Guest weblog by Hendrik Tennekes
Five months ago, I felt that the tide in Holland was turning. Marcel Stive, a civil engineering professor and member of the Delta Committee, a blue-ribbon panel that was going to publish a report on our coastal defenses, said in an interview with an alumni magazine:
“Fortunately, the time rate of climate change is slow compared to the life span of the defense structures along our coast. There is enough time for adaptation. We should monitor the situation carefully, but up to now climate change does not cause severe problems for our coastal defense system. IPCC has given lower estimates for the expected sea level rise in four successive reports.” (I quoted this in my weblog of 14 July 2008).
But what happened? The Delta Committee published its report in September, and based its recommendations on well over a meter of sea-level rise in this century and a tenfold increase in coastal security. Its estimate for the additional funding needed is two billion dollars annually.
In interviews with journalists, scientists associated with the Delta Committee went further yet. Professor Pavel Kabat of Wageningen University said that sea-level rise could easily exceed the number given in the report, and Professor Pier Vellinga, also of Wageningen University, quoted six meters, on the assumption that the rate at which the Greenland ice cap is melting will accelerate dramatically.
Professor Hans von Storch, a German member of the subcommittee in charge of assessing the scientific evidence, promptly protested in the Dutch press, saying that the Delta Committee had piled extreme upon extreme in order to obtain these figures. Holland’s senior science writer, Karel Knip, followed suit, suggesting that the Committee was evidently ignorant of the statistics of rare events. For reasons unknown to me, KNMI, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, did not attempt a rebuttal. It could have chosen to state in public that recent assessments by IPCC and by its own scientists predicted half a meter of sea-level rise, but it didn’t. I suspect that the Department of Transportation and Public Works, which is responsible for our coastal defense system, instructed KNMI not to derail the political debate with a balanced presentation of the scientific evidence.
Much to my dismay, the publication of the Committee report was followed by a massive publicity campaign. Al Gore came over to Holland a month ago, and gave a $300,000 speech blasting the energy industry. James Hansen, advisor to Gore and well-known forecaster of catastrophic sea-level rise, will address a meeting in Rotterdam next month. Kabat and Vellinga will speak there too. The Urgenda Foundation, not so subtly named for its promotion of an Urgent Agenda for Climate Change, has published a manifesto full of hell and damnation in a leading newspaper. After several years of floating scary stories about possible inundation of Amsterdam Airport, Professor Vellinga now advocates a massive dam in front of our entire coast, wide enough for urban development.
What is the purpose of hyped-up forecasts of sea-level rise? Why don’t the Dutch participants in IPCC speak up? Why doesn’t the IPCC brass? Whose interests are served by ridiculous climate alarms? The problems surrounding climate change are tough enough as is. We desperately need moderation, not propaganda.