Thursday 22 January 2015

Time to Wake Up: American Corporations are Taking Climate Change Seriously



Published on 16 Jan 2014
January
15, 2014 - In this week's "Time to Wake Up" speech on the Senate floor,
Senator Whitehouse describes how many American companies are planning
for climate change. In the speech, Senator Whitehouse shares that
companies with internal prices for carbon include Microsoft,
Exxon-Mobil, Disney, and Google.

Wednesday 21 January 2015

The CSIRO and the missing climate change data - The AIM Network

The CSIRO and the missing climate change data - The AIM Network



The CSIRO and the missing climate change data














Kirsten Tona’s article on Newpolitics.com.au – Government ignoring climate change while the planet burns (and published on The AIMN as Canberra fiddles while Australia burns) – contained a number of links to the CSIRO website where climate change data and modelling were available to the public.

Within a week of her article
being published the links to the CSIRO website were taken down. These
were the following links (that no longer work):


The conspiracy theorist in me jumps on the idea that they may have
been removed by the wishes of a government famous for its climate change
denial. Perhaps the recent funding cuts to the CSIRO include cutting out information that provides evidence contrary to the government’s stance.



But I’m sure there is a simple explanation. I’ve asked for one:


Dear Sir/Madam.


I draw your attention to this article: http://www.newpolitics.com.au/government-ignoring-climate-change-while-the-planet-burns


Since the publication of that article a number of the links to the
CSIRO’s data and models on the effects of climate change have been
removed. I refer to the following:



“Australia’s premier scientific body, the CSIRO, has been quietly
beavering away, using proven scientific methodologies to produce
realistic models of what climate change may look like in our country.



Global sea levels rose by about 17 centimetres during the twentieth century, and are projected to keep rising . . .


Climate Change In Australia
is an initiative of the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), in
partnership with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency,
through the Australian Climate Change Science Program”.



Clicking on those links will now give you the following announcement:


OOPS!!!
This site is currently unavailable
If you are the owner of this site, please contact us at 1-480-505-8855 at your earliest convenience.
As a citizen who is concerned about the effects of
climate change in Australia and who relies on the excellent work done by
the CSIRO in keeping concerned citizens informed, it was disappointing
to find that this information has been removed. Was there a valid reason
for this?
Yours sincerely,
Michael Taylor

One AIMN commenter noted that: “The people of Australia have an
absolute right to the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research”.
Let us see what they say (though I don’t expect a reply something along
the lines of “The people of Australia do not have access to the results
of taxpayer-funded scientific research because it interferes with the
government’s political agenda”).



I’ll keep you posted.



Tuesday 20 January 2015

Canberra fiddles while Australia burns - The AIM Network

Canberra fiddles while Australia burns - The AIM Network



Canberra fiddles while Australia burns














Despite the overwhelming evidence
that the effects of climate change are having a devastating impact on
present and future Australia, Kirsten Tona reports that the Abbott Government continues to ignore the evidence.



By 2070, Australia’s average temperature will rise by anything up to
five degrees Celsius, our rainfall will be significantly lower and our
sea levels higher. This data comes from the CSIRO, not from
the-sky-is-falling conspiracy theorists, so …. why is the Australian
Government not preparing?



It is a sometimes uncomfortable paradox of democracy that while
governments—elected—come and go, much of the real work of the state is
done behind the scenes by unelected bureaucrats and institutions.



But, there are times we have reason to be grateful for that.


While the current Prime Minister of Australia is on record as saying that the arguments behind climate change are “absolute crap”,
Australia’s premier scientific body, the CSIRO, has been quietly
beavering away, using proven scientific methodologies to produce
realistic models of what climate change may look like in our country.



And the news is: hotter, and drier.


Temperatures will go up, rainfall down. Ocean acidity levels will rise, as will the incidence of certain extreme weather events.


REAL FIGURES

Global sea levels rose by about 17 cm during the 20th century, and are projected to keep rising, as are ocean acidity levels.


Air and ocean temperatures across Australia are now, on average, almost a degree Celsius warmer than they were in 1910, with most of the warming occurring since 1950.
The Climate Change In Australia website use 24 of the world’s best
models to predict what Australia might look like in 2030, 2050 and 2070.



The best projections have average temperatures rising by 1-2.5°
within 50 years, if carbon emmissions are brought under control, soon.
The worst projections say average temperatures in Australia will rise by 5° within 50 years.



Climate change is real, and here to stay.


Climate Change in Australia is an initiative of the CSIRO and the
Bureau of Meteorology in partnership with the Department of Climate
Change and Energy Efficiency, through the Australian Climate Change
Science Program.



Governments come and go, and party policy is based on a wide range of
political factors, strong scientific research being merely one. Or,
should we say, occasionally one.



But the CSIRO and the BOM have to deal with the evidence. And they
have to try, current government & party policy notwithstanding, to
educate the public about their findings.



To this end, they have produced an unfeted, but extremely useful, set of reports, analyses, even posters.


But…who has been educated? Have you seen these projections? Where are the news stories?


How much public money was spent on this very important set of
projections, and why are the public not being given these posters, being
referred to this website? If you are planning where you and/or your
children/grandchildren are going to live in the future, wouldn’t you
want to see this?



LIMA CONFERENCE

Meanwhile Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is in Lima trying to defend her party’s policies on climate change.


Left: Australian Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop. Right: Tony Abbott’s Chief Of Staff, Peta Credlin.
Left: Australian Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop. Right: Tony Abbott’s Chief Of Staff, Peta Credlin.

There is some controversy around her attendance at this, a precursor
to a more important conference being held in Paris, at the end of 2015.
Reports say that when Bishop first proposed attending the Lima talks,
the “prime minister’s office” rejected her request. (“The prime
minister’s office” is often, in journalist-speak, used as code for “Peta
Credlin”).



It is said that Julie Bishop was furious about this, and took it to a
full meeting of Cabinet, where her attendance was approved.



However, “the prime minister’s office” then insisted she only attend
the talks under the tutelage of known climate skeptic, Trade Minister
Andrew Robb.



SIAMESE FIGHTING FISH

Now it is being widely reported that Peta Credlin and Julie Bishop
have had a massive falling-out. (Although, it must be noted, Bishop
herself denies this).



But climate change, the melting of the icecaps, rising sea levels,
reduced rainfall and global warming are surely too important to be left
in the hands of those who would ignore the science in favour of
political grandstanding.



Or in the hands of their advisors, who frequently concentrate on the
sale of the message rather than the predicament of the people.



Or…in the hands of the Murdoch press, who are encouraging the populace to blame the alleged rift between Bishop and Credlin on Tony Abbott, no longer, it seems, news.com.au’s blue-eyed boy.


NEWSPEAK

In 2003, George W. Bush, then President of the USA, was advised by
notorious Newspeaker Frank Luntz to emphasise the notion that the
science of climate change was unsettled, uncertain. Not because it
really was uncertain, but because that was what the public already
believed.



In a quite shockingly cynical memo,
Luntz told Bush Snr: “The scientific debate is closing [against us] but
not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the
science … Voters believe that there is no consensus about global
warming within the scientific community.



He wrote: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific
issues are settled, their views about global warming will change
accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of
scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to
scientists and other experts in the field.”



REALSPEAK

The CSIRO do not think there is no consensus on the science of
climate change. The CSIRO think climate change is already happening. So
do the Bureau of Meteorology, the Department of Climate Change and
Energy Efficiency and the Australian Climate Change Science Program.



So too, it seems, does Julie Bishop.


But Peta Credlin doesn’t. And if she doesn’t, Tony Abbott doesn’t.
And so, our commitment to emission reduction and other important planks
in the platform of preparing for continuing climate change, is left in
the hands of people who are unelected, or who seem to care a lot more
about being elected, than about actually governing.



This article was first published on Newpolitics.com.au as Government ignoring climate change while the planet burns and has been reproduced with permission.


Monday 19 January 2015

The Great Acceleration: An unequal world shows the strain

The Great Acceleration: An unequal world shows the strain





As the 'one per cent' meet in Davos for the World Economic Forum, a new scientific report shows the world risks being destabilised by human activity — most of it from a rich minority, writes Tim Radford from the Climate News Network.







HUMANS ARE NOW THE CHIEF DRIVERS of change in the planet’s physical,
chemical, biological and economic systems according to new research in a
series of journals. And the humans most implicated in this change so
far are the 18% of mankind that accounts for 74% of gross domestic
productivity.




And the indicators of this change – dubbed the “planetary dashboard” –
are 24 sets of measurements that record the acceleration of the carbon
cycle, land use, fisheries, telecommunications, energy consumption,
population, economic growth, transport, water use and many other
interlinked aspects of what scientists think of as the Earth System.




Although these indicators chart change since the start of the
Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the most dramatic
acceleration – the scientists call it the Great Acceleration – seems to have begun in 1950. Some researchers would like to set that decade as the start of a new geological epoch — the Anthropocene, from Anthropos, the ancient Greek word for mankind.




On the eve of this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a team of scientists, led by Will Steffen of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the Australian National University, report in the journal Science that
the world has now crossed four of nine planetary boundaries within
which humans could have hoped for a safe operating space.




The four boundaries are climate change, land system change,
alterations to the biogeochemical cycle that follow phosphorus and
nitrogen fertiliser use, and the loss of a condition called “biosphere
integrity”.






Past their peak



The scientists judge that these boundary-crossing advances mean that
both present and future human society are in danger of destabilising the
Earth System — a complex interaction of land, sea, atmosphere, the icecaps, natural living things and humans themselves.




Said Professor Steffen:



'Transgressing a boundary increases the risk that human
activities could inadvertently drive the Earth System into a much less
hospitable state, damaging efforts to reduce poverty and leading to
deterioration of human wellbeing in many parts of the world, including
wealthy countries.




'In this new analysis we have improved the quantification of where these risks lie.'




The Science article is supported by separate studies of global change, including the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, also headquartered in Stockholm, which publishes an analysis in the journal the Anthropocene Review.



Meanwhile a team of European scientists warn in the journal Ecology and Society that out of 20 renewable resources (among them the maize, wheat, rice, soya, fish, meat, milk and eggs that feed the world), 18 have already passed their peak production.



And a separate team led by scientists from Leicester University in Britain has even tried to pinpoint the day on which the Anthropocene era may be said to have commenced. In yet another journal, the Quaternary International, they nominate 16 July, 1945: the day of the world’s first nuclear test.





Unequal world



This flurry of research and review is, of course, timed to help world
leaders at Davos concentrate on the longer-term problems of climate
change, environmental degradation, and food security, in addition to
immediate problems of economic stagnation, poverty, conflict and so on.
But these immediate challenges may not be separable from the longer-term
ones. To ram the message home, the authors will present their findings
at seven seminars in Davos.




In the Anthropocene Review, Professor Steffen and his
co-authors consider not just the strains on the planet’s resources that
threaten stability, but also that section of humanity that is
responsible for most of the strain.




Although the human burden of population has soared from 2.5bn to more than 7bn in one lifetime, in 2010, the scientists say, the OECD countries that
are home to 18% of the world’s population accounted for 74% of global
gross domestic product, so most of the human imprint on the Earth System
comes from the world represented by the OECD.




This, they say, points to the profound scale of global inequality,
which means that the benefits of the so-called Great Acceleration in
consumption of resources are unevenly distributed, and this in turn
confounds efforts to deal with the impact of this assault on the
planetary machinery. Humans have always altered their environment, they
concede, but now the scale of the alteration is, in its rate and
magnitude, without precedent.




The report's author's say:



'Furthermore, by treating ‘humans’ as a single, monolithic whole,
it ignores the fact that the Great Acceleration has, until very
recently, been almost entirely driven by a small fraction of the human
population, those in developed countries.'







The IGBP-Stockholm Resilience Centre co-operation first identified
their 24 “indicators” of planetary change in 2004, and the latest
research is a revisitation. In 2009, researchers identified nine global
priorities linked to human impacts on the environment, and identified
two, ­ climate change and the integrity of the biosphere, ­ that were
vital to the human condition. Any alteration to either could drive the
Earth System into a new state, they said.




In fact, since then, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise,
and accordingly global average temperatures have steadily increased,
along with sea levels. At the same time, habitat destruction, pollution
and hunting and fishing have begun to drive species to extinction at an
accelerating rate.




Almost all the charts that make up the planetary dashboard now show
steep acceleration; fisheries, one of the indicators that seems to have
levelled off, has probably done so only because humans may have already
exhausted some of the ocean’s resources.




Prof Steffen said:



“It is difficult to over-estimate the scale and speed of change.
In a single human lifetime humanity has become a planetary-scale
geological force. When we first aggregated these datasets we expected to
see major changes, but what surprised us was the timing. Almost all
graphs show the same pattern.




“The most dramatic shifts have occurred since 1950. We can say
that 1950 was the start of the Great Acceleration. After 1950 you can
see that major Earth System changes became directly linked to changes
related to the global economic system. This is a new phenomenon and
indicates that humanity has a new responsibility at a global level for
the planet.”







Climate News Network

Thursday 15 January 2015

Human activity has pushed Earth beyond four of nine 'planetary boundaries', scientists warn

Human activity has pushed Earth beyond four of nine 'planetary boundaries', scientists warn


At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a "safe operating space" for human beings.

That is the conclusion of a new paper published in the journal Science by 18 researchers trying to gauge the breaking points in the natural world.

The paper contends that we have already crossed four "planetary boundaries".

Human activities are "destabilising the global environment", scientists are warning.
Human activities are "destabilising the global environment", scientists are warning. Photo: Jonathan Carroll





They include the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and
phosphorous (used on land as fertiliser) into the ocean.


Advertisement


"What the science has shown is that human activities - economic
growth, technology, consumption - are destabilising the global
environment," said Will Steffen, who holds joint appointments at the
Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and
is the lead author of the paper.


These are not future problems,
but rather urgent matters, according to Professor Steffen, who said that
the economic boom since 1950 and the globalised economy have
accelerated the transgression of the boundaries.


Cleared land in Ecuador: the deforestation "boundary" has been crossed, scientists say.
Cleared land in Ecuador: the deforestation "boundary" has been crossed, scientists say. Photo: Bloomberg





No one knows exactly when push will come to shove, but he said
the possible destabilisation of the "Earth system" as a whole could
occur in a time frame of "decades out to a century".


The
researchers focused on nine separate planetary boundaries first
identified by scientists in a 2009 paper. These boundaries set
theoretical limits on changes to the environment, and include ozone
depletion, freshwater use, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol
pollution and the introduction of exotic chemicals and modified
organisms.


Beyond each planetary boundary is a "zone of uncertainty".

The flow of fertiliser chemicals into the ocean has reached a critical level, the paper says.
The flow of fertiliser chemicals into the ocean has reached a critical level, the paper says. Photo: Peter Braig





This zone is meant to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties in
the calculations, and to offer decision-makers a bit of a buffer, so
that they can potentially take action before it's too late to make a
difference.


Beyond that zone of uncertainty is the unknown - planetary conditions unfamiliar to us.

"The
boundary is not like the edge of the cliff," said Ray Pierrehumbert, an
expert on Earth systems at the University of Chicago. "They're a little
bit more like danger warnings, like high temperature gauges on your
car."


