There Is No 'Consensus' On Global Warming A clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition
by Prof Richard S. Lindzen
According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms -- unless we change the way we live now.
Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific community is over."
That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this "debate" actually is in the first place.
The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim -- in his defense -- that scientists "don't know… They just don't know."
So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the "consensus." Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore's preferred global-warming template -- namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore's movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming.
They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why.
The other elements of the global-warming scare scenario are predicated on similar oversights. Malaria, claimed as a byproduct of warming, was once common in Michigan and Siberia and remains common in Siberia -- mosquitoes don't require tropical warmth. Hurricanes, too, vary on multidecadal time scales; sea-surface temperature is likely to be an important factor. This temperature, itself, varies on multidecadal time scales. However, questions concerning the origin of the relevant sea-surface temperatures and the nature of trends in hurricane intensity are being hotly argued within the profession.
Even among those arguing, there is general agreement that we can't attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure, there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be global warming because he can't think of anything else. While arguments like these, based on lassitude, are becoming rather common in climate assessments, such claims, given the primitive state of weather and climate science, are hardly compelling.
A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are clearly not issues over which debate is ended -- at least not in terms of the actual science.
A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by the environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific community now agrees that significant warming is occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, increased again until the '90s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998.
There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatsoever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas -- albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.
Given that we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task is currently impossible. Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising impact. Thus, although the conflicted state of the affair was accurately presented in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the infamous "summary for policy makers" reported ambiguously that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." This sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.
The next IPCC report again described the problems surrounding what has become known as the attribution issue: that is, to explain what mechanisms are responsible for observed changes in climate. Some deployed the lassitude argument -- e.g., we can't think of an alternative -- to support human attribution. But the "summary for policy makers" claimed in a manner largely unrelated to the actual text of the report that "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
In a similar vein, the National Academy of Sciences issued a brief (15-page) report responding to questions from the White House. It again enumerated the difficulties with attribution, but again the report was preceded by a front end that ambiguously claimed that "The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability." This was sufficient for CNN's Michelle Mitchell to presciently declare that the report represented a "unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man. There is no wiggle room." Well, no.
More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.
Even more recently, the Climate Change Science Program, the Bush administration's coordinating agency for global-warming research, declared it had found "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system." This, for Mr. Easterbrook, meant: "Case closed." What exactly was this evidence? The models imply that greenhouse warming should impact atmospheric temperatures more than surface temperatures, and yet satellite data showed no warming in the atmosphere since 1979. The report showed that selective corrections to the atmospheric data could lead to some warming, thus reducing the conflict between observations and models descriptions of what greenhouse warming should look like. That, to me, means the case is still very much open.
So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.
First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists -- especially those outside the area of climate dynamics.
Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.
Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce -- if we're lucky.
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
Scandals in Scandinavia: Time to Cancel IPCC and Withdraw Nobel Prizes From Them and Gore
Written by Dr. Tim Ball, Canada Free Press
Wednesday, December 02 2009 13:56
Al Gore is the only Nobel Prize winner, whose work was ruled politically biased and containing nine major scientific errors by a court (UK) a week before it was awarded. The Nobel Committee should have known. They could argue they’d already made their decision. Problem is there was considerable evidence about the errors easily available long before. Clearly they didn’t do their homework, so their decision was purely political. The Prize should be revoked.
Gore shared his prize with the members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He used their research, but went further. He misused it to achieve the falsehoods that permeate his movie An Inconvenient Truth. Now we know through the files obtained from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia (Climategate), that all the information put in the global arena was falsified, manipulated and deliberately made wrong. Silence of those involved in climategate about Gore’s misuse of their false data tells several stories. They couldn’t point out the error and risk exposure. Like everything they did the end justified the means. Gore was useful. He distracted the mainstream media and kept the global warming pot boiling while they had access to power behind the scenes through the IPCC. He was the buffoon who distracted the audience from the real villains. Again the Nobel committee didn’t do their homework and made a political decision. This Prize should also be revoked.
Nothing Nobel: Time To Terminate The IPCC.
The IPCC Nobel Prize was questionable in the first place. There are serious questions about giving a Nobel Prize to government employees. Why didn’t the prize money go back to the taxpayer who funded the work? How did they divide the money? Did the CRU gang receive more because they controlled most of the process? Regardless, all the money should come back, just like Olympic Gold medals are withdrawn from members of a team if one member has cheated. IPCC members were eager to be on board the ship and should have known about the corruption. Several prominent members with integrity resigned including Richard Lindzen and Chris Landsea; they should receive the Prize taken from those who participated. If outsiders like myself could see the problems then there is no excuse for those inside.
The IPCC has completely lost all credibility and should be terminated immediately. The current Chairman R.K.Pachauri received the Nobel Prize on behalf of the IPCC. As Chair he is also a recipient. As a railway engineer he went off the tracks in his apparent craving for power. He is also cc’d on many of the emails obtained by climategate so he clearly knew what was going on. That is completely unacceptable.
Politics Makes a Mockery of Reward
The Nobel Committee have made a mockery of what constitutes Peace and the entire concept of the Peace Prize. That award, though noble, should also be terminated because it will always be political and politics ultimately taints everything it touches. We need to blow it up with some of that material used to provide the funding in the first place because at least Alfred Nobel had a conscience about his actions.
As Lord Acton said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those in power will now use it to whitewash and absolve those responsible. We know this already because the University of East Anglia spokesperson Professor Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement has already made a biased comment. He said, “It is worth reiterating that our conclusions correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.” This incorrect comment shows how little he knows about climate science and the degree of corruption. It’s a comment apparently provided by the CRU gang. These people who have perpetrated the greatest scandal in history, because it is global in its impact, will silently glide away under the cloak of political power.
Lovely lovely Carbon Dioxide, the life-enhancing gas which improves crop yields and makes life on Earth more abundant. If only it could raise the temperature a degree or two it would be perfect!
Quote:
IN PRAISE OF CO2: EARTH ‘IS THE GREENEST IT'S BEEN IN DECADES, PERHAPS IN CENTURIES’ Rising CO2 a Boon for Biosphere – Earth in 'CO2 Famine' – Cutting CO2 'a profoundly evil act'
by Marc Morano | August 10, 2009
CLIMATE DEPOT'S CO2 FACT SHEET
Prominent Scientist Tells Congress: Earth in 'CO2 Famine' - Feb. 25, 2009
Excerpt: 'The increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind' : Washington, DC — Award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer declared man-made global warming fears “mistaken” and noted that the Earth was currently in a “CO2 famine now.” Happer, who has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, made his remarks during today's Environment and Public Works Full Committee Hearing. “Many people don't realize that over geological time, we're really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million - ppm) – that's unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it's been quite higher than that,” Happer told the Senate Committee. To read Happer's complete opening statement click here: “Earth was just fine in those times,” Happer added. “The oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it's baffling to me that we're so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started,” Happer explained. Happer also noted that “the number of [skeptical scientists] with the courage to speak out is growing” and he warned “children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science.” [In December, Happer requested to be added to the groundbreaking U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims ] Happer was pressed by the Committee on whether rising CO2 fears are valid. “I don't think the laws of nature or physics and chemistry has changed in 80 million years. 80 million years ago the Earth was a very prosperous palace and there is no reason to suddenly think it will become bad now,” Happer added. Happer is a professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. “I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind,” Happer told the Committee. “What about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated,” he explained.
