Who owns our science? - by Richard... Monday, March 08, 2010

Who owns our science? - by Richard... Monday, March 08, 2010

Jo Nova makes a good point in herrecent piece about the hideously complex task of tracing funds spent on climate change research. It's a PhD size project, she writes, and there are no grants available to fund this kind of PhD.

Actually, as I've hinted before, I'm not sure it's even doable. The tortuous flows of money, the multiple agencies involved, the extremely slack accounting in some instances, and the lack of any clear definition of "climate change", all conspire to make any calculations extremely tenuous.

There may even be an element of exaggeration – not only for the reasons Jo suggests, that some agencies and governments want to be seen as "green" but also, many projects are deliberately falsely categorised, just to get the money. Knowing which way the wind is blowing, many academics tag a "climate change" label on work that would have been done anyway, to improve the chances of a grant award.

However, the job has got a great deal harder with a poorly reported announcement at the end of last year, heralding the launch of a "Global Research Alliance" on agricultural greenhouse gases. The Washington Post was one newspaper which did pick it up, on 17 December, retailing a statement from US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack on a 21-country "research alliance" which would include the United States.

The objective is "better to understand - and prevent - greenhouse-gas emissions from farms," and Vilsack promised that the US department of agriculture would increase its spending on farm-emissions research by $90 million over four years, bringing it to a total of $130 million.

Canadian environment minister Jim Prentice pledged $27 million (Canadian) in additional funding over the next five years. New Zealand also announced a contribute of $45 million over four years 

This multiplies the tracking problem in several ways, as Vilsack says research projects will be shared with the other countries in the alliance, leading to multi-national projects of the type we have already seen – but on a larger scale. Global costs will (sometimes) be identified, but there will be no clues as to the apportionment between individual countries.

This is exactly the sort of dynamic evident in EU research funding. For instance, in a current project called INCREASE, we see details of an "integrated network on climate change research activities on shrubland ecosystems". The lead institution is Københavns University in Denmark but there are seven partners, from five countries, including the UK.

Crucially, the UK partner is the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) which itself is a funding body. Thus, funding identified on the NERC database will include an unknown element of EU cash, making apportionment extremely difficult. Yet this is no small project. It started in March 2009 and will finish in February 2013, costing €7.78 million, of which the EU will pay €6 million.

What is not evident from the title is that this is part of a much larger study aimed at identifying the "carbon budget" of a small part of the ecosystem, the combined projects all focusing on agriculture and its assumed role in climate change. 

This issue has massive political and economic significance, the extent of which could hardly be overstated. In the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, the role of agriculture was highlighted. As the global industry is reckoned to account for 14 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, it is being presented as a prime target for "mitigation" measures.

What this amounts to is that agricultural policy is progressively being re-framed. No longer is food production, per se being seen as the absolute priority. More and more, the climate change industry is looking to "land use" as an attractive way of reducing emissions – where the focus is on bullying individual farmers rather than having to confront the power of the industrial conglomerates.

Already, in EU terms, spending is huge. One project alone, code-named CARBOEUROPE, received €16.3 million in funding from the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and about €30 million from member states.

In the current round (Seventh Framework Programme), spending is continuing, with projects such as SOILTREC, aimed at establishing an "integrated model of soil processes that describes key soil functions", part of the process that will help define the EU strategy on agricultural management. Led in this case by Sheffield University, this is costing €9.16 million, of which the EU is paying €6.97 – and calling the shots. Once again, NERC is one of the beneficiaries.

Another massive project is GHG EUROPE, looking at "Greenhouse gas management in European land use systems", aiming to "improve our understanding and capacity for predicting the European terrestrial carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) budget."

The point, of course, is that while individual nations are paying for this research, through their EU membership payments and the greater amounts in "co-funding" top-ups, they neither define the research priorities, control the research nor own the results – despite the political implications. Equally, the research scientists involved are not responsible to their national authorities but to a supranational agency. Not only are they becoming politicised, this is happening at an international level.

Unsurprisingly, when it comes to the Global Research Alliance, the EU is heavily involved and plans to support it with secretarial assistance. It is seen as an opportunity to coordinate funds and activities, the EU priding itself on "its long experience in bringing together national research programmes to tackle shared problems."

So, yet another transnational body is in the making, detaching still further the research effort from its national base, blurring the lines of responsibility and destroying the last vestiges of accountability. And there lies the greatest of all dangers. Too often, we hear ministers tell us that they must be "guided by the science". But, we have to ask, who owns this science – and who is it working for? It is no longer ours, and it does not work for us.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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It is a religion! - by Richard...

"... the plain fact is that we surely need a prophet, not yet another committee. We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince – not because he preaches apocalypse in gory detail, but in simple, overwhelming terms. We need to be taught to believe by a true believer in a world where belief is the fatal, missing ingredient."

Peter Preston in The Guardian, bemoaning the lack of public commitment to "climate change."

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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The great scam exposed - by Richard...

Connie Hedegaard, the newly appointed EU commissioner for climate change is waking up to the realities of the carbon trading scam set up under the Kyoto agreement, which could permit an overall increase in developed world emissions.

According to a report from Reuters, the commission is about to announce that "loopholes" in the system mean that the world is awash with surplus carbon credits which can be bought up by manufacturers in developed countries who can then avoid having to make emission cats.

The main problem, it seems, is the collapse of heavy industry in former communist countries during the transition to a free market economy, leading to sharp falls in carbon emissions and a huge surplus of emissions rights. Russia and Ukraine are the main problem, with Russia alone on track to under-cut its Kyoto target by about 1.4 billion tons.

These spare credits could cover up to 6.8 percent of current developed world emissions, which means that they need only reduce actual emissions by 6.4 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade. Furthermore, loose rules for allowing credits for forestry and agriculture could erode another nine percentage points from the agreed emission cuts.

In all, this actually means that real cuts could amount to as little as 2 percent but, if all the scams are taken into account, developed countries could increase emissions by 2.6 percent above 1990 levels and still meet Kyoto obligation. This falls far short of the real 25-40 percent cut recommended by the IPCC.

In fact, it points to the enormity of the fraud perpetrated, which is now worth $128 billion annually, in traded credits, to the great benefit of traders, financiers and brokers. Having ripped of this huge sum, they make Bernie Madoff – who only took $18 billion – look like a rank amateur.

The difference is, of course, that Madoff went to jail, while the perpetrators of this scam are still roaming free, supported by the UN and all the governments of the world, including the EU. But then, the best way to rip off the public has always been to get government approval first. All you have to do is cry "global warming" and the world is your oyster.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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Lean times for the alarmists - by Richard...

"It may just be one of the most ominous bits of evidence yet that global warming could run out of control," writes Geoffrey Lean. 

"Scientists are beginning to find that methane frozen in permafrost under the Arctic Ocean is bubbling up to the surface and reaching the atmosphere, raising concerns that one of the most-feared potential self-reinforcing effects of climate change may be starting to get under way."

You have to read right down to the end of the report, however, to find the great man writing: "It is far too early to draw firm conclusions from the findings." 

Then we learn that "Only a tiny amount of methane has been released so far compared to what is emitted elsewhere in the world and the Alaskan researchers are only beginning to track how the methane moves into the atmosphere." 

Aha, though, never fear ... er ... please do fear. Be very afraid, please – my job depends on it. This, Lean assures us: " ... certainly bears watching closely. It could turn out to be one more piece of evidence that the effects of climate change are becoming evident faster than anyone predicted."

They are getting desperate. It'll be farting cows next.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME