Exaggerating the Exaggerators

Here we go again. Yet another "scientific expert" who is supposedly going to expose the "myth" of climate change...

According to an article on Sydney, Australia's Herald Sun) (which is also reported on Alex Jones' Prison Planet), "IPCC external reviewer Dr Madhav Khandekar says the UN body has exaggerated the costs of global warming."

In the article, Exaggerators: IPCC accused by its own, written by Andrew Bolt:

"The full paper, kindly sent to me by Dr Khandekar, a former research scientist with Environment Canada who holds a PhD in meteorology and has worked in the fields of climatology," makes the following claim:

"The exaggerated claim of GW impacts by the IPCC has led to a distortion of the reality of climate change and its future impact. The earth’s climate has changed and is changing continuously, a fact accepted by most climate scientists on both sides of the present debate. Is the present climate change deleterious to human societies? Are there beneficial aspects of climate change that have been overlooked? Do adverse impacts outweigh beneficial impacts? We do not have all the answers yet. There is a definite need to carefully analyze climate change impact on world-wide human societies. The IPCC assessment is far from objective and needs to be critically re-assessed."

Permit me to express my thanks and appreciation to "KarmakazeNZ" for bringing up the following points that I will post below:

Dr Khandekar is a member of the Friends of Science Scientific Advisory Board.

“In an August 12, 2006, article The Globe and Mail revealed that the group had received significant funding via anonymous, indirect donations from the oil industry, including a major grant from the Science Education Fund, a donor-directed, flow-through charitable fund at the Calgary Foundation. The donations were funnelled through a University of Calgary trust account research set up and controlled by U of C Professor Barry Cooper. The revelations were based largely on the prior investigations of Desmogblog.com, which had reported on the background of FoS scientific advisors and Cooper’s role in FoS funding.”

“Following an internal audit and review begun in March of 2007, the University determined that some of the research funds accepted on behalf of the Friends of Science “had been used to support a partisan viewpoint on climate change”. As a consequence, the University advised FoS “that it would no longer accept funds on the organization’s behalf”, according to an email from University legal counsel Elizabeth Osler sent on December 24, 2007. On February 17, 2008, CanWest News Service reported that U of C officials had shut down Cooper’s “‘Research on Climate Change’ trust account”, and were about to advise Elections Canada of the University’s ongoing review of the matter. In the wake of the revelations, Liberal public works critic Mark Holland called for parliamentary hearings to investigate the source of donations. A few days later, CanWest reported that the targeting of the FoS radio ad campaign to key Ontario ridings was directed by then FoS media contact Morten Paulsen (later a vice-president at Fleishman-Hillard), who also served as volunteer spokesperson for the Stephen Harper led Conservative Party of Canada during the election.”

Strike One!

"The journal Energy and Environment is a social science journal published by Multi-Science. The journal’s editor is Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, a reader in geography at the University of Hull in England and climate skeptic.

Energy and Environment is not carried in the ISI listing of peer-reviewed journals. Its peer review process has been widely criticised for allowing the publication of substandard papers. Numerous climate skeptics and contrarians have published in the journal and these studies have later been quoted by Republican critics of global warming science such as Senator James Inhofe and Congressman Joe Barton.”

Strike Two!

What else has Dr Khandekar been involved in?

Well, there was the “2008 International Conference on Climate Change”.

“The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change was a conference held at the Marriott New York Marquis Times Square Hotel in New York between March 2-4 . The conference was organised and “sponsored” by the Heartland Institute, a U.S. think tanks that in preceding years received substantial funding from Exxon for its work downplaying the significance of global warming.”

“The conference was described by Washington Post reporter, Juliet Eilperin, as “a sort of global warming doppelganger conference, where everything was reversed.” At the event, skeptics unveiled their response to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report, edited by corporate-funded skeptic Fred Singer, argued that “recent climate change stems from natural causes.” Eilperin notes that “while the IPCC enlisted several hundred scientists from more than 100 countries to work over five years to produce its series of reports, the NIPCC document is the work of 23 authors from 15 nations, some of them not scientists.”

The New York Times reports that while the Heartland conference “was largely framed around science ... when an organizer made an announcement asking all of the scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 men did so.” The conference invitation identified its goal as “to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science.”

The Heartland Institute offered “$1,000 to those willing to give a talk,” and “a free weekend at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, including travel costs, to all elected officials wanting to attend,” according to the RealClimate blog.”

Strike Three! Yer OUT!

To quote "Karmakaze", "I hope Dr Khandekar and Andrew Bolt enjoy their blood money."