Opinion: A reluctant whistle-blower - The Great Global Warming Swindle

Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, broadcast in March 2007, broke Ofcom rules, the UK media regulator has ruled.
The controversial programme, which presented the view that climate change was not primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, attracted a range of criticisms from viewers, including a number of leading climate scientists.
Dave Rado, who co-ordinated a formal complaint to Ofcom, explains why he felt compelled to challenge the programme's contents.

The film suggested global warming was not down to burning fossil fuels Climate documentary 'broke rules'

When I sat down to watch the screening of Martin Durkin's The Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4 in March last year, I had no idea how much of an impact it would have on my life. Fifteen months later, after a 176-page complaint involving more than 20 scientists and other distinguished academics, the film's contents have now been scrutinised by the UK media regulator.
I was initially wary of doing anything public regarding my involvement with the Ofcom complaint - I'm merely a concerned citizen, and what's important is the quality of the other contributors, who include many of the world's most respected climate scientists.
But when I was told that it was possible that the film-maker might try to portray himself as the "David", being ganged up against by the "Goliath" of the scientific establishment, I reconsidered.
I'm simply a person, unconnected with any environmental or scientific group, who believes that a public service broadcaster should not be allowed to deceive the public about science - particularly on issues that have profound implications for our future.
Natural Sceptic
My interest in climate science and my subsequent involvement in this project were sparked several years ago.

Channel 4 said it aired the film to show that the climate debate was not over

A friend told me there was a global conspiracy involving nearly all of the world's governments, most of the world's scientists and the media to convince the public that there is a major human influence on climate when they were well aware there was no evidence for this.
I am a natural sceptic, and find it hard to take conspiracy theories seriously; but out of respect for my friend I decided to research the issue in depth.

After reading hundreds of scientific papers and summaries I was struck by the quite extraordinary amount of evidence - and more importantly, the many completely independent lines of evidence that all point in the same direction - that human greenhouse gas emissions are indeed profoundly changing the climate, and that the problem is going to become extremely serious in the long run unless emissions are cut drastically.

Moreover, all of the papers I read disputing this premise used the cherry picking of evidence as a tactic. Many of them recycled long discredited myths, while others used statistically flawed techniques, in an apparent attempt to massage data in order to support their desired conclusions.
This also led me to find a number of high profile websites devoted entirely to peddling misinformation about climate - many of them run by, and most of them funded by, lobby groups that campaign against action on climate change. Many of these lobby groups are partly funded by sections of the fossil fuel industry.

So my friend was right that there are many people actively engaged in a well-funded attempt to subvert mainstream science and to mislead the public; although he seems to have been mistaken about which side is doing most of the subverting.

So by the time I watched Swindle, after all the reading I'd done, I was flabbergasted by both its brazenness and its unprecedented number of deceptions.

I hope that in some small way the complaint...provides inspiration to others who would challenge questionable assertions made by certain sections of the media

We have a right to expect broadcasters not to set out to mislead us; yet to me, this was exactly what Channel 4 and Wag TV appeared to be doing.

Where Channel 4 claimed the film was an attempt to give a minority a voice, I saw it as a systematic attempt to deceive the public, an out and out propaganda piece masquerading as a science documentary.

The morning after the broadcast, I posted on the blog of the British Antarctic Survey's scientist William Connolley, saying that I wanted to complain to Ofcom and asking whether any scientists could help me write a comprehensive complaint.
Nathan Rive and Brian Jackson responded to my post and became my two co-lead authors. William Connolley also agreed to peer review it. I wrote the same morning to Carl Wunsch, who confirmed to me what I suspected - that he had been duped.
There followed a frantic three months, in which most of my spare time was devoted to co-ordinating, editing, recruiting authors and peer reviewers, and managing the peer review process.
Humbling experience
I was astounded by how many of the world's most distinguished scientists and other academics in relevant fields were willing to devote time to the project.

READ THE FINDINGS Ofcom bulletin (including its ruling on the Great Global Warming Swindle) [450KB] Download the reader here

For example, Bert Bolin, widely regarded as the world's most distinguished climate scientist until his sad death from cancer last December, agreed to peer review some sections. Many other academics of similar standing also made huge and very time-consuming contributions, in some cases giving up several weekends in order to do so.
I found this very humbling.
The complaint was submitted in early June last year. Much of it related to individuals and organisations having had their views unfairly misrepresented without being given an opportunity to respond in the film.
In October, after receiving the sections of our complaint relating to former UK chief scientific adviser Sir David King and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Channel 4 responded with a very long document that we felt was packed with misinformation. Our response was written and reviewed by as distinguished a group of scientists as the original complaint had been, including one former and one current IPCC Co-Chair.
Largely because of Channel 4's tactics - which included trying to have our complaint thrown out - the entire process dragged on for more than a year, a huge waste of public money.

The experience has left me feeling that the odds are greatly stacked in the broadcasters' favour.
How often would ordinary members of the public have the time, inclination or support from scientists to jump over so many hurdles? And unlike the anti-Al Gore court case, there has been no rich benefactor behind this complaint - just the time and goodwill of a large number of academics who object to their fields of study being misrepresented.

In February, I began building a website called Ofcom Swindle Complaint containing our complaint, which I hope will become an educational resource for the public.
Given that many of the inaccuracies and misleading arguments in the Swindle are widely used elsewhere, I thought that the detailed response in our complaint, with thousands of links to supporting evidence, should be available to the public in an easily accessible format. I'll continue to improve the website as time goes on.
Mixed feelings
Now that Ofcom has published its ruling, I'm looking forward to getting back to my life again.

While I am very pleased that the regulators upheld our complaint that a number of scientists who contributed to the programme were unfairly treated, I am surprised and disappointed by its accuracy verdict.
Ofcom says that it was only able to consider the documentary's accuracy in terms of whether it was misleading enough to cause harm.

The issue of whether or not a programme is factually accurate only applies to news media, they explained.
Because The Great Global Warming Swindle fell outside of this category, they were not in a position to make a ruling on the accuracy of some of the assertions that the programme presented as fact.

If this is the case, then I would argue that Ofcom's remit needs to be revised in order to protect the public when it comes to programmes' accuracy on matters of science.

It's been 15 months of major highs and lows. The best parts were working with wonderful people, such as Professors Jim McCarthy and Bert Bolin, who gave their time and expertise.
The worst were the deaths of three people who made major contributions before the ruling was published. Bert Bolin was a very special person as well as a great scientist.
Also, my co-lead author Brian Jackson died last August. His involvement was immensely valuable to the complaint and he had his whole life before him.
And Chris Curtis, one of the world's leading malaria mosquito experts, died in May this year after a brief and unexpected illness. He was an exceptionally compassionate person.
I'm very saddened by their deaths and grateful to have known such wonderful, selfless people.

I hope that in some small way the complaint honours their memories and provides inspiration to others who would challenge questionable assertions made by certain sections of the media that could result in political or commercial gain.

The green inquisition

We're being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories which block out sensible solutions to climate change

• 
• • Björn Lomborg
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Monday July 14, 2008
  • Article history

When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six metres of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.

Gore's scientific adviser, Jim Hansen from Nasa, has even topped his protege. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 metres, with a six-metre rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that "we are engaging in a reckless drive-by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation."

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn't increased. It has slightly decreased. Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4mm. For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)

This doesn't mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat. Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again.

This is what the UN climate panel is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 centimeters (7-24 inches), with the typical estimate at 30cm.

This is not terrifying or even particularly scary – 30cm is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.

Simply put, we're being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today.

Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.

Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread "disinformation" about global warming – CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn't follow Hansen's narrow definition of the "truth" – should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.

It is depressing to see a scientist – even a highly politicised one – calling for a latter-day inquisition. Such a blatant attempt to curtail scientific inquiry and stifle free speech seems inexcusable.

But it is perhaps also a symptom of a broader problem. It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before: the global temperature has not risen over the past 10 years, it has declined precipitously in the last year and a half, and studies show that it might not rise again before the middle of the next decade. With a global recession looming and high oil and food prices undermining the living standards of the western middle class, it is becoming ever harder to sell the high-cost, inefficient Kyoto-style solution of drastic carbon cuts.

A much sounder approach than Kyoto and its successor would be to invest more in research and development of zero-carbon energy technologies – a cheaper, more effective way to truly solve the climate problem.

Hansen is not alone in trying to blame others for his message's becoming harder to sell. Canada's top environmentalist, David Suzuki, stated earlier this year that politicians "complicit in climate change" should be thrown in jail. Campaigner Mark Lynas envisions Nuremberg-style "international criminal tribunals" against those who dare to challenge the climate dogma. Clearly, this column places me at risk of incarceration by Hansen & Co.

But the globe's real problem is not a series of inconvenient facts. It is that we have blocked out sensible solutions through an alarmist panic, leading to bad policies.

Consider one of the most significant steps taken to respond to climate change. Adopted because of the climate panic, biofuels were supposed to reduce CO2 emissions. Hansen described them as part of a "brighter future for the planet." But using biofuels to combat climate change must rate as one of the poorest global "solutions" to any great challenge in recent times.

Biofuels essentially take food from mouths and puts it into cars. The grain required to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol is enough to feed one African for a year. Thirty percent of this year's corn production in the United States will be burned up on America's highways. This has been possible only through subsidies that globally will total $15bn this year alone.

Because increased demand for biofuels leads to cutting down carbon-rich forests, a 2008 Science study showed that the net effect of using them is not to cut CO2 emissions, but to double them. The rush towards biofuels has also strongly contributed to rising food prices, which have tipped another roughly 30 million people into starvation.

Because of climate panic, our attempts to mitigate climate change have provoked an unmitigated disaster. We will waste hundreds of billions of dollars, worsen global warming, and dramatically increase starvation.
We have to stop being scared silly, stop pursuing stupid policies, and start investing in smart long-term R&D. Accusations of "crimes against humanity" must cease. Indeed, the real offense is the alarmism that closes minds to the best ways to respond to climate change.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.

MPs criticise government over CO2

Ministers have set government departments guidelines on energy

The government has made "very poor progress" on reaching its own carbon emissions-cutting targets, MPs say.

Ministers want departments and agencies to reduce emissions by 12.5% by 2010/11 compared with 1999/2000 levels - and to be carbon-neutral by 2012.

But the environment audit committee said a cut of just 4% had been achieved by 2006/07.

Chairman Tim Yeo said this damaged the government's "moral authority" on environmental issues.

'Degree of confusion'

The committee said it was "extremely disappointed" that only 0.0004% of all electricity consumed by the government was generated on Crown property using renewable energy sources such as wind, solar or biomass power plants.

Ministers were relying "too heavily" on buying offsets to help achieve carbon neutrality, the report - Making Government Operations More Sustainable - said.

There was a "degree of confusion" about how the targets would be met and these "essential issues" should be worked out urgently, the committee added.

Mr Yeo, a Conservative former minister, said: "Until the government shows that it is living up to its commitments it will find it hard to maintain the moral authority to influence the rest of us."

The committee also expressed concern over the reliability of emission figures.

Members criticised the Ministry of Defence for claiming a big cut in emissions after it sold the defence agency QinetiQ.

In reality, the committee said, the government was simply moving these emissions "off-balance sheet" to the private sector.

A committee spokesman said: "The government has now stopped claiming this as a cut in emissions, but the committee warns it not to make similar claims in the future."

The Office of Government Commerce should annually publish details of the amount the Government expected to spend on offsetting emissions, it was added.

G8 fails to set climate world alight

ANALYSIS By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website

G8 leaders believe they have planted the seeds of climate success

At first sight, the G8 agreement on climate change promises much.

Leaders are "committed to avoiding the most serious consequences of climate change", and determined to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at levels that would avoid "dangerous climate change".

In fact, this is exactly what leaders of nearly 200 countries signed up to in the original UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit. So if re-stating a 16-year-old commitment is progress, then this is clearly a success.

The question ever since Rio has been what to do about it. But the reality of negotiations within groups such as the G8 is that every party needs to emerge with bits of language that they can point to and say "I won".

So here is the key sentence in all its diplomatic finery: "We seek to share with all parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognising that this global challenge can only be met by a global response, in particular, by the contributions from all major economies, consistent with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."

The G8 are crawling forward on emissions cuts at a time when giant leaps and bounds are needed Peter Grant, Tearfund

So the EU emerges with an apparent commitment to cut emissions by at least 50%.

The US and Canadian administrations can say that it is only a commitment if the major developing countries play ball, and that the 50% figure concerns global emissions, not necessarily their own.

And the major developing countries, involved on the sidelines of the G8 summit, can point to inclusion of the UNFCCC phrase "common but differentiated responsibilities" as continued acknowledgement that far less would be required of them than of developed economies.

Off base

The host nation Japan appears to have won two key concessions.

One is that different industrial sectors could be set different targets with the aim of preserving competitiveness.

The second, which is more important, concerns the baseline year against which carbon savings would be measured.

