Global Warming Policy Foundation | 15 August 2014
ACLU, News Organisations Back Mann-Critics In Climate Libel Case
Was the Earth in a period of global warming or cooling before the 20th century? Attempting to answer this question has thrown up a conundrum for scientists, with some studies showing a warming trend, while others suggesting it cooled until humans intervened. Now a new study hopes to settle the issue by arguing that data points to the fact that Earth’s climate has been warming over the past 10,000 years – long before human activity is thought to have changed the climate. It argues that previous research that showed a cooling trend was wrong because it used contradictory ice core data. –Ellie Zolfagharfard, Daily Mail, 13 August 2014
A who’s who of news organizations, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, have sided with the conservative National Review and the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute in a libel lawsuit brought against them by climate scientist Michael Mann. In an amicus brief filed Monday, the ACLU and news organizations urged the court to reverse a lower court ruling that the statute didn’t apply in this case. They argued that it would be a blow to freedom of the press should Mann prevail: While Mann essentially claims that he can silence critics because he is “right,” the judicial system should not be the arbiter of either scientific truth or correct public policy. While amici may not necessarily agree with the content of defendants’ speech, they believe that, if left to stand, the decision below will chill the expression of opinion on a wide range of important scientific and public policy issues, and therefore urge that it be reversed. –Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner, 13 August 2014
What if the warmth the world has enjoyed for the past 50 years is the result of solar activity, not man-made CO2? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its acolytes pay scant attention to any science, however strong the empirical evidence, that may relegate human causes to a lesser status. If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared. Cheap electricity in a colder climate will be critical. –Maurice Newman, The Australian, 14 August 2014
I get the sense that the Washington libel community and U.S. national media have belatedly woken up to the potential threat of Mann v Steyn and that the tide is now starting to run strongly against Mann in the anti-SLAPP proceedings. The most visible evidence of this is an impressive Amici brief from the ACLU and an imposing list of 25 other media organizations (the Reporters Committee for Press Freedom, the American Society of News Editors, the Association of American Publishers, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (The Village Voice et al), NBC Universal, Bloomberg News, the publishers of USA Today, Time, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Detroit Free Press, The Seattle Times, The Arizona Republic and The Bergen County Record) filed on August 11, 2014. – Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit, 13 August 2014
The support for Steyn et al. provided by the ACLU and the libel community plus the national news media re-emphasizes that this case is about the freedom of speech. It is very heartening to see this support for freedom of speech. It is particularly interesting to see liberal organizations, who would normally align to support an issue related to climate change, effectively take actions against Michael Mann. The link between ‘defending Michael Mann is defending climate science’ seems to have been broken. The ACLU has it exactly right with this statement: “Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation. More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models – not larger awards of damages – mark the path toward superior understanding of the world around us.”—Judith Curry, Climate Etc, 14 August 2014
In the last decade of his life, Alan Peacock (1922-2014) was closely involved with issues relating to climate change: these indeed became his chief single professional concern. Lawson’s cause was one which Alan Peacock was happy to make his own: he was involved with the Foundation from its inception till his death. As advisor, commentator, author and collaborator, Alan made over the last years of his life an outstanding contribution to the quality of the climate change debate in Britain. All of us who worked closely with him in this cause will miss him greatly and treasure his memory. –David Henderson, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 August 2014
1) Earth Has Been Warming For 10,000 Years, Contradicting Studies That Humans Started Global Warming – Daily Mail, 13 August 2014
2) ACLU, News Organisations Back Mann-Critics In Climate Libel Case – Washington Examiner, 13 August 2014
3) Maurice Newman: We’re Ill-Prepared For Global Cooling – The Australian, 14 August 2014
4) Alan Peacock (1922-2014): A Personal Record – The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 August 2014
1) Earth Has Been Warming For 10,000 Years, Contradicting Studies That Humans Started Global Warming
Daily Mail, 13 August 2014
Ellie Zolfagharfard
A new study finds that the Earth’s climate has been warming over the past 10,000 years – long before human activity is thought to have changed the climate.
Was the Earth in a period of global warming or cooling before the 20th century? Attempting to answer this question has thrown up a conundrum for scientists, with some studies showing a warming trend, while others suggesting it cooled until humans intervened.
Now a new study hopes to settle the issue by arguing that data points to the fact that Earth’s climate has been warming over the past 10,000 years – long before human activity is thought to have changed the climate.
A study last year (shown by the blue lines) said that temperatures in the Holocene maximum (8000 – 9000 years ago) – cooled by 0.5°C. But climate models (yellow and black) suggest that the planet should have gradually warmed by about the same amount during that period
It argues that previous research that showed a cooling trend was wrong because it used contradictory ice core data.
The research was undertaken by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Professor Zhengyu Liu.
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change requested a figure to show global temperature trends over the last 10,000 years, Professor Liu knew that was going to be a problem.
‘We have been building models and there are now robust contradictions’, he said. ‘Data from observation says global cooling. The physical model says it has to be warming.’
In his latest study, Professor Liu describes a consistent global warming trend over the course of the Holocene, our current geological epoch.
‘The question is, “Who is right?”‘ said Professor Liu. ‘Or, maybe none of us is completely right.
‘It could partly be a model problem because of some missing physical mechanisms.’
Scientists ran simulations of climate influences and each on revealed global warming occurring over the last 10,000 years.
Professor Liu explained that we know atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 20 parts per million before the 20th century, and the massive ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum has been retreating.
These physical changes suggest that, globally, the annual mean global temperature should have continued to warm, even as regions of the world experienced cooling, such as during the Little Ice Age in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries.
The team ran simulations of climate influences that spanned from the intensity of sunlight on Earth to global greenhouse gases, ice sheet cover and meltwater changes.
Each showed global warming over the last 10,000 years.
2) ACLU, News Organisations Back Mann-Critics In Climate Libel Case
Washington Examiner, 13 August 2014
Sean Higgins
A who’s who of news organizations, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, have sided with the conservative National Review and the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute in a libel lawsuit brought against them by climate scientist Michael Mann.
Mann contends that the magazine and the think tank both libeled him by publishing articles alleging that he has intentionally manipulated climate data. Both defendants are seeking to have the case dismissed under a statute that prevents nuisance lawsuits intended to silence critics. The matter is currently before the D.C. Superior Court.
In an amicus brief filed Monday, the ACLU and news organizations urged the court to reverse a lower court ruling that the statute didn’t apply in this case. They argued that it would be a blow to freedom of the press should Mann prevail:
While Mann essentially claims that he can silence critics because he is “right,” the judicial system should not be the arbiter of either scientific truth or correct public policy. While amici may not necessarily agree with the content of defendants’ speech, they believe that, if left to stand, the decision below will chill the expression of opinion on a wide range of important scientific and public policy issues, and therefore urge that it be reversed.
The ACLU was joined in the brief by the Washington Post, Fox News, NBC Universal, USA Today publisher Gannett Co., Bloomberg, Time, the Tribune Publishing Co., the Seattle Times and various professional organizations including the American Society of News Editors, the National Press Club, and the Society of Professional Journalists, among others.
3) Maurice Newman: We’re Ill-Prepared For Global Cooling
The Australian, 14 August 2014
If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared. Cheap electricity in a colder climate will be critical.
What if David Archibald’s book The Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short turns out to be right? What if the past 50 years of peace, cheap energy, abundant food, global economic growth and population explosion have been due to a temporary climate phenomenon?
What if the warmth the world has enjoyed for the past 50 years is the result of solar activity, not man-made CO2?
In a letter to the editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics, IG Usoskin et al produced the “first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity”. They found that during the past 3000 years the modern grand maxima, which occurred between 1959 and 2009, was a rare event both in magnitude and duration. This research adds to growing evidence that climate change is determined by the sun, not humans.
Yet during the past 20 years the US alone has poured about $US80 billion into climate change research on the presumption that humans are the primary cause. The effect has been to largely preordain scientific conclusions. It set in train a virtuous cycle where the more scientists pointed to human causes, the more governments funded their research.
At the same time, like primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to appease the gods, many governments, including Australia’s former Labor government, used the biased research to pursue “green” gesture politics. This has inflicted serious damage on economies and diminished the West’s standing and effectiveness in world affairs.
University of Pennsylvania professor of psychology Philip Tetlock explains: “When journal reviewers, editors and funding agencies feel the same way about a course, they are less likely to detect and correct potential logical or methodological bias.” How true. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its acolytes pay scant attention to any science, however strong the empirical evidence, that may relegate human causes to a lesser status.
This mindset sought to bury the results of Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark’s experiments using the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. For the first time in controlled conditions, Svensmark’s hypothesis that the sun alters the climate by influencing cosmic ray influx and cloud formation was validated. The head of CERN, which runs the laboratory, obviously afraid of how this heretical conclusion would be received within the global warming establishment, urged caution be used in interpreting the results “in this highly political area of climate change debate”. And the media obliged.
But Svensmark is not alone. For example, Russian scientists at the Pulkovo Observatory are convinced the world is in for a cooling period that will last for 200-250 years. Respected Norwegian solar physicist Pal Brekke warns temperatures may actually fall for the next 50 years. Leading British climate scientist Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, found 24 occasions in the past 10,000 years when the sun was declining as it is now, but could find none where the decline was as fast. He says a return of the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830), which included “the year without summer”, is “more likely than not”. In their book The Neglected Sun, Sebastian Luning and Fritz Varenholt think that temperatures could be two-tenths of a degree Celsius cooler by 2030 because of a predicted anaemic sun. They say it would mean “warming getting postponed far into the future”.