Professor Pierrehumbert, who was not involved in the paper published in Science, added that a planetary boundary "is like an avalanche warning tape on a ski slope".

The
scientists say there is no certainty that catastrophe will follow the
transgression of these boundaries. Rather, the scientists cite the
precautionary principle: We know that human civilisation has risen and
flourished in the past 10,000 years - an epoch known as the Holocene -
under relatively stable environmental conditions.


No one knows what will happen to civilisation if planetary conditions continue to change. But the authors of the Science paper write that the planet "is likely to be much less hospitable to the development of human societies".

The
authors make clear that their goal is not to offer solutions, but
simply to provide information. This is a kind of report card, exploiting
new data from the past five years.


It's not just a list of Fs.
The ozone boundary is the best example of world leaders responding
swiftly to a looming environmental disaster. After the discovery of an
expanding ozone hole caused by man-made chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons,
the nations of the world banned CFCs in the 1980s.


This young
field of research draws from such disciplines as ecology, geology,
chemistry, atmospheric science, marine biology and economics. It's known
generally as Earth Systems Science. The researchers acknowledge the
uncertainties inherent in what they're doing. Some planetary boundaries,
such as "introduction of novel entities" - CFCs would be an example of
such things - remain enigmatic and not easily quantified.


Better
understood is the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The
safe-operating-zone boundary for CO2 had previously been estimated at
levels up to 350 parts per million (ppm).


That's the boundary -
and we're already past that, with the current levels close to 400 ppm,
according to the paper. That puts the planet in the carbon dioxide zone
of uncertainty that the authors say extends from 350 to 450 ppm.


At
the rate CO2 is rising - about 2 ppm per year - we will surpass 450 ppm
in just a couple of decades, said Katherine Richardson, a professor of
biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and a
co-author of the new paper.


Humanity may have run into trouble
with planetary boundaries even in prehistoric times, said Richard Alley,
a Penn State geoscientist who was not part of this latest research. The
invention of agriculture may have been a response to food scarcity as
hunting and gathering cultures spread around, and filled up, the planet,
he said.


"It's pretty clear we were lowering the carrying capacity for hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago," Professor Alley said.

There
are today more than 7 billion people, using an increasing quantity of
resources, turning forest into farmland, boosting the greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere and driving other species to extinction. The
relatively sudden efflorescence of humanity has led many researchers to
declare that this is a new geological era, the human age, often referred
to as the Anthropocene.


The Earth has faced shocks before, and
the biosphere has always recovered. Hundreds of millions of years ago,
the planet apparently froze over - becoming "Snowball Earth".


About
66 million years ago, it was jolted by a mountain-sized rock from space
that killed half the species on the planet, including the non-avian
dinosaurs. Life on Earth always bounced back from these shocks.


"The planet is going to take care of itself. It's going to be here," Professor Richardson said.

Technology
can potentially provide solutions to many of the environmental problems
we face today. But technological innovations often come with unforeseen
consequences. Professor Pierrehumbert said we should be wary of
becoming too dependent on technological fixes for global challenges.


"The
trends are toward layering on more and more technology so that we are
more and more dependent on our technological systems to live outside
these boundaries," he said.


"It becomes more and more like living on a spaceship than living on a planet."

The Washington Post

Monday 12 January 2015

The climate wars: IPA amateurs inordinately outgunned by Royal Society experts

The climate wars: IPA amateurs inordinately outgunned by Royal Society experts



936 21



Finally, @RichardDiNatale finds a use for IPA propaganda (Meme by @KieraGorden)


The Institute of Public Affairs has renewed its attack on climate science. Steve Bishop explains why it could suffer very serious injury in this conflict.



WHAT HAVE the Institute of Public Affairs and the Royal Society, a scientific institution with 80 Nobel Laureates among its members, got in common?



Well, they both issued publications about climate change just before Christmas. And that’s where the similarities end.



