Professor Will Steffen interviewed by Alan Jones AO on Radio 2GB. Thursday, October 20 th, 2011

Transcription

1 Professor Will Steffen interviewed by Alan Jones AO on Radio 2GB Thursday, October 20 th, willsteffen.mp3 Transcript (partially annotated) of key parts of interview by Alan Jones of Professor Will Steffen Expert Adviser to the federal government s Multi Party Climate Change Commission. The MPCCC was responsible for recommending to parliament the imposition of a tax on carbon dioxide, CO2 scheduled to commence in July, 2012 and a carbon dioxide trading scheme to commence in Of four (4) so-called Expert Advisers to the MPCC, Will Steffen is its sole adviser on climate. This transcript starts eight (8) minutes and 30 seconds into the interview (8 30 ) and continues uninterrupted to the end of the interview. It focuses on discussion of the Inter Academy Council s (IAC s) report on its review of UN IPCC* processes and procedures used in producing the UN IPCC s Fourth Assessment Report, the 2007 report to national governments and media. The Greens and ALP have publicly stated that their climate policies are based on this UN IPCC report. * United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2009 s Climategate scandal engulfed Britain s Climatic Research Unit, CRU. It is responsible for temperature records that are the basis of the UN IPCC s core claims. Contrary to accepted scientific processes, the CRU temperature record s raw data is not available for public or independent scientific scrutiny. As a result of the scandal the UN IPCC was severely compromised and tarnished. In its apparent attempt to address its sullied reputation, the UN IPCC chose to seek review of its processes and procedures. That was conducted by the Inter Academy Council, the peak international body of science academies. The IAC reported in August The body of the IAC report reveals that it is impossible for anyone to know which if any statements in the UN IPCC s latest (2007) report can be relied upon. Interestingly, the IAC report s Executive Summary painted a far rosier picture not consistent with the report s body. Yet two monitors were given responsibility for ensuring that the executive summary accurately reflected the report s body. One of these monitors is Professor Kurt Lambeck who reports to Professor Will Steffen, Director, of the Australian National University s (ANU) Climate Change Institute. His Institute relies on government funding. 1

2 Around the time of release of the IAC s report, the Australian Academy of Science released its glossy booklet entitled The Science of Climate Change Questions and Answers. It is an attractive glossy booklet funded by the Department of Climate Change. It endorses the UN IPCC s unfounded core claims yet as a scientific work it is pitiful. The booklet s Foreword was written by Professor Kurt Lambeck, then President of the Australian Academy of Science. The Academy s The Science of Climate Change Questions and Answers was then used to support the Climate Commission s document: The Critical Decade. It was signed by Professor Steffen yet provides no names of authors or reviewers. In his foreword, Will Steffen claims it was reviewed by his colleagues from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology that are both government funded and by his colleagues in, quote, the university sector. This document was used to portray supposed science yet failed to provide any evidence that global warming had been caused by human CO2 production. I conclude it was designed to appeal essentially to media and politicians. It was heavily criticised by reputable scientists for being falsely portrayed by the Climate Commission as a scientific document. In reality it is cunningly designed to be effective propaganda spread and legitimised by journalists. Prior to his appointment as the federal government s current Chief Scientist in 2011, Ian Chubb was Vice-Chancellor, ANU. In his early comments during the interview Professor Steffen made comments about carbon dioxide that are contradicted by many eminent scientists and by empirical science. He included deforestation as a cause of global climate change in addition to human production of carbon dioxide, CO2. While discussing CO2 he made a spurious and misleading comment about cyanide. Yet CO2 is overwhelmingly made by Nature and is essential to all life on Earth. Listen for yourself and decide whether or not at times his responses cleverly avoided or twisted questions about CO2. Transcript commences: 8 30 Alan Jones: You were at a public meeting on Wednesday 28 th July in Cooma and, this year, and you confirmed that our climate change policy, here, was based primarily on the Fourth Assessment Report. It s AR stands for assessment 4. So it s called AR4. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Now bear with me, this is a very critical issue. In 2007, this is the basis of the carbon tax. This is the report that has been proffered to government and the basis on which they have introduced a carbon tax. And the IPCC commissioned the world s highest academic body, the Inter Academy Council, IAC to conduct an independent review of the processes and procedures that led to this report the Fourth Assessment Report, AR4. This followed 2

3 this very severe criticism of the IPCC following all this Climategate stuff. Isn t it true that the body of the IAC report, the body of this peak advisory, the world s highest academic body said that this Fourth Assessment Report contained many serious and substantial criticisms? 9 40 Will Steffen: I think there were some criticisms of the processes and indeed I think the IPCC has taken on board some of those and improved their processes. The critical point for policy Alan is that the substantive conclusions of the IPCC were not challenged, either by the Inter Academy body or by their members our own Academy of Science the US Academy of Science the Royal Society each of which has gone through the climate science which the IPCC is based on, done their own judgment and agreed with the basic conclusions that in fact the earth is warming, it s unequivocal and we are very, very confident that the primary cause of that warming are human emissions of greenhouse gases. That s not debated either in the academies or the Inter Academy Council or the IPCC or the scientific community. (Yet, in his written responses to requests following the Cooma meeting Will Steffen failed to provide links accessing such formal reports that he claimed from various national academies. His claim at Cooma in response to a question was false and he subsequently acknowledged it as false. His claim in subsequent correspondence was false and he subsequently acknowledged that too as incorrect. His response to Alan Jones is false. There is considerable debate within academies. The Royal Society s executive is being vigorously challenged by its own members furious at the Society s abandonment of science and scientific process on the topic of climate. The spontaneous worldwide scientific movement exposing UN IPCC fraud is unofficially led by UN IPCC scientists including Lead Authors.) (My Canberra colleagues are expert on the internet and on science. Yet they can find no formal report by a national body that formally reviews IPCC science and endorses the IPCC science.) (The Australian Academy produced a glossy booklet around the time the IAC released its damning report. The Australian Academy s report is not a formal review of the IPCC, nor of the science. It fails to provide evidence of human causation of global warming.) Alan Jones: Hang on, let me just take this that point. This is, we re on very critical territory here I have to tell you. This is Professor Steffen whom I should say is everything imaginable to the government. He is the Expert Adviser to the Multi Party Climate Change Committee, he s the sole Expert Adviser on climate science on the Multi Party Climate Change Committee which is the outfit that recommended carbon tax and so on, he s the Director of the ANU s Climate Change Institute that gets a lot of government funding, he s the Chair of the federal government s Antarctic Science Advisory Committee, he s a member of the government s Climate Commission chaired by that fellow Flannery. Now, you ve said that the this expert body the IAC, the Inter Academy 3

4 Council had no problem with the conclusions of this report which is called the Fourth Assessment Report AR4. Isn t it true that that body, expert body in reviewing that report said amongst other things in relation to bias, and I quote having author teams with diverse viewpoints is the first step towards ensuring that a full range of thoughtful views is considered? It said Review Editors do not fully use their authority to ensure that review comments receive appropriate consideration by Lead Authors and that controversial issues are reflected adequately in the report. It said, The committee recommends that Lead Authors document that they have considered the full range of thoughtful views even if these views do not appear in the assessment report. The report said alternative views are not always cited in a chapter if the Lead Authors don t agree with them. This is pretty serious criticism of a report that has formed the basis of government policy. Was the Multi Party Committee on Climate Change Gillard, Combet, Oakeshott, Windsor were they told specifically of these criticisms? Will Steffen: I, I, I, well you d have to ask them if they were aware of them Alan Jones: No, no, no you were on the Committee. You were there Will Steffen. Yes, that s right. What I did as Expert Adviser to that Committee was to provide the best science based on the peer reviewed literature. I tend to go directly to the literature. The IPCC is, just a minute Alan, just so I can clarify it for your listeners. The IPCC doesn t do research. It s an assessment body. All of us who are in the business we have our own right or ability to go directly to the peer-reviewed papers and literature and make our own judgments. And many groups do that. The academies of science do that. I provided advice to that Committee based on the best available peer-reviewed literature much of which has come out since (It seems clear that Will Steffen failed to answer Alan Jones question. Given Will Steffen s statements at Cooma it s clear that he either failed to understand the gravity of what the IAC had revealed or is lying. I conclude that by omission he negligently misled the MPCCC or as he was the expert, by omission deliberately misled the MPCCC.) (Further, it seems that as Expert Adviser to the MPCCC Will Steffen provided that Committee with his view alone based on his reading of the peer-reviewed literature. Yet he is apparently not even aware of the many, many eminent scientists worldwide who disagree with his claim. Or so he says. I conclude that Will Steffen incompetently advised the MPCCC. This is supported by his startling falsehoods about the IAC and UN IPCC during and after the Cooma meeting.) (It is further supported by Will Steffens presentation slides. These reveal that he is peddling unscientific material. Some of the material he presents has for many years been completely discredited by scientists worldwide. Some has even been withdrawn by the fraudulent UN IPCC.) 4