If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared. After the 2008 financial crisis, most economies are still struggling to recover. Cheap electricity in a colder climate will be critical, yet distorted price signals caused by renewable energy policies are driving out reliable baseload generators. Attracting fresh investment will be difficult, expensive and slow.
Only time will tell, but it is fanciful to believe that it will be business as usual in a colder global climate. A war-weary world’s response to recent events in the Middle East, Russia’s excursion into the Crimea and Ukraine and China’s annexation of air space over Japan’s Senkaku/Daioyu Islands has so far been muted. It is interesting to contemplate how the West would handle the geopolitical and humanitarian challenges brought on by a colder climate’s shorter growing seasons and likely food shortages. Abundance is conducive to peace. However, a scenario where nations are desperately competing for available energy and food will bring unpredictable threats, far more testing than anything we have seen in recent history.
During the past seven years, Australia has largely fallen into line with Western priorities and redistributive policies. It is reminiscent of a family that has inherited a vast fortune constantly fighting over the legacy but showing little interest in securing the future.
However, a country that is so rich in nature’s gifts should not be complacent or assume that in other circumstances there will not be adversaries prepared to take what we have.
But, in times of peace and when government debts and deficits are growing daily, it is hard to persuade voters to trade off immediate benefits for increased defence spending, let alone prepare them, after all the warming propaganda, that global cooling is a possibility.
Maurice Newman is chairman of the Australian Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council. The views expressed here are his own.
4) Alan Peacock (1922-2014): A Personal Record
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 August 2014
David Henderson
In the last decade of his life, Alan Peacock was closely involved with issues relating to climate change: these indeed became his chief single professional concern. As a result, he and I worked closely together, and on three occasions we were actually co-authors.
Our first joint piece was written in the summer of 2005, when together with two other economist colleagues, Ian Byatt and Colin Robinson, we submitted evidence to Sir Nicholas (later Lord) Stern in connection with the preparation of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. (The views and ideas we put forward in our memorandum of evidence fell on stony ground).
A further collaborative initiative came about in early 2006, when Stern brought out the text of a public lecture he had given, together with two accompanying documents. I then assembled a team of nine economists, and we published in the journal World Economics a joint article criticising these documents: it was entitled ‘Climate Change: The Stern Review “Oxonia Papers”’. Alongside the four of us just mentioned, the other five authors of the article were Ian Castles, Nigel Lawson, Ross McKitrick, Julian Morris and Robert Skidelsky. The journal published in the same issue a reply by Stern.
When the Stern Review itself appeared in late 2006, the nine of us, again including Alan, published a full review article in World Economics: it appeared there as Part II of a dual critique, with Part I written by a team of scientists and engineers which I had put together. (This latter team comprised Robert Carter, Chris de Freitas, Indur Goklany, David Holland and Richard Lindzen). In the introduction to the two papers, representing all 14 authors, we wrote that
‘In relation to both scientific and economic issues, we question the accuracy and completeness of the Review’s analysis and the objectivity of its treatment.’
In 2008 the Institute of Economic Affairs brought out a book of essays, edited by Colin Robinson, entitled Climate Change Policy: Challenging the Activists. Alan contributed a chapter entitled ‘Climate Change, Religion and Human Freedom’. His concluding words were that
‘… we should be wary of the dangers to individual freedom inherent in the present consensus about prospective climate change and how to deal with it’.
Byatt, Morris, Robinson and I were fellow-contributors to this volume.
In 2009 Nigel Lawson established the Global Warming Policy Foundation, with the object of making a distinctive and informed contribution to a climate change debate which from the outset, not least in Britain, had been one-sided and unbalanced (as it still is). Lawson is Chairman of the Foundation’s trustees; while its Director is Benny Peiser.
Lawson’s cause was one which Alan Peacock was happy to make his own: he was involved with the Foundation from its inception till his death.
The Foundation provides a continuing news service and commentary on climate change issues, and sponsors a range of publications from briefing notes to major reports. In the latter context, Lawson established an Academic Advisory Council, of which he has written:
‘It is a group of eminent academics and quasi-academics from a number of disciplines and with a range of views, scattered around the world, who can be called on to advise the Director (and whose advice we welcome even if it has not been sought!), to peer review the GWPF reports we are planning to publish, and to contribute to our website as and when they are able to do so.’
Peacock was a founding member of the Council (which I chair), and one of its most active participants. Right through these years, up to his last illness, he was a regular source of ideas and comments which were unfailingly informed, judicious, fair-minded and to the point.
As advisor, commentator, author and collaborator, Alan made over the last years of his life an outstanding contribution to the quality of the climate change debate in Britain. All of us who worked closely with him in this cause will miss him greatly and treasure his memory.
David Henderson
14 August 2014
