Telegraph View: the case that global warming is man-made needs to be constantly tested and credible
Published: 7:00AM GMT 31 Jan 2010
The question of what, if anything, to do about global warming is one of the most important that humanity faces. Most people believe that the Earth is becoming warmer – but there are significant disagreements over the speed and extent of the process, the danger it poses, and its precise causes. The Government is convinced that the debate is over, won by the scientists who insist that climate change is the result of the carbon dioxide generated by human activity. It has now embarked on the project of ”decarbonising” the economy; since carbon-based energy provides most of our electricity and powers nearly all of our transportation, this is a colossal, and colossally expensive, task.
We need, therefore, to be very sure that our policy is based on an accurate diagnosis. But such certainty has become much harder to come by in recent weeks. A paper to be published in the journal Science by a team of researchers from America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that changes in the amount of water vapour high in the Earth’s atmosphere may affect the extent to which the planet heats up or cools down to a much greater extent than previously thought. That, of course, is something which those who doubt that man-made activity is responsible for global warming have long maintained. And other developments have struck not just at the data but at the trustworthiness of those presenting it. Our columnist Christopher Booker, among others, has highlighted that extent to which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose objectivity and neutrality most people thought could be taken for granted, has been caught acting like a pressure group. Not only did it insert into its latest report the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 – which has now been acknowledged to have no basis in fact – but, as we report today, it appears to have recycled observations on the dwindling levels of ice on mountains around the world from a climbing magazine and a student dissertation.
In its zeal to persuade the world of the catastrophic consequences of man-made global warming, the IPCC has lost both its objectivity and the trust of the public. That is one of the main reasons why we, along with our sister newspaper The Daily Telegraph, believe that Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC’s chairman, should step down. This issue is far too important for there to be a scintilla of doubt about the reliability of the reports and raw data on which policy must be based. While Dr Pachauri remains in post, those doubts will remain.
As with every other scientific theory, the case that global warming is man-made needs to be constantly tested. Mr Booker and others have been enormously energetic in pointing out the weaknesses and uncertainties in the argument. Are the doubts enough to mean that the Government is proceeding from a false premise? There is no doubt that there needs to be a continued and vigorous debate on this topic – although there are, of course, additional reasons for decreasing our dependence on carbon, such as the need for energy security, the desirability of adopting more energy-efficient (and therefore cheaper) technologies, and the role of CO2 in the acidification of the oceans. Ministers’ insistence that those who question their presumptions are irrational and dogmatic does nothing to help bring about the consensus that is so sorely needed.
And more on Glaciergate and Pachauri and IPCC and their “science”.
“They raise more questions about why the IPCC ever took the claim seriously. It means the UN panel ignored scientific publications rejecting the rapid-melt theory in favour of claims that had been reported only in the non-scientific media and in a report by WWF, a conservation pressure group.”
“A furious Rees made the magazine publish a retraction in its letters page, describing Hasnain’s comments as a “gross misrepresentation”.
This weekend it emerged that the leaders of the IPCC had known for weeks and probably months about the error and had even convened private conferences to discuss it.”
THE United Nations climate panel ignored warnings by leading scientists not to publish false claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.
One warning, in 2006, a year before the report was published, came from Georg Kaser, an Austrian glaciologist who was a lead author on another section of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He said: “I sent warnings to the IPCC telling them the claim about Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 was false.”
Another warning came from Gwyn Rees, a British hydrologist who oversaw a £300,000 study funded by the UK government in 2001 to assess the claims about rapid melt.
His findings were published in 2004 — three years before the IPCC report — and also showed there was no risk of rapid melt.
Rees said: “The sheer size and altitude of these glaciers made it highly unlikely they would melt by 2035.”
The new revelations follow a report in The Sunday Times this month which forced the IPCC to retract its claim that the glaciers in the Himalayas might be gone by 2035.
They raise more questions about why the IPCC ever took the claim seriously. It means the UN panel ignored scientific publications rejecting the rapid-melt theory in favour of claims that had been reported only in the non-scientific media and in a report by WWF, a conservation pressure group.
The saga began with Syed Hasnain, the Indian glaciologist who issued the first warnings about rapid glacier melt in media interviews in 1999. He now works for The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi, which is run by Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC.
It was those claims that prompted Britain to fund the study by Rees — who recruited Hasnain to help lead it.
Rees, a water resource scientist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, a government research centre, said Hasnain had signed up to the study’s conclusions. These stated that any suggestions the region’s glaciers might soon melt “would seem unfounded”.
Hasnain was also in the audience at a seminar sponsored by the EU in 2004 where Rees gave a presentation suggesting there would be some glacial melt, but nothing on the scale suggested by Hasnain. His closing slide read: “It is unlikely that all glaciers will vanish by 2035!”
That same audience also included representatives from WWF who were compiling their own report on glacier melt. Despite Rees’s warnings, they later decided to include Hasnain’s claims in their report, published in 2005, from where they were picked up by the IPCC.
In 2004, Rees had assumed the rapid-melt claims would not be repeated, but in May that year Hasnain gave an interview to New Scientist suggesting the UK-funded study had confirmed his claims of rapid glacier melt.
In it he said: “Global warming has already increased glacier melting by up to 30%. After 40 years, most glaciers will be wiped out and we will have severe water problems.”
A furious Rees made the magazine publish a retraction in its letters page, describing Hasnain’s comments as a “gross misrepresentation”.
This weekend it emerged that the leaders of the IPCC had known for weeks and probably months about the error and had even convened private conferences to discuss it.
The last such meeting was hosted by TERI in Delhi last month and was the scene of a confrontation between Hasnain and Professor Murari Lal, one of the lead authors of the glaciers section of the IPCC report.
According to the minutes, Hasnain defended himself by pointing out that he had not mentioned the 2035 date in any of his scientific papers.
This is true, but The Sunday Times has confirmed that Hasnain has repeated the claims in a series of media interviews over most of the past decade.
In 2007 he told the Indo-Asian News Service: “After 40 years, most of these glaciers will be wiped out and we will have severe water problems.”
Perhaps his biggest publicity coup came in August 2008 when he was interviewed by ABC, one of the giant American TV networks, suggesting that the Ganges, one of the world’s greatest rivers, would dry up by the middle of the century. He said: “We are going to be doomed in the future.”
Suspicions about Hasnain’s claims began to spread, and the Indian government sponsored a new report by V K Raina, the former deputy director-general of the Geological Survey of India.
That study, published last October, rejected the claim that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, saying: “It is premature to make a statement that glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating abnormally because of global warming.”
An IPCC spokesman said it regretted the error but pointed out that glaciers were still melting — albeit far more slowly than its report had suggested.
Evidence is building that IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt by 2035 was not only a deliberate fraud, but efforts were made to cover it up when the figure was challenged.
Some of the pieces of the jigsaw are already there in the public domain, starting with Ben Webster’s piece in The Times on Saturday – which we analysed in this post. This made it clear that Rajendra Pachauri was appraised of what he now claims was a ”mistake” by an Indian science journalist, last November.
But the story is taken further by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times today, under the heading: ”Panel ignored warnings on glacier error”. There, he reports that the leaders of the IPCC had known for weeks and probably months about the ”error” and had even convened private conferences to discuss it.
Although he refers to the last of such conferences, which was hosted by TERI in Delhi last month (28 December), there is no mention of the fact that this was organised by the United Nations Environment Programme, the sponsoring body for the IPCC itself.
Although it was a pre-planned meeting, it turned rapidly into a crisis ”workshop” of international glaciologists, which decided that, ”the IPCC conclusion that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 may have to be revised … ”, adding that: ”there appears to be no scientific foundation for the IPCC’s prediction for the year 2035.”
Although Rajedra Pachauri is not listed as an attendee, his senior glaciologist, Syed Hasnain was there, and so was professor Murari Lal, one of the lead authors of the glaciers section of the IPCC report. In all, there were fifteen TERI personnel at the workshop, including Hasnain, and TERI University is cited as a collaborator in the production of the subsequent report (cover illustrated).
Given that the meeting was actually held in the TERI offices, with so many TERI personnel there, it is inconceivable the Pachauri – director general of TERI and chairman of the IPCC – was not appraised of its findings, especially given the importance of the issue.
Apart from the implications for the IPCC, what may of course have been preoccupying Pachauri was that, on 15 January, there was to be a high-profile launch of the collaborative programme on glacier research, funded by the Carnegie Corporation, at which the president of Iceland, Dr Ólafur Grímsson, was to be the star guest.
It takes little imagination to surmise that Pachauri would not want to be embroiled in a controversy over glaciers with such a prestigious event in the offing – especially, as we see from Carnegie grant statement that the research project was based on Hasnain’s false claim that glaciers ”will vanish within forty years as a result of global warming … resulting in widespread water shortages.”
This brings us to Hansain himself, who was leader of the TERI glaciology team. Building on our work on the timeline of Hasnain’s claims, Leake makes it abundantly clear that not only were Hasnain’s claims false, but he knew them to be so.
In particular, as party to the Sagamatha study which was concluded in June 2004, Hasnain had signed up to the conclusions that suggestions the region’s glaciers might soon melt ”would seem unfounded”.
That Hansain persisted in his false claims, right up until September 2009, and then sought to defend the IPCC claim in the face of Raina’s report published in November 2009, is to say the very least, perverse – more so when the leader of the Sagamatha survey, Gwyn Rees, had re-emphasised in May 2009 that, ”It is unlikely that all glaciers will vanish by 2035!”
With Hasnain by then employed by Dr Pachauri’s TERI, and reliant on grant-funded work from the Carnegie Corporation and the EU ”High Noon” programme – which had been initiated on the basis of Hasnain’s false 2035 claim –there is a very obvious motive for Dr Hasnain to keep the controversy out of the limelight.
Thus it was that only after the falsehood had been ”outed” by Leake on 17 January, that Pachauri began to acknowledge that there was a problem, but then very grudgingly. Two days after the Leake report, all he would concede was: ”Theoretically, let’s say we slipped up on one number …”.
With Hasnain claiming he was ”misquoted” – which was never the case – and Pachauri maintaining that the inclusion of the figure was a mistake, this has all the hallmarks of a clumsy cover-up which continues to this day.
Exposing the Pachauri lie is lead author professor Murari Lal who told the UNEP workshop back in December, ”that it was wrong to assume, as has been done in sections of media that the year 2035 had crept in the report by mistake” (see inset, above right).
Yet even to this day, the IPCC is still talking about an ”error”, thus perpetrating the lie, and concealing from the public that false information was deliberately included in the IPCC report. ”Glaciergate”, it seems, still has a long way to go before we get to the truth.
I have written extensible about the UN pack, this travelling circus that fly around the globe in first class, or private jet, stay in hotel rooms at £400-500 per night in spa resorts, and gets wined and dined at expensive restaurants.
All of this of course paid by us, the normal people.
While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.
This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.
They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.
How ironic that today most of this class is leftists and so called “liberals”.
Below is another example, this time from the high priest of Global Warming Hysteria, the head of IPCC Pachauri.
And about Pachauris racy sex novel. Yep, the guy has time to write a racy novel during these last months.
“The chair of the UN’s panel on climate change Dr Rajendra Pachauri has taken a break from writing academic papers on global warming to pen a racey romantic novel.”
“In the acknowledgement of his novel, Dr Pachauri admits to writing the book while flying around the world between meetings as IPCC chairman or else in his capacity as head of a research institute in Delhi. “
“It is also difficult to imagine that Dr Pachauri’s tale, its mass of concupiscence garnished with a little spiritual rhubarb, will arouse much erotic excitement among its readers. Slumber is all that seems likely to follow such pedestrian lines as:”
Controversial climate change boss uses car AND driver to travel one mile to office… (but he says YOU should use public transport)
By Simon Parry
Last updated at 1:48 AM on 31st January 2010
He is the climate change chief whose research body produced a report warning that the glaciers in the Himalayas might melt by 2035 and earned a Nobel Prize for his work – so you might expect Dr Rajendra Pachauri to be doing everything he can to reduce his own carbon footprint.
But as controversy continued to simmer last week over the bogus ‘Glaciergate’ claims in a report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which he heads – Dr Pachauri showed no apparent inclination to cut global warming in his own back yard.
On Friday, for the one-mile journey from home to his Delhi office, Dr Pachauri could have walked, or cycled, or used the eco-friendly electric car provided for him, known in the UK as G-Wiz.
But instead, he had his personal chauffeur collect him from his £4.5million home – in a 1.8-litre Toyota Corolla.
Hours later, the chauffeur picked up Dr Pachauri from the office of the environmental charity where he is director-general – The Energy and Resources Institute–blatantly ignoring the institute’s own literature, which gives visitors tips on how to reduce pollution by using buses.
Dr Pachauri – who as IPCC chairman once told people to eat less meat to cut greenhouse gas emissions – was driven to an upmarket restaurant popular with expatriates and well-off tourists just half a mile from his luxurious family home.
As he waited outside the institute office for Dr Pachauri, the chauffeur said: ‘Dr Pachauri does use the electric car sometimes but most of the time he uses the Toyota.’
The electric car might be kinder to the environment and more suitable for short trips, explained the chauffeur – who has worked for the environmentalist for 19 years – but it was simply too small for Dr Pachauri and a driver to share. ‘When he uses it, he has to use it by himself,’ he said.
At his office, Dr Pachauri has at his disposal four electric cars obtained by the institute last year from REVA – the Indian company that makes the G-Wiz cars seen in many British cities.
The institute bought the battery-powered cars with the express aim of reducing pollution on short trips by staff around town. One of those cars has been set aside for his personal use.
The chauffeur said Dr Pachauri’s family owned or ran a total of five cars. Dr Pachauri used three: the company Toyota, the REVA and an older ‘Ambassador-style car’ – a reference to the smoke-belching, Indian-made Hindustan Ambassador car, based on the vintage British Morris Oxford, that is a common sight at taxi ranks in Delhi.
The family’s two other cars are owned by Dr Pachauri’s wife and his grown-up son, also a scientist.
The five-star lifestyle and considerable wealth of Dr Pachauri – who is said to wear suits costing £1,000 each – has come under growing scrutiny since he was forced to acknowledge the error of the claims in an explosive 2007 IPCC report that the Himalayan glaciers might melt within 25 years.
The humiliating climbdown over the report, which was masterminded by Dr Pachauri and which led to the organisation sharing the Nobel Prize with Al Gore, was followed by calls for him to step down from the UN panel, which he has chaired since 2002.
On Friday, at the institute’s swish city-centre offices, where the foyer walls are covered with pictures of Dr Pachauri meeting politicians and dignitaries and receiving awards for his environmental work since he took up his role as its head in the Eighties, he declined to comment on recent calls for his resignation. He said: ‘I am very tied up – I am just too tied up to talk to you just now.’
His company’s manager for corporate communications, Rajiv Chhibber, later said: ‘Dr Pachauri is really stressed at the moment. The past two weeks have been very rough on him.
‘We have about 250 interview requests and he has to do all his usual work as well. We have the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit coming up in February and he has got a lot of work to catch up on.’
Another concern for Dr Pachauri could be the questions being asked about his portfolio of business interests in bodies that have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations – including banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds involved in carbon trading.
His institute is said to have received £310,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion’s share of a £2.5million EU grant after citing what have now been found to be the bogus Glaciergate claims in grant applications.
And there are signs in Delhi that Dr Pachauri – once fawned over by politicians and celebrities alike as a climate change luminary– is losing the support of some of his most powerful allies, including, critically, Indian government officials who previously used him as a key adviser.
Reports in Delhi last week suggested Dr Pachauri had been quietly dropped as head of a solar-power campaign being prepared by the prime minister.
The Golf Links area in Central Delhi where Dr Pachauri lives is named after the nearby Delhi Golf Course and is one of the most expensive residential areas in India. Every home in this gated community has its own security guard and it enjoys round-the-clock police patrols to protect its wealthy residents.
Dr Pachauri’s neighbours include a former prime minister’s son and senior Indian business leaders. Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man with an estimated £10.8billion fortune, owns a home in the same area.
Currently, homes of a similar size to Dr Pachauri’s are being advertised at prices of around £6million.
Explaining the area’s sky-high property prices, the director of an international property broker told India’s Economic Times: ‘This area has a certain snob value attached to it. Buying a house here means announcing to the world that one has arrived in life.’
Despite heading the UN body on climate change, Dr Pachauri has no background in environmental science. He began his career as a railway engineer, graduated in engineering and gained his doctorate in industrial engineering.
Dr Pachauri has four electric cars at his disposal
In an attack on Dr Pachauri in a Delhi magazine article on Friday, headlined The Great Climate Change Fraud, Indian commentator Ninad D. Sheth said: ‘Mr Pachauri has no training in climate science yet he heads the pontification panel which spreads the new gospel of a hotter world. How come?’
Yesterday, in a statement from Mr Chhibber, Dr Pachauri insisted that he would not resign over the Glaciergate controversy – and, ironically, urged people to use public transport to help reduce global warming.
Dr Pachauri said people should take ‘practical lifestyle steps’ including ‘use of energy-efficient transport, including public transport – and in general become conscious of our carbon footprints as individuals’.
Asked why Dr Pachauri used a chauffeur-driven car, Mr Chhibber said: ‘He does use the REVA electric car whenever he can and he encourages the staff to use the other electric cars when they drive around town. He also encourages all his staff to pool cars when we can.
‘But sometimes the REVA is not practical. It may be he has to pick up other people. There is not so much room inside.’
When Mr Chhibber was asked why Dr Pachauri left the REVA in the car park on Friday, he replied: ‘I cannot comment on that.’
Science and public policy can be uncomfortable bedfellows, as we saw last year with the sacking of Professor David Nutt, the government’s chief drugs adviser. Politicians, we know, can play fast and loose with “expert” evidence. But scientists, too, are neither infallible nor always pure of heart. Their findings must be open to scrutiny and challenge.
There have been two recent developments in which this newspaper has had a pivotal role. One concerned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
As is now conceded by the IPCC, a claim made in its influential fourth assessment report in 2007 that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 “or perhaps sooner”, was wrong. The claim, based on an eight-year-old magazine report subsequently picked up by environmental pressure groups, had been challenged by scientists commissioned by the Indian government but their views were dismissed by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, as “voodoo science”.
If this was an isolated example, perhaps the matter could rest. But other sections of the IPCC’s report dealing with the impact of climate change are also in doubt. The scientific basis is thin for claims that global warming is responsible for a rise in the number or severity of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and was not based on peer-reviewed research, as we reported last week. Alarm bells should have rung much sooner when the IPCC began drawing on such “grey” science and claims by pressure groups to support its case.
We are not seeking to rubbish every claim by the IPCC or destroy the underlying arguments about climate change. The IPCC’s evidence on the physical science is extensively peer-reviewed and remains largely intact. But when scientists allow claims from pressure groups into the public arena, without checking the evidence, they let themselves and everybody else down.
That is also true of the case of Dr Andrew Wakefield and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. For parents of children with autism, the idea that this was caused by the vaccine provided succour and the prospect of compensation. Many other parents refused to have their children vaccinated with MMR.
Dr Wakefield exploited these concerns ruthlessly, taking money from the parents’ lawyers for his researches, developing his own patented single measles vaccine and recruiting children for £5 a time at his son’s birthday party for experiments with, as the General Medical Council put it, “callous disregard” for their distress and pain. Some sections of the media have been criticised for spreading his claims but we should remember that they were first published in The Lancet after being peer-reviewed by scientists. Conversely, it was Brian Deer’s reporting for The Sunday Times which exposed this wrongdoing.
Dr Wakefield is finished in this country, thanks to the GMC, whatever his followers may think. Dr Pachauri is still head of the IPCC, although he presided over the use of dodgy science in its reports and ignored legitimate criticism of that science. He should go.
IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri is fighting to keep his job after a barrage of criticism
A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.
The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.
This is the third time in as many weeks that serious doubts have been raised over the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. Two weeks ago, after reports in The Sunday Times, it was forced to retract a warning that climate change was likely to melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. That warning was also based on claims in a WWF report.
The IPCC has been put on the defensive as well over its claims that climate change may be increasing the severity and frequency of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
This weekend Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was fighting to keep his job after a barrage of criticism.
Scientists fear the controversies will be used by climate change sceptics to sway public opinion to ignore global warming — even though the fundamental science, that greenhouse gases can heat the world, remains strong.
The latest controversy originates in a report called A Global Review of Forest Fires, which WWF published in 2000. It was commissioned from Andrew Rowell, a freelance journalist and green campaigner who has worked for Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and anti-smoking organisations. The second author was Peter Moore, a campaigner and policy analyst with WWF.
In their report they suggested that “up to 40% of Brazilian rainforest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall” but made clear that this was because drier forests were more likely to catch fire.
The IPCC report picked up this reference but expanded it to cover the whole Amazon. It also suggested that a slight reduction in rainfall would kill many trees directly, not just by contributing to more fires.
It said: “Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state. It is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannas.”
Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at Leeds University who specialises in tropical forest ecology, described the section of Rowell and Moore’s report predicting the potential destruction of large swathes of rainforest as “a mess”.
“The Nature paper is about the interactions of logging damage, fire and periodic droughts, all extremely important in understanding the vulnerability of Amazon forest to drought, but is not related to the vulnerability of these forests to reductions in rainfall,” he said.
“In my opinion the Rowell and Moore report should not have been cited; it contains no primary research data.”
WWF said it prided itself on the accuracy of its reports and was investigating the latest concerns. “We have a team of people looking at this internationally,” said Keith Allott, its climate change campaigner.
Scientists such as Lewis are demanding that the IPCC ban the use of reports from pressure groups. They fear that environmental campaign groups are bound to cherry-pick the scientific literature that confirms their beliefs and ignore the rest.
It was exactly this process that lay behind the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers were likely to melt by 2035 — a suggestion that got into another WWF report and was then used by the IPCC.
Georg Kaser, a glaciologist who was a lead author on the last IPCC report, said: “Groups like WWF are not scientists and they are not professionally trained to manage data. They may have good intentions but it opens the way to mistakes.”
I had no time to post this yesterday so here it comes today.
“It was set up in 1988 by a small group of scientists all firmly committed to the theory of ”human-induced climate change”, and its chief purpose ever since has been to promote that belief.
The blatant bias of each of its four reports has been pointed out by scientists – notably the rewriting of key passages in its 1995 report after the contributing scientists had approved the final text. This provoked a magisterial blast from Professor Frederick Seitz, a former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, who wrote that in all his 60 years as a scientist he had never seen ”a more disturbing corruption” of the scientific process, and that if the IPCC was ”incapable of following its most basic procedures”, it was best it should be ”abandoned”.
“The centrepiece of the IPCC’s 2001 report was Michael Mann’s notorious ”hockey stick”, the graph purporting to show temperatures in the late 20th century soaring at an unprecedented rate – later exposed as a statistical artefact. Another new book, The Hockey Stick Illusion by A W Montford, brilliantly tells the bizarre tale of how Mann’s colleagues, calling themselves ”the Hockey Team” and now at the heart of the IPCC, managed to resurrect the discredited graph for inclusion in its 2007 report.”
The IPCC is beginning to melt as global tempers rise, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:12PM GMT 30 Jan 2010
It is now six weeks since I launched an investigation, with my colleague Richard North, into the affairs of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the hugely influential body which for 20 years has been the central driver of worldwide alarm about global warming. Since then the story has grown almost daily, leading to worldwide calls for Dr Pachauri’s resignation. But increasingly this has also widened out to question the authority of the IPCC itself. Contrary to the tendentious claim that its reports represent a ”consensus of the world’s top 2,500 climate scientists” (most of its contributors are not climate experts at all),it has now emerged, for instance, that one of the more widely quoted scare stories from its 2007 report was drawn from the work of a British ”green activist” who occasionally writes as a freelance for The Guardian and The Independent.
Last week I reported on ”Glaciergate”, the scandal which has forced the IPCC’s top officials, led by Dr Pachauri, to disown a claim originating from an Indian glaciologist, Dr Syed Husnain, that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035. What has made this reckless claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report even more embarrassing was the fact that Dr Husnain, as we revealed, was then employed by Dr Pachauri’s own Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (Teri).His baseless scaremongering about the Himalayas helped to win Teri a share in two lucrative research contracts, one funded by the EU.
The source the IPCC cited as its ”scientific” authority for this claim, however (as Dr North first reported on his EU Referendum blog), was a propagandist pamphlet published in 2005 by the WWF, the environmentalist pressure group, citing a magazine interview with Dr Husnain six years earlier.
Dr North next uncovered ”Amazongate”. The IPCC made a prominent claim in its 2007 report, again citing the WWF as its authority, that climate change could endanger ”up to 40 per cent” of the Amazon rainforest – as iconic to warmists as those Himalayan glaciers and polar bears. This WWF report, it turned out, was co-authored by Andy Rowell, an anti-smoking and food safety campaigner who has worked for WWF and Greenpeace, and contributed pieces to Britain‘s two most committed environmentalist newspapers. Rowell and his co-author claimed their findings were based on an article in Nature. But the focus of that piece, it emerges, was not global warming at all but the effects of logging.
A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC’s report which cite similarly non-peer-reviewed WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority, and other researchers have been uncovering a host of similarly dubious claims and attributions all through the report. These range from groundless allegations about the increased frequency of ”extreme weather events” such as hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves, to a headline claim that global warming would put billions of people at the mercy of water shortages – when the study cited as its authority indicated exactly the opposite, that rising temperatures could increase the supply of water.
Little of this has come as a surprise to those who have studied the workings of the IPCC over the years. As I show in my book The Real Global Warming Disaster, there is no greater misconception about the IPCC than that it was intended to be an impartial body, weighing scientific evidence for and against global warming. It was set up in 1988 by a small group of scientists all firmly committed to the theory of ”human-induced climate change”, and its chief purpose ever since has been to promote that belief.
The blatant bias of each of its four reports has been pointed out by scientists – notably the rewriting of key passages in its 1995 report after the contributing scientists had approved the final text. This provoked a magisterial blast from Professor Frederick Seitz, a former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, who wrote that in all his 60 years as a scientist he had never seen ”a more disturbing corruption” of the scientific process, and that if the IPCC was ”incapable of following its most basic procedures”, it was best it should be ”abandoned”.
The centrepiece of the IPCC’s 2001 report was Michael Mann’s notorious ”hockey stick”, the graph purporting to show temperatures in the late 20th century soaring at an unprecedented rate – later exposed as a statistical artefact. Another new book, The Hockey Stick Illusion by A W Montford, brilliantly tells the bizarre tale of how Mann’s colleagues, calling themselves ”the Hockey Team” and now at the heart of the IPCC, managed to resurrect the discredited graph for inclusion in its 2007 report. Montford’s book, if inevitably technical, expertly recounts a remarkable scientific detective story. And of course, it was incriminating leaked emails between members of the Hockey Team that were at the centre of the recent ”Climategate” scandal at the University of East Anglia.
Most disturbing of all are the glimpses the story gives of the inner workings of the IPCC, an institution now so discredited and scientifically corrupted that only those determined to shut their eyes could possibly defend it. This is now compounded by the recent revelations by Dr North and myself in these pages of how its chairman, Dr Pachauri, has built a worldwide network of business links which provide his Delhi institute with a sizeable income.
It is noticeable how many of those now calling for Dr Pachauri’s resignation, led by Professor Andrew Weaver, a senior IPCC insider,are passionate global warming believers. Fearing that Pachauri damages their cause, they want him thrown overboard in the hope of saving the IPCC itself.But it is not just Pachauri who has been holed below the waterline. So has the entire IPCC process. And beyond that – and despite the pleading of Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and the BBC that none of this detracts from the evidence for man-made global warming – so has the warmist cause itself. Bereft of scientific or moral authority, the most expensive show the world has ever seen may soon be nearing its end.
Now we have an update of the 30 year timeline of Cliamte Gate (1.1) thanks to Mohib Ebrahim plus four volonteers. Study it and read all the details of the biggest political and scientific scandal in modern time – The Global Warming Hysteria.
“When a first draft was published last December, many readers had excellent suggestions for improving it. So behind the scenes, Mohib and four more volunteers went to work. Thanks especially to Curt for revising and editing the entire timeline (as he’d done with the introduction), and to Tom, Stuart and Gene for help proofreading. It’s really been a monumental task and now, finally, for all those waiting for the chance to print and learn, here is the official edition. All pictures and links have been updated.”
First it was Climate gate, then Glacier gate, then Amazon gate. And now Mountain Gate. Based on VERY STRICT SCIENCE AND PEER REVIEW from anecdotes in a climbing magazine. And some more interviews and anecdotes from a dissertation.
Both of them “accidentally” climate change campaigners.
What a coincidence wouldn’t you say? Ah.. it’s so good to witness pure science as it’s works.
This is IPCC peer reviewed “science”:
“However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.
The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerlandthat quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps. “
“But some researchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC’s use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature.
Professor Richard Tol, one of the report’s authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: ”These are essentially a collection of anecdotes.
”Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been.
”There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense.”
“Roger Sedjo, a senior research fellow at the US research organisation Resources for the Future who also contributed to the IPCC’s latest report, added: ”The IPCC is, unfortunately, a highly political organisation with most of the secretariat bordering on climate advocacy.
”It needs to develop a more balanced and indeed scientifically sceptical behaviour pattern. The organisation tend to select the most negative studies ignoring more positive alternatives”
But they missed the real story that the assertions made by the WWF paper are not in any way supported by the Nature paper and actively misrepresent its findings.
UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article
The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent and Rebecca Lefort
Published: 9:00PM GMT 30 Jan 2010
The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.
The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.
In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.
However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.
The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerlandthat quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.
The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.
It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC’s report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.
This week scientists from around the world leapt to the defence of the IPCC, insisting that despite the errors, which they describe as minor, the majority of the science presented in the IPCC report is sound and its conclusions are unaffected.
But some researchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC’s use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature.
Professor Richard Tol, one of the report’s authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: ”These are essentially a collection of anecdotes.
”Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been.
”There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense.”
The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government’s worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people.
The claims about disappearing mountain ice were contained within a table entitled ”Selected observed effects due to changes in the cryosphere produced by warming”.
It states that reductions in mountain ice have been observed from the loss of ice climbs in the Andes, Alps and in Africa between 1900 and 2000.
The report also states that the section is intended to ”assess studies that have been published since the TAR (Third Assessment Report) of observed changes and their effects”.
But neither the dissertation or the magazine article cited as sources for this information were ever subject to the rigorous scientific review process that research published in scientific journals must undergo.
The magazine article, which was written by Mark Bowen, a climber and author of two books on climate change, appeared in Climbing magazine in 2002. It quoted anecdotal evidence from climbers of retreating glaciers and the loss of ice from climbs since the 1970s.
Mr Bowen said: ”I am surprised that they have cited an article from a climbing magazine, but there is no reason why anecdotal evidence from climbers should be disregarded as they are spending a great deal of time in places that other people rarely go and so notice the changes.”
The dissertation paper, written by professional mountain guide and climate change campaigner Dario-Andri Schworer while he was studying for a geography degree, quotes observations from interviews with around 80 mountain guides in the Bernina region of the Swiss Alps.
Experts claim that loss of ice climbs are a poor indicator of a reduction in mountain ice as climbers can knock ice down and damage ice falls with their axes and crampons.
The IPCC has faced growing criticism over the sources it used in its last report after it emerged the panel had used unsubstantiated figures on glacial melting in the Himalayas that were contained within a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report.
It can be revealed that the IPCC report made use of 16 non-peer reviewed WWF reports.
One claim, which stated that coral reefs near mangrove forests contained up to 25 times more fish numbers than those without mangroves nearby, quoted a feature article on the WWF website.
In fact the data contained within the WWF article originated from a paper published in 2004 in the respected journal Nature.
In another example a WWF paper on forest fires was used to illustrate the impact of reduced rainfall in the Amazon rainforest, but the data was from another Nature paper published in 1999.
When The Sunday Telegraph contacted the lead scientists behind the two papers in Nature, they expressed surprise that their research was not cited directly but said the IPCC had accurately represented their work.
The chair of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri has faced mounting pressure and calls for his resignation amid the growing controversy over the error on glacier melting and use of unreliable sources of information.
A survey of 400 authors and contributors to the IPCC report showed, however, that the majority still support Mr Pachauri and the panel’s vice chairs. They also insisted the overall findings of the report are robust despite the minor errors.
But many expressed concern at the use of non-peer reviewed information in the reports and called for a tightening of the guidelines on how information can be used.
The Met Office, which has seven researchers who contributed to the report including Professor Martin Parry who was co-chair of the working group responsible for the part of the report that contained the glacier errors, said: ”The IPCC should continue to ensure that its review process is as robust and transparent as possible, that it draws only from the peer-reviewed literature, and that uncertainties in the science and projections are clearly expressed.”
Roger Sedjo, a senior research fellow at the US research organisation Resources for the Future who also contributed to the IPCC’s latest report, added: ”The IPCC is, unfortunately, a highly political organisation with most of the secretariat bordering on climate advocacy.
”It needs to develop a more balanced and indeed scientifically sceptical behaviour pattern. The organisation tend to select the most negative studies ignoring more positive alternatives.”
The IPCC failed to respond to questions about the inclusion of unreliable sources in its report but it has insisted over the past week that despite minor errors, the findings of the report are still robust and consistent with the underlying science.
“I first met Professor Stott a couple of years ago. He’s emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London, and I tracked him down because in those days he was pretty much the ONLY senior scientific academic anywhere in Britain brave enough publicly to dispute the AGW ‘consensus.”
We had lunch. “There are many more scientists who think the way I do,” he told me. “But they don’t want to stick their heads above the parapet. They don’t want to lose their jobs.” We talked a bit about the loneliness of our position, how impossible it was to place dissenting articles anywhere in the media, how people who thought like us were treated like pariahs.
Now suddenly it has all changed utterly. And you know what? I’m in no mood for being magnanimous in victory. I want the lying, cheating, fraudulent scientists prosecuted and fined or imprisoned. I want warmist politicians like Brown and disgusting Milibands booted out and I want Conservative fellow-travellers who are still pushing this green con trick – that’ll be you, David Cameron, you Greg Clark, you Tim Yeo, you John Gummer, to name but four – to be punished at the polls for their culpable idiocy.
For years I’ve been made to feel a pariah for my views on AGW. Chris Booker has had the same experience, as has Richard North, Benny Peiser, Lord Lawson, Philip Stott and those few others of us who recognised early on that the AGW thing stank. Now it’s payback time and I take small satisfaction from seeing so many rats deserting their sinking ship. I don’t want them on my side. I want to see them in hell, reliving scenes from Hieronymus Bosch.
Yeah, maybe it isn’t the Christian way. But screw ‘em. It’s not as though they haven’t all been screwing us for long enough.”
For over a month now, since the farcical conclusion of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, I have been silent, partly through family commitments abroad in the USA, but also because, in this noisy world, in ‘The Clamour Of The Times’, it is on occasion better to be quiet and contemplative, to observe rather than to comment. And, as an independent academic, it has been fascinating to witness the classical collapse of a Grand Narrative, in which social and philosophical theories are being played out before our gaze. It is like watching the Berlin Wall [pictured] being torn down, concrete slab by concrete slab, brick by brick, with cracks appearing and widening daily on every face – political, economic, and scientific. Likewise, the bloggers have been swift to cover the crumbling edifice with colourful graffiti, sometimes bitter, at others caustic and witty.
The Political And Economic Collapse
Moreover, the collapse has been quicker than any might have predicted. The humiliating exclusion of Britain and the EU at the end of the Copenhagen débâcle was partially to be expected, but it was brutal in its final execution. The swing of power to the BASIC group of countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) had likewise been signified for some time, but, again, it came with precipitate ease, leaving even the American President, Barack Obama, with no doubts as to where the political agenda on climate change was now heading, namely to the developing world, but especially to the East, and to the Pacific Rim. The dirigiste tropes of ‘Old Europe’, with its love of meaningless targets and carbon capping, will no longer carry weight, while Obama himself has been straitjacketed by the voters of Massachusetts, by the rust-belt Democrats, by a truculent Congress, by an increasingly-sceptical and disillusioned American public, but, above all, by the financial crisis. Nothing will now be effected that for a single moment curbs economic development, from China to Connecticut, from Africa to Alaska.
And, as ever, capitalism has read the runes, with carbon-trading posts quietly being shed, ‘Green’ jobs sidelined, and even big insurance companies starting to hedge their own bets against the future of the Global Warming Grand Narrative. These rats are leaving the sinking ship far faster than any politician, many of whom are going to be abandoned, left, still clinging to the masts, as the Good Ship ‘Global Warming’ founders on titanic icebergs in the raging oceans of doubt and delusion.
The Scientific Collapse
And what can one say about ‘the science’? ‘The ‘science’ is already paying dearly for its abuse of freedom of information, for unacceptable cronyism, for unwonted arrogance, and for the disgraceful misuse of data at every level, from temperature measurements to glaciers to the Amazon rain forest. What is worse, the usurping of the scientific method, and of justified scientific scepticism, by political policies and political propaganda could well damage science sensu lato – never mind just climate science – in the public eye for decades.The appalling pre-Copenhagen attacks by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and his climate-change henchman, Ed Miliband, on those who dared to be critical of the science of climate change were some of the most unforgivable I can recall.
It is further salutary that much of the trouble is now emanating from India. Indeed, the nonsense written about the Indian Sub-Continent has been a particular nadir in climate-change science, and it has long been judged so by many experts on the region. My ex-SOAS friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Bradnock, a world authority on the Sub-Continent, has been seething for years over the traducing of data and information relating to this key part of the world. In June, 2008, he wrote:
“However, in my own narrow area of research, I know that many of the claims about the impact of ‘global warming’ in Bangladesh, for example, are completely unfounded. There is no evidence that flooding has increased at all in recent years. Drought and excessive rainfall are the nature of the monsoon system. Agricultural production, far from being decimated by worsening floods over the last twenty years, has nearly doubled. In the early 1990s, Houghton published a map of the purported effects of sea-level rise on Bangladesh. Coming from a Fellow of the Royal Society, former Head of the Met Office and Chair of the IPCC, this was widely accepted, and frequently reproduced. Yet, it shows no understanding of the complex processes that form the Bengal delta, and it is seriously misleading. Moreover, despite the repeated claims of the World Wide Fund, Greenpeace, and, sadly, Christian Aid, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers is of completely marginal significance to the farmers of the plains in China, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. One could go on!”
The Media Collapse
One could indeed! But we may not need to do so for much longer. Why? Because the biggest collapse is in the media, the very ‘mechanism’ through which the greedy Global Warming Grand Narrative has promulgated itself during the last ten to twenty years.
The break in the ‘Media Wall’ began in the tabloids and in the ‘red tops’, like The Daily Express and the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, but it is today spreading rapidly – yet once more as theory predicts – to the so-called ‘heavyweights’ and to the BBC. In the past, uncritical and apocalyptic stories and programmes were given the highest prominence, with any sceptical comment confined to the briefest of quotations from some benighted, and often snidely-mentioned, sceptic squeezed in at the very end of the piece (“For balance, you know”). Today, the reverse is becoming true, with the ‘global warming’ faithful firmly forced on to the back foot. Yet, in our post-modern world, it is the journalistic language being employed that is the true indicator of a new media order. Listening to good old Roger Harrabin this morning, reporting on BBC Radio 4’s flagship ‘Today’ programme, was a revelation in this respect; the language, and even the style, had altered radically.
Potential Losers
The collapse is now so precipitate that there will inevitably be some serious losers caught out by it all. The UK Met Office could well be one, with the BBC rightly reviewing its contract with them. At the moment, Met Office spokespersons sound extraordinary, bizarre even. They bleat out ‘global warming’ phrases like programmed robotic sheep, although they are finding it increasingly difficult to pull the wool over our eyes. It is terribly 1984, and rather chilling, so to speak. It is obvious that the organisation is suffering from another classical academic state, namely that known as ‘cognitive dissonance’ [see here and here]. This is experienced when belief in a Grand Narrative persists blindly, even when the facts in the real world begin to contradict what the narrative is saying. Sadly, many of our public and private organisations have allowed themselves to develop far too great a vested interest in ‘global warming’, as have too many politicians and activists. These are increasingly terrified, many having no idea how to react, or how to adjust, to the collapse. It will be particularly interesting to witness how, in the end, the Royal Society plays its cards, especially if competing scientific paradigms, such as the key role played by water vapour in climate change, start to displace the current paradigm in classic fashion.
Certain newspapers, like my own DNOC, The Times, have also been a tad slow to grasp the magnitude of the collapse (although Ben Webster has tried valiantly to counter this with some good pieces); yet, even such outlets at last appear to be fathoming the remarkable changes taking place. Today, for example, The Times carries a brief, but seminal, critique of the ‘science’ from Lord Leach of Fairford.
What Will It Mean?
I have long predicted, and in public too, that the Copenhagen Conference could prove to be the beginning of the end for the Global Warming Grand Narrative. It appears that I may well have been right, and, indeed, I may have considerably underestimated the speed, and the dramatic nature, of the demise.
Where this all leaves our politicians and political parties in the UK; where it leaves climate science, scientists more generally, and the Royal Society; where it leaves energy policy; where it leaves the ‘Green’ movement; and, where it leaves our media will have to be topics for many later comments and analyses.
For the moment, we must not underestimate the magnitude of the collapse. Academically, it is jaw-dropping to observe.
And, the political, economic, and scientific consequences will be profound.
More on the total unreliability of the computer models which ALL THIS Global Warming Hysteria is based on.
I have written extensively about the climate models. How uncertain and unreliable they are, how their parameters are “tweaked” to fit this Global Warming Hysteria, how a lot of the important natural forces and parameters that are involved in “creating” weather and climate are not included etc.
These climate models who cannot predict the weather 2 weeks from now, or how the weather was 2 weeks ago.
And these are the models they want us to believe that they can “predict” the temperature within a tenth of a degree in 100 YEARS!
Now they discovered that water vapour does EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE what the computer models predicted.
Contributions of Stratospheric Water Vapor to Decadal Changes in the Rate of Global Warming
Susan Solomon,1 Karen Rosenlof,1 Robert Portmann,1 John Daniel,1 Sean Davis,1,2 Todd Sanford,1,2 Gian-Kasper Plattner3
Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here, we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000 to 2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor represents an important driver of decadal global surface climate change.
1 NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Division, Boulder, CO, USA.
2 Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA.
3 Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Sidlerstrasse 5, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
——————————————————————————–
Received for publication 25 September 2009. Accepted for publication 12 January 2010.
“Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect,” says Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist and first author of the study.
Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W.D., Parshall, L., Lynn, B., Cox. J., Goldberg, R. Hodges, S., Gaffin, S., Slosberg, R.B., Savio, P., Dunstan, F. and Watson, M. 2009. Mitigating New York City’s heat island. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 90: 1297-1312.
What was done
The authors compared ”the possible effectiveness of heat island mitigation strategies to increase urban vegetation, such as planting trees or incorporating vegetation into rooftops, with strategies to increase the albedo of impervious surfaces.”
What was learned
With respect to the magnitude of the problem they were seeking to address, Rosenzweig et al. report that ”surface air temperatures elevated by at least 1°C have been observed in New York City for more than a century (Rosenthal et al., 2003; Gaffin et al., 2008), and the heat island signal, measured as the difference between the urban core and the surrounding rural surface air temperature readings taken at National Weather Service stations, averages ~4°C on summer nights (Kirkpatrick and Shulman, 1987; Gedzelman et al., 2003; Gaffin et al., 2008),” with the greatest temperature differences typically being sustained ”between midnight and 0500 Eastern Standard Time (EST; Gaffin et al., 2008).” And on a day that they studied quite intensively (14 August 2002), they report that at 0600 EST, ”the city was several degrees warmer than the suburbs, and up to 8°C warmer than rural areas within 100 km of the city.”
With respect to mitigation strategies, the twelve researchers determined that ”the most effective way to reduce urban air temperature is to maximize the amount of vegetation in the city with a combination of tree planting and green roofs.” Based on modeling studies of these approaches, for example, they estimated that this strategy could reduce simulated citywide urban air temperature by 0.4°C on average, and 0.7°C at 1500 EST, while simulated reductions of up to 1.1°C at 1500 EST could be expected in some Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods, ”primarily because there is more available area in which to plant trees and install vegetated roofs.”
What it means
These several findings reveal that New York City has already experienced an urban-induced warming equivalent to what is predicted to occur by the end of the current century as a result of business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions,and that planting additional vegetation throughout the city would likely moderate its thermal environment more than all of the greenhouse-gas emissions reductions the world’s governments are ever likely to make.
References
Gaffin, S.R., et al. 2008. Variations in New York City’s urban heat island strength over time and space. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 94: 1-11.
Gedzelman, S.D., Austin, S., Cermak, R., Stefano, N., Partridge, S., Quesenberry, S. and Robinson, D.A. 2003. Mesoscale aspects of the urban heat island around New York City. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 75: 29-42.
Kirkpatrick, J.S. and Shulman, M.D. 1987. A statistical evaluation of the New York City-northern Jew Jersey urban heat island effect on summer daily minimum temperature. National Weather Digest 12: 12.
Rosenthal, J., Pena Sastre, M., Rosenzweig, C., Knowlton, K., Goldberg, R. and Kinney, P. 2003. One hundred years of New York City’s ”urban heat island”: Temperature trends and public health impacts. EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 84 (Fall Meeting Supplement), Abstract U32A-0030.
“Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong,but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists. “
“Mr Bagla said he had informed Dr Pachauri that Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University and a leading glaciologist, had dismissed the 2035 date as being wrong by at least 300 years. Professor Cogley believed the IPCC had misread the date in a 1996 report which said the glaciers could melt significantly by 2350.
Mr Pallava interviewed Dr Pachauri again this week for Science and asked him why he had decided to overlook the error before the Copenhagen summit. In the taped interview, Mr Pallava asked: “I pointed it out [the error] to you in several e-mails, several discussions, yet you decided to overlook it. Was that so that you did not want to destabilise what was happening in Copenhagen?” “
Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen
Ben Webster, Environment Editor
The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.
Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong,but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.
The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.
Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure. He told The Times on January 22 that he had only known about the error for a few days. He said: “I became aware of this when it was reported in the media about ten days ago. Before that, it was really not made known. Nobody brought it to my attention. There were statements, but we never looked at this 2035 number.”
Asked whether he had deliberately kept silent about the error to avoid embarrassment at Copenhagen, he said: “That’s ridiculous. It never came to my attention before the Copenhagen summit. It wasn’t in the public sphere.”
However, a prominent science journalist said that he had asked Dr Pachauri about the 2035 error last November. Pallava Bagla, who writes for Science journal, said he had asked Dr Pachauri about the error. He said that Dr Pachauri had replied: “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.”
The Himalayan glaciers are so thick and at such high altitude that most glaciologists believe they would take several hundred years to melt at the present rate. Some are growing and many show little sign of change.
Dr Pachauri had previously dismissed a report by the Indian Government which said that glaciers might not be melting as much as had been feared. He described the report, which did not mention the 2035 error, as “voodoo science”.
Mr Bagla said he had informed Dr Pachauri that Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University and a leading glaciologist, had dismissed the 2035 date as being wrong by at least 300 years. Professor Cogley believed the IPCC had misread the date in a 1996 report which said the glaciers could melt significantly by 2350.
Mr Pallava interviewed Dr Pachauri again this week for Science and asked him why he had decided to overlook the error before the Copenhagen summit. In the taped interview, Mr Pallava asked: “I pointed it out [the error] to you in several e-mails, several discussions, yet you decided to overlook it. Was that so that you did not want to destabilise what was happening in Copenhagen?”
Dr Pachauri replied: “Not at all, not at all. As it happens, we were all terribly preoccupied with a lot of events. We were working round the clock with several things that had to be done in Copenhagen. It was only when the story broke, I think in December, we decided to, well, early this month — as a matter of fact, I can give you the exact dates — early in January that we decided to go into it and we moved very fast.
“And within three or four days, we were able to come up with a clear and a very honest and objective assessment of what had happened. So I think this presumption on your part or on the part of any others is totally wrong. We are certainly never — and I can say this categorically — ever going to do anything other than what is truthful and what upholds the veracity of science.”
Dr Pacharui has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Intresting interview with Roger Sedjo, a Washington-based economist, who was involved in the IPCC’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th assessments between 1996 and 2007. He was also a lead author of one of the chapters in the 3rd assessment.
“And even if you are a sceptic, you have to ask yourself, “Are people trying to manipulate the science in order to try and achieve a political aim?” I am concerned that scientists aren’t more worried about these mistakes. Things like this shouldn’t happen. If they were dealing with financial accounting, they would all be in jail. It borders on outright fraud.”
“A concern is that a majority of the management are advocates. What you have is an organisation tasked with looking at a scientific question, but the top management, almost entirely, subscribes to the more extreme position”
‘An Intentional Effort To Distort The Debate…Borders On Outright Fraud’
The Washington-based economist who was part of the team to be awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize weighs in
Ashish Kumar Sen
Roger Sedjo, a Washington-based economist, was involved in the IPCC’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th assessments between 1996 and 2007. He was a lead author of one of the chapters in the 3rd assessment and part of the team to be awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Sedjo is also a senior fellow and the director of Resources for the Future’s forest economics and policy programme. Excerpts from an interview with Ashish Kumar Sen:
Is the uproar over an error in the IPCC report justified?
It has created a much bigger furore in India than it has here.
Should Dr Pachauri step down?
Should the head of an organisation be responsible for each piece of paper that comes out of his office? I should say not. On the glacier melting date, was the mistake inadvertent or by design? I cannot conceive of a publication coming out where they don’t pay careful attention to an important detail like a 300 years’ difference. Someone should have picked up on this because it changes the whole bottomline. It’s hard to imagine a mistake of that magnitude slipping through as a mistake rather than as an intentional effort to distort the debate. But I don’t see how it reflects on Pachauri. He has responsibility for looking into what apparently was sloppiness. But unless this occurs on a regular basis at the IPCC, I find it hard to understand why he should step down.
And the repercussions?
This is providing tremendous ammunition to opponents of climate science. And even if you are a sceptic, you have to ask yourself, “Are people trying to manipulate the science in order to try and achieve a political aim?” I am concerned that scientists aren’t more worried about these mistakes. Things like this shouldn’t happen. If they were dealing with financial accounting, they would all be in jail. It borders on outright fraud.
Is the lobbying effort in Washington aimed at IPCC and Dr Pachauri?
Among opponents, there is a general disdain for the IPCC, but I have never heard talk in Washington about getting rid of Pachauri.
What is your assessment of the IPCC?
A concern is that a majority of the management are advocates. What you have is an organisation tasked with looking at a scientific question, but the top management, almost entirely, subscribes to the more extreme position: “We have a serious problem; it’s generated by humans and greenhouse gases; we understand the problem pretty well.” That seems to me to be an overstatement. Climate change is a scientific question and science is supposed to be addressed with a certain degree of scepticism.
“But however doomed the effort, it is worth the strain to re-summon the spectre of the Copenhagen festival. The prelude to the event was a blizzard, a windstorm, a tsunami of worldwide press attention.The myriad and extremely well-orchestrated voices of climate alarmism had warned the world of its importance. Copenhagen was make or break for the planet. It was do or die.”
“And then the summit met. Forty-five thousand of the most professionally worried people on the planet, jetted and limousined their way, with a blissful unconsciousness of the titantic carbon propulsion it took to get them there, into Copenhagen for two weeks. They yammered. They press-released. They fossil-awarded like mad. And they went home. Finis.
That was it.
Three days after the great gloom-bazaar, it was hard to find a sentient human being on this threatened planet who had a word to say, or a thought to waste, on Copenhagen.”
“If all of those voices of the environmental groups, the hectic NGOs, the potentates and activists, the missionary scientists truly believed their own press releases before the conference, then its culmination in frustration and impotence must have registered with devastating effect. But in the days after Copenhagen, they and the world seemed to be spinning quite as calmly as before. “
Q. How is the recently concluded Copenhagen climate conference like the Medieval Warm Period?
A. They both may be seen to disappear when it serves a noble purpose.
Well, I warned it was very little. But, then again, global warming is a very earnest, if not positively sullen topic, and to mine even an atom of a joke from all of the frenzied evangelism of self-appointed environmentalist groups, the grim coven that ran the now celebrated labs in East Anglia, or from our modern day catastrophist Savonarola, Al Gore, is too much even for the most deep-mining humourist.
But however doomed the effort, it is worth the strain to re-summon the spectre of the Copenhagen festival. The prelude to the event was a blizzard, a windstorm, a tsunami of worldwide press attention.The myriad and extremely well-orchestrated voices of climate alarmism had warned the world of its importance. Copenhagen was make or break for the planet. It was do or die. Either Copenhagen would prove to be a greater Kyoto, a summit that crafted binding resolutions on the carbon-belching nations of the world, or it would be but a little while that we passed the “tipping point,” and poor Mother Gaia and her shielding atmosphere would be sent inexorably on the path to ecological doom. Island states would be deluged, a new tropics would settle over our northern climes, millions would be displaced or worse and rogue mankind would have missed its last best chance to halt the sultry drift into global ruin.
The buildup to the Copenhagen conference had better writers than the Book of Revelations (and certainly better press management). All that was missing from the drum-roll of anticipation for the summit was a walk-on part for The Great Whore of Babylon to add a little lurid colour to its vision of meteorological apocalypse.
And then the summit met. Forty-five thousand of the most professionally worried people on the planet, jetted and limousined their way, with a blissful unconsciousness of the titantic carbon propulsion it took to get them there, into Copenhagen for two weeks. They yammered. They press-released. They fossil-awarded like mad. And they went home. Finis.
That was it.
Three days after the great gloom-bazaar, it was hard to find a sentient human being on this threatened planet who had a word to say, or a thought to waste, on Copenhagen. If I knew the Latin for “What happened?” (and I am for once unwilling to Google-cheat for the knowledge) this is where I’d drop it. After all this splendid fanfare, after so glorious an overture — what happened to the symphony?
If all of those voices of the environmental groups, the hectic NGOs, the potentates and activists, the missionary scientists truly believed their own press releases before the conference, then its culmination in frustration and impotence must have registered with devastating effect. But in the days after Copenhagen, they and the world seemed to be spinning quite as calmly as before.
Well, not quite as calmly.
The toxic radiations from Climategate, that sad stream of emails leaked on the eve of the great summit, had percolated through the media and to the wider audience at large. Those who took the trouble to read them caught a glimpse of the sullenness, rivalry, distemper and outright mischief that some of the scientists at the very centre of the whole global warming industry brought to their task.
The picture presented was one of pre-commitment to a point of view, of a gloomy, angry and ruthless determination to keep “outsiders” off their turf. Peer review, the very gold standard of science, was shown to be a closed circle. Journals that thought the approved way were fine: Others were to be derogated, taken off the mailing list.Science as a closed shop of the right-minded, science in alliance with activism, was the real revelation of Climategate.
More followed Climategate, as all now know, not least the monstrous claims about the Himalyan glaciers (purported to be ready to melt away in 2035!). This is why the Copenhagen Conference for all its extravagant hype and buildup simply disappeared from the press and the public mind on the instant of its conclusion. Because, via Climategate, the world caught the first real glimpse of how politicized and manipulated this “greatest issue of our time” had been allowed to become. Saw as well how the sacred impartiality of science, and the great authority of peer review, had been suborned for something as political in its way as the average day’s outing in Question Period.
No one’s really talking about the failure of Copenhagen now because the ostensible threat to humanity was shown to be shrouded in hype. Al Gore and his crew simply don’t have now what we used to call “the face” to deliver another grand and imperiously moralizing lecture to the world and its carbon-consuming innocents after the travesty revealed in Climategate and the clutter of revelations that followed it.
National Post
Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.
“In the Obama worldview, fighting climate change will ”finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” In the Osama worldview, it will ”bring the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.”
“The president and the Democrats running Congress fail to see the dangers that environmentalist extremism poses to the U.S.But bin Laden has concluded it is a powerful weapon that can destroy us.”
“Environmentalist extremism has made the leap from a politically-correct fetish of leftist utopians who resent capitalists to an economic weapon highly recommended by America‘s international Public Enemy No.1.”
Al-Qaida: Global warming fanatics have an unwelcome new ally: Osama bin Laden. Unlike enviro-leftists, the terror master recognizes that the green agenda can cripple the U.S. economy.
In the Obama worldview, fighting climate change will ”finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” In the Osama worldview, it will ”bring the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.
The president spoke those words to Congress last week during his State of the Union message; the head of al-Qaida was delivering his latest rant for broadcast to his followers.
The president and the Democrats running Congress fail to see the dangers that environmentalist extremism poses to the U.S.But bin Laden has concluded it is a powerful weapon that can destroy us.
The Saudi-born patriarch of Islamist terrorism, from whatever cave he currently calls home, devoted his entire latest audiotape message to global warming. ”Talk about climate change is not an ideological luxury but a reality,” bin Laden declared. ”All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.”
Bin Laden even bashed ex-President George W. Bush for opposing the Kyoto Protocol at the behest of big business; he must have gotten hold of the Democratic National Committee’s talking points.
How do we prevent the promised worldwide calamity of temperatures going up and up? ”Drastic solutions” are in order according to the reclusive al-Qaida chief, as opposed to ”solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change.”
The world must ”stop consuming American products,” he advised, and ”we should stop dealings with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible.”
That will have ”grave ramifications,” bin Laden admitted, ”but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America.” Doing so would have the added bonus of hurting U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, he added.
As George Mason University atmospheric physicist Fred Singer and Hudson Institute agricultural economist Dennis Avery point out in their book, ”Unstoppable Global Warming,” Kyoto would create some jobs, ”but far more would be lost through the economic stagnation and the higher taxes required to ration energy use.”
As Singer and Avery note, Americans ”have been reluctant to commit the United States to the cost of building an entirely new energy system when the old energy system was still working, the alternative fuel systems recommended by environmentalists were expensive and erratic, and the science of global warming was still uncertain.”
Of course, in the wake of last year’s Climategate e-mail scandal, in which hacked communications between climatologists revealed the intentional skewing of scientific evidence regarding warming, plus other tendentious misconduct, the science backing climate change alarmism is more uncertain than ever.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., former chairman of and now ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, argued on the Senate floor in November that ”developing countries like China and India will never be masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West’s climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that don’t actually have to be met.”
He added, ”the U.S. will not support a global warming treaty that will significantly damage the American economy, cost American jobs, and impose the largest tax increase in American history.”
Inhofe spoke for many when he said that ”given the unemployment rate of 10%, and given all of the out of control spending in Washington,the last thing we need is another thousand-page bill that increases costs and ships jobs overseas, all with no impact on climate change.”
Environmentalist extremism has made the leap from a politically-correct fetish of leftist utopians who resent capitalists to an economic weapon highly recommended by America‘s international Public Enemy No.1.
Who wants to bet it’s only a matter of time before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad follows bin Laden’s recommendation and echoes the call to use global warming policies to topple the Great Satan from its position as the world’s lone superpower?
A bad treaty, after all, can be nearly as destructive as a nuke.
Well, this must be the ULTIMATE sign that the Global Warming Hysterics REALLY, REALLY are on the ropes. With an ally like Bin Laden who in the world need ANY enemies?
If I was a High Priest of this Political Cult, I would just pack my things and leave. And hide under a rock for the rest of my life cursing my misfortune.
Before Christmas I wrote:
In my post exactly a year ago I wrote:
“I am looking forward to 2009, the year when the biggest political and scientific scandal in modern time is going to implode – The Global Warming Hysteria.”
Well, it did happen.
So for 2010 I am looking forward to that the biggest political and scientific scandal in modern time – The Global Warming Hysteria – is not only going to implode, it is going to vanish into thin air.
Well, it went MUCH quicker that I thought.
‘AGW is real!’ insists Al Gore’s new soul mate Osama Bin Laden
“Joining president Obama, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and, of course, the EU, R K Pachauri, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, warning of the dangers of climate change, is that star of stage and screen … bring on the one and only Osama bin Laden.”
The story here:
Bin Laden slams US on climate, economy in new tirade
“DUBAI (AFP) – Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden lectured the US and other industrial nations on climate change, and urged a dollar boycott in response to American ”slavery,” in a fresh verbal assault broadcast Friday.
In the message aired on Al-Jazeera television, possibly timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, bin Laden said ”all industrial nations, mainly the big ones, are responsible for the crisis of global warming.”
”Discussing climate change is not an intellectual luxury, but a reality,” he said in the audio recording whose authenticity could not be immediately verified.
”This is a message to the whole world about those who are causing climate change, whether deliberately or not, and what we should do about that.”
Considered the climate Bible by governments around the world, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is meant to be a scientific analysis of the most authoritative research.
Instead, it references literature generated by Greenpeace – an organization known more for headline-grabbing publicity stunts than sober-minded analysis. (Eight IPCC-cited Greenpeace publications are listed at the bottom of this post.)
In one section of this Nobel-winning report, climate change is linked to coral reef degradation. The sole source for this claim? A Greenpeace report titled ”Pacific in Peril” (see Hoegh-Guldberg below). Here the report relies on a Greenpeace document to establish the lower-end of an estimate involving solar power plants (Aringhoff).
When discussing solar energy elsewhere, the report references two Greenpeace documents in one sentence. Here it uses a Greenpeace paper as its sole means of documenting where the ”main wind-energy investments” are located globally (Wind).
On this page, the report notes that while some research suggests wind power will generate between three and five percent of global electricity by 2030, a more optimistic forecast places this number at 29%. The six times more favorable estimatecomes fromGWEC, 2006 – a 60-page, photo-rich report co-authored by Greenpeace and the Global Wind Energy Council. (The latter describes itself as ”the global wind industry trade association.”) In fairness to the IPCC, even it rejectedGreenpeace’s numbers, choosing instead to use 7% in its analysis.
But the fact that this report relies on Greenpeace-generated copy isn’t the only reason for concern. Here is an IPCC graphic:
[h/t to Roger Pielke Jr. and Ben Pile] The idea that 2,500 ”scientific expert reviewers” provided feedback about the report during its pre-publication phase sounds awesome. But many of those people aren’t scientists at all. They’re professional activists in the employ of environmental organizations.
The expert reviewers who had input into just one portion (Working Group III) of the IPCC report are listed in this 8-page PDF. They include three Greenpeace employees, two Friends of the Earth representatives, two Climate Action Network reps, and a person each from activist organizations WWF International, Environmental Defense, and the David Suzuki Foundation.
One of these expert reviewers is Gabriela von Georne – who holds a PhD in geology and works as a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Germany. Von Georne is co-author of a 2008 report that employs colourful, less-than-clinical language. Carbon capture and storage ”will arrive on the battlefield far too late to help the world avoid dangerous climate change” it declares on page six.
(Incidentally, although this Greenpeace report begins with a declaration that it is ”based on peer-reviewed independent scientific research,” footnotes 48 and 53 cite only a non-peer-reviewed source to support statements of fact:
Hannegan, B, 2007. Testimony for Hearing of the Science, Technology and Innovation Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. 110th Cong., 1st Sess. 7 November 2007.
Moreover, footnote 153 cites a Greenpeace-published document authored by von Georne herself. Greenpeace, it would appear, has a definition of ”peer-reviewed” that is as elastic as the IPCC’s.)
As a Greenpeace employee, von Goerne gives interviews to the media. In 2007 she expressed her organization’s policy preferences to MSNBC: ”What we see is a diversion of money away from renewables toward CCS and coal, and that’s not the way we want to see things move forward… [italics added]
A 2005 BBCarticle about a Swedish company exploring clean-coal technology, quotes her thus:
I don’t think [this company] is taking climate issues seriously. They want to move on with coal technology, which ultimately is a dead end. The best choice would be to concentrate on renewable energies…
And in 2004, when von Goerne was part of a three-person Greenpeace delegation that testified before a committee of Australia’s Parliament, her demeanor was so combative that she was admonished by the chair, who told her: ”We are not having an ideological argument.”
All of this suggests that von Goerne is no neutral, disinterested party. It’s difficult to believe that, in her role as an IPCC reviewer, she confined herself solely to science-based objections.
Nevertheless, according to this bio, during the same time she would have been performing her reviewer role for the 2007 Nobel-winning report, von Goerne was also serving as a lead author of an IPCC special report examining the issue of carbon sequestration.
The second Greenpeace ”scientific expert reviewer” is Steve Sawyer. A Greenpeace bio describes him as a ”seasoned campaigner on board Greenpeace boats and a tireless lobbyist.” In 2005 he spent his time ”lobbying governments and corporations on energy policies.”
Sawyer is a former director of Greenpeace USA, a former executive director of Greenpeace International, and has two children with former Greenpeace Antarctic campaign director Kelly Rigg. In 2007, he became the secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, the lobby group that produced the wildly-optimistic wind power estimate mentioned above.
Fond of dramatic statements, Sawyer has declared that ”Future generations will not forgive us if we delay” emissions cuts. He has warned that Manhattan is at risk of being ”under water” due to climate change. And then there’s this quote from a press release issued prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq:
It’s clear [the US and the UK]…intend to wage a reckless war which would make the world a much more dangerous place…If it wanted the world to be ruled by the cowboy with the biggest guns, the international community wouldn’t have created the UN…
In short, Sawyer’s career has focused on political activism and environmental lobbying. How does that qualify him to be an IPCC ”scientific expert reviewer”?
The third Greenpeace representative given official standing as an IPCC reviewer is Sven Teske. When a Greenpeace protest vessel shut down Europe’s largest coal port in 2005, Teske was on board. Described as a renewable energy expert, he declared:
Climate change is now the single biggest threat facing our planet…Greenpeace is here today to expose Europe’s dangerous addiction to coal.
Elsewhere, he insists that: ”Renewable energy is the true answer” to coal’s shortcomings [italics added]. According to this bio, Teske has a BSc in engineering and a masters in ”wind energy technology.” Curiously, a 1995 Greenpeace press release described him as a ”nuclear expert” [screengrab here].
In April 2009, Teske was one of two speakers at a ”Public Forum on Climate Justice” held in Ottawa, Canada. Although he resides in Amsterdam, a month later he was quoted in a Greenpeace press release calling for Canadian ”political leadership” on green issues. A month after that, he called Australia ”a global climate change pariah.”
In 2006, Greenpeace released another report in conjunction with the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (a solar power lobby group). Teske is described as the ”Greenpeace Co-ordinator and scenario analyst” in its credits and his name is one of two appearing at the end of that document’s forward.
This attractive, 50-page publication is an extended brochure of the sort distributed by solar energy marketing departments. Although it is data and graph-intensive, it contains a grand total of four footnotes. Although it mentions external documents in passing, no list of full citations is provided.
Thus, we read on page 14 that, ”According to a WHO study, as many as 160,000 people are dying each year as a result of climate change.” Should we care to double-check this claim, we’re on our own.
As incredible as it sounds, this publication/brochure is itself cited in the Nobel-winning IPCC report as evidence that a particular statement is true. Appearing in the list below as Greenpeace 2006, it is one of two references mentioned in a single sentence, as discussed above.
Which begs an important question: how did it get into the same room with serious scholars? Why would it even be under consideration by a scientific body tasked with producing an assessment of the latest scientific research?
There appears to be an interesting chronology here. First Teske is granted ”scientific expert reviewer” status by the IPCC. Second, a non-academic, non-peer-reviewed document in which he was closely involved gets added to the climate change research canon by virtue of it being cited by the Nobel-winning report.
Third, Teske co-authors a new Greenpeace report that receives an extra measure of prestige when it features a forward authored by the high-profile IPCC chairman. Fourth, in a final flourish, Teske – like his Greenpeace colleauge von Goerne – gets elevated to lead author status of yet another IPCC special report (on renewable energy) due to be published this year.
Where does Greenpeace stop and the IPCC begin? Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.
GREENPEACE-GENERATED LITERATURE CITED BY THE 2007 NOBEL-WINNING CLIMATE REPORT
Aringhoff, R., C. Aubrey, G. Brakmann, and S. Teske, 2003: Solar thermal power 2020, Greenpeace International/European Solar Thermal Power Industry Association, Netherlands
ESTIA, 2004: Exploiting the heat from the sun to combat climate change. European Solar Thermal Industry Association and Greenpeace, Solar Thermal Power 2020, UK
Greenpeace, 2006: Solar generation. K. McDonald (ed.), Greenpeace International, Amsterdam
GWEC, 2006: Global wind energy outlook. Global Wind Energy Council, Bruxelles and Greenpeace, Amsterdam, September, 56 pp., accessed 05/06/07
Hoegh-Guldberg, O., H. Hoegh-Guldberg, H. Cesar and A. Timmerman, 2000: Pacific in peril: biological, economic and social impacts of climate change on Pacific coral reefs. Greenpeace, 72 pp.
Lazarus, M., L. Greber, J. Hall, C. Bartels, S. Bernow, E. Hansen, P. Raskin, and D. Von Hippel, 1993: Towards a fossil free energy future: the next energy transition. Stockholm Environment Institute, Boston Center, Boston. Greenpeace International, Amsterdam.
“Twenty years ago, Stanford University environmentalist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine that it’s perfectly fine ”to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
The IPCC of Dr. Pachauri has turned out to be neither. Under his tutelage, it has continued to foster climate fraud in the face of contrary evidence. Scary scenarios are offered up, but little else. As his and then IPCC’s credibility melts away faster that the Himalayan glaciers, he should resign or be fired.”
Global Warming: If we’re serious about restoring science to its rightful place, the head of the U.N.’s panel on climate change should step down. Evidence shows he quarterbacked a deliberate and premeditated fraud.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been forced to back off its now-discredited claim that the Himalayan glaciers would soon disappear. But it’s not true, the panel’s vice chairman, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, told the BBC, that it was simply a ”human mistake.”
The panel’s chairman, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, who was forced to admit the claim had no basis in observable scientific fact, said its inclusion was merely a ”poor application” of IPCC procedures, acting as if the original source of the claim, Indian scientist Dr. Syed Hasnain, was a total stranger.
In fact, as Christopher Booker of the London Telegraph points out, Dr. Hasnain ”has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr. Pachauri was director-general.”
So after the 2007 assessment that included Hasnain’s claim, Pachauri was impressed enough to hire him as an employee. Pachauri should have been familiar with both his work and the fact the claim had not been peer-reviewed, and aware that it had been challenged by reputable geologists.
Before the 2007 report was published, Hasnain’s claim was challenged by another of its lead authors, Austrian glaciologist Dr. Georg Kaser. He described Hasnain’s prediction of glaciers vanishing by 2035 as ”so wrong that it is not even worth dismissing.”
So why was it included in the 2007 IPCC assessment? In an interview with the London Daily Mail on Sunday, Dr. Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the chapter on Asia, gave a disturbing answer. ”It related to several countries in the region and their water sources,” he said. ”We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
In other words, the motive was political, not scientific, in contradiction to the IPCC mission statement that says its role is ”to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socioeconomic information — the IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy.”
Was money another motivation? Booker points out that Hasnain’s claim ”helped TERI win a substantial share of a $300,000 grant from one of America’s leading charities, along with a share in a 3-million-euro research study funded by the EU.”
Deception and manipulation are apparently established practices at the IPCC, just as they were with the researchers at Britain’s Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Marc Morano at Climate Depot, who has done yeoman work exposing climate fraud, relates the witness of Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Christy served as an IPCC lead author in 2001 for the third assessment report and personally witnessed U.N. scientists trying to distort the science for political purposes.
”I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors. And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol,” Christy told CNN on May 2, 2007.
Twenty years ago, Stanford University environmentalist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine that it’s perfectly fine ”to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
The IPCC of Dr. Pachauri has turned out to be neither. Under his tutelage, it has continued to foster climate fraud in the face of contrary evidence. Scary scenarios are offered up, but little else. As his and then IPCC’s credibility melts away faster that the Himalayan glaciers, he should resign or be fired.
I all along have said that this Global Warming Hysteria has nothing to do with science, facts, or saving the environment. It’s all a political agenda. An anti human, anti development and anti freedom agenda. They also hate the capitalistic system for obvious reasons.
And the Global Warming Hysterics DO ABSOLUTELY NOTING ABOUT REAL PROBLEMS WHICH PEOPLE ARE DYING FROM HERE AND NOW.
Instead they WASTE ALL THESE TRILLION OF DOLLARS ”fighting” something that MIGHT HAPPEN(IF the climate models are right – which they are not) IN 100 years – a temperature rise of 2-4 F.
So I thought I would give you a REAL LIFE experience of some REAL problems which the Global Warming Hysterics are not interested in:
I write this from the middle of the eastern China coastal Plain where particulate air pollution is out of control, water pollution is out of control, solid waste management is out of control, industrial conversion of Ag land is out of control, all of which is reduced to side show by fixation on the trivial warming effects of a trace gas.
The legitimate causes of pollution control and conservation have been hijacked by a scientific freak show, demanding that the entire world fiddle while substantial portions of the planet burn. Those forces (political and industrial) that have no interest in addressing reality will happily spar forever in the fantasy shadow game of carbon control.”
“That is the truth – the climate change industry is causing terrible damage by diverting attention from real pollution, the effects of which are blighting millions of lives. The only honest thing is to abandon the obsession with ”carbon” and get down to tackling real pollution. All the rest is talk.”
Here are some pictures by Lu Guang (卢广) from his documentary project “Pollution in China.”
5. Henan Anyang iron and steel plant’s (河南安阳钢铁厂) sewage flowed into Anyang River. March 25, 2008
14. A Large amount of the chemical wastewater discharged into Yangtze River from Zhenjiang Titanium mill (镇江市钛粉厂) every day. Less than 1,000 meters away downstream is where the water department of Danyang City gets its water from. June 10, 2009
16. Hebei Province Shexian Tianjin Iron and steel plant (河北省涉县天津钢铁厂) is a heavily polluting company. Company scale is still growing, seriously affecting the lives of local residents. March 18, 2008
And this is what I wrote 2 years ago and sadly it’s the same today:
Do you think the Nobel Price winners IPCC, Al Gore and the rest of the Global Warming Hysterics pack care? Nah…they are very busy spending trillions upon trillions of dollars of your tax money on something much, much more important than saving lives here and now.
Here is part of what i wrote nearly 2 years ago in my post
“And when you are at it – the rest of the World too.
This is happening HERE AND NOW. People are being burnt alive and hacked to pieces. Gruesome? You bet! Horrible – yes. But desperate people do sometimes do desperate things.
Do you think the Nobel Price winners IPCC, Al Gore and the rest of the Global Warming Hysterics pack care? Nah…they are very busy spending trillions upon trillions of dollars of your tax money on something much, much more important than saving lives here and now.
Namely, they are ”fighting” something that MIGHT HAPPEN(IF the climate models are right – which they are not, se my previous posts) IN 100 years – a temperature rise of 2-4 F.
Wow! That’s a worthy goal isn’t. I mean how cares about people killing themselves, dying of starvation or some ”obscure” disease that take tens of thousand of lives a year here and now. And you don’t need computer models to figure that out either – you just have to go out on the streets.
There’s to much population anyway – they are actually saying that. When you instead can ”fight” the great enemy CO2 lurking in a distant future.
All of this is led by the holly church of IPCC and it’s chief priest (and saint) Al Gore. Who is constantly spreading the message of near Gloom and Doom if we do not obey him and his church. And if you question this superstition you are immediately excommunicated and shunned.
And ALL the politicians and news media are worshiping and prostrating before their altar of carbon trading. Obediently following every whim and decree from the high church.
The problem is that the priesthood of Global Warming Hysterics are not exactly living as they preach. On the contrary – they live a very luxurious life and DO ALL THE THINGS that they preach and say the common man should not do.
Seems like fair and righteous deal doesn’t it? We do ALL the hard work and ALL the sacrifices and they take ALL our money.
At the same time as they are spending enormous sums of your tax money on their VERY important (except for themselves) nonsense mission. They do not forget to tell you ALL the time what a great burden they have so we should understand how REALLY important these people are. And what an important function THEY play in saving the planet. And how grateful we the people should be for that.
And that they can not be disturbed fulfilling this important mission by such trivial matters as people dying of starvation or curable diseases and civil wars etc.
But this is not a problem (that they are not living as they preach ) since news papers and TV are very obedient and loyally preach the message and sings the Gospel. And has since long forgotten what it meant to be a journalist. Or a politician in service of the public.
This my friends is the sad state of the ”civilized” world today. If you didn’t know otherwise you would think this is some scene from medieval times with it’s pagan rituals and worship. And with the letters of indulgence (carbon credits) paying for our carbon sins and repenting to Kyoto.
And I hold all politicians and so called scientists and so called journalists accountable for this sorry state of affairs because they took ACTIVE part in it and promoted it. And they did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO STOP this madness for all these years.
We in the industrialized world would be reduced to subservient living. And the developing world efforts to give it’s citizens a decent living standard would be stopped in it’s tracks and they would be reduced to mass poverty.
Lo and behold isn’t that a worthy goal!. You toil and work hard to reduce your own AND everybody else’s living standard. Yeah that’s a motivator all right!
See the picture before you – mom and dad is proudly telling their children that they are working VERY, VERY HARD to REDUCE their own living standard, their children’s and the grandchildren’s.
We would be the first generation IN HISTORY who on purpose and willingly reduce our economic, social and living standard. AND FORCE the rest of the world to do the same regardless of WHAT THEY WANT!
This global mass madness is led by politicians, newspapers/TV and so called scientists. Because they are blindly following some computer models that cannot predict even the weather two weeks from now! Or accurately simulate how the weather was two weeks ago!
All in the name of reducing the increase of global temperature 2-4 F in 100 years.”
Environment: The United Nations makes a claim that can’t be supported by science, and U.S. researchers ignore temperature data from frigid regions. The crack-up of the global warming fraud is picking up speed.
With so much of the science behind climate change coming under attack, especially among scientists, it’s been a harsh winter for the global warming crowd:
• In late November, thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were leaked to the public. The evidence strongly suggests that researchers colluded to prove the global warming scientific ”consensus” by rigging, burying and destroying data that ran counter to their political agenda.
• Last week, the public learned that claims made by the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change were not based on science, but on speculation. Specifically, the IPCC’s 2007 report said the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 due to man-made global warming.
The claim, used at the U.N. Copenhagen climate change conference in cold and snowy December to rush through a restrictive greenhouse-gas-emissions treaty, was not based on a scientific study. It was based on a telephone call that a reporter had with a scientist who was speculating.
The IPCC has withdrawn the claim. Murari Lal, the scientist who included the contention in the U.N. report, admitted that he knew it wasn’t based on peer-reviewed scientific research.
• Also in the last week, it was revealed that U.S. researchers working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are excluding temperature data from cold regions for a database used by the U.N. in its global warming scare campaign.
Canwest News Service, a Canadian agency that also owns a chain of newspapers, reported Friday, ”In the 1970s, nearly 600 Canadian weather stations fed surface temperature readings into a global database assembled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Today, NOAA only collects data from 35 stations across Canada.
”Worse, only one station — at Eureka on Ellesmere Island — is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.
”The Canadian government, meanwhile, operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country, and more than 100 above the Arctic Circle, according to Environment Canada.”
Canwest also reports that Americans Joseph D’Aleo, a meteorologist, and E. Michael Smith, a computer programmer, say that the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has ”reduced the total number of Canadian weather stations in the database” and has ”cherry-picked” the stations.
The NASA agency uses data from ”sites in relatively warmer places, including more southerly locations, or sites closer to airports, cities or the sea — which has a warming effect on winter weather.”
In a paper published on the Science and Public Policy Institute Web site, D’Aleo and Smith say the ”NOAA … systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.
”The thermometers, in a sense, marched toward the tropics, the sea and to airport tarmacs.”
• Then, just last weekend, we find that same 2007 IPCC report included another phony claim: that ”the rapidly rising costs” of natural disasters since the 1970s is linked to global warming.
British newspapers reported Sunday that that assertion was neither peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific paper when the IPCC report was issued. When the paper that the claim was based on was published in 2008, its authors said:
”We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”
Now the IPCC says it is ”reassessing the evidence.”
All threads of fiction unravel eventually, and the deterioration flies out of control as the end nears.
Is this what we are seeing with the contention that man-made greenhouse-gas emissions are causing the planet to overheat?
We can’t see into the future, but this myth has taken so many hits from the truth that its survival is in doubt.
I have written extensible about the scam called cap and trade, where BOTH BUYER ABD SELLER BENEFITS FROM CHEATING. And we, as taxpayers and consumers pay the prise. It’s an open invitation to fraud and manipulation.
And recognize it for what it is – A GIANT FINANCIAL SCAMthat puts all the burden on the common people and does nothing whatsoever for the environment.
The European model is a carnival of corruption, profiteering, speculation and multi-billion-dollar fraud. It’s done nothing to improve the environment while handing undeserved profits to big business and driving up the cost of energy to consumers.
The latest episode of “The Sopranos”, and a very illustrating example from Papua New Guinea, where Australian carbon traders literally at gunpoint forces local villages to sign.
And these guys spends billions of $ of our tax money.
Now at gunpoint!
“During the United Nations Copenhagen climate summit in December, fresh allegations emerged that unscrupulous carbon traders were buying up the rights to the carbon stored in forests in Papua New Guinea from indigenous landowners.
One PNG man told the December 12 SBS news he was forced to sign up at the point of a gun. “
“The governor of PNG’s Eastern Highlands province, Mal Kela Smith, told SBS the carbon traders are “just coming up from Australia looking for a quick quid and they see that they can get in with a few people and make some promises”.
“As far as I’m concerned, they are not very genuine people and they’re not really interested in the Papuan New Guineans.
“Most of the deals I’ve seen, the landowners are completely ignorant of what’s happening.”
During the United Nations Copenhagen climate summit in December, fresh allegations emerged that unscrupulous carbon traders were buying up the rights to the carbon stored in forests in Papua New Guinea from indigenous landowners.
One PNG man told the December 12 SBS news he was forced to sign up at the point of a gun.
Abilie Wape, the head of a landowner group in Kamula Doso, told SBS he had refused to sign a deal with Australian carbon trader Kirk Roberts. “And I told them: ‘I’m not your small boy. I am not going to listen to anybody. I represent the village people.
“‘If I sign then that means I am selling my birthrights away’.”
Wape said later, “the police came with their gun”.
“They threatened me. They forced me to get on the vehicle and we came to the hotel.
“They told me: ‘You sign. Otherwise, if you don’t sign I’ll lock you up, I’ll get the police and lock you up’. I was like a criminal … so I signed the document.”
Douglas refused to speak to SBS about the allegations.
Most of the carbon traders that have recently flooded into PNG are Australians. Although forest carbon trading has no international legal framework or recognition, traders hoped Copenhagen would endorse a market-based forest scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).
The promise of REDD is that owners of forests in the global South can be paid to stop deforestation as a way of reducing carbon emissions.
In theory, each tonne of forest carbon thus “saved” can be sold as carbon credits to companies overseas to “offset” their company’s carbon emissions. This will supposedly ensure that it is more profitable to keep forests standing than to cut them down.
Copenhagen ended without an agreement on REDD. But countries such as Australia may decide to go it alone and strike bilateral carbon trading deals with countries such as PNG and Indonesia.
The federal Rudd government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme allows 100% of Australia’s emissions cuts to be meet in carbon projects overseas. REDD projects could be among cheapest ways for Australian business to avoid cuts at home under the CPRS.
The idea that rich countries should pay for preserving forests in the global South isn’t a bad idea. Deforestation is a big contributor to carbon emissions.
But REDD critics, such as REDD-Monitor.org’s Chris Lang, have pointed out that a market-based scheme using forests in the South to offset First World emissions would simply allow the rich countries to claim emissions reductions on paper while polluting as before.
A January 7 statement by the Durban Group for Climate Justice coalition also condemned REDD as an “ineffective and unjust solution to climate change”.
“REDD’s focus on the mass production of pollution licenses for industries in rich countries would inevitably neglect the needs and rights of ordinary people throughout the world.
“In the South, REDD would transform the carbon in living trees into private property so that it can be awarded or transferred to private corporations in the North.
“In the worst case, it could inaugurate a massive land grab.
“In the North, meanwhile, REDD credits would enable fossil fuel-related corporations to maintain business as usual, to the detriment of communities affected by fossil fuel extraction and pollution.”
Even Marc Stuart, a founder of the British carbon trading firm EcoSecurities who supports an international forest carbon trading scheme, posted his own concerns about REDD on Cleantechblog.com last May.
“REDD … is the most mind twistingly complex endeavor in the carbon game. The fact is that REDD involves scientific uncertainties, technical challenges, heterogeneous non-contiguous asset classes, multi-decade performance guarantees, local land tenure issues, brutal potential for gaming and the fact that getting it wrong means that scam artists will get unimaginably rich while emissions don’t change a bit.”
The governor of PNG’s Eastern Highlands province, Mal Kela Smith, told SBS the carbon traders are “just coming up from Australia looking for a quick quid and they see that they can get in with a few people and make some promises”.
“As far as I’m concerned, they are not very genuine people and they’re not really interested in the Papuan New Guineans.
“Most of the deals I’ve seen, the landowners are completely ignorant of what’s happening.”
This is YET ANOTHER good example, in a long row, of the “great science” behind the Global Warming Hysteria.
This is the “official science” which there is “consensus” about and which cannot be criticized or questioned. Or even worse – asking to see the raw data or the tweaking of this data.
This is what we, the common people, are supposed to pay TRILLION of dollars and reduce our living standard back to the Stone Age for.
And that “our” politicians want to RAM trough at ALL COSTS!
These corrupt people, the High Priests of the Global Warming Hysteria (to call them scientists would be an outrage against real scientists) should be removed. And that includes ALL the politicians who used this hysteria to promote their political agendas.
And building business empires on this scare.
“THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report’s own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.
The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month’s Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions. “
“The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.
When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: ”We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”
Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored. “
“He found from 1950 to 2005 there was no increase in the impact of disasters once growth was accounted for. For 1970-2005, however, he found a 2% annual increase which ”corresponded with a period of rising global temperatures,”
Muir-Wood was, however, careful to point out that almost all this increase could be accounted for by the exceptionally strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005.There were also other more technical factors that could cause bias, such as exchange rates which meant that disasters hitting the US would appear to cost proportionately more in insurance payouts.
Despite such caveats, the IPCC report used the study in its section on disasters and hazards, but cited only the 1970-2005 results. “
UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters
Jonathan Leake, Science and Environment Editor
THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report’s own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.
The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month’s Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.
Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods — such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 — could be linked to global warming. Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: ”More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”
Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen ”must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm”.
The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.
The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC’s 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had ”suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s”.
It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: ”One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.”
The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.
When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: ”We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”
Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.
The claim will now be re-examined and could be withdrawn. Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who is vice-chair of the IPCC, said: ”We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific.”
The academic paper at the centre of the latest questions was written in 2006 by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a London consultancy, who later became a contributing author to the section of the IPCC’s 2007 report dealing with climate change impacts. He is widely respected as an expert on disaster impacts.
Muir-Wood wanted to find out if the 8% year-on-year increase in global losses caused by weather-related disasters since the 1960s was larger than could be explained by the impact of social changes like growth in population and infrastructure.
Such an increase, coinciding with rising temperatures, might suggest that global warming was to blame. If proven this would be highly significant, both politically and scientifically, because it would confirm the many predictions that global warming will increase the frequency and severity of natural hazards.
In the research Muir-Wood looked at a wide range of hazards, including tropical cyclones, thunder and hail storms, and wildfires as well as floods and hurricanes.
He found from 1950 to 2005 there was no increase in the impact of disasters once growth was accounted for. For 1970-2005, however, he found a 2% annual increase which ”corresponded with a period of rising global temperatures,”
Muir-Wood was, however, careful to point out that almost all this increase could be accounted for by the exceptionally strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005.There were also other more technical factors that could cause bias, such as exchange rates which meant that disasters hitting the US would appear to cost proportionately more in insurance payouts.
Despite such caveats, the IPCC report used the study in its section on disasters and hazards, but cited only the 1970-2005 results.
The IPCC report said: ”Once the data were normalised, a small statistically significant trend was found for an increase in annual catastrophe loss since 1970 of 2% a year.” It added: ”Once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.”
Muir-Wood’s paper was originally commissioned by Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, also an expert on disaster impacts, for a workshop on disaster losses in 2006. The researchers who attended that workshop published a statement agreeing that so far there was no evidence to link global warming with any increase in the severity or frequency of disasters. Pielke has also told the IPCC that citing one section of Muir-Wood’s paper in preference to the rest of his work, and all the other peer-reviewed literature, was wrong.
He said: ”All the literature published before and since the IPCC report shows that rising disaster losses can be explained entirely by social change. People have looked hard for evidence that global warming plays a part but can’t find it. Muir-Wood’s study actually confirmed that.”
Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the Tyndall Centre, which advises the UK government on global warming, said there was no real evidence that natural disasters were already being made worse by climate change. He said:“A proper analysis shows that these claims are usually superficial”
Such warnings may prove uncomfortable for Miliband whose recent speeches have often linked climate change with disasters such as the floods that recently hit Bangladesh and Cumbria. Last month he said: “We must not let the sceptics pass off political opinion as scientific fact. Events in Cumbria give a foretaste of the kind of weather runaway climate change could bring. Abroad, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of South Asia could put hundreds of millions of people at risk of drought. Our security is at stake.”
Muir-Wood himself is more cautious. He said: ”The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. ”We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes.If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished.”
Some researchers have argued that it is unfair to attack the IPCC too strongly, pointing out that some errors are inevitable in a report as long and technical as the IPCC’s round-up of climate science. ”Part of the problem could simply be that expectations are too high,” said one researcher. ”We have been seen as a scientific gold standard and that’s hard to live up to.”
Professor Christopher Field,director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in California, who is the new co-chairman of the IPCC working group overseeing the climate impacts report, said the 2007 report had been broadly accurate at the time it was written.
He said: “The 2007 study should be seen as “a snapshot of what was known then. Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around.” However he confirmed he would be introducing rigorous new review procedures for future reports to ensure errors were kept to a minimum.
More on Pachauri , head of IPCC , and Glacier gate.
This is another good example of the “great science” behind the Global Warming Hysteria.
This is the “official science” which there is “consensus” about and which cannot be criticized or questioned. Or even worse – asking to see the raw data or the tweaking of this data.
This is what we, the common people, are supposed to pay TRILLION of dollars and reduce our living standard back to the Stone Age for.
And that “our” politicians want to RAM trough at ALL COSTS!
These corrupt people, the High Priests of the Global Warming Hysteria (to call them scientists would be an outrage against real scientists) should be removed. And that includes ALL the politicianswho used this hysteria to promote their political agendas.
And building business empires on this scare.
