If it's a bit quiet

... on the blog, you might guess I'm up to something. You would not be wrong. A major blast on Pachauri coming up. Watch this space.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

It's just weather

Much hilarity over at WUWT as the news reaches us that Moscow is under 20 inches of snow, making it the snowiest February in the Russian capital since 1966.

This makes for a long winter as deep snows were also experienced in early January and the snowfall in St Petersburg broke a 130-year record.

Flash back to December 2008 when Las Vegas was being battered by largest snowfall in 30 years while Muscovite dreams of a White Christmas were being shattered as the Russian capital was experiencing its "warmest winter ever".

The Russian capital then had a big problem – not unlike Vancouver's present troubles - as it was due to host the FIS World Cup Alpine promotional event, aimed at stimulating interest for Alpine Skiing as part of the build up to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. The Mayor was forced to truck in snow from Siberia.

Then, of course, the warmists were shrieking about climate change but, with this current snowfall, they are silent. It is just "weather".

Meanwhile, straight from the "it would never happen here" department, the governor of snow-bound St Petersburg today dismissed 11 officials and deprived the heads of municipal districts of their bonuses over failure to remove snow from the streets.

Russia's second largest city has been fighting hard against record heavy snow which has left over 500 residents injured since late December, many from falling icicles - yet another hazard of global warming.

To tackle the threat, Governor Matviyenko has proposed using steam or even lasers. "However," he adds, "if St. Petersburg scientists throw up their hands and say that icicles should be removed using crowbars, we will use crowbars."

Nice to have scientists pronouncing on something useful for a change.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Wedded to their lies

The warmists have been continuing to huff and puff about the terrible sceptics who are calling their religion into question, one of the latest broadsides coming from The Guardian yesterday, headed: "Do climate change sceptics give scepticism a bad name?"

The details need not detain us, other than to note that this is an authored piece by Adam Corner, a research associate at Cardiff University. His interests, we are told, "include the psychology of communicating climate change".

It might help though if Corner told us that his "interests" were slightly more formal than his casual description would imply. His University is in fact a partner in an EU-funded project called PACHELBEL, funded to the tune of €1.68 million, researching "consumer behaviour" in relation to climate change.

Corner's work comes on the back of an earlier survey which addresses resistance to the climate change message, making this apparently independent academic a paid servant of the EU, charged with fighting climate scepticism.

Although not always picked up directly, it is this patina of dishonesty shrouding the warmists that is breaking though. Nothing they say is now regarded as trustworthy.

With that in mind, we had another look at Pauchauri's golf course and the TERI claim that the irrigation included an "efficient rainwater harvesting system".

The golf course is part of the "Retreat" site, of which TERI is inordinately proud, featuring it in detail on its website. Strangely, there is no mention of rainwater harvesting – or indeed of the golf course or cricket pitches, much less the badminton green.

Where we do get a reference to water harvesting is in respect of waste water produced on the site, which we are told is used for irrigation – all five cubic metres or about 1000 gallons a day. The system is pictured above.

Considering the site may need as much as 300,000 gallons a day during the dry season, that 1000 gallons seems hardly sufficient.

Nevertheless, taking TERI at its word, we took a look at the rainfall stats of the region and calculated that the two feet of rainfall, over 27 rainy days would yield just over 42 million gallons on the basis of full recovery. Yet the requirement for irrigation, even at a reduced rate of 100,000 gpd would require over 300 million gallons for the entire season.

These are only rough calculations, based on several assumptions, and they may even be wildly wrong. But they are enough to cast doubt on a source that has already exhausted its quota of trust. The odds are, the site has a borehole and is robbing fellow Indians of their drinking water in a water-parched city.

As a refreshing change, therefore, we see today an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. It tells us that sceptics "don't doubt science -they doubt unscientific claims cloaked in the authority of science."

"Those who want to persuade others of the truth as they see it", the paper concludes, "need to make their case as transparently as possible." Technology enables access to information and leads us to expect open debates, conducted honestly and in full view. This is inconvenient for those who want to claim unequivocal truth without having the evidence. But that's the way it is.

This is something the likes of Corner, Pachauri and the rest need to learn, but seem incapable of learning. Shrieking at us, calling us names, and demanding unqualified belief, isn't working any more – it never really did. But they can't try honesty – if they do, they have no scare and lose their power.

The warmists, therefore, are wedded to their lies. They have nowhere to go.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

That "conspiracy" meme

Anthony Watts over at Watts up with that is a tad miffed with The Guardian - and rightly so.

But we are all getting a little weary with the desperation of the warmists to pin their conspiracy meme on us – the constant prattling about climate sceptics being funded by corporate interests.

As with just about everything associated with these people, there is a fundamental dishonesty about their argument. They pick up on the sceptic funding, ignoring the fact that most activists are entirely self-funded and working on a shoe-string, and ignore completely their own funding.

Yet, when it comes to corporate funding, one of the biggest "corporates" of them all is the European Union. In the run-up to the IPCC's AR4 (2002-2006), it threw €2.3 billion – yes BILLION – at climate change under its FP6-SUSTDEV programme.

Taking account matched funding from institutions and member state governments, plus separate national programmes (such as the £243 million the UK has allocated to the Met Office), and you are almost certainly talking about a sum in the region of €5 billion, out of Europe alone.

We do not have the specific figures for US research in that very narrow period (2002-2006), but Joanne Nova offers a sum of $36 billion for climate research over 20 years.

Given inputs from Canada, Australia and other developed countries – all within the same nexus – and the huge flow of funds from the giant US charitable foundations, plus corporate spending and the NGOs, and you can easily make a case for expenditure on pushing the climate change agenda in the run-up to AR4 exceeding $10 billion ... or £10 billion if you prefer, as long as we are in ballpark figures.

It is virtually impossible to work out the level of sceptic spending, but even if you put the total figure at £100 million (and that would take a giant leap of faith), that gives a spending ratio of something like 100:1 in favour of the warmists.

One could, of course, take the warmist paranoia over sceptic funding as a compliment. Despite the torrent of funds, they are on the back foot, run ragged by a citizen army, many equipped with no more than a laptop and a brain.

On the other hand, you can see where the warmists are coming from. Having thrown money at their new religion and been unable to prove their case, for them to admit that they are being defeated by so slender an opposition must be the ultimate humiliation.

Hence, for their own self-esteem, they have to invent their "well-funded, highly organised conspiracy" meme. To admit to reality would be more than they could cope with – they would probably suffer collective nervous breakdowns if they confronted the truth.

Speaking of which, does anyone know where Moonbat is?

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

You don't have to be German

... to understand this. The payoff is superbly done.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Vote Dave – get Brussels

Dave "yes we have no referendum" Cameron has despatched the trusty Europhile Ken Clarke (pictured) to Brussels for a secret tête à tête with EU commission boss José Manuel Barroso.

The talks, we are told, are to assure the EU president that the EU "has nothing to fear from a Conservative government." And sending the most pro-EU member of Dave's cabinet-in-waiting is seen by European officials as a signal that a new Conservative administration will work with the EU "executive" rather battling against it.

It would be rather nice to think that the Boy Dave might spare a little time from his hectic schedule to reassure potential voters that they had nothing to fear from the Brussels government, but since that ain't so, it is just as well that he keeps his mouth shut and avoids uttering yet another pack of lies.

But it speaks a great deal of the Boy's priorities that, while keeping the British electorate almost completely in the dark as to his intentions regarding the EU, he should send his plenipotentiary over to the heart of darkness to grovel to our masters.

All too clear now is the evidence that should we have the misfortune to acquire Cameron as our prime minister, we will be set for another round of "more of the same" – yet another "Conservative" administration that talks big about being Eurosceptic to a domestic audience, while fawning at its master's feet and rolling over to have its tummy tickled.

Then, there are many of us who have never been in the least impressed by Dave's faux Euroscepticism. This little episode simply reinforces that which was obvious from the very start: "vote Dave, get Brussels."

COMMENT THREAD

The hidden propaganda

The Daily Mail and other assorted newspapers have been getting excited about a comic book portraying two fictional EU commission bureaucrats as humanitarian heroes.

This is being sent to schools and homes across the UK and mainland Europe at a cost of £200,000 to the taxpayer. It is printed in English, French, German, Italian and Dutch. Polish and Spanish translations are possibly to come later.

One can certainly understand the concern, both for the fact that the EU is once again indulging in naked propaganda, and wasting an amount of money into the bargain. But when it comes to either or both, this is just one tiny – and possibly least effective – part of the EU propaganda machine.

Another EU venture into schools, for instance, is a project called CARBOSCHOOLS+, linking carbon science laboratories with secondary schools to develop partnerships where "young Europeans" learn and conduct experiments about climate research and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As opposed to the roughly €250,000 spent on the comic book venture, €1.43 million is being poured into this, with €981,553 coming from the EU.

Children aged from 7 to 12 years are the target of the Children's university, a project currently costing €666,086, for "the most radical opening towards the general public that universities can undertake."

However, the commission has found through a number of Eurobarometer polls, the main way the "European Public" absorbs its information is through television. And, as one example of how it is using that finding, it is running a project called GREENTRANSPORT-TV to "contribute to the development of public awareness on the European research on Greening transport in all European countries through the professional use of television media." That is costing €822,865.00 with the EU contributing €691,910.

The EU also recently commissioned a project called "Science in Europe 2020" (SC2020). Funded to the tune of €1,500,000 – with a million of that contributed by the EU - this is a measure to support the "promotion of science by audiovisual means via European co-productions and the circulation of science programmes". Essentially, it is a bribe on offer to independent television producers to make films which "enhance the knowledge and the awareness of scientific research in Europe."

Nor is just money on offer. The lucky applicants are also be given access to "the leading world-wide broadcasting organisation, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)". It has agreed to put at the disposal of this project "its unique position on the audiovisual market" – thereby ensuring the work is aired.

The EU is at pains to tell you that they exercise no influence over editorial content – this being left to the film-makers, but what we are seeing here is a relatively subtle attempt to create "agents of influence".

The effect can be seen in the behaviour of Geraint Tarling, head of ecosystem dynamics for the British Antarctic Survey. Having begun his own research career with funding from the EU Commission's Third Framework Programme, he went on to give EU funded presentations (in cooperation with the British Council) at a series of so-called cafés scientifiques, trying to explain "why climate change in Polar Regions should concern us all." That project cost €1.07 million, of which the EU paid €798,862.

So pervasive is the EU that, in every nook and cranny of public-funded scientific activity, you will find EU money – and influence. This, as with the film-making, extends way beyond financing research, even though much of the money actually comes from the research budget.

Thus, when the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) held its World Climate Conference 3 (WCC 3) in Geneva last year – at an overall cost of €2.93 million – the EU was right there with its cheque book, contributing €200,000 to the proceedings.

It would not have needed to impose conditions. WCC-3 was aimed at furthering "the scientific basis to explain and predict changes in the global climate in the context of both natural and anthropogenic forcing with an emphasis on contributing, from the science perspective, to the development of policy options for appropriate responses to global changes."

Then, throughout Europe (not just the EU), the commission is funding a series of researchers nights, typically offering between €60-65,000 for efforts to "raise public recognition" of European science, usually promoting an EU core issue.

Along those lines, researchers from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2008, working under the aegis of the EU-sponsored "Researchers' web in society", told the public about their involvement in the climate change and greenhouse effect research and tried to "raise the alarm concerning the new global changes."

For that, the university was paid €60,580 – one of eight of such projects funded in Greece alone, out of a total of over 120 similar events Europe-wide, costing in total around €700,000. Even more money – just short of a milliom (€992,076) was spent on project 2WAYS, communicating European research about life sciences with science festivals & science centres/museums, and holding "Science Parliament" debates.

Museums are often used as a mechanism to convey propaganda, with another project – this one called ACCENT - currently in progress. At a cost of €1.35 million (including €1.02 million from the EU), fifteen relevant science centres, science museums and aquariums are being mobilised "to move the campaign on climate change from informative to the active phase."

Debates and conferences are a general favourite of the EU, one of the more egregious examples being GENDERA. At the cost of €1.03 million – of which the EU is contributing €798,666, this project involves a series of debates and a conference, the intention being to contribute to changing the conscious/unconscious "male-is-better" attitude widespread in research.

Competitions for "young scientists" are also grist to the mill, this one costing a relatively modest €300,000. For the full Monty, though, there is the 21st EU Contest for Young Scientists at €1.07 million.

The trouble is that none of these events, far more influential and costly than a crass comic book, have quite the same news appeal. Largely, therefore, they are ignored – or even supported by local media, despite even just the examples here amounting to well over €13 million. Strangely, although money "talks", it doesn't necessarily get noticed by the media.

COMMENT THREAD

Global warming is back

Actually, it's been with us for about a week – light falls, just enough to whiten the ground but not enough to cause any problems. But, this morning, we got at least three inches dumped on the city. Now with clear skies, it is freezing hard.

The local paper picked it up but, contrary to the assertions of that idiot David Viner about snow becoming "a very rare and exciting event", it is so common that it has become routine.

What has also changed is the terminology. It has undergone a paradigm shift. Quite routinely, people refer to the white stuff as "global warming". It has become part of the everyday language that needs no explanation. It no longer even raises a smile: "global warming" means snow.

Needless to say, the paper hypes it up telling us that the weather "created havoc" with the local sports fixtures as football and rugby matches across the district were called off. And there is a "moderate risk" of severe weather affecting us on Wednesday, when we could get as much as four inches of global warming.

This is not in the same league as Washington and many parts of the States, but what was once considered a big deal here is being shrugged off. Apart from the namby-pamby sportsmen, life goes on without a pause. Traffic was running virtually without a glitch.

The routine of it all, though, is a killer for the global warming lobby. They can scream all they like about the planet heating up. Their credibility is shot to hell, covered in layers of white stuff and destroyed by the matter-of-fact sense of humour of a population that knows bullshit when it sees it.

What is really amazing is how slow the politicians are in picking up on this. But then it doesn't snow that often in London and they are so wrapped up their Westminster bubble that they may not have noticed the shift in mood. Perhaps they have - which is maybe why little Dave isn't talking about it.

If he tried raising global warming outside the metropolitan bubble, though, it would probably do no more than reinforce the already dismally low opinion we already have of politicians. It can't get any lower because it's almost certainly as low as it can get. But he can look even more of an idiot than he does already.

Politically, that can be even more deadly than unpopularity.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Credo in unum deum

George F Will in The Washington Post argues that, "A religion is what the faith in catastrophic man-made global warming has become." Thus, he tells us, "It is now a tissue of assertions impervious to evidence, assertions that everything, including a historic blizzard, supposedly confirms and nothing, not even the absence of warming, can falsify."

He is not the first to make such an observation, but to find such expression the The Washington Post is a significant step on the road to deprogramming a population which has been held in the thrall of this false creed for far too long.

Another step is a profile of Vijay Kumar Raina in Forbes India. Raina, of course, is the scientist who produced the Indian government's glacier report, of which Pachauri was so rudely dismissive.

What shines out from this profile is a picture of a real scientist, one who has spent a lifetime steeped in his specialist subject and has forgotten more about glaciers than that the posturing golf course owner Pachauri knows or ever will know.

But what is so very helpful is that Raina was also a government scientist, working in areas about which academics would know little. And his knowledge sheds a massive light on the disputed claims about whether glaciers are growing or shrinking.

Because of the remoteness of the majority of Himalayan glaciers – and the inconvenient fact that many of them lie in war zones – many of the baseline surveys, on which the IPCC and others base their claims of shrinkage, were undertaken by aerial photography.

The problem here is that the photography was done in November when the skies had cleared of cloud after the monsoons but, by that time, snows had already fallen, obscuring the outlines of the glaciers. Thus, there was a tendency to over-estimate the size of the glaciers on the maps based on the photography.

Now, however, the surveys are carried out in September by satellite, before the snows and when glacier outlines are a lot clearer. As a result, comparisons tend to over-state the shrinkage.

That problem does not arise to the same extent where earlier satellite imagery exists – and, interestingly, when like-for-like imagery was examined for the Tibet region, a report published last year found that a significant number were either holding their own or increasing in mass.

This was a survey of the Karakoram mountains in the Western Himalayas where, of a group of some 230 glaciers, 87 had surged forward since the '60s, sliding down into lower elevations.

The researchers, imbued with the global warming ethos, clearly failed to remark that their findings depended on comparing like with like, and must have been unaware of the problems in other areas, described by Raina.

Even without the photography though, Raina has another trick up his sleeve. He produces a graph of the rate of retreat of the poster child Gangotri glaciers (pictured above), showing that the rate of retreat started to slow in the 90-96 period and has now stopped completely.

A full appreciation of the situation is nevertheless complicated by the fact that high-definition, multi-sensor satellite monitoring of remote glaciers is only relatively recent, so analysts are using relatively short-term datasets, which cannot really support meaningful conclusions when so little is known about natural variability and long-term behaviour.

Despite this, we still have Pachauri squeaking that the glaciers are continuing to melt rapidly, a claim that owes far more to his need to recover lost credibility over the "Glaciergate" affair than it does any science.

In fact, this reinforces Will's thesis. Pauchauri clings in desperation to his shrinking glaciers, not because of any underlying reality but because they are a central tenet of his faith. He must believe this because, without that certainty, the very foundation of his existence is challenged.

Increasingly though, this desperation of the believers, once threatening, now looks pathetic. Their climate change God, unlike the glaciers they so revere, is melting away

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Global warming meltdown

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Tory fail

The Sunday Times reports on the latest YouGov poll which has the Tory lead slump to just six percent. The not-the-tory-party makes 39 percent, down one point on January, Labour gets 33 percent, up two and the Lib-Dims drop one point to 17 percent.

We are told that the six-point gap is the narrowest since December 2008, the results suggest a hung parliament with the Cameron's party set to take 290 seats, 10 seats more than Labour.

Even worse news awaits the Boy over in The Sunday Telegraph though. There, a tracker poll by Politics Home has his personal lead over Gordon Brown halved in six months.

The centrepiece of the Cameron experiment has always been that call-me-Dave has been more popular than his own party, dragging it up in the polls.

When voters were asked in September whether they thought he was doing a good or a bad job, Mr Cameron scored a positive performance rating of 36 (calculated by subtracting the percentage of people who thought he was doing a bad job from the percentage who thought he was doing a good job).

However, that rating fell by several points each week until it was 12 by the second week of February. By contrast, Brown's performance rating, was minus 55 in September last year and climbed steadily by several points a week until it was minus 33 by mid February.

If the trend continued, says The Telegraph, Cameron and Brown could be neck and neck by the time of the election on 6 May, each with performance ratings of just below zero. Neither Autonomous mind nor Your Freedom and Ours would be surprised.

But what is especially significant is that Cameron's fall from grace began in the first week of November, which coincided with him ditching his EU referendum pledge. He can't say he wasn't warned – he was in no uncertain terms, but the Boy thought he knew better.

He didn't.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker

The weekly column is posted. At least he recognises a good story when he sees one - or two. Ironically, one of the contextualised Google ads on the page takes you here, to a site flogging carbon credits. My guess is that they won't pick up much business from Booker readers.

However, the site might come as a bit of a surprise to Jeremy Warner, assistant editor for The Daily Telegraph. He has just learnt about CDMs from this brilliant article. You can see why that paper is so far behind the curve – the system has only been in place since 1998, the year after Kyoto.

Meanwhile, Booker's second piece deals with a kerfuffle in The Independent. This has Sir John Houghton, former head of the UK Met Office – and erstwhile trustee of TERI-Europe – complaining of the use of a quote attributed to him, the apocryphal "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen."

Houghton denies ever having said this – or anything like it, claiming that the exact quote was: "There are those who will say 'unless we announce disasters, no one will listen', but I'm not one of them."

Oddly, although the quote was attributed to his book, published in 1994, with it first appearing on the internet in 2006, it has taken until now for Houghton to complain – and that is after Booker used the truncated version in his book, The Real Global Warning Disaster.

The trouble is that, if Houghton did not utter the truncated version, it is so close to the sort of thing that he might of said that it conveys credibility. And, despite his denials, he did indeed say something very similar.

Thanks to that admirable expert on "risk", Professor John Adams, and Professor Philip Stott, who for years was almost the only voice critical of climate hysteria in the British press, we see this in an interview Houghton gave to The Sunday Telegraph in its "Me and My God" slot on 10 September 1995.

As a fervent evangelical Christian, Sir John claimed that global warming might well be one of those disasters sent by God to warn man to mend his ways ("God tries to coax and woo but he also uses disasters"). He went on: "If we are to have a good environmental policy in the future, we will have to have a disaster".

"Maybe," notes Booker, "these are not quite the words that have been so widely misquoted." They are close enough. Houghton might claim he opposes the idea of generating scare stories to publicise climate change, but the truth will out.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

How green is my golf course?

"Happiness in life is based on expectations," writes Rajendra K Pachauri on his own blog. And if your expectations include ownership of a nine-hole golf course, then Dr Pachauri must be a very happy man indeed.

