DOCTORS FOR DISASTER PREPAREDNESS NEWSLETTER

To affect future climate, we might just as well launch a campaign to “Stop Continental Drift!” as Sallie Baliunas pointed out its devastating effect on ocean currents.

Nevertheless, the public gets its view of the latest IPCC report–an 800-page document with no index–from reporters, who read the news release about the Executive Summary, which does not accurately reflect the actual content of the document.

Thus, the perception of a scientific consensus persists–purportedly including all decent and credible scientists and excluding only cranks and shills for the oil industry–even though the percentage of 530 leading climatologists who strongly agree with the statement that “climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes” is 9.4% (< 10%). In this survey by Prof. Dennis Bray of the German coastal research station in Greesthacht, 9.7% strongly disagreed with the statement, and the average score was right down the middle, 3.62, with “1” being “strongly agree” and “7” being “strongly disagree.”

Science refused to publish these findings, even as a letter to the editor, although last December it published a paper by Naomi Oreskes, a history professor specializing in “gender and science,” on her analysis of the abstracts of 928 peer-reviewed climate research papers. “Remarkably,” she said, “none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.” Science also refused to publish a rebuttal of her analysis by Benny Peiser, a science professor at John Moores University in Liverpool. He studied the same set of papers and found that only one-third supported the “consensus” view on climate change, and only 1% did so explicitly (TWTW 5/28/05, www.sepp.org).

The influence of the famous “hockey stick” graph–purportedly showing the unprecedented nature of current temperature trends–lives on (also see Civil Defense Perspectives, January and March 2004, March 2005). While the critics published all their computer code, the original authors, after 7 years, still refuse to release theirs, telling the Wall Street Journal that to do so would be “giving in to intimidation.”

The “hockey stick” shape depends on the use of controversial U.S. bristle-cone records. “If they are removed from the data, the hockey stick shape disappears,” writes Steve McIntyre. “We showed that the authors had discovered this themselves and they not only failed to disclose it, they claimed the opposite in a later commentary on their own work” (Financial Post [Toronto] 6/17/05, quoted in TWTW 7/9/05).

Meanwhile, the press attacks the White House and the chief of staff for its Council on Environmental Quality for editing reports so as to “minimize greenhouse gas links,” publishing the original wording and handwritten edits by Philip Cooney (NY Times 6/8/05). The documents were approved by a National Academy of Sciences expert panel, but some scientists warned that the process for vetting reports could “result in excessive political interference with science,” according to the NY Times (ibid.).

Cooney's “sacrilege,” as described by Lorne Gunter in the National Post, was to suggest “a nip here and a tuck there to make some reports consistent with the scientific principle that nothing is ever certain, and consistent with the stated White House policy that more understanding of climate change is needed before the world's policy makers rush off making laws and regulations that may have no impact on the environment, but could easily damage economies and kill jobs” (TWTW 7/2/05).

Mr. Cooney now works for Exxon, the NY Times points out. Exxon disputes the concept that hydrocarbon fuels are the main cause of global warming, while other oil giants such as BP PLC and Royal Dutch/Shell seem to be positioning themselves to profit from emissions caps (Wall St J 6/14/05). (Ways in which “green” groups pressure corporate management to bring about results they cannot achieve legislatively were discussed at the meeting by Steve Milloy.)

In Europe, global warming is a “gushing source of political hypocrisy,” writes Robert Samuelson (Wash Post 6/29/05, quoted in TWTW 7/2/05). Since the base year of 1990, CO₂ emissions are up 16.7% in the U.S., 6.9% in France, 13.2% in the Netherlands, 40.3% in Ireland, and 46.9% in Spain. Reductions in Germany are a one-time saving from closing inefficient plants in East Germany, and in Britain the result of shifting electric utilities from coal to natural gas. Between 2002 and 2003, emissions in the EU-15 increased by 53 million tons, 1.3%, wiping out all the reductions of the previous two years, because of increased burning of coal during a colder winter ( TechCentralStation.com 6/29/05).

Some voices of dissent are arising even in Britain. The House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs issued a report on July 6, noting that: “We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.” Their Lordships asked for better examination of costs and benefits and disclosure of same to the public; consideration of the relative merits of adaptation and mitigation, with far more attention to adaptation measures; and an examination of dubious assumptions about the role of renewable energy and energy efficiency. The Lords even noted that “positive aspects of global warming appear to have been downplayed in IPCC reports.” (A link to the full report is found in TWTW 7/9/05).

One item that may attract the Brits' attention is the recommendation by academics at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute that 3.2 million homes be demolished by 2050. Households account for 30% of Britain's total energy use, and there is a “desperate need” for a clear strategy to deal with old, inefficient housing stock to bring about the 60% reduction in emissions that Tony Blair wants to see by 2050 (Daily Telegraph 5/30/05).

ON PEER REVIEW

“[P]eople generally have the wrong idea about journal peer review. Users of scientific research for policy-making generally assume that when an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal it means someone checked the data, checked the calculations and checked that the stated conclusions are supported by the evidence presented. But peer review does not guarantee any of this. Influential papers in climate research can go for years without the data or methods even being disclosed, let alone independently checked, even as huge policy investments are based on them. So we have urged policy-makers to put into place formal processes to ensure complete disclosure of data and methods for any scientific work that is being used to drive policy debates. We urge the development of audit procedures to verify compliance with such requirements. We believe such innovations would be good for science and good for the policy-making process, even if a few more scientific icons get broken as a result.

“One of the first places we would recommend such procedures is the temperature data set used by the IPCC. Other researchers have tried without success to get access to the supporting data. One of them shared with us the response he received from the principal author of the dataset: `We have 25 years invested in this work. Why should we let you look at it, when your only objective is to find fault with it?' (Financial Post, op. cit.)”

So much for the self-correcting mechanism of science in America today.

DDP, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, (520)325-2680, www.oism.org/ddp