Guest post by Tom Harris
Besides the obvious bias we have come to expect from most main stream media coverage of climate change, “Climate of Doubt“, aired Tuesday night on PBS’s Frontline, committed one serious mistake that can not be left unaddressed.
Frontline repeatedly implied that there is an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that our CO2 emissions are driving us to a global climate catastrophe. They cited 97% as the fraction of the climate science community who agreed with climate alarmism.
That number is easily dismissed. It comes from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. Strangely, the researchers chose to eliminate almost all the scientists from the survey and so ended up with only 77 people, 75 of whom, or 97%, thought humans contributed to climate change.
Besides the fact that, with tens of thousands of climate scientists in the world, 77 is a trivial sample size, the survey coordinators did not ask respondents how much humans had contributed to climate change. The poll is therefore meaningless.
In reality, no one knows, or even currently can know, what the “consensus” is in the world climate science community. This is because there has never been a meaningful, comprehensive worldwide poll about the topic among the thousands of scientists who specialize in the many relevant disciplines.
Scientific theories are never proven by a show of hands, of course. Otherwise, the Earth would still be considered flat and space travel impossible. It is indeed those who go against the flow—independent, original thinkers –who are usually responsible for our most meaningful advances in science.
But, most reporters, politicians and the public understand little of the scientific method and even less about the exceptionally complex field of climate change science. Consequently, they often look for an indication of ‘consensus’ when trying to decide which science should form the basis of important public policies decisions. Distasteful though this is to pure scientists, it is a reality we need to recognize and it is therefore important to try to decide whether a reliable determination of ‘consensus’ has been made about the causes of climate change.
First, it is important to realize that, of the prominent national and international science bodies that have issued official statements that are in support of the CO2/climate crisis hypothesis, none released results that show a majority of their members agreeing with the assertion.
For example, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) and a leading Canadian energy expert, “Archie” Robinson of Deep River, Ontario, explains what happened with a Royal Society (the world’s oldest scientific organisation) climate initiative supporting the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report:
“the president of the Royal Society of London … drafted a resolution in favour and circulated it to other academies of science inviting co-signing. … The president of the RSC, not a member of the [RSC’s] Academy of Science, received the invitation. He considered it consistent with the position of the great majority of scientists, as repeatedly but erroneously claimed by Kyoto proponents, and so signed it. The resolution was not referred to the Academy of Science for comment, not even to its council or president.”
A similar episode happened in the United States and Russia concerning the Royal Society effort and a survey of pronouncements from other science bodies reveals that they are usually just the opinions of the groups’ executives or committees specifically appointed by the executive. The rank and file scientist members are rarely consulted at all.
But what about the supposedly authoritarian United Nations IPCC report that constitutes the foundation of most official climate concerns today? Media and politicians tell us that 2,500 official “expert reviewers” who worked with the UN body on its most recent (2007, the fourth) “Assessment Report” (called “AR4”) agreed with its conclusions. Perhaps most importantly, in Chapter 9 of the IPCC Working Group I report (“The Physical Science Basis”, reporting on the extent and possible causes of past climate change as well as future ‘projections’) appears the following assertion: “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”
Determining how many of the “2500 scientists” are known to actually agree with this statement is difficult, but we do know how many commented on anything in Chapter 9. Sixty-two is the number (see this analysis). The vast majority of the expert reviewers are not known to have examined this or related statements. Instead they would have focused on a page or two in the AR4 report that most related to their specialties, usually having little or nothing to do with greenhouse gases (CO2 or otherwise). And, of those sixty-two experts who did comment this chapter, the vast majority were not independent or impartial since most were employees of governments that had already decided before the report was written (indeed, as MIT Professor Richard Lindzen, a past IPCC lead author, explains, before much of the research had even begun) that human CO2 emissions are driving us to climate catastrophe.
When one eliminates reviewers with clear vested interest, we end up with a grand total of “just seven who may have been independent and impartial”, according to Australian climate data analyst, John McLean (see his report). And, two of those are known to vehemently disagree with the statement. Prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider Dr. Mike Hulme even admits that “only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies”, not thousands as is commonly asserted by the IPCC and others, “reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate” (p. 10, 11 of Hulme’s April 12, 2010 paper in “Progress in Physical Geography” at http://tinyurl.com/2b3cq3r). It is travesty that the UN permits this misunderstanding to continue uncorrected.
To meaningfully assert that there is a consensus in any field, we need to actually have convincing evidence. And the best way to gather this evidence is to conduct unbiased, comprehensive worldwide polls. Since this has never been done in the vast community of scientists who research the causes of global climate change, we simply do not know what, if any, consensus exists among these experts. Lindzen concludes: “there is no [known] consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them.” Frontline did a disservice to the public telling them otherwise.
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition – http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/ and an advisor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
@Duster
The grand finale here is that the post is a guest post. Did you actually read it? So why should Anthony Watts, rather than the author, do all this acknowledging you think is necessary?
You are right, my apologies I didn’t see that it was a guest post.
Let me switch the point that the article is factually incorrect to Tom Harris.
@D Patterson, Duster, J Martin
I find it interesting that you engage with arguments I have not made.
I am simply (a) showing that the author has his basic facts wrong on the paper used by PBS – a point which none of my rebutters has actually mentioned – odd since it is the meat of my post and (b) that there are several lines of evidence that conclusively show a consensus, including several peer-reviewed surveys of climate scientists, surveys of the actual peer-reviewed literature, the positions of the world’s NAoS and of course the fact that not a single scientific institution in the world dissents from AGW.
Now, all of you make value judgements on this consensus and rebuttals to points I never actually made.
I am simply correcting the author of this piece. Is there something factually inaccurate in my statements? Because I am not interested in an exchange of values, I know yours and you can guess mine, and there can be no reasoned discussion in this forum on that basis.
Also, another elephant in the room is also lurking in the conclusions of the two studies. The fact that both studies reach precisely the same figure is not just surprising, it is downright suspicious.
The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science and the University of Chicago have together conspired to fraudulently produce surveys of climate opinion?
Can you think of another possible reason why two papers found the same degree of consensus in the scientific community? Any reason at all?
@J Martin
Sceptical Tom. There is a saying that your post brings to mind.
‘A fool and his money are easily parted’.
I’m sure you’re right J. Unfortunately since this post is as undecipherable as the texts of certain pre-Hispanic Mexican civilizations, I’ll never be able to tell.
ScepticalTom:
At October 24, 2012 at 1:16 pm you ask
Allow me to provide an answer.
The two papers each defined ‘climate scientists’ in such a way that from a finding of 10,257 scientists who publish on climate science all except 77 were excluded and of that small number almost all are pro-AGW.
In fact, that is what was done.
Richard
My apologies sir.
Don’t blame me, I have ADD!
Seriously, I read only the first few paragraphs. I stand corrected.
Okay all you wonderfully intelligent eggheads, just a word from an average US taxpaying citizen here to add a different perspective. Whatever was or wasn’t true in the Frontline show is moot at least to me an average Joe. It’s not the scientific consensus, nor the political consensus that really matters, it is the consensus of the American public. I think it is great that there are folks out there who bring accountability to these issues and more power to you all- and thank you! The world needs more courageous folks willing to stand for truth. The way I see it Frontline may have gotten the facts wrong, but they still showed that there are skeptics, even if they portrayed them as fringe extremists. It still causes people to question the so called “established facts”. It may have been their end goal to discredit the skeptics, but in today’s connected world,all people have to do is google “climate change skeptics” and invariably they will find sites such as this one. By bringing up the very idea that there are skeptics out there, they invite inquiry from the public. An educated public is not so easily taken in by mainstream media’s propaganda machine.
You can bet that when the rubber meets the road, and John Q public is asked to foot the bill for whatever the politics of the climate change agenda calls for, all your hard work will pay off and we will have a nation of skeptics! We the people still have a say, and folks like those at Frontline can point fingers all day long, but I will hound my congressman and get others to hound theirs to keep the environmental extremists from pilfering my wallet to fund their agenda!
@richard
I’m afraid the figures are not correct with regards the PNAS survey:
They used (from the paper) “an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data.” (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html)
As for your other factual error, it includes the opinions of all respondents, but states that the publishing climate scientists agree around the 97% figure.
Results show that overall, 90% of participants answered “risen” to question 1 and 82% answered yes to question 2. In general, as the level of active research
and specialization in climate science increases, so does agreement with the two
primary questions (Figure 1). In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1 and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2. (http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf)
It is important to note that neither of this papers have been refuted in the scientific literature.
It is also important to note that there have been no official complaints of black-listing against Doran or PNAS.
Doran states:
While respondents’ names are kept private, the authors noted that the survey included participants with well-documented dissenting opinions on global warming theory.
Of course, with the hostility towards peer-reviewed science on this board, I assume this quote in a peer-reviewed paper means precisely nothing to you.
@richard
The two papers each defined ‘climate scientists’ in such a way
I think readers would be interested to understand how climate scientist was defined in both papers. Doran:
An invitation to participate in the survey was sent to 10,257 Earth scientists. The database was built from Keane and Martinez [2007], which lists all geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, and NOAA (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) facilities; U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories; and so forth).
And for climate scientists in particular the respondents are defined as:
the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change
Why do you believe this method of defining climate scientists blackballs skeptical views?
As for PNAS:
We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers based on authorship of scientific assessment reports and membership on multisignatory statements about ACC (SI Materials and Methods). We tallied the number of climate-relevant publications authored
or coauthored by each researcher (defined here as expertise) and counted the number of citations for each of the researcher’s four highest-cited papers (defined here as prominence) using Google Scholar. We then imposed an a priori criterion that a researcher
must have authored a minimum of 20 climate publications to be considered a climate researcher, thus reducing the database to 908 researchers. Varying this minimum publication cutoff did not materially alter results (Materials and Methods). We ranked researchers based on the total number of climate publications authored. Though our compiled researcher list is not comprehensive nor designed to be representative of the entire climate science community, we have drawn researchers from the most high-profile reports and public statements about ACC. Therefore, we have likely compiled the strongest and most credentialed researchers in CE and UE groups. Citation and publication analyses must be treated with caution in inferring scientific credibility, but we suggest that our methods and our expertise and prominence criteria
provide conservative, robust, and relevant indicators of relative credibility of CE and UE groups of climate researchers (Materials and Methods).
Now, leaving aside for the fact that you are factually incorrect that PNAS used 77 climate scientists (they surveyed 1,372), how does this selection method exclude skeptical scientists?
Why do you think there has been no rebuttal in the scientific literature, nor official complains against the UoC or PNAS?
What is the difference between your claim of fraud and any other claim of fraud that relies on nothing but value judgements?
Re consensus of many 1000s of scientists. I was once asked by someone “did you know there are more scientists in the world today than have lived and died since the beginning of recorded history?” I replied that there are probably more white lab coated folks with horn-rimmed glasses alive today, but the creative few that might compare with those of bygone years are few. The rest are technicians. Some call me a musician because I’m not a bad bluegrass banjoist, but I don’t think one would consider me in the fraternity of towering musicians who have lived and died in the past and whom we see surviving in history books. How many of the these minions will we be reading about in our science books in 10-20 years.
ScepticalTom:
You asked a question and I gave you the correct answer. Please don’t take my word for that but check it for yourself. Hint: a google will provide you with more than enough information but SkS and RC will give you bollocks.
And at October 24, 2012 at 2:09 pm you reply to me saying
If you really think that then let me ask you a question.
Do you want to buy the bridge I have for sale?
Richard
Its worse they have no idea of the number of scientists in the world for any subject , in fact what is a scientists is still a virtual unanswered question . So clearly these claims fail on the basic maths front , for if you have no idea of the the size of the whole group you can’t state what percentage a number in subgroup make up.
Its like claiming most chickens in the world are white becasue you have 5 chickens and 3 of them are white.
ScepticalTom show us the peer reviewed research that tell us the number of climate scientists in the world . once you done that we can see what percentage these 75 actual make up of that group. Basic fact checking for which I am sure you can do easily given the claims you made .
