Greenpeace “Science”

Always busy now, so less time to post. Anyway I just have to note that Flagrant Harbour picked up on Al Gore’s claim that smoking contributes to global warming. Al Gore is really on a runaway train he can’t get off now, I predict even more hysterical statements from Mr. Gore in future.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace is continuing to use strange surveys to raise more money for its offices and staff. In Saturday’s South China Morning Post, Greenpeace campaigner Francis Yeung is apparently trying to pass government janitors off as global warming experts. He writes:

More proof of global warming’s effect on Hong Kong comes from a survey conducted by Greenpeace and the Government Mod 1 Staff General Union last month. Nearly all of the 201 government janitors interviewed for the study reported that it was getting hotter working outdoors. More than 90 per cent said they had suffered dizziness, suffocation and heat exhaustion. Serious cases such as shock and heatstroke were also reported.

Whilst I do sympathize with anyone that has to work outdoors without the benefit of air conditioning, I sincerely doubt that janitors are fully reliable as measurements of any global warming. Working out in the hot weather is certainly not nice, however janitors are not scientists.

On another global warming point, my own letter about a recent SCMP editorial appeared on October 2. In that I said:

American Senator James Inhofe, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee cited recent studies that have shown polar icecaps to be expanding, not contracting — making complete nonsense of Mr. Chugani’s claims of polar ice shrinkage.

Senator Inhoffe also noted that the left-wing media was completely biased in its coverage of global warming. I wonder, did ATV or the Post cover Senator Inhofe’s speech? The senator also noted that the American public can, and do find his speeches on the Drudge Report. There will be an American outcry over global warming alarmism, just opposite the one Al Gore and the Post intend.

An outline of Senator Inhofe’s speech to the US Senate is here.

I put this up because I notice that a certain blogger named Chris is not criticizing the logic of the Senator’s argument. Rather Chris is criticizing the Senator for accepting money from oil and gas "interests". This seems standard operation for Chris, despite the fact that the senator has done a great deal of work researching this issue. (See link above). There are a couple of things to note here:

1. The science is on the side of Senator Inhofe. (Chris claims I would put my argument, even it was untrue. It is just as easy to assert the opposite to be true. Could it be that Chris knows there is no real science behind the claim that global warming is man made? Chris, get some evidence!)

2. NGO’s and government scientists receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year in funding based on their shrill claims. So if Chris wants to bring up the funding issue, I suggest he look carefully at the champagne lifestyle that some environmental frauds in Hong Kong are engaging in, and the reasons they continue to push their crazy ideas as "fact".

3. Global warming conspiracy theorists incorporate corporate bashing into any argument. Whilst there are a few rogue companies out there (including Enron and the Tobacco companies), most companies realize they have to survive on reputation. Reputation is easy to lose with false claims. (Please note: this is not an endorsement of those companies that run to the government for protection. I support companies that profit from their own effort, not from their ability to collude.)

Anyway, as Gore continues to make his claims, it seems he is only strengthening the resolve of people like Senator Inhofe.

A Breath of Fresh Air

It was wonderful to see Richard Straw’s excellent letter to the editor in the SCMP today, regarding claims by global warming alarmists. To quote from Mr. Straw:

The chief proponent of anthropogenic global warming is US scientist Michael Mann who, along with a number of colleagues, is famous for his "hockey-stick" temperature graph – the sticky-up bit on his line chart is supposed to represent where global temperatures are today relative to the past several hundred years.

The work of Dr Mann and company underpinned the stance taken by the 2001 United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, Dr Mann’s studies and conclusions have been formally challenged by scientists and economists (a graph is a graph is a graph, as the South China Morning Post’s very own Jake van der Kamp will tell you) in reputable scientific literature because they have been unable to replicate the numbers.

Of course Dr. Mann has quite a notorious reputation. More information on the hockey stick effect can be found here on John Daly’s website.

Environmentalist Lies

Last week one Mark Williams claimed in a letter to the SCMP that the 17,000 scientists who signed the petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine included Ginger Spice, and a character from the TV series M*A*S*H. The list of scientists who signed the petition is freely available at the website for the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. The list of characters for the cast of M*A*S*H can be found here.

The website also notes that of the 17,000 signatures that were verified there were 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists. They also note that there were 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences that make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth’s plant and animal life.

Mr. Williams claims are just arbitrary noise. It would take too long to refute every piece of nonsense that comes out of his mouth.

Same Old Tricks

(Dear reader: please excuse the font mess here, typepad seems to have a problem putting it all into one font.)

It appears that Ordinary Gweilo is up to his old tricks again – personal attacks, selective quoting, and sitting firmly on the fence.

Mr. G takes issue with my letter to the post earlier this week – questioning the objectivity of the source of one of my quotes, one Robert Carter of James Cook University. This is a common tactic of the left – attack a scientist because he is getting funding from a corporation. As I explained in the previous post, this argument can equally be applied to scientists who are trying to get government funding – invent a scary story to get a politician to finance the work. One actually needs some sort of PROOF before saying someone’s work is flawed – saying they get money from government or private sources is not proof.

I also explained that the 17,000 scientists that signed the petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) were not “right-wing politicians, businessmen, entertainment stars and a few academics”. They were ordinary scientists rejecting claims by the politically charged IPCC that global warming is man-made. The credentials of the signatories were carefully checked. Two-thirds had advanced degrees in science.

Mr. G also selectively ignores a key part of my letter to the post. Maybe he also missed the point, which was to show that there was NO scientific consensus as Al Gore claims. From my original letter:

In a recent [Wall Street Journal] op-ed Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, stated that there was no scientific consensus on global warming. He also noted, “Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists–especially those outside the area of climate dynamics.”  He called Mr. Gore’s movie “shrill alarmism”.

To look at Mr. G’s comments on the issue of global warming:

However, we don’t really know whether global warming is going to continue, what (if anything) we can do about it, or what impact it will have.

This is just hot air – taking two views and balancing them out. One can do with this with anything. Imagine the police saying, well we have the statement from the bank robbers, and the bank tellers. We better let the robbers go, because we don’t know who is telling the truth. He goes on:

The question is whether they will wondering why we were worrying about it, or why we failed to do anything about it before it was too late.

I think that it’s entirely possible that at some time in the future people will look back at the arguments about global warming and wonder why it was such a controversial subject.

More space filling hot air. It’s like saying: "Either Australia or England will probably win the Ashes". He goes on:

Surely common sense dictates that we should take the problem seriously and do something about it, but it doesn’t have to be the scary things that some people seem to fear.

I think Mr. G is confused over common sense, and is using it as gut feeling. When one acts on common sense, one usually looks at the facts of the matter. The facts are that global warming alarmists rely almost exclusively on computer models predicting 50 years into the future. They can’t even forecast the weather ten days ahead. These models have been notoriously unreliable. If one looks at the typical statements that accompany these models, they typically use words like could, might, perhaps. (Christine Loh’s columns are riddled with them.) The global models say nothing. They are just arbitrary statements. He concludes:

Now, that wasn’t painful, was it?  I think I’d have to agree with The Economist:

…although the science remains uncertain, the chances of serious consequences are high enough to make it worth spending the (not exorbitant) sums needed to try to mitigate climate change.

He does not say how he arrives at those chances. Did he just balance out the views of two conflicting sets of scientists. This brings me back to the original theme of my letters. There is no overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is man made as Al Gore claims. As Richard Straw notes in his letter to the SCMP:

Here’s the bottom line. Many leading scientists, including members of the US National Academy of Sciences, simply do not believe that man’s carbon-dioxide input is big enough to alter the Earth-ocean-atmosphere system. It is like pouring one more beer down the throat of a hefty expat in a Wan Chai bar – it will have a negligible impact.

Global Warming is Not Man-Made

One of the shrill claims that environmentalists (including Al Gore) make is that there is scientific consensus that global warming is caused by man. This is a total lie. There are many scientists who say that global warming is not caused by man. The petition project by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is one example. Over 17,000 scientists (two thirds with advanced degrees) signed the petition.

Of course, this scares environmentalists such as Richard Fielding who claims in today’s South China Morning Post:

The signatories – 17,000 right-wing politicians, businessmen, entertainment stars and a few academics – were hardly scientists, as he claims. The petition is part of a sustained campaign sponsored by the energy industries to deny global warming.

This is typical smearing by the left, and is a blatant distortion of fact. A simple reading of the petition project shows this to be the opposite. The signatories were scientists, independent of any industry. Even if they were financed, industry too has the right to publish the truth. If they distort the facts (like the tobacco industry tried to do), they lose their reputation – this is something the left clearly does not understand.

If anything there has been a lot of controversy over the original IPCC report, which apparently was changed after it was approved — at the behest of NGO’s who wanted a more alarmist document.

Let’s ask, why is Al Gore making his movie? Why do environmentalists make such claims? To get publicity, and get money?

Richard Lindzen (Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT), the has an interesting summary of the typical way that environmentalists get their funding. He calls it the iron triangle of alarmism. That is what we are seeing again from Al Gore, and people like Mr. Fielding.

Lights Out Fizzles Out

The SCMP reported that there was little interest in the Lights Out For Hong Kong campaign. Pacific Coffee was the most notable exception – willingly plunging their customers into darkness for three minutes. (Despite the lack of interest for the campaign, we did see some call for three hours of lights out – that slippery slope.)

Power companies reported no changes in supply during the campaign. Indeed the skyline stayed lit up, and most people continued to enjoy the modern miracle known as light.

According to the SCMP:

It remained unknown how much electricity had been saved last night, given the sporadic participation in the campaign.

Alastair Robins, the organiser of the campaign, could not be reached for comment last night.