One has closed the door on debate about whether or not 97 per cent of
scientists agree that global warming is largely man-made by stating
categorically that it is a fact. It also says scientists are 'very confident' that Earth will warm further over the coming century.




The other is still trying to suggest the world’s foremost climate scientists and nearly 200 worldwide scientific organisations are boofheads.



One is an organisation respected throughout the world for its aims of finding the scientific facts.



The other seems to process views until it finds something compatible
with its aims, which, when it comes to climate change, have been summed
up by IPA executive director John Roskam in this way (reported in Fairfax Media):




''Of all the serious sceptics in Australia, we have helped and
supported just about all of them in their work one way or another,'' he
says, listing some prominent figures on the local circuit. ''Ian Plimer -
we launched his book - Bob Carter, Jo Nova, William Kininmonth.'' 





Indeed, in a comment on an obscure page
on journalist Graham Redfearn's website, Roskam gloated about the IPA's
role sowing doubt about credible, evidence based science:




'…in May The Sydney Morning Herald said that ‘Roskam has done
more to fuel doubt about climate change than almost anyone in
Australia.’ It would have been great if you had mentioned it.'









One of the organisations has a motto:



'Take nobody's word for it.'




The other seems to have a motto of



'Find someone who supports our biased view of climate change.'




So, the two publications bear no resemblance to one another.



As the world's oldest scientific organisation and with about 80 Nobel
Laureates on its books, the Royal Society has enormous gravitas,
so when it issued a Short Guide to Climate Science on December 11, the science community took it very seriously.




The Society states categorically:



'Scientists know that recent climate change is largely
caused by human activities from an understanding of basic physics,
comparing observations with models, and fingerprinting the detailed
patterns of climate change caused by different human and natural
influences.'







The Institute of Public Affairs, however, risks becoming a casualty
in the climate wars, with its book published a week later under the misleading title:




'Climate Change: The Facts 2014, featuring 22 chapters on the science, politics and economics of the climate change debate ...[featuring] ... the world’s leading experts and commentators on climate change'.




The IPA does not include one expert from the Royal Society (full name: Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge,
which is the National Academy of Sciences in the UK and the world’s
pre-eminent assembly of brains from all aspects of science).




The IPA book’s authors are John Roskam’s "serious sceptics" rather than the promised 'world’s leading experts’, despite the fact that the IPA boasts on its website that it supports 'evidence-based public policy'.



How do its “world’s leading experts” measure up against the 12 professors who wrote the Royal Society’s publication?



Take geologist Ian Plimer, who made a fool of himself and his views in a televised debate with journalist George Monbiot.





Peter Jackson of the Canadian paper, The Telegram, summarised the debate:



'For Plimer, it was an unmitigated disaster. He fudged and
distracted at every turn like a senile old goat. In the end, he refused
to answer a single question put to him by Monbiot or the moderator. His
credibility - and that of his book - withered away into oblivion.'





With delicious irony, in one of the IPA’s chapters:



'James Delingpole
looks at the academic qualifications of the leading proponents of
catastrophic climate change and finds many lack the credentials of
so-called ‘sceptics'.'





Yet, Delingpole wrote in one of his columns for the Daily Telegraph about his credentials:



'I'm an English graduate and know NOTHING about science apart from, maybe, how to grow copper sulphate crystals.'




And still on the credentials of sceptics, DeSmogBlog, which examines the credibility of climate change commentators, says another of
the IPA "experts" left school at the age of 18 and does not appear to
have a college education or any background in climate science. 




According to Sourcewatch another author, Joanne Nova, has no evident academic background in climate science; her degree (BSc) is in molecular biology.



Another contributor to the IPA book, Donna Laframboise, has a degree in women's studies and now works as a photographer, says DeSmogBlog.



Yet another of the IPA’s 'leading commentators on climate change' is a journalist who does not seem to have any scientific background and who, says Wikipedia, does not appear to have finished his arts degree — Andrew Bolt.





Bolt has been found wanting by many experts, including Dr Andrew GliksonDr Tim Flannery, and Dr Barry W. Brook.



And I found that when he called climate expert Dr David Suzuki ‘pig ignorant’, it was actually Bolt who was pig ignorant.



On a different tack, funding has been a controversial issue among climate change sceptics.



Some allege it is in the interests of climate scientists to
manufacture statistics that support man-made global warming in order to
receive generous grants from government organisations.




Here’s IPA author Garth Paltridge with a similar view:



'The livelihood of many of the climate scientists within the
CSIRO and elsewhere is now dependent on grants from that department. It
is not a situation conducive to sceptical outlook and balanced advice.
When a tendency toward postmodern science is mixed with a single,
generous and undoubtedly biased source of money, it is not surprising
that things can go very wrong very quickly.' 





So where do some of the IPA’s authors obtain their funding?



Wikipedia says that among businesses who have funded the IPA are ExxonMobil, Caltex, Shell and Esso. Other donors include electricity and mining companies.



Then there’s the Heartland Institute which, according to DeSmogBlog, has received at least $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998 but no longer discloses its funding sources. The Sydney Morning Herald says documents
show it has spent more than $US20 million funding and co-ordinating the
activities of climate sceptics and bloggers since 2007. Heartland bills
itself as promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.






Do any of the IPA's authors receive funding from Big Carbon?



Yes. Many.



Documents show IPA author Bob Carter receives a "monthly payment" of $US1667 ($1550) from the Heartland Institute as part of a program to pay



'... high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message.' 




IPA author Joanne Nova does also. DeSmogBlog says in 2007, the Heartland Institute arranged for and funded
a group of scientists, including Ms Nova, to be sent to Bali to
challenge and protest the annual conference of the parties to the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change.




And IPA author Dr Willie Soon has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major U.S. oil and coal companies. .



Then there's IPA author Patrick Michaels. Wikipedia says he acknowledged on CNN that 40 per cent of his funding came from the oil industry. A 2005 article in the Seattle Times
reported that Michaels had received more than $165,000 in fuel-industry
funding, including money from the coal industry to publish his own
climate journal.




Another IPA author, Richard Lindzen,
was a member of the Science, Health, and Economic Advisory Council of
the Annapolis Center, a Maryland-based think tank which had been funded
by corporations including ExxonMobil.




IPA author Nigel Lawson founded the Global Warming Policy Foundation which, says The Guardian, has received donations from two sources linked to a free-market thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has admitted taking funding from fossil fuel companies and has also argued against climate change mitigation.





IPA author Jennifer Marohasy is currently an adjunct Research Fellow at Central Queensland University, being funded by the B Macfie Family Foundation, which according to CQU has



'... been set up to assist expert researchers in environmental
science and related areas who are prepared to challenge orthodoxy on
topics which are scientifically and politically controversial,” said Dr
Bryant Macfie.
 





Morohasy told the ABC:



“I worked for the IPA as a salaried employee on contract from
2003 until 2009. During this time I attended a conference on climate
change organized by the Heartland Institute."





Sourcewatch says about IPA author Stewart Franks
that, despite repeatedly denying that he has received any funding from
polluting industries, Franks in fact received $85,000 in 2006/7 from Macquarie Generation, a state-owned corporation selling electricity on the National Electricity Market in Australia and one of the largest CO2
emitters in Australia. He was forced to admit this funding when
questioned by a parliamentary committee, but immediately claimed the
money went to a "student" and not himself.




According to documents from the Heartland Institute, IPA author Anthony Watts was paid by the "think tank" $88,000 for a project. 



It would be interesting to learn of Garth Paltridge’s views about
scientists and others receiving money from sources associated with
fossil fuel industries.




The IPA book costs $24.95. The Royal Society information is free.





Read more by Steven on his blog stevebishop.net.