From Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Foundation

Climate Science Paper CensoredBy American Meteorological Society Journal

Climate Models Confounded As Antarctic Sea Ice Hits New Record High

 

The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life. --Albert Einstein

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

 

Research that questioned the accuracy of computer models used to predict global warming was “censored” by climate scientists, it was alleged yesterday. One academic reviewer said that a section should not be published because it “would lead to unnecessary confusion in the climate science community”. Another wrote: “This entire discussion has to disappear.”…… The paper suggested that the computer models used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were flawed, resulting in human influence on the climate being exaggerated and the impact of natural variability being underplayed. Vladimir Semenov, a climate scientist at the Geomar institute in Kiel, Germany, said the questions he and six others had posed in the original version of the paper were valid and removing them was “a kind of censorship”. --Ben Webster, The Times, 8 July 2014

The levels of Antarctic sea-ice last week hit an all-time high – confounding climate change computer models which say it should be in decline. America’s National Snow And Ice Data Center, which is funded by Nasa, revealed that ice around the southern continent covers about 16million sq km, more than 2.1

 million more than is usual for the time of year. It is by far the highest level since satellite observations on which the figures depend began in 1979. It represents the latest stage in a trend that started ten years ago, and means that an area the size of Greenland, which would normally be open water, is now frozen. The Antarctic surge is so big that overall, although Arctic ice has decreased, the frozen area around both poles is one million square kilometres more than the long-term average. --David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 6 July 2014

President Barack Obama’s aggressive and controversial Climate Action Plan grew out of a draft proposal from one of America’s richest environmental activist groups, it emerged Monday. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which spent $41 million of its $210 million nest egg last year pushing for changes in energy policy, circulated a 110-page document in 2012 that outlined what would become the president’s latest salvo in the global-warming wars. Now that the Obama administration has adopted the green-group’s plan, the NRDC’s insider status is widely seen as an in-your-face response to oil, gas and coal companies that had a seat at the table 13 years ago when then-Vice President Dick Cheney convened meetings in secret to chart future energy policy. --David Martosko, Daily Mail, 8 July 2014

Climate policy is a matter of balancing political values and objectives – an issue on which Lord Lawson is indisputably one of the world’s leading authorities and about which the climate scientist knows absolutely nothing. The sooner people grasp that climate change policy is not a scientific question, the sooner our debate on this matter will become a whole lot more rational and balanced. --Andrew Lilico, The Daily Telegraph, 7 July 2014

 

The BBC Has Lost Its Balance Over Climate Change

British Public Want BBC Licence Fee Scrapped

 

 

What explains the incredible intolerance, belligerance, and stunning dogmatism of the climate central planners? They really can’t allow a debate, because they will certainly and rightly lose. When that is certain, the only way forward is to rage. If you want tolerance and humility, and a willingness to defer to the evidence and gradual process of scientific discovery, you will find it among those who have no desire to manage the world from the top down. --Jeffrey Tucker, Liberty Me, 19 June 2014

The BBC’s behaviour grows ever more bizarre. Committed by charter to balanced reporting, it has now decided formally that it was wrong to allow balance in a debate between rival guesses about the future. In rebuking itself for having had the gall to interview Nigel Lawson on the Today programme about climate change earlier this year, it issued a statement containing this gem: “Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research.” The evidence from computer modelling? The phrase is an oxymoron. A model cannot, by definition, provide evidence: it can provide a prediction to test against real evidence…….The BBC bends over backwards to give air time to minority campaigners on matters such as fracking, genetically modified crops, and alternative medicine. Biologists who thinks GM crops are dangerous, doctors who thinks homeopathy works and engineers who think fracking has contaminated aquifers are far rarer than climate sceptics. Yet Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth spokesmen are seldom out of Broadcasting House. So the real reason for the BBC’s double standard becomes clear: dissent in the direction of more alarm is always encouraged; dissent in the direction of less alarm is to be suppressed.  --Matt Ridley, The Times, 7 July 2014

More than half the British public think the television licence fee should be scrapped and the BBC forced to find new ways to fund itself, according to a poll published today. The broadcaster should generate income from advertising rather than relying on taxes or higher licence fee funds, the findings suggest. The results, from a survey of more than 2,000 people by ComRes, come as ministers and BBC executives prepare for the government’s review of the broadcaster’s charter in 2016. The new Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, has indicated he is prepared to be radical in reconsidering the BBC’s funding. --Tim Ross, The Daily Telegraph, 7 July 2014

Climate sceptics are influencing government at the highest level, former energy secretary Chris Huhne argued this week. The likes of former Conservative chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson and his climate sceptic think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) are “fomenting dissent” on climate action, according to Huhne. This is holding prime minister and Conservative leader David Cameron back from delivering on his earlier green ambitions, Huhne implied. Addressing a solar industry conference on Monday, Huhne said: “Within the governing coalition, there are Tory supporters like the former chancellor Lord Lawson, who are actively fomenting dissent in this whole [green] agenda. And his Global Warming Policy Foundation believes that renewable subsidies are a waste of money. As a result of those snipers, the prime minister, who made his name hugging a husky and declaring that this would be ‘the greenest government ever,’ has put his tin hat on. He has yet to make a single major speech on renewable energy or on climate change.” --Megan Darby, Responding to Climate Change, 4 July 2014

The BBC has announced a series of measures to make it more difficult to challenge green narratives on the BBC, and this is obviously going to lead to new waves of ecodrivel on the national broadcaster’s output. Such liberal spirits! Couldn’t they just shortcut the process and silence everyone except the BBC and the Guardian? --Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 7 July 2014

As loyal left-wingers go, Caleb Rossiter is a trouper. He’s supported every left of center cause going back to the Cold War, but lately he’s become a partial dissenter against the new religion of climate change. And now he’s been put out in the cold. Mr. Rossiter’s fate is further evidence of the left’s climate of intellectual conformity. If you disagree with the orthodoxy on climate change, you aren’t merely wrong, you must be banished from public debate. --Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 6 July 2014

Germany Bans Fracking Until 2021

Europe's Energy Security At Risk From GreenRussian Lobbies

Germany plans to halt shale-gas drilling for the next seven years over concerns that exploration techniques could pollute groundwater. "There won't be [shale gas] fracking in Germany for the foreseeable future," German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks (SPD) said Friday in Berlin. The government's planned regulations come amid a political standoff with Russia, Germany's main gas supplier, and following intensive lobbying from environmentalists and brewers concerned about possible drinking water contamination. --Jan Hromadko and Harriet Torry,

The Wall Street Journal, 4 July 2014

You could spend 10 million bucks on a “buy Gazprom” PR campaign, or you could buy the former chancellor of Germany. Gerhard Schroeder now sits on a Gazprom board. So he is undermining any politics in Germany to be energy independent. --Ezra Levant, The Daily Caller, 30 June 2014

The risk of water supplies being contaminated as a result of fracking is much lower in Britain than in the United States because almost all the recoverable shale oil and gas is at least 650m (2,132ft) below groundwater layers, a study by the British Geological Survey (BGS) has found. It said that the distance between the water and shale was at least 650m in the Weald basin in the South Downs, and 800m in the Bowland basin in Lancashire and Yorkshire. --Ben Webster, The Times, 4 July 2014

Russia is in the midst of an ugly fight with Ukraine, and it has the potential to upend energy markets around the world. That’s a big problem for Russia’s Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas giant. On top of that, there are now accusations of covert efforts to hamper shale gas drilling in Europe. According to Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Russia is doing this by funding anti-fracking groups. There are good reasons for Russia to undertake such a covert operation. For starters, Gazprom would suffer greatly if its European business started to slip away. Second, by keeping Europe hooked on Gazprom gas, Russia maintains a strong bargaining position in world politics. --Reuben Brewer, The Motley Fool, 4 July 2014

How far will Russian President Vladimir Putin go to stop fracking in Europe? Tint his thinning hair an eco-friendly color? According to NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen, Russia’s myriad intelligence agencies are working directly with European environmental groups to fund anti-fracking campaigns. Putin is doing this to slow the spread of the U.S. shale revolution across the Atlantic so Russia can hold on to its monopoly of the European natural gas market. Europe’s energy insecurity – its dependence on Russian gas – has proven to be Putin’s favorite tool of geopolitical blackmail. Putin can continue to funnel rubles to Europe’s environmental activist groups and hope to slow the spread of the shale revolution. But Russian dominance of the European gas market is on borrowed time. --William F. Shughart II, Forbes, 4 July 2014

Gazprom does not hide its contempt for fracking, even though they have signed large fracking contracts in Siberia. They’re obviously fine to frack their own country, but they do not want competitors to frack. They denounce fracking in America, and in Europe. We saw … Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, say that Gazprom has co-opted western environmentalist groups. Remember, Vladimir Putin is a former KGB agent — this is what he did during the Cold War. They undermined the West from the West. They financed peace and disarmament groups. --Ezra Levant, The Daily Caller, 30 June 2014

Data Deleted From UN Climate Report Highlight Politicization Of Climate Science BBC

Programme Criticised For Giving Platform To Climate Sceptic Lord Lawson

 

When the United Nations’ last major climate change report was released in April, it omitted some country-specific emissions data for political reasons, a trio of new papers argue, sounding a warning bell about the global politicization of climate science. “Heated negotiations among scientific authors and diplomats led to substantial deletion of figures and text from the influential ‘Summary for Policy-makers,’” writes Brad Wible, an editor at the journal Science. --Brian Clark Howard, National Geographic, 3 July 2014

A complaint has been upheld against the news programme over a February edition in which Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared alongside the respected scientist Sir Brian Hoskins, director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London. During the programme Lord Lawson, the founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), repeatedly argued that “nobody knows” about the extent of climate change and that 2013 was “unusually quiet” for tropical storms. The finding follows a ruling earlier this week from the BBC Trust, which partly upheld a complaint against Radio 4’s The World at One for the platform it gave to the Australian climate change sceptic [Professor] Bob Carter in September. --Ian Burrell, The Independent, 3 July 2014

The BBC Trust has issued a new report into progress on adopting the recommendations of the Steve Jones review of science coverage. This was the integrity-free publication that recommended keeping sceptics off air as much as possible. According to the new paper, the BBC has been holding a series of seminars to bang home the "keep sceptics off air" message and will keep up this re-education programme in the future. Given that we know that BBC editors are telling their staff not to allow scientists to appear opposite anyone who might disagree with them, I would suggest to readers that the paragraph quoted above is entirely mendacious. And the idea that the English literature graduates and environmentalists who infest the BBC are going to "properly scrutinise" scientists is beyond contempt. It is simply a case of putting two fingers up to the general public. -- Andrew Montford,….If the BBC truly apportioned due weight in their science reporting then anti-fracking reports and global-warming scare stories should effectively disappear. These topics actually represent a tiny fraction of scientific research. So why does the BBC pursue these topics with such vigour? They are confused. They think that environmental activism is science, and employ writers with little science education or experience. I see no defensible reason for lumping Science and the Environment together on the BBC website. One could, with equal validity, classify Science and Sport together. --Michael Heart, Bishop Hill, 4 July 2014

The BBC licence fee could be cut after the Culture Secretary warned that it was a big expense for families and that ‘nothing should be ruled out’ when it is reviewed next year. In the clearest signal yet that the Conservatives are preparing to overhaul the Corporation’s funding and governance if they remain in government after the general election, Sajid Javid said the annual £145.50 payment would be scrutinised. MPs are considering scrapping the licence fee and replacing it with a subscription system or a household levy similar to council tax. John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture Select Committee, warned last month that the fee was ‘designed for a different age’ and ‘will not survive’. --Tamara Cohen, Daily Mail, 15 June 2014

Action to save coral reefs in the Caribbean has been delayed by the misapprehension that climate change is the primary cause of their decline, a leading scientist said. The main reasons why the area covered by live coral has more than halved since the 1970s are overfishing and coastal pollution, according to Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of the global marine programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The report, published yesterday, concluded that climate change had wrongly been blamed for a problem that had largely been caused by local factors which could have been controlled by better regulation. --Ben Webster, The Times, 3 July 2014

Fracking in the US has led to a greater reduction in carbon emissions than all the wind turbines and solar panels across the entire globe put together. This is the stark fact presented at a meeting at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg last week. The economic impacts of fracking and shale gas are also indisputable: as natural gas prices in the European Union have doubled since the year 2000, US prices have fallen by about 75 per cent in the past few years. Annually, the global solar and wind subsidies cost $60B, whereas the US is saving at least $100B from cheaper energy. --Oil and Gas Online, 30 June 2014