There now seems to be a trenchcoat war brewing between journalists over the Climategate whitewashes and the recent “blacklist”. For example, the WSJ recently ran a story on the folly of the Muir-Russell inquiry, and is being lambasted for taking a stand on the skeptical side. One journalistic camp accepts the blacklist and inquiry decision without question, the other camp sees through it and questions why such basic things as why the inquiries never talked to the plaintiffs (skeptics) and why climate activists need such a list at all except to isolate people.
One such war of words is taking place in an unlikely place ; on the pages of the Financial Post in Canada.
Two columns, two opinions. One in my opinion, ugly, the other matter of fact. You be the judge for yourselves which is which.
First excerpts from Jonathan Kay, titled “Bad Science: Global Warming Deniers are a Liability to the Conservative Cause.”
Followed by excerpts from Terrence Corcoran: Bad politics The politicization of climate science reaches new low with the development of a deniers blacklist
Jonathan Kay:
Let me be clear: Climate-change denialism does not comprise a conspiracy theory, per se: Those aforementioned 2% of eminent scientists prove as much. I personally know several denialists whom I generally consider to be intelligent and thoughtful. But the most militant denialists do share with conspiracists many of the same habits of mind. Oxford University scholar Steve Clarke and Brian Keeley of Washington University have defined conspiracy theories as those worldviews that trace important events to a secretive, nefarious cabal; and whose proponents consistently respond to contrary facts not by modifying their hypothesis, but instead by insisting on the existence of ever-wider circles of high-level conspirators controlling most or all parts of society. This describes, more or less, how radicalized warming deniers treat the subject of their obsession: They see global warming as a Luddite plot hatched by Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Al Gore to destroy industrial society. And whenever some politician, celebrity or international organization expresses support for the all-but-unanimous view of the world’s scientific community, they inevitably will respond with a variation of “Ah, so they’ve gotten to them, too.”
In support of this paranoid approach, the denialists typically will rely on stray bits of discordant information — an incorrect reference in a UN report, a suspicious-seeming “climategate” email, some hypocrisy or other from a bien-pensant NGO type — to argue that the whole theory is an intellectual house of cards. In these cases, one can’t help but be reminded of the folks who point out the fluttering American flag in the moon-landing photos, or the “umbrella man” from the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination.
In part, blame for all this lies with the Internet, whose blog-from-the-hip ethos has convinced legions of pundits that their view on highly technical matters counts as much as peer-reviewed scientific literature. But there is something deeper at play, too — a basic psychological instinct that public-policy scholars refer to as the “cultural cognition thesis,” described in a recently published academic paper as the observed principle that “individuals tend to form perceptions of risk that reflect and reinforce one or another idealized vision of how society should be organized … Thus, generally speaking, persons who subscribe to individualistic values tend to dismiss claims of environmental risks, because acceptance of such claims implies the need to regulate markets, commerce and other outlets for individual strivings.”
======================================================
Terrence Corcoran:
The reason for noting all this is that “Expert Credibility in Climate Change” was the spring board for a piece in yesterday’s National Post by Jonathan Kay, titled “Bad Science: Global Warming Deniers are a Liability to the Conservative Cause.” The paper, he said, shows that only a tiny sliver of fringe opinion held skeptical views of climate science, and that fringe smacks of right-wing conspiratorial craziness. “One can’t help but be reminded of the folks who point out the fluttering American flag in the moon landing photos, or the ‘umbrella man’ from the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination.”
One of the first principles of good science and even in life is that before you start jumping up and down on the diving board to do a cannonball into the pool, it is best to first make sure there is water in the pool. This is especially true if the pool is maintained by the scientific mop-and-pail crew that produced “Expert Credibility in Climate Change.”
The paper was cited on Green blogs such as desmogblog as the work of “Stanford University researchers” and by Mr. Kay as “scholars” from Stanford University and the University of Toronto.
Let me introduce the scholars.
James W. Prall, a system administrator and tech support contact for all research computing at the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Toronto. That’s his day job. When not doing that, Mr. Prall spends his free time developing and maintaining a list of some 2,100 climate scientists and ranking them according to whether or not they are climate deniers. Mr. Prall’s academic background is unclear, although his blog site informs he is a Virgo. His views of climate issues are clear, however. He is “all too familiar with the tiny minority of ‘climate skeptics’ or ‘deniers’ who try to minimize the problem, absolve humans of any major impact, or suggest there is no need to take any action. I’ve gotten pretty fed up with the undue weight given to the skeptics in the media and online.”
William R. L. Anderegg, the lead author of the paper, is a biology student at Stanford who did his honours thesis on wetland bird populations. He is a climate activist and a member of Students for a Sustainable Stanford. His picture suggests a free spirit. Astrological sign not readily available.
Jacob Harold, who holds an MBA from Stanford’s business school, makes his main living as a program officer in the philanthropy program at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, set up by one of the founders of Hewlett-Packard and now a giant $7-billion cash machine for green activism and research all over North America, including Canada’s anti-fish farm movement. Mr. Harold’s staff bio at Hewlett says he spent a year “as a grassroots organizer with Green Corps, where he led campaigns on climate change, forest protection and tobacco control.” There is nothing in the postings to indicate whether the Hewlett Foundation funded the black list paper or Mr. Prall’s research. Nor is it clear what role Mr. Harold played in the research.
Stephen H. Schneider is the only member of the four co-authors who can claim status as a scholar. He is Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University, author of 450 scientific papers, and a genuine climate scientist, including a lead author on the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Without Prof. Schneider as a co-author, it seems doubtful the prestigious National Academy of Sciences would have published “Expert Credibility in Climate Change.”
Prof. Schneider is also notorious for his views on how climate science should be conducted. Climate scientists, he once said, are like most people. “We’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. “
That’s the scholarly science team that’s maintaining the pool that Jonathan Kay is jumping into, the only scholar being a man who believes in scary scenarios and avoiding doubts.
UPDATE:
While both articles are presented here for readers, over at Climate Progress, Joe Romm doesn’t have the integrity to put up excerpts and links to both sides of what’s going on at that newspaper, only the side he likes, while at the same time bashing WUWT saying it has reached “peak traffic”. Heh. Will he post excerpts or links to Corcoran’s essay to give CP even a thin residue of balance? Doubtful.
Ian MacEwan ( the novelist) is obviously having problems sorting reality from fiction. He thinks sceptical scientists are OK but the denialists are ‘different and extremely well funded, particularly in America’. How does one engage with MacEwan and people with similar views who give every indication of delusional thinking?
And I see now why I have missed out on my share of the enormous Denialist funding – I am not living in America!
Their conclusion: The group that is skeptical of the evidence of man-made global warming “comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate researchers as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications)…”
So, someone’s “climate expertise” is now ranked by the sheer volume of papers he cranks out, regardless of the quality of work?
Cool. By that metric, I can write 200 three-pagers on helicopter air combat maneuvering and declare myself the leading expert in helicopter-vs-helicopter combat.
*koff*
Shub Niggurath, the retraction was in error.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/retract_the_retraction
In fact, you could have read right here that the retraction was in error.
When you have no proof, it comes down to trust.
It’s almost impossible to get trust back.
and the vast majority of people are tired of being lied to.
The polls are showing that.
Bernie July 17, 2010 at 4:00 am
Beth Cooper July 17, 2010 at 5:17 am
The Guardian ‘debate’? The Guardian’s CIF forum is the most heavily censored blog on the planet! I used to post there until I finally got irritated enough to post the following.
“How strange. I wonder why that comment was censored – sorry I meant ‘moderated’. It was a polite enquiry to another poster who happens to use the phrase “Peace and Love” at the end of each post as does another poster but under another name in the blogosphere. Why’s the word ‘moderated’ being used rather than censored. My feelings won’t be hurt if my post has been censored for immoderate language or content. Is it a spin thing? Of course it is. It’s my fault for being ‘immoderate’ rather than the censors fault for ‘censoring’.
I wonder why? I suppose there’s the central problem – I’m beginning to wonder why. After a while one begins to express oneself in such a way as to avoid the attention of the internet God of ‘moderation’. The first flagstone to conformity on this bastion of freedom of expression called the internet. “Sleepwalking into the surveillance society …”
I believe it was Walter Cronkite who observed that of all the kinds of censorship, the most pernicious is self-censorship.”
The result was immediate banning from posting and the removal of pretty much everything I’d posted there! There’s nothing so intolerant as a liberal blog …
Pointman
Like most Climate bedwetters, Kay talks out of both sides of his mouth. First he says:
“Let me be clear: Climate-change denialism does not comprise a conspiracy theory, per se:” Then, in the same paragraph he opines:
“They see global warming as a Luddite plot hatched by Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Al Gore to destroy industrial society.”
So; not an actual conspiracy, just a plot, hatched by the usual suspects. Got it.
Predictably, Kay’s diatribe reads like a laundry list of all the wrong-headed, ad hominem and straw man-laced Alarmist arguments, such as referring to thermogeddonists’ view as “the all-but-unanimous view of the world’s scientific community”, appealing to both Authority and Consensus in one fell swoop.
Fortunately, his is but a last-gasp rallying cry of a dying ideology, and will most likely do more harm to his side than good.
Is it just me or does anyone else see something significant in how the Grauniad has referred to the debate and Steve M?
“Steve McIntyre, editor of ClimateAudit: It was hard to reconcile the much-demonised McIntyre with the open and avuncular Canadian on the stage. Despite being the highest-profile critic of CRU, he pointed out none of the three enquires had asked him to give evidence…”
Hard to reconcile? Much demonised? – who has been doing the demonising, George if not you and your ilk?
And why should it come as a surprise? Is it because you adopted a belief without verifying its truth? Hmmm.
The more I read and learn about the whole question of AGW the more I see the pro AGW side looking like a faith-based belief system (aka a religion).
Bring on more of these debates – and isn’t it telling that open debate is what many pro AGWers seem to be wary of? Spending time (and someone’s money) preventing debate (emails passim) and shouting down those who have questions, issuing lists of those they see as an enemy (when what THEY are doing is asking questions) looks rather like the Spanish Inquisition to me.
And no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition…
I scrubbed down a Microsoft Internet Keyboard, took off the top, popped out all 104 plastic keys, cleaned and dried all 105 pieces, reassembled. Looks almost new. On first test there was a stuck key. Rather than have the rubbery bits between the keys and the circuitry sheets be a one-piece layer as on my Dell keyboard, there are many little rubbery “towers” lightly stuck on the sheets, and some had come loose. By sticking those into the backs of their respective keys before assembly, alignment was assured.
Just conducted the second test this morning, on my Dell P4 with Debian GNU/Linux, modem off. System had some quirks, setting it to “Microsoft Internet Keyboard” helped some, but it was incredibly sluggish. Firefox was very bad, almost unresponsive. I hot-swapped to my old Dell keyboard and reset to “Generic 104 key” then went to Hibernate to make sure the system recognized it. On awakening the browser was still sluggish, I closed all tabs then the browser (which took a while), restarted browser, now everything is normal. I conclude the MS keyboard was sending a high volume of system requests, upon return from hibernate the browser, at the state it was before hibernation, was still trying to process all of them.
The modem was off, no internet access. Was the keyboard desperately trying to phone home to Microsoft? Does Microsoft have some sort of “asset tracking” routine built into the keyboard? Or could there even be a keylogging “virus” in the keyboard trying to upload? Or should I assume something somewhat less paranoid, that Microsoft made sure its keyboard would only work well with a M$ OS?
Remember: “Just because you’re paranoid does not mean that someone is not out to get you.” 😉
I think the thing that intrigues me the most about AGW is the need to shape an opponent’s views in a way that is most easy to dismiss. From Jonathan Kay’s article…
“Have you heard about the “growing number” of eminent scientists who reject the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are increasing the earth’s temperature?”
There are certainly some people that think that man-made greenhouse gases aren’t increasing the earth’s temp. There are some that will read this post. And I’m not sure there is actual evidence to disprove them. But, I suspect, most people that come here agree that CO2 does increase the earth’s temp. The questions are by how much, and will that increase be catastrophic? That is what I question, anyway. What is being rejected is not the science, but the prognostications about the science. So Kay, in his first sentence, creates a straw man he can ridicule, that really isn’t all that reflective of the debate at all.
