November 17, 2009

Book Review

Climate Cover-UP
The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
By James Hoggan
with Richard Littlemore
Greystone Books
$20, 250 pages

The Real Global Warming Disaster
Is the Obsession with Climate Change Turning Out To Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?
By Christopher Booker
Continuum
$23.28, 368 pages

Reviewed by
Dr. Stephen Murgatroyd
Columnist
Troy Media

Climate Cover UP, by James Hoggan, Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and the President of a well-known public relations company and Richard Littlemore, who works for the same public relations company and is a skilled journalist, is a well-written polemic book which seeks to expose climate change “deniers” as individuals working on behalf of vested interests, as befuddled conspiracy theorists or as individuals with hidden agendas.

Using a variety of methods – exposure of past connections to industry, identifying funding sources which may suggest undeclared bias, suggesting inadequacies in their understanding of science, showing contradictions over a period of time in their stated positions – the authors are out to discredit the “denial industry.”

Particular targets for their analysis and condemnation are Third Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Marc Morano of Climate Depot, US Senator James Inhofe, Professor Fred Singer, Dr Bjorn Lomberg, Dr Willie Soon, Professor Richard Lindzen, Craig Idso and Frontier Centre for Public Policy Senior Fellow Tim Ball. While these names may mean little to most people, they represent the high church of deniers.

For each, the authors offer reviews of their background, alleged links to electricity, gas and big oil companies and their inappropriate uses of selective science. For several, their basic criticism is that they have no real competence in climatology. But then nor do David Suzuki, Al Gore or the Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Kumar Pachauri – Suzuki is a zoologist, geneticist and broadcaster, Gore is a politician and businessman and Pachuri is an industrial engineer and economist.

The basic thesis of the book is that some of these deniers have been “bought” by vested interests while others naively follow the leaders and engage in junk-science or “SLAPP” science, which the authors define in terms of laws suits being used to prevent the dissemination of the truth about the science used by deniers. They cite chapter and verse the role of the coal, oil and gas industry which, they claim, buy the time of some of the deniers. The authors then attempt to show how the deniers have used their influence to delay climate change mitigation, thereby endangering the planet. They further focus on how the media is manipulated by deniers so as to help sow the seeds of doubt about the veracity of the claims of some climate scientists, suggesting that this is what is to be blame for the politician’s weak-kneed approach to action on climate change.

What the authors do not mention is that the David Suzuki Foundation also receives support from the oil and gas industry [Editors note: see comment below by Duncs19], with ATCO and EnCana being supporters as well as many banks and other companies with ties to oil, gas and coal. They also receive support from the Ontario Power Corporation, one of the largest fossil fuel burning energy companies in Canada, which also has interests in nuclear energy. However, by far the majority of supporters of the Foundation donate less than $500.

Some IPCC-supported conferences prior to Copenhagen have also been sponsored by vested interests. For example, in January of 2009 a conference on Future Climate-Change Response Research was held in Amsterdam and sponsored in part by the wind power industry and solar energy companies, which depend on subsidies for their development.

Many climate change sessions are also funded directly or indirectly by government. While such funding is seen by many as “neutral,” government funding for such organizations as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and similar organizations is not matched by similar levels of funding for those taking a different view of the science or the related policy options. In Rio, the precursor to Kyoto, some 20,000 activists (or lobbyists) were paid by governments to attend. Some of these organizations are subsidized for up to 30 per cent of their annual operating costs by government.

I mention these issues because Hoggan and Littlemore do not. They present a view of deniers which is damning, but partial and misleading. There is a degree of hypocrisy in how they present their case.

Christopher Booker, former editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye and a well-established journalist, offers a detailed and thoroughgoing critical history of climate change as the cloak under which a great deal of social engineering and global social change is being proposed. He reviews each stage of the development of the argument, links the cast of characters to their past work on the Club of Rome, and suggests that the science is not at all settled, citing evidence to support his proposal.

He is especially critical of the role of Al Gore as “prophet” for the “warmist” industry, especially given his vested financial interests in green technology (Gore Chairs a UK-based investment company which invests in green technology and stands to become one of the world’s first green billionaires) and of the motives behind the UN’s push for global governmental mechanisms to combat climate change. Well-written, thorough and biased (as both books are), Booker questions the scale of action proposed and worries that the new socialism of climate change mitigation policy will change forever the societies in which we live and will cause untold and unanticipated harm.

As we watch the world negotiate its future at Copenhagen less than 20 days from now, these two books, if read together, will leave readers uncertain as to who to believe. This is a good thing. There are no absolute truths on climate change: there are emerging scientific theories, some facts and an incomplete picture. Climatology is emerging as a science and the most fearful predictions about our future are based on poorly developed computer models, which are gradually improving over time.

The motto of the Royal Society, one of the leading scientific bodies in the world, is nullis in verba – “nothing upon another’s word.” I am afraid you will have to make up you own mind.

For the record, I have not been paid by the oil, electrical or gas industry for this review.

Channels: Climate Depot, November 20, Science Canada, Desi-Radi0 (Pakistan), Corporate Knights, December 1, 2009