Doubts on human-induced climate change

SCEPTIC'S SCEPTIC: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition chairman Rear Admiral Jack Welch.

05-05-2008 | Tim Fulton

The campaign for humans to reduce their impact on global warming has reached such a fever pitch that it's no longer acceptable to voice dissent, says the leader of a New Zealand-based group of climate sceptics.

Former Navy chief Rear Admiral Jack Welch, the chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, spoke to The NZ Farmers Weekly about how the views of climate-change sceptics are reported.

It has become fashionable, he says, to dismiss doubts about global warming and concentrate instead on reporting the impact of it.

The BBC and the New York Times, for instance, have decided to no longer give equal print or airtime to the doubters, given the apparent weight of scientific evidence for human-induced climate change.

The two big news media outlets have argued that their role is to inform as well as report - and that giving climate change sceptics an equal hearing doesn't encourage intelligent debate.

Former BBC environment reporter Alex Kirby referred to the broadcaster's enthusiasm for the climate change issues when he visited NZ late last month. Kirby agreed with the BBC's stance on climate change reporting, but noted dryly that the current policy seemed to land his successor on a polar ice cap most days of the week.

NZ news media are also keen to embrace climate change stories, including Radio NZ's Mediawatch programme, which recently grilled the editor of The Listener for giving a "right of reply" to climate change sceptics.

Still, the debate does continue in other directions elsewhere, led by analysts such as NZ Institute of Economic Research, (NZIER) which has scrutinised the Government's proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Last week the institute announced the completion of what it calls "a detailed assessment of the negative impacts of this major proposed shift in economic policy".

The report's main findings are that pain from the ETS would be "felt right across the economy, and in particular in the agricultural, energy and transport sectors".

NZIER also concludes export earnings are under threat, domestic prices and inflation will increase and provincial New Zealand will be hit particularly hard.

"The scheme will distort the NZ economy far more and be less effective in reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases, than if the Government simply bought credits to ensure we honour our Kyoto commitments", the report argues.

None of this is to say the NZIER's conclusions are any more valid than that of the Government or the Climate Science Coalition for that matter.

But global warming sceptics such as Welch do want to see climate change debated more freely - and he believes - more honestly.

To that end, the Climate Science Coalition recently invited University of Queensland research professor Bob Carter, to "explain how and why the IPCC have over-exaggerated problems for our planet, and, in particular, why carbon dioxide does not justify being termed a pollutant or the basis for charges on the community for its emission".

Carter has formally retired from academia, staying on at the university in an associate position, but the Climate Change Coalition uses him to "advise and commentate". In this case the university "sprung funds" for Carter to participate in a speaking tour throughout the North Island.

The numbers were effectively as large as could be drummed up by Federated Farmers provinces. The coalition provided Carter free of charge and Federated Farmers took on the remainder of arrangements, including advertising and news media coverage.

Results were predictably mixed and in some cases quite disappointing, Welch said. While others attendances were very good, the quality of audiences varied.

While Rotorua and Stratford were "excellent in all respects"; Federated Farmers in Hastings and Palmerston North "did not want to know him". The largest turnout was 200 at Auckland and about 80 at Rotorua.

Welch accepts that no one scientist, Carter included, has all the answers to climate change. Indeed that is the reason for continuing to challenge the so-called "consensus" on the subject.

"It's a chaotic business, the whole discussion is chaotic. I was talking to Bob Carter the other night when we had him over for dinner and he was saying there's about 60 to 80 different disciplines inputting into the climate change discussions. So there's no one that has the ascendancy - and there's no way you can go round talking about consensus."

Welch, who retired as chief naval commander 10 year ago, believes that sense of consensus has been encouraged by bureaucrats trying to do the Government's bidding.

"This all sounds a bit dark and Machiavellian but I think time will show that those in government who support global warming are those who are in the pay of governments."

As an example he cites the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and the Royal Society's climate committee, "which is supported by government".

By way of example he singled out the chairman Dr David Wratt, who is also principal scientist at NIWA.

Such connections means there can be "no suggestion of an independent review of the science by the Royal Society", Carter says.

"The trouble is we have no independent, government-paid sceptics or critics. In other words, (the scientists) have been backed into a corner and if it is going to happen, it's going to take huge cahones to turn this one around, or to get this ship steadied up a bit."

The key challenge to any scientist, climate-change proponents included, continues to be "prove it".

"Funnily enough they say, Oh, there's a consensus. But that's not the way science works so you go back at them and say prove it. And they actually go very quiet."

Carter says a "fair amount of scepticism" is emerging within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and elsewhere about previous climate change findings.

"A lot of evidence is starting to be rolled out now which is actually in direct contradiction to what has been put out there as gospel."

At this point Welch refers to former US vice-president Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", which arguably did most to bring global warming to mainstream awareness.

Welch hasn't seen the movie. "Someone said, ‘you better see it' and I said I gave up on Hollywood spectaculars with Ben Hur - and I didn't like that much either!

"But I have seen the discussions and I've seen his main points...and he just jerked us all along. You know, when you start to have drowning polar bears and great chunks of ice floating around, this has an immediate impact on people who aren't aware of what's really going on."

Likewise, Welch refers to Dr Michael Mann's much-quoted "hockey stick' showing a trend of rapidly rising global temperatures, which he says has been proven "statistically flawed".

"They're running with this sort of stuff and I see a diminution of the power of the IPCC. I see that sense will have to return - there are too many good scientists out there who will look around one day and say ‘I've actually been duped'."

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