2008: In praise of CO2: Earth 'is the greenest it's been in decades, perhaps in centuries'
Excerpt: Earths' Biosphere is Booming, Satellite Data Suggests CO2 the Cause - Financial Post, June 07, 2008
Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began. GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere –the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe's production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it's been in decades, perhaps in centuries. [...] The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometres — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year. Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up — carbon is the building block of life — and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: “Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century.”
Higher Carbon Dioxide May Give Pine Trees A Competitive Edge
Excerpt: ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — Pine trees grown for 12 years in air one-and-a-half times richer in carbon dioxide than today's levels produced twice as many seeds of at least as good a quality as those growing under normal conditions, a Duke University-led research team reported Aug. 3 at a national ecology conference. Carbon dioxide readings that high are expected everywhere by mid-century. The findings suggest some woody tree species could, in the future, out-compete grasses and other herbaceous plants that scientists had previously found can also produce more seeds under high-CO2, but of inferior quality.
CO2 is 'Plant Food': Skeptical Physicist Declares 'those who want to reduce use of fossil fuels are mortal enemies of the biosphere' -- 'This is a profoundly evil act' – August 5, 2009
Dr. Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press)
Excerpt: As the Senate considers the fate of the cap-and-trade bill, we should consider what it means for more carbon dioxide to be added to the atmosphere, something the bill intends to prevent. Carbon dioxide is first and foremost a plant food. In fact, plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use the energy from sunlight to combine the CO2 with water to yield glucose, the simplest sugar molecule. Carbon dioxide is also the source of all organic — this word just means “contains carbon” — molecules synthesized by plants.
Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there would be no organic molecules synthesized by plants. The less carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the fewer organic molecules synthesized by plants. All animals depend on plants to synthesize essential organic molecules. Without the organic molecules synthesized by plants, the animal world could not exist. Without plants, there would be no biosphere. Several million years ago, a disaster struck the terrestrial biosphere: there was a drastic reduction in the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere. The flowering plants evolved to be most efficient when the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 1,000 parts per million. But the percentage had dropped to a mere 200 parts per million. Plants tried to adapt by evolving a new, more efficient way of using the little remaining CO2. The new mechanism, the C4 pathway, appeared in grasses, including corn and wheat, which enabled these plants to expand into the plains. If the carbon dioxide percentage had stayed low — or worse, had decreased further — the entire biosphere would have been endangered. Fortunately for the plants and the rest of the biosphere depending on them, a wonderful thing happened about 150,000 years ago: a new animal species, Homo sapiens, evolved. This creature was endowed with a huge brain, enabling it to invent a way to help the plants with their CO2 problem. Gigantic amounts of carbon had been deposited deep underground in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. Not only were these reservoirs of carbon locked away in rock, but they were in forms of carbon that the plants could not use. [...] Due to the diligent plant-saving efforts of the humans, the CO2 atmospheric percentage is now at nearly 390 parts per million. Were humans to continue in their biosphere-rescuing efforts at the present rate, the CO2 level will be returned to normal in a mere few hundred years. The cap-and-trade bill is designed to stop this effort to save the biosphere. This is a profoundly evil act. [...] Those who want to reduce the use of fossil fuels are the mortal enemies of the biosphere. They must be stopped at all costs! Write your senator at once!
'Crop yields could jump by up to 20%' with rising CO2 – March 6, 2009
Excerpt: "Research carried out by the Department of Primary Industries in Victoria has shown that wheat crop yields could jump by up to 20 per cent under global warming. The trial pumped more carbon dioxide into the air around the wheat, to the level that's expected in 2050. Glenn Fitzgerald, from the DPI, says that it's not all good news though. "The caveat there is that that assumes sufficient water and nitrogen," he says. "We're looking at basically how the fertilisation effect of C02 can offset some of the reductions in water that we know [NOT!] are coming."" "Wheat crop produces more in climate change test"
Study: Biodiversity boomed during global warming -- teeming with plants and animals – August 7, 2009
Excerpt: A global warming span from 53 million to 47 million years ago strongly influenced the biodiversity of western North America, geologists said. The warming spurred a biodiversity boom of plants and animals, the researchers reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Today, the middle of Wyoming is a vast desert, and a few antelope and deer are all you see," geologist Michael Woodburne, of the Museum of Northern Arizona, said. Fifty million years ago, however, when temperatures were at their highest, that area of Wyoming was a tropical rain forest teeming with lemur-like primates, small horses, forest rodents and other mammals, Woodburne said. "In fact, there were more species of mammals living in the western part of North America at that time than at any other time," he said. Woodburne's research into global warming was aided by Gregg Gunnell of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology and Richard Stucky of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Shock: National Geographic's Moment of Clarity: 'Emerging evidence' reveals 'rising temps could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent' - Sahara Desert Greening Due to Global Warming? - July 31, 2009
Excerpt: Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear. Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent. "Camel Contest" in National Geographic Magazine Ancient Cemetery Found; Brings "Green Sahara" to Life Exodus From Drying Sahara Gave Rise to Pharaohs, Study Says Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities. This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago. [...] The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers). Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.
Oops! UN IPCC Wrong Again: Deserts Getting Greener: 'It has been assumed that global warming would cause an expansion of the world's deserts' - July 16, 2009
Excerpt: It has been assumed that global warming would cause an expansion of the world's deserts, but now some scientists are predicting a contrary scenario in which water and life slowly reclaim these arid places. They think vast, dry regions like the Sahara might soon begin shrinking. [...]The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned recently that rising global temperatures could cut West African agricultural production by up to 50% by the year 2020. But satellite images from the last 15 years do seem to show a recovery of vegetation in the Southern Sahara, although the Sahel Belt, the semi-arid tropical savannah to the south of the desert, remains fragile. The fragility of the Sahel may have been exacerbated by the cutting of trees, poor land management and subsequent erosion of soil.
Study: 'Long-term (100 year) rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is not from anthropogenic sources' – April 1, 2009
Excerpt: With the short (5−15 year) RT results shown to be in quasi-equilibrium, this then supports the (independently based) conclusion that the long-term (100 year) rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is not from anthropogenic sources but, in accordance with conclusions from other studies, is most likely the outcome of the rising atmospheric temperature, which is due to other natural factors. This further supports the conclusion that global warming is not anthropogenically driven as an outcome of combustion. The economic and political significance of that conclusion will be self-evident.
New Study: Most of rising CO2 level is not man-made – August 5, 2009
By Tom V. Segalstad, Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology, The University of Oslo, Norway
Excerpt: The rising concentration of atmospheric CO2 in the last century is not consistent with supply from anthropogenic sources. Such anthropogenic sources account for less than 5% of the present atmosphere, compared to the major input/output from natural sources (~95%). Hence, anthropogenic CO2 is too small to be a significant or relevant factor in the global warming process, particularly when comparing with the far more potent greenhouse gas water vapor. The rising atmospheric CO2 is the outcome of rising temperature rather than vice versa. Correspondingly, Dr. Essenhigh concludes that the politically driven target of capture and sequestration of carbon from combustion sources would be a major and pointless waste of physical and financial resources.
