Merchants of doubts : interview with Naomi Oreskes

Science historian professor Naomi Oreskes just appeared in a radio-interview in Australia to talk about her book Merchants of Doubt. In the interview (and book) she explains how a few people, driven by ideology, started attacking scientific topics they feared would be an attack on freedom. The attack started in the circles around the George C. Marshall Institute and the first scientific topic that was attacked was not climate science but tobacco. With the financial aid of big industrial companies, the strategy used is manufacturing doubt, helped by the philosophical perversity proving something is right isn’t as easy as you might think.
As the strategy is still deployed until today, it is extremely important to both understand the strategy of doubt and to understand the importance of freedom-ideology and the somehow paranoid visions sometimes associated with it. Even though Oreskes talks about the American situation, you can easily compare what Oreskes talks about in the interview and the situation in the Low Countries and you’ll find out there’s a striking resemblance.
The role of ideology in understanding climate scepticism in Holland is pretty obvious. The sceptical website Klimatosoof even explicitly states in its FAQ-section : we suppose members of the Groene Rekenkamer are fighting for maximal personal and economical freedom (…) and belong to the libertarian fraction, a philosophy that wants to decrease the role of the government on every domain.
When you look at the other big climate sceptical webpage in Holland, climategate.nl, you’ll also recognize what Oreskes said. The first sentence in Rypke Zeilmaker’s latest post reads : Many "’scientists’ see global warming as an excellent tool for a socialist reform-agenda. Hajo Smit on the other hand is the perfect example of the role of paranoia in the debate. Hajo Smit often accuses people, without any provocation or apparent reason, that they want to censor or lock up unwanted individuals just like the Nazis and Communists did.
At present, the Dutch doubtmaster is Hans Labohm, an economist. He doesn’t understand climate science and sticks to quoting dubious claims he finds on the internet, even when he knows what he says is wrong or misleading. Once you recognize what he’s doing you’ll see that when he gets challenged about the mistakes in his posts or in the work of people he cites, he shows no interest whatsoever in the content of what he writes or the fact of what he says is correct or not. Instead he’ll give a reply like “…but the important things is to remember the science is not settled !”. He’s not interested in science but in manufacturing doubt. Which is no coincidence: one of the three scientists Oreskes talks about is S. Fred Singer, and it is this very same Singer who has close contacts with Labohm and they frequently show up together all over Europe.
I know what is written in this post is something I've said many times before on this blog, but understanding the role of non-scientific doubt and the important role of bias linked with a person’s ideology is vital in understanding the climate debate. So I will keep on hammering getting that message through.
The WtD-blog has a good post today on how the industry is involved in feeding the "uncertainty-meme" and manipulating the audience : Wolves in sheep's clothing : how big tobacco wanted to mimic the global warming sceptics and establish a "fake" NGO

The inconsistency in the response of the Klimatosoof’s Theo Richel to the Open Letter of 55 Dutch Scientists

Theo Richel and Christopher Monckton

On the Klimatosoof-website DGR’s Theo Richel complains that the “55 Dutch scientists open letter” published on SENSE contains a lot of “non-climate scientists” like biologists. He writes a whole paragraph to say he thinks biologists aren’t able to understand the complex physical processes of climate science. He also wonders about the fact there are economists, politicologists, mathematicians on the list. He concludes :

On the grounds of their education only a minority of all signers is able to judge whether IPCC’s claims on anthropogenic climate change are true.

According to a comment of Bart Verheggen (link in Dutch) most of the names he recognizes actually do work in a domain related with climate research
But given Richel’s argumentation it might be fun to have a little closer look at the people who wrote (or were interviewed) on the Klimatosoof website the past half a year or so :

• Bas Van Geel is a biologist
• Theo Richel himself is a man who apparently has no education after high school
• Hans Labohm is an economist
• Benny Peiser is an anthropologist
• Lord Monckton is a man with no scientific training whatsoever
• Arthur Rörsch was a professor teaching genetics

And of course in the entire advisory board of the Klimatosoof there’s no-one who ever worked in a field even remotely close to climate science.
I think Theo Richel just disqualified his entire website :)

Ton Begemann cruisin’ the arctic

In an earlier post I mentioned professor Ton Begemann published a video in which basically he made the claim all scientists are following the money, making it impossible to be a climate sceptic when working for a university or so. A claim which was refuted by climate sceptic Bas Van Geel, working at the University of Amsterdam, who wrote he never met ANY attempt to oppress his visions on climate change
Yet the main subject of Begemann’s video was the fact he went on a couple of “semi-scientific” [sic] cruises through the arctic.
In the comments section on the Klimatosoof he makes the claim arctic ice is growing rapidly. For two years in a row now. He backs up his claim by linking to a NASA’s picture of the day section containing the two images below demonstrating, at least according to Begemann, that the arctic ice is “nearly back on the long term average!!!!”



Clearly, the extent of the arctic ice is nowhere near both the long term median and the mean extent.
But there’s more : while the extent of the ice sheet of course is a way of obtaining information about the amount of ice, it’s not an absolute way : the 2007 decline was a bit of an outlier in the whole series, with a much bigger decline than to be expected.
The most probable explanation is heavy winds in the area in 2007 caused the ice to cluster together more than it would in an average year, leaving more open waters than normally. Making 2007 an anomaly which probably was more an indicator for ‘wind’ than for ‘melt’. It’s a fine example of how one has to be careful with interpreting data.
Luckily, modern techniques have been developed making it possible to have an indication of the age of the sea-ice, which is an indicator for the thickness, with one-year old ice of course being rather thin, while the older ice is thicker.
The image for the ice-thickness of the last three years is given below :


The image supports the hypothesis from above that 2007 was nothing but an outlier. There’s no doubt that the amount of old ice, and therefore the amount of thick ice is decreasing, and the summer melt is compensated for any more by the winter freeze.
On the klimatosoof, i did comment that in the climate debate there’s no room for two year trends. And i gave a link to the image containing the arctic ice age. Here’s the reply of Tom Begemann :

Jules, nice that you are proving yourself wrong with the figure you present yourself, as it demonstrates the 2009 ice-area increased, just like i said.
Considering 2-year trends not belonging in a serious climate debate :
Then the same thing is valid for the dramatic stories in the years before when ice was melting, the melting polar cap with the Polar bear on a little iceberg which became the symbol of climate alarmists, the 2007 decrease and the incorrect claim that in 2008 there was a huge decrease in arctic ice …. headline news !!! … one day later NASA had to admit there’s been a mistake the size of California … and there was significant rise …. unfortunately no headline news any more … let alone it was headline news there was a 24% growth mid September 2009 !!!!!!!!!!
So there a more than relevant turn in the trend and is very important !!!! …. And if this trend continues for a couple of years the whole Global warming is lying on it’s scientific ass [I guess the meaning of this rather vulgar Dutch expression needs no explanation? - J] because this wasn’t predicted by climate models. And finally, but this isn’t decisive evidence yet (we need to wait a couple of years you say) the only place where earth still is warming is in climate models. It’s very probable all of them have been infected with the Gigo-virus (Garbage in, Garbage Out)

The main conclusion to be drawn from Begemann’s reply is that the professor really loves exclamation marks.
And that he doesn’t have a clue about the difference between weather and climate. Begemann is another amateur who gets lost in his bias.
Meanwhile, on the website of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre it’s possible to see how the arctic ice evolved after September :


Due to warm winds in the arctic area, currently there’s little growth in winter ice. Despite’s Begemann’s claim of a fast increase in arctic ice the past two years, reality is that the ice-extent for the moment is exactly the same as in the record year 2007. Which is nature’s way of saying : ‘Ton Begemann, thou shall not use 2-year trends in a climate debate”

UPDATE : Begemann also takes about eskimo-farming in his video, while of course they never practised agriculture

dr Tom van der Hoeven needs to do his homework first, then talk

Under the title ‘there’s no climate crisis’, an op-ed of dr Tom van de Hoeven (in Dutch) appeared in a local newspaper last week.
Dr Van der Hoeven, who promoted on the subject Math in Gas and the art of linearization (PhD thesis here) works for GasTerra and his article presents exactly what you’d expect from someone working in the Gas-industry.
From the very first sentence the man writes, you know you’re not reading a highlight in climate-literature. His text is so silly i will stick to presenting a quick overview of the most blatant errors / confused parts :

1) Instead of warmer, global temperatures have decreased for the past decade
Wrong.
Van der Hoeven copies the “earth’s temperatures haven’t been rising for a decade” meme, whereas this is nothing but a cherry-pick on the 1998 El-Nino. Earth did not become colder.

2) The most important cause for the climate discussion is the hockey-stick
Wrong.
The hockey-stick represents a reconstruction of past temperatures, but predictions do not depend in any way on the hockey stick.

3) Wegman has ‘broken’ the hockey stick, thereby destroying the main argument around climate change
wrong and wrong
The political Wegman report did not ‘break’ the hockey-stick. The Hockey-stick controversy has shown that indeed there were some minor statistical issues around the original work of Mann et al, but the hockey stick is not broken, but bended. It still looks like a hockey stick though.
Above that, the proxy-reconstruction of Mann is not the main cause for climate concerns.

4) Scott Armstrong thinks climate models aren’t any good
Meaningless
Van der Hoeven calls Armstrong an expert in model-predictions, but doesn’t not mention Armstrong is a professor in Marketing. Hardly a specialist in exact sciences I’d say. Nor does Van der Hoeven present any facts why Armstrong should be right.
Anyway, Real Climate & James Annan already had a look at the claims of Armstrong.

The rest of Van der Hoeven's opinion piece is meaningless sloganesque-language and naturally there’s also some wining about Al Gore. Dr Van der Hoeven managed to write one of the most embarrassing pieces on climate change i ever read from someone with a degree. Tom van der Hoeven needs to do his homework first, then talk.
The only good thing from his text is the fact that you know that people who refer to it don’t have a clue what climate science is about, or don’t care. Van der Hoeven so far was cited by Hans Labohm and Theo ‘klimatosoof’ Richel.

The Heidelberg Appeal Nederland

Roots of the Dutch climate skepticism series, part 8

The beginning of HAN

Karel Beckamn - Het broeikaseffect bestaat niet

When HAN (Heidelberg Appeal Nederland) Foundation was founded in 1993, one of the founding fathers was prof Rob Meloen (bio). In a 1997 article in hypothese (pdf) Meloen states he got interested in the subject after reading a book of former journalist Karel Beckman, a man who writes for the Free-market group i started my series on Dutch climate sceptics with, being the More Freedom Foundation. Currently, Karel Beckman is editor-in-chief for a magazine called European Energy Review.
in Hypothese, Meloen is quoted saying :

I was unhappy already with the way science is communicated towards the public. Then i read the book ‘the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist’ by Karel Beckman [and according to Beckman, nor does the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, etc –J] and i thought by myself : if a PhD-student in English literature can unmask pseudo-science, than us beta’s certainly should be able to do so too.

Soon afterwards, and with aid of a donation by the Dutch Rabobank, the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland was formed, with Karel Beckman as a coordinator. Besides Meloen, the first board was formed by Aalt Bast, professor pharmacology and toxicology and professor Albert Cornelissen, a man who would become one of the Academic members of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), a tool for the tobacco lobby which was involved with the original international Heidelberg Appeal.

First Newsletters

In their first newsletter (pdf), HAN announces they want to set up “fast alert” groups able to respond to different subjects. The first one is the one around Agriculture and environment. It’s something you don’t meet often when looking at international climate scepticism, but HAN from the beginning had very close ties with the agricultural sector.
I’m not really sure how the situation is in other countries, but in Belgium and Holland, historically the agricultural world always has been hating everything involved with environmentalism.
HAN does launch a call to its audience to help them setting up more fast response groups, and they suggest some subjects :

Biotechnology, Soil remediation, Environmental toxicology, Climatology, Acidification, subjects involving raw materials & energy and Environmental philosophy.

It is clear : Even though in the beginning HAN locally in Holland was known as an organisation working mainly on agricultural subjects, from the beginning HAN was set up with the aim to launch a broad attack on science & environmentalism. The second part of the first newsletter is a text on SEPP, the tool of S. Fred Singer which as we have seen had close ties with the international Heidelberg Appeal too.

In the second newsletter (pdf), HAN proudly announce they will start cooperating with Frits Böttcher’s global institute. This is no surprise, as the international Heidelberg Appeal was a result of tobacco lobbyism around S. Fred Singer’s SEPP and the infamous TASSC which has a European branch called ESEF with Böttcher being one of the founding fathers of ESEF…
Also in this newsletter, they announce the start of two more ad-hoc groups : one around toxicology, with (contact person Aalt Bast) and one around biotechnology (contact : Albert Cornelissen). Also in this 2nd newsletter is an interview with a man maybe known in the blog world : Ferdinand Engelbeen. Yet at the time he was just the founding father of AKZO Nobel’s Chlorophyles, it’s only later in time he’d be joining DGR.
In 1999, journalist Martijn van Calmthout wrote a very critical article on HAN : doubt for sale , criticising the foundation and the fact their reports seem to unscientific.
In this article, word is given to environmental historian Wybren Verstegen, a former secretary of HAN who left the organisation after a fight. Before becoming on speaking terms with Cornelissen again, he is quoted stating HAN is incredibly biased and always looking at things one sided, having no criticism at all towards organisations criticising environmental problems. And this will always remain HAN’s weak spot.
Around the change of the millennium Cornelissen would stop leading HAN to become dean of the faculty of veterinaries.
While HAN started as an organisation in the agricultural sector, with the Dutch Union of Pork Keepers NVV as an important source of income, the focus did shift a little, and HAN would be offering “independent research”

Jaap Hanekamp

From the beginning of HAN, the person offering research was dr Jaap Hanekamp, a man who quickly took over coordinating HAN from Beckman and who's name in the next decade keeps returning in corporate funded studies.
At present, Jaap Hanekamp is a lector for the Roosevelt College, which on it’s website presents this CV. As you can see, Hanekamp did not have a real academic career. His CV mentions he runs a “(small) company in which he conducts scientific research for third-party contractors.” That company is HAN-research, which indeed has been associated with the HAN-foundation.
Many people have wondered about the reliability of HAN and their links with he industry. An example is this 2005 article by Jeroen Trommelen which appeared in the newspaper Volkskrant :

But the Dutch antigreen movement has a weak spot. According to HAN, environmental groups and research institutes form a conglomerate of ‘heavily subsidized organisations which ‘strong independent scientists’ should avoid. But it’s just this independent & scientific character of the foundation which is questioned.

Since it’s formation, HAN is leaning on gifts and orders from the agricultural world. The first big donation came from Rabobank and one of the first studies was sponsored by a regional federation of farmers (Fries-Flevolandse Land –en Tuinbouworganisatie). The problems with livestock manure were researched for the Dutch Union of Pork Keepers. (..) The study showing hunting could have a possible positive effect on biodiversity was paid by a lobbygroup of hunters.

The research company of HAN, paying the salary, office-room and telephone of Dr Jaap Hanekamp in the last years was thriving on money coming from the Dutch Potato Processors' Association and a Dutch union for Industries working with Building Materials, as the financial books of HAN are demonstrating.

For the upcoming years, they count on a long-term project of the European Building Materials suppliers, worth 500.000 €. The building lobby at the moment is fighting against the new regulations for the Building Materials Law, costing the sector many handfuls of money.
It was the Pharma-industry (Pfizer) which ordered the study in which Hanekamp explains that relics of antibiotics in meat aren’t harmful. And it were the farmers of LTO who paid for the study on the use of pesticides. Summary : “are those pesticides harmful for people’s health ? The answer to this questions is a firm no”

According to sourcewatch, Jaap Hanekamp was part of the board of the lobby group the Committee for a constructive tommorow (CFACT) which recently was behind the fake grassroots organisation EIKE which ran the fake 60 scientists open letter Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The end of an era
in 2004, in the newsletter celebrating the 10th anniversary, HAN launched the idea of starting a Green Court of Audit. Even though by this time well known sceptics as Dick Thoenes, Hans Labohm & Arthur Rörsch had already joined the circles around HAN, the foundation seem to have been loosing it’s vitality.

In an attempt to revive it, HAN would start contact to other organisations to form this Green Court of Audit. They did find some partners like Ferdinand Engelbeen & his Chlorophyles, The Climate Foundation with it’s close connections to the pro-automobiles foundation. Another associate was the Foundation Nuclear Energy, the lobby group of professor Rob Kouffeld

HAN also did manage to publish a GreenBook (pdf) in which they summarized all the subjects they believed to be hoaxes. The publication of this book lead to a one time cooperation with the Edmund Burke Foundation and the pro-aviation lobby group the Platform Dutch Aviation

De Groene Rekenkamer

Yet it seems that only when libertarian Theo Richel, also part of the More Freedom Foundation, that HAN found a new spirit and would be transformed in the Green Court of Audit, or as it’s called in Dutch : De Groene Rekenkamer (DGR). Their double website Klimatosoof / Groene Rekenkamer is maintained by Theo Richel, who apparently currently is an employee for DGR, despites the fact he seems to have no formal education after high school, and certainly no scientific one.

The Advisory Board of DGR

At current, the advisory board of DGR still consists of HAN-foundation’s founding fathers Rob Meloen, Karel Beckman, Aalt Bast & Jaap Hanekamp. Furthermore there’s Rob Kouffeld of the Foundation Nuclear Energy.
Another person who heavily is pro Nuclear Energy is :

Prof.Dr.Ir. Frans Sluijter

as i wrote before, hidden somewhere in the comments section of a previous post :
Frans Sluijter did publish an article in a Dutch magazine SPIL which is the place where Dutch sceptics publish the things they consider to be their more "serious" works. Then I'm talking about people like Hans Labohm or Arthur 'earth hasn't warmed for 4 years now' Rörsch, and some others belonging to DGR.
Sluijter is an emeritus since 2001. He's HEAVILY pro-nuclear energy, which will come as no surprise given his academic background. He's a very vocal opponent of wind-power and building wind-mills.
In his article (in Dutch) in SPIL he writes an article against the use of windmills on land. Despite the subject, it's titled : "the position of the State : for or against it's civilians?'

i'm translating (very summarizing) some key sentences of his SPIL-article :

"the position of the State : for or against it's civilians?'
[after making plans to put them in the north sea], political pressure grows to start building windmills on land also (...) Minister Cramer apparently is horrified by the thought of building new nuclear plants and at the same time can't prevent new coal-power plants from being built. That's why he's so interested in CCS.

(...) then, after some complaining about government propaganda (…) :

everybody [government like] will come to explain, not only how you can save the world by building windmills on land, but mainly how to make civilians accept your saviour, either "friendly or the hard way"

[they'll even explain] how a local community, with one or two windmills, can stabilise the climate. The fact you can get the same amount of electricity, but then in a reliable way and on command, can be established by one nuclear plant is probably something none of them ill mention.

And that, if you're worried about CO2, you could think about a nuclear plant then will probably be considered 'swearing in church' by the target group of the study-day

He also wrote a comment on the news Toyota starts building a car powered by hydrogen. Sluijter writes :

What they don't mention is that the Hydrogen is made from ethane and this produces CO2. The only efficient way to produce Hydrogen is thermolysis, with the heath coming from a nuclear reactor.

I think it's pretty clear what drives Frans Sluijter in the climate change debate.

Ferdinand Engelbeen

Ferdinand Engelbeen was the chairman of the organisation Chlorophyles, a lobby group of employees of the Chlorine & PVC-industry. The group was founded some 15 years ago as a response to the Greenpeace campaigns against PVC, which was a lot in the news those days.
Engelbeen worked for the chemical company AKZO-Nobel, and it seems that in the circles around DGR, this industrial company is heavily overrepresented : Jaap Hanekamp worked for AKZO. Emeritus Dick Thoenes was research director for AKZO, as were Ernest ‘Noor’ van Andel and Jan Mulderink. It’s strange, because for the rest (with the exception of Huib Van Heel) there seem to be little direct connections between the Dutch climate sceptics and the industry.
It is very tempting to think Greenpeace’s campaigns around chlorines & ftalates against AKZO Nobel created an atmosphere of anti-environmentalism in the company. Of course, this is just speculation.
A person for whom it is pretty clear that a process like above happened is :

Huib van Heel

In the 70’s and 80’s Huib Van Heel was director of the chemical company Hoechst Holland in Vlissingen (which now has been split in smaller units). The company makes Phosphates from the raw Phosphor-ore minerals. Lots of it went to the washing-powder industries of p.ex. Proctor & Gamble.
In the beginning of the 80’ies, in Europe lots of attention went to water pollution and the role of phosphates and the relation in the exponential growth of algae. Finally, it was the Dutch minister for the social-democrat party Irene Vorrink who launched several rules to regulate the emissions of phosphates, which directly affected Van Heel’s factory.
Martijn van Calmthout in the newspaper Volkskrant writes a round-up what Van heel thought about Vorrink’s decision :

they had to go, not –according to Van Heel in his book “Nader Bezien” because Vorrink knows a lot of the effects of Freon's and Phosphates. It’s all about socialist politics. Aerosol sprays & soap were frequently used articles in household, and therefore a good starting point to learn the public the left-wing anti-consumerism.

One thing Van Heel’s book clearly shows is that ever since he’s on a personal vendetta against environmentalism. The thing that keeps him going seems to be rancour.
Huib van Heel would also be one of the Dutch skeptics to end up in the board of ESEF

Hans Labohm

As Hans Labohm already received way too much attention on this blog, so I'll keep it a short as possible. Labohm seems to one of the key-players in the Dutch organised scepticism network.
Libertarian Labohm, just like Richel & Beckman associated with the More Freedom Foundation. He seems to be associated with a lot of well known international organisations of climate sceptics. He appears on the website of the free-market organisation The Heartland Institute, published on the astroturf organisation Science and Public Policy group SPPI, is an allied expert for the Natural Resource Stewardship Project NRSP, etc
Like Hanekamp, Labohm is associated with the lobby group CFACT and Labohm was writing (and being paid for it) for Exxon funded Tech Central Station.
Labohm seems to appear at many places where S. Fred Singer passed by, a man about who's funding Hans Labohm has lied. Currently, Labohm publishes like crazy on DDS, a website of Joshua Livestro, one of the founding fathers of the Edmund Burke Foundation, and the man who brought in corporate funding into that foundation. Livestro also is the man who on his blog censors anyone placing a link to my blog.
Labohm, an economist, in his articles does nothing more than translating what the international lobby groups send around in their mailing lists. When commenter's question the things he writes, his most common tactic is to disappear and repeat his refuted claim elsewhere, even when it’s clear even he himself knows what he writes is incorrect. There are several examples how he does so, I’ve given one here (he’s still repeating his claim btw, i stopped updating my post as i got bored).
When Labohm does address rebuttals, the commenter's receive answers like ‘that’s what you say’ or “there are people who disagree” or “but the point is there’s no consensus” or something alike.
The blatant ignorance of Labohm is so frustrating for another Dutch climate sceptic, Geophysic Hans Erren, that on his own blog Erren sometimes writes blog posts with the sole purpose of teaching Labohm some absolute basics of climate science (example).

Politics and DGR

in the FAQ’s on the website, DGR addresses the question “is DGR a right-wing organisation” ?

of course we are generalising, but we assume that people supporting DGR are both pro a maximal personal as a maximal economical freedom, making them left nor right, but rather belonging to a philosophy called libertarism, which means they want to diminish the role of the government on every domain.

DGR consist of people who all have their own personal reasons to be attacking environmental science. Politics does seem to play a role for most of them, especially for the libertarians. Others are coming from fields of debate where environmentalism never has been popular, like agriculture, nuclear sector or the chemical industry.
Above that, there seems to be professional lobbyism involved in DGR. It seems the personal bias is troubling the scientific objectivity, and corporate funding helps closing the eyes some more.

Prof em. Rob Kouffeld on climate change

Purely coïncidental, two days after i was blogging about Rob Kouffeld, De Groene Rekenkamer on it's Klimatospoof website posted a video message from this very same man who, to refresh the minds, is the president of the Dutch Foundation Nuclear Energy.

The video is in Dutch, but i'll summarize below what Kouffeld has to say and show it's nothing but a bunch of red herrings and low brow misconceptions..



CO2 isn't the most important greenhouse gas
Kouffeld's arguments are old news and have been debunked so many times it is incredible people still use them. Kouffeld isn't really delivering new insights :
CO2 is considered to be the most important greenhouse gas (GHG). This is incorrect, water vapor is.
Kouffeld immediately starts his video with a strawman argument : scientists don't consider CO2 to be the most important GHG as they are very well aware that water vapor accounts for most of the temperature rise due to GHG's. In the light of the present discussion, this is rather irelevant though as by no means it implies CO2 is not a GHG.

After the invalid water vapor argument, Kouffeld continues to try to marginalise the role of anthropogenic CO2 even further by saying that methane is a GHG too.

And he finishes by saying that the role of CO2 is minor, and from that CO2, only a limited part is antropogenic as volcanoes and forrest fires are emitting CO2 in the atmosphere too.
As most people know, of course it is true that methane is a GHG too. But Kouffeld fails to mention that in the previous century mankind caused the levels of methane to increase sharply...
The second part of his argument also isn't telling the complete story : while indeed there's natural CO2 in the air (duh), it isn't so that mankind did not alter the concentrations significantly : in pre-industrial time, CO2-levels were around 280 ppm.

At present they are around 390 ppm, and predictions say levels could rise to 600, 700 ppm or more. In other words : it is very well possible mankind will double the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is significant.

Emission of CO2 from volcanoes is less than 1% of what man pumps in the air annualy.
Temperatures aren't rising
Next, Kouffeld jumps on the train of using short time natural varation in temperature trends to claim that while CO2 levels are rising, temperature isn't always following. Hence there's no 1:1 relation between CO2 and temperature.
The argument once again is a clear strawman : CO2 is not the only factor with an influence on climate, so naturally one simply does not expect to find a 1:1 relation. Antropogenic climate change comes on top of natural variation.
Kouffeld then continues using the well known claim 'the last ten years, earth hasn't been warming' which Coby Beck adresses here and is a clear cherry-pick as the period to be compared has been carefully selected to fit the conclusion.


Glaciers are meaningless
Kouffeld continues by saying glaciers were melting before man was emitting GHG's, but doens't mention earth was coming out of a little ice-age. And he correctly says the length of a glacier is an equilibrum that doesn't depend solemnly on temperature, but also on precipiation, and claims therefore it is possible to say if glaciers are melting due to a rise in temperature.

In other words, Kouffeld fails to notice we both have thermometers and snow gages, two devices which make it impossible to verify which of the two factors is dominant (temperature for the vast majority of the glaciers).


It's anything but man

He then continues by adressing the Svensmark cloud theory, which scientist never considered to be proven. Realclimate adresses Svensmark latest publication in their post : still not convincing.

Not very convincing either is his argument the present low activity of the sun is the cause of the present (cherry-picked) cooling period.

He ends his talk by mentioning Al Gore a couple of times. Which obliges me to say Cheers !


Did i mention Rob Kouffeld is part of the "scientific" advisory board of the climate skeptical group De Groene Rekenkamer ?


UPDATE : a reader mailed me Kouffeld is member of the International Climate Science Coalition. A group which received quite some attention lately because of its strong ties with the authors (McLean, de Freitas & Carter) of one of the most deeply flawed papers which appeared in a mighty long time.

Deepclimate has a nice post covering the biggest problems with the McLean, de Freitas & Carter paper and a follow up post which links the New Zealand division of the ICSC with a ... libertarian political party called ACT.

Roots of the Dutch climate denialists, part 3 : stichting kernvisie

The Stichting Kernvisie (or Foundation Nuclear Energy) was found in 2000 and the president is emeritus Rob Kouffeld, who was working on Energy Technology in the Technical University Delft.

In its newsletter, the Stichting Kernvisie's main focus of course seems to be promoting nuclear energy and it considers Nuclear Power to be one of the answers to the climate change problem.

Even though the reasoning is completely logical, there's something odd going on : De Groene Rekenkamer (DGR) is an organisation of climate skeptics claiming there's basically no man-made climate problem, while Stichting Kernvisie uses this same climate-subject as one of the reasons to be pro nuclear power. Apparantly Stichting Klimaat is satisfied by one side of DGR's story, being their applause for nuclear power.

But there's more going on, as is shown beneath the widget


Rob Kouffeld
On top of the apparant contradiction above, when having a closer look one sees Stichting Kernvisie's president Rob Kouffeld (who is member of the advisory board of DGR) is one of the people signing a letter published in the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant saying man is not altering climate.

So while the Stichting Kernvisie's publications may be accepting manmade climate change, Kouffeld himself clearly does not. How he manages to rhyme those two opinions is something i cannot explain, it looks like the man is playing double game.

As can be seen often in an enviro-skeptical environment, what matters is not the arguments used (they can be excluding each other, it doesn't matter), but what matters is the conclusion. In Kouffeld's case : the promotion of Nuclear Power. And both Stichting Kernvisie and DGR do so.


The S. Fred Singer letter
The letter mentioned above, which has spread widely over the internet, is extremely important as it reads as a "who's who" in Holland. Yet the truly amazing thing with this letter is the appearance of a name of a person without direct connections to Holland. That man is S. Fred Singer, the man who built a career as a lobbyist for anyone who needed an anti-environmentalist viewpoint.

It's the first yet not the last time we'll see Singers name appear in the history of Dutch climate skepticism, as it seems to be S. Fred Singer who seems to have been their most important international contact, and this from the very beginning of the Dutch anti-environmentalism.

Sending letters signed by a bunch of (supposed) experts, as we see here, actually is a tactic which the international climate change denialists have used over and over again. Looks like Singer has been a good teacher to Hans Labohm, the author of the letter. Obviously, there's also a clear connection between the names on that letter and De Groene Rekenkamer, as we will see later on.

Dutch climate skeptical organisations pt 2 : De Groene Rekenkamer (intro)

The next organisation which deserves some more attention is The Green Court of Audit or in Dutch : De Groene Rekenkamer (DGR).

As we will see, this is the organisation where different kinds of environmental skeptics (not just in the field of climate change) come together. Clearly, as will be explained later on, DGR is an organisation with a clear political focus.

De Algemene Rekenkamer is the Dutch court of auditors which on its website summarizes its task as follows : The Court of Audit checks that the government spends public funds and conducts policy as intended.

Of course it's this Auditing institute which inspired the name Groene Rekenkamer. Clearly, just from the name itself, one can already see what kind of organisation DGR will be. The organisation was found in 2008 by scientists and journalists and in the statutes DGR describes the aim they were formed as follows (§2) :

The aim of DGR is to critically look at the governmental policy on environment, health, technology & related areas and to encourage scientific analysis of risks, cost-effectiveness of the policy and to spread knowledge to a broader audience.

As a little sidenote i can't resist mentioning that, regarding what's to follow, i was surprised to see that under revenues the very first source the organisation sees is "subsidy". I was amused :-)

Before the official start of DGR in 2008, there already was a coöporation between the different groups which ultimately would join DGR, something MeerVrijheid's Theo Richel (as far as i understand, he became an employee of DGR) was already asking for in 2005 on the website libertarian.nl (sic). The groups which ultimately would form De Groene Rekenkamer are :

• Stichting Kernvisie, ("Foundation Nuclear Energy") which still exists independently.
• Stichting Heidelberg Appeal Nederland ("Foundation Heidelberg Appeal Holland") which indeed found inspiration for its name in the international Heidelberg Appeal
• Stichting klimaat ("climate foundation")
• vzw de Chlorofielen which, as far as i know, was the one-man personal toy of Ferdinand Engelbeen

For a better understanding of what DGR is about, it is useful to have a closer look at the organisations behind DGR. Which will be the topic of the next couple of blogposts.

Arthur Rörsch's bizarre ideas on cherry-picking

I know i've been absent from blogging for a while but my job, involving real science, still has priority.

Yet simply have to mention this post by Hans Labohm published on Theo Richels website Klimatosoof which presents a paper written by Prof. dr. ir. Arthur Rörsch (a 75 year old emeritus in biochemistry actually, but that's qualifications enough to be a prominent climate skeptic nowadays) in which he summarizes some of his objections towards climate science (my translation, my emphasis) :

Arthur Rörsch

Observations show that CO2-concentrations since the beginning of the century has risen some 5,5% while there was no worldwide temperature rise. There are even some indications since 2006 temperatures have been decreasing, and this trend will continue in the next decade.

The article on the Klimatosoof was written in responce to the Dutch PCCC-report.

PCCC stands for Platform, Communication on Climate Change and is a collaboration of several Dutch scientific research centres. Recently PCCC presented the brochure 'de staat van het klimaatonderzoek 2008' (Dutch only, the title means 'climate research roundup 2008')

Amusingly, given the quote above using a three year temperature trend, Rörsch (or Labohm ?) accuses PCCC of cherry-picking : he complains "PCCC presents a misleading graph" for the time period 1900-2008 which could make the people think earth has been warming as "it gives an impression of a continuous rise".

So, if i may believe the Klimatosoof article presenting the entire available data set that is available (1900-2008) is called "cherry-picking", while isolating 3 single years out of that very same dataset is called "science".

The PCCC-graph which gets attacked looks similar like this one from NASA:

Rörsch/Labohm, instead of using all those data in the graph ditch all data that doesn't fit their predesigned conclusion. Instead of using this 100 years-timescale they present a graph which looks amazingly familiar as it's Labohm's well known misleading graph of the past decade:

A. Rörsch has bewildering ideas on science.
Hans Labohm remains a fraud.


Actually Rörsch presents the graph in a context that CO2-levels in the atmosphere don't correlate all that much with temperature. I believe i linked to it before, but this post on More grumbine Science is a must read on the correlation between the two.

UPDATE : Do also read Rörsch' mind numbing post in the comments section of the article