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Deutsche Bank really wants us to trade carbon

Deusche Bank Carbon Counter
Six months ago, Deutsche Bank was overcome with concern about the planet—bless its soul–and launched this 70 ft. vision of climate doom opposite Madison Square Gardens, New York. You can feel relieved. The bank paid for the carbon credits (no doubt through one of its own funds), so the 40,960 low-energy light-emitting diodes are “carbon-neutral.”

Kevin Parker for Deutsche Asset Management said: “We hope with this sign that it is going to foster a sense of urgency about the problem, raise public awareness, create a need for education and really spur a call for action”

Spurring action indeed. “Sign Copenhagen; Sign Cap N Trade; Give us that $2 trillion dollar market based on meaningless paper permits, and funded by consumers everywhere. Please!”

In a more candid moment, Parker said: “Well, what we’d like to see is a price on carbon. That is absolutely foremost in everyone’s minds involved in the climate change debate. The governments around the world have to get on with regulations…”

Yes, the real agenda is the legislation: forced payments from citizens. We all know we aren’t going to see the Deutsche Bank Top-Soil Clock coming soon highlighting the problem of erosion, or the Deutsche Bank Falling Fish Stock Clock…or the Deutsche Bank program to save the spotted quoll.

In a brazen ambit, Parker suggested we all might like to invest more in renewable energy: $45 trillion more (over 40 years), and that’s only going to solve half the problem”. There is no end to the audacity.

Is this anything other than blatant advertising for a Cap N Trade scheme? Ponder if Exxon launched a similar billboard with the “costs” of carbon mitigation, it would be vandalized, scorned, and disparaged even by august associations like the Royal Society.

A NASA official would call for corporate heads to be jailed for crimes against humanity.

It’s ok for bankers managing $695 billion-dollar funds to take sides in a science debate…. That’s not the same as corporations trying to influence policy. More »

Is there any unmassaged data out there?

This is yet another example of things that don’t add up in the world of GISS temperatures in Australia. Previously, we’ve discussed Gladstone and Darwin.

Ken Stewart has been doing some homework, and you can see all the graphs on his blog. Essentially, the Bureau of Met in Australia provides data for Mt. Isa that shows a warming trend of about 0.5 degrees of warming over a century. GISS takes this, adjusts it carefully to “homogenize urban data with rural data”, and gets an answer of 1.1 degrees. (Ironically among other things, “homogenisation” is supposed to compensate for the Urban Heat Island Effect, which would artificially inflate the trend in urban centers.)

To give you an idea of scale, the nearest station is at Cloncurry, 106km east (where a flat trend of 0.05 or so appears in the graph). But, there are other trends that are warmer in other stations. Averaging the five nearest rural stations gives about 0.6 degrees; averaging the nearest ten stations gives between 0.6 and 0.88 degrees.

Mt Isa and surrounds with temperature trends

More »

Thai Translation – The Skeptics Handbook

The volunteers keep coming. Please take a moment to appreciate how much work it takes to do a proper translation, to check it, to edit it, and to edit and arrange the artwork. Then take another moment to think of old friends and contacts who might find it interesting, and e-mail it on. Thanks.

The reach of our global human network is changing polls.

Thanks to Weeraboon Wisartsakul for his expertise and patience.

See www.wwisartsakul.wordpress.com for his Thai blog.

Thanks to Jimmy Haigh for the double-checking and help.

Click on the image to download the pdf.

Volunteers have translated the first Skeptics Handbook into German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Japanese, Balkan and Spanish. The second Skeptics Handbook is available in French and Turkish.

ABC Chairman says “Let them speak.” Greens say “Nooooo.”

Today the Chairman of “our ABC” (it’s paid for by Australian taxpayers) said the unthinkable.

It’s not that he said man-made global warming was a scam, and he didn’t announce that carbon wasn’t a pollutant; he just asked for journalists to listen to other points of view.

“At the ABC, I believe we must re-energise the spirit of enquiry. Be dynamic and challenging, to look for contrary points of view, to ensure that the maverick voice will not be silenced.”

In a speech to senior ABC staff, he said that climate change was an example of “group-think”, and that they should listen perhaps “to other points of view that may be sceptical.”

