Pioneers into practice - by Richard... Friday, February 12, 2010

Pioneers into practice - by Richard... Friday, February 12, 2010

As part of a €760 million programme called Climate-KIC, that has distinctly Communist overtones, the EU and its "partners" are planning to spend a minimum of €4m per year on developing "Pioneers into Practice", new generations of "high-skilled specialists in the low-carbon economy." 

One is surprised they are not called "Carbon Pioneers" and only by accident, probably, did they avoid the label "Young Pioneers".

Incorporating the statutory propaganda element, the programme will also fund a series of annual "Innovation Fests", the first to be held in Central Hungary in June 2011, with a budget of €400,000 allocated for the festival and linked activity.

Climate-KIC is the latest of the EU's increasingly expensive "climate change" initiatives, this oneintended to bring together Europe's leading academic institutions and business partners to address climate change.

It consists of a consortium of 16 core partners, five from the academic side, one regional partner – known as the RIC (Regional Innovation Implementation Community) - and ten from the corporate world. 

The Grantham Institute at Imperial College London is the British academic partner and one of the commercial partners is our old friend Beluga Shipping, sitting alongside Shell Oil and defence giant Thales.

The Regional innovation and implementation community (RIC) consists of the West Midland Regional Assembly, Central Hungary, Lower Silesia (Poland), Hessen (Germany), Emilia Romagna (Italy) and Valencia (Spain). It has committed to providing €140m over the first four years. €120 million comes from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and the remainder will come from a combination of national and EU funding, with and private contributions.

Climate-KIC, we are told, will initially focus on achieving excellence in four areas: assessing climate change & managing its drivers, transitioning to low-carbon resilient cities, adaptive water management and zero carbon production. These fields were selected for their "mitigation-adaptation potential as well as innovation and job creation opportunities."

Happily, so the EU predicts, by 2014, Climate-KIC "will be the natural place for companies to locate climate R&D centres, top students to look for climate education, researchers to look for inspiration and policy makers to seek advice." And it will have created significant industrial value and high-skill jobs for Europe and built the critical mass to be self-sustaining.

Already, the cornucopia of funding is winging its way to Coventry, with Lord Mandelson in the city yesterday, "urging the Midlands to drive the global car industry into a greener era." 

During a visit to Warwick University, he also announced a government investment of £19 million to make the Midlands a "Low Carbon Economic Area" focused on researching and developing low carbon vehicles. "The move towards a low carbon economy presents huge opportunities and this new funding will help secure the Midlands' 10,000 existing car industry jobs by helping transform them into the green car jobs of the future," says Mandelson.

Meanwhile, Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, with his Grantham Institute hat, chirps about the "benefits" of Climate-KIC. "Across Europe we're already seeing people's lives being altered by the effects of climate change, with increases in forest fires, heat waves, flooding and drought," he says.

"It's a massive task to both reduce carbon emissions across the world and to ensure that on a local, national and international level, we are able to adapt to the changes that are coming our way. The Climate Knowledge and Innovation Community will enable Europe to adapt and to hugely reduce its greenhouse gas emissions."

Hurrah for the "Pioneers into Practice", I say. They are our carbon-free future.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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Shroud waving - by Richard...

Prof Peter Liss, acting director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), claims sceptics are endangering the lives of generations to come by making unsupported claims. Critics of the science behind man-made global warming theories are playing "Russian roulette with the planet". 

"The evidence is hugely for there being substantial climate change due to man's activities and if you want to argue against that case you have to produce some evidence," he said.

Er ... excuse me. The IPCC is makingunsupported claims. We are pointing that out, all in the context of a demonstrably political process where science, quite clearly, has gone off the rails.

But this is the modern "post science" norm, it would appear. With the benefit of millions of pounds of taxpayers' cash, these people make their assertions, and sceptics, from their own resources, are supposed to prove them wrong. 

This is a staggering perversion. It is up to the proponents of change to put up their arguments, then to expose them to scrutiny, entering into a debate where the issues are explored and discussed, against a backdrop of the free exchange of information.

Instead, we have a situation where, via the clearly flawed process of the IPCC report, a small group of scientists, backed by an international clique of politicians, have attempted to bounce the populations of the world into accepting their agenda, claiming that the "science is settled" and refusing to entertain debate.

Then, when a much-delayed and fragmented debate begins to emerge, up pops the likes of Liss, indulging in what is known in the trade as "shroud waving". Do as I say, or people will die ... the classic cry of the demagogue and the rent seeker.

And if any evidence as needed of how flawed the process has become, one only needs to watch the statement of Pachauri yesterday, in response to a direct question about "Africagate". This was not a scientist speaking, but a politician, bluffing it out in the knowledge that another admission of "error" would fatally damage his institution and his already flawed case.

What is so terribly dangerous is the limited response of the media in general to his statement. Here, in "Africagate" we have the clearest, unequivocal evidence of blatant scaremongering – totally (a word used without exaggeration) unsupported by science and, in fact, contradicted bypeer-reviewed papers and observation.

Thus, this is not just a question of the IPCC using non peer-reviewed papers - as Pachauri would like to frame the issue – but of the IPCC citing such papers in preference to available peer-reviewed work, choosing an alarmist and unsubstantiated claim in preference to more measured, authenticated work.

In terms of domestic politics, if a leading politician had made a false claim that had such significant policy implications – with such a clear audit trail – and then blandly sat in front of a press conference and denied any error whatsoever (then refusing to entertain any discussion as to how he had reached that conclusion), the media would be all over him. He would be hounded out of office.

This is where the likes of Roger Harrabin completely fail to do their jobs. Likewise, with his easy acceptance of "Glaciergate" being a mistake, he sells the pass, ignoring the fact that the lead author, responsible for the false glacier claim, insists that the inclusion of the reference was not a mistake.

If, for one minute, Harrabin could break free from his own prejudices and stultifying ignorance, and recognise that which has been admitted – that the inclusion of the glacier claim was deliberate – and that, most likely, so indeed was the false claim about Africa, then he would also have to acknowledge that the shape of the debate changes irrevocably.

But, by buying into the fiction – in complete defiance of the evidence – that "Galciergate" was a single, isolated "mistake", Harrabin reinforces the preferred narrative that the IPCC report is still "fundamentally sound".

Of course, it is not. And the issues go far beyond WGII. The Mann "hockey stick" and the surface station temperature records have been sufficiently challenged to make any responsible journalist sit up and question the science. But, as long as ego-driven and fundamentally lazy fluff like Harrabin play their dire little games, this leaves the way open for charlatans like Liss to indulge in their shroud-waving.

He, Harrabin, and all the rest of the motley crew should be run out of town, replaced with some real journalists and real scientists, who have the skill and courage to do their jobs properly.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD