CBC honks for IPCC-nik Andrew Weaver AND censors comments

In my previous post of May 8, I had posed the question: CBC censoring again – or honking for IPCC’s Andrew Weaver?

And I believe that the CBC has now provided the answer. Well, actually wrt the “honking” this was provided sooner than I had thought – and broadcast on National TV (h/t Alex Cull in his comment).

Alex’s link is to a segment of the April 28 National News. Here’s a screen capture from that segment:

The adulation and glorification inherent in Wendy Mesley’s introduction (with the following long-lingering image in the background):

before the cutaway to the main event of Chris Brown’s report, included a statement that the BC Greens are turning to “star power“. And we all know how very impressed the CBC is with green “star power”! Check out today’s Sunday Edition on CBC radio. which includes a 30+ minute segment with hypocrite-extraordinare, Al Gore who’s currently flogging his latest fact-free predictions of doom and gloom (not to mention bad-mouthing Canada’s oil-sands deposits, which no doubt delighted Weaver!) But I digress …

In his April 28 “report”, Brown reinforced (by accident or design) Mesley’s intro. He described Weaver as a “climate change superstar“. And – for reasons perhaps best-known only to himself, to Weaver and to the cameraman (if not the CBC editor(s) who scrupulously vet all stories before they go on air) – provided viewers with yet another glimpse of Weaver as “Nobel-award winning” scientist:

I didn’t count how many seconds the camera lingered on the above before panning down to:

[Sidebar: A funny thing happened on the way to capturing the Mesley-Weaver image above. You will notice that the other three images (which I had captured yesterday) are ... uh ... framed by the red banner "CBC Television" above - and by a "footer" which indicated that this was from the April 28, 2013 3:17 segment of  The National, followed by:

Green Weaver

Global warming expert Andrew Weaver is running for the Green Party in the upcoming provincial elections in B.C.

Yet when I went back earlier today to capture the Mesley-Weaver medley, the banner and footer were nowhere in sight! Now this certainly wouldn't be the first time that the CBC has engaged in undated and undocumented now-you-see-it-now-you-don't posting behaviour, as Morley Sutter has noted in a comment on my previous post. But it is somewhat odd, don't you think?! End Sidebar]

How strange that the CBC seems incapable of basic fact-checking regarding Weaver’s unearned “Nobel” laurels. As Donna Laframboise had reported last October:

The facts are as follows: Weaver is merely one among thousands of scientists who contributed their time to the preparation of IPCC reports over the past two decades. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Al Gore and to the IPCC. The IPCC is an intergovernmental body. Its membership consists of nations – not individuals.

Weaver’s Nobel claim is spin. Self-aggrandizing, inaccurate, misleading spin.

See also Laframboise’s follow-up post in which she provides photographic evidence of Weaver’s bobbing and weaving around his unearned “Nobel-winning” laurels:

Last October when he announced his “reluctant” [see below!] candidacy, Lavin Agency’s bio of Weaver was headlined as follows:

Lead Climate Scientist & Co-winner of Nobel Peace Prize

By January of this year, this billing had … uh … evolved to:

Lead Climate Scientist & Member of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Panel

But this new improved billing is an instance of Weaver engaging in “Self-aggrandizing, inaccurate, misleading spin”.

If he had any commitment towards truth in self-advertising, rather than puffing up his image with such unsustainable claims as:

“his groundbreaking work in the field – in the trenches – of climate science [and that he is one who has] re-energized a new generation of discussions on climate change and sustainability”

Weaver would have acknowledged that the “trenches” in which he works are primarily high-priced computer simulations. He would further have acknowledged that his “new generation of discussions” includes slamming the virtual door in the face of those who dare to question his claims and assertions, or who might not agree with his prescriptions for what he calls “the action we need”.

And speaking of Weaver’s “Self-aggrandizing, inaccurate, misleading spin” consider the following excerpts from Weaver’s recent exercise in Huff-Po self-puffery:

Andrew Weaver.Professor and Canada Research Chair, University of Victoria

I Joined the Green Party Because I’m a Scientist

Posted: 05/08/2013 11:43

[...] I guess, despite being a climate scientist whose work is recognized around the world, according to Megan Leslie, that means I am not concerned about climate action.