On the contrary, we find your remarks to be the repetition of the same old frauds and same old lies which have been refuted point by point on numerous previous occasions.
For example, you wrote above:
Nancy Oreskes’ claims were reported to be fraudulent.
You are of course welcome to make the attempt to explain how Oreskes managed to cite absracts that were not really there, but I suspect you won’t.
Steven Hales (October 24, 2012 at 7:20 am) says:- “77 is an appropriate sample size given the population size of about 11,000 if it is a highly polarized issue where the yes and no answers are skewed…”
But the survey respondents were not randomly selected climate scientists and the final selection of the 77 relied on the honesty of respondents in self-qualifying- with no means of eliminating false responses.
Moreover, many of the final 77 complained about various scoping fallacies in the survey questions.
@ur momisugly Richard
You asked a question and I gave you the correct answer. Please don’t take my word for that but check it for yourself. Hint: a google will provide you with more than enough information but SkS and RC will give you bollocks.
Richard, sorry to quibble, but you said that both papers surveyed only 77 climate scientists. I linked directly to the actual PNAS paper, the primary data source, that shows 1,372. That is the actual peer-reviewed paper, not Sks, not RC, and not google. I even quoted the paper that showed that they surveyed 1,372.
The primary data source Richard, which cannot be misrepresented, explicitly shows your claims to be factually wrong. It is not a matter of opinion, or something that can be skewed ideologically, or misrepresented.
Let me link to it again, the actual paper.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html
We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers based on authorship of scientific assessment reports and membership on multisignatory statements about ACC (SI Materials and Methods). We tallied the number of climate-relevant publications authored
or coauthored by each researcher (defined here as expertise) and counted the number of citations for each of the researcher’s four highest-cited papers (defined here as prominence) using Google Scholar. We then imposed an a priori criterion that a researcher
must have authored a minimum of 20 climate publications to be considered a climate researcher, thus reducing the database to 908 researchers. Varying this minimum publication cutoff did not materially alter results (Materials and Methods). We ranked researchers based on the total number of climate publications authored. Though our compiled researcher list is not comprehensive nor designed to be representative of the entire climate science community, we have drawn researchers from the most high-profile reports and public statements about ACC. Therefore, we have likely compiled the strongest and most credentialed researchers in CE and UE groups. Citation and publication analyses must be treated with caution in inferring scientific credibility, but we suggest that our methods and our expertise and prominence criteria
provide conservative, robust, and relevant indicators of relative credibility of CE and UE groups of climate researchers (Materials and Methods).
I must admit, I find your contention to be correct after being shown that your claims are wrong from the actual source, rather bizarre.
You do understand that I linked directly to the actual paper, the primary data source in question, and it shows you are factually wrong? You understand that, right?
@ur momisugly D Patterson
On the contrary, we find your remarks to be the repetition of the same old frauds and same old lies which have been refuted point by point on numerous previous occasions.
Quite remarkable. You have not shown a single claim to be fraudulent or a lie.
I linked to Oreskes’ peer-reviewed paper and summarised the abstract. Is that a fraud or a lie? I don’t believe so.
I linked to two peer-reviewed papers showing a consensus of 97%. Is that a fraud or a lie? I don’t believe so.
I told you that 30+ National Academies of Science back AGW? Is that a fraud or a lie? I don’t believe so.
I told that not a single scientific institution of national or international note in the world dissents from AGW? Is that a fraud or a lie. I don’t believe so.
Now you may disagree with Orseskes (indeed there is criticism of her in the peer-reviewed literature), but my linking to her paper is not fraudulent. You may disagree with the peer-reviewed surveys of climate scientists – but my posting to them is not a fraud or a lie.
See I’m very careful to only engage on the facts with people such as yourself, because you quickly jump to value judgements, like labelling me a fraud and a lier for posting, not opinions, but clearly verifiable facts.
In fact, I’ve have show the author to be factually incorrect, as he fingered the wrong paper. I notice you still ignored that.
As for the US Senate’s press release, when the US Senate is allowed to arbitrarily overrule the opinion of it’s own National Academy of Science, you let me know. Until then I’ll get my science from the source, scientific journals and scientific institutions, not politicians.
