Climate and Atmospheric Circulation

AP - Tropical Storm Darby has formed in the Pacific off the coast of Guatemala.

In yet another brutal take-down of 'Lord' Christopher Monckton's claims to royalty and relevance, Bob Ward at The Guardian exposes the fabrications Monckton has whipped up to endear Margaret Thatcher fans to his own 'work' as a climate skeptic.

Ward's piece, "Thatcher becomes latest recruit in Monckton's climate sceptic campaign," illustrates again the main point that DeSmogBlog readers know all too well - that climate denialism is about politics, not science.

Ward, who is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, was inspired to write the piece after reading Monckton's outlandish claims in a blog posted on Anthony Watts' blog.

In his guest blog on WattsUpWithThat, Monckton claims that, among all the advisers to Margaret Thatcher in the mid-80s, he was "the only one who knew any science." 

Monckton is not a scientist by any stretch, he holds a journalism degree. Apart from his recent paid speeches at tea parties and climate conferences as an anti-science crusader, his career in daily news and tabloid journalism has had nothing to do with science.  But that hasn't stopped him from pretending to be one. He's like the fake doctor in the 1940's advertisements who really, really wants you to trust him that cigarettes are safe, and it's okay to spray DDT on your kids.
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Monckton then goes on to suggest that "it was I who – on the prime minister's behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisers to the government, from the chief scientific adviser downward."

Bob Ward reports in the Guardian:

"This revelation might be news to Lady Thatcher. On page 640 of her 1993 autobiography Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years, the former prime minister describes how she grappled with the issue of climate change, referring only to "George Guise, who advised me on science in the policy unit". Indeed, given Monckton's purportedly crucial role, it seems to be heartless ingratitude from the Iron Lady that she does not find room to mention him anywhere in the 914-page volume on her years as prime minister."

So it seems that Christopher Monckton's claims over all these years that he was a key policy advisor to Thatcher are pretty disingenuous.  That's not surprising from a character who regularly embellishes his non-voting non-recognized title of 'Lord' in the House of Commons.  Luckily for Monckton, "it is not in itself an offence to pretend to be a member of the House." Now that he's figured that out, perhaps he'll start calling himself Prime Minister for the heck of it.

To clarify his role in Thatcher's government, it seems Monckton started out in the early '80s as a scribe taking minutes at meetings of a group loosely associated with Thatcher, then wrote a paper that supposedly endeared him to Downing Street, then magically became a key policy advisor a few years hence.

But if that claim were true - that Monckton was so dear an advisor to Thatcher - why would he have left such an important post in 1986 to take an assistant editor position at a (now defunct) tabloid newspaper?

As is so often the case with Christopher Monckton, the facts just don't ever seem to back up his version of events. 

What will the good 'Lord' dream up next?

Last night the award-winning documentary Gasland got a big bump in profile when it was aired on HBO.

And by the looks of the PR attack campaign launched today, it looks like Gasland is starting to get under the skin of the oil and gas industry.

I guess the dinosaurs in the dirty fuel lobby don't like videos of people who can light their tap water on fire after their wells are contaminated with methane gas, like this:

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Of course the gas companies say this is all perfectly natural and has nothing to do with their operations, but Gasland documents the many stories of people whose drinking water is just fine until the gas companies come along and start pumping all sorts of toxic chemicals into the ground in an extraction process called hydraulic fracking.

In fact, I have heard this same story for years and as far north as Alberta, Canada where ranchers who have had natural gas drilling operations forced on to their properties can now light their water on fire.

Not to mention the chemical burns their children get in the shower or the water irrigation shed that blew up in a ball of flames.

All perfectly natural indeed.

Most of the PR push-back on Gasland appears to be coming from an oil and gas lobby group calling itself "Energy In-Depth" whose anonymous website lists other oil and gas lobby groups, like American Exploration and Production Council, the Indiana Oil and Gas Association and the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, as their members.

While the members of Energy in Depth might be listed, who is actually running the day-to-day operations and mounting the attack on Gasland is a bit of mystery.

No contact information, phone number, mailing address or anything else telling us who is organizing the group can be found on the website. A little digging, finds that the website is registered to a Washington, DC public relations firm called FD Americas Public Affairs (formerly FD Dittus Communications).

FD's clients include other oil and gas lobby groups with one in particular that stands out, the American Energy Alliance, run by former Republican staffers Eric Creighton, Kevin Kennedy and Laura Henderson. The Energy Alliance ran an "Energy Town Hall" bus tour last summer attacking the Obama administration's Clean Energy and Security legislation. As FD explains on their website:

An email that was forwarded to me gives a little further information on who's behind the PR push. The email was sent by the Senior Public Affairs Representative for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation - one of the world's largest independent oil and gas companies - saying that the company is:

In public relations, it is always a bit of a tricky decision about when to begin countering your opponents message.

If you hit back too early, you may give the story "oxygen" and inflame a controversy that may have gone away if ignored. But if you wait too long to counter your opponent you risk jumping in too late and losing the war of words.

The trick is to watch for the tipping point.

Looks like the tipping point for Gasland's opponents was last night's HBO screening, so watch out because we're all about to subjected to more spin than the teacup ride at Disneyland.

Overwhelmingly, Americans think the nation needs a fundamental overhaul of its energy policies, and most expect alternative forms to replace oil as a major source within 25 years. Yet a majority are unwilling to pay higher gasoline prices to help develop new fuel sources. <!--break-->

AFP - Hurricane Celia, the first of the 2010 Pacific season, was upgraded late Monday to a Category Two storm as it churned off the the southeastern Mexican coast, the US-based National Hurricane Center said.

AP - Hurricane Celia grew stronger Monday evening in the East Pacific Ocean and was upgraded to a Category 2.

A study by Stanford University researchers examining expert credibility in climate change has confirmed that climate skeptics and contrarians within the scientific community comprise at best 3% of the field, and are “vastly overshadowed” in expertise by their colleagues who agree that manmade climate change is real. 

As readers of DeSmogBlog know well, the credibility of climate science and scientists has come under attack in recent months.  In the wake of the Climategate episode –portrayed in the right wing media as a scandalous cover-up while independent investigations found no evidence calling into question the integrity of climate science – skeptics have loudly argued that the public shouldn’t trust the overwhelming consensus among scientists that man-made climate change is real.

Flipping that faulty assertion on its head, this new Stanford study, published today in the highly-regarded journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides even more reason for the public to scrutinize the credibility of the skeptics and contrarians themselves, showing them to possess less direct expertise and far fewer published works in the climate science literature than colleagues who agree with the consensus view.
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Examining a group of 1,372 climate researchers, their publications and the number of times their work is cited by peers in related studies, the Stanford researchers found that:

1) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of [man-made climate change] outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and 2) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of [man-made climate change] are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”

The authors found that:

“the expertise and prominence, two integral components of overall expert credibility, of climate researchers convinced by the evidence of [anthropogenic climate change] vastly overshadows that of the climate change skeptics and contrarians.”

Reviews of the scientific literature and surveys of climate scientists “indicate striking agreement with the primary conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” according to the study.

But you would hardly know that from watching Fox News or reading mainstream media coverage of climate change lately. 

Using Climategate and the juvenile theatrics of a handful of Republican politicians as fuel, climate deniers have waged a fierce media campaign to confuse the public in recent months, an effort that poll results in the U.S. indicate had a negative impact on public understanding of climate change and recognition of the urgent need to address it. 

While skeptics have been given plenty of oxygen on talk radio and TV lately, they remain remarkably quiet in the annals of peer-reviewed literature.  Reams of data and papers have been published in the best scientific journals documenting and supporting the consensus view that humans have altered the climate in potentially catastrophic ways. 

In contrast, evidence to support the views of contrarians and skeptics remains mostly unrecognized and unpublished in scientific journals.  That is not an indication that the peer-review process is somehow corrupt, as some skeptics contend, but rather a clear sign that skeptics have failed to present to their peers any credible evidence to support their contrary opinions.

It is interesting to note that the study, which was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Stanford University, did not look at the issue of industry funding or conflicts of interest among the skeptics identified in the report.  Even without taking those important factors into account, the Stanford researchers demonstrate a clear lack of credibility among skeptics who doubt man-made climate change. The vast majority of skeptics who signed onto joint statements denying man-made climate change “have not published extensively in the peer-reviewed climate literature,” the study found.

This study from Stanford has documented yet again the total lack of credibility and expertise among climate skeptics, yet as long as Fox News and talk radio exist, the public will continue to be duped into the false assumption that there is doubt among the scientific community on this issue. 

While President Obama has pledged to craft policy based on the best science available and to consult with the most credible experts, climate skeptics have used biased media outlets and a bullhorn to sow doubt about the scientific consensus on climate change.  That dangerous distraction enables lawmakers to avoid making science-based policy decisions, delaying action on climate change and fostering continued dependence on dirty energy sources.

For the full details, read the attached study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ending a dispute that has dragged on for months, London newspaper The Sunday Times has finally retracted and apologized for an article filled with blatant misinformation and smears against the IPCC and climate researchers that it ran in January, creating a nontroversy which deniers tried to label “Amazongate.” 

RealClimate.org more accurately dubbed the episode “Leakegate” after the Times' reporter Jonathan Leake, who wrote the article in question.

The Times published a lengthy correction to the bogus article and disappeared the original from its website.

Since the bogus article ran in January, scientists and researchers who study the Amazon have tried to correct the misinformation it spread.  Chief among them was Dr. Simon Lewis, an expert on rain forests at the University of Leeds, who filed a 30-page complaint against The Sunday Times with the UK Press Complaints Commission in March. Lewis alleged that the paper had mangled his quotes, which ended up far from the remarks he actually made in interviews with the reporter, and that the paper had published “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” about climate change in the article.
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Lewis maintains that the reporter read him a version of the piece over the phone that Lewis found agreeable, but then the Times published a vastly different article skewed to fit the Times’ anti-science, denialist editorial line, completely ignoring the scientific facts underpinning the IPCC’s statements about the Amazon.

The Sunday Times acknowledged in its correction/retraction that the IPCC’s conclusion about the Amazon was supported by peer-reviewed science, and that it erred in presenting Dr. Lewis’s comments as disputing the science behind claims about the vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change.

The retraction notes:
“A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.”

When Dr. Lewis heard the news, he wrote to several outlets, “I welcome the Sunday Times’ apology.”  

ClimateProgress published more of Lewis’s reaction:
“The public’s understanding of science relies on scientists having frank discussions with journalists, who then responsibly report what was said. If reporting is misleading then many scientists will disengage, which will mean that the public get more opinion and less careful scientific assessments. This is extremely dangerous when we face serious environmental problems, like climate change, which require widespread scientific understanding to enable wise political responses to be formulated and enacted.”

It is worth pondering what might have happened if Simon Lewis had chosen not to file his complaint.  Readers of the Sunday Times could have easily remained confused and misled on this subject, potentially losing trust in the IPCC scientific community. 

Lewis is to be commended for seeing this through, earning what amounts to a total retraction of Leake’s article and setting the record straight.  It isn’t every day that climate misinformation gets corrected in such a thorough manner.  This is a huge win for scientific integrity and accuracy in reporting.

“If reporting is misleading then many scientists will disengage, which will mean that the public get more opinion and less careful scientific assessments,” Lewis wrote in response to hearing the news about the correction.

But imagine if the article had been published in its original, unadulterated form – the version that Leake initially read to Lewis over the phone?  The misinformation and distortions would never have reached the public, the deniers would have been denied their long-winded gloating over the inaccurate version, and perhaps there would be less confusion over this entire issue. 

Just as with the so-called “Climategate” episode, there was no conspiracy here, no reason whatsoever to question the vast, global body of scientific knowledge about climate change. 

But until the media – especially biased outlets like the Sunday Times and FOX News – learn to report on climate science matters responsibly, the public is destined to remain confused about this important issue.

It should not take someone like Simon Lewis pressing the matter after the fact to correct the record.  It should be inherent in these newsrooms’ journalistic standards that nothing like this ever happen in the first place.

The Washington Post has done a nice round-up of how desperately BP is trying to circle the lobbyists in an effort to minimize the political price it will pay for devastating the Gulf Coast.

But per Jim Hoggan's analysis here last week, no amount of PR spin will rescue the company when its own partner, Anadarko, is accusing BP of recklessness and incompetence.

The lobbyist line, of course, is that they're just there to help. In fact, the Post quotes "a lobbyist for one of the key players," saying this:

"I think for the most part the lobbyists for all the companies have just been trying to give information to people; it has not been focused on policy questions at all. There's a thirst for information despite the media saturation."

Wouldn't that sound so much more convincing if BP ("5,000 barrels per day") had been disseminating information that was accurate?<!--break-->