Climatologist Dissents: 'Greenhouse effect phenomenon is not a result of human emissions' - 'I am ashamed of what climate science has become today' – April 2009
Hans Jelbring, Ph.D Climatology, Stockholm University, M.Sc, Royal Institute of Technology
Excerpt: Basic scientific principles demonstrate that the overall GE phenomenon is not a result of human emissions of “greenhouse gases”.
[Climate
Take back Al Gore's Oscar, 2 Academy members demand in light of Climategate
December 4, 2009 | 2:03 am
No, it wouldn't do anything for the environment.
But two Hollywood conservatives (yes, there are some) have called upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rescind the prestigious, profitable gold Oscar statuette that it gave ex-Vice President Al Gore et al two years ago for the environmental movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, both Academy members, are among a small, meandering pack of known political conservatives still believed to be on the loose in the liberal bastion of movie-making.
In 2007, Hollywood's Academy sanctified Gore's cinematic message of global warming with its famous statue, enriched his earnings by $100,000 per 85-minute appearance and helped elevate the Tennesseean's profile to win the Nobel Peace Prize despite losing the election battle of 2000 to a Texan and living in a large house with lots of energy-driven appliances.
Chetwynd and Simon were prompted to make their hopeless demand this week by the....
...leak two weeks ago of a blizzard of British academic e-mails purporting to show that scientists at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit systematically falsified data to document the appearance of global warming in recent years.
The university is reportedly investigating the claims, which added dry fuel to the never-ending political debate over whether the Earth really is warming as a result of human activity or if it's just normal natural cycles and the debate is what's heated. The demand to withdraw Gore's award provides yet another opportunity to argue.
The startling leak comes at an inconvenient time just before next week's United Nations' climate change meeting that will cause an immense carbon footprint with thousands of people flying up or over to Denmark to talk about saving the environment.
These airplanes will include Air Force One with its primary passenger President Obama, who's returning to the Copenhagen scene where he didn't help win the 2016 Summer Olympics for Chicago, which could do with a little global warming at this time of year.
Simon, a screenwriter who is also chief executive officer of Pajamas Media, a network of conservative online blogs, conceded he knew of no precedent for the Academy withdrawing a previously-awarded Oscar, despite decades of Hollywood hijinks and worse. But, he added, "I think they should rescind this one."
Democrat ex-VP Al Gore talking about the environment
The controversial leaked documents have been assembled here by Pajamas Media and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The joint demand by Simon and filmmaker Chetwynd is available on video here.
The television news-watching world in America has not learned much about the so-called Climategate scandal because it has not really been mentioned on the air except for a notorious cable news channel named for a three-lettered, wily, wild animal that often seems to revel in debunking liberal shibboleths.
Network news programs have been far more concerned with the obviously more important White House party-crasher story involving a couple of formally-dressed phonies.
The falsified documents do not come up in Gore interview excerpts published late last night here by Politico's John F. Harris and Mike Allen.
This week White House Press Secy. Robert Gibbs claimed that global warming was no longer in dispute by most people. But a subsequent Rasmussen Reports poll of Americans finds only one in four adults believe most scientists agree on the topic.
And while only 20% claim to have followed the leaked e-mail story Very Closely, nearly 60% believe it is at least somewhat likely that scientists have falsified environmental data to support their own global warming beliefs and theories.
The programmer was using raw data so that explains why it is such a mess. Its not his fault the whole database is junk - just accept the conclusions that are drawn from it. Desperate desperate desperate.
Climate email mess hits Australia
PAOLA TOTARO, December 5, 2009
LONDON: Australian weather records for an international database on climate change were a "bloody mess", riddled with entry errors, duplication and inaccuracies, leaked British computer files reveal.
The Herald found the criticism in a 247-page specialist programmer's log, unearthed among the thousands of files hacked from East Anglia University, which is at the centre of a climate change email scandal.
Labelled "HARRY-READ-ME", the log catalogues problems with the raw, historical climate data sent from hundreds of meteorological stations around the world.
The Australian data comes in for particular criticism as the programmer discovers World Meteorological Organisation codes are missing, station names overlap and many co-ordinates are incorrect.
At one point the programmer writes about his attempts to make sense of the data. "What a bloody mess," he concludes. In another case, 30 years of data is attributed to a site at Cobar Airport but the frustrated programmer writes: "Now looking at the dates. something bad has happened ... COBAR AIRPORT AWS [automatic weather station] cannot start in 1962, it didn't open until 1993!"
In another he says: "Getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data ... so many false references ... so many changes ... bewildering."
The log spans four years of work at the university's Climatic Research Unit, the British keeper of global temperature records. The programmer rails that the information has "no uniform integrity".
His criticisms relate solely to the construction of the database and do not question the validity of historical temperature records or analyses that suggest the impact of human activity on global warming trends.
"I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar co-ordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that's the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight."
Michael Coughlan, the head of the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said it was difficult to comment without knowing the source of the raw data. It was unlikely to have come directly from the bureau's centre because unchecked, raw data was rarely requested for climate analysis. The bureau had a network of more than 100 specially selected weather stations to monitor climate change, and a century of records from them had been checked.
"We've put an enormous effort into developing a high-quality reliable climate record for Australia and all that data is freely available," Dr Coughlan said.
But he said that if the British programmer had been using raw weather data, which is sent around the world in real time for weather forecasting, it would not be surprising that it contained errors. This raw data could have come from countries other than Australia, and would have been difficult to correct without access to information in Australia, such as the original field books.
"A computer programmer sitting in England won't have the resources to make those corrections. I can understand their frustrations," Dr Coughlan said.
The programmer's log is one of the most read files worldwide since the email archives were leaked. The log has been treated particularly sympathetically as it reveals his blow-by-blow frustrations, which seemed to be unfolding as his scientist colleagues, including the head of the Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones, appeared to discuss via email ways to avoid freedom-of-information requests for raw data and to denigrate their critics.
Professor Jones, who has denied a conspiracy to manipulate global warming statistics as "complete rubbish", has stood down from his post while the university investigates the leaks.
The Herald attempted to contact Professor Jones and spoke to the computer programmer we believe to be the author of the file. The programmer did not deny his name but referred queries to the university's media unit. Professor Jones has not responded.
RealClimate, a website run by climate scientists, confirms the log as the work of a specialist charged with upgrading data.
"Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets, will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be," it says.
Dont leave Chek, you keep me entertained with your unfaltering belief in your new-age religion. What is posted on this thread by others is in no way `Spam` just because it doesnt fit with your dogma. All the posts that i have seen have been on subject.
See, yet again you plainly show you can't distinguish between understanding and belief.
But that's only your perception, Mr-B.
Then Chek as i have asked many times please show me the proof man is the cause, You cant nor can anyone else especially now as the data, programs used seems to have been altered/massaged/adjusted to fit the theories. Without this proof it is a belief system.
I loved the News at ten last night as they had some climate scientist on there trying his best to bs his way out of the questions about climategate and his closing statement was something like` we know man is effecting the climate but we are not sure to what extent`
How much further can these charlatans back-peddle their bs, at least
x-factor keeps the masses enterained. Look at the shiny shiny
As for what is posted on the thread i will continue to post what i feel are interesting articles on the subject or just ones i know that will illict some lame ad hominem attack.
At least it nice to read the Met office is going to re examine their data on the subject
I got this email message today. Again, I haven't done my homework on this issue, so I don't have a strong opinion. But the signatories to this email and (I suspect) a fair number of APS members do.
Dear fellow member of the American Physical Society:
This is a matter of great importance to the integrity of the Society. It is being sent to a random fraction of the membership, so we hope you will pass it on.
By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate, which was and is an international scientific fraud, the worst any of us have seen in our cumulative 223 years of APS membership. For those who have missed the news we recommend the excellent summary article by Richard Lindzen in the November 30 edition of the Wall Street journal, entitled "The Climate Science isn't Settled," for a balanced account of the situation. It was written by a scientist of unquestioned authority and integrity. A copy can be found among the items at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u, and a visit to http://www.ClimateDepot.com can fill in the details of the scandal, while adding spice.
Article continues below this advert:
What has this to do with APS? In 2007 the APS Council adopted a Statement on global warming (also reproduced at the tinyurl site mentioned above) that was based largely on the scientific work that is now revealed to have been corrupted. (The principals in this escapade have not denied what they did, but have sought to dismiss it by saying that it is normal practice among scientists. You know and we know that that is simply untrue. Physicists are not expected to cheat.)
We have asked the APS management to put the 2007 Statement on ice until the extent to which it is tainted can be determined, but that has not been done. We have also asked that the membership be consulted on this point, but that too has not been done.
None of us would use corrupted science in our own work, nor would we sign off on a thesis by a student who did so. This is not only a matter of science, it is a matter of integrity, and the integrity of the APS is now at stake. That is why we are taking the unusual step of communicating directly with at least a fraction of the membership.
If you believe that the APS should withdraw a Policy Statement that is based on admittedly corrupted science, and should then undertake to clarify the real state of the art in the best tradition of a learned society, please send a note to the incoming President of the APS ccallan@princeton.edu, with the single word YES in the subject line. That will make it easier for him to count.
Bob Austin, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Hal Lewis, emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Will Happer, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics, Hartford
Roger Cohen, former Manager, Strategic Planning, ExxonMobil
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2009 1:11 am Post subject:
'Climategate' professor Phil Jones awarded £13 million in research grants
The professor at the centre of the 'Climategate' affair has successfully received more than £13 million in research funding.
By Robert Mendick - Daily Telegraph - Published: 8:15PM GMT 05 Dec 2009
Prof Jones has stood aside as head of the CRU while an independent inquiry investigates thousands of emails and other documents stolen from the university's computer server and published on the internet The figure is disclosed in a leaked, internal document posted on the internet by climate change sceptics who have seized upon it as evidence of a funding "gravy train" for scientists conducting research into the area.
The grants were awarded following successful applications made by Professor Phil Jones, who headed up the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.
Coleman: Media Will Ignore Climategate Until They Hear ‘I Was Wrong’ (PJM Exclusive)
The Weather Channel founder knows the MSM won't admit fault — they will preach global warming until they can claim: "We were misled."
December 4, 2009 - by John Coleman
This simple three-word phrase is almost impossible to say because it changes everything. It is easiest for a child to say it — after all, a child isn’t expected to be right about things. But the higher you climb through life, the more difficult it becomes to admit being wrong. It would be devastating for a president of the United States to say it: “I was wrong.” And it may be about as difficult for an established, respected scientist who does research at an institution funded by millions of tax dollars.
That is why I don’t expect any of the scientists caught by the Climategate leak to admit “I was wrong” anytime soon.
Consider the case of Roger Revelle, the “grandfather of global warming.” He didn’t say “I was wrong” during all the years he was heading up the Scripps Institute of Oceanography or the Center for Population Studies at Harvard. He waited until he was in a retirement job back at UC San Diego — a mere professor without any research or grant monies coming in — to admit he was wrong about CO2 being an important greenhouse gas.
But to his credit, he did say it in his final years. I respect that he did clear the air before leaving the scene.
I regret that Al Gore, the IPCC, and the media were no longer listening to him.
The media rarely says it: “We were wrong.” I have worked in newsrooms for 56 years — I have never heard it. On several occasions I have heard “we were misinformed,” “we were misled,” and even “we were duped.” On several occasions I have heard “we must correct this item” — but even on these rare occasions there is great reluctance.
It would take a monumental event to force the media to say “we were wrong.”
The media claims to be unbiased, but everybody knows that is not true. “Fair and balanced” is a great slogan, but it’s not a reality. I have witnessed that bias at all three of the old-line networks (yes, I did the circuit) and major market network stations. There happens to be less bias and better balance at the small independent station where I work now in my retirement job than anywhere else I have worked. But still, every person in the newsroom — including me — comes to work with personal biases, and as hard as we try to set them aside, they shine through from time to time.
Generally speaking, people who launch media careers are “do-gooders,” wanting to inform the people regarding how to make the world and their communities better places. It comes off, mostly, as a liberal bias. Most news people in the United States voted for Al Gore. They support the United Nations. They want to advance the environmental issues of clean water and clean air, and protect our natural areas.
So when global warming came along, they accepted it immediately, without question, as a major environmental challenge that they needed to tell the public about. They felt they needed to help bring about the changes required to solve the problem.
For years and years — peaking with the Al Gore movie and the UN conference in Bali — every scientific paper about melting ice, the plight of polar bears, the fear of submerged coastlines, and the entire spectrum of far-fetched global warming-related claims and studies was reported with priority and without question. The media felt it was doing great service towards saving the planet. And the bosses knew nothing built ratings better than “the sky is falling.”
The skeptics were regarded as cranks and shills for evil polluters, such as the oil companies. If they got coverage at all, it was negative.
Now comes Climategate. It is out of step with the media agenda. What does the media do now?
“Ignore it,” has been the first answer.
Regard it as an unimportant story. Not nearly as important as Tiger Woods or the couple that crashed a White House party. It is just another hacker, and undoubtedly the work of one of those oil company shills. Yes, ignore it. It will fade away.
The second answer: Write about Climategate’s general unimportance and give the parties involved a platform to dismiss the charges. Various outlets took minor steps to cover the story in a limited, dismissive way.
But the major networks stonewalled.
You must know this about the leaked files: While the emails were damning, the real “meat” was in the computer code leaked. Skeptical climate scientists have already studied it; they find it to be an outrageous manipulation that takes real temperature data and converts them into a warming fairytale. This data form the baseline for the research used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This is huge.
Those who counter this argument by saying there are three other databases, and the two that use surface temperatures agree with this data, need to rethink what they are saying. Think about it. The CRU data is scientifically meaningless, and the scientists at the other centers are in constant contact with the scientists at CRU. There is a strong likelihood that the other databases are similarly without scientific merit.
Meanwhile, I am very impressed with the wide-ranging internet coverage of Climategate. It is mostly of excellent quality. Media news editors, producers, columnists, and opinion/editorial page editors all use the internet for ideas and research. This has been a forcing factor to the media, and as a result a few mainstream outlets have picked up on the internet items. The AP has posted some stories.
But still, the television news channels and networks (except for Fox) have ignored the story as well as they can.
While there will be continuing ramifications throughout science and among the researchers and organizations involved, without significant media coverage Climategate will soon fade away. We skeptics will continue to talk about it, but no one will be listening. Things will quiet down to “normal.”
But there is one possibility that could grow Climategate and demand mainstream coverage. That possibility is my hope. I hope the person who leaked the damning files comes out of the shadows and speaks out about the outrage of what is transpiring — after all, that person had to feel strongly enough about it to perform the leak in the first place. And if that person is an important warming scientist, or is accompanied by a prominent warming scientist, that could break Climategate into the headlines.
