Campaign against Climate Change

So, today we read that, on the one hand, some people think that giving Climate Skeptics/Deniers/Contrarians a platform just keeps the "debate" running on needlessly. And on the other, some Climate Skeptics/Deniers/Contrarians are complaining they don't get heard...

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Too much balance : Too much over-compensation :-
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=3560&lan...
Climate reporting 'too balanced' say scientists : Sceptics can unbalance discussions about climate change : Daniela Hirschfeld : 18 April 2007 : Source: SciDev.Net

[MELBOURNE] Airing the views of climate change sceptics in the media only serves to keep controversy boiling, scientists have told the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia.

Kevin Hennessy, Australian scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II report, said today (18 April) that media attention on "the view of a handful of climate change sceptics" amplifies their opinions and "implies that there is little agreement about the basic facts of global warming".

Speaking in a session about climate change reporting, he said editors and journalists have a duty to ensure that facts are presented in context. Balanced reporting, he said, "perpetuates the public's perception that scientists are in disarray, which is misleading in the case of climate change".

Geoff Love, vice chair of the IPCC Working Group II, said that the IPCC assessment reports ― from 1990, 1995, 2001 and February 2007 ― are strong evidence of "the coming together of the scientific community" and that emphasis on the sceptic view does not help public understanding of climate change.

Media coverage has not always reflected the consensus of the majority of the scientific community, said Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation. "That only makes the public and political discussion more difficult," he said.

The problem is compounded by a lack of reporting on climate change, according to Chris Mooney, a US-based science journalist.

Although the 2006 hurricane season attracted a lot of media attention, Mooney presented statistics from the United States showing that climate change has never been a priority in the media.
The situation is similar in Africa, said Kenyan SciDev.Net correspondent Ochieng' Ogodo. Articles about deaths caused by floods or other natural disasters, and political scandals related to climate change tend to get precedence, he said.
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Too Hard To Get Heard : Skeptics Complain :-
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1829984220070418
Climate change skeptics say it's hard to get heard : Wed Apr 18, 2007
2:15PM EDT : By Jeff Mason : BRUSSELS (Reuters) - skeptics of the
seriousness of global warming complained on Wednesday of not being
heard by the public or policy makers while warning governments to take
a second look at the scientific consensus on climate change.

Scientists who doubt the scope and cause of climate change have
trouble getting funding and academic posts unless they conform to an
"alarmist scenario," said Roger Helmer, a British member of the
European Parliament, at a panel discussion on appropriate responses to
rising global temperatures. "If global warming is happening, we can
then ask: is it accelerating and is it likely to be catastrophic?" he
said. "Many people think not."

European Union leaders agreed in March to try to cut greenhouse gas
emissions by at least a fifth compared with 1990 levels by 2020 and as
much as 30 percent if other industrialized and emerging countries joined in.

The EU pledge came shortly before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which groups 2,500 scientists and is considered the world authority on
the issue, said all regions of the planet would suffer from a sharp
warming.

David Henderson, an economist at the Westminster Business
School in London and former head of the Economics and Statistics
Department at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, the OECD, said governments had given the IPCC a monopoly
on climate advice. "The very idea of creating a single would-be
authoritative fount of wisdom is itself dubious," he said, urging
countries to seek a more balanced approach than the IPCC and to stop
pursuing programs to urgently reduce carbon emissions.

"In this area of policy it's high time for governments to think again," he said.
Mahi Sideridou, climate policy director at environmental group
Greenpeace, rejected criticism of the IPCC. "Saying that the IPCC is
not balanced is probably the most ridiculous claim that anybody can
make," she said, stressing the group's reports were based on
scientific consensus.

The IPCC findings are approved unanimously by more than 100 governments
and will guide policy on issues such as extending the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the
main U.N. plan for capping greenhouse gas emissions, beyond 2012.

Benny Peiser, a professor at Liverpool John Moores University, questioned the
methods used by climate scientists. He said many were recognizing that using computer
modeling to predict an "inherently unpredictable future" was illogical. "Today's
scientific consensus very often turns out to be tomorrow's redundant theory," he said.

He said that scientific journals refused to take papers from scientists who doubted
climate change. Most scientists say climate change will cause seas to rise,
glaciers to melt and storms to intensify, potentially leading to more natural
disasters around the world.

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That Julian Morris of the IPN International Policy Network has been at it again :-

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/stories/MYSA041807.02O.kolliascommen...

Comment: Climate change debate invalid when only one side is heard
Web Posted: 04/17/2007 08:10 PM CDT
John Kollias

The mainstream media have bludgeoned us continuously for years with their dire predictions of global catastrophes that are supposedly caused by mankind's "pollution" of the environment with carbon dioxide. And anyone who disagrees with this scenario is a segmented worm or the devil or worse.

As Rebeca Chapa states in her April 5 column, "if you are a naysayer of the human-activity-as-an-agent-of-climate-change theory, you may find yourself increasingly frozen out of the debate."

Really? What debate? I have yet to see the mainstream media give space to the hundreds of eminent scientists who do not believe human activity is causing "global warming." On the contrary, Chapa says in the same column, "The evidence to support climate change is irrefutable." (Notice, she does not say humans caused climate change.)

To all on the left who have "drunk the global warming Kool-Aid," let me throw a little cold water on your anti-industrial parade by reminding you of some "inconvenient truths," to borrow a phrase. If the media were not either intellectually lazy or guilty of having a political agenda about global warming, they could easily ascertain, as I did, that man-made global warming is, to quote Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

By merely reading one book on the subject, you could begin to have an informed opinion instead of regurgitating the party line of the left. That book is "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism" by Christopher C. Horner.

Here are some facts and quotations you may find interesting:

Concerning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Chapa refers to, Julian Morris of the United Kingdom-based International Policy Network notes, "The IPCC is not a scientific body: it is a consensus-oriented political body. Further, the choice of authors and reviewers as well as the final review of its reports is conducted by government officials, who may or may not be scientists. These documents (summaries) generally mischaracterize the underlying work. The summaries, though, are typically the only part a reporter or politician's speech writer ever reads."

According to Professor Dennis Bray of Geesthacht, Germany, in a recent survey of climate scientist only 9.4 percent of respondents "strongly agree" that global warming is caused by human activity and only 22.8 percent "strongly agree" that IPCC reports accurately reflect a consensus within climate science.

The vast majority of the "scientists" referred to by Al Gore & Co. as supporting his viewpoints are not qualified to do so. An analysis of Citizens for a Sound Economy research puts 90 percent of the 2,600 "scientists" alleged to be experts by the left-wing group Ozone Action into this category, and only one of these "scientists" is actually a climatologist.

As spoken by Professor Bob Caster of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory in Australia, "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Greenpeace co-founder, and now skeptic of climate alarmism and green pressure groups, Patrick Moore lectured the U.K.'s Royal Society about playing a political blame game: "It appears to be the policy of the Royal Society to stifle dissent and silence anyone who may have doubts about the connection between global warming and human activity. That kind or repression seems more suited to the Inquisition than to a modern, respected scientific body."

So, please, let's start a real debate about global warming, and let the chips fall where they may. Claiming "scientific consensus" is both deceiving (because it is not true) and meaningless. After all, the "scientific consensus" used to be that the Earth was flat, that the sun traveled around the Earth and, until 30 years ago, that we were entering a new ice age.

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