So when Jaccard has something to say, politicians and interested citizens on all sides of the climate policy debate generally listen. And Jaccard is speaking out  against the Northern Gateway pipeline, stating in no uncertain times that ongoing expansion of the Alberta oil sands, including its proposed network of pipelines, can not be reconciled with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s promises and commitments to mitigate climate change.

Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Jaccard laments that Northern Gateway opposition is largely focused on  what he terms “local” environmental issues, such as pipeline and tanker spills. As compelling as those concerns may be, this risks missing the big picture. The Northern Gateway is only one element in a program of massive and rapid oil sands expansion that will undoubtedly upend Canada’s climate change initiatives.

Jaccard notes the Conservative government’s endorsement of U.N. and G8 initiatives and resolutions broadly commiting industrialized nations to cut GHG emissions by 80% by 2050. The Harper government’s own commitment, as embodied in the 2008 Turning the Corner Plan, calls for a somewhat  less aggressive target of 65% below 2006 levels. As I explained in my previous post on the subject, Canada after Kyoto, this translates into a 2050 target level of 250 Mt a year. If the more aggressive U.S. Copenhagen target of 83% below  2005 levels were adopted by Canada, the 2050 target would be 125 Mt.

But as I noted back then, even Canada’s less aggressive 250 Mt target can not be reconciled with the ongoing unbridled expansion of the oil sands. For Alberta’s own emission targets, already off track, call for a rise to 2020, and a reduction of only 14% below 2005 level by 2050, namely 200 Mt. That irresolvable conflict is baldly summarized in the graph  I presented three weeks ago.

The Alberta plan is based on a business-as-usual scenario of 400 Mt in 2050 (up from 230 Mt in 2005), and is heavily dependent on an unlikely mitigation from carbon-capture-and-storage of almost 140 Mt to arrive at the 200 Mt target. Yet even this far-fetched scenario is clearly impossible, as it leaves only 50 Mt for all of the rest of Canada. And the 83% target is actually a whole 75 Mt, or 37%,  under Alberta’s target.

Nevertheless, even discussion of climate change issues tends to be focused on Canada’s 2020 target. As I showed previously, that target is clearly already blown, since there is a yawning 178 Mt gap with absolutely no measures in place, or even announced, to bridge it.

But Jaccard argues that the mid-century time frame is even more important (a view with which I seem to be one of the few concurring these days). Here’s Jaccard again:

A target 38 years hence might seem safely distant. But this is incorrect. All leading independent climate policy institutes concur that only with immediate action will we achieve a 65-80 per cent reduction in less than four decades. In the case of vehicles, this means the rapid deployment of near-zero-emission technologies which, thankfully, are already commercially available. These include hybrid vehicles using biofuels (ethanol or biodiesel), plug-in hybrid vehicles, and battery-electric vehicles. In contrast, our demand, and soon the global demand, for oil must contract, especially the demand for high-cost, high-emission tarsands.

Thus, for his promise not to be a lie, Harper cannot allow expansion of tarsands and associated pipelines, and he must require a growing market share of near-zero-emission vehicles. He knows this because his analysts are privy to the work of the world’s leading researchers. Canadians on all sides of the issue should read a 20-page report from MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change entitled Canada’s Bitumen Industry Under CO2 Constraints (found at http://globalchange.mit. edu). The report shows how and why the Canadian tarsands must contract as part of a global effort to prevent a 4 degree increase in temperatures and catastrophic climate change.

Well, I’m going to read that 2010 MIT report. And I hope Canadian politicians – of all stripes – will read it as well, and that we all start discussing the real issues.

[Update: Here is part of the abstract of Canada’s Bitumen Industry Under CO2 Constraints (January 2010, MIT Joint Program Report 183):

We find: (1) without climate policy annual Canadian bitumen production increases over 6-fold from 2005 to 2050; (2) with CO2 emissions caps implemented in developed countries, Canadian bitumen production drops by nearly 65% from the reference 6-fold increase and bitumen upgrading capacity moves to the developing countries; (3) with CO2 emissions caps implemented worldwide, the Canadian bitumen production becomes essentially non-viable even with CCS technology, at least through our 2050 horizon. The main reason for the demise of the oil sands industry with global CO2 policy is that the demand for oil worldwide drops substantially.

This confirms what I've said previously; any plausible scenario to reduce  global emissions and limit atmospheric CO2e to 450 ppm necessarily implies much more limited development than planned, with phaseout of the oil sands much sooner than currently contemplated. ]

In the mean time, I’ll give Jaccard the last words, with the emphasis they deserve.

The facts are simple. Our political leaders are lying to us if they aid and abet the expansion of tarsands while promising to take action to prevent the imminent climate catastrophe. If you love this planet and your children, and are humble and objective in considering the findings of science, you have no choice but to battle hard to stop Gateway and other tarsands pipelines. It is time to face up to this challenge with honesty and courage.

1) The Keystone XL application has been turned down by the Obama administration, but the applicant Trans Canada has been invited to reapply and will do so. In other words, a final decision has been delayed until 2013, which was the situation before the Republicans tried to force the issue.

2) Hansen et al have released their  2011 review, “Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects”.

But it turns out there are other interesting ties behind the scenes. An examination of the web server hosting EthicalOil.org reveals a network of fifty or so websites, mainly on behalf of right-wing causes and politicians. The latter include two Conservative cabinet ministers, Velshi’s old boss immigration minister Jason Kenney and that scourge of foreign billionaire socialists, Joe Oliver. And it also points to the key involvement of Go Newclear Productions, a somewhat mysterious “full service digital agency with a focus on public affairs and politics”.

Go Newclear is headed up by none other than political wunderkind Hamish Marshall, already a veteran of both the PMO and  the Conservative federal council – and husband of hapless Ethical Oil spokesperson Kathryn Marshall. The other Go Newclear directors /officers (and presumed principals)  are linked to the Conservative PR machine known as the Conservative Resources Group; radio and TV advertising specialist Brendan Jones left the CRG in 2009, while developer Travis Freeman, astonishingly enough, is still with the group. Not only that, but the Ethical Oil cluster of websites and Joe Oliver.ca form a distinct sub-group within the Go Newclear network, with unmistakeable signs of common development and a deployment seemingly aimed at obfuscating the link to Newclear team. So there is more than just common ideology tying EthicalOil.org to the Conservative PR machine; they also share digital service providers – and a lack of transparency.

Newclear then and now

The roots of Go Newclear Productions go back to early 2009. That’s when Brendan Jones left the Conservative Resource Group, a “research and public relations bureau of the Conservative Party” with about 30 employees. (The CRG is listed in the Canadian government employee directory under the rubric Conservative Research Bureau).  According to his Linkedin profile, Jones held down stints as special assistant and website administrator for Stephen Harper and then was  Television & Radio Specialist at the CRG up until January 2oo9 .

As the startup’s Chief Creative Officer, Jones did not preside over much activity at first from all appearances. As late as July 2010, Newclear did not even have a functioning website. But that all began to change with the arrival of  Hamish Marshall.

Marshall’s LinkedIn resume certainly shows a young ambitious political mover on the rise. As Manager of Strategic Planning in Stephen Harper’s PMO, Marshall was responsible for the Conservative government’s public opinion research. In 2007, Marshall moved back to NaiKun Wind Energy Group in British Columbia and then in 2009 became Research Director for Angus Reid Strategies, managing the public affairs practice in western Canada. During this period, Marshall was also on the Conservative national council, representing B.C. and chairing the National Candidate Selection Committee.

Public Eye Online described Marshall’s next move in June 2010:

Angus Reid Public Opinion research director Hamish Marshall is leaving the polling firm he joined in April 2009. In an email obtained by Public Eye, Mr. Marshall announced “today is my last day at Angus Reid Public Opinion. I am off to pursue some exciting opportunities (more on that later).” Specifically, he’ll be the president and chief executive officer of Go Newclear Productions Inc., a Web development company. Mr. Marshall will also continue to do political research work for a small unnamed company.

The “small unnamed company” turned out to be Abingdon Research, whose founder Jonathan Snoek has since departed for SECOR Consulting, apparently leaving Marshall as sole active principal.

The rest of 2010 saw a fair amount of work for Newclear and Abingdon with Alberta’s right-wing Wildrose Party, including development of the main Wildrose website and a number of individual ones for members and candidates, not to mention a controversial online poll. Marshall also got involved in British Columbia provincial politics, helping John Cummins to the B.C. Conservative leadership and now, as the  party’s campaign manager, overseeing selection of candidates for an election expected within a year or so. Almost all of those websites are hosted on a Newclear controlled server at ThePlanet.com, part of the SoftLayer.com server farm empire based in Dallas, Texas.

“Strategic Imperatives Online” (or what’s in a name server?)

I’ll be taking a more detailed look at those Wildrose and BC Conservative connections in part 2. For now, though, I’ll merely point out that while Newclear hasn’t exactly trumpeted any of this activity, neither have they taken any steps to hide their involvement; the name server for all these websites is found at GoNewclearProductions.com. (A name server is a domain or server designated to resolve browser and other internet requests for “look up” of other domains; each domain name must have an associated name server to provide the translation of a domain name into a numeric IP address. For example, here is the whois information for wildrosecaucus.ca, showing the designated name server as ns1.GoNewclearProductions.com).

