’s agenda.

[Posted 03/25/2013 11:24 PM PDT]

It’s most unfortunate that Peter Mansbridge, who introduced this particular piece of pap, seems to have forgotten what he wrote a few days earlier about Frum, from whom he could have learned much. Quoting Frum he wrote:

“I listen for something that sounds so authentically right and dead on, and so fresh, and so unpatterned and unlikely, that it’s got a ring of truth,” [Barbara Frum] once said. “That’s what I look for because there is so much fudge in this world today. Everybody is so polite, everybody says things that kind of throw you off the course.”

But it’s also interesting to note that in this particular “report”, climate change -formerly known as global warming – is not even mentioned. Could it be that CBC is signalling a shift of gears from “all climate change all the time” to “sustainable development”? The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) seems to be making such a shift, one should not expect the CBC to be too far behind, eh?!

I’ll let you know if/when my comment passes the CBC’s antiquated “pre-moderation”.

UPDATE: 03/26/2013 11:50 AM PDT The “pre-moderator” appears to have approved my comment. One of the others who commented on this post has provided a link to the actual paper:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0053856

Why the CBC could not have provided this link in their original article is left as an exercise for the reader.

Climategate 3.0: Practicing what I preach

In my previous post, I had written:

To my mind the password protected files [included in CG2] were more akin to an archive of documents written in an obscure language that required “translation”.

And there was only one person on the planet who could provide the “translation” so that the material in the archive would be comprehensible to all who might read it: The Saint.

So maybe what we should be doing – instead of expending hours complaining (and/or trying to guess The Saint’s identity) and arguing while the “translated” documents are being compiled into a useful database – is taking the time to revisit the material we already have at our virtual fingertips to see what we might have missed. [emphasis now added -hro]

Yesterday, I had also made a comment to this effect in the (now very long) comment thread at WUWT.

So I was delighted to see a reply from Duke C. in which he had written:

Hilary, I converted Buffy Minton’s spreadsheet to an html index with a link in the subject line that opens the selected email in your web browser window, all offline. 35 Meg zip file here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4EzgaD0DOfYaFBmdUZoaUJvTmM/edit?usp=sharing

Next step is to imbed a more comprehensive search engine, something better than Ctrl-f.

Posted this on Tips and Notes awhile back, but it went unnoticed, apparently.

So, my mouse and I followed Duke’s link, downloaded the file, unzipped it, read the readme … and it works like a charm!

I also found that if I import Duke’s “CG1CG2Merge_index.html” into an MS Access database, I can run queries to my heart’s content. For example, one of the NYT‘s Andrew Revkin’s conspicuous shortcomings is his failure to give equal time, treatment and consideration to any skeptic’s investigation into (and/or observations on) alarmist publications.

As I noted a year ago, Revkin (amongst others) wasted no time at all posting Peter Gleick’s cooked up allegations – without bothering to conduct any due diligence on the provenance:

Unlike the NYT‘s Andrew Revkin, or the U.K. Guardian‘s Suzanne Goldenberg and Leo Hickman, for whom fact-checking and provenance confirmation is – for all intents and purposes – anathema when it comes to matters enironmental, Megan McArdle of the Atlantic has been following this story and asking questions, as a journalist should.

McArdle readily acknowledges her green-tinted glasses; but she does not permit her vision to become as clouded and biased by advocacy as Revkin, Goldenberg or Hickman.

More recently, Revkin has continued this practice. He happily churned out a blog-post on March 7 on the highly dubious Marcott et al’s latest reincarnation of the “hockey-stick”. And he subsequently gave lots of air-time to Michael Mann (who’s been singing glowing praises of Marcott to beat the band!)

In the meantime, Steve McIntyre has been conducting the due diligence that obviously was not done by Revkin (nor, evidently, by those who “peer-reviewed” the paper for Science). So how did Revkin deal with this fact when it finally appeared to cross his radar, circa March 16? I’m so glad you asked. Here’s Revkin’s update:

Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has been dissecting the Marcott et al. paper and corresponding with lead author Shaun Marcott, raising constructive and important questions.

As a result, I sent a note to Marcott and his co-authors asking for some elaboration on points Marcott made in the exchanges with McIntyre. Peter Clark of Oregon State replied (copying all) on Friday, saying they’re preparing a general list of points about their study.

So all he’s interested in is “the points Marcott [et al]” had made during the course of this correspondence.

Did Revkin understand (or even ask McIntyre about) “the points” McIntyre had made?! Perhaps. But I have yet to see any evidence of this. OTOH, Revkin had provided a link (http://climateaudit.org/?s=marcott+holocene) but the criteria Revkin chose only yields four of McIntyre’s six posts since March 13. I found that http://climateaudit.org/?s=Marcott yields all six – and I suspect that if I use it in future, it will also list any subsequent Marcott-related posts.

Although Revkin – to his credit – has acknowledged that his name (and emails) can be found in the Climategate files, I was curious to know how many were sent to or from him. So, using my Handy-Dandy-Duke’s-Database, a simple query tells me that between Sept. 27, 2004 and Sept. 29, 2009 there were 22 (well, actually only 21, as the last is readily identified – both by timestamp and by Duke’s filename – as a duplicate).

