Climatologist sues National Post, asks for troubling precedent
Andrew Weaver has been the recipient of some rather nasty commentary from some less respectable members of the Canadian press writing in the National Post. This sector of the press has over the years, but especially since the CRU email leak, shown a consistent disregard for reality.
Weaver feels that his reputation is being unfairly tarnished “by a a series of unjustified libels based on grossly irresponsible falsehoods that have gone viral on the Internet”, and he is fighting back. He has launched a libel suit against the National Post newspaper and its publisher, editors and three writers: Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster and Kevin Libin.
Holding media organizations, and story writers responsible for the content the produce is absolutely essential, especially as any allegiance to the truth has been thrown under a bus by many reporting on this issue. Blatant falsehoods are spreading like wildfires; corrections and retractions are almost nonexistent.
Canada’s Bush style climate policy
Remember back during the Bush years when climate scientists were being muzzled? Well it is still happening. Not in the US, but rather here in Canada by the Harper Conservatives:
Since 2007 Environment Canada, has required senior federal scientists to seek permission from the government prior to giving interviews, often requiring them to get approval from supervisors of written responses to the questions submitted by journalists before any interview.
“Many [federal climate change] scientists are recognized experts in their field, have received media training, and have successfully carried out media interviews for many years,” said the document, leaked by an Environment Canada employee who asked not to be named.
“Our scientists are very frustrated with the new process. They feel the intent of the policy is to prevent them from speaking to media…. There is a widespread perception among Canadian media that our scientists have been ‘muzzled’ by the media relations policy,”
The leaked document came to light through research done by the Climate Action Network for a scathing report on the laundry list of restrictions on climate researchers since the Harper regime came to power.
This policy is absurd. Government scientists should be free to speak to the media, especially in areas where they are experts. As David Schindler from the University of Alberta makes clear:
Errors in the IPCC and perspective
It was inevitable. The IPCC AR4 is over 3000 pages long, there are bound to be some errors contained within. But some perspective is needed when they are found; jumping to the conclusion that any error in the IPCC is proof that climate science is bunk, or that global warming is a sham is absurd.
Climatologist criticizes IPCC, says its conclusions are valid
News has been making the rounds that respected Canadian climatologist Andrew Weaver has throw his hat behind those that criticize the IPCC. And in some respects he has done just that, but importantly he has not called into question the science included in the IPCC reports, nor the conclusion that our GHG emissions are responsible for the recent warming trend.
The Himalayas circa 2035
Once again we see that scientists are not perfect, but flawed like the rest of us (duh), and it turns out the reports made by those flawed humans are also not perfect (duh).
Science works fine in aggregate, but this idea that science must have only flawless people doing impeccable work is a strawman set up by the superstitious to discredit empiricism through nutpicking. -Tim F.
The IPCC Working Group 2 report (yes there are more than 1 IPCC reports included in the overall assessment) claimed that the likelihood of the Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035″ was “very high”. This was wrong. Very wrong. And it highlights why sticking to the peer-reviewed literature is so important. This particular claim came from a 2005 WWF report, which got its estimate of glacier loss from a 1999 article in New scientist.
And while both WWF reports and New Scientist are generally reliable, they are not peer-reviewed and thus should be viewed with increased scepticism. The IPCC failed to do this, and thus included an estimate for Himalayan glaciers that was obviously wrong.
As Mauri Pelto, director of the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project, says:
Graham [Cogley] and I both reviewed the IPCC section on glaciers and ice sheets, and the 2035 date is not there. It is in the regional section where only regional scientists reviewed the information…
[Himalayan Glaciers] show a sustain substantial retreat that is worrisome, but again the retreat rate average is between 10 and 20 m per year on large glaciers… One of the poster glaciers for Himalayan retreat is the Gangotri Glacier, this glacier is noted as retreating around 15 m year, and is 15 km long. How can we get rid of this anytime soon?
Even though the 2035 date is obviously wrong, it doesn’t mean that Himalayan glaciers are not in receding. They are. At alarming rates.
So is this the climate scandal that many are making this out to be?
No. Of course not.
More science troubles for Harper
Harper’s Conservative government has had a troubled relationship with science. From demoting, then removing the National Science Adviser, to appointing a creationist science minister, Harper’s Conservatives have never held science in high regard. Now comes word that Harper is appointing two anti-science climate deniers to important federal scientific bodies. The scientific community is justifiably appalled.
BC NDP global warming plan: bad for the environment, bad for the economy [UPDATED]
Originally posted on April 15, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Mark Jaccard has recently released an analysis of the BC NDP’s main policy to deal with global warming concluding that:
if BC were to try to reach its aggressive GHG emissions reduction target without emissions pricing for non-industrial emitters, relying instead on industry and government funds to subsidize relatively ineffective energy efficiency and fuel switching by non-industrial emitters, the outcome is likely to be a dramatic reduction in BC industrial production. This would have significant negative repercussions for employment levels, especially in some key BC communities that are dependent on one or two specific large industrial GHG emitters. The loss of jobs will be substantial.
Environment Canada scientists told to toe the line
The Conservative government has an abysmal record on environmental issues, and is now finally doing something about it.
Environment Canada has “muzzled” its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with “approved lines.”
The new policy, which went into force in recent weeks and sent a chill through the department research divisions, is designed to control the department’s media message and ensure there are no “surprises” for Environment Minister John Baird and senior management when they open the newspaper or turn on the television, according to documents obtained by Canwest News Service…
Until now, Environment Canada has been one of most open and accessible departments in the federal government, which the executive committee says is a problem that needs to be remedied.
The problem was clearly the openness of Environment Canada, and not the of lack of action on environmental issues. You can always trust the Conservatives to do the right thing. Read the rest of this entry »
How do you tackle climate change without reliable data?
Without good, reliable data it becomes virtually impossible to create effective policy.
Nobel Prize-winning scientists from Canada say the Harper government is failing to protect the country from the dangers of global warming because it has shut down a federal climate change research network and blocked new studies on the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.
The scientists, among a few dozen Canadians who were part of the team of international experts that won the Nobel Peace Prize after producing this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report on the latest research on global warming, say changes in the atmosphere are happening faster than anticipated. But without adequate research, Canada and other world leaders won’t know what policies or targets could stop human activity from causing dangerous changes to the climate.
“I can only put it down as one of two things,” said Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences. “It’s vindictive, because the climate science community has been quite outspoken about the need for dealing with global warming, or stupidity, and not really knowing what’s going on out there, because they don’t consult the (environment) ministry.”
