Lord Monckton reports on Pachauri’s eye opening Copenhagen presentation
17/12/2009
From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Copenhagen
In the Grand Ceremonial Hall of the University of Copenhagen, a splendid Nordic classical space overlooking the Church of our Lady in the heart of the old city, rows of repellent, blue plastic chairs surrounded the podium from which no less a personage than Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was to speak.
I had arrived in good time to take my seat among the dignitaries in the front row. Rapidly, the room filled with enthusiastic Greenies and enviro-zombs waiting to hear the latest from ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac, yea verily.
The official party shambled in and perched on the blue plastic chairs next to me. Pachauri was just a couple of seats away, so I gave him a letter from me and Senator Fielding of Australia, pointing out that the headline graph in the IPCC’s 2007 report, purporting to show that the rate of warming over the past 150 years had itself accelerated, was fraudulent.
Would he use the bogus graph in his lecture? I had seen him do so when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales. I watched and waited.
Sure enough, he used the bogus graph. I decided to wait until he had finished, and ask a question then.
Pachauri then produced the now wearisome list of lies, fibs, fabrications and exaggerations that comprise the entire case for alarm about “global warming”. He delivered it in a tired, unenthusiastic voice, knowing that a growing majority of the world’s peoples – particularly in those countries where comment is free – no longer believe a word the IPCC says.
They are right not to believe. Science is not a belief system. But here is what Pachauri invited the audience in Copenhagen to believe.
1. Pachauri asked us to believe that the IPCC’s documents were “peer-reviewed”. Then he revealed the truth by saying that it was the authors of the IPCC’s climate assessments who decided whether the reviewers’ comments were acceptable. That – whatever else it is – is not peer review.
2. Pachauri said that greenhouse gases had increased by 70% between 1970 and 2004. This figure was simply nonsense. I have seen this technique used time and again by climate liars. They insert an outrageous statement early in their presentations, see whether anyone reacts and, if no one reacts, they know they will get away with the rest of the lies. I did my best not to react. I wanted to hear, and write down, the rest of the lies.
3. Next came the bogus graph, which is featured three times, large and in full color, in the IPCC’s 2007 climate assessment report. The graph is bogus not only because it relies on the made-up data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia but also because it is overlain by four separate trend-lines, each with a start-date carefully selected to give the entirely false impression that the rate of warming over the past 150 years has itself been accelerating, especially between 1975 and 1998. The truth, however – neatly obscured by an ingenious rescaling of the graph and the superimposition of the four bogus trend lines on it – is that from 1860-1880 and again from 1910-1940 the warming rate was exactly the same as the warming rate from 1975-1998.
4. Pachauri said that there had been an “acceleration” in sea-level rise from 1993. He did not say, however, that in 1993 the method of measuring sea-level rise had switched from tide-gages to satellite altimetry against a reference geoid. The apparent increase in the rate of sea-level rise is purely an artefact of this change in the method of measurement.
5. Pachauri said that Arctic temperatures would rise twice as fast as global temperatures over the next 100 years. However, he failed to point out that the Arctic was actually 1-2 Celsius degrees warmer than the present in the 1930s and early 1940s. It has become substantially cooler than it was then.
6. Pachauri said the frequency of heavy rainfall had increased. The evidence for this proposition is largely anecdotal. Since there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for 15 years, there is no reason to suppose that any increased rainfall in recent years is attributable to “global warming”.
7. Pachauri said that the proportion of tropical cyclones that are high-intensity storms has increased in the past three decades. However, he was very careful not to point out that the total number of intense tropical cyclones has actually fallen sharply throughout the period.
8. Pachauri said that the activity of intense Atlantic hurricanes had increased since 1970. This is simply not true, but it appears to be true if – as one very bad scientific paper in 2006 did – one takes the data back only as far as that year. Take the data over the whole century, as one should, and no trend whatsoever is evident. Here, Pachauri is again using the same statistical dodge he used with the UN’s bogus “warming-is-getting-worse” graph: he is choosing a short run of data and picking his start-date with care so as falsely to show a trend that, over a longer period, is not significant.
9. Pachauri said small islands like the Maldives were vulnerable to sea-level rise. Not if they’re made of coral, which is more than capable of outgrowing any sea-level rise. Besides, as Professor Morner has established, sea level in the Maldives is no higher now than it was 1250 years ago, and has not risen for half a century.
10. Pachauri said that if the ice-sheets of Greenland or West Antarctica were to melt there would be “meters of sea-level rise”. Yes, but his own climate panel has said that that could not happen for thousands of years, and only then if global mean surface temperatures stayed at least 2 C (3.5 F) warmer than today’s.
11. Pachauri said that if temperatures rose 2 C (3.5 F) 20-30% of all species would become extinct. This, too, is simply nonsense. For most of the past 600 million years, global temperatures have been 7 C (13.5 F) warmer than today, and yet here we all are. One has only to look at the number of species living in the tropics and the number living at the Poles to work out that warmer weather will if anything increase the number and diversity of species on the planet. There is no scientific basis whatsoever for Pachauri’s assertion about mass extinctions. It is simply made up.
12. Pachauri said that “global warming” would mean “lower quantities of water”. Not so. It would mean larger quantities of water vapor in the atmosphere, hence more rain. This is long-settled science – but, then, Pachauri is a railroad engineer.
13. Pachauri said that by 2100 100 million people would be displaced by rising sea levels. Now, where did we hear that figure before? Ah, yes, from the ludicrous Al Gore and his sidekick Bob Corell. There is no truth in it at all. Pachauri said he was presenting the results of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report. It is quite plain: the maximum possible rate of sea-level rise is put at just 2 ft, with a best estimate of 1 ft 5 in. Sea level is actually rising at around 1 ft/century. That is all.
14. Pachauri said that he had seen for himself the damage done in Bangladesh by sea-level rise. Just one problem with that. There has been no sea-level rise in Bangladesh. At all. In fact, according to Professor Moerner, who visited it recently and was the only scientist on the trip to calibrate his GPS altimeter properly by taking readings at two elevations at least 10 meters apart, sea level in Bangladesh has actually fallen a little, which is why satellite images show 70,000 sq. km more land area there than 30 years ago. Pachauri may well have seen some coastal erosion: but that was caused by the imprudent removal of nine-tenths of the mangroves in the Sunderban archipelago to make way for shrimp-farms.
15. Pachauri said we could not afford to delay reducing carbon emissions even by a year, or disaster would result. So here’s the math. There are 388 ppmv of CO2 in the air today, rising at 2 ppmv/year over the past decade. So an extra year with no action at all would warm the world by just 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.024 C, or less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree. And only that much on the assumption that the UN’s sixfold exaggeration of CO2’s true warming potential is accurate, which it is not. Either way, we can afford to wait a couple of decades to see whether anything like the rate of warming predicted by the UN’s climate panel actually occurs.
16. Pachauri said that the cost of mitigating carbon emissions would be less than 3% of gross domestic product by 2030. The only economist who thinks that is Lord Stern, whose laughable report on the economics of climate change, produced for the British Government, used a near-zero discount rate so as artificially to depress the true cost of trying to mitigate “global warming”. To reduce “global warming” to nothing, one must close down the entire global economy. Any lesser reduction is a simple fraction of the entire economy. So cutting back, say, 50% of carbon emissions by 2030, which is what various extremist groups here are advocating, would cost around 50% of GDP, not 3%.
17. Pachauri said that solar and wind power provided more jobs per $1 million invested than coal. Maybe they do, but that is a measure of their relative inefficiency. The correct policy would be to raise the standard of living of the poorest by letting them burn as much fossil fuels as they need to lift them from poverty. Anything else is organized cruelty.
18. Pachauri said we could all demonstrate our commitment to Saving The Planet by eating less meat. The Catholic Church has long extolled the virtues of mortification of the flesh: we generally ate fish on Fridays in the UK, until the European Common Fisheries Policy meant there were no more fish. But the notion that going vegan will make any measurable impact on global temperatures is simply fatuous.
It is time for Railroad Engineer Pachauri to get back to his signal-box. About the climate, as they say in New York’s Jewish quarter, he knows from nothing.
Exclusive: Lead Author Admits Deleting Inconvenient Opinions From IPCC Report
Global Warming Profiteers Exposed On National Television as Ventura Show Blows Giant Hole In Climate Change Fraud
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, Thursday, December 17, 2009
The latest installment of Jesse Ventura’s highly successful Conspiracy Theory show exposed millions of viewers on national TV last night to the climate change fraud, blowing a giant hole in the global warming scam by exposing how its adherents comprise wealthy industrialists making billions in profits by fearmongering about the environment.
Ventura and his team attempted to track down the key architects of the scheme, a search which led them to Beijing China and the heavily guarded residence of global warming pioneer and billionaire Maurice Strong.
The show lifts the lid on how the very same alarmists pushing the threat of climate change are profiting in the billions from carbon trading systems in which they have a huge personal stake.
The most damning part of the program is when Ben Santer, a climate researcher and lead IPCC author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC Working Group I Report, admits that he deleted sections of the IPCC chapter which stated that humans were not responsible for climate change.
Accusing Santer of altering opinions in the IPCC report that disagreed with the man-made thesis behind climate change, Lord Monckton told the program, “In comes Santer and re-writes it for them, after the scientists have sent in their finalized draft, and that finalized draft said at five different places, there is no discernable human effect on global temperature – I’ve seen a copy of this – Santer went through, crossed out all of those and substituted a new conclusion, and this has been the official conclusion ever since.”
“Lord Monckton points to deletions from the chapter, and there were deletions from the chapter, to be consistent with the other chapters we dropped the summary at the end,” Santer admits to the program.
Commenting on The Alex Jones Show today, Lord Monckton said that this was the first time Santer had publicly admitted to deleting the information.
Santer was intimately involved in the Climategate email scandal, communicating with other IPCC-affiliated scientists who conspired to “hide the decline” in global warming.
Does Santer’s shocking admission that he deleted the opinions of scientists who stated that human activity did not cause global warming from a key IPCC report represent Climategate 2?
One of the most insightful moments in the show arrives when Amit Chatterjee, CEO of Hara, a company that sells carbon credits, is confronted with the fact that his business is bankrolled by an investment firm partnered with Al Gore.
After admitting that the “carbon market” will be worth a trillion dollars by 2015, and that his company will rake in billions, but then denying that he will profit from lobbying for cap and trade laws as well as any link to Al Gore, Chatterjee is confronted by Ventura.
“We don’t have any direct relationship with Al Gore,” claims Chatterjee, despite a June 2009 Reuters report headlined, Gore-backed Hara sees profit from low-carbon economy.
“Hara, a 25-employee company that debuted in 2008, provides online software to help companies reduce their carbon footprint — a $2.5 billion market that will grow 10-fold if the proposed energy bill, which will require companies to get permits for emissions, becomes law, Chief Executive Amit Chatterjee said,” states the report.
The Reuters report states that Hara is “An environmental start-up backed by Al Gore’s venture capital firm.”
Ventura challenges Chatterjee on his denial of a connection with Al Gore, at which point Chatterjee’s slick demeanor changes to that of a deer trapped in the headlights.
“No relationship with Al Gore? Let him tell that to me,” comments Ventura. Chatterjee then becomes evasive and refuses to comment when Ventura points out that Chatterjee’s company will make a fortune as a result of Al Gore’s lobbying for cap and trade to be passed. Ventura makes Chatterjee look like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Maybe they never met at the company picnic, but Al Gore owns a piece of his business,” comments Ventura, “He makes sure they make payroll.”
The trail then leads to Maurice Strong, “the world’s leading environmentalist, who just happens to be a billionaire industrialist.”
As we have documented, Maurice Strong, who is regularly credited as founding father of the modern environmental movement, serves on the board of directors of The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Strong was a leading initiate of the Earth Summit in the early 90s, where the theory of global warming caused by CO2 generated by human activity was most notably advanced.
By using his considerable wealth and influence to lobby for cap and trade and a tax on CO2 emissions, Strong stands to enrich his company’s coffers to the tune of trillions if a binding agreement on carbon dioxide is formulated in Copenhagen.
Strong and his close ally Al Gore come from a stable of elite groups that have long sought to use the environmental movement to advance their agendas.
Strong, who was groomed by David Rockefeller to eventually serve as Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, is also a member of the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Club of Rome.
In their 1991 report, The First Global Revolution, the Club of Rome, a powerful globalist NGO committed to limiting growth and bringing in a post-industrial society, conspired to exploit fears about the environment to make humans the enemy so they could usher in a global government.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself,” states the report.
Ventura and his team are unable to confront Strong, as he remains ensconced in his heavily guarded Beijing residence, but they do talk to whistleblower George Hunt, an official with the World Wilderness Conference who worked with Strong in 1987. Hunt tells Ventura that Strong is one of the leading conspirators behind a plot on behalf of aristocratic billionaires to use global warming as a justification for a one world bank, a global currency and a global government – which is exactly what’s unfolding right now in Copenhagen with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon insisting that global governance will be imposed to enforce CO2 regulations.
Ventura concludes the show by stating that global warming is a fear tactic invented to control people and make trillions in profit. Ventura signs off by stating that people who preach the global warming gospel, “Are not out to save the world – they’re out to run it.”
Watch the entirety of last night’s show via You Tube below.
The show’s riveting investigative-style approach to the subject matter has attracted droves of viewers for the series. The premiere episode of Ventura’s new show, aired earlier this month, was watched by 1.6 million viewers, truTV’s biggest audience ever for a new series launch.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Scientists Considered Pouring Soot Over the Arctic in the 1970s to Help Melt the Ice - In Order to Prevent Another Ice Age
(Environmentalists: Kindly start by reading the end notes to see my background and why I am writing this)
On April 28, 1975, Newsweek wrote an article stating:
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
Here is a reprint of the article in the Washington Times, and here is a copy of the 1975 Newsweek article.
Why were scientists considering melting the arctic ice cap?
Because they were worried about a new ice age.
Newsweek discussed the 1975 article in 2006:
In April, 1975 ... NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production." Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling...
Citizens can judge for themselves what constitutes a prudent response-which, indeed, is what occurred 30 years ago. All in all, it's probably just as well that society elected not to follow one of the possible solutions mentioned in the NEWSWEEK article: to pour soot over the Arctic ice cap, to help it melt.
Newsweek was not alone. Some scientists and the press have been warning about an ice age off and on for over 100 years.
For example, on February 24, 1895, the New York Times published an article entitled "PROSPECTS OF ANOTHER GLACIAL PERIOD; Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again", which starts with the following paragraph:
The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.
In September 1958, Harper's wrote an article called "The Coming Ice Age".
On January 11, 1970, the Washington Post wrote an article entitled "Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age - Scientists See Ice Age In the Future" which stated:
Get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters--the worst may be yet to come. That's the long-long-range weather forecast being given out by "climatologists." the people who study very long-term world weather trends.
In 1972, two scientists - George J. Kukla (of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory) and R. K. Matthews (Chairman, Dept of Geological Sciences, Brown University) - wrote the following letter to President Nixon warning of the possibility of a new ice age:
Dear Mr. President:
Aware of your deep concern with the future of the world, we feel obliged to inform you on the results of the scientific conference held here recently. The conference dealt with the past and future changes of climate and was attended by 42 top American and European investigators. We enclose the summary report published in Science and further publications are forthcoming in Quaternary Research.
The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.
The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on recent studies of deep sea sediments.
Existing data still do not allow forecast of the precise timing of the predicted development, nor the assessment of the man’s interference with the natural trends. It could not be excluded however that the cooling now under way in the Northern Hemisphere is the start of the expected shift. The present rate of the cooling seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century, if continuing at the present pace.
The practical consequences which might be brought by such developments to existing social institution are among others:
(1) Substantially lowered food production due to the shorter growing seasons and changed rain distribution in the main grain producing belts of the world, with Eastern Europe and Central Asia to be first affected.
(2) Increased frequency and amplitude of extreme weather anomalies such as those bringing floods, snowstorms, killing frosts, etc.
With the efficient help of the world leaders, the research …
With best regards,
George J. Kukla (Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory)
R. K. Matthews (Chairman, Dept of Geological Sciences, Brown U)
The White House assigned the task of looking at the claims contained in the letter to its science agencies, especially the National Science Foundation and NOAA, who engaged in a flurry of activity looking into the threat of an ice age.
On August 1, 1974 the White House wrote a letter to Secretary of Commerce Frederick Dent stating:
Changes in climate in recent years have resulted in unanticipated impacts on key national programs and policies. Concern has been expressed that recent changes may presage others. In order to assess the problem and to determine what concerted action ought to be undertaken, I have decided to establish a subcommittee on Climate Change.
Out of this concern, the U.S. government started monitoring climate.
As NOAA scientists Robert W. Reeves, Daphne Gemmill, Robert E. Livezey, and James Laver point out:
There were also a number of short-term climate events of national and international consequence in the early 1970s that commanded a certain level of attention in Washington. Many of them were linked to the El Niño of 1972-1973.
A killing winter freeze followed by a severe summer heat wave and drought produced a 12 percent shortfall in Russian grain production in 1972. The Soviet decision to offset the losses by purchase abroad reduced world grain reserves and helped drive up food prices.
Collapse of the Peruvian anchovy harvest in late 1972 and early 1973, related to fluctuations in the Pacific ocean currents and atmospheric circulation, impacted world supplies of fertilizer, the soybean market, and prices of all other protein feedstocks.
The anomalously low precipitation in the U.S. Pacific north-west during the winter of 1972-73 depleted reservoir storage by an amount equivalent to more than 7 percent of the electric energy requirements for the region.
On June 24, 1974, Time Magazine wrote an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" which stated:
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere ...
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
(here's the printer-friendly version).
Science News wrote an article in 1975 called "Chilling Possibilities" warning of a new ice age.
A January 1975 article from the New York Times warned:
The most drastic potential change considered in the new report (by the National Academy of Sciences) is an abrupt end to the present interglacial period of relative warmth that has governed the planet's climate for the past 10,000 years.
A May 21, 1975 article in the New York Times again stated:
Sooner or later a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable.
A 1994 Time article entitled "The Ice Age Cometh?" stated:
What ever happened to global warming? Scientists have issued apocalyptic warnings for years, claiming that gases from cars, power plants and factories are creating a greenhouse effect that will boost the temperature dangerously over the next 75 years or so. But if last week is any indication of winters to come, it might be more to the point to start worrying about the next Ice Age instead. After all, human-induced warming is still largely theoretical, while ice ages are an established part of the planet's history. The last one ended about 10,000 years ago; the next one -- for there will be a next one -- could start tens of thousands of years from now. Or tens of years. Or it may have already started.
Note 1: I have an extensive background working to preserve natural areas and reduce urban pollution. I studied global warming at a top university in the early 1980's. I was taught - as Al Gore was taught in college - that temperatures are directly correlated with CO2 levels.
Note 2: I not only do not receive a penny from oil or any other energy, industry or political person or organization of any nature whatsoever (I make a few peanuts from ads on this site, which I do not choose, but are selected without my input by my ad service), I am also wholly and completely against big oil, big coal and big nuclear. As I have repeatedly argued, power should be taken away from the oil giants and decentralized. I have repeatedly argued for microgeneration and for alternative energy. These things are beneficial for a number of reasons - including better health, less corruption of our political systems through decentralization of power, and a boost to our economy - in addition to whatever climate benefits they may have.
Note 3: One of the main reasons for writing this essay is to point out that we must make sure that our "solutions" are not more dangerous than the problems themselves. For example, the Washington Post noted that the government forced a switch from one type of chemical to another because it was believed the first was enlarging the ozone hole. However, according to the Post, the chemical which the government demanded be used instead is 4,470 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Currently, "government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth's upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of 'global warming.' " Others are currently suggesting cutting down trees and burying them. Other ways to geoengineer the planet are being proposed.
And Noam Chomsky has said that he would submit to fascism if it would help combat global warming:
Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something.
Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we'd probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I'd even agree to it, because there's just no other alternatives right now." (page 388).
Are those ideas any better than pouring soot on the North Pole?
Our primary responsibility must be to ensure that we are not doing more harm than good.
Note 4: Given that scientists considered pouring soot on the North Pole to melt the ice in the 1970's, it should come as no surprise that soot may be having a dramatic effect on the ice sheets and glaciers now.
Note 5: Some global warming advocates warn that a warming-induced shut down of the huge ocean current known as the thermohaline circulation could cause a new ice age in certain limited parts of the world that are warmed by the by the North Atlantic current, such as Iceland, Ireland, the Nordic countries, and Britain. But scientists in the 1970s were talking about something different: the start of a worldwide ice age due, for example, to a 100,000 year cycle in solar radiation hitting the Earth.
Note 6: For further information on the swing between warnings of ice ages and runaway global warming, see this and this. I have verified all of the facts made in the main post above, but I have not yet verified all of the claims made in the last two aforementioned web pages.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Non-Binding "Sham Agreement" Reached At Copenhagen. “Rich Countries ... Sought to Bribe and Bully Developing Nations"
An agreement - of sorts - was reached at Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen Accord is not legally binding and - apparently - does not specify either target emission reductions or monetary contributions of various countries. Here is a copy of the actual Copenhagen Accord (notice that the Appendices for target emissions and monetary contributions are blank).
Friends of the Earth says of the Copenhagen Accord:
Climate negotiations in Copenhagen have yielded a sham agreement with no real requirements for any countries. This is not a strong deal or a just one -- it isn't even a real one. It's just repackaging old positions and pretending they're new.
A Greenpeace representative said:
This latest draft is so weak as to be meaningless.
And a representative of the anti-poverty group, World Development Movement said:
This summit has been in complete disarray from start to finish, and now appears to be culminating in a shameful and monumental failure ... The leaders of rich countries have refused to lead and instead sought to bribe and bully developing nations ...
By the time they try to continue the scam so many people will have woken up to the gigantic lie they will be laughed from public view. This whole charade has been an embarrassment to the human condition.
Disappearing sunspots may signal end to global warming
December 16, 5:38 PMSeminole County Environmental News
Oh, where, oh where have all the sunspots gone?
The fiery orange ball overhead has quieted during the past three years. Quiet in the sense that there have been very few sunspots – those black blotches on the sun’s surface caused by intense magnetic activity.
But just how quiet is quiet? Well, so far during the recent solar minimum (a period of low activity during the sun’s typical 11-year solar cycle), we’ve seen 183 sun-spotless days in 2007, 266 in 2008 and 259 in 2009 (as of Dec. 16 2009). Earth hasn’t witnessed a similar three-year stretch (1911, 192, 1913) of sun-spotless days since the early 1900s.
The blank sun has not gone unnoticed by the experts. "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
"This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
So why are sunspots under the spotlight? Because, according to solar scientists, their declining numbers, significant even by solar-minimum standards, could be the harbinger of colder temperatures ahead.
If so, it won’t be the first time the earth shivered as sunspots numbers declined. In the 17th century, the sun experienced a sunspot drought, dubbed the Maunder Minimum, which lasted 70 years – from 1645 until 1715. Astronomers at the time counted only a few dozen sunspots per year, thousands fewer than usual.
As sunspots vanished temperatures fell. The River Thames in London froze, sea ice was reported along the coasts of southeast England, and ice floes blocked many harbors. Agricultural production nose-dived as growing seasons grew shorter, leading to lower crop yields, food shortages and famine.
Canadian author and National Post environmental columnist Lawrence Solomon describes the period:
“Glaciers advanced rapidly in Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and North America, making vast tracts of land uninhabitable. The Arctic pack ice extended so far south that several reports describe Eskimos landing their kayaks in Scotland. Finland’s population fell by one-third, Iceland’s by half, the Viking colonies in Greenland [yes, it was once green, with forests and pastureland] were abandoned altogether, as were many Inuit communities. The cold in North America spread so far south that, in the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, enabling people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island.”
Is mankind headed for another cool-down or big freeze? Based on recent scientific findings, it might be a possibility. A Danish research team led by Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen, has discovered a strong correlation between sunspot activity, galactic cosmic rays and variations in the earth’s climate, a theory (supported by experiments) that challenges the prevailing concept of human-induced climate change, popularly known as anthropogenic global warming.
Henrik and his team have discovered that increased solar activity in the form of sunspots, flares and other disturbances generate solar winds that strengthen the magnetic fields surrounding earth, creating a bubble that suppresses cosmic ray penetration, inhibiting cloud formation and causing warming.
Conversely, when solar activity diminishes, the protective magnetic bubble weakens and more cosmic rays penetrate the earth’s atmosphere. The high-energy particles serve as host nuclei around which water vapor can condense and form droplets, resulting in more cloud cover and precipitation. Temperatures begin to fall as the clouds reflect more sunlight back into space.
“Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy,” says Ed Smith, NASA’s Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere [earth’s protective bubble] will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system.”
If Svensmark and other climate scientists are correct, the decline in solar activity may be responsible for the recent fall in global temperatures. In 1998, global temperatures at the earth’s surface began leveling off and have actually declined slightly since 2001, despite an increase in CO2 levels, calling into question the accuracy of climate models that predict catastrophic global warming.
The decade-long cool-down is clearly visible in satellite temperature measurements, which are widely viewed as more accurate than land-based temperatures readings, according to Dr. David Evans, who was a researcher with the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1995 to 2005. Such readings, he says, are often skewed by what is called the “urban heat island” effect, which articially elevates temperatures.
“NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling,” says Evans. “The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.”
As Svensmark observes:
“In fact, global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the [global warming] projections of future climate are unreliable.”
If what Svensmark and other researchers say is true, it is very likely that when the heated debate between global warmers and global-warming skeptics finally ends, cooler heads may ultimately prevail.
Climategate: the lawyers move in – those scientists are toast!
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: December 15th, 2009
God bless America and – can I really be saying this? – God bless the legal profession! Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, most of the world’s other governments (save the plucky Canucks), the United Nations and the Mainstream Media (MSM) to sweep Climategate under the carpet, the lawyers are putting this shoddy scandal where it belongs: in the dock. (Hat tip: Platosays)
The US Department of Energy (DOE) – under pressure, most likely, from Senator Inhofe – has issued a “Litigation Hold Notice” to its various sub-departments asking them to retain any documents pertaining to the Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia. Below – reports Watts Up With That - is a copy of the notice sent to the DOE’s Savannah office in South Carolina:
“December 14, 2009
DOE Litigation Hold Notice
DOE-SR has received a “Litigation Hold Notice” from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Council and the DOE Office of Inspector General regarding the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, records, data, correspondence, notes, and other materials, whether official or unofficial, original or duplicative, drafts or final versions, partial or complete that may relate to the global warming, including, but not limited to, the contract files, any related correspondence files, and any records, including emails or other correspondence, notes, documents, or other material related to this contract, regardless of its location or medium on which it is stored. In other words, please preserve any and all documents relevant to “global warming, the Climate Research Unit at he University of East Anglia In England, and/or climate change science.”
What does it mean? Big, BIG trouble for the Climategate scientists is what it means. You don’t mess with US lawyers and the reason that what might seem an essentially British affair comes under their jurisdiction is because the DOE has provided funding for these scientists.
Here’s one example from the Climategate files:
From: Ben Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: lbutler@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: averaging
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:08:14 -0800
Reply-to: santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, kevin trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
<x-flowed>
Dear Lisa,
That’s great news! I’ve confirmed with DOE that I can use up to $10,000 of my DOE Fellowship to provide financial support for Tom’s Symposium. I will check with Anjuli Bamzai at DOE to determine whether there are any strings attached to this money. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to use the DOE money for the Symposium dinner, and to defray some of the travel expenses of international participants who can’t come up with their own travel money. I’ll try to resolve this question in the next few days.
Mmm. I expect you can buy quite a nice no-strings dinner for $10,000.
And here’s another one of the Climategate emails from Dr Phil Jones.
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: “Neville Nicholls” <N.Nicholls@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: RE: Misc
Date: Wed Jul 6 15:07:45 2005
Neville,
Mike’s response could do with a little work, but as you say he’s got the tone almost dead on. I hope I don’t get a call from congress ! I’m hoping that no-one there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last 25 years.
I’ll send on one other email received for interest.
Cheers
Phil
Gosh. I wonder why it can be that he doesn’t want congress to know about his DOE grant. Surely transparency and integrity were ever the CRU’s watchwords?
But if I were the DOE’s lawyers, I think one of the letters I’d most like to examine would be this one by the CRU’s former head Tom Wigley.
To understand its significance you need first to be aware of one of the most contentious points about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) – the reliability of weather station records and the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI). For chapter and verse, your man is Anthony Watts – creator of the now legendary Watts Up With That and also of this wonderfully informative site Surface Stations.
Put very simply, there is great concern among sceptics that the data records used to support the IPCC’s claims about “unprecedented” and catastrophic late 20th century global warming are untrustworthy. Not only do these records rely on a dwindling number of weather surface stations whose readings have been skewed either by relocation or by the warming effects of the cities which have grown around them over the years. But also, the raw data may have been tampered with by activist scientists with a specific political agenda – as for example we saw in this story about some very dubious temperature records in Darwin, Australia.
In 2007 Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog had identified serious inconsistencies in one such data record – the GIStemp record at NASA, run under the auspices of Al Gore’s favourite scientist James Hansen. He wondered whether similar rules might apply at another surface record, HadCrut, run by Phil Jones of the CRU. But when McIntyre put in a Freedom of Information request for data on the weather stations used by HadCrut, this was – predictably and quite deliberately, as we now know from the Climategate files – rebuffed.
Meanwhile another researcher, British mathematician Dr Doug Keenan had also smelled a rat. His suspicions had fallen on 84 Chinese weather stations whose data was being used by CRU to inform their HadCrut record.
In 1990 – as Christopher Booker reports in The Real Global Warming Disaster – two papers had appeared on these stations, one in Nature by a team led by Jones, the other by a US scientist Professor Wei-chyung Wang, who also contributed to Jones’s paper. The Jones paper stated that HadCrut had chosen stations ‘with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times’. This was confirmed in almost identical terms by the Wang paper. Both papers referred to a report produced jointly by the US Department of Energy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, making a similar claim.
As Booker describes it:
When Keenan examined this report he found that it contained information on only 35 of the 84 stations. But the locations of at least half of these had been moved during the period 1954-1983, in one case five times, by as much as 41 kilometres. This not only cast serious doubts on the reliability of their data but belied the claims made by Jones and Wang in their papers.
Bear in mind that Wang is one of the key players in the AGW debate – especially in the field of climate modeling and data analysis, as he describes in this biog. He is professor in Atmospheric Sciences Research at the University at Albany, in New York. He has received $7 million in grants from US federal agencies. And here he was being caught out in a case of alleged scientific fraud.
This is certainly what Keenan believed and submitted a report on the affair to Wang’s university. How did the university respond? It carried out an internal review, without interviewing – or even referring to – Keenan, and without giving any reasons, announced that the charges were baseless. For the full dirt on this cover up read this report at Watts Up With That.<
Now here’s that letter from Tom Wigley to Phil Jones giving his views on the affair:
(3) At the very start it seems this could have been easily dispatched.
ITEM X really should have been …
“Where possible, stations were chosen on the basis of station histories
and/or local knowledge: selected stations have relatively few, if any,
changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times”
Of course the real get out is the final “or”. A station could be
selected if either it had relatively few “changes in instrumentation”
OR “changes in location” OR “changes in observation times”. Not all
three, simply any one of the three. One could argue about the science
here — it would be better to have all three — but this is not what
the statement says.
Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start?
Perhaps it’s not too late?
What we see encapsulated here is the corruption at the heart not just of Climategate but the whole IPCC process. Here we have the former head of one of the world’s leading climate research bodies apparently brainstorming with a colleague implicated in a fraud scandal on how best to conceal that fraud from outside investigation.
Meanwhile in a separate case, a US State Senator has written to Penn State University warning that its funding may be withheld if it doesn’t properly investigate the activities of its associate professor Michael Mann.
As Jeffrey Piccola rightly points out:
“The allegations of intellectual and scientific fraud like those made against Dr. Mann are serious against anybody involved in academics but the impact in this case is significantly elevated. The work of Dr Mann and other scientists at the CRU is being used to develop economic and environmental policies in states and countries across the world.”
Meanwhile in Copenhagen, the caravan rolls on. I’m not saying we’re going to win this one easily. Not with so many powerful vested interests backing AGW theory – among them the firms listed in this release from Open Europe: (Hat tip: Msher1 and Alexei)
EU environmental policy awards millions in windfall profits to oil companies and heavy industry
As national ministers meet this week in Copenhagen to discuss a new climate change deal, Open Europe has found that under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), oil and gas companies’ operations in the UK were granted a surplus of carbon permits worth €28.6m in 2008. For example, ExxonMobil received €4.3m and Total received €5.4m.
Meanwhile, heavy industrial polluters such as Corus received €47m, while cement firms Hanson and Lafarge received €17.3m and €20.2m.
Due to the economic downturn, many heavy polluters, such as oil and gas companies and heavy industrials, have been left with a surplus of carbon permits – essentially a free asset that firms can sell on to bolster their short term profits.
The glut of surplus permits on the market has driven down the price of carbon and led to a sharp increase in the number of permits being traded via carbon exchanges. Open Europe has found that the two largest carbon trading exchanges, European Climate Exchange and Bluenext, which includes members such as Barclays Bank, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Shell, have earned a combined average of €245,000 a day from the trading of carbon permits.
After a decade of global cooling, we should sigh with relief at Copenhagen's failure
The disappointment of Copenhagen is actually a reason to celebrate.
Published: 12:02AM GMT 21 Dec 2009
SIR – The only good news to come out of Copenhagen is that, in the words of Greenpeace: "There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty."
Hooray! Along with tens of thousands of global-warming sceptics, the world can now breathe a sigh of relief and return to the sanity of real science, which counsels that carbon dioxide is not a poison, let alone likely to cause a heat-driven Armageddon.
We can now burn non-sulphurous coal again to ameliorate the effects of the colder climate that has already been with us for the past decade and is likely to stay for the next 30 years.
Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an e-mail in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.” And yet, seventeen days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems that very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history.
As the mainstream media move from abject denial to dismissive whitewashing, CRU co-conspirators move to Copenhagen for tomorrow’s U.N. climate meeting, intent on changing the world as we know it based primarily on their now-exposed trickery. Add yesterday’s announcement of a U.N. investigation into the matter, which will doubtless be no less corrupt than those being investigated, and public awareness of how and why that trick was performed is now more vital than ever.
So please allow me to explain in what I hope are easily digestible terms.
First and foremost -- contrary to what you’ve likely read elsewhere in the blogosphere or heard from the few policymakers and pundits actually addressing the issue, it was not the temperature decline the planet has been experiencing since 1998 that Jones and friends conspired to hide. Certainly, the simple fact that the e-mail was sent in November of 1999 should allay any such confusion.
In fact, the decline Jones so urgently sought to hide was not one of measured temperatures at all, but rather figures infinitely more important to climate alarmists -- those determined by proxy reconstructions. As this scandal has attracted new readers to the subject, I ask climate-savvy readers to indulge me while I briefly explain climate proxies, as they are an essential ingredient of this contemptible conspiracy.
Truth be told, even reasonably reliable instrumental readings are a relatively modern convenience, limiting CRU’s global measured temperature database to a start date somewhere in the mid-19th century. That’s why global temperature charts based on actual readings typically use a base year of 1850, or somewhere thereabout.
And yet, most historical temperature charts, including the one Al Gore preached before in An Inconvenient Truth, go way back to 1000 AD. That’s where proxies come in.
While historical documents (e.g., ship’s logs, diaries, court and church records, tax rolls, and even classic literature) certainly provide a glimpse into past temperature trends, such information is far too limited and generalized to be of any statistical value. So climate scientists have devised means to measure variations in such ubiquitous materials as lake sediments, boreholes, ice cores, and tree rings to evaluate past temperature trends.
They then employ complex computer programs to combine such “proxy” data sampled throughout a region and plot that area’s annual relative changes in temperature hundreds or even thousands of years prior. By then combining the data sets, they believe they can accurately reproduce hemispheric and global temperature trends of the previous millennia.
And while reconstructions -- as past temperature interpretations from proxy data are called -- can differ greatly from one source to another, those generated by the CRU have often been accepted as the de facto temperatures of the past.
This is largely because the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proclaims them to be.
Warmist Public Enemy Number One: The Medieval Warming Period
It’s important to understand that early analyses, and even many contemporary studies, of these “proxies” clearly demonstrate that three radical temperature shifts occurred within the past millennium. Indeed, the years 900-1300 AD were labeled the Medieval Warming Period (MWP), as global temperatures rose precipitously from the bitter cold of the previous Dark Ages to levels several degrees warmer than today. The Little Ice Age, a sudden period of cooling, then followed and lasted until the year 1850. And then began the modern warming period, which is by no means unique and appears to have ended with the millennium itself.
Originally, even the IPCC accepted that pre-20th-century analysis. In fact, the 1990 First Assessment Report used this schematic IPCC 1990 Figure 7c (courtesy of Climate Audit) to represent last millennium’s dramatic temperature swings.
