The Greenhouse Industry?

John Daly often refers to the `Greenhouse Industry' in an effort to suggest that scientists and policy-makers involved in climate change gain a benefit from over-emphasising the probable effects of anthropogenic global warming (see for example). Here is an example of one particular claim made by a contrarian, Richard Courtney, who was a Founder Member of the European Science and Environment Forum (which was formed primarily to lobby against the conventional view on climate change). On 27 February 2003, Richard Courtney sent the following email to John Daly within the Yahoo group climatesceptics (posting number 8603):

Dear John Daly:
Thankyou for getting John Hunter to admit that he obtains funds from Greenpeace.
In 1991 Greenpeace International published a letter in CoalTrans International (the journal of the world's international coal trading industry). That letter included the following assertion about me that was attributed to Hunter.
"Courtney clearly understands nothing about physics or climate or, at least, he pretends not to understand."
At the time I was the Senior Material Scientist of the National Coal Board (a.k.a. British Coal) based at the Coal Research Establishment (CRE). I had Hunter's above assertion printed in large letters and framed, then I mounted it on the wall of my office at CRE. It provided amusement for many until I left that job in 1997.
This year, Hunter has impugned my integrity, my veracity, my scientific credentials, and my scientific competence. This caused me some distress until I learned that Hunter still gets funds from Greenpeace. "He who pays the piper calls the tune". Clearly, the recent attacks on me indicate that I must have been effective of late.
Again, thankyou.
All the best
Richard

(John Hunter is the primary author of What's Wrong With Still Waiting For Greenhouse?. In August, 2002, Greenpeace provided travel support for John Hunter, as an employee of the University of Tasmania, to present a paper on sea level rise to the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji. This is the only funding ever provided by Greenpeace in support of John Hunter's work. He had no contact with Greenpeace prior to May 2002.)

In the above email, Richard Courtney quite clearly implied that John Hunter had received payment from Greenpeace since 1991, and that this payment had influenced his work ('he who pays the piper calls the tune'). The email was followed by another (6 March 2003) to Hunter and to a number of members of climatesceptics, which contained the following elucidation:

In 1990 two senior officials of GreenPeace published an article about 'global warming' in CoalTrans International. It was suggested that I reply to that and I did. My (long) letter provided referenced scientific information that refuted each assertion in the Greenpeace article, and it was published as an article in CoalTrans International. Following this, the Editor of CoalTrans International asked me to become Contributing Technical Editor of that journal. I accepted the post and took responsibility for all matters of science and technology in that journal. Greenpeace wrote to say they would research answers to my article and would respond in due course. In 1991 Greenpeace wrote a letter to CoalTrans International saying they had researched the matter by asking for comments on my article from climate scientists. I published that letter in full (two-thirds of a page) with my response beneath it. My answer began;
"I enjoyed reading this response from Greenpeace. It pleases me that after more than a year of research they have failed to state a single error in anything I wrote. Instead, they cite personal insults against me for writing it"
The Greenpeace letter said one of those insults was from you, Hunter.

Is this the Greenhouse Industry at work? Well, firstly, Courtney's claims cannot be true, for the following reasons:

Hunter's first contact with Courtney was when Courtney sent him an email on 25 October 1999. Prior to that date, Hunter did not know of his existence.
Hunter's first contact with Greenpeace was when they sent him an email on 7 May 2002, concerning sea level change in the South Pacific.
It is clear from reading Hunter's CV that he had virtually no involvement in climate issues until about 2000.

Secondly, let's look at the published evidence:

A search of the 1991 issues of CoalTrans International by the British Library yielded the following emailed statement on 5 March 2003:
I have looked through 1991, both advertisements, and articles, news items (scanned).
No advert from Greenpeace, no item overtly from Greenpeace, no apparent reference to Richard Courtney.
An independent search of all 1990 and 1991 issues of CoalTrans International indicated no items matching the descriptions in Courtney's email of 6 March 2003.
In fact, Courtney was wrong by 2-3 years (does this indicate that Courtney does not even have copies of the articles to which he refers?). The following items are presumably the ones described by Courtney:
- An article entitled Climate change: just simple carbon arithmetic by Marcus Rand and Jeremy Leggett of Greenpeace, in CoalTrans International, Vol. 8, No. 2, April 1993, pp. 24-26.
- An article entitled The end of the world is not nigh by Richard S Courtney, Science and Technology spokesman of the British Association of Colliery Management, in CoalTrans International, Vol. 8, No. 3, June 1993, pp. 40-42.
- An article entitled Climate change debate: Greenpeace replies in CoalTrans International, Vol. 8, No. 5, September/October 1993, p. 62. This article was based on a response by Jeremy Leggett of Greenpeace (which is presumably the `Greenpeace letter' described by Courtney). Leggett's response was not published `in full' as claimed by Courtney in his email of 6 March 2003.
  Needless to say, this article made absolutely no mention of the quote attributed to Hunter in Courtney's emails.

It is left to the reader to decide whether the above supports John Daly's claim of a `Greenhouse Industry', or whether Courtney's claims are instead a complete fabrication. Since Courtney has been informed several times of the above information and yet has never retracted his original claims, it would certainly appear to be a good example of contrarianism: holding to a particular view in the absence of any supporting evidence and/or in the face of totally contrary evidence.

(Copies of the original emails, and a scanned copy of the article Climate change debate: Greenpeace replies may be obtained by phoning 0427 098 831 or +61 427 098 831.)

22 August 2013