The reason I joined the Green Party of BC was not because I was yearning for power, or willing to parse the truth and join in the hyper-partisan spin of the major parties. I joined the Green Party because it is the only party to consistently support climate action — carbon pricing, an end to fossil fuel subsidies, aggressive efforts in energy efficiency and demand-side management and the steady expansion of renewable and green energy. These steps would improve our economic performance, create tens of thousands of new jobs across Canada, while preserving a sustainable world for our children.

The only time a major party was willing to call for a tax shift, to reduce income taxes and increase pollution taxes, was in 2008 under Stephane Dion’s Liberal leadership. [...]

What Canadian politics needs is a party that is more interested in respectful debate and dialogue, in pressing for climate action as a daily commitment, than parties that swing with the winds of political expediency.

I never imagined I would be a candidate for any party. As a scientist, I am way outside my comfort zone. But when I look at my children and imagine what their future will be if we continue with politics as usual, I realized I could no longer sit on the sidelines.

The decisions being made in Victoria and Ottawa are too important to be left to the politicians. [...]

Greens understand we will not be forming government any time soon. But we equally believe it is critical to have representatives in our legislatures who will support other parties when they have a good idea, criticize those who twist the truth, condemn those who block action, and work to promote cooperative, positive decisions to reduce greenhouse gases. Let’s stop pointing fingers and work together to get the action we need. [emphasis added -hro]

Well, I suppose his current claim that he “joined the Green Party because [he's] a scientist is somewhat consistent with his telling CBC’s Brown that his decision to “engage” in the political process because he believes that it’s the “final thing a scientist can do”. But, to my mind, this is considerably at odds with his earlier claim that he has “a passion for politics“.

Indeed, some might ask: was he lying then, or is he lying now? But I couldn’t possibly comment!

As for Weaver’s singing the praises of Stephane Dion’s “green shift” platform … perhaps he has (conveniently?) forgotten that Canadian voters resoundingly rejected Dion’s green dreams. Then again … considering his claim during his prime-time-live April 28 CBC interview, that fellow greenie and Federal MP, Elizabeth May, has far more “influence than 100 backbenchers” perhaps Weaver doesn’t really give a damn what Canadian voters might think – or how they might have chosen.

And please spare us this ludicrous appeal for “respectful debate and dialogue”. Unless Weaver and/or one of his fans would care to tell us what exactly is “respectful” about his rants against PM Stephen Harper, as noted in the Apr. 28 video and in a Nov. 2010 Victoria Times-Colonist interview which I had documented here:

The UVic climatologist, sputtering words like “unbelievable” and “dictator” and “shocking affront to democracy,” says he hopes the opposition will force Harper’s minority government to fall. “He’s got to get kicked out. This is Canada, not Zimbabwe . . . or maybe it is.

In that November 2010 post, I had concluded by observing:

Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to Weaver that he needs to make a choice: Does he want to be known as a thoughtful, respected scientist or an incoherent environmental activist/advocate who is only capable of mindlessly mouthing echoes of Michael Mann’s mantras?

It would seem that in the interim, Weaver has definitely opted for the latter. Ironically, shortly after Weaver first launched his campaign last October (long before he slammed the virtual door in my face!) when I had asked him via twitter [see my Update to this post] to give me one good reason that I should tell my friends in his riding, Oak Bay-Gordon Head, to vote for him, Weaver had responded:

Ensure evidence forms the basis decision-making rather than decisions forming the basis of evidence-making

Wow! What a slogan, eh?! Too bad that all the evidence to date, strongly indicates that for Weaver, his “decisions” as to what the Province (if not the country!) needs – as embodied in his litany of policy prescriptions and dutiful recitation of the latest and greatest scary stories (not the least of which are his rapidly escalating extinction fictions) – have no basis in empirical evidence. Regardless of what his computer-simulations “in the trenches” might show.

So, I can only suggest to my friends in Oak Bay-Gordon Head … Do be very careful out there when you’re casting your vote on May 14.

As for the CBC’s comment-censoring practices … I believe that the evidence is now in: Yes, they do censor comments for no valid reason.

But – before I write to the Ombudsman, regarding their failure to correct the false claim that Weaver is a “Nobel-winning” scientist – I would invite a representative of the CBC to provide me with chapter and verse of their Submission Guidelines in accordance with which the “moderator” was acting (and which I must have “violated”) when rejecting my post, repost and subsequent comment, as I had documented in my previous post, and updates thereto.

Federal politicians use non-partisan climate group to meet in ‘safe space’ behind closed doors

Reblogged from National Post | News:

OTTAWA — An all-party committee of federal politicians interested in learning about climate change science is continuing to meet behind the scenes on Parliament Hill, with discreet participation from a few backbench Conservative MPs.

The committee has met on a monthly basis for about two years. But its meetings are secret and its members are reluctant to say who attended and what they discussed.

Read more… 809 more words

See also Donna Laframboise's post on this http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/04/28/secret-climate-meetings/ And my observations in the comments on the NP article.

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.

Kyoto klimateers in Kenya

As Donna Laframboise (to whom thanks and congratulations are due for her 500 posts since April 2009) wrote the other day, the BBC has egg on on its face following a bogus claim by David Attenborough in a recent TV program. Even Leo Hickman, of the greenest of ‘em all U.K. Guardian – whose reputation for fact-checking before publishing is far from examplary – could not let this one pass unchallenged. Attenborough had claimed:

Some parts of the [African] continent have become 3.5C hotter in the past 20 years.

In a post, yesterday, Shub Niggurath expands on the connections Laframboise had uncovered and asks:

[...] why does Kenya want a climate bill, one wonders. It turns out, that it wants to ‘reduce’ greenhouse gas ‘emissions’. The aborted law had a provision to throw you in jail, for five years, if you flouted it

But I’m sure it must be sheer coincidence that Nairobi, Kenya just happens to be the HQ for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)

The UNEP, parent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its highly unsuccessful Kyoto Protocol, as well as a multitude of other acronymic offspring, is about to celebrate 40 years of generating and promulgating increasingly scary stories – and its recently acquired “upgraded” status in the UN maze.

So, I know you’ll you’ll be just as thrilled as I was to learn that (all emphases that follow are mine -hro]:

First Universal Session of UNEP Governing Council to Galvanize New Environmental Era in Support of a Sustainable Century

Hundreds of environment ministers, decision makers, scientists, civil society representatives and business leaders are set to gather at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters next week to galvanize a new era of stronger action on pressing environmental issues.

The delegates will be making a small but significant piece of history by attending the first ever meeting of the UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GC/GMEF) under universal membership as a result of the Rio+20 Summit held last year.

As well as charting a course for a strengthened UNEP that will help transform a wide body of science into concrete policy action, the meeting will cover many pressing and emerging issues, including: sustainable consumption and production patterns and the post-2015 Development Agenda, financing options for chemicals and waste, and system-wide coordination on Rio+20 follow-up.

UNEP will launch new reports outlining emerging issues such as the global consequences of rapidly receding ice in the Arctic, [...]

This “upgrade”, btw, “establish[es] the organization as the leading international authority that sets the global environmental agenda.”

Needless to say, during the course of this patting-themselves-on-the-back exercise in creative writing, the UNEP’s head honcho, Achim Steiner, is quoted:

“UNEP – with its long history of working with partners from governments, the UN family, cities, the scientific community, businesses and civil society – is entering a new phase that can better serve the needs of a growing global population while keeping humanity’s footprint within planetary boundaries,”

It would be interesting to know how “humanity’s footprint” (whatever that might mean in UN-speak) could exceed “planetary boundaries” (whatever they might mean in UN-speak), don’t you think?!

But – notwithstanding the single mention of”climate change” – against which the UNEP will “intensify the battle “- what struck me as being some rather, well, very conspicuous absences in this particular creative writing exercise from the ubiquitous – but uber-uninformed – Nick Nuttall, “Director of Communications and UNEP Spokesperson” was any mention of the IPCC or its “main client”, the UNFCCC.

Could it be that (as I had speculated a few years ago!) Steiner is about to throw … ooops … sorry, this is a UN body, where nothing ever happens (or certainly not quickly – unless, of course, it is to condemn Israel for defending itself) make that “moving towards throwing” the IPCC and the UNFCCC under the proverbial bus?!

