Fate of the World Beta

While being ill over the last week or so, I’ve spent some time playing the beta version of Fate of the World, a forthcoming PC game based around climate change which has generated quite a lot of interest in the mainstream media ( see here and here)

The game essentially puts you in command of a global organisation whose mission is to prevent catastrophic climate change (defined in the beta mission as 3 degrees of warmth), maintain a human development index above 0.5 and keep people happy enough to stop more than a certain number of geographical regions from kicking you out by the year 2020.

To achieve these goals you have a variety of tools at your disposal; projects which include boosting renewable energy, deploying CCS technology and subsidising electric cars, environmental and social adaptation/mitigation measures such as drought prevention measures, healthcare programmes and advancing regional water infrastructure, policy measures such as banning oil from tar sands or deploying algae based biofuels, and political measures such as deploying peacekeepers to troubles regions and black ops (including covert steralisation programmes?!).

From a game studies perspective the game is interesting as it provides users with a complex simulation whereby numerous interdependent factors are required to be dynamically balanced in a way that goes far beyond the usual kill or be killed binary prevalent inb most computer games. While there are of course alternatives, particularly in the realm of sandbox simulation games from SimEarth to Civilisation 5, Fate of the World is interesting insofar as it uses data taken from climate models to simulate not a fictional alternative world, but possible futures of this planet, presuming that the current data from climate models are broadly accurate. As such by experimenting with different variables users can glean a different kind of insight pertaining to the challenges posed by Anthropogenic Climate Change to engaging with traditional forms of media, such as watching a documentary or reading the scientific literature. By being able to manipulate how regions react through play, users get a different kind of experience, one driven by feedback, configuration and systemic thinking rather than narrative, affect or rhetoric. While such models will always be highly reductive simplifications of real world complexity, they could provide a useful way of approaching some of the complex social and environmental issues currently facing us, and indeed this kind of argument has been powerfully advanced by game studies scholars such as Stuart Moulthrop, who have advanced the argument that when dealing with complexity, configurational thinking is likely to present users with a better understanding of the area than linear narrative based approaches.

One criticism I have of the game in its current state is that the processes of feedback which reveal how a user’s interventions are effecting the relevant systems are often relatively obscured by their placement two menus deep, and I suspect that many players will struggle to find the data which actually spells out what the the consequences of their actions have been, and without this crucial information actions can appear opaque and indeed this criticism has been made on gaming forums discussing the beta. Hopefully this will something that is addressed before the game is released, as if players don’t understand what effects their decisions have entailed, then the game isn’t achieving its goals.

One aspect of the game which I found highly intriguing is the disparity between the aims and activities the game sets for users and the claims and actions of really existing nation states and supranational institutions. The beta mission in the game sets success as avoiding a rise of 3 or more degrees over pre-industrial temperatures by 2120, which is  below the midpoint of the IPCC projections of 1.5-6 degrees of warming this century (dependent on a range of factors, but primarily human measures), but which is considerably higher than the figure of a 2 degree rise which nation states couldn’t agree upon at the COP15 conference at Copenhagen last year. The reason states couldn’t agree upon that figure wasn’t the complete lack of concrete measures designed to practically bring about that change, but because a large number of nations, primarily the 131 countries represented by the G77 group, declared that a 2 degree temperature rise was too high. Earlier this year those nations convened in Bolivia at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, where they drafted a people’s agreement which stated

If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of species would be in danger of disappearing. Large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen. Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people. The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system…

Our vision is based on the principle of historical common but differentiated responsibilities, to demand the developed countries to commit with quantifiable goals of emission reduction that will allow to return the concentrations of greenhouse gases to 300 ppm, therefore the increase in the average world temperature to a maximum of one degree Celsius.

With atmospheric CO2 concentrations currently at 387ppm, and even the most ambitious campaigners in the developed world calling for a reduction to 350ppm, the aims set out at the World People’s Conference appear laudable, but completely unrealistic. Indeed, the goal loosely set out at COP15 of reducing warming to no more than 2 degrees, but with no mechanisms to try to achieve this have been widely criticised by groups such as the International Institute for Environment and Development;

The Accord is weak. It is not binding and has no targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (countries that signed it have until 31 January to list their voluntary actions in its appendix). The low level of ambition will make preventing dangerous climate change increasingly difficult. What countries have so far proposed will commit us to a 3 to 3.5-degree temperature increase, and that is just the global average.