Contrary views on climate change have not been tolerated and those who express them have been labelled and mocked.

I’ve been around long enough to know that consensus and conventional wisdom doesn’t always serve you well and that unless you leave some room for an alternative point of view you are likely to go down a wrong track…

These innocuous non-judgemental lines are too far from the doctrine.

Christine Milne of the Australian Greens responded, and in the true spirit of an open democracy and a free press, urged ABC journalists to ignore him. Fully 40% of Australians might be sceptical,* but Christine Milne wants to make sure that information that aligns with their opinions is not represented by our national government-funded broadcaster. Like Clive Hamilton, she hides in the dark… don’t let them speak. Where is the compassion and tolerance the Greens claim to defend? We’ll defend you if you agree with us, but if you come from a different culture (one that respects data more than “doctorates” and logic over bluster), we’ll use every tool at our disposal to suppress you. More »

The evidence? What evidence?

Robyn Williams is Australia’s science communication guru in the sense that he’s one of the few in our country who’s been making a living at it with a regular radio program (or two) for decades. He’s been doing this so long, he was proclaimed a National Living Treasure, and that was twenty-three years ago.

He’s posted his thoughts on the climate debate at ABC unleashed, Climate Change Science: The Evidence is Clear.

He’s been passionately defending science for years, sharing curious points, and explaining how things work. And yet in the upside down world in which we live in 2010–after all these years, he (and nearly everyone else in our profession) has lost sight of the most important things in science, and somehow ended up defending science-the-bureaucracy, instead of science-the-philosophy.

It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw.

It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw. For science-the-bureaucracy is not science at all; it’s just another cluster of committees, each run by six or ten people who discuss articles published in niche magazines owned by mega-conglomerate financial houses and ultimately controlled by a few editors who print articles reviewed by a couple of anonymous busy and unpaid people. Occasionally, a really big committee forms to issue a really long report, but in the end, the few pages that everything else hinges on are only assessed by four dozen names, most of whom are reviewing their own work, and most of whom are collecting grants that would be smaller if they…discovered less of a crisis.

science-the-bureaucracy is not science at all, it’s just another cluster of committees

Meanwhile giant banking corporations have already factored in billion dollar profits from the “science”, and thousands upon thousands of concerned citizens have been coached into thinking that if they insult the scientists who disagree, they are somehow helping the planet.

Who better to expose all this than the few people who understand the science, who know how the process of science ought to work, and who don’t have a major vested interest in the outcome? This is exactly what science communicators ought to be doing. There is no more appropriate specialty to interview scientists on both sides of the story, to see who makes sense, to ask hard questions of both teams, and point out the flaws in the reports. Instead, science communicators take the side of the mediocre committees, the scientists with the well-paid and high-status positions, the power-hungry bureaucracies, and the calculating world of high finance. Then these same science communicators throw insults at the unpaid whistleblower scientists. Ouch. More »

Help! How do I know?

IMAGE: Sceptical Scientist

IMAGE: Unsceptical Scientist

How do you tell a scientist from a non-scientist? Where does science end, and propaganda, politics, and opinion begin? You only need to know one thing:

…
Image: The Aim of Science

…

Straight away, this sorts the wheat from the weeds. We don’t learn about the natural world by calling people names or hiding data. We don’t learn by chucking out measurements in favor of opinions. We don’t learn by suppressing discussions, or setting up fake rules about which bits of paper count or which people have a licence to speak.

A transparent, competitive system where all views are welcome is the fastest way to advance humanity. The Royal Society is the oldest scientific association in the world. Its motto is essentially, Take No One’s Word For It. In other words, assume nothing; look at the data. When results come in that don’t fit the theory, a scientist chucks out his theory. A non-scientist has “faith”, he “believes” or assumes his theory is right, and tries to make the measurements fit. When measurements disagree, he ignores the awkward news, and “corrects”, or statistically alters, the data–always in the direction that keeps his theory alive.

Spanish translation of Skeptics Handbook I

Spanish Translation - The Skeptics Handbook I

I am delighted to announce that finally, after drafts have been sent between three continents, the Spanish translation is ready to share. With over 330 million native speakers of Spanish, I expect it will be one of the most popular of all the translations.