I haven’t looked at the content yet, but I’ll let you know what I find :-) In the meantime … speaking of Michael Mann, Marcott et al (and Duke’s diligent work) …

Yesterday via twitter, I came across two related interesting tweets. The first from Anthony Watts WUWT

People send me stuff. Word has it that Michael Mann was one of the reviewers of Marcott et al.

And the second was Richard Tol’s tweet in reply:

@wattsupwiththat I would be surprised if he wasn’t.

By pure serendipity, while I was perusing Duke’s index (before I created my Access database), I came across the following. The subject is listed as “no_subject” (which suggests that there wasn’t one, but it piqued my curiosity) [paragraph breaks and emphases in body inserted for ease of reading, email addresses partially redacted, and signature stripped by me ... I'm sure they get their fair share of spam already]:

From: Keith Briffa
Date: 7/24/2002 12:01 PM
To: mas@xxxxx
CC: ppn@xxxxx

Dear Meric

The purpose of this short message is to ask that you do not send my RAPID proposal to Mike Mann for refereeing.

I do this openly (i.e. by cc’ing this message to Philip) because I wish it to be an above-board statement , made simply for information. I am genuinely a little nervous as to whether Mike could remain sufficiently objective . We have had a debate (politely phrased) as to the merits of trying methods of data assimilation that are independent of his approach. Ray Bradley is a coauthor on the most significant Mann papers and is very aware of the needs of the science in this area – but I have suggested him as a potential referee rather than Mike because , although he may disagree on some matters , I am confident of his objectivity. If our proposal has gone (or does go ) to Mike , I at least feel happier having made this statement before you receive any report from him.

best wishes
Keith

–
[sig]

REF: CG2 <4025.txt>

So, if you want to verify for yourself that the E-mail reads as above, Duke has provided (on each of the 6,366 pages) a reference to the Climategate release in which the file can be found, as well as the text filename one can use to search any of the current online databases; my choice is EcoWho – and here’s a link to 4025.txt

Assuming that the source of Watts’ tweet above has reported accurately, I would think that by now Marcott might be kicking himself for not having taken a good hard look at the emails released in CG1 and CG2. He might have spared himself considerable grief and embarrassment.

Incidentally, Revkin’s quasi-journalistic green-heart-on-sleeve endeavour had noted that when he wrote to Marcott, his co-author and thesis supervisor (and AR5 WG1 Ch13 Coordinating Lead Author) Peter Clark had responded:

[...] we’ve decided that the best tack to take now is to prepare a FAQ document that will explain, in some detail but at a level that should be understandable by most, how we derived our conclusions. [...]

So, I can’t help wondering if Mann will be giving them a helpful hand in writing this FAQ!

P.S. Many thanks, Duke C … for making it so easy for me to practice what I preach ;-)

Climategate 3.0 … Of saints, sanity and premature pronouncements

Unless you happen to get all your news via the traditional mainstream media, you are probably aware that on March 13, the person(s) who liberated a cache of emails and related documents from the cloisters at the University of East Anglia (UEA)’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009, has relayed to a carefully chosen few the password which would unlock “all.7z” contained in the release of the second tranche (to borrow a word from the infamous Muir-Russell), known as Climategate 2.0 (or CG2 for short).

Using the now familiar pseudonym of FOIA, The Saint (as I have long preferred to think of this person – or these persons – unknown), had included in the accompanying heartfelt missive an injunction:

DO NOT PUBLISH THE PASSWORD

IMHO, as I shall explain later in this post, for various reasons this was a very wise injunction, which should be unanimously respected.

There are over 200,000 files in this third archive, many of which – not surprisingly – have already been released as part of CG1 or CG2. I find it disappointing (and a disservice to The Saint’s earlier work) that some are already posting material they may not have seen before thinking that it’s “new” – when it isn’t.

In the accompanying missive, The Saint had written:

I don’t expect these remaining emails to hold big surprises. Yet it’s possible that the most important pieces are among them. Nobody on the planet has held the archive in plaintext since CG2.

That’s right; no conspiracy, no paid hackers, no Big Oil. The Republicans didn’t plot this. USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK. There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere.[emphasis added -hro]

My translation: “Look folks, I pointed the way to the most relevant and damning emails in CG1 and CG2, so don’t get your hopes up for too much more here”.

Tom Nelson has confirmed this:

I’ve taken a quick look at hundreds of these text files, and I agree with others that that vast majority are mundane. Over the last day, many of us have already had the experience of “finding” an email that shows massive weakness in the warmist case, only to discover that that particular email had already been previously released.

I think over time, even the skeptics have forgotten just how much damage the ClimateGate 1 and 2 files did to the warmist case. [...] (emphasis added -hro)

So, apart from the fact that in their haste to post some are not taking the few extra minutes to eliminate unsightly line-breaks, they’re not even granting The Saint the courtesy of acknowledging her/his earlier work by checking the existing searchable archives.

