Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Australia has been repeated accused over the last few weeks, of successfully lobbying UNESCO to drop mention of the Great Barrier Reef from a climate report. My question – if a relatively minor world player like Australia can manipulate the content of a UNESCO climate report, what does this say about the scientific integrity of other UN bureaucracies, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?
Every reference to Australia was scrubbed from the final version of a major UN report on climate change after the Australian government intervened, objecting that the information could harm tourism.
Guardian Australia can reveal the report “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate”, which Unesco jointly published with the United Nations environment program and the Union of Concerned Scientists on Friday, initially had a key chapter on the Great Barrier Reef, as well as small sections on Kakadu and the Tasmanian forests.
But when the Australian Department of Environment saw a draft of the report, it objected, and every mention of Australia was removed by Unesco. Will Steffen, one of the scientific reviewers of the axed section on the reef, said Australia’s move was reminiscent of “the old Soviet Union”.
No sections about any other country were removed from the report. The removals left Australia as the only inhabited continent on the planet with no mentions.
The Guardian provides a link to a chapter which they claim was removed from the final report, thanks to Australia’s political manoeuvring;
Climate change is the primary long-term threat to the integrity and biodiversity of the world’s most extensive coral reef ecosystem. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) was added to the world heritage list in 1981. It is one of the world’s most complex and diverse ecosystems, with at least 400 species of hard coral, 150 species of soft corals and sea fans, and more than 2,900 individual reefs and some of the most important seagrass meadows in the world – teeming with marine life of all sorts, including more than 1,600 fish species, seabirds, seahorses, whales, dolphins, crocodiles, dugongs and endangered green turtles. The GBR extends for 2,300km along the coast of Queensland in Northeast Australia and has evolved over a period of 15,000 years (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority 2012, Unesco). The GBR region is important for the indigenous heritage of First Australians – Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander people – who are the traditional wners. Climate change threatens hunting and fishing as well as other traditional and cultural practices. Some sacred sites are also at risk for the more than 70 traditional owner groups for whom natural resources are inseparable from cultural identity (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority 2012).
Click here to see the official report. I haven’t read the full report, but just glancing through provided some interesting highlights. The Union of Concerned Scientists features in the list of credits. The Great Barrier Reef gets a mention on page 89, in the references, but as far as I can tell it is not mentioned elsewhere, which in my opinion supports the assertion of a hasty removal of censored material from the report.
The following is a statement by the Australian Environment Department, about their contact with UNESCO regarding this report;
The World Heritage Centre initiated contact with the Department of the Environment in early 2016 for our views on aspects of this report.
The department expressed concern that giving the report the title ‘Destinations at risk’ had the potential to cause considerable confusion. In particular, the world heritage committee had only six months earlier decided not to include the Great Barrier Reef on the in-danger list and commended Australia for the Reef 2050 Plan.
The department was concerned that the framing of the report confused two issues – the world heritage status of the sites and risks arising from climate change and tourism. It is the world heritage committee, not its secretariat (the World Heritage Centre), which is properly charged with examining the status of world heritage sites.
Recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of world heritage properties impacted on tourism.
The department indicated it did not support any of Australia’s world heritage properties being included in such a publication for the reasons outlined above.
The Department of the Environment conveyed these concerns through Australia’s ambassador to UNESCO.
The department did not brief the minister on this issue.
Read more: Same as the first link
Regardless of whether you agree with the contents of the report, to me the far more damaging revelation is how easy it is for governments to manipulate UN climate processes – how susceptible the content of allegedly scientific UN Climate reports is to “political” input.
The UN report covers many other countries too. There is a section on neolithic monuments in Britain, the most famous of which is Stonehenge. It discusses how Stonehenge might be endangered by climate change. Since Stonehenge is the best part of 5,000 years old it obviously would not be here today if the climate had started to change before the 20th century!
The real question is not that the Australian goivernment objected to some of the draft report’s content, we may never know what the particular objections were, rather why UNESCO then ‘removed all refeference to Australia’.
There is just a little bit more to Australia than the Great Barrier Reef so why remove ALL reference? Did that include references to more positive aspects such as the greening of the continent or the increased use of gas compared to coal ?
It seems to me like UNSECO petulence contrived to give the likes of alarmist careerists like Will Steffen and co a segue to enter into the fray smack in the middle of a fairly close run Federal election campaign.
United Nations and United Nations climate panel IPCC have an enormous influence on governments. IPCC states that it does not perform any research – and that might be right. However, by selecting, assessing, interpreting and summarizing scientific work – IPCC do science. No matter what they say, or whether the method is proper or not.
Producing a consensus opinion is not a scientific method – neither is producing low, medium and high level of confidence. Nobody has been able to quantify a relationship between consensus or confidence and the probability that a hypothesis or theoretical system is true – or even accurate. The strive for consensus is a political method – not a scientific method. In the guise of science, IPCC follows a political method.
Besides the scientific problem with their choice of method – another problem is that the United Nations should have been concerned about human rights, which states:
Article 21. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
United Nations has not been serving me the right to express my will. There has been no election of the people in charge of this enormous bureaucracy. In my opinion United Nations has become defective by noble causes. My will would be to deconstruct this enormously expensive bureaucracy.
‘However, by selecting, assessing, interpreting and summarizing scientific work – IPCC do science.’
No. They do politics.
Exactly. If they were doing science there would be no need for political editing of their reports. And that is what they do. Every single syllable is perused and discussed and if the politicos think it necessary, edited, before an IPCC report is released.
to ‘do’ science involves attempting to find fault – to attempt to falsify hypothesis .. the IPCC clearly do not do this.
I think it depends somewhat on how it is done. The way IPCC does it – it is at best heavily influenced by politics. This is not a scientific process:
And the Principles governing IPCC are not scientific:
– United Nations enforced a mission on IPCC §1
– United Nations let IPCC operate by the unscientifically principle to strive for consensus §10
– United Nations let IPCC establish an organization structure and approval process which by its nature was bound to diminish dissenting views. §11
United Nations demonstrated gross negligence by creating a biased organisation, a political organisation which by its principles must have been unable to provide balanced and pure scientific statements.
‘United Nations demonstrated gross negligence by creating a biased organisation, a political organisation which by its principles must have been unable to provide balanced and pure scientific statements.’
“Gross negligence?” Do you have evidence that they didn’t do exactly what they were trying to do? I’m confident they did.
I think the most damning part is this: “selecting…scientific work”. That right there implies that there is data being excluded.
“Australia has been repeated accused over the last few weeks, ”
Eric, should that be “REPEATEDLY” ??
Reefer Madness strikes again.
whining will steffen
and that Pratt ove hugh goldberg
theyre the two most pathetic and abc favoured dweebs since flimflam got outed from govvy position
the reefs most at risk from SEWAGE outfalls from Brisbane n Sydneys poop plants then the Farm runoff OR any elnino warming
the dugongs n turtles are at risk from tourist boats and aboriginals hunting them for food still
theyre “special” theyre allowed to kill “endangered species”
mere mortals can get fined for even picking a turtle up to move it OFF the road to save its life elsewhere
hmm
windmills n aborigines have something in common
The UN has, in my view, outlived its usefulness.
and what was that usefulness that it had and then outlived?
mikerestin:
“and what was that usefulness that it had and then outlived?
Raising bureaucratic theft and corruption to an art-form to the point of embarrassing international crime syndicates? No more warehouse room in N.Y. to store their parking tickets?
Okay. I give up, mike.
We Australia suffer much much from climatey change. Reef go white – like country after aboriginal all killed when boat arrived. No left for welfare payment. Need refugee fill gap. Labor save us. Green save us. LGBTI is future. No more have children. Dress up as woman. Reef can be save. #1 priority for Australia.
I would have thought it obvious why the Australian part got pulled.
Think about it this way.
Australia is surrounded by sharks, coral snakes and salt water crocodiles.
Inland are the deadliest snakes,spiders and other nasties known to man.
Just about everything in the country is out to kill you.
In this place that would have the devil himself looking over his shoulder, are some of the friendliest people in the world.
The thing in the back of the UN bureaucrats minds though, is ,are the Australians as harmless as they look, or are they really Terminator level killing machines that have evolved to deal with their environment?
And do you really want to find out what happens when they stop being friendly?
I love this! +1000
You are right, too, I’m living with 4 species of deadly snakes in my garden that I have so far identified: Brown snakes, red-bellied black snakes, copperheads and tiger snakes, all very active, all very lethal. I’d still pick living here in the country over any city anywhere in the world. And yes, I’m friendly. Mostly. 🙂
Felf old chap,
This debate always reminds me of the Terry Pratchett fantasy ‘The Last Continent’ and the scene when the wizards enter the library of Unseen University and command it to give them books on the dangerous animals of ‘Four Ecks’ – the Last Continent (which certainly looks and sounds like Australia!).
Being a magic library, it complies, and they are buried under books; one is examined – it is ‘The Dangerous Animals, and Plants, of Four Ecks’ – Volume XXXII, Part 4.
They then ask for details of the non-dangerous animals of Four Ecks.
A single sheet of paper floats slowly down to them.
They read – ‘The Sheep. PTO.’
On turning over, the reverse reads, ‘Some of them’.
Read Pratchett for fun. He was hugely inventive, and not at all politically correct.
Auto
We have harmless snakes as well. The dangerous ones know they are dangerous they don’t run away they just sit and say “come on then have a go” at which point a sensible person backs off.