“The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
Here’s the NASA Climate Change “evidence” page where they list a series of visual earth topics that support AGW as factual. In the sidebar they have heavy reference on IPCC AR4.
Scrolling down through the page you come across the section that talks about glacier melt. Here is the screencap of that section BEFORE (courtesy of Google Cache) and AFTER as it appears now:
Yellow highlight mine. Note not only did they cite the now famous false glacier melting alarm from IPCC AR4, they moved it up five years to 2030!”
Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified
By David Rose
Last updated at 12:54 AM on 24th January 2010
The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.
‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’
Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.
According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.
The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.
It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.
The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.
Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.
Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’
In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.
Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.
‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said.
‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’
One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’
When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’.
Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures.
It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’
However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them.
For example, Hayley Fowler of NewcastleUniversity, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.
In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so.
The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was ‘very high’. ‘What is the confidence level?’ it asked.
The authors’ response said ‘appropriate revisions and editing made’. But the final version was identical to their draft.
Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue.
Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. ‘He didn’t contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,’ he said.
The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable.
Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’.
Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’
Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.
I have written extensible in this blog about temperature measurements, raw and “adjusted” data, the tweaking and discrepancy that is going on, the cherry picking of stations, the urban heat effect etc. from the official temperature keepers.
Below is some very intresting analysis of long record GHCN stations data by Nic L.
“What this shows is that on average the adjustment process more than quadrupled the trend in raw temperatures, increasing the trend of the mean from 0.0113 for raw data to 0.0536.Indeed, if the mean trend change of 0.0423 resulting from adjustments to the long record stations were typical of the effect of adjustments to station data generally, the adjustment process would account for a substantial proportion of the recorded global mean temperature increase over the twentieth century.”
“The graph below shows that the mean 1900-2005 trend in the anomaly temperature raw data from the 484 rural stations was 0.0117, statistically completely insignificant. The mean of the trends of the individual series, as shown in the scatter plot below the temperature graph, is almost identical at 0.0102. These trends are under half those for all 1034 stations with long raw data records.”
At Jeff’s request, I present here some findings from work I have carried out using long-record GHCN stations. I have defined these as stations with temperature data in both 1900 and 1999 and fewer than 240 months (20%) in that period with no data. The reason for looking at long record stations is primarily that one can have some confidence that trends over the last 100 years or so reflect actual changes in recorded temperature and are not affected by changes over time in the set of stations that are combined to produce an average.
The GHCN database contains temperature records from 7280 separate stations; 4495 of these are WMO stations and the remainder are non-WMO stations, whose station number includes the WMO number of the closest WMO station but also a non-zero modifier to distinguish them from that WMO station.
Although the geographical coverage of the 7280 GHCN stations is impressive, unfortunately many of them have short records, with only a minority having data before 1950 or after 1990, and fewer still having data before 1900.
The map below shows the location of the 1034 GHCN stations (not all of which are WMO stations) that meet my long record criteria in respect of their raw data.
It can be seen that the long record station set is dominated by the USA, but that there are a fair number of stations elsewhere with 100 year raw data records, with quite a wide geographical spread.
The variation over time in the total number of stations with raw data at GHCN is shown below.
Most of the long record stations have data for some years after 1999, but the number of stations reporting data collapsed by over 1000 in April 2006, when many Indian stations ceased reporting, following a previous sharp fall in the early 1990s.
Raw Data
So what story does the raw data from the 1034 long record GHCN stations tell? Shown below is the unweighted mean of the temperature anomalies for all data from those stations for each month from 1999 to 2005. The mean is slightly smoothed, hence the high Lag-1 serial correlation. The trend is fairly low, at 0.0269 Deg. C /Decade – which are the units I hereafter use for all trends. The confidence interval is over three times as high as the trend, which is accordingly far from being statistically significant. There is no pronounced peak in 1998, and the peak temperature occurred in the 1930s. As this data set largely represents temperatures in the USA, that is perhaps unsurprising.
Adjusted Data
For many of the long record stations, GHCN also presents homogeneity-adjusted temperature series, of which there may again be duplicates. Where there are duplicate series, the GHCN files do not indicate which of the duplicated raw series each adjusted series is based on, although often it will be possible to work this out.
Peterson’s 1997 Bulletin of the AMS paper “An overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network Temperature Database, available at the GHCN website, gives a very useful summary of the adjustment process, as well as of many other aspects of the GHCN temp data. However, the adjustments appear to be primarily, if not exclusively, aimed at correcting for discontinuities. So far as I can tell, they would not correct for gradual distortions to data caused by, for instance, an increasing Urban Heat Island effect as a conurbation encroached on a previously rural station or the size of a town in which a station was located grew.
The number of GHCN stations with adjusted data peaked at just over 4,000, compared with just under 6,000 with raw data, but has fallen even more sharply in the last twenty years, with recent adjusted data only being available for about 250 stations. This is illustrated below
In order to get a clearer picture of the effects of the adjustment process, I calculated the trend in the combined raw data from all 764 stations which had long records of adjusted data, thereby ensuring a like-for-like comparison. The mean raw temperature anomaly record of those 764 stations is shown below.
What this shows is that on average the adjustment process more than quadrupled the trend in raw temperatures, increasing the trend of the mean from 0.0113 for raw data to 0.0536.Indeed, if the mean trend change of 0.0423 resulting from adjustments to the long record stations were typical of the effect of adjustments to station data generally, the adjustment process would account for a substantial proportion of the recorded global mean temperature increase over the twentieth century.
Rural Data
In an attempt to avoid possible inflation in station trends resulting from UHI effects, I also screened out from the 1034 GHCN stations with long raw data records all but stations marked as rural. That left 484 rural stations, of which unfortunately only 28 were outside the USA, located as per the below map.
The graph below shows that the mean 1900-2005 trend in the anomaly temperature raw data from the 484 rural stations was 0.0117, statistically completely insignificant. The mean of the trends of the individual series, as shown in the scatter plot below the temperature graph, is almost identical at 0.0102. These trends are under half those for all 1034 stations with long raw data records.
USA vs Rest of the World
Finally, I thought it worthwhile to divide the 1034 long record stations between USA stations (of which there are 832) and the 202 non-USA stations. The mean temperature anomaly of the USA stations, and the1900-2005 trend thereof (being 0.0144), is shown in the next graph.
By comparison, the mean temperature anomaly of the non-USA stations has a much higher 1900-2005 trend, of 0.0805, as shown in the below graph. This is the only one of the graphs that shows a statistically significant trend.
Why should the non-USA long record stations show a mean 1900-2005 decadal trend of 0.0805 whilst the USA ones show a mean trend of only 0.0144? Perhaps the USA has warmed by far less than other areas. But as the non-USA stations are also very largely northern hemisphere, with in many cases similar latitudes to those of USA stations, it is not obvious to me why that should be. However, there is one obvious possible explanation that is worth investigating further here: the UHI effect.
A majority, 456 out of 832, of the long record USA stations are classified as rural. Any many of the remainder may be in cities that had by 1900 already reached the size (relatively small, I believe) by which most of the UHI effect occurs. By contrast, only 28 of the 202 long record non-USA stations are classified as rural, and it may be that relatively more of the urban stations are in towns that only became sizeable post 1900. Could the bulk of the difference in trend (amounting to 0.7 deg. C over 1900-2005) between the long record USA and non-USA stations could be due to the UHI effect? At first sight, It seems conceivable. Having said that, the pattern of temperature movements over 1900-2005 is not the same for the USA and non-USA stations, and there is so much weather noise in the data (even when taking averages of hundreds of stations) that it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions.
In an attempt to estimate how much of the difference between the trends of long record USA and non-USA stations might be due to the UHI effect, I shortened the qualifying period to 1900-1990. Doing so increased the total number of rural stations from 484 to 574. More importantly, it increased the number of non-USA rural stations from 28 to 86, albeit these are rather dominated by Australia, Canada and Siberia, as shown on the below map (the final graphic, you will be pleased to know J).
I took the mean of the individual station trends over 1900-1995 rather than the trend of the mean, as the anomalisation period is more variable with only a 90 year qualifying period. For the USA stations, the mean trend was -0.0024 (yes, a negative trend, albeit a completely insignificant one).
By comparison, the mean 1900-1995 trend of the 86 non-USA rural stations with 90+ year records was 0.0548. The mean trend over the same period for the 297 non-USA non-rural stations was only modestly higher than this, at 0.0606, although the geographical distribution of the rural and non-rural non-USA data sets is different. These results suggest that the UHI effect may account for part of the difference between twentieth century mean recorded temperature trends in the USA and elsewhere, but not the bulk of it.
However, these rural station results may not be representative of the rest of the world, and are almost certainly not statistically significant. Further, non-USA stations marked as rural may be more likely to be affected by non-climatic warming, or warming affected by their type of environment, than are rural stations in the USA. For instance, only 12% of USA rural stations are near the coast, next to a large lake or on a small island, whereas 41% of non-USA rural stations are. It is conceivable that such environments could be are associated with greater (or lesser) twentieth century warming than land bound ones, although I am not aware of any evidence to that effect.
In conclusion, the raw data from long record GHCN stations shows little apparent warming in the USA and moderate warming (on land) elsewhere, only part of which seems likely to be due to the UHI effect. The adjusted data shows much higher trends than the raw data for the same stations, and it is not clear why the homogeneity adjustments should on balance be significantly positive.
“The irony is that the head of an outfit devoted to climate change is promoting the enhanced recovery of a fossil fuel the use of which has, according to IPCC, led to global warming.
Equally remarkable is the fact that the chair of IPCC, which is advocating emissions trading along with other mitigation strategies, is himself involved in a commercial trading exchange involving carbon credits.
In other words, Pachauri as the climate czar first recommends certain policies for mitigating global warming. He then gets involved with a commercial entity — a climate exchange ( akin to a stock exchange) — which benefits from the adoption of those policies by governments.”
The Indian Mail Today again takes up the Pachauri story, under the heading: ”Inconvenient truth about Pachauri”.
Ajmer Singh, who wrote the earlier piece on ”conflict of interest”, this time covers some more of Pachauri’s commercial interests – his involvement in the Houston oil technology firm GloriOil and the proposed India Climate Exchange (ICX).
With GloriOil, the irony, writes Ajmer, is that the head of an outfit devoted to climate change is promoting the enhanced recovery of a fossil fuel the use of which has, according to IPCC, led to global warming. Equally remarkable, he adds, is the fact that the chair of IPCC, which is advocating emissions trading along with other mitigation strategies, is himself involved in a commercial trading exchange involving carbon credits.
In other words, Pachauri as the climate czar first recommends certain policies for mitigating global warming. He then gets involved with a commercial entity — a climate exchange (akin to a stock exchange) — which benefits from the adoption of those policies by governments.
Some of the murky tale of GloriOil is told here but Ajmer adds to the details, noting that the company — of which Pachauri is listed as a founder and scientific advisor —provides enhanced oil recovery technology to more than 100 oil wells in Texas.
Dr Pachaur’s Indian commercial venture, TERI Biotech, often claims that it was the pioneer in this field but here we are told that the technology was originally developed by India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).
This comes from R V Marathe, director of the Institute of Reservoir Studies (IRS), an ONGC research laboratory at Ahmedabad. He confirms that MEOR technology was ONGC’s concept, stating: ”The technology was developed by using ONGC’s own infrastructure. Later on, we had collaborated with TERI.”
However, Dr Lal, director of TERI’s Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology Division, claims that the technology used in the US reservoirs has been ”customised” but, bizarrely, when asked about TERI’s commercial ambitions and ventures, his response was: ”I don’t know, ask the government.”
Here, though, the story gets even murkier as Ajmer reveals that the technology, which GloriOil was licensed to use, was given to it at what amounted to the knockdown price of £50,000 while the charge for implementation and field trials had only been just over £100,000. Given that TERI have been paid just over £4 million by ONGC for what amounted to extended field trials of the technology, GloriOil seems to have benefitted from an extremely generous deal.
Much more has yet to come out about Dr Pachauri’s raft of commercial ventures and his relationship with Big Oil, but today we have seen another corner of the carpet lifted, and had a quick peek inside. The full story of GloriOil, however, has yet to be told.
Nevertheless, Ajmer turns to what ”also appears to be a conflict of interest”, as he highlights Pachauri’s role as as chairman of IPCC, and his role as an adviser to the Chicago Climate Exchange ( CCX) and the proposed ICX, the first pilot greenhouse gas emissions trading programme in India.
Pachauri’s involvement is clear from the CCX website: ”To further this goal, an ICX technical design committee and advisory board is being formed. Dr R K. Pachauri has agreed to serve as the advisory board’s honorary chairman.”
The global market for carbon trading is estimated to be of the order of £75 billion and, given the potentially huge profits, it is not surprising that the participants who have committed to be part of the ICX technical design committee include leading corporations such as Ford India, Tata Motors, ITC, Reliance Industries, Reliance Power, Tata Power, Indowind Power Suzlon/ Senergy Global, IBM India and Motorola India.
Pachauri, writes Ajmer, has claimed that TERI is not a profit-making organisation, but works for the larger good of the society. However, the fact that he is the head of a key UN panel and has links with a number of commercial organisations and entities, casts a doubt on his claims.
Amjer thus concludes that his critics argue that TERI ought to make public its balance sheet, viz. the money it has earned from various sources, and the details of the manner in which it has been spent. However, the organisation currently publishes its accounts for public consumption only in percentage terms.
Surprisingly – or perhaps not – Pachauri did not respond to repeated queries from newspaper, either by telephone or e-mail. He may find, though, that ducking the hard questions does not make them go away – as he will see in The Sunday Telegraph tomorrow.
WITH ‘ Climategate’ and ‘ Glaciergate’ behind him, things have started getting hot for Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) and director general, The Energy Research Institute ( TERI).
Questions are now being raised over his association with some commercial ventures, such as one with an American oil company and another with a proposed India Climate Exchange ( ICX).
The irony is that the head of an outfit devoted to climate change is promoting the enhanced recovery of a fossil fuel the use of which has, according to IPCC, led to global warming.
Equally remarkable is the fact that the chair of IPCC, which is advocating emissions trading along with other mitigation strategies, is himself involved in a commercial trading exchange involving carbon credits.
In other words, Pachauri as the climate czar first recommends certain policies for mitigating global warming. He then gets involved with a commercial entity — a climate exchange ( akin to a stock exchange) — which benefits from the adoption of those policies by governments.
The oil company in question is US- based GloriOil — of which Pachauri is listed as a founder and scientific advisor — which provides enhanced oil recovery technology to more than 100 oil wells in Texas. The technology was originally developed by India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation ( ONGC).
Dr Banwari Lal, another TERI director, is also on the advisory board of GloriOil. The cofounder of GloriOil is New York merchant banking firm Global Technology Investments ( GTI).
According to TERI’s annual report: “ After the successful application of MEOR ( Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery) technology in India, a joint venture company between TERI and GTI was created for implementing this technology in the US oilfields.” Dr R. V. Marathe, director of the Institute of Reservoir Studies (IRS), an ONGC research laboratory at Ahmedabad, confirmed that MEOR technology was an original concept of the Indian PSU. “ The technology was developed by using ONGC’s own infrastructure. Later on, we had collaborated with TERI,” he said. He refused to comment on TERI’s claims and it applying ONGC’s technology in GloriOil.
Pachauri did not respond to repeated queries from M AIL TODAY on telephone and on mail.
However, Dr Lal, director of TERI’s Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology Division, claimed that the technology used in the US reservoirs was different from the one used in India.
It is a customised technology and the ONGC technology can’t be replicated there, he added. When asked about TERI’s commercial ambitions/ ventures, Lal refused to comment. “I don’t know, ask the government,” he said.
GloriOil’s website, however, acknowledges the fact that in 1997, ONGC had commissioned TERI to develop MEOR technology to improve the production of its mature fields.
According to senior ONGC officials, IRS had developed MEOR technology in 1994. Subsequently, Rs 40 lakh were paid to TERI for characterisation of the bacteria and Rs 85 lakh for implementation and field trials.
There also appears to be a conflict of interest in Pachauri as chairman of IPCC and his role as an adviser to the Chicago Climate Exchange ( CCX) and the proposed ICX, the first pilot greenhouse gas emissions trading programme in India.
Pachauri’s involvement is clear from the CCX website: “To further this goal, an ICX technical design committee and advisory board is being formed. Dr R. K. Pachauri has agreed to serve as the advisory board’s honorary chairman.” The European Union has a system in place since 2005 whereby all major manufacturing companies are given carbon emission quotas based on their past greenhouse gas emissions. If they are to increase their emissions, then they have to earn or buy carbon credits from companies which have surplus credits.
Thus, if company A, which has a certain number of carbon credits, puts up a facility based on, say, renewable energy which earn it carbon credits, it can sell them to company B, which may want to expand its business based on increasing emissions.
The idea is to make industrial activity greenhouse gas neutral.
The global market for carbon trading is estimated to be of the order of 75 billion pounds.
Given the potentially huge profits, it is not surprising that the participants who have committed to be part of the ICX technical design committee include leading corporations such as Ford India, Tata Motors, ITC, Reliance Industries, Reliance Power, Tata Power, Indowind Power Suzlon/ Senergy Global, IBM India and Motorola India.
Pachauri has claimed that TERI is not a profit- making organisation, but works for the larger good of the society. However, the fact that he is the head of a key UN panel and has links with a number of commercial organisations and entities, casts a doubt on his claims.
His critics argue that TERI ought to make public its balance sheet, viz. the money it has earned from various sources, and the details of the manner in which it has been spent.
However, the organisation currently published its accounts for public consumption only in percentage terms.
“Joseph D’Aleo, of Icecap.us, said the analysis found NASA ”systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations.”The number of actual weather stations used to calculate average global temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35.
E. Michael Smith, a computer programming expert who worked with D’Aleo, said he found ”patterns in the input data from NCDC that looked liked dramatic and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations.” The more he looked, the more he found ”patterns of deletion that could not be accidental.”
Hoaxes: Climate researchers and the Weather Channel’s founder accuse NASA of the same data manipulation as Britain’s Climate Research Unit. Were weather stations cherry-picked to hide the temperature drop?
We recently commented on how our space agency for two years refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has had to repeatedly correct its climate figures.
In a report on global warming on KUSI television by Weather Channel founder and iconic TV weatherman John Coleman, that reticence has been traced to the deliberate manipulation and distortion of climate data by NASA.
As Coleman noted in a KUSI press release, NASA’s two primary climate centers, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C., and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York City, are accused of ”creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based.”
Joseph D’Aleo, of Icecap.us, said the analysis found NASA ”systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations.”The number of actual weather stations used to calculate average global temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35.
E. Michael Smith, a computer programming expert who worked with D’Aleo, said he found ”patterns in the input data from NCDC that looked liked dramatic and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations.” The more he looked, the more he found ”patterns of deletion that could not be accidental.”
Stations in places such as the Andes and Bolivia have virtually vanished, meaning, according to D’Aleo, temperatures from these areas are now ”determined by interpolation from stations hundreds of miles away on the coast or in the Amazon.”He says it’s as if Minneapolis stopped reporting and its average temperature was extrapolated from readings in St. Louis and Kansas City.
Smith argues that the decrease in stations used and the selectivity of locations make NASA’s data and conclusions suspect. D’Aleo goes further, saying such cherry-picking and data manipulation are a ”scientific travesty” committed by activist scientists to advance the global warming agenda.
To us, it looks like just another example of ideologically driven climate deceit following the Climate Research Unit scandal and the fraudulent claim by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers would soon vanish.
Last November, U.N. climate chief Rajendra Pachauri delivered a blistering rebuke to India’s environment minister for casting doubt on the notion that global warming was causing the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.
”We have a very clear idea of what is happening,” the chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told the Guardian newspaper. ”I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”
Then again, when it comes to unsubstantiated research it’s hard to beat the IPCC, whose 2007 report insisted that the glaciers—which feed the rivers that in turn feed much of South Asia—were very likely to nearly disappear by the year 2035. ”The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers,” it wrote in its supposedly definitive report, ”can be attributed primarily to the [sic] global warming due to increase in anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases.”
It turns out that this widely publicized prediction was taken from a 2005 report from the World Wildlife Fund, which based it on a comment by Indian glacier expert Syed Hasnain from 1999. Mr. Hasnian now says he was ”misquoted.”Even more interesting is that the IPCC was warned in 2006 by leading glaciologist Georg Kaser that the 2035 forecast was baseless. ”This number is not just a little bit wrong, but far out of any order of magnitude,” Mr. Kaser told the Agence France-Presse. ”It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing.”
On Wednesday, the IPCC got around to acknowledging that the claim was ”poorly substantiated,” though Mr. Pachauri also suggested it amounted to little more than a scientific typo. Yet the error is of a piece with other glib, and now debunked, global warming alarms.
Among them: that 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States (it was 1934); that sea levels could soon rise by up to 20 feet and put Florida underwater (an 18-inch rise by the year 2100 is the more authoritative estimate); that polar bears are critically endangered by global warming (most polar bear populations appear to be stable or increasing); that—well, we could go on without even mentioning the climategate emails.
For the record, most Himalayan glaciers do seem to be retreating, and they have been ”since the earliest recordings began around the middle of the nineteenth century,” according to a report from India’s ministry of environment and forests. The reasons are complex and still poorly understood, and we’re glad to see responsible scientists acknowledge as much. If more of them could help the IPCC get its facts straight, we might put more stock in its reports.
“Later, Pearce obtained a copy of Hasnain’s original article and discovered it did not mention 2035 as a date the Himalayan glaciers would disappear, as he told Pearce on the phone. The article also said it applied only to a portion of the Himalayan glaciers.
There the story lay until 2005 whenthe World Wildlife Federation, a key player in the climate change movement, cited the New Scientist account in its own report.From there it was picked up and embellished as part of the 2007 IPCC by Professor Murari Lai, who oversaw the report’s section on glaciers.
Neither Hasnain’s original Indian magazine article, Pearce’s account of it in the New Scientist nor the WWF’s citation qualifies as peer-reviewed scientific research. Yet there is this unsubstantiated speculation in an official U.N. document being used to justify draconian restrictions on the world economy as well as a global redistribution of wealth, all in the name of saving the planet.”
Global Warming: The scientists who said that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 have admitted the claim has as much credibility as sightings of the mythical Yeti. It’s their fraudulent claims that are melting away.
We hesitate to call it Glacier-gate, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. body tasked with scaring us to death about global warming, has admitted that the claim in its 2007 report about the Himalayan glaciers disappearing was not based on any scientific study or research. It was instead based on one scientist’s speculation in a telephone interview with a reporter.
The IPCC claimed: ”Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of their disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the earth keeps warming at the current rate.”
As it turns out, the earth hasn’t been warming at all, at least not in the last decade, and reputable scientists have said it may continue to cool for decades to come. Even if it was warming, glaciologists insist, the sheer mass of Himalayan glaciers made such a prediction laughable.
Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, notes: ”Even a small glacier, such as the Dokriani glacier, is up to 120 meters (394 feet) thick. A big one would be several hundred meters thick and tens of kilometers long.”
According to Dowdeswell, the average glacier is 300 meters thick, so to melt one even at the rate of five meters a year would take half a century. ”That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing now,” he says, ”so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistically high.”
The current maximum observed rate of glacier melt worldwide is two to three meters a year.
The IPCC claim has been traced to an article published in 1999 in an Indian magazine by Syed Hasnain, a little-known scientist then based at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India. Journalist Fred Pearce heard of the article and interviewed Hassan for a piece in the popular journal, the New Scientist.
Pearce is quoted in the London Times as saying: ”Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing these numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer-reviewed or formerly published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status, so I reported his work on that basis.”
Later, Pearce obtained a copy of Hasnain’s original article and discovered it did not mention 2035 as a date the Himalayan glaciers would disappear, as he told Pearce on the phone. The article also said it applied only to a portion of the Himalayan glaciers.
There the story lay until 2005 whenthe World Wildlife Federation, a key player in the climate change movement, cited the New Scientist account in its own report.From there it was picked up and embellished as part of the 2007 IPCC by Professor Murari Lai, who oversaw the report’s section on glaciers.
Neither Hasnain’s original Indian magazine article, Pearce’s account of it in the New Scientist nor the WWF’s citation qualifies as peer-reviewed scientific research. Yet there is this unsubstantiated speculation in an official U.N. document being used to justify draconian restrictions on the world economy as well as a global redistribution of wealth, all in the name of saving the planet.
Lai now says: ”If Hasnain says officially he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, then I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”
It should be removed regardless because it is based on the anecdotal suppositions of a single scientist.
Like the infamous ”hockey stick” graph purporting to show sudden and man-induced warming, and the Climate-gate e-mails showing the efforts by researchers associated with Britain’s Climate Research unit to ”hide the decline” in global temperatures, the Himalayan glacier claim, like the IPCC report itself, is science fiction and not science fact.
“The joke on the internet these days is ”What do Tiger Woods and Phil Jones of East AngliaUniversity in Britain have in common? They both got hit in the head by a model.”
“The models’ error was not, perhaps, too surprising. As Barnett points out, they do not include vital ”forcing” mechanisms that alter temperature, such as solar cycles and volcanic eruptions. Nor can they yet mimic the strength of the largest year-on-year variability in the natural system, the El Nino oscillation in the Pacific Ocean, which has a global impact on climate.”
“It is difficult to identify a subset of models that consistently does well in many different regions and over a range of different timescales.”
Climategate: The Truth Hurts When It Hits You in the Head
By Dexter Wright
The joke on the internet these days is ”What do Tiger Woods and Phil Jones of East AngliaUniversity in Britain have in common? They both got hit in the head by a model.”
In 2007, Professors David Douglass, John Christy, Benjamin Pearson, and Fred Singer wrote a scientific paper in the International Journal of Climatology, which compared Global Climate Models (GCMs) with real observed data. GCMs were theoretically designed to forecast how greenhouse gases (GHGs) are warming the planet.
There are certain rules that must be followed in scientific investigations in order to ensure that the results and conclusions are not erroneous. Basically, the process requires an investigator to operate under multiple hypotheses so that he is not blinded to facts that might contradict one of his hypotheses and leave him with a dead end. An investigator should start by working from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex, and always bend the theory to fit the facts — not the other way around. This is exactly how the four scholars led by Professor Douglass conducted their investigation into the accuracy of the GCMs.
The GCMs were touted by the now-discredited Dr. Jones as accurate predictions of how the planet is responding to GHGs, but no serious published work had been done to compare these GCMs with real observations to find out if the theoretical models agreed with the established facts. The results of these comparisons done by Prof. Douglass and his team were found to be significantly divergent. The paper states the following:
Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean.
In English, that says that the models could not be trusted. This news publicly enraged the gang led by Dr. Jones. They fired off more than 29 e-mails concerning this one paper. But the real story is that these findings did not surprise them. In one of the recently uncovered Climategate e-mails from Dr. Fred Pearce to Dr. Keith Briffa, dated the 13th of October, 1996, Dr. Pearce delivers the bad news that the data does not agree with the models.
The models’ error was not, perhaps, too surprising. As Barnett points out, they do not include vital ”forcing” mechanisms that alter temperature, such as solar cycles and volcanic eruptions. Nor can they yet mimic the strength of the largest year-on-year variability in the natural system, the El Nino oscillation in the Pacific Ocean, which has a global impact on climate.
This statement means that as far back as 1996, the Jones Gang knew that the GCMs were producing significant errors and problems. This resulted an inability to reconcile the forecasts with reality. They seemingly knew that specifically excluding solar and El Niño influences would cause the forecast to be untrustworthy. But apparently they wished to keep these problems a secret. So to accomplish this, they chose to deal with the problem in a surprising way, as the e-mail further states:
Of course we don’t have to believe the proxy data.
So now are they suggesting that they alter or ignore the data rather than bend their theory to fit the facts? In other words, are they completely disregarding the scientific method?
When trying to come up with a response to Prof. Douglass’s International Journal of Climatology paper, Dr. Ben Santer wrote to Dr. Jones and admitted that the basic premise of the work done by Prof. Douglass and his collaborators was correct. They had run head-first in to the cold, hard truth (ouch), as revealed in Sater’s e-mail, dated the 12th of December, 2007, when he stated the following:
It is difficult to identify a subset of models that consistently does well in many different regions and over a range of different timescales.
What Dr. Santer is saying here is that clearly, the GCMs are broken, but that even a broken clock is right twice a day. As any forecaster at the National Hurricane Center will tell you, the only forecast models that they trust are models that consistently perform well. When lives are on the line, you don’t take chances by using an unreliable forecast model.
So in response to their dilemma of having to deal with the truth, the Jones Gang seems to abandon all scientific methods and decides to proceed down the rabbit hole and embrace the tactics of attorneys. In law school, they teach the students that if the law is on your side, argue the law; if the facts are on your side, argue the facts; but if neither the law nor the facts are on your side, then you have no choice but to try to discredit the witness.
The difference between scientists like Prof. Douglas and lawyers like Al Gore is that scientists seek the truth, while lawyers find the truth to be a simple matter of convenient choice to be used or obscured as needed.
The choice that the Jones Gang appears to make is to impugn the reputation of these scholars by referring to them as charlatans and pondering how to get them fired, as is detailed in this e-mail Dr. Tom Wigley sent on the 10th of December, 2007, to Dr. Santer:
… what Douglass has done would cause him to lose his job.
It is true that five hundred years ago, when a scientist challenged the prevailing accepted view of things, he would lose his job (and even get locked up like Galileo), but this is the twenty-first century! The inquisition is over…or is it?
The apparent plotting seems to take shape as this cabal begins to scheme and set traps for Prof. Douglass’s collaborators, as is suggested in this e-mail from Dr. Wigley, dated the 29th of December, 2007:
Dear all,
I was recently at a meeting in Rome where Fred Singer was a participant. He was not on the speaker list, but, in advance of the meeting, I had thought he might raise the issue of the Douglass et al. paper. I therefore prepared the attached power point — modified slightly since returning from Rome. As it happened, Singer did not raise the Douglass et al. issue, so I did not use the ppt. Still, it may be useful for members of this group so I am sending it to you all.
Please keep this in confidence. I do not want it to get back to Singer or any of the Douglass et al. co-authors.
If this were some floor fight in Congress, where the ”honorable” members are duking it out over some piece of legislation, this kind of language could be expected, but these are supposedly scientists. Men of science are supposed to be ethical and motivated only by the pursuit of truth. These e-mails seem to paint a very different picture of the Jones Gang.
TAXPAYERS FOOT BILL FOR CLIMATE CHANGE CAMPAIGNERS
Tuesday January 19,2010
BRUSSELS bureaucrats gave climate change groups more than £1.5million of taxpayers’ money last year to promote the theory that human activity is causing global warming, it emerged yesterday.
The European Commission handed out huge cash sums to Climate Action Network, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund. In one case, British and other European taxpayers paid out more than £700,000 to Friends of the Earth Europe – more than half the pressure group’s 2009 budget.
The payouts came to light after questions by UKIP Euro MP Godfrey Bloom. He said the cash was perpetuating unfounded claims about global warming.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimasinsisted that the groups’ aims and objectives were in tune with EU policy.
As an update on my previous post, V K Rana , India‘s senior-most glaciologist, wants an apology from Pachauri, head of IPCC, over his smears of his science.
Glaciologist demands apology from Pachauri for ‘voodoo’ remark
19 Jan 2010, 2101 hrs IST, PTI
NEW DELHI: India‘s senior-most glaciologist V K Raina today said the chief of the UN climate body should apologise to the scientist fraternity for
dubbing their work on melting of Himalayan glaciers as ”voodoo science”.
Raina’s demand comes even as the UN body, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) headed by R K Pachauri, deliberates on retracting its statement on Himalayan glaciers melting.
”The IPCC had dumped our report that the glaciers have not retreated abnormally. Now, with the truth out in open, the IPCC should dump its own report which was based on mere speculation,” Raina told PTI.
He was reacting to the revelations that the UN panel’s predictions that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 stemmed from a 1999 article in a scientific journal which relied on an estimate made by a glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain and not based on a peer review.
IPCC must be answerable to all the scientists and experts associated who stand vindicated that glaciers melting is not being happening at the abnormal pace as declared by it, Raina noted.
”It only shows that IPCC has based its arguments on speculations and did not verify it before making it public,” the former deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India said.
Raina, in his report, had maintained that glaciers have ”not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 yearsand the reports of the glaciers demise are a bit premature.”
Interesting isn’t it, that the guy who was speculating, and after passing thru a “science” magazine and WWF, ends up as Hard Irrefutable “science” in IPCC:s 4 AR ; IS NOW ACTUALLY WORKING FOR Pachauris company TERI.
What a coincidence wouldn’t you say?
And that TERI got a $500,000 grant as a result of these speculations.
Another coincidence wouldn’t you say?
“Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as ”voodoo science”. “
Syed Hasnain (pictured), the scientist at the centre of the growing controversy over melting Himalayan glaciers (not), is now working for Dr R K Pachauri’s TERI as head of the institute glaciology team, funded by a generous grant from a US charity, researching the effects of the retreat.
Highlighted in The Sunday Times yesterday, Dr Hasnain was the scientist responsible for claiming that the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. This was picked up by the New Scientist and then by a 2005 WWF report, and subsequently published as a definitive claim in the IPCC’s 2007 fourth assessment report, masterminded by Dr R K Pachauri.
But, while Dr Hasnain, who was then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, has admitted that the New Scientist report was based on ”speculation” and was not supported by any formal research, he is now a direct beneficiary of that speculation.
Using Dr Hasnain’s claim that the Himalaya glaciers ”will vanish within forty years as a result of global warming…resulting in widespread water shortages,” Pachauri’s ”alarmism” was bolstered by the WWF report which stated:
As apocalyptic as it may sound, it needs to be underlined that glaciers need to be studied for a variety of purposes including hazard assessment, effects on hydrology, sea level rise and to track climatic variations. There are several problems associated with retreating glaciers that need to be understood in order to proceed to the next stage of quantifying research and mitigating disaster.
With the case for more research thus established, Pachauri’s institute, TERI, approached the wealthy Carnegie Corporation of New York through a consortium led by the Global Centre for funding to carry out precisely the work to which his own ”independent” report had drawn attention.
In November 2008, they were successful, being awarded a $500,000 grant for ”research, analysis and training on water-related security and humanitarian challenges to South Asia posed by melting Himalaya glaciers.” This helped Dr Pachauri set up the TERI Glaciology team, putting at its head now professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain.
The Global Center is an Icelandic-based private institute with links to the office of the president of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. Its aim is to establish ”a major research and training program involving scientists from South Asia, Europe and the Americas,” of which Dr Pauchari’s TERI India is a central part.
Thus, this month, on 15 January, Iceland president Grímsson and Dr Pachauri, together with a team from Ohio State University, launched their collaborative programme, declaring that TERI and the Carnegie Corporation of New York had ”joined hands” to work in the fields of glaciology and soil science.
The purpose of the joint effort, they said, was ”to improve understanding of the effects of climate change on the Himalaya and the manifold consequences that follow for the possibilities of water management and food production on the plains below.”
The research fund is also to be topped up from the $108,000 proceeds of the Nehru Prize awarded to Grímsson this month.
Nevertheless, Dr Hasnain does not seem always to be upholding his earlier ”speculation”. He was ”on message” in November 2009 but, on the first day of the two-day conclave on ”Indian Himalayan glaciers, change and livelihoods” in October 2009, he told his audience that scientists projected ”a 43 percent decrease in glacial area on average by the year 2070 and 75 percent decrease by the end of 21st century at the current warming rate” – a very far cry from disappearance in 2035.
However, with the addition of EU funding, Dr Hasnain can afford to be more candid. He has been able to set up a major research facility at Latey Bunga, Mukteshwar, with several outstations in what is now a well-resourced operation.
Meanwhile, Dr Pachauri, head of the parent research institute, TERI, and a ”full-time salaried employee”, is seeking to disown his own 2007 report. Despite having dismissed criticism of it by the Indian government as ”voodoo science”, he told an Indian news agency today that he washed his hands of the controversy saying he has ”absolutely no responsibility”.
Still, with $500,000 in the bank, and EU money flowing into the coffers, the report has served its purpose and he can afford now to walk away from it.
“So, to recap: in the course of a garbled phone conversation a scientist accidentally invents a problem that doesn’t exist. This gets reported as if gospel in an influential Warmist science magazine and repeated by a Warmist NGO, before being lent the full authority of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report which, as we know, can’t be wrong because it is vetted by around 2,500 scientists.Then, on the back of this untrue story, the scientist gets a cushy job at the institution whose director is also in charge of the IPCC.
‘India being vindicated in Himalayan glacier issue’
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New Delhi, Jan 18 (PTI) As the controversy over retreating Himalayan glaciers took a new turn, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh today said India stood vindicated with a UN body moving to retract its own ”alarmist” warning that the glaciers would melt by 2035 due to climate change.
Ramesh slammed as ‘alarmist’ the warning by Rajendra Pachauri’s Nobel-prize winning Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the glaciers would vanish and said it was without any scientific basis.
Pachauri, who is the IPCC Chairman, washed his hands of the controversy saying he has ”absolutely no responsibility”
”The health of the glaciers is a cause of grave concern but the IPCC’s alarmist position that the glaciers will vanish by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence,” Ramesh told reporters.
”We are looking into the issue of the Himalayan glaciers, and will take a position on it in the next two or three days,” Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters in an e-mail.
What this might mean isunclear since the AR4 is disbanded and it is not clear that the IPC has any policies or procedures for revisiting or addressing errors in previously published reports. Depending on how the IPCC responds, there likely will be other issues to be addressed, including of course the IPCC’s egregious errors on disasters and climate change.
In Indian media, Pachauri also appears to have disavowed any responsibility for the IPCC error, while India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh claims to have been vindicated in his dispute with Pachauri and the IPCC:
India’s Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh Monday said “I was right on the glaciers” while maintaining that the Himalayan glaciers are ”indeed” receding, which is a cause for great concern, but the view that these rivers of ice would melt down completely by 2035 due to global warning is ”alarmist” and without any scientific basis.
”It is a clear vindication of our position. (But) It is a serious issue. (Himlayan) glaciers are serious issues for India. Most of the Himalayan glaciers are in a poor state, but the report that suggested that the glaciers will vanish completely by 2035 is alarmist and misplaced,” Ramesh told reporters in New Delhi.
He maintained that the causes for the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas needs to be carefull studies.
Ramesh was referring to the study by the Nobel prize winning group – United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 had – that claimed that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.
The Rajendra Pachauri-led UN panel had warned that the melting of glaciers would have far-reaching consequences for India. However, new evidence has emerged to suggest that the IPCC may have been mistaken.
The IPCC’s claim was based on an article in a London-based science journal which had borrowed the statement from India’s glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain. “The study was not made on any scientific evidence,” a very happy sounding minister.
WWF-India Climate Change and Energy Programme chief Shirish Sinha admitted that there are ”limitations to scientific models used for such studies.”
”We need to look at new data and study. The larger issue is the coming of scientific data which is not validated,” said Sinha.
The report was based on compilation of papers. We regret the report that was put out. The information used in the report was not validated and the predictions were based on scientific models. What WWF has seen is that smaller glaciers are more vulnerable but larger ones are not that vulnerable,” Sinha has been quoted as saying by CNN-IBN television channel.
A little-known scientist Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, Syed Husnain who first issued the doomsday warning, has admitted that it was based on a news story in a science journal.
Pachauri, however, washed his hands off the report saying Husnain was not working with him but in the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) when he published it
”Husnain was with JNU when the report was published in 1999. I am not responsible for what he did in his past, can’t say anything now. Have to assess facts first,” Pachauri replied when asked if the misleading report was an embarrassment for The Energy and Resources Institute.
WWF Australia has issued a statement apologizing for the error in its report and distancing itself from the IPCC. Here is an excerpt from the statement:
. . . In this case, we relied upon a published article rather than the original report for the information we cited in our own document. Referring to this article without double-checking the primary source was a mistake inconsistent with our high standards and one we sincerely regret. . .
How can the IPCC justify not having peer-reviewed this statement before including it in their report?
A: This is a question for the IPCC.
Posted by Roger Pielke, Jr. at 1/18/2010 10:05:00 AM
Here is a very interesting analysis of the central England temperature (CET) dataset (records since 1659). They have looked at the 10 largest temperature changes for a single year, the 10 largest for a 5 year period, the 10 largest for a 10 year period, and so on up to a 60 year period.
And, surprise surprise –OF ALL these 10 highest in the different time periods (80 in total) 2 was from this decade (2002 and 2006, both in 8 place).
If you take the largest single year temperature change the “most recent one” was in 1922 (5th place).
If you take the largest 5 year temperature change the “most recent one” was in 1990 (4th place).
If you take the largest 10 year temperature change the “most recent one” was in 1995 (6th place).
And so on.
And nearly all of the top ones are either from the 18th century or the 19th century.
Weren’t wein IMMEDIATE AND EMINENT DANGER OF GLOBAL CATASTROPHE (said 3 months ago)according the high priests of the Global Warming Hysteria?
The Sunday Telegraph has an interesting story on TERI-Europe and Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, uncovering what TERI admits are accounting ”anomalies” — never a good thing to hear when financial accounting is concerned. I will have more to say on that, but in this post I’d like to focus on a very interesting statement in the article on the UN and IPCC policies for conflict of interest:
Because Dr Pachauri’s role at the IPCC is unpaid – although he does receive tens of thousands of pounds in travel expenses – he is exempt along with other panel members from declaring outside interests with the UN.
As far as I have been able to discern, the IPCC has no policy governing conflict of interests. This is remarkable, given the importance of the IPCC to international climate policy as well as the importance that has been given in recent years to conflicts of interest in scientific advice.The question that needs to be put to the IPCC is: why should it be exempt from adhering to conflict of interest policies that are deemed appropriate in every other important area of scientific advice?
Last month I posted up the standards of conduct regarding conflict of interest for the IPCC’s parent bodies: the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization. Based on what the Sunday Telegraph has reported the leadership of the IPCC falls through a bureaucratic loophole and is not accountable to UN or WMO conflict of interest policies.In fact, it appears that there are no such policies governing the IPCC — which is remarkable.
Instituting such policies will be difficult as any reasonable conflict of interest policies will necessarily lead to some very uncomfortable questions about its current chairman, as well as others in leadership positions. There is no doubt based on publicly available information that Dr. Pachauri has material conflcits of interest as IPCC chair. At the same time, unless the IPCC sets forth such policies, it will continue to hang exposed like a virtual pinata, getting whacked repeatedly and justifiably for its ”anything goes” approach. For the IPCC the better course is to clean up its act sooner rather than later, as uncomfortable as that might be in the short term.
Posted by Roger Pielke, Jr. at 1/17/2010 09:38:00 AM
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Paul said…
The UN is hopelessly corrupt … from Oil for Food to human trafficking, to it’s members living like little kings in developed countries (Haiti comes to mind); it has the perfect structure for predators to profit from with no accountibility. The UN is third world corruption come to our shores.
Are you surprised then, that with trillions to be made from carbon trading (money from thin air) that the parasites wouldn’t be congregating. ”The science” has become hopelessly mixed up with politics, unaccountable bureaucracy, and corporate greed … so the Pachauri tale is just the tip of the iceberg. The UK Telegraph team are just getting started.
Roger, let’s not be naive! AGW is a fast track to incredible profits for those on the right side of the trade … to think that this won’t corrupt every aspect of the ”science” is to use rose coloured glasses. AGW science is to the carbon trade as Research is to big pharma … can you imagine big pharma functioning without strict oversight to keep it hones?. Yet, the AGW science has no such checks and balances with a who’s who of corporate and private interests salivating at the profit potential.
Just think, politicians get billions to ”redistribute for votes”; corporations like Goldman Sachs make billions just in transaction fees; NGOs get billions for doing the work of Gaia; Scientists get billions (79 so far) in grants; bureaucrats get more power and wealth doing the work of saving the planet; and every single ”green” business gets in on the feeding frenzy.
And more on Pachauri, head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
It’s very interesting with all this money floating around, passing through several layers before ending up in all these “Non Profit Charity Organizations”.
“Since being elected to the IPCC chairmanship five years earlier, he has coincidentally built up a worldwide network of business interests. He has been appointed to more than 20 positions, ranging from directorships and advisory roles to major banks and investment firms to serving as the first head of YaleUniversity‘s new Climate and Energy Institute.
Dr Pachauri insists that the millions of dollars he receives for these posts are all paid not to him personally but to his Delhi-based institute. But during the same period he has also presided over a massive expansion of TERI’s own empire, which now has five overseas branches, in North America, Japan, South-East Asia, Dubai and Europe.
Considerable mystery surrounds the financial affairs of the TERI group since its annual reports do not include its accounts.”
“Why Dr Reisinger’s money was paid through TERI Europe, via an unnamed department of CambridgeUniversity – and why the Government has been so secretive about details of this payment – thus remains as mysterious as much else about the financial affairs of TERI Europe.
The one thing all this made obvious, however, was that TERI Europe’’s income and expenditure in recent years were both much greater than the figures it declared to the Charity Commission.
When we put this to Ms Kumar, as a director and company secretary of TERI Europe, she admitted that our questions had brought to light ”anomalies” in the charity’s accounts. Its accountants have now been called in to produce a revised version.
The primary responsibility for ensuring that TERI Europe’s affairs are in good order and comply with the requirements of the Charities Acts lies not just with the directors but with its board of trustees.
These include not only Dr Pachauri himself but also two other notable figures in the global warming story. One is Sir John Houghton, a former head of the UK Met Officewho played a crucial part at the top of the IPCC through much of its existence.A third is Sir Crispin Tickell, the former diplomat who was responsible in 1988 for converting Mrs Thatcher to a belief in the dangers of global warming.This led to the setting up by Houghton of the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, which has continued to play a key role in the IPCC to this day.
If the Charity Commission’s investigation confirms these anomalies in the charity’s accounts, its eminent trustees will be at the forefront of those asked to provide an explanation.
One interesting fact to emerge from our enquiries to the IPCC secretariat in Geneva is that, for his extensive work as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pauchuri receives no salary but only expenses.
Just what Dr Pachauri himself earns from TERI, of which he describes himself to the Sunday Telegraph as ”a full-time salaried employee”, is not publicly revealed. Indeed, on Indian TV recently, in response to an article we published three weeks ago, he curiously claimed that ”nobody in TERI gets any money for anything he or she does as part of his or her job”.
Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN climate chief
Millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money is being paid to an organisation in India run by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the controversial chairman of the UN climate change panel, despite growing concern over its accounts.
By Robert Mendick
Published: 9:30PM GMT 16 Jan 2010
A research institute headed by Dr Pachauri will receive up to £10 million funding over the next five years from the Department for International Development (DfID).
The grant comes amid question marks over the finances of The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI) London operation. Last week its UK head called in independent accountants after admitting ‘anomalies’ – described as ‘unintentional’ – in its accounts that have prompted demands for the Charity Commission to investigate.
The decision to resubmit accounts follows a Sunday Telegraph investigation into the finances of TERI Europe, which has benefited from funding from other branches of the British Government including the Foreign Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Dr Pachauri, TERI’s director-general, has built up a worldwide network of business interests since his appointment as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2002. The post, argue critics, has given him huge prestige and influence as the world’s most powerful climate official.
The decision by DfID to fund Dr Pachauri’s institute, based in Delhi, will add to growing concern over allegations of conflict of interest with critics accusing Dr Pachauri and TERI of gaining financially from policies which are formulated as a result of the work he carries out as IPCC chairman – a suggestion he strongly denies.
But Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor who now chairs the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank which challenges the prevailing scientific view on climate change, said: ”It is now a wholly legitimate concern to ask questions about possible conflicts of interests. The IPCC is a very influential body and he is obviously very involved in its leadership.”
Ann Widdecombe, one of only a handful of MPs who have openly declared themselves climate sceptics, said: ”I would have thought that in the interests of transparency and for the avoidance of doubt he probably should not perform both roles. It makes me uneasy.”
Because Dr Pachauri’s role at the IPCC is unpaid – although he does receive tens of thousands of pounds in travel expenses –he is exempt along with other panel members from declaring outside interests with the UN.
But he is paid an undisclosed salary by TERI while the institute has also received payments from a number of organisations and businesses he has advised in recent years including 100,000 euros (£88,400) from Deutcshe bank, $80,000 (£49,000) from Toyota Motors and $580,000 (£357,000) from Yale University, where he serves as head of its new Climate and Energy Institute.
The deal with DfID was announced in September at the British Council in Delhi with Dr Pachauri and Development Secretary Douglas Alexander in attendance. According to a press release issued by the British High Commission at the time, the ”partnership will enable TERI to improve knowledge, policy analysis and development practice across a broad range of issues critical to growth, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability in India”.
Dr Pachauri, who lives in a mansion in Delhi on the most valuable stretch of residential real estate in India, declared at the time: ”This partnership will assist in creating capacity within TERI to undertake efforts by which poverty can be addressed through resource efficient solutions.”
Asked last week what the money was actually for, a DfID spokesman said it would help ”bring electricity and clean energy to millions of the world’s poorest people”.
The spokesman added: ”TERI is a globally respected institution. Their accounts are externally audited and annually submitted to the Government of India. As is routine, DFID is undertaking a full Institutional Assessment of TERI as part of our due diligence process.”
Mystery surrounds the financial affairs of TERI, which now has five overseas branches in North America, Japan, South East Asia, Dubai and Europe, since it does not make its accounts public even though it is a not for profit organisation. Its annual report only shows two pie charts representing its main areas of income and expenditure although these include no figures.
After two weeks of requests by the Sunday Telegraph, TERI revealed income for 2008 to 2009 of £10.7m, up from £6.8 million the year before. DfID said the first year funding of £2 million amounted to about 15 per cent of TERI’s annual turnover.
TERI Europe has also attracted British Government and private funding and although no overall figures have been made available for the value of the contracts, they are reckoned to be worth substantial sums over several years.
But latest available Charity Commission accounts show income of £8,000 and expenditure of £3,000 in 2008 while separate accounts lodged at Companies House show a little over £60,000 in cash at the bank in June 2008.
Ritu Kumar, who runs TERI Europe, said in response to inquiries by this newspaper she had called in independent accountants Mazars.
Dr Kumar wrote: ”As a result of this, Mazars has advised us that there are anomalies in the accounts filed with the Charity Commission. As soon as we learned of these anomalies, which were unintentional on our part, we informed the Charity Commission and immediately asked the accountant to prepare revised accounts, which will apply the correct accounting treatment.”
In a letter published in today’s Sunday Telegraph, Dr Pachauri denies any conflict of interest. He writes: ”I am proud of my association with various organisations, of which I am happy to provide a complete list, but such associations are limited to me providing them with advice essentially on clean technologies and sustainable practices. There is no question of them influencing the functioning of TERI, the IPCC or myself.
”There is no conflict between these roles and my position as chairman of the IPCC. I advise several organisations on sustainable energy and related subjects, and any remuneration that is due to me from these organisations is paid to TERI, not to me.
”This is not for reasons of tax evasion or money laundering, but, to keep within the practices of TERI, of which I am a full-time, salaried employee. No part of these payments is received by me from TERI either directly or indirectly.”
This is another example of the “great science” behind the Global Warming Hysteria.
“Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was ”speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research.”
“The New Scientist report was apparently forgotten until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China. The report credited Hasnain’s 1999 interview with the New Scientist. But it was a campaigning report rather than an academic paper so it was not subjected to any formal scientific review. Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the Himalayas.
When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was ”very high”. The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%. “
“Some scientists have questioned how the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most likely reason was lack of expertise.Lal himself admits he knows little about glaciers. ”I am not an expert on glaciers.and I have not visited the region so I have to rely on credible published research. The comments in the WWF report were made by a respected Indian scientist and it was reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking about,” he said.
Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as ”voodoo science”.
Last week the IPCC refused to comment so it has yet to explain how someone who admits to little expertise on glaciers was overseeing such a report. Perhaps its one consolation is that the blunder was spotted by climate scientists who quickly made it public.”
A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was ”speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: ”If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”
The IPCC’s reliance on Hasnain’s 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: ”Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.
”Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers. not the whole massif.”
The New Scientist report was apparently forgotten until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China. The report credited Hasnain’s 1999 interview with the New Scientist. But it was a campaigning report rather than an academic paper so it was not subjected to any formal scientific review. Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the Himalayas.
When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was ”very high”. The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%.
The report read: ”Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”
However, glaciologists find such figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are far lower.
Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, said: ”Even a small glacier such as the Dokriani glacier is up to 120 metres [394ft] thick. A big one would be several hundred metres thick and tens of kilometres long. The average is 300 metres thick so to melt one even at 5 metres a year would take 60 years. That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing now so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistically high.”
Some scientists have questioned how the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most likely reason was lack of expertise.Lal himself admits he knows little about glaciers. ”I am not an expert on glaciers.and I have not visited the region so I have to rely on credible published research. The comments in the WWF report were made by a respected Indian scientist and it was reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking about,” he said.
Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as ”voodoo science”.
Last week the IPCC refused to comment so it has yet to explain how someone who admits to little expertise on glaciers was overseeing such a report. Perhaps its one consolation is that the blunder was spotted by climate scientists who quickly made it public.
The lead role in that process was played by Graham Cogley, a geographer from Trent University in Ontario, Canada, who had long been unhappy with the IPCC’s finding.
He traced the IPCC claim back to the New Scientist and then contacted Pearce. Pearce then re-interviewed Hasnain, who confirmed that his 1999 comments had been ”speculative”, and published the update in the New Scientist.
Cogley said: ”The reality, that the glaciers are wasting away, is bad enough. But they are not wasting away at the rate suggested by this speculative remark and the IPCC report. The problem is that nobody who studied this material bothered chasing the trail back to the original point when the claim first arose. It is ultimately a trail that leads back to a magazine article and that is not the sort of thing you want to end up in an IPCC report.”
Pearce said the IPCC’s reliance on the WWF was ”immensely lazy” and the organisation need to explain itself or back up its prediction with another scientific source. Hasnain could not be reached for comment.
The revelation is the latest crack to appear in the scientific concensus over climate change. It follows the so-called climate-gate scandal, where British scientists apparently tried to prevent other researchers from accessing key date. Last week another row broke out when the Met Office criticised suggestions that sea levels were likely to rise 1.9m by 2100, suggesting much lower increases were likely.
I have written before about Wikipedias active censorship when it comes to global warming.
Well, it seems that they are not alone. The giant Google is doing the same in a more indirect way. Censoring the number of pages you get when you search for “climategate”. And taking “climategate” away from it’s Google Suggests.
“On Dec. 7, Google’s search engine found 31.6 million hits for people who searched for “Climategate.”
Sometime around then, in early December, Google began to minimize the Climategate scandal by hiding Climategate pages from its users. By Dec. 17, the number of climategate pages that a Google search found dropped by almost 10 million, to 22.2 million. One day later Google dropped its find by another 8 million pages, to 14.1 million.By Dec. 23, Google could find only 7.5 million hits and on Dec. 24 just 6 million. And yesterday, when I checked, Google reported a mere 1.8 million climategate pages.
Bing, in contrast, didn’t make climategate pages disappear. As you’d expect from a search engine that wasn’t manipulating data, search results on Bing climbed steadilyuntil they peaked at around 51 million, where they have remained since.”
“But suddenly in late November, for reasons known only to Google, Google often would not suggest “climategate” to those who keyed in c-l-i. Even c-l-i-m-a or c-l-i-m-a-t-e-g-a-t weren’t enough to solicit a suggestion.Bing, in contrast, did not and does not steer users away from climategate — it has consistently suggested “climategate” to those who keyed in c-l-i or even c-l.
For those whom Google can’t steer away from “climategate,” and who key in all 11 letters to learn about the eye-opening emails, Google goes the extra yard in keeping people in the dark — it dishes up a page that trivializes the scientific significance of climategate.”
For my posts regarding the censorship at Wikipedia see:
Googlegate: The search engine may be standing up to Chinese censors. What about Google’s own censors?
By Lawrence Solomon
This week, Google announced an end to its long-standing collaboration with the Chinese Communists — it will no longer censor users inside China.
That’s good of it. Maybe Google will now also stop using its search engine to censor the rest of us, in the Western countries.
Search for “Googlegate” on Google and you’ll get a paltry result (my result yesterday was 29,300). Search for “Googlegate” on Bing, Microsoft’s search engine competitor, and the result numbers an eye-popping 72.4 million. If you’re a regular Google user, as opposed to a Bing user, you might not even know that “Googlegate” has been a hot topic for years in the blogosphere — that’s the power that comes of being able to control information.
Despite Google’s motto of “Do No Evil,” it has long been controversial and suspected of evil-doing — and not just in its cooperation with China, or in protecting itself by hiding criticism of itself from unsuspecting Google users. In recent months, most of the evil-doing has focused on the Climategate scandal, the startling emails from the Climate Research Unit in the UK that show climate change scientists to be cooking the books.
For many weeks now, readers have been sending me emails describing how Google has been doing its best to hide information relating to Climategate, which has been the single biggest story on the Internet since the Climategate emails came to light on November 19. By Nov. 26, the term had gone viral and Google returned more results for “climategate” (10.4 million) than for “global warming” (10.1 million). As the Climate Scandal exploded, and increasing numbers of blog sites covered it, the number of web pages with Climategate continued to climb. On Dec. 7, Google’s search engine found 31.6 million hits for people who searched for “Climategate.”
Sometime around then, in early December, Google began to minimize the Climategate scandal by hiding Climategate pages from its users. By Dec. 17, the number of climategate pages that a Google search found dropped by almost 10 million, to 22.2 million. One day later Google dropped its find by another 8 million pages, to 14.1 million.By Dec. 23, Google could find only 7.5 million hits and on Dec. 24 just 6 million. And yesterday, when I checked, Google reported a mere 1.8 million climategate pages.
Bing, in contrast, didn’t make climategate pages disappear. As you’d expect from a search engine that wasn’t manipulating data, search results on Bing climbed steadilyuntil they peaked at around 51 million, where they have remained since.
Starting in late November, Google has been keeping the public in the dark about Climategate in other ways, too. Ordinarily, when people begin keying in their search terms, Google helpfully suggests the balance of their text, through an automatic feature it calls Google Suggests.
At the very beginning of the Climategate scandal, before it became huge, Google Suggests worked as advertised. If someone typed in c-l-i-, Google would have shown them “climategate” on a list of options. Many people, in fact, learned about Climategate this very way, because most major media outlets had not yet picked up on the scandal. As Climategate rose in intensity, the term also rose in prominence on the Google Suggest list — anyone keying in c-l-i would see “climategate” at the top of thelist.
But suddenly in late November, for reasons known only to Google, Google often would not suggest “climategate” to those who keyed in c-l-i. Even c-l-i-m-a or c-l-i-m-a-t-e-g-a-t weren’t enough to solicit a suggestion.Bing, in contrast, did not and does not steer users away from climategate — it has consistently suggested “climategate” to those who keyed in c-l-i or even c-l.
For those whom Google can’t steer away from “climategate,” and who key in all 11 letters to learn about the eye-opening emails, Google goes the extra yard in keeping people in the dark — it dishes up a page that trivializes the scientific significance of climategate. Those who click on Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” after asking for “climategate” find themselves on a Wikipedia page entitled “Climatic Research Unit hacking incident” that downplays the content of the emails and focuses on the “unauthorised release of thousands of emails and other documents obtained through the hacking of a server,” the “illegal taking of data,” the “Law enforcement agencies [that] are investigating the matter as a crime,” and “the death threats that were subsequently made against climate scientists named in the emails.”
For those who don’t use Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” feature, Google presents them with this one-sided Wikipedia page as the first item in its search results. Wikipedia actually has a page called “Climategate” that contains damning information about the scientists caught up in the scandal but its own censors won’t let the public see it — anyone who tries to key in “Climategate” on the Wikipedia site will be instantly redirected to the Wikipedia-approved version of climategate, where the scandal is described as nothing more than “a smear campaign.”
Why would Google want to tamp down interest in climategate? Money and power could have something to do with it. Search for Google and its founders and you’ll see that they have made big financial bets on global warming through investments in renewable and other green technologies; that they have a close relationship with Al Gore, that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is close to Barack Obama.
But search for Googlegate and you’ll also see that more than money is at stake. The accusations against Google of censorship are wide-spread, involving schemes to elect Barack Obama, attacks on Christianity (key in “Christianity is” and Google will suggest unflattering completions to the phrase), and political correctness (key in “Islam is” and nothing negative is suggested).
The bottom line? Google is as inscrutable as the Chinese, and perhaps no less corrupt. For safe searches, you’re best off with Bing.
Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
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.
And more on Pachauri, head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
It’s very interesting with all this money floating around, passing through several layers before ending up in all these “Non Profit Charity Organizations”.
“Thus, we have a gilded circle of the wealthy, all in the climate change business to make a buck or two, and all in some way connected to a network of environmental ”charities”, which are dishing out funds to activists at the sharp end, many of whom will be quite unaware of who their ultimate paymasters are.”
For all that Dr R K Pachauri has his hands deeply embedded in the till, he is actually a small-time chancer, made good. The really big money lies elsewhere, and he is just on the edge of it, picking up the crumbs.This comes home when we return to look at the mysterious European Climate Foundation (ECF) and follow through some of the sponsors – or ”funding partners” as they prefer to call them.
One of those was the Ecofin Research Foundation, which we looked yesterday, finding that it had donated just a few pounds short of £1 million to get the ECF off the ground. But this is small beer compared with what other ”funding partners” have given.
A much more generous ”partner”, for instance, has been the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) – an unlikely sponsor on the face of it as this charity’s ”mission” is ”to demonstrably improve the lives of children living in poverty in developing countries by achieving large scale and sustainable impact” (as well as splitting infinitives).
Yet, despite this, in the financial year ending 31 August 2008, the foundation funded the ECF with a £2,527,973 grant ”to support advocacy issues on climate change and energy in the European Union aimed at dramatically reducing the region’s greenhouse gas emissions and helping the EU play a leadership role in multilateral climate protection.
If this seems a long way from the mission of improving the lives of children ”living in poverty in developing countries,”then it seems even more remote when CIFF tells us that the ”transformative goal of this initiative in 2009 is that the EU provides leadership in Copenhagen and is poised to move credibly to a 30 percent emission reduction goal against 1990 levels by 2020.”
Why a dedicated childrens’ charity should suddenly take it upon itself to fund so generously a European climate advocacy group is less than clear. At least with the Ecofin Research Foundation, there was a very obvious motivation and some prospect of a pay-back.
There are few clues to be gained from the charity’s founder, Christopher Cooper-Hohn. He is a fabulously rich hedge fund manager who has bestowed the best part of £1.5 billion to his charity, with a view to funding a wide range of good works from the investment income.
Certainly, CIFF seems to have caught the climate ”bug” quite late, having only recently launched its own special initiative on climate change, employing amongst others Kate Hampton, former head of the climate change campaign for Friends of the Earth International. And, to make up for lost time, it has spent £3,018,953 spent on climate change, including £175,000 on the Catalyst project.
Therein, possibly, is the link. The founder of that project is George Polk, as ”a serial entrepreneur most recently CEO of The Cloud Networks Ltd, the leading broadband wireless network operator in Europe.” He is known to have close links with the powerhouse of CIFF, Jamie Cooper-Hohn, the wife of the great hedge fund manager and CEO of the charity.
CIFF’s interest in climate change corresponds almost exactly with a change in Polk’s career path, when he stepped down as CEO of The Cloud in early 2007 to focus on climate change. Not only did he found the Catalyst project, he also started up the European Climate Foundation, where he served as CEO and chairman of the executive committee. Other activities were to serve as an advisor to Climateworks and as a senior advisor on climate change to McKinsey & Company.
But Polk’s main interest in life is his role as the managing partner of Soros Climate ”a new $1 billion initiative by George Soros to invest private equity in ways which accelerate the development and diffusion of climate change technologies and business models.” And it was Soros who created something of a stir at Copenhagen, suggesting the launch of a $150 billion financial plan.
Polk, however, has yet another interest in his busy life. He sits on the executive board of an outfit called the Carbon War Room, founded by Richard Branson, of Virgin fame, and Craig Cogut. The latter, of course, is founder and co-managing partner of Pegasus Capital Advisors, which claims as one of its ”strategic advisors” a certain Rajendra K Pachauri – for which post, he claims, he is paid nothing.
Thus, we have a gilded circle of the wealthy, all in the climate change business to make a buck or two, and all in some way connected to a network of environmental ”charities”, which are dishing out funds to activists at the sharp end, many of whom will be quite unaware of who their ultimate paymasters are.
And, if the hedge-fund contribution from CIFF – of over $2 million to the European Climate Foundation – looks generous, this is nothing compared with Polk’s other venture, Climateworks. This organisation emerged from a study commissioned by six foundations: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; The David and Lucile Packard Foundation; The Energy Foundation; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; The Joyce Foundation; and The Oak Foundation.
Remarkably, in 2008, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation awarded $481,505,182 to the ClimateWorks Foundation. And ClimateWorks is another of those ”funding partners” of the European Climate Foundation – having donated an unspecified sum to help set it up.
With all that money flowing around, however, readers will be pleased to learn that Dr R K Pachauri was not left out. In 2007, The Energy Foundation gave him, via TERI-NA, the sum of $75,000 for ”an educational outreach campaign to promote the 4th Assessment Report” (see page 43) – crumbs from the rich man’s table, but every little helps.
And more on Pachauri, head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
“Equally, however, it cannot be assumed that the ECF money was an altruistic gesture and came without ”strings”. As a study financed by the ECF points out, the payments are devoted to developing ”a strategy to influence key decision makers”. The ”primary audiences are EU politicians and politicians from each member state,” and a special ”opinion leader” is Rajendra Pachauri, to whom the ECF has been so generous.His statements are ”reckoned to have substantial influence on media and members of the primary audiences.”
The happy snap shown above, taken at the end of March last year, shows Mr Tulsi Tanti shaking hands with a certain R K Pachauri. And despite the poor quality of the photograph, it is quite evident that Dr Pachauri has a demeanour not dissimilar to a cat that has just swallowed the cream – which, in a sense, he has.
Mr Tanti is no ordinary well-wisher. He is the chairman and managing director of the multi-million Indian energy firm, Suzlon Energy, which has major interests in renewable energy. It is the world’s fifth leading wind turbine maker and also has solar power interests. And he has just signed an agreement with Dr Pachauri promising to fund a programme in renewable energy engineering and management at one of Dr Pachauri’s spin-off enterprises, the TERIUniversity.
The sum to be handed over – as so often – is undisclosed, but it is likely to be substantial. It will, of course, secure the goodwill of the chairman of the IPCC who will no doubt have warm feelings towards yet another of his Institute’s commercial benefactors.
But this is by no means the full extent of the financial links between Suzlon Energy and Dr Pachauri, but through a trail so tortuous that no possible connection could be proved.
But following that trail provides a graphic example of the murky world of climate change financing, using a network of commercial companies, ”charitable” foundations, NGOs and other activist groups, where huge sums of money can be channelled to organisations and individuals, with no accountability whatsoever and no means of identifying the original sources.
Returning to Suzlon Energy, we see an example of that dynamic in play – with absolutely no question of any money passing directly from the company to Dr Pachauri or any of his numerous enterprises.
It is, therefore, a complete and totally unrelated coincidence that Suzlon Energy owns a company called Hansen Transmissions International NV, an ”established global wind turbine gearbox and industrial gearbox designer, with a leading position in the wind turbine gearbox market” – a company which, incidentally, has a considerable European presence.
It is, also a complete coincidence that, at the beginning of last year, Suzlon sold a ten percent stake in the company to a London-based investment house called Ecofin Ltd, a company with about $3 billion under its management, which specialises in the global utility, infrastructure, alternative energy and environmental sectors.
Therefore, it is just as much a coincidence that Ecofin Ltd – now earning a not inconsiderable amount from Suzlon – has a ”charity” called the Ecofin Research Foundation, set up in May 2007 with a staff of one, the sole objective of which is to hand funds from Ecofin Ltd – its sole donor – to environmental ”charities.”
So far, Ecofin Ltd has given a few pounds short of £1 million to its Foundation and it is yet another complete coincidence that the major recipient of the Foundation’s grants is an outfit called the European Climate Foundation (ECF), to the tune of £743,071 in the year ending 31 December 2008.
Thus, it is just another complete and utter coincidence that, in the grant year 2009, the ECF made a donation of an unspecified amount, direct to TERI India, to ”facilitate meetings between Dr R K Pachauri and key European decision makers in support of an international agreement on climate change.”
Thus, as we pointed out earlier, there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between that money, Suzlon Energy and Dr Pachauri. But then, there is absolutely no connection between the electricity that you use in your home and the supplier whom you pay. The electricity it and other utility companies generate all go into the same pot. What you take out at the other end could have come from anywhere.
Equally, however, it cannot be assumed that the ECF money was an altruistic gesture and came without ”strings”. As a study financed by the ECF points out, the payments are devoted to developing ”a strategy to influence key decision makers”. The ”primary audiences are EU politicians and politicians from each member state,” and a special ”opinion leader” is Rajendra Pachauri, to whom the ECF has been so generous.His statements are ”reckoned to have substantial influence on media and members of the primary audiences.”
In fact, therefore, Suzlon Energy need not have been involved at all. Indirectly – several stages removed from the final destination – it is simply putting money into a pot. But it has to be said that what comes out the other end is by no means harmful to the interests of Mr Tulsi Tanti and his wind turbine business.
“Well a fat commission fee goes to the priesthood and the rest to some African dictator to plant trees. Except that no one seems to be able to find evidence of a single planted tree let alone new forests. At the Copenhagen conference there were so many private jets that every airport in Denmark ran out of apron space and every limousine in Scandinavia was leased. Result?
Staggering amounts of Co2 and no progress, except in the dictator’s bank accounts. (The president of genocidal Sudan rejected with contempt the offer of £11billion as grossly inadequate. What the hell, apart from palms, do they plant in Sudan?)
It is all beginning to look like a religion-cum-flawed-science-cum financial-scam run by and for one per cent of the planet’s population. “
Doom and disaster stories meet the wintry landscape but some catastrophes never happened
THE doom-and-disaster stories pour upon us from our wintry landscape but it is nice to note that some of the catastrophes never happened.
What about Mexican swine flu? All right, we are having the usual seasonal winter flu but do you recall the now retiring government chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson telling us of the apocalypse that was coming upon us all?
Sixty five thousand corpses, we were promised. We’d be tripping over them come muck-spreading, he said. We needed a trillion doses of Tamiflu, he said. Visions were unavoidable of handcarts pulled through the streets to the cry of “Bring out your dead”.
Nostradamus was portrayed as an optimist compared with Sir Liam D. It seems to have gone the way of the Millennium Bug, the computer virus that during the first seconds of 2000 AD would destroy every cyber-gizmo we have and terminate civilisation as we know it. Never happened.
I have a lurking suspicion that 50 years from now when I am long gone my grandchildren will convene a seance to tell me global warming went the same way. Joking apart, there is a huge cost to all these scares and as ever it settles not upon the Smartypants leering out of our TV screens but on the rest of us, the humble taxpayers.
But if a scare really is a scam after all, the global warming money machine must be the biggest in the history of our planet.
For the costs to us all now being grim-facedly proposed are literally trillions, which we simply do not have. how did it all overwhelm us with such amazing speed? Well, first, global warming began as a genuine fear but has now graduated to a form of religion with all the passions and intolerances that medieval faiths used to possess.
But attached to it is also a large and growing industry controlled by the high priesthood. The supporting science has now been denounced as flawed and may yet get more so but that does not impede the staggering commercial contracts now controlled by the priesthood. Among the Sanhedrin is to be found the oily Al Gore, who is wafted around the world only by private jet.
Ditto our own Tony Blair. everyone associated with wind farms – land- owners, designers, contractors, builders, cable-layers and energy-providers – are set to make huge fortunes even though the fans don’t work on a calm day and need a second set of back-up “conventionals”.
And what could turn out to be the lion’s share of the scam is this “carbon credit” and “carbon trading” lark. We have all heard of it but what does it mean? Carbon trading seems to be a wheeze whereby you can buy the right to create carbon dioxide. What happens to this purchase money?
Well a fat commission fee goes to the priesthood and the rest to some African dictator to plant trees. Except that no one seems to be able to find evidence of a single planted tree let alone new forests. At the Copenhagen conference there were so many private jets that every airport in Denmark ran out of apron space and every limousine in Scandinavia was leased. Result?
Staggering amounts of Co2 and no progress, except in the dictator’s bank accounts. (The president of genocidal Sudan rejected with contempt the offer of £11billion as grossly inadequate. What the hell, apart from palms, do they plant in Sudan?)
It is all beginning to look like a religion-cum-flawed-science-cum financial-scam run by and for one per cent of the planet’s population.
NASA GISS Inaccurate Press Release On The Surface Temperature Trend Data
Thanks to Anthony Watts for alerting us to a news release by NASA GISS (see) which reads
“NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis. The analysis utilizes three independent data sources provided by other agencies. Quality control checks are regularly performed on that data. The analysis methodology as well as updates to the analysis are publicly available on our website. The agency is confident of the quality of this data and stands by previous scientifically based conclusions regarding global temperatures.” (GISS temperature analysis website: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/)” [note: I could not find the specific url from NASA, so I welcome being sent this original source].
This statement perpetuates the erroneous claim that the data sources are independent [I welcome information from GISS to justify their statement, and will post if they do]. This issue exists even without considering any other concerns regarding their analyses.
I have posted a number of times on my weblog with respect to the lack of independence of the surface temperature data; e.g. see
There remain also important unresolved uncertainties and systematic biases in the surface temperature data used by GISS [and CRU and NCDC] which we reported in the peer reviewed literature, i.e.
The GISS news release is symptomatic of the continued attempt to ignore science issues in their data analysis which conflict with their statement in the press release. This is not how the scientific process should be conducted.
We urge, based on the exposure of such type of behavior in the CRU e-mails; i.e. see The Crutape Letters by Steven Mosher, Thomas W. Fuller, 2010 ISBN/EAN13: 1450512437 / 9781450512435 that the suppression of alternative viewpoints ends.
The UK CRU version of Climategate centered around whether the 1990′s were warmer than any time in the past 1000 years. The US GISS version could be about whether 1998 was warmer than 1934!
It seems the temperature readings were adjusted six times after analysis in July 1999indicated that the temperature anomaly for 1934 was nearly 60% higher than for 1998. See the above graphic for how GISS adjusted 1934 down and 1998 up until 1998 was warmer than 1934 (the January 2007 analysis) or at least virtually indistinguishable (the March and August 2007 analyses).
In the UK CRU case, the Medieval Warm Period vanished to present a ”nice tidy story”. In the US GISS case, a nearly 60% temperature anomaly difference vanished to show that 1998 was as warm as 1934! Are these guys serious scientists or just skilled magicians?
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) can be a wonderful thing. According to WattsUpWithThat, a FOIA request by Judicial Watch has landed 215 pages of GISS emails related to errors in handling temperature data from 2000 to 2006 that overstated the temperature increase during that period.
One of the emails [see below - click image for larger version] reveals the details of the seven different sets of numbers calculated by GISS researchers. It appears to me that they were under pressure to make 1998 the warmest year in the 150 years good thermometer readings have been available.
Judicial Watch Uncovers NASA Documents Related to Global Warming Controversy
NASA Scientists Go on Attack After Climate Data Error Exposed
Washington, DC — January 14, 2010
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained internal documentsfrom NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) related to a controversy that erupted in 2007 when Canadian blogger Stephen McIntyre exposed an error in NASA’s handling of raw temperature data from 2000-2006 that exaggerated the reported rise in temperature readings in the United States. According to multiple press reports, when NASA corrected the error, the new data apparently caused a reshuffling of NASA’s rankings for the hottest years on record in the United States, with 1934 replacing 1998 at the top of the list.
These new documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), include internal GISS email correspondence as NASA scientists attempted to deal with the media firestorm resulting from the controversy. In one exchange GISS head James Hansen tells a reporter from Bloomberg that NASA had not previously published rankings with 1998 atop the list as the hottest year on record in the 20th century.
Email Response from James Hansen to Demian McLean, August 14, 2007: ”…We have not changed ranking of warmest year in the U.S. As you will see in our 2001 paper we found 1934 slightly warmer, by an insignificant hair over 1998. We still find that result. The flaw affected temperatures only after 2000, not 1998 and 1934.”
(This issue also crops up in email communications with New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin a little over a week later.)
According to the NASA email, NASA’s incorrect temperature readings resulted from a ”flaw” in a computer program used to update annual temperature data.
Hansen, clearly frustrated by the attention paid to the NASA error, labeled McIntyre a ”pest” and suggests those who disagree with his global warming theories ”should be ready to crawl under a rock by now.” Hansen also suggests that those calling attention to the climate data error did not have a ”light on upstairs.”
”This email traffic ought to be embarrassing for NASA. Given the recent Climategate scandal, NASA has an obligation to be completely transparent with its handling of temperature data. Instead of insulting those who point out their mistakes, NASA scientists should engage the public in an open, professional and honest manner,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Here are some more very good examples of James Hansen and NASA doing the same thing as Climate Gate revealed that the CRU (Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia) is doing.
This is the “official science” which there is “consensus” about and which cannot be criticized or questioned. Or even worse – asking to see the raw data or the tweaking of this data.
This is what we, the common people, are supposed to pay TRILLION of dollars and reduce our living standard back to the Stone Age for.
And that “our” politicians want to RAM trough at ALL COSTS!
These corrupt people, the High Priests of the Global Warming Hysteria (to call them scientists would be an outrage against real scientists) should be removed. And that includes ALL the politicians who used this hysteria to promote their political agendas.
We found a surprisingly large difference from the NCDC United States USHCN version 1 and the NCDC global GHCN for that station.
( Click on the graphs and they get bigger)
The USHCN version 1 had an urban adjustment (Karl 1988) when it was introduced in 1990. The cooling was as 7F for July and 6F for January. Notice however as some state climatologists noticed, the annual adjustments began to diminish in 1999 and in version 2 of USHCN disappeared altogether.
This led Steve McIntyre hereto quip “If one reverse engineers this adjustment to calculate the New York City population used in the USHCN urban adjustment, the results are, in Per’s words, ‘gobsmacking’ (utterly astounding, even by climate science standards.” This was because, it could only be explained by a massive depopulation of New York City.
The story doesn’t end there. The same NCDC maintains a global data base of station data used for climate change assessment called GHCN Version 2 of GHCN contains some of the same adjustments except for the Karl urban adjustment. Central Park is one of the GHCN sites. Note in the top graph above, it mysteriously warms not cools New York’s Central Park by 4F.
GISS USES GHCN AS UNADJUSTED DATA BEFORE HOMOGENIZATION
GISS recently eliminated GHCN with USHCN adjustments as one of the data access options here. “We no longer include data adjusted by GHCN”. They do start with GHCN ‘unadjusted’ before they work their own homogenization and other magical wonders.
I downloaded the Central Park ‘unadjusted’ GHCN data from GISS and did a comparison of annual mean GHCN with the raw annual mean data downloaded from the NWS New York City Office web site here.
We found that the two data sets were not the same. For some unknown reason, Central Park was colder in the unadjusted data sets in the early record as much as 3F than the raw observation records. The difference gradually diminished so, currently the changes are small (2008 was the same). Some recent years the ‘unadjusted’ adjustments were inexplicably positive.
The difference is shown below.
Thus in the so called unadjusted GHCN data, the warming (due to urbanization)is somehow increased from 2.5 to 4.5F by NOAA.
Anyone observing ANY DIFFERENCE?And this HUGE DIFFERENCE of course just happened by “chance”. One of their famous “reconstructions” or Mike’s (Michael Mann) nature “trick”.
And isn’t it interesting that NCDC claims that the weather station in Central Parkwas artificially warmed by 3 degrees in 1900 by its urban location, but isn’t affected today.
And that they call the adjusted/tweaked data for “unadjusted”.
My friends, THIS IS “science” at work – or more appropriately Global Warming Hysteria told by the high priest of that cult. The BIG problem is thatWE HAVE TO PAY THE HUGH COST FOR THIS LUNACY.
“Deloitte Forensic calls it “the white collar crime of the future.” Kroll, a business risk subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan, the global professional services firm, calls it “a fraudster’s dream come true.”
These two global financial services firms are referring to carbon trading markets, a business that is estimated to explode from $132-billion in 2009, mostly in the European Union, to $3-trillion by 2020 as jurisdictions around the world join in carbon trading, part of the “cap and trade” system that governments are embracing. “
“Apart from phony projects — Kroll likens them to “the Soviet Union’s Potemkin villages built to show off a phony communal paradise to naïve foreigner visitors” — Kroll, in a report published last year in its Tendencias journal, tells us to expect companies to create entitlements for themselves by “pumping up the baseline,” say by pretending they have historically been emitting more greenhouse gases than in fact occurred, thus creating a government entitlement that they can then turn into cash.”
“In the final analysis, carbon markets are political constructs controlled by politically empowered regulators who will be gatekeepers to a multi-trillion dollar market. The regulators themselves would become too numerous to regulate. This then becomes the tried and true recipe for good old fashioned and widespread corruption.”
Attempts to create markets for tradeable CO2 are shaping up to be the next Oil-for-Food-sized fraud
By Patricia Adams
Deloitte Forensic calls it “the white collar crime of the future.” Kroll, a business risk subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan, the global professional services firm, calls it “a fraudster’s dream come true.”
These two global financial services firms are referring to carbon trading markets, a business that is estimated to explode from $132-billion in 2009, mostly in the European Union, to $3-trillion by 2020 as jurisdictions around the world join in carbon trading, part of the “cap and trade” system that governments are embracing.
Under cap and trade, companies need permits for the right to emit CO2 as part of their operations. The permits, in effect, guarantee that excess carbon emissions will be “offset” by third parties that will, for example, sequester carbon by growing trees. These permits, which are being traded on carbon exchanges, akin to stock exchanges, have caught the attention of law enforcement officers, who have seen an upsurge in fraud.
Says Chris Perryman of Europol’s Criminal Finances and Technology section in The Hague, in referring to the $7.4-billion in fraud that have occurred in the last 18 months in the EU’s carbon market: “It is clear that [carbon trading] fraudsters are fully aware of the potential that trading in intangible commodities has to further their ends. Such goods or services can be traded without the need to be physically moved or transported, which represents an obvious opportunity to frustrate Law Enforcement efforts to track and trace transactions.” So much fraud has been occurring that, Europol estimates, up to 90% of all carbon market volume in some EU nations was related to fraudulent activities.
Permits for CO2, a tasteless, colourless and odourless gas, epitomize an “intangible commodity.” The underlying commodity for these permits, CO2, until recently had few producers, few customers and few commercial uses. With the rise of fears over global warming, governments decided to turn this niche gas into what could soon be the world’s most traded commodity — by comparison, oil, currently the most traded commodity, logs an estimated $2-trillion in annual trade.
But unlike oil and other commonly traded commodities, CO2 is a commodity with no inherent value. Most transactions involving carbon permits involve parties that have no interest in the CO2 — the value lies in the permit. If no CO2 is actually offset, neither buyer nor seller would suffer a loss. The only incentive anyone has in dealing with this intangible commodity is in avoiding fines or suffering bad PR.
What kind of fraud do private auditors and law enforcement alike believe inevitable? Take the example of an Indonesian forest operator who provides a permit to a German manufacturer, to offset the German company’s excess CO2 emissions. The German company receives a certificate as proof that it has offset its emissions. It will be content, as will the Indonesian company that planted the trees. The German firm won’t know if the Indonesian has sold permits for the same forest to companies in Canada and the UK and it won’t care — the German firm, like the others, will think they have helped the planet by planting a forest and they will have obtained what their businesses need — a permit to continue operating. There are no identifiable victims. The only loser — if there is any — is the planet, and it won’t be blowing the whistle on this crime.
Because buyers and sellers will rarely have an incentive to police their carbon transactions, “tight, frequent, ongoing monitoring will be fundamental to the integrity of any cap-and-trade system,” states ClimeCo, a carbon consulting firm. Yet the likelihood of that occurring is next to nil because the regulators will be official bodies like the UN — think Oil-For Food Program, says Kroll. Moreover, governments themselves will balk at the cost that would be entailed in meaningful regulation. Because CO2 is ubiquitous in society, affecting most industrial processes, an army of inspectors and auditors would be needed to properly check the countless transactions that would occur to ensure that no company’s carbon footprint was understated, that every windmill contracted for in faraway lands was indeed built, that every meter measuring the flow of gas piped underground was recording CO2 and not air and that every seedling committed to be planted was planted.
Apart from phony projects — Kroll likens them to “the Soviet Union’s Potemkin villages built to show off a phony communal paradise to naïve foreigner visitors” — Kroll, in a report published last year in its Tendencias journal, tells us to expect companies to create entitlements for themselves by “pumping up the baseline,” say by pretending they have historically been emitting more greenhouse gases than in fact occurred, thus creating a government entitlement that they can then turn into cash.
Deloitte, in a report released last November, echoes such concerns, taking particular aim at problems likely to emerge under Australia’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, in which the country’s largest greenhouse gas emitters will be required to offset their carbon footprint. Says Deloitte: “even a cursory look at the global carbon market in its current form reveals some carbon credit fraud ‘red flags’ that simply cannot be ignored.”
Deloitte also warns companies to be on the lookout for the entry of organized crime into the Australian scheme, which is slated to take effect this year. “For example, a money launderer could use illegally obtained funds to purchase wind turbines for an offset project, especially those projects occurring in developing nations,” Deloitte explains. “The launderer would then seek reimbursement for the wind turbines from a company seeking to purchase carbon offsets.” In doing so, the launderer is able to use illegally obtained funds for legal purposes — concealing the wealth obtained from illegal activities.
In the final analysis, carbon markets are political constructs controlled by politically empowered regulators who will be gatekeepers to a multi-trillion dollar market. The regulators themselves would become too numerous to regulate. This then becomes the tried and true recipe for good old fashioned and widespread corruption.
Financial Post
Patricia Adams is an economist and executive director of Toronto-based Probe International. www.probeinternational.org
And more on Pachauri, head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
Very interesting! Roger Pielke, Jr has reacted regarding Pachauri and his Business Empire and conflict of interest. Plus an interesting comment from a believer.
When causes are popular it can be uncomfortable and inconvenient to realize that experts who render politically desired advice have potential conflicts of interest. Perhaps this helps to explain why investigative journalists (with only severalexceptions),especially those who cover science, have turned a blind eye to the obvious and egregious conflicts of interest present in the case of Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC. The longer this issue is allowed to percolate in plain view, the worse the outcome will be for the scientific community and perhaps also those whose job it is to hold experts accountable to basic standards of conduct.
In India on Sunday, the paper India Today had a detailed and hard-hitting story on Dr. Pachauri’s conflicts of interest, revealing some very interesting new details and responses. The paper received a response from Dr. Pachauri which includes the following statement about the organization that he leads, TERI:
TERI is a not-for-profit organisation working for the welfare of society and its revenues cover costs and provide no private benefit to any party.
India Today notes that this response seems ”untenable.” They are correct. The existence of a conflict of interest does not depend upon what TERI chooses to do with the resources that it receives from interests who are direct beneficiaries of its advice.
Banwari Lal has a problem with the numbers. He holds a PhD in microbiology and six or seven patents jointly with The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), but he can’t seem to figure out what will Teri’s share of the profits be if it wins — it is one of the 60 bidders globally — a Kuwaiti government contract to clean up its oil spills. Along with a local partner who has a 40 per cent share, the contract will be executed by ONGC-Teri Biotech, a 49:48 joint venture whose CEO is Lal (he also heads the Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology Division of Teri). . .
The project involves cleaning up an 80×80 km area in Kuwait and is likely to cost around $3 billion. That’s right, three billion dollars. Kuwait got this money from the United Nations as compensation after Iraq damaged its wells in the first Gulf War. The contract will be awarded in January.
The Kuwait project is just one of many enterprises that TERI is invested in:
Lal has got two joint ventures to help Teri make money, his neighbour Alok Adholeya (he has been with Teri for 23 years as compared to Lal’s 21) has five licensees doing the same. Adholeya, who received his PhD from Govind Ballabh Pant University, heads the Biotechnology and Bioresources Division. He says his brief after he joined Teri was to create a bank of microbes that could help plants grow better. . .
Teri gets a 5 per cent royalty on all purchases and Rs 25 lakh in technology-transfer fee. Different species of mycorrhiza, Adholeya says, are being used to clean up ash ponds in thermal power plants, distilleries and so on. Talks are on with various mining companies to use the bio-mining microbes (this helps get the minerals out without damaging the environment). A joint venture for jatropha cultivation has been set up with a German company after an R&D project with British Petroleum on jatropha ended.
Saving carbon emissions
Another eight companies have been licensed to sell or implement Teri’s biomass gassifiers which convert plant and wood residue to gas that drives an alternator to produce electricity. If an Australian government-funded project to develop a solar biomass-based cooling system works out, this too will convert into a series of licences. Eighty to 90 glass units in Firozabad near Agra use Teri’s pot furnace and several brick kilns use its vertical shaft brick kiln. According to Teri, its technologies helped the medium- and small-scale sector save around 350,000 tonnes of carbon emissions last year.
A books division has a turnover that’s already up to Rs 4 crore doing children’s and other books. It plans to do college textbooks by next year and the “Soldiers of the Earth” global environment programme has actor Akshay Kumar offering ideas for attractive comic books.
Whatever the outcome of the Kuwait project, with so many commercial projects coming out of its R&D work on a regular basis, it is clear Teri is no longer your run-of-the-mill, though successful, policy institute.
If you read that last part closely you’ll see that TERI is involved with reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, it is akey player in the Clean Develop Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. If you connect the dots — and there aren’t many to connect — you will quickly see that as Director of TERI Rajendra Pachauri’s advice through the IPCC and his platform provided by the IPCC on climate change and carbon trading has direct and significant benefits to his own institution. These benefits find their way through a wide range of for-profit enterprises.So when Dr. Pachauri is advocating carbon trading — a policy doomed to fail if one ever was — his recommendation will lead to direct and significant benefits to the institution that he directs. Uncomfortable and inconvenient.
The situation is no different than would be the case if the head of a government advisory panel on drugs for heart disease were to recommend that everyone take Acme Pills for heart disease, while at the same time his research center would be the direct financial beneficiary of projects carried out in conjunction with Acme Pills, their suppliers and partners. In such a case the conflict of interest would have nothing to do with the benefits of Acme Pills, the importance of treating heart disease or the integrity of the science advisor. Such situations are of course why conflict of interest guidelines are developed in the first place, and one important reason is to maintain a sense of integrity and trust in advisory processes.
There is no problem with profit, enterprise or investment. There is a serious problem of rendering advice when that advice has a direct influence on money that one’s organization receives. Isn’t this fairly obvious? Do some people actually believe that the case for action on climate change will be made stronger by looking the other way when climate science advisors have conflicts of interest? Is it possible that climate science will be stronger by holding scientists to well-accepted standards of behavior? If Dr. Pachauri was an advisor on pharmaceuticals, and had parallel interests in drug companies, I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t be getting a free pass.
There is more to discuss. Such as how a venture capital firm associated with Al Gore invested $10 million in a company founded by Dr. Pachauri. TERI was also a primary investor in the company. The company — the aptly named Glorioil — is focused on getting even more oil out of seemingly spent wells. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill references enhanced oil recovery as a potential opportunity for offset credits. Would Glorioil’s technology qualify? I don’t know (and neither does anyone else, as that is all to be determined, and Glorioil’s various technologies are mostly out of sight). Given the various shenanigans associated with cap and trade it is not too much of a stretch to think that it could. Is it worth looking into? Seems like it. But I’ve already see enough.
The sum total of the above signifies that at a minimum climate science needs to set forth and follow basic standards of conflict of interest. Otherwise, the apparent anything-goes approach is giving opponents of action to address accumulating carbon dioxide emissions plenty of legitimate material to work with. Journalists and others who turn a blind eye are their unwitting allies.
And more on Pachauri, head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
As I said in my previous post: They – Global warming Hysterics, have a “very strange” way of paying people.
And the accounting is a “little bit strange” too:
£1,436,162 is entered at £543,816
£30,417 shrinks to £5,800
“In the interests of ”accountability,” however, these payments are notified to Parliament – sort of. They are tucked into a list of climate change projects worth £19,751,686, in a longer report entitled: ”Ongoing Research and Development”. The report is created on 21 May 2008 and the project coded GA01087 which actually cost £1,436,162 is entered at £543,816. The £30,417 paid to TERI Europe, coded GA01095, miraculously shrinks to £5,800. Nearly a million has gone adrift.
How much more money, under what headings, and from what sources, flowed through the system, is thus unknown. How much ended in the pocket of Dr Pachauri – or in the coffers of his beloved TERI – we have no means of knowing. But then the whole point of money laundering is to conceal sources, recipients and flows of money. If this wasn’t money laundering, then it bears a very great similarity to it.”
Government projects costing respectively £1,436,162 and £30,417 miraculously shrink when MPs are formally told about them, to become a mere £543,816 and £5,800 – ”losing” nearly a million pounds in the process.
Welcome to the second instalment of our look at the bizarre world of climate change politics, where nothing is what it seems and governments indulge in behaviour which, in other circumstances, would look very much like money laundering.
In our first piece, we introduced a new character to our growing cast of players – a certain Dr Andrew Reisinger. For his pivotal role in furthering the ambitions and interests of one R K Pachauri, he ought perhaps to be better known than he is.
We can see these two figures together – or at least at the same venue – on 8 November 2004, where they were both at the 32nd Session of the IPCC Bureau, held in Pachauri’s adopted home town of New Delhi – a city which Reisinger was to get to known extremely well.
It was at that meeting, way back in 2004, that Pauchauri presented the Bureau with his ”final proposal on scope and content of an AR4 Synthesis Report (SYR).” His outline was complete with ”Options for a schedule for preparing an AR4 SYR and for managing the process, including resource implications.”
Throughout the proceedings, Andy Reisinger was there on behalf of the New Zealand government, styling himself as belonging to the Climate Change Office, Ministry for the Environment. He was, however, doubtless fully attendant on the man who was a few years hence to become his boss and co-worker, Dr Pachauri.
The opportunity for Andy to jump ship was created the following year in Montreal when between the 26-28 September 2005 the full IPCC met in its 24th Session to discuss a report, submitted by Pachauri on the ”Management plan for the AR4 Synthesis Report.”
It says something of the persistence if Pachauri that the issue had already been raised at the 23rd Session of the IPCC held in Addis Ababa on 8 April 2005 (at which Reisinger was again present), when ”progress” had been made.
The issue had been referred back to the Bureau in its 33rd Session also held in Addis Ababa, the record of which is curiously missing from the public domain. This had been followed by an ”extremely helpful and effective meeting” held in Baarn, the Netherlands, on 7-8 July 2005.
That then, set the scene for the IPPC meeting in September in Montreal where Pachauri was able to set out to the management team his full plans for the production of his synthesis report, complete with costings and the formation of a Technical Support Unit (TSU). Then, he was able to tell his colleagues that it was ”anticipated that the total cost of this TSU Head, including travel etc., would be taken care of by the Government of the UK.”
Quite when this was agreed, we do not know – still less do we know on whose authority it was agreed. But the deal had been done.
The Management team was also ”grateful to learn” that the two individuals to assist Pachauri, ”kindly supported by the Government of India”, were available to work in New Delhi. This, it was ”felt”, was the most desirable location for the TSU. Reflecting possible dissent, however, Pachauri conceded that the ”next best location” would be Exeter.
Apart from the generosity (albeit unknowing) of the British and Indian taxpayers, Pachauri told his team that the estimated expenditure for preparation of the synthesis report over a period of three year – 2006-2008 – would be about £400,000. That included a sum of about £250,000 for publication and translation, leaving £150,000 for preparation – this for a 52-page summary of the main report.
Although, famously, Pachauri, was to say that he was not paid for his part in the report, the contract for ”Layout and Graphics Design Support” was to be awarded to TERI Press – and, no doubt, there was an ”overhead” component to the sums paid for staff.
Evidently so confident of the approval of his management teamthat on 21 September – a full five days before the start of the Montreal meeting – Mary Jean Burer, an official at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva, was already circulating an e-mail advertising the vacancy for an ”IPCC AR4 SYR TSU Head”. The appointment was for 24 months beginning 1st March 2006, the ”compensation package” commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the person selected.
This, of course, was the job for which Reisinger successfully applied, and its was then the job of the UK government to pay for him. This it did in an extremely round-about way. Tucked into a wider project to fund a ”IPCC Technical Support Unit for Working Group II” – which it appears the UK also funded – is buried a reference to ”support for … preparation of the IPCC AR4 Synthesis report.”
The combined cost, financed from DEFRA, is an eye-watering £1,436,162 – paid to the Met Office.There is, of course, no breakdown of the apportionment of costs between the two different projects. And, to get round the inconvenient fact that Dr Reisinger was working for IPCC, he is put on the books as a ”contractor at the Met Office.”
According to a post-project report produced under the Freedom of Information Act, however, things do not seem to have gone entirely to plan. Dr Andy Reisinger is indeed employed as a contractor at the Met Office.
But, we are told, this [only] involved provision of salary, accommodation, travel and subsistence and other work-related costs, within the period 18th April to 31st December 2006. After that, the TSU moved to New Delhi to be based close to Pachauri.
To the casual reader, this would seem to be the end of it. Apparently, Andy is off the books after 31 December 2006. But then there is that extraordinary payment of £30,417 to TERI Europe, which we explored yesterday – in addition to the money already paid.
In the interests of ”accountability,” however, these payments are notified to Parliament – sort of. They are tucked into a list of climate change projects worth £19,751,686, in a longer report entitled: ”Ongoing Research and Development”. The report is created on 21 May 2008 and the project coded GA01087 which actually cost £1,436,162 is entered at £543,816. The £30,417 paid to TERI Europe, coded GA01095, miraculously shrinks to £5,800. Nearly a million has gone adrift.
How much more money, under what headings, and from what sources, flowed through the system, is thus unknown. How much ended in the pocket of Dr Pachauri – or in the coffers of his beloved TERI – we have no means of knowing. But then the whole point of money laundering is to conceal sources, recipients and flows of money. If this wasn’t money laundering, then it bears a very great similarity to it.
And more on Pachauri, head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
They – Global warming Hysterics, have a “very strange” way of paying people.
“But, if there is any doubt as to where Reisinger belongs, the IPCC itself solves the mystery, giving him the designation: ”IPCC SYR TSU, Met Office Hadley Centre, UK, and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India.”
So, it would appear that one of the most powerful and influential men in the IPCC process, second only to Rajendra Pachauri, actually works directly for TERI India, which – like its master – has benefitted and stands further to benefit from climate alarmism.
Furthermore, this man also works close enough to the Hadley Centre – part of the UK Met Office – to be able to describe himself as working for it, this proving a link between TERI, Pachauri and the Met Office.
Instead – as we have seen – it pays CambridgeUniversity, which pays TERI Europe. The destination of those funds, one can only assume, is TERI India. And this is hardly an unwarranted assumption. In the Synthesis Report, ”gratitude” is expressed ”particularly to the staff of the Technical Support Unit for the IPCC Synthesis Report in The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi.”
But if DEFRA is funding this unit, why not say so? And why the convoluted route for the payment? This is not the way government departments normally work – unless, of course, they have something to hide.”
A British government department, DEFRA, has paid taxpayers’ money to a British University which in turn paid it to the British subsidiary of an Indian research organisation, which in turn seems to have paid it to a New Zealand university scientist so that he could work for an international organisation based in Geneva – the IPCC.
Welcome to the bizarre world of climate change politics, where nothing is what it seems and governments indulge in behaviour which, in other circumstances, would look very much like money laundering. But, bizarre though it might appear, this is only half the story. The reality is even more convoluted – the word ”bizarre” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
The tale emerges from our trail of the millions salted away by climate change ”hero” Rajendra Pachauri, and the role of TERI Europe, his outpost of Empire in London.
When we were first alerted to this payment from DEFRA of £30,417 by one of our forum members at the beginning of the month, we found it had been paid to Cambridge University, ”to provide funding to TERI Europe to cover salary and travel cost of the head of unit responsible to produce a Synthesis Report of the IPCC AR4.”
Given that the only link (we thought) between TERI and the IPCC was Dr R K Pachauri, we naturally assumed that the money was intended for the good doctor. We were wrong. That he was paid this money is denied by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) – which has taken over some duties from DEFRA.
The press office at DECC, however, has been unable (so far) to tell us to whom the money was paid. That information came from none other than Mrs Robins, aka Ritu Kumar, director and company secretary of TERI Europe. In response to our questions, she informs us that the money went to Dr Andrew Reisinger (pictured), whom she tells us, is currently a senior fellow at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute.
Andy, as he likes to be known, is a figure of some importance in the ”climate community”. As head of the Technical Support Unit for the synthesis report group of the IPCC, he was responsible to his ”core group” co-author Rajendra Pachauri for co-ordinating the drafting of the ”synthesis report” to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
The importance of this synthesis report cannot be overstated. Approved in detail at the IPCC plenary in Valencia, Spain, during 12-17 November 2007, it represents the formally agreed statement of the IPCC concerning key findings and uncertainties in AR4. It is the substantive document, on which governments rely for the subsequent climate negotiations.
Thus, Reisinger is in an important and powerful position, which makes his background crucially important, if he is to be seen as independent and impartial. This would seem to be the case if he works for the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, which is a department of the University of Wellington.
Certainly his cvstarts well enough, and seems to confirm this. By way of background, he studied atmospheric sciences in Germany and New Zealand, specialising in measurements and modelling of ozone depletion, urban air pollution and agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
He then spent six years working for the [New Zealand] Ministry for the Environment as Senior Adviser on climate change, acting as science liaison point, developed a work programme on climate change impacts and adaptation options, and contributing to climate policy development. In 2002, he also represented the NZ government on the IPCC and participated in negotiations under the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol.
But then, he tells us, he worked ”for the IPCC in the UK and in India,” where he coordinated the production of the Synthesis Report. That gets very interesting as we follow Dr Reisinger’s career path during that period, covering 2006-7.
We first come across him in 2006, when he assumes the designation ”Met Office, UK.” He then attends the climate change summit in Bali in December 2007. There we find him designated as ”IPCC SYR”, the ”SYR” standing for ”synthesis report”. But the e-mail is the give-away – the address is ”@teri.res.in”, which belongs to Pachauri’s own organisation, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), in India.
But, if there is any doubt as to where Reisinger belongs, the IPCC itself solves the mystery, giving him the designation: ”IPCC SYR TSU, Met Office Hadley Centre, UK, and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India.”
So, it would appear that one of the most powerful and influential men in the IPCC process, second only to Rajendra Pachauri, actually works directly for TERI India, which – like its master – has benefitted and stands further to benefit from climate alarmism.
Furthermore, this man also works close enough to the Hadley Centre – part of the UK Met Office – to be able to describe himself as working for it, this proving a link between TERI, Pachauri and the Met Office.
As for the money, DEFRA is the primary funder of the Hadley Centre, for which Reisinger claimed to work. If it wanted to pay him, could it not have remitted fundsdirectly to that organisation? Equally, the UK contributes to the IPCC.Since Reisinger was working for the IPCC, could it not have sent money there, for him to be paid by the institution that was nominally employing him?
Instead – as we have seen – it pays CambridgeUniversity, which pays TERI Europe. The destination of those funds, one can only assume, is TERI India. And this is hardly an unwarranted assumption. In the Synthesis Report, ”gratitude” is expressed ”particularly to the staff of the Technical Support Unit for the IPCC Synthesis Report in The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi.”
But if DEFRA is funding this unit, why not say so? And why the convoluted route for the payment? This is not the way government departments normally work – unless, of course, they have something to hide.
Interestingly, Reisinger is a man who has some firm views on climate science. ”We should not judge whether the answers are good by whether they are convenient, or even whether they make intuitive sense; we should only rely on them if the process by which they were reached follows general, well-accepted principles of quality assurance.”
By this, Reisinger means the setting up of expert panels whose reports ”undergo an open, multiple peer-review process and that are connected with the highest quality international research,” something he says in May 2009, eighteen months after the synthesis report had been delivered.
Representing the distillation of the combined output of the scientific working groups whose labour fills the pages of the main AR4 report, he would, no doubt, consider ”quality assurance” for his own report absolutely vital.
Presumably – although not stated – the expert panels should be made up of scientists of high-standing who should – above all else – be absolutely impartial, their judgements entirely unclouded by commercial considerations and possible conflicts of interest.
If that is indeed a test, however, Reisinger fails it.
I have written extensible about the UN pack, this traveling circus that fly around the globe in first class, or private jet, stay in hotel rooms at £400-500 per night in spa resorts, and gets wined and dined at expensive restaurants.
All of this of course paid by us, the normal people.
While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.
This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.
They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.
How ironic that today most of this class is leftists and so called “liberals”.
The latest example of that was the enormous costs and hypocrisy of Copenhagen. They arrived in their chauffeur driven limousines, and their special “eco friendly” busses were of course empty. Their housing warmed by oil heaters and the energy used by the conference was from coal fired power stations. And seventy percent of the summit’s greenhouse gas emissionscame from activities inside the conference center,
This is the US Congress version of the UN pack. But the blatant hypocrisy is still the same!
“Nobody we asked would defend the super-sized Congressional presence on camera.One Democrat said it showed the world the U.S. is serious about climate change.
And all those attendees who went to the summit rather than hooking up by teleconference? They produced enough climate-stunting carbon dioxide to fill 10,000 Olympic swimming pools.
Which means even if Congress didn’t get a global agreement – they left an indelible footprint all the same.”
Exclusive: At Least 20 Members of Congress Made the Trip to Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen Last Month
By Sharyl Attkisson
CBS) Few would argue with the U.S. having a presence at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. But wait until you hear what we found about how many in Congress got all-expense paid trips to Denmark on your dime.
They were joined by 17 colleagues: Democrats: Waxman, Miller, Markey, Gordon, Levin, Blumenauer, DeGette, Inslee, Ryan, Butterfield, Cleaver, Giffords, and Republicans: Barton, Upton, Moore Capito, Sullivan, Blackburn and Sensenbrenner.
That’s not the half of it. But finding out more was a bit like trying to get the keys to Ft.Knox. Many referred us to Speaker Pelosi who wouldn’t agree to an interview. Her office said it ”will comply with disclosure requirements” but wouldn’t give us cost estimates or even tell us where they all stayed.
Senator Inhofe (R-OK) is one of the few who provided us any detail. He attended the summit on his own for just a few hours, to give an ”opposing view.”
”They’re going because it’s the biggest party of the year,” Sen. Inhofe said. ”The worst thing that happened there is they ran out of caviar.”
Our investigation found that the congressional delegation was so large, it needed three military jets: two 737′s and a Gulfstream Five — up to 64 passengers — traveling in luxurious comfort.
Add senators and staff, most of whom flew commercial, and we counted at least 101 Congress-related attendees. All for a summit that failed to deliver a global climate deal.
Until required filings are made in the coming weeks, we can only figure bits and pieces of the cost to you.
· Three military jets at $9,900 per hour – $168,000 just in flight time.
· Dozens flew commercial at up to $2,000 each.
· 321 hotel nights booked – the bulk at Copenhagen‘s five-star Marriott.
· Meals add tens of thousands more.
Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, wasn’t against a U.S. presence. But he said, ”Every penny counts. Congress should be shaking the couch cushions looking for change, rather than spending cash for everybody to go to Copenhagen.”
Nobody we asked would defend the super-sized Congressional presence on camera.One Democrat said it showed the world the U.S. is serious about climate change.
And all those attendees who went to the summit rather than hooking up by teleconference? They produced enough climate-stunting carbon dioxide to fill 10,000 Olympic swimming pools.
Which means even if Congress didn’t get a global agreement – they left an indelible footprint all the same.
“Professor Lu, a path-breaking scientist in the field of ozone protection, made his CO2 discovery by accident — he was looking for culprits in the formation of the ozone hole over Antarctica. A chief suspect was CO2: Climate models produced by climatologists showed that CO2 would have devastating effects on the ozone layer, significantly enlarging the ozone hole over Antarctica and dramatically enlarging it over the Arctic. But when Dr. Lu compared the imagined output of the climate models with the actual measurements taken real-time by satellites and weather balloons, the models turned out to be soaring failures.
“I didn’t see any CO2 effect on temperature or ozone depletion over the South Pole from 1956 to 2008,” explained Dr. Lu, surprised at how totally different the real-world measurements were from those that the climate model predicted. The real-world measurements showed CO2 to be largely irrelevant – “the global warming on Earth’s surface between 1950 and 2000 is pretty much due to CFCs,” he concluded. “The models say that CO2 is a major greenhouse gas but the facts show otherwise.”
New Univeristy of Waterloo study finds CFCs, not CO2, to be the cause of recent global warming
By Lawrence Solomon
Climate change is real and man-made, explains University of Waterloo professor Qin-Bin Lu, author of a new study published this week in the peer-reviewed journal,
Professor Lu also explains that the climate change crisis is over. Thanks to an international environmental treaty, the planet is no longer in peril. We have, in fact, begun a long cooling period that will bring Earth’s temperatures back to normal.
The man-made cause of global warmingis not CO2 and the international treaty that saved the planet is not the Kyoto Protocol. Rather, says Dr. Lu, the true cause of global warming has been CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons, a class of chemicals that was once widely used in aerosol cans and refrigeration. As CFC use soared in the decades following World War II, he explains, the globe started warming dramatically. The world stopped warming dramatically when government regulations began to phase out CFCs, an event that culminated in the western world in 2000. Almost immediately afterward, in 2002, the world began to cool as CFCs started to diminish in our atmosphere.
The heroes in this tale are environmentalists and world leaders such as U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who got together to sign the Montreal Protocol of 1987. This protocol was designed to stop the Ozone Hole from developing above the Antarctic by ridding the planet of ozone-destroying CFCs. Little did either the environmentalists or the world leaders recognize at the time, explains Professor Lu, that their actions would also eliminate the threat to the planet of global warming.
Professor Lu, a path-breaking scientist in the field of ozone protection, made his CO2 discovery by accident — he was looking for culprits in the formation of the ozone hole over Antarctica. A chief suspect was CO2: Climate models produced by climatologists showed that CO2 would have devastating effects on the ozone layer, significantly enlarging the ozone hole over Antarctica and dramatically enlarging it over the Arctic. But when Dr. Lu compared the imagined output of the climate models with the actual measurements taken real-time by satellites and weather balloons, the models turned out to be soaring failures.
“I didn’t see any CO2 effect on temperature or ozone depletion over the South Pole from 1956 to 2008,” explained Dr. Lu, surprised at how totally different the real-world measurements were from those that the climate model predicted. The real-world measurements showed CO2 to be largely irrelevant – “the global warming on Earth’s surface between 1950 and 2000 is pretty much due to CFCs,” he concluded. “The models say that CO2 is a major greenhouse gas but the facts show otherwise.”
In contrast, CFCs have long been known to be a greenhouse gas that, on a molecule per molecule basis, is 10,000 times more potent than CO2. Professor Lu’s satellite and balloon measurements showed that factor of 10,000 to have been a gross underestimate!
Had CFCs never been widely used in our air conditioners and refrigerators, Dr. Lu believes, the Earth would not have warmed in the last century. And had CFCs not been banned, he would not be predicting a period of global cooling.
But with the CFC ban, and the subsequent phase-out of this ozone destroying chemical, global warming stopped and, early this decade, a period of global cooling began. This cooling will last “at least 50 years, and possibly 70 years” as the global temperatures return to their pre-CFC levels, he explains, barring the rise of an alternative to CFC, or the introduction of another greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
The cooling, he predicts, will be gentle – “after 2010 or so, the globe temperature will experience a small bounce back but a general declining tendency will not change.” Neither will the new levels be worrisome – Earth will find itself back at the levels of the 1950s, which themselves hadn’t changed much over the previous century.
Dr Lu’s study is now published and the reviews he has received to date have been favourable but he may find himself writing a postscript in three year’s time. Like hundreds of other scientists around the world, Dr. Lu may have unwittingly relied on invalid data for a portion of his study. His real-time satellite and balloon data, which shows CO2 does not cause climate change, is not in dispute. Not so for the historical temperature data, on which he based his estimates of how much global cooling we face as Earth’s temperatures return to their historic pre-CFC levels. “My temperature data comes from the UK – the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University,” he reveals when questioned.
As a result of the Climategate Scandal, this temperature data is now in doubt. Investigations into the Climategate emails are underway at East Anglia and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. More significantly, CRU’s data is so suspect that the UK Met Office, which partnered with the Climate Research Unit in producing datasets for researchers, is undertaking a mammoth three-year investigation during which it will re-examine 160 years of original temperature data to determine to what extent, if any, CRU cooked the books.
Because of all this uncertainty, “I cannot say how reliable their data is,” states Professor Lu, who has done his best to reassure himself that all is in order. When the Climategate scandal erupted as his study was being completed, he cross-checked the CRU data to that of NOAA, another prominent organization, and then he cross-checked his data again when CRU’s partner, the UK Met Office, released more data. “All of them look similar,” Professor Lu says. Professor Lu’s cross-checks provide scant reassurance, however, because all these data-handling agencies had drawn their data from the same tainted pool. Although Professor Lu declines to comment on the Climategate scandal, he cannot be confident that his study will not need to be redone in three year’s time, when the UK Met Office completes its re-examination.
One calculation in his study that may change with revised CRU data: His 50-70 year estimate of the coming global cooling may change by two or three decades. One calculation that won’t change: CO2’s contribution to global warming remains approximately nil.
“According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.
The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.
They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles.”
“He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.
Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.
‘They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.”
“But he added: ‘I do not believe in catastrophe theories. Man-made warming is balanced by the natural cycles, and I do not trust the computer models which state that if CO2 reaches a particular level then temperatures and sea levels will rise by a given amount.
‘These models cannot be trusted to predict the weather for a week, yet they are running them to give readings for 100 years.’ “
By David Rose
Last updated at 11:17 AM on 10th January 2010
The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.
Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.
The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.
They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.
This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.
However, both main British political parties continue to insist that the world is facing imminent disaster without drastic cuts in CO2.
Last week, as Britain froze, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband maintained in a parliamentary answer that the science of global warming was ‘settled’.
Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago.
Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.
He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.
Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.
‘They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.
‘The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.’
As Europe, Asia and North America froze last week, conventional wisdom insisted that this was merely a ‘blip’ of no long-term significance.
Though record lows were experienced as far south as Cuba, where the daily maximum on beaches normally used for winter bathing was just 4.5C, the BBC assured viewers that the big chill was merely short-term ‘weather’ that had nothing to do with ‘climate’, which was still warming.
The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view.
On the one hand, it is true that the current freeze is the product of the ‘Arctic oscillation’ – a weather pattern that sees the development of huge ‘blocking’ areas of high pressure in northern latitudes, driving polar winds far to the south.
Meteorologists say that this is at its strongest for at least 60 years.
As a result, the jetstream – the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain – is currently running not over the English Channel but the Strait of Gibraltar.
However, according to Prof Latif and his colleagues, this in turn relates to much longer-term shifts – what are known as the Pacific and Atlantic ‘multi-decadal oscillations’ (MDOs).
For Europe, the crucial factor here is the temperature of the water in the middle of the North Atlantic, now several degrees below its average when the world was still warming. But the effects are not confined to the Northern Hemisphere. Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world’s climate from a ‘warm mode’ to a ‘cold mode’ and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles.
‘They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather,’ he said yesterday, ‘and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries.
‘We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler temperatures.’
Prof Tsonis said that the period from 1915 to 1940 saw a strong warm mode, reflected in rising temperatures.
But from 1940 until the late Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, the world cooled, despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise.
Many of the consequences of the recent warm mode were also observed 90 years ago.
For example, in 1922, the Washington Post reported that Greenland’s glaciers were fast disappearing, while Arctic seals were ‘finding the water too hot’.
It interviewed a Captain Martin Ingebrigsten, who had been sailing the eastern Arctic for 54 years: ‘He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, and since that time it has gotten steadily warmer.
‘Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended into the sea they have entirely disappeared.’
As a result, the shoals of fish that used to live in these waters had vanished, while the sea ice beyond the north coast of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean had melted.
Warm Gulf Stream water was still detectable within a few hundred miles of the Pole.
In contrast, Prof Tsonis said, last week 56 per cent of the surface of the United States was covered by snow.
‘That hasn’t happened for several decades,’ he pointed out. ‘It just isn’t true to say this is a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while.’
He recalled that towards the end of the last cold mode, the world’s media were preoccupied by fears of freezing.
For example, in 1974, a Time magazine cover story predicted ‘Another Ice Age’, saying: ‘Man may be somewhat responsible – as a result of farming and fuel burning [which is] blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the Earth.’
Prof Tsonis said: ‘Perhaps we will see talk of an ice age again by the early 2030s, just as the MDOs shift once more and temperatures begin to rise.’
Like Prof Latif, Prof Tsonis is not a climate change ‘denier’. There is, he said, a measure of additional ‘background’ warming due to human activity and greenhouse gases that runs across the MDO cycles.
‘This isn’t just a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while’
But he added: ‘I do not believe in catastrophe theories. Man-made warming is balanced by the natural cycles, and I do not trust the computer models which state that if CO2 reaches a particular level then temperatures and sea levels will rise by a given amount.
‘These models cannot be trusted to predict the weather for a week, yet they are running them to give readings for 100 years.’
Prof Tsonis said that when he published his work in the highly respected journal Geophysical Research Letters, he was deluged with ‘hate emails’.
He added: ‘People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I’m interested in is the truth.’
He said he also received hate mail from climate change sceptics, accusing him of not going far enough to attack the theory of man-made warming.
The work of Profs Latif, Tsonis and their teams raises a crucial question: If some of the late 20th Century warming was caused not by carbon dioxide but by MDOs, then how much?
Tsonis did not give a figure; Latif suggested it could be anything between ten and 50 per cent.
Other critics of the warming orthodoxy say the role played by MDOs is even greater.
William Gray, emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, said that while he believed there had been some background rise caused by greenhouse gases, the computer models used by advocates of man-made warming had hugely exaggerated their effect.
According to Prof Gray, these distort the way the atmosphere works. ‘Most of the rise in temperature from the Seventies to the Nineties was natural,’ he said. ‘Very little was down to CO2 – in my view, as little as five to ten per cent.’
But last week, die-hard warming advocates were refusing to admit that MDOs were having any impact.
In March 2000, Dr David Viner, then a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over the notorious ‘Warmergate’ leaked emails,said that within a few years snowfall would become ‘a very rare and exciting event’ in Britain, and that ‘children just aren’t going to know what snow is’.
Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: ‘We’ve had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn’t change anything.
‘This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.’
The longer the cold spell lasts, the harder it may be to persuade the public of that assertion.
It looks as if the Indian media is growing some balls, with the New Delhi Mail Today taking on our revered ”climate change hero” in a banner, front-page headline story, continued on a full page inside. The story is also online published by India Today.
Relying heavily on our story in The Sunday Telegraph – to which fulsome acknowledgement is given – journalist Ajmer Singh takes as his ”line” the fact that Pachauri was on boards of oil and power utilities, with large carbon footprints, and got ”crores-worth” (10 million rupees – about £140,000) of business for TERI from them.
Thus does Singh note that while Pachauri had advocated emission reductions at the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate Summit, ”back home in India, he seems to be failing to uphold standards of propriety in his professional dealings.”
We learn that, during his tenure, first as director from 1982, and then as director-general of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) since 2001, Pachauri was a member of the boards of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), three of India’s biggest public sector energy companies, all of whom by the very nature of their business contribute heavily to greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions, according to the IPCC, are adding to the country’s growing carbon footprint and hastening climate change.
TERI, in fact, entered into business dealings with these companies and allegedly benefitted from Pachauri’s association with them. Pachauri’s dealings have also been noticed by the international media. Recently, The Sunday Telegraph of London had accused him of amassing a fortune using his links with carbon trading companies. Pachauri dismisses the report as ”a pack of lies.”
With a certain sense of irony, Pachauri is described as ”the climate change hero” and Singh tells us he was an independent director on ONGC’s board for three years between June 2006 and June 2009. During that time, he was entitled to first-class air travel when he attended meetings, five-star hotel stays and an allowance of 25,000 rupees for each meeting attended. This was in addition to having a say in the company’s decision-making process. It was during this period that TERI had secured business contracts from ONGC.
This practice, writes Singh, is against ONGC’s official code of conduct which says: ”The directors and management shall act within the authority conferred upon them in the best interests of the company and will use their prudent judgment to avoid all situations, decisions or relationships which give or could give rise to conflict of interest or appear to conflict with their responsibilities within the company.”
In his defence, Pachauri says he is now not on the board of any public sector undertaking, then declaring: ”What is stated applies only for short periods in the past … TERI is a not-for-profit organisation working for the welfare of society and its revenues cover costs and provide no private benefit to any party.”
Singh is less than convinced. ”Pachauri’s position is untenable,” he writes. As noted on this blogon 29 December, ONGC and TERI launched a joint business venture in March 2008 called ONGC-TERI Biotech Ltd (OTBL).
This was while the TERI director-general was on its board. This entity’s objective was the ”large-scale application of microbial product oil zapper for clean-up of oil spills in farmers’ fields and around oil installations and treatment of oily sludge hazardous hydrocarbon waste.”
When asked about this, Pachauri says ”The joint venture (OTBL) was established largely at the insistence of ONGC. A decision to set up OTBL was taken only on October 31, 2006, at a board meeting that I did not even attend.”
This evokes a somewhat jaundiced response from Singh: ”Does that mean he wasn’t even aware of the decision to set up OTBL? OTBL was set up in 2008, and ONGC insiders told this correspondent all the work awarded to TERI was done on a nomination basis and not through tenders, as is the accepted practice,” he writes.
Climate change ”hero” Pachauri hasn’t finished though. He claims that ‘TERI has not even charged OTBL any royalty for the technology provided to ONGC and other oil companies in India.” Says our hero: ”Any funds provided to TERI are purely to cover costs of activities carried out and performed successfully.”
Unfortunately (for Pachauri) Singh has been speaking to a senior ONGC official. He confirms that close to Rs 30 crore (about £4 million) was paid directly and indirectly to TERI over a period of time for the execution of projects, which included bio-remediation, pipeline corrosion inhibitors and microbial enhanced oil recovery. OTBL was also involved in these transactions, he said.
Pachauri’s response is a classic. He ”denies” that TERI received the money, saying that OTBL ”… is an independent entity with separate accounts, and any funding received from ONGC by OTBL is separate from any transactions involving OTBL and TERI.” And OTBL is owned by?
Intriguingly, Singh notes, ONGC has two specialty labs — Institute of Reservoir Studies (IRS) in Ahmedabad and Institute of Biotechnology and Geo- Tectonics Studies (INBIGS) at Jorhat, Assam — to do what TERI was contracted to do. Both labs were set up to handle high- value, high- end and extremely specialised research.
Thus does Singh write that Pachauri concedes that the decision to set up OTBL was based on the work done jointly by TERI and IRS. ”Pachauri may not see this as a conflict of interest, but former minister of state for petroleum and natural gas Santosh Gangwar said he had complained against it.”
Gangwar actually demanded an inquiry against Pachauri in a letter I wrote to petroleum minister Murli Deora some time back. ”This is a case of conflict of interest on Pachauri’s part. TERI is benefitting from ONGC,” he says. Furthermore,the associate director of the environment NGO, Centre for Science and Environment, Chander Bhushan Singh says Pachauri and TERI need to come clean on their conflict of interest dealings with ONGC.
Needless to say, the noble Pachauri does not see it this way. ”The presence of any TERI person on the board of a PSU (public service utility) cannot be seen as a conflict of interest just as the presence of a secretary to the government of India on TERI’s governing council – which is the case – can be seen as serving the public interest.”
On whether the association of anyone from TERI on PSU boards had served any public interest, he claimed: ”It is [in] the larger public interest, with no private benefit to any party.” Pachauri says projects were awarded to TERI because it served the objectives of PSUs.
In a delicious contradiction, Pachauri then says: ”TERI’s track record of successfully completing projects and serving the objectives of several PSUs is the reason why these were awarded to my organisation, with several of them going back in time well before I joined the boards of these organisations.”
He then adds that, in ”certain isolated incidents” he had recused (excluded himself) himself, but goes on to say: ”The boards of the PSUs I have been associated with generally consist of over 20 members, and there is no way I could have influenced any decision within this structure even if I was a part of such a decision. ”
So, he wasn’t part of the decision, but even if he was, he couldn’t possibly have influenced it … honest Guv!
However, the OTBL issue is not unique. Pachauri was also on the board of another OTBL client — IOC — from January 1999 to September 2003. TERI signed a memorandum of collaboration with IOC to treat oil sludge, a waste product thrown up by oil refineries.
IOC uses the TERI-developed oil zapper technology to treat the waste. According to IOC, its mini-utility project for charging solar lanterns was launched in technical collaboration with TERI. Pachauri was also on the NTPC board from 2002 to 2005, and then from January 2006 onwards. In 2006, NTPC and TERI signed a MoU to implement rural electrification jointly through distributed generation schemes.
Under this project, TERI and NTPC identify suitable technology, and then fund and implement appropriate electricity delivery mechanisms.
Unsurprisingly, Pachauri had a reply for this too: ”TERI took the initiative of providing that organisation with its biomass gasifier technology to set up power generation in villages that had no access to electricity. TERI did not charge any royalty for the technology developed over decades of research and development and was in fact reimbursed by NTPC sums that were far below costs incurred by TERI.”
But, writes Singh, Pachauri’s problems run deeper. The Sunday Telegraph of London, in a recent report, claimed Pachauri had established an ”astounding worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations”.
Pachauri’s answer to this is: ”I haven’t pocketed a penny from my association with companies and institutes … All honoraria I get go to TERI and to its ‘Light A Billion Lives’ campaign for reaching solar power to people without electricity.”
The fact that Pachauri concedes (to us) that he is a ”full-time salaried employee of TERI” is not stated here and nor is it noted that the climate change ”hero” has not, to this day, revealed the size of that salary. Instead, he is allowed to say: ”My dealings are above board.”
”The climate change hero is quick with his answers,” concludes Singh, ”but doubts over his links linger.” When our next The Sunday Telegraph story is published, however, there will be fewer ”doubts”, and a lot more certainty about the nature of Dr Pachauri’s money-making enterprises and the payments to TERI.
This is the man who tells us, ”no part of these payments is received by me from TERI either directly or indirectly” – despite his being a ”full-time salaried employee of TERI”, a man living the life-style of a multi-millionare.
I have written extensible about the scam called cap and trade, where BOTH BUYER ABD SELLER BENEFITS FROM CHEATING. And we, as taxpayers and consumers pay the prise.
“The European model is a carnival of corruption, profiteering, speculation and multi-billion-dollar fraud. It’s done nothing to improve the environment while handing undeserved profits to big business and driving up the cost of energy to consumers. “
“Will all this hike energy prices for consumers? Absolutely. Big time.
Given current technologies, the only way governments can lower emissions quickly and dramatically is by forcing people to use less energy by making them pay more for it.
If our leaders honestly believe man-made global warming from burning fossil fuels poses an imminent, existential threat to humanity, then what they are really advocating is huge price increases in the cost of energy, meaning the cost of everything.
Giving away free carbon credits to industry makes no sense for the U.S. — or for us
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Last Updated: 10th January 2010, 11:08am
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada must mirror the Barack Obama administration in the U.S. on climate change.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t explain what Canada is going to do if the Americans do something stupid.
Problem is, we know the U.S. is about to do something stupid — which is to set up a cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions in which 85% of the carbon credits will be given away to industry for free.
How do we know this is stupid? Well, as David Wessel observed in The Wall Street Journal, we know it from Obama and his budget director, Peter Orszag.
Last March, Obama told U.S. business leaders: ”If you’re giving away carbon permits for free, then basically you’re not really pricing the thing and it doesn’t work – or people can game the system in so many ways that it’s not creating the incentive structures that we’re looking for.”
Orszag told the budget committee of the House of Representatives that if you don’t auction the permits, ”it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States.”
Two months later, the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill. In the horse trading to get it approved by a razor-thin margin of 219 to 212, the Democrats gave away the store to industrial emitters — at the expense of taxpayers — by agreeing to give away all but 15% of the permits.
GIVEAWAY WILL REMAIN
The U.S. Senate is working on its own version of the bill, and at some point the two efforts will have to be melded. But there’s little doubt the permit giveaway will remain.
That will gut Obama’s original plan to raise $646 billion between 2012 and 2019 by auctioning 100% of the permits to industry. That money was supposed to pay for $150 billion in clean energy projects over the next decade, plus provide a tax credit to help Americans cope with higher energy prices.
Despite this, Obama called Waxman-Markey ”historic” legislation, presumably because he thinks half a loaf is better than none. The problem is with an 85% permit giveaway there’s no loaf, and no guarantee plans to auction off all the permits by 2030 will ever become a reality.
The U.S. is going down the same disastrous road the European Union did five years ago when it created its cap-and-trade market, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). It, too, gave away the permits for free. That doomed the ETS’ effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, along with another huge blunder EU bureaucrats made by handing out more permits than emissions. (The point of cap-and-trade is to lower the ”cap” over time, not raise it.)
I’m no fan of cap-and-trade. The European model is a carnival of corruption, profiteering, speculation and multi-billion-dollar fraud. It’s done nothing to improve the environment while handing undeserved profits to big business and driving up the cost of energy to consumers.
That said, if the U.S. is stupid enough to implement cap-and-trade, and if we’re stupid enough to follow, let’s at least do it in the least stupid way.
The only way cap-and-trade can be effective in reducing emissions, which is the point, is if (a) all carbon permits are auctioned (b) no industry is exempt (also the opposite of what happened in Europe) and (c) the government develops an effective, enforceable mechanism for lowering the cap on emissions.
PRICE HIKES FOR US
Will all this hike energy prices for consumers? Absolutely. Big time.
Given current technologies, the only way governments can lower emissions quickly and dramatically is by forcing people to use less energy by making them pay more for it.
If our leaders honestly believe man-made global warming from burning fossil fuels poses an imminent, existential threat to humanity, then what they are really advocating is huge price increases in the cost of energy, meaning the cost of everything.
“At last, in all directions, we are beginning to see the terrifying cost of that obsession with “global warming” and “green energy” which for nearly 20 years has had all our main political parties in its grip.For years governments, including the EU, have been shovelling millions of pounds into the coffers of “green” lobby groups, such as Friends of the Earth and the WWF, allowing them in return virtually to dictate our energy policy.Not for nothing is a former head of WWF-UK now chairman of the Met Office.”
Climate change: the true price of the warmists’ folly is becoming clear
From the Met Office’s mistakes to Gordon Brown’s wind farms, the cost of ‘green’ policies is growing, warns Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:28PM GMT 09 Jan 2010
Impeccable was the timing of that announcement that directors of the Met Office were last year given pay rises of up to 33 per cent, putting its £200,000-a-year chief executive into a higher pay bracket than the Prime Minister. As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions.
For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row. The current cold snap, we were told with the aid of the BBC– itself facing an inquiry into its relentless obsession with “global warming” – was just a “regional” phenomenon, due to “natural” factors. No attempt was made to explain why the same freezing weather is affecting much of the northern hemisphere (with 1,200 places in the US alone last week reporting record snow and low temperatures). And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world’s politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead.
Then, as councils across Britain ran out of salt for frozen roads, we had the Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, admitting that we entered this cold spell with only six days’ supply of grit. No mention of the fact that the Highways Agency and councils had been advised that there was no need for them to stockpile any more – let alone that many councils now have more “climate change officials” than gritters.
Then, with the leasing out of sites for nine giant offshore wind farms, there was Gordon Brown’s equally timely relaunch of his “£100 billion green revolution”, designed, in compliance with EU targets, to meet a third of Britain’s electricity needs. This coincided with windless days when Ofgem was showing that our 2,300 existing turbines were providing barely 1/200th of our power. In fact, 80 per cent of the electricity we used last week came either from coal-fired power stations, six of which are before long to be closed under an EU anti-pollution directive, or from gas, of which we only have less than two weeks’ stored supply and 80 per cent of which we will soon have to import on a fast-rising world market.
In every way, Mr Brown’s boast was fantasy. There is no way we could hope to install two giant £4 million offshore turbines every day between now and 2020, let alone that they could meet more than a fraction of our electricity needs. But the cost of whatever does get built will be paid by all of us through our already soaring electricity bills – which a new study last week predicted will quadruple during this decade to an average of £5,000 a year.This would drive well over half the households in Britain into “fuel poverty”, defined as those forced to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on energy.
Finally, following Mr Brown’s earlier boast that his “green revolution” will create “400,000 green jobs”, there was the revelation that more than 90 per cent of the £2 billion cost of Britain’s largest offshore wind farm project to date, the Thames Array, will go to companies abroad, because Britain has virtually no manufacturing capacity.
At last, in all directions, we are beginning to see the terrifying cost of that obsession with “global warming” and “green energy” which for nearly 20 years has had all our main political parties in its grip.For years governments, including the EU, have been shovelling millions of pounds into the coffers of “green” lobby groups, such as Friends of the Earth and the WWF, allowing them in return virtually to dictate our energy policy.Not for nothing is a former head of WWF-UK now chairman of the Met Office.
The bills for such follies are coming in thick and fast. Last winter’s abnormal cold pushed Britain’s death rate up to 40,000 above the average, more than the 35,000 deaths across Europe that warmists love to attribute to the heatwave of 2003. Heaven knows what this winter will bring. And remember that the cost of the Climate Change Act alone has been estimated by our Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband at £18 billion every year until 2050 – a law that only three MPs in this Rotten Parliament dared oppose. Truly have they all gone off their heads.
Christopher Booker’s ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster’ (Continuum, £16.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £14.99 plus £1.25 p&p
How “they” (NASA) make Bolivia a VERY HOT PLACE EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO TEMPERATURE STATIONS OR DATA FROM THERE.
Another brilliant example of the trustworthiness of the Global Warming Hysteria.
And “their science”.
“One Small Problem. There has not been any thermometer data in GHCN since 1990.
None. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.
So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data?
Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away. So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Peru and the Amazon Jungle. Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know? (The official excuse given is that the data acceptance window closes on one day of the month and Bolivia does not report until after that date. Oh, and they never ever would want to go back and add date into the past after a close date. Yet they are happy to fiddle with, adjust, modify, and wholesale change and delete old data as they change their adjustment methods…)”
You can create many maps, and many of them will not show The Bolivia Effect as well as this one (while some may be better). This map was not “cherry picked”, it is just the most recent month with data available. It does, however, have a very nice example of The Bolivia Effect in it. (At least 2, in fact).
Alright Already, what is this Bolivia Effect?
Notice that nice rosy red over the top of Bolivia? Bolivia is that country near, but not on, the coast just about half way up the Pacific Ocean side. It is almost entirely high cold Andes Mountains. It’s the patch of whitish mountains in this picture:
One Small Problem. There has not been any thermometer data in GHCN since 1990.
None. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.
So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data?
Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away. So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Peru and the Amazon Jungle. Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know? (The official excuse given is that the data acceptance window closes on one day of the month and Bolivia does not report until after that date. Oh, and they never ever would want to go back and add date into the past after a close date. Yet they are happy to fiddle with, adjust, modify, and wholesale change and delete old data as they change their adjustment methods…)
What about that other red spot in the middle of Canada? Yup, you guessed it. No thermometers survive in GIStemp in Yukon and The Northwest Territories, and only one survives in Nunavut (at the northern edge of Canada, but in a location called The Garden Spot of the Arctic due to the unusual warmth of the area allowing a variety of plants and animals to survive there that do not survive elsewhere.
