Climate clowns galore, but what do they squark about?
Climate clowns galore, but what do they squark about?
Dr Bill Johnston
www.bomwatch.com.au
Australia’s contingent to the circus of COP28 is led by the Government’s top climate-clown Christopher Bowen. But for what precise benefit to Australia?
Bowen’s game-plan is to make promises that can’t be kept; promises that wreck our reliable coal-based energy networks; that export another generation’s-worth of manufacturing jobs off-shore ensuring that we import stuff we once made here, or food we once grew ourselves. Promises of shortages where none should exist, and, with the aid of WWF and their friends in the NGO-sponsored Climate Institute, and the Australian Academy of Science, promises to frighten the Dickens out of millions of Ozzie children with climate horror-stories that will never come to pass.
Background
Following a review of their 2002 book International Environmental Policy: Interests and the Failure of the Kyoto Process, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen and Aynsley Kellow made the point in reply to reviewer Dr John Zillman that “Governments decided to establish an intergovernmental panel to produce a consensus in advance of any significant evidence of global warming for the political purpose … of assisting the development of a climate convention”. (Article link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14486563.2003.10648590.) As Zillman advocated for the IPCC, and was one of a select group that drafted its terms of reference and oversaw its initial structure and operation, he had both feet in one camp.
Zillman was also Director of the Bureau of Meteorology, a position which gave him considerable leverage within the upper echelons of Australia’s scientific community. From 1978 to 2004 he was Australia’s permanent representative on the World Meteorological Organisation, First Vice President from 1987 to 1995 and then President from 1995 to 2003. The WMO and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) set-up the IPCC in 1988. Its First Assessment Report (FAR) was published in 1990.
However, the IPCC was set up only to endorse, synthesise and report on the science in the context of “understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation”. It was beyond its remit to question or verify that the science was sound (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/09/ipcc-principles.pdf).
Boehmer-Christiansen and Kellow outlined the “important ways in which (the IPCC) falls short of normally accepted scientific standards of conduct: lead authors acting as editors; lead authors inviting contributions; lead authors selecting reviewers; lead authors deciding whether and how to respond to criticisms; the absence of a non-publication option; self-citation; citation of yet-to-appear work….” Then there was Kyoto, then Paris and on it goes like an out-of-control juggernaut.
The Executive Summary of Chapter 8 of the FAR entitled Detection of the greenhouse effect in the Observations, concluded thus: “The fact that we are unable to reliably detect the predicted signals today does not mean that the greenhouse theory is wrong or that it will not be a serious problem for mankind in the decades ahead”. From that time, finding data that supported the models, and models that fitted the warming hypothesis became the focus of the science and all that followed.
Despite decades of data-fiddling, five more IPCC reports each more strident than the last, and 27 COPs there can be little doubt that the main topic of discussion over canapés and Champagne at COP28 will be: Are we there yet, when will we be there?
I’m better by far, than a silly galah, they squeak and squawk and try to talk … (inspired by John Williamson’s Old man Emu)
About:
Bill Johnston is a retired natural resources senior scientist, and experienced weather observer. Interests include agronomy, ecology, climatology, hydrology and soil science. Recent studies relating to temperature data homogenisation are available at www.bomwatch.com.au.