With very few exceptions, the UN process has always used 1990 as the baseline.

But Japan argues this is unfair. The significant gains in energy efficiency it made before 1990 are effectively penalised, it says, while the gains made in Europe after 1990 through the clean-up of Soviet-era industry and the switch to natural gas are rewarded.

Campaigners say the G8 has shown far less ambition than is needed

The G8 document does not specify a baseline year, but asked by reporters, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said it was "current levels".

This would be significant in at least three ways.

From a practical standpoint, emissions have risen by more than a quarter since 1990; so a 50% cut from now is worth far less than a 50% cut from 1990 levels.

On the diplomatic front, it would raise a big question for the EU, which has taken 1990 as the baseline for its own target of cutting emissions by 20% by 2020. The UK's domestic targets also use 1990.

And from a philosophical point of view, it would again amount to turning the clock back 16 years, and saying "we're going to ignore what we said then and start again from here".

The EU will continue to insist that 1990 stays as the baseline in UN talks; and as the G8 document does not specify any date, any party can select whatever it feels is more politically acceptable when reporting back to its electorate.

But just by raising the issue, Mr Fukuda has thrown up yet another thing for parties to argue about.

Leadership question

So it is perhaps not surprising that campaign groups have lined up to criticise the deal.

WWF said it confirmed the recent trend of industrialised countries showing less, rather than more, of the leadership required.

"The G8 are responsible for 62% of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere, which makes them the main culprit of climate change and the biggest part of the problem", said the director of the group's global climate initiative, Kim Carstensen.

"WWF finds it pathetic that they still duck their historic responsibility, and refuse to turn from the main driver of the problem into the main driver of the solution."

Tearfund, which campaigns on issues of developing world poverty rather than the environment per se, added that using a 1990 baseline was crucial.

"Concrete commitments on climate change are the acid test of success at this summit," said international director Peter Grant.

"The G8 are crawling forward on emissions cuts at a time when giant leaps and bounds are needed."

The G8 acknowledged that the coal industry needs to be cleaner

The other main gripe of these organisations is that 2050 is too distant. They have been urging parties to commit to shorter timescales for achieving cuts, as the EU has done with its own 2020 target, arguing that this removes the option of delaying action until it is too late.

Instead, the statement merely acknowledges that "a long-term global goal will require mid-term goals and national plans to achieve them" - without specifying what these goals should look like.

Elsewhere, there is acknowledgement that the poorest countries are going to need help to adapt to climate impacts, and that clean energy technologies need to be developed and rolled out rapidly.

There is support for the rapid development of "clean coal" demonstration plants, in particular, and recognition that some countries will seek to lower carbon emissions through investing in nuclear.

Place in the world

It is important to recognise what the G8 could not achieve.

The UNFCCC is the sovereign body for making global agreements, and the two-year road leading from last December's UN climate summit in Bali to next year's in Copenhagen is still the most important route to a low-carbon future.

Nothing that the G8 or G8+5 or G20 or any other expansion of the core group could agree would change that.

What this week's gathering could have done was to point the way and ease the path, by agreeing a common front to take into the UN process.

On Wednesday, G8 countries meet the large group of "big emitters" or "major economies", the latest stage in a process formulated by the Bush administration.

The group includes major developing countries such as China, India and Mexico. And they have already set out their stall, responding to the G8 declaration with a statement calling on rich countries to go further and faster, committing to cuts of 25-40% by 2020 and 80-90% by 2050.

So far, then, this G8 summit has confused the issue rather than clarifying it.

Governments are as divided as ever on what they are prepared to pledge and what they want to achieve; and re-opening the baseline year question is potentially hugely destructive.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Summit ends with climate 'vision'

G8 leaders and developing nations remain divided on emissions cuts

World leaders have proclaimed a "shared vision" on climate change, but failed to bridge differences between rich and emerging nations on curbing emissions.

Concluding a summit in northern Japan, leaders from the G8 and developing countries said "deep cuts" in greenhouse gas emissions were needed.

China and other emerging powers declined to endorse specific targets.

The three-day summit on Hokkaido island also discussed Zimbabwe, and the global rise in food and energy prices.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had called on the G8 to tackle the "interconnected challenges" of soaring food costs, development, and climate change.

On the third and final day of the summit, the G8 and eight developing countries issued a statement calling global warming "one of the great global challenges of our time".

We, the leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, commit to combat climate change in accordance with our common but differentiated responsibilities G8 statement on climate Full text: Leaders' statement C02 emissions by country G8 summit: Key issues

But it stopped short of urging numerical targets reducing greenhouse emissions.

"Leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, commit to combat climate change in accordance with our common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities," it said.

India and China dismissed the rich nations' call for them to halve emissions by 2050.

The BBC's Roger Harrabin at the summit says China felt that emerging economies were being implicitly asked to take responsibility for a problem caused mainly so far by the West.

'Criminal cabal'

On Tuesday,

the G8 - which includes the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia - restated its "vision" of halving harmful emissions by 2050.

But Mexico, Brazil, China, India and South Africa challenged developed countries to cut their greenhouse emissions by more than 80% by 2050.

Leading environmentalist R K Pachauri discusses the summit outcome (Recommended, 6 mins)

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said the G8 leaders had demonstrated they were serious about tackling climate change.

"It is the very first time ever that leaders of the major economies have got down to vigorous discussions on a broad range of climate-change-related issues, and I believe that the leaders have shown strong political will," he said.

Why G8 climate pledge doesn't go far enough

• 17:16 08 July 2008
• NewScientist.com news service
• Catherine Brahic

The world's leading economic powers agreed Tuesday that global emissions should to be reduced 50% by 2050.

On the face of it that seems like good news for the environment, but the G8 nations failed to say whether they would halve current or past emissions levels, rendering the agreement "pathetic", say campaigners.

Moreover the agreement failed to say how nations should split the burden of responsibility for emissions cuts, and, crucially, what would be done in the short term to meet the 2050 target.

On day two of the G8 summit on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, the US and the European Union agreed to a statement on environment and climate change.

In it, they say they "seek to consider and adopt [in UN negotiations] the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050".

'Strong signal'

Politicians have hailed the statement as breakthrough, pointing out that at the same summit last year, the countries could only agree to "seriously consider" such a target – falling short of a commitment to adopt it.

"This is a strong signal to citizens around the world. A new, shared vision by the major economies in the climate challenge within the UN framework has emerged," says José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

The agreement refers to international UN climate-change negotiations on several occasions, indicating the G8's support for that process. There have been fears that the agreements made in different political forums could work against each other.

Missing base

But environmental campaign groups have been quick to point out that the statement is missing a "base year". The Kyoto protocol, for instance, states that emissions will be reduced by 5.2% by 2012 relative to 1990 levels – with 1990 being the base year. Without this, an emissions target bears little meaning.

Speaking from Hokkaido, Kathrin Gutmann, policy coordinator for the WWF Climate Change Programme, says the countries could not agree on a base year and so left it out.

The EU, she says, pushed for 1990, in line with the Kyoto protocol. However, Japan and Canada, whose emissions have risen considerably since 1990, wanted more recent base years. Japan was keen for a 50% reduction compared to current emission levels.

"That would make a 10 percentage point difference," says Gutmann. "If the target were to cut emissions by 50% by 2050 relative to 2008 levels, that would mean a reduction of less than 40% when translated to 1990 levels."

Speedy decision

It nonetheless comes as a surprise that the G8, including the US, were able to agree on a statement at all so early on in the summit. The reason is perhaps that China, India and other influential developing countries are not involved.

This allowed the G8 to make the 50% target a global one, without saying how it would be shared between developing and developed nations, something which environmental charities have also criticised.

The document has also been criticised for taking too much of a long-term view on climate change. "Governments think in five-year periods and act in five-year horizons," says Gutmann.

"You need to link long-term goals to short-term action," agrees Jim Watson of the Tyndall Centre on Climate Change in the UK. "You need to something to tell you if you're on track to meet the 2050 goal."

Carbon pie

But Watson says the G8 cannot be expected to make concrete agreements and decide how to split the responsibility for cutting emissions between developed and developing countries. "In a way, if the G8 started cutting up the carbon pie, the rest of the world would cry foul and say it was trying to sidestep the UN," he says.

On Wednesday, US president George W Bush will convene the last in the series of Major Economies Meetings (MEM) which he launched last year. China, India, Brazil and other developing countries that rank among the world's top emitters will be present at these meetings.

A draft MEM agreement seen by New Scientist makes no mention of quantified targets, although it does state that "deep cuts in global emissions will be necessary".

Climate Change – Want to know more about global warming – the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report.

Climate book is judges' hot pick

National Geographic has produced a film based on the book

A book about global warming has won this year's Royal Society prize for popular science writing.

Mark Lynas' Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet has already been turned into a TV programme and is now almost certain to experience a jump in sales. The book explains how Earth will change for every degree rise in temperature - from droughts to mass extinctions.

Mr Lynas was presented with the winner's £10,000 cheque at a ceremony hosted by the UK academy of science.

The award is one of the major publishing events of the year in the UK. Previous winners have included Bill Bryson, Stephen J Gould, Roger Penrose, and Stephen Hawking.

Six Degrees uses published scientific data and interviews with leading researchers to illustrate the changes we could witness in a warmer world.

Professor Jonathan Ashmore, the chair of the judges, described the book as "compelling and gripping".

"It presents a series of scientifically plausible, worst-case scenarios without tipping into hysteria," he said.

"Six Degrees is not just a great read, written in an original way, but also provides a good overview of the latest science on this highly topical issue.

"This is a book that will stimulate debate and that will, Lynas hopes, move us to action in the hope that this is a disaster movie that never happens. Everyone should read this book."

The bookies' favourite had been A Life Decoded, the autobiography of genetics pioneer Craig Venter.

The six books shortlisted for the Royal Society's General Prize were:

A Life Decoded, by J Craig Venter (Penguin Allen Lane)

Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise, by Steve Jones (Little, Brown)

Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer (Penguin - Allen Lane)

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by Mark Lynas (Fourth Estate)

The Sun Kings, by Stuart Clark (Princeton University Press)

Why Beauty is Truth, by Ian Stewart (Basic Books)

The Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do, written by Rebecca Gilpin and Leonie Pratt and designed and illustrated by Josephine Thompson, won in the junior science books category.

Bush sets new CO2 emission target

Mr Bush says new technology will help lower emissions

US President George W Bush says he is setting an "ambitious" new target of halting growth in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

Citing new technology as the key, he said emissions in the US needed to reach a peak within 15 years and decline after that.

Environmentalists were quick to sharply criticise the new targets.

The three main challengers to replace Mr Bush in January all favour more aggressive climate change policies.

Legislation

Mr Bush said the new target should require emissions "well below" projections given in the 2002 climate strategy.

"There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies."

Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming Carl Pope, Sierra Club

He added: "If we fully implement our strong new laws, adhere to the principles I've outlined, and adopt appropriate incentives, we will put America on an ambitious new track for greenhouse gas reductions."

The new technology would combine with nuclear power and "clean coal" to help meet the targets, Mr Bush said.

However, there was no indication of any new legislation to target emitters, and his statement warned Congress not to pass laws that could "impose tremendous costs on our economy and American families".

The US took part in climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia, last year when it was agreed to work towards setting new targets by the end of 2009, ahead of the expiry of the Kyoto emissions agreement in 2012. The US always rejected Kyoto.

Environmentalists rounded on Mr Bush's new plan.

Carl Pope, the executive director of the largest US environmental group, the Sierra Club, said: "Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming."

The three rivals for the US presidency - John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - all favour tougher climate change policies.

They include a cap on industrial carbon dioxide gases and an emissions trading system like that in the European Union.

Limitations of the 'Scientific Method'

--- In bhascience@yahoogroups.com, "david_c_flint" wrote:
>
> I'm glad you asked me that! I will upload a paper I wrote two years
> ago giving one approach.
>
> dcf
>
>
> --- In bhascience@yahoogroups.com, "Chris Street" chris@ wrote:
> ...
>
> > So what ARE the limitations of the Scientific Method?


David, I think one of the most important limitations of the Scientific Method is (as you say in your upload file) "research often delivers qualified answers whereas citizens and policy makers want definitive answers"

I think terms like 'probably' or 'highly likely', when discussing science, can be used with bullish confidence.

As a corollary, the strength of the scientific method is that current research is provisional and if falsified may be replaced by science that better describes how the world works.

I was very impressed with the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ) final report (pdf) which I reviewed in my Climate Alternative Temperature Science (CATS) blog.

The IPCC considered about 29,000 pieces of real-world evidence and concluded:

Uncertainty

• climate change is "unequivocal"
• Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
• Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C

Likelyhood

• humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% very likely to be the main cause
• Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
• Increase in heat waves very likely
• Increase in tropical storm intensity likely

Confidence

• Changes in snow, ice and frozen ground have with high confidence increased the number and size of glacial lakes
• earlier timing of spring events and poleward and upward shifts in plant and animal ranges
  are with very high confidence linked to recent warming.
  

IPCC defined what they meant by the above terms in red in the IPPC glossary:-

Uncertainty
An expression of the degree to which a value (e.g., the future state of the climate system) is unknown. Uncertainty can result from lack of information or from disagreement about what is known or even knowable. Uncertainty can therefore be represented by quantitative measures, for example, a range of values calculated by various models, or by qualitative statements, for example, reflecting the judgement of a team of experts.

Likelihood
The likelihood of an occurrence, an outcome or a result, where this can be estimated probabilistically, is expressed in IPCC reports using a standard terminology defined as follows:

Terminology Likelihood of the occurrence / outcome
Virtually certain >99% probability of occurrence
Very likely >90% probability
Likely >66% probability
More likely than not >50% probability
About as likely as not 33 to 66% probability
Unlikely <33% probability
Very unlikely <10% probability
Exceptionally unlikely <1% probability

Confidence
The level of confidence in the correctness of a result is expressed in this report, using a standard terminology defined as follows:

Terminology Degree of confidence in being correct
Very high confidence = At least 9 out of 10 chance of being correct
High confidence = About 8 out of 10 chance
Medium confidence = About 5 out of 10 chance
Low confidence = About 2 out of 10 chance
Very low confidence = Less than 1 out of 10 chance

I think this measured language in terms of uncertainty, likelyhood and confidence brilliantly conveys the provisional nature of the scientific method to non-scientists and politicians.

Bali Summit Analysis by New Scientist

Reposted from: http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19626353.900-analysis-how-the-climate-drama-unfolded-in-bali.html

Analysis: How the climate drama unfolded in Bali

• 22 December 2007
• From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues
• Fred Pearce Nusa Dua, Indonesia

THE Bali climate conference had everything, from beaches to the UN's top climate diplomat fleeing the platform in tears. There were charges that the science underpinning the event had been reduced to a footnote, and even a rescue mission from the UN secretary general as the all-night final session extended long into the following afternoon. To top it all, a booed and humiliated US delegation was forced into a U-turn after being unable to find a single supporter in the face of a vitriolic attack from Papua New Guinea.

Between the tears and ultimatums,

the conference may also have ensured that both the US and China become fully engaged in humanity's most pressing task of the 21st century - reining in climate change.

On the face of it, nothing happened that will immediately affect the atmosphere. Almost 24 hours after the scheduled close, with ministers already leaving for the airport,

a deal was reached on the "Bali roadmap" - a document setting the agenda for two years of negotiations that should culminate in a Copenhagen protocol to govern global greenhouse gas emissions after the Kyoto protocol lapses in 2012.

The key question is whether the roadmap will prevent dangerous climate change.

European nations wanted it to state a "destination" - a target of emissions cuts by industrialised countries of between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020, and for total global emissions to peak within 15 years and halve by 2050.

The US - in its one clear victory of the fortnight - joined with Canada, Japan and Russia to veto this text, saying it prejudiced the coming negotiations.

They secured a compromise reference to the necessity for "deep cuts", with a footnote mentioning several pages taken from a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describing scenarios for reducing emissions.

Here the story gets murky, with the science repeatedly being taken in vain.

The EU and many environmentalists claimed at the meeting that the 25 to 40 per cent plan was the recommendation of the IPCC, and that to reject it was to reject the science. In fact the referenced pages do not make such a recommendation. They simply say that cuts within that range would likely be required to limit concentrations of greenhouse gases in the air to the equivalent of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide. They give equal prominence to two other targets - 550 and 650 ppm - that require less stringent cuts.

Most delegates left the meeting believing that the footnote embraces a 450 ppm target. The Americans know better.

There is a further complication. Delegates repeatedly asserted that

keeping atmospheric concentrations below 450 ppm would prevent global average air temperatures rising by more than 2 °C from pre-industrial levels, which is often seen as a threshold beyond which dangerous climate change will occur. It might. But according to studies presented in Bali by the UK's Met Office, there is only a 20 per cent chance of 450 ppm delivering that.

Uncertainty about the climate's sensitivity to extra greenhouse gases is still so great, said Vicky Pope of the Met Office, that

450 ppm could cause warming of 4 °C or more (see Graph).

The best that can be said is that the significance of keeping below 2 °C is more a political construct than a scientific fact.

None of this detracts from the urgency of dramatically lowering emissions of greenhouse gases.