There are probably a lot of legitimate reasons why Mr. Robins could not be reached for comments. But, the whole campaign sounds like it fizzled.

Lights Out For Hong Kong Campaign

The Lights Out campaigners are continuing to get marginal publicity in the South China Morning Post, for their plan to plunge Hong Kong into darkness for three minutes. So far, we have seen photo-ops with models, schoolchildren, and most recently the Lights Out "clowns".

Some might argue that Lights Out only want to plunge Hong Kong into darkness for three minutes, and they are doing it for clean air. However, I don’t think it is perfectly blue, clear skies they are after. A typical environmentalist might say they support development, and dress it up as "sustainable development. However, their ideal is no development, no cars, no modern buildings, and no minerals or dams to power our electricity; a slow return to the cave if you will – all for allegedly perfectly blue skies.

As evidence, we can see that virtually every new development in Hong Kong has been opposed by one environmentalist organization or another. They want absolutely no change to the harbour, rivers, or trees — even if these changes result in bigger flats, more bedrooms, and larger kitchens. They are not holding human life as the standard of value, but rather the dirt, water and trees, that we as humans need to reshape to survive. (Survival does not mean living at the subsistence level either. It can and should mean each individual human being living the best life possible – electrical power, and the industrial revolution have added fifty years to life expectancy. Hong Kong, despite all the alleged pollution, has close to the world’s highest life expectancy.)

At the deepest level, environmentalism is just a variation on other philosophies that preach self-sacrifice. Some have preached sacrifice to a god, others to a party, and yet others to a king. Lights Out want most of Hong Kong to stay in the dark for three minutes. I don’t think it’s anything to do with clean air. I think its all about self-sacrifice.

Much of the problem with pollution seems to come from factories in China, that have to rely on their back up power supplies, in order to continue operations. I think a more reliable power supply in China will go a long way to fixing much of the problem. Currently the power markets in both Hong Kong and China are very much closed. Perhaps its time to open both markets up, and allow for real competition. That way factories won’t have to keep relying on their own back up generators, just to stay in business.

Update: Donald Tsang has written to the Lights Out organizers. According to the SCMP

Organisers earlier asked Mr Tsang to delay or cancel the Symphony of Lights show on both sides of Victoria Harbour on August 8, but he refused. "While we appreciate your support to the environmental cause, we do not feel able to endorse your campaign as it could send a misleading message to the community that protecting the environment is inconsistent with modern life," his letter said.

What Donald Tsang fails to realize, is that environmental ideals are inconsistent with modern life. They place the alleged needs of weeds, bugs, water, fish and trees above the needs of man. I believe that Lights Out is just another in a series of many steps to march modern society back to the cave.

Gore’s Convenient Lie

John Stossel (of Sixty Minutes fame) has written an interesting article about Gore’s recent movie. I will try to add more links about this issue in the near future.

Another Blow to Global Warming Scaremongers

Prof Bob Carter (a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research) wrote an excellent piece on Global Warming. The article (There IS a problem with global warming… it stopped in 1998) appeared in the Daily Telegraph on April 9. Rather than quote from the article, I think it best to let it speak for itself.

Also in the Telegraph (Kyoto is pointless, say 60 leading scientists), sixty climate scientists just sent a letter to Stephen Harper, the new Canadian Prime Minister. According to the Telegraph the scientists emphasiced,

"… that the study of global climate change is, in Mr Harper’s own words, an "emerging science" and added: "If, back in the mid 1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." Despite claims to the contrary, there is no consensus among climate scientists on the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, they wrote.

"’Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified.

"Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise’."

Update via the BBC. They have the following program listing:

Overselling Climate Change

Thursday 20 April 2006 20:00-20:30 (Radio 4 FM)

Simon Cox reports on how scientists are becoming worried by the quality of research used to back up the most extreme climate predictions.

Every week we are assailed by scare stories about the climate. Malaria in Africa, hurricanes in Florida, even the death of frogs in Latin America – all are being linked to global warming. But does the science behind these claims really stand up, or are the risks of climate change being oversold to win the battle for influence?

Hooray!

Hooray. Harbour Watchdog to Close It’s Office. According to the SCMP:

"Hong Kong’s biggest harbour protection group has closed its office in Central, and founder Winston Chu Ka-sun is planning to retire later this year."

This campaign was one big scare story, with claims that Victoria Harbour would be turned into a river. The whole premise of the campaign was that the harbour was somehow a gift from nature to the Hong Kong people. This raises a number of questions:

• What exactly do they mean by gift – who is the donor?
• What is nature in this case – how can it give a gift if it is not a walking, talking living being – or how can it know that people will come around billions of years later to claim it?
• Who exactly received this alleged gift?
• Why can’t people do anything with this "gift" except look at it?

The whole idea of preservation goes against the principle that in order to survive man must reshape his environment to survive. Ultimately, one has to ask if this harbour has more value as a view, or as a place where people can work, live and relax. Land is not cheap in Hong Kong and we need as much of it as we can get.