But this image of a fluid climate system subject to abrupt and natural up-and-downturns made "unprecedented" 20th-century warming about as marketable as Florida swampland. And opportunists who depended on the aberrance of post-industrial revolution warming in order to condemn and control mankind’s CO2 emissions soon recognized that perhaps the LIA, and most certainly the MWP, simply had to go.
And as many of these hucksters were closely connected to the IPCC -- both sender and recipient names on those illuminating CRU emails include many of its editors, lead authors, and contributors -- that task was far less daunting than one might imagine.
Proxies, Tricks, and Hockey Sticks
The first step was taken in the 1995 Second Assessment Report, when the above Figure 7c was replaced with a 1993 reconstruction from R.S. Bradley and Phil Jones himself that used 1400 AD as its base -- effectively wiping the MWP off the radar screen.
But it wasn’t until the 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR) that the MWP simply vanished. This multi-proxy reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature anomalies appeared in chapter 2, page 134 of the Working Group 1 (WG1) report [PDF].
Of course, the first thing you’ll notice is that both the MWP and LIA have indeed disappeared. In fact, temperatures appear to trend downward throughout the millennium until a sharp jump upward last century. But if you look closer, you’ll also notice that the “reconstructed” series terminates in 1980. What forms the dramatic blade to the hockey stick shape (yes, this is indeed the famous “Hockey-Stick” graph) is instead the distal segment of the 1902-to-1999 instrumental data series.
Mann has recently claimed that the available proxy data ended in 1980, but even his co-conspirators at RealClimate admit that’s nonsense. The truth is that the proxy data was scrapped because unlike those measured, reconstructed temperatures showed a marked decline after 1980. And as the chart plotted temperature anomalies against what the plotters selected as the “normal” period and temperatures of 1961 to 1990, the reconstruction would have been quite unremarkable otherwise. So at the 1980 mark, the actual post-1980 measurements were attached to the truncated proxy series to create the illusion that they were one.
The figure below, found on the same page of the WG1 report, reveals this trick more clearly. This chart plots the original four reconstructions used: two from Mann et al, one from Jones et al, and one from Briffa et al. Notice how all but the first series continue to trend downward around 1960 while instrumental readings begin to trend upward? And even that series ends abruptly in 1980.
So not only did conspirators cherry-pick the one series of the four that approximated measured temperatures the longest, they also terminated that series at the point that it too, began to trend down. They then joined it to the actual 1980-1999 temperatures to “hide the decline” in the final product, as that decline created an inexplicable divergence between the reconstructed and measured temperatures..the existence of which challenges the entire series dating back to 1000 AD.
Remember, all the temperatures prior to 1850 were estimated by computer algorithms, and no actual readings exist to prove or disprove those figures. So a relatively short window of opportunity exists to test the programs against observations. Had 20th-century measured temperatures continued to align with those recreated as smoothly after 1960 as they did previously, then the programmers could declare their code and hence their millennial temperatures sound. But the divergence, if allowed to stand, instead reveals serious design flaws in the proxy reconstructions...which suggests that just as the decline was dealt with through trickery, so was the MWP.
And it seems that each time the trick was used, its involvement would be more deeply concealed.
Every multi-volume IPCC Assessment has been accompanied by a relatively brief and highly-politicized Summary for Policymakers (SPM). This synopsis invariably commands the bulk of the media and political attention. Here’s the version of the graph depicted prominently on page 3 of the 2001 TAR SPM [PDF], the only version of the report most policymakers and reporters would ever actually see. Notice how they further obscured their chicanery by omitting the series-defining legend and the “1988 instrumental value” declaration:
And despite the fact that the only confirmable segment of the series failed that very test, which should have declared the entire series null and void, the chart’s caption informed policymakers that
the rate and duration of warming of the 20th century has been much greater than in any of the previous nine centuries. Similarly, it is likely that the 1990s have been the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millennium.
And it’s this highly fraudulent version that has become the poster child of the equally fraudulent Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) movement.
All this is thanks in large part to the trick that hides the decline.
Trick or Cheat
Now we'll take a closer look at exactly what Jones meant when he wrote that he had “just completed Mike’s Nature Trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Why did Jones refer to the ruse as “Mike’s Nature Trick”?
As die-hard Hockey Team opponents and fans alike already know, the original 600-year version of the now infamous “Hockey-Stick” graph was dubbed MBH98 because it first appeared in the Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes paper “Global-Scale Temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries” [PDF], originally published in the science journal Nature in 1998. And “Mike’s Nature Trick” received its dubious designation among CRU insiders for the very same reason.
As to the rest of the sentence, it seems Jones was working on a cover chart for a forthcoming World Meteorological Organization report [PDF], “WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1990,” when he wrote the e-mail. As the graph would incorporate one reconstruction of his own plus one each from Michael Mann and Keith Briffa, Jones was informing them that he had used the trick on Mann’s series at the same 1980 cutoff as MBH98, but found it necessary to use 1960 as the cutoff on the Briffa series.
And what I uncovered in the source code told why. While Mann used multiple proxy sources, Briffa’s reconstructions were based solely on a property of annual tree ring growth known as maximum latewood density (MXD). And the MXD-only-driven plots began to diverge from actual temperatures as early as 1960. In fact, while many of CRU’s programs are designed to exclude all data after 1960 for later manual splicing with instrumental data, others employ “fudge factors” to force the generated plot to more closely adhere to measured temperatures as far back as 1930.
And as you’ll soon see, Jones’s admitted use of MNT took it to an entirely new level of fraud.
Here’s the original reconstruction, with the three proxy and measured temperature (black) series intact:
Notice how Briffa’s series (green) begins to trend sharply downward around the mid-20th century. Jones’s series (red) soon follows, but less sharply, and then it begins to trend higher. Mann’s (blue) appears to flatten out around the same year that Jones’s begins to fall. Meanwhile, all three have broken with the measured rising temperatures of the late 20th century.
Now take a look at the chart actually published by the WMO, with all three proxy series having been surreptitiously subjected to MNT:
Since the release of CRU’s FOI2009, alarmists have continued their claim that there’s nothing deceptive about the “trick” and that it has been openly discussed in scientific journals like Nature since 1998.
But I defy anyone to compare the above chart -- the one to which Jones wrote he had applied MNT -- to the unadulterated version above it and tell me there’s been no deception committed. At least with MBH98, a sharp eye might recognize the ruse. Here, there is no indication given whatsoever that the graph represents an amalgam of proxy and measured temperatures. This, my friends, is fraud.
And I hope that those investigating the fraud will carefully consider this explanation of the WMO cheating given last week by Jones:
One of the three temperature reconstructions was based entirely on a particular set of tree-ring data that shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century through to the mid-20th century, but does not show a realistic trend of temperature after 1960. This is well known and is called the ‘decline’ or ‘divergence’. The use of the term ‘hiding the decline’ was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. Indeed, CRU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure. It is because of this trend in these tree-ring data that we know does not represent temperature change that I only show this series up to 1960 in the WMO Statement. [My emphasis.]
And they’ll immediately recognize the dishonest denial they’re dealing with when they read the WMO Statement figure from the inside cover Jones referred to:
Northern Hemisphere temperatures were reconstructed for the past 1000 years (up to 1999) using palaeoclimatic records (tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc.), along with historical and long instrumental records. The data are shown as 50-year smoothed differences from teh 1961-1990 normal. Uncertainties are greater in the early part of the millennium (see page 4 for further information). For more details, readers are referred to the PAGES newsletter (Vol. 7, No. 1: March 1999, also available at http://www.pages.unibe.ch) and the National Geophysical Data Center (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov).
Even if MNT had been explained as Jones claimed -- which it hadn’t -- just how was the observer expected to differentiate the reconstructed from the actual data? And good luck finding that newsletter.
Spin it any way you want -- Mike’s Nature Trick is Phil’s WMO cheat.
More Tricks of the Charade
While suddenly the most famous, Mike’s is not the only trick in CRU’s bag.
Many of the programs I reviewed contained routines to exclude proxy data that demonstrated poor correlations with local temperature, which of course explains why CRU’s 19th- through mid-20th-century proxy temperatures appeared to be observationally accurate. Others “estimated” values for missing data.
And then there’s the Yamal matter -- also a popular subject of the CRU e-mails.
In an October 5th e-mail to climatologist Tom Wigley, Jones took issue with a piece I had written that day exposing the lies in CRU-based U.N. climate reports, which included a section on Keith Briffa’s mistreatment of Polar Ural data in order to exaggerate 20th-century warming. That e-mail prompted the reply from Wigley -- now familiar to AT readers -- in which he admitted it was “distressing to read that American Stinker item” -- before offering to help Briffa, who “does seem to have got himself into a mess,” write an “explanation” for his deceitful cherry-picking of Yamal peninsula data.
Indeed, Keith’s Yamal Trick also “fudged” proxy reconstructions, not by overwriting them with instrumental data à la Mike, but rather by underhandedly stacking the actual data set with trees handpicked to assure his predetermined outcome. Yet both methods intentionally corrupted reconstruction results for the same devious purpose -- to skew late-20th-century temperatures higher in order to artificially create the dreaded hockey-stick effect.
Now, you might be wondering why all this fuss is being made over late-20th-century temperatures when even we realists accept that they did rise until 1998. Hopefully, you now understand why the divergence between proxy and measured temperatures betrays a potential serious flaw in the process by which temperatures are reconstructed from tree-ring density. And any reconstruction demonstrating such a flaw-revealing divergence should be dismissed outright, not presented as policy fodder.
But there’s another issue at stake here.
Anthony Watts has surveyed over 75% of the 1,200-plus U.S. weather stations from which national temperatures are accumulated. Most of those were found to be inaccurate by more than 2°C, largely due to being located within ten meters of an artificial heating source. In fact, less than 10% met strict placement guidelines set forth by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Not to worry -- NOAA claims it has methods to “adjust” for such bias, including the use of “smoothing” adjustments to “homogenize” station data to that of surrounding stations.
Unpublished computer programs artificially adjusting the data -- what could possibly go wrong with that?
Would you be shocked to learn that at ICCC 3, Watts told us he had calculated such adjustments to raw temperature data between 1940 and 1999 to be 0.5°F to the positive? That accounts for almost one half of the 1.2°F warming over the last century.
And that’s here in America. Try to imagine what kind of shenanigans might be going on elsewhere in the world.
Consequently, even the “instrumental” temperatures the CRU crooks were using as a basis for fudging were likely themselves fudged. So they were pumping the incline while hiding the decline.
Hold the Fudge, and the MWP Won’t Budge
In a June 2003 e-mail to Jones and company, Mann discussed the notion of expanding CRU charts to two millennia in an effort to “try to "contain" the putative "MWP."” No deception in that, I suppose. Of course, an honest 2000-year reconstruction, such as this one from CO2Science.org, adapted from a 2005 Moberg, et al temperature history derived from tree-rings and lake and ocean sediments, would actually emphasize rather than “contain” the MWP:
Any questions why Mann and friends work so diligently to “contain” (hide) the MWP?
As you can see, the post-LIA warming that began around 1850 is neither unprecedented nor spectacular. And it's certainly not worth rewiring the economic circuitry of the planet over.
And the CRU/IPCC reconstructions have been counterfeited for the express purpose of hiding that very fact.
After all, the stakes are enormous: perhaps trillions of dollars and unquestionably every American’s personal liberties. Tomorrow, over 20,000 delegates from 193 nations will gather in Copenhagen to craft an agreement which would not only force American power consumption to levels equal to those of about 1910, but would also have us pay reparations for an imaginary “climate debt” we’ve accumulated by building the world’s greatest economy of all time. That debt is based on the amount of CO2 our financial growth has purportedly pumped into the atmosphere, which, according to the conclusions of the IPCC and based largely upon reports from the CRU, has selfishly imperiled the planet by inducing climate change.
Of course, asking Americans to pay reparations based on the claim they’ve done harm to other nations by spoiling the climate is like asking me to pay damages to my neighbor based on his claim that he can’t sell his house because my great-grandmother’s ghost is haunting it.
As many have known and as Climategate has proven, both situations are equally preposterous.
But at least belief in ghosts is only marginally inspired by fraud.
Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 431 Location: North East England
Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 5:24 am Post subject:
Nice piece in the Sunday Times yesterday on why we should be thankful that Copenhagen ended in farce. It could have ended in one giant suicide note for the British economy - something all the main political parties seem to want - instead people at last seem to be waking up to this giant scam and not before time
One thought though, something that some of the comments touched upon.... Isn't this all at least partly just a vain attempt to stem the growing competitiveness of China and India - something with which Europe just cannot compete?
Quote:
The Sunday Times
December 20, 2009
The Copenhagen farce is glad tidings for all
Dominic Lawson
After two weeks of increasingly ill-tempered negotiations, one of the European delegates at the Copenhagen summit “to save the planet” had clearly reached breaking point; or perhaps it was the ingratitude of the people he was trying to save that caused this negotiator to tell the BBC’s science correspondent, Susan Watts, that millions of Africans now “deserve” to be incinerated.
Watts was reporting a conversation she had had with an unnamed “European negotiator” after South Africa decided to join the quartet of America, India, China and Brazil in putting its name to a statement rejecting any binding emissions targets, and thus comprehensively sabotaging the entire conference. “South Africa has signed up to this!” the delegate told Watts. “They’re going to fry — and they’ll deserve it.”
One’s heart does not warm to anyone expressing such sentiments, but it’s easy to understand the fury that must have overcome this delegate. Here was Europe offering to impose vast costs on its own industries and peoples to save Africa from the alleged perils of runaway CO2 emissions — and that continent’s most powerful international voice says, thanks very much for the offer, but we think we can best provide health and prosperity to our people by being free to expand our economy exactly as you did in the industrial revolution, by using the wonderfully cheap forms of energy that nature affords: fossil fuels. After all, why is it that in the US many fewer people die as a result of very high temperatures than used to be the case a hundred years ago? Air-conditioning.
I know that for those thousands of “climate activists” who descended on Copenhagen, the idea of air-conditioning in African homes is something almost too revolting to contemplate; but then they have never understood that, for the real inhabitants of the developing world, the American example of achieving health and comfort through technology and subverting harsh nature for human ends is something to be emulated, not shunned.
The climate catastrophists naturally insist that if the developing countries — notably China and India — follow the American path, the planet will become uninhabitable. The most quoted expression of this came in 2004 from Britain’s chief government scientist then, Sir David King, when he said that if we did not act to reduce our carbon emissions, by the end of the century Antarctica would be the world’s only habitable continent.
Even if you share King’s view of what some of the climate models project in terms of anthropogenic CO2’s effect on global temperatures, his apparent belief that man is completely unable to adapt to a changing environment suggests that, whatever his claims as a scientist, he knows next to nothing about either human nature or history.
Unfortunately for those in the same camp as King, the leak of lethally embarrassing emails from the world’s foremost academic climate research unit, at the University of East Anglia, confirmed the suspicions of roughly half the British population, that too much political faith had been placed in the omniscience of a small group of scientists.
The most interesting of those leaked emails came from Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. After observing — this was an email dated October 12, 2009 — that in freezing Boulder, “We have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record ... it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F”, Trenberth turned to the fact that the planet’s average temperature over the past 10 years seemed to have been static and wrote: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of global warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Two days later he reiterated: “We cannot account for what is happening in the climate system.”
Asked last week by the BBC about these emails, King would say only that their leak and publication in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit had to be the work of some malign national agency (the CIA? The Russians?). Since we know that a Briton with Asperger’s syndrome, working on a domestic dial-up internet connection, managed to hack into the Pentagon’s most secret codes, King’s insistence that only a national agency could have hacked into a non-secure academic research unit’s emails seems as sensible as the assertion that we must all plan to settle in Antarctica. Even if he is right that UEA’s emails were put in the public domain as a result of theft, he deserves as much respect for his reaction as any MP whose only response to the leak of Commons expenses claims had been that the newspaper that bought the disc with all the information had broken the law. As a matter of fact, no MP was quite so arrogant.
King’s old boss, Tony Blair, turned up in Copenhagen to give his take on the leaked emails. The former prime minister declared that they did not lessen by one jot what he called “the need for action” and added: “It is said that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege. It doesn’t need to be.” Blair is clearly not troubled by irony, since this approach is exactly the one that got us into such a mess over Saddam Hussein’s suppositious biological threat. The actual evidence was tenuous at the time — but to persuade the public of the need for action, Blair was prepared to say that it was watertight. For weapons of mass destruction, read weather of mass destruction.
Blair now argues that even if the science is less clear than is claimed by the climate catastrophists, we have to act because of the risks to humanity if their worst fears turn out to be well founded. This would make perfect sense if there were no risks attached to what he calls “action”, just as it would if there had been no lives put at risk by attacking Iraq. In fact, there are vast costs involved in the war against weather, which could actually cost lives. The highly respected climate economist Professor Richard Tol, a senior member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that the CO2 tax required to bring emissions down to the levels demanded by the IPCC would reduce global GDP by an amount that would equate — in 2100 — to $40 trillion (£25 trillion) a year. It’s pretty obvious, really: just as cheap energy has transformed the lives of millions for the better, it follows that reversing the process would have an opposite effect.
Carbon cap and trade, recommended by the EU as an alternative to tax, has its own malign effect. Just ask the 1,700 employees being made redundant at Corus’s steel plant in Redcar. The owners of Corus could receive up to $375m (£230m) in carbon credits for laying off those British workers. Then, if they switch production to a so-called clean Indian steel plant, Corus could also receive millions of dollars annually from the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism fund. The net effect of all that on the environment could be safely estimated as zero.
Gordon Brown, who seems to be embarking on a scorched earth economic policy in his final months in power, evidently regards this as worth it — he wants to go down in history as the man who saved the climate. Yet this government — or the next one — has been given a golden opportunity by the farce in Copenhagen: to abandon the carbon witch hunt altogether. If India, China, America, Brazil (and Uncle Tom Cobley and all) carry on with “business as usual”, then anything Europe does to cut its emissions is irrelevant, at best: it will cause pain and hardship for its own citizens to no purpose whatever.
So let’s toast the negotiators of Copenhagen. By failing so spectacularly, they have presented us with a wonderful Christmas present. All we have to do is open it.
Isn't this all at least partly just a vain attempt to stem the growing competitiveness of China and India - something with which Europe just cannot compete?
Absolutely not! It is a scam to tax people for breathing including China and the rest of the world. It is a power grab for world domination by the "elite" who encouraged the growth of the Chinese economy by subsidising the export of jobs and industry from the West to China and elsewhere. It is "competing" which is what they want, and what will destroy us all if we do not defeat them. How about trying co-operating for a change, and not to defeat a scam like "man-made climate change".
The two five minute videos linked at the bottom of the article are well worth a look. Dr Ball exposes the depth of the lies and the disgusting behaviour of the "scientists" at the University of East Anglia.
Even the Criminals of Climategate Avoid Gore
By Dr. Tim Ball Wednesday, December 16, 2009
“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”—Mark Twain.
Twain’s observation is precisely the issue with the Nobel Peace Prizes given to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC are now completely discredited because the ‘scientists’ at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia controlled the data, the computer models and the press releases officially known as the Summary for Policymakers (SPM).
Their prizes were obtained for work deliberately falsified then used for policies that creates unnecessary hardship rather than peace. Equally disgraceful is how one prizewinner, Al Gore, distorted and falsified the distortions and falsifications of the other prizewinner, the IPCC.
Gore was already discredited, especially when his carbon footprint was found too big for his mouth. Other discredits include; the millions he made from his misdirection on carbon; failure to answer questions or participate in debate; character assassination of scientists who raised legitimate questions; the false claim that “the science is settled”, and failure to correct the major errors in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. Gore must have created a major dilemma for the IPCC and CRU.
A minor dilemma was the contradiction over projected sea level rise. The IPCC 2001 Report said, “Global mean sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 m between the years 1990 and 2100,”. The 2007 Report raised the lower projection to 0.18 m but significantly lowered the upper limit to 0.59 m. In his ridiculous movie, Gore predicted a 20 ft (6m) rise but gave no time frame. Recently he made the false statement that the Arctic ice cap is the size of the continental US. Wrong! That is the amount that melts and refreezes every year. Then he said it would be all gone in 5 to 10 years, but ice this year has already recovered what it lost in the last few years.
Now, in a more bizarre twist, we learn Gore’s claim about the Arctic ice came from another scientist, Dr. Wieslav Maslowski. The professor then claimed Gore misquoted him, but his prediction was published in a Danish journal.
The problem is they’re both wrong, but that is the pattern of the climate issue. Lies on lies on lies create the tangled web Sir Walter Scott predicted when you practice deception.
But Gore doesn’t stop. There are academics and scientists lining up to provide him with more false information. He incorrectly claims Antarctica and Greenland are melting. Maybe he got the Antarctic idea from the false research produced by some at CRU that Antarctica is warming.
And he is still at it with incredibly stupid comments. On the Conan O’Brien show of 11/12/09, he said the temperature in the mantle, the deep layer immediately below the crust, is several million degrees just two kilometers down. This is many times hotter than the Sun. It is truly frightening to think this man was one step away from the Presidency, no wonder Clinton didn’t support his presidential run.
The CRU gang had to know what Gore was presenting in his movie and speeches, yet I am unable to find any direct reference to him in their emails. When they occur it is in outsider emails. I am unaware of any public comments by CRU people about Gore’s work; it appears they studiously avoided him. You must be bad when the criminals avoid you.
Gore says the emails “don’t change established conclusions.” “These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus.”
Well he got that completely wrong too but it’s not surprising because he misinterpreted their original work. Maybe he is relying on another academic source. Trevor Davis, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of East Anglia says, “There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation. CRU’s peer-reviewed publications are consistent with, and have contributed to, the overwhelming scientific consensus that the climate is being strongly influenced by human activity.”
What planet is this Davis on? Besides the clear evidence of criminality there is also the deliberate falsification of the science and perversion of the scientific publication and peer review process. His statement shows a complete lack of understanding of the email content and climate science. Like Watergate the problems of Climategate are compounded by the cover-up and nobody does it better than universities. Davis began with his condemnation of the leaks when first disclosed, but he had no problem with leaked emails he obtained about funding and provided to the CRU gang.
Of course, they were bringing in massive amounts of funding and that apparently bought Davis’s support. I watched funding create disturbing behavior and biases throughout academia.
No wonder the CRU gang ignored Gore. He took their false work and falsified it some more. Of course, they couldn’t denounce him because they might expose their own corruption. Together they achieved only one success by disproving the adage that there is honor among thieves.
“Dr. Tim Ball is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.”
Isn't this all at least partly just a vain attempt to stem the growing competitiveness of China and India - something with which Europe just cannot compete?
That's a perfectly valid question about one possible interpretation of the reason why the AGW hypothesis has become the number one issue on the planet.
Our esteemed Foreign Secretary Miliband provided one reason why we in the UK must act on CO2 by proclaiming that we must "set an example to China" adding that, it would be difficult for us to criticise them if we didn't get our house in order first.
Analyse that whichever way you choose.
By itself statements such as these do not validate the suspicion that the AGW hypothesis could partially be about developing a global framework with which to curb growth in the new global factories of China and India, but Miliband did provide a flavour of the rationale behind the publicly stated reasons for the UK attempting to be among the leaders of the low emissions pack.
Why he chose not to include the USA in that statement might also be interpreted innocently, perhaps even excused on the basis of our supposed "special relationship" and selective diplomacy. It is hard either way, to argue against his stated focus.
What is more difficult to reconcile are the two apparently contradictory efforts of global outsourcing being so quickly followed by the push for industrial and economic down sizing based on the AGW rationale.
Does it not seem just a little perplexing, that so many industries in so much of the developed west have been obliterated by exporting them east and that so soon after those new economies begin to emerge they become the focus of another globalised effort to reign them in?
Under the Thatcherite / Reagan revolution in the 1980's, the traditional, old and dirty, heavily unionised industries such as coal, steel and shipbuilding were deliberately decimated; a process excused with arguments based on pure economic competitiveness. That outsourcing process focussed on the technology and investment of the emerging powerhouse of China. We were now to become a predominantly service based economy with flexi-time tennis and leisure filling our days instead of that nasty old work.
Whatever you think of the Tories, Thatcher was a convicted politician. She believed in the Tory plan.
Among our understandable interpretations of the new war on the workers, were the usual suspects of class and retribution against the powerful unions. This was easy stuff to understand. Thatcher was the face of the old working class enemy that hated and despised the power imbued in the block vote and the right of the working class to bring governments to their knees. We were punished with a three day week. No electricity for two or three days a week. Things had to change.