Once in the air, the lifetime of CO₂ is measured in centuries, so climate scientists in Bali argued that only near-zero emissions by mid-century or soon after will begin to make the world safe from climate change.

It is not an impossible target. Three nations publicly committed themselves to bringing their emissions to zero: Norway, New Zealand and Costa Rica. The last says it can get there by 2021.

This was the first UN climate conference at which countries talked confidently about making emissions cuts on such a scale. They are being pushed by the remorselessly alarming science, but also drawn by the assurances of large corporations that such cuts are feasible. Germany last week announced plans to cut its emissions by 40 per cent below 1990s levels by 2020. "This is not altruism, the German economy will benefit from the plans," said the environment minister.

Bali was also the first UN climate conference to take place without a chorus of industrialists warning of economic doom if emissions are corralled. Instead, many are demanding firm long-term emissions targets to help them plan future investment. For them, the failure to enshrine a 25 to 40 per cent cut is a blow.

Bali was also the moment when large developing nations such as China for the first time committed themselves to what the roadmap calls "measurable, reportable and verifiable... mitigation actions".

This did not amount to pledging actual emissions cuts, but it was at least divergence from business as usual.

This commitment, unthinkable only a couple of years ago, did not happen easily. It nearly derailed the conference at the start of its unscheduled final day.

In return for their promise, developing countries demanded that they also receive "measurable, reportable and verifiable" help from the rich world, in the form of money and technology. The European Union swiftly conceded the point, but a suspicious US blocked it.

Just a few hours before, a procedural cock-up had resulted in a chastised and sleep-deprived Yvo de Boer - executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change - leaving the platform in tears. Then the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon entered to read the riot act and demand a deal from bickering delegates. Coming after such a tense and fractious morning, the US's one-nation attempted veto caused outrage.

It seemed set to wreck the deal.

But then, in a moment of unscripted high drama rarely seen at UN conferences, Papua New Guinea's head of delegation Kevin Conrad rose above the barrage of appeals to the US delegation and simply commanded them: "If you are not prepared to lead, get out of the way." And they did. If the world finds a way to counter climate change, that will be a moment for the history books.

"Papua New Guinea simply said to the US delegation: 'If you are not prepared to lead, get out of the way.' And they did"

The scale of global emissions cuts now regarded by scientists as essential means that developing nations including China, India and Brazil will need to curtail their emissions sooner rather than later. US delegate Jim Connaughton put the emissions maths most succinctly.

Assuming even a conservative rate of global economic growth, business-as-usual energy technologies will raise global CO₂ emissions from 22 billion tonnes to 37 billion tonnes by 2050. Meeting the Bali aspiration of halving global emissions will require cutting emissions to 11 billion tonnes. That is a reduction on business as usual of 26 billion tonnes - more than current total emissions.

The scale of the task was so great that "even if developed countries went to zero, it would still require major developing countries to halve their [projected] emissions," Connaughton said.

One barely discussed element is that the Kyoto protocol appears to have been consigned to the dustbin of history even before its main provisions come into force in January. Nobody talks about a second round of Kyoto targets any more. The Bali roadmap mentions the protocol only once, noting that the new negotiations "shall be informed by... experience in implementing the... Kyoto protocol".

This provides a face-saving way back into the climate fold for Kyoto-refusenik, the US. Nobody is saying so, but it may also wipe the slate clean for countries likely to fail their Kyoto targets. Canada in particular is expected to have emissions 38 per cent above 1990 levels by 2010, rather than the promised 6 per cent cut. Moreover its government has said that it will not, as required by the protocol, buy carbon offsets to make up the difference.

Under the protocol, Canada faced swingeing penalties in a future round of emissions targets. It may now escape them. Likewise Australia, which finally signed up to the Kyoto protocol in Bali seemingly unconcerned that it has no hope of even approaching the target it agreed back in 1997.

Meanwhile the "Berlin Wall" within the Kyoto protocol, which divided the list of industrialied nations with targets and the rest, has disappeared. The roadmap text talks simply of developed and developing nations, without defining them. De Boer says this creates greater flexibility. It also creates new complications.

The one unquestioned promise in Bali was that negotiations on the successor to the Kyoto protocol will be concluded in 2009. That could prove the hardest thing of all to achieve.

(See editorial comment)

Climate Change – Want to know more about global warming: the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report.

From issue 2635 of New Scientist magazine, 22 December 2007, page 6-7