Open thread with new climate reports

If you want to talk about anything, I'm pretty well tied up for the next few days - so please add anything you want in the comments.

One thing you might have missed is the BAMS special climate supplement "2015 State of the Climate" has been released. You can get it here.

The report confirmed that 2015 surpassed 2014 as the warmest year since at least the mid-to-late 19th century. The record heat resulted from the combined influence of long-term global warming and one of the strongest El Niño events the globe has experienced since at least 1950. Most indicators of climate change continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet. Several markers, such as land and ocean temperatures, sea levels, and greenhouse gases, broke records set just one year prior. 

Another thing is there's a new report from the Climate Council focusing on rural Australia, which you can read here.

Our new report reveals that climate change is likely to worsen the systemic disadvantages suffered by rural and regional communities, and further widen the gap between rural and urban areas.

The 'On the Frontline: Climate Change & Rural Communities' report finds the increase in extreme weather events is disproportionately affecting those in rural areas, with serious social, health and economic impacts.

The Great Barrier Reef: an unmitigated disaster - if only the Australian public knew...

Here is the video from the Climate Council, with Tim Flannery, Amanda McKenzie and Dean Miller on the disastrous bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

Graham Readfearn has written about how Ben Webster at the anti-environment newspaper, The Australian, tried to downplay the disaster.

Will Steffen and all of climate science vs Bjorn Lomborg and deniers - no contest! But Tony Abbott picks the loser.

Some Australian readers will have received a copy of this letter from Tim Flannery, which, given it's wide mailout, I think is okay to share more broadly. (Bernard has already posted a copy in the comments).

Deceiving the Australian public

The Australian Government today announced they would contribute $4m for Danish climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg to establish a new “consensus centre” at the University of Western Australia.

In the face of deep cuts to the CSIRO and other scientific research organisations, it's an insult to Australia’s scientific community.

As the Climate Commission, we were abolished by the Abbott Government in 2013 on the basis that our $1.5 million annual operating costs were too expensive. We relaunched as the Climate Council after thousands of Australians chipped in to the nation’s biggest crowd-funding campaign - ​remember this video?

It seems extraordinary that the Climate Commission, which was composed of Australia’s best climate scientists, economists and energy experts, was abolished on the basis of a lack of funding and yet here we are three years later and the money has become available to import a politically-motivated think tank to work in the same space.

This is why the work of the Climate Council is so important- to counter this continuing ideological attempt at deceiving the Australian public. 

Please consider chipping in a few dollars a week to help us stay independent and continue to fight the rising tide of misinformation. 

Mr Lomborg’s views have no credibility in the scientific community. His message hasn’t varied at all in the last decade and he still believes we shouldn't take any steps to mitigate climate change. When someone is unwilling to adapt their view on the basis of new science or information, it's usually a sign those views are politically motivated. 

But with your support we will continue to fight back and reach millions of Australians with information that is based on the best science available. 

Thank you 

Tim Flannery

P.S We're already busy responding to misinformation in the media. We just called out The Australian for deliberately misinterpreting the science and the Prime Ministers Business Advisor Maurice Newman for getting his facts wrong. 

I've also previously written about Maurice Newman's wrong facts, such as here and here and here. And on several occasions about misleading articles in the Australian.

I've also been told about an article in the Guardian on the topic of Bjorn Lomborg's new creation (h/t Bert).

My reaction is the same as Tim Flannery's. One of the very first things the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott did was to abolish the Climate Commission. Australians were outraged, and within only a few days Australian people donated $500,000 dollars to create the Climate Council. And soon doubled it. It must vie with the biggest responses of any appeal for donations.

Now Tony Abbott is reportedly funding a "denier" (as defined by rationalwiki) at around the same annual cost of the then Climate Commission. (I'll need to check the numbers.)

I don't have time to write any more about this. Feel free to express your opinions in the comments.

Disinformation Lesson 1a: Anthony Watts' trained lapdog Eric "Eugenics" Worral plays a dangerous game

Eric "Eugenics" Worrall** vacillates between vacuous and contemptible. Today he's decided to do another smear job on Professor Tim Flannery (archived here). He thinks he can get away with it because he's using the disinformer's trick of linking to someone else telling the same lies.

This recycling of five year old denier memes doesn't mean deniers are running out of puff. They have an endless capacity to recycle disinformation. In fact it's all they've got.

Disinformation Lesson 1a: Cherry pickQuote mine, misrepresent and link

Lesson 1: One of the first lessons disinformers learn is how to cherry pick quote mine. That means taking anything from one word to ten from a blog article, a stolen personal email, a scientific paper or even from a video transcript and putting them in a different context of your choosing. In other words, distorting at best but usually making something up altogether and then falsely attributing it to the person you want to misrepresent or defame.

Lesson 1a: The variation in use today is to link to some other source of cherry picking quote mining to twist and misrepresent. Now that deniers do defamation for a living there are a lot of websites they can link to where people tell lies. Some like Andrew Bolt misrepresent facts for a living. He gets paid handsomely. The Eric Worralls of the world are mere footsoldiers and work for free.

Just this week I've shown two other people at WUWT who've put Lesson 1 or Lesson 1a into practice.