In some ways this may be the most useful role the game plays; highlighting the distance between the rhetoric of political and business leaders who are currently seeking to greenwash the issue, and present their inaction beyond rhetoric as somehow being constitutive of a viable solution to the problems posed by ACC. Despite taking concerted action throughout the game it is hard to maintain warming of under 3 degrees without society collapsing due to a lack of mitigation and adaptation measures, widespread war and civil unrest or widespread poverty and famine in the face of increasingly severe climate related disasters as the next 110 years unfold. In some ways this isn’t that much fun; being told that your actions are resulting in millions starving and armed conflict doesn’t spread warmth and joy, but it does give some indication of how hard things are likely to get as time passes.

One thing that becomes abundantly clear from the game is that the sooner action is taken to dramatically curb CO2 emissions (particularly in wealthy nations where emissions per capita are far higher), the less severe the consequences will be further down the line. This is a lesson we would do well to heed.

World People’s Conference on Climate Change

and the Rights of Mother Earth

April 22nd, Cochabamba, Bolivia

PEOPLES AGREEMENT

Today, our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger.

If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of species would be in danger of disappearing. Large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen. Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people. The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.

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10:10 Promo Pulled

So the other day I wrote about why I don’t think the 10:10 campaign in general works, and why Richard Curtis’s promotional film for it was destined to be a spectacular own goal which offended people and put them off environmentalism.

And today the Guardian has a piece describing what’s happened since…

The charities that backed a Richard Curtis film for the 10:10 environmental campaign said today that they were “absolutely appalled” when they saw the director’s four-minute short, which was withdrawn from circulation amid a storm of protest.

The charity ActionAid, which co-ordinates the 10:10 schools programme, today welcomed the move. “Our job is to encourage proactive decisions at class level to reduce carbon emissions. We did it because evidence shows children are deeply concerned about climate change and because we see the impacts of it in the developing world where a lot of our work is. So we think the 10:10 campaign is very important, but the moment this film was seen it was clear it was inappropriate.

The questions we ought to be asking now are how did the 10:10 team ever think that a promotional film featuring authority figures such as a teacher and an office manager blowing up children and workers who dont sign up to their campaign was a good idea and how much money and carbon were wasted by their celebrity packed own goal?

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IPCC Errors

There’s a really good piece over on the Nature website about the recommendations made by an independent assessment of the way in which the IPCC currently functions. (hat tip Realclimate)

It’s worth reading because a lot of the coverage of the report has been over the top sensationalist nonsense about how the IPCC needs drastic reform as a result of serious errors. When these mainstream and sceptic pieces say errors, they all point to one example – the erroneous claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. One error, which was not in working group 1 (which covers the science of ACC) but appeared in WG2 (impacts adaptation and vulnerability) does not amount to a series of errors.

While right-wing media outlets and sceptic blogs spent a lot of time propagating the idea that there have been other, similar errors with the IPCC 2007 report, such as the Amazongate saga, whose main claims the Times has now retracted (the Times version is now however behind the Murdoch pay wall), the truth is that the science behind the IPCC 2007 report has stood up pretty well to the intense scrutiny which it has come under. On a related note, the IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri was subjected to an entirely baseless series of accusations claiming that he was making a fortune from his links with carbon trading companies. According to climate sceptics and the right-wing press he was profiteering from his position of head of the IPCC. An independent report into his financial dealings have found all of those claims to be completely and utterly false. Still, as George Monbiot demonstrates, the accusations continue to be made by right-wing media outlets.

In fact the major story about the IPCC getting something wrong is actually about sea level rise. The IPCC admitted in their assessment that they weren’t taking all factors into account, as some were too uncertain, but the reality of empirically observed sea level rise is way above the IPCC’s uppermost prediction.  This prediction wasn’t made using grey literature, it was supposedly based on solid science, and yet it turns out to be totally wrong. So why has there not been widespread outcry in the media about this erroneous prediction? Why are there not legions of sceptical bloggers using this as evidence that the IPCC reports are equal parts guesswork and science, and that their conclusions should be viewed with a large dose of scepticism?

Because the message we get from the IPCC’s most serious error is that their estimates err on the side of conservatism and caution rather than the alarmism they are routinely accused of. Which is really not any great surprise given the consensus based framework they operate within. But if the IPCC’s predictions are too conservative, then the entire sceptic argument goes up in smoke, so very little is heard about the most serious error the IPCC have made. This is somewhat telling, as it suggests that those criticising the IPCC have little interest in improving its procedures and improving its predictions. More often than not it turns out to be the same few voices attempting to sell generalised doubt about climate change in order to prevent any kind of legaslative action being take to mitigate the predictions the science makes.

