As we now know, Johann Hari has been rather less than honest on quite a few occasions. Brendan O’Neill has a good article in the Telegraph about the tyranny of the “good lie”:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100094506/johann-hari-and-the-tyranny-of-the-good-lie/

‘The key problem with Hari’s approach to interviews, and with his justification of it in this morning’s Independent, is that he has deployed the Noble Truth defence – the idea that it is okay to play fast and loose with the facts, and with reality itself, just so long as you end up telling a “greater truth”.’

In a climate context, this is reminiscent of Stephen Schneider’s “scary scenarios” and “simplified, dramatic statements”…

Back to Johann Hari, I believe he has outdone himself with this despairing cry upon witnessing the hilarious and utter trainwreck of COP15:

“Throughout the negotiations here, the world’s low-lying island states have clung to the real ideas as a life-raft, because they are the only way to save their countries from a swelling sea. It has been extraordinary to watch their representatives – quiet, sombre people with sad eyes – as they were forced to plead for their own existence. They tried persuasion and hard science and lyrical hymns of love for their lands, and all were ignored.”

Although, George Monbiot’s emotional elegy was perhaps even better:

“Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.”

(Full texts here and here
, hat tip to James Delingpole here
.)

The thing is, after such excesses, where do Johann and George M go from here? George M has now said his tearful farewells to Africa, the glaciers, coral reefs etc. What on earth will he (and Johann) do in 2019 or 2029, if it emerges that these places are, ahem, less completely doomed than they had thought?

Have a look at The COP15 problem is not climate change skepticism, it is anti nuclear fanaticism. (Also available at The Energy Collective – check out the comments in particular).

For a comprehensive look at temperature spinning from the Met Office and more info about Tyndall, have a look here: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/Spinning%20temperature%20out%20of%20control.pdf

Isn’t this cosy? Climate change deniers patting each other on the back and saying that as long as we redefine the words ‘fact’ and (overwhelming) ‘evidence’ then climate change will go away (Did I understand your first mission statement correctly?).

No.

It’s always encouraging to receive criticism that can only nitpick round the edges rather than address the argument (that Hari is selling dodgy political arguments as somehow flowing inevitably from ‘the science’). FWIW, we’re not writing off Hari’s entire corpus – but he’s been wrong before, by his own admission, and we think he’s wrong again now. As for the nitpicks…

His intro is not just describing his mental state. He’s also saying that he’s seen the world that we’re heading for at the hands of climate change. He has seen the catastrophe in store. That’s what we’re criticising here.

“the climate system is rather more complicated than such a one-dimensional portrayal would suggest”
>Is this trying to imply that climate scientists are trying to simplify things and that is why they come up with faulty results? From what I’ve seen climate science is plenty complex, what with all the feedbacks and carbon sources/sinks. The focus is on much more than just CO2, the Kyoto protocol regulates six greenhouse gases.

it’s Hari who is presenting us with the choice between adopting green energy and an uninhabitable planet. How one-dimensional do you want?

“public opinion as the product of primaeval biological urges”
>I think you are underestimating psychology, it is based on a lot more than just primaeval biological urges – you are twisting Johann’s words here.

Hari calls them ‘evolved instincts’. What’s the difference?

“Research bodies such as NASA and NOAA do, like Hadley, collect and analyse data, and test hypotheses”
>In this section, you are agreeing with the point that everybody comes to the same conclusion about the human influence on climate change. You can criticise the inclusion of more public relation-type bodies, but you are not providing any counter examples of credible institutes/universities that disagree. By the way, the reason that Johann lumps together CRU and the Hadley Centre is precisely because they made the data set together as you point out.

we think Hari has made a fundamental mistake here in claiming that all these institutions have ‘independently verified the evidence’. And you seem to agree. Your point? Off the top of our head, a counter example is the Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/jstor_climate_report_translation/). But that’s a distraction from the broader point that political statements by scientists are not the same as scientific analysis. As for the lumping of Hadley and CRU, if Hari meant what you say he meant, he should have said it, rather than saying something that is just wrong.

Scientists have been able to separate the natural long-term variations in climate and the persistent upwards trend that is directly related to the emissions of greenhouse gases. They can also show which one is the most influential…

perhaps you know something we don’t. Please tell.

“No scientist could state with the certainty that Hari has that the persistence of post-98 temperatures can be attributed to increases in CO2.”
>Erm, yes they can. New Scientist explains clearly why:

but the article you cite is making the case that global warming hasn’t stopped as some sceptics claim. And even on that issue it’s couched with so many qualifiers – may, might, some scientists etc – so we’re not sure why you think it shows with certainty the respective contributions of anthropogenic and non-anth warming.

“This misses the point that the arguments about what kind of problem climate change is and what to do about it emerge almost exclusively from WGII and WGIII”
>But you should be happy about this given your fifth mission statement: “5. How society should proceed in the face of a changing climate is the business of politics not science.”

eh? We were countering the claim that the IPCC is all about climate science. While you seem to think that appointing an expert committee of political scientists to make decisions is a substitute for democracy.

That’s enough I think, people can see that this is nothing but the unfounded opinions of two writers who criticise the IPCC report for not being scientific enough yet they do not provide information on their ‘about’ page to what makes them so excellently qualified to make these statements!

So what makes the non-scientist writer Hari so excellently qualified to make statements about the science?