If Al Gore, Michael Mann, or Jim Hansen were to say it — “I was wrong” — that would be a major mainstream news development. And the global warming frenzy would be dead.
[size=18ClimateGate Could Lead To A Salem Style Witch Trial For Those Who Doubt Global Warming[/size]
Saturday, December 5, 2009
The brewing scandal over ClimateGate has shown that belief in global warming ought to be seen as a religious belief. The increasing doubts about global warming being caused by man may in fact lead to the persecution of those who challenge Liberals about their belief in it.
Remember, Al Gore said denying global warming is like denying the moon landing or that the earth is round.
This sort of attitude seems to be only getting reinforced by believers in global warming and it could cause a modern version of the Salem witch trials to break out. One may be forced to affirm belief in global warming of face dire consequences.
This is beautiful. It is a BBC show with Brit warmist Andrew Watson against American denier Marc Morano. When asked about the email scandal in which the CRU at East Anglia allegedly doctored data to hide the decline in global temperatures, Watson goes with the warmists' standard, "nothing to see here" line while ignoring the facts. Morano is having a great time with the whole thing, as those with moral clarity often do.
Newsbusters has the whole 7 minute clip, which is worth the click, but the money part is here. Note Watson goes from rolling his eyes and telling Morano to "shut up" at about the 1:00 mark to calling him an "a**hole" at about 2:35. Morano just chuckles. Some guys have all the fun.
The Washington Post put ClimateGate on the front page, top left in Saturday’s edition. It’s also the top story at washingtonpost.com. The headline is "In e-mails, science of warming is hot debate." The website summary: "E-mails stolen from British research center show climate-change leaders noting flaws in their own data and seemingly scheming to muzzle critics."
Wow. The story is breaking. Here’s paragraph two of the David Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin story:
Now it has mushroomed into what is being called "Climate-gate," a scandal that has done what many slide shows and public-service ads could not: focus public attention on the science of a warming planet.
Except now, much of that attention is focused on the science's flaws. Leaked just before international climate talks begin in Copenhagen -- the culmination of years of work by scientists to raise alarms about greenhouse-gas emissions -- the e-mails have cast those scientists in a political light and given new energy to others who think the issue of climate change is all overblown.
The e-mails don't say that: They don't provide proof that human-caused climate change is a lie or a swindle.
But they do raise hard questions. In an effort to control what the public hears, did prominent scientists who link climate change to human behavior try to squelch a back-and-forth that is central to the scientific method? Is the science of global warming messier than they have admitted?
Eilperin covered this story before, but it's never been on the front page until now. The alarmist lobby gets plenty of play, but when both sides get play, it seems shocking. After the ClimateGate players defend themselves, it's back to this: Why would scientists hype data?
But recent debate -- some scientists say the Earth hasn't warmed as predicted over the past 10 years -- show that climate science is still science, with researchers drawing different lessons from the same data. The problem is that it plays out before an audience that won't wait for certainty.
Politicians say, " 'We need to reduce the uncertainty,' and I think that's contributed to a certain mind-set where [climate scientists] try to reduce the uncertainty" when they talk about their research, said Judith Curry, chair of the school of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech. "I'm a little bit worried about that political pressure," she said.
Are dissenters muzzled? Yes, even if they don't deny warming caused by humans:
"To me, it's unambiguous . . . humans are altering the climate system," said Roger Pielke Sr., a research scientist at the University of Colorado. "It's just that, it's much more than CO2."
Pielke said his research shows that, in addition to carbon dioxide and other factors, Earth's warming is affected by how people alter the land. When a forest becomes a farm, or a farm becomes a suburb, that changes the amount of heat and moisture coming off the ground, he said.
But Pielke said he has seen some papers rejected and has felt so marginalized that he quit a U.S. panel summing up climate change a few years ago. One of the stolen e-mails seems to confirm the idea that he was being excluded: In 2005, Jones wrote to colleagues about some of Pielke's complaints, "Maybe you'll be able to ignore them?"
"These individuals, who are very sincere in their beliefs, have presumed that that gives them permission to exclude viewpoints that are different from their own," Pielke said.
But the Post makes sure to emphasize that the side they generally favor are not liberals or activists for government intervention, but "top scientists" and "mainstream scienists" -- just like the Post is a top, "mainstream" paper.
Mainstream climate scientists say they have kept an open mind but have rejected papers that lack proper evidence. In Pielke's case, "the literature doesn't show" his ideas about the importance of land use are correct, said Tom Karl, head of the NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.
Top climate scientists say that in recent years most of the new, worthy research has only made the threat of climate change seem bigger and faster.
But the current debate over what's happening to global temperatures shows the noisy, confusing disagreement of scientists trying to make nature make sense.
These are the facts: After an increase in 1998, the world has been historically warm, but its average temperatures have not climbed steadily. Does that mean climate change has stopped?
Many mainstream scientists say no: This is just a tic of nature, as cycles of currents in the Pacific Ocean and a decrease in heat coming off the sun have temporarily dampened warming. Some researchers, though, have said the models -- and, by extension, the human researchers that built them -- could be missing something about how the climate works. That point was made in one stolen e-mail, in which climate researcher Kevin Trenberth wrote it was a "travesty" that models could not explain why the Earth hadn't warmed more.
"We're simply not tracking where the heat is going," said Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
If the objective of conservative media monitors is simply to open a space that forces liberals into a debate, this is a sign of success.
—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.
Climategate: Obama’s Science Adviser Confirms the Scandal — Unintentionally
What a close analysis of Dr. John P. Holdren's statement from December 2 reveals.
December 5, 2009 - by Myron Ebell
When the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing on the state of climate science on December 2, the Republicans were ready to focus it on the Climategate fraud scandal. And the first witness, President Obama’s science adviser, Dr. John P. Holdren, was ready to respond.
Instead of summarizing his written testimony in his oral remarks, Holdren read a prepared statement on Climategate. He said that the controversy involved a “small group of scientists” and was primarily about one temperature dataset. He said that such controversies were not unusual in all branches of science and that they got sorted out through the peer review process and continuing scrutiny. Holdren also said that openness and sharing of data was important, which is why the Obama administration is strongly committed to openness. In the case of the disputed dataset (the “hockey stick” graph), the National Academies of Science (NAS) undertook a thorough review of it and all other similar datasets and concluded that the preponderance of evidence supported the principal conclusion of the research. Holdren concluded by predicting that when the dust settles on this controversy, a very strong scientific consensus on global warming will remain.
Well, that sounds pretty plausible, but anyone who has followed Dr. Holdren’s amazing career knows that he is a master of plausible buncombe that disguises his “outlandish scientific assertions, consistently wrong predictions, and dangerous public policy choices,” as my CEI colleague William Yeatman has put it. Everything that Holdren said in his opening statement is incomplete and misleading. But explaining that is a job for another day. The point is that the alarmist establishment and environmental pressure groups have settled on these talking points in order to try to contain and sanitize the scandal.
When Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and other Republicans on the committee challenged Holdren’s analysis of Climategate, the president’s science adviser responded by repeating that it was just a small group of scientists engaged in some narrow research. Any mistakes or misdeeds on their part couldn’t possibly compromise the scientific consensus, which is as strong as it is vast.
But when asked about some of his own extreme statements and predictions, Holdren replied that scientific research had moved on from the latest UN assessment report in 2007. The most up-to-date scientific research was contained in a report written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists and released last summer. Holdren mentioned and referred to this report, Copenhagen Diagnosis, several times during the course of the hearing.
I remember when Copenhagen Diagnosis came out because nearly every major paper ran a story on it. Global warming is happening even faster than predicted, the impacts are even worse than feared, and that sort of thing. I also remembered that the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis included many of the usual conmen who are at the center of the alarmist scare. So I asked my CEI colleague Julie Walsh to compare the list of authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis with the scientists involved in Climategate.
I’m sure it will come as a shock that the two groups largely overlap. The “small group of scientists” up to their necks in Climategate include 12 of the 26 esteemed scientists who wrote the Copenhagen Diagnosis. Who would have ever guessed that forty-six percent of the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis belong to the Climategate gang? Small world, isn’t it?
Here’s the list of tippity-top scientists who both wrote the authoritative report that Holdren relied on to support his statements and belong to the “small group of scientists” who are now suspected of scientific fraud:
Nathan Bindoff, also a lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (hereafter LA-IPCC FAR)
Peter Cox, also LA-IPCC FAR
David Karoly, also LA-IPCC FAR and the Third Assessment Report (TAR)
Georg Kaser, also LA-IPCC FAR
Michael E. Mann, also LA-IPCC TAR (the hockey stick scandal made him too radioactive to participate in writing FAR)
Stefan Rahmstorf, also LA-IPCC FAR
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, merely “a longstanding member of the IPCC.”
Stephen Schneider, also LA-IPCC FAR, TAR, and the First and Second Assessment Reports (SAR) plus two of the IPCC’s synthesis reports
Steven Sherwood, only a contributing author to IPCC-FAR
Richard C. J. Somerville, co-ordinating LA-PCC FAR
Eric J. Steig, no connection to IPCC listed
Andrew Weaver, also LA-IPCC FAR, TAR, and SAR
In the interests of space, I’ve left out all of their distinguished positions as professors, editors of academic journals, and heads of institutes. You can search for their Climategate emails here.
Then there are those Climategate figures who didn’t help write Climate Diagnosis, but who have been involved in the IPCC assessment reports. Here are three that come to mind:
Phil Jones, contributing author IPCC TAR
Kevin Trenberth, co-ordinating LA-IPCC FAR and SAR, LA-IPCC TAR, and an author of the summaries for policymakers for FAR, TAR, and SAR
Ben Santer, convening LA-IPCC First Assessment Report
Now, I wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions here, but it kind of looks to me like the “small group of scientists” caught out by Climategate are pretty much the same people who make up the vast and strong scientific consensus on global warming and write the official reports that the U.S. and other governments rely on to inform their policy decisions. I’m sure Dr. John P. Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser, has a plausible alternative explanation. He always does.
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: December 5th, 2009
Truth to left-liberals is like garlic to vampires, so I suppose it’s no wonder the world’s watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) have been reacting so badly to Climategate.
A few days ago we had the hugely entertaining spectacle of climate activist Ed Begley Jr losing the plot completely on Fox news. (aka Tofu-crazed Vegan Goes Postal).
Yesterday, I understand, decrepit Politburo chief Gordon Brown decided that climate change sceptics – Does he mean me? He surely does! – were “flat-earthers.” I consider this perhaps the greatest badge of honour of my entire career. It’s like being called a “gibbering lunatic” by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “a dangerous nutcase” by Charles Manson, “a sinister, slippery snake” by Lord Mandelson, “an utter b******” by Joe Stalin.
And now, in case you missed it, I offer some delightful Newsnight footage of a very frustrated Professor Watson from UEA being goaded to the point of rude-wordery by the japesome Marc Morano. These climate fear promoters: they just don’t like it up ‘em!
A climate of doubt: Almost half of Britons believes global warming is NOT caused by man
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:58 AM on 07th December 2009
Almost half of people in Britain believe there is no proof that global warming is caused by humans, according to a new poll.
The survey revealed that 46per cent of those quizzed did not believe mankind was largely responsible for the global temperature rise.
Some 39per cent of those questioned said climate change was not proven to be man-made - and a further 7per cent of pollsters believed that climate change was not taking place at all.
And despite a contrasting message from many governments, less than one in four voters believe climate change is 'the most serious problem faced by man'.
Climate change cost: Emissions rising from Drax Power Station near Selby, Yorkshire. Enviromentalists blame the flooding and extremes of weather Britain is facing on global warming caused by pollution
The poll comes just before a meeting of world leaders next week in Copenhagen with the aim of securing a new deal to tackle rising temperatures.
On the other side were 23per cent of respondents, who said climate change was the most serious problem man faced, and 58per cent who described climbing global temperatures as one of a number of serious problems.
Less than a fifth (17per cent) of those asked in the poll, by ICM for the Sunday Telegraph, said global warming was not a very serious problem.
UN Climate Treaty: A Sneak Attack on Humanity
Written by Alan Caruba, Warning Signs
Sunday, December 06 2009 18:25
It’s ironic that the United Nations Conference on Climate Change began on December 7th. For an aging portion of the U.S. population, December 7, 1941 will always mark the Japanese Empire’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. It drew the U.S. into World War Two.
Humanity has been threatened for decades by the effort of the United Nations, through its environmental program in general and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in particular, to impose an international treaty that would put the UN in charge of all energy use.
The treaty, like the former Kyoto Protocols, would have no basis in science.
The pretext has been that “global warming” is the result of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the Earth to warm exponentially. The IPCC encountered a problem when the planet began to measurably cool beginning in 1998.
Satellite data since then have demonstrated that the average global temperature has been dropping, mostly in response to the Sun whose solar radiation has moved into what is called “a solar minimum”, a reduction in magnetic storms. This is a natural cycle the Sun has gone through many times over the billions of years of the Earth’s existence.
Like an invading army, more than 16,500 of the world’s greatest liars will descend on Copenhagen for what may well be the last attempt by the United Nations to use the “global warming” fraud to alter the economies of industrialized nations in the name of “saving the Earth.”
We now know conclusively that a key element of the fraud, the data put forth by the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, was deliberately falsified. This will test whether the participants in the conference can maintain their massive, international fraud.
If the UN can control energy use, it controls mankind.
The Copenhagen conference has already generated a torrent of green lies from environmental organizations. The fraud-—now dubbed Climategate—-will require the masters of worldwide media to choose between repeating discredited climate lies or to finally report the views of legitimate climate scientists and others that have been repudiating them for decades.
Here are just a few examples of the Climategate propaganda being perpetrated.
Despite the revelations of a massive climate data fraud initially reported on November 20, on November 23, the World Wildlife Fund released a report filled with the usual predictions of climate-related catastrophes, from hurricanes destroying New York to changes in the Asian monsoon patterns.
The World Wildlife Federation announced that it is hosting “Eco-Schools USA” intended to “Green K-12 buildings, grounds and curriculum.” Instead of learning the three R’s, in addition to some real science, groups like the WWF have been steadily indoctrinating young Americans to believe the Earth is doomed.
In November, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a $52,000 grant for projects in which students “will explore their coastal ecosystems” in New Jersey. The projects “emphasize the importance of taking action to protect the environment.” Not much money, but “since 1992, EPA has funded over $45 million in environmental education grants to support more than three thousand projects across the country.” Is this education or indoctrination?
The EPA has gone on record dismissing the revelations of distorted and false climate data used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is moving ahead to produce a finding that would permit the agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions despite ample evidence that it plays no role in climate change. This reflects the effort of environmentalists to control energy use.
A group called Rare Conservation that describes itself as “a leader in local social and behavioral change for global biodiversity conservation” released a statement to the effect that “tropical deforestation is widely believed to be responsible for 15-20% of climate change.” The Washington Post reported their absurd claim that the Earth’s great “carbon sinks”, oceans and forests, will not be able to absorb increased levels of carbon dioxide, though they have been doing this for millennia!
In October, it was reported that “The federal government has paid out billions of dollars to environmental groups for attorney fees and costs, according to data assembled by a Cheyenne, Wyoming lawyer. A review by the attorney, Karen Budd-Falen, revealed that “the government, between 2003 and 2007, paid more than $4.7 billion in taxpayer money to environmental law firms “and that’s just the lawsuits she tracked.”
It is very doubtful that Americans are aware that they have been paying billions for green lawsuits, many of which were intended to stop various forms of development, i.e. jobs, or to encumber agricultural activity.
Who has grown wealthy from the greening of America? In November, the Capitol Research Center compiled a list based on budget figures from environmental groups.
These are groups that have infiltrated the curriculums of the nation’s schools, frightening a generation of children with global warming claims, along with predictions of the extinction of species, rising sea levels to flood cities, and other base nonsense.
These are just a handful of environmental organizations that have grown fat while doing everything they could to slow the U.S. economy by acquiring private property to put it off-limits to mining, drilling, timber, and agricultural use, among others.
These are groups that have lobbied Congress for all manner of legislation and regulations that have encumbered industrial and agricultural development. The “Cap-and-Trade” bill, based on IPCC data, is awaiting a vote in the U.S. Senate. If passed, it would destroy all hope of any economic recovery.
These are groups that signed onto the global warming fraud and whose representatives will be attending the UN Conference on Climate Change.
One thing that does bother me more and more for instance is when I went to a recent peace festival. Someone from the “Friends Of The Earth” stand was trying to tell me and convince me that there are to many people in the world. Which gave me an opportunity to explain that it is not the case and there are more responsible ways.
The great climate change swindle: global warming is not manmade
Published 07 December, 2009, 10:38
Climate change has always existed and humankind does not have the power to affect it insists a critic of global warming theory, Lord Christopher Monckton, on the eve of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
“It is yet another attempt of the governing class of the world to take advantage of the ‘little guy’ to conspire against the governed, to have another excuse for exaggerated levels of taxation, regulation and interference,” blames Monckton.
“There is no scientific basis whatsoever for saying there is a 90% probability that most of the warming of the last 50 years was caused by human kind,” Monckton insists. “The fact is we have no means of knowing what are the influences that cause the climate to fluctuate in the short term upwards or downwards, this is simply beyond our capacity to measure or analyze.”
Speaking about replacing one third of agricultural land which grows food to be used for growing bio-fuels instead, Christopher Monckton reminded that it has led to double food price surge over just one year.
“If we have to pay twice as much for our food – it’s inconvenient. If you are in a poor country – that difference of a 100% in the price of your food is the difference between life and death,” he warns.
Monckton points out that this resulted in major food riots in dozens of countries as a result of the food price rise were hardly reported in the West.
Lord Christopher Monckton promised he would be talking to the Russian delegation at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, despite the fact that current Russian leadership does not get a favorable approach in the British press and explained his position as follows:
“The Russian democracy as we know it is twenty times more democratic than the British democracy has become, because we now have 90% of our laws made for us by the commissars – that is the official German word for the Commissioners of the European Union, whom we do not elect, cannot question, cannot remove and cannot replace. They make 90% of the laws of Britain, But Russia has a Duma, has a Parliament in Russia, which makes 100% of Russia’s laws.”
Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 431 Location: North East England
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 3:12 pm Post subject:
Mr-Bridger wrote:
Almost half of people in Britain believe there is no proof that global warming is caused by humans, according to a new poll.
Their belief is completely correct, even the esteemed IPCC report, with its weasel-words and misleading graphs does not claim there is proof of AGW, it merely states there is a high probability that this is the case.
There were some interesting items in the Times today, notwithstanding the usual 2-3 pages of Green propaganda.....
The arch-villain in the 'Climategate' scandal uses predictable excuses to justify what any fool can see is a blatant twisting of the truth to suit an agenda. Andrew Watson's smugness on Newsnight recently was breathtaking, a prime example of how some 'scientists' (I use the word loosely) seem to think people should just accept their views regardless of real-life data....
Quote:
From the Times
December 8, 2009
Climate change e-mails have been quoted totally out of context
If this was a conspiracy, it wasn’t a very successful one
Andrew Watson
We non-media-savvy scientists at the University of East Anglia have learnt a hard lesson this week — the truth is not enough in the face of a media-savvy enemy.
Character assassination is a purely diversionary tactic, but in the hacked e-mails affair it has been spectacularly successful.
How many of us would emerge unscathed if all our private e-mails over 20 years were opened by someone determined to prove that we were up to no good? The hackers have picked choice phrases out of context — and context is all: without it, these statements look awful. In the one most quoted, the director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones, talks about using a “trick” to “hide the decline”. At first reading, this easily translates as “deceiving [politicians, other scientists, everyone] into believing the world is warming when it is actually cooling”.
But it doesn’t mean that at all. Jones is talking about a line on a graph for the cover of a World Meteorological Organisation report, published in 2000, which shows the results of different attempts to reconstruct temperature over the past 1,000 years. The line represents one particular attempt, using tree-ring data for temperature. The method agrees with actual measurements before about 1960, but diverges from them after that — for reasons only partly understood, discussed in the literature.
The tree-ring measure declines, but the actual temperatures after 1960 go up. They draw the line to follow the tree-ring reconstruction up to 1960 and the measured temperature after that. The notes explain that the data are “reconstructions, along with historical and long instrumental records”. Not very clear perhaps, but not much of a “trick”.
In another e-mail, Jones calls a sceptical research paper “garbage”, and says of this and another, that he “can’t see them being included” in the International Panel on Climate Change report that was being prepared. Such strong reactions are commonplace in academic research. What matters is what actually gets published. Were the papers excluded? No. Both are discussed appropriately in the report. If this was a conspiracy, it was singularly unsuccessful.
Climate sceptics would have us believe that the CRU data is invalid, and that the 20th-century warming is a construct entirely in the minds of a few scientists. This point of view surely has difficulty explaining why Arctic sea ice is declining and glaciers are retreating so rapidly, and why spring arrives earlier and autumn later than 50 years ago.
Andrew Watson is Royal Society Research Professor at the University of East Anglia
More interestingly, the paper also chose to print a number of sceptic letters on AGW, given that the Times has completely fallen in with the mainstream media ploy of massive attempted brainwashing on this subject, its a surprising move on their part to say the least. Is it indicative of disbelief in the majority of the population....? In any case, the writers have some very valid points to make.
Quote:
From The Times
December 8, 0009
Questioning scientists over climate evidence
Despite the inexorable rise in CO2 concentrations, the past decade has witnessed no warming
Sir, Cries of “foul” by Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, over the theft of e-mails, only serves to underline the perception of arrogance surrounding the global warming lobby (“Climate scientists’ e-mail was hacked ‘by professional in an attempt to sabotage summit’,” Dec 7).
He should be asking why it appears to have been necessary for the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit to apparently massage its figures. Whether or not data was twisted there was no excuse for the unit not putting its findings in the public domain — the reason it became the target of hackers in the first place. The unit, which is funded by interested parties, has reinforced science’s “we know best” perception by refusing open debate.
Instead of whingeing, Mr van Ypersele should concentrate on explaining the unpublished and hacked data.
Peter Pallot
London W6
Sir, In January 1661 Samuel Pepys wrote: “It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all; but the ways are dusty, and the flyes fly up and down, and the rose-bushes are full of leaves, such a time of the year as was never known in this world before here.”
One hundred years later there were fairs on the Thames, it had frozen so thickly. So, I am not denying climate change. It is the cause that I query and when people stop questioning science, science is dead.
Bob Gardiner
Kirkbymoorside, N Yorks
Sir, The description of the warming effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is as thorough and meticulous as you would expect from seven distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society (letter, Dec 7).
As they explain, extra greenhouse gases warm the Earth and the only question is by how much. That, indeed, is the crunch question. Some physicists and meteorologists have argued that it is not a linear process — more CO2, more warming. Other feedback mechanisms — cloud cover is just one — may intervene to cast doubts on predictions. Despite the inexorable rise in CO2 concentrations, the past decade has witnessed no warming.
The matter may not be as entirely “settled” as we are asked to believe.
P.S. Anyone interested in the paleo-history of climate change might want to watch the new series 'Man on Earth', which is excellent and puts the minute climate changes supposedly caused by man into their hisorical context.
I recently had a lengthy debate (on another forum ) with a pro-AGWer who took the line that climate change only occurred very slowly in the past. He took this line despite the evidence that a more than 1 degree change in temperature took place in the 14th Century, according to some pro-AGWers this is impossible without mans malign influence, wait until they see evidence that changes of 10 degrees occurred over a few decades in the distant past, its no wonder many of their graphs start only in 1750......
I recently had a lengthy debate (on another forum Embarassed ) with a pro-AGWer who took the line that climate change only occurred very slowly in the past. He took this line despite the evidence that a more than 1 degree change in temperature took place in the 14th Century, according to some pro-AGWers this is impossible without mans malign influence, wait until they see evidence that changes of 10 degrees occurred over a few decades in the distant past, its no wonder many of their graphs start only in 1750......
that climate change only occurred very slowly in the past.
Last Ice Age happened in less than year say scientists
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech/Last-Ice-Age-happened-in.4351045.jp _________________ "Soon after the year 2000 has been written, a law will go forth from America whose purpose will be to suppress all individual thinking. This will not be the wording of the law, but it will be the intent" Rudolf Steiner: Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes in Menschengeiste (The Present and the Past in the Human Spirit)
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 10:01 pm Post subject:
The UN climate talks in Copenhagen descended into acrimony overnight after the leaking of a draft "Copenhagen Agreement" that would require developing countries to take on targets as the world cut emissions in half by 2050.
Drafted by the Danish Government after talks with the so-called "circle of commitment", including Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the document said global emissions should peak by the end of next decade but did not include any emissions targets for 2020 or specific proposals for the creation of a green fund to help the most vulnerable. Control of climate change finance would be passed to the World Bank.
Angry developing countries said the document was the work of rich nations who wanted to abandon the existing Kyoto Protocol, which is not mentioned in the draft, and its principle of only industrialised nations taking on emissions targets due to their historic responsibility for climate change.
It prompted a furious rebuke to rich nations from China. In a surreal press conference in a cramped room next to the Chinese delegation office, chief negotiator Su Wei claimed he was unaware of the leaked Danish proposal that had hijacked the mood of the convention centre while attacking the European Union, Japan and the US for claiming they were acting on climate change while doing very little.
In a detailed analysis of the flaws of rich nations' 2020 targets, he said Europe had already done more to limit emissions under the flawed Kyoto Protocol than it proposed to under a Copenhagen pact, Japan's proposed 25 per cent cut was meaningless because it had set conditions that would never be met and the US had promised a "remarkable and notable" emissions target but proposed only a provisional 1 per cent cut below 1990 levels.
"I'm not very good at English, but I doubt whether just a 1 per cent reduction can be described as remarkable or notable," he said.
He said the US $10 billion annual green fund that was won wide support at the conference and is included in the draft Danish Agreement worked out to just $2 per person across the planet - not enough to buy a coffee in Copenhagen, or a coffin. "Climate change is a life and death issue," he said.
Aid agencies and environment groups said the Danish proposal undermined the two-week UN negotiations as it had been pulled together by only a handful of countries.
The head of the WWF's global climate initiative, Kim Carstensen, said it was a distraction from getting a strong deal.
"The behind-the-scenes negotiations tactics ... have been focusing on pleasing the rich and powerful countries," he said.
But Climate Institute policy director Erwin Jackson said the draft could provide the basis for an agreement on an ambitious climate deal if widely backed. He was critical that it did not include emissions targets and financing figures.
"The principle concern is that the text does not provide a timeline to finalise a new treaty to avoid dangerous climate change and drive new investments and jobs in the clean energy economy. Australia needs to ensure we have a clear mandate for a new treaty by the middle of 2010," he said.
The Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy denied in a statement that the document was a "secret Danish draft". "Such a text does not exist. In this kind of process, many different working papers are circulated among many different parties with their hands on the process ... therefore, many papers exist."
Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 431 Location: North East England
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 11:24 pm Post subject:
Andrew. wrote:
10 degrees occurred
Why do you believe that ?
Paleo-historical evidence? See also the article posted by Husq above, or any reasonable anthropological text. I don't really see any reason to disbelieve it, I can however see why CRU scientists may have been troubled by the medieval warm period, which is very well documented.
Once an alternative view is allowed, the belief in the gigantic scam falls away!
Quote:
Americans' belief in warming falls
WASHINGTON
December 9, 2009
AMERICANS who think global warming is caused by human activity, including vehicle and industrial emissions, are a minority for the first time in nearly two years, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.
Only 45 per cent of the 1041 adults surveyed on December 2-3 believed global warming was a proven fact and mostly caused by human activity, down from 56 per cent in October 2007, the survey, released on Monday, found.
By comparison, Americans who believe global warming is caused by natural changes unrelated to man have increased to 22 per cent from 20 per cent two years ago, and those who believe global warming is a yet unproven theory grew to 31 per cent from 23 per cent.
Regarding how the US should tackle global warming, 58 per cent of those surveyed said it should cut carbon dioxide emissions unilaterally, down from 66 per cent in October 2007.
Those who thought the US should cut such emissions only if other countries also did so remained virtually unchanged at 17 per cent, from 16 per cent two years ago. But those who said carbon emissions should not be cut regardless of what the rest of the world does jumped to 24 per cent, from 15 per cent two years ago. AFP
Only 45 per cent of the 1041 adults surveyed on December 2-3 believed global warming was a proven fact and mostly caused by human activity, down from 56 per cent in October 2007.
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) with a pro-AGWer who took the line that climate change only occurred very slowly in the past. He took this line despite the evidence that a more than 1 degree change in temperature took place in the 14th Century, according to some pro-AGWers this is impossible without mans malign influence, wait until they see evidence that changes of 10 degrees occurred over a few decades in the distant past, its no wonder many of their graphs start only in 1750......