Conversely, when describing the side he wants to praise, we describes them as such…
“…[about] 97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of [man-made global warming].””
So, to be on that team, you need only agree with the “tenents” of man-made global warming. What that details isn’t clear. But by most reasonable definitions, I suspect Kay would be surprised at the number and the notoriety of the scientists and blogging “sceptics” that believe in the “tenants” of global warming.
So really, he doesn’t disagree with the sceptic’s science. It is their reaction to the science, and their reluctance to raise the alarm with him, that Kay takes issue with. Kay’s sides are not those that accept science and those that “deny” science, although he’d like you to believe that. For Kay, the sides are those that are willing to trumpet the evils of capitalism and consumerism, even in the face of uncertainty about the science, and those that aren’t. And that’s just regular old politics.
Jonathan Kay showed great courage in his column. Clinging to bad or nonexistent science in order to justify big cars, mansions, and gubmint-out-of-my-life could make the conservative movement irrelevant.
We need conservative ideas, and government is often not the solution. Hitching wagons to paid propagandists and sunset industries who make baseless claims about climate science is not a good idea, and many conservatives privately agree with Kay.
As for Corcoran, he questions the credentials of authors who have performed a routine journalistic investigation. He does not bother to dispute the fruits of that effort, because he cannot.
REPLY: “Clinging to bad or nonexistent science in order to justify big cars, mansions… ” Wait, are you talking about Al Gore’s bad science, mansions, cars etc?
From Corcoran:
“Mr. Prall spends his free time developing and maintaining a list of some 2,100 climate scientists and ranking them according to whether or not they are climate deniers.”
And how does one rank “denialists” after they’ve been put on the list? It’s easy to pick one of the familiar names and put them at the top. How does one go about deciding if “denialist #637” really, REALLY should be ranked ahead of “denialist #638”?
And when the trials start, is it fair to sentence “denialist #419” to 6 months less gulag time than “denialist #377”? Are we just let going to let “denialist #1776” off with a slap on the wrist and 2 months of re-education?
I’m sure Mr. Prall does it all very scientifically, don’t you know. The reprisals will be fair and balanced. Someone ought to use the FOI Act and make sure Mr. Prall is using proper, objective criteria.
(Sigh… to /sarc or not to /sarc? That is the question.)
I think we should all have weather by consensus. Every day hand out a ballot as to what that person wants the weather to be. Count up the ballots and ta da that is the weather. It takes a good liberal arts education to even conceive that consensus means anything in the physical sciences. Accepted working hypothesis and simplifications are used all the time in science and engineering, but with the knowledge that they are a hypothesis and not a fact, and a simplification, not a truism. About the only science in which a consensus is even remotely valid is medicine. You may have a patient present with symptoms that may come from one of several diseases and the only way to find out which it really is would be an autopsy. Fortunately those type of diseases are getting fewer and fewer, but still you reach a consensus between several MDs as to how to treat the patient when such patients present.
The alarmist creed..
There is no conspiracy; it’s a conspiracy by big oil to promote the myth of a conspiracy
Mr Kay is the offspring of a talented and erudite lady by the name of Barbara Kay; a fine and distinguished woman of letters, who also happens to be an opinion writer at the National Post. I think it is clear just why Mr Kay has a job where his mommy works. And try as he might, he never quite manages to rise beyond his childish need to hurl invective where argument is needed, nor use thoughtful reasoning in place of his favored hyperbole. Poor wee Johnnie. Always resorting to vitriol and slander in his need to be seen out of the shelter of his mother’s skirts. Conservatism is well served by the likes of Mrs Kay. I’m not quite sure just what Mr Kay claims to bring to the game, but conservatives continue to manage just fine without him.
It’s surprising they don’t talk about money, who gets it, who spends it and who benefits. The basis of the AGW hoax is the dividing up other people’s money … In other words politics wrapped in a science veneer. Maybe the real science people would like to form up a breakout group and pursue truth.
There is nothing in the whole process that says otherwise. It’s as if collective salivation, Marxism, will save all people on planet earth, with few exceptions. It’s surely not about science, for if it were, wouldn’t Africans have DDT to save them from malaria … Just as an aside.
It would be far better for people on earth if we allowed Africans to build coal plants too. Think how much better and improved their lives would be with just something like electricity.
Even though I only agree with one of the columnists (Terrence), I think it’s great the paper can have these completely opposite viewpoints! That makes things interesting. I wish more papers would do that.
Mr Kay is as much a scholar as Mary Kay of cosmetics infamy.
One can laugh at Kay’s presenting Jim Prall the IT tech from University of Toronto as a “scholar”especially when one knows how he assembled his database…
If Jonathan Kay cannot even informed himself on the key paper he articulates his argument upon then what the heck is a news organization paying this clown for? Agit prop?
HMMMmmm,
Seems we struck a nerve. I guess Jonathan Kay does not like the fact some commenters at the WUWT article on July 6th, Sustainability Teaching: “lack of ethical dimension” traced CAGW to a CRU e-mail that referenced Global Governance.
One of the scenarios actually referenced in the Climategate e-mail, 4. Sustainable Development (B1) traces back to UN Agenda 21 the e-mail even mentions Global Governance.
Here is the actual connection between Sustainable Development (B1) and Agenda 21.
“* Sustainable Development ====================
B1] 13th session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
(Source: Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Vol. 5 No. 218, 11 Apr 05)
The thirteenth session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-13) takes place from 11-22 April 2005, at UN headquarters in New York. CSD-13 is the second session to be held since the new multi-year programme of work was adopted at CSD-11 in 2003. The new work programme restructured CSD’s work on the basis of two-year “Implementation Cycles.” Each Implementation Cycle is comprised of a Review Year and a Policy Year, and focuses on a thematic cluster of issues. Building on the outcomes of CSD-12 (which was the Review Year of the first cycle), CSD-13 will focus on policies and options to expedite implementation of commitments in the areas of water, sanitation and human settlements, as contained in Agenda 21, the Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and the Millennium Declaration. Various cross-cutting issues will also be addressed. “
If you do a bit of digging you find the UN sponsored Commission of Global Governance and the Father of Global Warming Maurice Strong. Dig further and you find Strong presented a paper to the UN UN REFORM – Restructuring for Global Governance
My computer does not support youtube but useless eater recommended:
AGENDA 21 FOR DUMMIES
NWO / CLUB OF ROME DEPOPULATION & AGENDA 21
Here is 4. Sustainable Development (B1) as depicted in the Climate Gate E-mail.
The central elements of this scenario family include high levels of
environmental and social consciousness, successful governance including
major social innovation, and reductions in income and social inequality.
Successful forms of governance allow many problems which are currently hard
or difficult to resolve to fall within the competency of government and
other organisations. Solutions reflect a wide stakeholder dialogue leading
to consent on international environmental and social agreements. This is
coupled with bottom-up solutions to problems, which reflect wide success in
getting broad-based support within communities.
The concerns over global sustainable development, expressed in a myriad of
environmental and social issues, results in the eventual successful
management of the interaction between human activities and the biosphere….”
Sounds like a lovely green utopia doesn’t it.
Who is Ged Davis? (straight from the guy’s mouth)
“Ged Davis is the global energy assessment co-president at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), an international research organization conducting inter-disciplinary scientific studies on environmental, economic, technological, and social issues in the context of human dimensions of global change. Until March 2007 he was managing director of the World Economic Forum, responsible for global research, scenario projects, and the design of the annual Forum meeting at Davos, which brings together 2,400 corporate, government, and non-profit leaders to shape the global agenda. Before joining the Forum, Ged spent 30 years with Royal Dutch/Shell, which he joined in 1972. Most recently, he was the vice-president of global business environment for Shell International in London, and head of Shell’s scenario planning team. Ged is a member of the InterAcademy Council Panel on “Transitions to Sustainable Energy”, a director of Low Carbon Accelerator Limited, a governor of the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa and a member of the INDEX Design Awards Jury. He has led a large number of scenario projects during his career, including the multi-year, multi-stakeholder scenarios on the future of sustainability for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and was facilitator of the last IPCC emissions scenarios.”
No connections here it is all a Denialist Conspiracy Theory – move along nothing to see here.
“jcrabb says:
July 17, 2010 at 12:35 am
Heratland compiled a list of papers that dispute AGW, is that also a blacklist?”
T.C. asks…
What is Heratland? A tiny nation on Atlantis?
I have been a subscriber to the National Post for quite awhile now. Jonathan Kay has always stuck out as different from the rest of the editorial staff (like a big pink and green thumb). I imagine he thinks he brings a “balanced perspective” to the pages of the NP. But really, it is just the same tired liberal-left green tripe you see parroted in every other Canadian newspaper. Back when the NP was first introduced to the Canadian market, Canada’s other newspaper, The Grope and Flail, er, The Globe and Mail, a liberal-left green newspaper that spewed out pablum to the masses, was eliminated from the market in Western Canada. For years afterwards The Globe and Mail was given away in banks and bus depots. Nobody would buy it. I imagine Jonathan Kay sees it as his duty to bring a little something of Globe and Mail’s perspective back to the ignorant masses in these markets.
History will judge these people as fools who wanted to jump ship and abandon the dream of human liberty and progress over a trace gas.
jcrabb says: July 17, 2010 at 12:35 am
Heratland compiled a list of papers that dispute AGW, is that also a blacklist?
As you are no doubt aware, crab, Stanford Professor Naomi Oreskes published a paper titled Beyond the Ivory Tower in SCIENCE which purported to demonstrate that there were no articles challenging AGW in the professional literature. Her claim made its way in Gore’s film. The Heartland Institute list is a rebuttal to that canard.
The next position out of Stanford was, of course, Expert Credibility In Climate Change which now admits, essentially, that Oreskes was wrong, there really are papers in the literature written by real scientists that challenge the AGW position, but they really don’t matter because they are not as intellectually sharp or well-informed as the vast, over-whelming majority of credible climate scientists.
Notice a pattern here, crab? Both papers were unbelievably shoddy. i am also intrigued by the way Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus seems to be gaining traction. I was rather appalled the first time I read it and promised myself I’d write a review… it’s better than ECICC, but not by much.
But you already knew all that, didn’t you? Your only purpose here is to distort and dissemble. Must be a satisfying way of life.
Journalism, if not dead, is in a deep coma. Yesterday on CBS radio news a spokesperson for some “climate research data center” or such (did not catch the actual organization name, NCDC?) was put on to tell us that the regional summer hot spell we are experiencing is due to “greenhouse gasses” after which the CBS sod noted that we “just need to get used to it”. Not nearly as hot here in WY and the NW as 4 years ago and overall we have had an unusually cool, wet spring. No note of that. Also yesterday NPR (National Politbureau Radio) reported the job losses and economic decline in LA due to the BP oil spill never noting the even more extreme economic decline caused by the moritorium on deep well drilling. Drillers do make and spend more than fishermen or tourists in that economy not to mention the future impact of the decline in oil and gas production.
I thought it was interesting that Kay rails against the internet because it
So lets look at just one of the bits of info I found googling Ged Davis as I mentioned above.
Gee Oen comment from the man himself confirms the Oil – IPCC – Council for Sustainable Development connection. but don’t look folks you might come up with a GASP “Conspiracy Theory”
Who is Ged Davis? (straight from the guy’s mouth)
“Ged Davis is the global energy assessment co-president at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), an international research organization conducting inter-disciplinary scientific studies on environmental, economic, technological, and social issues in the context of human dimensions of global change. Until March 2007 he was managing director of the World Economic Forum, responsible for global research, scenario projects, and the design of the annual Forum meeting at Davos, which brings together 2,400 corporate, government, and non-profit leaders to shape the global agenda. Before joining the Forum, Ged spent 30 years with Royal Dutch/Shell, which he joined in 1972. Most recently, he was the vice-president of global business environment for Shell International in London, and head of Shell’s scenario planning team. Ged is a member of the InterAcademy Council Panel on “Transitions to Sustainable Energy”, a director of Low Carbon Accelerator Limited, a governor of the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa and a member of the INDEX Design Awards Jury. He has led a large number of scenario projects during his career, including the multi-year, multi-stakeholder scenarios on the future of sustainability for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and was facilitator of the last IPCC emissions scenarios.”
Couldn’t stand to read anymore of this condescending crap. Gee! the guy actually knows not one, not two, but several denialists.