Energy Probe

Hacked e-mails heat up climate-change debate

Posted on November 27, 2009 by energyprbe

Richard Foot
Canwest News Service
November 27, 2009

Christmas came early this year for Diane Katz and other Canadians at the forefront of the most polarized political fight on the planet.

For many years Katz — the director of environment policy at the Fraser Institute, the free market Vancouver think-tank — has argued alongside her allies that global warming is neither a man-made phenomenon nor the doomsday crisis it is widely considered to be, and that the scientists who fuel such fears have in fact hoodwinked us.

Then last week Katz and her colleagues were handed an unexpected gift: a computer hacker had stolen hundreds of e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain — an influential centre of climate change study — and posted the material on the Internet, only weeks before world leaders gather in Copenhagen on Dec. 7 to hash out a new global strategy on carbon emissions.

The e-mail exchanges, between a group of powerful, like-minded scientists based in Britain and the U.S., written over the past 13 years, suggest they may have rigged their data, suppressed contrary information and conspired to control what should be an independent peer review process surrounding the publication of their scientific papers.

It’s partly the work of these scientists — whose computer modelling research has formed the basis of reports published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — that now compels many countries to write new laws on carbon emissions limits.

But Katz says the hacked e-mail exchanges prove the IPCC, and governments everywhere, have been seriously misled.

“The perversion of science exposed in these e-mails is a vindication of the scholars and analysts who have long questioned the claims of climate alarmists,” said Katz in an interview this week.

“It also shows that the real deniers are the researchers such as those at the CRU, who ignore evidence that man-made emissions are not causing global warming. It’s imperative now that governments not impose measures to mitigate global warming.”

In one e-mail, the CRU scientists and their U.S. colleagues discuss using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures presented on a set of data.

Other e-mails show the scientists may have plotted to eliminate from their modelling an entire set of temperature data from the Middle Ages, when the world may have been warmer than it is now.

And in others they discuss rigging the rules of the peer review process, to ensure that scientific articles on climate change are reviewed by friends, not critics.

When this doesn’t work, they resort to bullying. In 2003, when the journal Climate Research published an article contrary to the views of the CRU and its friends, one scientist suggested boycotting the journal or trying to manipulate its editors.

“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” one e-mail said. “We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues, who currently sit on (the journal’s) editorial board.”

In another e-mail the scientists even refer to the death of a prominent climate change skeptic as “cheering news.”

Phil Jones, the director of the CRU, has admitted that “some of the published e-mails do not read well. . . . Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment.”

But he has also called it “complete rubbish” that he and his colleagues conspired to manipulate the data itself, or the journals that published it.

Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University scientist who wrote some of the offending e-mails, said the messages have simply been misunderstood, and wrongly turned from “something innocent into something nefarious.”

“What they’ve done is search through stolen personal e-mails, confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world.”

Asked about the furor on Friday, John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, made the same argument, saying: “Mann and his colleagues were simply speaking in their own high-level code, and a number of things were taken out of context.

“They used the word ‘trick’ in one of the stolen e-mails,” Bennett said, “but they were simply referring to a way of dealing with a complicated mathematical problem. They weren’t using the word in the sense of, ‘I’m going to fool you.’ ”

In some of Mann’s e-mails, however, his meaning is perfectly clear, including the one to a New York Times reporter, in which he disparages Canadian climate researcher Stephen McIntyre as someone “not to be trusted.”

McIntyre is a Toronto-based blogger who has become a thorn in the side of Mann and his colleagues, fact-checking their research and pointing out their inconsistencies on his website climateaudit.org.

What kind of effect the “climategate” revelations will have on the future of the global warming debate isn’t yet clear. Next month’s meeting in Copenhagen is unlikely to be influenced by the scandal, says Katz, because expectations are already low that the meeting will produce any kind of serious new plan on carbon emissions.

But the longer-term impact could be greater. Nigel Lawson, a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer and a well-known climate change skeptic, has called for a public inquiry into the CRU and the scientific study of global warming.

“I am confident that we’ll see a major inquiry within the next one to three years,” says Lawrence Solomon, another skeptic, and executive director of the Toronto think-tank Energy Probe.

He says if an inquiry isn’t opened by Britain’s Labour government, the Conservative opposition, widely expected to win power in the next election, will almost certainly convene one. A U.S. congressional committee might also decide to hold hearings into the science of climate change.

An inquiry, says Solomon, is likely to produce “a lot more e-mails like the ones we’ve seen so far in ‘climategate.’ ”

He also hopes an inquiry would include a forensic analysis of the computer codes, or programs, that produced the climate models now being relied on by the IPCC.

Even if governments don’t investigate the matter, the affair may have permanently shifted the momentum of the debate.

“Until now, what these scientists have said is, ‘trust us.’ Now, what the scandal has almost certainly done is put the onus on these people, the doomsayers, to demonstrate the validity of their data. They’ve never been required them to do that before.”

Says Katz: “Proponents of the more alarmist chain of thinking have always assumed this mantle of moral superiority, even going so far as to call those who disagree with them ‘deniers.’ This has now changed all that. It shows in fact that they don’t have any moral superiority, because they’ve been fixing the data.”

Bennett brushes aside those claims, insisting the scandal will be short-lived.

“I think it will have no impact whatsoever,” he says.

For one thing, the computer modelling studies that have now been thrown into question aren’t the only form of science behind the climate change crisis. Observational science — witnessed evidence of melting glaciers, disappearing polar ice, rising sea levels and changing ocean acidity — also inform the world’s understanding of global warming.

“In the last 10 years, there’s been a tremendous amount of observed changes in the climate,” says Bennett. “We’re observing the very changes that Mann’s models predict. So his work, and that of his colleagues, remains pivotal and important.

“All this controversy will prove is the desperateness of the fossil fuel industry, and those they back, the tiny, minuscule group of pseudo-scientific deniers, who are so desperate they will resort to this kind of criminal tactic — stealing e-mails — to make their point.”

Posted in Climate Change, Energy Probe News, The Deniers | Leave a comment

Google’s climate ‘scholars’

Posted on November 27, 2009 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
November 27, 2009

Methods used to tabulate the number of experts who are skeptical of climate change leave something to be desired.

There you go,” concluded Anna Maria Tremonti of CBC’s morning radio show, The Current. “According to Jim Prull’s database, of the 615 scientists who published papers on climate change, the skeptics are outnumbered 601 to 14.”

Case closed, she was saying, after Prull, a computer network manager, explained how anyone can use a spreadsheet and Google Scholar searches to separate the real climate experts from the phony ones. Just key someone’s name into Google Scholar if you think he’s a scientist and see how often he has been cited. Those who aren’t cited much have little scientific credibility, CBC’s national audience was told, and those who are cited a lot have lots. Not once during her interview of Prull did Tremonti question Prull’s methodology or his premises or his results.

She didn’t, for example, try a reality check by asking him to search Google Scholar for Al Gore. Had she done so, she would have seen that Gore, with 30,000 Scholar hits and untold citations, was closing in on Einstein’s 36,000.

On what basis did Tremonti, formerly a CBC investigative journalist, grant so much credibility to Prull’s techniques? Perhaps because, as he explained to the CBC audience, Google Scholar “studies just the scientific literature. They look at peer-reviewed journals.” She might have done a reality check on that premise, too. Google Scholar finds articles in popular newspapers and magazines. A search for The New York Times yields 101,000 hits, for The Economist magazine 18,000 and for The Wall Street Journal 17,000. Google Scholar also finds articles on global warming websites, including those of the skeptics.

Prull claims to have objectively investigated 2,940 names, of scientists on both sides of the debate, including those who signed various petitions protesting global warming doomsterism. Yet he dismisses the biggest petition of all — the 31,000 scientists on the petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine — on the grounds that organizations like DeSmogBlog say that they’re not really scientists. DeSmogBlog, an organization that Prull donates to, was specifically created for the purpose of discrediting skeptics.

