A climate catastrophe or a carbon agenda?

As the Australian federal government has reintroduced its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) bill into parliament for the third time, and the first 2010 round of formal United Nations climate change negotiations is due to take place from April 9 in Bonn, Germany, it is perhaps time to reconsider the role that the media has played in influencing public opinion about CO2-based anthropogenic global warming (AGW) or climate change. Is the potential for AGW to be simply of the political spin that is commonplace for the function of hiding other agendas, for instance with regard to this assumption being used as a driver to implement a globally-applied carbon-based emission tradings scheme (ETS), or carbon tax?

Close inspection of the media reveals that between the scientific study of “global warming/climate change” and the politically-charged implementation of an ETS, as the CPRS seeks to do, there is a dichotomy between the processes of science and the beliefs of those people who seek to change the way we impact on the environment, and use oil and coal as a source of energy - this latter group, in the main, get their views from the media.

Over the past few years many political, scientific and environmental leaders have continually warned the public, in the most dire of terms, that virtually every heat wave, unseasonally hot day, tropical cyclone or hurricane, drought, glacial ice sheet calving, ice sheet fracture, el Niño event, and so on, is the result of AGW, or indicative of runaway or catastrophic climate change. The term “climate change” used to mean long term natural changes in climate; today it also includes these observed short-term extremes in the weather elements, and their impacts on the environment, at least in the media.

It has not helped our understanding of anthropogenic environmental impacts by framing our environmental problems with AGW or climate change so that scepticism of the AGW hypothesis implies ambivalence about these problems. By ignoring the serious and proven problems caused by humans, like deforestation and its impact on near-surface air temperatures and the water cycle, means that the AGW debate inevitably becomes a smokescreen that covers these serious issues of environmental degradation.

We need to be very careful that AGW, or the fears of runaway or catastrophic climate change, have not become the tools of propaganda proclaiming an advocacy position that uses an as yet unproven scientific hypothesis to drive an agenda of policy change - but is it too late?

In 2004, the United Kingdom’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, located (primarily) at the University of East Anglia, home of the leaked Climategate (Climate Research unit or CRU) emails, suggested in a paper by Dennis Bray and Simon Shackley titled, The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change, the following media “talking” points:

• To endorse policy change people must “believe” that global warming will become a reality some time in the future.
• Only the experience of positive temperature anomalies will be registered as indication of change if the issue is framed as global warming.
• Both positive and negative temperature anomalies will be registered in experience as indication of change if the issue is framed as climate change.

Bray and Shackley summarised their findings thus: “We propose that in those countries where climate change has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon, unseasonably cold temperatures, for example, are also interpreted to reflect climate change/global warming, and is indeed often reported as such by science through the general media. In those countries where global warming has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon of climate change/global warming, unseasonably cold weather is seen as a refutation of the phenomenon and indeed will lessen the belief temperature.” [Author’s italics]

This idea of a furtherance of an agenda is reinforced by Michael Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and a co-ordinating lead author for the chapter on “Climate Scenario Development” (3rd IPCC Report), in his book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, in which he states, “The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.”

He adds, “Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs”, summarising this intention with, “We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects”.

Superficially, Hulme’s statements (and book) appear to be not about climate change per se but rather using climate change as a basis to institute a change in human values and beliefs. But wasn’t the argument that there was a consensus of climate scientists, through the auspices of the IPCC, proclaiming that by the exhaustion of anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide the world would possibly experience catastrophic climate change and all that entails (for instance, ice sheet melting, rapidly rising sea levels, ocean acidification)? And that we had to mitigate our carbon dioxide output as soon as possible, by putting a price on carbon, with the climate change catchcry continually being stated that, “it is happening quicker than we thought”?

In 2008 Australian Professor of Public Ethics, Clive Hamilton, of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, said, “Well, quite frankly, if you’re not terrified, you’re not listening to what the climate scientists are saying”. He finished off by adding, “I think we’re beyond feeling hopeful, and the only way to get people to take the necessary action is to scare the pants off them”.

Just what Hamilton is implying with his statement?

Given what has been disclosed over recent months by Climategate and the errors, inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims made in the 4th IPCC Report, associated synthesis reports, and the Summary for Policymakers (Glaciergate; Amazongate; Disastergate; incorrect Dutch sea level rises; a downplaying of the urban heat-island effect; altered and manipulated temperature data bases; an incomplete and disorganised CRU climate database (see the complete version of the Harry Readme file) upon which climate alarmism is based; unverified climate modelling; lack of supporting peer-reviewed evidence; unreliable proxy tree ring data; overstating the greenhouse impact of livestock industries; quoting from non-peer-reviewed papers written by advocacy groups and think-tanks; statements based on unpublished student dissertations, and so on) is the alarmist message implied by Hamilton still relevant today?

It would seem that the data and modelling upon which the notion of runaway climate change is, at best, unreliable or, at worst, deliberately manipulated to further a policy agenda, ostensibly about climate change but perhaps rather more about implementing another agenda.

In 2007, Mike Hulme was quoted in The Guardian newspaper as saying that, “… ‘self-evidently’ dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth-seeking … scientists - and politicians - must trade truth for influence”.

So is climate change less about catastrophism and rather more about, say, establishing a global carbon market?

Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian wrote, on March 21, 2007, about David Miliband, Britain’s then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: “Last week Miliband announced that Britain will become the world’s first nation to legislate a climate change bill setting legally binding timetables for a low-carbon economy. It will put into law the target of 60 per cent emission cuts by 2050, the same target pledged by Rudd’s Labor Party [prior to Rudd winning office]. This decision will affect every British industry, business and household.”

Kelly suggests Miliband is “recasting social democratic philosophy and practice for the coming century”, after which he adds, “The purpose is to impose this [carbon-trading] system on the world. Britain and Europe are setting benchmarks for a new global order.”

Kelly’s article then goes on to quote then British Chancellor Gordon Brown: “My ambition is to build a global carbon market founded on the EU emissions trading scheme and centred in London” to which Kelly adds, “The bill will create statutory carbon budgets that will be managed ‘with the same prudence and discipline’ as financial budgets. For Brown, the carbon will be counted like the pound sterling.”

Well, there is an agenda!

Kelly summarises this position as the “debate is no longer just about the environment. It is about economics, culture, ideology and foreign policy. The old debate about climate change believers and sceptics is dead (being kept alive only for political gain). The new debate is about policy solutions.”

Little wonder then that Australia’s Climate Change and Water Minister, Penny Wong, included in her CPRS 2009 Exposure Bill the following clauses that cut into the heart of many centuries of law and jurisprudence: for anyone suspected of emitting too much carbon their right to silence is abolished (clause 311-3), their right not to incriminate themselves is abolished (clause 300-1) and the onus of proof is reversed so that a citizen suspected of this crime will also need to prove they are innocent instead of the government proving they are guilty (clause 336-3).

These sections of the CPRS bill follow a precedent set by the Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority Bill, which removes the right to privacy and that the government may pass on private information about Australian citizens to practically anyone it wants, including foreign governments (clause 48-1(r)), and the United Nations (clause 48-1(s)).

If the alleged consensus of the IPCC scientists regarding global warming is so certain then one is left to wonder why the CPRS Exposure Bill is needed to remove these long-established legal precedents, and why the government did not inform the citizenry of the necessity for these radical legal changes. Is it the situation, in fact, that the AGW consensus is less certain than has been reported and that the necessity to revert the basic tenets of our legal system has more to do with Gordon Brown’s statement regarding statutory carbon budgets being managed “with the same prudence and discipline as financial budgets”? In each case the Australian federal government has some explaining to do.

By design the alarmist findings contained in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers has deeply penetrated the public mind and body politic, assisted by the mainstream media in framing what may be (but rarely discussed) natural temperature anomalies and weather events with AGW or catastrophic climate change. It is therefore not surprising that by politicising the scientific process those people who support the AGW hypothesis will brook no dissension, principally by silencing sceptics through ad hominem attacks, for an unsubstaniated hypothesis to drive political discourse requires belief, and adherance to that belief.

With the general public’s lack of basic physical geographic knowledge global warming purveyors have, through exaggeration of the threats or using qualifiers such as “may”, “could”, “likelihood of” and so on, effectively wedged both scientists and environmentalists, a significant setback for not only the scientific process but also the effectiveness of governments and environmental movements to deal with our real and observable environmental problems.

Scientific method, like good journalism, is founded on scepticism, repeated independent measurement and analysis, and open communication. The AGW debate does not follow these principles. If we wish to pursue a policy agenda then surely the most effective means is to bring people onboard through truthful and honest debate rather than through unsubstantiated science and a polity built on deceit and obfuscation.