Eric,
I think that you want to change “repeated” in the first sentence to “repeatedly.”
There’s no freedom of speech in Australia, and it is a criminal offence to publish any leaked government document, no matter how trivial.
Governments are becoming more and more used to making sure information that doesn’t fir their political narrative doesn’t get out into the public.
Doctors have broken the law and made themselves liable for 2 years imprisonment for taking about the sexual abuse of children they have treated from our asylum seeker’s detention centres.
The press is currently being pursued for reporting on some facts about price blowouts in the national broadband roll out.
The collection of social and industry statistics was defended in 2014 for 13 projects of the ABS, the CSIRO has had climate monitoring and modelling defunded in 2016.
Controlling inconvenient information is a proxy for doing a adequate job, so this removal of all Australian effects in a climate report must surely have been expected.
I don’t suspect that it would have affected tourism as much as the actuality of the damage to the GBR.
Seth May 29, 2016 at 6:34 am wrote: “There’s no freedom of speech in Australia, and it is a criminal offence to publish any leaked government document, no matter how trivial.”
I see that as a real danger to your freedom. The same for England and the other nations that restrict free speech. Now, you are at the whim of those in power. You guys need to change that.
In the meantime, we Americans will speak freely for you, if there is something you can’t say in your home country. Not being able to speak freely would be tyranny to me.
Australia’s Rob Ellison connects the dots between rivers changing forms and Pacific Ocean cycles.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/05/29/ocean-trumps-global-warming/
Check out the level that these hysteria has reached with our youngsters. Permanent damage being done:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/videos/Gallery/watch-adorable-six-year-old-gets-emotional-over-the-environment/2312993038001/2312993038001_1
Chills me to the bone. GK
Misleading, frightening, manipulating and using children for political gain. Why am I not surprised? Disgusted, yes, but not surprised.
El Nino officially dead, Bureau of Meteorology declares.
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/el-nino-officially-dead-bureau-of-meteorology-declares/news-story/19e1c57babcaa5112df0854b06f23635
“…with at least 400 species of hard coral, 150 species of soft corals and sea fans, and more than 2,900 individual reefs and some of the most important seagrass meadows in the world – teeming with marine life of all sorts, including more than 1,600 fish species, seabirds, seahorses, whales, dolphins, crocodiles, dugongs and endangered green turtles….”
This tells an intelligent person all he/she needs to know about the continued survival of the GBR. biological diversity is its strength for survival. The terrible state of world science is evident when a geologist and engineer like myself has a better grasp of the survivability of the GBR than do biological ‘experts’. Surely the ‘experts’ know that the earth was much hotter 7-8000yrs ago than it is now. They can even read Wiki on the reef to learn that:
“..The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) considers the earliest evidence of complete reef structures to have been 600,000 years ago..”
Gee, are they saying the rise from the cold LIA to the present which is still well within the historical temperature variations of the past 600,000yrs is a danger to the reef.
Compare this to UNESCO’s (above)
“..and has evolved over a period of 15,000 years (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority 2012, Unesco).”
It’s amazing to comtemplate that real estate developer Donald Trump is probably going to take this whole house of cards down in one fell swoop.
I just want to know why it is that “Darwinism” is true when trying to cudgel a religious person (regardless of their opinion about evolution), but ceases to be a factor when AGW is “in” the picture. Survival of the fittest suddenly does not apply, evolution cannot happen “fast enough”, and all change is bad. Nature’s default position is static. Change only occurs because of man, whose original sin is existence.
I want certain animals and plants to survive, I think people should be more mindful of their effect on the environment and their fellow man, but I am not so foolish to think that change is not inevitable. Anyone who claims that the world has radically changed since its formation in one breath, and in the next breath claims that all change over the last 150-200 years is unnatural, needs to take a course in logic. Reason and consistency are your friend.
Good for Australia, bad for UNESCO. If they went along with Australia they did the right thing for once because man-made climate change does not exist. And if they did go along with Australia it is a cinch to conclude that they have gone along with bigger players in the past who as a rule advocate global warming. We were told by Hansen in 1988 that the greenhouse effect has been detected. In his own words, “…global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.” But elsewhere he considers regional observations of warming and the best that he can say about it is that “…In all of these cases, the data is just beginning to emerge.” Hence, we can paraphrase him as: “…If it is warm it must be greenhouse warming but data to prove this has yet to emerge.” This is not science but IPCC and others insist that Hansen proved the existence of the greenhouse effect. They have spread it around and the greenhouse effect is now uncritically and falsely taken for granted. The following example proves the falsity of this assumption. It depends upon the experimental observation of NOAA global warming curve. The curve shows the existence of a thirty year warming period that extends from 1910 to 1940. The extended Keeling curve shows that there was no corresponding increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide during this period that would be required if this was greenhouse warming. In addition, this warming is followed by a severe cold spell that inaugurated World War II. It is impossible to reverse greenhouse warming without removing every absorbing carbon dioxide molecule from the air. The fact that this thirty year warming was followed by cooling proves that it could not possibly be greenhouse warming.That takes care of a third of a century. There is no particular reason to think that the rest of the century is any different, hence the twentieth century warming is simply not anthropogenic global warming as we are drilled to believe. That being the case, the Great Barrier Reef is now simply on its own, likely to do its thing as it always has done without imaginary input from AGW.
It does not matter. Australia will introduce a cap and trade ETS, July 1st, one day before the Federal election, all passed in to law in secret during the last sitting of Parliament in December 2015.
great post
thank you
i will cite it in a paper i am writing
I live by the sea, and this morning I measured a 1.5M rise in the sea level. If this continues for the next week or so the entire East coast of Australia will be under water.
That’s funny!
hot off the press
Bleaching kills third of coral in Great Barrier Reef’s north
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2016/deadanddying.jpg
Dead and dying staghorn coral on the central Great Barrier Reef At least 35 percent of corals in the northern and central regions of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are dead or dying from a mass bleaching event, scientists said on May 30, 2016. The assessment was made after months of aerial and underwater surveys after the worst bleaching in recorded history first became evident in March as sea temperatures warm.
http://phys.org/news/2016-05-coral-great-barrier-reef-north.html
With each successive El Nino spiking reef water temperatures higher, over the bleaching threshhold…it doesn’t augur well.
Has the temperature increased?
http://seatemperature.info/
If you look for Australia and great Barrier reef monthly values i cant find any increase, but it varies from 23 to 29 during a year. Maybe it was bleached by cold during the vinter.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/05/24/coral-b…
Want to know how to curtail UN climate bullshit?
Ask an Aussie!
That’s right, go to the experts!
I tried this once (now twice) and it didn’t go. I’ll try again with a little modification.
ms May 30, 2016 at 10:20 am wrote:
TA:”“Mr. S claimed that the U.S. murdered “millions and millions” of innocent civilians in war.”
ms: Well, I see you are unable to read. I claimed millions and millions of innocent civilians murdered in American Wars, not just Vietnam.”
You would be wrong about the other wars, too. I believe I recently heard (it being Memorial Day) the figure 500,000 as the number of civilians killed in Germany during World War II and approximately the same number in Japan. That totals one million. Not all of them were killed by the U.S. “Millions and Millions”? And Germany and Japan brought that destruction upon themselves.
ms: “I also was cnsored in reply”
I was sorry to hear that. I was looking forward to your reply. It must have been one heck of a rant.
ms: “so you don’t know that my Uncle was on the planning staff of the war and I know what happened. No need to read some academic’s book.”
Having an uncle on the planning staff doesn’t guarantee you understand the war, and you *don’t* understand the war. I can tell by the way you talk about it. Having an uncle on the staff didn’t do you any good. You should read the book. BTW, I served two tours in Vietnam: 1968 and 1969.
ms: Leftist? Oh boy are you wrong. I am a Rothbardian radical libertarian.
Well, I said I wasn’t sure. I’ve seen anti-war types of all political persuasions, but most of them are on the radical left. Same mindset though.
ms: “I am as anti-war as the “Old Right” of the Republican party that saw defense of our own lands as the only justifiable use of war.”
Yeah, that’t the way I look at it, too. Fighting in South Vietnam was defending my land from communist aggression, IMO.
ms: “It is obvious you are a wrmonger who does not care a bit about the innocent.”
Obvious to you, I guess. I actually prefer peace instead of war, but being realistic, I know that is not possible. There are bullies out in the world who will kill us if we don’t do something about it first. Your alternative to opposing them is?
ms: “You would have been a good aid to Sherman as he brought total warfare to the modern world for the first time.”
Getting a little carried away, arent’ you?
ms: “May you get what you so richly deserve.”
That’s what I’m hoping.
Are you mods censoring my posts now?
‘the scientific integrity of other UN bureaucracies, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?’
best summed up by the IPCC themselves , we do not do science . therefore than can have no scientific integrity which given they show themselves to have no integrity at all comes has no surprise.
mark s May 30, 2016 at 10:20 am wrote:
TA:”“Mr. $toval claimed that the U.S. murdered “millions and millions” of innocent civilians in war.”
ms: Well, I see you are unable to read. I claimed millions and millions of innocent civilians murdered in American Wars, not just Vietnam.”
You would be wrong about the other wars, too. I believe I recently heard (in a Memorial Day discussion) the figure 500,000 as the number of civilians killed in Germany during World War II, and approximately the same number in Japan. That totals one million. Not all of them were killed by the U.S. So where are your “Millions and Millions”?