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NOAA: State of the Climate Report

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recently released a report entitles State of the Climate 2009, which is downloadable in its entirety as a pdf from here, with a web page summarising the report available online here.

The findings of this report, which involved over 300 scientists from 48 countries around the world are further corroboration of the evidence that ‘t the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.’ What is interesting about the report, is that it uses a methodology which is well suited to examining a broad range of climactic indicators to build a fairly comprehensive overview of numerous ecological systems and so to be able to map the changes these systems are currently undergoing.

Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

By utilising a broad range of indicators, and finding such broad agreement between them the NOAA report provides a good example of the way in which the science behind anthropogenic climate change is based on a vast array of observations which corroborate with the physics behind the greenhouse effect, which gives a causal mechanism to the observations seen in these global climactic systems.

As John Cook from SkepticalScience points out in an article for the Guardian, this kind of rigorous scientific research which seeks to give a good overview of global systems by combining and comparing the observed data for numerous global systems is diametrically opposed methodologically to the kind of material promoted by most climate change skeptics, who seek to prevent meaningful action being taken to reduce the severity of ACC by entirely ignoring the bigger picture – the enormous breadth of data from global systems – instead focusing on minute details such as the choice of proxies used in decade old papers on paleoclimatic reconstructions (the repeatedly vindicated Hockey Stick paper published by Mann Hughes and Bradley) or the choice of wording in private emails between climate researchers (such as Phil Jones’ phrase ‘hide the decline’ to describe the divergence between one particular set of trees used as as a climate proxy and the observed temperature record, which was covered in the published literature on that proxy set).

As the NOAA report highlights, when you look at the big picture, rather than concentrating on minute details, the evidence is that the planet is heating up, that human activity is largely the cause, and that the medium to long term ramifications of these changes will make life far harder for hundreds of millions of people as well as causing the extinction of innumerable other species less capable of adapting to a changing climate. As time goes by and more research is being done, that evidence is only getting stronger as more and more datasets which confirm the findings of the IPCC emerge. However despite this mountain of evidence, the political action that would make meaningful action to mitigate the worst of the potential consequences is still a long way off, with the US Senate’s decision not to even try to get a massively compromised bill through following in the wake of the inability of the world’s political leaders failure to reach any deal at COP15 in Copenhagen last December to succeed the emissions cuts of developed nations agreed under the Kyoto Protocol. With the US seemingly steadfast in its refusal to make any kind of cuts to its emissions, it seems unlikely that other developed nations are going to volunteer further reductions to their own emissions, no matter what the science says, as politicians are too fearful for their own careers, which are largely dependent on short term economic success rather than longer term sustainability.

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Muir Russell Report: Jones and the CRU Vindicated (Again)

This afternoon the Muir Russell led Independent Climate Change Email Review delivered it’s report. This is the last and most extensive of the investigations set up in the wake of the Climactic Research Unit email hack/leak which occurred last November (to conveniently become an international news scandal casting doubt on the scientific basis of anthropogenic climate change just before world leaders held the COP15 conference to negotiate – or rather fail to negotiate – a successor to the Kyoto Protocol).

The other investigations, by the House of Commons select committee, the Oxburgh Report, and the  inquiry by Penn State University into the conduct of Michael Mann, one of the scientists prominently featured in the emails, had all previously  found that Phil Jones and the CRU had not falsified data, engaged in research misconduct, or corrupted the peer review process as had been claimed by climate sceptics and mainstream media outlets (ranging from the Daily Mail to the Guardian in terms of political affiliation).

So what has the Muir Russell investigation concluded? Well…

Climate science is a matter of such global importance, that the highest standards of honesty, rigour and openness are needed in its conduct. On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.
On the allegation of withholding temperature data, we find that CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data or tamper with it. We demonstrated that any independent researcher can download station data directly
from primary sources and undertake their own temperature trend analysis.
On the allegation of biased station selection and analysis, we find no evidence of bias. Our work indicates that analysis of global land temperature trends is robust to a range of station selections and to the use of adjusted or unadjusted data. The level of agreement between independent analyses is such that it is highly unlikely that CRU could have acted improperly to reach a predetermined outcome. Such action would have required collusion with multiple scientists in various independent organisations which we consider highly improbable.
The overall implication of the allegations was to cast doubt on the extent to which CRU‟s work in this area could be trusted and should be relied upon and we find no evidence to support that implication.

The central implication of the allegations here is that in carrying out their work, both in the choices they made of data and the way in which it was handled, CRU scientists intended to bias the scientific conclusions towards a specific result and to set aside inconvenient evidence. More specifically, it was implied in the allegations that this should reduce the confidence ascribed to the conclusions in Chapter 6 of the IPCC 4th Report, Working Group 1 (WG1). We do not find that the way that data derived from tree rings is described and presented in IPCC AR4 and shown in its Figure 6.10 is misleading. In particular, on the question of the composition of temperature reconstructions, we found no evidence of exclusion of other published temperature reconstructions that would show a very different picture. The general discussion of sources of uncertainty in the text is extensive, including reference to divergence. In this respect it represented a significant advance on the IPCC Third AssessmentReport (TAR).

On the allegation that the phenomenon of “divergence” may not have been properly taken into account when expressing the uncertainty associated with reconstructions, we are satisfied that it is not hidden and that the subject is openly and extensively discussed in the literature, including CRUpapers.

On the allegations in relation to withholding data, in particular concerning the small sample size of the tree ring data from the Yamal peninsula, CRU did not withhold the underlying raw data (having correctly directed the single request to the owners). But it is evidently true that access to the raw data was not simple until it was archived in 2009 and that this delay can rightly be criticized on general principles. In the interests of transparency, we believe that CRU should have ensured that the data they did not own, but on which their publications relied, was archived in a more timely way.

On the allegations that there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process we find no evidence to substantiate this in the three instances examined in detail. On the basis of the independent work we commissioned (see Appendix 5) on the nature of peer review, we conclude that it is not uncommon for strongly opposed and robustly expressed positions to be taken up in heavily contested areas of science. We take the view that such behaviour does not in general threaten the integrity of peer review or publication.

On the allegations that in two specific cases there had been a misuse by CRU scientists of the IPCC process, in presenting AR4 to the public and policy makers, we find that the allegations cannot be upheld. In addition to taking evidence from them and checking the relevant records of the IPCC process, we have consulted the relevant IPCC review Editors. Both the CRU scientists were part of large groups of scientists taking joint responsibility for the relevant IPCC Working Group texts, and were not in a position to determine individually the final wording and content.

So in line with the other three reports, the Muir Russell inquiry’s main findings are that 1) The CRU scientists are honest researchers 2) The various allegations of data manipulation and/or fraud are entirely baseless 3) The HadCRU temp record has not been tampered with, and that any competent researcher could reproduce the CRU’s results. Essentially this is another through vindication of the work undertaken by Jones and the CRU.

However, despite entirely clearing Jones and the CRU of the major accusations leveled at them by bloggers and journalists over the past nine months, it did make some criticisms of the way the CRU and UEA had acted with regards to complying with FoI requests, reporting that

But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of the CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA, who failed to recognise not only the significance of statutory requirements but also the risk to the reputation of the University and, indeed, to the credibility of UK climate science.

and that

On the allegation that CRU does not appear to have acted in a way consistent with the spirit and intent of the FoIA or EIR, we find that there was unhelpfulness in responding to requests and evidence that e-mails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them. University senior management should have accepted more responsibility for implementing the required processes for
FoIA and EIR compliance.

It must be remembered when contemplating what the findings of the report mean, that the allegations against Jones and the CRU which had been widely disseminated across both the Internet and print media, were that they had falsified data to make their results concur with a preconceived position, that they had corrupted the peer review process preventing scientists with alternative views from having their work published in prestigious journals, that they had infiltrated and distorted the IPCC so that the IPCC’s major reports reflected their alarmist position (based on their falsified data) and that the CRU email leak was a smoking gun which laid bare the fraudulent work of these dishonest scientists. The Muir Russell report’s findings on all of these charges are that these claims are entirely baseless. That is (or ought to be) the story here.

The international ‘scandal’ surrounding the CRU leak was most certainly not based around the notion that honest, credible scientists who otherwise worked within best practices were based at an institution which didn’t deal entirely correctly with freedom of information requests made by bloggers they didn’t like (due to a history of the bloggers making inaccurate claims about their work). The headlines were based around the notion that the scandal cast doubt upon whether the planet was in fact warming as a result of human activity, not around how senior management at a university dealt with FoI requests.

As Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst states with regard to the scandal and the subsequent inquiries

The report by Sir Muir Russell et al confirms what everybody who has worked with Phil Jones and Keith Briffa knew all along – they are honest, hard-working scientists whose reputations have been unjustifiably smeared by allegations of unscrupulous behaviour. These allegations are soundly rejected by the report. If there is a scandal to be reported at all, it is this: the media stoked a controversy without properly investigating the issues, choosing to inflate trivialities to the level of an international scandal, without regard for the facts or individuals affected. This was a shameful chapter in the history of news reporting, and a lesson for those who are concerned about fair and honest communication with the public.

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Climategate: More Garbage from the Guardian

Yesterday I wrote about the Penn State University investigation into Michael Mann’s research conduct which stemmed from the Climate Research Unit email hack widely known as Climategate, and criticising media outlets such as the Guardian, which gave a huge amount of coverage to the ‘scandal’ whilst then failing to give anything like equal attention to the three subsequent investigations which have found that there was no research misconduct on the part of climate scientists, and absolutely no evidence of fraud, data manipulation or inventing climate change to receive funding money.

Today, Fred Pearce, who wrote an utterly abysmal 10 part special on Climategate for the Guardian, and has now written a book on the subject, has a new piece linked off the front page of the paper. Shockingly, this latest piece on Climategate repeats the claims that

Critics say the emails reveal evasion of freedom of information law, secret deals done during the writing of reports for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a cover-up of uncertainties in key research findings and the misuse of scientific peer review to silence critics.

However Pearce decides to entirely omit from his report that three independent investigations have found every one of these claims not to be true. One would have thought that mentioning that the scientists have now been vindicated by three separate investigations into the accusations Pearce restates would be an important part of the story, but apparently this is not the case. He does mention the Muir Russell investigation, the fourth inquiry which is due to report its findings on Wednesday, and then says that

whatever Sir Muir Russell, the chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland, concludes on these charges, senior climate scientists say their world has been dramatically changed by the affair.

Unbelievably it would seem that Fred Pearce thinks that it doesn’t matter whether climate scientists are guilty of research misconduct, fraudulently manipulating data or any of the other charges of which they have been accused. In the surreal world of the mainstream media, what matters is not the facts surrounding the issue, and certainly not the results of independent investigations into these matters, but the number of bogus accusations already made by journalists and bloggers.

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Penn State Inquiry Clears Michael Mann

So the second part of the Penn State University (PSU) inquiry into the conduct of Dr Michael Mann has now concluded… The inquiry, which was set up after the university received a large volume of angry correspondence from members of the public who believed that emails contained in the CRU email hack showed that Dr Mann had committed serious misconduct while based at PSU.

The four charges leveled at Dr Mann by the inquiry were

• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?
• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to [him] in [his] capacity as an academic scholar?
• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?

Back in February PSU administrators ruled that there existed ‘no credible evidence’ that there was any merit to the first three allegations, however they decided that the fourth allegation required further investigation by academic staff. The results of that investigation have now been published, and they state that

A panel of leading scholars has cleared a well-known Penn State climate scientist of research misconduct, following a four-month internal investigation by the University.

Penn State Professor Michael Mann has been cleared of any wrongdoing, according to a report of the investigation that was released today (July 1). Mann was under investigation for allegations of research impropriety that surfaced last year after thousands of stolen e-mails were published online. The e-mails were obtained from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

The panel of leading scholars from various research fields, all tenured professors at Penn State, began its work on March 4 to look at whether Mann had “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” Mann is one of the leading researchers studying climate change.

A full report on the findings of the committee can be viewed at “Final Investigation Report Involving Dr. Michael E. Mann.”

So how widely published will it be that one of the scientists who had to withstand a vast volume of entirely false accusations with regards to his honesty and academic integrity has been completely and utterly vindicated by an investigation? My guess is barely. Yes places like Realclimate and Deltoid will cover it, but the mainstream media outlets which published a huge amount of critical material when ‘Climategate’ was considered a scandal are completely silent. The BBC Science and  Environment section has nothing on this story, likewise the Guardian Environment section has no mention of the latest findings. Sadly it just goes to show once again that while the possibility of a scandal based on hearsay and blog based rumour can be a major story, the far more mundane truth that actually Mann is a diligent, honest and well respected scientist isn’t considered newsworthy. Consequently the millions of people who rely on mainstream media for their news will be left with the impression that Mann and other honest scientists may well be in the process of attempting to manufacture a perceived crisis called global warming.

Equally, those who frequent climate sceptic blogs may be left with the impression that although this later round of investigation chose to interview Richard Lindzen, a well known sceptical scientist (with obligatory links to the oil industry and right wing think tanks, and who has been proved wrong on numerous occasions), it was simply a whitewash, a case of the university acting to protect its own reputation in the face of public criticism. Indeed this was the claim made after the initial three charges were rejected by sources such as Fox News and well know climate sceptic blog site Climate Audit. As Scholars and Rogues aptly demonstrated though, these claims of further wrongdoing by a university inquiry in order to cover up research misconduct are extremely unlikely. It was alleged that this whitewash was done in order to preserve the funding which Mann’s work brought in, however S&R’s research into the matter shows that

According to a list of grants at The Free Republic, Mann has brought in a total of $4.2 million since he joined PSU in 2006, with a significant portion of that money to be spent over the next several years. From 2006 to 2009, Mann’s grants totaled about $1.8 million. In that same period, PSU’s total research income was $2.8 billion ($2,804 million). As a percentage, Mann’s grants represented 0.06% of the total research money that PSU was granted between 2006 and 2009.

The chances of a University risking its reputation as a centre of international excellence by whitewashing an inquiry into one researcher’s conduct is highly unlikely. As of course were the claims that Mann and many other scientists were colluding and conspiring to invent climate change in order to frighten the world into taxing people or bring about a UN based world government, however that didn’t stop these allegations becoming a major news story conveniently timed to coincide with the COP15 conference where world leaders came together attempting to negotiate a follow up to the Kyoto treaty.

With COP15 having been and failed, allied with increased public perception that climate change is not an important issue (and may even be a fraudulent invention of Dr Mann and other scientists) it should be vital that the news outlets who provided so much coverage when they saw a scandal now present a similar amount of coverage that it turns out that their claims turn out to be entirely baseless. However sadly that isn’t how the media works; scandal and allegations sells, carefully researched science and academic inquiries which find no wrongdoing don’t.

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Sunday Times Retracts Bogus Amazongate Article

Earlier this year the Sunday Times published a piece by Jonathan Leake claiming that a claim in the 2007 IPCC report about the sensitivity of the Amazon rainforest to changes in precipitation had been invented by environmental activists at the WWF who sought to alarm the public about non-existent dangers which they sought to attribute to anthropogenic climate change.

At the time the piece, based on research by Richard North, was widely criticised on places like Deltoid for failing to report that the WWF report was in fact based on peer reviewed scientific research, and for misrepresenting Dr Simon Lewis’s comments that the IPCC should have referenced the original works rather than the WWF report, claiming that Lewis disputed the scientific basis of both the IPCC and WWF reports.

At the time Lewis tried to comment on the Times website to clarify that his position on the issue had been misrepresented by Leake, so the Times duly deleted his comment. He wrote to the newspaper, and heard nothing back. So he took his complaint to the Press Complaints Commission. In response the Sunday Times has issued the following retraction.

The article “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim” (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an “unsubstantiated claim” that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report prepared for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as “green campaigners” with “little scientific expertise.” The article also stated that the authors’ research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact of human activity rather than climate change.

In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change. We also understand and accept that Mr Rowell is an experienced environmental journalist and that Dr Moore is an expert in forest management, and apologise for any suggestion to the contrary.

The article also quoted criticism of the IPCC’s use of the WWF report by Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. We accept that, in his quoted remarks, Dr Lewis was making the general point that both the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed scientific research literature. As he made clear to us at the time, including by sending us some of the research literature, Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’ statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change.

In addition, the article stated that Dr Lewis’ concern at the IPCC’s use of reports by environmental campaign groups related to the prospect of those reports being biased in their conclusions. We accept that Dr Lewis holds no such view – rather, he was concerned that the use of non-peer-reviewed sources risks creating the perception of bias and unnecessary controversy, which is unhelpful in advancing the public’s understanding of the science of climate change. A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.

As Tim Lambert points out however, Leake’s bogus story soon was doing the rounds on both the climate change denialist blogosphere , and also in other right wing newspapers such as Rupert Murdoch’s Australian and the Daily Mail. It seems highly unlikely that these secondary authors who relied on Leake’s falsified story will all be publishing similar retractions, and consequently much of the impact that the story had as being a widely publicised example of the IPCC allegedly using alarmist predictions from non-scientific sources will likely remain despite the factual basis of the story turning out to be untrue.

This seems a good example of how making entirely baseless accusations can essentially tarnish the work of honest researchers; it is far easier to make unfounded accusations, and then to get these accusations widely reprinted and disseminated by people whose ideological preconceptions the claims resonate with, than it is for those on the wrong end of bogus reporting to clear their names and set the record straight. The affective impact of headlines proclaiming that ACC is a myth invented by environmental activists to create redistributive taxes is somewhat stronger than a retraction of the article  some four and half months after the event.  And as the retraction only covers the place it originated from, The Times, and excludes the plethora of places the untrue assertions were republished, it’s doubtful whether many of those who read those claims will end up reading the retraction. While climate change blogs such as Deltoid, RealClimate and DeSmogBlog have covered the story, as have eco-activists in the (mainly left-wing sections of the) mainstream media such as George Monbiot and Roy Greenslade, it is highly doubtful that these commentators will have the same audience that was reached by the original Times article, and its spin offs in places such as the Mail, the Australian and climate change denial blogs.

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Comparing Apples to Oranges

I’ve just been reading a piece by John Vidal on the Guardian Website about the new draft text prepared by the UN Secretariat at the end of their discussions in Bonn over the past couple of weeks

In the piece Vidal states

The new draft text is also guaranteed to infuriate the US, which has so far only pledged to cut its emissions 17% by 2020 on 2005 emission levels – far less than European Union countries who have committed themselves to 20% cuts by 2020 and a 30% cut if other countries show similar ambition. “If this text were to be adopted, then the US would find it particularly difficult. It means they would have to do very much more,” said one European diplomat.

Are pledged cuts of 17% of emissions really ‘far less’ than pledged cuts of 20%? Well if you were getting your information solely from this article you might think perhaps not. What Vidal fails to explain however, is that whereas the US has pledged cuts of 17% of 2005 emissions, the EU figure relates to 1990 levels. As the unlike the EU the US didn’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, its emissions grew by about 15% between 1990 and 2005, meaning that if they were measured from the same baseline as everyone else in the world – that is their 1990 levels – the cuts the US has pledged amount to a rather pathetic 4% And this will of course include emissions savings from carbon trading and other schemes which are designed to allow developed countries to avoid actually cutting emissions.

Vidal is comparing apples (cuts based on 1990 levels) to oranges (cuts based on 2005 levels) to paint an entirely confusing picture of what is going on and who has pledged what.

Rather ridiculously though, the actual UN text they are referring to is not much clearer on what exactly it proposes

Developed country Parties shall undertake, individually or jointly, legally binding nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions, [including][expressed as] quantified economy-wide emission reduction objectives [while ensuring comparability of efforts and on the basis of cumulative historical responsibility, as part of their emission debt] with a view to reducing the collective greenhouse gas emissions of developed country Parties by [at least] [25–40] [in the order of 30] [40] [45] [49] [X*] per cent from [1990] [or 2005] levels by [2017][2020] [and by [at least] [YY] per cent by 2050 from the[1990] [ZZ] level].

Developed country Parties’ quantified economy-wide emission reduction objectives shall be formulated as a percentage reduction in greenhouse gas emissions [for the period] [from 2013 to 2020]
compared to 1990 or another base year [adopted under the Convention] [, and shall be inscribed in a legally binding agreement].

So the actual UN text seems to suggest that the UN thinks it’s okay for the US to invent a new baseline date for any emission cuts which means that its cuts will be minute compared to those of other developed nations, despite the US per capita emissions figure being far higher than that in Europe and elsewhere. Quite why Vidal and others think that this will infuriate the US is fairly odd, the provision for dates other than 1990 to act as a baseline appears to have been inserted purely to appease the US.

No wonder developing nations are calling this another stitch up along the lines of the Copenhagen Accord. Expecting details such as this to be picked up by the mainstream media when they can’t even give their readers figures based on the same start date seems like wishful thinking though.

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Climategate: The Oxburgh Enquiry and the BBC’s Usual Bullshit

During the time that I’ve not been writing, the so-called Climategate ‘scandal’ has been one of the major talking points regarding climate change and the media. In a fairly sickening way it’s a really interesting example of how communication can be distorted by a combination of willing idiots and paid PR people who have an agenda to push – in this case right wing think tanks linked to fossil fuel industries who are hell bent on opposing any kind of binding international agreement or national laws which will curb the emissions of their industries. It’s an issue I’ll probably spend some more time analysing here sometime soon, but today I briefly wanted to look at the latest developments and how the BBC in particular chose to cover them.

