The End of Consensus Science

On June 4^th, the US House of Representatives received a petition signed by 31,478 scientists. It asks congress to reject the current orthodoxy with respect to global warming, the greenhouse effect and climate change. Here is the text:

``We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.''

Signers of this petition include 3,803 with specific training in atmospheric, earth, and environmental sciences. All 31,478 of the signers have the necessary training in physics, chemistry, and mathematics to understand and evaluate the scientific data relevant to the human-caused global warming hypothesis and to the effects of human activities upon environmental quality. So much for the IPCC’s so called “scientific consensus”.

Climate Change Talks in Trouble

The purpose of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December is to agree on a multi-national deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which has no targets for emissions reductions beyond 2012. Climate change activists are looking to Copenhagen, encouraged by the newly minted US strategy, to begin a process of rapid de-carbonization of the global economy. It is not likely to happen.

First, as recent talks in Bonn make clear, some key rich countries – especially Canada and Japan – are unwilling to commit to specific legally binding targets. They want to see what the developing countries will do before making their commitments.

Second, the developing countries are asking for substantial commitments both of emissions reductions and financial support from more developed countries. The rich countries balk at the financial transfer sums involved and the poorer countries are demanding tougher targets than the rich countries are willing to offer.

Third, the US position is very soft. The greatly watered down “cap and trade” scheme for carbon reduction will not lead to significant emissions reductions but will lead to heavily subsidized green industries and increased energy costs. Economic pain with no carbon gain is likely to cause political fallout from both green campaigners worried that the US will not honour its commitments and from business who think that the costs of the Copenhagen compromise will be too high.

Fourth, to achieve a commitment of holding climate change to an increase of no more than 2 degrees Celsius will be very aggressive carbon emission reduction targets – far more aggressive than any country has yet committed to. With the US offering little – just 4-7% below 1990 levels by 2020 and Japan, Canada, China and India being reluctant to set targets, the earths climate will continue to experience the greenhouse effect.

Fifth, apart from the political issues, the logistics of lowering carbon emissions aggressively by some 4-5% per cent per annum for a considerable number of years and the economic fall-out of industry disruption such change will cause, there is the difficult problem of the data. The observed climate data, as opposed to the data produced by the twenty three climate change models tracked by the UN, is showing no evidence of warming and in fact the earth looks to be cooling, following a prolonged period of low sunspot activity and changes in cloud formation, wind patterns and ocean currents. Those who look at the evidence believe that a twenty five to thirty year cooling period is likely. The evidence for this is mounting, just at the time when the warming argument is important for policy makers – they now rely on models rather than evidence for their rationale for changing how the world’s economy functions.

Finally, as Kyoto has shown, talk is cheap. Action is more difficult. Few of the countries who signed up to Kyoto have or will achieve the targets set by that legally binding agreement. Even fewer know how to reach the substantial targets they have set for 2020, which is just over a decade away. Countries like Britain, France, Ireland and Germany which have strong targets are also suffering from severe economic challenges, some of which will persist for a considerable number of years. Changing how business is done over a period of economic recovery is likely to slow that recovery.

Independent observers watching the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen are not optimistic of a breakthrough deal being reached in Copenhagen. Compromise, back-sliding and double-speak – the kind of thing seen at the April G20 summit – will be the hallmark of the December meeting. For those who believe that the planet is imperiled, they will be deeply disappointed. Their warnings and arguments will be shrill, stark and largely emotional. For those who do not accept the basic premise of this meeting – that wise words and limited actions can change the patterns of nature – they will be relieved that the more radical emissions reduction targets and strategies are unlikely to form a part of the conversation. No one will be happy.

We can expect some of the scientists, especially those for whom the line between social action and science has become blurred, to become more and more aggressive in their “use” of evidence to support a case for radical change. We should be cautious about climate change scientific assertions in the lead up to Copenhagen. We should also be cautious about the pious declarations of politicians – deeds speak louder than words.

King Cnut tried to command the tide of the river in Britain to prove to his courtiers that they were fools to think that he could command the waves. His point was that nature commands the oceans and climate. He is purported to have said "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws."

Our impact on the climate is, if anything, modest. It is possible that a very modest outcome from Copenhagen summit in December will meet the political need to be seen to act and the economic need to act slightly. While some will claim that the sky is falling, many will breathe a sigh of relief that compromise and back-sliding may actually lead to common sense.

More People Now Believe Elvis is Alive Than Support Labour

Gordon Brown has had a terrible week-end. Apart from giving a good, solid speech at the D-Day ceremony in Normandy, where he was overshadowed by a powerful and evocative peroration by Barrack Obama, the plot to oust him continues, with the plotters emboldened by terrible election results for Brown’s governing Labour party.

In the municipal elections, the Labour Party lost some 284 seats and lost control of four municipal councils it had held prior to the election. Any map of the local election results shows strong conservative gains – they won 241 seats in total and gained control of ten councils, taking the number under their control to 30 with the Liberal Democrats gaining control of the City of Bristol.

In the European elections, Labour came third behind the Conservatives and the UK Independent Party (UKIP)– with Labour’s share of the poll down by 9% on the last European election results. Of the 69 seats available in the European Parliament for Britain (excluding Northern Ireland), Labour has won 13. Worse, the racist neo-fascist party, the British Nationalist Party (BNP), has won two seats despite an active campaign by all established political parties and Church leaders – a win that relied on disaffected Labour voters shifting to the far right. The BNP seats are in the traditional Labour area of Manchester, Yorkshire and Humberside. Even in Wales, a Labour heartland, the Conservative topped the polls. Less than 6% of eligible voters voted Labour – more people believe that Elvis is still alive. None of this is good for Labour and all of it is bad for Gordon Brown.

On Friday, Brown reshuffled his cabinet and left in place his expense scarred Chancellor and brought back into government Peter Hain, who left his position as Secretary of State over a sleight of hand in his election expenses. Adding four Ministers from outside parliament who will go to the House of Lords and serve from there, the reshuffle has failed to calm the anxieties within the Labour Party. Now the reshuffle of junior Ministers – those outside cabinet begins – and already there are resignations. The plotters continue to work to oust Brown as quickly as possible.

The plotters have found a new ally – Lord Falconer, a former Blair cabinet Minister, who has suggested that a leadership review would be appropriate. He said, during a television interview, speaking about the Labour party, that “we need unity above all. Can we get unity under the current leadership? I don't think so. The only way it can be achieved is a change of leader.” While he has a certain cache amongst the intellectual members of the Labour Party, he is not sufficiently placed to do to Brown what Geoffrey Howe did to Thatcher – he will not be the one to bring Brown down.

Former Brown cabinet Ministers, especially Hazel Blears and Caroline Flint, are planning a major assault on Brown’s leadership, focusing on both policy issues and also his inability to manage and work with others. Caroline Flint has already made clear that Brown finds it especially difficult to work with women. Leaked emails from Lord Mandelson, one of Brown’s newly strengthened cabinet Ministers, make clear that Mandelson sees Brown as both insecure and “angry”. Backbenchers continue to be asked to sign up to a no confidence letter to Brown – some now beginning to demand a leadership review. The discontent is palpable, the disillusionment is growing and the despair over the potential of a landslide Conservative victory when Britain finally has a general election is real.

Brown has played his major card – the reshuffle of his cabinet and changed in non Cabinet Ministerial appointments. What will follow, as he made clear in his press conference on Friday, is a clear and sharp agenda for change and a platform for Labour’s election manifesto. It will not be enough. The electorate is sending clear and unequivocal messages to the party and Brown is refusing to hear them. More of the same, with the face and voice of the message changing only slightly, will not be enough to save Brown from the anger of the people. He is finished, knows it, but refuses to accept it.

It is not, however, a time for David Cameron to gloat. The leader of the Conservative Party has to be very careful. Brown laid out a challenge to him on Friday by repeating his mantra “you cannot cut your way out of a recession”. This despite the fact that his own Government’s budget makes clear that there will be significant and substantial cuts in public spending from 2011 onwards – after the general election. Brown wants to push Cameron into a spend versus cuts campaign, when in fact both parties will have to cut public spending deeply to get Britain back on track.