The Oregon Petition, for those who are unfamiliar with it, was organized by Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Arthur B. Robinson, the former president and research director of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine and the man who, according to Nobel laureate Pauling, was “my principal and most valued collaborator.” You can’t fault Prull for not wanting to go through all 31,000 names — he has a day job keeping computer systems running — but his dismissal of the Oregon Petition calls his objectivity into question, particularly since that petition includes renowned scientists such as Freeman Dyson, America’s most famous scientist. Moreover, those 31,000 signatories didn’t sign some meaningless motherhood statement — they unequivocally asserted that carbon dioxide benefits the planet and that the danger that we face comes from a misguided Kyoto Protocol.

My book, The Deniers, warrants a special place on Prull’s website. He has investigated 37 of the scientists that I profiled and generally found them wanting. Reid Bryson, for example, fares poorly on Prull’s spreadsheet — he’s ranked 290th — with an inexplicably low number of citations. Yet Bryson, who is known as “the father of scientific climatology,” holds the title of “the world’s most cited climatologist,” according to an analysis in the journal of the Institute of British Geographers.

I don’t mean to be hard on Prull — his professional discipline is outside the ken of climate science or environmental policy, and there’s no reason for him to be especially able to judge whose science counts and whose doesn’t. But what does it say of the standards at CBC and The Current that they would prefer the judgment of a well-meaning amateur to that of the Institute of British Geographers? Or that they would unquestioningly assume that crude returns from a Google Scholar search were worth imparting to its audience?

Even if Prull were capable of judging which scientists qualify as climate scientists, and even if Google Scholar only searched peer-reviewed sites, CBC and The Current would have been remiss in assuming that appearances in peer-reviewed journals mean what they appear to mean.

For one thing, governments have provided some $80-billion in climate research funding over the last 20 years, virtually none of it to the skeptics. With only one side of the debate funded, it’s hardly surprising that one side dominates the publications. For another, as the recently surfaced Climategate emails demonstrate, scholarly publications have been under pressure to refuse any work from skeptics. As The Wall Street Journal Europe put it, “The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start.”

The impression left by the performance of Anna Maria Tremonti and The Current is that they — wittingly or not — have been helping to rig the game in Canada.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe (energy.probeinternational.org) and Urban Renaissance Institute, and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

Posted in Climate Change, Energy Probe News, The Deniers | Leave a comment

New Zealand's Climategate

Posted on November 26, 2009 by energyprbe

An agency of the New Zealand government has been cooking the books to create a warming trend where none exists, according to a joint research project by global warming skeptics at the Climate Conversation Group and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. The chief cook? Dr. Jim Salinger, considered one of the country’s top scientists, who began the graph in the 1980s when he was at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. CRU, of course, has become ground zero of Climategate at Dr. Salinger has maintained close relations with CRU since, as seen in the Climategate emails.

What do the uncooked books show? Rather than warming over the last hundred years, New Zealand’s temperature has been steady.

For the full story, visit the site of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, here.

For the rebuttal by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, visit here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Aldyen Donnelly: Obama is going to Copenhagen: Expect to hear that “China is In”

Posted on November 25, 2009 by energyprbe

On December 6, 2009, expect Obama to announce that the US, Japan, South Korea and China have agreed to announce national GHG targets before the summer of 2012 and to implement common domestic "cap and trade" systems. (None of the national targets will be legally binding, but the national leaders will downplay that reality.)

India will likely not announce a series of national targets, but will appear to be a part of the group. Exporting nuclear reactors (based on technology India stole from AECL in the late 1970s) is the centerpiece of India’s new trade plan, and the US/Japan/South Korea/China GHG market collaboration potentially creates a new market for India’s proprietary nuclear reactor technology that is essential to the successful execution of India’s new economic development strategy. The parties are not willing to negotiate their individual national GHG targets with each other or other nations. They have agreed that each can set its pwn national target on its own terms, and each will announce its target sometime before 2012. None of the other partners will announce any target or domestic implementation plan until AFTER the US Congress passes Climate Change legislation. Congress is now targetingg passage of the US cap and trade bill by spring 2010.

On December 6, or so, the collaborating nations plan to announce their commitments to implement common domestic "cap and trade" systems that will largely be based on or derived from the final US cap and trade law, by or before the end of 2012. US "Cap and trade" is nothing more (or less) than a global quota-based supply management regime that covers the combined energy, building products and food markets. In US-style "cap and trade" each nation converts a series of annual national GHG targets into a new currency – a unique series of "vintaged" quota units. Each party in this carbon-importing nation cartel will then rule that DISTRIBUTORS (domestic producers AND importers) of key carbon-based products )will be obliged to remit sovereign GHG quota units to their governments equal to the GHGs arising from the production and consumption of those regulated carbon-based products that are SOLD (as opposed to produced) within their boundaries. The key regulated products will be: petroleum products, natural gas, electricity, cement, aluminum, iron & steel, pulp & paper, wood products, beef, pork, grain, rice, glass and industrial chemicals, which account for over 85% of the global GHG inventory. Coal will only be regulated indirectly through the electricity sector coverage. GHGs arising from manufacturing sector consumption of coal will not be covered by any carbon-importing nation’s GHG cap.

Distributors of the regulated products will be obliged, under the regulations, to remit/surrender domestic GHG quota units to their home governments covering the GHGs arising from the production (including foreign production emissions for imported products) and domestic and petroleum product suppliers will be obliged to hold and then surrender GHG quota covering both their supply chain (domestic and foreign) and customer end-use GHGs. In every one of these nations, GHGs arising from the domestic production of regulated products that will be exported WILL BE EXEMPT from the obligation to surrender GHG quota to their governments. (The carbon importing nation cartel will suggest that domestic GHGs arising from the production of exports are "liabilities" for the importing nations, not the exporting
nations.)

Then, each government in the carbon-importing nation cartel will freely allocate 85%+ of its early vintage national quota supply to DOMESTIC PRODUCERS (including exporters) of the regulated carbon-baed products. There will be NO FREE QUOTA allocation to importers of the regulated products, but imports are equally required to remit quota to the national governments. Therefore, as soon as the domestic implementation regulations are in full effect, Any US, Japanese, Sout Korean or Chinese importer of Canadian electricity, natural gas, petroleum products, pulp & paper, wood products, aluminum, iron & steel, glass, beef, pork, grains, rice or industrial chemicals will have to acquire GHG quota covering the Canadian supply chain GHGs AND any domestic GHGs arising from the consumption of Canadian products in their markets, which GHG quota may only be acquired from either competing domestic producers of regulated products or government quota auctions.

The quota allocations and fact that the domestically regulated parties will be carbon-based product DISTRIBUTORS (not producers) in the carbon importing nation cartel comprise a system that generates new revenues and subsidies and significant global competitive advantage for producers of the carbon-based products wiho operate facilities and pay taxes in the IMPORTING nations, which revenues are essentially EXPROPRIATED from the owners of production assets in the exporting nations (i.e. Canada). This is a key economic reality that is not reflected in most of the carbon market analysis that has been published by Canadian or US academics to date. To date, most of the academic and government-sponsored analysis of different GHG control options assumes that the market value that attaches to GHG quota comes out of the air. They deem it an economic "windfall" for which there is no balancing liability. However, in every quota-governed market, 100% of the market value that attaches to quota is directly expropriated from the production assets whose output cannot be sold without quota.

When carbon-importing nations cover all domestic SALES with the quota regime and freely allocate quota to domestic producers only, the lion’s share of the value of quota in those end-use markets will reflect an equivalent reduction in the value of the foreign assets that produce carbon-based products for export to those markets. (This reality is evident in all existing quota-governed market, including Canada’s dairy, chicken, turkey markets and municipal tax license markets. It was also highly evident in the recently phased-out global garment and textiles quota-covered markets.)

The sole objective of US-style "cap and trade" is to effect a wealth transfer – through the quota market – to the world’s energy, building product and food importing nations at the sole expense of the largest exporters of those commodities. The US government successfully achieved such a wealth transfer when it unilaterally used domestic quota allocations to manage the phasing out of lead in gasoline (see case study attached), CFCs and HCFCs in refrigerants and to protect US biofuel producers at the expense of foreign suppliers under the US Renewable Fuel Standard (law since September 2008). But the key to successfully implementing this wealth transfer is to ensure that the regulated product importing nation is a price-setter, not a price taker.

In each US "cap and trade" precedent,s (leaded gasoline, CFC and HCFC-based refrigerants, biofuels) US demand for the regulated products so dominated global demand that the US remained the commodity price-setter after introducing their domestic quota allocations. US phaseout, entities that legally exported leaded gasoline to the US during the phase out financed almost 100% of US refinery modification costs (through their purchases of the US lead allowances/quota required for market entry) and that less than 30% of the foreign suppliers allowance acquisition costs were passed through to US consumers as price increases. Over 70% of the cost of US leaded gasoline allowances/quota was born in the form of reductions in export sales margins and tax revenues for the exporting nations. But US negotiators have long since assumed that a cartel of carbon-importing nations must be established, the member of which will be committed to implement a common quota system design, to ensure that the carbon-importing nation cartel will have sufficient global market power to set and not take prices. US negotiators are confident that if the US, Japan, South Korea and China act in concert, they will become energy, building product and food price-setters, not price takers. India will support the initiative and will be a net beneficiary from the forced decline in global oil prices.

US advisors anticipate that the carbon importing nation cartel will have the power to drive the global price of oil down to $35/bbl. and that global capital investment in value-adding manufacturing will shift from commodity exporting nations (those nations that will be perpetually short of GHG quota) to importing nations (whose domestic producers will be perpetually long in quota supply).

The carbon-importing nation cartel member nations have no intention of cutting their carbon-based energy, building product or food imports in the short or medium terms. They do anticipate, however, that the successful launch of their cap and trade cartel will cause a massive evaluation of exporting nation energy, building product and food production assets (including oilsands production facilities), as economic rents shift from these production assets to importing nation-issued GHG quota units.

Once existing investors in Canadian carbon product manufacturing assets write down the value of in Cda’s production capacity (as economic rents shift from the production facility owners to the quota holders), importing nation quota-holders will acquire the Canadian assets at deep market discounts. After the existing investors write off their expected returns to capital, the new owners of the Canadian carbon-based production facilities will profit will supplying Canadian energy, building products and food to their home markets at signficantly reduced prices. The foreign-owned Canadian assets will legally "transfer price" exports, operate a breakeven and pay minimal or no taxes in Canada.

Canada can easily turn the tables on the carbon importing nation cartel with 4 rather simple domestic regulations that we could, conceivably, make law within a few months. The regulations will serve the combined purposes of: (1) competently and efficiently regulating GHGs in Canada to ensure Canadian compliance with our previously-announced commitment to cut national GHGs to 80% of 2006 levels by 2020, (2) form the foundation for efficient and successful defences against the protectionist nature of the carbon importing nation cartel’s strategy at both the WTO and (more importantly) IN US COURTS, and (3) show the rest of the world how to efficiently achieve environmental protection without the element of trade protectionism.

It is in Canada’s best interest to implement these 4 regulations as a pre-emptive strike, before the US Congress passes their trade protectionist cap and trade bill in the spring os 2010. I am of the opinion that 3 of the 4 essential Canadian initiatives can be passed by regulation (no new legislation is required) and 1 is a 2010 Federal Budget item that should easily garner all-party support.

The problem is that it is not apparent that Canadian federal and provincial policy-makers understand how essential it is for Canada to: (1) launch this pre-emptive strike and (2) lead a global debate regarding the true nature of US-style "cap and trade".

Posted in Aldyen Donnelly | 2 Comments

Hadley / CRU data leak

Posted on November 24, 2009 by energyprbe

by Aldyen Donnelly

Do you think last week’s release of emails, code and calculations from the CRU wil undermine the Copenhagen process?

No. This is a serious situation, but it will take the larger scientific and academic community time to sort it out. What the emails and other documents reveals is the authors’ disdain for Freedom of Information legislation and the peer review process. Of course, I am of the view that peer review has fallen on event that might motivate the academic and publishing community to clean this situation up.

The most significant problem that the released documents reveal is that the CRU appears to have destroyed the raw data records they used to model climate trends. Given raw data, the scientist made many adjustments to the data before it was incorporated in their modelling. I don’t think the released documents PROVE that the data modifications were inappropriate (however they do suggest that might be the case). But the fact is that the only record CRU can release, now, is the modified data, not the raw data.

Since a large share of other climate change research has relied on CRU for basic temperature/climate data, it is toing to prove expensive to address this problem. Hopefully, the weather stations and research initiatives from whom CRU initially sourced raw data still have complete files, so the raw dataset can be reconstructed. It will only be through the release of both the raw dataset and the modified dataset, along with explanations for the data modifications, that the wider scientific community will be able to determine what is good and what is not so good in this situation.

I agree that the CRU crew has behaved arrogantly and unprofessionally. It will take some time to determine whether their analysis and modelling should be rejected.

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Question on Flannery's assurance that Australia likely to meet Kyoto target and "patience has worn thin" with Canada

Posted on November 23, 2009 by energyprbe

by Aldyen Donnelly

With respect to Australia’s ability to comply with its Kyoto commitment, I am not sure who is briefing Tim Flannery, but he appears, to me anyway, to harbour a number of misconceptions — about both Canada and his home land, Australia.

The Aussie facts are a little bizarre. In 2004, the Howard government decided to introduce an unusual, uniquely Australian GHG inventory accounting practice that is not recognized anywhere else in the world or by the parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The newer Rudd government has maintained the Howard government inventory accounting method for purposes of reporting to and communicating with the Australian people.. The Aussie target of "8% above 1990 levels" is likely within reach using the unique, bizarre Aussie GHG inventory method. But Australia’s Kyoto target is impossible to reach. While all of the official national GHG inventories that appear at the Australia Greenhouse Office incorporate the bizarre, unique GHG accounting method, Australia still complies with IPCC/UNFCCC guidelines for all of their official GHG inventory submissions to the UNFCCC/COP.

Using the bizarre Howard/Rudd Austrlia GHG inventory method, Australia’s GHG itotalled 546,328,000 in 1990 and 597,197,000 in 2007. (source http://www.ageis.greenhouse.gov.au/). If you elect to recognize these GHG inventory estimate, an Australian commitment to cap GHGs at 8% above 1990 levels for 2008-2012 is very much within reach.

But according to Australia’s official inventory submissions to the UNFCCC–and for purposes of determining Kyoto Protocol compliance–Australia’s GHGs (including land use change) totalled 453,794,000 in 1990 and 825,888,000 in 2007 (see Australia’s official GHG
inventory submissions to the UNFCCC, below, source):

http://unfccc.int/national_reports/annex_i_ghg_inventories/national_inventories_submissions/items/4771.php

Below, I should tell you both the Aussie UNFCCC inventory excluding and including land use change and forestry ("LULUCF") You may recall that all parties were invited to elect to report target progress in reference to either UNFCCC inventory option — with or without LULUCF. Canada elected to report progress without LUCLUCF (which means that under Kyoto we are not permitted to count forestry and land use change credits towards our Kyoto target) and Australia elected to report with LUCLUCF (which means that Australia can use forestry and land use change credits when they report progress towards their Kyoto target).

Yes, you are reading this correctly. With its much smaller population, Australia’s total reportable GHGs (including land use change) exceeded Canada’s by roughly 30,000,000 TCO2e in 2007. Australia’s 1990 to 2007 GHG growth rate has also been significantly higher than
Canada’s when the reference is the internationally sanctioned IPCC/UNFCCC Inventory method.

In fact, both inventories are posted at the Australia Greenhouse website (http://www.ageis.greenhouse.gov.au/). The first inventory is labelled "National Greenhouse Gas Inventory", while the inventory that is used to determine Kyoto compliance is labelled "UNFCCC Inventory". Because of their election to include LUCLUCF in their progress reporting, the Aussie government shows only the GHG inventory that was at 825,888,000 TCO2e in 2007 as the UNFCCC Inventory at the AGO website.

It is, therefore, inconceivable that Australia can comply with its Kyoto target, which compliance — by definition–must be achieved using the IPCC/UNFCCC GHG inventory accounting methods.

Of course, this Australian government inventory game-playing is highly confusing for the Australian people. I would have thought that Tim Flannery, of all people, would have been above playing this game.

Annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for Australia, in Gg CO₂ equivalent

Query results for Party: Australia – Years: All years – Category: Total
GHG emissions excluding LULUCF/LUCF – Gas: Aggregate GHGs

Category	Base Year	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	Last Inventory Year(2007)
1 Energy	286,433.06	286,433.06	288,301.58	294,536.63	298,927.27	301,172.86	312,795.28	318,702.89	328,977.53	342,863.55	349,717.30	358,623.05	365,123.66	368,640.12	381,635.46	387,039.68	392,830.15	400,103.83	408,162.69
2 Industrial Processes	24,141.44	24,141.44	23,411.06	24,039.63	23,882.18	24,069.93	24,268.94	24,079.50	24,165.23	25,442.53	25,690.74	25,731.17	26,381.40	26,831.19	27,936.86	29,018.65	27,792.74	29,386.59	30,342.89
3 Solvent and Other Product Use	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
4 Agriculture	86,832.12	86,832.12	87,000.54	85,328.50	84,845.84	85,374.57	86,332.68	86,628.17	87,848.27	88,048.65	91,225.69	94,676.97	98,236.03	95,646.16	91,230.08	91,286.62	89,571.32	90,798.01	88,106.04
6 Waste	18,807.32	18,807.32	18,787.06	18,580.34	18,507.59	17,998.98	18,039.86	16,649.98	16,440.74	15,799.14	15,958.64	15,823.60	15,996.48	16,072.35	15,125.52	14,739.68	14,441.26	14,182.29	14,567.10
7 Other	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
Total	416,213.94	416,213.94	417,500.24	422,485.10	426,162.88	428,616.33	441,436.75	446,060.54	457,431.77	472,153.87	482,592.36	494,854.79	505,737.57	507,189.82	515,927.91	522,084.63	524,635.47	534,470.72	541,178.73

Note 1: The reporting and review requirements for GHG inventories are different for Annex I and non-Annex I Parties.
The definition format of data for emissions/removals from the forestry
sector is different for Annex I and non-Annex I Parties (see details).

Note 2: Base year data in the data interface relate to the base year under the Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC).
The base year under the Convention is defined slightly different than the base year under the Kyoto Protocol.

Note 3: — means "No data available"; * means "Emissions were reported with notation keys"; n.a. means "not applicable".

Annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for Australia, in Gg CO₂ equivalent

Query results for Party: Australia – Years: All years – Category: Total
GHG emissions including LULUCF/LUCF – Gas: Aggregate GHGs

Category	Base Year	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	Last Inventory Year(2007)
1 Energy	286,433.06	286,433.06	288,301.58	294,536.63	298,927.27	301,172.86	312,795.28	318,702.89	328,977.53	342,863.55	349,717.30	358,623.05	365,123.66	368,640.12	381,635.46	387,039.68	392,830.15	400,103.83	408,162.69
2 Industrial Processes	24,141.44	24,141.44	23,411.06	24,039.63	23,882.18	24,069.93	24,268.94	24,079.50	24,165.23	25,442.53	25,690.74	25,731.17	26,381.40	26,831.19	27,936.86	29,018.65	27,792.74	29,386.59	30,342.89
3 Solvent and Other Product Use	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
4 Agriculture	86,832.12	86,832.12	87,000.54	85,328.50	84,845.84	85,374.57	86,332.68	86,628.17	87,848.27	88,048.65	91,225.69	94,676.97	98,236.03	95,646.16	91,230.08	91,286.62	89,571.32	90,798.01	88,106.04
5 LULUCF	37,579.65	37,579.65	133,227.28	60,564.39	-2,559.59	-43,356.47	101,010.49	-15,260.84	-56,971.07	129,938.70	-46,012.73	-90,462.68	-78,658.29	283,885.46	114,111.83	-193,623.41	71,603.29	16,587.76	284,709.69
6 Waste	18,807.32	18,807.32	18,787.06	18,580.34	18,507.59	17,998.98	18,039.86	16,649.98	16,440.74	15,799.14	15,958.64	15,823.60	15,996.48	16,072.35	15,125.52	14,739.68	14,441.26	14,182.29	14,567.10
7 Other	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
Total	453,793.59	453,793.59	550,727.52	483,049.49	423,603.29	385,259.86	542,447.24	430,799.70	400,460.70	602,092.57	436,579.63	404,392.10	427,079.28	791,075.28	630,039.74	328,461.22	596,238.75	551,058.48	825,888.42

Note 3: — means "No data available"; * means "Emissions were reported with notation keys"; n.a. means "not applicable".

Why Canada failed on Kyoto and how to make amends

by Tim Flannery, Toronto Star, November 22, 2009

Whatever you may think of the climate problem or the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, it’s indisputable that Canada, by virtue of its history of engagement with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, finds itself facing a profound dilemma. More than anything else, reducing carbon emissions requires bold policies that guide the responsible production and use of energy, and examining Canada’s federal structure and history on this issue helps to frame the realistic options available to the country at this critical juncture.

Canada’s problem with Kyoto goes to the very heart of its system of government, for Canada is a federation with a weak centre. While the federal government has the authority to negotiate multilateral agreements and enact legislation to respect their terms, in the case of climate change the brunt of this legislation affects energy, which is of provincial jurisdiction.

The debate surrounding Kyoto and its implementation raised spectres that had, in the early 1980s, nearly torn the country apart. So from the very beginning it was clear that only the strongest, most resolute federal leadership had a hope of honouring the promises it had made. One only need mention the words National Energy Program in the province of Alberta to experience an echo of that crisis. The sense that the province was being unfairly targeted is still so raw that no federal government since has been brave enough to forge a new energy policy. And without such a policy, how can Canadians deliver on international obligations that involve fossil fuels?

Canada was an early and strong promoter of a global climate treaty, reflective of its longstanding commitment to international environmental and development agendas. At the Kyoto meeting in 1997, Prime Minister Jean ChrÃ©tien negotiated an obligation to cut Canada’s annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 6 per cent below their 1990 levels from 2008-2012.

This was in line with the reduction targets accepted by other developed countries but contrasted sharply with the position of Australia, an economy markedly similar to Canada’s and heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Australia negotiated an 8 per cent increase on 1990 levels, a target it is likely to honour, and which is the starting point for a new drive to finally reduce emissions which will commence in 2012.

So from the outset it was clear that Canada had set itself a difficult task. When the United States abandoned Kyoto in 2001, Canada was left as the only nation in the Americas considering the adoption of a binding emissions-reduction obligation. Canada forged ahead and announced its intention to ratify in late 2002, and when Russia’s ratification in November 2004 resurrected an agreement many had left for dead, it started to become clear that an energy-intensive economy like Canada’s would need to take bold steps to enable responsible economic growth accompanied by a dwindling emissions profile.

While many could empathize with Canada’s difficult position, patience has worn thin as months and years have now passed in the absence of a coherent and detailed climate strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

True it is that attempts at action were made, but differing provincial views as to how (or whether) action should be taken, coupled with federal indecision (under the Liberals) and then deliberate indifference (under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives) to the issue have left Canada adrift.

A NEW ADMINISTRATION in the United States has made clear its intention to take meaningful action, and Canada’s wait-and-see approach has left its provinces to take disparate and largely uncoordinated actions. Federal attempts at harmonizing this basket of approaches, and getting it to add up to a national emissions reduction target, have been slow and secretive, leaving many skeptical of the earnestness of Canada’s attempts to honour its international obligations.

The problem facing Canada is that its commitment to Kyoto is real. Though efforts have been made by the current administration to repudiate the emissions reduction obligation, Canada remains a Party to the Protocol and is expected to honour those obligations. Failure to deliver will have profound economic, political and moral implications. Current best-guess estimates project that Canada will overshoot these targets by some billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent during the Kyoto period, by far the worst breach of any nation.

And that is a real drag on the current negotiations, for given the sizeable penalty (30 per cent on top of a billion-tonne excess) that Canada would most likely be obliged to pay for its Kyoto breach, any target it would be willing to accept under a new agreement is likely to be unacceptable to every other nation around the table.

Every action has its consequences, and right or wrong, Canada will pay for its Kyoto default. In international politics, as among individuals, reputations are our most important asset, and before Kyoto Canada had one of the finest international reputations in the world. One only need think of the Montreal Protocol, where the world agreed to phase out CFCs and other materials that damage the earth’s ozone layer, or the great work done by Canada in international peacekeeping, to get a sense of how outsiders saw Canada prior to its Kyoto debacle.

As Canada seeks to engage with the Copenhagen meeting, it finds itself in the position of a seller on eBay who has pocketed the payment but not forwarded the goods. Such a loss of reputation in business is often irreparable, but in politics amends can be made. Making best efforts to address this issue will serve Canada well, for among nations as among people, goodwill is recognised and rewarded.

WERE I ADVISING the government of Canada, I would urge the Harper government, despite the fact that it didn’t create the problem, to take ownership of it and seek meaningful ways to make recompense. One avenue open to it is to play a leading role in financing adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change impacts in the world’s poorest countries.

Canada has a proud history of engagement with Africa, which could be built on as a way of restoring the nation’s reputation. Just as importantly, Canada needs a national energy policy which forms the framework for a viable approach to national emissions reductions in future. The only way that this can be achieved is if it becomes the personal crusade of a highly capable Canadian prime minister who is capable of working effectively with provincial leaders. It would cost time, political capital and money, but nothing is more important for Canada’s reputation, nor its place in the world, than this.

In a few weeks I’ll be sitting down, here in Australia, to a very different Christmas from that enjoyed by most Canadians. It’s likely to be at least 35C, with worries about bushfires perhaps putting a damper on the barbecue. But still our fundamental thoughts will be the same. I’ll be thinking about my father, now in his 80s, who battles valiantly on through increasingly frail health, and of my son, aged 26, who will be enjoying his first Christmas away from home, in Europe. My son may well live to see the year 2080, and he will carry with him all his life the love of his grandfather and grandmother. As dispersed as we are, there’s a web of love connecting us all, which spans half a world and 150 years of time.

One thought has recently been much on my mind: what would our world be like today if the climate crisis had emerged in my father’s youth? What if, in the 1930s, scientists had discovered that a rapid increase in temperature brought about by human pollution was threatening the survival of humanity? I’ve no idea how my father and his generation would have risen to the challenge, but whatever their actions, science leaves no doubt that their decisions would by now be having a profound impact upon my world and quality of life. And when I look at my son that is just what I feel. That despite the difficulties and sorry history and scientific uncertainty about details, we need to do our best in dealing with the climate problem; the fate of our children depends upon it, and in the web of human love connecting families, a century is not a long time at all.

Australian scientist Tim Flannery is the author of The Weathermakers and Now or Never, which argue for public policies to reduce carbon emissions that scientists have linked to rising temperatures.

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"Carbon 20" and GHG regulation design in Canada

Posted on November 23, 2009 by energyprbe

by Aldyen Donnelly

What I find bizarre is the language that is repeated throughout the draft Copenhagen agreement that says the purpose of the agreement is to compel the nations that are most responsible for existing GHG concentrations (i.e. the nations most responsible for 1990 to 2000 GHG discharges) to compensate the developing nations for GHG impacts.

As you saw in one of my prior postings, if we just consider energy-related discharges since 1990, China, Russia and India are among the top 6 nations responsible for current GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. I have not replicated other estimates of national discharges since 1900, because in most cases they are at best guesses. But while %s may change, it is unlikely that more than one or two of the rankings of the 30 countries listed below would change if we had good data back to 1900.

What does this mean? It means that the commitments outlined in the draft Copenhagen agreement are largely inconsistent with the objectives of the agreement, as they are stated in the agreement. I do not intend to suggest that the developed world should not act unless/until at least the developing nations listed below also commit to caps. As I wrote previously, it is essential that the international negotiations drop the quota-based supply management market control strategy ("cap and trade") and introduce a new GHG treaty that relies on product standards (as outlined below), which is much more consistent with the very successful Montreal Protocol model

United States, 23.4%;
China, 13%;
Russia, 9.8%;
Japan, 4.8%;
Germany, 3.6%;
India, 3.4%;
United Kingdom, 2.6%;
Canada, 2.3%;
Ukraine, 2%;
Italy,1.8%;
France, 1.8%;
Poland, 1.6%;
South Africa, 1.5%;
Mexico, 1.5%
South Korea, 1.4%;
Australia, 1.3%;
Brazil, 1.2%;
Spain, 1.2%;
Iran, 1.2%;
Saudi Arabia, 1.1%.

This list of 20 nations accounts for 80% of anthropogenic discharges of GHGs to the atmosphere over the 27 year period ending in 2007. Obviously, the top 5 listed nations account for over 50% of atmospheric GHG concentrations.

To get anywhere, the US has to drop its desire to impose a quota-based carbon supply management regime ("cap and trade" on the world. Quota-based supply management always delivers unprecedented market power to incumbents, which market power the incumbents use the quota regime to secure in perpetuity. It is obvious why a global GHG quota regime advantages the US and the consolidates EU and Japan vis-a-vis the rest of the world. It is equally obvious why newer economies, including Canada, should never accept such a proposal.

We did not need to introduce global quota allocations to reduce sulphur levels in diesel, lead in gasoline, PCBs in electricity supply systems, lead in paint, etc. We achieved these objectives by adopting product standards that regulated limits to pollutants and/or pollutant precursors in the products that we allow to be sold in our nations (as opposed to regulating domestic production and introducing tariffs on imports of those products). If/when we regulate fossil carbon content limits that decline over time for all electricity, petroleum product, cement, aluminum, iron & steel, pulp and paper, wood product and glass sales in the "C5", let alone the "C20" nations, as long as we rule that any combination of regulated product distributors can "comply jointly" and any entity that over-complies with their annual fossil carbon content limit (on an overall sales portfolio average basis) can bank that over-compliance for future use, then a simple set of fewer than 10 international product standards is all we need to convert our 2020 and 2050 GHG reduction objectives into reality.

For a model for product performance standard regulatory language, simply download Canada’s PCB regulation from:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/CEPARegistry/regulations/DetailReg.cfm?intReg=105

Note, in particular:

"Application 2. (1) These Regulations apply to PCBs [insert "greenhouse gases"] and to any products containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"]."

Most of the issues blocking any kind of international or domestic consensus on GHG mitigation derive from the fact that in the international and domestic contexts we are addressing only production-level GHGs and failing to address the sale products the consumption of which results in the discharge of GHGs. In every Canadian pollutant regulatory precedent we clearly understood that we cannot regulate domestic production pollutant discharge unless/until we are also prepared to regulate the sale of products that contain the target pollutant or pollution precursors.

I am at a loss to explain how we managed to completely forget all of our prior regulatory experience when it came to GHGs.

"PROHIBITIONS Release into the environment 5. (1) No person shall release PCBs [insert "GHGs"] into the environment, other than from the equipment referred to in subsection (2), in a concentration of (a) 2 mg/kg or more for a liquid containing PCBs [insert fossil-based carbon"] ; or (b) 50 mg/kg or more for a solid containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"]."

What should the allowable GHG intensity limits be for fossil-based carbon-containing products for: (1) 2013-2017, (2) 2018-2022, (3) 2023-2027, etc? For example, Canadian and US Renewable Fuel Standards that oblige distributors to acheive 5% biofuel conent targets (% total weight of liquid fuels) will likely prove highly inefficient regulatory measures. However, a regulation that caps fossil carbon content in liquid fuels at a kg/kg level that equates to 95% of baseline average carbon content for those fuels will likely prove an highly efficient regulatory measure.

"Prohibited activities 6. Except as provided in these Regulations, no person shall (a) manufacture, export or import PCBs or a product containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"] in a concentration of 2 mg/kg ["??? kg/kg"] or more; (b) offer for sale or sell PCBs or a product containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"] in a concentration of 50 mg/kg ["??? kg/kg"] or more; or (c) process or use PCBs or a product containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon in a concentration of 50 mg/kg [??? kg/kg] or more."]

Note that for any such regulation, not just GHG regulation, it is essential to address all of the following activities: a) manufacture, export or import… (b) offer for sale or sell..(c) process or use…

Of course, much in the PCB regulation does not apply in the GHG context or required radical modification to address the GHG context. But I find it is still a very, very good exercise to start with this or a similar Canadian pollutant regulation when you are attempting to draft regulations that will work for GHGs.

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What she didn't ask

Posted on November 23, 2009 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
November 21, 2009

CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti had tough questions for me this week, but none for a global warming propagandist.

You probably missed my heated on-air debate Thursday morning with Anna Maria Tremonto, host of CBC’s The Current. You certainly missed my superheated off-air debate in her studio immediately afterwards, when Tremonti lit into me for my skepticism of global warming orthodoxy. I don’t recall being berated after an interview by a broadcaster before, certainly not be a consummate professional like Tremonti. But Tremonti was visibly upset, so much so that she ended the second debate by turning away from me without the courtesy of a goodbye (she did properly thank me on air at the conclusion of our broadcast debate.

Climate change has been a frequent theme on The Current over the years — a Google search of the three search terms, “CBC,” “The Current,” and “climate change,” turns up 251,000 hits, an indication of this show’s reach. My appearance Thursday morning was, to my knowledge, just about the only time that The Current has ever invited a climate change skeptic.

For this I was grateful, even if I wasn’t the headliner on the show that morning: That honour went to James Hoggan, the owner of a public relations firm who was promoting Climate Coverup, his book attacking global warming skeptics. I was third in the lineup, following a computer programmer who determines through Google searches of his own that credible global warming skeptics are rarely cited. My role Thursday morning, a CBC producer told me several days earlier, would be to respond to the two global warming asserters preceding me.

That role didn’t last long. The interview quickly turned confrontational with Tremonti — using her vaunted investigative skills — attempting to challenge my credibility. I don’t begrudge her aggressive questions — that’s fair game for good investigative journalists and, in any event, I believe they backfired. But I did think she cut me off excessively — an average of once every 30 seconds after her initial questions, when she seemed curious rather than confrontational.

I do begrudge her gentle, almost fawning treatment of Hoggan. Rather than serve her audience through probing questions that tested Hoggan’s thesis and explored his motivations, Tremonti posed questions that could have been scripted by his PR firm. (Hoggan’s firm or his website did provide her with at least some of the “gotcha” questions she posed to me, inadvertently laying a trap for her when the “gotchas” proved to be fabrications.) Tremonti even immunized herself against the obvious criticism that she was giving credibility in this global warming debate to a PR man, of all people, by airing what many in her audience must have been thinking: “You have a lifelong career in public relations. You’re also the chair of the Suzuki Foundation. Some would think you’re spinning me,” she stated, accepting as satisfactory his response that "I’m not telling you that I’m an expert in climate science and I’m not being funded by anyone.”

What would the investigative Tremonti of old — she was a correspondent and host of CBC’s Fifth Estate — have asked Hoggan? Here are some alternatives to the softball questions that Tremonti posed to him.

Tremonti:
Mr. Hoggan, during this interview you have three times cited NASA in making your point that the science is settled on climate change. How does that square with the comments two years ago from the head of NASA, Mr. Michael Griffin, a scientist with six degrees, who said that global garming is nothing to worry about? Or with calculations by a group of NASA scientists, recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, which cites reduced solar activity as the most important cause of stagnating global warming?

Tremonti: You say the debate over whether the globe is warming or cooling is taking place at the Kiwanis Club and small community newspapers, not among real climatologists or in peer-reviewed journals like Science. How do you explain the Science magazine article of last month, entitled "What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit," in which scientists grapple with whether the globe is warming or cooling and whether their models are working? And how do you explain the stir caused in September at the UN’s World Climate Conference, where Mojib Latif of Kiel University — one of your own — shocked the gathering of 1,500 climate scientists by saying that temperatures could fall over the next two decades, again contradicting the past predictions of climate models?

Tremonti:
You paint the corporate sector as working behind the scenes to undermine global warming legislation such as the Waxman-Markey bill, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed recently. Yet it is well known that this bill was largely written by a powerful lobby called the United States Climate Action Partnership. This lobby is dominated by a long list of multinationals, including major oil multinationals that you love to excoriate such as BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips. Doesn’t this support the claims of the skeptics, who point to the immense
profits that the multinationals stand to make should global warming legislation pass?

Tremonti: I’d like to follow up on why my listeners should trust someone in the PR business to be impartial in this debate. When I look at your client list on your firm’s corporate website, I see that it includes ALCOA among your firm’s blue chip clients. ALCOA happens to be part of this lobby, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, that’s pushing climate change legislation. Can you explain why exactly you don’t have a con
flict of interest here, when you are attacking those who would derail your client’s legislation? While you’re at it, can you elaborate on the “Hoggan Credo” that you advertise on your website. The way I read it, your advice to corporations is that they need PR services, but that they should be sure that the public doesn’t know it’s having a PR job done on it.

Tremonti asked none of these questions. She not once interrupted Hoggan, or tried to throw him off his stride. Her favourite follow-ups, after letting him expound at will, were supportive interjections such as "Tell me more.”

Did Tremonti knowingly conduct a puff-piece of an interview with Hoggan? I doubt it. Does she herself have a conflic of interest as a journalist in the global warming issue? Unlikely in the extreme. Does she suspect that she has been a victim of PR spin? I have no way of knowing.

All I do know is that when it comes to global warming, Anna Maria Tremonti set aside her journalistic instincts. It would be impossible for any investigative reporter, let alone one as talented as she, to objectively delve into global warming and conclude that the science was settled.

Hear Anna Maria Tremonti’s interview of Solomon here.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

Comments

Nov 20 2009

On listening to that interview with Anna Maria Tremonti and James Hoggan I thought exactly the same as you, Lawrence. It was a powder puff interview – the complete opposite of the way she treated you. The suggested questions above that she could have asked Hoggan are relevant and valid and as an alleged investigative journalist I trust Ms Tremonti’s face is now an appropriate shade of red. PS Amazing as it may seem to Ms Tremonti, I have no connection with "big oil" or "big coal" and I was never a supporter of "big tobacco"!

by Tom Harris

Nov 21 2009

Your piece illustrates well why I turned down being interviewed for The Current a couple of years back – I simply did not trust them to conduct the interview in a balanced and fair fashion.

Tom Harris

Executive Director

International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)

Ottawa, Ontario

http:///www.climatescienceinternational.org

by Robert_Prouse

Nov 21 2009

Tremonti at work! The great "Ambusher" at it again. This gotcha specialist is about as poor an excuse for a journalist as can be. Why anyone intheir right mind would subject themselves to an interview with her, and expect fair treatment, is beyond me. Shades of Kissinger! She fits in very well with that biased incompetent organization she works for!

by Fred . . .

Nov 21 2009

Tremonti & the CBC are perfect examples of the downtown Toronto Latte Liberal Oh So Progressive class that believe they have a right to impose their own petty biases on everyone. Wonder how fast their little pinheads will implode when the scientific fraud implications of the release of the CRU data are fully understood. Tremonti & Hoggan’s favorite Climate Scientists and Gloabal Warming Hysteria Fear Mongerers have been revealed. Discussing how to avoid FOI requests for their data, how to destroy data and emails that might be revealing, how to "trick" data to "hide" global cooling, how to keep certain articles out of the scientific literature, how to steer the Peer Review process down the AGW Yellow Brick Road . . . . . the list goes on and on. Massive fraud and all a Tremonti style journalist can do is lob soft pitches at an admitted AGW propagandist.

She could of also asked how much money Hoggan’s firm has made from the BC Government led by Gordo "Carbon Tax" Campbell.

Apparently it is about $335 thousand. . . . nice dough to spin AGW hsyteria and keep people afraid of a harmless trace element atmospheric gas that is really plant food not pollution.

by the shadow

Nov 21 2009

I stopped listening to CBC last year mainly because I got so frustrated with their inability to see more than one side of any argument. One never saw an unbiased discussion. It didn’t matter who the interviewer was (with the possible exception of Rex Murphy) the information being given was always suspect, tainted by the personal tenets of the interviewer.

by eustace

Nov 21 2009

I am not surprised that Tremonti was rude to Solomon off air, he was disputing her religion. In major orthodoxies, gun controll, climate change, American conservatism, the CBC no longer pretends to be neutral. The issues are just too important for objectivity. Friday morning Tremonti’s replacement interviewed Jim Prentice. Although no
t as obnoxious as Tremonti, she did press the minister hard as to Canada not "doing" anything for a plan to present for Copengagen, as time is running out on the environment.

On the Current web site is a snotty score of federal minister invited for interviews, and those appearing. Is it any wonder that ministers might decline the Current inquisition.

The more biased CBC becomes, the more producers and their ombudsman deny any imbalance.

by Iconoclast

Nov 21 2009

I can’t help but notice that both of my posts, along with those of several others which might not be considered favourable to Mr. Solomon and the global warming deniers have been removed i.e. censored. While those extolling Mr. Solomon’s interview performance and stance on global warming have been removed. For shame, Solomon.

by highplainsdrifter

Nov 21 2009

Scrap the CBC or communist broadcasting corp as I like to think of it. Then the government should cut everyone’s taxes accordingly.

All government in Canada = monopolies over the individual which = nothing more than legal organized crime.

by rbren

Nov 21 2009

I.Con,

They haven’t been removed. Just look for the piece by clicking on full comment. Pan down till you find it.

by charlie brown 73

Nov 21 2009

Iconoclast.

Your post makes no sense. Also, you do not have a carte blanche right to make remarks the editor finds offensive. You always have the Star to print them.

by Douglas_Ball

Nov 21 2009

I value Lawrence Solomon’s articles very much. Through them, Solomon has introduced me to numerous scientists who question the role of human beings in generating climate change. I am therefore firmly in the camp that disbelieves and question the motivations of those who hype man-made change change.

That said, I don’t think Mr Solomon is articulate enough to go up against Tremonti; he could hardly get his thoughts formed in a coherent manner. I know from his writings he is a thoughtful and articulate person. On radio, unfortunately, he is a stammering reed in the wind.
Of course Tremonti wouldn’t cut him some slack; and she was after all under time constraints. Still, I thought Lawrence wouldn’t be able to gather his thoughts fast enough even if he were given more time. It’s pretty intimidating on radio. Regretfully I must say that Lawrence is not the man for that media, especially when it’s arrayed against him, as expected.

But that should discourage him from continuing the fight. His writing is invaluable.

by sonofkaz

Nov 21 2009

Iconoclast

– the user generated feedback at the NP cannot be understood by mere mortals. To some it appears to be a mess, but I think it might be magic. If you pay close attention, you’ll see posts disappearing, then inexplicably appearing again. Or suddenly all of them go missing. Or the article vanishes, to be found at a different link at a different time, with or without posts. Or some posts are like the ones here, others are in that frustrating little box at the bottom of an article, but not permanently as they can magically switch places at times. There
is a devil playing with us here, I say, a cruel but strangely all inclusive and fair beast that stomps on us all with amazing equality regardless of what we say on these pages.

by andersm

Nov 21 2009

I heard Lawrence Solomon being interviewed for Ideas, a CBC program. It was on his climate change views and he did great so I don’t think his ability to articulate his thoughts was the problem.

The problem was a hostile interviewer who had the power to shape the discussion any way she wanted. And she so badly wanted to crowd her subject so he could only react and even at that not allow him time to fully state his answer. Ever see an expert lawyer cross-examine a witness for the other side? They know how to restrict the witness’s statements so they do minimum harm to their client’s position. Lawrence Solomon is the man who woke me up to the reality and extent of the fraud of AGW with his NP series ‘The Deniers’. I have the greatest admiration for him and his sincere efforts to tell the truth in the fact of doubt and abuse.

by jimprall

Nov 21 2009

It’s unfortunate that Mr. Solomon felt unfairly treated in the interview.

I am the person who wa
s on in between Mr. Hoggan and Mr. Solomon, describing my list of climate scientists. My intent for this list is to let readers see for themselves what the scientists say, how much they have published on climate and been cited by others. I’ve noted some 470 names who have signed statements against climate legislation/stressing uncertainty. I’ve also listed all 619 contributing authors to working group 1 of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report. I’ve linked to each person’s homepage at a university or national lab. Have a look to see for yourselves what the experts are saying:

www.eecg.utoronto.ca/…/climate

by Iconoclast

Nov 21 2009

Other research Mr. Solomon conveniently failed to note in his interview is the 2009 annual Climate Confidence Monitor survey. (A 12-country study, commissioned by the HSBC Climate Partnership).

The results send a strong message to governments preparing to attend the climate change summit in Copenhagen in December to agree on a policy framework to tackle global warming.

In fact, 79 per cent want to see a commitment from their governments to "meet or significantly exceed’ a 50-80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050."

65 per cent of people across the globe indicated that a new international deal to cut emissions is ‘very important’.

Once again, you global warming deniers appear to be on the wrong planet, in more ways than one.

by maths1

Nov 21 2009

My web-space* records CBC versus the work of mathematicians and associates in a half century of irregularities (theft, corruption, false police minutes etc) and the immense range of politician response (direct contracts/replacement of delnquent deputy ministers) versus
exploitation) to "all-member" mailings to (municipal.provincial and Commons) legislatures.

The CBC has shut out from its CBO/CBOT newsrooms (and its published names of candidates) mathematicians as candidates, has rigged "phone-in" with "the producer has instructed you not be aired" and after I wrote to R. Renaud about surgical changes to audio-tape of Minister/Deputy Minister support at NAC public meetings, he did not acknowledge, but the "surgeon" went to unqualified overseas assignment.

ottawamaths.spaces.live.com

click Profile, click Documents and recover $7.1 billions for the Crown,

including one legal action "shuffled to next month" for three years.

aguetta@rogers.com

by Fred . . .

Nov 21 2009

OK. Mr Iconclast, since you have the almighty high ground . . tell us what you would do to make our required Kyoto or 20/20 cuts and how we will meet the para 41 requirements.

Details, my boy, details . . . no blathering on about high ideals. Put up or STFU. In order to fall in line with the Copenhagen/COP15 agreement Canada needs to cut 150,000 Mt of carbon emissions from our annual level.

The table below lists the major carbon emission sources. So your task is to choose which areas of the Canadian economy to devastate . . . but you total cuts needs to add up to 150,000 Mt.

After you have figured out what parts of the economy need to go bye-bye, then address the COP 15 para 41 requirement . . . you know the one where it says Canada needs to start paying an annual amount equal to a minimum of 0.7% of our GDP for our "Climate Debt".

0.7% is about $9 billion dollars annually . . . so what are you going to cut out of the current Federal budget to free up $9+ billion annually ?

I’d cut Equalization payments to Provinces – but you-know-who would go ballistic because although they deny they are net recipients of Canadian largesse, they would whine like stuck pigs if their entitlement to the entitlement was cut off.

Electric/heat generation 126 000

Fossil Fuel Industries 70,000

Mining & Gas 23,000

Residential 40,000

Automobile 41, 000

Light Gas trucks 45, 000

Heavy Gas Trucks 6,640

Heavy Diesel Trucks 40,100

Railways 7,000

Off Road Diesel 25,000

Off Road Gas 6,7000

Domestic Aviation 7, 804

Metal Production 13, 800

Have funds kiddies, cut away. Canada must be a good little Climate weenie boy scout and go along to get along.

My solution . . . take every car & truck off our roads, stop every train, ground every plane and tie up every ship.

That will meet the required target and shouldn’t have too much of an impact on our economy.

Should it?

by Tenuc

Nov 22 2009

Main-stream media do not present a balanced view of the scientific debate on the falsified AGW hypothesis.

It is obvious from the documents leaked last week by s
omeone at the CRU at the University of East Anglia that the science is far from settled and much effort is being put in there to ensure temperature trend match the fallacious IPCC models.

The full document is available at Wikileaks, under the caption Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009.

I suggest everyone reads about the abysmal state of our politically driven system of climate science before it’s too late.

by Fred . . .

Nov 22 2009

The CRU leaks/hack/whistleblowing should be the only topic of discussion at Hopehagen/COP15 next month. The politicians have been made fools of, the vast majority of the media has gone along for the free hysteria ride.

Excellent summary by Andrew Bolt . . .

"It’s in fact a conspiracy of many of the world’s leading global warming scientists that involves massaging data, dodging scrutiny, hounding out sceptical editors, fudging figures, the possibly criminal destruction of data under FOI request, tax avoidance, gloating over a
sceptic’s death, character assassination of sceptics, admissions of using “tricks” to “hide” inconvenient trends, farming grants, private admissions of grave doubts in their own public warming warnings, close collusion with green groups, . . . .

by jimshort19

Nov 22 2009

Fred makes the point. We could afford to shut down co2 emmissions by 150,00 mt, but we’d have to turn the clock back not 50 years, when we could burn oil indescriminately, but 100 years to 1910 when we could not afford cars. It’s not happening. We are too many, too comfortable now to be so constrained.

by Tenuc

Nov 22 2009

Just come across an interesting link at populartechnology.net, which gives a list of 450 papers which are sceptical of man-made global warming and managed to get through the peer review process. The debate about the causes of climate change is far from over, despite what the UN, IPCC and our new EU ‘leader’ want you to think. The scientific debate is far from over.

Looks like my reading material sorted for the next few months :-)

by charlie brown 73

Nov 22 2009

Well said Fred. I await, with baited breath, Iconoclast’s detailed reply.

by Fred . . .

Nov 22 2009

And my point still waits for some pearls of wisdom from Mr. Iconoclast.

Waiting.

Still Waiting.

Yoooo Hooooo Mr. Iconoclast, having trouble with some facts, some numbers, some detail ? Still wrapping yourself up in you warm comfy "we should do something" fur.

Defecate

Flatulate

Or get off your high & mighty throne.

Waiting . . . still waiting.

by Les Bolschitt

Nov 22 2009

Will be very revealing to watch which media outlets ignore the Climategate story involving the hacked emails and the fraud they confirmed.

Not expecting to see anything from the Watermelons at the the CBC. And so far nothing on the BBC despite the fact that it happened there.

Fortunately the internet is now far more important than the corporate media for revealing inconvenient truths.

by eveable

Nov 22 2009

True, the only Canadian sources on this I have seen are the CFP and the Financial post. Fortunately, lots of information on the net. The emails do show changing of data, misuse of the peer review system which I always thought was a crock, manipulating data at the IPCC’s direction, misuse of budgets, etc. As well as all the members of the CRU team who should be jailed, there are many US scientist who should also be jailed and fined.

The IPCC should be disbanded.

by Jeff the thinker

N
ov 22 2009

People like Hogan and Tremonti have to turn science into a juvenille debate because it’s all they understand. Scientist don’t write scientific papers on whether they think Gore is a liar.

Scientific journals sound something like this: “Arctic air temperature change amplification and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”. Geophysical Research Letters" from lead author Petr Chylek.

Quotes from the paper:

"In the following analysis we confirm that the Arctic has indeed warmed during the 1970-2008 period by a factor of two to three faster than the global mean in agreement with model predictions but the reasons may not be entirely anthropogenic. We find that the ratio of
the Arctic to global temperature change was much larger during the years 1910-1970.”

“We consequently propose that the AMO is a major factor affecting inter-decadal variations of Arctic temperature"

Simply put, the natural ocean oscillations could account for much of the warming and cooling.

Petr Chylek does not deny man has an influence said this: “This value corresponds to a warming of about 1.6 (with uncertainty of 0.4) deg C due to doubling the amount of carbon dioxide from its pre-industrial level. The deduced value is close to the lower end of the IPCC 4AR assessment of 2 to 4.5 deg C (with 66% probability).”

You see if you give too much credit to natural sources and estimate the human effect below that of the IPCC you are clearly a paid of hack of the oil industry and therefore Petr Chylek earns a spot on Hogans DeSmog Blog list of deniers.

The IPCC covers ocean oscillations but gives no attribution to them as a cause of the late 20th century warming and of course is confounded by the current lack of rise in temperature when these natural variations swing the other way.

by Fred . . .

Nov 23 2009

have some fun . .

us.asiancorrespondent.com/…/climate-science-the-quiz.htm

I’m betting Mr. Iconoclast would score poorly on this wee quiz.

Very poorly.

Still waiting for a response.

Waiting.

And . . . . . waiting.

Dum dum diddle dee dum dum.

Waiting.

by Daystrom

Nov 23 2009

After reading this gem from WUWT, I wonder if Tremonti will be jumping off the top of one of those rapidly melting glaciers in Greenland once AGW is exposed for what it is: a sham?

http://tinyurl.com/ygf8pwb

Jones can prattle on all he wants about what "trick" means but programming comments tell a different story.

Posted in Climate Change, Energy Probe News | Leave a comment

What she didn’t ask

Posted on November 21, 2009 by energyprbe

(Nov. 21, 2009) CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti had tough questions for me this week, but none for a global warming propagandist. Continue reading →

Posted in The Deniers | Leave a comment

Energy Probe Executive Director Lawrence Solomon on CBC Radio’s The Current

Posted on November 20, 2009 by energyprbe

Energy Probe

November 20, 2009

Listen to an interview with Energy Probe’s Executive Director Lawrence Solomon on CBC Radio’s The Current. Mr. Solomon discusses the current debate surrounding climate change.

Click here to listen.

Posted in Climate Change, Energy Probe News, The Deniers | Leave a comment