• Rachel DeJong used Lesson 1a making a faked up claim about Gina McCarthy, head of the EPA
• E. Calvin Beissner used Lesson 1, without the link, making a faked up claim about James Powell 

Does Anthony Watts train his disinformers in basic disinformation techniques? Doesn't Anthony know that as publisher, he is equally liable as his "guest essayists" for defamation if someone decides enough is enough? Is he so flushed with the success of cadging a few thousand more dollars from fans in a matter of hours so he can go on a jaunt to the UK that he reckons his readers will cough up again in that eventuality? Maybe so.

Eric "eugenics" Worrall was able to go to Lesson 1a, linking to Australian blogger and shock jock, Andrew Bolt, who's a climate science denier from way back. Incidentally, he's also a good mate of Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott, when he's useful to him. (Tony counts shock jocks/climate science deniers among his "friends" - even promoting science deniers to positions of power in dismantling renewable energy programs.)

Support the Climate Council - Keep science in the headlines and stop Tony Abbott's vandalism

Support the Climate Council

It's time to support the Climate Council again. Australia needs it more than ever. Help keep science in the headlines. Every little helps.

Click here to donate.

From the Climate Council website:

After thousands of Australian's chipped in to Australia's biggest crowd-funding campaign, the abolished Climate Commission has relaunched as the new, independent Climate Council.

We exist to provide independent, authoritative climate change information to the Australian public. Why? Because our response to climate change should be based on the best science available.

We're a fast growing group of people made up of expert Councillors, staff, volunteers and supporters. Together we are doing everything we can to spread independent and accurate information on climate change.

Selected Climate Council publications

Australia's Electricity Sector: Ageing, Inefficient and Unprepared

Climate Council Seasonal Update: Abnormal Autumn

IPCC Report: more certain than ever that climate change is underway

Angry Summer (again)

and many more...

The new Climate Council - Australians aim high!

Almost $400,000 raised in just one day for the Climate Council - so Australians will continue to get solid information about our changing climate.

Mostly from small donations.  Australians have spoken!

Source: @ClimateCouncil

It would be great to get it to $5 million.  That would help set it up properly for the longer term.

You can become a Founding Friend and donate here.

Become a Founding Friend of the Climate Council today!

Late edition: see below.

The Climate Commission was shut down and the Climate Council has opened for business.

The twitter account @climatecouncil had such a rush of followers it was automatically suspended!  Hopefully it will be back on Twitter soon.

From the Climate Council website:

1. What is the Climate Council?

The Climate Council is a non-profit independent organisation which aims to provide clear, independent advice to the Australian community. We are fiercely independent and apolitical.

2. Why is it important?

Information: information is the currency of democracy, and Australians deserve to have independent information on the state of our climate. Similarly, emergency services, health professionals, local government and journalists need accurate information about a changing climate.

Action: already this year has been one of the earliest starts to the Australian bushfire season. Last summer was the hottest on record, breaking over 120 extreme weather records. This is the critical decade for tackling climate change and reducing our emissions. But we can’t tackle climate change without a well-informed public – and that’s where we come in. Our expert reports help journalists and the public, with timely, expert, and independent information about climate change and its effects on our economy, environment, security, and health.

3. Who is involved?

The Councillors: All the former Climate Commissioners are supporting the initiative with or without Government funding. We’re volunteering our time to get this set up. (Sou: The Commissioners were Professor Tim Flannery, Mr Roger Beale AO, Mr Gerry Heuston, Professor Veena Sahajwalla and Professor Will Steffen.)

The Public: over the last week, we’ve been flooded with people offering encouragement, support, and even donations to keep us going. They come from all political persuasions – they have one thing in common: they know that independent information so important in our democracy.

The Experts: we’ve worked with Australia’s leading experts in emergency services, climate science, health, and defence. Many of them have spoken out in the last week, to call for us to keep going. They know that climate change has real implications now for our health, our security, our food, and for extreme weather. They value the information we provide and they want us to continue, and to continue working with us.

4. How will it make a difference?

We’ll continue to provide journalists and the public with authoritative independent reports, starting with next week’s international climate science update. This will be accompanied by a range of communications materials relevant to different audiences, videos, infographics, fact sheets, and other resources. Similarly we will continue to provide information to the community directly through speeches, community forums and briefings.

The info-graphic below accompanied the Climate Commission’s Angry Summer report illustrating the wide-ranging number of records that were broken over the last Australian summer. (Click to enlarge)

Australia's Angry Summer

5. How do you plan to cover operating costs?

We have already had some seed funding, and we’re seeking funding from the public. If you’d like to help please visit our donate page.

Become a founding friend of the Climate Council and donate to help get it going.

Late edition:

4:00 pm Tuesday 24 September 2013
The ABC seems to be doing its bit.  I logged onto the home page of their main website and this is what was displayed.  It is unusual for the ABC to give top prominence to climate matters. (Click image to enlarge.)

• The top headline of the moment is the new Climate Council.
• The third top headline was a link to the Media Watch segment from last night, exposing the lies about the IPCC which were being spread by radio shock jocks, newspapers and bloggers last week.