The ownership is reported today by the Indian newspaper the Mail Today which tells us that R K Pachauri's "not-for-profit" TERI - imbued with a mission to "work towards global sustainable development, creating innovative solutions for a better tomorrow" – is the proud owner of a water-guzzling nine hole golf course in Gual Pahari on the outskirts of Gurgaon a satellite town to the southwest of New Delhi.

This much is not new. It was described in glowing terms by the Business Standard in February 2007, when we were told of a "beautiful golf course" that precedes the entrance of a "completely different world from the precincts of Gurgaon".

It is part of the "amazingly landscaped 36-hectare TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) campus at Gual Pahari." And nestled inside this campus is an unassuming building called The Retreat, a training and recreation centre for TERI staff and executives.

Furthermore, TERI has made no secret of the facility, noting in its Annual report 2006/7 that the golf course had been created "with the intention of promoting golf amongst TERI personnel residing in Delhi and Gurgaon." It was then that the six-hole golf course was being upgraded into a nine-hole green. A 200-yard driving range was "an added attraction" and there was a nine-hole putting course adjacent to the Retreat building.

But, it appears, TERI is harbouring a guilty "secret". The five-acre golf course is part of the 69 acres of institutional land it acquired from Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) in 1985 (below - Google Earth), for the exclusive use of TERI staff. Commercial exploitation is prohibited.


Yet the paper has found that the golf course has been opened up to selected members of the public who are being charged Rs 25,000 (£350) for membership.

According to Gurgaon's district town planner Vijender Singh Rana, commercial activity through sports on institutional land is illegal. "HUDA gave this land to TERI for institutional or public and semi-public purpose."

Rana said. "Though they have asked for change of land use (CLU) regularly from HUDA, permission cannot be given for any sporting activity. If TERI is selling golf course memberships, it is wrong." Rana said the conditions for use of institutional land were clear. "If TERI uses it for its own purpose, there is no problem. But it cannot use it commercially and sell golf memberships," he said.

Needless to say, a TERI spokesperson denied it was making commercial use of the course, something rather contradicted by this piece written in May 2008, to say nothing of this site which refers to green fees. Then there is another, seemingly bizarre, contradiction which has the state government imposing a tax on golf players, a piece in which the TERI golf course is mentioned.

However, this is confirmed by a Mail Today reporter who anonymously contacted course officials and was offered memberships for £350. Furthermore, Mohinder Singh, an official at the course, told the paper that there was a one year waiting time. "Your form will come for review after a year," he said.

Equally contentious is the water usage to keep the golf course green. As chair of the IPCC, Pachauri is voluble in demanding of governments around the world that they cut down on carbon emissions and save water, among other things, to sustain the environment. He is equally voluble about potential water shortages in his home country, arising from melting glaciers and all that.


TERI claims that water conservation measures on the campus include "an efficient central rainwater harvesting system in accordance with water conservation guidelines such as drip water irrigation, early morning and late evening half circle sprinkling to minimise water evaporation and loss."

But with the golf course and environs requiring up to 300,000 gallons a day during the summer to keep the lush greenery in condition (pictured above), questions are being asked about the sustainability of the facility, which would have difficulty in meeting the volume required solely from harvested water.

This is especially an issue in Delhi, where water shortage is a major a problem, and more so in Gurgaon. As recently as March 2008, local difficulties were causing scarcity of drinking water in the city.

Then reported earlier this month, serious concern has been expressed about the huge gap between supply and demand and the rapidly falling water table, depleted by an estimated 35,000 bore wells, only 9,780 of which are registered.

With many local residents increasingly struggling to cope with a failing water supply, many eyebrows are being raised at the luxuriant scenery which Dr Pachauri's merry men enjoy as they stroll round the greens in between saving the planet and relieving the misery of the poor.

And for those who are not too keen on golf, there is the world class "TERI Oval" cricket green for gentle recreation. Failing that, there is always the badminton green.

But this is not what most people had in mind when they describe Dr Pachauri and his institute as "green".

COMMENT THREAD

Self-deception writ large

A recent interview with Michael Mann – of "hockeystick" fame - has him in a defensive mood, complaining about the "twisted" media coverage which he has had to endure.

As to redressing what Mann feels is the balance, he refers to "this website" Real Climate, "that I'm involved in along with roughly a dozen other scientists." The purpose of the website, Mann claims, "is to try to communicate to the interested public what the science actually has to say."

What is both so terribly sad and dangerous is that Mann undoubtedly believes what he is saying, and expresses his views in all sincerity. One problem, though. is that the site, recognisably, is about advocacy rather than explanation. It does not tell the public "what the science actually has to say" – it is there to defend the orthodoxy.

Another, more serious problem – which stems from the first – is that the narrative is irretrievably biased, very often subtly, in such a way that the message is wholly distorted, tilted towards the favoured line, in a way that is wholly anti-scientific.

Yet, all along, it represents itself as the unvarnished truth, as presented by honest (implied) "climate scientists", thus claiming a superior status over less well-endowed commentary, which is characterised as "the anti-climate science effort."

Excellent examples of this can be found in the recent post, labelled, with unconscious irony, "IPCC errors: facts and spin", the piece itself a classic example of "spin".

How that "spin" manifests itself can be seen in the treatment of several of the issues raised, not least in the attempt to diminish the importance of "Africagate", which is a classic of its kind.

The main techniques deployed are the "straw man", misrepresenting the nature of the complaint, then to deal with the distorted version rather than the actual case presented, and positive "framing" – building up the report before addressing the criticism. This is then complemented by belittling the criticism.

Thus, we have Real Climate present the issue with the statement: "The IPCC Synthesis Report states: 'By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%."

Now, the essence of the complaint, expressed in Jonathan Leake's article - articulated via professor Chris Field – is that there is "nothing in the report to support the claim." Furthermore, the statement has been widely quoted by Pachauri and others, including Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

However, neither of these issues is addressed here. Instead, we are immediately told that the claim is "properly referenced back to chapter 9.4 of WG2." Not said, of course, it that the Synthesis Report was published with great fanfare separately from the WG2 report, and is the one which represents the considered view of the IPCC, the report most widely read and quoted by the media.

Only that smaller number who then referred to chapter 9.4 of WG2 would find what Real Climate now highlights. The chapter section says: "In other countries, additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-2020 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)." Of this, we are told: "The Agoumi reference is correct and reported correctly."

So far, therefore, we have two "positive" statements: the Synthesis Report is "properly referenced" and the Agoumi reference is "correct and reported correctly". Actually, neither of these points is at issue – they are irrelevant to the argument. But they have created an impression of rectitude, attempting to condition the reader.

Then comes the "straw man". The main criticism, we are told, is that that Agoumi (2003) "is not a peer-reviewed study ... but a report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Climate Change Knowledge Network". But that is not the main criticism. The main criticism is that there is nothing in the report to support the claim.

However, with the "straw man" up and running, the counter argument is then lodged. Firstly, the "prestige" of the report is built up as we are told that it is "funded by the US Agency for International Development." This, again, is totally irrelevant to the argument but, to the untutored, it confers a certain amount of authority.