2010 also saw the creation of another name server: StrategicImperativesOnline.com.This domain name’s owner is completely hidden,  and the domain has no obvious ties to Newclear, except that the few domains associated with it happen to be hosted on the same server as the other Newclear domains. Even that could be coincidental (although very unlikely in this case); sometimes single websites or small domain groups are ganged on servers (or server clouds) with other unrelated websites. However, the Newclear connection is clinched by noting that just after being registered StrategicImperativesOnline.com had GoNewclearProductions.com as its own name server – for all of one day.

An overlapping chronology

The websites associated with that name server are, well, arguably somewhat sensitive, especially when viewed as a group. The following chronology shows in bold all the “strategically imperative” websites launched since the beginning of 2011, along with other relevant events.

• 2011-01-28: JasonKenney.com redesigned and moved to Newclear.
• 2011-03-09: Ethical Oil Institute is incorporated in Alberta.
• 2011-05-04: Alykhan Velshi leaves Kenney’s office to run EthicalOil.org.
• 2011-06-21: EthicalOil.org is launched as a simple blog (see July 14 version).
• 2011-07-05: Joe Oliver.ca redesigned and moved to Newclear.
• 2011-07-28: Revamped and expanded EthicalOil.org is launched.
• 2011-08-26: First Ethical Oil TV ad runs on Oprah network in Canada.
• 2011-12-15: Ethical Oil launches ChiquitaConflict.com and Alberta radio ad boycott campaign after Chiquita asked transporters to avoid oil sands fuel.
• 2012-01-02: Ethical Oil launches OurDecision.ca in conjunction with radio ads attacking “foreign influence” on B.C. environmental groups just ahead of Northern Gateway pipeline hearings.

One interesting question in light of the above is which members of the Go Newclear team might have actually executed the various projects.

Turning first to the easier question of the TV and radio ads, it’s a reasonable inference that responsibility for these fell to Newclear CCO Brendan Jones, given his background as a radio and TV specialist for the Conservative Resource Group.

But how about the websites? The earliest website listed above, JasonKenney.com, has a lot in common with the rest of the Newclear portfolio, such as WildroseCaucus.ca: A garish design along with a fairly standard WordPress and jQuery implementation, often using a CodaSlider plug-in to provide the ever changing “panels” of featured stories that slide into place one after the other.

The next two websites,  EthicalOil.org and JoeOliver.ca, are clearly much slicker than the other Newclear websites. And although they have quite different looks and functionality (with EthicalOil.org sporting a blog comment system from Disqus.com and various “grass roots campaigns” tools), there is unmistakeable commonality behind the scenes.

Unlike all of the other Newclear websites I have examined (and I’ve looked at the source code for about a dozen now), these two websites use a more recent JavaScript plug-in called  AnythingSlider to present the opening page panels. Not only that, they use exactly the same version of  AnythingSlider, as can be easily seen by comparing the EthicalOil.org version with the one on JoeOliver.ca.

In a similar vein, both websites include the FancyBox plug-in which gives a, well, fancy floating “lightbox” effect to photos or other images (it’s a Mac thing apparently). Here’s a screenshot of FancyBox in action at the JoeOliver.ca photo page.

I haven’t found an instance of FancyBox at EthicalOil.org; perhaps it isn’t even used. But it’s definitely there – and, once again, the JoeOliver.ca and EthicalOil.org versions are identical. (Fittingly, the only other website that has this plugin is OurDecision.ca, although, it too does not appear to use it).

The inescapable inference is that the current versions of these two flagship “strategic imperative” websites were done by the same developer around the same time.

The only known member of the Go Newclear team with apparent web development experience is the mysterious “third man”, Travis Freeman. So perhaps he is the unknown developer or else supervised the effort. But even in the unlikely event that Freeman has had no active role whatsoever in any Newclear projects, his presence on the Go Newclear team, while also holding down a government job as developer at the Conservative Resource Group (a.k.a. Conservative Research Bureau), is highly problematic, to say the least.

So add the names of Hamish Marshall, Brendan Jones and Travis Freeman, alongside Levant and Velshi, to the growing list of Ethical Oil connections to the Conservative Party of Canada.

It’s time to ask some real questions and demand more transparency about what’s really going on here. Such as:

• What communications and transactions have occurred between and among Conservative government ministers or aides, Go Newclear and/or Ethical Oil?
• And how can the presence of a Conservative employee on the board of a supposedly independent digital media firm possibly be explained or justified?

But don’t expect any answers from EthicalOil.org, if this interview of Ethical Oil spokesperson Kathryn Marshall (along with the Sierra Club’s John Bennet) by CBC’s Evan Solomon is anything to go by (the amazing performance starts at around 5 minutes in).

Marshall’s repeated refusal to respond to a  simple yes-or-no question about financial support from Northern Gateway principal backer Enbridge must set some sort of record for evasion (not to mention further damaging the credibility of claims to be a “grassroots” organization). So, just as Marshall has done in that interview and elsewhere, EthicalOil.org will probably try and dismiss these questions, along with the growing evidence suggesting co-ordination with the Conservatives, as “conspiracy theories”.

Here are some parting thoughts from the Newclear strategists, as heard at the end of their annoying, but ultimately revealing video.

So the next time your organization, brand, product, service or candidate needs to consolidate power or ward off potential attack, we suggest that you decide to Go Newclear.

It looks like some folks in Ottawa and Calgary may have taken that advice.

[Update, January 17]

Here’s a fine graphic from a piece by Matt Price of Huffington Post, highlighting the links between the Conservative Party and Ethical Oil.

[Update, January 20]

But I want to turn today to an analysis of the Conservative government’s putative  alternatives to Kyoto, namely the 2009 Copenhagen agreement, as well as the GHG reduction plans put forth in 2008 by Canada and the province Alberta (home to the oil sands and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper).  That analysis confirms the contention of Jeffrey Simpson and others that the government of Canada is “mocking” the 2020 target agreed to only two years ago; the promised 17% reduction in annual GHG emissions (relative to 2005) is already out of reach. A big reason for this is an Alberta target (itself very unlikely to be met) that calls for a rise in GHG emissions until 2020. Not only that, but Alberta’s 2050 target, predicated on massive expansion of oil sands operations, is only 14% below 2005 levels, and sets Canada on a path that can not possibly be reconciled with the Harper government’s own stated long-term target, let alone any reasonable goal compatible with Canada’s responsibilities.

First, I’ll give an overview of the Canadian and Alberta GHG reduction plans, including corrections necessary to perform an integrated analysis of the two jurisdictions’ targets, baselined to current emissions. Then I’ll show how the (corrected) emission scenarios play out until 2020 and 2050.

Canada: The 2009 Copenhagen Agreement and the 2008 “Turning the Corner” plan

Two years ago Canada signed on to the non-binding Copenhagen accord, touting this as a “replacement” for the Kyoto protocol (which the Harper government had always opposed).  Canada agreed to match U.S. 2020 targets; both were set at 17% below 2005 emission levels in the ensuing list of quantified targets. This was a slight adjustment from the previous Conservative target of 20% below 2006 emission levels, which was set in the 2008 “made in Canada” plan entitled Turning the Corner.

Conspicuously absent from Canada’s Copenhagen commitment, however, was any mention of long-term targets. For its part, the U.S. did put forth aggressive, albeit aspirational, longer term targets,  including a cut of 83% below 2005 levels by 2050. Despite Canada’s stated position of matching U.S. emissions targets, Canada did not sign on to any such long term targets. The earlier 2008 Corner plan, however, did propose a milder 60-70% reduction by 2050, again relative to 2006; subsequent NRTEE reports (e.g. Getting to 2050) have assumed a target in the middle of that range, that is 65% below 2006 by 2050.

While the commitment to that long term target remains vague and is no longer mentioned by government spokespersons, there is a fair amount of detail available on Canada’s short term plan to 2020. Readers might recall environment minister Peter Kent’s fatuous claim that Canada had “already achieved almost a quarter of that 17 per cent reduction”, made when “ethical oil” first surfaced as the government’s communication strategy (it would be a stretch to call it a policy). It turns out that the ever-befuddled Kent actually meant that projected emissions  in 2020 are a quarter of the way between “business as usual” (BAU) and the Copenhagen target, but are still expected to rise under currently enacted policies (the details of which are still being rolled out, with much of the effect after 2015). The rest of the reduction will have to come from policies not yet enacted or even proposed.

An Environment Canada briefing note shows Canada’s current emissions path, compared to BAU (i.e. without provincial and federal government actions) and the 2020 Copenhagen target.

However, this chart does not appear to reflect current estimates for GHG emissions from 2009 through 2012. 2009, the latest year for which official data is available, was pegged somewhat lower than shown at 690 MT.  But current estimates from Environment Canada call for emissions to rise to 731 MT in 2012, somewhat higher than the 715 MT shown and exactly the same as the 2005 baseline reference. The “no action” BAU figures for 2010-2012 are also higher, as they are based on adding back the very low estimated difference that policies have made so far. The discrepancies probably arise from a failure to update the chart since late 2010, as 2008 was the latest “actual” available at that time.

Correcting the BAU and current figures, and straightlining all scenarios from 2012 on, yields the following for 2005-2020:

Regulations applying to the coal-fired electricity and transportation sectors, comprising 39% of GHG emissions in 2005, have already been announced and are reflected in the above scenarios [as noted on p. 3-4 of Canada's latest Kyoto report, published in May 2011]. So it is not clear how the government intends to make up the yawning 178 MT gap between projected emissions and the 2020 target. Complicating the picture is that most emission sources are subject to overlapping federal and provincial jurisdiction (such as electrical generation, where policies in the three largest provinces are more restrictive than the new federal regulations). Other levers, such as tighter building codes, are exclusively in the provincial bailiwick.

The Harper government has long opposed a carbon tax that would be the most efficient way of engendering lower emissions. But they have also ruled out a cap-and-trade system, after promising such a “made-in-Canada” scheme in 2008.  And regulations of the oil and gas sector are still in the “pipeline” and are not expected to have much impact until after 2020.

So there appears to be little chance that the 2020 interim target will be achieved. Nevertheless, here is a schematic of the follow-on 2050 targets mentioned above. Both assume the 2020 Copenhagen target, with the Turning the Corner target (dotted line) and the more aggressive U.S. Copenhagen 83% reduction target (dashed line), diverging thereafter.

The “Corner” target (250 MT) is presumably still government policy, but the more ambitious Copenhagen based target (125 MT) is arguably the minimum that would be acceptable to many of Canada’s UNFCCC partners, especially Europe and major developing countries.

Alberta: 2008 climate change plan

Alberta’s climate change plan is summarized in the following chart from the official Alberta climate change strategy [PDF].

Although Alberta is home to only 11% of Canada’s population, the province is responsible for roughly a third of national GHG emissions. The oil and gas sector accounts for a large portion of that, with fast rising oil sands production driving the current climb in emissions. But Alberta is also the province most heavily dependent on coal-fired electricity. New coal-fired power plants were commissioned in 2005 and last year, with another already granted interim approval at Grande  Cache, (thus escaping the new federal regulatory restrictions).

There is a discrepancy between the Alberta 2005 baseline of 205 MT, and the value of 232 MT given in the official Environment Canada National Inventory Report for 2005. In general, Alberta appears to underreport by about 25 MT per year, compared to the federal figures. I have adjusted the scenarios upward to account for this discrepancy, resulting in a BAU scenario of 400 MT in 2050, and a corresponding target of 200 MT (still 50% below BAU and 14% below the 2005 baseline). The “current path” reflects NIR figures where available.

Unlike Environment Canada, Alberta has produced no detailed evaluation of plan performance. However, a recent analysis by the Pembina Institute indicates that current policies will achieve no more than 14 MT of mitigation by 2020, and quite possibly well under 10 MT. (The report, entitled Responsible Action? An assessment of Alberta’s greenhouse gas policies, is a detailed and cogent critique of Alberta’s current GHG reduction effort). So, as in the overall Canadian case, the current emission path hews much more closely to the BAU scenario than the target (I have optimistically assumed that 15 MT of 50 MT of planned reductions for 2020 would be achieved under current policies).

I have also added BAU and target scenarios for the oil sands, which accounts for an increasing portion of Alberta’s emissions. Current emissions are at about 50 MT (2010 estimate) [See table 5 at p. 25 of Canada's July 2010 emissions trend report]. With daily production expected to triple to 5 million barrels per day by 2035, the BAU scenario shows a corresponding tripling of emissions to 150 MT. However, production increases are expected to flatten out after 2030, so BAU oil sands emissions rise more slowly after then, reaching 180 MT in 2050. I have also assumed lower mitigation of GHGs from the oil sands, but still a substantial (and probably overly optimistic) reduction of 80 MT from BAU, with 5 MT of that coming by 2020.

Putting this all together results in the following chart.

Currently, the oil sands account for about 20% of Alberta’s emissions (and 7% for Canada overall). The oil sands scenario above shows that share rising to roughly 33% in 2020 and about 50% in 2030 and beyond, underscoring the increasing role of the oil sands in overall emissions.

It should also be noted that Alberta’s plan relies very heavily on CCS (carbon capture and sequestration).  Given likely costs of up to $200-$250 per tonne of CO2, depending on the application, it is highly uncertain that this will prove cost effective. In the short term, four heavily subsidized projects are planned; it is not clear which of these will be delivering reductions by 2020.

Canada and Alberta: The combined view

Now we are in a position to compare scenarios. First, let’s look at the picture to 2020. I’ve added one more set of scenarios: Canada without Alberta (in green), which is simply obtained by subtracting the Alberta scenario paths from the Canadian ones.

As noted previously, it is highly unlikely that the 2020 targets will be met, either in Canada or in Alberta. But a look at the target scenarios shows another problem. The Alberta 2020 target is 280 MT, about 45% of the overall Canadian target of 609 MT. Even if the Alberta target could be met, the rest of the country would have to reduce current emissions by about 150 MT, or a whopping 30%, to match the Copenhagen target. And this would have to happen in eight short years!

But the situation is even worse when we turn to a comparison of the Alberta plan to 2050 with the two long-term scenarios for Canada. Matching the 2050 U.S. Copenhagen target is clearly an impossibility given Alberta’s current plan, as the Alberta target is a full 75MT above the overall 83% reduction target.

Even if one accepts the Canadian exceptionalism implicit in the Corner target, the numbers still don’t add up.

Assuming smooth reduction path from 2020 on, these scenarios show Alberta’s emissions at 50% of Canada’s about 2025, matching the rest of the country (represented by the crossing over of the green and blue lines). In 2050, Alberta takes a full 80% of Canada’s emission targets, leaving only 20% (or a meagre 50MT) for the rest of the country.

Finally, here is a chart combining the two 2050 scenarios, showing the Alberta target, with its heavy oil sands component, in between the two overall targets.

Yet proponents of massive oil sands expansion refuse to admit the obvious: current plans for the oil sands are simply incompatible with any reasonable long-term target for emissions reduction, not even the government’s own.

But don’t just take my word for it. Have a listen to economist Mark Jaccard on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks; Jaccard categorically states that the Harper government’s 2050 target is simply unachievable given massive expansion of the oil sands and associated infrastucture, such as new high-capacity pipelines. (Jaccard’s segment on energy starts at 3:20, and his discussion of the path away from fossil fuels begins at 9:00; I’ll be returning to a more detailed discussion of his work at some point).

It is also clear that continued oil sands expansion is incompatible with any reasonable scenario for achieving a global target of 450 ppm CO2 by 2050. For example, even the relatively oil friendly International Energy Agency (IEA) 450 Scenario assumes  very low growth in the oil sands, as the world moves away from predominance of fossil fuels, especially in industrialized North America and Europe.

Those IEA scenarios are also a topic worth exploring another time. But for now, I’ll leave the last word to Jeffrey Simpson, who summed up the situation accurately, if a little graphically.

Canada struts on the world stage, naked as a newt, and can’t fool those who know what’s really going on.

I wish you all a happy and peaceful holiday and all the best in the coming year.

Son of climategate? SwiftHack 2.0? Dejavugate (as in “deja vu all over again”)? Whichever moniker one prefers for the latest release of stolen CRU emails, it is  very clear that a new round of out-of-context quote mining and error-filled “analysis” is already unfolding. And the leader out of the gate, so to speak, appears to be Ross McKitrick, whose recent National Post piece on the IPCC and the latest batch of stolen emails is now being spread far and wide.

In one particularly outrageous and error-filled passage, McKitrick accuses IPCC  AR4 co-ordinating lead authors Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth of selecting their team of contributing authors solely on the basis of whether they agree with the pair’s scientific views. He even goes so far as to accuse Jones of “dismissing” (i.e. rejecting as a contributing author) one qualified expert who, supposedly in Jones’s own words, “has done a lot, but I don’t trust him.”

But the record clearly shows that it was Trenberth who made that last comment, and that he was expressing misgivings about the quality of the researcher’s work, not whether he was on the “right side” of scientific issues.  And the expert in question, climatologist Joel Norris, was in fact selected by Trenberth as a contributing author. Even worse, McKitrick has reversed the order of  the  Jones quotes (originally three months apart) , taken them out of context, and then juxtaposed them to make it appear as if they were part of the same exchange. Meanwhile, an examination of the two separate email discussions show chapter co-ordinators trying to fill out their team with authors who will be able to contribute effectively, in complete contradiction to McKitrick’s central thesis.

Complaisant National Post editors have a long history of handing economist and climate science gadfly Ross McKitrick a platform for his nonsense, especially whenever he has a new think tank report to peddle. This time around, the occasion for the piece Fix it or Fold It was the latest screed from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a McKitrick “report” entitled What Is Wrong with the IPCC? Certainly there is much to criticize here, starting with the supreme irony of the GWPF attacking the IPCC for supposed bias and lack of transparency. After all, the GWPF has been caught “hiding the incline” in their misbegotten “analysis” of the Berleley Earth global land-surface temperature series, and it’s hard to imagine a less transparent organization, judging by the official report of their first few months of operation.

But for today, we’ll leave all that aside and take a look at McKitrick’s  hasty attempt to buttress his weak case against IPCC scientists by quoting from the latest dump of stolen emails. In this excerpt he rails against the criteria supposedly used by Phil Jones for choosing contributing authors (CAs) for the AR4 WG1 chapter 3, Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change.

In a surprise, and fast-breaking development, Monday morning saw the release of more than 5,000 fresh emails of climate scientists connected with the U.K. Climate Research Unit. … But the ones that pertain to the IPCC process fully support the contentions in my report.

For instance, I discuss the problem that IPCC chapter authors are able to recruit contributing authors (CAs) in an opaque process that does not ensure a diversity of views. The resulting uniformity is obvious simply from looking at the list of authors, but we can now see the confirmatory evidence in the email traffic. In a pair of emails (nos. 0714 and 3205), ­IPCC lead author Phil Jones goes through lists of possible CAs with his IPCC coauthor Kevin Trenberth, declaring “Getting people we know and trust is vital.” He then categorizes his recommendations based, not on whether the person is the most qualified but on whether the person is “on the right side” (namely agrees with him), or whether he “trusts” him or not. At one point he dismisses a particular expert who “has done a lot but I don’t trust him.” This kind of cronyism is shown by the emails to be rampant in the IPCC.

This exposition is highly problematic. For starters, only the first two quotes are from Jones. And, unlike the impression given by McKitrick they are separated by more than three months, with the “right side” quote actually preceding the “know and trust” quote! McKitrick has reversed the order of the quotes and juxtaposed them as if they were part of the same exchange.

So let’s take a look at key excerpts from the emails and place these quotes a little more in context, and just as importantly, in proper sequence.

At the time of the first email exchange (no. 3205, dated June 9-10, 2004), the main focus had been on preparing for the first writing team meeting that fall and contacting the lead authors, three of whom neither Jones nor Trenberth had been able to reach.

But Jones also ran through the list of CAs prepared by the IPCC.

The additional list sent from WG1 contains a FEW useful names.  There are some who  are CLAs/LAs on other chapters (Forster, Hegerl, Hewitson, Karoly, Lean, Nicholls,  Peterson  and Villalba). Of those only Neville Nicholls, Bruce Hewitson and Tom Peterson would  likely   have been useful.

So what did Jones mean by “useful”? Here are his comments, running through the a list of IPCC suggestions alphabetically:

Useful ones might be Baldwin,  Benestad (written on the solar/cloud issue – on the right side, i.e anti-Svensmark),  Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be have to involve him ?), Dai (good), Fraedrich (circulation),  Frei (good, for extremes), Fyfe (circulation), Gallo, Groisman, Hanssen-Bauer (OK),  Hurrell (good), King (good for Antarctic), Kodera, Kunkel (has written stuff, but never  met him), McBride (OK, but will he do anything in our timeframe), Nobre (simialr to McBride),  Power (good), Rayner (good but will mostly be in the oceans chapter), Salinger (knows the  ropes), Seidel (good), Stephenson (just about OK), Vose (probably) and Zhang. There are a few others (e.g. Ramaswamy, but they seem more appropriate elsewhere in AR4).

So in only one case (Benestad) is  being “on the right side” of a scientific issue even mentioned. And there can be no doubt about Benestad’s expertise in this area. Overall, the clear criterion involves matching CAs with a particular area needed according to the chapter 3 outline (“good, for extremes” or “good for Antarctic”). Concerns include problems with availability (such as conflicts with other chapters),  regional representation, or ability to deliver within the prescribed time frame.

The only two “skeptics” mentioned in the email are John Christy and Patrick Michaels. Christy was in fact included; the ensuing period must have been uncomfortable for him, as it included a major correction to his UAH troposhere temperature record, and the ascendant credibility of the competing tropospheric analysis from RSS.

In any event, McKitrick’s assertion that agreement with Jones on scientific issues was the main criterion for his CA recommendations is completely unsupported by the actual record.  And the real reason there are few “skeptics” in the WG1 is simply that their contributions to climate science have been few and uncompelling. They represent a very small part of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, despite their promotion by fossil-fuel funded think tanks and PR firms, aided by complaisant right wing press outlets.

The second email exchange (no. 0714) features a longish email from Trenberth, where he embedded reply comments in an earlier email from Jones. These are from September 15, 2004, at the beginning of the chapter 3 planning process and a full three months after the first exchange.

The whole sequence is kicked off by Trenberth’s email the previous day, where he sent Jones an annotated version of the chapter 3 outline, and asked Jones for additional suggestions. (I’ve formatted and ordered the emails in a more readable PDF to make the back and forth easier to follow).

In reply, Jones ran through various sections in the chapter outline with additional suggestions on who might be able to help out with each. Here he discussed section 3.4 and  raised clouds observations as an area still needing attention.

I’ve emailed Adrian Simmons on another issue and asked him how much he would like to get involved. Need to add Peter Thorne to 3.4.1.6 [troposperic temperatures] . Co-ordination with the various US efforts essential. Tom Wigley tells me he’s heavily involved in one of these.

Clouds in 3.4.3 are a problem.

Trenberth replied:

I have done a very preliminary review of literature on clouds.  I can send to you if you like? Liepert might be better there.  Rossow also?  But I don’t trust him.  Norris has done a lot but I don’t trust him either.

So it is Trenberth, not Jones, who initially discussed “trust”, but as we’ll see in a moment, he meant something very different from the meaning implied by McKitrick.

Jones also mentioned some possibilities for section 3.9, which are crucial to interpreting his later comments.

For 3.9.3.4 there is Nikolai Dotzek who said he could do something on tornadoes and severe local weather events. No idea how good he is. Their web site ([1]http://www.tordach.org)has some links to work in Germanic countries. Tordach has a US page as well. Ever heard of this?  Another person here is Rudolf Brazdil (Czech Rep.)

I’ll add them for discussion.

Later the same day, Jones replied to Trenberth:

Getting people we know and trust is vital – hence my comment about the tornadoes group.

I still favour Steve Warren on clouds, but there are a whole range of aspects to consider there.

So now at least we have, if not the complete context (impossible from a single email exchange), a much clearer  indication of what Jones meant. He did not “know” how “good” the tornado work of Dotzek and the Tordach group is, or whether they can be counted on to produce effectively.

As for Trenberth’s comment about Norris, in context the concern seems to be his worth to the team as scientists and writers in their area, rather than “skeptic” or conflicting views. But I decided to look into this further, starting with McKitrick’s suggestion to check the list of authors.

Lo and behold, there is the supposedly “dismissed” J. Norris, alongside the other suggested names of Liepert and Warren. And an email exchange from November 2004 (no. 2362), another two and a half months later, sheds further light on Trenberth’s attitude and intended meaning.

At this point, the writing team was well into the First Order Draft, and Trenberth and Lead Author Brian Soden had a detailed email exchange concerning the section on clouds. Soden had referred to the importance of Norris’s work “showing agreement between ISCCP  and surface high clouds cover trends”, that is between satellite and surface observations. Trenberth urged Soden not to gloss over discrepancies, and to deal with discontinuities and other uncertainties. Among the detailed discussion of data sets and analyses, Trenberth also let it be known that he was “uncomfortable” that two of Norris’s papers relied upon had yet to be submitted. And then he elaborated on his previous comment on Norris, saying that he “thought we should have him as a CA as he has done a lot of work in this area”.  At the same time, though, Trenberth did not “fully trust his results or analysis” (not to mention that he did not even have copies of the latest papers).

But Soden assured him that the papers would be submitted in time for the FOD deadline, and reiterated the importance of Norris’s work comparing ISCCP and surface observations. And he pointed out that Norris had previously identified problems in ISCCP and that “Joel is naturally skeptical of observational data sets in general and analyzes them carefully.”

This exchange shows two authors trying to get the science right and resolve disagreements, and stands in sharp contrast to McKitrick’s accusations of “cronyism” and  evaluation of CAs based on “trust” to achieve a predetermined agenda.

I must admit to some misgivings about rehashing these emails in such depth, as some of the details may be hurtful to the individual scientists discussed. There are good reasons why the private deliberations of authors working through the construction of a major scientific assessment should remain so, and such concerns are reflected in the safeguards of most FOI protocols.

But in a toxic environment where selective quoting and fanciful interpretation of fragments from stolen emails are considered proof of malfeasance, the record should be set straight to the extent possible.

The more we know about the work of Ross McKitrick and his ilk, the less we trust it.

[UPDATE, Nov 30, 2011]

McKitrick has responded at Judith Curry’s website:

So far, however, controversy has centred overwhelmingly on the distracting “ethical vs conflict oil” arguments and less on the equally misleading statements on the real environmental issues in the oil sands from EthicalOil.org (a.k.a. the Ethical Oil Institute). So today I’ll take a detailed look at the Ethical Oil position on the oil sands carbon footprint, as seen in former spokesperson Alykhan Velshi’s error-filled and confused post entitled Mythbusting: Are the Oilsands Major greenhouse Gas Emitters?, part of his “Myths and Lies” series.

I’ll focus on the two most significant problems in Velshi’s piece:

• Velshi’s original premise was that not only are oil sands greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relatively insignificant, but that they are actually declining. This has been partially corrected, presumably in response to my initial commentary on this issue, but in such a way as to render his argument completely illogical. And Velshi’s conclusion still repeats the utterly mistaken assertion that oil emissions “are falling”, whereas in fact they are rising at a rapid rate.
• Ethical Oil’s credibility is further damaged by misleading statements concerning the supposedly tiny contribution of oil sands emissions when compared to total global human and natural emissions. This echoes barely veiled climate “skeptic” arguments in Ezra Levant’s 2009 book that started the whole “ethical oil” rebranding effort. And an examination of Levant’s previous statements on climate science would appear to confirm that a strong anti-science stance is not far from the surface, despite the efforts of Ethical Oil spokespersons to hide it.

Oil sands emissions: up, down and sideways

I first noted problems with Velshi’s oil sands GHG post in my original expose of the hitherto mysterious Alberta-based Ethical Oil Institute, pointing to the following passage.

So, if we want to ensure that we minimize the impact our industries have on the atmosphere, then paying close attention to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the oilsands has to be a priority. And it is: According to Environment Canada’s measurements, the oilsands has reduced its GHG output by 29% since 1990. Despite massive expansion of oilsands production in the last two decades, Canada’s oil companies have managed to cut their carbon output by nearly a third.

I pointed out the obvious error: that the Environment Canada figure referred to GHG intensity, that is emissions per barrel, not overall emissions. Some time after that, a surreptitious correction made its appearance. But the corrected version makes even less sense.

According to Environment Canada’s measurements, the oilsands has reduced its per barrel GHG output by 29% since 1990. Despite massive expansion of oilsands production in the last two decades, Canada’s oil companies have managed to cut their per barrel carbon output by nearly a third. [Bold emphasis added].

Falling overall emissions accompanying “massive expansion of oilsands production” would have been most impressive, had that fairy tale been true. But one would expect at least some “per barrel carbon output” reduction with such expansion, simply from economies of scale and normal early improvements, if nothing else. To laud this per barrel reduction “despite” massive expansion renders the last sentence nonsensical (not to mention utterly hilarious).

Now I can’t be sure that the half-hearted correction was inspired by my critique. On the other hand, only the specific instance I pointed out was changed, while the misbegotten premise of falling (or else constant) greenhouse gas emissions remained woven throughout the rest of the piece. That includes Velshi’s rousing conclusion, based on that same original erroneous assertion.

Canada’s oilsands are responsible for a fraction of the country’s GHG emissions; the entire Canadian economy is responsible for a fraction of the world’s GHG emissions; and while emissions from the oilsands fall, there are many energy sources presenting far more serious climate challenges than the oilsands do, and those other challenges, unfortunately, are only getting worse. [Emphasis added]

And it gets better. After the mangled passage now describing falling per barrel GHG emissions, Velshi claimed:

As impressive as that is, Canadians want oilsands producers to do even better, and at this rate, there’s no reason to expect that they can’t.

Remember that the original context of this statement was a supposed (but non-existent) decline in total GHG emissions from the oil sands. However, even if we interpret this statement in the context of per barrel emissions, any improvements will be modest at best for the foreseeable future. In fact, average per barrel emissions have stalled and even climbed a little over the last five years, according to Government of Canada figures (as noted in the recent must-read Pembina Institute briefing note Oil Sands and Climate Change in Figure 3  on p.6). [Update: See chart below]

Moreover, more GHG-intensive “in situ” projects will continue to have a rising share of production, so there is little reason to expect any overall reductions in GHG intensity over the next several years. (The one innovation would be slight reductions from massively subsidized upgrader carbon capture and storage projects, which may or may not come online before 2020).

So GHGs will continue to rise more or less in lockstep with production. That’s why Environment Canada projects oil sands emissions to double from now to 2020 and reach about 90 Mt, a fact nowhere discussed in Velshi’s confused exposition. That’s hardly surprising: oil sands apologists, whether from government, industry or allied PR groups, generally avoid discussion of rising GHGs. Of course, that usually means not referring to the massive increase in production either, but the ever-confused Velshi appears not to have gotten that particular memo.

Velshi’s  failure to acknowledge the inexorable steady rise in oil sands emissions can also be seen in these statements, which imply more or less constant emissions (which is at least a slight improvement to the supposedly falling emissions he alluded to elsewhere).

The entire oilsands industry emits, every year, 45 MT. …

[Oilsands] … are responsible for roughly 5% of all of Canada’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Similar, although not quite identical, statements can be found in Levant’s 2009 Ethical Oil (p. 113).

… [The oil sands]  account for approximately 5 per cent of Canada’s total human emissions – which works out to 0.1 per cent of the world’s human-caused emissions. Not bad for the world’s biggest source of oil. …

In absolute terms, the oil sands release about 29.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

Aside from Levant’s curious reference to “human” emissions (more on that in a moment) it’s interesting to note that somehow oil sands GHGs have risen from 29.5 MT to 45 MT, yet remain at 5% of Canadian emissions. Once again, the facts are rather inconvenient to Levant’s and Velshi’s case, as can be seen in the actual numbers for the last four years (including 2010 estimates from Environment Canada’s July 2010 report, Canada’s Emissions Trends).

It turns out Levant’s 29.5 MT figure is actually from 2005, four years before he wrote the book. But even the widely cited 5 percent figure has been superceded in two short years by the inexorable rise in oil sands GHGs. As can be seen above, last year’s oil sands emissions are estimated at 49 MT, about 7 percent of the total Canadian economy.  And they are set to rise to at least 12 percent of the Canadian total by 2020, jeopardizing the Canadian Conservative government’s 17% overall reduction target relative to 2005.

Also notice Levant’s deceptive assertion that this record is “not bad for the world’s biggest source of oil”. Oil sands reserves may be very large, but at about 1.6 million barrels per day, current production is still under 2 percent of global production of about 87 million barrels per day. However, as production ramps up to access proven reserves and capture a larger share of world production, so too will the oil sands carbon footprint. And that leads directly to the essential debate that Levant and company want to avoid.

However, Ethical Oil is far from the only oil sands booster to present outdated information and gloss over the ever rising carbon footprint of the oil sands. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers’ page on oil sands impact on “air” still proclaims:

37.2 megatonnes of greenhouse gases are emitted from the oil sands each year.

This represents

• 15 per cent of Alberta’s total greenhouse emissions
• five percent of Canada’s emissions

37.2 MT is the old 2008 figure, which was recently revised up to 40 MT and is a full 12 MT short of  estimated 2010 emissions. And at the very top, you can find this guiding principle, even though per barrel emissions reductions have stalled over the last few years, as I mentioned above.

We will continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of production by improving our energy efficiency and by developing new technologies.

Perhaps CAPP iswaiting for a final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline before getting around to updating and correcting their oil sands web page.

Closet climate science “skeptics”?

Previously, I noted Levant’s passing reference to “human” emissions. Velshi also makes a distinction between “natural” and “manmade” emissions, and then lumps them together in an attempt to downplay oil sands emissions by an order of magnitude.

Since the entire Canadian economy is responsible for just 0.3% of the whole world’s natural  and manmade carbon emissions, GHGs from the oilsands total just over one-hundredth of one percent of all the greenhouse gases going up into the atmosphere, or 0.015%.

Now here is Levant (again from p. 112-113 of Ethical Oil) elaborating on natural and human emissions, with a few well worn contrarian talking points along the way. I’ll quote a full two paragraphs, but that’s necessary to understand Levant’s essentially anti-science contrarian stance.

While carbon dioxide may get all the attention, it isn’t really the biggest source of greenhouse gases on the planet: water vapour is. According to reporting by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, water vapour is responsible for between 60 per cent and 80 per cent of the greenhouse effect. And both gases are a natural part of our ecosystem. The planet can’t survive without a great deal of carbon dioxide, and a massive amount of it is naturally occurring: more than 95 per cent of all the CO2 in the  atmosphere comes from nature, including the world’s oceans, decaying plants, and the exhalation of all of the earth’s tens of billions of creatures.  Then there are all the forest fires and volcanoes. Every single year, 210 billion tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere – and CO2 is just a small fraction compared to water vapour, which accounts for the majority of the greenhouse effect.

So, according to Levant, more than 95% of CO2 is natural, implying that human CO2 emissions are thus a small part of any CO2 effect. This tired contrarian meme flies in the face of established science demonstrating that pretty much all the rise in atmospheric CO2 since the dawn of the industrial age has been due to human activity. After all, annual global emissions from human activities are roughly double the observed annual rise in atmospheric CO2; it’s utterly illogical to ascribe any of this rise to natural causes.

Similarly, references to the need for carbon dioxide to sustain life and water vapour as the “most important GHG” invoke two more well-worn “skeptic” talking points.

Levant goes on, just in case there was any doubt about the intended meaning of his contrast between “natural” and “human” emissions:

Humans – who take all the blame for carbon emissions, with our cars, factories, power plants, oil sands operations, and everything else – emit a minuscule amount of that total.

And to erase any doubt about where Levant stands on anthropogenic global warming and the current consensus among climate scientists, consider this excerpt from an interview Levant gave on the Agritalk radio show in 2002. Here he repeats some of the above inanities, and adds a few more in his eagerness to promote a previous book, Fight Kyoto.

Well, the earth naturally oscillates in temperature. I mean, a thousand years ago there was period of global warming, Greenland was actually green; that was when the Vikings made their settlements there. There were vineyards in southern England. Then 600 years ago, there was the period called the “Little Ice Age” that we’re still actually emerging from. So it’s natural for the temperature of the earth to fluctuate. It’s actually not the fault of human activity because it’s happened many times in the past. You know, in my book I quote from a 1975 Newsweek article about the perils of global cooling, so I think if we were to jump every time some scientist said it was time to jump over climate change, we would be jumping quite a lot. And I think the smart thing to do is to focus on cleaning up real pollution in the world instead of running around trying to reduce our emission of harmless gasses like carbon dioxide and methane that are mostly released by natural sources. And to all of a sudden try to criminalize naturally emitted gasses like carbon dioxide is folly in the highest degree.

I’ll leave it as an exercise for readers to enumerate all the additional (and repeatedly debunked) climate “skeptic” memes invoked by Levant here. Perhaps I’ll update this piece with a complete list, with links to the appropriate SkepticalScience.com pages.

Meanwhile, Ethical Oil spokespersons should at least acknowledge that denial of the scientific link between human fossil fuel use and global warming is part and parcel of the ideas presented in Ethical Oil, the promulgation of which is  the stated mission of the Ethical Oil Institute and its blog.

But instead Velshi gave this bit of insincere fluff.

So, if we want to ensure that we minimize the impact our industries have on the atmosphere, then paying close attention to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the oilsands has to be a priority.

On the available evidence, “paying close attention” to  oil sands GHG  emissions is very far from Levant and Velshi’s true priorities – unless it’s to downplay them through misleading arguments and out-of-date information. New spokesperson Kathryn Marshall happens to be a strong supporter of Alberta’s right-wing Wildrose Party, led by former Fraser Institute researcher and declared climate “skeptic” Danielle Smith. Perhaps, then, Marshall will finally express Ethical Oil’s anti-AGW position in a forthright manner.

For all the ink spilt, both pro and con, about EthicalOil.org and its aggressive defence of the oil sands, it’s surprising that no one seems to have noticed the  numerous fallacies in their position on the key debate concerning rapidly climbing GHG emissions in oil sands development. And, to my knowledge, no one has called them on their anti-science stance.

Levant, Velshi and Marshall are quick to denounce opponents of rampant oil sands developments for supposedly spreading “myths and lies”. But judging from their treatment of the key issue of the oil sands’ rising GHG footprint,  it is Ethical Oil’s own credibility that should be questioned.

As the title implies, the article was meant to provide a broad overview of  mathematical optimization and set the stage for subsequent articles detailing various optimization techniques. However my analysis, entitled Suboptimal Scholarship: Antecedents of Said and Wegman 2009, demonstrates the highly problematic scholarship of the “Roadmap” article.

• No fewer than 15 likely online antecedent sources, all unattributed, have been identified, including 13 articles from Wikipedia and two others from Prof. Tom Ferguson and Wolfram MathWorld.
• Numerous errors have been identified, apparently arising from mistranscription, faulty rewording, or omission of key information.
• The scanty list of references appears to have been “carried along” from the unattributed antecedents; thus, these references may well constitute false citations.

First, I’ll present an abridged version of Suboptimal Scholarship summary as an overview of the analysis. Then I’ll take a look at a few examples showing the derivation of “Roadmap” from its antecedents, including some remarkable errors introduced in the process.  And finally I’ll place this latest embarrassment in the context of the pattern of dubious scholarship evidenced by Wegman and Said over the last several years.

Overview of Suboptimal Scholarship: Antecedents of Said and Wegman 2009

Here is the full citation for “Roadmap for Optimization”

Yasmin H. Said and Edward J. Wegman, “Roadmap for Optimization‖”, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: ComputationalStatistics[WIREs Comp Stat], Volume 1, Issue 1, pages 3-11, July/August 2009. Online July 13, 2009.

The abstract reads:

This article focuses broadly on the area known as optimization. The intent is to provide in broad brush strokes a perspective on the area in order to orient the reader to more detailed treatments of specific subdisciplines of optimization throughout WIREs: Computational Statistics. In this article we provide background on mathematical programming, Lagrange multipliers, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker Conditions, numerical optimization methods, linear programming, dynamic programming, the calculus of variations, and metaheuristic algorithms.

Thus, this article was conceived as a key element in realizing the “serial encyclopedia” vision of WIREs Comp Stat.

As can be seen in the following table, apparent unattributed antecedents
have been identified in each of the sections corresponding to the aforementioned subjects. For the most part, the antecedents’ use appears
sequential, and shows little of the interspersing of sources found in the pair’s other WIREs overview article, Wegman and Said 2011 “Color Theory and Design” (previously analyzed).

Section 2 (p. 3-5) of Suboptimal Scholarship  breaks down Said and Wegman 2009 page by page and gives identified antecedents, if any, for each sub-section, paragraph by paragraph. This section also contains a brief selection of identified errors, most of which have been introduced through various changes to the antecedents, reflecting apparent mistranscriptions or misunderstandings of subject area details. Some key omissions are also identified.

Section 3 (p. 6-30)  begins with a detailed breakdown of the antecedents paragraph by paragraph. That is followed by a complete textual side-by-side comparison of Said and Wegman and its identified antecedents, with identical and trivially similar text highlighted, in the now familiar cyan (identical) and yellow (trivially different)  highlighting scheme.

Finally, section 4 (p. 31-33) has a brief analysis of Said and Wegman’s references and suggested reading list. The seven references, including two for different editions of Bellman’s Dynamic Programing, can all be found in the corresponding Wikipedia antecedents. Similarly, the extensive “Further Reading” list also appears to be derived from the various antecedents.

Example 1: “Mathematical programming is the simplest case of optimization” [SoS p. 4, p. 10]

Note: in this and following examples, I’ve given the relevant page numbers from  Suboptimal Scholarship (SoS), in case you want to follow along. The first page number is the page analyzing the error(s) and the second is the location of the detailed side-by-side comparison.

Almost a year ago, reader “Amoeba” tried to point out that parts of “Roadmap” had “striking similarities” to the Wikipedia article on Mathematical Optimization. I didn’t get it at the time, but in my defence the correspondence is quite a bit clearer if you go back to the version from early 2009.

In mathematics, the simplest case of optimization, or  mathematical programming, refers to the study of problems in which one seeks to minimize or maximize a real function by systematically choosing the values of real or integer variables from within an allowed set. This (a scalar real valued objective function) …

Now let’s omit certain parts:

… the simplest case of optimization, or  mathematical programming, … real … variables … a scalar real valued objective function

And rearrange to get the second paragraph of Said and Wegman:

The simplest case of mathematical optimization is mathematical programming. Mathematical programming considers as its objective function a scalar real-valued function of real variables.

The rest of the section features a similar rearrangement of the Wikipedia antecedent, but with so much common material as to make the source unmistakeable.

However, the real howler is that Said and Wegman have failed to understand that “mathematical programming” is used here as a synonym for mathematical optimization (or just plain optimization); it is patent nonsense to claim that mathematical programming is the “simplest case” of mathematical optimization.

If  only they had waited a year, they could have avoided this particular fiasco. The Wikipedia opening now reads:

In mathematics and computational science, mathematical optimization (alternatively, optimization or mathematical programming) refers to the selection of a best element from some set of available alternatives.

In the simplest case, this means solving problems in which one seeks to maximize (or to minimize) a real function by systematically choosing the values of real or integer variables from within an allowed set.

Enough said.

Example 2: 2d (or, not 2^d)       [SoS, p. 4, p. 22-24]

The long section on linear programming contains some of the most egregious lifting of material; check out the “sea of cyan” in the side-by-side comparison.

Here is a short excerpt from a longer passage that is strikingly similar to Tom Ferguson’s handy Linear Programming: A Concise Introduction. The highlighted portions are identical, with the slight changes shown with strikeout.

A vector, x for in the standard maximum problem or y for in the standard minimum problem, is said to be feasible if it satisfies the corresponding constraints. The set of feasible vectors is called the constraint set. A linear programming problem is said to be feasible if the constraint set is not empty; otherwise it is said to be infeasible. A feasible maximum (resp. minimum) problem is said to be unbounded if the objective function can assume arbitrarily large positive (resp. negative) values at feasible vectors. ;otherwise, If a problem is not unbounded,it is said to be bounded

And so it goes, for several more sentences. But even these minimal changes have introduced confusion; the original commas (and the word “for”) are there for a reason, to emphasize that x and y are used for the standard maximum or standard  minimum problem respectively, and that the rest of the statement applies to “a vector” in general. Then the removal of “resp.” (i.e. “respective”) makes the parallel construction incomprehensible.

One of Said and Wegman’s particular enhancements to their Wikipedia antecedents, is to change notation of variable counts from n to d, perhaps to emphasize the geometric aspect of some optimization techniques. So a long passage on the simplex algorithm, apparently originating in Wikipedia – Simplex Algorithm (Apr. 2009), contains several such switches. For example, these two sentences require five such switches:

Suppose in the standard form of the problem there are n d variables and m constraints, not counting the n non-negativity constraints. Generally, a vertex of the simplex corresponds to making n d of the m + d total constraints tight, while adjacent vertices share n d − 1 tight constraints.

Unfortunately, the authors only made four of the changes, omitting to adjust the count of non-negativity constraints, which should of course match the number of variables. (And, no, n makes no other appearance in this section).

A few sentences later, Said and Wegman break new mathematical ground in a howler that has already been excoriated by Andrew Gelman again and again :

… the simplex method visits all 2d vertices before arriving at the optimal vertex.

The original has:

the simplex method … visits all 2ⁿ vertices before arriving at the optimal vertex.

And all this time I thought a cube had eight vertices, not six. Who knew!

Example 3: Simulated annealing breaks down [SoS p. 5, p. 30]

Here is the opening from the  Wikipedia 2009 article on Simulated Annealing.

Simulated annealing (SA) is a generic probabilistic meta-algorithm for the global optimization problem, namely locating a good approximation to the global minimum of a given function in a large search space.

The Said and Wegman version is less clear, but at least does not totally mangle the original.

Simulated annealing is a probabilistic metaheuristic global optimization algorithm for locating a good approximation to the global minimum of a given function in a large search space.

Here’s the Wikipedia explanation of the role of the global “temperature” parameter T, and its effect on solution search.

By analogy with this physical process, each step of the SA algorithm replaces the current solution by a random “nearby” solution, chosen with a probability that depends on the difference between the corresponding function values and on a global parameter T (called the temperature), that is gradually decreased during the process. The dependency is such that the current solution changes almost randomly when T is large, but increasingly “downhill” as T goes to zero. The allowance for “uphill” moves saves the method from becoming stuck at local minima—which are the bane of greedier methods.

Now look at the Said and Wegman version, which effectively confuses the global “temperature” parameter that modulates the solution search, and the minimum solution itself, as well as omitting key details such as selecting successive candidate solutions “nearby”.

During each step of the algorithm, the variable that will eventually represent the minimum is replaced by a random solution that is chosen according to a temperature parameter, T. As the temperature of the system decreases, the probability of higher temperature values replacing the minimum decreases, but it is always non-zero. The decrease in probability ensures a gradual decrease in the value of the minimum. However, the non-zero stipulation allows for a higher value to replace the minimum. Though this may sound like a flaw in the algorithm, it makes simulated annealing very useful because it allows for global minimums to be found rather than local ones. If during the course of the implementation of the algorithm a certain location (local minimum) has a lower temperature than its neighbors yet much higher than the overall lowest temperature (global minimum), this non-zero probability stipulation will allow for the value of the minimum to back track in a sense and become unstuck from local minima.

This is plain wrong – frighteningly so, in fact.

Concluding thoughts

This paper is the fifth major work that I have analyzed from Wegman and Said. From the 2006 Wegman report to Congress, up to this year’s “Colour Theory and Design”, so much of Wegman and Said’s recent work demonstrates extreme reliance on unattributed antecedents, as well as numerous errors and incompetent analysis. Here is the list of the main works that have been found to be highly questionable (together with links to discussion and analysis for each).

1. 2005: Chapter 1 (Wegman, Solka and Rao), and Chapter 13 (Said) in Handbook of Statistics: Data Mining and Data Visualization, Rao et al eds., Elsevier [Discussion]
2. 2006: Wegman, Scott and Said; Ad Hoc Committee Report on the ‘Hockey Stick’ Global Climate Reconstruction [Discussion 1, 2,  3,  4 -  Analysis 1, 2, 3, 4   -   Statistical analysis discussion  ]
3. 2008: Said, Wegman et al, “Social Networks of Author–Coauthor Relationships”, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis [Discussion  - Analysis - Retraction part1, part 2]
4. 2009: Said and Wegman, “Roadmap for Optimization”, WIREs Comp Stat [Discussion  (this piece) -  Analysis]
5. 2011: Wegman and Said, “Color Theory and Design”, WIREs Comp Stat [Discussion part 1, part 2 -  Analysis]

It’s a dismal chronology. Yet George Mason University is stuck in a never-ending research misconduct inquiry that apparently still has not reached a recommendation to proceed to a full-blown investigation, even after 18 long months consideration of an overwhelming mountain of evidence. Meanwhile, Wiley is incapable of facing up to the serious problems at WIREs Comp Stat and seems prepared to let the reputation of the journal spiral downward.

Perhaps it’s time for David Scott to step up and do the right thing.

The objects for which the Company is established are:
(a) To support and encourage research and education respecting the following:
(i) the use and development of natural resources including, without limitation, the extraction, production, development, conservation, protection, and distribution of natural resources, and other related matters, throughout Canada and the World;
(ii) conservation and protection of the environment;
(iii) ethical issues and considerations in respect of the items described in subparagraphs (i) and (ii) including, without limitation, issues and
considerations of environmental responsibility, peace, treatment of workers, democratic rights, and human rights;   ….

Suzuki Foundation? Nope. Well then, how about the energy think tank Pembina Institute? Wrong again, although this newer organization is also based in oil rich Alberta.

Say hello to – wait for it – the Ethical Oil Institute. Today I’ll take a first look at the hitherto unknown entity behind the latest push to defend the Alberta oil sands (a.k.a. tar sands). I’ll review the emerging roles of the Conservative-linked masterminds behind the initiative, namely pundit and author Ezra Levant and government spokesperson turned blogger Alykhan Velshi. And I’ll introduce Levant’s silent partner in the Institute: Calgary lawyer Thomas Ross,who also happens to be a partner at oil patch law firm McLellan Ross and one of the leaders of the firm’s OilSandsLaw.com initiative. All of this belies the studiously cultivated image of Ethical.org as a “grassroots” organizational effort; indeed, it looks more and more like industry sponsored  astroturf.

In retrospect, it all seems inevitable. As I noted last March, 2011 saw the rapid  promotion of Levant’s “ethical oil” meme (elaborated in his 2009 book of the same name) into adoption as a Conservative government catch-phrase. That was followed quickly by the surprising  transition of Conservative government spokesperson Alykhan Velshi into a new career as blogger at Levant’s Ethicaloil.org, recently made over in a slick relaunch.

In interviews Velshi spun the ad hoc nature of his involvement, stating that “he wasn’t paying himself” and pointing to the apparently improvised reliance on small PayPal donations to fund Access-to-Information requests to the dreaded CBC (Canada’s state-owned broadcaster). But somehow the narrative of Velshi bolting from a rising career in government in the wake of a comfortable Conservative majority, into an uncertain future helping out an old friend never quite added up. Ironically, it was a click on that very same PayPal button that yielded an important clue to the more complete story.

Well, well – the Institute that dares not speak its name. In fact, as of this writing, there were still only two Google hits for the mysterious Ethical Oil Institute. But one was crucial: the publication  of a notice of incorporation in the official Alberta Gazette.

ETHICAL OIL INSTITUTE/INSTITUT DU PETROLE ETHIQUE
Non-Profit Private Company Incorporated 2011 MAR 09
Registered Address: 600, 12220 STONY PLAIN ROAD, EDMONTON ALBERTA, T5N 3Y4.

The address turned out to be the Edmonton office of McLennan Ross, a pre-eminent Alberta law firm (more on that in a moment). And the registration date of March 9, 2011 shows plans for the Ethicaloil.org were well underway long before Velshi’s initial blog posts in June, and indeed before the Canadian election campaign (which was called in late March).

Birds of Feather

The biographies of Levant and Velshi both show a long involvement with the Harper-led Conservatives (and in Levant’s case,  its western-based predecessors, the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party). Indeed the arc of their careers are remarkably similar, with the elder Levant about 10 years ahead of Velshi. Both cut their teeth at right-wing think tanks: Velshi was an intern in 2005 at the American Enterprise Institute (where he prepared a summary  of an anti-U.N. conference), while Levant  started out as a 1996 intern at the Fraser Institute.

And both have extremely hawkish views on the Middle East and have gotten into hot water with over-the-top attacks on their political enemies. Perhaps Levant’s lowest point (and that’s saying something)  came last year when he wrote a column in the Toronto Sun falsely accusing financier and philanthropist George Soros of having been a Nazi collaborator.  Meanwhile, Velshi is feeling the heat for his role in Conservative government efforts to ban former U.K. MP George Galloway from entering Canada; along with his ex-boss Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, he faces a $1.5 defamation million lawsuit for allegations that Galloway financed terrorism.

However, it was their common political affiliation that first brought them together. Levant is now a commentator and talk show host at the the fledgling Sun News TV network in Toronto.  But much earlier he worked for  parliamentary aide for Reform Party leader Preston Manning, and Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day, before winning the nomination as Alliance candidate in Calgary Southwest.  That political career ended when Levant reluctantly stood aside to let newly-elected leader Stephen Harper run in his stead and re-enter Parliament in 2002. However, Levant did go on to work in the all-important “war room” in  subsequent elections, as Harper presided over the merger of the Canadian Alliance into the Conservative Party and formed the government in 2006.

Meanwhile Velshi held various posts with the Conservatives, notably as an advisor to Environment Minister John Baird, and communications director for the aforementioned Kenney. He too was a valued member of the Conservative re-election team in the 2008 election campaign, and that’s apparently when he and Levant became good friends.

A new non-profit …. and a career change

The first inkling of the Ethical Oil project came in a late May report in the Hill Times. In an email to friends just after the May 2 election, Velshi had announced he was about to leave his government post. He was coy about his future plans, which he said he didn’t “yet know for certain”. But he told the Hill Times in that he was “pursuing an opportunity in the not-for-profit sector, outside partisan politics” and that he had wanted to leave Parliament Hill at the “least disruptive” time.

Another Hill Times report, at the time of  EthicalOil.org’s late June soft launch, presented Velshi as a passionate oil sands advocate and grassroots organizer on a shoestring budget,”mooching off free Wi-Fi at coffeehouses and wearing flip-flops”. Oh, and “not raking in any dough”, at least for the time being.

He also explained a little bit about the genesis of EthicalOil.org, or rather what we now know to be the Ethical Oil Institute.

“I think with [Levant] going to the Sun [News Network], I think he hasn’t had enough time to push out this argument in the media, in panels and in debates,” said Mr. Velshi. “I said, ‘Well, look, I’m looking to do something after government. Why don’t I set this up? And I’d be looking for your advice on how to do that.’”

Well, then, let’s take a closer look at the organization Velshi and Levant “set up” back in early March. A close examination of Institute’s founding documents (available from the Alberta corporate registry) reveals a lot of information that has otherwise been emerging in dribs and drabs, or else not at all.

Take, for instance, the rather basic matter of the organization’s location. The Ethical Oil Institute is incorporated under  Alberta Companies Act Part 9 (governing non-profit organizations), with its registered office at the Edmonton address of law firm McLellan Ross. The two shareholders (and board directors) are  Levant and McLellan Ross partner Thomas Ross. They have given as their addresses the firm’s smaller Calgary office, which is indeed Ross’s place of work.

But the EthicalOil.org Facebook page proclaims that it is a  “Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)” located in Toronto, Ontario, neatly hiding the Ethical Oil Institute’s proximity to the oil industry, physical and otherwise.

Similarly, the involvement of  Ross – made public here for the first time as far as I know – has inconvenient optics. Ross is a lynchpin of McLellan Ross’s Calgary office, where he is one of ten lead partners in McLellan Ross’s “Oil Sands Law.com” initiative, described as a “Slick new oilsands cross-selling strategy” in a 2009 Canadian Lawyer article.

The respective official roles of Levant, Ross and Velshi can be surmised by an examination of the list of officers in the Articles of Association, cross referencing to the occasional crumb offered up by Velshi and Levant.

The executive officers of the Company shall be the President & Executive Director, a Treasurer, and a Secretary, or alternatively, a President & Executive Director and a SecretaryTreasurer. The President & Executive Director, Treasurer, and Secretary may be elected by the Board at the first or any subsequent meeting of the Board held after each Annual General Meeting. The Board may also elect or appoint at any time and from time to time as officers or executive officers a Chairman of the Board, …

Velshi recently described himself, for the first time, as the “executive director of EthicalOil.org”. That came in a press release last week describing his latest stunt -  an Ottawa “protest” featuring a gruesome post card handout and two niqab wearing young women (one blue-eyed and one brown-eyed, presumably to provide politically correct eye colour balance). And Levant apparently has the Chairman’s seat on the Institute’s board, according to  this week’s Ottawa Sun newspaper report on the new Ethical Oil TV ad now running on the Oprah Winfrey Canadian network. I guess they should know these things.

… That’s the stark message from a new group dubbed Ethical Oil, founded by a former Tory staffer and chaired by Sun News Network’s Ezra Levant. Levant wrote an award-winning book by the same name and provided start-up cash.

Logically, that means Thomas Ross is Secretary-Treasurer – the money guy. Makes sense.

Finances: The median is the message

In the late June Hill Times interview, Velshi discussed the new Ethical Oil venture.

Mr. Velshi said he plans to devote the next six months to the project.

“If it takes off, this will become my career for the next little bit,” he said.

Mr. Velshi said Mr. Levant has offered some of the $20,000 he won from a National Business Book Award for Ethical Oil to pay for the project’s start-up costs. Individual donations or membership fees are meant for publicity, not overhead costs, said Mr. Velshi. He said he won’t accept money from “foreign interests or lobbyists” and won’t seek or accept money from government. He said he had no plans for a corporate membership category, but that individual members of political parties or oil and gas companies would be free to donate to the not-for-profit project.

“I certainly expect that people who work in the ethical oil industry, whether they’re welders or pipe fitters from Newfoundland who work in Fort McMurray, or whether it’s geologists in Calgary, maybe some Conservative activists in Ottawa, may chip in $10 or $15,” he said.

Fortunately, the Institute’s Memorandum of Association doesn’t tie Velshi down to such pesky details as whether corporate donations would or would not be accepted, or what individual donations would fund. That’s a good thing, because the PayPal button asking for “$5, $10 or $15″ first appeared alongside a blog post asking for donations to fund Velshi’s Access to Information request to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That doesn’t sound like “publicity”, although arguably all of Velshi’s antics so far could be classified as publicity stunts.

But if small individual donations are going only to publicity, then how are overhead costs – including Velshi’s eventual remuneration – going to be funded?

Perhaps the EthicalOil.org PayPal donation statement will help us understand this.

The No Tar Sands Coalition, Greenpeace, and other opponents of Ethical Oil are funded by grants from foreign foundations. EthicalOil.org, by contrast, will not take money from foreign corporations, foundations, governments, or lobbyists. We will not allow foreign corporate interests to compromise our independence. This means we rely on small donors like you to sustain our grassroots advocacy. Please consider making a $5, $10, or $15 donation

So, let’s see. The small donations pay for publicity (also known as “grassroots advocacy”). And no “foreign corporate interests” are allowed to contribute (although presumably a well-heeled individual foreign shareholder could press that PayPal button just like anyone else).

That leaves large donations from Canadian corporations and possibly their individual executive officers.  (Note that would also include foreign controlled companies like ExxonMobil subsidiary Imperial Oil and Koch-owned Flint Hills Resources Canada).

So let’s sample some of  Velshi’s various statements about corporate donations (with emphasis added):

• Hill Times, June 27 (Kristen Shane): “[Velshi] said he had no plans for a corporate membership category, but that individual members of political parties or oil and gas companies would be free to donate to the not-for-profit project.”  [That strongly implies individual donations only, without explicitly ruling out corporate donations.]
• Guardian, July 28 (Leo Hickman):  “Velshi said: ‘I won’t take money from any foreign corporations, any governments.’ He added, though, that, if offered, he wouldn’t refuse Canadian corporate donations.
• Huffington Post, August 28 (Althia Raj): “Velshi wouldn’t say whether EthicalOil.org collects money from big oil companies. He described his campaign as ‘grassroots’, saying all Canadians who care about ethical oil are invited to donate and that the median donation is in the $20-$25 range. ‘We are 100 per cent independent of government and industry,’ he wrote in an email.”

Not to mention 100 per cent evasive. I especially like the comment about the “median donation”, which begs the obvious questions about the amount and source of the largest donations.

I dare say Friends of Science also had a median contribution of about $25 in their heyday (they too offered memberships for that amount). But the dozens of membership fees were dwarfed by the corporate and foundation donations funnelled through Barry Cooper’s bogus research fund at the University of Calgary.

Of course, it took years for the truth about Friends of Science to start to  emerge, and some details are still missing. And in that case the egregious use of a university research fund as a conduit meant that key information could not be covered up forever.

So we may never know the identity of Ethical Oil’s biggest supporters. However, besides the obvious connection in the person of Thomas Ross, there is one other intriguing bit of evidence that the Calgary oil patch was being canvassed for support, even before Velshi’s first blog post (courtesy of that second Google hit).

It turns out the Ethical Oil Institute was a “birdie” sponsor of this year’s Kinnear Classic celebrity golf tournament, an annual fundraising event in support of the Calgary Health Trust. That’s no doubt a worthy cause, but one wonders why a cash-starved startup non-profit would participate in such an event. Presumably, you have to spend money to make money, and what better way to introduce the new kid on the non-profit block to Calgary’s corporate elite.

Onwards and upwards

In a few short weeks, Ethical Oil has gone from a humble blog to a slick social media website, complete with a Facebook presence and Twitter feeds. The stakes could be not be higher, as oil sands defenders and opponents battle over the Obama administration’s final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, widely expected in the next three months. That decision could set the course for oil sands development for decades to come.

The hypocrisy of Ethical Oil’s framing  of the issue as a choice between “ethical oil” and “conflict oil” has been duly noted elsewhere. After all, pretty much every important player in the oil sands has operated in the Middle East or Africa, and several still do. Less noticed has been Velshi’s math challenged mangling of the usual talking points downplaying the greenhouse gas impact of the oil sands.

According to Environment Canada’s measurements, the oilsands has reduced its GHG output by 29% since 1990. Despite massive expansion of oilsands production in the last two decades, Canada’s oil companies have managed to cut their carbon output by nearly a third.

It’s emission intensity (i.e. GHGs per barrel), not output, that has been cut by 29%; that’s a figure that’s often quoted precisely to avoid discussion of the steep rise in total GHG output from the oil sands, a trend that Environment Canada projects will result in a tripling of GHG output from 2005 to 2020.  Clearly, Ethical Oil’s “research and education” in this area deserves more detailed scrutiny.

Nevertheless, the most insidious aspect of the Ethical Oil campaign is its attempt to present itself as a broadly supported, independent “grassroots” movement. There is now every reason to treat that narrative with, shall we say, extreme skepticism.

[Update, September 11: The misidentification of George Galloway as a Labour MP has been corrected (he had been expelled from the Party in 2003 and sat as an independent until 2010). As well, Ezra Levant was never an MP; he was nominated as Canadian Alliance candidate, but stepped aside for Stephen Harper before the 2002 election. ]