5 (From scrutiny of references relied upon by the UN IPCC, John McLean s work raises serious questions concerning peer-reviewed literature. Further, even though UN IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri has publicly been quoted as claiming that UN IPCC reports cite and rely upon 100% peer-reviewed literature, an independent international team s audit revealed the chairman s claim is false. Instead, the UN IPCC s 2007 report cites and relies upon more than five and a half thousand references not peer-reviewed, including newspaper articles, mountain hiker s anecdotes and political activists campaign material. For McLean s core work visit: For Laframboise s international audit visit: Alan Jones: Were those who peer-reviewed it named? 13:14 Will Steffen: Well, peer-review actually acts in a blind quote-unquote blind way. Alan Jones: Were they named? Will Steffen: We don t know who the peer-reviews are on our own papers. Alan Jones: Holy godfather. We don t even know if they were peer-reviewed. Let me ask you this. Will Steffen: No we do. (UN IPCC reports are not scientifically peer-reviewed.) Alan Jones: Well I doubt that. Because if you can t tell me who peer-reviewed them it s like me saying I backed the Melbourne Cup winner. You saying how much did you have on it? I can t tell you that. I can t tell you that. You didn t back it. Will Steffen: Alan, let me just explain. Alan Jones: Well, let me just give you another quotation. Will Steffen: Can I just? Alan Jones: Listen, listen to this. You say oh yes, we agreed on all this and it was perfect and everyone agreed the science was wonderful and no problems. This is what this analysis of this (IPCC) report, the report is the basis of a bloody carbon tax for god sake that s striking a stake through the heart of the Australian economy. And the report said the expert advisers investigating this report which forms the basis of government policy which you have endorsed says authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore by making vague statements that were difficult to refute authors were able to attach high confidence to the statements. It said, Assessing probabilities to imprecise statements is not an appropriate way to characterise uncertainty. This was in a chapter called uncertainty. 5

6 Conclusions were likely to be stated so vaguely as to make them impossible to refute and therefore, professor, statements of very high confidence, you ve expressed high confidence in this report, very high confidence have little substantive value. This is the criticism of the report that formed the basis of a carbon tax Will Steffen: No that report (IPCC) has not formed the basis of the carbon tax. It s the science which that report assesses that forms the basis. (This is an amazing statement. Firstly, the IPCC s report is its report on the assessment of the science. It s the report that Greens and ALP MP s repeatedly stated is the basis of the parties climate policies. Secondly, Will Steffen s statement endorses listeners conclusions from his earlier comment that the MPCCC apparently based it s recommendation to parliament apparently solely on Will Steffen s advice.) Alan Jones: Well the science is based on confidence of science of little substantive value. He said, authors reported high confidence in statements, professor, for which there s little evidence. What? Authors reported high confidence in statements for which there is little evidence. Moreover, the guidance was often applied to statements that are so vague they can t be disputed. In these cases the impression was often left, incorrectly, that a substantive finding was being presented Will Steffen. It s interesting Alan, that after those statements the world s peak bodies, like our Academy of Science, like the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, the Russian, the Chinese, the American all took on board those criticisms and went back and looked at the original literature that the IPCC assessed. And the main conclusions of that IPCC report are that (1) the earth is warming, and that is unequivocal (Will Steffen repeats this claim after admitting previously in s to a colleague of mine that his statement is false. Additionally, he implies a rigorous scientific approach yet the Australian Academy simply produced a glossy brochure that provides no scientific evidence of causal relationship and that misrepresents climate and science.) Alan Jones: It s not unequivocal, it s challenged. (Alan Jones has interviewed prominent scientists from various nations who completely contradict Will Steffen s falsehood. There are many UN IPCC contributing scientists and even Lead Authors who contradict the UN IPCC s core claim.) Will Steffen. Can I finish? Was accepted by all the academies of science and professional bodies who looked at it independently of the IPCC. The second point was the main cause of that warming since the middle of last century, the primary cause has been the additional greenhouse gases that have been emitted by human activity. Let me finish this one statement. That was also accepted by all of those academies of science independent of the IPCC. Now those criticisms of the IPCC were taken seriously. They re serious 6

7 criticisms. You re absolutely right on that. So what the scientific community does when that happens is they independently go back to the original literature and assess it to see whether the IPCC really got it wrong. (Will Steffen is acknowledging that the IPCC got it wrong. Yet in Cooma at a public meeting he stated that the IAC report endorsed the IPCC science. How can anyone trust this man s statements? He continues ) Will Steffen: Now on some peripheral things like Himalayan glaciers the IPCC made some mistakes. (This is a breathtaking misrepresentation of reality. Even the relevant IPCC Lead Author admitted the Himalayan claim was driven by a political agenda. The claim contradicted science. Will Steffen continues ) Will Steffen: But on the core science, the academies of science around the world have confirmed that the primary peer-reviewed literature is indeed saying these two important points. (This from the man who admitted two previous public falsehoods on this matter. The same man who as a member of Tim Flannery s Climate Commission publicly made a false statement claiming that eminent scientists did not sign the Oregon Petition repudiating the UN s Kyoto Protocol based as it was on UN IPCC reports. Yet eminent scientists, including UN IPCC contributing scientists are signatories of that petition against the UN s climate capers. Climate Commission public meeting at Ipswich, April 7 th,2011) Alan Jones: I have interviewed on this program some of the most outstanding scientists in the world and you know them. Professor Richard Lindzen, Timothy Ball, you know all those people. They say that what you people are talking is a load of codswallop. Now when we, I think this is the greatest hoax since Haley s Comet. That we re being perpetrated with. And you are endorsing material in that report on which this world expert advisory body which reviewed it says this, of this report that is the basis of the government s decision to have a carbon tax. This is the report that was considered by the Multi Party Committee on Climate Change Oakeshott, Windsor, all of those people were Windsor and Oakeshott and Gillard and Combet told that this body said, the IAC quote there are many statements that are assigned high confidence but based on little evidence. Moreover, apparent need to include statements of high confidence in the Summary for Policy Makers led authors to make many vaguely defined statements that are difficult to refute, therefore making them of high confidence. Such statements have no value. Holy Nellie. And this you are telling me that you properly briefed the Multi Party Committee on Climate Change. Did you tell Gillard, Combet, Oakeshott, Windsor when you briefed them that this was the criticism of this AR4 (IPCC-2007). 7

8 (Alan Jones previously interviewed UN IPCC Expert Science Reviewer, Dr Vincent Gray who provided by far the most comprehensive, detailed and thorough review of the UN IPCC s 2007 report, including 575 review comments on chapter 9, the report s sole chapter claiming warming and attributing it to human CO2 production. Vincent Gray has 60 years real-world experience as a research scientist. He has 21 years on climate. He has reviewed all four (4) UN IPCC assessment reports: 1990, 1995, 2001, He says there is no evidence for the UN IPCC s core claims, anywhere.) Will Steffen. I briefed that Committee on the absolutely best peer-reviewed scientific information that was available right up to date which means in the year 2011, end of Much research has been done since 2006 which was the cutoff date for the IPCC report. That research has strengthened the two main conclusions of the IPCC report. And the independent assessments of the academies of science around the world. (Again Will Steffen makes a false statement about the academies, a statement that contradicts his statements after the Cooma meeting. Recall that after he first stated this to members of the Cooma audience he was subsequently held accountable by a member of the audience and he admitted he was relying on one glossy publication from the Australian Academy. That booklet contains no evidence of a causal link between human production of CO2 and global warming. It is not independent. It is not the report of a formal review or investigation. It is not scientific. It contradicts science. He continues ) Will Steffen: So my advice was not given from the IPCC report of 2007 it was given from the best available recent up-to-date quality controlled literature. (Note that for the second time he failed to answer Alan Jones core question. He again reassures that his advice to the MPCCC was not given from the UN IPCC. His advice was given from his review. One man s view.) (Empirical scientific evidence since 2006 reveals global ATMOSPHERIC temperatures have not increased since That s 14 years of no increase.) Alan Jones; You can t do any better than this. The IPCC asked this IAC, this body to review this report. It asked it to do it. This is its findings for god s sake. These are the best scientists in the world. Listen to this. I m saying this to my listeners. This is in relation to conflict of interest. This is what this body in review said a complication could arise and this is what I m told is happening all the time when Lead Authors are sitting side-by-side with their government representative which might put the Lead Author in the difficult position of either supporting the government position at odds with the (scientific) Working Group report or opposing the government s position. This may be most awkward when authors are also government employees. That is, on the payroll. It further said, Government representatives then negotiate and agree to the final wording line-by-line. Holy Nellie. And we re meant to take this stuff seriously. And we ve got a carbon tax hanging over our heads. 8

9 20 20 Will Steffen. Well first of all the line-by-line refers to the Summary for Policy Makers not the body, of the scientific body of the report. Second of all, Alan, er those criticisms obviously are serious criticisms. They were taken on board by the scientific community. There were independent investigations of the science by these academies of science and learned bodies around the world. In addition there s been much more research done since All of that activity, the independent assessments of what the IPCC was doing and what they came up with, the research that s been done since that report has came out has confirmed the two main conclusions that the IPCC put forward. That the earth is warming and that human activity is the main cause. That is not in debate any more across the scientific community. (Yet again he repeats the false statement implying rigorous investigations by academies and implies yet again that they endorsed the UN IPCC science. Yet another falsehood.) (Even UN IPCC Lead Authors are vigorously revealing UN IPCC scandals. Many scientists worldwide now oppose the UN IPCC s unfounded and unscientific core claims to which Will Steffen refers.) Alan Jones: It is totally in debate. I could get Lindzen, Ball a whole stack of people up here to tell me (1) the globe hasn t warmed since 1998, the science isn t settled and there are thousands of signatories. And even your own, now if you re studying for the Higher School Certificate and you think well I don t know anything about King Lear you can go into a bookshop and you ll buy a little King Lear and it ll have 60 questions and answers to explain King Lear simply. You learn them off by heart and you can go in and throw that into the exam and you ve haven t even read the thing but it sounds as though you know something about King Lear. So that s what s happened with this climate change thing and there s an Australian Academy of Science publication called Questions & Answers which is a thumbnail sketch. There s your own publication called the Critical Decade. These are sort of populist documents for the dumb public like us and they are they re not real. They don t have any credibility at all, I don t think. But however forget that. This is significant professor. Why in your Critical Decade document do you then say you, Will Steffen quote, quote accept no liability for the accuracy of, or inferences from, the material contained in this publication, or for any action as a result of any person s or group s interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in relying on this material? You accept no liability for the accuracy or the inferences from the material but this is being used to justify government expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars and a carbon tax Will Steffen. Look that s a legal disclaimer put there because it was published by the Climate Commission. If you actually look at my Foreword Alan I do take all liability, all responsibility for the veracity of what s in that report. So, please I just want to reassure your readers that I do stand absolutely behind what was written in that report and I ve said so in my own words in my own foreword. (Alan Jones is correct. Although, Will Steffen does take responsibility in his foreword for quote my own syntheses and judgments where there is, as he says, quote no clear 9

10 consensus in the peer-reviewed literature. eg, sea level in the year As Will Steffen relies on the oxymoron and unscientific phenomenon he calls scientific consensus, those instances of his taking responsibility would seem to be largely token. Does he seriously think people in 2100 will be able to hold him responsible?) Alan Jones: Do you understand that if you re a corporation and there was a prospectus issued and there were criticisms made of the prospectus the like of which this Inter Academy Council has made accusing the processes and procedures of really extraordinary behaviour and conflict of interest and bias if that were a corporation they d be in the dock. They d be charged. They d be charged with issuing a false prospectus. And this has formed the basis of revolutionising the Australian economy Will Steffen. Well let me say again. Alan Jones: You ll have the final say. Will Steffen: Thanks Alan. Alan Jones: No this is your final say. Will Steffen: OK look, er we do accept and the IPCC accepts that it has to improve its procedures and it s undertaken that as it goes to its Fifth Assessment Report. But again I say that learned bodies, academies of science around the world took this seriously enough to do their own investigation of the primary quality controlled literature to say: well did the IPCC get it badly wrong or did they not? And the unequivocal consistent answer around the world is on the core messages, core conclusions that the IPCC made they got it right. And subsequent evidence since 2006 has confirmed that. We have more observations, we have more experiments, we have more studies done that have been published and they confirm that the earth continues to warm and they confirm that greenhouse gases are the likely causes. (Yet again Will Steffen repeats his Cooma statement that he later admitted was false.) (Yet again, contrary to the facts, he falsely claims an unequivocal consistent answer found by the UN IPCC.) (Global atmospheric temperature data by satellite and radiosonde weather balloon both contradict Will Steffen. They continue to reveal no increase in temperature since 1998.) (Given extensive deep-rooted systemic corruption of science within the UN IPCC since 1988 and within it s predecessor UNEP since 1972, it s not surprising that the UN IPCC is already being exposed for using unscientific processes in fabricating its Fifth Assessment Report: 10

11 24 32 Alan Jones: Well there s a whole heap of scientists who don t I can assure you. The science is not settled and I don t believe that the people who fashioned the carbon tax were properly advised on all the reservations and you can talk about academies of science and whatever all funded by governments. It s interesting that Stephen Harper the Canadian Prime Minister has sacked all of those people, the whole department of environment and climate change. Stephen Harper. He says it s a whole heap of rubbish. Now he says it s rubbish he must be stupid. Here we are heading down this track. You re funded by the government. I suppose you ve got to tell the government what they want to hear. I don t know what goes on. But all I m saying is that outfit was appointed by the IPCC themselves. The world s highest academy body. The world s highest academy body, the Inter Academy Council, the Inter Academy Council made these criticisms. That ll do me. I m simply saying we ought to be back to the drawing boards. Thank you for joining me. I appreciate it very much and we will have that cup of tea. Will Steffen: Thank you Alan, pleasure. Absolute pleasure. PostScript: In response to my request for evidence that human production of CO2 caused Earth s latest modest atmospheric global warming that ended around 1998, the Australian Academy of Science s Science Policy Manager, Dr Martin Callinan, advised that there is evidence in references numbered listed in the Academy s glossy booklet entitled The Science of Climate Change Questions and Answers. After checking his list of references, it s clear that there is no such evidence. Prepared by Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts. Saturday, March 10 th, 2012 Original personally initialled. 11