We took an in depth look at those thermometer deletions in this posting:
Which included this description (from the wiki page) of the only surviving thermometer in Northern Canada, at the weather station in Eureka:
“Eureka has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to the flora and fauna abundant around the Eureka area, more so than anywhere else in the High Arctic.” …
Further down, under “Climate” it says:
“Winters are frigid, but summers are slightly warmer than at other places in the Canadian Arctic.”
The station is on the coast near water. Water, as we know, serves to moderate extremes of temperature. There is a nice picture of it, showing the ocean in the background, on the above link, if you wish to see it.
Arctic Red is What Again?
How about all that Red in the Arctic? Well, no surprise, there are no thermometers up there. Yes, all that red across the top is fiction. It is called “estimation” based on ice estimates and “interpolation” and even “the reference station method” but in the end it all comes down to “just made up”.
So when you look at one of these Anomaly Maps, the “highest and best use” that I have found for those rosy red patches is to find those places where there have been abuses of the thermometers (such as in Morocco where they move from the coast, near cool ocean currents, to the Atlas Mountains, on the edge of the Sahara Desert)or where they have been deleted from High Cold Places (such as Bolivia), or where there are simply none at all (such as the Arctic).
Bolivian Data
This is a listing of the “By Altitude” report for Bolivia, so you can see for yourself that there are data in the “baseline” period used by GIStemp, but there is no data since 1990.
The GHCN ”By Altitude” report for Bolivia, Country Code 302:
Year -MSL 20 50 100 200 300 400 500 1000 2000 Space
Notice that while one thermometer level manages to straggle into 1990, it gets shot that year (or the “decade ending” would have had a later year – by default I end the decade counts in years ending in “9″ so 0-9 end up in one decade average together; unless you run out of records… )
It is very hard to have “warming” with no data, but somehow GIStemp, with GHCN, manages to do just that. I guess Bolivia is somehow magical, so I just call it “The Bolivia Effect”… and it is warming the planet.
On this blog I have written extensively about press and mass media and their role in this the greatest scientific and political scandal of modern times.
The sad part about this Global Warming Hysteria is, besides the scientists how have betrayed everything that science should stand for, the press and mass medias role in this.
More and more people have had enough of the religious gospel that most of the mainstream media is spreading. And their willing participation in driving and promoting this hysteria.
AT THE SAME TIME AS THESE MEDIA HAVE TAKEN AN ACTIVE PART in SUPPRESSING FACTS and IS CENSORING AND INTIMIDATING EVERYONE WHO HAS OPPOSED THIS HYSTERIA.
A truly “worthy” goal for the organizations and companies whose goals was supposed to protect and enhance freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Talking about the ultimate betrayal of all that good and independent journalism was supposed to be.
In this article there are some more insights to this.
“The situation was alarming to some people. A select committee of climate experts came together in January 1978. They declared that there was no end in sight to the 30-year cooling trend.
The stage was set for news media to capitalize on these captivating weather stories — but it never happened to the degree it has today. Not even close.”
“Global warming supplies news outlets with an endless stream of planet-endangering, guilt-extracting drama that can be linked to all aspects of human activity. The production of carbon dioxide by industrial activity threatening a future climate catastrophe — this is the global warming doctrine. The very fossil fuels that lifted societies to unprecedented prosperity being cast as climate killers. Weather, climate, and prosperity all wrapped into one very convenient eco-economic package.
Any story that dealt with economic activity was linked to global warming. Any story about global warming was linked to human industrial activity. This amalgamation of previously unrelated phenomena was the consultant’s dream: All of what civilization does to produce energy and prosperity demonized in the name of saving the planet, with old media playing the hero role of saving the world from ourselves. A just and noble cause, and simply too irresistible of a story for struggling companies to resist.”
I went into television in 1979, when I was 25 years old. The weather was cold, very cold. The winters of the 1960s and 1970s were some of the most brutal of the last century. And stubbornly, the cold would not release it’s bone-numbing grip.
Magazines sported stories [1] of a coming Ice Age. The winter of 1976-77 was so cold that the state of Ohio virtually closed for the month of January. A great blizzard in January 1978 brought hurricane force winds and record snowfall to the Midwest. Just a few weeks later, another massive blizzard of historic proportions closed Boston and Providence for a week. Snow fell in Miami [2] on January 19, 1977.
Energy conservation was all the rage. People were buying solar panels to put on their houses to heat hot water. Tiny little Japanese cars were selling faster than Japan could make them — not only for the fuel efficiency, but because they were all front-wheel drive, better for handling in the never-ending snowstorms.
The situation was alarming to some people. A select committee of climate experts came together in January 1978. They declared that there was no end in sight to the 30-year cooling trend.
The stage was set for news media to capitalize on these captivating weather stories — but it never happened to the degree it has today. Not even close.
There were several factors at work regarding why. First, there were only three channels on television. They were very competitive with each other, but they were all essentially printing money. NBC, ABC, and CBS controlled what the public saw and heard, along with the newspapers — which were thriving. The major media outlets were king.
Second, there was no internet. You got your news from the small group of information outlets, and that was it. It’s hard to imagine a world without blogs and websites freely writing and editorializing about the stories of the day, but this simply did not exist.
And third, there were no rapidly evolving technologies forcing change. Television, radio, and print were healthy and profitable. The marketplace was in their control, and life was good.
As the 1980s dawned, market conditions began to change. It started with CNN, ESPN, HBO, and The Weather Channel, among others.
The planting of cable TV across the nation was a double-edged sword for the traditional television networks. It gave them a much better and more consistent signal, but it also put a hole in their revenue stream. Total audience for the big three television networks peaked in the early to mid-1980s and has been falling ever since. Combine that with the internet, satellite TV, and expanded radio offerings, along with a myriad of other technological innovations, and today you have a much more complex and competitive marketplace.
How does this figure in with global warming? It all started in 1988, when Dr. James Hansen [3] of NASA testified before Congress on a very hot summer day. He said global warming is real, is caused by human burning of fossil fuels, and is a danger to the future of the planet.
Overnight, everything changed.
This testimony was the catalyst needed to fuse the weather, climate, and human drama into a gripping narrative which the news media could desperately use. There were plenty of dramatic life-and-death weather stories in the 1960s and 1970s, however there was no way to link what was happening to the climate and what people were doing. There was a weak attempt to link air pollution with colder weather, but it never took hold. There were stories about bitter cold and savage blizzards, but no “it’s our fault” stories.
But after Dr. Hansen’s testimony in 1988, media outlets began to fashion news stories that appealed to the portion of the audience that was convinced humans were destroying nature. The growth of the environmental movement from the 1960s on had already planted those seeds. In the cold weather of the 1960s and 1970s, people were still seen as victims of nature, but now the roles were reversed — a fresh new story, good for ratings. The human drama brought weather into people’s homes and lives. We had to start thinking about what we were doing to nature: no longer the victim, but the destroyer.
Television market shares continued to erode through the 1990s, and old media was desperate to stop the bleeding. They hired consultants to tell them what to air to at least retain what audience they still had. And it turned out that weather was right near the top of the list of most popular topics. Weather stories began to get more air time.
I was working for a television station in Connecticut during this period, and stories about weather that would never have seen the light of day were now the leading the show!An executive producer once told me: “Weather trumps all!” The implication was that a weather story would get priority over almost anything else making news that day and that you should never miss an opportunity to make a weather story more than it really was.
One evening, I had predicted a light snowfall of 1 to 2 inches. I commented on-air:
It’s really no big deal, just a little snow but nothing we can’t handle.
The general manager of the station took me aside after the program and said:
When it comes to weather, don’t say “no big deal.”
Dramatic life-and-death weather stories don’t simply occur when you need them, such as during a ratings period. But the global warming drama?
It could always be there.
Global warming supplies news outlets with an endless stream of planet-endangering, guilt-extracting drama that can be linked to all aspects of human activity. The production of carbon dioxide by industrial activity threatening a future climate catastrophe — this is the global warming doctrine. The very fossil fuels that lifted societies to unprecedented prosperity being cast as climate killers. Weather, climate, and prosperity all wrapped into one very convenient eco-economic package.
Any story that dealt with economic activity was linked to global warming. Any story about global warming was linked to human industrial activity. This amalgamation of previously unrelated phenomena was the consultant’s dream: All of what civilization does to produce energy and prosperity demonized in the name of saving the planet, with old media playing the hero role of saving the world from ourselves. A just and noble cause, and simply too irresistible of a story for struggling companies to resist.
Media outlets now are looking at a terribly uncertain future. Market shares and profits continue to plummet, newspapers are closing, and television stations and networks are reducing staffs.
When someone is drowning, they will grab whatever is around to save them. Dying media clutched at global warming as a way to stay afloat for a little while longer.
Art Horn spent 25 years working in television as a meteorologist. He now is an independent meteorologist and speaker who lives in Connecticut. He can be contacted at skychaserman@cox.net
“At the urging of Al Gore, the administration is signing on to a plan to task vital intelligence assets to protect not the people of the United States, but the environment.
The program, shot down by President Bush, who thought we had better things to do after 9/11,involves using government intelligence assets, including spy satellites and other classified sources, to monitor such things as clouds, glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.”
Climate Change: We can’t stop terrorists from boarding planes with explosive undies, but the CIA has assets sufficient to monitor Arctic ice and look for signs of global warming? Is al-Qaida recruiting polar bears?
One wouldn’t think that the increasing polar bear population and the increasing rate of recidivism of former Guantanamo detainees released into the wild were related, but they are.
At the urging of Al Gore, the administration is signing on to a plan to task vital intelligence assets to protect not the people of the United States, but the environment.
The program, shot down by President Bush, who thought we had better things to do after 9/11,involves using government intelligence assets, including spy satellites and other classified sources, to monitor such things as clouds, glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.
Climate change alarmist and former Vice President Gore began lobbying for the program’s resumption in 2008and has received the enthusiastic endorsement of CIA Director Leon Panetta, who met with scientists backing the program in November.
”Director Panetta believes it is crucial to examine the potential national security implications of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels and population shifts,” said Paula Weiss, an agency spokeswoman. The only thing we should be scanning the world’s deserts for are terrorist targets for our Predator drones.
Sen. John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, is appalled at this misuse of federal surveillance equipment, including the highly classified satellites of the National Reconnaissance Office. He believes the agency should be fighting terrorism, ”not spying on sea lions.”
This is especially true considering that our security agencies cannot monitor and keep a terrorist from boarding an aircraft — even a radicalized jihadist who paid for his one-way ticket with cash, checked no luggage and was turned in by his own father at an American embassy. But we’re supposed to track polar bears and ice floes?
As for Al Gore’s pushing of the program, Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, says: ”If anything, Al Gore is the real national security threat. Gore’s climate change fear mongering, which lines his own pockets with cash, has stoked a war against the fossil fuels so vital to our nation’s economic prosperity and national security.”
The program resurrects a scientific group that during the Clinton administration advised the government on environmental surveillance. Called Medea, for Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, the group evidently feels we’re more endangered by melting polar ice than, say, Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Back in 2007, Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel and Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin pushed legislation to make the environment a national security priority, even though it was hijacked airliners, not rogue icebergs, that brought down the WorldTradeCenter and attacked the Pentagon.
Using intelligence assets to draw conclusions about whether warming is real, man-made and imminently dangerous is dicey — considering the recent dead-wrong national intelligence estimate that said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
This nonsense is in keeping with the theme first advanced by Gore in his book ”Earth in the Balance”: that the internal combustion engine is the greatest threat to mankind in its history. Gore and Bill Clinton have both said global warming is ultimately a greater threat than terrorism.
The April 21 issue of Time called green ”the new red, white and blue” and compared global warming to the fight against Nazism and fascism. The cover took the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of Marines planting our flag on the blood-soaked island of Iwo Jima and replaced our flag with a tree.
We disagree that a purely hypothetical and thoroughly discredited threat to our planet, attributed to our use of carbon-based energy, is as serious as the threat posed by Islamofascism. When the al-Qaida threat recedes, we’ll start worrying about the glaciers.
“The average temperature in December 2009 was 30.2 F. This was -3.2 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 14th coolest December in 115 years.”
And the recent 12 Month period (Jan-Dec) 1895-2009.
Last year, 2009 (Jan-Dec), the temperature is NEARLY EXACTLY THE SAME AS IN 1896! The difference is ah HUGE 0.33 F. One third of a degree in 113 years.
Andrew Neil 18:21 UK time, Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Well, I did warn you! My last blog (December 30th) reported that several US weather forecasters were predicting that most of the Northern Hemisphere was in for a punishing January, casting doubt on our Met’s forecast of a mild winter.
Since then we’ve had record snowfalls and low temperatures from North America to Scotland to China (where Beijing has just had its heaviest snow for 60 years) to South Korea (whose capital has had the worst snow since records began in 1937). So I think we can say the cold weather is global (for those parts of the globe where it is winter).
On Wednesday’s show I hope to interview the head of the Met, who’s just had a big rise. It will be interesting to discover why the rise — he’s now paid more than the PM — is merited. (I say ”hope” because I’m flying in from France very early in the morning — so keep your fingers crossed the airport is open!).
Of course one very bad December/January is not proof that global warming isn’t happening. The planet could still be warming as part of a long-term trend. But if it is the long-term must be seen as more than a decade — and even then the evidence is mixed. I recently referred to the satellite temperature measurements of the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). It started logging temperatures in the lower troposphere (where warming should be most marked) in 1979 and it does show a rise over the past three decades — but only of about 0.2 degrees C.
Its figures for December are now in and they show that over the past decade (1999 to 2009) average global temperatures have not changed, even though CO2 emissions have continued to rise unchecked (Kyoto making no discernible difference). I’ve used 1999 as the starting point because 1998 temperatures were boosted by the non-global warming El Nino effect – otherwise we’d be talking about a drop over 11 years).
Now it is true, as the Met points out, that the past decade has still been a pretty warm one by recent historic standards. But it is clear that over the past 10 years temperatures have not risen in line with increased CO2 emissions. That fact is not necessarily a clincher in itself but it does suggest that when President Obama and others (including our own Prime Minister) say the ”science is settled” they might not be right — and that the scope for continued controversy and debate is vast.
The current Northern Hemisphere snow cover as monitored by Rutgers University. The December value was in the second highest during this period of record.
On this blog I have written extensively about press and mass media and their role in this the greatest scientific and political scandal of modern times.
The sad part about this Global Warming Hysteria is, besides the scientists how have betrayed everything that science should stand for, the press and mass medias role in this.
More and more people have had enough of the religious gospel that most of the mainstream media is spreading. And their willing participation in driving and promoting this hysteria.
AT THE SAME TIME AS THESE MEDIA HAVE TAKEN an ACTIVE PART in SUPPRESSING FACTS and IS CENSORING AND INTIMIDATING EVERYONE WHO HAS OPPOSED THIS HYSTERIA.
A truly “worthy” goal for the organizations and companies whose goals was supposed to protect and enhance freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Talking about the ultimate betrayal of all that good and independent journalism was supposed to be.
Below are one example of this utter betrayal of journalism and the blatant hypocrisy from these medias – the ones venerable and prestigious The Times. Who changes the “rules” as it suite their political needs.
And it’s no difference here in Sweden – the same “journalistic” shenanigan goes on. All in the name of spreading “the right” gospel.
The Times has liberally papered London underground carriages with a fascinating new ad campaign. One poster shows a ship navigating some treacherous icy waters, with the accompanying copy reading:
Climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time.
Impressive – if only it were true. The Northeast Passage has been opened for commerce since 1934 – and never ‘closed’.
Over the years hundreds of thousands of freighters have passed through, and after Russia put Soviet-era politics aside it was extended to foreign commerce in the 1990s. As we reported (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/14/north_eastern_passage/) two weeks ago, it took bloggers a few seconds to find this out, and unearth a wealth of maritime history. But when German shipping company Beluga issued a press release claiming to be the first foreign pioneer, many newspapers and the broadcast media (the BBC) were in such a rush to report another example of Global Warming, they didn’t bother to check the claim – and reported it verbatim.
Among the parrotters was Times hack Tony Halpin, here (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6832885.ece), who cleaned his Trumpet of Doom and proceeded to shoot himself in both feet with this blast: ”It is both a symbol of global warming and a potentially lucrative new trade route between Europe and Asia.”
According to the ad copy:
To help you navigate the changing world we have more dedicated science and environment correspondents than the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail or Independent.
Quality isn’t quantity, evidently. But a fascinating question arises. Why spend so much money to tell commuters that you’ve cocked things up? It doesn’t make sense. Perhaps there’s a better explanation.
Perhaps what the Times has noticed is that there’s a lucrative market for environmental scare stories. What the advertisements are doing is targeting this segment of the superstitious middle class, which wants to believe that Thermageddon is nigh, or that oil will run out next week, or that a tsunami of non-biodegradable plastic refuse will engulf the family Volvo on its morning school run – shortly before it’s zapped by deadly WiFi radiation.
No one today is as superstitious as the Grauniad-reading middle class, and the Times wants some of the action. And perhaps some of those adverts for ”survival seeds” you hear on US talk radio.
When you think about it, this is actually a much more rational explanation. So what the Times really wants to convey is that it can be relied on to get it wrong – and has more staff devoted to getting things wrong than anybody else. ®
By Andrew Orlowski (andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk)
5th January 2010 11:40 GMT
An advertising campaign touting the depth and quality of the Times newspaper’s environment coverage has been slapped by an industry watchdog for inaccuracy. The paper has agreed to modify the advertisements, which are based on a false climate change claim.
The Times ads claimed that global warming had caused the North East shipping passage, the icy Arctic route which in summer links Russia’s European ports to the Bering Strait, to be opened for the first time. In fact, the North East Passage opened in 1934, and was opened to overseas traffic after the fall of the Soviet Union. Modern technology, specifically radar, has permitted a safer passage in recent years.
News International has agreed to amend the ad, which instead of claiming that ”Climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time,” now claims that ”Climate change has allowed the Northeast passage to be more accessible as a viable commercial shipping route”.
Although that depends on the kind of climate change, though. With the climate cooling, the route is less accessible than it was in warmer times.In the leaked East Anglia emails, scientists who confidently predicted continued warming ahead confess they can’t account for the refusal of the climate to conform to their models.
The Times spends big: to tell us it can’t get climate stories right
The campaign received 29 complaints to the industry’s self-regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority.
In November, The Times promised not to repeat another ad (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/06/times_fishy_ad_abandoned/) in the same series, which also boasted about its eco-reporting credentials. The paper had claimed that the oceans would be free of fish by 2048 (Not ManBearPig again, but over-fishing). The researcher who made the original claim has now revised it. Oops.
Gradually, we are closing in on Dr R K Pachauri’s little outpost of empire in 27 Albert Grove, Merton, as further evidence is obtained which reveals the undeclared scale of this operation.
The ”smoking gun” is a 50-page study entitled: SI2 – Sustainable Investment in India, reporting on ”Sustainable development of portfolio investment in India‘s publicly listed companies,” which TERI Europe published in May 2007.
This was the year that the organisation filed accounts with the Charity Commission claiming an income of a paltry £9,000 and an expenditure of a mere £5,000.
Although it was produced, we are told, with the ”generous support” of the Global Opportunities Fund of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office,we still do not know how much it cost to produce.
Nevertheless, we have speculated that it cost a great deal more than the £5,000 declared as expenses that year, and the ”generous support” given to carry out the project must have been considerably more than the £9,000 declared as income.
Now, however, we are in a very much better position to estimate the cost of the project as TERI Europe went on to update this report for the International Finance Corporation – an offshoot of the World Bank – which it published in May 2009 under the title ”Sustainable Investment in India 2009″.
This document, with one other produced by TERI Europe in April 2009 – called ”Sustainable Investment in Brazil 2009″ was part of a three-part project each very similar -two parts of which were completed by TERI Europe and the third by a Chinese organisation.
And here, there is information on costing, through the good offices of the IFC Advisory Services in Environmental and Social Sustainability, which has produced its Annual Report 2009, containing the details.
The projects were started on 21 July 2008 and the total cost, shared between TERI Europe and the Chinese outfit, Business for Social Responsibility Advisory Services, was $331,000.
Assuming an equal split between the three parts of the project,that means TERI Europe must have been paid about $110,000 for each of the reports. Even with today’ debauched sterling, that still amounts to nearly £70,000 a throw – £140,000 for the two.
Now, we cannot say that TERI Europe was paid the same amount for the ”SI2 – Sustainable Investment in India” report, although the organisation does acknowledge the ”generous support” from the FCO. Given the scale of the production, it surely cannot have been much less.
Thus, we have a situation where there is good evidence that TERI Europe was engaged in the production of a report for which it must have attracted funding in the order of £70,000 and incurred considerable expense, yet it shows an income of £9,000 and an expenditure of £5,000.
Even if there is a substantial discount on the SI2 report, it is simply not credible that TERI Europe could have operated that year with an income so low, or spent so little. On the face of it, we are very much closer to showing that this organisation has indeed been guilty of false accounting, and misleading the Charity Commission.
We have written to the FCO, formally asking for details of the amounts paid to TERI Europe for the project, and await their response with interest. We will keep you appraised, as the noose tightens.
SNOW CHAOS: AND THEY STILL CLAIM IT’S GLOBAL WARMING
Wednesday January 6,2010
By Martyn Brown
AS one of the worst winters in 100 years grips the country, climate experts are still trying to claim the world is growing warmer.
With millions of Britons battling through snow and ice to get to work today, scientists claim that the cold conditions should not be used as evidence against man-made climate change.
Blizzards, ice and sub-zero temperatures that have gripped the UK for almost a month in a record deep freeze are not “robust” indicators of global weather patterns, they say.
Their claims come despite the fact that the rest of the northern hemisphere, from America to Europe and Asia, is suffering some of the worst winters in living memory.
Huge snowfalls are being witnessed from China and South Korea, across eastern, central and western Europe and to America where even Florida is struggling to record temperatures above freezing.
Last night critics of the global warming lobby said the public were no longer prepared to be conned into believing that man-made emissions were adding to the problem.
Long-term forecaster and trends analyst Piers Corbyn, of WeatherAction, said: “Global warming is a failed science built on falsified data. It is a sham to say that man has caused it.”
But Stephen Dorling, of the scandal-hit University of East Anglia’s school of environmental sciences, remained adamant that the weather should not be used as evidence against climate change.
But he added: “It’s no surprise that people look out of their window and find it hard to rationalise what’s going on with the longer term trend.”
But he said it was wrong to focus on cold snaps or heat waves but look instead at longer-term trends.
The Met Office’s Barry Gromett said December and January’s cold weather was “within the bounds of variability” in a global trend of rising temperatures in which 2009 is set to be the fifth warmest year on record.
He added that while Siberia, the UK and parts of the US were very cold, other areas including Alaska, Canada and the Mediterranean were warmer than usual. But China faces its worst winter in 20 years, with temperatures down to -43C.
Mr Gromett added: “Climate change is likely to give us milder winters, but there’s always opportunities within that to have colder years.
“The temperature graph is a series of peaks and troughs and there’s a lot of variability within the trend.”
Labour insisted yesterday that last month’s shambolic Copenhagen climate summit had led to greater efforts to tackle global warming.
But shadow climate change secretary Greg Clark branded the conference a flop, only delivering an accord that was “an agreement to disagree”.
Christopher Booker, author of The Real Global Warming Disaster, said: “It is amazing how this scaremongering from climate change lobbyists keeps arising even though they are constantly being proved wrong.
“Last year there was snow in Saudia Arabia and still they persist in saying the temperature is going up.”
Climate Change: A new study shows that Earth’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide from all sources, including man, has remained unchanged for 160 years. As it turns out, there may be no carbon to offset.
A major tenet of the global warming religion, straight from the Book of Gore, has been that the ability of the earth to handle increasing CO2 emissions is finite and that once the ”tipping point” is reached, the earth will warm uncontrollably. Well, another climate domino has fallen — the myth that man-made CO2 is leading to climate catastrophe.
This ”settled science” has been upended by an unsettling (for warm-mongers) new study out of the University of Bristol in England.Unlike the Climate-gate charlatans at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Wolfgang Knorr of Bristol’s Earth Sciences Department followed the data where it led instead of trying to manipulate it to ”hide the decline” in global temperatures the earth has experienced in the last decade.
The new study, published in the online journal Geophysical Research Letters, does not deny that increasing amounts of CO2 have been generated as the world has industrialized, eradicated disease, produced agricultural abundance and improved man’s standard of living. It does show that only 45% of man’s emissions, not 100% as warmers claim, stays in the atmosphere, and that includes the carbon emissions of the private jets that flew to Copenhagen last month and the limos that drove the occupants around.
The rest is absorbed by nature, and that percentage hasn’t changed since 1850. Knorr arrived at that figureby relying solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice. He did not rely, as the CRU did, on badly written computer models with built-in fudge factors to direct the data to a foregone conclusion.
Another result of this study, reports Anthony Watts at WattsUpWithThat.com, is that emissions from deforestation, caused in large part by the clearing of forest land to grow allegedly planet-saving biofuels, may have been grossly overestimated. This finding agrees with results published in November in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University in Amsterdam. It reanalyzed deforestation data and concluded that resulting emissions have been overestimated by a factor of two.
We have tried to help document this growing disparity between observable data and apocalyptic computer models that cannot even predict the past. This post-Climate-gate study provides another nail in the coffin of cap-and-trade and shows why the Environmental Protection Agency should not be allowed to destroy the U.S. economy by absurdly regulating carbon dioxide, the basis for all life on earth, as a pollutant.
Reputable scientists have concluded that earth’s climate is the result of an infinite number of variables and processes that are not completely understood. There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in their computer models. Cyclical ocean currents, solar cycles, even cosmic rays have been documented as affecting earth’s atmosphere and weather.
As Weather Channel founder and eminent meteorologist John Coleman notes, ”The sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost 10 straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?” More and more Americans are asking the same question as the earth is under an Arctic siege.
Temperatures in Iowa are 30 degrees below normal. In South Burlington, Vt., 33 inches of snow fell — an all-time record for a storm. Three deaths due to cold were reported in Memphis, Tenn., as Miami experienced the coldest temperatures in, uh, a decade. AccuWeather.com chief meteorologist and expert forecaster Joe Bastardi says this could be the worst winter in 25 years.
As more scientists reveal inconvenient truths, we too ask: Where’s the warming, Al Gore?
Here with some more up to date trends and statistics. And Obama and the democrats would be in even more trouble if it weren’t for the fact that the republican party “brand” is in such a terrible shape.
There are a lot of republicans who are disgruntled with the party establishment. And think they are just the “light” version of Big Government and More Spending.
The only differences compared with the democrats are in scale and scope. And that’s also why the Tea Party movement is growing.
The president’s Approval Index ratings fell three points in December following two-point declines in both October and November.
Looking back, the president’s honeymoon ended quickly before his ratings stabilized from March through May. They tumbled in June and July as the health care debate began before stabilizing again over the summer. Public attitudes towards the health care legislation have hardened in recent months, with most voters opposed to the work being done in Congress.
As Congress has drawn closer to achieving the president’s goals on health care, unemployment also has been rising, and Obama’s ratings have reflected the turmoil.
The number who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s performance inched up a point to 41% in December. The number who Strongly Approved fell two more points to 26%. That leads to a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15, a new low for Obama.
Also in December, the president’s total approval dropped two points to 46%. His total disapproval gained a point to 53%. It’s worth noting that the Approval Index ratings have generally proven to be a good leading indicator of the president’s overall approval ratings.
Number of DemocratsFalls to New Low, Down Six Points Since Election 2008
Sunday, January 03, 2010
In December, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports.
Currently, 35.5% of American adults view themselves as Democrats. That’s down from 36.0 a month ago and from 37.8% in October. Prior to December, the lowest total ever recorded for Democrats was 35.9%, a figure that was reached twice in 2005.
The number of Republicans inched up by a point in December to 34.0%. That’s the highest total for Republicans since December 2007, just before the 2008 presidential campaign season began.
However, the number of Republicans in the country is essentially no different today than it was in November 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president.
The change since Obama’s election is that the number of Democrats has fallen by six percentage points and the number of voters not affiliated with either major party has grown by six. The number of adults not affiliated with either party is currently at 30.6%, up from 24.7% in November 2008.
Despite the changes, there are still more Democrats than Republicans in the nation. But the gap is down to 1.5 percentage points, the smallest since August 2005.
Between November 2004 and 2006, the Democratic advantage in partisan identification grew by 4.5 percentage points. That foreshadowed the Democrats’ big gains in the 2006 midterm elections. The gap grew by another 1.5 percentage points between November 2006 and 2008 heading into the election of President Obama.
The gap between the parties is now very similar to the gap in November 2004, when George W. Bush won reelection. However, at that time, both parties had more support, and fewer were unaffiliated with either party. The number of unaffiliateds typically declines as major elections draw near.
When Obama was inaugurated last January, Democrats had a seven-point lead on the Generic Congressional Ballot.Republicans now have a five-point advantage. That change has been brought about partly by the declining number of Democrats and partly by the fact that unaffiliated voters are now more supportive of the GOP.
(The republican now have NINE-Point advantage Januari 3)
“The United States opens this decade in a sour mood. First, Americans are anxious about the future. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. Only 27 percent feel confident that their children’s generation will be better off than they are.
Second, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. During the great moments of social reform, at least 60 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Now, only a quarter have that kind of trust.
The country is evenly divided about President Obama, but state governments are in disrepute and confidence in Congress is at withering lows. As Frank Newport of the Gallup organization noted in his year-end wrap-up, “Americans have less faith in their elected representatives than ever before.”
(The latest Rasmussen poll showed this: Congressional Job Rating
12% Excellent/Good, 85% Fair/Poor)
“Third, the new administration has not galvanized a popular majority. In almost every sphere of public opinion, Americans are moving away from the administration, not toward it. The Ipsos/McClatchy organizations have been asking voters which party can do the best job of handling a range of 13 different issues. During the first year of the Obama administration, the Republicans gained ground on all 13.
“The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.”
“A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.”
The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.
The tea party movement is mostly famous for its flamboyant fringe. But it is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.
The movement is especially popular among independents. The Rasmussen organization asked independent voters whom they would support in a generic election between a Democrat, a Republican and a tea party candidate. The tea party candidate won, with 33 percent of independents. Undecided came in second with 30 percent. The Democrats came in third with 25 percent and the Republicans fourth with 12 percent.”
As we left if with our last piece, we were looking Dr R K Pauchauri’s London enterprise, by the name of TERI Europe. Headquartered at 27 Albert Grove, Merton (pictured), it is a registered charity which declared to the Charity Commissioner a total of £24,000 (exactly) income for the three trading years ending in 2008, with an income of exactly £16,100.
Yet this is also an organisation which took a contribution of £30,417 from DEFRA in that period, which exceeds the total income for a period of three years, against a high level of operational activity and additional, ”generous support” from the Global Opportunities Fund of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Exact information on income, however, remains frustratingly – if predictably – difficult to obtain and although we have written to TERI Europe director (and company secretary) Ritu Kumar, asking for further details of their accounts, we have yet to receive a reponse.
In this fourth piece on TERI-Europe, therefore, what we are doing is building a picture of the operations of TERI-Europe by which means we aim to show that the level of activity could not possibly be supported by the declared income and expenses and therefore, as an entirely reasonable assumption, that details of the accounts have been wrongfully (and illegally) concealed.
Unusually, I am not posting this as a completed work but as a running post, to which I will progressively put up the information I have and then add to it as more comes in, and further details become available, building up the dossier on-line. So far, I have identified well over 30 specific activities/projects, the first ten of which – not in any particular date order – are posted now, with more going up later.
Initiated by Munich Re in April 2005 in response to the growing realization that insurance solutions can play a role in adaptation to climate change. TERI Europe is a founder member.
4. Working Group on Climate Change and Development :
Grpup formed involving: ActionAid International, Christian Aid, Columban Faith and Justice, IDS (Institute of Development Studies), ITDG (Intermediate Technology Development Group), IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development), Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, nef (new economics foundation), Operation Noah, Oxfam, People & Planet, RSPB, Tearfund, TER Europe, WWF, WaterAid and World Vision.
Foreword by R K Pachauri and participation by TERI Europe.
6. Conference: ”Investing in the Future: a European Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Finance Sector”, attended by Dr Ritu Kumar and
Ms Rochelle Mortier. 1 & 2 December 2005, Riverbank Park Plaza, London
7. EU Parliament Report: Climate Change and India: Impacts, Policy Responses and a Framework for EU-India Cooperation
Completed in January 2008 by Dr Ritu Kumar
8. Sustainable building design: strengthening capacities for planning and implementation
As part of the EU-funded Asia Urbs programme, TERI-Europe was engaged in a project aimed at improving urban environment through the introduction of sustainability measures in building design.
The project was jointly implemented by RENUE (Renewable Energy for the Urban Environment) in the UK, ICAEN (Institut Catalana d’ Energia) in Barcelona, Spain, TERI, Delhi, India, and the Haryana Energy Development Agency, India.
The project aimed at exchanging advice and good practices between the EU (European Union) and India to assist the local authority in Gurgaon to formulate urban development strategies and develop sustainable building design plans.
9. Facilitating sustainable trade in the textile and clothing sector
TERI-Europe completed a comprehensive review of environmental and social requirements faced by textile and clothing exporters, exporting to the EU. This information has been compiled in a CD Rom, which contains a database on environmental and social requirements for the textile and clothing sector and provides exporters with a ready tool to access information on technologies, retail sources, and trade links.
The scheme included pilot demonstrations on management of supply chains, as well as adherence to environmental, social, and trade regulations, which were conducted in two factories each in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.
Sponsored jointly by the EU and the Commonwealth Science Council.
TERI Europe is a major partner in this project. Amongst other activities, on 5 December 2006 Ritu Kumar moderated a panel discussion at the Hotel Silken 11–19 Boulevard Charlemagne, Belaymont, Brussels, Belgium.
AEDE is funded by the European Union as part of the Asia-Pro Eco Programme. The overall goal is to assist the Asian electronics and electrical suppliers to meet the challenges of existing and forthcoming EC and Japanese product-related environmental legislation and emerging CSR developments.
Picked up by an Indian specialist IT blogger Techgoss, it seems that some of the embarrassing evidence of Pachauri’s commercial interests, that we reported earlier – and much more besides – is disappearing.
What we have ”lost” is a particular page on a site owned by the Tendris Group group, with a subsidiary called Siderian ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specialising in ”sustainable technologies”.
Siderian in 2007 appointed Pachauri to its senior advisory board, where he was expected to provide the Fund with ”access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level”. How much Pachauri – or his institute – is paid for his services is not disclosed and the good doctor has been extremely reticent about even mentioning this association.
And, to spare his blushes, it appears that the original page has been taken down by its owners – removing traces of Pachauri’s appointment. However, the Google cache still survives and all the details (until recently) could be read there.
However, there is much more to this than just Pachauri. As Techgloss points out, not only has Siderian been snapping up the chairman of the IPCC for his ”access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level”, it seems to have bought up some high level Indian politicians as well.
Largely unknown to Western audiences, we have figures like Nandan Nilekani who, as an icon of the Indian tech industry, resigned his job in the private sector to join a government project with ministerial rank. But Mr Nilekani too is a Senior Advisor to Siderian, expected to provide the Fund with ”access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level”.But, as Techgloss observes, no Indian Minister or senior government official can be an advisor to an American or European company.
Now Siderian has removed the incriminating evidence from its website, we can expect more of this as Pachauri and his cronies attempt to cover their tracks.But these are the actions of guilty men. If they had nothing to hide, their names would still be on the website and they would still be declaring their intent to provide ”access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level”.
The head of the Met Office, the national weather service which has been heavily criticised for getting its forecasts wrong, is now paid more than the Prime Minister, after receiving a 25 per cent pay rise.
According to a copy of the organisation’s latest annual report and accounts, John Hirst, the organisation’s chief executive, received between £195,000 and £200,000 in pay and bonuses in 2008/9.
The figure is a 25 per cent increase on the £155,000 to £160,000 ”pay equivalent” for Mr Hirst in 2007/8. Mr Hirst had joined midway through the previous financial year in September 2007.
The remuneration package – which includes salary, performance pay, overtime and other allowances – is more than the £192,414 salary paid to Gordon Brown this year. Mr Brown receives £130,594 in Prime Minister’s salary, and £61,820 as MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.
Seven other directors received pay rises of between 3 per cent and 33 per cent. The biggest rise went to Nick Jobling, the Met Office’s chief financial officer, whose total salary jumped by a third to up to £100,000. Campaigners said the payments were “jaw-dropping”.
The large pay rises for the management of the Met Office came despite a series of widely criticised forecasts, including a warm winter in 2009/10 last October.
This followed its much lambasted forecast of a “barbecue summer” last year which drew strong criticism after heavy rainfall saw the wettest July for almost 100 years.
The organisation’s prediction of a mild winter in 2008-09 was also criticised after heavy snow fell last February and parts of southern England had their coldest night for 20 years in January.
A Met Office spokesman said Mr Hirst’s total pay had jumped because a“performance related bonus” from 2007/8 was paid in 2008/9. There was no underlying increase in salary, she said.
She said: ”John Hirst’s salary reflected the need to bring in,and appropriately reward, skills to meet the significant opportunities and challenges in our weather and climate business.
Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ”It illustrates the excesses at the top of so many public bodies that this official got a pay rise bigger than the average salary.
”For ordinary taxpayers struggling to pay the bills, it is jaw-dropping to see someone who is already very well paid get such a hefty increase. The Met Office should not be splashing around our money with such enthusiasm.”
Predictions of a warm winter seemed way off the mark as commuters struggling back to work after the Christmas break were forced to battle through heavy snow and freezing temperatures.
And now we finally have a sculpture of one of the leading hypocrites and high priest of Global Warming Hysteria.
I especially like the Gores teams answer – “There was a scheduling conflict”.
Specially since there was no time or date specified for the invitation!
“We’re not giving up easy”, Compeau told onlookers as the statue was receiving its final touches Sunday evening. “We invited Mr. Gore to Fairbanks last January, (one of the coldest in decades), to debate his planet-melting theories, and his people responded via email, that although Mr. Gore would love to attend, there was a scheduling conflict. Compeau thought that was odd since he had not suggested any specific date or time.”
And a very nice touch having hot air coming out of his mouth. Plus the contest to see how many hours the Ford F-350 have to run to EQUAL the carbon output of Mr. Gores recent round trip visit to Copenhagenaboard his private Lear jet.
New “Interactive” Al Gore Ice Sculpture to be unveiled in Fairbanks, AK
Fairbanks, AK - In an ongoing effort to attract Former Vice President Al Gore to come to Fairbanks and debate his man-made global warming theories, a unique interactive ice sculpture will be unveiled Tuesday, January 5th in downtown Fairbanks.
The new sculpture, a 6’ tall, 4,000 lb, likeness of Mr. Gore will be uncovered at the corner of Airport Road and Cushman Street next to Thrifty Liquor. This year the carving features an audio dub of Mr. Gores Dec 2009 Copenhagen speech suggesting that the entire Polar Ice cap will likely disappear in the next 5 to 7 years, and urging us to upgrade our light bulbs.
As the audio is played, hot air will be omitted from the mouth of the statue, signifying the dangers to the environment of all types of man-made emissions. The source of the hot air will be the Ford F-350 flatbed truck on which the sculpture sits, with a 2” hose from the tailpipe of the vehicle, through a hole bored in the back of the head of the carving, and pumped out through the mouth of the statue.
Local businessmen Craig Compeau and Rudy Gavora commissioned the frozen artwork, by world class sculptor Steve Dean.
“We’re not giving up easy”, Compeau told onlookers as the statue was receiving its final touches Sunday evening. “We invited Mr. Gore to Fairbanks last January, (one of the coldest in decades), to debate his planet-melting theories, and his people responded via email, that although Mr. Gore would love to attend, there was a scheduling conflict. Compeau thought that was odd since he had not suggested any specific date or time.”
Locals are welcome to stop by and get their photos taken with the artwork at any time of day, although the frigid temperature may keep them away, or cause cameras to freeze up.
Temperatures in interior Alaska have recently fallen to the -30 to -40F range. In conjunction with the release of the new statue, Compeau has incorporated a “Local Warming” contest that will raise money to provide warm winter clothing for homeless Fairbanks residents.The contest asks participants to estimate how many hours the Ford F-350 would have to run to equal the carbon output of Mr. Gores recent round trip visit to Copenhagen aboard his private Lear jet. To enter, visit www.frozengore.com.
Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm.
Volunteers have reported that ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.
Temperatures this week are forecast to plummet as low as -13ºC in the Scottish Highlands, with the mercury falling to -6ºC in London, -5ºC in Birmingham and -7ºC in Manchester as one of the coldest winters in years continues to bite.
Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, described how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.
One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.
A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’
A 500g book can sell for as little as 5p, while a 20kg bag of coal costs £5.
Since January 2008, gas bills have risen 40 per cent and electricity prices 20 per cent, although people over 60 are entitled to a winter fuel allowance of between £125 and £400.
Jonathan Stearn, energy expert for Consumer Focus, said: ‘If pensioners are taking such desperate measures to heat their homes it is shocking. With low wholesale prices and increasing profit margins, there is clearly room for energy companies to make price cuts immediately.’
Ruth Davison, of the National Housing Federation, said: ‘The spiralling cost of energy means heating homes has become a luxury rather than a necessity for many people – particularly the elderly, low paid and unemployed.’
Yea, when all is said and done, AS USUAL it’s the common people who have TO PAY EVERYTHING while the politicians have exempted ALL with political connections.
Last week France’s Constitutional Council blocked a new tax on carbon emissions that was set to take effect on January 1. The eleventh-hour ruling is a blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s efforts to present himself as a champion climate crusader. But environmentalists can take heart: The tax, which would have failed to apply to 93% of French industrial emissions, wasn’t exactly going to put a stop to global warming.
When Mr. Sarkozy announced the tax in September, he promised that ”The aim of ecological fiscal policy is not to fill state coffers but to incite French people and companies to change their behavior.” But the details of the policy spoke otherwise, most notably by fully exempting oil refineries, power stations, cement works and other major producers of carbon, and partially exempting politically connected constituencies such as farmers and fishermen. Instead, the tax was to be paid by people heating their own homes and driving their own cars—in other words, anyone too politically vulnerable or disorganized to get the ear of the ÉlyséePalace. Thus it typically is with environmental regulations written in the name of saving the planet.
On the other hand, the tax, levied at a rate of €17 (about $24.50) per ton of carbon dioxide emissions, was expected to raise a cool €4.1 billion in revenue. With the OECD expecting a French budget shortfall of 8.6% of GDP in 2010, the funds would surely have come in handy. Mr. Sarkozy’s government is now set to present a new plan by Jan. 20.
The carbon tax hasn’t been Paris‘s only effort to cloak misguided economic policies in the mantle of environmental virtue. Mr. Sarkozy has been pushing for the entire European Union to impose a carbon tax on goods entering its borders—an move that would do more to protect European businesses from competition than it would to protect the environment. The brainstorm has gone trans-Atlantic, too, with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu also pushing for a carbon tariff on imports, an idea that was included last year in the House of Representatives’ cap-and-trade bill.
Proponents of carbon taxes have long argued that they offer a more honest approach to curbing carbon emissions, without the opportunities for corruption and political gamesmanship endemic to a cap-and-trade system. But if Mr. Sarkozy’s carbon-tax play is anything to go by, that charitable assessment must—like so much else that was previously thought to be settled in matters of global warming—now be reconsidered.
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Just a Global Warming Appetizer to remind us all that according to the high priest of Global Warming Hysteria we had “ONLY” 4 months to save the planet from catastrophic warming (and that was 2 months ago).
“Arctic freeze and snow wreak havoc across the planet”
The Times
And it’s just a small roundup:
December was coldest month in 28 years
PAMELA NEWENHAM 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 snow began to fall slowly but steadily on Russia’s northern capital, St. Petersburg, a week ago. Local residents were surprised as there has been no snowfall like this for nearly 130 years and in recent years they have hardly seen any snow at all on New Year’s.
The snowfall, which continued through Monday afternoon, was the heaviest in a single day since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937, the state weather agency said
Beijing also was digging out Monday from a weekend winter storm.
More than 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of snow accumulated in the city center Sunday, according to China’s National Meteorological Center. State media called it the highest snowfall in the capital in a single day in January since 1951. Upward of 8 inches (20 centimeters) was recorded in the suburbs of Changping near the Great Wall of China.
Beijing faces lowest temperature in half a century; schools closed today
The heaviest snow to hit North China in decades caused widespread chaos on roads and left tens of thousands of passengers stranded at airports yesterday – but worse is forecast for today and tomorrow.
Temperatures are forecast to drop to -16 C in Beijing, the lowest in half a century, when work resumes after a three-day New Year holiday.
Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict
Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.
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.
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.
Cold weather brings freeze warnings and potential for brush fires
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
In case you haven’t stepped outside, here’s a news flash. It’s cold, people.
Temperatures will be 15 to 20 degrees colder than they usually are this time of year through Monday, according to the National Weather Service. And freeze warnings were posted for most of the TampaBay region Saturday night. Dry air coupled with high winds have also heightened a brush fire threat.
A mass of cold air called scary technical words like ”arctic” and ”high pressure” has swept from Canada to Florida.
U.S. East Coast Faces Deep Freeze; FloridaOranges Threatened
By Dan Hart
Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. East Coast faces the coldest night of the season as frigid air spills south and threatens agriculture in Georgia, Alabama and the orange crop in Florida.
Freeze warnings were posted by the National Weather Service as far south as the Orlando area, which may be as many as 20 degrees below normal tonight, the National Weather Service said. The advisory alerts growers that subfreezing temperatures are imminent and may kill crops or other sensitive vegetation.
Jacksonville, Florida, may see a record low tonight, Keefe said. The Miami area will see temperatures 12 degrees to 13 degrees below normal for this time of year, Keefe said.
String of frigid days in Columbia could set a record
COLUMBIA — The cold weather gripping Columbia isn’t going anywhere, according to the National Weather Service.
More snow is expected later this week, and sub-freezing temperatures are forecast for Columbia through early next week. If Columbia doesn’t warm up to more than 20 degrees by Wednesday, this winter will make the list of worst cold snaps in Columbia history.
The National Weather Service predicts temperatures will stay below 20 degrees through Saturday, which would be the ninth day of temperatures that low. A streak that long hasn’t happened since 1983.
Temperatures were 15 to 20 degrees below normal Monday in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Schoolchildren and workers who headed back to the grind after the holiday season in Kentucky and Tennessee are expected to face a week of frigid temperatures and snow.
Subzero temperatures have been the norm across the state.
Iowans are returning to school and work after a holiday weekend of sub-zero temperatures. Meteorologist Miles Schumacher, at the National Weather Service, says several low temperature records were broken over the weekend, including Atlantic with 29-below this morning, though other places were even more frigid.
Schumacher says, “The coldest that we saw was in the Spencer-Estherville area on Saturday morning with temperatures dropping as low as 37-below and that was within a degree of the coldest in the whole United States.”
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.
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.
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.
I have written extensible about the UN pack, this traveling circus that fly around the globe in first class, or private jet, stay in hotel rooms at £400-500 per night in spa resorts, and gets wined and dined at expensive restaurants.
All of this of course paid by us, the normal people.
While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.
This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.
They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.
How ironic that today most of this class is leftists and so called “liberals”.
The latest example of that was the enormous costs and hypocrisy of Copenhagen. They arrived in their chauffeur driven limousines, and their special “eco friendly” busses were of course empty. Their housing warmed by oil heatersand the energy used by the conference was from coal fired power stations. And seventy percent of the summit’s greenhouse gas emissionscame from activities inside the conference center,
This is the local government version of the UN pack. But the blatant hypocrisy is still the same!
“Jennifer Dunn said: ”The agency lectures ordinary people that they shouldn’t use short-haul flights, but they themselves take dozens of domestic flights each year.”
OFFICIALS in the Government’s green quango took 120 short-haul flights last year while telling others NOT to fly.
Environment Agency staff made 174 short hops to British and nearby European cities, costing the taxpayer £164,320.
But for two-thirds of the trips, they could have taken the train, The Sun can reveal.
The quango’s job is to protect and improve the environment. Its website asks visitors: ”Do you really need to take that flight? Why not travel to Europe by train?”
But in 2008-09, agency staff took 51 flights to Edinburgh, 26 to Brussels, 16 to Newcastle, 15 to Paris and 12 to Bristol.
All have high-speed rail links. At least two other flights were just 100 miles between Plymouth and Bristol.
The shocking double standards are exposed by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, who forced the figures from the agency TaxPayers’ Alliance policy analyst.
Jennifer Dunn said: ”The agency lectures ordinary people that they shouldn’t use short-haul flights, but they themselves take dozens of domestic flights each year.”
Campaigners say short-haul flights produce more greenhouse gases per passenger than long-haul journeys.
An agency spokesman said: ”It is occasionally necessary for staff to take flights.”
“The mainstream media willfully ignore the massive deception just as they have the political exploitation of climate science. In fact, most led or joined attacks on scientists who dared to point out the problems.They’re still doing it directly or by their silence. There’s no excuse for missing the biggest story in history.”
Climategate: Failure of a Blind and Biased Mainstream Media
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, January 4, 2010
It’s beyond belief that the mainstream media can’t see the devastating importance of the emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) known as Climategate. The blindness cancels the claim they’re society’s watchdog. Left wing journalist Amy Goodman said when writing about the Bush administration, ”You know governments are going to lie, but not the media.” Now, with a new administration she is silent, proving there are lies of commission and omission.
Most haven’t read the emails or summarily dismiss them because of political bias. Journalist Clive Crook illustrated an open mind, albeit on second look. “In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back. The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.”
The mainstream media willfully ignore the massive deception just as they have the political exploitation of climate science. In fact, most led or joined attacks on scientists who dared to point out the problems.They’re still doing it directly or by their silence. There’s no excuse for missing the biggest story in history. It proves the adage that there are none so blind as those who will not see.
To See Ourselves As Others See Us
Michael Mann, the most aggressive, bullying and deceptive member of the CRU gang, claims without embarrassment there’s nothing significant in the emails. As Keith Briffa wrote, It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively.” He even scared his fellow CRU conspirators as one noted on October 26 2003, “Anyway, there’s going to be a lot of noise on this one, and knowing Mann’s very thin skin I am afraid he will react strongly, unless he has learned (as I hope he has) from the past….” A psychologist can probably identify these behavior characteristics.
In a Washington Post article Mann said the content “doesn’t alter evidence for climate change.” It’s the confidence trick they’ve always used exploiting the fact most people don’t know how much climate changes naturally. As a result they can report natural change as unnatural and by implication caused by humans. The real issue is the cause of climate change. Now we know how the CRU gang used deception to falsely prove it was human produced CO2. But the mainstream media brush it off, ignore it, or deliberately play along with the CRU gang denials. A good example of the latter was the action of the Associated Press (AP) identified by a Washington Times editorial titled, “Biased Reporting on Climategate – Associated Press coverage raises eyebrows.” They wrote, “There’s a big difference between saying that there is insufficient evidence to determine if falsification occurred—and that there should be an investigation—and saying, as AP did, “Science not faked.” The Times is wrong because it’s incorrect to say there is insufficient evidence, but it is a measure of poor journalism.
The Stink is Unavoidable
Evidence of wrongdoing in the emails doesn’t require understanding of the science. Any objective reading quickly dispels the claim they are normal banter between colleagues.
On 22 November 1996 from Geoff Jenkins (UK Met Office) to Phil Jones, “Remember all the fun we had last year over 1995 global temperatures, with early release of information (via Oz), “inventing” the December monthly value,letters to Nature etc etc? I think we should have a cunning plan about what to do this year, simply to avoid a lot of wasted time.”“We feed this selectively to Nick Nuttall (Executive Director of UNEP) (who has had this in the past and seems now to expect special treatment) so that he can write an article for the silly season. We could also give this to Neville Nicholls (IPCC lead author and Australian Met Bureau employee.)??” They’re talking about releasing an annual global temperature a month before the year is over. Hardly scientific or responsible bureaucratic behavior, but they think deceiving the public is “fun”.
On March 11, 2003 Mann acknowledges they silenced skeptics by criticizing them for not having peer-reviewed publications. They could do this because they believed they controlled peer review of climate change papers. Mann writes, “This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.”
On May 29, 2008Jones directs Mann to delete emails about requests for Freedom of Information.
On 24 April 2003 Wigley upset about Hans von Storch’s editorial role proposes to mislead the publishers, “One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work. I use the word ‘perceived’ here, since whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care about—it is how the journal is seen by the community that counts.”Is this normal discourse between academics?
On 21 Jan 2005 Jones writes to Wigley about requests under the Freedom of Information Act, “Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.“Why would he need to hide?
On 8 July 2004 Jones to Mann, I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! Even if the malfeasance wasn’t obvious a check of the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to review all literature would disclose it.
On 2 February 2005 from Jones to Mann “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” “They”are McIntyre and McKitrick (MM) names already familiar in the mainstream media.
On 29 April 2007 Briffa to Mann; a red flag is waved by the comment, “I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same.” The only need for science is accuracy and openness, which means the IPCC is not about science. That alone should trigger further investigative journalism.
Unbelievable Ignorance
Those involved in the original deception now present ludicrous arguments. The journal “Nature”used in the corruption of the peer-review process and biased throughout says, “If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.”
Absolute rubbish! They should read their guidelines, which say in part, An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without preconditions. (Their emphasis).
The ability to reproduce results is fundamental to science.
Jim Hoggan, Chairman of the Board of the Suzuki Foundation and founder of the sleazy, squalid, web site Desmogblog, says the real issue is the agenda of the people who stole the files. It’s an agenda Hoggan, a professional spinner, and the biased mainstream media would not recognize or understand; a desire for openness and the truth.
Despite what you’ve heard and read, there is no consensus among the world’s atmospheric scientists about the causes of global warming. Nevertheless, politicians ignore this lack of consensus and they justify their proposed actions based upon their own politically sponsored science. They don’t claim to understand this science but they still use it for their own purposes.
The US and several other countries of the world may agree on reducing future emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the distant future. But therein lies the critical question: what is carbon dioxide’s role in climate change?
Politically sponsored arguments about climate change focus on anthropogenic carbon dioxide as if it were different or separable from natural carbon dioxide. It isn’t, but it suits the promoters’ political argument and politically sponsored scientists to make it sound as though it is.
Carbon dioxide is a specific molecule in the earth’s atmosphere that occurs in trace abundance. The concentration of carbon dioxide has varied in history. During the Pleistocene and Holocene (from about 2.6 million years ago, to about 12,000 years ago), it averaged about 190 parts per million. During the Ordovician (about 450 million years ago) it was as high as 4,400 ppm. And yet, temperatures have remained in a narrow – and habitable range — for all of that time. The present UN-accepted level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 371ppm. Even extreme alarmists about climate change aren’t extrapolating temperature levels with carbon dioxide concentrations above 500 ppm.
The term “greenhouse gas” was invented to characterize physics that doesn’t occur in nature. Capping and sequestering carbon dioxide from smokestacks, then piping and pumping it underground is technically challenging. Energy companies will do so at the customer’s expense. It won’t be cheap. Estimated costs of doing so are in the billions. This would be a government-subsidized bonanza for everyone involved.
By my calculations, carbon dioxide’s total heat-trapping capacity in the atmosphere is almost zero. Its capacity is over 1 million times less than that of the oceans. The oceans have the thermal inertia that has been incorrectly attributed to the greenhouse gas mechanism. The earth’s heat is actually stored in the most likely place, its oceans.
Greenhouse gasses are alarming only if you don’t understand (or conceal) the governing physics and disallow the Earth’s climatic history. You don’t have to look too closely to recognize the obvious limitations of politically sponsored science.
These are self-imposed data limitations, probably initially decided upon by committee. They do not however, limit science, which is embodied in the laws of physics.
Phil Holbrook has been a research scientist for major subsurface operating and service companies for over 25 years. He can be reached at phil@GlobalWarmingCycles.info
New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals ”runaway warming” impossible”
“NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. ”Money”, he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.
Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, ”Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”
Well, the noble art of silencing scientists in the name of Global Warming Hysteria continues unabated.
NASA started it and now it has reached the Hungary end so now the “case” is “closed”.
“When Miskolczi later informed the group at NASA there that he had more important results, they finally understood the whole story, and tried to withhold Miskolczi’s further material from publication. His boss for example, sat at Ferenc’s computer, logged in with Ferenc`s password, and canceled a recently submitted paper from a high-reputation journal as if Ferenc had withdrawn it himself. That was the reason that Ferenc finally resigned from his ($US 90.000 /year) job.
This my friends is how they are spending our tax money to SILENCE SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS.
The deft hand of the socialism hasn’t really left us, as the following note received via email shows.
Why Dr Ferenc Miskolczi and Dr Miklos Zagoni have been put under pressure to be silent about Miskolczi`s research concerning the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect.
In 2004 Dr Ferenc Miskolczi published a paper ’The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky terrestrial radiation’, in the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service (Vol. 108, No. 4, October–December 2004, pp. 209–251.).
The co-author of the article was his boss at NASA (Martin Mlynczak). Mlynczak put his name to the paper but did no work on it. He thought that it was an important paper, but only in a technical way.
When Miskolczi later informed the group at NASA there that he had more important results, they finally understood the whole story, and tried to withhold Miskolczi’s further material from publication. His boss for example, sat at Ferenc’s computer, logged in with Ferenc`s password, and canceled a recently submitted paper from a high-reputation journal as if Ferenc had withdrawn it himself. That was the reason that Ferenc finally resigned from his ($US 90.000 /year) job.
I want to make it clear: NASA never falsified or even tried to falsify Ferenc`s results, on the contrary, they fully understand it. They know that it is correct and see how important it is. To make sense of their actions, they probably see a national security issue in it. Perhaps they think that AGW is the only way to stop, or to slow, the coal-based growth of China.
In my circumstance where I have been dismissed from my Government paid position in Hungary, I think the information vacuum (in Hungary), has the same type of origin. I believe someone is in the background trying to convince the establishment (media, science, politics) that Miskolczi’s results are against our national security interests. First, they tried to frighten me, and then when that did not work, they kicked me out from my job. So now I am turning to the wider internet to publicise Miskolczi`s work, as I know that his results are valid and true. There is no way and no need to hold them back for the world to understand them.
Tomorrow, for the first time in my life, I am jobless.
Budapest, 31 Dec, 2009
“But all this profound transformation has had nothing to do with the plan adopted at Lima—which in fact did not have any meaningful follow-up. Rather, it was accomplished after developing countries decided to adhere (one after the other) to the recommendations of the dissidents of third-worldism, namely to play the card of market forces and become internationally competitive.
A new international economic order has thus seen the light of day, not thanks to a decision taken in an international conference, at Lima or elsewhere, but by the fierce competition of developing countries in world markets. This new order has a name: ”globalization.”
Third-worldism has become obsolete. But in its place, environmentalism is the new politically correct pet view in international organizations.”
“Beyond their differences, Lima and Copenhagen suffer from a common handicap: Both conferences were a failed attempt, at the expense of taxpayers around the world, to institute global economic governance by imposing quantifiable targets on the 192 member nations.”
Both conferences were failed, taxpayer-funded attempts to institute global economic governance.
By FABIO RAFAEL FIALLO
Have you ever heard, dear reader, of an international conference held in Lima in 1975 with the purpose of securing nothing less than a full-fledged reorganization of the industrial production of the planet? If your answer is no, don’t be ashamed: This event quickly fell into total oblivion.
Let us unearth that conference, however, because it could help us to understand the outcome of the mega-conference that took place in Copenhagen last month with the no-less-pompous objective of stopping the warming of our planet.
Lima ’75: Those were the good old days of ”Third Worldism.” The developing countries, spurred by the demonstration of force by oil exporting countries during the oil shock of 1973, called for the institution of a ”new international economic order” (NIEO), aimed at securing a better place for these countries in the world economy. Once the call was made, international organizations started aligning their work programs toward that grandiose objective.
It should be recalled that in those days the dominant view in the corridors of international organizations favored strong state intervention in economic affairs. The prevailing view had its dissidents: Bela Balassa, an economist at the World Bank, as well as Little, Scitovsky and Scott, authors of a report commissioned by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), to mention a few. These economists argued that developing countries would do better to place their hopes in the interplay of market forces rather than in state interventionism and, accordingly, should adopt policies aimed at encouraging foreign investment and improving the international competitiveness of their goods.
The governments of many developing countries that adhered to the dominant view arrived at Lima with the firm intention of obtaining the international community’s endorsement of a ”plan of action,” stipulating that 25% of the world’s industrial production should be generated in the Third World by the year 2000.
Lima led to nothing significant. The plan of action adopted there turned out to be a vague compromise text with a strong whiff of state interventionism (as was customarily the case of international declarations at that time). It requested the ”redeployment” to the Third World of some of the industries established in developed countries. There was nothing coercive in the text, as a number of industrialized nations refused to accept any binding clause. The plan also instituted a bureaucratic mechanism of ”consultations,” with a view to pursuing the conference’s goals.
Did the industrial reorganization of the world take place? Yes. Today, the developing countries are not far from accounting for a quarter of the world’s industrial production. The industrial ”redeployment,” too, has been taking place in the form of the so-called hollowing out of developed-country economies.
But all this profound transformation has had nothing to do with the plan adopted at Lima—which in fact did not have any meaningful follow-up. Rather, it was accomplished after developing countries decided to adhere (one after the other) to the recommendations of the dissidents of third-worldism, namely to play the card of market forces and become internationally competitive.
A new international economic order has thus seen the light of day, not thanks to a decision taken in an international conference, at Lima or elsewhere, but by the fierce competition of developing countries in world markets. This new order has a name: ”globalization.”
Third-worldism has become obsolete. But in its place, environmentalism is the new politically correct pet view in international organizations. Thus, rather than referring to an NIEO, it is fashionable nowadays to talk about ”saving the planet” by reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 50% by 2050 at the latest. Ergo, Copenhagen.
Like third-worldism in the 1970s, today’s environmentalism has its dissidents. There are many. They do not deny the existence of global warming, but question the role of human activity in this phenomenon. In addition, they tend to advocate technological innovation, rather than restrictions on the emissions of carbon dioxide, to deal with the impacts.
Like Lima, the conference in Copenhagen did not go beyond the declaration of intentions. Agreement was not reached on concrete measures to drastically reducing carbon emissions. And just as Lima relegated the hardest discussions to a series of consultations, so Copenhagen sent negotiations to another conference next year—without explaining why agreement would be easier in 2010, the year of mid-term elections in the United States, which will make the American Congress even more reluctant to alienate voters by approving costly measures to deal with global warming.
Beyond their differences, Lima and Copenhagen suffer from a common handicap: Both conferences were a failed attempt, at the expense of taxpayers around the world, to institute global economic governance by imposing quantifiable targets on the 192 member nations.
The ”Lima Plan of Action” marked the culmination of Third Worldist multilateral diplomacy. Since then, developing countries, in their struggle for economic modernization, do not expect much from big international conferences. In the same fashion, there is a strong likelihood that the so-called ”Copenhagen Accord” will in turn represent the high point of environmentalist multilateral diplomacy. Henceforth, means other than big intergovernmental forums will be explored to deal with global warming.
Taking the analogy between the two conferences a step further, it is possible to conclude with a note of optimism. In the same manner that developing countries succeeded in increasing their share in world industrial output through international competition, irrespective of the Lima planning, so one can expect that the issue of global warming will be dealt with, not through the Copenhagen Accord, but by technological innovations, notably those falling within the category of geoengineering. These techniques aim at capturing carbon emissions or, more directly, at cooling the climate.
So we may yet see major shifts in the way man deals with climate—but don’t expect them to come about through sprawling international get-togethers. Like the Lima conference, Copenhagen will, in a few years, most likely end up in the dustbins of oblivion.
Mr. Fiallo is a former international civil servant. His latest publication: ”Ternes Eclats” (”Dimmed Lights”), L’Harmattan, Paris, presents a critique of international organizations.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
”Climate change has become a multi-billion dollar commercial sector,” proclaims the brochure from a leading finance house, and it is not wrong.
Nowhere are the opportunities more ”exciting” for the business community though than in the burgeoning ”carbon” market. And there, potentially one of the biggest players is a company called Climate Exchange PLC which operates three businesses, the European Climate Exchange (ECX) the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX ) and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE).
Although its last year’s revenues were a mere £22.7 million, with pre-tax profits of £2.8 million, it is a company with global ambitions, with plans already well advanced to set up similar operations in China, Canada and Australia.
But another of its enterprises is to create an entirely new exchange in India, called the India Climate Exchange (ICX). With outline plans announced in India in June 2007, the company then announced on 14 January 2008 that it had established a ”founder member group” which was working create a system similar to that operated by the Chicago Climate Exchange.
With a distinguished Indian member, by the name of Dr R K Pachauri, already on the ChicagoExternal Advisory Board, it comes as no surprise to learn that the new chairman of this founder member group was to be Pachauri.
To assist him in the development of this enterprise, there was also created a Technical Design Committee, attracting a number of India‘s ”leading industrial companies” and ”think-tanks” who had ”committed” to be part of the committee. And, amongst those were Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals and Tata Power, as well as TERI India, of which Dr Pachauri just happens to be Director-General.
Interestingly, the Chairman of the entire Climate Exchange PLC group, Dr Richard L Sandor, is a member of the TERISchool of Management Advisory Committee in India.
All this puts Pachauri, with his institute, as a direct player in the creation of a lucrative carbon trading market in India,alongside direct evidence that he was using his position as chairman of the IPCC to advocate a ”definite agreement on placing a price on carbon” at the Copenhagen COP15 Summit.
Acting with a coterie of other UN officials, when it comes to a conflicts of interest, they do not come any stronger.
As it stands, TERI India has already received development funds to assist it in the process of establishing the exchange and, as has so often been the case before, the generous donor is the UKForeign and Commonwealth Office.
And nor has the FCO largesse stopped there. It is currently running a Low Carbon High Growth Programme for which £19m in funding was available in financial year 2009-10.
Interestingly, this included a project for the ”establishment by March 2011 in India of an effective mandatory trading scheme in energy saving certificates,” where specific reference is made to the India Climate Exchange scheme.
Thus, it seems, not only has Dr R K Pachauri got his nose firmly stuck in the honey jar, Her Majesty’s Government is supplying some of the honey – at the British taxpayers’ expense.
“WE are truly living in a strange world when the word sceptic, as in the term climate sceptic, has come to be used as an insult.
It used to be the case that there was something honourable about being a sceptic.”
“What does it mean then when supporters of one interpretation of climate change claim that those who do not support them are deniers, not really scientists and therefore not worthy of a hearing?
It can only mean one thing. One group of people has attempted to turn its particular interpretation into a dogma that is beyond challenge. It has become a form of absolute truth. This is not a form of scientific activity but a political act.”
“Why are climate change advocates so willing to accept so much on authority and not use their critical faculties?
There is an obvious answer. Their education has taught them that the political is more important than the intellectual. Political action trumps rigorous intellectual investigation.
This attitude is no longer confined to the humanities and the social sciences; as climate change dogma indicates, it has also infected the so-called hard sciences.”
“It is a sad state of affairs. For a democracy to flourish, it needs also to be an open society in which a variety of viewpoints can jostle for public attention. When the term sceptic becomes a term of abuse, and there is willingness by many to demonise those who do not agree with them, then one must be concerned about the future of our democracy.”
Greg Melleuish The Australian January 04, 2010 12:00AM
WE are truly living in a strange world when the word sceptic, as in the term climate sceptic, has come to be used as an insult.
It used to be the case that there was something honourable about being a sceptic.
It meant one did not merely take things on trust; that one insisted on a rigorous examination of both evidence and argument before exercising one’s judgment on a particular matter.
Even then a good sceptic would recognise that this judgment was only provisional, as more evidence or a better explanation could emerge. Human beings are fallible creatures; none of us can claim to have a monopoly on truth. Be it physics, history or even climate science, there will always be competing explanations.
Attempts to impose a single model or explanation will always be doomed to failure. I recently read Ross Honeywell’s Lamarck’s Evolution, in which he discusses the career of Australian biologist Ted Steele. Steele has defied the Darwinian consensus and argues for a more Lamarckian view of evolution. Despite much opposition from within the scientific community, the evidence has emerged to support Steele’s position.
A democratic society can only flourish if it allows a range of ideas and views to thrive. Some of these ideas will turn out to be wrong; the price of openness is to allow both the sensible and the ratbags to have their say. Open societies work. Failed ideas can be discarded and replaced by better ones rather than congealing into dogmas and ideologies.
Scientific ideas, like historical interpretations, are never settled. There will always be challenges as new data comes to light.
What does it mean then when supporters of one interpretation of climate change claim that those who do not support them are deniers, not really scientists and therefore not worthy of a hearing?
It can only mean one thing. One group of people has attempted to turn its particular interpretation into a dogma that is beyond challenge. It has become a form of absolute truth. This is not a form of scientific activity but a political act.
It can be quite difficult to move from the messy world of science, its provisional explanations and need for revisions, to that of public policy in which governments take action. Definite action requires certainty. The science cannot be open to question.
There is a real conflict here between the provisional nature of scientific and academic activity and the need for governments to take clear-cut and definite action. They cannot be reconciled because those engaged in the world of ideas and science will always find qualifications and possible objections to any theory.
However, we now have a generation of scientists and academics with a desire to have an impact on the world. They are willing to create dogmas so governments will act according to their wishes. This represents the triumph of political over academic and scientific values.
I was struck recently by the similarity between the present debate on climate change and the referendum on the republic held in 1999. On that occasion I asked some of my academic colleagues their views on the effect of changing the wording of sections of the commonwealth Constitution. They told me they had not looked at the proposed changes. They would simply support the case for a republic on trust.
It seems to me that we are now in an analogous situation. Many people are supporting the case for climate change simply on trust. The scientists have spoken and they are happy to accept what they have said.
What is odd is that many of those who are willing to accept climate change dogma are well educated.
They have been educated at universities that are supposedly devoted to encouraging rigorous analysis and respect for a diversity of intellectual views.
Why are climate change advocates so willing to accept so much on authority and not use their critical faculties?
There is an obvious answer. Their education has taught them that the political is more important than the intellectual. Political action trumps rigorous intellectual investigation.
This attitude is no longer confined to the humanities and the social sciences; as climate change dogma indicates, it has also infected the so-called hard sciences.
It is a sad state of affairs. For a democracy to flourish, it needs also to be an open society in which a variety of viewpoints can jostle for public attention. When the term sceptic becomes a term of abuse, and there is willingness by many to demonise those who do not agree with them, then one must be concerned about the future of our democracy.
What is particularly worrying is that those who are leading this drive away from discussion and debate towards a passive acceptance of climate change dogma are often very well educated. What has happened to their spirit of open inquiry?
Greg Melleuish’s book The Power of Ideas is published by Australian Scholarly Publishing.
And more on Pachauri , head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
Also not that Pachauri is currently a member of the external advisory board of the Chicago Climate Exchange. Which is actually trading and profiting from the carbon trading.
Another coincidence for his “charity organization”?
Many analysts bemoan the failure of governments at December’s UN Climate Change Conference to arrive at a legally binding agreement to rescue the world from alleged pending eco-disaster. But the UN’s top climate official claims Copenhagen was, in many ways, a success.
In an interview with CNBC, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), named four achievements brought about at Copenhagen:
• ”We had over 100 heads of state and heads of government [at Copenhagen] … and they came there essentially because they thought this was an important issue.”
• ”The acceptance by at least the countries that are signatories to the accord of limiting temperature increase to 2 degree Celsius.”
• ”They have also referred to the science and the fourth assessment report of the IPPCC on the basis of which they have arrived at this figure of 2 degree increase in temperature.”
• ”The developed countries are talking about providing around USD 30 billion as assistance in the period 2010 to 2012.”
When one considers how much money Pachauri stands to gain from these outcomes, it is easy to understand why he calls Copenhagen a success. The major media and the environmental lobby may lament that Copenhagen delegates failed in their global duty, but such widely reported claims could actually make it easier for guilt-ladened governments to fall for carbon-trading schemes structured to fatten the wallets of Pachauri and his ilk.
Pachauri is hardly shy about admitting the money-making opportunities Copenhagen affords. Speaking of his native land, he said, ”For a country like India, since there will be the clean development mechanism or some such provision in any new agreement, which would allow a developed country to invest in projects over here and get credit for reduction of carbon dioxide emission, there would be huge business opportunities.”
What Pachauri calls ”business opportunities” are termed by others ”financial disaster.”Companies from developed countries that export operations to places like India leave unemployment at home and reap a hefty profit from selling their carbon permits in the global carbon trading market. Consider what happened to 1,700 steel workers from Teesside in northeast England. They lost their jobs when the steel giant Corus announced plans to close two plants and expand operations in India through its parent company, the Tata Group. After the move, Tata sold its English carbon permits for £1.2 billion, as reported by the Express.
Unencumbered by carbon restrictions in India, Tata continues belching CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate that would make Pachauri’s head spin — with delight. You see, the head of the IPCC is also director-general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a privately owned climate change think tank established by Tata in 1974. Originally known as the Tata Energy Research Institute, TERI is still solidly linked to Tata despite Pachauri’s claims to the contrary. According to the Telegraph, TERI lists one of the Tata companies among its corporate sponsors, ”several directors of Tata serve on TERI’s Business Council for Sustainable Development, and one senior director servers on Teri’s Advisory Board.”
But that is only the tip of the iceberg. The Telegraph also recently reported that Pachauri maintains ”an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organizations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.” The article went on to mention a host of links with climate change groups that present such a considerable conflict of interest that skeptics at Copenhagen called for Pachauri’s dismissal as IPCC chairman. Consider the following from the Telegraph article:
Dr. Pachauri serves on the advisory board of the Chicago Climate Exchange, the largest and most lucrative carbon-trading exchange in the world. In 2007 he was appointed to the advisory board of Siderian, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specializing in ‘sustainable technologies.’ In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of £4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund and also became a director of the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva, set up by EDF and E.On, two of Europe’s largest electricity firms, to promote ‘bio-energy.’ [In 2009] Dr. Pachauri joined the New York investment fund Pegasus as a ‘strategic adviser’ and was made chairman of the advisory board to the Asian Development Bank, strongly supportive of CDM (or Clean Development Mechanism, the UN’s profitable carbon-trading market).
He has become head of Yale University’s Climate and Energy Institute… [serves] on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank… [is] director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies… [and is] a policy adviser to SNCF, France’s state-owned railway company. In India, he serves on an array of influential government bodies, including the Economic Advisory Committee to the prime minister, holds various academic posts and has publish[ed] 22 books.
Despite all these connections, no one knows how much Pachauri earns because none of the organizations listed publish his salary or fees. Whatever his income, it is likely to rise in the coming months as carbon trading and sustainable technologies take their place as the fastest growing commodity markets in the world. Bloomberg estimates the size of the U.S. carbon market alone will be between $300 billion and $2 trillion, if current cap-and-trade legislation passes the Senate.
There is little wonder Pachauri has urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to go ”above what is going to be legislated,” as quoted in US News & World Report. The Obama administration has already announced its plans to do just that,which begs the question as to how much our own government officials stand to gain from the lucrative carbon-trading market.
We note that throughout your chairmanship of the IPCC you have also been chairman of Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), founded by the multi-billion-dollar Tata steel and energy conglomerate. In 2003 the institute, which you have headed since 1981, was renamed simply “The Energy Research Institute”.
TERI was originally founded by a consortium of Tata Group companies, initially operating from the headquarters of the Tata Group, which can trace its origins to 1868, when its founder, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, established a trading company in Bombay to deal in opium.
The Tata group is now owner of Corus Steel, which, not long ago, closed down the steelworks in Redcar, UK, putting 1,700 workers out of their jobs.Corus stands to make billions by cashing in on now-surplus EU “carbon credits” given to the steelworks. It stands to make a great deal more, via the Clean Development Mechanism that is one spin-off from the IPCC process, by transferring steel production from the Redcar works to India.
Tata stands to gain from the Clean Development Mechanism by receiving credits for notional carbon ”savings” obtained by investing in a new steel plant in the Indian province of Orissa, which will initially produce 3 million tons of hot rolled steel – exactly the capacity of the now-closed Redcar plant.
The Clean Development Mechanism, which was established to implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, is administered by the UN, of which you are a senior official. You are also an advocate for the carbon trading scheme represented by the Clean Development Mechanism.
Tata, therefore, which founded the institute (now employing 700) that you head and that has been paying you substantial benefits, has taken full and very profitable advantage of the various carbon trading schemes that you, as chairman of the IPCC, have been instrumental in establishing.
We note that you do not declare this manifest and serious conflict of interest to the extent of making explicit the connection between Tata and the institute that it had established. There is no explicit mention of the connection on the institute’s official website. There is no mention of it on your personal website. There is no mention of it on your curriculum vitae.
Indeed, a year after you were appointed chairman of the IPCC, the Tata Energy Research Institute was quietly renamed as The Energy Research Institute. The only overt link now is a listing of Tata Tea Limited – a wholly-owned division of the Tata Group – as one of the institute’s corporate sponsors.
Notwithstanding the apparent softening of your institute’s sponsorship, in reality its relation with the entire multi-billion-dollar Tata Group remains unaltered, as your communication manager Annapurna Vanchewsaran, explained in January 2003 –
”We have not severed our past relationship with the Tatas. It [the name-change from Tata Energy Research Institute to The Energy Research Institute] is only for convenience.’
We also understand that you are now Director-General of The Energy and Resources Institute in the United States, where one of your board of directors is Dr. Timothy Gregoire, JP Weyerhauser Jr. Professor of Forest Management in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, where – if our information is correct – you have been nominated to head the newly-established Yale Climate and Energy Institute.
We also understand that you are a trustee of TERI-Europe, with offices in Albert Grove, London, where two of your fellow-trustees are Sir John Houghton, a former IPCC science chairman and founder of the UK’s Hadley Centre, and Sir Crispin Tickell, author of a book on man and the climate of which the first edition said that taxpayer funding should be made available to prevent global cooling, and the current edition says taxpayer funding should be made available to prevent global warming.
TERI-Europe has recently compiled a study on ”Developing Clean Development Mechanism projects for renewable energy technologies”, sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
In 2006 BP had announced it was funding TERI in India to the tune of $9.4 million to produce biodiesel from Jatropha Curcas, a non-edible-oil-bearing crop, which could benefit from a renewable Clean Development Mechanism credit.
The project, of which you are in charge, was expected to take 10 years and would cultivate around 8000 hectares of land currently designated as wasteland with Jatropha Curcas and install all the equipment necessary for seed crushing, oil extraction and processing to produce 9 million litres of bio-diesel per annum.
Just a year later, Tata Chemicals – a wholly owned division of the Tata Group – announced plans to ”foray into biodiesel”, disclosing that it was already in talks for securing the required raw material from ”several leading plantation groups” that were engaged in growing Jatropha and pongamia plants on a commercial scale.
Tata’s closure of the Redcar steel plant, with the loss of 1700 jobs, will help the UK to meet the emission reduction targets that are currently being negotiated – under your aegis – in Copenhagen.
We have looked for your declaration of these interests in the documents of the IPCC, particularly in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, but we have not found them.
Our conclusion is that you have numerous substantial direct or indirect vested financial and commercial interests profiting from the emissions reduction processes that the documents produced by the IPCC under your chairmanship have triggered.
Finally, we note that TERI Biotech, a subdivision of TERI, is tendering for a UN contract worth $3 billion to clean up Kuwait after the oilfield fires. Once again, the conflict of interest is material and severe.
“The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals.This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers.Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.”
“ We are being told that numerical models that cannot make accurate 5- to 10-day forecasts can be simplified and run forward for 100 years with results so reliable you can impose an economic disaster on the U.S. and the world.”
Now that Copenhagen is past history, what is the next step in the man-made global warming controversy? Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by “Climategate.”
If you have not heard, hackers penetrated the computers of the Climate Research Unit, or CRU, of the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, exposing thousands of e-mails and other documents. CRU is one of the top climate research centers in the world. Many of the exchanges were between top mainstream climate scientists in Britain and the U.S. who are closely associated with the authoritative (albeit controversial) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among the more troubling revelations were data adjustments enhancing the perception that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Particularly disturbing was the way the core IPCC scientists (the believers) marginalized the skeptics of the theory that man-made global warming is large and potentially catastrophic. The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals.This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers.Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.
Climate alarmists would like you to believe the science has been settled and all respectable atmospheric scientists support their position. The believers also would like you to believe the skeptics are involved only because of the support of Big Oil and that they are few in number with minimal qualifications.
But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified. Several years ago two scientists at the University of Oregon became so concerned about the overemphasis on man-made global warming that they put a statement on their Web site and asked for people’s endorsement; 32,000 have signed the petition, including more than 9,000 Ph.Ds.More than 700 scientists have endorsed a 231-page Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute has recently sponsored three international meetings for skeptics. More than 800 scientists heard 80 presentations in March. They endorsed an 881-page document, created by 40 authors with outstanding academic credentials, that challenges the most recent publication by the IPCC. The IPCC panel’s report strongly concludes that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide.
Last year 60 German scientists sent a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to “strongly reconsider” her position supporting man-made global warming. Sixty scientists in Canada took similar action. Recently, when the American Physical Society published its support for man-made global warming, 200 of its members objected and demanded that the membership be polled to determine the APS’ true position.
What do the skeptics believe? First, they concur with the believers that the Earth has been warming since the end of a Little Ice Age around 1850. The cause of this warming is the question. Believers think the warming is man-made, while the skeptics believe the warming is natural and contributions from man are minimal and certainly not potentially catastrophic à la Al Gore.
Second, skeptics argue that CO2 is not a pollutant but vital for plant life. Numerous field experiments have confirmed that higher levels of CO2 are positive for agricultural productivity. Furthermore, carbon dioxide is a very minor greenhouse gas. More than 90 percent of the warming from greenhouse gases is caused by water vapor. If you are going to change the temperature of the globe, it must involve water vapor.
Third, and most important, skeptics believe that climate models are grossly overpredicting future warming from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide. We are being told that numerical models that cannot make accurate 5- to 10-day forecasts can be simplified and run forward for 100 years with results so reliable you can impose an economic disaster on the U.S. and the world.
The revelation of ClimateÂgate occurs at a time when the accuracy of the climate models is being seriously questioned. Over the last decade Earth’s temperature has not warmed, yet every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the next century?
Climategate reveals how predetermined political agendas shaped science rather than the other way around. It is high time to question the true agenda of the scientists now on the hot seat and to bring skeptics back into the public debate.
Neil Frank, who holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University in meteorology, was director of the NationalHurricaneCenter (1974–87) and chief meteorologist at KHOU (Channel 11) until his retirement in 2008.
As a complement to my previous post here is more on the Met Offices political agenda to spread the Global Warming Hysteria. And at the same time failing miserable in their forecasts 3 years in a row now. This is what they are supposed to be “expert” at.
AND REMEMBER, THE WHOLE GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA IS BASED ON THE SAME COMPUTER MODELS!
“Spinning a coin could have given the same result – not one you would expect from an organisation that spends nearly £170million a year, has 1,500 staff and a team of scientists operating a £30million supercomputer capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second, with a carbon footprint the size of a small town.”
“The point of this row – which is often poorly understood – is that the so-called ‘global temperature’ which these scientists produce, upon which rests the whole case for ‘dangerous global warming’, is not a matter of observed fact.
The data collection system is far from perfect, designed primarily for weather recording, not long-term climate prediction. Reflecting the military origins of the Met Office, many weather stations are situated on airfields. They are there to provide real-time observations for aviators and to provide the basis for short-term forecasts. They are not climate monitoring stations and arguably should not be used as such.
Furthermore, the likes of Manchester and Aberdeen airports, which were once grass airstrips, are now vast stretches of concrete, ramping up temperatures well above the surrounding countryside. This is known as the urban heat island effect. “
“The Met Office seems to have forgotten what it was set up for – to predict weather day by day. Instead, it is devoting it energies to the fantasy that it can predict climate decades ahead when it cannot even tell you whether it is going to snow next week, or whether we might have a barbecue summer.”
It has a gigantic supercomputer, 1,500 staff and a £170m-a-year budget. So why does the Met Office get it so wrong?
By Richard North
Last updated at 10:12 PM on 02nd January 2010
‘Cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy-consuming areas of the northern hemisphere. The first 15 days of the opening of the New Year will be the coldest, population weighted, north of 30 [degrees] north worldwide in over 25 years.’
That is the chilling (quite literally) verdict of Joe Bastardi, a weather forecaster on the American TV channel AccuWeather.
Yet, while many months ago he and several of his rivals correctly forecast a pre-Christmas freeze, the organisation that told us last year to prepare for a ‘barbecue summer’ was getting it wrong again.
This is our own famous Met Office, which last September confidently predicted a warmer than average winter for Britain. Tell that to Eurostar passengers stuck in the Channel Tunnel for 18 hours before Christmas, the breakdown of their trains blamed on the coldest weather for 15 years.
Not until late November did the Met Office tone down its prediction by saying that there was a ’50 per cent chance’ of a mild winter.
Spinning a coin could have given the same result – not one you would expect from an organisation that spends nearly £170million a year, has 1,500 staff and a team of scientists operating a £30million supercomputer capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second, with a carbon footprint the size of a small town.
Yet even with this brand-new computer in action since last August, on December 10 the Met Office predicted that it was ‘more likely than not that 2010 will be the warmest year in the instrumental record, beating the previous record year which was 1998′. That prediction stands unchanged.
How could the Met Office be so wrong, both about its barbecue summer and the mild winter? And could the answer to that question have anything to do with its remarkable transformation in recent years?
From a fuddy-duddy organisation created in 1854 to provide a service to mariners, and then aviators when the aeroplane was invented, the Met Office became an arm of the Ministry of Defence. But it has since transmuted into a powerful advocacy unit that sees its main mission to convince the world that we are prey to ‘ dangerous climate change’.
Much of this is down to one man – John Houghton (now Sir John) who was the director-general and later chief executive of the Met Office between 1983 and 1991.
It was he, way back in 1988, who attended the first World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in Toronto and later became the first scientific chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It was Houghton who, with one of her senior advisers, Sir Crispin Tickell, convinced the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to fund a new Met Office unit called the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. Opened in 1990, it is now based in Exeter and employs more than 200 staff, having become a temple to what many regard as the climate change ‘religion’.
Its pivotal role is now well-recognised as it is this centre, working with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, that produces one of the most relied-upon data sets used to track the global temperature and tell us that the planet is heating up.
Crucially, it is that same CRU that has been embroiled in the so-called ‘Warmergate’ scandal, where leaked emails suggest that climate scientists may have manipulated the evidence when it did not give the answers that proved that global warming was continuing. The University of East Anglia has ordered an independent review into the Warmergate row and the allegations made against the CRU.
The point of this row – which is often poorly understood – is that the so-called ‘global temperature’ which these scientists produce, upon which rests the whole case for ‘dangerous global warming’, is not a matter of observed fact.
The data collection system is far from perfect, designed primarily for weather recording, not long-term climate prediction. Reflecting the military origins of the Met Office, many weather stations are situated on airfields. They are there to provide real-time observations for aviators and to provide the basis for short-term forecasts. They are not climate monitoring stations and arguably should not be used as such.
Furthermore, the likes of Manchester and Aberdeen airports, which were once grass airstrips, are now vast stretches of concrete, ramping up temperatures well above the surrounding countryside. This is known as the urban heat island effect.
Because of this effect, instrument changes, inbuilt errors and the huge gaps in the record, the crude data has to be ‘adjusted’ – sometimes several times. Then sophisticated statistical techniques have to be applied before a single global figure can be produced.
The complexity of the calculations, and the considerable element of human judgment in choosing which of the limited number of specific temperatures to use from the thousands of weather stations all over the world,leave the process wide open to error and bias. Thus, the final results may actually reflect, to one degree or another, no more than the opinions of the scientists producing them.
This is where the good faith and the impartiality of the scientists involved is so important, and why the Warmergate scandal was so damaging. Far from being impartial custodians of the truth, some scientists were shown to have feet of clay, guarding their own patch rather than the science.
This was reinforced shortly after Warmergate, when Russian analysts complained that the Hadley Centre had been ‘cherry-picking’ temperatures from the Russian data set, using only those that were untypically high. Similar complaints have been made of the United States’ data set, where urban heat island effect and positioning errors may taint as much as 80 per cent of the weather station records. Last month the Met Office denied ‘cherry-picking’ and said it used data from a network of individual stations designated by the World Meteorological Organisation.
But there is an even greater reason to doubt the impartiality of the Met Office and the Hadley Centre. Having had at its helm Sir John Houghton, a conviction ‘warmist’, in 2006 it acquired a new and highly controversial chairman – Robert Napier.
Described as a ‘committed conservationist’ and then a ‘passionate environmentalist’, before taking over the most senior position at the Met Office, Napier had for seven years been the chief executive of World Wildlife Fund-UK, one of the foremost activist groups in the climate-change business.
Up to then, WWF was primarily concerned with wildlife issues and conservation. It is widely acknowledged that Napier put climate change on the map during his tenure, using his position to ‘leverage the power and experience of the whole organisation’, changing its focus to the extent that campaigning on this issue became its main activity.
Among other things, he was particularly effective in making alliances with big business, doing deals with the likes of the insurance giant Allianz and convincing the company that there was money to be made out of climate change.
Bizarrely, although the Met Office is still part of the MoD and its staff are civil servants (who, as the Met Office itself says, ‘cannot support individual campaigns that actively lobby for policy change’), the organisation has taken its cue from its new leader. It has become a powerful and vocal climate-change lobbyist, contributing hugely to the climate-change conference in Copenhagen last month, at which it launched its prediction that this year would be the hottest on record.
That raises the question whether the Met Office can still be relied upon to give accurate forecasts. Predicting the weather – both short-term and long – is not an exact science. Computers can do the number crunching but the programs or ‘models’ they work to are devised by human beings.
Exactly the same computer models that are used to forecast that we will fry by the year 2030, 2050 or even 2080, are also those used to produce the shorter-range forecasts. It was these models, back in September, that told us we were going to have a mild winter.
But the problems do not stop there. From a technical body, the Met Office has now become the producer and purveyor of endless propaganda on climate change. Its latest production is an expensive, glossy, 20-page pamphlet. It is packed with highly controversial and disputed assertions that are delivered with the authority of a government agency as if they were unarguable fact.
There is no room for doubt, for instance, in the assertion that humans are causing climate change.
‘Human activities like burning coal, oil and gas have led to…extra warming. As a result, over the past century there has been an underlying increase in average temperatures which is continuing.’
Yet no discernible warming has been recorded since 1998.
Indeed, it has snowed in the UK for the past three years, famously last October as MPs were voting through the Climate Change Bill. Each winter has been harsher than the last, and many independent meteorologists, including Joe Bastardi, believe the Earth has entered a cooling cycle.
What was once a highly respected organisation risks becoming a laughing stock in the weather community and a danger to the rest of us.
Farmers who rely on the Met Office risk their animals dying and their crops being destroyed. Local authorities, who ran down their grit stocks because the Met Office said it would be mild, are putting the lives of motorists and pedestrians at risk. Airlines, unprepared for the snow, have lost millions of pounds, while the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of people have been disrupted.
The Met Office seems to have forgotten what it was set up for – to predict weather day by day. Instead, it is devoting it energies to the fantasy that it can predict climate decades ahead when it cannot even tell you whether it is going to snow next week, or whether we might have a barbecue summer.
“The reason the Met Office so persistently gets its seasonal forecasts wrong is that it has been hi-jacked from the role for which we pay it nearly £200 million a year, to become one of the world’s major propaganda engines for the belief in man-made global warming.Over the past three years, it has become a laughing stock for forecasts which are invariably wrong in the same direction.”
The UK’s official weather forecasters are determined that winters should be mild, in the face of the frozen facts, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:12PM GMT 02 Jan 2010
Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, as 200,000 merrymakers were departing from the Thames after enjoying a spectacular fireworks show in sub-zero temperatures, flakes of snow began to fall on Whitehall. In light of the Met Office’s prediction that this would be a ”mild” winter, with temperatures above average, it seemed an apt way to start the New Year. But hasn’t the time come for us to stop treating the serial inaccuracy of Met Office forecasts as just a joke and see it for what it is – a national scandal?
The reason the Met Office so persistently gets its seasonal forecasts wrong is that it has been hi-jacked from the role for which we pay it nearly £200 million a year, to become one of the world’s major propaganda engines for the belief in man-made global warming.Over the past three years, it has become a laughing stock for forecasts which are invariably wrong in the same direction.
The year 2007, it predicted, would be ”the warmest ever” – just before global tempratures plunged by more than the entire net warming of the 20th century, Three years running it predicted warmer than average winters – as large parts of the northern hemisphere endured record cold and snowfalls. Last year’s ”barbecue summer” was the third time running that predictions of a summer drier and warmer than average prefaced weeks of rain and cold. Last week the Met Office was again predicting that 2010 will be the ”warmest year” on record, while Europe and the US look to be facing further weeks of intense cold.
What is not generally realised is that the UK Met Office has been, since 1990, at the very centre of the campaign to convince the world that it faces catastrophe through global warming. (Its website now proclaims it to be ”the Met Office for Weather and Climate Change”.) Its then-director, Dr John Houghton, was the single most influential figure in setting up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the chief driver of climate alarmism. Its Hadley Centre for Climate Change, along with the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), was put in charge of the most prestigious of the four official global temperature records. In line with IPCC theory, its computers were programmed to predict that, as CO2 levels rose, temperatures would inevitably follow. From 1990 to 2007, the Department of the Environment gave the Met Office no less than £146 million for its ”climate predictions programme”.
But in the past three years, with the Met Office chaired by Robert Napier, a former global warming activist and previously head of WWF UK, its pretensions have been exposed as never before. The ”Climategate” leak of documents from the CRU, along with further revelations from Russian scientists, have shown the CRU/Met Office alliance systematically manipulating temperature data, past and present, to show the world growing warmer than the evidence justified. And those same computers used to predict temperatures 100 years ahead for the IPCC have also been used to produce those weather forecasts that prove so consistently wrong.
Scientific method has gone out of the window, to support a theory that looks more questionable than ever. The whole set-up – Met Office, Hadley Centre, the CRU, the IPCC – looks hopelessly compromised. It is a state of affairs so bizarre that it cries out for political intervention. Yet our politicians, from Gordon Brown and David Cameron down, are so in thrall to this new religion that they cannot see evidence staring them in the face – that the show has gone off the rails. How many more winters and summers will it take before sanity finally breaks in to put an end to this scandal?
And more on Pachauri , head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
“What we are seeing here though is an interesting modus vivendi – three different payments to support the chairman of the IPCC, yet each payment is made by a different organisation to a different organisation – one in the US, one in the UK and one in India. No one knows what the other is doing – except Pachauri, of course.
On top of that, of course, multi-millionaire businessman Pachauri has a separate funding stream from the IPCC, which pays his salary and – crucially – his travel expenses.Already, we have seen him claim from the IPCC for a journeys to London and Delhiwhich were clearly private business.”
First, as we reported yesterday, we have the £30,417 donated by DEFRA, paid to TERI Europe via Cambridge University to cover Pachauri’s salary and travel in producing a Synthesis Report of the IPCC AR4.
Then, gleaned from the IRS return submitted by TERI-NA (North America) for the financial year ending in 2009, we get the information that a $27,000 donation was made by the Germehausen Foundation, ”to support outreach efforts on the fourth assessment report of the IPCC.”The cash was remitted to TERI India, its obvious intended recipient being R K Pachauri.
Now we have the European Climate Foundation which, in the grant year 2009, makes a donation of an unspecified amount, direct to TERI India. This is to ”facilitate meetings between Dr R K Pachauri and key European decision makers in support of an international agreement on climate change.”
This one should be of special interest to James Delingpole who reveals in his latest piece that he has a family friend who works for the Foundation. Perhaps he can ask him next time they meet how much cash went Dr Pachauri’s way.
What we are seeing here though is an interesting modus vivendi – three different payments to support the chairman of the IPCC, yet each payment is made by a different organisation to a different organisation – one in the US, one in the UK and one in India. No one knows what the other is doing – except Pachauri, of course.
On top of that, of course, multi-millionaire businessman Pachauri has a separate funding stream from the IPCC, which pays his salary and – crucially – his travel expenses.Already, we have seen him claim from the IPCC for a journeys to London and Delhiwhich were clearly private business.
This scam, it seems, was also played out in China when the good doctor claims a trip from Aomori in Japan to Peking on 23 April 2007, to attend a Low-carbon Economy Seminar of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, then flying off to Bangkok on 29 April.
On the participants’ list, he is indentified as the ”Director General, TATA Energy Research Institute, India” (someone has not told the Chinese about the name change) and it is clear from a subsequent eventthat Pachauri is doing business on behalf of TERI with the Chinese.
Pachauri is in fact a member of the China Council and one wonders which – or how many – people paid his expenses for the meetings. It takes until 2008 before he is described as Director General, the Energy & Resources Institute, India and Chair of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which presumably then allows him to claim legally from the IPCC.
With so many paymasters though, and such a multiplicity of payment routes, Pachauri’s financial affairs should be raising these sort of alarm signals. This man, however, seems to be above the law.
A long interview with Professor S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist, Professor Emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, specializing in planetary science, global warming, ozone depletion, and other global environmental issues. He was a Special Advisor on space developments to President Eisenhower and the first Director of the National Weather Satellite Service Center.
Singer: Yes, global mean temperatures have been increasing since 1978, or since 1910, or since 1600, or since the last ice age ended, around 8,000 BC. Global climate has always changed and we should be grateful that we’re in one of those warming periods, which have always been beneficial to humans.
Scientists have been able to identify some of the temperature cycles in nature, but historic data is sparse and inconsistent, depending on conflicting proxies for temperature measurements. Our best global temperature measures are from satellites and weather balloons, covering only the last few decades.
If we use the standard definition of climate as 30-year norms, we don’t have accurate data for even one cycle. Our best measures indicate that global temperatures have been stable, or slightly declining, over the past decade.
Examiner: Is recent global warming exceptional?
Singer: Not in terms of decadal, much less millennial, trends. Several natural cycles, like El Niño, solar intensity, and ocean currents have probably influenced the minor warming trends of the last three decades. In the context of ice ages, the globe is approaching another ice age, just as it has been doing every100,000 years or so.
Ice core sampling doesn’t produce high-resolution data, like modern satellites do, so the short-term variations can’t be compared. During the past decade, annual averages have fallen and trends have stabilized.
Some temperature charts give the impression of exceptional warming because they begin at the trough of prior cool periods, such as the Little Ice Age and Maunder Minimum. Most charts start at 1890, when we first started to estimate global temperatures from direct instrumentation. There’s nothing exceptional about that date in terms of industrialization or the intensive use of fossil fuels, which accelerated several decades later.
Examiner: But, the North Pole is melting, polar bears are dying, and sea levels are rising. Right?
Singer: Let’s take those one at a time. When global temperatures are increasing, the amount of sea ice decreases. Arctic ice cover has been decreasing. Some of our media expresses surprise that some northern shipping lanes are nearly ice free. They shouldn’t be shocked. Just a hundred years ago, Roald Amundsen navigated the Northwest Passage, above Canada, in a wooden boat, when no icebreakers existed. Baron Adolf Nordenskiöld sailed through the Northeast Passage, above Russia, in 1878. It’s really nothing new.
Remember that Arctic ice cover is only ten percent of the global area, with the remainder in Antarctica. We’ve been able to accurately measure total global ice cover by satellite since 1979 and the trend line is nearly flat, with some decreases in the Northern Hemisphere and some increases in the Southern.
I’m no expert on polar bears, but there was over-hunting in the 1970s that reduced the population. Since restrictions were imposed, almost all of those populations have recovered. The bottom line is that polar bears don’t need ice to survive; they need open water, where they catch and eat seals. [Reference]
Sea levels. It is absolutely true that sea levels are rising. It’s also absolutely true that they’ve been rising at about the same rate for the past 3000 years; roughly 7 inches per century. [Reference]
Let me add another: retreating glaciers. There are many anecdotal stories about mountain glaciers fading away in temperate climes. Mount Kilimanjaro is one. Scientists have studied the causes and discovered that global warming is not the culprit. Changing humidity, prevailing winds, and deforestation explain almost all of the retreat.
Exclusive Examiner Interview: Part 2
Examiner: Does carbon dioxide cause global warming?
Singer: Carbon dioxide is a trace gas that doesn’t produce any heat of its own, but it does act like a blanket. Most solar rays pass through it, warming the earth. Most heat radiated from earth is absorbed and then re-emitted by the CO2 or, more importantly, by water vapor. That’s why CO2 is called a ”greenhouse gas”, even though it doesn’t actually retain heat in exactly that same way that a sealed greenhouse does. Nevertheless, it is certainly one factor that affects the amount of retained heat on earth and therefore the dominant temperature.
In theory, any warming caused by CO2 will be most evident in the upper troposphere, where most commercial airliners fly, particularly over the tropics. If atmospheric CO2 were the primary cause of increased global temperatures, the increase would be even more pronounced at those altitudes. The most accurate measurements indicated that, over the last three decades, there has only been slight warming. So, it’s very hard to make the case that CO2 is a primary factor. [Reference] [Reference]
More important, the Vostok ice core studies demonstrate that increased CO2 concentrations follow the millennial temperature increases by about a thousand years. That’s been true for hundreds of thousands of years. The common sense view is that warming causes more CO2, not that higher CO2 causes warming. Of course, there are fudge factors. We don’t know exactly how fast CO2 is absorbed – we call it ‘sequestered’ – in the oceans during temperature declines, nor do we know how fast it is released when atmospheric temperatures rise. What we don’t know far exceeds what we do know.
What people should know is that CO2 is only one of a half-dozen greenhouse gases [GHG] in the atmosphere. Most of them have a stronger effect on warming than CO2 and the overwhelming GHG is simple water vapor. Almost all of the alarming computer models have to assume some positive feedback effect, so that CO2 increases cause more water vapor, multiplying the greenhouse effect, in order to portray CO2 as a causative effect of warming. Those computer models have thousands of related assumptions that haven’t been scientifically demonstrated by actual, confirmed testing.
So, to answer your question, yes: CO2 concentrations certainly have some effect on global temperatures. It’s just that the predicted effects aren’t evident and CO2 alone may be a relatively insignificant factor in warming.
Examiner: Isn’t CO2 a pollutant, as designated by the Environmental Protection Agency?
Singer: The EPA was given a very broad mandate by Congress, granting them control over any substance that they believed might cause harm. They simply accepted the U.N. conclusions that anthropogenic CO2 causes warming and all warming causes harm. Neither conclusion is defensible, but the agency has accepted them as the scientific consensus, so they want to impose restrictions on CO2 emissions. Consensus is totally irrelevant to science, but it’s very important to politics. Ask Galileo.
We learned in grade school that CO2 is absolutely essential to all life on earth. If it didn’t exist, all plants would die and every animal would eventually starve to death, including every human. Calling CO2 a pollutant is silly, or at least a very bad euphemism. If the EPA were to strictly follow its mandate, it would punish every human being that exhaled.
It is absolutely true that CO2 can be dangerous to your health, but only if concentrations are extremely high, more than 20 times the present level. We have to get a significant amount of plain old oxygen in every breath we take. But, you don’t have to worry about too much CO2 fizz in your soda, seltzer, or champagne.
Examiner: Hasn’t the burning of fossil fuels by humans produced a lot of CO2 over the past century?
Singer: Yes, but you have to put that in context. While natural sources of CO2 are twenty times greater than human sources, the observed rise in the past 150 years is almost all anthropogenic, mostly from burning of fossil fuels, from cement manufacture, and from land clearing. The influence of all CO2 is guesstimated at less than 10 percent of the total greenhouse effect, with water vapor the main GHG.
Now, put those greenhouse effects into the context of all the other temperature factors, like changes in solar activity, cloud cover, and ocean circulation. The human impact on warming becomes inconsequential.
Given that the ”fingerprint” of CO2 warming has not been detected, we should discount the influence of human fossil fuel combustion to practically zero.
Beyond that cursory evaluation, there are many confounding factors in the analysis of CO2 influence on warming. As global temperatures increase, some CO2 dissolved in the oceans is released into the atmosphere. At the same time, increased temperatures and CO2 encourage plant growth, which increases the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere. Earth’s climate is a complex and chaotic system. We only understand a few of the interactive components that influence temperature. There is no scientific certainty about all the causative factors, much less a consensus that humans have caused recent warming.
Exclusive Examiner Interview: Part 3
Examiner: Does the International Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] have it all wrong?
Singer: The Panel was established by members of the United Nations with an assortment of political objectives in mind. Hundreds of scientists are doing commendable research and they have contributed to many of the Working Group reports, but they don’t participate in writing the final ”Summary for Policymakers” that gets all the attention of media and national leaders. The IPCC procedure actually requires the Working Group reports to conform with the political conclusions of the Summary, written and negotiated by a group of U.N. politicians.
No doubt, there are some scientists who want to collect large government grants for studying climate. The recent release of emails from the East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit suggests that some of them want to provide their employers with an unjustified political consensus that serves their purposes.
Thousands of competent scientists who have scrutinized the IPCC reports agree that many of the conclusions are unsupported by the scientific evidence. Many IPCC reviewers have publicly rejected the Summary’s conclusions. In my opinion, every good scientist is a skeptic. Humans don’t dictate facts to nature. As our knowledge of global climate improves, we may discover that all of the popular assumptions are wrong.
Examiner: How did the anthropogenic theory get started and why has it been so popular?
Singer: There have always been people who recognized that pollution was a problem and adopted the perspective that the natural environment needed to be protected from human abuse. If I were to speculate, I suppose the Wicca religion created the seeds in Europe. Native American traditions and fables had an influence in the United States. But that’s sociology, not science.
In the scientific community, the idea of human causation was probably started by David Keeling in 1958, when he observed that CO2 increases he was measuring at the South Pole seemed to match the increase in the combustion of fossil fuels during recent decades. Keeling devoted most of his life to measuring atmospheric CO2 and founded the modern research facility at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. His speculation wasn’t improper and his surmise was certainly worthy of investigation, but many scientists adopted the proposition of anthropogenic causation as a matter of faith.
I don’t like to speculate about people’s motives, but there are many reasons that scientists, politicians, and businessmen latched on to the anthropogenic theory. For scientists, it was an interesting idea and may have been related to their field of study, usually meteorology. Twenty years ago, there were no ”climate scientists”, nor any PhD in ”Climatology”, so it was an enticing field, open for exploration.
The idea that humans might be responsible for a potentially damaging warming trend certainly appealed to politicians, particularly those with a strong ”environmental” record and reputation. It was a chance to “save the world” and be a hero. I won’t even mention the name of one politician who has made it a career.
Finally, when governments began adopting policies that embraced the anthropogenic theory, money started flowing. Businessmen saw an opportunity for profit and took advantage of financial incentives and government subsidies. The tempting promise of huge profits probably encouraged a transition from legitimate pollution control investments to energy opportunities. The speculative ”sustainable” technology required equipment and servicing; the new ”climate modeling” required huge supercomputers and programmers; and the proposed ”carbon markets” needed traders, speculators, and investors. Beyond all that, businesses want to develop a good image and are anxious to be associated with popular trends. So, ”BP” no longer stands for ”British Petroleum”, it means ”Beyond Petroleum”.
All of those trends feed back into the faith-driven scientists, who are expected to maintain the appearance of a consensus, suppress skepticism, and ensure that the published facts conform to the objectives of business and politics. It’s the ultimate in bio-feedback loops.
Examiner: Whether you’re right or wrong, do you think the Kyoto Protocol or energy taxes have any merit?
Singer: Let’s assume that I’m stupid and crazy? If fossil fuel combustion were a problem, there is a vast array of scientific mitigation measures that could be effective. There is also plenty of speculation about relatively simple, but global-scale, interventions that might impede warming. I would be very reluctant to assume responsibility for a project that might very well move the globe, more quickly than nature otherwise would, into the next Ice Age. I suppose, if I were a crazed fanatic I would encourage people to burn as much fossil fuel as possible to forestall eventual global cooling. I wouldn’t expect anyone to follow that advice, but it might make me a famous … or infamous … celebrity. But then, of course, higher levels of CO2 would benefit agriculture and save the lives of millions around the world, especially children, who now suffer from malnutrition
Kyoto is a strange blend of superficial government promises and artificial market incentives. It hasn’t worked, even for the limited purposes and goals it had set for itself, primarily because of the absence of any enforcement measures. I would be the last person to propose some global government that actually had the power to impose strict limits on energy use or emissions worldwide. That’s a huge amount of power, which would surely result in a huge amount of international corruption.
There are several energy tax schemes that have been proposed by warming advocates. They’re taking the popular approach, politically: there are very few politicians who don’t salivate at the thought of some new method of imposing taxes that they can spend. Saving the world from some despicable horror sells well; persuading people … or forcing other people … to make financial sacrifices for the ”common good”. I’m a scientist, not a politician, so my sole interest is in finding the truth. That requires evidence, based on data and verifiable facts. I don’t think I could stomach the process of writing laws to force people to conform with my own sentiments, passions, and beliefs. To each his own.
Examiner: You’ve devoted a lot of time and energy to this debate. Are you optimistic or pessimistic?
Singer: I am really quite optimistic. I am sure that sound science must — and will — win out in the long run and convince not only scientists but also the public and politicians that climate change is almost all natural, and that a modest warming, should it occur, is good for humanity overall. The revelations of “ClimateGate” will be very helpful here and show how a gang of determined climatologists was able to con almost everyone by cooking the data and stifling any scientific criticism from ‘skeptics.’
Of course, ‘long run’ may mean many more years — during which the alarmists will try to impose policies that produce great economic hardships for no good reason. I fear especially those who have learned to game the system and are using global warming scares to enrich themselves at our expense. I won’t mention names but you know who they are: Utopians who believe that global governance will lead to a better world; Luddites who oppose technological advance and economic growth; international bureaucrats and profiteers who want power and money. If they ever gain the upper hand, the world may have a difficult time recovering.
I hope I can be around when we can look back on past decades and say: ”How could this climate insanity have fooled so many smart people?”
And friends of Pachauri, the head of IPCC., who are helping him with his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
“Friends of R K Pachauri, it seems, tend to do rather well out of their association with the man.”
And do you think that media is going to follow up un all these angels on Mr Pachauri, officially an UN employee and ALL HIS BUSINESS DEALINGS WHICH PROFIT DIRECTLY FROM HIS UN POSITION?
In a small step sideways from looking at TERI-Europe, we need to pick up a few loose ends before progressing the story.
We thus return to Ritu Kumar, whom we met in an earlier piece. She has it seems a taste for directorships, and is turning out to be a past master at multi-tasking.
It is not enough for this lady that she should be a director and company secretary of Pachauri’s little enterprise, TERI-Europe, the Executive Director of the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre (STIC), a consultant to the Commonwealth Science Council and a senior adviser for Actis UK.
For the idle moments in her otherwise busy life, she as acquired another directorship, this time of a company called Investor Watch, formed on 27 April 2009. Her co-directors are Cary Krosinsky and Mark A Campanale, the latter being responsible for company research on the Jupiter Merlin Ecology Fund, the Merlin International Green Investment Trust PLC and the Skandia Ethical Selection Fund at Jupiter Tyndall Merlin.
Having placed the marker, we will return to these two gentlemen and their shared enterprise in due course. Both have very interesting links into the green movement. But we need also to look briefly at another of Kumar’s co-directors of this newly-formed company, none other than Nicholas Vivian James Robins (pictured).
It is he, we ascertained in our previous piece, shares ownership of 27 Albert Grove with Ritu Kumar, the rather unlikely registered office of Pachauri’s TERI-Europe. Both give this address as their residence.
Amongst his other activities, he is a leading light in the Network for Sustainable Financial Markets but his current paying day-job is director of the HSBC’s Climate Change Centre of Excellence, which he joined in late 2007.
He started off his career with the Economist Intelligence Unit, moved to the EU Commission’s Environmental Directorate and thence to the Business Council for Sustainable Development. From there moved to the International Institute for Environment and Development, before ending up with Henderson Global Investors, where he was head of SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) funds prior to joining HSBC.
If this is an interesting snapshot of a green activist pursuing his career path, what Robins does not reveal in his general cv (apart from the fact that he is living in the ”head office” of TERI-Europe, prop. R K Pachauri) is that he is an active member of the Green Party – and has recently been a generous donor, contributing £5,500 to the party coffers. Moreover, he stood for election as a councillor in the 2006 local elections in his home area, the London Borough of Merton.
Here, strangely, there is a link with TERI, because TERI-Europe claims as one of its ”partners” the London Borough of Merton which it assisted in ”organizing a major seminar on energy efficiency and in incorporating renewable energy technologies in building design.”
Why a suburban London Borough should need the help of the European arm of an Indian ”think tank” is not explained. Even less so is why theseminar was funded by the European Union under its €42.3 million ”Asia Urbs ” project. However, as first sight, this looks to be a mechanism for channelling EU funds into TERI. Was Robins involved?
Whether there was a link, there is certainly a more tangible association between Robins’s employer, HSBC, and an offshoot of TERI-India known as the TERI Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD). In partnership with this organisation, the HSBC proudly sponsors the Living Business SME Award.
Whether there is link between Robins and this award, again is not stated, but HSBC have certainly benefitted from their sponsorship. On 5 February 2009 at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, Naina Lal Kidwai, Group General Manager and Country Head, HSBC India, was presented by Dr R K Pachuri with the ”prestigious” Green Globe Award in the business enterprise category ”for her commitment to environment sustainability”.
Sponsored by the newly-formed Green Global Foundation, the initiative of the Indian Film Academy and Wizcraft International Entertainment, UNEP and TERI, headed by R K Pachauri, are the partners of the foundation.
Friends of R K Pachauri, it seems, tend to do rather well out of their association with the man.
And more on Pachauri , head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
“Everything about the organisation is shrouded in mystery and even the most straightforward of details raise serious questions about its operations. For instance, the organisation was incorporated on 10th June 1999, its articles then amended by special resolution dated 2 September 1999. But, although it is registered as a charity, it seems to be running an accumulated deficit over the last five years. “
“Nevertheless, this ”charity” is also registered as a company, and it tells the Company Registrar that it has a healthy cash balance, currently listing its cash assets as £63,000, which happens also to be the ”capital employed” by its two directors. One, rather predictably, is Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri – who gives his address as 160 Golf Links, New Delhi.”
“What all makes this so very mysterious is that, despite the incredibly low level of trading, TERI-Europe seems to be able to afford the services of the likes of Mortier, to say nothing of Ritu Kumar, who rather hides her light under a bushel, as far as the TERI-Europe website goes. Furthermore, she seems to have several different versions of her cv.” http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/pachauri-teri-europe-enigma-part-1.html
Pachauri: TERI-Europe – the enigma (Part 1)
Posted by Richard Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Part of the great global empire controlled by Dr Rajendra Pachauri is an organisation called TERI-Europe. And, like everything to do with Dr Pachauri, it is not quite what it seems, apparently enjoying a flood of grant-funded work, yet living off thin air.
Everything about the organisation is shrouded in mystery and even the most straightforward of details raise serious questions about its operations. For instance, the organisation was incorporated on 10th June 1999, its articles then amended by special resolution dated 2 September 1999. But, although it is registered as a charity, it seems to be running an accumulated deficit over the last five years.
In its year ending 30 June 2004, it reported an income of £21,286 yet showed an expenditure of £35,403. The following year, it attracted a paltry £456 yet still managed to spend £24,379. For the next two years, it took in £7,000 and £9,000 respectively, spending £8,100 and then £5,000. In its year ending 30 June 2008, it made £8,000 and spent £3,000. Grossing just over £45,000 in the period, that left it short by about £30,000.
Nevertheless, this ”charity” is also registered as a company, and it tells the Company Registrar that it has a healthy cash balance, currently listing its cash assets as £63,000, which happens also to be the ”capital employed” by its two directors. One, rather predictably, is Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri – who gives his address as 160 Golf Links, New Delhi.
But we also have a new (to us) character on the scene. She is Ritu Kumar (pictured), the second of TERI-Europe’s two directors. Kumar describes herself as an ”environmental economist”. She is also the company secretary.
The next strange – very strange – fact is that you might expect this hub of empire to be registered at a prestigious central London address – in common with the Washington office.Instead, it is located in an unprepossessing Edwardian detached residential house, deep in suburban Merton on the fringes of South London. This, Ritu Kumar also gives as her address – 27 Albert Grove, London, SW20 8PZ (pictured, below right).
That she gives it as her address is unsurprising. She is what the Land Registry describes as the ”proprietor”, along with a certain Nicholas Vivian James Robins, who also gives this as his address. The property was purchased for £215,000 on 15 April 1999 – two months before TERI-Europe was incorporated – with a mortgage from the Nationwide Building Society. But this was paid off on 28 September 2001, when Kumar and Robins assumed ”title absolute”, becoming the legal owners of the property. We will have a closer look at Robins later.
To add to the mystery, there is no mention of company directors in the official TERI-Europe website, which claims that the organisation was ”set up by TERI India”. This it clearly was not.But Pachauri is not listed as a director – only as a ”trustee”, along with a galaxy of notables, including Sir John Houghton and Sir Crispin Tickell – who would hardly be seen dead in Merton.
Ritu Kumar, just as strangely, is not identified as a director either – much less as the Secretary of the company. She is mentioned only as a ”contact” – with the Albert Grove address and a TERI-India e-mail.
There is also another ”contact”, a lady called Rochelle Mortier. She has a very interestingcv, currently working for Alexander Ballard Ltd, an environmental consultancy, via Cargill, Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse and Greenpeace – as well as TERI-Europe.
What all makes this so very mysterious is that, despite the incredibly low level of trading, TERI-Europe seems to be able to afford the services of the likes of Mortier, to say nothing of Ritu Kumar, who rather hides her light under a bushel, as far as the TERI-Europe website goes. Furthermore, she seems to have several different versions of her cv.
One of the more interesting of these makes it clear that we are dealing with Dr Ritu Kumar, described as ”one of India‘s topmost environmental economists, experienced in issues related to sustainable production, trade, and climate change.” We are also told that she is currently Director of TERI-Europe and Executive Director of the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre (STIC).
Initially government-funded (by the Dutch), STIC is another of those interesting NGOs, with a lot of detail here. In the brochure other funding partners are identified: the Commonwealth Science Council (CSC), UK, the European Partners for the Environment (EPE), Brussels, and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam.
Kumar is then identified as the representative of the Commonwealth Science Council, giving her address as 27 Albert Grove. In another instance, however, she gives a slightly more prestigious address: Commonwealth Secretariat, Marlborough House, Pall Mall.
In a book to which she contributes, edited by Cary Krosinsky and her housemate Nick Robins, called Sustainable Investing, Kumar offers a slightly different version of her cv. Here, we are told that from 2000 to 2006 she was director, UK, with TERI-Europe. That – insofar as it implies that she no longer worked for TERI-Europe after 2006 – clearly is not true. All the official records – and much else – have her currently still a director.
But this cv has Dr Kumar from 2006 as a senior adviser on environmental, social and governance issues with Actis UK – a private equity firm investing primarily in Africa, China, India, Latin America, South and South East Asia. She has advised on ”environmental, social and business integrity since 2006.” The company handles $7.3 billion in investments and has over 100 investment professionals in nine offices worldwide.
Thus far then, with a great deal more to cover in what becomes an increasingly murky story, we have a charity which is a company wholly owned by Dr Pachauri and Dr Kumar, the latter who not only works for TERI-Europe but also for a government-funded NGO, the Commonwealth Secretariat and a private equity company handling billions in investment funds – aided by another ”part-timer” working for another company.
Interestingly, much of TERI-Europe’s activities are devoted to encouraging Indian corporates to be more ”transparent”. As we will see in the next part, though, this does not apply to TERI-Europe. The plot is about to get very much thicker.
And more on Pachauri , head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
“This, then, points to a profound suspicion about the operation. That it should have declared an income of only £9,000 and a lesser amount for expenses for its financial year ending 30 June had a particular advantage, viz à viz the Charity Commission.Falling below the £10,000 threshold on turnover, this meant it did not have to publish either its accounts or its annual report. Its affairs could be kept away from the prying eyes of the casual public.”
Although – as we recorded in our earlier post – Dr Pachauri’s European outpost, TERI-Europe, was formally set up on 10 June 1999, it was not officially launched until 25 January 2000. For that grand event, its suburban home at 27 Albert Grove, in the London Borough of Merton, could hardly have sufficed.
Through the good offices of Ritu Kumar, director and company secretary of TERI-Europe, however, there was a more than adequate alternative. Using her position in the Commonwealth Secretariat, she was able borrow the premises of her additional employer, the very splendid setting of Marlborough House.
And for such an occasion, the chief guest had to be a person of some substance and it says something for the pulling power of this obscure charity that its was able to attract the Rt Hon Mr John Prescott, then deputy prime minister. Whether Dr R K Pachauri was present at the event is not recorded.
From such an auspicious start, Pauchauri’s new outpost of Empire went on to attract an impressive array of projects and partners, proudly listed on its own website.
Foremost amongst these, it parades a project which it describes as SI2 – Sustainable Investment in India, which culminated in a report, published under the TERI-Europe brand, in May 2007. This 50-page document, stacked with detail, was entitled: ”Sustainable development of portfolio investment in India‘s publicly listed companies.”
The report is interesting for many reasons, not least because the primary author was Ritu Kumar, who must have spent many hours researching and writing it. Then there must have been the costs of design and typesetting, plus the printing and distribution costs.
Yet, in the year of production – TERI-Europe’s financial year ending on 20 June – the organisation told the Charity Commission that its income had been a paltry £9,000 and that its expenditure had been a mere £5,000.
If Ritu Kumar had been paid for her work, it cannot have been very much, and the elaborate 50 page SI2 Report must have been remarkably cheap to produce.
It is also remarkable that, whatever were the incidental costs – such as the telephoning Ritu Kumar must have done, her stationery costs and her office sundries – those plus whatever salary she might have been paid and all the other expenses that TERI-Europe carried that year, came to such an exact figure of £5,000.
This, then, points to a profound suspicion about the operation. That it should have declared an income of only £9,000 and a lesser amount for expenses for its financial year ending 30 June had a particular advantage, viz à viz the Charity Commission.Falling below the £10,000 threshold on turnover, this meant it did not have to publish either its accounts or its annual report. Its affairs could be kept away from the prying eyes of the casual public.
The report, incidentally, was co-authored by a certain Dan Siddy. This gentleman is the founder and director of an outfit called Delsus Limited, a ”specialist consulting and advisory services for sustainable finance and investment in developing countries and transitional economies”, started in 2006.
An issue here is that the report was not a co-production by TERI-Europe and Delsus. It was very much a TERI-branded product. Therefore, his substantial input must have been by way of a donation to TERI – something, of course, Siddy was perfectly entitled to do. And his time would not come cheap.
However, the Charity Commission rules are very clear on the way such donations should be treated. It states that such ”incoming resources” should be included in the statement of financial activities, valued at the price the charity estimates it would pay in the open market for such a service.
Thus, we have a situation where the cash equivalent of Siddy’s ”donation” comes – presumably – within the £9,000 declared income for TERI-Europe in that year.
That, though, is by no means the whole of it as this enterprise was produced with the ”generous support” of the Global Opportunities Fund of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This ”support” was announced in April 2006 would, presumably have become payable in the financial year ending June 2007 – all part of the £9,000 income that TERI-Europe declared to the Charity Commission.
If it was included within the £9,000 declared income, the support cannot have been all that generous as the project also had to fund the services of an ”Advisory Group”. Surprisingly enough, one prominent member was Nick Robins, cited as Henderson Global Investors.No mention is made if his being Ritu Kumar’s housemate and co-owner, with her, of 27 Albert Grove, head office of TERI-Europe.
Other members of the Advisory Group were David Gait (First State), Stephen Hine (Eiris), Nandan Maluste (Kotak Mahindra Bank), Ravi Narain (National Stock Exchange) and Suresh Narayan (India Index Services Limited). Then, TERI-Europe had the services of Rochelle Mortier for ”initial research in India and UK”, plus Rachel Mew of Delsus Limited, and the staff of the Publications Unit at TERI India. All of this, it seems, was funded within that incredibly modest total expenditure for the year of £5,000 – unless, of course, all these services were donated, in which case they must have come within the £9,000 income.
And this was but one project for that year, and there were other years with other projects, again where the income and expenditure was remarkably modest. We will look at some of these in the next part.
And even more on Pachauri , head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
“Working backwards, the main person responsible for this task, to which this funding applies, can only be Dr R K Pachauri. Yet the proposition that he should be paid salary and travel costs by DEFRA, when as head of the IPCC his costs are already covered and his salary is paid by this agency, seems bizarre.
Even stranger is the proposition that the money is being allocated not to the IPCC but to TERI Europe, which has no locus and no responsibilities for the Synthesis Report. It is Dr Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, not Dr Pachauri, director general of TERI and trustee/director of TERI-Europe who is doing the work.”
“One can only speculate where the money did go, but that is not the issue here. On the face of it, TERI-Europe seems to be in clear breach of the statutory accounting rules applying to charities. And that is a criminal offence.”
Al Capone was never prosecuted for his major league crimes – to get him jail the Feds did him for tax evasion. Much the same thinking is behind the pursuit of Pachauri’s outpost of empire, TERI-Europe.
Located in London, this is the one part of his empire which comes under UK jurisdiction, where the Charities and Companies Acts apply, in a situation where there is a very strong smell of malpractice – to put it mildly.
A more pointed assessment might veer towards the supposition that this is a ”front” organisation, its primary purpose being to launder a substantial flow of funds to other recipients, with minimum scrutiny and accountability.
That the accounts of the charity (pictured left – click to enlarge) don’t stack up is already evident from our previous piece, but we need a great deal more before we have a strong enough case to put to the Charity Commission by way of a formal complaint – which is the eventual intention.
What I am doing, therefore – slowly and laboriously – is going through the tedious process of building a picture of TERI-Europe’s activities and scale of operations, seeking to demonstrate that they far exceed anything that could possibly be covered by the income and expenditures declared to the Charity Commissioner.
If this can be made to stick, Pachauri, his fellow trustees and his co-director – Ritu Kumar – could be in very serious trouble.
What could help us on our way is a lead which came via our forum, identifying a payment from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) intended for TERI-Europe, but which does not seem to have found its way into its accounts.
Even without that, there are several odd things about this payment. To the value of £30,417, it is intended ”to provide funding to TERI Europe to cover salary and travel cost of the head of unit responsible to produce a Synthesis Report of the IPCC AR4.”
Working backwards, the main person responsible for this task, to which this funding applies, can only be Dr R K Pachauri. Yet the proposition that he should be paid salary and travel costs by DEFRA, when as head of the IPCC his costs are already covered and his salary is paid by this agency, seems bizarre.
Even stranger is the proposition that the money is being allocated not to the IPCC but to TERI Europe, which has no locus and no responsibilities for the Synthesis Report. It is Dr Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, not Dr Pachauri, director general of TERI and trustee/director of TERI-Europe who is doing the work.
Yet another strange thing is that, although the money is allocated to TERI-Europe, DEFRA pays it to Cambridge University. One assumes the university is dealing with this as a project ”managed on behalf of Defra by the Contractor/Funded Organisation selected.” But DEFRA has not been slow to throw money at TERI-Europe in the past, so why it could not send the cheque direct this time is not explained.
Howsoever, these are but details compared with the main event. What we have here is hard evidence of a payment of £30,417 – less the university’s cut – allocated to TERI-Europe. The detail is quite explicit there: ”to provide funding to TERI Europe … ”. What we also have is the payment period, which is ”from 2006 to 2007″. The sum will thus fall either within the 2005-6 accounting period, 2006-7 or even, possibly, 2007-8.
Even if the sum was split between all three accounting periods, though, there are problems. Respectively, £7,000, £9,000 and £8,000 are declared as income – totalling £24,000. This is less than the sum paid by DEFRA. Even if DEFRA had been the only source of income in the period (and we know it was not – there was that ”generous support” of the Global Opportunities Fund of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) it cannot be the case that the sum has been declared.
One can only speculate where the money did go, but that is not the issue here. On the face of it, TERI-Europe seems to be in clear breach of the statutory accounting rules applying to charities. And that is a criminal offence.
What sort of audit trail there is back from DEFRA might also be relevant. If there has been an improper payment, it should know about it. But there is something very strange about the British government when it comes to Pachauri’s outfits. It seems to have a strange urge to throw taxpayers’ money at them.
Thus we learn that, earlier this year minister for International development Douglas Alexander launched a partnership with TERI-India, pledging up to £10 million to support the work of TERI over the next five years.
Amongst other thing, the money would enable TERI ”to focus on building its own institutional capacity, helping it to become an even stronger organisation than it is already.”Dr R K Pachauri was very pleased. And after he had offered his ritual comments about the ”removal of poverty”, he no doubt retired to his multi-million dollar home at 160 Golf Links – further then to consider the plight of the poor.
If he were asked what had happened to the £30,417 paid to him, he probably would not remember. Pocket-change sums like that are so easy to forget. We trust, though, that the Charity Commissioner will be less than impressed.
Garth Paltridge From: The Australian January 02, 2010 12:00AM
THE Climategate scandal continues to unfold. The thousands of emails leaked to the internet from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal a tight-knit, influential group of scientists whose attitude to their profession is, to say the least, distorted.
It seems that a religious belief in disastrous climate change has destroyed their common sense and their appreciation of what is the appropriate way to carry out research.
Climategate may at least demonstrate that the concept of a scientific consensus with regard to global warming is nonsense. There may indeed be thousands of scientists contributing to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but on any particular aspect of the overall story all have to rely on the word of the few scientists who are directly involved. And when the particular aspect concerns experimental data on which the whole story rests, the data purporting to show the world is getting warmer, then the consensus argument is indeed on shaky ground.
On the evidence so far, there is not much doubt that the group of scientists linked to the CRU has behaved fairly badly. Any individual email from the Climategate pile may be explained and excused as a stupid mistake of the time, but when all are taken together it seems obvious enough that there have been lots of violations of what might be called the scientific code. The most glaring examples concern efforts to keep basic sets of data out of the hands of people who may not be sympathetic to the official story about the disastrous nature of global warming.This, when the CRU is specifically paid to collate the data gathered by national meteorological services across the world, and to make the data available to outside scientists to check and to use.
In any event, the CRU information is covered by environmental information regulations that specifically require public bodies in Britain to make their data progressively available to the public by electronic means that are easily accessible.
So the ducking and weaving in the face of reasonable requests for CRU data by outside scientists and indeed in the face of Freedom of Information requests by those same outside scientists may not be just bad scientific form. It may be illegal. Which makes the lukewarm reaction to Climategate by the great and powerful of the scientific establishment even more difficult to swallow. The journal Nature, for instance, has this to say: ”If there are benefits to the email theft, one [of those benefits] is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts.”
Let us ignore the fact that even a prestigious journal such as Nature is happy to label scientific scepticism as the work of ”denialists”, which is good evidence that the CRU disease has spread far and wide into the general science community. Prior to Climategate, there were probably fewer than a dozen FOI demands to CRU. There would have been no need even for those if the information had been made available when it was first requested.
I said recently in my book The Climate Caper that most scientists simply cannot believe that their colleagues would deliberately oversell a scientific conclusion for the benefit of a political cause. Dishonesty of that nature would fly in the face of everything that the rather idealistic typical scientist has been taught about his profession.
Perhaps Climategate will provide a medium for introducing typical scientists to the real world and perhaps as well it will re-introduce them to the idea that scepticism is the basis of the profession.
Garth Paltridge is an atmospheric physicist and former chief research scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research. His book The Climate Caper is published by Connor Court.
”Burt” Rutan, that great American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft.
He is most famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period.
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Several recent studies have highlighted the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started loosing part of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This is an important claim, because so far only about 40% of those emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, which has prevented additional climate change. This study re-examines the available atmospheric CO2 and emissions data including their uncertainties. It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.
The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.
This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.
So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? “Not necessarily”, says Knorr. “Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed”.
Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published last week in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.”
And it took nearly 2 months for some of media to start “noticing”
No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds
ScienceDaily (Dec. 31, 2009) — Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere.
However, some studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb carbon dioxide recently may have begun to decline and that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is therefore beginning to increase.
Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase. Because understanding of the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide is important for predicting future climate change, it is essential to have accurate knowledge of whether that fraction is changing or will change as emissions increase.
To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.
In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.
The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.
But first I like to push for this gem at the bottom of this post. It’s from Pravda (Russia):
“Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our ”wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride. “
“The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America‘s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. “
“Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of ”pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions. “
“The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left. “
But let’s go back to the post I wrote 4 months ago. Here is what I wrote then:
“Obama went to the presidential election promising change and portraying himself as a moderate politician and pragmatist. The problem was that most of the American people never understood how radical that change was meant to be.
But his radical policies have finally caught up with him and the normal American people have taken notice.
-The stimulus package of $787 billion which have hardly stimulated anything, let alone created any jobs.
- The Cap and trade bill that meant that the Blue Dog democrats lost their credibility among their voters.
And now the Obama health care plan which is going to cost bare minimum a $1 trillion and more likely $2 trillion during the next 10 years.
As a consequence the budget deficit is running wild under Obama – The deficit in 2008 was $455 billion. At the end of this year it has soared to almost $1.6 trillion. That my folks are a quadrupling IN ONE YEAR. A new world record!
Currently, the U.S. Debt is estimated at EST 4 pm today: $11,803,653,380,955.
Your share of today’s public debt is: $38,398”
Well, 4 months later we know that the budget deficit for 2009 was over $1.4 trillion. It is ”scheduled” to be at least $1.5 trillion in 2010. And that cost of the Obama health care plan is going to be nearly $2.5 trillion. That’s $1.5 trillion more than when first presented.
Let’s look at the U.S. Debt again:
At EST 3:15 pm today: $12,154,545,281,435. Your share of today’s public debt as a citizen is: $39,427. And as a taxpayer: $111,501.
That is an INCREASE OFF $1,029for EVERY CITIZEN in less than 4 months.
And imaging what this sum will be in 10 years time if the present rate of increase continues? It will be $30,870 more + $39,427 = $70,229for EVERY CITIZEN.
And he has effectively nationalized the automakers, the financial sector and the banking system. Not to mention EPA:s CO2 ruling and trying desperately to ram through cap and trade.
So let’s look at the charts again – in less than one year this has happened with the government expenditures:
(Click on the charts and they get bigger)
And look at this chart over health care and the drastic difference in just 10 months:
And look at this chart of independents. They were the ones that made Obama and the democrats victory so big (together with all disgruntled republicans) because most of them voted for the democrats. And they played a KEY ROLE in tipping some swing states. And look at this chart and the drastic difference in just 10 months:
And overall:
And on Foreign Policy:
And Right Direction-Wrong Track
And republicans. All the disgruntled GOP votes Obama got are gone.
And to get an idea of the mindset of the new administration, that you would find it very hard to find in the press and media, which are still singing in the Obama hallelujah choir.
Forgetting that they are supposed to be “journalists”, not spin doctors.
”None of this should be a surprise. Presidential Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel warned us in November 2008.
”You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel told a Wall Street Journal conference of top corporate chief executives, ”Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with.This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”
One of the ”things that could not be done before” described by Emanuelis switching the relationship between the American people and government. We have forgotten the words of Patrick Henry:”The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”
And this gem from Stanislav Mishin in Pravda, (Пра́вда) means truth. All this was a big joke during communist time when Pravda was the official mouthpiece of the party, together with Izvestia (Известия) which means ”delivered messages”.
Well, it now makes some good point about the situation in America under Obama. And this is how part of the world is looking at us. Very revealing:
American capitalism gone with a whimper
27.04.2009
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their ”right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our ”democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different ”branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the ”winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the ”winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America‘s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars.These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of ”pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a ”bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our ”wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a ”freeman” whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set ”fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