An omission is also notable. Although the International Institute for Sustainable Development claims to be a think-tank, it is by its own declaration, an advocacy group. But Real Climate readers are not allowed to know this.

Instead, the author is quite happy to take Leake's evaluation of Agoumi's worth at face value. When it suits, Leake is a reliable source. Thus, the report is written by Morroccan (sic) "climate expert Professor Ali Agoumi". Whatever Agoumi is, he is not a "climate expert" and, particularly, he has no track record in climate impacts. But the description serves, so it is used.

As for the report itself, this is given the most positive spin possible. It is, "a summary of technical studies and research conducted to inform Initial National Communications from three countries (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

By contrast, Leake's point is that Agoumi refers to "other reports prepared by civil servants in each of the three countries as submissions to the UN. These do not appear to have been peer-reviewed either."

Given a more critical and searching demeanour, Real Climate could have noted that, rather than refer to Agoumi, the authors of the WG2 report could have referenced the Initial National Communications – the primary rather than secondary sources.

This is a simple, obvious point that any real scientist would make. You do not, as a rule, reference secondary sources when primary sources are available. If you did that in a PhD thesis, an alert supervisor or examiner would strike it out and you would be made to go back and cite the originals.

The IPPC report, of course, is not a PhD thesis - it is supposed to the "gold standard". Yet what would be unacceptable of a collage graduate is deemed by the "climate scientists" of Real Climate to be perfectly acceptable for the IPCC.

This, however, is also the nub of the argument. Had this issue been explored, it would have been seen that the references cited by Agoumi did not support the contention he had made – thereby standing up Leake's complaint, that there is "nothing in the report to support the claim."

Instead, Real Climate does not even deal with the real complaint, instead averring that the Agoumi report "is a perfectly legitimate IPCC reference". Even if that was true, it does not address the substantive issues.

What we then get is a lengthy dissertation about the contents of chapter 9.4 – none of which is at all relevant to the issue. But it allows the comment that it "sounds like a balanced discussion of potential risks and benefits, based on the evidence available at the time – hardly the stuff for shrill 'Africagate!' cries."

The technique here is wearily transparent. Having trotted round the block with your "straw man", you belittle your critics.

Then, and only then, do you add as an afterthought: "If the IPCC can be criticized here, it is that in condensing these results for its Synthesis Report, important nuance and qualification were lost."

By such means, the substantive and very real issue is reduced in scope and importance to a mere footnote, a minor misdemeanour rather than a major and glaring felony.

This is not honest science. It is dishonest wordplay, and all the more contemptible for its pretence at being something else. If the authors believe – like Mann – they are telling the truth, they are deceiving themselves. It is self-deception writ large.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Saving money?

The Daily Telegraph is running as its lead today, "Fortnightly bin collections are to be extended across the country to save money."

In a muddled story, we are told that councils hope that the move will encourage residents to recycle more, "reducing the amount of waste dumped in landfill sites, where it is taxed by the ton." We are also told that councils have been ordered by the government to find £550 million in savings from waste disposal budgets to cope with the pressures of the recession.

As always though when this paper reports on waste issues, there are two words missing from the story: "European Union". And it is the absence of any explanation of the EU influence that robs the story of any meaning.

The key words in what were are told – which give the clue to what is going on – are "waste disposal budgets". Here, it is helpful to know that, of the 27.3 million tons of municipal waste collected in a year (2008/09), about half (50.3 percent) goes to landfill.

This year, however, under EU rules, that figure must drop to 11.2 million tons, requiring about 2.4 million tons more to be recycled. Failure to comply invokes a fine of £200 a ton – around £500 million paid into EU coffers. Without it being specified, therefore, it would seem that the £550 million "savings" are in fines not paid to the EU.

Needless to say, though, things are not quite that simple – they never are. This forthcoming financial year, the landfill tax goes up from £40 to £48 per ton. So, by not landfilling 2.4 million tons, councils "save" £115 million – although the tax is paid into Whitehall coffers, so it would just be a transfer from one pocket to another.

The problem here is that dumping 2.4 million tons in landfill costs councils about £150 million, including tax. But, to divert it to other disposal options will cost between £250 and £500 million, with a significant capital investment for the waste handling and treatment – possibly £1-2 billion.

There are some savings to be made from reducing collection from weekly to fortnightly, but these are marginal, as councils are to impose food waste recycling, and collection will be weekly. Possibly, costs may even increase.

Thus, what this amounts to is that, in order to avoid paying the EU about half a billion in fines, local councils must add at least £100 million extra to their own costs (ignoring capital costs). Thus, the true picture is that we will end up paying more for a seriously degraded collection service. The savings are illusory.

It helps not one whit to learn that this is being done in the name of saving the planet from global warming, but at least we can enjoy the warm glow of satisfaction from knowing that these are yet more benefits of EU membership.

COMMENT THREAD

Peabody Energy Company

Offers its 240-page argument on the EPA endangerment case. It relies heavily on "Climategate" and the CRU e-mails, plus the lacunas in the IPCC report - "Amazongate" and others – then concluding:

The EPA relied on IPCC reports that were not prepared in accordance with US data quality standards and therefore do not meet US standards of reliability. Thus, [the] EPA's attempt to transform a benign naturally-occurring substance into a dangerous air pollutant is based on evidence that it should never have used in the first place.

That seems to me an innovative and effective approach. That the assessment reports did not meet "US standards of reliability" is probably unarguable. Get that excluded and where does the EPA go?

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

The Stack effect - updated

If you do one thing today, after reading this, take the time out to read what the man had to say. Self-described as a "rant", I have seen much less coherent stuff on many a forum.

Whether one approves of or condemns his action is not the point - suffice to say that, from either point of view, it is possible to understand why he felt driven to do what he did. That said, Stack's crie de coeur was a very specific amendment to the tax code which excluded self-employed software contractors from benefitting from a tax exemption open to many others. This is not dissimilar to the UK's IR4, the injustice of which has been well rehearsed, and is subject to comment in the New York Times.

To dismiss his behaviour as "psychotic" or "lunatic", as does one of our forum commentators, is to miss the point. More likely, given the circumstances, this was an extreme stress reaction. With various stress responses being progressively recognised as forms of mental illness, it could be argued that the man was ill - a condition brought about by his treatment and his inability to deal with it.

Put more prosaically, everyone has their "breaking point". Clearly, Stack reached his. With that, it is hardly inappropriate to discuss whether a more humane or responsive system could have avoided this. Draw your own conclusions.

COMMENT THREAD

Money talking

Inherent in the dishonesty of the warmists is the canard raised about the opposition being "well funded", backed by their frequent references to support from "Big Oil".

Already, though, we have identified £243 million of British government money poured into the Met Office for its "climate prediction" programme, going back to 1990.

How much the countries in Europe were also pouring into the pot we have no immediate means of knowing – although it would be useful to find out. But what we do have is the global figure paid out by the EU in the earlier period, taken from the Cordis website.

There, we see that the "Specific programme of research and technological development in the field of environment and climate, 1994-1998" amounted to €914 million – about £650 million in real money. Bearing in mind that the EU, typically, requires match-funding and core overheads have to be borne by the grant applicants, you can probably double that figure when it comes to actual expenditure.