Memo to journos: Why you are not trusted

Two interesting posts today from two investigative journalists – both in the U.K.

The first is from Brendan O’Neill, whose opening remarks about investigative journalism, at University College Cork Journalism Society’s annual conference. include the following:

Investigating the crisis of 21st Century Journalism

[...] There is a great deal of investigative journalism around today. The problem is that a lot of it is not very good; it is very different to the investigative journalism of the past and it often ends up distorting the truth rather than enlightening public debate.

I want to run through three C-words in modern journalism that I think are having a detrimental impact on investigative reporting.

The first C-word is “conspiratorial thinking”, the tendency of journalists to write about power and power relations in a quite juvenile, teenage way [...]

The second C-word is “crusading mentality”, the way more and more journalists now conceive of themselves as moral crusaders against evil – whether that evil is climate change or Catholic child abusers or Bosnian-Serbo maniacs or whatever.

And the third C-word is “conformism”. I want to argue that the sphere of what it is acceptable to think and say has shrunk dramatically in recent years, and even radical journalists now investigate things and say things that are not nearly as daring as they think.

[...]

The second problematic C-word in modern journalism is “crusader”. Lots of investigative journalists today seem to believe they are moral crusaders against wickedness, that they are forces for Good against Evil.

You can see this, for example, in environmentalist exposes of Big Oil and its wicked antics. Green journalism is the most annoying kind of journalism today, employing a very childlike, almost Biblical language to describe the nastiness and destructiveness of modern industry and the modern world. [...] [emphasis added -hro]

YMMV, but I certainly cannot disagree with O’Neill’s observations.

Complementing these obvious shortcomings of the media mavens, are Richard North’s observations on the recent “reporting” of the horsemeat crisis/scandal in Europe [h/t Shub Niggurath via twitter].

The innumeracy of these particular journos is almost beyond belief. One of the examples cited by North:

Media: no wonder we have a problem

[...]
We now have an explanation not only for the horsemeat crisis, but also the economic crisis. Europe is drowning in horsemeat.
[...]
But, if the Telegraph would thus have us drowning in horsemeat, the Independent on Sunday doesn’t do so much better. It has Canada exporting 1.8 million tons of horsemeat to France in 2011, with Mexico sending another 1.2 million tons. The actual figures are, respectively, 1,800 and 1,200 tons.

Newspapers these days are becoming a joke. Not only are their journalists profoundly ignorant, they are also inumerate. If these figures were taken at face value, they would represent something like 10 million horses – 50 times the entire number of horses (200,000) slaughtered in the EU annually. [emphasis added -hro]

O’Neill had also observed:

Investigative journalists are turned from active seekers of truth into passive recipients of gossip, passive recipients of titillating information from within the citadels of power. They become messengers between squabbling sections of the elite, rather than properly independent pursuers of political and social insights or truths. This is a problem because truth is not something that can be revealed to us – it is something we find and even formulate through the very act of looking for it and uncovering it. It doesn’t exist externally to us, in Julian Assange’s computer; it is made by us through investigation and thought. [emphasis added -hro]

Andrew Revkin’s acknowledgement a few months ago of his failure to verify Gavin Schmidt’s Nov. 2009 claim that RealClimate had been “hacked” is a perfect example of (crusading?) journalist as messenger – as was Revkin’s even more ignominious unverified repetition of the claims in Peter Gleick’s creative writing exercises a year ago.

Could this combination of dedication to blind “crusading” and “passivity” be the cause of the MSM’s continued failure to highlight Donna Laframboise’s thoroughly investigated – and meticulously documented -shortcomings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?

Could this same combination be the cause of these same media mavens’ decision to ignore (rather than investigate) the evidence which strongly suggests that fellow green crusader, Saint David Suzuki has a very tarnished halo?

Quote of the week: Pachauri’s recipe for IPCC messages

Pachauri on Doha, IPCC Leaks and His Optimism

“It’s difficult to say whether [the leak] will be positive, but it clearly is a deviation of understanding that you have with the reviewers. For a number of reasons, we treat the drafts as something that is not to be made public, because you know that it’s a work in progress.”

“You don’t want to send out half-baked messages to the world until you are absolutely sure. We have a solid process in place involving the role of governments and the review [needed] for the final draft.” [h/t Tom Nelson and emphasis added -hro]

Considering that the “leak” to which he refers is that of the Second Order Draft (which in effect is the third draft, because the IPCC draft-counts start at zero) of Working Group I’s contribution to the 5th Assessment Report, surely the report should be more than “half-baked” at this point.

Then again, I suppose if you are going to send out messages that are “half-baked” (as opposed to “fully-cooked”), I can almost understand why you would want to be “absolutely sure” before doing so.

All of that aside … is it not most unfortunate that Pachauri’s “optimism” does not appear to extend to his views of the general public? I mean, what is it that he thinks journalists could not communicate – and/or that John or Jane Q. Public could not possibly understand – about the meaning of the word DRAFT?

But speaking of DRAFTs and leaks thereof … Richard Tol, Coordinating (formerly known as “Convening”) Lead Author of Working Group 2, has an experimental blog in which he:

discusses the developments around Chapter 10 on Key Economic Sectors and Services of the Fifth Assessment Report of Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He’s been posting since May, 2010. You might want to take a look at his two most recent posts:

Response to comments: Tourism and recreation

Draft 2a: Tourism and recreation (“first version of the second-order draft” in which, unless I’m mistaken the relevant details from the comments above have been incorporated)

To the best of my knowledge, unlike Donna Laframboise – who has not posted any of the Draft material leaked to her by the Secret Santa – Tol has received no notice from the IPCC legal beagles.

Oh, well … never let it be said that consistency is a hallmark of this “gold standard” assessment process ;-)

P.S. If you are interested in the history of the IPCC’s assessment reports past, I highly recommend Bernie Lewin’s recent post.

Enter the Economists: The Price of Life and how the IPCC only just survived the other chapter controversy

Something I hadn’t known (which he recounts in his post) is that, initially, there was no WG3. [UPDATE: 01/17/2013 05:46 PM PST, This was an error in interpretation on my part. WG3 has always existed, but changes had been made along the way.]

Also interesting, in this first of two Parts, is that the fact-free “misinformation … big coal” meme was active even in the IPCC defenders’ early days:

When the controversy was over and the Report publish[ed], David Pearce, the coordinating lead author, remained insulted and perplexed that their expert assessment could be called into question by the government delegations due to the confused and spurious reasoning of this enthusiastic outsider with his ‘silly campaign of misinformation and abuse.’ In fact, to his dying day, Pearce remained convinced not only that Meyer served the interests of the coal lobby, but that they were funding the whole absurd charade.

Sign of slight improvement detected in IPCC green files

In her book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, Donna Laframboise highlighted in Chapter 29, The Cut-and-Paste Job (Kindle Locations 1725-1728) the highly dubious appointment of an Anthony McMichael as the Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Climate Bible’s first health chapter. McMichael is an Australian epidemiology professor.

Donna had noted:

According to a 2001 bio, McMichael’s early research interests spanned a considerable range of topics – mental health, occupational diseases, the link between diet and cancer, and environmental epidemiology. In the late 1980s he co-authored a “bestselling guide to a healthier lifestyle” that discussed nutrition and physical fitness. The bio tells us it was only “during the 1990s” that McMichael developed “a strong interest” in the health risks associated with global environmental change. So in the early 1990s, out of all the experts in the entire world the IPCC might have chosen to oversee the writing of a chapter examining how climate change might impact human health, why was McMichael selected?

I suspect it had a great deal to do with another book he wrote – the one that appeared in 1993 titled Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species. This book’s central theme is that human activity is undermining the planet’s ecosystem. Its tone and analysis are similar to hundreds of other environmental treatises published in recent decades.

But the really interesting part about the IPCC’s first ever chapter on climate change and human health is:

There is a straight line between what the UN’s 1995 Climate Bible told the world about health issues and what McMichael had already written in his 1993 book. Planetary Overload isn’t included among the 182 references listed at the end of the health chapter. Which is curious, since entire passages of the Climate Bible were lifted directly from it.

My research has indentified 11 instances in which the wording in these two documents is almost identical. (Kindle Locations 1759-1775) [emphasis added -hro]

Quite astounding that such a thorough and transparent “gold standard” process should have let so many examples of blatant unattributed text slip into an assessment report, don’t you think?!

Kind of makes one wonder how many more such examples might be found in other assessment reports.

But at least this time around – according to the files leaked to Donna by the Secret Santa – the IPCC is making an effort to identify (prior to publication) any suspect text.

On the Green data stick there’s a folder called “WGII AR5 FOD Plagiarism Screen” [path green\Buenos Aires Documentation\c_ExpertReviewFiles\]

There’s a report for each chapter, as well as a document entitled “Explanation of iThenticate Report.pdf” [copy available here] which indicates the following:

iThenticate checks written work for duplicate and unattributed content against the world’s largest comparison database, providing in–‐depth reports to the WG2 TSU. This software ensures that all work in the FOD is original before the AR5 goes to press.

Every chapter has been checked using the iThenticate software. The report generated for your chapter was then edited by the TSU to include only pages that contain passages of content that is inadequately attributed.

The PDF is comprised of 2 parts. The first part lists what iThenticate identifies as original material. This is listed starting with the largest match. These original sources are then ranked according to the size of the match within the text. Each source is given a different color to help identify it within the text. [emphasis added -hro]

It’s certainly too bad for the IPCC that a product such as iThenticate was not available at the time of McMichael’s involvement in authorship, don’t you think?

I also wonder what might have precipitated the IPCC’s decision to utilize such technology – and when it was first implemented. If – as I’m inclined to suspect – it’s because they got caught with their pants down as a consequence of Donna’s investigations, the very least the IPCC could have done was say “thank you”, wouldn’t you agree?!

And, of course, there’s no guarantee that the powers that be (i.e. the Chapter Authors – or perhaps the TSU?) are obliged to follow the recommendations – just as they are not obliged to respect Reviewer Comments, or those of the Review Editors.

YMMV, but I find it quite astounding that they would go to all this trouble to make sure that source material is “adequately attributed”, yet they find it “too impractical” to include a simple flag which would identify non-peer-reviewed source material.

[UPDATE: 01/11/2013 11:39 AM PST: Please see additional info on use of grey lit in my comment below -hro]

Unlike the recommendation that existing rules on flagging be strengthened, this check for plagiarism wasn’t even included in the InterAcademy Council’s 2010 Review of the IPCC Procedures and Processes.

But all of that aside … it is a sign of slight improvement. First one I’ve seen, come to think of it ;-)

Fifty shades of red for the IPCC

[Please note Update below]

Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard by now … Donna Laframboise has scored a marvellous coup!

Here’s a picture that will brighten anyone’s day:

Photo by Donna Laframboise

Donna writes:

A week before Christmas, three data sticks containing 661 files and amounting to nearly one gigabyte of material came into my possession. They were created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body currently at work on a high-profile report.

And on the Green activist infiltration front, it’s definitely worse than we thought:

Additionally, [self-described "climate campaigner" and IPCC "expert" reviewer, Kathy] Yan recommends two news stories that were published on her organization’s website, an online bibliography of “key scientific articles” selected by her fellow activists, a 112-page report on sustainable water strategies, a 90-page report on alternative power in Guatemala, and two other documents about renewable energy in Chile. All of this material was produced in-house (3/869, 3/891, 27/339, 27/345).

All of it, therefore, is activist-generated grey literature – exactly the kind of thing that has caused the IPCC grief in the past.

What is the IPCC thinking? Why is it rolling out the red carpet for activists, permitting them to directly lobby IPCC authors?

And as if that weren’t enough … here’s Josh’s brilliant take:

be sure to check out http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com

Happy New Year, folks … I think this is going to be a very good year … if not the best year evaaaah for those of us who are finding fewer and fewer reasons to trust in the work of the IPCC :-)

01/8/2013 12:43 PM PDT Update: The IPCC has “responded” in record time (for them, at least!) Did I say “responded”, well, I suppose one could call this a “response” if one lacked a better word (which I do at the moment).

Clearly the IPCC has taken a leaf from the book of Gleick in their “review” which begins:

The recent posting of drafts of the Working Group II contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) starts from the incorrect assumption that the IPCC is interested in restricting reviewer input to its drafts.

I’m not sure what their new improved PR department have been smoking, but it seems to be adversely affecting their reading comprehension skills.

Although there’s no mention whatsoever of the previously upbiquitous “all peer reviewed”, the PR folks spin away:

All scientific comments submitted through the review process will be considered and addressed by authors, and all comments are made public when the report is completed. Comments in blogs or other communications will not contribute to the review process.

And no doubt, with this in mind, they have discharged little Ms. Climate Campaigner Kay from her duties, right?!

Amazing. Simply amazing.

New, improved “gold standard” IPCC: Business as (conflicted as) usual

[Please see update below]

While the U.K. Guardian‘s activist-journalist Suzanne Goldenberg bemoans the lack of mention of “climate change” in the recent US presidential debates, the new, improved Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appears to be continuing its standard operating procedure of … ignoring its own rules.

As Steve McIntyre noted yesterday:

[...] the [recently "withdrawn"] Gergis reconstruction continues to be used in the IPCC Second Order Draft (released for review in early October) [...] However, the attribution has changed. The First Order Draft attributed the reconstruction to Gergis et al (then submitted to Journal of Climate, later accepted and then withdrawn. See CA posts here). The Second Order Draft attributes the Gergis reconstruction to PAGES 2K Consortium (submitted to Science).

Meanwhile, out in the twitter-universe, Andrew Weaver, the Lead Author of Working Group 1′s Chapter 12 for the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), who had recently declared his candidacy for the BC Green Party has proudly announced that he has “accepted the position [of] Deputy Leader” of the BC Green Party:

No answer to my question as of Oct. 23 10:01 AM PDT

How will the IPCC respond, one wonders? Recently, as Roger Pielke Jr. had observed, they declared that because their correction protocols do not cover Press Releases, there was no need to make any correction.

I don’t recall reading anything in the IPCC’s conflict of interest guidelines regarding political candidacy and holding office within political parties, so perhaps Weaver’s choices do not concern the powers that be at the IPCC any more than they appear to concern Weaver.

But I suppose that one might consider this non-concern to be in keeping with the IPCC’s practice of weighting its reports heavily by choosing a green-advocacy laden stable of authors, as Donna Laframboise has documented in her book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

UPDATE: 10/24/2012 10:56 AM PDT

Weaver has further announced:

 

Well, that settles it, then, doesn’t it?! With Suzuki on-side, it’s difficult to imagine that anyone at the IPCC would dare to suggest that Weaver’s deep-green political activities might compromise the “gold standard” output from their stable of “objective, transparent, inclusive talent”.

Flogging the dead Kyoto horse in Doha … and the UK

Peter C. Glover, has a very succint take on the state of the climateers’ union in today’s edition of The Commentator. As the run-up to the Nov. 26 – Dec. 7 confab of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begins the charge of the blight brigade, Glover writes (h/t GreenCease via twitter):

Kyoto: The last rites

Where better than the Qatari capital to perform the last rites over the Kyoto Protocol?

It’s uniquely appropriate that November’s UN Climate Summit – the last before the Kyoto Protocol formally expires on December 31st – is taking place in Doha. In the league of the world’s highest per-capita greenhouse gas emitters, Qatar currently ranks at the very top. Where better than the Qatari capital to perform the last rites over the Kyoto Protocol?

Not that that’s how November’s talks will be sold, you understand. In typical UN double-speak, the Climate Summit secretariat will fashion a form of words suggesting that the Kyoto process is alive and well and merely moving into a ‘new phase’. So why do the terms ‘flogging’ and ‘dead horse’ come to mind?

[...]

n truth, backing the Kyoto ‘horse’ had failure written all over it. The treaty was on life support right from its inception. Hardly surprising given the economic implications for the 37 industrialized states expected to bear the industry-hitting burden of emission cuts while also having to stump up enormous reparations to the non-industrialized world to atone for their sinful ‘polluting’ ways. By the time of the 2009 ‘(another) last chance for the planet’ Copenhagen Summit, the Kyoto ‘horse’ was already looking suspiciously bereft of breath.

[...]

But it was the abject failure to grasp the economics that was the real blind spot. Bottom line: If the price of saving the planet is more than we can actually afford, then it’s really already beyond saving. Greens and idealists have never understood the facts of economic life.

Pre-Copenhagen, UN Secretary-General told us, “We have just four months to secure the future of our planet.” What the conference ultimately foundered on was the 37 industrialized states balking at handing over a cool $100 billion to the non-industrialised states.

At the same time, polls in the democratic states increasingly reflected growing scepticism at pouring billions of dollars into an anti-carbon campaign to help keep an ‘anticipated’ global temperature rise to below 2 degrees (ah yes, the age-old yearning to control the weather). Why, wondered an increasing number, should the price be so high when the cost of keeping the temperature rise at nil for 15 years had cost us precisely nothing?

[...]

The UN [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC was again valiant in its attempt to re-ignite public concern. But even their pre-summit report was forced to admit that there was unlikely to be any earth-warming for the next 20 or 30 years. This, according to the IPCC report: “because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability.” Hardly the key message Durban was hoping to hear to ferment international action.

Just for good measure, Donna Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert exposed the UN IPCC in all its inept, politicized, incoherent, and outright corrupt glory. Anyone who may care to read this devastating critique could only conclude that the real alarm was that anyone could consider this shambolic, dysfunctional, pseudo-scientific oligarchy credible in any way.

[...]

Kyoto failed in its chief goal of achieving legally binding global emission cuts, much as the Bush White House foresaw it would because of its economy-busting potential, mostly for the industrialized nations. The UNIPCC has also been forced to admit that the “natural variations” inherent in climate change means it wildly overstated its case.

What the UNIPCC fails to explain is how those same “natural variations” make claims to climate catastrophe 30 years down the line any more credible. [emphasis added -hro]

Meanwhile … the greenest of ‘em all U.K. Guardian provides some “insight” into the “inflamed” air we might expect over the next few months on the part of NGOs and celebrities. Although one might be somewhat relieved that Ban Ki-Moon’s 2009 “just four months to secure the future of our planet” has now been superceded by the new, improved, doom and gloom timeline they offer. We now have fifty months to prevent catastrophic climate change and save the planet:

Ignoring global warming is ‘reckless’ of the government, warn campaigners

Greenpeace and Oxfam among those warning that more must be done to stop critical climate change threshold being breached

[...]

The signatories [of a letter to the Guardian] including senior figures at Greenpeace, Oxfam and the Women’s Institute, as well as the designer Dame Vivienne Westwood and the environmental campaigner Bianca Jagger, warn there are just 50 months left before it will become unlikely that a 2C temperature rise can be prevented. The UK and the EU have set the 2C mark as a line the world should not cross.

[...]

The campaigners say the lack of action comes against a backdrop, this year, of a record loss of sea ice, greenhouse gas concentrations above the Arctic at their highest point for possibly 800,000 years, and crop-wrecking droughts and record temperatures in the US mid-west.

[...]

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace , has committed to more direct action to protect the Arctic from oil drilling, while Westwood said there was a need to inflame public opinion and blame politicians for the crisis.

The letter urges politicians to say what they will do “to grab the opportunity of action and prevent catastrophic climate change”. [emphasis added -hro]

As I had remarked to the congregation at Bishop Hill, perhaps these NGOs and celebs should approach Paul Simon and request that he release a modified version of:

 

Something along the lines of ….

“The problem is all inside your head”, she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I’d like to help you in your struggle for 2-C
There’s just fifty months to save the planet

She said it’s really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my data won’t be lost or misconstrued
But I’ll repeat myself, at the risk of being crude
There’s just fifty months to save the planet
Fifty months to save the planet

[To which BH commenter HaroldW has added]

“Just hop on your bike, Mike”
“Paint your roof white, Dwight”

[and BH commenter Eric H. has chimed in with]

You just add a new tax, Jax
Graph a new plan, Mann (ooops!)
Don’t try to be coy, Roy (Spencer?)
Just be carbon free
Take the bus, Gus
Don’t question temps and such
Wind is the key, Lee
To be carbon free

So …. while I complete the analysis of my recent Survey results, your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to complete the new, improved lyrics for the doomsters’ proposed anthem, to help them “inflame public opinion” ;-)