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 Artful Bias or Outright Deception?

The IPCCs assessment reports and especially its summaries for policymakers have been criticized from many quarters and have been shown to contain many errors and weaknesses. One of the most recent criticisms, and perhaps the most devastating, is the one authored by Dr. David Wojick, president of Climatechangedebate.org, who has a Ph.D. in mathematical logic and philosophy of science.

In the report, The UN IPCCs Artful Bias, Wojick analyzes the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) for Working Group I, which deals with the science, of the IPCCs Third Assessment Report. According to Wojick, the SPM “is an artfully constructed presentation of just the science that supports the fear of human induced climate change. It is as one sided as a legal brief, which it resembles.” Wojick goes on to argue, “A line by line analysis of the SPM reveals that all of the science that cuts against the theory of human interference with climate has been systematically omitted.”

The first problem that Wojick presents is that the IPCC ignores the errors in the surface temperature data. The SPM claims, “The global average surface temperature has increased over the 20^th century by about 0.6 degrees C.” The certainty expressed in this statement, says Wojick, is unwarranted.

Despite the many problems with the surface temperature record, the IPCC only briefly mentions the urban heat island effect and claims that all errors have been taken into account, without explanation. But as Wojick explains, “There is no way to correct for most measurement errors, including the urban heat island effect. The magnitude of these errors, which may be quite large, is simply unknown. The supposed corrections that have been made to date are merely guesswork.”

Moreover, the temperature data that we have is not a random sample of the Earths surface, but a “convenience sample,” or data that is the most convenient. The IPCCs “reference to data gaps,” says Wojick, “suggests that sometimes a station did not record, or the data is bad, not that there is in actuality no data for most of the earth, most of the time. So the fact that we merely have a convenience sample is either omitted, or cleverly disguised.”

The importance of this point is that the IPCC has calculated its confidence levels as if it had a random sample. Given that the sample is not random, the margin of error in the data is much larger than suggested by the IPCC.

Other problems with the IPCCs SPM is how it glosses over the “profound contradiction” between the satellite temperature record and the surface record, the huge uncertainties with regard to aerosols, the omission of natural sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and the inadequate treatment of the chaotic nature of the Earths climate. The full critique can be found at www.john-daly.com.

Another peer-reviewed scientific study of hurricanes has failed to find a trend in hurricane activity in the United States, let alone a link between hurricane activity and global warming. The study, published in Ecological Monographs (71: 2001), looks at hurricane data from 1620-1997.

What the authors found was that, “there was no clear century-scale trend in the number of major hurricanes.” They did find that there were more lower intensity hurricanes reported in the 19^th and 20^th centuries than there were in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. But the authors attribute the difference to “improvements in meteorological observations and records since the early 19^th century.” Also, the data from the last 200 years show that there were five of the strongest category hurricanes reported in the cooler 19^th century and only one reported during the 20^th century.

• The Skeptical Environmentalist Looks at Global Warming and the Kyoto Protocol

Professor Bjorn Lomborg will speak at a Cooler Heads Coalition congressional and media briefing from noon to 1:30 PM on Thursday, 4th October, in Room HC-5 of the U. S. Capitol. Lomborg is author of the Skeptical Environmentalist, which was published in the U. S. this month by Cambridge University Press and which has received rave reviews. Those wishing to attend the briefing must Rsvp to Michael Mallinger at CEI: telephone (202) 331-1010, ext. 254, or e-mail: mmallinger@cei.org. Please give your name, affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address.

A Greener Planet

A new study slated to appear in the September 16 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres has found that warmer temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide have led to a greening of the northern hemisphere. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which portrays global warming as an unmitigated disaster, this new study confirms what numerous other studies have found; that many benefits may result from a warmer planet.

A press release from the American Geophysical Union explains that, “Researchers using satellite data have confirmed that plant life above 40 degrees north latitude (New York, Madrid, Ankara, Beijing) has been growing more vigorously since 1981 due to rising temperatures and buildup of greenhouse gases, and Eurasia seems to be greening more than North America, as existing vegetation is more lush for longer periods of time” (www.enn.com).

One of the researchers, Ranga Myneni, of Boston University, “suggested that these results are indicative of a greener greenhouse. This is an important finding because of possible implications to the global carbon cycle, he said. Further, Myneni said, under the Kyoto Protocol, most of the developed countries in the north can use certain vegetation carbon sinks to meet their greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitments. If the northern forests are greening they may already be absorbing carbon dioxide. Myneni said, As to how much and for how long, that needs more research.”

Global warming alarmists have repeatedly pointed to warmer temperatures in Alaska as a major sign that significant global warming has already arrived. Recent research, however, has found that Alaska has undergone similar periods of warming before man began to burn fossil fuels.

In a study in the August 21 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Feng Sheng Hu, a professor of plant biology and geology at the University if Illinois, and his co-authors, constructed a continuous 2,000-year temperature record of the area by analyzing sediment samples from Farewell Lake, near the northwest foothills of the Alaska Range. What they found was that there were two periods of warm climatic conditions that occurred in A.D. 0-300 and 850-1200, which were also characterized by dryer than normal conditions.

An article about the study noted that Dr. Hu and postdoctoral associate Will Turner did a follow up study that found that forest fires were more abundant during the Little Ice Age than during warming periods, contradicting global warming predictions (www.news.uiuc.edu/).

• The Los Angeles Times (September 1, 2001) reports that the San Fernando Valley is experiencing its coolest summer since 1987. According to Tim McClung, a Weather Service meteorologist, “The average temperature in downtown Los Angeles in July was 71 degrees, 3.9 degrees below the normal average of 74.9. The average August was 72 degrees, 4 degrees below the average of 76.”

 Wind Power Cheaper than Coal?

“The cost of wind energy is now less than that of coal.” With that startling declaration, Mark Z. Jacobson and Gilbert M. Masters, with the Department of Civil Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, conclude that the U.S. could meet its Kyoto target by replacing 59 percent of coal energy with between 214,000 and 236,000 wind turbines (Science, August 24, 2001).

How do they come to this conclusion? They point out that the direct cost of energy from a new coal power plant is about 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). But, claim the authors, there are many costs associated with coal use that are not accounted for.

“Coal-mine dust kills 2,000 U.S. miners yearly, and since 1973, the federal black lung-disease benefits program has cost $35 billion,” say Jacobson and Masters. “Coal emissions also cause acid deposition, smog, visibility degradation, and global warming; its particles increase asthma, respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and mortality.” Including these costs, say the authors, increases the cost of coal to 5.5 to 8.3 cents per kWh.

Wind power, on the other hand, only costs 3 to 4 cents per kWh. There is no mention of externality costs associated with wind power, however. Many of the costs that are attributed to coal are dubious, to say the least. Linking asthma to particulate pollution seems weak, since asthma rates have been going up even while particulate concentrations have fallen.

Moreover, most experts attribute the rise in asthma to higher levels of indoor air pollution. The harmful effects of acid deposition have been greatly exaggerated, and there is no evidence of any costs associated with higher carbon dioxide levels or global warming.

Glen Schleede, president of Energy Market and Policy Analysis, Inc., has heavily criticized the report. He notes several external costs associated with wind power that are ignored by Jacobson and Masters, including scenery impairment, noise, property value losses, the need for massive infrastructure investment to transport electricity from remote wind farms, and the provision of backup power to alleviate intermittency problems associated with wind power.

Moreover, the assumptions behind the analysis are wrong. Schleede points out, for example, that Jacobson and Masters assume that windmills have a capacity factor of between 35.8 and 39.6 percent. In reality, capacity factors are much smaller. Schleede assumes a 30 percent capacity factor (which is still higher than that currently seen in practice) to determine that it would take as many as 366,000 wind turbines to replace 59 percent of coal power.

Finding suitable sites for so many windmills (which are 300 ft. tall) would pose serious difficulties. Schleedes full critique, “Science article is wrong in claiming that wind energy is cheaper then coal,” can be found at www.heartland.org.

Speaking of costs, a proposed wind farm on a remote hillside in northeast Scotland has met with significant resistance. According to the September 1 issue of the Independent (London), “Accusations of foul play, misinformation, environmental destruction and dirty tricks have abounded in a fight over the siting of 21 turbines, each as large as a 30-story block of flats.” Worries about the adverse effects on local property values are a major concern to property owners in the area.

Britains energy regulator, Ofgem, has told the government that more subsidies may be required for renewable energy if it is to meet the stringent greenhouse gas targets it has set for the country, according to the Financial Times (September 1, 2001). Britain has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 23 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, and it wants half of those reductions to come through the use of renewable energy.

After implementing the New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) five months ago, there has been a drop in wholesale electricity prices of 20 to 25 percent for large power generators and a drop of 17 percent for smaller generators including renewable energy generators.

Producers of renewable energy claim that the new arrangement has harmed them disproportionately relative to the rest of the electric power industry, mainly because they are unable to predict power output due to the intermittency problems that plague renewable energy. NETA “requires power producers to forecast output four hours in advance, and to buy any shortfall at premium prices.”

Ofgems chief executive, Callum McCarthy, is unapologetic. “Put simply, reliable plant commands a premium under NETA, as the majority of electricity customers want a reliable source of supply and the electricity system needs to be kept in balance to maintain the security and quality of supply” (Daily Telegraph, September 1, 2001).

“If for wider environmental reasons the government wishes to encourage forms of renewable generation whose output is less predictable or less reliable,” said McCarthy, it should “consider additional support to these types of generators” (Financial Times).

Science Magazines Summer Silliness

This summers silly season has not generated anything approaching last summers top-of-the-front-page claim by the New York Times that “The North Pole is melting” because of global warming. The Timess story by John Noble Wilford was based on only one sourcea press release from a global warming nut, albeit one with an academic post at Harvard. As reported in the August 23 and September 6, 2000 issues of Cooler Heads, the story was obviously ludicrous and the Times was quickly forced to retract it.

Although nothing so delightful has been concocted for this Augusts hottest days, Science Magazine is trying to entertain. In its August 17 issue, Science published an article on “Hidden Health Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Mitigation.” The article claims that more people die from air pollution than from traffic accidents in New York City, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Santiago, Chile. Reducing fossil fuel use to cut greenhouse gas emissions would therefore have the additional immediate benefit of saving lives and improving health.

There are several problems with the “study.” First, improving air quality has already been accomplished in cities like New York, where fossil fuels are still consumed in huge quantities, but few people now die because of air pollution. Second, the study doesnt mention that cutting fossil fuel use will either be enormously expensive or force people to use much less energy, both of which have serious health consequences. Moreover, reducing fossil fuel use is by far the most expensive way to reduce air pollution.

Third, it is highly doubtful that more people die from air pollution than from traffic accidents in all but a few big cities in developing countries. And in most of those cities, the worst air pollution comes from things like using charcoal or cow dung for cooking. Using more fossil fuels in those cities could cut air pollution.

Fourth, the study implies that all greenhouse gases are pollutants. This last point was picked up by Paul Recers story for the Associated Press (August 16, 2001). Recer, whose title is given in the byline as AP Science Writer, lists carbon dioxide as one of the pollutants causing people to die prematurely.

More than eighty atmospheric scientists are attending the first “International Conference on Global Warming and the Next Ice Age” at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada this week. Sponsored by the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society and the American Meteorological Society, the conference is one of the few to bring together large numbers of scientific supporters and skeptics of global warming alarmism for debate and discussion.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald reported (August 22, 2001) that Dr. Petr Chylek, professor of atmospheric science at Dalhousie, “organized the conference so that theories on climate change other than conventional thoughts about global warming could be discussed.” Dr. Chylek decided to hold the event after reading a newspaper story that cited scientific research claiming that the Greenland glaciers were melting because of global warming, whereas his own research showed that earlier temperature increases had not led to melting.

Dr. Chylek further explained that many of his peers believe that natural factors such as solar radiation and variation in climate patterns are contributing to global warming. He asserted, “Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to find a way to scare the publicand this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.”

Dr. Greg Holloway, professor of oceanography at the Institute of Ocean Studies in British Columbia, pointed out that many past periods of dramatic climate change such as the ice ages occurred without significant human influence. “Everybodys ready for more evidence of global warming and not as ready for the scientific balance which is what you are receiving here.”

• The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg was published in Britain on August 15 by Cambridge University Press. CUPs American edition is due on September 15. Lomborg, who is a professor of statistics at Aarhus University in Denmark, re-examines many of the controversial environmental claims originally made by Julian Simon and concludes that Simon got most things rights. Lomborg backs up his own conclusions with a huge amount of documentation.

Considering the amount of environmental heresy the book contains, it is astonishing how favorable the press reaction has been. The Economist (August 4, 2001) and the New York Times (August 7, 2001) ran long, flattering pieces on Lomborg and his book, which expands and updates the 1998 Danish version. The ever-so-politically-correct Guardian in London ran a three-part series by Lomborg.

The books longest chapter is devoted to global warming. Although Lomborg accepts the IPCCs assessment reports, his conclusions are more in line with the Cooler Heads Coalition.

Here is just one sample: “Is it not curious, then, that the typical reporting on global warming tells us all the bad things that could happen from CO₂ emissions, but few or none of the bad things that could come from overly zealous regulation of such emissions? And this is not just a question of the medias penchant for bad news, as discussed in chapter 2, because both could make excellent bad news.”