But what is particularly sinister is the programme objective, as set out:

To observe the characteristics and understand the basic processes of the climate and of natural systems (continental, oceanic and atmospheric), to identify and assess the adverse effects of human activity on them and, to identify ways of preventing such effects or remedying them where this proves necessary.

There, writ large, is the a priori hypothesis of "man-made global warming". Hundreds of millions is being thrown at academia with instructions to go out and find the evidence to support the hypothesis. This is at a time – pre-TAR – that "scientists" supposedly had open minds and were gathering information.

Anyone who has the remotest idea of how academia works will know instantly how corrosive this sort of money really is. Department heads, anxious for funding to keep their empires going, would tailor their research proposals to ensure that they conformed with the programme objective.

Without being told, they would know that to submit a counter-hypothesis – that there were other climate drivers, or that mans' influence was negligible - would be to invite instant oblivion. The chances of getting funding would be nil.

I actually saw this at first hand after the 1988 Salmonella-in-eggs scare. With food poisoning in the headlines, the issue suddenly became fashionable in the halls of academia and the Research Councils, MAFF (as it was then) and the Department of Health were suddenly throwing huge amounts of money at the perceived problem.

It was at that time that I decided to do my own PhD, offering a counter-hypothesis that the "egg scare" was an artefact, arising from poor investigational technique, institutional bias and many other factors, including scientific fraud – yes ... we've been there before.

Not only could I not get funding – which hardly surprised me – none of the universities I initially approached would take me on. My very presence on the campus, it was felt, could prejudice the ability to tap into the well of funds aimed at supporting the prevailing hypothesis.

The caution was well-advised. When one brave department head did take me on, he was summonsed down to London and grilled by MAFF officials. Only under the most stringent of conditions was his funding stream allowed to continue, which included my being excluded from all the government-funded activities in the department.

Currently, we have diverse warmists pouring scorn – as they do – on the idea that thousands of "scientists" are somehow part of a grand conspiracy, but that is wilfully to distort the way academia works.

Basically, it is bought and paid for – it will follow the money. If you have €914 million on offer to those prepared to "identify and assess the adverse effects of human activity" on the climate, hundreds and thousands of "scientists" will dutifully fill in their grant applications, proposing to do precisely that. Those who do not conform fall by the wayside – they simply do not get funded.

Then, of course, the overwhelming weight of funded papers is taken as proving the point, and evidence of the "consensus". But it is money, not science, that is talking.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

A total farce

Anyone following the global warming rhetoric coming out of India recently will be under no illusion that the official line is that it represents a major threat to the human race – and especially the peoples of India.

Then you see a piece like this in the Pakistani Daily Times (not by any means the first of its kind) and you know the Indian rhetoric for exactly what it is – rhetoric.

The report here tells us that India is in a fix over releasing "secret data" on the Himalayan glaciers to the scientists studying the phenomenon of ice melting in the region.

These data are so classified that government glaciologist Dr VK Raina was refused access to his own work that he had done during his tenure in the Geological Survey of India (GSI). He was bluntly told that all GSI data was classified, which also included the water flow from the melting glaciers.

Raina was able to use some of the data he had – though at the risk of being hauled up under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) – in his report, trashing the Pachauri's claims of fast disappearing glaciers by pointing out that some glaciers had in fact "expanded".

But the fact remains that many of the glaciers are in highly sensitive border areas so data on the areas are withheld on the grounds that its release might be a compromise on the country's security. This reflects the fears that it might get into "wrong hands" and be misused by the "neighbours" – meaning, of course, Pakistan, but also taking in China.

And, if India cannot even co-operate on a regional level over areas supposedly of vital interest to the mankind's survival, putting its own national needs ahead of the common interest, putting men with guns where there should be scientists, then the hopes of anything sensible coming out of the region are next to nil.

Even though the guns in the particularly sensitive areas – such as Kashmir – are most often silent, there is a proxy war between Pakistan and India going on in Afghanistan, driving the insurgency there. That the two countries should then put aside their enmities and allow free-roaming parties of scientists to release potentially strategic war material is too much to ask.

The tragedy is that this insecurity is doing more than anything else to hold back development in the region. Between then, Pakistan and India field more than two million men under arms, each country having to bear crippling military costs. Settling the regional disputes would do far more that any amount of "mitigation" to deal with the rapidly disappearing global warming.

That too points up another evil of the global warming obsession. Huge amounts of intellectual energy and resources are being expended on a non-existent or low-order problem, while the more important issues are tucked into the background, unresolved.

These obsessives do more damage than they even begin to realise.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Holland's first climate exile?

"I am much more anxious about the cooling of the earth. The ultimate fate of this planet is a new ice age. If the main wheat belts of the Northern hemisphere fail to produce their much needed harvest, heaven knows how we will feed ourselves. Well, it could be that warming will lead to a disaster. I still want to accept that. But you must weigh this unknown risk against other problems."

Henk Tennekes, former Director of the KNMI (Dutch Meteorological Institute), forced out of his job in the '90s over his views on global warming – interviewed in De Telegraaf.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Biased BBC

"In the corrupt world of climate change it's all very, very cosy for those who make the running."

Comment on the resignation of Yvo de Boer.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Saving the planet

Kidney disease sufferers and hard-pressed taxpayers generally will be delighted to learn that NHS Kidney Care is funding a one-year "Green Nephrology Fellowship" for a Specialist Registrar (SpR) to work on "sustainability in kidney care".

So it was that in September 2009, Andrew Connor was appointed to the post. He has been seconded to The Campaign for Greener Healthcare (which is in part funded by the NHS) and has been receiving training in project management and clinical systems improvement.

Apparently a qualified physician, he is no longer wasting his time treating patients. Instead, he is now working with renal units "to look at existing approaches that aim to reduce carbon emissions, and to develop sustainable models of kidney care," busily "undertaking carbon modelling of clinical pathways."

The cost of this one-year project, we are told, is a mere £135,700.00, including VAT and a provision for £20,000 for "footprinting work".

However, this is not the end of it. Further projects include an analysis of the carbon footprint of kidney care, a survey of current sustainability within renal units and collaboration with the renal industry – at a cost so far undisclosed.

Nevertheless, one is so pleased that the NHS has given up on the boring old task of saving patients' lives and is increasingly concentrating its scarce resources on saving the planet – a far more worthwhile venture.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

There's always a catch

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has been caught in flagrante delicto, or so it would seem. The Daily Telegraph reports that this department, specifically set up to tackle climate change has paid for more than 1,000 internal flights around Britain despite telling the public to cut down on air travel.

However, or so we are told, this is somewhat mitigated by the Government using £35,000 of our money to buy indulgences carbon credits to offset the flights – but that isn't even the half of it.

What we are not told is that the government is co-funding an EU project called CATCH headed by the transport consultancy MRC Mclean Hazel Limited, with the participation of the University of the West of England in Bristol and the public-funded Transport Research Laboratory.

For €1.94 million, of which €1.48 million is EU funding, the project will "develop a knowledge platform" to "provide travellers, businesses, planners and other mobility stakeholders with the tools to play their part in creating a new mobility culture promoting timely and informed climate-friendly travel choice and policies."

The "Holistic Platform" (i.e., website) "will enable travellers to understand the climate change impacts of their choices, and take effective actions to reduce them, and enable policy decision makers to include carbon constraints into their actions."

Nor indeed is this the full extent of the EU involvement. It also has on the go a project called WISETRIP, in which the University of Aberdeen and the Angus Transport Forum is taking part. For €2.14 million – of which €1.44 million is EU funding – they are designing a network of interconnected Journey Planner systems to combine urban and Long-Distance Transport information services, all of which is supposed to integrate with the CATCH project.

Then there is the i-Travel project which for €2.27 million – of which €1.46 million is EU funding – is set to develop "a personalised, context-aware online 'virtual travel assistant' service for travellers, both before and throughout their journey."

This, in turn is augmented by CIVITAS, a €24.48 million project, with €15.29 million of EU money, aimed at improving "sustainable transport" and "pushing citizens towards the desired behavioural shift".

With all that effort, and something like €30 million being spent on guiding travellers towards making the "right" choice of journey plan, the very least DECC could do is take a little notice of what is going on. But then, I suppose, we are dealing with the mindset of our rulers, who subscribe to the dominant ethos of "do as I say, not what I do".

When CATCH goes online in 2012 and becomes available to the public, though, at least we will have some guidance in telling them what to do with it.

COMMENT THREAD

Are the rats deserting the sinking ship?

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, has announced his resignation, according to Associated Press. His departure takes effect 1 July, five months before 193 nations are due to reconvene in Mexico for another attempt to reach a binding worldwide accord on controlling greenhouse gases.

De Boer said from Bonn, Germany that he was announcing his departure now to allow UN Sec Gen Ban Ki-moon to find a successor well before the Mexico conference.

AP notes that his constant travel and frenetic diplomacy failed to bridge the suspicions and distrust between developing and industrial countries that barred the way to an agreement at Copenhagen in December.

It should also be noted that it was de Boer, rather than Pachauri, who first acknowledged the "Glaciergate" error, with the good doctor trailing grudgingly in his wake. Whether the two events are connected, we do not know but, no doubt, more will emerge.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Diminishing returns

The latest "gate" - of a sort – has made an appearance, via Czech physicist Lubos Motl. He analyses on his blog the temperature record at the Clementinum in central Prague (pictured).

The site hosts the world's second oldest continuously working weather station after the Central England dataset, with records going back to 1770 which have not been interrupted or modified since 1775. And, in 1794, the Clementinum's annual mean temperature was 11.50°C and in 2005 it was 10.88°C.

Effectively, there has been no statistically significant warming in Prague since 1800, and that is without taking into account the urban heat island. That may be as much as 0.6°C per century and which would probably revert the 200-year trend to a significant cooling.

Despite this, the records have been excluded from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), from which the climate records have been compiled. They have been replaced by some gapped and strangely artificially adjusted data from the Prague International Airport, which doubtless give a different picture.

If there was anything like an honest and informed debate going on, then this would be big news, not least because it confirms so much else, where the accumulated evidence points to a sustained and deliberate tampering with the historical temperature record.

Given the inherent dishonesty of the imperious "Gavin" over at RealClimate (which actually has two million hits less than EUREF, despite starting two years earlier), there is no possibility of dialogue with the warmists. Mockery of their pretentions is the only real option.

Far more important than the warmist claque, however, is the Economist blog which trots through the "gates" with a superficiality that the Beano would find it hard to emulate, making lofty, ex cathedra pronouncements as to the rectitude of the "climate scientists" RealClimate. That is "prestige" in action for you: sceptics versus climate scientists – no contest in the writer's mind.

A similar line comes from CBS News as the establishment seeks to recover its dominance, after the multiple hits it has taken, retreating into a smokescreen of clever-dickery which allows commentators to appear knowing, without addressing any of the issues.

Fortunately, we see items like this in the Washington Examiner, which follows the path of this blog, with a "daily outrage" column, highlighting in this case money misspent on global warming.

Andrew Alexander in The Mail on Sunday (which I missed at the time) also offers a insight on the power of the myth, although this one has a way to run on this side of the Atlantic before the establishment deserts it here.

It is in the States that real battle will be fought. The EPA lawsuit documents have been lodged (such as this one) and they make powerful reading. For the first time, we are to see the warmists challenged in a formal arena, where they cannot duck and dive.

Without that avenue available to us over here, and with our politicians resolutely keeping their heads down, we are stuck with the political condom of the EU, which ensures that no serious debate is ever born. Thus, as so often, we are relegated to the sidelines, hoping "our" side will win but unable to participate in the action.

As for the "gates", without political engagement, we are approaching the point of diminishing returns. Every new finding has less shock value, and soon enough the media will run out of steam – and interest. After their brief flurry, they will move on.

However, with Pachauri refusing to move, the IPCC is fatally wounded. Things will never be the same again. The warmist creed is on the wane and, eventually, the politicians will catch up, and bow to the inevitable. We can entertain ourselves, in the meantime, by baiting the warmists and supporting the Americans, but short of shooting the denizens of our political establishment – an option which looks increasingly attractive – we are mere bystanders.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

A satisfactory model of complete ignorance

This one, I couldn't resist. In June 2006, the EU decided to commission a project under the heading: "What poor information can tell: Analysis of climate policies under large uncertainty about climate change."

The research investigated "the usefulness of imprecise probability concepts for assessing and processing the large and diverse uncertainty that needs to be considered in climate policy analysis. Imprecise probabilities are constituted by entire sets of probability measures."

I think I understand what they are talking about (just), but in case you have problems, they go on: "They provide a satisfactory model of complete ignorance, which is an important prerequisite for quantifying poor states of information such as encountered in climate change research. Classical probability theory faces severe difficulties in this field as the debate around quantifying uncertainties in the IPCC Assessment reports shows."

The project consisted of a theoretical part mainly conducted at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA and an applicational part to be executed at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, Germany (return host).

And you will be pleased to learn that the theoretical part consisted of an analysis of the decision theoretical as well as evidential basis of imprecise probabilities in the light of climate change. In the applied part, it investigated how the presence of ambiguity, i.e., imprecise information, can alter the results of model-based analyses of climate protection strategies and policy instruments.

It seems they had their work cut out. Fortunately, the work – completed in May last year – only cost us €245,365.00 – excluding VAT of course. Mind you, I could have provided "a satisfactory model of complete ignorance," absolutely free of change.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

A climate change person

Following up on my previous piece (which seems to be becoming a habit), another reader tells me to have a look at Anita Swarup, the author of the Oxfam report on Tajikstan. It turns out that the lady has "form".

Formerly a "communications officer" for the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, she subsequently became freelance, describing herself at a UNESCO International Conference on Broadcast Media and Climate Change in Paris in September 2009 as: "Research, advocacy and communications – Climate Change."

In her Carbon Capture bio (above), she is described as a "climate change person," telling us that she is an Oxfam International regional research report author, "who has worked as a consultant on climate change for Oxfam , Unicef and other organisations."