British politics is frenzied and dangerous right now. Frenzied if you are trying to follow it – so many twist and turns. Dangerous if you are in the midst of it. None of these shenanigans are helping the work of government and it is this that the electorate cares about.

Stick a Fork in Him, Gordon Brown is Done

Last Friday Gordon Brown rang The Priory to inquire about the health of Susan Boyle, the singer who became an international sensation on Britain’s Got Talent, but had a meltdown when she didn’t win. This Friday, Susan Boyle rang Downing Street to inquire as to the political health of Gordon Brown, who is having his own meltdown as the most troubled Prime Minister since Anthony Eden.

Four Cabinet Ministers and two Ministers of State resign within three days, one suggesting that Brown should join him so as to make it less likely that the Conservatives will win an election. Meantime, the British public is sending a strong message through the polls that the Labour Party has lost its favour and that, while the other parties are not much better, anyone but Labour will do. Labour is set to lose significant ground in its municipal heartland, if early English results are anything to go by.

Brown has rushed a cabinet shuffle and conceded ground to both Milliband, who stays at the Foreign Office and, more significantly, Alistair Darling, who stays at Chancellor. This decision to keep Darling in place is a blow to Brown, and reveals his vulnerability. He had made it clear during this last week that he wished Ed Balls, the Education Minister, to move to the Treasury but Darling had made it clear that he was not moving. He either stayed in the Chancellorship or he left the front bench. Brown conceded and both Balls and Darling stay where they are.

This is the end for Brown. While he may survive till Sunday, the European Election results due Sunday afternoon will rekindle the anger and bitterness within the party and push the plotters further. At least two former cabinet members suggested or hinted that Brown needed to go and a third left rather than accept a demotion, unhappy with Brown’s leadership. A backbench hotmail campaign calling for Brown is gaining ground, even as Alan Johnson, the imputed alternative leader to Brown, accepts the position of Home Secretary, thereby confirming his allegiance to Brown.

“Stick a fork in him, he’s done”, said one backbencher today when speaking of Brown. He may be Prime Minister by name, but continues to battle his own party and is distracted from running the country. Infighting, bickering, power struggles, campaigning has taken over the Labour Party, who are now less than a year from being required to hold a General Election. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Party are both calling for an immediate general election, one Labour is certain to lose in a most dramatic way. Whether Brown likes it or not, there is no leadership, no strategy and no plan to either rebirth the British economy and its social development or to fight off the Tories at the next election. The Party, as Nick Clegg, the Liberal Leader, rightly observes “has run out of track and the train is derailed”.

The collapse of the Prime Ministers authority and the debacle within the Labour Party is spectacular. A sequence of high profile resignations, culminating in that of the Defence Secretary late yesterday, challenged Brown through a form of Chinese torture – each resignation being another drip of venom pouring down on a beleaguered and ham fisted Prime Minister. Even the Queen, who appoints him, must be wondering whether she call him in and ask him to go.

The surprising thing is how Brown has boxed in Alan Johnson. Many backbenchers and a large number of political commentators, most notably Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, had seen Johnson as the next leader of the party. A strong communicator, steady pair of hands and supported by many in the party, he was seen to have the “moxy” to push back at Cameron and begin the turnaround in Labour’s fortunes. In interviews on both Wednesday and Thursday he supported Brown and today has accepted a senior role in the Brown cabinet. This makes the plotters work more difficult and requires Brown to voluntarily relinquish his post, which no one expects him to do. Leaderless and limping, the plotters now have to find a new champion to rally behind. It wont be easy. The “I come to bury Brown, not to praise him speech” is a difficult one to give.

Brown has bought a few days of time to consolidate his inner circle and rally his own support, but it is temporary. This thing will not go away. It’s the swine flu season, after all. Brown will see most of his opponents as swine.

The End of New Labour is in Sight

Gordon Brown must feel very strange. He is supposed to be in command of a government. He is supposed to be the one who determines who is in and out of Cabinet, what they will focus on and how they should work with the public. All of a sudden, he has no real moral authority.

Two Secretaries of State – the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears – have indicated to the media that they have resigned ahead of a cabinet shuffle which will happen between Friday morning of this week and Tuesday afternoon of next. Two junior Ministers, those for Children, Beverly Hughes, and Europe, Tom Watson, have also resigned. Due to the never ending revelations about expenses, others may well have to – including the Chancellor Alistair Darling. It’s a mess – an unprecedented debacle and a tragedy for Labour. As Oscar Wilde indicated, losing one is unfortunate, but four speaks to negligence.

It will get worse. Tomorrow, it is widely expected, Labour will suffer its worst electoral defeat in municipal and European elections in over twenty five years. The public, tired of this government and its polemic, rhetoric and lack of substance, will show that it is in charge of the political future of those at Westminster and it is in a foul mood. As one veteran observer has indicated, the general public’s mood is that “crucifixion is too good for some people” – and it is Gordon Brown they have in their sights.

Worse, he faces a backbench revolt over a rumored cabinet appointment. Ed Balls, currently the Education Minister, is widely tipped to replace Alistair Darling as Chancellor. A tough enforcer and a close ally of Brown’s, his appointment is being resisted by many in Government and in the party. In part it is because he is too closely allied to Brown, is a bully and is not respected. More significantly, it is a test of the authority of the backbench. If they can stop Balls they can oust Brown. And oust they must do, since Brown, no matter how bad Bleak Thursday’s poll results are, he will not resign.

Plotting is rife at Westminster. Alan Johnson is widely regarded as the safe pair of hands who can steer Labour out of the crisis and into the general election, which must be held on or before June 3rd 2010. The Guardian and other newspapers have been pushing his name as Brown’s immediate successor and he had made no moves to indicate his disinterest. It will take a series of refusals to serve in a new Brown cabinet and significant letters of no confidence from the party over the week-end to force the issue, but egos being what they are, it is doubtful that key party members have the courage to do what is best for Britain and force Brown out. Instead, they will accept the grace and favours of a cabinet post, even if its only for twelve months.

A lame duck Prime Minister (more likely, a lame gannet – a protected Scottish bird) at a time when Britain is in deep economic trouble is not good for Britain. Nor is a government starved of imagination, fresh thinking and concrete proposals for action. Debt ridden, lurching from crisis to crisis with no over-arching strategic intent, the government of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is in desperate need of an injection of fresh leadership. Only a new politics, a new language and a new commitment to smaller, less interventionist and less expensive government will satisfy the people. A reform of how parliament works and of Cabinet is essential.

A new path for the economy which relies less on Government bail-outs, hand-outs and dole and more on entrepreneurship and self-reliance is key. Cutting government programs and reducing the bloated public service and its various illegitimate cousins – non government agencies funded entirely by government – and capping public sector pay are all essential actions to reduce deficits and debt. While Labour chants that the Tories “will cut government programs”, the Conservative party needs to say that it will and will do so with gusto. Its what Britain is ready for. The fact that Brown and his remaining three or four friends want to expand Government shows just how far out if touch he and the party is.

When you wake up on Friday morning you will be witnessing the beginning of one of the most intriguing week-ends of British politics for a quarter century. Watch what happens carefully and witness the beginning of the end and the end of New Labour, for that is what we are witnessing right now.

All Fur Coat and No Knickers

Momentum is gathering amongst world leaders with respect to the agenda for Copenhagen in December – the world gathering to develop a post-Kyoto treaty on climate change. We can expect lots of lies, damn lies and statistics to appear between now and then, some from scientist seeking to sway the agenda and others from polemicists and activists seeking a new world order in a post-carbon economy. It will be messy and verbally violent.

Recently, there was a report that some 300,000 persons a year die and a further 30 million impacted as a result of climate change. Sponsored by an organization headed by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, this disreputable report uses sleight of hand and deception to reach this conclusion. Treating all deaths from hurricanes, floods, tsunami, earthquakes and other naturally occurring events as “climate change impacts”, they arrive at this figure. It is surprising they did not include the 500,000 people a year who die from flu to boost this number. Despite the widespread condemnation of this piece of rhetoric by serious scientists, the media continue to report this as is if it were fact.

Then we have had the deniers. Those who deny the facts and prefer instead to rely on climate change models for their “evidence”. These models have singularly failed to predict the climate since they began to appear and be taken seriously some twenty five years ago. The fact is that the earth has not warmed since 1998 and has been in a cooling period since 2001, due in part to changes behaviour of the sun. Also a fact is that the polar bear population in most of the polar bear communities is either stable or increasing, not decreasing and that the Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker. These inconvenient truths are denied by climate change campaigners and their camp followers, since models show that these satellite based observations do not tally with the model predictions.

Prince Charles has suggested that we have just 100 months to save the planet, by which he means reforestation of the rainforest and a substantial reduction in the use of carbon based fuels and in CO2 emissions. Supported by twenty Nobel laureates, he suggests that action now can “change the climate” and save the planet. In this kind of rhetoric he is following a royal tradition, established by King Canute who thought he could command the tides to change and drowned as a result of how own stupidity. Man cannot change the climate and “stop” global warming unless man alone causes climate change, and there is little convincing evidence that man is responsible for the climate. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) makes clear in its extensive report that the evidence favoring health effects of climate change or the impact of climate change on ocean levels is not at all the story the IPCC would have us believe, and is not as fear-mongering as the press like to hear. The NIPCC study, supported by more scientists than have been involved in the IPCC work, is also clear that the impact of CO2 emissions from man-made systems on the climate are not as serious or threatening as many would like us to believe.

The story of the arctic is the story that seems to convince most people that climate change is real. The story is that the arctic is melting so fast that, within a very short time, the Northwest Passage will be open and the North Pole will be a grassland. As a result of the melt, the oceans will rise and a number of small islands will disappear in the flood of ocean water that will occur.

Now to some facts. The opening and closing of the Northwest Passage is not a new phenomenon – it has happened several times before, the last time being in 1906. The ice melt which has occurred is part of a cyclical pattern of ice melting and is connected to a variety of factors, not least of which is the pattern of ocean currents. Despite claims to the contrary systematic measurement of ocean levels on the coast of the vulnerable islands do not show any rise in ocean levels significant enough to threaten these islands. Once again, computer models are the basis of these claims, not observed data.

The scares will keep coming, getting more intense as it becomes clear that the compromises and fixes that the politicians will deal in over the next few months will not appease the most ardent of the climate change deniers – those who claim that man made climate change will destroy the planet, in denial of the facts. Greenpeace and others will be shrill and their scientific allies, fearful of the loss of their grant farming and rent seeking resources, will come to their aid with more scare stories.

If Kyoto is anything to go by, there will be a lot of talk and very little actual achievement. Bu then, I guess this is the nature of the climate change business – “all fur coat and no knickers”, as my grandmother used to say when warning me to be careful around certain kinds of people. She may well have been right.

Academic Dishonesty?

In a gesture of public spiritedness, seven academics who include three lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a former director of the World Climate Research Program wrote to Australian power generating companies on April 29 instructing them to cease and desist creating electricity from coal....

“The warming of the atmosphere, driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, is already causing unacceptable damage and suffering around the world.”

No evidence is provided for this statement and no signatory to this letter has published anything to support this claim. These university staff are unctuously understanding about the plight of those who face employment extinction in the smokestack towns of Australia. Worse, they are using their positions to assert a moral authority and a right to command which they do not appear to posess.

They write: “We understand that this will require significant social and economic transition that will need to be managed carefully to care for coal sector workers and coal-dependent communities.”. This love for fellow workers brings tears to the eyes.

The electricity generating companies should reply by cutting off the power to academics’ homes and host institutions, forcing our ideologues to lead by example.