Furthermore, this scattergun approach can result in related material (which, in at least one instance of which I’m aware, is more damning) being completely overlooked. And because the “source” material they’re posting is not yet located in a publicly accessible repository, no one can verify it.

So I was somewhat annoyed when I read the following comment at WUWT:

SanityP says: March 15, 2013 at 1:04 pm

Still waiting for some actual damning info or at least something that will be a game changer … will this ever happen?

And that’s what precipitated this post (which began as a comment there, but got to be far too long with too many links!)

I don’t know how long “SanityP” has been following this saga; but perhaps s/he’s somewhat late to this party!

An awful lot has changed since Nov. 20/2009. Not the least of which is the ramping up of Mann-o-matic nonsense (feebly but desperately bolstered by contributions from the likes of Ludicrous Lewandowsky) – not to mention the Gleickenschpiel! From a so-called “science” perspective, the best they’ve been able to muster is the now discredited and withdrawn Gergis et paper and (more recently) an iconic resurrection reconstruction by Marcott et al – which is currently being meticulously dissected by Steve McIntyre.

And in the meantime, more and more resources have been made available, and easily accessible, for those laypersons who prefer to think for themselves – rather than accept the routinely unquestioned churnalism and advocacy from the MSM.

Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion (and his sequel Hiding the Decline), Donna Laframboise’s excellent exposé of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert and Harold Ambler‘s Don’t Sell Your Coat … to name but a few of these excellent resources.

I haven’t read it yet, but Rupert Darwall’s newly published The Age of Global Warming: A History [excerpt here commentary here] also promises to be enlightening. Not to mention Dr. David Whitehead’s Whitehouse’s calm, articulate and factual assessment, GLOBAL TEMPERATURE STANDSTILL IS REAL released earlier today

As I had noted when The Saint released CG2, Fred Pearce had made a rather telling comment in a piece he wrote circa Dec. 9, 2009:

I have been speaking to a PR operator for one of the world’s leading environmental organizations. Most unusually, he didn’t want to be quoted. But his message is clear. The facts of the e-mails barely matter any more. It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.

But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. “The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.” [emphasis added -hro]

The part I’ve bolded above certainly sounded like a game-changer ringing in my ears!

IMHO, even before CG1, the alarmosphere was in trouble. As I have noted in the past, Joe Alcamo (one of their own!) had sounded the alarm when he addressed the October 26, 2009 plenary of the IPCC in Bali:

as policymakers and the public begin to grasp the multi-billion dollar price tag for mitigating and adapting to climate change, we should expect a sharper questioning of the science behind climate policy. [emphases added -hro]

This was a mere few weeks BC (Before Climategate). In the intervening years, it would seem that the movers and shakers in the alarmosphere have utterly failed to grasp the meaning of “multi-billion dollar price tag” – and in particular the implications thereof in a world where far too many nations’ economies are so weighted with debt that they totter on the brink of collapse.

Get real, eh?!

But speaking of getting real … this brings me back to some of the (over-)heated arguments I’ve seen regarding the wise decision of the recipients to respect The Saint’s injunction not to publish the password.

The arguments I’ve read seem to fall into one of two strains: You must release the password because if you don’t you are (in effect) acting as censors who will decide what we can see and what we can’t. Alternatively, you must release the code because if you don’t then you could be liable for any non-relevant but damaging material contained in whatever does end up getting released to a wider audience.

I don’t happen to agree with either of these arguments. And my reasons are as follows.

Let’s set aside the fact that we should not be following the example of the highly unethical promulgator of forgery, Peter Gleick who had distributed confidential documents he had obtained unlawfully that were none of his business and to which he had absolutely no right.

Those of us who did not personally download CG1 and/or CG2 did not even dream of suggesting that the people who took it upon themselves to create publicly available searchable databases from the material might be censoring or redacting that which we had a right to know. I don’t recall seeing any complaints about information being withheld, do you?! And these very helpful databases were compiled by persons unknown!

Notwithstanding Michael Mann’s claim to the contrary, there is nothing “criminal” about possession of that which has been released to the public domain; i.e. CG1 and CG2. To my mind the password protected files were more akin to an archive of documents written in an obscure language that required “translation”.

And there was only one person on the planet who could provide the “translation” so that the material in the archive would be comprehensible to all who might read it: The Saint.

So maybe what we should be doing – instead of expending hours complaining (and/or trying to guess The Saint’s identity) and arguing while the “translated” documents are being compiled into a useful database – is taking the time to revisit the material we already have at our virtual fingertips to see what we might have missed.

Btw, UEA/CRU seem to have magically found some emails that David Holland had requested five years ago.

Consequently, there’s one other reason I firmly believe that the password should not be published (even without The Saint’s injunction): those in the “cloister” have had the resources at their disposal to make some fairly educated guesses as to what else might be contained in the newly “translated” material. But I doubt that they are, well, 97% “certain”.

Remember that The Saint had said, “it’s possible that the most important pieces are among them”. So, (to paraphrase and/or borrow some of Phil Jones’ famous first words!) why should we make this long-awaited “translation” available to the cloistered ones when all that they’ll do is try to find … more words they can “redefine” before we publish them? ;-)