After all, we wouldn’t want the science politicised, would we D?
Here is a study that seems to show a high level of consensus. Is it flawed?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/07vr675818570r57/
@ur momisugly Knr
ScepticalTom show us the peer reviewed research that tell us the number of climate scientists in the world . once you done that we can see what percentage these 75 actual make up of that group. Basic fact checking for which I am sure you can do easily given the claims you made .
Once again another rebuttal that completely ignores my actual posts.
I talked about 2 peer-reviewed papers, one of which is the PNAS paper that queries 1,372 climate scientists.
On the issue of the total amount of scientists in the world: you think that surveys, to be legitimate, need to query an entire population? But okay, I’ll bite, how would you define a climate scientist?
But if you are genuinely interested, the database used by the PNAS paper is explained here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2010/06/07/1003187107.DCSupplemental/pnas.201003187SI.pdf#nameddest=STXT
It uses authorship and citations in peer-reviewed works to define who is and who is not a climate scientist. Do you have any reason to believe this sample is not representative of climate scientists?
As for basic fact checking the claims I made, they are not claims but easily verifiable facts. I never once offered an opinion that did not have a primary data source.
As I have pointed out to you and to others, that two peer-reviewed papers exist claiming 97% of climate scientists agree with AGW is a fact. That 30+ National Academies of Science (that’s a sample size of 100% of all NAoS holding an official opinion, not a survey – I notice you ignore this) agree with AGW is a verifiable fact. That not a single scientific institution of international or national note dissents from AGW is a verifiable fact. That the author of this piece fingered the wrong paper used in the PBS special is a verifiable fact. Every response I have made is about repeating those facts.
Very, very simple. All facts, all verifiable. If you can show I’ve been factually incorrect on these points, I would be genuinely interested to know.
ScepticalTom says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:01 pm
What you are not factoring in is that no academic is going to go against the source of funding or his colleagues. This is the “systemic bias” that keeps these advocates (they are not scientists IMO) in line with the “consensus”. No need for a “conspiracy”, just a simple fear of being outcast and losing ones career. Factor that in and your 97% BS is defenestrated. You know that though, don’t you? What a load of hooey.
@ur momisugly David
What you are not factoring in is that no academic is going to go against the source of funding or his colleagues. This is the “systemic bias” that keeps these advocates (they are not scientists IMO) in line with the “consensus”. No need for a “conspiracy”, just a simple fear of being outcast and losing ones career. Factor that in and your 97% BS is defenestrated. You know that though, don’t you? What a load of hooey.
What am I not factoring in David? I’m simply correcting the author on pointing out the wrong paper.
David, what you say can be said about anything. In that sense it says nothing about climate science.
Is Quantum Physics a fantasy based on systemic bias?
Did Stephen Hawking perform his pioneering work on black holes out of peer pressure?
Was Newton bullied by a rogue apple into his theory of gravity?
ScepticalTom says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:37 pm
“What am I not factoring in David?”
I told you what you are not factoring in. Can you not read?
ScepticalTom says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Your handle is itself a lie. Telling.
@ur momisugly David
I told you what you are not factoring in. Can you not read?
Well we know I can write, and I’ve managed to perform a comprehension of this article to show it is based on a falsehood, so obviously my literacy was not in question.
As I stated at least 10 times on this thread, I am simply posting to the relevant papares to correct the author on his falsehood about PNS using the UoC.
I’m not here to talk about whether those papers are correct – but as you can see I’ve corrected several falsehoods about the papers (they blacklist skeptics, that the PNAS only uses 77 scientists).
As I said before, I only linked to the facts, I’ll stick very closely to them, and I’ll let you arrive with your value judgements such as “climate scientists write science due to peer pressure” which is a statement that cannot be proven or disproven – and as such it about as useful to this debate as a monkey in a cat’s pyjamus.
Would you like to insult my literacy again? Or are you going to pull out a fact or two?