Download the 1.2Mb emailable version.

Thanks especially to Víctor González García in Mexico, who did most of the work and coordination, and with editing help from Pepe Salama in Spain.

Please send links to this page or to Pepe’s blog page to your Spanish speaking friends, so they can download copies from either site. And consider PePe’s page as the main home for discussion of the Handbook in Spanish.

There is a larger 7Mb version here for printing.

All translations and versions are available on this page.

How many tax dollars have you paid towards climate PR or research?

Richard North has picked up the ABC Drum article “The Money Trail”, and wonders about the total value of financial contributions towards carbon related research or PR from the UK and EU. I’ve wondered the same thing. Indeed, I tried to find answers for other nations and to add to the USA figures I put into Climate Money, but rapidly discovered, as he has, that it’s a hideously complex task. It’s a Ph.D size project, and there are no grants available to fund this kind of Ph.D.

Five times the cost of the Manhattan Project

Spending is hugely fragmented, between several departments of state, including DEFRA and DECC, with contributions from government agencies and quangos, including the Carbon Trust.

Then there are the devolved governments, the regional development agencies and local authorities, plus a very considerable input from the European Union, through the Framework research programme and also via direct contacts issued by the various Commission DGs.

Among the big spenders, though, are the seven UK research councils, which collectively dispense billions into the research community each year. You might think that each of these would be able to pinpoint the amount dispensed on climate research, but that it very far from the case.

The thing that made my analysis of the US climate funding possible was that there were bragging rights in spending big on climate research. Naming a department and printing annual reports made it possible. North is dedicatedly going through individual reports: More »

Turkish – Skeptics Handbook II

Turkish Translation Skeptics Handbook II

Once again, marvel at the worldwide grassroots network of volunteers. E-mail all your Turkish friends. Click on the image above to see the Turkish Skeptics Handbook II. The first Skeptics Handbook in Turkish was announced in August (and had a rather interesting synopsis of the Turkish situation vis a vis climate change at the time). More »

The climate industry wall of money

This is the copy of the file I sent the ABC Drum Unleashed. I’m grateful they are allowing both sides of the story to get some airtime (though Bob Carter’s , and Marc Hendrickx’s posts were both rejected. Hat-tip to Louis and Marc). Unfortunately the updated version I sent late yesterday which included some empirical references near the end was not posted until 4.30pm EST. (NB: The Australian spelling of skeptic is “sceptic”)

Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed. Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.

The big-money side of this debate has fostered a myth that sceptics write what they write because they are funded by oil profits. They say, follow the money? So I did and it’s chilling. Greens and environmentalists need to be aware each time they smear with an ad hominem attack they are unwittingly helping giant finance houses.

Follow the money

Money for Sceptics: Greenpeace has searched for funding for sceptics and found $23 million dollars paid by Exxon over ten years (which has stopped). Perhaps Greenpeace missed funding from other fossil fuel companies, but you can be sure that they searched. I wrote the Climate Money paper in July last year, and since then no one has claimed a larger figure. Big-Oil may well prefer it if emissions are not traded, but it’s not make-or-break for them. If all fossil fuels are in effect “taxed”, consumers will pay the tax anyhow, and past price rises in crude oil suggest consumers will not consume much less fuel, so profits won’t actually fall that much.

But in the end, everyone spends more on carbon friendly initiatives than on sceptics– even Exxon: (how about $100 million for Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project, and $600 million for Biofuels research). Some will complain that Exxon is massive and their green commitment was a tiny part of their profits, but the point is, what they spent on skeptics was even less. More »

The slow road to… getting things right

I watched part of the UK Parliamentary Committee Panel investigations with Phil Jones, and my main thought was ferrgoodnesssake! The nation of the Magna Carta, Newton, and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution: Can’t the UK empire just fly Steven McIntyre in, and sit these two men down in the same room at the same time? You know, ask questions of one then the other, drilling down with no tea-and-cakes breaks, till they sort out each item on a prearranged list?

Billions of lives depend on figuring out whether CO2 matters, and trillions of dollars rest on the scientific output of East Anglia CRU. If it’s so important, why don’t the UK Government get serious? Or for that matter, why doesn’t the IPCC volunteer to arrange this, all televised and restore its credibility; show they are take “unscientific behaviour” seriously?) Note that I’m not suggesting that the panel members aren’t serious, only that they have a long learning curve in this incredibly detailed saga, and McIntyre could save everyone some time.

Steven McIntyre has written an excellent submission (worth reading). That will have to do…

I did like that the dialogue was so civilized (that’s such a rare thing), but it seemed like the slow road to real answers. I guess this is a big new (albeit supranormal “parliamentary”) step on the road where science “gets it right in the long run”.

In Short:

Prof Jones admitted he had withheld data and sent some “pretty awful” emails, and he insisted it was “standard practice” to refuse certain information to other scientists. He also explained that none of the climate scientists reviewing his papers had ever asked for the data. There you have it: what we always knew, that peer review boils down to two anonymous, unpaid “peers” who have barely any vested interest in finding flaws.

Awkwardly for Jones, Steven Mosher points out on WattsUP that, Professor Jones was quite happy to share data with Steven McIntyre in 2002, before he realized that McIntyre was a step ahead and moving on a different path. After that, suddenly there were “confidentiality agreements” to worry about, (though those agreements apparently only applied selectively, since he sent that confidential information to Webster and Rutherford).

The net effect of Phil Jones “Standard Practice” for data requests was:

1. Violate the confidentiality if they are Pro-AGW.

2. Violate the tenets of science if they are Skeptic (hide that information).

The UK Parliamentary site is here, with words from Lord Lawson in the first hour, then Phil Jones starts after 60 minutes. Thanks to Simon at Australian Climate Madness for the youtube version of the Phil Jones’ testimony. Smart move. More »

Lambert, victim of his own spin?

Spin Cycle Science Cartoon
Lambert has replied to the post I did that pointed out that his use of the fake “Pinker Tape” in the debate with Monckton was a cheap-shot ambush with no real significance.

As usual, his reply includes major claims like “a dishonest post” and ”there’s no wiggle room here”, and, as usual, he can’t back them up.

Dishonest? I quote Pinker as saying:

[I]f we give Christopher Monckton the benefit of doubt and assume that he meant “the impact of clouds on the surface shortwave radiation” than it can pass.”

And Lambert thinks that somehow this really means that Pinker said Monckton’s terminology can pass, but his analysis is wrong? This exactly-backward interpretation is delusional (or dishonest, eh?). To read it from Pinker’s statement, you need to throw out the English grammar rulebook, and read from right to left. So now, it’s dishonest to quote someone directly? This is another example of the convoluted way faithful AGW people have to think in order to dig themselves out of the hole they find themselves in.

Let’s recall after all the too-ing and fro-ing, that even if Pinker thinks Monckton is wrong, even if Lambert gets a quote from Pinker saying Monckton is totally, utterly wrong, or that the IPCC did interpret the full implications of her work, this doesn’t prove he is, or they did. It means we need to listen to her reasons and Monckton’s reply carefully. (Notice how those who promote alarm end up discussing opinions and the minutia of who-said-what, rather than the science itself?)

Science associations give science a bad name

In this story from The Australian, we have the ludicrous double-irony of subscribers paying to read a story that disguises how their own taxpayer dollars are used against them to fund the propaganda that’s used to justify milking them for more taxpayer dollars….

Sometimes, you’d think media releases from science associations and universities were Commandments from God.

If football associations put out media releases that tried to whitewash the news of clubs rampantly breaking rules, or of officials letting them get away with it, or of umpires placing bets on the outcome of games they rule over, the sports journos would bake the officials, grill the umpires, and lampoon the clubs. But, when the topic is “science”, and the spokespeople have polysyllabic titles, they are untouchable.

Admittedly, there is that other effect: advertising. The Higher Education Supplement is designed to sell advertising space to universities, and asking the top dogs biting-hard questions is probably not the way to win big contracts (the journalists might be cynical, but Australian universities are a $12 billion dollar industry). And look in the last budget: There’s a neat pink icing on the cake in the graph below, thanks to the man-made theory of global warming. That pink icing is worth $100 million dollars to Australian universities annually, and most of that money for clean energy research heads to members of science associations (and not to the legal, architectural, arts, or physical ed. departments).

New Higher Education Funding Australia

In “Climate Wars Give Science A Bad Name”,the Australian lets the universities and science associations get away with unquestioned promotion of nonsense.

Many of their utterances would evaporate under the weight of a single half-baked question. More »

The loooooong road to regaining trust?

Just in case anyone out there has missed it, there is one of those landmark posts on Watts Up this weekend. Judith Curry tried to explain how Climate Scientists need to rebuild trust, and made the mistake of using the “Denier” insult (even though she thinks of it as just a label, rather than a perjorative term). She is still trying to blame poor communication or poor strategies to explain why Climate Science is looking so shonky at the moment. Then Willis Eschenbach diplomatically fries that idea, and points out that the only way to regain trust is not to look like honest scientists but to be honest scientists: to disavow the bad practices and disown the people who have failed science so badly.

Judith Curry responds graciously

To her credit she is engaging skeptics, and she points out in the comments to Willis’ post that:

… by staking this middle position, i pretty much am getting tomatoes thrown at me from both sides, but I am hoping to provoke both sides to think about productive ways of moving forward in getting climate science back on track.

And I agree. She is in a “wedged” position, and importantly she also makes the point that she feels angry too…

“… since I may have been using unnecessarily inaccurate surface temperature data in my research. Ecologists, chemical engineers, etc. who have made career decisions in directing their research toward climate change impacts or mitigation have been trusting the system to work. Etc.”

The point is nigh when the single mass of “climate scientists” (that never really was one mass) fractures into opposing groups. Honest scientists who rode the gravy train will have to admit that it’s never OK to withhold data, dodge FOI’s, exaggerate scares, and make thousands of adjustments to data without explaining the details of what they did and why they did it. In short: it’s not just high time to throw the corrupt scientists under a bus, it’s about five years too late.

All in all, this interchange is a good step forward.

My thoughts

I would add two things to Willis’ prosaic comments (some copied below).

One: Judith has also been taken in that there ever was a “Denial Machine”. Big-Government outspent Big-Oil 3500 to 1. The paltry $2 million or so a year that was available to some skeptics was vastly outweighed in every sense by the monster funding from government, the UN, and the Greens devoted to smearing and crushing dissent.

Two: I would also add that “denier” is one of the worst insults that can be thrown at a scientist, and while this exchange is a step forward, there can be no real conversation until the “denier” label is dropped in all shapes and forms, which is why I insist it can not be used as a group label in comments on my blog. After all, who would listen to a denier?

Following is a shortened edited version from Willis’ brilliant response: More »

If carbon didn’t warm us, what did?

Graph: Svensmark reply to Lockwood and Frolich, Cosmic Rays

Svensmarks Cosmic Ray Theory. TOP: If the sun's magnetic field is weak it allows more cosmic rays, which may seed more clouds on Earth. BOTTOM: A strong solar magnetic field blocks the same rays and could mean less clouds and clearer skies.

People have known for 200 years that there’s some link between sunspots and our climate. In 1800, the astronomer William Herschel didn’t need a climate model, he didn’t even have a calculator — yet he could see that wheat prices rose and fell in time with the sunspot cycle. Since then, people have noticed that rainfall patterns are also linked to sunspots.

Sunspots themselves don’t make much difference to us, but they are a sign of how weak or strong the sun’s magnetic field is. This massive solar magnetic field reaches out around the Earth, and it shields us from cosmic rays. Dr Henrik Svensmark has suggested that if more cosmic rays reach further down into our atmosphere, they might ionize molecules and help “seed” more clouds.
As it happens, this year, the sun has almost no sunspots, but for much of the late 20th Century, the solar magnetic field was extremely active. If the theory is right, an active field means a warming earth with fewer clouds. A quiet sun though, means a cooler earth with more clouds. More »

Skeptics Handbook permeates Copenhagen

Part II of Climate Change Gone Dutch. This is one of the best advertisements I’ve seen yet for The Skeptics Handbook. Seeing footage like this gives me a warm glow. Thanks atomkerman. Priceless!

It’s 5 minutes and the fun starts at 2:00 mins. (Cue ominous soundtrack). Introducing… the dreaded skeptic — a faceless trench coated “mafia” man who surreptitiously leaves a copy of The Skeptics Handbook on the table for … (gasp)… anyone to read. How dangerous. Friends of the baseless theory do what they always do, try to hide the graphs from public view. But the insidious copies are out there… people are reading them… the clock ticks. More »

The global gullibles shift to high gear smear

It’s tough when you can’t talk evidence, and the topic is science. What’s left is just the Stone Age mud-throwing campaign.

There’s a Matrix-moment coming for Clive Hamilton. Skeptics are now the grassroots activists against Big Money and Big Lies, fighting for the poor and the environment. He’s doing his damnedest to suppress community participation, promote intolerance, and effectively fight for banker profits, corrupt scientists, and plundering bureaucrats.

The AGW camp has on its side all the authority positions in climate science (you don’t get appointed unless you believe), all the climate and science journals, all the government and university funding, the computer models, the Nobel prizes, the Western governments, all the propaganda money can buy, the Greens, the politically correct, the UN, and all the mainstream media (at least, until recently). And the skeptics have…evidence, logic, retired scientists, and donations to blogs. Clive imagines he is speaking truth to power.

Since he can’t win on the science, he tries to bully instead (ironically while whining about…bullies). He peddles easily refutable lies, using unverifiable words from anonymous entities. Twice, Hamilton even contradicts himself, probably because he knows he’s making defamatory claims he can’t back up.

Hamilton realizes too late that the campaign to “out” the bullies is working More »

GISS goulash at Gladstone

Gladstone is half way up the coast of Queensland, and though GISS (the Goddard Institute of Space Studies) can claim it has not “adjusted” the data, it appears to have cherry picked it.

Thanks to Ken Stewart for his detailed attention. The information here and graphs come from his blog.

Here’s how you double the warming trend without “adjusting” the data.

Start with several different records The oldest is the BOM (Bureau of Met) Post Office. The highest is the BOM radar, which stepwise jumps up a whole degree. The last is the BOM Airport, which confirms that the Radar for some reason is 1 degree higher than the rest.

Lambert’s Pinker-tape “ambush”: PR stunt

Lambert has claimed a major win over his use of a voice recording (Monckton’s McLuhan Moment). As usual, it all sounds incredibly clear cut and impressive until the bluff gets hit with a 5 minute test…

The bottom line? The infamous “Pinker tape” turns out to be a reenacted piece of cherry-picked exaggeration, where lines are taken out of context to imply something important, or to frame it as if it were significant.

It’s true Monckton did get Pinker’s sex wrong (golly), and there was a point about fluxes being at the surface vs top of the atmosphere, but nothing Pinker or Lambert said makes much difference to the point that matters: climate sensitivity. (When the top of atmosphere problem emerged, Monckton recalculated the climate sensitivity on the spot; it changed from “very low” to “even lower”.) Pinker herself acknowledges that Monckton’s approach is reasonable.

Monckton has over the years pointed to many reasons why climate sensitivity is low. The Pinker paper is just another one of these corroborating pieces (and it looks a doozy). Using satellite measurements, Pinker shows that more sunlight is reaching the surface of the Earth (possibly due to fewer clouds over the ocean). Over the 18 years, the increase in energy amounts to almost 3W/m². If this is the case, there is just not much room for greenhouse gases to be heating the world after the effect of this extra surface sunlight is taken into account.

Pinker 2005, Fig 1: global solar irradiation.

Lambert’s staged recording and carefully edited slide contained this select message: More »

The Jedi mind trick falters…

…

There are dozens of the Downfall of Hitler parodies, but this one stands above. (Click on the square above to see it).

Thank you jlakey1! You made me laugh.

His theme of just how successful the big fake scam was, how close it came to success, and how completely the media prostrated themselves to be the doormats for big bankers and bureaucrats to walk on: “the public were begging for one world government” is so well described, so incisively done… I won’t do a plot spoiler. It’s only 3:54 minutes. Enjoy