Interestingly, the Oxfam Tajikstan report was edited by John Magrath and Richard English. Magrath is a writer and researcher who has worked for Oxfam GB for over 20 years in a range of roles, including press officer and executive assistant to the Director. For the last three years, he has researched climate change implications for Oxfam's work. English is the campaigns manager for Oxfam.

Thus, we have a report "researched" and written by a climate change advocate, and edited by another "researcher" on climate change, overseen by a campaigns manager for an organisation that is active in climate change activism. And it was going to report anything else, other than climate change was a problem?

More than ever, this underlines the unreliability of NGO reports – in particular from advocacy groups such as Oxfam, whose work is not worth the paper it is printed on.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Where our money goes

In January 2007, the University of Sussex was awarded an EU contract worth €147,691 – excluding VAT – "for benchmarking of policy measures for gender equality in science".

The study was "to identify and analyse the success of key women and science policies and actions in the Member States and associated countries, with a view to benchmarking existing policies and highlighting examples of good practice."

I just though you'd like to know that.

COMMENT THREAD

Compassion fraud

Featured prominently in today's Guardian and dutifully mirrored by the BBC is a tale of woe, headlined: "Tajikistan facing water shortages and climate extremes, report warns". The strap line reads: "Falling supplies due to rising temperatures and retreating glaciers could spark conflict between water-stressed countries in the region, says Oxfam."

Few will actually read the Oxfam report and fewer still will have the background knowledge to understand how fundamentally dishonest it is. In pursuing its own distorted agenda on climate change, the charity is exploiting the misery of the peoples of Tajikstan, wilfully distorting the cause of their plight.

A taste of that dishonesty, writ through the entire 24-page production, comes at the very end, where the pomposity is of quite staggering proportions:

Oxfam International's experience in more than 100 countries around the world that a combination of active citizens and effective state action is the best way of securing development and poverty reduction. It is also best way of preparing for climate change. Tajikistan's civil society organizations need to be involved in the development of concrete proposals on the content and direction of national adaptation and mitigation policy. There needs to be a concerted campaign, supported by both government and civil society organisations, to broaden awareness of the challenges of climate change and the need for action to the public at large.

For a different and altogether more candid "take", however, you need only turn to the Crisis Group summary, dated 12 February 2009:

Since the civil war (1992-97), government advisers and international donors have repeatedly called for sweeping reforms to address food security, diversify the economy, dismantle opaquely run state monopolies and stop the looting of state coffers. Nothing has happened.

Significant improvement is highly unlikely under President Rakhmon's leadership, and may well take a generation. Whether Tajikistan can last that long is an open question. Donors need to address corruption in a coherent and unified way if they want to avoid seeing the country slip back into failure. A new framework for aid, based on strict conditionality, is urgently needed.

The government pays little, if any, attention to these problems. Ministries and state bodies that are of direct political or financial interest to the top leaders and their allies function well, notably the security bloc, along with the highly profitable state-owned aluminium smelter and several other state firms. Other sectors, particularly social welfare, health and education, are ignored and underfunded.

Some 70 percent of the population lives in abject poverty in the countryside, and hunger is now spreading to the cities, particularly Khujand, once one of the most prosperous and politically influential parts of the country. In the past few years increasing numbers of young Tajiks have left the country to work as seasonal labourers, primarily in Russia and Kazakhstan.

In 2008 the number reached a new record, in all likelihood over one million, or at least half of the country's labour force. Their remittances exceeded $2 billion, almost half of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The annual departure of Tajikistan's most dynamic and enterprising citizens has up to now provided Rakhmon with an economic lifeline, not to mention a political safety valve by removing those most likely to oppose the regime.

With the onset of the world economic crisis, however, labour migration is likely to diminish sharply in 2009, and along with it the remittances that are so vital to the country's economic stability.

Even a straight factual report tells you the country is in dire trouble and the most superficial level of research tells you that, of all the problems confronting the peoples of Tajikstan, "climate change" is the least of them.

And should that actually be a problem, the Oxfam nostrums verge on the surreal: "There needs to be a concerted campaign, supported by both government and civil society organisations, to broaden awareness of the challenges of climate change and the need for action to the public at large."

With a corrupt, dictatorial government, thieving as much of the aid that comes its way as it can – totally heedless of the welfare of its people – there is no civil society. This is a country where journalists have to use assumed names to avoid being picked up by the secret police. The idea of the government mounting an "awareness" campaign on climate change would be laughable, if it were not so utterly absurd.

As to "climate change", it is true that the country has experience some terrible weather over the last few years. Though the winter of 2007-8, it went through an unprecedented (in recent times) period of cold, similar to the Dzud which is has been blighting Mongolia and is still at crisis point.

Back in Tajikstan, in February 2008, the UN had to step in with a "flash appeal," calling for an immediate international infusion of $25.1 million. "At least 260,000 people are in need of immediate food assistance," the appeal stated grimly. "Moreover, the government reports that up to 2 million people may require food assistance through the end of the winter, if limited food and fuel supplies in rural areas are not replenished," it continued.

In August 2008, Reuters was reporting that the UN World Food Programme (WFP) was to supply Tajikistan with $10 million worth of food to avert famine, as the prices of bread and vegetable oil had more than doubled. It noted that the Tajik economy and infrastructure were still in tatters following the civil war in the 1990s. A foreign debt of more than 40 percent of gross domestic product was adding to its woes.

Over 2008-9, Tajikistan was hit by another harsh winter and, in March 2009, the minister for economic development and trade was reported as admitting that the chronic power shortage in the country was bound to have a "cumulative effect" on the economy. The National Bank estimated the weather-related economic loss at $250 million in January and February alone, a calamitous figure in a country where the annual state budget was roughly $610 million.

And, when it came to the "water shortages" which the current Oxfam report highlights, experts were then expressing concern that once all the snow that fell this winter started to melt, the country's already over-taxed sewer and water-supply systems would collapse. It was not the "shortage", per se that was a problem but the lack of infrastructure that left 41 percent of the population without access to reliable drinking water.

Needless to say, coverage of the crisis by state-controlled media outlets was "muted", with a notable lack of criticism of official policies.

Even then, the pain continued. In January of this year, there was a report of an earthquake in southern Tajikistan, leaving 20,000 people in an area bordering Afghanistan to face a freezing winter weather without permanent shelter. Yet, a year later, we have Oxfam dribbling on about "climate change".

Meanwhile, as the crisis in Mongolia intensifies, leaving millions at risk of starvation, we hear not a word from Oxfam or any other British charity. One of our forum members raised it with the joint Disasters and Emergencies Committee, only to be told that, "few of our agencies have a presence anywhere in China and none has approached us to enter discussions over the possibility of an appeal."

Thus, while the plight of the people of Mongolia is ignored, no expense is spared by Oxfam to exploit the people of Tajikstan (and our compassion) in pursuit of an overtly political agenda, aided and abetted by a section of the media – and, of course, the BBC.

There is something particularly loathsome about exploiting other peoples' misery to pursue an agenda, while ignoring others because it does not fit with the narrative. In doing this, Oxfam has crossed the line. Alongside the climate specialists who are committing scientific fraud, we now have a British charity committing compassion fraud. Can it sink any lower?

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD