Groundswell pushing climate swill

Max, one of our regular podcast listeners, messaged us to let us know that Groundswell NZ has recently sponsored a visit by climate denier Dr Tom Sheahen.

Groundswell, as many people will be aware of already, is a political movement in NZ centred around farmers and their needs. Although the group started as a response to government efforts to clean up our waterways, they have since expanded to cover tangential farming-related issues, such as emissions trading, immigration, electric car rebates, Three Waters, and individual members at the group's protests have leaned heavily towards criticism of the Labour party and the voicing of fears around communism, biculturalism and a supposed encroachment of our rights.

Dr Sheahen was flown over to New Zealand by Groundswell and taken on a tour of the country, giving talks about climate change.

Sheahen's big argument is that climate scientists have misunderstood methane, and that it's not actually a greenhouse gas. Here are a couple of photos that were posted to the Groundswell Facebook page that appear to be from a handout given out at the New Zealand talks:

And here is a copy of the slides from a talk Dr Sheahen gave in 2022 in Ireland - a talk that looks basically the same as the talk he's been giving in NZ:

https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Methane-the-Irrelevant-GreenHouse-Gas.pdf

Sheahen's argument appears to be based on work done by William Happer and William van Wijngaarden, who published a paper a few years ago (which was never submitted to peer review) arguing that methane is not a greenhouse gas that we should be concerned about. Now, I'm not going to try to walk you through their argument, or the response from the climate science community, as I'm not an expert and I'd likely not do it justice. However, rest assured this viewpoint does not appear to be mainstream, and climate scientists are definitely still concerned about methane as a greenhouse gas.

However, given that Sheahen has graced our shores recently, I am going to briefly look into his activities and his background.

For starters, during his time here Dr Sheahan's been interviewed on The Platform and Reality Check Radio, both of which should give you some idea of his calibre and political leaning.

https://realitycheck.radio/climate-talks/

Although he's a legitimate doctor, Dr Sheahen's specialty appears to be physics based - with a published book titled “Introduction to High Temperature Superconductivity”, and published papers on topics such as rocket re-entry instrumentation, industrial instrumentation and industrial energy conservation. None of this appears to be related to climate physics or chemistry.

As for the groups Dr Sheahen has aligned himself with, it's not looking great.

He's a member of the Heartland Institute, which is described on Wikipedia as a “conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking”.

He's also a member of the CO2 Coalition, a group which argues that we need more CO2 as it's apparently beneficial to the world. Again from Wikipedia:

“_The CO2 Coalition was one of over 40 organizations to sign a letter dated May 8, 2017, to President Donald Trump thanking him for his campaign promise to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which Trump announced on June 1, 2017.

In 2021 the CO2 Coalition submitted a public comment opposing climate change disclosure rules by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Coalition asserted "There is no 'climate crisis' and there is no evidence that there will be one," and further "Carbon dioxide, the gas purported to be the cause of catastrophic warming, is not toxic and does no harm." Both assertions are at odds with the scientific consensus on climate change.

In 2022 the Coalition submitted a public comment on climate-related risks to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, concluding "Real science demonstrates there is no climate emergency and there are no climate-related financial or other risks caused by fossil fuels and CO2._"

Finally, he's a science advisor for ITEST - the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology, described on its own website as “an association of theologians, scientists and others committed to a Catholic world view in which faith and science collaborate in exploring the truth”. Basically, their line seems to be that science and faith don't disagree with each other, and if they do, the science is obviously wrong.

Without being capable of working out whether the science Dr Sheahen is pushing is dodgy or not, the fact that he has no scientific expertise in climate science, the fact that his view is a minority view not held by most climate scientists, and his frankly worrying associations with conservative and Christian groups, all seem to suggest that it's unlikely what he's been peddling for Groundswell in NZ recently is true.

It's sad that Groundswell have wasted their money paying someone who appears to be so biased to do the rounds of New Zealand, trying to convince farmers that climate scientists are idiots and don't know what they're talking about. What we need for climate change is a nuanced discussion, and this doesn't appear to be nuanced at all.

Reading up on this visit made me think of the time I went to see “Lord” Monckton talking out of his ass about climate change at a Press Club event in Wellington, and I'm just disappointed I didn't get to see Dr Sheahen while he was here. Max, who let us know about this visit, said that he did manage to go along, and that despite a moderate turnout (40-50 people), there was no media coverage - which was good to hear. Maybe it's better that these people's message is restricted to their echo chambers, rather than making national media and potentially misinforming people.