Truly inconvenient truths about climate change being ignored

Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply. As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: "We're at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]".

Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there's been a sharp cooling. These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.

So it's disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri's presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.

Later that night, on ABC TV's Lateline program, Pachauri claimed that those who disagree with his own views on global warming are "flat-earthers" who deny "the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence". But what evidence could be more important than the temperature record, which Pachauri himself had fudged only a few hours earlier?

In his talk, Pachauri said the number of global warming sceptics is shrinking, a curious claim he was unable to substantiate when questioned about it on Lateline. Still, there's no doubt a majority of climate scientists agree with the view of the IPCC.

Today I want to look at why this might be so: after all, such a state of affairs presents a challenge to sceptics such as me. If we're right, then an awful lot of scientists are wrong. How could this be? This question was addressed in September in a paper by Professor Richard Lindzen, of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, probably the most qualified prominent global-warming sceptic, suggested that a number of changes in the way science is conducted have contributed to the rise of climate alarmism among American scientists.

Central to this is the importance of government funding to science. Much of that funding since World War II has occurred because scientists build up public fears (examples include fear of the USSR's superiority in weapons or space travel, of health problems, of environmental degradation) and offer themselves as the solution to those fears. The administrators who work with the scientists join in with enthusiasm: much of their own funding is attached to the scientific grants. Lindzen says this state of affairs favours science involving fear, and also science that involves expensive activities such as computer modelling. He notes we have seen "the de-emphasis of theory because of its difficulty and small scale, the encouragement of simulation instead (with its call for large capital investment in computation), and the encouragement of large programs unconstrained by specific goals.

"In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and [computer] programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage."

Lindzen believes another problem with climate science is that in America and Europe it is heavily colonised by environmental activists. Here are just two examples that indicate the scale of the problem: the spokesman for the American Meteorological Society is a former staffer for Al Gore, and realclimate.org, probably the world's most authoritative alarmist web site, was started by a public relations firm serving environmental causes.

None of this is necessarily sinister, but the next time you hear a scientist or scientific organisation warning of climate doom, you might want to follow the money trail. Sceptics are not the only ones who have received funding from sources sympathetic to their viewpoint. (And yes, Lindzen did once receive some money from energy companies.)

Lindzen claims that scientific journals play an important role in promoting global warming alarmism, and gives a number of examples. Someone else who's looked closely at scientific journals (although not specifically those dealing with climate science) is epidemiologist John Ioannidis of the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. He reached the surprising conclusion that most published research findings are proved false within five years of their publication. (Lest he be dismissed as some eccentric, I note that the Economist recently said Ioannidis has made his case "quite convincingly".)

Why might this be so? Later work by Ioannidis and colleagues suggests that these days journal editors are more likely to publish research that will make a splash than that which will not. They do this to sell more copies of their publications and of reprints of papers in it. Ioannidis believes these publication practices might be distorting science.

It's possible the forces described by Lindzen and Ioannidis have imbued climate science with a preference for results that involve (or seem to involve) disastrous change rather than stability. Rajenda Pachauri's recent Sydney lecture suggests that in this relatively new field, inconvenient truths to the contrary are not welcome.

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For a full scholarly paper showing that Pachauri is wrong, see here. The graph below is taken from that paper. It shows the global temperature data derived from land-based measurements by Britain's Hadley Centre (HADCRUT) and the American satellite data from the University of Alabama (UAH). Both datasets show 1998 as the warmest of the last 10 years. The paper also evaluates in detail the significance of that datum and what influences produced it.








Employment figures riding the storm

An extra 34,300 jobs together with an unchanged unemployment rate of 4.3 per cent showed Australia was still weathering the global financial crisis. But Employment Minister Julia Gillard said the impact of the crisis would come soon. After weeks of negative data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics jobs figures for October had been expected to record a fall. Instead the number of part-time jobs grew while full-time employment slipped by just 9200. But Ms Gillard warned that the global crisis will impact on employment. "The Government does expect to see unemployment rise," she said.

CommSec chief equities economist Craig James hailed the figures as sensational. "Not only is it a great shot in the arm for the economy but for the confidence of consumers and businesses across the nation," Mr James said.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said the Government should be focusing its attention on jobs now. "We've got to make sure that every decision, whether it is relating to fiscal policy or monetary policy, is focused on jobs, jobs, jobs," Mr Turnbull said. "We've got to make sure that as we go into times of forecasted slowing growth that Australians stay in work and that employment remains high."

In its Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook released yesterday, Treasurer Wayne Swan forecast that the unemployment rate would rise to 5 per cent by June 2009 and 5.75 per cent by June 2010. Economists have described the forecasts as optimistic. Recently several big companies have said they will offload staff, including Ford, Optus, Boeing and the ANZ Bank.

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Killer delays from ambulance service in Victoria

Victoria's ambulance service needs a major overhaul, especially when it comes to treating children with asthma, the grieving father of a young footballer said yesterday. And paramedics are frustrated that they are "always playing catch-up" with their huge workload and lack of resources, an inquest was told.

Peter Hindhaugh, whose son Jake died after suffering an asthma attack and cardiac arrest, said long delays, a better priority system and better response times needed to be addressed in a system that was already overcrowded.

The Coroner's Court heard that had an ambulance arrived within seven to eight minutes of Jake's respiratory or cardiac arrest on April 15 last year the outcome may have been different. Instead it took an ambulance 24 minutes to arrive after his parents made an emergency call to 000. Jake, 11, suffered an asthma attack 30 minutes after playing his 50th match with the Yarra Glen Junior Football Club -- a day after ambulances treated him for two other attacks. Paramedics arrived 18 minutes late on one of those occasions. He had brain damage by the time he was revived by paramedics and four days later his life support was switched off.

Coroner Jane Hendtlass yesterday said Jake's death provided a very valuable case study of what Ambulance Victoria needed to think about. The inquest heard that the Metropolitan Ambulance Service did not review Jake's case after his death because the MAS did not review asthma cases. Operations quality improvement boss Kevin Masci said the MAS did not find out about the outcome of Jake's case until it was contacted by the Coroner's Office about the inquest. "In our case we at least got Jake to hospital alive but we don't know what happened three to four days later," he said. "Unless we get a complaint or a physician rings up we don't know." Mr Masci said the delay in dispatching an ambulance in rural areas or the outer suburbs was frustrating because of the lack of resources.

Outside court Mr Hindhaugh said Jake's death was a clear example the system was beyond its limits and needed immediate intervention. He and his wife, Cheryl, also want recommendations for teachers and the parents of asthmatic children to be trained to deal with attacks.

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A mental health system that is as crazy as its inmates

Prisoner with murder plan released from Queensland jail, kills man days later

A dangerous mentally ill prisoner killed a man eight days after leaving jail after warning he would do so two months before his release. An under-resourced and under-staffed Queensland prison Mental Health service cleared his release despite him telling his prison psychiatrist that he wanted to "achieve" killing a man.

A coronial inquest into the fatal bashing of John Simpson, 56, has exposed a struggling system which has no legal means of keeping dangerous prisoners behind bars. It was told this week neither Dr William Kingswell, former director of the central and southern zones Forensic Mental Health Services and the man's psychiatrist at the time, nor other officials who were told of the threat, informed the man's mother or the private psychiatrist who would care for him on his release.

The inquest, which will continue into the new year, was also told by current Prison Mental Health Services director Dr Edward Heffernan that the agency was "50 per cent underfunded". It had 3.5 full-time clinical staff to treat about 1000 prisoners with mental illness in eight state jails.

Dr Kingswell said there were "significant barriers to information sharing (about mentally ill prisoners) that persisted" between Corrective Services, the Queensland Health-linked Prison Mental Health Services and Disability Services Queensland. Dr Kingswell, who was not made aware of notes taken by Corrective Services and DSQ staff that showed his client was dysfunctional and experiencing delusions, also accused DSQ of "abandoning" its clients if they were jailed. He said offenders with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders needed to be diverted from jail in the way those with mental illness were.

Mr Simpson, whose daughter called for the coronial inquiry, was slain on June 3, 2005, in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, where he had fallen asleep. In her letter to the State Coroner last year, his daughter wrote that the public's safety had been jeopardised "because it appears that the (prison) system does not have a safety net for violent, mentally ill people who have been released".

Her father's 33-year-old killer had been released from the Maryborough Correction Centre on May 26, 2005, after serving three years for attacking a Sunshine Coast taxi driver with scissors and a hammer in 2002. Last September he was found by Mental Health Court Justice Anthe Philippides to be unfit to stand trial for the murder and ordered to be held at The Park high security mental health facility west of Brisbane, where he continues to be treated. The inquest heard the man, who had a developmental disability from birth, had over the years been diagnosed with conditions ranging from Asperger's Syndrome to schizophrenia. His mother had asked that her son be cared for in a high security psychiatric facility after his release.

Dr Kingswell said he knew the man was dangerous but there was no legal means to detain him once he had served his time. He could have arranged community-based mental health care for the man but his mother had said she had no faith in the service. A raft of lawyers packed Court 4 at the Brisbane Magistrate's Court complex every day this week for the inquest.

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