Fracking, Environment & the Media

Shale Gas, Climate Change, The Environment, The Media and the Chew Valley

Sound Bite:

The anti-global warming 'junk-science' tactics of the George W. Bush Administration have crossed the Atlantic in the guise of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Tory right and elements of the national press to poison the UK media debate on climate change and energy policy. It has  come home to roost in North East Somerset and the Chew Valley in the views of the local Member of Parliament. 

The electorate needs to be aware that some of the climate sceptic opinions of the Tory right are entirely different to the scientific facts of global warming and climate change and the energy policies necessary to deal with them. 

Also see:

How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups

Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial think tanks

Secret funding of climate sceptics is not restricted to the US
and another:

The educational charities that do PR for the rightwing ultra-rich

Polemic:

The pressing and historic environmental issue of our times, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, are largely the result of our reliance on fossil fuels since the start of the industrial revolution and on recent and ongoing land cover change in the tropics. How we deal with energy, carbon emissions and climate change, both nationally and internationally, is becoming an increasingly hot policy potato. The industrial revolution started in Britain and 200 years later Britain was the first country to set in law (the Climate Change Act 2008) a legally binding commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. Rather than feel smug about either of these achievements we now need to de-carbonise our energy use and deliver a new low carbon industrial revolution, to allow us to prosper into a sustainable future. These are both massive and difficult undertakings and are both national and local issues. Energy, Economy and the Environment go hand in hand. 

 

To implement the Climate Change Act the UK Government has a Carbon Plan and an emerging energy policy based on a diverse mix of energy sources and declining CO2 emission targets,with the goal of achieving 50g of carbon per kilowatt-hour generated by 2050. The purpose of this is to play our part in avoiding dangerous climate change above 2C. To come even close to this goal our energy policy needs to be radical and ambitious and we need to do it now. The policy also needs to be informed by and based on science to give us an evidenced based policy. 
 

There is of course plenty of room for a healthy scientific skepticism and debate around all of these issues - to enable us to come to both a better understanding and to better policies. But we must not let the debate be based on ignorance, wishful thinking or utter twaddle. 

'Policy' implies 'politics' and despite an agreed national legal framework and despite an international scientific consensus on climate change and how to deal with it, there are those who for political or dogmatic reasons wish to choose to ignore both the policy and the science.

 

The administration of George W. Bush in the USA dreamt up an anti-climate change policy which directly challenged the scientific consensus by branding it as "junk science" and by deliberately using the media (in particular Fox News) to promote, on an equal footing, the views of a tiny minority of scientists with alternative views. They also used the media to promulgate a mass of misinformation about global warming and climate change. The junking of science in this way has had a profound impact on American policy - which impacts us all. In 2007 the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee concluded that the Bush Administration had 'engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming'.

Until quite recently, and in the interests of impartiality and balance, the BBC had felt it necessary to provide two sides to the climate change discussion – thereby giving climate change deniers an equal footing to the overwhelming scientific consensus and making it appear to the public that there was still a debate to be had. In 2010 the BBC Trust reviewed the accuracy and impartiality of the BBC's science coverage and concluded that a clear distinction should be made between opinion and established fact and that “due weight” should be applied when making editorial judgements on impartiality. Further, that an over rigid application of guidelines can “produce an adversarial attitude to science which allows minority, or even contrarian, views an undue place”. You may have noticed that the BBC's reporting on the issue has changed to a more science based perspective.

However the misleading anti-science tactics of the Bush Administration have crossed the Atlantic to the UK in the form of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, set up by Lord Lawson in 2009. This 'educational charity' cherry picks news and blog articles which suit its anti-global-warming, anti-renewables, pro-fossil-fuels stance and republishes them together with its own light-weight non-peer reviewed reports to further its own agenda. Despite its ambitions and thin veneer of respectability the GWPF has no educational or academic credentials and has done more than anyone to poison the UK's popular debate on energy and climate change issues. In cahoots with journalists from the right wing press the effort to 'mislead policy makers and the public' continues apace in the UK. 

One of the first things the President of the Royal Society, Professor Paul Nurse, did when he was appointed in 2010, was to make a film entitled Science Under Attack which highlights the way in which some US climate scientists have been subjected to a McCarthy like witch hunt and how in the UK journalists like James Delingpole have unjustifiably attacked climate science, climate scientists and energy policy. This is a sad state of affairs.

Unfortunately members of the Tory right also subscribe to contraian  views on climate change and global warming and some even write pamphlets / 'reports' for the GWPF. 

However, you don't have to look far to discover what informed opinion of GWPF is.  For example:

•  On the GWPF's first report the Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change said to GWPF: "Let me say straight away that my assessment of your paper leads me to believe that you have been misinformed and that your conclusions are poorly supported by the underlying science evidence"

•  With reference to Lord Lawson / GWPF David Attenborough recently said “We need to be able to see just how wrong-headed they are and how selective they are in picking data to support their ideas” and, “Certainly I think that most people would recognise that Lawson is up a gum tree”. See David Attenborogh: force of nature

• On the GWPF's recent written evidence to the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and Climate Change on the economics of wind farms Imperical College said that parts of their evidence was 'baseless', 'made no sense at all' and 'does not align with the evidence from simulation studies or indeed a commonsense investigation of the basic statistics'. See UKERC.

• On the GWPF's recent phamphlet by Peter Lilley challenging the Stern Review the London School of Economics said: 'Mr Lilley’s pamphlet ... offers nothing new and instead recycles flawed and feeble arguments that collapse under scrutiny, apparently the result of a confused attempt to force confounding evidence into an ideological straitjacket'. See A case of bad economics and fundamentally flawed science and Peter Lilley's flawed climate analysis.

• etc., etc., etc.

Unfortunately some of the views and the tactics of the GWPR have come home to roost in the Chew Valley in the guise of the documented opinions of the Member of Parliament for North East Somerset, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg. Mr Rees-Mogg is on record as:

• cherry picking shale gas evidence to suit his views and then embellishing it

• obfuscating behind news reports on shale gas rather than referring to credible sources including government briefing notes, the British Geological Survey, evidence submitted to the Energy and Climate Change Committe

• telling the Centre for Policy Studies on the energy price that:

• “Hydraulic fracturing may be part of the solution but carbon emission targets will not be" 

• "Environmental and recycling targets need to be looked at to see if they serve any useful economic purpose or are merely part of green orthodoxy" 

• thinking that climate change may be due to natural causes and not anthroprogenic*

• finding attractive the opinions of the GWPF*

• favours exploitation of shale gas despite the government's independent advisors warning they may be incompatible with legislated carbon budgets *

• being prepared to allow increased carbon emissions despite the danger of dangerous climate change*

• favours changing the Climate Change Act to allow for increased carbon emissions *

• as saying "We know wind farms are all but useless and nobody wants them in England"

(* As reported by the Timsbury Environment Group meeting with Mr Rees-Mogg in September 2012)

 

It is important to recognise that:

• Mr Rees-Mogg's opinions appear to be in close accordance with the views of the GWPF

• Some of Mr Rees-Mogg's opinions are at odds with the 2010 Conservative Manifesto

• Mr Rees-Mogg is welcome to his opinions but some of them are divergent with accepted scientific facts

It is difficult not to be seriously worried about the world view of our MP and the way in which he goes about justifying it by choosing policy based evidence, rather than forming an evidence based policy. The broader context of the poisonous influence of the GWPF in the climate change / energy debate and its relation to the national media and the Parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee are equally worrying.