Who among us then, would have aligned those efforts to economically "cleanse" our industrial heartlands, with some Malthusian plan for World Governance?
The globalist effort was continued under the Tory's natural successor Blair, only now the targets were some of those same service sector soft McJobs that were promised to keep us all afloat in between our swimming and tennis lessons. Blair too was a convicted politician. He was as messianic in his social engineering as Thatcher was in her economics.
The new emerging Tiger Economies of the late 1980's became the focus for the new models of the capitalist development. They crashed almost as soon as they and Blair emerged. Who would have thought that would happen, or that it too was part of some economic Malthusian plan?
The New Labour project for the new British century was globalisation, globalisation, globalisation.
Only this time around there was not even so much of a whiff of an attempt at justification as before, because by now the mantra had been accepted. It was simply, globalisation for the sake of globalisation. Deal with it.
Blair inherited massive unemployment so things could only get better. There followed years of apparent economic growth and apparent prosperity. Thatcher's relaxed credit provided the basis for Blair's boom and his successor's bust.
The oft recited mantra of globalisation, globalisation, globalisation, was further extended under the anomalous accession of Gordon "New World Order" Brown.
Who would have thought that things would not, ultimately get any better? Who would have thought that we would end up in biggest financial mess since records began with the banksters still calling the shots, only this time using our taxes ? Who thought then that this might be part of some grand Malthusian plan?
Reconciling our recent and shared industrial and economic decimation with the huge effort that was expended to promote the AGW paradigm and the current effort to implement the "global framework" and "global governance" to supposedly counter the unproven and tenuous hypothesis of AGW might become a little easier when it is considered as the intended outcome of all those years of outsourcing our jobs and industry under the banner of unstoppable economic based lies.
Forget all the noise from the useless idiots who feel so rightly convicted of the AGW hypothesis, their opinions do not count any more than any other faith based ideology.
Forget about the "science" of AGW, for you will spend the rest of your life trying to figure it out. Besides, our own highly informed David Miliband, among others, has already declared the debate to be closed. His keenness to help us all and enthusiastic egalitarianism has forced him, with charitable reluctance, to shut down any further debate. There's no time left for talking we are told. We must all remain silent while we sit and watch this globalised first aid take shape. It's in our interests so what is there to debate? Like a TV reality show, the "science" votes are "in" and the lines are now closed. However, any dissenting voices will still be charged with insults, derision and ridicule.
What might inform your opinion is the context of our recent industrial and economic past.
What might further inform your opinion is the ease or difficulty that you encounter when you try to reconcile those facts and the arguments that were once used to underpin them, with the possible outcomes of the publicly declared goals of the new push for a "globalised framework" to counter the effects of the new religion; the faith based myth of AGW.
What has happened is unequivocal. The old left / right experiment formally died in 1989.
Industries and therefore economies have been deliberately wrecked now for decades. Traditional wealth creation and prosperity was replaced with credit. That credit has now been wrecked.
The system is being replaced with something new. System change based on human induced climate change.
The aches and pains of the long suffering dreamers for a scientific dictatorship are starting to ease.
It is something we can all get behind for our own, apparent good. The reasons seem to be overwhelming. Who can argue against denying our children's children their birthright. We are being encouraged to forsake our present for our children's future. This is a no brainer and does not require adversarial politics any more. This one requires a consensus. This big idea, requires global co-operation. The first since records began. A one world vision is being enacted in a post democratic world on the basis of thermo-terrorism.
The various factions that have been and continue to be at work, might become a little clearer once you either reject or accept the notions of a monumental, decades-long "c*** up" or conspiracy.
So forget the "science" for a while, don't struggle with the concept any more, there are others better qualified that you and I.
Forget all that and get on with your thinking. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Last edited by Mark Gobell on Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:16 am; edited 1 time in total
Lawrence Solomon: Wikipedia’s climate doctor
Posted: December 19, 2009, 2:53 AM by NP Editor
How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles
By Lawrence Solomon
The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.
The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.
The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.
The Medieval Warm Period, which followed the meanness and cold of the Dark Ages, was a great time in human history — it allowed humans around the world to bask in a glorious warmth that vastly improved agriculture, increased life spans and otherwise bettered the human condition.
But the Medieval Warm Period was not so great for some humans in our own time — the same small band that believes the planet has now entered an unprecedented and dangerous warm period. As we now know from the Climategate Emails, this band saw the Medieval Warm Period as an enormous obstacle in their mission of spreading the word about global warming. If temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago than today, the Climategate Emails explain in detail, their message that we now live in the warmest of all possible times would be undermined. As put by one band member, a Briton named Folland at the Hadley Centre, a Medieval Warm Period “dilutes the message rather significantly.”
Even before the Climategate Emails came to light, the problem posed by the Medieval Warm Period to this band was known. “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” read a pre-Climategate email, circa 1995, as attested to at hearings of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. But the Climategate transcripts were more extensive and more illuminating — they provided an unvarnished look at the struggles that the climate practitioners underwent before settling on their scientific dogma.
The Climategate Emails showed, for example, that some members of the band were uncomfortable with aspects of their work, some even questioning the need to erase the existence of the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years earlier.
Said Briffa, one of their chief practitioners: “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. … I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.”
In the end, Briffa and other members of the band overcame their doubts and settled on their dogma. With the help of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the highest climate change authority of all, they published what became the icon of their movement — the hockey stick graph. This icon showed temperatures in the last 1,000 years to have been stable — no Medieval Warm Period, not even the Little Ice Age of a few centuries ago.
But the UN’s official verdict that the Medieval Warm Period had not existed did not erase the countless schoolbooks, encyclopedias, and other scholarly sources that claimed it had. Rewriting those would take decades, time that the band members didn’t have if they were to save the globe from warming.
Instead, the band members turned to their friends in the media and to the blogosphere, creating a website called RealClimate.org. “The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly ‘bombshell’ papers that are doing the rounds” in aid of “combating dis-information,” one email explained, referring to criticisms of the hockey stick and anything else suggesting that temperatures today were not the hottest in recorded time. One person in the nine-member Realclimate.org team — U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William Connolley — would take on particularly crucial duties.
Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.
With trillions of dollars at stake in the battle over global warming, now would be the time for the press to closely scrutinize the claims of those who would reorganize the world's economy from farm to factory and laboratory to living room. And the Climategate scandal - where leaked e-mails and dodgy computer programs from the University of East Anglia raise powerful new questions about the role of politics in climate science - would be the perfect opportunity to explore what is going on behind the scenes.
That's not happening. To judge by recent coverage from Associated Press, the Fourth Estate watchdog has acted like a third-rate pocket pet. Case in point is an 1,800-word AP missive that appeared in hundreds of publications, many carrying it on the front page of their Sunday, Dec. 13 issue with the headline, "Science not faked, but not pretty." AP gave three scientists copies of the controversial e-mails and then asked them about their conclusions. The wire service portrayed the trio of scientists as dismissing or minimizing allegations of scientific fraud when, in fact, the scientists believe no such thing.
The first scientist quoted in the article, Mark Frankel, is director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AP quotes him as concluding that there is, "no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very 'generous interpretations.'" While the article mentions that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some Republican lawmakers are calling for independent investigations, AP doesn't note the views of the scientists they interviewed.
When The Washington Times talked to Mr. Frankel, the scientist gave a quite different impression. The e-mails, he said, are not sufficient to reach any judgment at all on whether the data or science was faked or misleading. "You can't do that on the e-mails alone, you can't do it on the e-mails or the program," he concluded. For that reason, Mr. Frankel supports investigation of East Anglia and related allegations of fraud at Pennsylvania State University.
There's a big difference between saying that there isn't sufficient evidence to determine if falsification of data occurred - and that there should be an investigation - and saying, as AP did: "Science not faked."
Mr. Frankel also believes outsiders to the two schools should be asked to take part. "You should be willing and open to going to outside people to be part of your inquiry," he advised. "If I were Penn State, I would certainly be advising them to be very open to the possibility of bringing in one or two people who have impeccable credentials, well-respected, to join in ...."
Arizona State University professor Dan Sarewitz is quoted by AP as saying, "This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds." However, Mr. Sarewitz wasn't speaking about the validity of the climate science; he was discussing his belief that politics infects how most scientific research is conducted. While AP used the quote to suggest that there was nothing terribly wrong that had been revealed in Climategate, Mr. Sarewitz was trying to issue a warning that politics infects too much science and that reporters, politicians and the public are naive about that reality.
As he told The Washington Times, "When the human underside (of science) gets revealed, then suddenly people are disillusioned and they say, 'Oh, how shocking!' But it's not particularly shocking." Indeed, Mr. Sarewitz suggests that reporters ask scientists about their political views. (For the record, he is a liberal Democrat.) He also is skeptical of the university investigations, particularly if they don't include outsiders. "I think they should have external people [involved in the investigations]. Certainly. ... The challenge here might be, can you find people who are independent but also understand the science well enough to really tell (if there was wrongdoing)?"
The third scientist interviewed by AP, professor Gerald North at Texas A&M University, joined Mr. Frankel and Mr. Sarewitz in hoping that climate data would be more readily shared in the future. He told us he also thinks it is important that investigations proceed at the two universities.
The Washington Times tried to raise these issues with the reporters and editors involved, but Jack Stokes, AP's manager of media relations, said that none of the five reporters who worked on the article nor their editors had time to answer questions.
If AP refuses to explain how it could have given readers across the planet such a distorted view of Climategate, maybe an explanation can be found buried in the article itself. One of the reporters, Seth Borenstein, the AP science reporter who writes on global warming and who is the lead author on the piece, is part of the Climategate story himself. In the last sentence of the article, the authors note that the archive of disputed Climategate e-mails "includes a request from an AP reporter, one of the writers of this story, for reaction to a study, a standard step for journalists seeking quotes for their stories."
But Mr. Borenstein's e-mail was hardly standard and far from neutral. In it, the reporter disparages Marc Morano, a critic of man-made global-warming claims, as "hyping wildly" the study that Mr. Borenstein asked scientists to comment on. The e-mail almost makes it appear as if Mr. Borenstein were asking those involved in Climategate to help him discredit critics of man-made global warming.
East Anglia and Penn State are not the only two institutions that need to answer questions about what is going on behind the scenes.
Time to Revisit Falsified Science of CO2
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, December 28, 2009
imageClimate science is a productive pursuit with Nobel Prizes, an Oscar, billions in research funding, massive tax grabs and wealth for exploiters. Continuation of these activities partly validated the claim the disclosed files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are of small consequence.
As I wrote earlier the scandal at CRU (Climategate) is diverting from the real scandal, which is the claim CO2 is causing warming and climate change. Climategate is the greatest orchestrated fraud in scientific history, but claims about CO2 are the greatest fallacy. Climategate lets those who’ve known what was happening to avoid being ignored as conspiracy theorists.
Everyone incorrectly talks about carbon when they mean CO2, which was the original focus of the claim human industrial activity was causing global warming. Theory assumed CO2 was a greenhouse gas that slowed heat escaping to space. As it increases temperature rises and it would because of increased industrial activity. This became fact immediately and challenging scientists were pushed aside. Mostly by nasty attacks from those who falsified records, rewrote historic records, distorted and misused science and statistics as the leaked CRU emails attest. Now they, their supporters, and all those benefiting, work to perpetuate the massive deception.
Selected Data and False Findings
Some of this article was presented in a 2008 piece, but the CRU revelations make a revisit important. The summary of work the IPCC represents is only that chosen by the IPCC to achieve their goal. Remember the email comments about including or excluding articles that supported their objective.
Claims now proven false include;
* an increase in CO2 precedes a temperature increase;
* current atmospheric levels of CO2 are the highest on record;
* and pre-industrial levels of CO2 were approximately 100 parts ppm lower than the present 385 ppm.
The last claim is basic to the argument that humans are causing warming and climate change by increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2.
In a paper submitted to a US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski explains,“The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false.” This means more when you know that Tom Wigley, who is the heart of the CRU gang, introduced the 280 ppm number to the climate science community with a 1983 paper titled, “The pre-industrial carbon dioxide level.” (Climatic Change 5, 315-320). He based his work on studies by G. S. Callendar (1938) of thousands of direct measures of atmospheric CO2 beginning in 1812. Callendar rejected most of the records, including 69% of the 19th century records and only selected records that established 280 ppm as the pre-industrial level. Here’s a plot of the records with Callendar’s selections circled.
Figure 1: Plot of 19th century CO2 levels
Source: Jaworowski, NZCPR Research, 20 September 2008 p.20
Selections changed the slope of the trend from declining to increasing. As Jaworowski notes, “The notion of low pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric level, based on such poor knowledge, became a widely accepted Holy Grail of climate warming models. The modelers ignored the evidence from direct measurements of CO2 in atmospheric air indicating that in 19th century its average concentration was 335 ppmv.”
Ice cores provide the historic record and samples from Mauna Loa provide the recent record. Both are drastically smoothed thus eliminating variability. This was done to tie in with the pre-industrial levels. Ernst Beck confirmed Jaworowski’s research in a September 2008 article in Energy and Environment and validated all the 19th century records. In a devastating conclusion Beck writes,“Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.”
Pre-industrial levels were 50 ppm higher than those used in the IPCC computer models. Models also incorrectly assume uniform atmospheric distribution and virtually no variability from year to year. Beck found, “Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.” Here is a plot from Beck comparing 19th century readings with ice core and Mauna Loa data.
Figure 2: Beck’s blended graph.
Source Energy and Environment, September 2008.
Difference in variability of the 19th century measures, ice core records and Mauna Loa are apparent. Ice core records are subjected to a 70-year smoothing average eliminating a great deal of information. For example, the Mauna Loa record covers 50 years (1958 - 2009), not enough for even a single point. Elimination of high readings prior to the smoothing makes the loss even greater. As with all known records the temperature changes before the CO2, here by approximately 5 years.
Elimination of data occurs with the Mauna Loa readings, which can vary up to 600 ppm in the course of a day. Beck explains how Charles Keeling established the Mauna Loa readings by using the lowest readings of the afternoon. He ignored natural sources, a practice that continues. Beck presumes Keeling decided to avoid these low level natural sources by establishing the station at 4000 meters up the volcano. As Beck notes “Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO2 on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000 m altitude at that latitude.” (Beck, 2008, “50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa” Energy and Environment, Vol 19, No.7.) Keeling’s son continues to operate the Mauna Loa facility and as Beck notes, “owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2 measurements.” Since Keeling is a co-author of the IPCC reports they accept Mauna Loa without question.
The Ice Core record
Jaworowski estimates the ice core readings are at least 20% low, which is reasonable given the CO2 levels for 600 millions years using geologic evidence.
Figure 3: CO2 and Temperature levels for 600 million years
Current level of 385 ppm on the right of the graph (Figure 3) is the lowest in the entire record only equaled by a period between 315 and 270 million years ago (mya).
Further evidence of the effects of statistical smoothing and the artificially low ice core readings are provided by measurements of stomata. Stomata are the small openings on leaves that vary directly with the amount of atmospheric CO2. A comparison of a stomata record with the ice core record for a 2000-year period illustrates the issue.
Figure 4: Ice core CO2 levels compared to Stomata over 2000 years.
Stomata data on the right show higher readings and variability than excessively smoothed ice core record on the left. The stomata record aligns with the 19th century measurements as Jaworowski and Beck assert. A Danish stomata record shows levels of 333 ppm 9400 years ago and 348 ppm 9600 years ago.
EPA declared CO2 a toxic substance and a pollutant. Governments prepare carbon taxes and draconian restrictions crippling economies for a completely non-existent problem. Failed predictions, discredited assumptions, incorrect data did not stop insane policies. Climategate revealed the extent of corruption so more people understand malfeasance and falsities only experts knew or suspected. More important, they are not rejected as conspiracy theorists. Credibility should have collapsed, but political control and insanity persists – at least for a little while longer.
ITS LOCAL!! EVERYWHERE - ITS LOCAL! ALL OVER THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE ITS LOCAL!! Just wait till "Global Warming/Climate Change" makes the Gulf stream stop!! You think its cold now - you just wait till Global Warming gets here.
Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict
Nick Britten, Published: 8:00AM GMT 02 Jan 2010
Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.
They predicted no let up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating.
And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder.
Weather patterns were more like those in the late 1970s, experts said, while Met Office figures released on Monday are expected to show that the country is experiencing the coldest winter for up to 25 years.
On New Year's Day 10 extreme weather warnings were in place, with heavy snow expected in northern England and Scotland.
Despite New Year celebrations passing off mostly unaffected by the weather, drivers in parts of the country, particularly areas of Northumberland, Cumbria and the Scottish Highlands, were warned not to travel unless absolutely necessary.
The continued freezing temperatures did not signal bad news for everyone however. CairnGorm Mountain said it has had its best Christmas holiday season in 14 years.
With heavy snow in the area, the resort said that over a four-day period following Christmas Day it has had more than 8,000 skiers and snowboarders using its runs - including 800 on New Year's Eve.
Over 15,000 skiers have used the resort since the start of December, compared to 2,000 last year.
A spokesman for the Met Office said: “It is certainly a while since we had cold weather like this and there isn’t any sign of any milder weather on the way.”
Considerable amounts of “showery snow” is expected over Scotland and eastern England over the coming days, he said, whilst the rest of the United Kingdom would remains dry but very cold.
He added that temperatures in the Scottish highlands could dip to minus 16 degrees while even southern areas of England could see lows of minus 7.
The cold weather comes despite the Met Office’s long range forecast, published, in October, of a mild winter. That followed it’s earlier inaccurate prediction of a “barbecue summer”, which then saw heavy rainfall and the wettest July for almost 100 years.
Paul Michaelwaite, forecaster for NetWeather.tv, said: “It is looking like this winter could be in the top 20 cold winters in the last 100 years.
“It’s going to be very cold the for the next 10 days and although there could be a milder spell at some stage the indications are that the second half of the month will be even colder.”
Revellers braved temperatures of minus 6 degrees to see in the New Year, with only the celebrations in Inverness being cancelled because of the cold.
Matt Dobson, forecaster for MeteoGroup, the Press Association's weather division, said last month had been the coldest December for 13 years. "It has been the coldest December on average since 1996," he said. "The second half of the month was very cold indeed but the first half was relatively mild. If it had been colder in the first few weeks we would have seen more records broken."
Police divers searching a lake for two duck hunters who had been missing over Christmas have found a second body.
The hunt for Paul Lichfield had been called off over Christmas because sub-zero temperatures made searching the ice covered lake too perilous.
However, as the weather conditions improved police frogmen resumed their search for the 30-year-old at Brightwell Lake at Ringstead, Northants. Police found the body of his friend, Philip Surridge, before Christmas after the pair fell in on December 22 whilst trying to rescue their dog.
Meanwhile, a fleet of gritters in Perth, central Scotland, was grounded this week because it was so cold, leaving roads untreated in temperatures of minus 10 degrees.
Perth and Kinross Council said the gritters were unable to leave the depot after the extreme weather led to difficulties in refuelling.
Perth resident Ian Thomson said: “I’ve heard of the rail companies blaming the wrong kind of snow and leaves on the line for disruption but for the council to say it was too cold to get the gritters out is just ridiculous.”
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 7:00 pm Post subject:
Here's some very worrying new info; dismiss it at your peril!:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/757.html _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 3rd, 2010
As I said yesterday, one of our jobs this year is to wipe the complacent smiles off the smug faces of the lobbyists, “experts”, “scientists”, politicians and activists pushing AGW.
This is why I am so glad to report that Michael Mann – creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal – is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.
Under US law, regardless of whether or not a prosecution results, the whistleblower stands to make very large sums of money: it is based on a percentage of the total government funds which have been misused, in this case perhaps as much as $50 million. (Hat tip: John O’Sullivan of the wonderful new campaigning site www.climategate.com)
Here’s that email in full:
Hi,
Greetings and best wishes for a prosperous New Year.
National Search
After the recent whistleblower revelations of emails between climate researchers and data from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, there are on-going investigations into potential fraudulent use of grant funds in Climate Research in the US. I am assisting interested parties who may have details of fraud in climate research to make contact with the proper authorities, and to share in the rewards paid when the funds are recovered.
Whistleblower Rewards Program
The federal government has established vigorous programs to identify and prosecute fraudulent grant applications and administration. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) administers the False Claims Act. It allows rewards for those who come forward with details of grant fraud to share in the recovery of federal funds. This reward can be as much as 30% of the total amount reclaimed. The program is almost completely reliant on insiders to report their knowledge of the fraud in their institutions.
Attorney Literally “Wrote the Book” on Fraud Recovery Lawsuits
Joel Hesch, Esq., of Hesch and Associates, literally wrote the book on how to report federal fraud. He has an extensive background in representing whistleblowers in all types of federal funding fraud cases, including Educational/ Research Grant Fraud. According to Mr Hesch: “Many institutions receive grants, whether for research or educational purposes. When they lie to get the grant or keep the grant or if they use the funds for purposes outside the grant, they are liable under the DOJ program. There have been many grant cases brought by whistleblowers. ”
If you know of anyone who might have details about fraudulent statements or actions by recipients of federal grant funds for climate research, please have them contact me immediately at the below email or cell phone. Alternatively, they may also contact Mr Hersch directly, and let him know that they were referred by me. All communications are completely confidential. They may want to consider using a third party email service (Yahoo, Hotmail, or other) instead of work email to communicate.
30% of $50 million is more than $12 million. Ask your friends to do the right thing, and be rewarded for doing it.
Our country, and in fact, the entire world is counting on someone to stand up and tell the truth about climate research. The effects of moving forward with taxes and policies based on fraudulent science could potentially cripple the US economy and cost lives and jobs for generations.
LUCKNOW, India — More than 40 people have died in a cold snap gripping northern India which prompted the authorities on Monday to shut thousands of schools and dole out firewood, officials said.
India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh has recorded 30 cold-related deaths since Saturday, police spokesman Soren Srivastava said in the state capital Lucknow. ..........
Deep freeze across nation to get colder
By Craig Johnson, Special to CNN
January 4, 2010 -- Updated 1741 GMT (0141 HKT)
(CNN) -- Much of the nation awoke to frigid weather Monday as below-freezing temperatures threatened to shatter records across the South.
"We're seeing freeze warnings not just into Central Florida, but down into the Everglades," CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano said.
Hard freeze warnings were in effect for much of the Florida Peninsula and the Southeast, according to the National Weather Service. Record lows were expected in the Gulf Coast states and into southern Florida, said CNN meteorologist Sean Morris........
Last month was the coldest December for almost 30 years over most of the country, Met Éireann has said.
In its monthly summary, the forecaster said December was the coldest month for 28 years for most of the country and the coldest of any month since February 1986 at a few stations.
The forecaster said there was a total of between 22 and 27 ground frosts during the month at inland stations, compared with the normal range for December of between 13 and 17.
The lowest temperatures of the year were recorded in late December, when Mullingar’s air and ground temperatures hit -10.0°C and -13.0°C respectively on December 25th......
Winter freeze kills 13 in Poland
January 4, 2010 - 11:54PM
AFP
Thirteen people died of cold in Poland over the New Year long weekend as temperatures plunged to minus 25 degrees Celsius, taking this winter's toll to 122, police said.
The majority of the victims were homeless men aged 35 to 50 who died of hypothermia while drunk, police said.
Police and municipal officials have urged Poles to help the homeless by pointing them out to authorities, who have laid on special winter hostels for them.
Since the start of November, 122 people have died from cold in Poland, not an unusual toll for a country that faces severe winter conditions.
The 2008 to 2009 winter season saw 82 deaths from hypothermia up to January 8. Poland's highest winter toll in recent years was in 2005 to 2006 when 233 died.
Thank GOD for Global Warming!!! Just think how much worse it would have been!!!!!
If any of your idiot friends still believe in AGW, make them read this letter
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 4th, 2010
Lord Monckton has written a letter about AGW to Kevin Rudd, offering to give the Aussie premier a private briefing to correct a few misconceptions he may have on the subject.
On the “conspiracy theory” that the AGW apparatus is really about creating world “government”.
Your speech mentioned my remarks about the proposal for world “government” in the early drafts of what had been intended as a binding Copenhagen Treaty. These proposals were not, as you suggested, a “conspiracy theory” from the “far right” with “zero basis in evidence”. Your staff will find them in paragraphs 36-38 of the main text of Annex 1 to the 15 September draft of the Treaty. The word “government” appears twice at paragraph 38. After much adverse publicity in democratic countries, including Australia, the proposals were reluctantly dropped before Copenhagen.
On the lessons we ought to have learned from the Europe
The climate ought not to be used as a shoddy pretext for international bureaucratic-centralist dictatorship. We committed Europeans have had more than enough of that already with the unelected but all-powerful Kommissars of the hated EU, who make nine-tenths of our laws by decree (revealingly, they call them “Directives” or “Commission Regulations”). The Kommissars (that is the official German word for them) inflict their dictates upon us regardless of what the elected European or any other democratic Parliament says or wishes. Do we want a worldwide EU? No.
On the economic illiteracy of ocean-going knobs like Lord Stern
Every economic analysis except that of the now-discredited Lord Stern, with its near-zero discount rate and its absurdly inflated warming rates, comes to the same ineluctable conclusion: adaptation to climate change, in whatever direction, as and if necessary, is orders of magnitude more cost-effective than attempts at mitigation. In a long career in policy analysis in and out of government, I have never seen so cost-ineffective a proposed waste of taxpayers’ money as the trillions which today’s scientifically-illiterate governments propose to spend on attempting – with all the plausibility of King Canute – to stop the tide from coming in.
On the crime against humanity that are biofuels
Millions are already dying of starvation in the world’s poorest nations because world food prices have doubled in two years. That abrupt, vicious doubling was caused by a sharp drop in world food production, caused in turn by suddenly taking millions of acres of land out of growing food for people who need it, so as to grow biofuels for clunkers that don’t. The scientifically-illiterate, economically-innumerate policies that you advocate – however fashionable you may conceive them to be – are killing people by the million.
On the 114 Aussie governmental junketeers who flew to Copenhagen
Are you, personally, and your advisers, personally, and your administration’s officials, personally, willing to make the heroically pointless sacrifices that you so insouciantly demand of others in the name of Saving The Planet For Future Generations? I beg leave to think not. At Flag 1 I have attached what I have reason to believe is a generally accurate list of the names and titles of the delegation that you led to Copenhagen to bring back the non-result whose paltriness, pointlessness and futility we have now rigorously demonstrated. There are 114 names on the list. One hundred and fourteen. Enough to fill a mid-sized passenger jet. Half a dozen were all that was really necessary – and perhaps one from each State in Australia. If you and your officials are not willing to tighten your belts when a tempting foreign junket at taxpayers’ expense is in prospect, why, pray, should the taxpayers tighten theirs?
and – most damningly of all, I think – on just how little effect the Copenhagen Accord would have on “climate”, even in the impossible event that everyone bothered complying:
We determine the warming forestalled over the coming decade by comparing the business-as-usual warming that would occur between now and 2020 if we made no cuts in CO2 emissions with the lesser warming that would follow full compliance with the Copenhagen Accord. Where today’s CO2 concentration is 388 ppmv –
Business as usual: ΔT = 5.7 ln(408.0/388) = 0.29 C°
One-fiftieth of a Celsius degree of warming forestalled is all that complete, global compliance with the Copenhagen Accord for an entire decade would achieve. Yet the cost of achieving this result – an outcome so small that our instruments would not be able to measure it – would run into trillions of dollars.
Yes, that’s right. If every country in the world went to the vast trouble and expense of implementing every last detail of the Copenhagen Accord, it would put off the rise in global warming over the course of one decade by one fiftieth of a degree.
Maybe our "friends" no longer "believe" in AGW. They seem to have gone missing.
From The Times, January 5, 2010
Arctic freeze and snow wreak havoc across the planet
Arctic air and record snow falls gripped the northern hemisphere yesterday, inflicting hardship and havoc from China, across Russia to Western Europe and over the US plains.
There were few precedents for the global sweep of extreme cold and ice that killed dozens in India, paralysed life in Beijing and threatened the Florida orange crop. Chicagoans sheltered from a potentially killer freeze, Paris endured sunny Siberian cold, Italy dug itself out of snowdrifts and Poland counted at least 13 deaths in record low temperatures of about minus 25C (-13F).
The heaviest snow yesterday hit northeastern Asia, which is suffering its worst winter weather for 60 years. More than 25 centimetres (10in) of snow covered Seoul, the South Korean capital — the heaviest fall since records began in 1937.
In China, Beijing and the nearby port city of Tianjin had the deepest snow since 1951, with falls of up to 8in and temperatures of minus 10C. In the far north of China, the temperature fell to minus 32C. More than two million Beijing and Tianjin pupils were sent home and 1,200 flights were delayed or cancelled at Beijing’s international airport.
The same far-eastern weather system took its toll of Sakhalin, the Russian island off Siberia, which was hit by blizzards and avalanches. Farther west, in northern and eastern India, more than 60 people, mainly homeless, died of exposure. Thousands of schools were closed. In Uttar Pradesh, the state neighbouring Nepal, the authorities spent £1.3 million on blankets and firewood for needy households.
Western Russia suffered a deep freeze as snow swept across the Baltic and north-central Europe, leaving the worst devastation in Poland, where 13 people died, bringing the toll from the cold this winter to 122.
Up to ten skiers died or were missing in avalanches. The worst incident was in the Diemtig Valley in Switzerland on Sunday, when avalanches hit a group of skiers and then the rescuers who went to their aid. Eight people were pulled from the snow alive, but four died, including an emergency doctor, and three more were missing.
In Italy, emergency services struggled with rare cold and ice. Motorways in the northeast were closed and military helicopters were sent to Sicily with medical aid.
In the United States, heavy snow fell again on the northeast.
In Burlington, Vermont, a record 33in of snow fell in a weekend storm. The previous record in a three-day period was set in 1969. Residents of the Northern Plains were warned to expect lethally cold temperatures of about minus 30C.
The icy conditions of Western Europe, which broke records in half a dozen countries in December, are expected to last for at least another week.
Guo Hu, the head of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, linked this week’s conditions to unusual atmospheric patterns caused by global warming.
Meteorologists were also trying to find a pattern in the heavy rains that have hit equatorial regions and the southern hemisphere in the past week.
At least 20 people have been killed in flash floods in Kenya after torrential rains made thousands homeless.
In Australia, the authorities declared a natural disaster along the Castlereagh River as it peaked after torrential rain, forcing 1,200 residents to abandon their homes for high ground.
In Brazil, the death toll from flooding and mudslides over the past four days rose above 80.
Closer to home, forecasters have warned Britons to brace themselves for a freezing cold, bleak new year — this winter is set to be the coldest for more than 30 years.
Guo Hu, the head of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, linked this week’s conditions to unusual atmospheric patterns caused by global warming.
Hot Weather Convinces Media of Climate Change; Cold Weather Ignored From 2003 heat wave that killed thousands, to melting Peruvian glaciers the news media find examples of global warming.
By Julia A. Seymour, Business & Media Institute, 1/4/2010 3:34:22 PM
The news media constantly misuse extreme weather examples to generate fear of global warming, but when record cold or record snow sets in journalists don’t mention the possibility of global cooling trends. While climatologists would say weather isn’t necessarily an indication of climate, it has been in the media, but only when the weather could be spun as part of global warming.
In Iowa, temperatures are 30 degrees below normal according to the Des Moines Register. That’s a near-record low. Beijing is facing the coldest temperatures in decades according to Australia’s The Age.
And in Pichccahuasi, Peru, bitter cold may cause the extinction of communities of alpaca farmers suffering from pneumonia and other respiratory problems. Ironically, that Guardian (U.K.) report called the region an anomaly “in a world growing ever hotter.”
Despite such extreme cold around the world, the three networks are not forecasting a period of global cooling. In fact, in the past three months there has been only one mention of “global cooling” on the networks. That was in an NBC “Today” about geo-engineering (manipulating) the global climate to create global cooling to combat global warming.
But when record heat was in the news global warming got the blame. NBC highlighted melting glaciers in Peru on Dec. 8 and declared that “climate change is to blame.” That story cited United Nations claims that the decade might be the warmest since 1850 – also the same year the Little Ice Age ended.
When a heat wave hit the U.S. in July 2006, CBS “Evening News” consulted Pew Center on Global Climate Change’s Jay Gulledge.
“The average global temperature is getting hotter due to global warming,” Gulledge told CBS.
In a Cosmo magazine style quiz, Newsweek called the deadly European heat wave of 2003 “a human fingerprint” of “man-made climate change.”
And in 2008 Stanford University professor Dr. Stephen Schneider told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are making hot temperatures even hotter.
“While this heat wave like all other heat waves is made by Mother Nature, we've been fooling around by turning the knob and making a little bit hotter,” Schneider said on June 9, 2008. “[W]e’ve already increased by 35 percent the amount of carbon dioxide which traps heat. We've added 150 percent more methane, which also traps heat.”
Dr. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist for the University of Alabama at Huntsville, disagreed with Schneider. Spender told the Business & Media Institute that making a connection between the East Coast heat wave and emissions was “too much.”
John Christy, a climatologist at the same university as Spencer, testified to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on May 2, 2001. He urged the committee “to be suspicious of media reports in which weather extremes are given as proof of human-induced climate change.”
He added that “weather extremes occur somewhere all the time,” including “the coldest combined November and December in 106 years” at the end of 2000, an event that “does not prove U.S. or global cooling.”
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 11:15 pm Post subject:
Just listening to old Bob Dylan songs as I check my email; great singer! great words! BUT PISS-POOR COMMITMENT. IN FACT, NO COMMITTMENT WHATSOEVER. Bit like the 'Left-Wing Press'; 'Morning Star', Socialist Worker and whatever, won't go near 9/11 Truth with a bargepole.
Wonder why? Well, it's accepted that the UK 'agencies' thoroughly compromised the IRA at the height of the 'Troubles'. So they haven't done the same with the so-called 'Left-Wing Press', already? How come?
Is their security more sophisticated than the IRA's?
What the heck has this got to do with the 'Man-Made Climate Change?'
Vell, red herrings spring to mind. I personally believe it's pretty obvious 'Man' is creating this, but on the other hand, I also believe it is basically neither here nor there; the **sholes that have taken control of the levers of power over the world, are a far more immediate concern.
We can have our different opinions about Global Warming, Peak Oil, and so forth.
The important thing we should all agree on, is getting to the Truth of 9/11.
Get the facts out, get the traitors dealt with, THEN worry about climate, overpopulation, and so on.
By the way, I'm not holding my breath (SOME of the posters may be glad to hear !). _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
The change climatologists need to look out their window, trudge through the snow, feel the wheel spin on their vehicle, watch how Europe Japan China, even Delhi are getting frozen out
It's monstrous denial to say warming when all about are freezing their nuts, so to speak
Farcical as much of everything is about this world
Two proper winters and three washout summers
There's no need to view computer models based on short term figures
No need to worry about polar bears whose ice cap is expanding
It's bloody cold everywhere in the Northern hemisphere and everyone should chill the climate change obsessionists out into the frozen wastelands where they belong
This is what the climate change people have been predicting actually Paul. Gulf stream weakened. Britain gets cooler.
As it happens I'm just reading a book called 60 Days To Live where a comet hits the earth and London finds itself whacked by a tsunami.
When the water recedes the Earth's axis has shifted and London is well in the Arctic Circle.
Well I don't think a comet just hit Earth though admittedly the magnetic North just took a walk into Siberia
The climate change people can just get stuffed, the most potentially dangerous to the government want more of what they've got to offer
All those climate camp hippies - I loathe them - they've been taken for a ride and are luvin it - real McDonalds zombies
However vegetarian they are
This is what the climate change people have been predicting actually Paul. Gulf stream weakened. Britain gets cooler.
Evidence the Gulf stream has weakened? Never mind. Nobody will bother to check.
The Gulf Stream affects China? Poland? India? Never mind - just say anything. It gets warm. Man's fault. It gets cold. Man's fault. Give all your money to the Cult and they will fix it.
By the way, the climate change people have not been predicting this. They invented this particular claptrap only after the Earth started cooling so "Global Warming" became "Climate Change" to cover their silly "theory" but it is hardly a prediction.
Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 431 Location: North East England
Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:45 am Post subject:
Has anyone been watching the programme 'Man on Earth' on C4 over the last few weeks - fascinating stuff which hopefully might spur some people into further research on climate change through history. The programme covered aspects of the infamous Medieval Warm Period that CRU scientists would rather people didn't know about..... Also how areas of Greenland that were cultivated in this period became uninhabitable due to climate change.
One particularly interesting part had a strange parallel with events today. Apparently the Mayan elites had a nice little trick going, where they claimed to possess unique access to the gods. In exhange for lots of money (what else) handed to them by the population at large, the elites would fix the weather, so everything would be OK and crops would flourish, etc. This story has a familiar ring to it........
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