So firstly, what was the conclusion of this report… well

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it.

Given the hysterical claims made by the global warming denial lobby over the CRU email hack that is pretty unequivocal. The data was not fudged, made up, or invented and the CRU was not involved in a duplicitous process of scientific malpractice and fraud aimed at deceiving the public and the world’s politicians into taking action on a non-existent problem.

This is the second report into the CRU hack which has now reached the same conclusion following the publication of the UK Parliament’s Commons Science and Technology Committee report into the affair. So after months of mainstream media and right wing blog speculation and hearsay about how anthropogenic climate was a fantasy concocted by conspiring climate scientists, which just happened to coincide with the UN COP15 confere4nce on climate change, it turns out that all of these claims were absolute rubbish.

So how does the BBC website cover this story? Well they start well with a headline of ‘No Malpractice by Climate Unit’ and briefly cover the actual report and it’s contents with a quote from Lord Oxburgh stating that

We found absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever. That doesn’t mean that we agreed with all of their conclusions, but these people were doing their jobs honestly.

The article then goes on to to state that sceptics have criticised Oxburgh’s appointment as the panel’s chair as he ‘is currently president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and chairman of wind energy firm Falck Renewables. Critics say clean energy companies would benefit from policies to tackle climate change.’ Which is fair enough – revealing the economic interests of interviewees which may impinge on their judgements ought to be a part of journalism. They don’t however mention that Oxburgh was only one of a seven man team of experts who oversaw the inquiry.

What really irked me about the BBC piece however is its concluding section in which we find

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, criticised the panel for producing a report that was “not even-handed” and appeared to be the product of a “rushed job”.

He said: “This has produced a very superficial report. The panel should have taken more time to come to more balanced and trustworthy conclusions.

“They should have heard evidence from critical researchers who have been working in the same field for many years.”

First of all, for those who aren’t familiar with Benny Peiser while he is indeed an academic, simply describing him as a Dr within an article concentrating on science and scientists is somewhat misleading. Peiser is a senior lecturer in social anthropology and sports sociology. Yup that’s right, instead of getting information about climate science from climate scientists, or maybe physicists or atmospheric chemists the Beeb turns to a sports sociologist. Right… Well he has published peer reviewed papers. Three in fact, in the following journals: Sports Medicine, 2006; Journal of Sports Sciences (2004); and, Bioastronomy 2002: life among the stars (2004).

Peiser’s main claim to fame, is that in 2005 he tried to publish a response to a paper published by Naomi Oreskes in the journal Science which carried out a survey of 928 abstracts of peer reviewed papers on the ISI database which contained the keywords ‘global climate change.’ Oreskes found that of these 928 papers, none of the abstracts contradicted the IPCC position, which was used as evidence corroborating the strength of the scientific consensus on climate change. Peiser couldn’t get his response published in Science, but did publish in the Daily Telegraph and online. He claimed that Oreskes had lied about the number of abstracts that her search should have turned up, and claimed that he found 34 abstracts among these which directly contradicted the IPCC position.

Firstly it turned out that Peiser had a different number of abstracts because he had entered different search terms, Oreskes had excluded journals which were not peer reviewed whereas Peiser had not, leading to one of his 34 abstracts being an un-reviewed industry publication by the American Society of Petroleum Geologists. Thats right, the oil industry.

Following his online publication of the 34 abstracts he claimed contradicted the consensus position, Tim Lambert who writes the Deltoid blog published the list and dissected whether or not they turned out to support Peiser’s claims. By October 2006 Peiser’s initial 34 abstracts had shrunk to one, making him a mere 97% wrong.

So not only do the BBC decide that they should be getting opinions on climate science from sports sociologists, but that they should get them from from sports sociologists who can’t use a search engine or comprehend the abstract of a scientific paper.

What about the official sounding Global Warming Policy Foundation which the BBC states Peiser is a director of? It’s an anti-global warming group launched by that scientific colossus Lord Nigel Lawson of Blaby, the former Tory chancellor who prior to becoming a politician had been a financial journalist.

If the Beeb really feel the need to include the views of sports sociologists and retired Tories on scientific issues it would seem professional courtesy to at least state what these sources really are rather than simply presenting them as a rival group of experts who disagree with the both the scientists at the CRU and the scientists who carried out the Oxburgh report.

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