I left a comment on the Frontline link to their Climate of Denial program, but it didn’t get published, even though lots of comments posted after mine did get published. I’m a bit shocked that PBS would do that, I actually like PBS. But since they didn’t publish my comment, I’m leaving it here:
Link to program:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/
My comment:
My wife and I had looked forward to this program, but after watching it, we felt it was far short of Frontline’s usual degree of both hard inquiry and complete examination of issues. The program certainly succeeded in showing how hard various interests tried, and succeeded, in derailing cap and trade legislation, and we give credit where credit is due. But observers of the program would never know that there are legitimate issues, having to do with:
1. historical temperature records — how much can temperatures vary naturally, in the very recent past (by historical standards)?
2. the rate of warming, satellite vs. land based records — how much are we actually warming?
3. the rate of sea level rise
4. what actually was Climategate, and what does it tell us about those in charge of the IPCC process?
5. what the US can do vs. what the developing world is actually doing
6. what actually can be done, today, to help, that might get international cooperation?
1. Historical temperature perspectives first. Several new research papers now confirm results from earlier papers, showing that the Medieval Warm Period about 1,000 years ago was just as warm as today. If natural temperature variability can produce temperatures as high as today’s, in the very recent past, it doesn’t say that we aren’t warming the planet, but it suggests that we need to be able to separate out how much warming is due to our emissions (which include not just CO2, but also black carbon and others) from natural variability. Here is one of the new papers, by a mainstream scientist, Jan Esper, and others:
http://www.wsl.ch/fe/landschaftsdynamik/dendroclimatology/Publikationen/Esper_etal.2012_GPC
2. Rate of temperature change. To listen to Frontline, you would have no idea that real scientists disagree about important aspects of climate change. You were correct to “out” Fred Singer as a professional skeptic on many topics, but John Christy is not such a person. You missed the opportunity to talk to many “skeptics” who are very good at what they do in showing fault lines in the work of prominent campaigners for immediate and costly action, for instance, Steve McIntyre. Christy and Roy Spencer are responsible for creating the ability of satellites to measure worldwide temperatures. The satellite record of temperature increase is about 1/3 less than the land based record, which is always undergoing adjustments of various sorts, and which is subject to the artificial warming due to the “heat island effect.” The satellite record is even further below predictions of climate models. The satellite record avoids those issues, and Frontline ignored the satellite records. The two different satellite records, going back now about 30 years, show warming of about 1.35 to 1.40 degrees C per century, well below model predictions.
3. Sea level rose about 1 foot last century, and currently, for as long as we have satellite records for sea level rise (about 2 decades), is still rising at about a foot a century. See: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
It made sense to me for the N Carolina legislators to not rush through planning for over 3 feet of sea level rise, by building that into their building code. If the IPCC is right about 3 feet of sea level rise, then in a few years, we should see it ramp up. If that happens, then we can legislate differently.
4. Climategate. Let’s simply say that among the many things the Climategate emails revealed, was that the people who developed the now debunked “hockey stick” of climate temperatures did everything they could to prevent publication of papers with contrary evidence to the hockey stick, and failing that, made sure they weren’t considered by the IPCC. (See #1 above for part of the debunking, since the “hockey stick” said that there were 900 years of relatively constant, lowish temperatures until temperature started skyrocketing at the beginning of the 20th C). They could prevent the IPCC consideration of other papers and viewpoints because the hockey stick authors were also in charge of reviewing all the temperature issues for the IPCC. It is as if oil executives were in charge of evaluating the Gulf oil spill. This procedure is bound to fail, if your goal is an even handed review.
On point 5, did you know that China burns nine times as much coal than does the US? And is growing its coal use rapidly? Suppose the US were to burn no coal whatsoever, driving up electricity prices and depressing job creation — what difference would it make? Wouldn’t it make more sense to not harm our economy and jobs at the present time, and hold off on drastic steps until our unemployment rate is low?
So turning to point 6, there are some things we can do, in cooperation with China and India (also ramping up its coal use). We can agree to reduce black carbon emissions, which also warm the planet. It is much cheaper, and quicker, to do that, and in so doing, we are also helping people live longer.
Wouldn’t it have been nice if Frontline had lived up to its usual standards?