The Financial Times reports:
One of Paul Wolfowitz's two handpicked deputies, Juan José Daboub, tried to water down references to climate change in one of the World Bank's main environmental strategy papers, the bank's chief scientist has told the Financial Times.
Mr Daboub, a conservative former finance minister from El Salvador, was brought into the bank by Mr Wolfowitz. He is already under fire for allegedly trying to take out references to family planning in the bank's Madagascar country assistance strategy and reduce its prominence in its new health sector strategy.
Robert Watson, the chief scientist, said Mr Daboub tried to dilute references to climate change in the Clean Energy Investment Framework, a key strategy paper presented to the bank's shareholder governments at its annual meeting in Singapore last September.
"He tried to water it down. He tried to take out references to climate change," Mr Watson said. Two other officials confirmed this account.
The chief scientist said Mr Daboub, who oversees the sustainable development division of the bank, tried to take out some references to climate change completely and, in other cases, replaced it with the phrases "climate risk" and "climate variability", which convey greater uncertainty over the human impact on climate.
Mr Watson said: "My inference was that the words -'climate change' to him implied human-induced -climate change and he still thought it was a theory and was not proved yet."
Hat tip: Ross Gelbspan.
Wolfowitz is a disciple of Bush and parrots the Bush administration's political fear of global warming and the possible restraints to greed that might occur.
What's the beef? *Any* views on global warming and/or family planning are inherently personal/political whether you are pro or anti. Because 'A' wishes to "water it down" does not make him more or less of a villain than 'B' who wrote it in the first place. And please, don't anyone mention that one of them is a 'scientist' as though, on these contentious subjects, that would make a difference.
Wow, someone of the political right (bet you are David) arguing in favour of social constructionism. A rare moment in time.
Who cares about all those ground and satellite temperature measurements, climate models, ice coverage estimates, etc? Whether global warming is real or not is not based on evidence, testing, etc. Oh no, it's purely a personal/political choice!
Well, I suppose Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will approve of this train of logic. Whether the holocaust happened or not is purely a personal/political viewpoint ... I choose to think it did not happen, and hey presto, it didn't!
Meyrock,
Godwin's Law after just two comments: congratulations you just set a new record.
Hans, you seem to be unaware of what Godwin's law says.
Proof of the power of Errendipity, Tim.
Best,
D
Well, Tim, he got pretty close to Godwin's Law, I think. Not that I care, I worry much more (but not that much!) about the accusation of "social constructionism" - whatever that is when it's at home. Whilst I have never doubted that the global temperature is changing, although the direction might be disputed, we are surely talking here of *anthropological* warming. Meyrick might think that is a scientifically proven fact, I do not; but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the whole shebang is Political with a capital 'P'. Anyone, on either side, who doubts that, is no longer entitled to call themselves a 'Bright' - a term of approbation, apparently, according to the word of Archbishop Dawkins!
Henk Tennekens made the useful suggestion that the IPCC summary for policymakers should be written by OECD economists.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/04/24/checks-and-balances-in-climat…
Heated debate in anthropological circles? Margaret Mead v Malinowski on climate change and the sex life of savages, perhaps?
"What's the beef? Any views on global warming and/or family planning are inherently personal/political whether you are pro or anti."
So David if he'd demanded that additional references to AGW be added and that the effects be exaggerated you'd think that was acceptable?
Contrary to the denialist spin, there's only one side of this debate engaging in those tactics.
"if he'd demanded that additional references to AGW be added and that the effects be exaggerated you'd think that was acceptable?"
No, Ian, and your continual ability to miss my point is almost becoming an art form! What I meant was that the whole controversy is now political and therefore attracts partisans on *either side*, ranging from the semi-expert to the sublimely ignorant (the name Gore springs to mind but only because he is well known, I'm sure there are equally obtuse 'denialists'!) Thus, our host, fainting into his armchair in shock and faning himself with one hand whilst reaching for the smelling salts with the other, cuts a rather ludicrous figure. The reporter from the FT, true to the house politics of that less than august newspaper, talks of "watering down" which might, for all any of us know, might better be described as cutting out the fibs.
David, you freely admit that your scientific education is at about high school level, so how the heck can you evaluate good science from bad science? The only tool you, like many of the other 'armchair experts' who occasionally populate this site, possess, is what probably what you've gleaned from the mainstream media and from your own inherent ideological agenda abd bias. Since the media, by and large, propogates the 'mass production of ignorance', an apt term originating with British historian Mark Curtis, this doesn't leave you with a whole lot to go on.
To briefly expand on the 'armchair expert' comment, what I have seen in my years as a scientist (I obtained my PhD in 1995) is how easy it is for people lacking any kind of relevant qualifications in any relevant fields to openly comment on a range of complex fields as if they were somehow magically imbued with wisdom from above. No studying is or was necessary, all one needs is to pick up a few snippets here and there, throw in some conspiratorial agenda and presto! Out spews nonsense like the IPCC is 'crap', humans have evolved above and beyond any constraints imposed by nature, biodiversity loss is nothing to be concerneded about, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I am not a climate scientist, and have not been trained in that field of endeavor, so I defer to the expertise of those on the ground who are douing the research and have invested their lives into understanding the vast array of forces that affect climate over time. The 2001 and latest IPCC reports are among the most - if not THE most - comprehensive documents in scientific history. They are also exceedingly conservative, owing to the fact that so many researchers contributed to them. No extreme views were allowed to dominate the published reports. Yet when the scientific community - which is itself highly cautious and not prone to exaggeration - can produce a document with conclusions as strongly worded as those in the 2007 report are, then this should be taken very seriously indeed by the public and policymakers.
Last week, a researcher from Yale University gave a excellent lecture at our institute on measuring various aspects of global change on natural ecosystems, bridging the gap between genomics and emergent properties such as productivity and resilience. Her talk focussed on the differing scale with which climate change will be aminfested on natural systems, from early stochastic responses (e.g. physiological) to more deterministic responses at the level of the community (initally) and then the ecosystem. Her talk underlined the differing ways in which keystone species (and in particular primary producers) will respond to stresses such as rapid warming, and what the consequences this may have for food webs and ultimately for a range of important ecosystem services. These areas are within my expertise (we had a good private discussion later about her research programme), and what I can say is that the current predicament is a serious one, if the kinds of non-linear responses referred to in her talk are borne out.
For their part, many of the naysayers, who more often than not don't have even the most rudimentary understanding of these processes, and whom clearly do not read the pages of journals like Ecology, Ecology Letters, Ecosystems, Global Change Biology, Oikos, Oecologia and others where these issues are debated, argued, and empirically reported, somehow never seem to not have an opinon that they think is sound and rational.
Jeff, as always, good to converse with you and don't think I don't appreciate your efforts to cast academic bread before ungrateful, unscientific swine like me. I may be in danger of repeating this quotation too often but having just directed the play it is fresh in mind, so forgive me: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". You are an expert, Jeff, but only an expert in *your* speciality. In coming to any firm conclusion (a doubtful stance from whichever direction you reached it!) over this AGW controversy one needs considerable expertise in all sorts of *other* subjects about which you, for example, know very little. I, for example, have considerable expertise in one particular area because, being an old man with a lifetime's interest in history, I now have a very wide knowledge of the foibles of human nature, particularly where power, politics and money converge. I have watched the doomster's bandwagon start to roll back in the '70s and have been amused but unsurprised at its progress. I have also admired the slight but deft changes in course that have been required as forecasts have proved to be hopelessly wrong. Only the other day I was reminded of Jimmy Carter's bequest to the world in 1980 in which, resting on the contemporary *certainties* of the scientific consensus, he warned of the imminent end of the world. America does not have a monopoly on dopes, the European Union issued its own daft forecasts before Carter and equalled him in egregious error.
None of that proves that you are wrong. I repeat, I am certain that global temperatures are changing but I have no *certainty* as to why. I have absolutely no axe to grind, except the natural and well-founded suspicions of any tax-payer, so I compare the track records of, say, Erlich and Simon and Kahn; I look at the outcomes of sundry, 'scientific' forecasts that have come and gone (down the toilet) during my lifetime; I read (as best I can with my poor academic abilities) sites like Real Climate and Climate Audit; and in conclusion, I can only tell you, Jeff, that you, and your ilk, remain deeply unconvincing - but if it helps with the pain, I haven't closed my mind - yet!
David Duff
How about Crudzen (CFCs cause the destruction of the ozone layer)?
How about Rachel Carson (continued use of DDT is extremely deleterious to the ecosystem)?
How about Robert Oppenheimer (a nuclear war would be the most horrific and destructive man-made calamity ever recorded. Or to put it more succinctly 'for I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds')?
How about the 1972 Clean Air and Water Acts? Did Lake Erie and the Cincinnati River not, indeed, catch fire? Did Los Angeles not have over 100 smog alert days a year?
What about those 'alarmist' scientists who believed that smoking caused cancer and other illnesses?
What about population growth? Has the precipitate decline in birth rate *due to human action* since the 1960s not given us much greater confidence that we can produce enough food and a minimum standard of living for the world's population?
How about those scientists and activists who said AIDS was a real threat, and might kill *millions* of people?
How about those visionaries, opposed by Florence Nightingale, amongst others, who said that if London had a clean and secure water supply and sewage disposal system, that recurrent cholera epidemics would be a thing of the past?
How about those doctors, who said that the government should organise, pay for and mandate, universal innoculation against diseases like smallpox? This was fiercely resisted at the time as being unnatural and intrusive.
How about a grumpy old man, a political has-been, much given to depression, reviled by both major political parties (having changed sides in Parliament twice), who spent much of the 1930s warning of the looming threat from Hitler and Nazi Germany? His name? Winston Spencer Churchill?
Were these people all wrong? Were the actions taken in response to their warnings wrong? Do we wish we had listened earlier, and done more sooner?
The reality is when human beings see a threat coming from their environment, they *act* to address it.
We will not, in 20 or 30 years time, assuming we do nothing now, have the luxury of making a decision then. All of our models and science now tells us we don't have any confidence that the world's climate will remain stable, or at a temperature that our civilisation finds amenable, at 500 or 550ppm CO2.
Stephen Schneider:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but -- which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
Wrong! If you are honest, then you are not effective, because you tell about all if's and but's.
Tim Lambert has a blind spot for "effective" people.
David Duff: "I have absolutely no axe to grind, except the natural and well-founded suspicions of any tax-payer..."
whioch somehow leads you to uncritical acceptance of the actions of a political crony of Paul Wolfowitz.
Tell me David, why is it you don't seem equally exercised about trhe massive human and economic cost inflicted on the US by Wolfowitz's lies in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion?
Ah yes the Schneider quote, wherever would poor old Hans be without it.
Yes Ian, and poor old Hans is pretty ineffective even with it don't you think?
Since Hans believes effective and honest exclude each other, perhaps he'll tell us which one he isn't?
'Valuethinker' risks an action under the Trade Description Act! Let me try and deal with some of his list.
Begging our host's pardon but I think there is a considerable and expert opinion that the policy pursued by Carson and her followers has been an unmitigated disaster.
The only nuclear war that has been fought so far was not a "horrific and destructive man-made calamity ever recorded", just the opposite it brought just such a calamity to a very much quicker end - and each of the bombs killed less people than a 'good' old-fashioned bombing raid using incendiaries. Oppenheimer should have stuck to physics.
Don't know about LA but we used to have fogs and smogs in London town but they went when people switched to central heating instead of fires and we didn't need experts to tell us how bad it was because we could see it for ourselves. Or to put it another way, technology saved the day.
"*The doomsters forecast [in 1980] an oil price in 2000 of $80-100. In fact it was $25-30, an error of between 300-400%. They went on to forecast "a 100% real increase in food prices by 2000". In fact (as opposed to phantasy), world food production rose by 25% so that by year 2000 food prices had fallen by 50%. So what about the 'population explosion, so beloved by the likes of Paul Erlich? Well, by 1999, the world population did increase to 6 billion but that was less than the forecast of 6.35 billion, and considerably less than the previous European effort at doom-mongering, 8 billion.*" (Quote from my own blog, if you will excuse my laziness.)
How about those doctors, all experts, who told us that AIDS was *not* primarily a homosexual and drug-user's disease?
Churchill in the '30s was what would be called today a 'denialist', some one who fails to go along with the consensus. (Way to go on that one, 'VT'!)
However, in my usual concilliatory way, I agree with you completely when you write: "*The reality is when human beings see a threat coming from their environment, they act to address it*". Exactly! Trust the people, or to be precise, trust the people's ingenuity.
Ian, I almost forgot you, sorry, but when you say that my comments indicate that "*[that]somehow leads you to uncritical acceptance of the actions of a political crony of Paul Wolfowitz*", I would be grateful if you could indicate the basis for such a description. All I said was that two parties to a dispute have tried, in effect, to 'rubbish' each other's point of view. All I asked was why anyone would be surprised, and why the FT reporter seemed to think on the basis of not much knowledge that one man's opinion was worth more than the other's?
And, oh dear, what an embarrassment that Schneider quote is, to be sure!
"My inference was that the words -'climate change' to him implied human-induced -climate change"
Global warming doesn't change climate; people change climate!
'David Duff'
Rachel Carson was right, and has been proven so endlessly since. Birds in the Arctic are still dying from DDT poisoning.
Glad you agree something was done about the London Fogs, the 'smoke'. You see, the power of human action to overcome environmental damage?
Take another analogy. Severe acid rain was damaging the forests of NE North America. The US brought in SO2 emission trading, and reduced SO2 emissions from power plants by 60%. The cost, which was termed 'unacceptable' has actually been about half of what had been estimated. Acid precipitation is far less of a problem.
Problem => action => solution
Churchill said we should *do* something about a looming threat. I hardly see how that qualifies him as a 'Denialist'? Rather, he looked truth in the eye, and acted on it.
Or is your definition of the 'good guy' simply 'one who goes against the majority?'
In which case, can I introduce you to Holocaust deniers like Nick Griffiths of the BNP?
On AIDS, there was never more than a tiny fraction of medical scientists, almost to the point of cranks, who suggested that AIDS was anything other than induced by the HIV virus. Indeed, they, and their political allies like Mbeki, are surely more like 'Denialists' in that they were and are fringe figures, than any of the vast mainstream of scientific consensus who argued that HIV caused AIDS?
Have you ever looked at a reasonable scenario for a 'limited' nuclear war? I'll give you a hint. The one Ian Watson profiled in his memorable documentary 'The War Game' was a *limited* Soviet strike on the United Kingdom, focusing only on 'military' targets, which *only* killed 20 million or so people. Scale that up to a full scale nuclear exchange between the US and Soviet Union: at least 150 million dead, and possibly more. Impossible to know whether civilisation would survive under those circumstances.
I hardly think the US dropping 2 bombs on 2 cities counts as a 'nuclear' war in the modern context. Japan had nothing with which to reply.
The difference between Paul Ehrlich's forecast and the actual outcome was the unprecedented drop in birth rates, across most of the world, composed of:
- a deliberate government policy of China, which is estimated to have removed at least 300 million people from the world population
- the invention of, and the widespread promulgation of, new methods of birth control to hundreds of millions of women
- deliberate decisions by hundreds of millions of families to have fewer children, particularly in southeast Asia and India (and to a lesser extent, Latin America)
You see, once again, problem => action. Ehrlich more than anyone was responsible for sounding the alarm about the problem.
I note you skipped over CFCs without mention. Were the sceptics right on that one, then? There was no threat to the ozone layer?
Over to the Club of Rome. It's interesting that one. Matt Simmons (of Twilight in the Desert fame) has taken another look at the original forecast, and pointed out how much of it *has* developed according to the C of R forecast. He points out most of the bad effects they forecast in 1972, were after the year 2000.
http://www.energybulletin.net/1512.html
http://www.energybulletin.net/1516.html
Simmons is a peak oiler (I am not, particularly, although I think inevitably conventional oil production *will* peak). But it's interesting to see a Bush2000 Ranger (organiser of large donations) say nice things about Club of Rome.
Setting that aside, the point about human action is again key. California uses less energy per capita than it did in 1980 (whereas the US as a whole uses 40% more). California also has the tightest rules on energy efficiency in the Union. You see the power of human action?
If the world hadn't responded to the energy crisis, oil prices really would have been that high (it's odd having this argument, in a way, because copper and uranium prices are actually now at their all-time highs-- maybe the Club of Rome was right?). But the world *did* respond. The US economy *did* become more efficient in its use of energy (and Japan and Western Europe even more so).
So once again, the logic is clear. If we create a price for carbon emission, the economy will respond. If we treat CO2 as a pollutant and *do* something about it, we can solve the problem.
Right now we treat the emission of CO2 as a free activity, so the economic mechanisms don't act to reduce it.
But our window to act is tightening very quickly, from all the science we have. And the scale of the problem is very large. Time is not on our side.
"Don't know about LA but we used to have fogs and smogs in London town but they went when people switched to central heating instead of fires and we didn't need experts to tell us how bad it was because we could see it for ourselves. Or to put it another way, technology saved the day."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200011/ai_n8921438
Actually David it was the Smokeless fuels Act of 1953, enacted in response to the Great Smog of 1952 which killed 20,000 people, which saved the day.
I'm sure its passage was greeted by howls of outrage from the right wing of the day.
"I would be grateful if you could indicate the basis for such a description. All I said was that two parties to a dispute have tried, in effect, to 'rubbish' each other's point of view. All I asked was why anyone would be surprised, and why the FT reporter seemed to think on the basis of not much knowledge that one man's opinion was worth more than the other's?"
You treat Wolfowitz's views as being equally deserving of consideration.
Which is rather like continuing to treat David Irving as a reliable source of historical interpretation.
Ian Gould
The plot (air ;-) thickens, so to speak. The Cabinet of the day, we now know from declassified minutes, was worried that there was not enough smokeless fuel available, that the economy would be destabilised, that the cost would be too great.
However public opinion was too powerful, and the Act was passed.
Central heating, which David Duff mentions, is actually not the same issue at all. Central heating came in after the freeze of the winter of 1963-- at that point, it became socially acceptable/desirable for middle class Britons to have central heating.
This involved ripping up the streets for gas mains (there were 'town gas' ie synthetic gas networks from Victorian times, for street lighting. That is what those giant gasholders in Battersea and Kings Cross are about. however mains gas for heating runs at much higher pressure).
Unfortunately, unlike SO2 smog, CO2 is odourless, colourless and basically unoticeable at atmospheric concentrations. So a direct public reaction is unlikely to be quite as urgent.
However this is, as I write, about to be the warmest April in 348 years in London's history. Suggesting we are getting some rather urgent signals from the environment, and the public is sitting up and taking notice.
What we need now is policy to do something about the problem.
Hans Erren:
1. You've spelt my name wrong.
2. It was the 3rd comment, not the 2nd.
3. Godwins law states:
I did not compare to the Nazi's, I compared to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Three mistakes in one sentence! Kind of impressive in a depressing sort of way.
We've never fought a nuclear war on the planet earth.
Which confirms my suspicions - David Duff lives on another planet than the rest of us.
Ian and Value thinker: one of the older AGW denialistsI, Hugh Ellsaesser, has also attempted to denialize the 1952 London Smog episode (and the smaller episode at Donora, Pennsylvania.) Not that he denied the smog itself, but he argued that the excess deaths during the period had nothing to do with it. Dixy Lee Ray, predictably, picked up on this but I don't recall anyone else doing so.