“Since 1988, when the greatest scare the world has seen got under way,hundreds of billions of pounds have been poured into academic research projects designed not to test the CO2 warming thesis but to take it as a given fact, and to use computer models to make its impacts seem as scary as possible. The new global ”carbon trading” market, already worth $126 billion a year, could soon be worth trillions.Governments, including our own, are calling for hundreds of billions more to be chucked into absurd ”carbon-saving” energy schemes, with the cost to be met by all of us in soaring taxes and energy bills.
With all this mighty army of gullible politicians, dutiful officials, busy carbon traders, eager ”renewables” developers and compliant, funding-hungry academics standing to benefit from the greatest perversion of the principles of true science the world has ever seen, who are we to protest that their emperor has no clothes? (How apt that that fairy tale should have been written in Copenhagen.) Let all that fluffy white ”global warming” continue to fall from the skies, while people shiver in homes that, increasingly, they will find they can no longer afford to heat. We have called into being a true Frankenstein’s monster.It will take a mighty long time to cut it down to size.”
The emerging errors of the IPCC’s 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:49PM GMT 27 Feb 2010
The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.
The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC’s last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other ”extreme weather events” were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The ”science is settled”, the ”consensus” is intact.
But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga.Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.
All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC’s 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists.Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.
Furthermore, it has also emerged in almost every case that the decision to include these scare stories rather than hard scientific evidence was deliberate. As several IPCC scientists have pointed out about the scare over Himalayan glaciers, for instance, those responsible for including it were well aware that proper science said something quite different. But it was inserted nevertheless – because that was the story wanted by those in charge.
In addition, we can now read in shocking detail the truth of the outrageous efforts made to ensure that the same 2007 report was able to keep on board IPCC’s most shameless stunt of all – the notorious ”hockey stick” graph purporting to show that in the late 20th century, temperatures had been hurtling up to unprecedented levels. This was deemed necessary because, after the graph was made the centrepiece of the IPCC’s 2001 report,it had been exposed as no more than a statistical illusion. (For a full account see Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, and also my own book The Real Global Warming Disaster.)
In other words, in crucial respects the IPCC’s 2007 report was no more than reckless propaganda, designed to panic the world’s politicians into agreeing at Copenhagen in 2009 that we should all pay by far the largest single bill ever presented to the human race, amounting to tens of trillions of dollars. And as we know, faced with the prospect of this financial and economic abyss, December’s Copenhagen conference ended in shambles, with virtually nothing agreed.
What is staggering is the speed and the scale of the unravelling – assisted of course, just before Copenhagen, by ”Climategate”, the emails and computer codes leaked from East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Their significance was the light they shone on the activities of a small group of British and US scientists at the heart of the IPCC, as they discussed ways of manipulating data to show the world warming faster than the evidence justified; fighting off legitimate requests for data from outside experts to hide their manipulations; and conspiring to silence their critics by excluding their work from scientific journals and the IPCC’s 2007 report itself. (Again, a devastating analysis of this story has just been published by Stephen Mosher and Tom Fuller in Climategate: The CRUtape Letters).
Almost as revealing as the leaked documents themselves, however, was the recent interview given to the BBC by the CRU’s suspended director, Dr Phil Jones, who has played a central role in the global warming scare for 20 years, not least as custodian of the most prestigious of the four global temperature records relied on by the IPCC. In his interview Jones seemed to be chucking overboard one key prop of warmest faith after another, as he admitted that the world might have been hotter during the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago than it is today, that before any rise in CO2 levels temperatures rose faster between 1860 and 1880 than they have done in the past 30 years, and that in the past decade their trend has been falling rather than rising.
The implications of all this for the warming scare, as it has been presented to us over the past two decades, can scarcely be overestimated.The reputation of the IPCC is in shreds.And this is to say nothing of the personal reputation of the man who was the mastermind of its 2007 report, its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
It was in this newspaper that we first revealed how Pachauri has earned millions of pounds for his Delhi-based research institute Teri, and further details are still emerging of how he has parlayed his position into a worldwide business empire, including 17 lucrative contracts from the EU alone. But we should not expect the truth to break in too suddenly on this mass of vested interests. Too many people have too much at stake to allow the faith in man-made global warming, which has sustained them so long and which is today making so many of them rich, to be abandoned. The so-called investigations into Climategate and Dr Michael ”Hockey Stick” Mann seem like no more than empty establishment whitewashes. There is little reason to expect that the inquiry into the record of the IPCC and Dr Pachauri that is now being set up by the UN Environment Programme and the world’s politicians will be very different.
Since 1988, when the greatest scare the world has seen got under way,hundreds of billions of pounds have been poured into academic research projects designednot to test the CO2 warming thesis but to take it as a given fact, and to use computer models to make its impacts seem as scary as possible. The new global ”carbon trading” market, already worth $126 billion a year, could soon be worth trillions.Governments, including our own, are calling for hundreds of billions more to be chucked into absurd ”carbon-saving” energy schemes, with the cost to be met by all of us in soaring taxes and energy bills.
With all this mighty army of gullible politicians, dutiful officials, busy carbon traders, eager ”renewables” developers and compliant, funding-hungry academics standing to benefit from the greatest perversion of the principles of true science the world has ever seen, who are we to protest that their emperor has no clothes? (How apt that that fairy tale should have been written in Copenhagen.) Let all that fluffy white ”global warming” continue to fall from the skies, while people shiver in homes that, increasingly, they will find they can no longer afford to heat. We have called into being a true Frankenstein’s monster.It will take a mighty long time to cut it down to size.
This is a post i didn’t have time to publish a couple a days ago so here it comes:
The Institute of Physics (IOP), a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics, has delivered a very interesting memorandum to the UK Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee. Who are doing an inquiry into the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
This is a very harsh critic and a devastating assessment of the “science” behind the Global Warming Hysteria.
Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Physics (CRU 39)
The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of over 36,000 and is a leading communicator of physics-related science to all audiences, from specialists through to government and the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics.
The Institute is pleased to submit its views to inform the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry, ‘The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia’.
The submission details our response to the questions listed in the call for evidence, which was prepared with input from the Institute’s Science Board, and its Energy Sub-group.
What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?
1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.
2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law.The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.
3. It is important to recognise that there are two completely different categories of data set that are involved in the CRU e-mail exchanges:
· those compiled from direct instrumental measurements of land and ocean surface temperatures such as the CRU, GISS and NOAA data sets; and
· historic temperature reconstructions from measurements of ‘proxies’, for example, tree-rings.
4. The second category relating to proxy reconstructions are the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. Published reconstructions may represent only a part of the raw data available and may be sensitive to the choices made and the statistical techniques used. Different choices, omissions or statistical processes may lead to different conclusions. This possibility was evidently the reason behind some of the (rejected) requests for further information.
5. The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.
6. There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails.This impedes the process of scientific ‘self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.
7. Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.
8. As a step towards restoring confidence in the scientific process and to provide greater transparency in future, the editorial boards of scientific journals should work towards setting down requirements for open electronic data archiving by authors, to coincide with publication. Expert input (from journal boards) would be needed to determine the category of data that would be archived. Much ‘raw’ data requires calibration and processing through interpretive codes at various levels.
9. Where the nature of the study precludes direct replication by experiment, as in the case of time-dependent field measurements, it is important that the requirements include access to all the original raw data and its provenance, together with the criteria used for, and effects of, any subsequent selections, omissions or adjustments. The details of any statistical procedures, necessary for the independent testing and replication, should also be included. In parallel, consideration should be given to the requirements for minimum disclosure in relation to computer modelling.
Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate?
10. The scope of the UEA review is, not inappropriately, restricted to the allegations of scientific malpractice and evasion of the Freedom of Information Act at the CRU. However, most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other leading institutions involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. In so far as those scientists were complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices, there is need for a wider inquiry into the integrity of the scientific process in this field.
11. The first of the review’s terms of reference is limited to: ”…manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice...” The term ‘acceptable’ is not defined and might better be replaced with ‘objective’.
12. The second of the review’s terms of reference should extend beyond reviewing the CRU’s policies and practices to whether these have been breached by individuals, particularly in respect of other kinds of departure from objective scientific practice, for example, manipulation of the publication and peer review system or allowing pre-formed conclusions to override scientific objectivity.
How independent are the other two international data sets?
13. Published data sets are compiled from a range of sources and are subject to processing and adjustments of various kinds. Differences in judgements and methodologies used in such processing may result in different final data sets even if they are based on the same raw data. Apart from any communality of sources, account must be taken of differences in processing between the published data sets and any data sets on which they draw.
“The enormous costs and hypocrisy of all the UN conferences.
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”.
Well, they the Global Warming Hysterics continuous as nothing have happened. The latest UN UNEP conference in Bali continues FULL SPEED AHED the march to Global Government. And GIGANTIC “TRANSFERS” OF MONEY from the industrialized western countries.
As I have been saying all along, this has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth. It has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism.
They are now continuing with the Copenhagen goals (which was rejected remember) – a 50 percent reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. That, the paper says, will requirea staggering $45 trillion dollarsto accomplish.
All of this, as always, paid by the common people in the form of taxes, high energy costsand reduce our living standard back to the Stone Age.
As I said, these guys will spend TRILLIONS $ of our tax money.
Do you know what anENORMOUS, STAGGERING FIGURE a $1 trillion is?
To give you an idea, here is a graphic presentation of $1 Trillion dollars.
Notice those palletsare double stacked. And remember those are $100 bills.
So our field of pallets is roughly 224ft x 432ft x 7ft high with $100 bills.
At 96,768 square feet, it’s about 2.2 acres and well over the size of a football field.
And now multiply that by 45 to arrive at the figure UNEP want to “transfer” from us, the common people.
For comparison here is $1 Billion dollars.
And for more comparison here is $1 Million dollars(100 packets of $10,000).
The pile is 12″ wide, 12.5″ deep and 4.3″ high.
In 2007, the real median annual American household income was $50,233.00 according to the Census Bureau
Bali-Hoo: U.N Still Pushing for Global Environmental Control
By George Russell
“Despite the debacle of the failed Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the United Nations is pressing full speed ahead with a plan for a greatly expanded system of global environmental governance and for a multitrillion-dollar economic transfer scheme to ignite the creation of a ”global green economy.”
In other words: Copenhagen without the authority — yet — of Copenhagen.
The world body even has chosen a time and a place for the culmination of the process: a World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, the 20th anniversary of the famed ”Earth Summit” that gave focus and urgency to the world environmentalist movement.
The 2012 summit date is significant for another reason: It marks the end of the legal term of agreement for the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, which includes carbon reduction targets, and provided the legal basis for an international cap-and-trade market for carbon, centered in Europe. The U.S. first signed then backed away from the Kyoto deal without ratifying it; until its apparent collapse, the comprehensive Copenhagen deal was intended to include the U.S. and supplant Kyoto with a new, legally binding regime.
The new Rio summit will end, according to U.N. documents obtained by Fox News, with a ”focused political document” presumably laying out the framework and international commitments to a new Green World Order.
Just exactly what that environmental order will look like, and the extent of the immense financial commitments needed to produce it, are under discussion this week at a special session in Bali, Indonesia, of the United Nations Environment Program’s 58-nation ”Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environmental Forum,” which oversees UNEP’s operations.”
“But the major topics are a global system of governance and what amounts to the next stage of a radical transformation of the world economic and social order, in the name of saving the planet.
Alongside that, as always, are discussions of vast sums of money that should flow to developing nations to help them make the transition to the new, greener world. As one of the papers written in advance of the meeting to ”stimulate discussion” puts it, ”the situation … presents genuine opportunities for a dramatic shift from what can be termed ‘business as usual.’”
”Moving towards a green economy would also provide an opportunity to re-examine national and global governance structures and consider whether such structures allow the international community to respond to current and future environmental and development challenges and to capitalize on emerging opportunities.”
The discussion paper, published — but not distributed — on Dec. 14, 2009, assumes that the goal of the green economic transformation is the same as that of the ill-fated Copenhagen conference: a 50 percent reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. That, the paper says, will require a staggering $45 trillion dollar to accomplish — much of it in transfers from rich nations to poorer ones.
The paper, however, paints that as a bargain — ”an average yearly investment of just over $1 trillion.” About half of that would go for ”replacing conventional technologies with low-carbon, environmentally sound alternatives.”
Climategates, Glaciergates, Amazongates, Pachaurigates and Africagates may come and go, but as far as the UN is concerned the caravan must roll on regardless. (Hat tip: Will8Ace)
Just have a look at this terrifying document unearthed by George Russell at Fox News – the one which paves the way for the New World Order destined to be imposed on us in the name of ecological righteousness.
It talks – as, inter alia, does Dave Cameron – of green jobs and green investment and the marvellous benefits which will accrue from the brave new green economy.
For the most part it’s vague, but in places the mask slips and the true horror reveals itself.
“Moving towards a green economy would also provide an opportunity to re-examine national and global governance structures and consider whether such structures allow the international community to respond to current and future environmental and development challenges and to capitalize on emerging opportunities.”
Bye bye democracy, in other words. Oh, and bye bye your job, your money and your children’s economic future too.
The discussion paper, published — but not distributed — on Dec. 14, 2009, assumes that the goal of the green economic transformation is the same as that of the ill-fated Copenhagen conference: a 50 percent reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. That, the paper says, will requirea staggering $45 trillion dollarto accomplish — much of it in transfers from rich nations to poorer ones.
The paper, however, paints that as a bargain — “an average yearly investment of just over $1 trillion.” About half of that would go for “replacing conventional technologies with low-carbon, environmentally sound alternatives.”
These people talk about trillions as if it’s handy small change. Do you want to know what a trillion looks like?
Here’s what a trillion dollars looks like. Now multiply that by 45. Remembering all the while that the crisis which it is designed to alleviate exists only in the imagination of your New World Governors.
I have written extensively about how the temperature is measured, the “adjustment” of the raw data, the cherry picking of stations, the urban heat island effect which officially doesn’t exist according to the Global Warming Hysterics etc.
Here is more on that subject from retired NASA scientist Edward Long – the ”adjustment” of the raw rural data byNOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
This my friends is another example of the “science” that the Global Warming Hysteria is based on.
Our study of data-massaging by the U.S. government agency charged with collecting temperature information raises uncomfortable questions.
We have been repeatedly told (perhaps ”lectured” is a better word) the past twenty years that global warming is occurring. With Climategate and subsequent confessions and bailouts by scientists at the CRU, Penn State, Arizona State, IPCC, et al., we are learning that little to none of the factual content in their ”peer reviewed” articles is true. The Medieval Warming Period did occur, and it was warmer than currently; the oceans are not going to flood the plains; and the Arctic Ocean may not be turning into a summer water park. Of course, the mainstream media, especially in the United States, has reported little of this news, and President Obama appears not to be well-informed. But now the global warming story grows more interesting because here in America, we may have our own little ”gate.” I will call it ATG, for ”American Temperaturegate.”
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) informs us, based on their ”Adjusted Data” for the period from the last decade of the 19th century to 2006, that the temperature for the contiguous U.S. has increased at a rate of 0.69oC/century. Click here. NCDC arrives at this conclusion by massaging raw data from a set of meteorological stations located in the contiguous U.S. which they selected on the basis of a 2.5-degree latitude- and 3.5-degree-longitude grid. For more on this, click here and here. The most-asked question, most recently by D’Aleo and Watts, is whether the NCDC’s reported increase is correct. Perhaps the value is due to a dominant use (over-selection) of stations in urban locations or because of other issues, such as leaving out stations at higher altitudes for the more recent history and retaining them for the more distant past.
Here, one aspect is considered — that of the Urban Heat Island Effect, which is tagged as UHIE.
We selected two sets of meteorological stations (48 each, with one station per each of the lower 48 states) from the NCDC master list. The stations in one set were at rural locations — a rural set. The stations in the other set were at urban locations — an urban set. The NCDC latitude and longitude station coordinates were used to ”fly over” the locations on a computer, using a GPS map application to confirm the rural and urban characteristics. For each of the 96 stations, the NCDC’s raw and adjusted temperature data were entered into a spreadsheet application and studied. The ”raw” data are the annual average temperatures of the measured data. The ”adjusted” data are the annual average temperatures the NCDC derived from the raw data by making a set of ”corrective” assumptions for time of day, type of instrument, etc. and guessing the temperature at stations for missing data based on temperatures of other stations at the same latitude and/or region. For a more in-depth understanding of the NCDC protocols for converting raw data to adjusted data, click here. A summary of the findings is in the following table. The values in the table show that the NCDC’s rate of increase of temperature, 0.69oC/century, is based on an over-selection of stations with urban locations.
Station Set
oC/Century, 11-Year Average Based on the Use of
Raw Data
Adjusted Data
Rural (48)
0.11
0.58
Urban (48)
0.72
0.72
Rural + Urban (96)
0.47
0.65
The values in the table highlight four important considerations:
1) The rate of increase for rural locations, based on as-measured (raw) values, is small (if not, in effect, zero) at 0.11 oC/century.
2) There is definitely a UHIE in that the urban raw data has a rate of increase of 0.72oC/century. This tells us that man has caused warming in urban locations. This finding should not surprise anyone. On the other hand, because the rural value is 15% of the urban value, the UHIE has not caused warming in the rural locations, and it certainly has not caused a global sense of warming other than the aspect that the urban location values when averaged with the rural values produce an average increase which is larger than that of the rural alone.
3) The rural + urban value for the adjusted data, 0.65oC/century, is still less than the 0.69oC/century published by the NCDC.Thus, likely, there are more urban than rural sites used by the NCDC.
4) And this is the ”Temperaturegate” aspect: The NCDC’s massaging — they call it ”adjusting” — has resulted in an increase in the rural values, from a raw value of 0.11oC/century to an adjusted value of 0.58oC/century, and no change in the urban values.That is, the NCDC’s treatment has forced the rural value to look more like that of the urban. This is the exact opposite of any rational consideration, given the growth of the sizes of and activities within urban locations, unless deception is the goal.
The criticism this makes of the NCDC’s treatment of historical data for the contiguous U.S. is the same as a recent Russian paper made of the HadCRUT treatment of historical temperature data for Russia. For a thumbnail of the points made in that paper, click here.
Edward R. Long holds a Ph.D. in physics. He is a retired NASA scientist who is a consultant on radiation physics for space flight and on energy/climate in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Climategate: What We Should Be Doing About Natural Climate Change
Just because AGW is a fraud doesn’t mean that we should ignore the natural and cyclical changes in the Earth’s temperature.
February 24, 2010 – by Harrison Schmitt
Earth’s climate changes are extraordinarily complex phenomena. They represent decadal, to millennial, to epochal changes in weather patterns as nature continuously attempts to compensate for solar heating imbalances in and between the atmosphere and oceans.
Nature’s attempts to restore heat balance take place under the complicating influences of the Earth’s inclined daily rotation, movement and release of heat stored in the oceans, aerosol production by many natural processes, water and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, and periodically changing orbital position and orientation relative to the sun. In spite of all these variables and more, the Earth currently controls its temperature in a very narrow range as shown by satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower atmosphere (troposphere) since 1979.
Global surface and near surface temperatures have risen about half a degree Centigrade (about 0.9 degree Fahrenheit) each 100 years since the minimum temperatures of the Little Ice Age in 1660.Multi-decade intervals of more rapid warming and cooling have occurred during this current, centuries-long general warming trend as they have for over 10,000 years since the last major ice age.
Indeed, by the end of the 17th century, glaciers had advanced over valley farmlands cultivated as those same glaciers receded during the preceding Medieval Warm Period (about 800-1300). Since the last major ice age, decades long periods of warming and cooling have been superposed on longer cycles, the longest repeating about every 1500 years.
All of this has occurred without any significant human activity. Cooling between 1935 and 1975 and since 2000, and warming between 1975 and 1995 have been the most recent such variations and correlate strongly with variations in solar activity.
In contrast to these facts, climate change assumptions and computer modeling, rather than real-world observations, underpin the government’s efforts to restrict American liberties and confiscate trillions of dollars of American income in the name of “doing something” about climate change.The scientific rationale behind this proposed massive intrusion into American life requires more than a “consensus” of like-minded climate analysts and bureaucrats. It needs to be right.
Recent disclosures and admissions of scientific misconduct by the United Nations and advocates of the human-caused global warming hypothesis shows the fraudulent foundation of this much-ballyhooed but non-existent scientific consensus about climate.
Still, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other government agenciespersist in over-stepping their regulatory authority to jam climate related regulations into our lives and economy at the expense of liberty, jobs, and incomes. Federal control of energy production and use, advocated by special “climate” interests, will have a vanishingly small effect on slowing three and a half centuries of very slow, erratic, but natural global warming.
A long-term federal and commercial agenda to gather power and profit in the name of “environment” at the expense of liberty has no constitutional foundation. The Tenth Amendment leaves to the states all governance responsibility for environment as no direct or indirect mention of it exists in the Constitution. Prudent protection of local environments by the states and the people does have justification in the Ninth Amendment’s protection of natural rights, including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as formalized in the Declaration of Independence. The Feds need to butt out!
So, what should the people do now about climate, if anything? We must prepare to adapt to inevitable change, however unpredictable it may seem. We can recognize that production and use of our own domestic oil, gas, coal, and nuclear resources buys us time to meet these challenges and, at the same time, preserve our liberty.
We can develop far better surface and space observational techniquesand use them consistently over decades to better understand the science of our Earth. On political time scales, we can quit taking actions with unknown and unintended consequences.We can choose sustained research and development of energy alternatives, those with clear paths to commercialization, rather than continue tax dollar subsidies and loan guarantees for premature or flawed introduction of politically motivated concepts. We can provide investment and business environments that will advance new sources of energy, particularly through reduction of personal and business income tax rates.
Basically, instead of being ideologically greedy and ignoring good science and economics, we can start being wise and truly concerned about our children, and their children, and the society in which they will live.
Harrison Schmitt is a a former senator from New Mexico and a geologist. He walked on the Moon as part of the crew of Apollo 17.
More on NASA’s manipulation of facts and science to spread the Global Warming Hysteria. In this case targeting children.
And remember, they are funded by our taxes.
“Utterly false.Heated masses always emit light (infrared). Always. That’s a direct consequence of molecules in motion. And while it’s true that some substances may be transparent to infrared light, it doesn’t follow that they can’t be heated or, if heated, might not emit infrared. Yet NASA’s misleading formulation implies precisely that. “
“Heat is transferred and absorbed in several ways, then, and no substance is immune from being heated, which means that all gases absorb heat — contrary to what NASA tells children.
So how does NASA go wrong? By consistently confusing light and heat, as you see in the illustration below, where infrared light is depicted as heat. Elsewhere, NASA expresses heat transfer in terms that pertain to radiant transfer alone:”
“Nowhere in its teacher’s guide are conductive and convective heat transfer even mentioned.By selective context and vagueness, then, NASA paints an impression that only light-absorbing substances can be heated. Thus, since nitrogen and oxygen don’t respond to infrared, NASA feels justified to say that ”only some gases have the unique property of being able to absorb heat.”
Astonishing.
But a mix-up like this raises a deeper question: why does NASA go wrong? Because it has a flimsy yet lucrative theory to foist on the tax-paying public, that’s why. As the space agency explains in the Main Lesson Concept, the core idea of greenhouse theory is that downward radiation from greenhouse gases raises the earth’s surface temperature higher than solar heating can accomplish.
To make this idea seem plausible, therefore, it’s crucial to fix people’s attention on the 1% of the atmosphere that can be heated by radiant transfer instead of the 99% and more that is heated by direct contact with the earth’s surface and then by convection. NASA is stacking the cards, you see. If they made it clear that every species of atmospheric gas gets heated mainly by conductive transfer, and that all heated bodies radiate light, then even a child could connect the dots: ”Oh. So the whole atmosphere radiates heat to the earth and makes it warmer. All of the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas.”
Crash, boom, there goes the theory. And there goes the abundant funding that this fear-promoting ”science” attracts so well. For what CO2 and water vapor emit is miniscule compared to the buzzing multitude of heated nitrogen, oxygen, and even argon, all of it radiating infrared too.Keep in mind that thermal radiation from this forgotten 99% has never been proposed or imagined to increase the earth’s temperature, although by the theory’s very tenets it should.
Insulated by an outer crust, the surface of the earth acquires nearly all of its heat from the sun. The only exit for this heat to take is through a door marked ”Radiation.” And therein lies a tale…
Recently, I chanced upon an Atmospheric Science Educator Guide [PDF] published by NASA. Aimed at students in grades 5 through 8, it helps teachers explain how so-called ”greenhouse gases” warm our planet Earth.
These guides are interesting on a number of levels, so I recommend you look them over. But what caught my eye was this:
Question: Do all of the gases in our atmosphere absorb heat?
Answer: (Allow students to discuss their ideas. Don’t provide the answer at this time.)
Indeed, that’s a good one to think over, yourself. Almost all of what we’re breathing is nitrogen and oxygen — do these gases absorb heat? Lakes and rocks absorb heat, after all, and thereby reach a higher temperature. So can nitrogen and oxygen molecules do the same?
Well, I won’t keep you hanging. After allowing students to discuss it, the instructor is instructed to give them the final verdict.
Answer: No. Only some gases have the unique property of being able to absorb heat.
These are the infrared-absorbing ”greenhouse gases,” of course, substances like carbon dioxide and water vapor, not nitrogen and oxygen.
Now, is something wrong here? Most definitely, for NASA has a finger on the scale. Let’s review a few basics that NASA should have outlined.
Heat consists of vibrating and colliding molecules. The motion of these molecules jostles their electrons around, and this emits light. Heat and light are thus strongly related, but aren’t the same. For instance, heat can’t actually be radiated, only the light that heat brings about. By the same token, light itself has no temperature because temperature is an index of molecular motion, and a beam of light isn’t composed of molecules. In short, ”heat” can be regarded as molecular excitement and light as electromagnetic excitement.
Observe how NASA describes this relationship, however.
Question: What is the relationship between light and heat?
Answer: Things that are hot sometimes give off light. Things under a light source sometimes heat up.
Utterly false.Heated masses always emit light (infrared). Always. That’s a direct consequence of molecules in motion. And while it’s true that some substances may be transparent to infrared light, it doesn’t follow that they can’t be heated or, if heated, might not emit infrared. Yet NASA’s misleading formulation implies precisely that.
There are three ways for heat (better to say thermal energy) to move from one zone to another: by conduction, convection, and radiation. Conductive heat transfer involves direct contact, wherein vibrations spread from molecule to molecule. Convective transfer involves a mass in motion: expanded by heat, a fluid is pushed up and away by the denser fluid that surrounds it. Radiative transfer arises when molecules intercept the light that warmer molecules are emitting, which brings about a resonant molecular vibration, i.e., heating.
Heat is transferred and absorbed in several ways, then, and no substance is immune from being heated, which means that all gases absorb heat — contrary to what NASA tells children.
So how does NASA go wrong? By consistently confusing light and heat, as you see in the illustration below, where infrared light is depicted as heat. Elsewhere, NASA expresses heat transfer in terms that pertain to radiant transfer alone:
The Earth first absorbs the visible radiation from the Sun, which is then converted to heat, and this heat radiates out to the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gases then absorb some of the heat.
Nowhere in its teacher’s guide are conductive and convective heat transfer even mentioned.By selective context and vagueness, then, NASA paints an impression that only light-absorbing substances can be heated. Thus, since nitrogen and oxygen don’t respond to infrared, NASA feels justified to say that ”only some gases have the unique property of being able to absorb heat.”
Astonishing.
But a mix-up like this raises a deeper question: why does NASA go wrong? Because it has a flimsy yet lucrative theory to foist on the tax-paying public, that’s why. As the space agency explains in the Main Lesson Concept, the core idea of greenhouse theory is that downward radiation from greenhouse gases raises the earth’s surface temperature higher than solar heating can accomplish.
To make this idea seem plausible, therefore, it’s crucial to fix people’s attention on the 1% of the atmosphere that can be heated by radiant transfer instead of the 99% and more that is heated by direct contact with the earth’s surface and then by convection. NASA is stacking the cards, you see. If they made it clear that every species of atmospheric gas gets heated mainly by conductive transfer, and that all heated bodies radiate light, then even a child could connect the dots: ”Oh. So the whole atmosphere radiates heat to the earth and makes it warmer. All of the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas.”
Crash, boom, there goes the theory. And there goes the abundant funding that this fear-promoting ”science” attracts so well. For what CO2 and water vapor emit is miniscule compared to the buzzing multitude of heated nitrogen, oxygen, and even argon, all of it radiating infrared too.Keep in mind that thermal radiation from this forgotten 99% has never been proposed or imagined to increase the earth’s temperature, although by the theory’s very tenets it should. You simply take the NASA formulation:
Greenhouse gases absorb heat that radiates from Earth’s surface and release some of it back towards the Earth, increasing the surface temperature
And make allowance for conductive transfer too…
All gases in the atmosphere absorb heat from the Earth’s surface and radiate infrared back towards the Earth, increasing the surface temperature.
Consider too that since most air molecules are infrared-transparent, they can’t be heated by the infrared that CO2 and water vapor emit.This means that downward radiation from ”greenhouse gases” can only explain how the earth’s surface might get warmer, not the rest of the atmosphere. Which underscores, of course, how much the surface is heating this 99% by conduction and convection alone, since radiative transfer can’t do the job.
To repeat: Irrespective of the manner of transfer, all gases absorb heat and all heated gases radiate heat (infrared light) in close proportion to their temperature. Major gases like nitrogen and oxygen, then, do not just radiate heat to the earth below, but the total of this radiation vastly exceeds what minor players like carbon dioxide and water vapor contribute.Ironically, another NASA publication [PDF] reinforces this point.
In solids, the molecules and atoms are vibrating continuously. In a gas, the molecules are really zooming around, continuously bumping into each other. Whatever the amount of molecular motion occurring in matter, the speed is related to the temperature. The hotter the material, the faster its molecules are vibrating or moving.
Electromagnetic radiation is produced whenever electric charges accelerate – that is, when they change either the speed or direction of their movement. In a hot object, the molecules are continuously vibrating (if a solid) or bumping into each other (if a liquid or gas), sending each other off in different directions and at different speeds. Each of these collisions produces electromagnetic radiation at frequencies all across the electromagnetic spectrum.
… Any matter that is heated above absolute zero generates electromagnetic energy. The intensity of the emission and the distribution of frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum depend upon the temperature of the emitting matter.
Accordingly, any heated gas emits infrared. There’s nothing unique about CO2.Otherwise, substances like nitrogen and oxygen would truly be miracles of physics: heat ‘em as much as you wish, they’d never radiate in response.
Yet this amounts to a double whammy. For meteorologists acknowledge that our atmosphere is principally heated by surface contact and convective circulation. Surrounded by the vacuum of space, moreover, the earth can only dissipate this energy by radiation. On one hand, then, if surface-heated nitrogen and oxygen do not radiate the thermal energy they acquire, they rob the earth of a means of cooling off — which makes them ”greenhouse gases” by definition. On the other hand, though, if surface-heatednitrogen and oxygen do radiate infrared, then they are also ”greenhouse gases,” which defeats the premise that only radiation from the infrared-absorbers raises the earth’s temperature. Either way, therefore, the convoluted theory we’ve been going by is wrong.
An idea has been drummed into our heads for decades, that roughly 1% of the atmosphere’s content is responsible for shifting the earth’s surface temperature from inimical to benign.This conjecture has mistakenly focused on specifically light-absorbing gases, however, ignoring heat-absorbing gases altogether. Any heated atmospheric gas radiates infrared energy back toward the earth, meaning that the dreadful power we’ve attributed to light-absorbing molecules up to now has been wildly exaggerated and must be radically adjusted, indeed, pared down perhaps a hundred times. Because all gases radiate the heat they acquire, trace-gas heating theory is an untenable concept, a long-held illusion we’d be wise to abandon.
Scientific scandals and record snowfalls have begun to melt away the congressional appetite for more global-warming regulations. On Sunday, to take the latest example, a major scientific journal admitted that ”oversights” compelled the retraction of its conclusion that sea levels were rising as a result of increased worldwide temperatures.Reports of this sort make it increasingly difficult for members of Congress to enter iced-over districts to ask their constituents to make economic sacrifices in an attempt to appease Mother Earth into favoring us with colder weather.
This does not mean, however, that the left has given up on global warming as a means of exerting more government control over the economy.
To avoid a potentially messy vote, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has turned to the administrative rule-making process to impose climate-control regulations. In December, the agency made an ”endangerment finding” that declared that six gases – including the carbon dioxide you are exhaling as you read this – are putting the planet’s well-being in peril. The first major rule based on this finding will be finalized next month.
President George W. Bush’s EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, warned that such a finding would result in a major government power grab. ”[T]he potential regulation of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land,” he explained.
Fortunately, Mr. Obama’s team might not get away with it. So far, 40 senators have signed on to an effort by Sen. Lisa A. Murkowski, Alaska Republican, to nullify the EPA endangerment finding. Three Democrats have been willing to co-sponsor the legislation, but Senate sources suggest a number of others may be willing to vote for the bill when it comes to the floor.
Mrs. Murkowski, who takes a moderate stand on the issue, is key to lining up the bipartisan support required for passage. In the past, the Alaska senator has embraced government efforts to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, including a limited form of cap-and-trade. Her resolution is evidence that both sides of the global-warming issue can agree that such a fundamental public-policy question should not be decided by unelected bureaucrats. Both sides also should be troubled by the EPA’s twisting of the Clean Air Act, which originally was designed to cut down on actual pollutants, into regulating so-called greenhouse gases.
Instead of preventing smokestacks from belching noxious fumes and toxic chemicals harmful to the health of human beings, the agency has made its new enemy No. 1 a cow chewing grass in a field. Citing U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the EPA declared ”enteric fermentation” – a fancy phrase to refer to a cow’s natural emissions in the field – to be the primary source of methane, which is 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in planetary warming.
The EPA placed what it called a ”primary reliance” on reports like those of the IPCC instead of conducting independent research to make its finding. Given the retractions and revelations of faulty science surrounding the global-warming religion, especially at the IPCC, it’s time to take the issue out of the EPA’s hands so Congress can address it in the open. The Senate should pass Mrs. Murkowski’s disapproval resolution when it comes for an expected vote next month.
Climate Fraud: The godfather of climate hysteria is in hiding as another of his wild claims unravels — this one about global warming causing seas to swallow us up.
We’ve not seen or heard much of the former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel Prize recipient recently as the case for disastrous man-made climate change collapses.
Perhaps he’s off reading how scientists were forced to withdraw a study on a projected sea level rise due to global warmingafter finding two ”technical” mistakes that undermined the findings.
The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, allegedly confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that sea levels would rise due to climate change. The IPCC put the rise at 59 centimeters by 2100. The Nature Geoscience study put it at up to 82 centimeters.
Many considered the study and the IPCC’s estimates too conservative in their warnings. After all, Al Gore, in his award-winning opus, ”An Inconvenient Truth,” laughingly called a documentary, foretold an apocalyptic vision of the devastation caused by a 20-foot rise in sea levels due to melting polar ice caps ”in the near future.”
Now Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at England’s University of Bristol, has formally retracted the study. ”One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years,” he said.
According to Siddall, ”People make mistakes, and mistakes happen in science.” They seem to be happening a lot lately, and more than just mistakes. We are talking about outright fraud, the deliberate manipulation and destruction of data.
Last November, Al Gore was hailed by Newsweek as ”The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man.”
Since then we and he have been given much to think about, starting with the damning e-mails from researchers associated with the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain. The e-mails revealed an organized attempt to ”hide the decline” in global temperatures, to manipulate data to fit preconceived conclusions, and to discredit and shun reputable skeptics.
A key finding of the IPCC, which along with Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, was revealed last month to be utterly bogus. The IPCC claimed glaciers in the Himalayas would likely disappear by 2035. The only thing they had to back it up was a 1999 non-peer reviewed article in an Indian mass-market science magazine.
It’s been revealed that researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been systematically eliminating weather stations, with a clear bias toward removing colder latitude and altitude locations. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35, with only one station used bythe NOAA as a temperature gauge for Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.
The past is prologue. Two years ago, Justice Michael Burton of London’s High Court ruled Gore’s film could be shown in British schools only if material explaining its errors were included in the curriculum. Burton documented nine significant errors in Gore’s film and wrote that some of Gore’s claims arose from ”alarmism and exaggeration.”
The first error Gore made, according to Burton, was in his apocalyptic vision of the devastation caused by a rise in sea levels caused by melting polar ice caps. Burton wrote that Gore’s predicted 20-foot rise could occur ”only after, and over, millennia” and to suggest otherwise ”is not in line with the scientific consensus.”
One by one, Gore’s prophecies of doom and those of the climate charlatans he inspired are being exposed as the work of con artists.From the CRU to the IPCC, the climate dominoes are falling one by one. His silence speaks volumes.
Climate Fraud: A senator wants an investigation of the false climate testimony before Congress and wants Al Gore to reappear. The illegalities may involve more than just lying to Congress.
At a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, ranking Republican James Inhofe told EPA head Lisa Jackson that man-induced climate change was a ”hoax” concocted by ideologically motivated researchers who ”cooked the science.”
More than that, Inhofe, in releasing a GOP report questioning the science used to support cap-and-trade legislation, hinted that such activities may be part of a vast criminal enterprise designed to bilk governments, taxpayers and investors while enriching those making the false claims.
In asking the administration to investigate what he called ”the greatest scientific scandal of our generation,” Inhofe called for Gore to be summoned to explain and defend his earlier testimony in light of the Climate-gate e-mail scandal and admissions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was essentially a work of fiction.
Since AR4 was released, Gore claims such as rising seas and endangered coastlines have been debunked. IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri has been revealed as a collector of anecdotes and student dissertations who had to retract the claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
Murari Lal, an editor of IPCC’s AR4 report, has admitted to Britain’s Daily Mail that he had known the 2035 date was false, but included it in the report ”purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”
Even Phil Jones, head of Britain’s tainted Climate Research Unit, has conceded that, yes, the Earth was warmer in medieval times and there has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years.
As Charlie Martin of Pajamas Media reports, Inhofe is asking the Department of Justice to look into possible research misconduct or even outright criminal actions by scientists involved in questionable research and data manipulation. These include Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Inhofe’s report suggests that the products of such scientific misconduct, used by the EPA and Congress to support draconian legislation and regulations, may violate the Shelby Amendment requiring open access to federally funded research, as well as the Office of Science and Technology Policy rules on scientific misconduct.
The report notes potential violations of the Federal False Statements and False Claims acts, which involve both civil and criminal penalties. Charges of obstructing Congress in its official proceedings are possible as well.
We should also follow the money. Researchers have lived off grants spawned by their claims of climate fraud. Oil and coal companies have suffered financially, as have their stockholders. Consumers have faced higher energy prices. Those who’ve made great sums are the very people who promote green energy and green companies in which they’re invested based on the false claims they’ve made.
When you add up the costs of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill and EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, all in the name of fighting climate change, you have a scam that dwarfs Bernie Madoff’s.
Vast sums are being made and will be made through the sale of carbon offsets and carbon credits. Perhaps the Securities and Exchange Commission should investigate the claims of such enterprises.
Gore himself has achieved a net worth estimated by some to be in excess of $100 million by persuading investors to get involved in his enterprises. He’s been touted as possibly the world’s first ”carbon billionaire.”
What if it’s all been a fraud all along? Inhofe may not get his investigation, but certainly it is well warranted.
Senator James Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has today formally called for an investigation into research misconduct and potential criminal acts by the scientists involved – Michael Mann and James Hansen.
Climategate Meets the Law: Senator Inhofe To Ask for DOJ Investigation (Pajamas Media/PJTV Exclusive)
Inhofe intends to ask for a probe of the embattled climate scientists for possible criminal acts. And he thinks Gore should be recalled to explain his prior congressional testimony. (Click here for the just-released Senate Environment and Public Works report behind Inhofe’s announcement.)
February 23, 2010 – by Charlie Martin
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
Senator Inhofe also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify.
“In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,” Inhofe said. He believes Vice President Gore should defend himself and his movie before Congress.
Just prior to a hearing at 10:00 a.m. EST, Senator Inhofe released a minority staff report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, of which he is ranking member. Senator Inhofe is asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether there has been research misconduct or criminal actions by the scientists involved, including Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science.
This report, obtained exclusively by Pajamas Media before today’s hearing, alleges:
[The] Minority Staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works believe the scientists involved may have violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, federal laws. In addition to these findings, we believe the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC -backed “consensus” and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.
As has been reported here at Pajamas Media over the last several months, the exposure of the Climategate Files has led to a re-examination of the IPCC Assessment Reports, especially the fourth report (AR4), published in 2007. The IPCC AR4 report was named by Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson as one of the major sources of scientific support for the agency’s Endangerment Finding, the first step towards allowing the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Since the Climategate Files were released, the IPCC has been forced to retract a number of specific conclusions — such as a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 — and has been forced to confirm that the report was based in large part on reports from environmental activist groups instead of peer-reviewed scientific literature.Dr. Murari Lal, an editor of the IPCC AR4 report, admitted to the London Daily Mailthat he had known the 2035 date was false, but was included in the report anyway “purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”
Based on this Minority Staff report, Senator Inhofe will be calling for an investigation into potential research misconduct and possible criminal acts by the researchers involved. At the same time, Inhofe will ask the Environmental Protection Agency to reopen its consideration of an Endangerment Finding for carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Federal Clean Air Act, and will ask Congress to withdraw funding for further consideration of carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
In requesting that the EPA reopen the Endangerment Finding, Inhofe joins with firms such as the Peabody Energy Company and several state Attorneys General (such as Texas and Virginia) in objecting to the Obama administration’s attempt to extend regulatory control over carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. Senator Inhofe believes this staff report “strengthens the case” for the Texas and Virginia Attorneys General.
Senator Inhofe’s announcement today appears to be the first time a member of Congress has formally called for an investigation into research misconduct and potential criminal acts by the scientists involved.
The staff report describes four major issues revealed by the Climategate Files and the subsequent revelations:
The emails suggest some climate scientists were cooperating to obstruct the release of damaging information and counter-evidence.
They suggest scientists were manipulating the data to reach predetermined conclusions.
They show some climate scientists colluding to pressure journal editors not to publish work questioning the “consensus.”
They show that scientists involved in the report were assuming the role of climate activists attempting to influence public opinion while claiming scientific objectivity.
The report notes a number of potential legal issues raised by their Climategate investigation:
It suggests scientific misconduct that may violate the Shelby Amendment — requiring open access to the results of government-funded research — and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) policies on scientific misconduct (which were announced December 12, 2000).
It notes the potential for violations of the Federal False Statements and False Claims Acts, which may have both civil and criminal penalties.
The report also notes the possibility of there having been an obstruction of Congress in Congressional Proceeds, which may constitute an obstruction of justice.
If proven, these charges could subject the scientists involved to debarment from federally funded research, and even to criminal penalties.
By naming potential criminal offenses, Senator Inhofe raises the stakes for climate scientists and others involved. Dr. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit has already been forced to step aside because of the Climategate FOIA issues, and Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State is currently under investigation by the university for potential misconduct. Adding possible criminal charges to the mix increases the possibility that some of the people involved may choose to blow the whistle in order to protect themselves.
Senator Inhofe believes that Dr. Hansen and Dr. Mann should be “let go” from their posts “for the good of the institutions involved.”
The question, of course, is whether the Senate Democratic majority will allow this investigation to proceed, in the face of the Obama administration’s stated intention to regulate CO2 following the apparent death of cap and trade legislation. The Democratic majority has blocked previous attempts by Inhofe to investigate issues with climate science.
Charlie Martin is a Colorado computer scientist and freelance writer. He holds an MS in Computer Science from DukeUniversity, where he spent six years with the National Biomedical Simulation Resource, DukeUniversityMedicalCenter. Find him at http://chasrmartin.com, and on his blog at http://explorations.chasrmartin.com.
“Most Americans are unaware how the leading green advocacy groups feed at the public trough, collecting legal fees and grants from the federal government. It amounts to millions. Take four minutes to learn about it.”
By simply ignoring the massive scandal, American journalists are making the inevitable public backlash against them worse.
February 22, 2010 – by Dennis T. Avery
Where are the American journalists who should be covering the collapse of the man-made warming scare — the biggest hoax in human history? The public, shoveling snow amid blizzard winds, wants to know. The stock market, laboring under the threat of trillion-dollar energy taxes, urgently needs to know. Even the Columbia Journalism Review, complicit in fostering the global warming scare for 20 years, is prodding America’s Mainstream Media to finally do their duty.
The press in England, Australia, and even India is already breaking the story:
– “The Professor’s Amazing Climate Change Retreat,” London Daily Mail, Feb. 13. “Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia University confesses on the BBC that the world hasn’t warmed since 1995, and the Medieval Warming was perhaps warmer than today.”
– “World May Not Be Warming, Say Scientists,” Sunday Times of London, Feb. 14.
– “The Hottest Hoax in the World,” Ninad Sheth, India’s Open Magazine, Jan. 30.
– “The Great Global Warming Collapse,” Margaret Wente, Canada’s Global & Mail, Feb. 20.
Also eagerly awaiting the media confessions is that little band of hardy souls who have been telling us for years inconvenient truths about gaps in the greenhouse theory while insisting that “the science isn’t settled” by a long shot. They’ve been accused of treason, likened to Holocaust deniers, and threatened with jail and with death for telling us that the evidence didn ’t stack up. They could get no hearing — not on university campuses, not in the press, not even in their own communities. While falsely accused of “shilling for corporations,” they lost jobs, tenure, and reputations.
Professor Jones, himself a leader of the plot, has confessed that the Medieval Warming might have been global and warmer than today. Now we can look at that remarkable seabed sediment core dug up from the Atlantic floor by Boston College’s Maureen Raymo. The plankton microfossils in the mud layers go back a million years,and tell of more than 600 long, moderate, natural global warmings: Medieval, Roman, Holocene, and on back through the ages. The wildlife has all been through sudden climate change many times.
Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger, pioneers of the Greenland ice cores who discovered the 1,500-year cycles named after them, can once again be science heroes, as they deserve.
What will Al Gore finally say if he ever grants an interview? Will he admit he misled us about the Antarctic ice records, which show temperatures have historically changed 800 years before the CO2 levels? That makes CO2 no more than a lagging indicator of solar changes.
As a mere economist and history buff, I will take some credit. I helped Fred Singer write a New York Times bestseller: Unstoppable Global Warming — Every 1,500 Years. We presented the historic and physical evidence of the world’s past global warmings. We credited Henrik Svensmark’s demonstration that the sun’s variability is linked to earth’s temperatures by cosmic rays, which create more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that cyclically warm and cool our planet. And we poked holes in the scare stories being fed to the public.
Most of the world’s citizens will never realize how close they came to revisiting the Stone Age, with precious little help from solar panels, wind turbines, or biofuels.
Right now the journalists’ dereliction of duty is mainly hurting themselves. The public already fears it can’t trust its newspapers and TV networks. Any carbon taxes imposed now will be quickly rescinded. American journalists are simply building a bigger head of steam for the angry backlash when the public finally learns (probably through the internet) that they’ve been had.
The enormous costs and hypocrisy of all the UN conferences.
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”.
One of these places where you can have extremely”frugal” accommodation and REALLY “save” the taxpayer’s money while you do all the hard work to save the world on the beach.
Why is it never… say DanyangCity (China) where you can study “UNsound management of hazardous chemicals and wastes.” DIRECTLY? (see pictures below)
Chemical waste from Jiangsu Taixing Chemical Industrial District (江苏泰兴化工园区) dumped on top of the Yangtze River bank. May 15, 2009
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
For folks terrified of warmer weather, the UN climate commissarssure do have a strange affinity for the balmy climes of Bali.
Recall that in December, 2007, as the common folk shivered in the wintry vicinity of the UN’s well-appointed offices in New York, Bonn and Geneva, a horde of UN climateers decamped to the far side of the globe for a fortnight of conferencing by the Indonesian beaches of Bali’s ritzy Nusa Dua resort (and convention center). There, up close and personal, they braved the preview of a world beset by warm temperatures and ocean waters, as you can see in this virtual tour of the adjacent beach resort — complete with its freshwater pool, beachside cocoons, seafood buffets and winding paths beneath the palm trees.
Now they’re at it again. The UN Environment Program, which is based in Nairobi, is convening a set of meetings this week – not in Nairobi, or New York, but at the same Bali beach resort (and convention center) where they sacrificed all that time for the greater good in 2007. Never mind the UN’s continuing campaign — in the face of its crumbling “climate science” — to restrict and control carbon emissions. Yet again, we are asked to believe the UN deserves special exemptions from its own preachings.Its conferees are jetting to Bali for the greater good of all the little folk,whose job is merely to pay the bills for such pleasures, and live with any resulting rationing and regulation.According to the Jakarta Post, some 1,500 people from 192 countries are expected to attend this shindig — where UNEP claims that envoys of some 140 governments will be present. The pre-session events (the UN goes in for a lot of those on Bali) have already begun.
This gathering is on a somewhat different theme from the grand “global warming” jamboree of 2007 (or the UN anti-corruption convention at the same Bali beach resort in 2008). The main topic of discussion this time is supposed to be the “sound management of hazardous chemicals and wastes.” Unlike carbon dioxide, that actually is worth worrying about. But do you trust this crowd to handle it?These folks are from the same UNEP (launched and initially run by Maurice Strong, who went on to godfather the Kyoto Treaty)that has been one of the big purveyors of UN climate alarmism. This is the same UNEP which, together with the UN’s Geneva-based WMO (World Meteorological Organization) established the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which under the leadership of UN climate guru Rajendra Pachauri is now embattled over one revelation after another of missing data, faulty data and cooked results in its politicized findings of climate “consensus.”
And in the UNEP press announcement of this conference, there is already a strong flavor of yet more alarmism, calculated to bring in yet more funding for these folks, as — I’m not making these names up— the United Nations Body Burden Forum gets ready to sound alarms about “the toxic chemical burden increasingly borne by the life of the planet.” Again — it’s a great idea to actually clean up toxic chemicals. But do you trust this UN crowd to decide what those are? Or to find a reasonable way to do it?
Part of this UN bash will be a special session of the UNEP governing council. That council includes not only such members as the U.S., Canada and Japan, but also Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran – Iranian government officials being free to join in overseeing and attending such shindigs, despite Iran’s being under UN sanctions for its continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons (which, in Iran’s hands, would be terrible for a lot of things, including the environment).
There’s lots here that bears watching, but I’ll round this off with a note that at this plush pow-wow the UN’s propaganda engines will be roaring full steam ahead. On Feb. 22-23, this Monday and Tuesday, UNEP will put together a media workshop, on “Reporting Green — The Environment as News.” What fun for the media! A two-day workshop on Bali, by the beach.Will this workshop be teaching the media how to ask hardball questions about things like IPCC findings, UNEP conflicts of interest, or, for that matter, repeat UN mega-eco-conferences on Bali? I’d say, don’t hold your breath.
“But the creature called man has the capacity to worry, and worry he does. He worried about global cooling in the 1970s and then later about global warming. Then it became ”climate change.” He worried about causing rising seas, even though we know that the ocean around Florida was once three hundred feet lower and at another time a hundred feet higher. He worried that CO2 — a naturally occurring gas necessary for life and conducive to plant growth (which is why botanists pump it into greenhouses)– would spell our end. Never mind how it’s said that CO2-level changes follow temperature changes, not the reverse. A hypothesis needed its data.”
“Ah, that’s the ticket. Before, we had to do something because of certainty; now we have to do something because of uncertainty”
“Yet amidst this exposition of fact and exposure of fiction, one point never changes: We have been had. And one question remains: Will justice be done?
Let us be clear on the gravity of the Climateers’ crime: They have used billions of our tax money to fund fraudulent science. And why?
For the purposes of promoting policies that would steal billions more.“
At one time, some would call them ”deniers.” The more generous called them ”skeptics.” But now, increasingly, it appears that they can be called something else: sane. Yes, the climate has certainly changed.
Even in the mainstream media, the less liberal organs are waking up. There is now a never-ending barrage of articles on the climate scam, with The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post firing some recent salvos. And these inconvenient truths are just adding to a case against the Climateers that has become dizzying.
Really, those issuing Chicken Little warnings had a tough sell from the get-go. We’re told that our world has seen at least five major ice ages, but then again, I’ve also heard four. It has experienced numerous minor ones, although I’m not sure if anyone knows precisely how many. In fact, we hear that the pattern is to have 100,000-year glacial periods followed by 12,000-year interglacials, with 1,500-year cycles of warming and cooling embedded within them. We’re told that during part of the Cryogenian Period — otherwise known as ”Snowball Earth” — the world was completely blanketed with snow and ice, and that during another period, glaciers were almost or completely gone. Furthermore, we’re informed that during the latter, there was still, believe it or not, dry land and creatures to tread upon it.
But the creature called man has the capacity to worry, and worry he does. He worried about global cooling in the 1970s and then later about global warming. Then it became ”climate change.” He worried about causing rising seas, even though we know that the ocean around Florida was once three hundred feet lower and at another time a hundred feet higher. He worried that CO2 — a naturally occurring gas necessary for life and conducive to plant growth (which is why botanists pump it into greenhouses)– would spell our end. Never mind how it’s said that CO2-level changes follow temperature changes, not the reverse. A hypothesis needed its data.
Then, oh, boy, did we hear about that data. First there was Climategate, with e-mails showing that ”scientists” had schemed to suppress inconvenient truths and had refused to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.Then came the admission that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was dead wrong about Himalayan ice melt. And other shoes have dropped as well. Remember the IPCC warning that climate change could cause the loss of 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest? It was based on a report by an advocacy group, the World Wildlife Fund, that misrepresented a study. Then we learned of other notable IPCC sources as well, such as a student’s master’s dissertation and a sporting magazine.
Next, notorious University of East Anglia head and central Climategate figure Phil Jones may not yet be starting to sing truly, but he is at least singing a different tune. He now admits that the Medieval Warm Period might have been toastier than today, meaning that current temperatures ”would not be unprecedented.” To those of us who vaguely remember stories about dinosaurs andMesozoic CO2 levels five to ten times today’s and temperatures 11 to 22 degrees greater, this isn’t exactly earth-shattering.Jones also admits that there has been no ”statistically significant” warming since 1995, something that, when asserted mere months ago, got one branded a flat-earther. In addition, he now says that the Gorelesque view that ”the debate is over” is ”not my view.” Interestingly, though, he never made this known until he was caught green-handed.
Then we heard how the 6,000 weather stations that collected temperature data had mysteriously been reduced to 1,500, and that those eliminated just happened to be in cooler regions. As for examples of those used, journalist Wesley Pruden writes, ”Several were located near air-conditioning units and on waste-treatment plants; one was next to a waste incinerator. Still another was built at Rome‘s international airport and catches the hot exhaust of taxiing jetliners.”That’s almost as bad as positioning one in front of Al Gore’s mouth.
But, hey, while the Chicken Little Climateers had a tough sell, they had the Government-Media-Academia-Entertainment Axis on their side and a tight little theory.If it got warmer, it was man’s fault. If it got cooler, it was man’s fault. If it got warmer in places it was cooler and cooler in places it was warmer, it was man’s fault. If the weather became more volatile, it was man’s fault. The only thing that could have disproven their theory was if the weather stayed precisely the same henceforth, anywhere and everywhere. Of course, this actually would be unprecedented.
The Climateers, however, can change as quickly as what they claim to care about. For example, robbed of settled-science sleight-of-hand, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel now states, ”We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty [before acting].”
Ah, that’s the ticket. Before, we had to do something because of certainty; now we have to do something because of uncertainty.
Well, my head is spinning. Trying to process all these twists and turns, my mind has become a hodgepodge of information resembling Phil Jones’ office.
Yet amidst this exposition of fact and exposure of fiction, one point never changes: We have been had. And one question remains: Will justice be done?
Let us be clear on the gravity of the Climateers’ crime: They have used billions of our tax money to fund fraudulent science. And why?
For the purposes of promoting policies that would steal billions more.
And what happens now? Do they just get to say ”oops” and slink away?
Unfortunately, this prospect is better than what may actually happen, as the Climateers may very well be able to wait out the current storm. Take Phil Jones, for instance. Although little more than a criminal with a science degree, he is avoiding a criminal investigation because it’s too late under the law to prosecute.Moreover, he has not been fired from his position as head of the University of East Anglia‘s Climatic Sciences Unit; he has merely stepped aside temporarily. And while recent revelations that he was contemplating suicide may evoke sympathy in some, cry me a rising ocean. If you’re a good man with the courage of your convictions, you don’t think about ending it all upon meeting opposition; as Kipling said, you rather ”trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.” No, Jones is better explained by Sir Walter Scott and something about a ”tangled web.” His is the depression of a man who has been living a lie, and now, as some slings and arrows come his way, doesn’t even have the might born of being right to sustain him. Yet, if I may offer some unsolicited counsel, suicide is no solution, Dr. Jones. The answer is to become a better man, come clean, and make amends.
Then there is the deafeningly silent Al Gore, who, just as Punxsutawney Phil did after seeing his shadow Feb. 2, seems to have scurried into a hole. Will he, like the reluctant rodent, emerge again when the climate changes? Will he rise again along with the mercury as the weather warms and memories fade?
Along with many other hucksters such as IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri, these men make Bernie Madoff look like a piker. And what recourse do we, the victims, have? Well, here are a few suggestions.
First, we need to adopt an aggressive stance. We should cast from office any politician who facilitated the climate-change fraud. Next, we need to press for criminal investigations into and charges against Climateers whenever possible. And when such a remedy isn’t possible, we should resort to civil-court action when feasible.
Lastly, just as Senator Ben Nelson was driven from a pizza shop by angry patrons after finagling the cornhusker kickback, the Climateers should be treated as pariahs and not allowed a moment’s rest. Some may say this is out of bounds, but scorn and ostracism are powerful corrective forces. Besides, if the law cannot hold these elites to account, then the peasants with pitchforks must step into the breach.
Of course, the Climateers don’t really fear this, as they take the peasants for serfs. Let’s just hope they’re as wrong about this as they are about their science.
“It’s been called the “biggest scientific scandal in history.” It has everything to earn Pulitzer consideration: lies and misconduct in high places, political implications, even massive financial transactions that may or may not be legitimate or even legal. It’s big news … as long as you read the Telegraph, the Guardian, the London Times, or even major Indian papers.
It’s no news at all if you read the U.S. mainstream media.”
“Inhofe’s igloo? Yes. Biggest scientific scandal? Not so much.”
“After the London papers covered the collapsing credibility of the IPCC, after the LA Times made fun of Inhofe’s igloo, after the Washington Post ran a story reassuring its readers that the climate science was still sound even if there were some procedural errors, the New York Times has run, apparently, nothing.”
“I contacted all three papers — the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times — asking for comment, or for a pointer to the stories I had missed. Only one of the three replied, and they wouldn’t speak for attribution or on the record.
It’s truly a puzzle. This is a story that affects the future of human civilization, if some of the believers are right. It ties financially to people right up to the top of American politics, as well as major industries throughout the U.S. and the world. What’s more, the story would seem to be all wrapped up, ready for aggressive investigative reporters with the resources of the Times to expose. Some of the perpetrators have even begun to confess. Why wouldn’t the Times cover it at all?”
“Or perhaps, it’s just that the wrong people have turned out to be the bad guys.”
Climategate: The World’s Biggest Story, Everywhere but Here
The biggest scandal of our times is a non-story to U.S media. Why are the London papers covering the Climategate collapse, but not ours?
February 21, 2010 – by Charlie Martin
It’s been called the “biggest scientific scandal in history.” It has everything to earn Pulitzer consideration: lies and misconduct in high places, political implications, even massive financial transactions that may or may not be legitimate or even legal. It’s big news … as long as you read the Telegraph, the Guardian, the London Times, or even major Indian papers.
It’s no news at all if you read the U.S. mainstream media.
In the ninety days — three months exactly at the time of this writing — since the Climategate files story broke, there has been an amazing amount of breakout in the climate science story, with major error after major error being uncovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report IV (AR4).
There has been the discovery of suspicious conflicts of interest on the part of the chair of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, and the expanding story of the financial connections between the carbon trading cabal and the scientific climate clique in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Dr. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has “stepped aside” while under investigation, after which the UK government said it appeared there may have been criminality in CRU’s refusal to fulfill Freedom of Information requests. Scientist members of the IPCC have resigned, not wishing to continue to be associated with the poor quality of work being revealed.
And the UN chief diplomat in charge of climate change matters, Yvo de Boer, resigned in a sudden move that shocked UN climate watchers.
But search the major U.S. papers. There is a story in the Washington Post that at least mentioned some of the recent problems, prompted by Senator James Inhofe’s recent floor speech. What do they have to say about the biggest scientific scandal? The Post quotes U.N. Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth, whose nonprofit group has highlighted the work of the IPCC, saying that the pirated e-mails gave “an opening” to attack climate science, and that the scientific work “has to be defended just like evolution has to be defended.”
That would, by the way, be the same Timothy Wirth who was the original negotiator of the Kyoto Protocol.
So, is the massive dumping of snow from the Mid-Atlantic to New England proof positive that climate change is untrue, as doubters such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) have taken the opportunity to trumpet? (His family built an igloo, declared it Al Gore’s new home and put up signs asking people to honk if they liked global warming).
…
To be sure, the IPCC has been forced to acknowledge errors and unsubstantiated statements in one of its landmark 2007 reports. The irregularities had to do with predictions of the expected effects of warming. None of them, however, undermined the report’s consensus that the planet has warmed and that man’s activities have contributed to the warming.
Inhofe’s igloo? Yes. Biggest scientific scandal? Not so much.
The New York Times — can we still say “paper of record” with a straight face? — hasn’t covered the recent developments at all.
After the London papers covered the collapsing credibility of the IPCC, after the LA Times made fun of Inhofe’s igloo, after the Washington Post ran a story reassuring its readers that the climate science was still sound even if there were some procedural errors, the New York Times has run, apparently, nothing. What we do have is a piece in NY Times reporter Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog on February 12, taken from “a prolonged exchange of e-mail messages Thursday with a heap of authors from past and future reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, along with some stray experts” that gives a lot of space to a prolonged fantasy of what science historians might say in 2210, that includes:
But this was the first time the media reported that an entire community of scientists had been accused of actual dishonesty. Such claims, if directed for example at a politician on a matter of minor importance, would normally require serious investigation. But even in leading newspapers like the New York Times, critics with a long public record for animosity and exaggeration were quoted as experts. As we know, the repetition of allegations is sufficient to make them stick in the public’s mind, regardless of whether they are later shown (or could easily be shown at the time) to be untrue.
I still have problems with this whole business of debating the levels of certainty associated with global warming science. My view is that ultimately it’s a waste of mental energy, since we’ve already got enough certainty to know that it’s a good idea to take out an insurance policy against the worst-case scenario — and by the time you’ve got the hindsight to have “no error bars,” it’s already too late to do anything about GHGs.
Are there any mentions of Professor Phil Jones’ admission in a BBC interview that he isn’t good at keeping records, that his notes were so disorganized that he couldn’t comply with the Freedom of Information requests, that there had indeed been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and that there was still significant uncertainty about the Medieval Warm Period and even about climate science in general?
Not that I can find.
I contacted all three papers — the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times — asking for comment, or for a pointer to the stories I had missed. Only one of the three replied, and they wouldn’t speak for attribution or on the record.
It’s truly a puzzle. This is a story that affects the future of human civilization, if some of the believers are right. It ties financially to people right up to the top of American politics, as well as major industries throughout the U.S. and the world. What’s more, the story would seem to be all wrapped up, ready for aggressive investigative reporters with the resources of the Times to expose. Some of the perpetrators have even begun to confess. Why wouldn’t the Times cover it at all?
Are there any mentions of Professor Phil Jones’ admission in a BBC interview that he isn’t good at keeping records, that his notes were so disorganized that he couldn’t comply with the Freedom of information requests, that there had indeed been no statistically significant warming since 1995 and that there was still significant uncertainty about the Medieval Warm Period, and even about climate science in general?
Thanks to Gerard Vanderleun of the American Digest blog — and his link to Tom Nelson, one of my new favorite climate aggregators — we might have an answer. Nelson ran into this audio recording (warning: 105MB mp3 file) of the first Shorenstein Center/Belfer Center seminar on news coverage of climate change. One of the speakers was Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Here’s part of what Revkin had to say, transcribed by Tom Nelson:
One thing that’s interesting to note … in this administration shift is that all the coverage that I did of all those obfuscations, editing, censorship and stuff that the Bush administration got involved in was a no-brainer getting that on the front page of the New York Times … Now, theoretically, should I be just as aggressively writing about these revelations? [nervous laugh]. There’s total … complete differences between what was going on then and some of the things you’ve heard about recently in terms of the scientific integrity of the IPCC …The bottom line is, there was a predisposition at my newspaper to say hey, that’s a great get; there’s a major front page story … when Phil Cooney … editing climate reports and all that stuff … it fit a very comfortable theme that all environmental stories for the longest period of time had, which is there’s bad guys and good guys. Shame on you, shame on you.
Could it possibly be that the Times would sit on a story of this magnitude simply because it doesn’t say “shame on you” to the right people?
There may be some some additional insight to be gained by reading two pieces from Columbia Journalism Review: “MIA on the IPCC,” published January 29, and and “U.S. Press Digs Into IPCC Story,” two weeks later.
The January 29 piece says, reasonably:
In the days after the story first broke, The New York Times and The Washington Post each ran one print article about the Himalayan glaciers error. The Christian Science Monitor, now published online, produced one piece, and the Associated Press and Bloomberg sent a couple of articles over the wire.
Unfortunately, that’s about it. Meanwhile, outlets in the UK, India, and Australia have been eating the American media’s lunch, churning out reams of commentary and analysis. Journalists in the U.S. should take immediate steps to redress that oversight.
It then runs through some of the other IPCC issues that had come to light by then, and concludes:
So, yes, an “old row” it is, but a very important one, to which the American press should pay more attention (taking a cue perhaps from the Guardian, which thought the flap between the Sunday Times, the IPCC, Ward, and Pielke was newsworthy enough). For, indeed, the row continues. Over the last week, Pielke has posted a number of entries on his blog revisiting his criticisms of the IPCC’s work on disaster losses and responding to Ward’s defense of the panel. … Today, he announced that next Friday he will debate Ward at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. The event is titled, “Has Global Warming increased the toll of disasters?”
That’s a great question. Unfortunately, the debate is in London, which probably means we’ll be hearing crickets in the U.S. media while coverage of this momentous topic continues elsewhere.
But by the 15th, CJR wrote:
Last Tuesday, The New York Times ran a front-page article by Elisabeth Rosenthal under the headline, “U.N. Panel and Its Chief Face a Siege on Their Credibility.” On Wednesday, the Associated Press ran one over the wire headlined, “Scientists seek better way to do climate report.” The difference between the two headlines — the Times focused on the panel’s faults, the AP on its attempts to address them — is important. Each tells half the story, but it is the latter that should lead.
In two weeks, CJR has moved from saying that U.S. media should cover the controversy to specifying what the “right” lead should be. CJR continues:
Bearing this in mind, it is easy to see why — as Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm first pointed out — Rosenthal buried her lede in the ninth paragraph, which reads:
The panel, in reviewing complaints about possible errors in its report, has so far found that one was justified and another was “baseless.” The general consensus among mainstream scientists is that the errors are in any case minor and do not undermine the report’s conclusions.
That is something that needs to be mentioned in the first few paragraphs. From there, a reporter can explain that errors were nonetheless made, which should remind the world of three things: that the exact timing and scale of certain impacts of climate change are subject to a lot of uncertainty; that some scientists will behave defensively, even to the point of negligence, when they feel threatened; and that all quality control-systems sometimes fail. Thereafter, the question becomes: what is being done about these problems?
That is, the “correct” view is that these problems don’t call the science into question, and the “right” question is to ask “what can be done about these trivial little problems?”
This appears to be one of the rare occasions on which we can observe the “consensus narrative” being shaped.
The CJR observes, correctly, that “outlets in the U.K., India, and Australia have been eating the American media’s lunch, churning out reams of commentary and analysis.” But it then concludes that there are no substantial problems; the “correct” view is that the scientific issues, and even more so the way that shoddy science was put together for political impact, aren’t particularly important and don’t call any of the conclusions into questions. Except, one assumes, the ones that have been determined to be false, like the impending doom of the Himalayan glaciers in 2035, or even the claim that the IPCC reports represented the best peer-reviewed science.
Which is, sure enough, the message being presented in the U.S. media. No scandal, no scientific misconduct, and certainly no actual fraud or criminality.
Motivations are slippery things, but consider just the facts: we have a mysterious lack of coverage of the repercussions and debate over Climategate in the world media.
Along with that, we have Revkin’s admission that for an environmental story to be of interest at the Times, it must ” … fit a very comfortable theme that all environmental stories for the longest period of time had, which is there’s bad guys and good guys.”
Finally, over the span of two weeks, the CJR — which may be less influential than it once was, but is still widely read between Harlem and Times Square — starts by saying that the U.S. media should be reporting this story, and moves to saying what the right reporting should be.
What the CJR has done, by accident, is answer its own question. The story has been covered the way it was, and to the small degree it was, because it doesn’t have a good guy to cheer and a bad guy to which the media can say “shame, shame.”
Or perhaps, it’s just that the wrong people have turned out to be the bad guys.
Charlie Martin is a Colorado computer scientist and freelance writer. He holds an MS in Computer Science from DukeUniversity, where he spent six years with the National Biomedical Simulation Resource, DukeUniversityMedicalCenter. Find him at http://chasrmartin.com, and on his blog at http://explorations.chasrmartin.com.
Left-Wing European Press Attacks IPCC, UN Climate Change “Dilettentes”
The meltdown of the climate change movement is entering a new phase as the European left turns on the UN climate change office and the IPCC.
The German left wing press, one of the world’s strongest supporters of the ‘climate change movement’ is turning against the scientists and UN bureaucrats responsible for leading the movement. A round-up of German press coverage over the unexpected resignation of UN climate chief Yvo de Boeroffers a perspective on the failures of the climate change movement that is both more scathing and more frank than anything the mainstream US press has yet brought itself to utter.
“De Boer’s Resignation is Catastrophic,” runs the headline on Der Spiegel’s English language website. Die Tageszeitung, a leftish daily, says that De Boer’s resignation may signal the collapse of the effort to stop climate change by treaty:“a signal that world diplomacy is not the way to win the struggle against climate change.”
The German press is also wondering why de Boer has resigned while Pachauri, widely seen as bearing more individual responsibility for the IPCC’s failings than de Boer, still clings to his job. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung, considered another left leaning newspaper has a much harsher assessment:
At last even the UN is drawing consequences from the disgrace of its climate politics over the last few months. Scientific documents were suppressed; the summit was prepared with such unbelievable dilettantism that it had no chance to succeed; then there was the bitter argument over false predictions about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. The resignation of Yvo de Boer — chief of the UN’s climate secretariat and one of the responsible figures — is overdue.
In France, the left wing Le Monde — the New York Times of France — wrote about a “total confusion” in the global climate change movement following De Boer’s resignation.According to Le Monde, the diplomatic process has broken down completely;De Boer’s resignation at least brings this out in the open. Le Figaro, a more conservative newspaper, offers an article on the proposal to reform the IPCC made by 5 leading scientists in Nature. Figaroquotes a leading French scientist who attacks the current process as biased and unfair, given IPCC’s status as a quasi-official body. In another piece, Figaro describes the climate skeptic movement’s attacks on the mainstream consensus (Sorry, the links are to articles in French).
When the British press attacked the IPCC, the US media insofar as they noted the British attacks at all, dismissed newspapers like the Telegraph and the Times as right wing outlets — Fox News in print. What do they say about this latest inconvenient truth: that left wing papers on the Continent increasingly believe that the movement to get a global climate treaty is dead and that the follies, dilettantism and errors of the climate change advocates rather than the churlishness of their critics is to blame?
Nothing.
The blogosphere has shamed some leading US newspapers into paying perfunctory attention to one of the biggest stories in several years. But there’s still no sign that the US press is ready to pursue this still unfolding story with anything like the determination it deserves. Until then, Americans will have to rely on the internet to watch this story unfold — and every day that goes on, the mainstream US media lose readers and respect.
Major Update: As quickly pointed out by one of my readers (thank you Skip Smith), the statement referred to in this article was in fact uttered by Gavin Schmidt, principal contributor to Real Climate, and not his colleague Michael Mann as I originally stated. My apologies to Mr. Mann for the error. Mr. Schmidt, shame on you.
One of the most bizarre statements in the history of science came out of the mouth of Gavin Schmidt Friday.
In an interview published Friday in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, Schmidt remarked of Steve McIntyre, ”“He could be a scientific superstar,” Mr. Schmidt says. “He’s a smart person. He could be adding to the sum total of human knowledge, but in effect he adds to the reduction of the sum total of human knowledge.” The last part of his statement should go down in history as the most anti-scientific sentence ever recorded.
Contrast this statement with one of history’s greatest scientists, Charles Darwin, who stated ”to kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact”. (Hat tip to Lefty Martin in the comments below.)
A little context, please… Gavin Schmidt works for NASA, although we know him best for his blogging efforts on Real Climate, the establishment voice for climate science. Schmidt is referring to mistakes in his colleagues’ papers that were, in part, highlighted by Steve McIntyre, who publishes his number checking efforts on the website Climate Audit. Schmidt and other members of the climate ‘establishment’ use the website Real Climate to defend themselves.
Schmidt and McIntyre were both interviewed (although separately–it’d be fun to see them in the same room, though) about Climategate and the various other ‘gates’ afflicting the IPCC and other bastions of global warming orthodoxy. McIntyre has found numerous errors in data handling, archiving and analysis in the work of Mann and other scientists. The errors all were in one direction–making global warming look both more severe and more certain. The reaction to McIntyre’s critiques has been hostile, obfuscatory and verges on the paranoid.
It was to keep data out of the hands of McIntyre that the crew at CRU deleted emails and violated the UK Freedom of Information Act. In fact the emails were released anonymously the day after one of McIntyre’s requests for information was denied, leading to speculation that opinion of McIntyre’s work is not unanimous at CRU. It was to counter-act McIntyre’s criticisms that the website Real Climate was formed, which delights in attacking McIntyre and trying to minimize the very real effects of McIntyre’s work.
So it’s natural that Schmdit would have a low opinion of McIntyre. McIntyre ripped Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick to shreds and has been finding holes in research papers by Mann and his fellow scientist-bloggers ever since.
But to baldly state that McIntyre’s work is leading to a reduction in human knowledge is not just wrong, it goes against the basic organising principles that have made science such a powerful force for good in this world.
Finding error is just as important as finding truth. You don’t get the Nobel Prize for it, but it is at least as valuable a contribution to science and society as coming up with an important hypothesis or finding supporting evidence. Many will argue that it is more important, as sadly there is more error than truth floating around this universe, and for the way we do science to work we need eagle-eyed critics willing to not only note discrepancies but dig into the data and illustrate the error and how it was made.
Schmidt is worse than wrong–he is moving outside of science completely with his statement.
Had the climate science establishment made any sort of gesture of inclusion to Steve McIntyre, he would probably be working with them today. It’s crucially important to understand that McIntyre is not what Joe Romm would term a ‘denialist.’ McIntyre does not dispute the fundamental tenets of climate science or climate change. But given that climate science is in its infant stages and major mistakes are a dime a dozen,auditing the data is key to maintaining credibility, especially on an issue where so much is at stake.
McIntyre is doing for free what climate scientists should have been doing themselves–the number checking and replication that makes science trustworthy. McIntyre is not being paid by anybody for this work, while climate scientists are the recipients of large sums of public money, which is certainly not going towards the verification his work needs.
They should be grateful for McIntyre’s contribution to reducing the noise level in the science so we can see the real signals that are there. Instead, as he has done since he first began commenting in public, Schmidt tries to insult McIntyre, minimize what he has done and defend his own shoddy work.
Steve Mosher and I have written a book about the leaked emails that have caused so much controversy. The title is Climategate: The CRUtape Letters. It is available on Create Space here, Amazon here, Kindle here and Lulu here. One Amazon reviewer wrote, ”Mosher and Fuller do a good job putting the ClimateGate documents in context, and the book is a riveting read. I received my copy yesterday, and find the book to be faithful to the climate war events that I have followed over a period of years. It reports actual email communications of a small group of paleoclimatologists and their roles in perhaps the biggest scientific hoax since Piltdown Man.”
“The climate change fraud also affected major U.S. corporations, none of whom wanted to appear to be opposed to it. However, on Tuesday, February 16th, BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar all announced they were dropping out of the Climate Action Partnership that advocated energy-rationing. Some of the millions squandered on various global warming and “environmental” projects and groups came from the bottom line of corporations across the nation.
At this point, any corporation that speaks of “climate change” in its advertising and other public statements is part of the global fraud that originated in the United Nations Environmental Program.”
“According to a recently released study by the National Association of Utility Regulatory Commissioners, the U.S. gross domestic product would lose $2.36 trillion and American consumers will pay an additional $2.35 trillion for energy if the oil and gas on federal lands remain off-limits through 2030. This constitutes a form of energy and economic suicide!”
He is right you know. We should as consumers boycott, where possible – some companies have near monopolies which make it harder, all these companies that continue to propagate the Global Warming hysteria, and makes money from it.
It is a very simple and effective way. And it is going to hurt their bottom line. It is the only way to make these politicized companies take notice.
As the massive global warming fraud implodes, the one aspect of it that has not been explored in depth is the equally massive waste of billions of dollars spent by the United States and nations around the world, we were told, to avoid global warming.
Whole industries such as automobile manufacture had demands and limits put on them. Some states required utilities to buy “carbon credits” to offset their use of “fossil fuels.” The list of things attributed to global warming expanded to the point of total absurdity.
The codification of the fraud into law began with the Kyoto Protocol, an element of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change whose purpose was to fight a global warming that we now know was not happening.
The data to support the fraud came out of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that specialized in distorting climate data in every way possible to emphasize a normal warming cycle and then to minimize any indication of a new cooling cycle dating to around 1998 or earlier.
The IPCC data, released periodically in reports purporting to be the work of some 2,500 scientists from around the world, were actually based the handiwork of a few academic centers such as the Climate Research Center (CRU) at East Anglia University in England, Penn State University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and climate modeling from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
Other participants in the fraud were NASA’s Goddard Institute and NOAA, both of whom produced claims, predictions, and questionable data to support “global warming.”
In the U.S. alone, I have heard figures in the area of $50 billion that have been spent on “climate change” over the course of administrations dating back to Clinton. In England, between 2006 and 2008, the government spent the equivalent of nearly $14 million (U.S.) on publicity stunts to convince Brits that global warming was real.
It is legitimate to ask if global warming has not in effect been a criminal enterprise.
The Kyoto Protocol required the nation states that signed onto it to commit to a reduction of four “greenhouse” gas, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride, and two groups of gases, hydrofluorocarbons and perflourocarbons. These gases occur in minimal amounts in the Earth’s atmosphere which is composed primarily of 95% to 97% water vapor!
The cost of accepting this commitment is measured in several ways, not the least of which was the sale of “carbon credits” to utilities and to industrial enterprises that would permit them to function outside the limits imposed. The exchanges created for this purpose prospered but it increased the cost of providing electrical energy and the manufacture of all manner of products.
The limitations, however, did not apply to either China or India, both of which were exempted, as were undeveloped Third World nations.
The climate change fraud also affected major U.S. corporations, none of whom wanted to appear to be opposed to it. However, on Tuesday, February 16th, BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar all announced they were dropping out of the Climate Action Partnership that advocated energy-rationing. Some of the millions squandered on various global warming and “environmental” projects and groups came from the bottom line of corporations across the nation.
At this point, any corporation that speaks of “climate change” in its advertising and other public statements is part of the global fraud that originated in the United Nations Environmental Program.
The carbon emissions limitations also served to justify huge public subsidies for U.S. producers of wind and solar energy, called “clean” energy. Several nations, such as Spain, Germany and Great Britain, invested heavily in these alternative energy sources only to discover that they were massively inefficient and unreliable.
At the same time, the global warming fraud in the United States limited the building of coal-fired plants to generate electricity when, in fact, coal provides 50% of the nation’s electricity needs. Combined with fears of nuclear energy dating back to the 1970s, the United States has essentially starved itself of the energy it needs.
According to a recently released study by the National Association of Utility Regulatory Commissioners, the U.S. gross domestic product would lose $2.36 trillion and American consumers will pay an additional $2.35 trillion for energy if the oil and gas on federal lands remain off-limits through 2030. This constitutes a form of energy and economic suicide!
A British newspaper, the Daily Mail in a recent interview with CRU Prof. Phil Jones, revealed he knew there had been no “statistically significant” warming for the past fifteen years.Little wonder Prof. Jones and the CRU refused to honor UK Freedom of Information requests for the data on which the IPCC claims were based. He and others who provided IPCC data are under investigation.
In essence, the IPCC reports were all fraudulent and all were used to advance the global warming fraud. That is why President Obama’s claim of “overwhelming evidence” of climate change, i.e., global warming is particularly troubling.
It is essential to understand that the “Cap-and-Trade” legislation passed by the House and waiting for a vote in the Senate is based on the IPCC reports and the threat by the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions throughout the nation have no legitimate basis in science.
There are still billions at stake if global warming-related laws, projects such as wind farms or the requirement that ethanol be added to every gallon of gas purchased are permitted to proceed or continue.
Global warming as an issue or basis for any law or expenditure of public funding no longer exists.
It’s long passed the time when the nation’s news media should stop referring to it as anything other than a fraud perpetrated on the people of the world.
Remember, weather is not the same thing as climate … unless David Suzuki says it is
By Lorrie Goldstein, Senior Associate Editor
Last Updated: February 21, 2010 2:15am
Other than their grating self-righteousness, the most annoying thing about global warmists is their double standards.
Case in point. All over North America for the past few weeks, they’ve been screaming how dare the Republican right and Fox News in the U.S. suggest the recent wave of record snowfalls and cold temperatures south of the border are evidence man-made global warming is a hoax.
Indeed, warmist piling on has been almost as impressive as the snow drifts that recently paralyzed Washington, D.C.
Now, before the warmists have a stroke, let it be said they have a point.
Weather isn’t climate and no single weather event, or season, or several cold and snowy seasons, can fairly be used to discount the theory of man-made global warming.
Indeed, in a warming world, precipitation increases (at least where it doesn’t decrease) and thus, heavy snowfalls aren’t automatic evidence of global cooling. To the contrary, warmists contend, record snowfalls are a sure sign of global warming.
Thus, when the family of Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, considered the anti-Christ by global warmists, builds an igloo near the U.S. Capitol declaring it “Al Gore’s New Home” that’s not fair … It’s funny, but it’s not fair.
Ditto Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, tweeting the snow would fall “until Al Gore cries uncle.” Again, unfair … Still funny, though.
Ditto Fox News — whose pundits express similar views, only more loudly.
After all, global warming is a complex issue and the public’s understanding is not helped by simplistic, sensationalistic portrayals of it.
Of course, global warmists — who have condemned Republican tactics — would never stoop to them, right? Wrong.
We whisk you to Vancouver just before the Olympics where — shocking, this — there wasn’t any snow, because, as all Canadians know, Vancouver is always buried in about, what,— a metre of the white stuff, at this time of year? (Insert laughter here.)
So, given the somewhat unsurprising news Olympic officials were trucking in snow to Cypress Mountain, site of the freestyle skiing and snowboard events, how did Canadian warmists respond?
Well, here’s our most famous environmentalist, David Suzuki, calmly commenting.
“I’ve watched in horror as the snow just melted away from Cypress Mountain and it’s even more horrifying to me to think of helicopters airlifting snow from Manning Park to fill it back up again.”
In addition to Suzuki’s apparently low tolerance for horror, climatically speaking, his foundation chimed in man-made global warming clearly had a hand in the lack of snow.
So, just to review the warmist perspective:
(1) North of the 49th parallel —global warming explains the lack of snow.
(2) South of the 49th parallel —global warming explains the snow.
Plus:
(1) Warmists can use single weather events to prove global warming.
(2) Opponents can’t use single weather events to disprove global warming.
Does it not occur to warmists that stuff like this is one of the reasons more and more people are starting to think of them as the intellectual heirs of Chicken Little?
As for Canada’s warmist media, if you’re wondering why fewer people are buying your argument neither climategate nor the growing scientific controversies engulfing the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is news, ask yourself this.
How many of you (justifiably) criticized Inhofe, DeMint and Fox for what they said? Now, how many of you criticized Suzuki and his foundation for what they said? Oops.
A final assignment for warmists. Go to your video bible, Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and find in all those dramatic visual images linking global warming to present-day heat waves, droughts, floods, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and hurricanes, one image — just one — linking global warming to record snowstorms.
Trust me, you won’t find any, because that would have gotten in the way of Gore’s painfully simplistic argument that more greenhouse gas emissions simply means more heat.
And the problem is, when you live by the sword, you die by the sword, as the warmists are now discovering.
More on Pachauri and background of Glacier gate in this article from Forbes India Magazine (05 March, 2010).
“Pachauri has been resisting calls for stepping down from the IPCC chair. For the rest of us who don’t want to confuse ‘science’ with ‘kazoombaa’, Gray has some advice, “There’s one (scientific study) born every minute. If somebody tells you what is going to happen in 100 years’ time I suggest kicking him out of the door.”
“The dissenting lot believes that while the Survey of India has prepared accurate maps for the rest of the country, its maps for Himalayan glaciers are incorrect. Raina recalls the time he was the director general of the glaciology division at Geological Survey of India (GSI) in the 1980s. The maps were based on aerial photography done in November because of clear skies. Now measurements are taken during September but because of monsoon clouds aerial photography is not possible.
However simple this may sound, it makes a lot of difference to the authenticity of the data collected. By November, the first snowfall has already taken place because of which it is very difficult to identify the outline of the glaciers. That’s why many glaciers outlined in the maps show much larger outlines than actually present. So, when the SAC compared the current size of glaciers using satellite imagery with the 1962 maps they obviously found a lot of shrinkage.“We told the minister that we do not agree what SAC says. At least that is our experience of the glaciers we have gone to,” adds Raina. “
“On August 4, 2009, Raina submitted his report. It contained 150 years of data collected by the GSI of 25 Indian glaciers. It said that the Himalayan glaciers and glaciers in the rest of the world have retreated and advanced irregularly with no direct link to warming or cooling of the earth’s climate. “This is one of the many issues of climate change science that we do not fully understand,” says Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, a scientist based out of Canada who has been an expert reviewer of the 2007 IPCC report.
On November 9, 2009, Jairam Ramesh released the Himalayan glacier document at a press conference in New Delhi. “There is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming with what is happening with the Himalayan glaciers,” he said.
Hell Breaks Loose
Raina vividly remembers the day the report was released. “It is surprising that even on the day when this document was released by the minister, a lot of press asked me questions but nobody bothered to put them in the papers because probably at that time they thought this fellow knows nothing… yeh to mantriji ne kar diya,” he says. He was partially correct. Not many took the statement too seriously in the beginning, except for some stray critics writing in the media. But the one man who took immediate note of it and reacted bitterly was R. K. Pachauri, chairman of IPCC
Pachauri came down strongly on the report. The following day, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, he questioned the minister’s intentions behind releasing such a report terming it as ‘an extremely arrogant statement’.And he didn’t refrain from taking pot shots at Raina either. “With the greatest of respect, this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago.”He went on to say that such claims were those of “climate change deniers and school boy science.” Scientists across the world and six of them who shared their perspective on this issue with Forbes India say that Pachauri’s comments were out of order because they were very personal.”
An account of how a retired geologist took apart the alarmist climate claims of a Nobel Prize winning organisation
by Ashish K Mishra | Feb 22, 2010
V ijay Kumar Raina is amused. The 76-year old retired geologist who lives in Sector 17, Panchkula in Haryana has been blitzkrieged by the media, government, world scientist community and the average citizen since December 2009.
Why? Because he blew the lid off the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC), headed by the charismatic R.K. Pachauri, claims that the Himalayan glaciers will be extinct by 2035.
Raina’s life has taken a complete turnaround in the last six months. Like most retirees, Raina had followed a routine: Early morning walks, discussing politics, attending to his plants and working religiously on his book devoted to ‘tracing the work done on Indian glaciers’.
He was on the receiving end of jibes from Pachauri who dismissed his claims as school-boy science. Now Pachauri has been keeping a low profile, his reputation at stake. However, neighbours call on Raina non-stop. There is no time to work on his book. But Raina laughs off the publicity. “The last one month has been absolutely maddening. Morning to evening, I am either talking to the press or answering questions on email and I haven’t been able to even touch my book. [But] so far I am concerned, the case is closed,” he says.
What case? In its 4th Assessment Report released in 2007, the IPCC said, ‘the Himalayan glaciers were receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if it continued, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.’ This was the same year that the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
Now it has emerged that none of it was true. IPCC, which employs top scientists in the world didn’t do its homework and made unsubstantiated, alarmist claims. The organisation is on the defensive and its credibility is diminishing by the day.
How It Unravelled
The whole chain of events started on another ordinary day in Raina’s life when he received a phone call.
Raina, along with his wife Mohini, 73, was driving to a bakery shop specialising in Kashmiri sweets in Sector 23, Chandigarh when his mobile phone rang. “I get this call from some gentleman by the name of Dr. Subramaniam from the Ministry of Environment who says that ‘the honourable minister wants you to attend a meeting on Himalayan glaciers’. I hung up saying that I am driving and will talk to you later,” says Raina. Once back home, he called the number. “I told him that I am a retired man and I don’t know where I come into the picture,” adds Raina.
He wasn’t sure he would go. But after much coaxing by his wife and the promise of the trip being sponsored by the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF), he finally agreed.
On July 10, 2009, Raina went to the Paryavaran Bhawan, headquarters of the MoEF in Delhi. He wasn’t alone. There were around forty other scientists at the meeting. The Space Application Centre (SAC) had prepared a report on a few Himalayan glaciers based on satellite imagery which had been funded by the MoEF.
Environment minister Jairam Ramesh wanted to know the view of all the scientists gathered in the room on the findings of SAC. “There was an open discussion where everybody was given the opportunity to air their views and most of the people didn’t agree with their findings,” says Raina.
The dissenting lot believes that while the Survey of India has prepared accurate maps for the rest of the country, its maps for Himalayan glaciers are incorrect. Raina recalls the time he was the director general of the glaciology division at Geological Survey of India (GSI) in the 1980s. The maps were based on aerial photography done in November because of clear skies. Now measurements are taken during September but because of monsoon clouds aerial photography is not possible.
However simple this may sound, it makes a lot of difference to the authenticity of the data collected. By November, the first snowfall has already taken place because of which it is very difficult to identify the outline of the glaciers. That’s why many glaciers outlined in the maps show much larger outlines than actually present. So, when the SAC compared the current size of glaciers using satellite imagery with the 1962 maps they obviously found a lot of shrinkage.“We told the minister that we do not agree what SAC says. At least that is our experience of the glaciers we have gone to,” adds Raina.
Ramesh took notice and asked Raina if he would prepare a ‘white paper on the status of work done on Himalayan glaciers’. He was given a window of three weeks to complete the white paper. Raina claims he had no idea what a white paper meant. But he checked. “I found that a white paper means truthful expression of facts,” he says.
On August 4, 2009, Raina submitted his report. It contained 150 years of data collected by the GSI of 25 Indian glaciers. It said that the Himalayan glaciers and glaciers in the rest of the world have retreated and advanced irregularly with no direct link to warming or cooling of the earth’s climate. “This is one of the many issues of climate change science that we do not fully understand,” says Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, a scientist based out of Canada who has been an expert reviewer of the 2007 IPCC report.
On November 9, 2009, Jairam Ramesh released the Himalayan glacier document at a press conference in New Delhi. “There is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming with what is happening with the Himalayan glaciers,” he said.
Hell Breaks Loose
Raina vividly remembers the day the report was released. “It is surprising that even on the day when this document was released by the minister, a lot of press asked me questions but nobody bothered to put them in the papers because probably at that time they thought this fellow knows nothing… yeh to mantriji ne kar diya,” he says. He was partially correct. Not many took the statement too seriously in the beginning, except for some stray critics writing in the media. But the one man who took immediate note of it and reacted bitterly was R. K. Pachauri, chairman of IPCC.
Pachauri came down strongly on the report. The following day, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, he questioned the minister’s intentions behind releasing such a report terming it as ‘an extremely arrogant statement’.And he didn’t refrain from taking pot shots at Raina either. “With the greatest of respect, this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago.”He went on to say that such claims were those of “climate change deniers and school boy science.” Scientists across the world and six of them who shared their perspective on this issue with Forbes India say that Pachauri’s comments were out of order because they were very personal.
In December, 2009, however, Dr. Murari Lal, a scientist and one of the authors of the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report spilled the beans at a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) conference held in New Delhi at the headquarters of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). He said that he had cited the ‘Himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035’ claim from a 2005 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report.
The implication of this “confession” was serious. Lal was saying his data was from a secondary source. The events quickly unravelled. WWF quickly responded and said it had, in turn, take the information from a quote in the New Science Journal given by Dr. Syed Iqbal Hasnain, who was then at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and who later became the head of glaciology at TERI. Hasnain, on his part, denied making any such statement.The source of the claim in IPCC’s report thus entered a blackhole.
The moment this story made headlines, scientists and policy makers across the world started questioning IPCC’s credibility. Dr. Vincent Gray, a scientist based out of New Zealand who has been an expert reviewer on all IPCC reports ,puts IPCC’s current state of affairs in perspective. “This Himalayan story is so obviously fraudulent that it is surprising that people have only just noticed it. I blame myself that I should have noticed it long ago,” says Gray. But, quite a few people including the IPCC believe that the ‘error’ is not such a big deal. Mark Kenber, Policy Director at The Climate Group, is one such person. “The IPCC does not claim anything with 100 percent certainty. Clearly there hasn’t been sufficient scrutiny of all work covered, but that only two pieces out of tens of thousands have slipped through is remarkable,” says Kenber.
However, others like Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book The Skeptical Environmentalist believe that over the years IPCC had assumed the status of almost a god-like organisation. “People thought that if it is in the IPCC, it is true. The guys were very sure about themselves. All three reports of the IPCC would do a lot of good with more transparency,” says Lomborg.
It is the IPCC’s motivation and hand-in-glove nature with policy makers that have come into question. “It is not a scientific body and it has become a political body, dedicated to distorting evidence to support the view that human emissions are dangerous,” says Gray. Kenber, on the other hand, believes that it is inevitable that a scientific body so closely aligned with a political process will come under intense scrutiny.
In reply to an email quesionnaire from Forbes India, IPCC said “there was regrettably a poor application of the IPCC Rules and Procedures” in drafting the paragraph on Himalayan Glaciers. “We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring that the author teams apply the IPCC procedures at every stage of the writing and review process in order to fulfil the IPCC mandate,” it said.
The Aftermath
In early 2010, Pachauri dismissed Raina’s report as ‘voodoo science’. But Pachauri himself is no scientist. In his earlier avatars, Pachauri indulged in more prosaic activities like overseeing operations at Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi and imparting lessons in economics to management students.
This in no way undermines the man’s achievement though. He had done a very good job building TERI.
Ever since the IPCC won the Nobel, Pachauri has acquired a celebrity status of sorts in the global warming scientific community. He is always on the move; either making speeches, attending conferences, presiding IPCC meetings or meeting policy makers. “The Nobel had its spillover. Earlier, he used to keep to himself but now he’s become more outspoken and sees himself more globally,” says another source who is a member of a TERI committee.
As for Raina, he is unhappy that the work of so many scientists was trashed. “There are people working from Geological Survey, people working from Jammu University, people working from Jawaharlal Nehru University, IITs who had been working on this subject and this is the remark. That’s the tragedy,” he says.
He knows what it is to be a field scientist. A Kashmiri Pandit by birth, Raina has spent more than 35 years studying Himalayan glaciers. And life as a glaciologist hasn’t been easy. He’s walked on foot for months to reach inaccessible glaciers, spent more than three months at a stretch living on glaciers surviving on ‘potatoes and onions’, led two expeditions to Antarctica, broken his leg when he fell into a crevice while coming down from the ‘Gara’ glacier in Himachal Pradesh with the nearest hospital available after five days march. He retired in 1991 with a last-month salary of Rs. 9,000.
Ask his wife about how he feels about the whole thing and Mrs. Raina does. “He says that I just gave the facts of science; and I didn’t mean to confront anybody. Many people wrote to us saying that this is not right. Let him (Pachauri) say what he likes but after all I know what my capabilities are…Waise bhi jo bechara gir gaya hai, use laat kyon maarni,” she adds.
The debate isn’t over but Raina is done with it. He still has plans to demolish a few myths. One of them is that the Gangotri Glacier in Uttarakhand gets affected by pilgrims taking bath in the Ganges or by army vehicles passing through. However, his next big thing is his book.
Pachauri has been resisting calls for stepping down from the IPCC chair. For the rest of us who don’t want to confuse ‘science’ with ‘kazoombaa’, Gray has some advice, “There’s one (scientific study) born every minute. If somebody tells you what is going to happen in 100 years’ time I suggest kicking him out of the door.”
“Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the EPA failed to meet its responsibility to conduct appropriate cost-benefit analysis, and that the economic harm to American citizens – including Virginians – would outweigh any purported benefits of the new regulations. As the AG put it,”We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground.” Of course, he’s spot on.”
Virginia attorney general questions global warming red tape
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took a gutsy and intelligent step Feb. 17 when he petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its ill-advised ”finding” that carbon dioxide creates an endangerment for human health. The endangerment finding would let the EPA battle alleged global warming by regulating emissions of CO2, which of course is the gas that every animal and person exhales with every breath. The finding was ludicrous from the start, and now Mr. Cuccinelli makes a reasonable case that it also was unlawful.
”Attorney General Cuccinelli believes that the EPA acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and failed to properly exercise its judgment by relying almost exclusively on reports from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an arm of the United Nations] in attributing climate change to [human-caused] greenhouse gas emissions,” the AG’s office explains. ”The IPCC is an international body that is not subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards and the IPCC prepared their reports in total disregard to U.S. Standards.”
Since the EPA finding was issued, the IPPC’s reports have become subject to scandal on multiple fronts. Those scandals reached a crescendo when a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported Feb. 14 that ”The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information. … And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”
Obviously, if the EPA were relying on bad data like all of the other climate-change fanatics, it ought to reconsider its plans to further strangle our struggling economy with more unnecessary red tape.
Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the EPA failed to meet its responsibility to conduct appropriate cost-benefit analysis, and that the economic harm to American citizens – including Virginians – would outweigh any purported benefits of the new regulations. As the AG put it,”We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground.” Of course, he’s spot on.
This is the fourth part of the story on NASA:s refusal to comply with FOI requests. And their active and willingly participation in the Global Warming Hysteria.
Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part Four)
Who pitches in to cover for NASA’s FOIA release? Al Gore’s cable TV station.
(Don’t miss Parts One, Two, and Three of Christopher’s report, and watch his PJTV interview, here.)
February 20, 2010 – by Christopher Horner
(On December 31, 2009, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute with the documents I requested from them with an FOIA in August 2007. My request asked NASA to release their internal discussions regarding a series of errors in their claims of warming U.S. temperatures caught by Steve McIntyre. NASA had stonewalled my request for more than two years.)
In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (co-founder of the climate alarmist website RealClimate.org).
I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “Hockey Stick” — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S.temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.
NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately. On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided CEI with the documents I requested in August 2007.
When I was almost finished reviewing the FOIA documents, I noticed that Al Gore’s Current news network was reporting that NASA had simultaneously published the documents. No press release had been issued — which NASA has also eschewed when correcting their cooked temperatures (after being caught). Yet in general, not issuing a press release on anything global warming-related is quite unlike NASA.
It was a tactic. What better way to take the sting out of revelations you hid for two years than to simply publish them at the same time — in non-searchable form, naturally — without a press release?And then have your allies dismiss the explosive data? “That’s old news … move on already!”
Indeed, for this and for reasons more specific to the “green” media, no one has yet written a story on the documents which achieved so much attention (and prompted so much green fury) less than a month prior. But there is no way to credibly claim “old news!” to avoid a discussion of these revelations — the emails include noteworthy admissions explaining NASA’s reticence to let the public see what the public is paying for.
Our litigation, which we plan to file when NASA, as we expect given their record of behavior, deny our appeal in this case, will expose more of these practices, in detail.
The Current “defense”
Al Gore’s web network ran a rather silly blog post to minimize the NASA release, titled: “It’s ClimateGate 2.0 ( … Not)”. The post invites further scrutiny — now unfolding through the legal process — by anxiously stating:
Clearly there was no metaphorical “smoking gun” in the emails, because the CEI didn’t crow about a likely Climategate 2.0 following the emails’ release.
Deliberate procession is alien to the global warming alarmist. We’ve thoroughly examined the emails, and we’re crowing now.
The Current post takes pains to portray Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre as the bad guy, rather than the deliberate professional he has been in uncovering inappropriate behavior. Revealingly, the Current TV author tips his hat to inspiration provided by Howard University’s Joshua Halpern (who hides as the source of his often vitriolic missives behind the name “EliRabbett”). The author of the Current post selects innocent passages from the NASA emails and presents them as somehow being representative proof that the hundreds of pages are benign. And this does not appear to be because he simply failed to encounter the damning information — rather, he clearly implies that he has read all of the emails.
Yet the Current TV author says something that is, at least in part, the truth:
Put simply, the emails show the GISS scientists acting professionally and in an open and transparent manner with reporters and McIntyre himself.
Yes, when dealing with McIntyre directly they were professional — though this followed internal, often nasty deliberations revealing a desire to deflect his legitimate inquiries.When dealing with the media they were quite unprofessional, showing either evasiveness (dodging very specific questions from reporters from New York to Brazil) or a too-cozy relationship with reporters friendly to their cause (as noted here).
Regarding any implication that these emails reveal these scientists acting professionally outside of their direct dealings with McIntyre, I see no need to further rebut this point by drawing additional attention to the alarmists’ preferred approach of focusing on ad hominem attacks and name-calling, of which there is plenty in the revealed pages. Because that is not the primary story the emails expose, though directing attention to such behavior was the preferred tactic to distract from Climategate, the original.
But why change the subject to the prurient when the subject itself is so fascinating?
Check with PJM in coming weeks for our update and specifics when we announce the litigation against NASA and one other taxpayer-funded climate office refusing the taxpayer access to that for which the taxpayer paid 100%.We will reveal numerous tactics which NASA and others used to hide public information from the public, protecting their highly lucrative franchise of global warming alarmism.
Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part Three)
When they show cooling, NASA dismisses temperature anomalies much larger than those hailed as ominous. (This is Part Three of a four-part series. Read Parts One and Two.)
February 19, 2010 – by Christopher Horner
(On December 31, 2009, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute with the documents I requested from them with an FOIA in August 2007. My request asked NASA to release their internal discussions regarding a series of errors in their claims of warming U.S. temperatures caught by Steve McIntyre. NASA had stonewalled my request for more than two years.)
A principal theme of these NASA emails — and one that is illuminating in its exposition of advocacy and hypocrisy at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) — is the insistence that what turned out to be a false warming of 0.15 degrees in the U.S. record is meaningless, even if covering merely seven years (2000-2006, as opposed to a decadal or longer trend).
In an August 7, 2007, email from GISS’ Dr. Reto Ruedy to GISS director Dr. James Hansen, Ruedy says the correction had “little impact” on the U.S. record. In an email to New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin on August 9, 2007, Hansen characterizes the error as having been “well within the uncertainty bar we give” for the U.S. and “entirely negligible” globally. In an email to Dr. Donald E. Anderson — program manager, Earth Science Enterprise, NASA Headquarters — on August 14, 2007, Hansen used the terms “minor,” “negligible,” and “less than the uncertainty” to describe the previously touted warming which was now shown to be an error.
This did not explain why the warming merited all of the hype in the preceding seven years.
Further, a week later Hansen privately wrote to Revkin that “[we] can add an uncertainty” to actually do what Hansen had been spinning to Revkin that they already do:
Indeed we already include a bar at several points on our temperature curve, but we note that it only includes the largest source of uncertainty in the temperature change (incomplete spatial coverage).
To add some further, curious texture to Hansen’s remarkably flexible view of what magnitude of warming is meaningful, note how in an August 14, 2007, email to GISS’ Makiko Sato and Ruedy, Hansen describes a claimed, much smaller warming between 1934 over 1998 of 0.02 degrees Celsius — which Hansen’s own 2001 paper had shown to be 0.5 degrees Celsius, a full half degree — as being “slightly warmer.” It is fair to assume from the record of NASA GISS that, because 1934 is an older year, the disparity must be downplayed. But it is also rather troubling that Hansen had forgotten his own work, serially rejecting the notion that he ever said 1934 was warmer than 1998, and his newer, operative claim that the difference is actually only 0.02 degrees Celsius, “much less than the accuracy” of their instruments. Therefore, he says: “Of course, scientifically, this is all nonsense.”
There is indeed nonsense in the various double standards that the emails reveal about NASA GISS, over how much and what kind of anomalies (warm or cool) are meaningful. Though not as he suggests.
Hansen also dismisses what had previously been the substantial relative warmth of 1934 over 1998 in the rankings of temperatures in an email to Bloomberg journalist Demian McLean on August 14, 2007:
In our 2001 paper we found 1934 slightly warmer, by an insignificant hair over, 1998.
But in fact that paper declared 1934 to be a whopping half a degree warmer than 1998. This couldn’t, and didn’t, last.
In an August 9, 2007, email from Ruedy to Hansen, Ruedy suggests an alternative method of bringing their data in line — internally, at least — which would cool the claimed twentieth century warming of under a degree by nearly one-third of that (0.3C). This suggestion was repeated by Ruedy the same day in an email to Gavin Schmidt. Both missives revealed NASA’s new preferred tactic of not emphasizing the impact of U.S. temperatures in favor of emphasizing global temperatures, in order to diminish the importance of their U.S. temperature problem. This reveals a bias towards advocacy and activism as opposed to objective science, a highly questionable practice for a taxpayer-funded science office staffed with career employees.
Hansen emailed Times reporter Revkin on August 9, 2007:
[In fact] it is unclear why anyone would try to make something out of [the differences], perhaps not a light on upstairs?
This perspective ignores how Hansen’s office had for years aggressively made quite a lot out of such differences, smaller ones, in fact. Now, when caught overstating the warming, changing and even losing historical data, he claims the differences are immaterial — and only someone not possessing full mental faculties would try to do such a thing as Hansen’s office had long done, with much smaller anomalies. Because those earlier, smaller anomalies were in support of the desired warming and related agenda that requires there to be warming.
Ruedy also spun for Revkin, trying to diminishing the magnitude of Hansen’s error:
To be remarkable, an observed change has to be a multiple of that standard deviation; compared to that, the errors caused by “bad” stations, urban heat island effect, etc., are of little importance.
Here we see how one can learn, and even grow, on the job.
From yesterdays special report – Global Warming: Meltdown by John Coleman from Kusi News in San Diego
“Global Warming: Meltdown digs deeply into the strong differences of positions about global warming; It answers the negative responses by several key institutions to our first global warming telecast* in January.
The “Climategate” revelations that began in mid December have crescendoed into a series of almost daily embarrassments for the UN IPCC. This telecast covers as many of them as we can cram into an hour. The program can be viewed in segments. With the intro to each segment you will find links you may use to find more information on the topics covered. If this is the first time you are hearing about my efforts to debunk the bad science behind the global warming frenzy, you will find a wealth of information, videos and links to sites on the colemanscorner page of KUSI.com/weather/.”
States’ Rights: A revolt against economic hardship imposed by unelected bureaucrats based on junk science is brewing. This Tea Party movement wants the faulty finding on carbon dioxide to be reviewed and dumped.
They say you shouldn’t mess with Texas, and on Tuesday the state filed suit to overturn the ”endangerment” finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that must be regulated.
CO2, the basis for all plant and therefore all animal life, was targeted early by environmental activists as the root cause of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW). But the Earth has cooled over the past decade, and reputable scientists predict the trend will likely continue for decades to come, influenced by natural phenomena such as ocean currents and solar activity.
According to research conducted by professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University, for example, the oceans and global temperatures are closely related. They have, he says, a natural cycle of warming and cooling that affects the planet.
The most important ocean cycle is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. ”The PDO cool mode,” Easterbrook says, ”has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of three decades of global cooling.”
Such solar and ocean cycles explain why the earth can cool and polar ice thicken even as CO2 levels continue to increase.
The revelations of climate fraud perpetrated by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia have exposed the global warming ”consensus” touted by Al Gore to be a conspiracy of fools and charlatans. Worse, this fraudulent work has formed the basis for U.S. climate policy.
In Texas’ suit, state Attorney General Greg Abbott said the IPCC and CRU shenanigans made any policy decisions based on that work flawed and unjustified. Abbott cited several examples in which he said climate scientists engaged in an ”ongoing, orchestrated effort to violate freedom of information laws, exclude scientific research and manipulate temperature data.”
”With billions of dollars at stake, EPA outsourced the scientific basis for its greenhouse gas regulation to a scandal-plagued international organization (the IPCC) that cannot be considered objective or trustworthy,” Abbott argued.
”This legal action,” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a 10th Amendment champion, ”is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, as well as defend Texas’ freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies free from federal overreach.”
Joining the fray are Virginia and Utah. Virginia has filed petitions with the EPA and the federal appeals court in Washington asking for a review of the ruling based on new evidence. Its attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, based his request on the fact that the damning CRU e-mails and the discovery of IPCC fraud were released after the public comment period.
Like most Americans this snow-riddled winter, Cuccinelli is an admitted climate skeptic. In the Feb. 8 edition of the Cuccinelli Compass, his e-mailed newsletter, he noted that residents of Fairfax County were looking ”out the window at 30+ inches of global warming.” So too were the judges on the federal appeals court.
The Utah House has passed a resolution asking the federal government not to proceed with its plan to regulate carbon dioxide. The resolution claims, among other things, that there’s ”a well-organized and ongoing effort to manipulate global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome.”
We couldn’t have said it better. As the political climate changes, we hope global warming will be restored to its rightful place as junk science, and the policies derived from it soundly repudiated.
Change: The United Nations’ global warming chief is resigning. Now how about firing the head of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and dismantling that worthless agency?
Yvo de Boer, the Austrian executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, will leave his position July 1 to join the consulting group KPMG as global adviser on climate and sustainability.
We realize he’ll be replaced by another functionary just as obsessed with forcing an emissions-restriction regime on developed nations. But we’d like to see the U.N. follow up the resignation by dismissing Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC.
It was under the leadership of Pachauri that the IPCC warned the world that the Himalayan glaciers would be melted by 2035 due to man-made global warming, a claim that turned out to be one man’s guesswork, not the finding of a peer-reviewed scientific report. Pachauri initially defended the claim, admitting only after he could no longer deny the truth that an error had been made.
As head of the IPCC, Pachauri is ultimately responsible for what goes into its assessments, which are considered the gold standard of global warming information by most media outlets.
The IPCC’s 2007 assessment, which shared a Nobel Prize with Al Gore, included the wild claim about the Himalayan glaciers. If Pachauri had a sense of decency, he’d return the tainted prize as his last act of duty as IPCC chief.
Pachauri also has conflict-of-interest problems. In December, Britain’s Telegraph reported that he ”holds more than a score of positions with banks, universities and other institutions that benefit from the vast worldwide industry now based on measures to halt climate change.”
The Telegraph also noted that Pachauri is director general of the Energy & Resources Institute, India’s ”most influential private body involved in climate-change issues and renewable energy.”
While Pachauri denies wrongdoing, the IPCC keeps using taxpayers’ money to warn of calamities that are not coming. It exists to agitate the public, drive political decisions and, most of all, perpetuate its own existence. It should be relieved of those responsibilities.
“One potent but insufficiently noted factor in the climate change issue is that those on the left are inclined to believe in climate change’s “solutions” — greater central control of the economy and redistribution to underdeveloped countries — regardless of climate science. That the policy ends are more important than the scientific facts is obvious from statements by prominent members of the IPCC. For example, Murari Lal, the lead author of the chapter in the 2007 IPCC report in which wildly inaccurate claims about melting Himalayan glaciers appeared, admitted that he knew the information was inaccurate, but “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
How could taking concrete action on the basis of wild exaggeration be considered a good thing unless you regarded such policy action as desirable in its own right?”
Leftists are inclined to believe in climate change because its “solutions” — central control and wealth redistribution — are things they already desire
By Peter Foster
Those who once called skeptics about catastrophic man-made climate change “deniers” are themselves now in a state of denial as both the science and public opinion shifts against them. Last week, The Globe and Mail carried a combative piece by Gerald Butts, president and CEO of WWF Canada, an organization whose professional alarmism has found its way into the official reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with nary a trace of “peer review.”
Mr. Butts continues, like Davy Crockett at the Alamo, to defend his lost cause, pointing to media authorities and scientific “consensus.” Intriguingly, and with admirable chutzpah, he cites a recent article in the magazine Nature that points out — which should come as a surprise to nobody — that we are biased in our perceptions: “We see the world as we want to see it, not as it is.” Naturally, this proviso doesn’t apply either to Mr. Butts or to the WWF, but only to their “self-centred” opponents.
Unfortunately for Mr. Butts, Nature experienced a little embarrassment last week when its editor-in-chief, Philip Campbell, was forced to resign from the U.K.’s “independent” inquiry into the Climategate scandal over his own blatant warmist bias. Nature, after all, is the magazine that suggested that requests for climate science data by skeptics amounted to “denialist harassment.” As for the article quoted by Mr. Butts, it claimed that “Like fans at a sporting contest, people deal with evidence selectively to promote their emotional interest in their group. On issues ranging from climate change to gun control, from synthetic biology to counter-terrorism, they take their cue about what they should feel, and hence believe, from the cheers and boos of the home crowd.”
True enough, but man-made climate change is not like terrorism or gun ownership or stem cell research. The latter are all established issues. The former is not, and whether you are a conservative or a Zoroastrian, what ultimately counts is that hypotheses are clearly stated and rigourously tested. There is mounting evidence that, when it comes to climate science, this process has been subverted. But doesn’t that mean that there has been a highly-improbable “conspiracy” among those “2,500 scientists” that have always been claimed to be the bedrock of the IPCC’s conclusions? Aren’t scientists the ultimate in objectivity?
No. Take Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of all time. He wrote about the “economic anarchy of capitalist society” and strongly advocated a “planned economy.” Einstein was typical of what Friedrich Hayek called the “fatal conceit” of reflexively believing that the economy needed to be guided from the top by wise men.
He was by no means unusual. Most people would not be surprised if told there was a leftist bias in political science or English faculties, but a 2005 study by academics Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter, and Neil Nevitte found that “three out of four biologists and computer scientists now place themselves to the left of center, as do about two thirds of mathematicians, chemists, and physicists.”Indeed, among physicists, the study found that self-described Democrats outnumbered Republicans in American universities by more than ten to one!
One potent but insufficiently noted factor in the climate change issue is that those on the left are inclined to believe in climate change’s “solutions” — greater central control of the economy and redistribution to underdeveloped countries — regardless of climate science. That the policy ends are more important than the scientific facts is obvious from statements by prominent members of the IPCC. For example, Murari Lal, the lead author of the chapter in the 2007 IPCC report in which wildly inaccurate claims about melting Himalayan glaciers appeared, admitted that he knew the information was inaccurate, but “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
How could taking concrete action on the basis of wild exaggeration be considered a good thing unless you regarded such policy action as desirable in its own right? The other factor that might incline leftist True Believers to irrationally harden their support for “settled” science is the oft-repeated conviction that their opponents represent big, selfish corporate interests, (a belief that is utterly at odds with reality). Meanwhile if the deniers are not mere shills, then they must be “libertarians,” whose ideas are obviously too ridiculous even to examine.
As noted, however, climate change is not like health care, or racism, or giving women the vote. It is not a policy issue or a moral issue until the science is established; and even if it had been, that certainly wouldn’t imply grand, dangerous and unworkable schemes such as Kyoto (yesterday, the UN’s chief climate change official, Yvo de Boer, resigned, taking the fall for the disaster of Copenhagen, where a successor to Kyoto was to have been crafted).
The leftist “moral” stance of many supporters may always have been that the science was merely a facilitator for a Better World. Suspicion of that orientation — and rejection of its premises — has led many skeptics to conclude that climate science has been cooked. It increasingly appears they were right.
Yvo de Boer, the United Nations’ top climate-change official, announced his resignation yesterday. Good riddance. The bureaucrat’s departure is no surprise because his pseudo-scientific global warming religion was proved to be a hoax on his watch.
The list of problems central to the global warming fraud just doesn’t seem to end. As if hiding and losing data, the numerous errors in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the suppression of academic research that disagrees with global warming weren’t bad enough, now comes word that basic ground-based temperature data may have been biased towards incorrectly showing temperature increases.
Joseph D’Aleo, the first director of meteorology and co-founder of the Weather Channel, and Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and founder of SurfaceStations.org, are well-known and well-respected scientists. On Jan. 29, they released a startling study showing that starting in 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began systematically eliminating climate-measuring stations in cooler locations around the world. Eliminating stations that tended to record cooler temperatures drove up the average measured temperature.The stations eliminated were in higher latitudes and altitudes, inland areas away from the sea and more rural locations. The drop in the number of weather stations was dramatic, declining from more than 6,000 stations to fewer than 1,500.
Mr. D’Aleo and Mr. Watts provide some amazing graphs showing that the jumps in measured global temperature occurred just when the number of weather stations was cut. But there is another bias that this change to more urban stations also exacerbates.Recorded temperatures in more urban areas rise over time simply because more densely populated areas produce more heat. Combining the greater share of weather stations in more urban areas over time with this urban heat effect also tends to increase the rate that recorded temperatures tend to rise over time.
Unfortunately, all three terrestrial global-temperature data sets (by NOAA/National Climatic Data Center, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the University of East Anglia) really rely on the same measures of surface temperatures. These three sources do not provide independent measures of how the world’s temperatures have changed over time. The relatively small differences that do arise from these three institutions result from how they adjust the raw data.
The findings by Mr. D’Aleo and Mr. Watts also explain some puzzles that have bothered researchers. For example, land-based temperatures have been rising while satellite-based measures haven’t shown the same increase since 1990. Their answer is that at that point in time, the elimination of weather stations produced a false measured increase in temperatures that didn’t affect the satellite readings. There is no evidence (yet) that this effort was consciously designed to increase recorded temperatures, but that is beside the point. The crux of the matter is that fanatics about man-made global warming want to spend trillions of dollars based on conclusions from faulty data.
As the frigid winter days pass and the scandals mount, it becomes clear that claims of man-made global warming aren’t based on scientific methods at all. The hysteria is based on fraud.
This is the second part of the story on NASA:s refusal to comply with FOI requests. And their active and willingly participation in the Global Warming Hysteria. First part here: Climate Gate – All the manipulations and lies revealed 314
Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part Two)
Horner looks further into the NASA emails, and finds stunning examples of politicized science and institutional hypocrisy. (This is Part Two of a four-part series. Read Part One here.)
(On December 31, 2009, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute with the documents I requested from them with an FOIA in August 2007. My request asked NASA to release their internal discussions regarding errors of theirs materially effecting their temperature claims caught by Steve McIntyre. NASA had stonewalled my request for more than two years.)
Dr. James Hansen has an extraordinary history of alarmism and dodgy claims: He has testified in support[1] of the destruction of private property[2] in the name of global warming alarmism and referred to coal rail cars as the equivalent of Nazi death trains, all while insisting that any president named George Bush was muzzling him. He has proven himself a global warming zealot leading a taxpayer-funded institute.
On August 11, 2007, James Hansen emailed the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin:
As for the future in the US, you can look for the warming to become more obvious during the next decade or two.
However, observations and projections in the refereed literature which take into account the past decade of no warming, shifts in oceanic currents, and other, obviously dominant climate “forcings” have since turned the other direction.
Getting it dead wrong is close enough for government work, and it’s pretty clear that Hansen is only protected and still employed because he is a government employee who gets things wrong in a way that supports a politically favored agenda.Hansen’s nuttiness is acceptable nuttiness. He is a sacred cow despite years of questionable practices and avocations.
——————————————-
Spinning madly in his defense during the August 2007 kerfuffle started by Steve McIntyre, Hansen repeatedly dismisses that NASA had ever presented 1934 as being warmer than 1998. In the process, he serially refers to a 2001 paper with other NASA colleagues of which he was lead author.
Ruedy wrote to Hansen on August 23, 2007, apparently seeking to stop their office’s highest-profiled scientist from continuing to embarrass himself — and them:
The US temperature graph in our 1999 paper, based on GHCN data, shows 1934 0.5C warmer than 1998; 1998 was in 5th place behind 1921, 1931, 1938, 1953.
In the corresponding graph in our 2001 paper, now based on the carefully corrected [euphemism alert!] USHCN data, 1934 and 1998 are in first, 1921 in third place (NOAA who provided the USHCN data had 1998 slightly ahead of 1934).
The US table we had posted during all of 2006 showed 1998 and 1934 even at 1.24C (I got a copy from a journalist in Brazil, we don’t save the data).
In fact, the paper referenced here, Hansen et al[3]. (2001), showed 1934 a whopping half a degree warmer than the next closest year, 1998.
After being embarrassed internally, Hansen says:
I think we want to avoid getting into more and more detail about ranking of individual years.
Yes. I suppose he would feel that way.
Not only was data maintenance not all that great a concern — despite NASA’s pronouncements of certainty and integrity, historical and otherwise — Hansen and NASA spent a good portion of August 2007 attempting to completely rewrite history. Particularly their own.
Ruedy emailed a NASA PR person named Leslie McCarthy, copying Hansen, on August 10, 2007. Ruedy advised McCarthy of the spin they would use to combat Steve McIntyre:
[McIntyre] concentrates on US time series which US covering less than 2% of the world is so noisy and has such a large margin of error that no conclusions can be drawn from it at this point.
The error Ruedy refers to is 0.5 Celsius, per Ruedy himself in his August 10, 2007, email to Kris French of National Geographic. In that email, Ruedy slurs McIntyre as a “global warming denier.”
Hansen emailed Dr. Donald E. Anderson, program manager at Earth Science Enterprise NASA Headquarters, on August 14, 2007:
If one wished to be scientific, instead of trying to confuse the public … one should note that single year temperatures for an area as small as the US (2% of the globe) are extremely noisy.
By this Hansen implicitly assesses NASA’s longstanding practice of touting temperature anomalies, U.S.-only and smaller than this, as being unscientific and designed to confuse the public. NASA had for years made great hay of U.S.-only temperatures as being somehow meaningful when a warming was claimed, even when that warming was less than the amount they now dismiss as meaningless. He pitched a directly contrarian perspective when U.S.-only temps threatened warming claims.
In an email to Andrew Revkin on August 24, 2007, Hansen states:
The contrarians are cleverly mixing up these two matters, global and U.S., thus completely confusing the public discussion.
But it was NASA, and indeed Hansen’s GISS, that emphasized U.S. temperatures all along. Not “contrarians.” NASA ranked individual years, then suddenly said the exercise was simply not worthwhile when the numbers contradicted it.
Hansen’s discourses on this included telling Andrew Revkin on August 24, 2007:
I think we want to avoid getting into more and more detail about ranking of individual years. As far as I can remember, we have always discouraged that as being somewhat nonsensical, other that (sic) the question of what is the warmest year.
Hansen offered no such examples of that kind of discouragement, and indeed NASA had actively engaged in the practice — even though on that apparent priority, NASA’s numbers, claims, and rankings swung wildly.
Hansen also told Revkin on August 23, 2007:
As far as I know we do not make such a list. We don’t like such lists, because the results are not significant and are certain to differ from one group to another [meaning there is no agreement on temperatures claimed as known -- and down to a hundredth of a degree!]. It is generally the media that makes a list. We look for a new record high ["look for" is a bit of an understatement] but note that it is a virtual tie if the difference is small.
Hansen’s memory is faulty. We have seen that substantial differences, such as that between 1934 and 1998 of up to 0.5 degrees Celsius, can subsequently, and rather magically, turn into a statistical tie of 0.02 degrees Celsius under NASA’s gentle ministrations.
An August 10, 2007, email from Ruedy to NASA’s Leslie McCarthy, copying Hansen, pleaded for McCarthy to pitch that:
The problem with rankings is that there are large clumps of years which are equal within the margin of error and rankings within these clumps are purely accidental.
Hansen emailed Revkin on August 23, 2007:
I believe we have clearly stated several times that the ranking [of years] does.
Old habits die hard, however, and later in this email, Hansen emphasizes 2005 as “the warmest year.”
Here is a selection of NASA press releases (links viewed on August 27, 2007):
“2005 Warmest Year in a Century”
“2006 was Earth’s Fifth Warmest Year”
“Top Four Warmest Years Worldwide Since the 1890s”
“The year 2003 is the third warmest year in the period of accurate instrumental data” (prominently mentions the two warmer years)
“The 2002 meteorological year is the second warmest year in the period of accurate instrumental data”
The efforts in August 2007 to reduce interest in NASA being caught making unsupportable claims about increasing U.S. temperatures were ad hoc tactics, used at the time becausethe U.S.-only and single-year measurements were the means in which Hansen and NASA were exposed as having sexed-up the temperature claims.
The Times’ Revkin diplomatically deferred responsibility for this focus, which NASA shared with a passion bordering on obsession, by writing to Hansen on August 10, 2007:
Given that quite a few folks (gore and some enviros particularly) have often used the US temp trends in arguments for action (string of record years) it’s hard for me to ignore the reanalysis of those annual temps — even though my own focus remains global temp. Essentially, should people always have paid less attention to US (48 state) trend as a meaningful signal of AGW? (now that all those earlier warm years intrude, it certainly makes the case that regional data can be a red herring).
“Regional data” has, of course, long been a mainstay of alarmist reporting on climate even though computer models are well-known as being simply incapable of making regional climate projections vs. global, due to the presence of oceans and mountains. “Regional climate” is a way to find localized trends and claim they are meaningful to the global, when all they are is politically useful anecdotes (when they are or at least can be portrayed as of the right sort: warming, very dry/very wet, etc.). Note also the recognized inconvenience of being caught, and the “intrusion” of “all those earlier warm years.”Given that Revkin had in the past transcribed NASA claims of the sort he here attributes to Gore, this is possibly little more than a bit of kissing up to Hansen, with an invitation for him to help massage and redirect the embarrassment.
Indeed — although Hansen essentially ducks Revkin’s question — Revkin dutifully transcribed Hansen’s line in a story in the New York Times downplaying “Hansen’s Y2k error.” In the article, as in his email responding to praise by Ruedy for the article, Revkin is almost apologetic for even writing it — a full two weeks after the story had broken — but the story had become too difficult for Revkin to ignore any longer.
NASA scientist Ruedy, in a private email to Brazilian journalist Leticia Francisco Sorg on August 15, 2007, also reaffirms how the hypocrisy is so great that NASA is willing to claim that even thirty years is a “brief” period for purposes of observing things — if during those thirty years the warming that occurred is warming they can’t attribute to Man. Otherwise, no — thirty years is plenty of time to draw conclusions.
Climate Change: The scientific ”consensus” that man is warming the planet is cracking, and so is a group that was going to push for cap-and-trade. Some business members no longer feel threatened by the government.
Oil giants ConocoPhillips and BP and heavy equipment maker Caterpillar said Tuesday they’d be leaving the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, described on IBD’s front page as ”a coalition of green groups and leading corporations pushing for a cap-and-trade bill to curb emissions of carbon dioxide.”
IBD on Wednesday reported that the three corporations ”indicated that their leaving was based on disputes within USCAP over the direction the legislation was taking in Congress,” that it has become ”now tilted toward coal-based energy producers.”
We’re not as diplomatic as these companies, so we can provide a more plausible explanation: They see the agenda of the global warming alarmists crumbling and have determined they don’t have as much to fear from government regulation as they once did.
Because onerous government policy distorts markets and cuts into profits, it’s rational for companies to try to protect themselves from regulatory damage.
One way to avoid or limit damage from a regulatory regime is to be part of the regulation-writing exercise by joining a coalition involved in the process.
When it becomes clear that new rules aren’t forthcoming, there’s no longer a need to be part of the group.
This appears to be the case with the defections from USCAP. The House passed a cap-and-trade bill last year, but the Senate has been unable to put global warming legislation on the floor for a vote. That has created a Senate delay that’s looking like it might be permanent.
Either way, executives are starting to feel they can return to their primary function — running their companies — and put the cap-and-trade distraction behind them.
Less than a year ago, with Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress and a Democrat finally in the White House, it looked like the country was going to be steamrolled by global warming legislation. The propaganda mill churned out one scare story after another about the effects of man’s carbon dioxide emissions. Democrats were set to enact the restrictions on the economy they’d been talking about for years.
Now the alarmists’ agenda is spiraling downward after a series of events embarrassing to anyone affiliated with the environmentalist lobby or sympathetic with its goals.
They began with the November release of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at England’s University of East Anglia. The back-and-forth between global warming researchers at the CRU and scientists elsewhere revealed an effort to twist the numbers as well as an intention to cover up any data that didn’t support the global warming narrative.
Since those e-mails surfaced, the international Copenhagen climate summit faded weakly into the winter evening; Michael Mann, creator of the hockey stick temperature chart that has been found to be in error, is being investigated by his university; the United Nations used a hunch, not science, to back its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would be melted away by 2035; and weather station measurements used to support the global warming assumption have been shown to be flawed.
We’ve also learned in the last year that scientists cherry-picked tree ring data from Russia to make the case for man-made warming, and more recently Phil Jones, the man who has for now stepped down as chief of the CRU, confirmed there hasn’t been ”statistically significant” warming since 1995.
In contrast to what we’ve been told for years, climate science isn’t just unsettled; it’s also agenda-driven, profoundly confused and so unreliable, we are tempted to say it’s the work of an insular group of con men. But that might be an insult to con men everywhere.
Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part One)
Chris Horner filed the FOIA request that NASA didn’t comply with for two years. Now we know what took so long. (This is Part One of a four-part series.)
In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder).
I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “hockey stick” graph — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S. temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.
NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately.
On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with the documents I requested in August 2007.
The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise. The emails show NASA making off with enormous sums of taxpayer funding doing precisely what they claim only a “skeptic” would do. The emails show NASA attempting to scrub their website of their own documents, and indeed they quietly pulled down numerous press releases grounded in the proven-wrong data. The emails show NASA claiming that their own temperature errors (which they have been caught making and in uncorrected form aggressively promoting) are merely trivial, after years of hysterically trumpeting much smaller warming anomalies.
As you examine the email excerpts below, as well as those which I will discuss in the upcoming three parts of this series, bear in mind that the contents of these emails were intended to prop up the argument for the biggest regulatory intervention in history: the restricting of carbon emissions from all human activity.NASA’s activist scientists leave no doubt in their emails that this was indeed their objective. Also, please note that these documents were responsive to a specific FOIA request from two years ago. Recent developments — combined with admissions contained in these documents — beg further requests, which have both been already filed and with more forthcoming.
Furthermore, on January 29, 2010, CEI filed our appeal of NASA continuing to improperly withhold other documents responsive to our FOIA requests. In this appeal we informed NASA that if they do not comply by the twentieth day, as required by law, we shall exercise our appellate rights in court immediately.
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Under Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA shepherds a continuing public campaign claiming clear evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) — climate change induced by human beings. The documents released via the FOIA request, however, contain admissions of data unreliability that are staggering, particularly in light of NASA’s claims to know temperatures and anomalies within hundredths of a degree, and the alarm they helped raise over a mere one degree of claimed warming over more than an entire century.
Dr. Reto Ruedy, a Hansen colleague at GISS, complains in his August 3, 2007, email to his co-worker at GISS and RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt:
[The United States Historical Climate Network] data are not routinely kept up-to-date (at this point the (sic) seem to end in 2002).
This lapse led to wild differences in data claimed to be from the same ground stations by USHCN and the Global Climate Network (GHCN). NASA later trumpeted the “adjustments” they made to this data (upward only, of course) in extremely minor amounts — adjustments they are now seen admitting are well within any uncertainty, a fact that received significantly less emphasis in their public media campaign claiming anomalous, man-made warming.
GISS’s Ruedy then wrote:
[NASA’s] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data … may not have been correct. … Indeed, in 490 of the 1057 stations the USHCN data were up to 1C colder than the corresponding GHCN data, in 77 stations the data were the same, and in the remaining 490 stations the USHCN data were warmer than the GHCN data.
Ruedy claimed this introduced an estimated warming into the record of 0.1 deg C. Ruedy then described an alternate way of manipulating the temperature data, “a more careful method” they might consider using, instead.
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Although in public he often used his high-profile perch for global warming cheerleading, former New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkinprivately wrote that he was worried about the integrity of the ground stations. When still at the Times he wrote to Hansen on August 23, 2007:
i never, till today, visited http://www.surfacestations.org and found it quite amazing. if our stations are that shoddy, what’s it like in Mongolia?
Sadly, although Andy wrote many pieces touting as significant what we now know NASA admits as statistically meaningless temperature claims, he did not find time to write about data so “shoddy” as to reach the point of “amazing.” That is what advocacy often entails: providing only one side, and even a far less compelling side, of a story.
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In an August 14, 2007, email from GISS’s Makiko Sato to Hansen, Sato wrote that his analysis of a one degree warming between 1934 and 1998 might in reality be half that amount:
I am sure I had 1998 warmer than 1934 at least once because on my own temperature web page (which most people never look at), I have [image/information not visible in document]. … I didn’t keep all the data, but some of them are (some data are then listed, with 1934 0.5 deg C warmer than 1998)
As AGW proponents only claim a one degree warming over the past century, the magnitude of a .5 degree Celsius problem in their calculations is tremendous.
Sato continues:
I am sorry, I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data after 2001 paper.
Sato is referencing the paper by Hansen, et al., in which Hansen’s colleagues remind him 1934 was indeed listed as being a full half-degree warmer than 1998 — which is shown in their emails as being what the data said as of July 1999 (their paper described 1934 as only “slightly” warmer than 1998, p. 8). Still, throughout these emails Hansen later insists 1934 and 1998 are in a statistical tie with just a 0.02 Celsius difference and even that their relationship has not changed. For example, Hansen claims in an email to a journalist with Bloomberg: “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 implication is that things had not changed when in fact NASA had gone from claiming a statistically significant if politically inconvenient warmer 1934 over 1998, to a tie.
Regarding U.S. temperatures, Ruedy confessed to Hansen on August 23, 2007 to say:
I got a copy from a journalist in Brazil, we don’t save the data.
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The Ruedy relationship with a Brazilian journalist raises the matter of the incestuous relationship between NASA’s GISS and like-minded environmental reporters. One can’t help but recall how, recently, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim of glacier shrinkage in the Himalayas was discredited when found to be the work of a single speculative journalist at a popular magazine, and not strict peer-reviewed scientific data. The emails we obtained include several instances of very close ties and sympathetic relationships with journalists covering them.
The same can be said of NASA’s relationship vis-a-vis the IPCC, whose alarmism NASA enabled.One NASA email implicitly if privately admits that IPCC claims of accelerating warming — such as those by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri or UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon — are specious. Yet NASA has never publicly challenged such alarmism. Instead, it sat by and benefited from it, with massive taxpayer funding of its rather odd if growing focus on “climate.”
In an August 15, 2007, email from Ruedy to Brazilian journalist Leticia Francisco Sorg, responding to Sorg’s request for Ruedy to say if warming is accelerating, Ruedy replied:
“To observe that the warming accelerates would take even longer observation times” than the past 25 years. In fact, it would take “another 50-100 years.”
This is a damning admission that NASA has been complicit in UN alarmism. This is not science. It is debunked advocacy. The impropriety of such policy advocacy, let alone allowing unsubstantial scientific claims to become part of a media campaign, is self-evident.
Christopher Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“If, instead of bleating for the past 15 years that the sky was about to burst into flame, major climate scientists had been saying the Earth was warming, but not to a statistically significant level, would you have been as worried as you were? Would there have been a Kyoto accord? A Copenhagen summit? Carbon trading schemes? Green taxes? Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth? David Suzuki’s call to throw politicians into jail if they fail to try to stop climate change?”
They’re finally admitting the science isn’t settled
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Why does Climategate matter? Who cares whether the climate data on a computer at some obscure English university has been deliberately corrupted?
In one form or another, I have had to answer these questions from dozens of readers in the three months since thousands of emails and computer files were leaked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.
There are plenty of ways in which these disclosures have been crucial, but the principal change has been the uncertainty creeping into the remarks of former True Believers. Some of those who for years have insisted the science is ”settled,” are now admitting we don’t know all we need to before making trillion-dollar policy decisions.
Consider the remarks Phil Jones, the former head of CRU, made last week to the BBC. Prof. Jones, who has stepped down from his directorship of the CRU pending official investigations into the leaks, told the Beeb there has been no ”statistically significant” global warming since 1995 — that’s the past 15 years!
It’s true, as some climate alarmist sites have pointed out, that what Prof. Jones said in full was that the warming since 1995 is almost significant, but not quite. The ”trend (+0.12 C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.”
Admittedly, that is not the same as a complete about-face by Prof. Jones, but neither is it meaningless. When was the last time you recall an alarmist such as Phil Jones admitting there was any doubt at all about warming in the last decade and a half?
Haven’t we had it drummed into us ceaselessly that the past decade has been the warmest ever recorded? Prof. Jones’s admission to the BBC then is very significant.
If, instead of bleating for the past 15 years that the sky was about to burst into flame, major climate scientists had been saying the Earth was warming, but not to a statistically significant level, would you have been as worried as you were? Would there have been a Kyoto accord? A Copenhagen summit? Carbon trading schemes? Green taxes? Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth? David Suzuki’s call to throw politicians into jail if they fail to try to stop climate change?
In his BBC interview, Prof. Jones also said that the Middle Ages may have been warmer than now, another key concession given that the CRU has for years denied the existence of the Medieval Warm Period. If the MWP can be made to disappear, then the warming that has occurred since 1900 would be abnormal and something to fear. But if there was an even greater warming 1,000 years ago — before SUVs, coal-fired plants and industrial carbon emissions — then the current warming might be part of a nature cycle and therefore unremarkable.
Prof. Jones even admitted the science of climate change is far from settled. ”There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties.”
Nothing scientific had changed since the Climategate leaks. No new data or discoveries have been added that would make the former CRU director change his tone so dramatically. So his new willingness to concede doubt must be solely the result of the embarrassing leaks last November.
That’s one of the ways in which Climategate matters: It has made the alarmists far more willing to admit the science isn’t settled.
It also matters because CRU is not just some no-name English university with one of thousands of environmental studies programs in the world. The CRU is one of three main sources of UN climate data.
Think of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a three-legged stool supported by the CRU, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Kick out one leg and the stool topples, taking everyone standing on it with it.
Reliance on one of these Big Three climate records has been repeated in hundreds — thousands — of academic studies, on everything from the calving of icebergs in Antarctica to the behaviour of Alberta bark beetles, the prevalence of sub-Saharan droughts to disappearing snow on hip Euro ski slopes.
So Climategate also matters because if one of the most critical sources of climate data is suspect, then the conclusions in all the scores of studies based on that data are suspect, too.
As always – follow the Money. In this case trillion of dollars. Paid, as always, by the common people in the form of taxes, high energy costs and lower living standard.
“When the issue of climate change became politically charged, publishing a paper on global warming put you on a fast track: There was grant money to be had, lots of it … if you supported the apocalyptic CO2-driven model.”“And this is why we can’t get cocky. There’s no question now that the science must be reexamined. Reexamining the science, though, doesn’t mean that the political and financial machine just stops operating. There’s a lot of money involved. A whole lot of money.Potentially trillions of dollars.
So we’re not done yet. In fact, the battle is just now being joined, because the questions about the science have got to provide the examination of the financial and political machinery of the climate cartel.”
The Climategate files have led to a reexamination of the science behind climate change, and the arguments of the so-called climate skeptics have been vindicated. It’s time for them to take a deserved victory lap.But skeptics can’t afford to get cocky.
Elsewhere in Pajamas Media, there are a number of reactions to the bombshell interview with Dr. Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and one of the first people to feel the consequences of Climategate. Those other PJM articles cover, in much greater detail than I will, the implications of the interview in which Jones begins to come clean about the machinations of the climate clique.
Clarity regarding the science is important, but it’s not the science that has made “climate change” what it is today. To understand that, we need to look at what has really driven the issue into prominence.
To understand that — as always — we must ask: Who benefits, and how?
Start with the scientists. An academic scientist rarely gets wealthy. There have been a lot of mistaken comments over the last months about how specific academics have gotten rich from million-dollar grants, or from half-million dollar “stimulus” awards.
Academics don’t function like that. The principal investigator doesn’t take home the grant. The money is instead split with the university, and the remainder allocated under strict accounting rules to pay for graduate assistantships, post-doctoral appointments, research expenses, and things like travel. (See a discussion of this at PJM: “Climategate: Who Benefits when the IPCC Lies.”)
The academic scientist’s reward isn’t directly from the money. The grants mean more opportunities for research, more publications, and more press coverage, all of which contribute towards the quest for the Holy Grail of academic life — tenure at a well-known institution.
Increasingly, universities cut out indirection and simply let it be known that tenure doesn’t come unless you bring in a large dollar amount of external support.
When the issue of climate change became politically charged, publishing a paper on global warming put you on a fast track: There was grant money to be had, lots of it … if you supported the apocalyptic CO2-driven model.
There were publications to be had, if — as we saw from the Climategate emails — you supported the climate clique’s theory. (If you were a journalist, as we say with Andrew Revkin at the New York Times, it helped to be known as “reliable.”)
There were conferences to speak at. Those conferences, centered on a popular topic with UN support, tended to be in places like Tahiti, the Canadian Rockies, or Swiss ski resorts. But you’d only get invited if you were contributing to the Cause.
Express any note of skepticism — as, for example, the Pielkes have — and you could expect a spanking. First you would lose access to the good journals; eventually you would suffer from glaring ad hominem attacks.
Once the theory of anthropogenic, CO2-forced global warming was politically established, it’s no wonder that the “scientific consensus” leaned in that direction.
So how did the theory become politically established?
Some true believers among the scientists, like James Hansen of NASA, had been pushing the notion that humans were ruining the world since long before the AGW theory was popular. These true believers pressed their agenda with politicians, and found plenty who saw it as important.
The politicians tended to be on the left side of the political spectrum. There is a natural confluence of interests among believers who feel people should be forced to reduce their environmental impact and politicians who feel that industry is inherently suspect and must be controlled by government.
Politicians don’t live in a vacuum, either. They respond to lobbying and need to build constituencies that provide support, both financial and organizational. The apocalyptic climate change theory developed its own constituency — big money contributors were willing to “put their money where their mouths are.”
Former Vice President Al Gore had already been a devotee of the CO2 apocalypse before he lost the 2000 election; he had been one of the primary advocates of the 1997 Kyoto Protocols, which were defeated by the Senate in 1998 but hung around to become a political issue in the 2000 campaign. Once the 2000 election was finally decided, Gore turned his attention to the private sector.
In a sense.
He joined in several financial ventures with people who had been his supporters in the past. People like Richard Sandor, who had been a faculty member at Berkeley following years as an executive at Kidder Peabody and Drexel Burnham Lambert. Another connection was with Peter Knight, his one-time aide, and with David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and Gore’s campaign manager for 2000. Another part of this group is Maurice Strong, who moved from involvement in the UN “Oil for Food” scam into environmental issues, and now lives in the People’s Republic of China where he advises the Chinese government. Sandor and Blood, along with Goldman Sachs and its then-CEO, Hank Paulson, founded the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), using seed money from the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. One of the major stockholders, along with Goldman Sachs, is Generation Investment Management (GIM), a trading company co-founded by Al Gore and David Blood.
The primary business of the CCX and GIM is trading environmental issues, and in particular “carbon credits,” the mechanism by which cap-and-trade schemes exchange emissions amelioration for cash.
The peculiar thing about carbon credits, as we discussed in “Climategate: How to Follow the Money,” is that they only exist because of political action. Once the carbon credits exist, though, they can become extraordinarily valuable. If the Copenhagen meeting had gone as planned, a new, UN-mandated carbon exchange plan would have come into existence in which carbon credits that only exist because of this political action would be traded on nearly every source of energy and industrial process. In the world.
The effect of that has been to turn Al Gore and others into multi-millionaires, with some people suggesting that Gore might become the first “environmental billionaire.”Those millions and millions of dollars then filter back through the system — becoming political contributions, funding for non-profit environmental organizations, and lobbying dollars.
The same organizations that then provide much of the funding that drives the science.
The scientific climate clique of Jones and others provide the scientific basis for the political action, which in turn provides the need for the carbon credits that are created and traded by the carbon and climate cartel of Strong, Gore, Blood, and Knight. (Boy, that sounds like a Steve Reeves movie, doesn’t it?) And the money provided by these trading schemes then supports the science — as long as it’s the “right” science.
And this is why we can’t get cocky. There’s no question now that the science must be reexamined. Reexamining the science, though, doesn’t mean that the political and financial machine just stops operating.There’s a lot of money involved. A whole lot of money. Potentially trillions of dollars.
So we’re not done yet. In fact, the battle is just now being joined, because the questions about the science have got to provide the examination of the financial and political machinery of the climate cartel.
That story, that battle, will be going on for a long time yet.
Charlie Martin is a Colorado computer scientist and freelance writer. He holds an MS in Computer Science from DukeUniversity, where he spent six years with the National Biomedical Simulation Resource, DukeUniversityMedicalCenter. Find him at http://chasrmartin.com, and on his blog at http://explorations.chasrmartin.com.
Professor Phil Jones has made some cautious concessions to his critics, but falls well short of the retraction and apology he owes his fellow scientists, policymakers, and the millions of people who trusted him, the CRU, and the IPCC.
It is not unusual for the scientists and promoters who stoke global warming alarmism to sound moderate and conciliatory from time to time. So now, Jones concedes that “the vast majority of climate scientists” don’t believe the debate is over.
Gee, thanks. But I’ve received death threats for saying that.
It’s not likely the people he misled for so many years will decide to stop placing those phone calls and sending those emails.
I want to know when Jones, Hansen, Mann, and the rest of the Climategate gang apologize to the 31,000 American scientists who signed the Oregon Petition saying there is no global warming crisis.
I want hear about apologies to Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Roy Spencer, and the rest of the “skeptics” who have been ridiculed repeatedly by Jones and his colleagues not just in email exchanges, but publicly in countless speeches, op-eds, letters, and interviews with reporters.
The Heartland Institute has been saying for 15 years that the science behind the global warming scare was weak. We’ve worked with hundreds of individuals who took great risks to their careers, reputations, and even their personal safety to speak out against one of the most powerful and dangerous popular delusions of the past century.
They are still the victims of wildly inaccurate and vicious attacks on Web sites like DeSmogBlog, RealClimate, and Wikipedia.
Until those attacks are taken offline and their authors apologize, this isn’t over.
Joseph Bast is president of The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Chicago. He is the coauthor of Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994) and editor of Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (2009).
Climategate: Phil Jones Finally Proves Al Gore Right — The Debate Is Over
CRU’s Phil Jones just ended it via the BBC, but the world now owes credit where credit is due: to the long-suffering, abused global warming skeptics. (See also Roger Kimball: ”It’s Not That I Like Saying ‘I Told You So’ About ‘Global Warming,’ but … ”)
Now that Climategate ringleader Phil Jones has admitted[1] that there has been no global warming (man-made or otherwise) since at least 1995, and that the world was warmer in medieval times than now, I only have one question. Where do the so-called global warming skeptics go to get their reputations back?
As head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — their data underpins most of the claims of man-made global warming — Jones’ admission should be the final nail in the coffin of the anti-carbon dioxide crusade of Al Gore, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), most green activist groups, industry lobbying groups like the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), and President Obama.
Concepts and policies like cap and trade, carbon taxes, carbon footprints, and carbon offsets all should shortly be relegated to the same ash heap of history as eugenics, communism, Enron, and Bernie Madoff.
Secondary school students subjected to hysterical global warming propaganda — like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth[2] — should recover quickly, if they were even paying attention in the first place. Since global warming alarmism for America’s universities was all about the federal grant money to start with, they should have no problems switching gears as long as the money keeps flowing.
Goldman Sachs probably won’t get to profiteer from trading carbon credits. But not to worry — there’s always some new sort of financial fraud for modern Wall Streeters to engage in just around the corner.General Electric will be forced to return to Thomas Edison-like innovation rather than lobbying for revenues and profits, but that should be no problem after shareholders get rid of global-warming-loving CEO Jeff Immelt.
Yes, the world will inexorably move on from global warming to new crises, both real and imaginary. But before it does, the world should give credit where credit is due: to the global warming skeptics.
For the past 20 years, the skeptics have consistently, courageously — and most importantly, correctly — pointed out the fatal flaws in the hysterical hypothesis of man-made global warming. In the course of their efforts, they have been mocked, threatened (sometimes physically), abused, derided, cursed, characterized as loons, and likened to Holocaust deniers. One green writer for the prominent online publication Grist magazine even suggested[3] Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for the denialists.
All this for the crime of being factually, though not politically, correct.
And I’m not referring to those skeptics-come-lately who, in the wake of Climategate, finally get it. I’m talking about those lone voices, especially during the Bush years. Few in number, they kept the flame of skepticism burning until the cavalry arrived in the form of Climategate, glaciergate, rainforestgate, and now Phil Jones’ anti-climactic climatic admission.
Had the skeptics not succeeded in preventing the U.S. from signing on to the Kyoto Protocol and to President Obama’s cap-and-trade crusade, we would all have been in for a world of hurt as misanthropic socialists — hiding behind their shields of “the environment” and “the children” — destroyed our liberties and ran our economy (further) into the ground.
Hug a skeptic. They saved your bacon.
Global warming is dead. Long live global warming — at least until it melts the 4-foot snow drifts outside my house.
There are now admissions from Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, that his “data” may be lost.
But what did this “data” actually consist of, anyway?
The only temperature measurements made at weather stations — until recently when some became “automatic” — were taken only once a day. Usually all the stations measure are the maximum and the minimum temperatures.
But the time of day that this is done is not standardized. And the maximum usually refers to a different calendar day from the minimum.
These two figures are then averaged and called the “mean daily temperature.”
It is this quantity that gets subjected to further multiple averaging to arrive at monthly and annual figures. Eventually a “global” chart is produced, purporting to show temperature “trends.”
So all of this is built on a foundation of sand.
If you would like to measure the average height of a group of schoolchildren, it is not much use measuring only the tallest and the shortest. Quite obviously, you will not get a fair average from these two measurements.
Weather forecasters all know that the maximum/minimum average is inaccurate and they avoid using it, preferring to mention the separate figures. They also know that decimals of a degree are meaningless.
Yet we have been persuaded to change our lives, the entire developed world, because a system built on such a dubious foundation shows a “warming” estimated only in decimals of a degree over an entire century.
An amount you would never notice if such a change happened in one moment, nevermind one hundred years.
Dr. Vincent Gray, founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, is an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“Then the global temperature stopped going up after 1998. At this point winters started getting colder and snowier around the world. The alarmists had to restructure their doomsday predictions because nature was not cooperating. The new spin is global warming causes everything. How can your prediction be wrong if you forecast everything to happen? The answer is you can’t. This silly notion is what we are being told to swallow. We are being “educated” into believing that record cold is the result of warmer temperatures. Something is very wrong with this picture. “
“Despite all the shouting about an increase in more extreme storms, the reality is that there has been no increase in the variability of weather. Let’s look at record high and low temperatures in the United States. By far the highest level of extreme temperatures was in the decade of the 1930s. There were many more record high and low temperatures in the ‘30s than at anytime in the last 130 years.In fact the most recent decade of the 2000s had the lowest number of record high and record low temperatures since the 1880s! This means that in terms of temperature the weather has been much more stable, not more extreme.”
Dear Al Gore: Please Send Us Some More of That “Global Warming”
During the first two weeks of January, a record cold wave invaded Florida. It was the longest and coldest penetration of Arctic air into Florida since 1940. For the first two weeks of 2010, West Palm Beach had an average low temperature of 39 degrees.
This month, Washington DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia were buried under record amounts of snow.Meanwhile, another storm dropped snow on the Deep South closing schools and highways. Dallas reported getting a foot of the white stuff, breaking that city’s 24-hour record for snowfall.
The winter of 2009-10 is rewriting the record books for cold and snow. Gee, I thought we were going to see the end of winter due to global warming — at least that’s what Al Gore told us. And yet, to the amazement and amusement of many we are being told that this winter’s record cold and record snowfall is due to global warming. Huh? Record cold and record snow is because it’s getting warmer?
Here is the political spin on all this cold and snow: To defend the climate Armageddon predictions, the global warming enthusiasts have declared that warmer temperatures introduce more moisture into the air and therefore create more snowfall. The global warming faithful say these weather extremes are a sure sign that global warming is here and we had better change our ways because global warming is even worse than we thought!
The problem with all these claims: there is no evidence to support any of them. As with so many global warming proclamations, these pronouncements are literally pulled from thin air.The claims that global warming would produce all kinds of severe weather from cold to hot is new.It was only a few years ago that the alarmists were claiming the earth would get warmer and this would produce more heat waves, droughts and melting ice caps and glaciers. Then the global temperature stopped going up after 1998. At this point winters started getting colder and snowier around the world. The alarmists had to restructure their doomsday predictions because nature was not cooperating. The new spin is global warming causes everything. How can your prediction be wrong if you forecast everything to happen? The answer is you can’t. This silly notion is what we are being told to swallow. We are being “educated” into believing that record cold is the result of warmer temperatures. Something is very wrong with this picture.
Despite all the shouting about an increase in more extreme storms, the reality is that there has been no increase in the variability of weather. Let’s look at record high and low temperatures in the United States. By far the highest level of extreme temperatures was in the decade of the 1930s. There were many more record high and low temperatures in the ‘30s than at anytime in the last 130 years.In fact the most recent decade of the 2000s had the lowest number of record high and record low temperatures since the 1880s! This means that in terms of temperature the weather has been much more stable, not more extreme. How about hurricanes? The global warming alarmists have been telling us that these storms will become more powerful as the earth warms. An examination of the World Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index reveals the opposite. This index measures the total energy output of tropical storms and hurricanes around world. It shows that worldwide tropical cyclone energy levels are now lower than anytime in the last 30 years. Hurricanes are not increasing in intensity around the world, they are getting weaker. How about tornadoes in the US? There are about 1,200 tornadoes in the US each year. No other place on earth even comes close. Global warming theory says these violent whirlwinds should become more common and stronger. The opposite is happening. An examination of strong and violent tornadoes shows us that the number of powerful tornadoes has been decreasing since the 1970s.
The theory that all forms of weather will become more extreme due to global warming is suspect. We live on a round planet and therefore the sun heats the world unevenly. The earth is cold at the top and bottom and hot at the equator. Storms transport heat away from the tropics and mix it with cold air at the top and bottom. This keeps our global temperature in check.
The strength of the storms depends on the magnitude of the temperature difference between the poles and the equator. This difference is greatest in the winter. In winter, temperatures at the North Pole can be 50 to 60 degrees below zero while readings in the tropics are in the 80s and 90s. A good way to see how the atmosphere reacts to this difference in temperature is in the speed of the jet streams. These powerful rivers of wind triple in strength from summer to winter. They blow about 60 miles per hour in the summer when the difference in temperature from pole to equator is the least. In the winter, these winds increase to near 200 miles per hour. The same is true for the winds on the ground. In the summer, the migratory storms move more slowly and have much less wind. In the winter, as the temperature differences increase, the storms become more powerful.
In a warmer world, we are told that storms will become more severe. There is no reason for this to happen. Global warming theory says the temperature changes will be most pronounced at the poles, much less so at the equator. As the temperature difference between the poles and the equator decreases, there will be fewer strong storms. As the winter temperature difference decreases in a warmer world, the energy available for stronger storms will decrease and so will the strength of the storms just as it does now from winter to summer. As the temperature contrast across the planet decreases, the winter storms would become more like summer storms are today. Less variation in temperature means fewer and weaker storms. Hurricanes would become less common and weaker in a warmer world. Hurricanes transport vast quantities of heat from the tropics to the higher latitudes. In a world of less temperature contrast the atmosphere won’t need to make as many hurricanes.
The severe winter weather over the last several years is due to global cooling, not warming. All data show the earth has been cooling since 2002. As this cooling continues the temperature difference across the planet will increase. This will result in stronger winter storms and more record winter weather events.
The recent snowstorms in Washington, DC broke the snowfall records set 126 years ago. The old record was 54.4 inches. The new record at the time of this writing is 55.9 inches. These numbers are within 97% of each other. There is an inherent inaccuracy in measuring snow especially in windy conditions. Also snowfall amounts are highly variable from one location to another in any snowstorm. Today we measure snowfall at far more locations than in the past.
Given these factors, we can say that the two seasonal snowfall numbers are basically the same. This means that a winter of similar magnitude and ferocity struck the Middle Atlantic region 126 years ago. The current winter is just a return of the same weather we had back then.
In summary, global warming did not cause the big winter of 1898-99 and it is not causing this year’s winter storms, either.
“All of this matters because the IPCC has been advertised as the last and definitive word on climate science. Its reports are the basis on which Al Gore, President Obama and others have claimed that climate ruin is inevitable unless the world reorganizes its economies with huge new taxes on carbon.Now we are discovering the U.N. reports are sloppy political documents intended to drive the climate lobby’s regulatory agenda. “
More embarrassments for the U.N. and ‘settled’ science.
It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the ”settled science” of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.
First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.
Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there’s no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC’s headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously.
Take the rain forest claim. In its 2007 report, the IPCC wrote that ”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.”
But as Jonathan Leake of London’s Sunday Times reported last month, those claims were based on a report from the World Wildlife Fund, which in turn had fundamentally misrepresented a study in the journal Nature. The Nature study, Mr. Leake writes, ”did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning.”
The IPCC has relied on World Wildlife Fund studies regarding the ”transformation of natural coastal areas,” the ”destruction of more mangroves,” ”glacial lake outbursts causing mudflows and avalanches,” changes in the ecosystem of the ”Mesoamerican reef,” and so on. The Wildlife Fund is a green lobby that believes in global warming, and its ”research” reflects its advocacy, not the scientific method.
The IPCC has also cited a study by British climatologist Nigel Arnell claiming that global warming could deplete water resources for as many as 4.5 billion people by the year 2085. But as our Anne Jolis reported in our European edition, the IPCC neglected to include Mr. Arnell’s corollary finding, which is that global warming could also increase water resources for as many as six billion people.
The IPCC report made aggressive claims that ”extreme weather-related events” had led to ”rapidly rising costs.” Never mind that the link between global warming and storms like Hurricane Katrina remains tenuous at best. More astonishing (or, maybe, not so astonishing) is that the IPCC again based its assertion on a single study that was not peer-reviewed. In fact, nobody can reliably establish a quantifiable connection between global warming and increased disaster-related costs. In Holland, there’s even a minor uproar over the report’s claim that 55% of the country is below sea level. It’s 26%.
Meanwhile, one of the scientists at the center of the climategate fiasco has called into question other issues that the climate lobby has claimed are indisputable. Phil Jones, who stepped down as head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit amid the climate email scandal, told the BBC that the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now.
This raises doubts about how much our current warming is man-made as opposed to merely another of the natural climate shifts that have taken place over the centuries. Mr. Jones also told the BBC there has been no ”statistically significant” warming over the past 15 years, though he considers this to be temporary.
***
All of this matters because the IPCC has been advertised as the last and definitive word on climate science. Its reports are the basis on which Al Gore, President Obama and others have claimed that climate ruin is inevitable unless the world reorganizes its economies with huge new taxes on carbon.Now we are discovering the U.N. reports are sloppy political documents intended to drive the climate lobby’s regulatory agenda.
The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC’s shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.
In recent years the Swedish scientist from Stockholm University, Karlén, has tried to create attention to the fact the Scandinavian temperatures when represented by IPCC cannot be recognized in the real data from the Scandinavian temperature stations:
Left: Karlen made a plot of 25 data series from the NordKlim database.
Right: IPCC´s temperature graph for the area does not reflect the actual Scandinavnian temperature graphs.
IPCC shows temperatures around year 2000 should be approximately 0,7 K higher than the peak around 1930-50, whereas the actual data collected by Karlen shows that year 2000 temperatures equals the 1930-50 peak, perhaps even lower. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/when-results-go-bad/
Was Karlen wrong? To evaluate this, lets check out the National meteorological institues of the respective Scandinavian countries:
Only Denmark shows slightly higher temperatures around year 2000 than in year 1930-50. 0,1 – 0,3 K warmer? However, the Danish Area around 3% of the overall area. For the vast majority of the Scandinavian area shows year 2000 temperatures just like the 1930-40 peak, Sweden maybe a tiny fall, Norway a tiny increase. Denmark is also the area of Scandinavia with far highest population density, and thus Denmark is likely to show more City heat effects (UHI) than the rest of Scandinavia.
So, With good confidence, we can say that Karlens data from Nordklim matches the opinions of the highest authority on Scandinavian temperatures. The very significant temperature peak around 1930-40 has been reduced almost removed totally. And thus the decline in temperatures after 1940 has been hidden. “Why?” and “How?” IPCC did this is basically up to the IPCC to come forward and explain. Until this happends, their vision of Scandinavian temperatures are for their own use only.
How about Sea temperatures in the Scandinavian are? Could IPCC have based their view on SST? No, because the graphic from IPCC is specifically land temperatures. But lets take a look at temperatures from Scandinavian Islands that to some degree also represents Sea temperatures – and due to their lower populations are more free of any potential City heat (UHI). Here data fom SMHI:
Scandinavian Ocean temperatures indicated from Iceland, Jan Mayen and Faroe Islands actually shows a clear pattern of lower temperatures in year 2000 than in around 1930-40. So never mind how we look at it, no shred of evidence to support the IPCC hockey-stick like warming over Scandinavia. And in general we see: The further from population, the cooler temperature trends.
I found on the net temperature data from Kategat and the north sea (“Skagerak”). This ocean area is placed in the most populated area of Scandinavia, but still, no measurements where taken in cities, obviosusly:
Finally, Danish temperatures are also available with trend line from DMI:
Taken from: http://www2.mst.dk/common/Udgivramme/Frame.asp?http://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2005/87-7614-890-4/html/annh_eng.htm – Black decline trend inserted by me.
Somehow, this graphic manages to wipe out the decline after 1935 with a seemingly handmade blue trendline. The blue “trend” graph around 1930-50 shows just a tiny top. Such a trendline could be made by using a middle tempeature for a long period, 50 years? Im just not sure how you can draw a 50-year-average trendline and still draw this trendline up and include the last year of data, 2004? They cannot know what a 50 year average for 2004 is, obviously, so this graph appears to… hide the decline.
Post scriptum:
Scandinavian temperatures 1900 – 2000 cleaned from trend lines. Still no sign of global warming in Scandinavia.
In my post Temperature data – What it really means nearly two years ago I tried to explain what all these figures and graphs actually means – RSS MSU monthly mean anomaly, UAH monthly globally averaged lower atmospheric temperature variations, and ”actual global mean temperature” etc.
Below is the graph for the “actual global mean temperature” 1850-2006.
And when you look at that graph don’t you se the HUGE variations? NO?
Well you have to use at high magnifying glass to see any variations at all.
I also showed the drastic temperature fluctuations over the last 2 billion years etc.
Now I have found a very good video from Canada explaining “What does Average of the Yearly Mean Temperature Actually Mean?”.
So enjoy this expose over the shaky ground that Global Warming Hysteria temperature “record” is based on.
“Their secular saint, Prophet Al, has become a very rich man off his global warming “science.” Yet, whenever he is interviewed by those virtuous paragons among the media elite, you’ll hear nary a peep on the fact that Prophet Al stands to become the“World’s First Carbon Billionaire,” if and when governments – especially ours – enact the cap and trade legislation, of which Mr. Gore is the most vociferous proponent.
The lying hypocrisy of it is just too much for an honest person to bear.
Mr. Gore has, in effect, declared economic war on the middle-class American family through his global warming faux science. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cap and trade legislation, which passed the House last year, will cost the average American family $890 per year. But the conservative Heritage Foundation immediately challenged this figure. Using a more inclusive analysis, Heritage raised the estimate to at least $1,870 per year.”
“In 2035 (the last year analyzed by Heritage) the inflation adjusted GDP loss works out to $6,790 per family of four–and that is before they pay their $4,600 share of the carbon taxes. The negative economic impacts accumulate, and the national debt is no exception.The increase in family-of-four debt, solely because of Waxman-Markey, hits an astounding $114,915 by 2035.
The bottom line here is that Al Gore is nothing higher on the moral scale than a war profiteer or as Investors Business Daily has called him, a “green Ponzi scheme”scammer. “
In yet another case of willful blindness, our formerly august mainstream media all but ignores Al Gore’s global warming millions. Their secular saint, Prophet Al, has become a very rich man off his global warming “science.” Yet, whenever he is interviewed by those virtuous paragons among the media elite, you’ll hear nary a peep on the fact that Prophet Al stands to become the “World’s First Carbon Billionaire,” if and when governments – especially ours – enact the cap and trade legislation, of which Mr. Gore is the most vociferous proponent.
The lying hypocrisy of it is just too much for an honest person to bear.
Mr. Gore has, in effect, declared economic war on the middle-class American family through his global warming faux science. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cap and trade legislation, which passed the House last year, will cost the average American family $890 per year. But the conservative Heritage Foundation immediately challenged this figure. Using a more inclusive analysis, Heritage raised the estimate to at least $1,870 per year.
Heritage also took the trouble – on behalf of American families – to take into account the larger picture, significant details completely ignored in the CBO’s accounting:
It is also worth noting that, of the 24 years analyzed by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (CDA), 2020 had the second lowest GDP loss. Furthermore, the CDA found that for all years the average GDP loss was $393 billion, or over double the 2020 hit. In 2035 (the last year analyzed by Heritage) the inflation adjusted GDP loss works out to $6,790 per family of four–and that is before they pay their $4,600 share of the carbon taxes. The negative economic impacts accumulate, and the national debt is no exception.The increase in family-of-four debt, solely because of Waxman-Markey, hits an astounding $114,915 by 2035.
The bottom line here is that Al Gore is nothing higher on the moral scale than a war profiteer or as Investors Business Daily has called him, a “green Ponzi scheme”scammer. When Gore provided his star-witness testimony in the House last year on cap and trade, Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) queried him on the millions he stands to make off the legislation. Gore responded that he was merely “putting my money where my mouth is.”
Perhaps, but at the same time he is advocating policies based on junk science that, while he enriches himself, will devastate the American economy, causing huge losses in jobs, economic growth and GDP.
The American consumer and taxpayer are on the wrong end of his green Ponzi scheme. Somewhere, Bernie Madoff is smiling.
Just to provide the hopelessly ignorant (or willfully blind) MSM with a bit of recap on Gore’s climate war profiteering, it might be useful to remind them of a few easily obtainable facts regarding our former VP, Prophet Al.
When Al Gore left the VP office, he reported a net worth somewhere between one and two million dollars. Currently his net worth is estimated in the hundreds of millions.
In 2004, Al Gore co-founded with former campaign manager, David Blood (also formerly with Goldman Sachs), an investment fund aimed at profiting from business and government initiatives to stop “global warming.” They affectionately call their venture: “Blood and Gore.” It’s real name is Generation Investment Management (GIM). GIM has its home base in London and lists a host of mega-corporations as investors, among them, Aflac, GE, Staples, SYSCO, UBS, Waters Corp. and Whole Foods. This is not the sort of venture capitalist scheme with which your ordinary American family could become a shareholder.
In 2006, Al Gore came out with his Oscar-chosen movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Due to the movie’s consequent hyping by an enthralled media, Mr. Gore’s “documentary” has grossed over $24 million in the U.S. and over $49 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing documentary in the U.S. to date, (from 1982 to the present). Yet, in 2007, the U.K.’s High Court found that the film was both “biased” and “alarmist” and noted nine specific “scientific” claims, which were at best unfounded and at worst outright lies. To be shown in British schools, the High Court ruled, would require tedious instruction to students on the errors and bias contained in the film.
The British ruling was widely ignored by the MSM this side of the big pond, however, and the movie continues to be shown to unsuspecting students in government schools and universities nationwide – with no disclaimers whatsoever.
Interestingly, one of the film’s claims which was noted as unsubstantiated by Britain’s High Court was the recently debunked. Mr. Gore’s assertion that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was expressly attributable to global warming has been found unscientific and based on faulty research.
None of Mr. Gore’s newly demonstrated scientific errors should really come as any surprise, however (after all, the man flunked out of divinity school). As noted by the Washington Post in this 2000 article on Gore’s lackluster college transcripts, the media-heralded scientific genius — Prophet Al — spent his entire tenure at Harvard avoiding all courses in mathematics and logic. The two science courses he had to take, Natural Science in his sophomore and senior years, he managed to receive a D and a C+ respectively. Gore’s college science performance was easily predictable, however, as his high school transcripts showed that the only courses in which Mr. Gore scored A’s were in art and religious studies.
The MSM is so enthralled with Mr. Gore and his single-handed quest to save mankind from itself that they ignore every salient fact regarding not only the scientific sham, but every detail about the man himself, including his anything-but-sterling scientific background. Add to that shameful sycophancy their enabling of the man to bank multi-millions while he scams the public and the MSM becomes no less than an unindicted co-conspirator in Gore’s war on Western economies.
When Mr. Gore makes wild claims, which are later debunked by truly scientifically minded folks, the MSM is AWOL. When Mr. Gore blithely insisted recently on NBC’s Tonight Show that the “interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …,” neither the host nor the media elite know enough about science to even question his authority. When Mr. Gore belittled critics on the cost to American families of his cap-and-trade Ponzi scheme to ex-cheerleader-turned-anchorwoman, perky Katie Couric, she was so ignorant that she did not even question his recitation of accepted dogma.
Poppycock peddlers are found in every generation, but Al Gore’s get-rich-off-unsuspecting citizens is definitely a cake-taker in this lot of scoundrels. And for the love of Pete, one would think that any self-respecting journalist would go after him with at least the zeal they show in examining Sarah Palin’s hand.
Moral compass? The MSM does not seem to own a single working one among their entire lot of overpaid, under-worked scalawags. In allowing Al Gore to continue his green Ponzi scheme unobstructed, they prove they are all birds of a feather and have lost all credibility.
More on Pachauri and his direct involvement in Africa gate
“Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC’s 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.
Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.”
“The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, ”agricultural production will more than double by 2020″.Yet it was Agoumi’s claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC’s Working Group II report in 2007. “
“British taxpayers poured out money for the section of the IPCC report for which Dr Parry was responsible. Defra paid £2.5 million through the Met Office, plus £330,000 for Dr Parry’s salary as co-chairman, and a further £75,000 to his consultancy for two more reports on the impact of global warming on world food supplies. Yet when it came to the impact on Africa, all this peer-reviewed work – including further expert reports by Britain‘s Dr Mike Hulme and Dutch and German teams – was ignored in favour of a prediction from one Moroccan activist at odds with his own cited sources.”
African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC
One more alarming claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report is disintegrating under closer examination, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:36PM GMT 13 Feb 2010
Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC’s 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.
Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.
One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.
The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for ”carbon credits”. As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. The nearest any got to providing evidence for his claim was one for the Moroccan government, which said that in serious drought years, cereal yields might be reduced by 50 per cent. The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, ”agricultural production will more than double by 2020″.Yet it was Agoumi’s claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC’s Working Group II report in 2007.
What made this even odder, however, was that the group’s co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC’s 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by ”up to 30 per cent”.
British taxpayers poured out money for the section of the IPCC report for which Dr Parry was responsible. Defra paid £2.5 million through the Met Office, plus £330,000 for Dr Parry’s salary as co-chairman, and a further £75,000 to his consultancy for two more reports on the impact of global warming on world food supplies. Yet when it came to the impact on Africa, all this peer-reviewed work – including further expert reports by Britain‘s Dr Mike Hulme and Dutch and German teams – was ignored in favour of a prediction from one Moroccan activist at odds with his own cited sources.
However, the story then got worse when Dr Pachauri himself came to edit and co-author the IPCC’s Synthesis Report (for which the IPCC paid his Delhi-based Teri institute, out of the £400,000 allocated for its production).Not only did Pachauri’s version again give prominence to Agoumi’s 50 per cent figure, but he himself has repeated the claim on numerous occasions since, in articles, interviews and speeches –such as the one he gave to a climate summit in Potsdam last September, where he boasted he was speaking ”in the voice of the world’s scientific community”.
Only last week, in an interview available on YouTube, Dr Pachauri was asked about errors in the IPCC’s 2007 report and his own Synthesis Report, with specific reference to the loss of North African crops. His reply was that – aside from the prediction that the IPCC has now had to disown, that Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035 – the reports contained ”no errors”.Passages such as those on African crops were ”not errors and we are absolutely certain that what we have said over that can be substantiated”.
In the wake of all the other recent scandals, ”Africa-gate” may be the most damaging of all, because of the involvement of Dr Pachauri himself. Not only is the reputation of the IPCC in tatters, but that of its chairman appears irreperably damaged. Yet the world’s politicians cannot afford to see him resign because, if he goes, the whole sham edifice they have sworn by would come tumbling down.
I have written extensible about the “official” selection of weather stations they use, how countries and continents just “disappear”, the urban heat island effect, the poor placement of many of these weather stations etc etc.
Now it seems that there has been another ”update” of weather stations at GHCN (Global Historical Climatology Network), the chief “global” historic temperture provider.
They dropped another 484 statione!
This “record” is becoming less and less “global” – It’s a joke.
Oh, and the list is also confirmation that the extraordinary hatred of thermometersshown by the managers of GHCN continues, unabated. Particular emphasis seems to have landed on Africa (already poorly covered) and Asia, with a modest effort to eradicate more of South America. By comparison, Europe is only slightly mauled…
This is an article from the indian Open Magazine which I didn’t have time to publish two weeks ago when it appeared.
So enyoy. And it’s no holds barrels.
“The climate change fraud that is now unravelling is unprecedented in its deceit, unmatched in scope—and for the liberal elite, akin to 9 on the Richter scale. Never have so few fooled so many for so long, ever.
The entire world was being asked to change the way it lives on the basis of pure hyperbole. Propriety, probity and transparency were routinely sacrificed.
The truth is: the world is not heating up in any significant way. Neither are the Himalayan glaciers going to melt as claimed by 2035. Nor is there any link at all between natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and global warming. All that was pure nonsense, or if you like, ‘no-science’! The climate change mafia, led by Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), almost pulled off the heist of the century through fraudulent data and suppression of procedure. All the while, they were cornering millions of dollars in research grants that heaped one convenient untruth upon another. And as if the money wasn’t enough, the Nobel Committee decided they should have the coveted Peace Prize.”
It was presented as fact. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, led by India’s very own RK Pachauri, even announced a consensus on it. The world was heating up and humans were to blame. A pack of lies, it turns out.
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrarywise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see? —Alice in Wonderland
The climate change fraud that is now unravelling is unprecedented in its deceit, unmatched in scope—and for the liberal elite, akin to 9 on the Richter scale. Never have so few fooled so many for so long, ever.
The entire world was being asked to change the way it lives on the basis of pure hyperbole. Propriety, probity and transparency were routinely sacrificed.
The truth is: the world is not heating up in any significant way. Neither are the Himalayan glaciers going to melt as claimed by 2035. Nor is there any link at all between natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and global warming. All that was pure nonsense, or if you like, ‘no-science’!
The climate change mafia, led by Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), almost pulled off the heist of the century through fraudulent data and suppression of procedure. All the while, they were cornering millions of dollars in research grants that heaped one convenient untruth upon another. And as if the money wasn’t enough, the Nobel Committee decided they should have the coveted Peace Prize.
But let’s begin at the beginning. Mr Pachauri has no training whatsoever in climate science. This was known all the time, yet he heads the pontification panel which proliferates the new gospel of a hotter world.How come? Why did the United Nations not choose someone who was competent?After all, this man is presumably incapable of differentiating between ocean sediments and coral terrestrial deposits, nor can he go about analysing tree ring records and so on. That’s not jargon; these are essential elements of a syllabus in any basic course on climatology.
You cannot blame him. His degree and training is in railroad engineering. You read it right. This man was educated to make railroads from point A to point B.
THE GATHERING STORM
There are many casualties in this sad story of greed and hubris. The big victim is the scientific method. This was pointed out in great detail by John P Costella of the Virginia-based Science and Public Policy Institute. Science is based on three fundamental pillars. The first is fallibility. The fact that you can be wrong, and if so proven by experimental input, any hypothesis can be—indeed, must be—corrected.
This was systematically stymied as early as 2004 by the scientific in-charge of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Change Unit. This university was at the epicentre of the ‘research’ on global warming. It is here that Professor Phil Jones kept inconvenient details that contradicted climate change claims out of reports.
The second pillar of science is that by its very nature, science is impersonal. There is no ‘us’, there is no ‘them’. There is only the quest. However, in the entire murky non-scientific global warming episode, if anyone was a sceptic he was labelled as one of ‘them’. At the very apex, before his humiliating retraction, Pachauri had dismissed a report by Indian scientists on glaciers as “voodoo science”.
The third pillar of science is peer group assessment. This allows for validation of your thesis by fellow scientists and is usually done in confidence. However, the entire process was set aside by the IPCC while preparing the report. Thus, it has zero scientific value.
The fact that there was dissent within the climate science teams, that some people objected to the very basis of the grand claims of global warming, did not come out through the due process. It came to light when emails at the Climate Research Centre at East Anglia were hacked in November 2009. It is from the hacked conversations that a pattern of conspiracy and deceit emerge. It is a peek into the world of global warming scaremongering—amplify the impact of CO2, stick to dramatic timelines on destruction of forests, and never ask for a referral or raise a contrary point. You were either a believer in a hotter world or not welcome in this ‘scientific fold’.
HOUSE OF CARDS AND COLOUR OF CASH
So we have the fact that a non-expert heads the IPCC. We have the fact that glaciers are not melting by 2035; this major scaremongering is now being defended as a minor error (it was originally meant to be 2350, some have clarified). The date was spouted first by Syed Hasnain, an Indian glacier expert, in an interview to a magazine. It had no scientific validity, and, as Hasnain has himself said, was speculative.
On the basis of that assertion, The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) that Pachauri heads and where Hasnain works in the glaciology team,got two massive chunks of funding. The first was estimated to be a $300,000 grant from Carnegie Corporation and the second was a part of the $2 million funding from the European Union. So you write a report that is false on glaciers melting and get millions to study the impact of a meltdown which will not be happening in the first place. Now if this is not a neat one, what is?
The same goes for dire predictions on Amazon rain forests. The IPCC maintained that there would be a huge depletion in Amazon rain forests because of lack of precipitation. Needless to add, no Amazon rain forest expert could be trusted to back this claim.They depended on a report by a freelance journalist and activist, instead, and now it has blown up in their faces.
There’s plenty more in this sordid tale. For one thing, there is no scientific consensus at all that man-made CO2 emissions cause global warming, as claimed by the IPCC. In a recent paper, Lord Monckton of Brenchley, who has worked extensively on climate change models, argues: ‘There is no scientific consensus on how much the world has warmed or will warm; how much of the warming is natural; how much impact greenhouse gases have had or will have on temperature; how sea level, storms, droughts, floods, flora, and fauna will respond to warmer temperature; what mitigative steps—if any—we should take; whether (if at all) such steps would have sufficient (or any) climatic effect; or even whether we should take any steps at all.’
An investigation by Dr Benny Peiser, director, Global Warming Policy Foundation, has revealed that only 13 of the 1,117, or a mere 1 per cent of the scientific papers crosschecked by him, explicitly endorse the consensus as defined by the IPCC. Thus the very basis of the claim of consensus on global warming is false. And so deeply entrenched is the global warming lobby, the prestigious journal Science did not publish a letter that Dr Peiser wrote pointing out the lack of consensus.
Speaking to Open, says Dr Peiser, “The IPCC process by which it arrives at its conclusions lacks balance, transparency and due diligence. It is controlled by a tightly knit group of individuals who are completely convinced that they are right. As a result, conflicting data and evidence, even if published in peer-reviewed journals, are regularly ignored, while exaggerated claims, even if contentious or not peer-reviewed, are often highlighted in IPCC reports. Not surprisingly, the IPCC has lost a lot of credibility in recent years. It is also losing the trust of more and more governments who are no longer following its advice. Until it agrees to undergo a root and branch reform, it will continue to haemorrhage credibility and trust. The time has come for a complete overhaul of its structure and workings.”
Another fraud is in the very chart central to Pachauri’s speech at the Copenhagen summit. As Lord Monckton has pointed out, ‘The graph is bogus not only because it relies on made-up data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, but also because it is overlain by four separate trendlines, each with a start-date carefully selected to give the entirely false impression that the rate of warming over the past 150 years has itself been accelerating, especially between 1975 and 1998. The truth, however—neatly obscured by an ingenious rescaling of the graph and the superimposition of the four bogus trend lines on it—is that from 1860 to 1880 and again from 1910 to 1940 the warming rate was exactly the same as the warming rate from 1975 to 1998.’
PACHAURI’S WRONG NUMBERS
This chart, tracking mean global temperature over the past 150 years, was central to the presentation that IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri made at the Copenhagen environment summit. Many scientists believe that the graph is fraudulent. First, there are strong allegations that the data, collected from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, is a tissue of lies. Plus, as British climate change expert Lord Christopher Monckton puts it: “(The main graph, in darker blue) is overlain by four separate lines, each carefully selected to give the entirely false im•pression that the rate of warming over the past 150 years has itself been accelerating, especially between 1975 and 1998. The truth, however… is that from 1860 to 1880 and again from 1910 to 1940, the warming rate was exactly the same as the warming rate from 1975 to 1998.” In other words, the graph has been drawn with a motive to prove one’s point, and not to show the truth.
Thus the earth has warmed at this rate at least twice in the last 100 years and no major catastrophe has occurred. What is more, the earth has cooled after that warming. Why is the IPCC not willing to explore this startling point?
Another total lie has been that the Sunderbans in Bangladesh are sinking on account of the rise in sea level. The IPCC claimed that one-fifth of Bangladesh will be under water by 2050. Well, it turns out this is an absurd, unscientific and outrageous claim. According to scientists at the Centre for Environmental and Geographical Information Services (Cegis) in Dhaka, its surface area appears to be growing by 20 sq km annually. Cegis has based its results on more than 30 years of satellite imagery. IPCC has not retracted this claim. As far as they are concerned, Bangladesh is a goner by 2050, submerged forever in the Bay of Bengal.
THE COOKIE CRUMBLES
The fallout of Climategate is slowly but surely unfolding right where it hurts a large number of special interests—in the field of business. Yes, the carbon trading business is now in the line of fire. Under a cap-and-trade system, a government authority first sets a limit on emissions, deciding how much pollution will be allowed in all. Next, companies are issued credits, essentially licences to pollute, based on how large they are, and what industries they work in. If a company comes in below its cap, it has extra credits which it may trade with other companies, globally.
Post Climategate, this worldwide trade, estimated at about $30 billion in 2006, is finding few takers. It is under attack following the renewed uncertainty over the role of human-generated CO2 in global warming. In the US, which never adopted any of this to begin with, there is a serious move now to finish off the cap-and-trade regime globally. It’s a revolt of sorts. Six leading Democrats in the US Congress have joined hands with many Republicans to urge the Obama Administration to back off from the regime.
The collapse of the international market for carbon credits, a direct fallout of Climategate, has already sent shudders down many spines in parts of the world that were looking forward to making gains from it. It was big business, after all, and Indian businesses were eyeing it as well. In fact, Indian firms were expected to trade some $1 billion worth of carbon credits this year, and with the market going poof, they stand to lose quite some money (notional or otherwise).
Besides the commercial aspect, there is also the issue of wider public credibility. There have been signs of scepticism all along. In a 2009 Gallup poll, a record number of people—41 per cent—elected to say that global warming was an exaggerated threat. This slackening of public support is in sync with a coordinated political movement that is seeking to re-examine the entire issue of global warming from scratch. The movement is led by increasingly vocal Republicans in the US Senate and packs considerable political power.
Pachauri’s position is also becoming increasingly untenable with demands for his resignation becoming louder by the day. In an interview to Open, Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute, a noted US think-tank, who has followed the debate for years, says, “Dr Pachauri should resign becausehe has a consistent record of mixing his political views with climate science, because of his intolerance of legitimate scientific views that he does not agree with, because of his disparagement of India’s glacier scientists as practising ‘voodoo science’, and because of his incomprehension of the serious nature of what was in the East Anglia emails.”
Richard North, the professor who brought to light the financial irregularities in a write-up co-authored with Christopher Booker, has also said in a TV interview that, “If Dr Pachauri does not resign voluntarily, he will be forced to do so.”
GLOBAL STORMING AHEAD
The world awaits answers, based not on writings of sundry freelance journalists and non-experts, but on actual verifiable data on whether the globe is warming at all, and if so by how much. Only then can policy options be calibrated. As things stand, there is little doubt that the IPCC will need to be reconstituted with a limited mandate. This mess needs investigation and questions need to be answered as to why absurd claims were taken as gospel truth. The future of everything we know as ‘normal’ depends on this. The real danger is that the general public is now weary of the whole thing, a little tired of the debate, and may not really care for the truth, convenient or otherwise.
“If there’s one thing that stinks even more than Climategate, it’s the attempts we’re seeing everywhere from the IPCC and Penn State University to the BBC to pretend that nothing seriously bad has happened, that “the science” is still “settled”, and that it’s perfectly OK for the authorities go on throwing loads more of our money at a problem that doesn’t exist.”
“The inquiry has not even begun and already it has told its first blatant lie – seen here on its official website.”
If there’s one thing that stinks even more than Climategate, it’s the attempts we’re seeing everywhere from the IPCC and Penn State University to the BBC to pretend that nothing seriously bad has happened, that “the science” is still “settled”, and that it’s perfectly OK for the authorities go on throwing loads more of our money at a problem that doesn’t exist.
The latest example of this noisome phenomenon is Sir Muir Russell’s official whitewash – sorry “independent inquiry” into the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) scandal.
The inquiry has not even begun and already it has told its first blatant lie – seen here on its official website.
Do any of the Review team members have a predetermined view on climate change and climate science?
No. Members of the research team come from a variety of scientific backgrounds. They were selected on the basis they have no prejudicial interest in climate change and climate science and for the contribution they can make to the issues the Review is looking at.
By what bizarre logic, then, did Sir Muir think it a good idea to appoint to his panel the editor of Nature, Dr Philip Campbell? Dr Campbell is hardly neutral: his magazine has for years been arguing aggressively in favour of the AGW, and which published this editorial in the wake of Climategate:
The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ’smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.
This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.
Dr Campbell has since resigned his post – and rightly so, as the Global Warming Policy Foundation makes clear. But are we to feel any more confident about the alleged neutrality of another of Sir Muir’s appointments, Professor Geoffrey Boulton?
signed up to a statement supporting the consensus in the wake of Climategate, which spoke of scientists adhering to the highest standards of integrity
could fairly be described as a global warming doommonger
is quite happy to discuss “denial” in the context of the climate debate.
You wonder, if Sir Muir really is that determined to keep his inquiry totally unbiased, independent, above-board and scrupulously neutral why he just doesn’t go the whole hog and appoint Al Gore, James Hansen and Rajendra Pachauri. I doubt the conclusions they’d reach would be any different.
Published Date: 13 February 2010, By JENNY FYALL ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
AN EMINENT Scottish scientist is facing calls to resign from the ”climategate” inquiry, amid concerns over his impartiality
Only 24 hours after another panel member quit, questions emerged over Professor Geoffrey Boulton because of his previous views that climate change is caused by human activity.
The investigation was set up to look into whether scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) covered up flawed data.
But some have cast doubt on whether the inquiry results can be trusted if Prof Boulton, general secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, remains on the panel.
The leading geologist was one of five people chosen by former University of Glasgow principal Sir Muir Russell to carry out the high-profile investigation. A statement released at the launch of the inquiry on Thursday said none of the panel members had a ”predetermined view on climate change and climate science”.
It added: ”They were selected on the basis they have no prejudicial interest in climate science.”
However, The Scotsman can reveal that only a few months ago, Prof Boulton, from the University of Edinburgh, was among a number of scientists who, in the wake of the climategate scandal, signed a petition to show their confidence that global warming was caused by humans.And for at least five years, he has made clear his strong views on global warming. He has given interviews and written articles – including in The Scotsman – that have spelled out his firmly held beliefs.
In one article for Edinburgh University, he wrote: ”The argument regarding climate change is over.” And for 18 years, he worked at the University of East Anglia (UEA) – the establishment at the centre of the scandal.
Last night, on being questioned by The Scotsman, Prof Boulton insisted he was a ”sceptical scientist” prepared to change his views ”if the evidence merited”.
The controversy follows the resignation of another panel member, Dr Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature magazine, just six hours after the inquiry launch. He stepped down after it emerged he had given an interview to Chinese radio about the climategate scandal, defending the behaviour of the scientists at the CRU.
Dr Benny Peizer, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank which claims the debate on climate change has become distorted, called for Prof Boulton to step down, too. He said: ”Prof Boulton obviously is a very distinguished geologist. The problem is, he is a very outspoken campaigner on this issue and he’s given talks calling for galvanising public opinion. He also worked at the very institution that he is now going to be investigating. That, we think, is a conflict of interest.”
He said he was ”speechless” about why Prof Boulton and Dr Campbell had been appointed in the first place.
”It looks like a shambles and it looks like the chairman of this panel hasn’t really thought this through,” he said. ”Everyone must have told him (Sir Muir] that it’s a very contentious issue and he should make sure the panel members have no bias at all.”
He added that he thought it was ”impossible” that Prof Boulton could remain in post.
The UEA, one of Britain’s leading climate-change research centres, helps compile a global temperature record published by the Met Office. This data is used by the government to justify its targets for cuts in carbon emissions.
The university appointed Sir Muir in December to head an inquiry into a series of allegations over manipulated data.
Prof Boulton said he had been open about having worked at the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA between 1968 and 1986.
”Since then, I have had no professional contact with the University of East Anglia or the Climatic Research Unit,” he said. He added that he had ”declared my current view of the balance of evidence: that the earth is warming and that human activity is implicated. These remain the views of the vast majority of scientists who research on climate change in its different aspects”.
But he added: ”As a sceptical scientist, I am prepared to change those views if the evidence merits it. They certainly do not prevent me from being heavily biased against poor scientific practice, wherever it arises.”
A spokeswoman for the inquiry said Sir Muir was ”completely confident each member has the integrity, expertise and experience to complete the task.”
Where eminent academic stands and what he’s said in past
Dec 2009: In the wake of the scandal over leaked ”climategate” e-mails, Professor Geoffrey Boulton signs a Met Office petition. It says: ”We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming.”
• Dec 2009: He gives an interview to The Scotsman in which he expresses his concern that public belief in climate change might be damaged by the scandal.
• Oct 2009: Writes an opinion piece for The Scotsman, in which he spells out the evidence that humans are responsible for climate change. It reads:
• Oct 2008: Is one of 18 scientists who write an essay about the likely impacts of climate change by 2050, commissioned by the David Hume Institute. He predicts melting icecaps causing ”the potential demise of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Kuwait, flooding of large areas of the US Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and east coasts of Myanmar, Thailand and north-east China”.
In Scotland, ”the Forth, Clyde, Moray and Solway lowlands were at risk”.
Governments are guilty of ”misplaced optimism” and being ”too preoccupied by the credit crunch”.
• 2005: In a paper produced for Edinburgh University’s Annual Review, Prof Boulton is quoted as saying: ”The argument regarding climate change is over.”
• 1968 to 1986: He spends 18 years working at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia – the university at the centre of the scandal.
However, Prof Boulton does not work in the Climatic Research Unit.
HOTTING UP
THE ”climategate” scandal broke just days before the Copenhagen climate change summit in December, when world leaders gathered to thrash out solutions to global warming.
A hacker obtained thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and posted them on a website. They appeared to suggest efforts by CRU scientists to cover up evidence that did not fit theories climate change was caused by humans. There was a reference to a ”trick” to ”hide the decline”.
On Thursday, an inquiry into the scandal started, carried out by a panel led by former University of Glasgow principal Sir Muir Russell.
This inquiry will examine the quality of scientific practice by CRU researchers as well as investigating whether they complied with the university’s freedom of information rules.
It will not examine the evidence on whether or not global warming is caused by human behaviour.
“Eventually the truth will out. When global warming finally is recognized as the world’s greatest political hoax, those discredited will not be the perpetrators.
The perpetrators are politicians and traditional media. After the credibility bubble bursts, the same politicians and media will continue to influence what the public is told. They will effectively claim that they never misled anyone. The fall guy will be science. “
“How starkly the vigorous opposition to creationism contrasts with the community’s near silence in response to the anti-scientific nonsense coming from the likes of Al Gore.Worse than silence, in all too many cases, the community has been an enthusiastic participant in an orgy of unreason. It has been an orgy lubricated by almost limitless opportunities to grab influence, physical resources and cool cash. “
“It is easy to create the illusion of consensus when those who disagree are silenced. “
Not even 30 inches of snow falling on Washington has discredited claims of ”global warming,” the belief that human activity is appreciably warming our planet. Of course, a single snowstorm does not disprove global warming. Weather is not the same as climate. But even after a decade of unexpectedly cool temperatures, global-warming alarmists still show no skepticism. Skepticism is a core value of science.
In ”1984,” George Orwell wrote about Big Brother (government) being so powerful that it can persuade people to believe things contrary to their senses. It even can convince them that two plus two is not equal to four.
Eventually the truth will out. When global warming finally is recognized as the world’s greatest political hoax, those discredited will not be the perpetrators.
The perpetrators are politicians and traditional media. After the credibility bubble bursts, the same politicians and media will continue to influence what the public is told. They will effectively claim that they never misled anyone. The fall guy will be science.
Lost in the confusion will be the distinction between science and the scientific community.
The scientific community has largely abandoned science. It has degenerated into little more than just another lobbying group seeking advancement for its members.
The scientific community gets it right when the stakes are unimportant. It effectively opposed such anti-scientific nonsense as creationism. If the religious zealots had won, children would be told that the Old Testament described things that really happened. Not good – but it would do little harm and certainly would not harm the world’s economies.
How starkly the vigorous opposition to creationism contrasts with the community’s near silence in response to the anti-scientific nonsense coming from the likes of Al Gore.Worse than silence, in all too many cases, the community has been an enthusiastic participant in an orgy of unreason. It has been an orgy lubricated by almost limitless opportunities to grab influence, physical resources and cool cash.
Galileo Galilei, the father of experimental science, was convicted of a crime in 1633 for stating ”that the Earth is not at the center of the universe, and it moves.” This contradicted the then-prevailing belief, supported by most highly credentialed astronomers of the day. His sentence was house arrest until his death in 1642.
Galileo was treated more leniently than earlier pioneer Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in 1600 for similar crimes.
Then, it was fear of the unknown that threatened intellectual freedom. Today, it is governments and international bodies. While they do not execute or imprison heretics, they still wield enormous power.
”Climate of Fear. Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence” was the headline on a column in the Wall Street Journal by Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Lindzen writes, ”Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”
It is easy to create the illusion of consensus when those who disagree are silenced.
It is not known what the majority of scientists think about global warming, not that it matters all that much. Science is not about counting votes. However, I can offer an anecdotal observation.
I am a scientist, while my wife is a professor of art history. Her colleagues generally think all scientists support Mr. Gore – after all, they have been so informed by such authoritative sources as the New York Times.My fellow doctorate-holding science colleagues generally share my conclusion: The claim that human activity has appreciably warmed our planet is the greatest political hoax ever.
Many specific actions supported by global-warming alarmists are admirable. We ought to pollute less and transfer less wealth to Middle Eastern oil-producing tyrannies. These issues should be addressed on their merits. They have little to do with global temperature.
To do sensible things for irrational reasons just validates irrationality. And who can tell what future horrors will be justified by irrationality?
When the global-warming hoax eventually collapses, the victim will be science. When science suffers, we all suffer.
Leonard Evans has a doctorate in physics from Oxford University and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on many scientific subjects.
“The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs.
When the growing demand for corn for ethanol helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008, people in low-income grain-importing countries were hit the hardest.The unprecedented spike in food prices drove up the number of hungry people in the world to over 1 billion for the first time in 2009.”
”Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the U.S. federal government in its Renewable Fuel Standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in hunger. By subsidizing the production of ethanol, now to the tune of some $6 billion each year, U.S. taxpayers are in effect subsidizing rising food bills at home and around the world.”
Data Highlights: U.S. Feeds One Quarter of its Grain to Cars While Hunger is on the Rise
January 21, 2010
The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004.
The United States looms large in the world food economy: it is far and away the world’s leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies.
From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive hunger for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs.
When the growing demand for corn for ethanol helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008, people in low-income grain-importing countries were hit the hardest.The unprecedented spike in food prices drove up the number of hungry people in the world to over 1 billion for the first time in 2009. Though the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has recently brought food prices down from their peak, they still remain well above their long-term average levels.
The amount of grain needed to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol just once can feed one person for an entire year. The average income of the owners of the world’s 940 million automobiles is at least ten times larger than that of the world’s 2 billion hungriest people. In the competition between cars and hungry people for the world’s harvest, the car is destined to win.
Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the U.S. federal government in its Renewable Fuel Standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in hunger. By subsidizing the production of ethanol, now to the tune of some $6 billion each year, U.S. taxpayers are in effect subsidizing rising food bills at home and around the world.
Exaggeration and alarmism have been a chronic weakness of environmentalism since it became an organized movement in the 1960s. Every ecological problem was instantly transformed into a potential world-ending crisis, from the population bomb to the imminent resource depletion of the ”limits to growth” fad of the 1970s to acid rain to ozone depletion, always with an overlay of moral condemnation of anyone who dissented from environmental correctness. With global warming, the environmental movement thought it had hit the jackpot — a crisis sufficiently long-range that it could not be falsified and broad enough to justify massive political controls on resource use at a global level. Former Colorado senator Tim Wirth was unusually candid when he remarked in the early days of the climate campaign that ”we’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” (Not surprisingly, after Wirth left the Senate and the Clinton administration he ended up at the United Nations.)
The global-warming thrill ride looks to be coming to an end, undone by the same politically motivated serial exaggeration and moral preening that discredited previous apocalypses. On the heels of the East Anglia University ”Climategate” scandal have come a series of embarrassing retractions from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding some of the most loudly trumpeted signs and wonders of global warming, such as the ludicrous claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear within 30 years, that nearly half of the Amazon jungle was at imminent risk of destruction from a warming planet, and that there was a clear linkage between climate change and weather-related economic losses. The sources for these claims turned out to be environmental advocacy groups — not rigorous, peer-reviewed science.
To be sure, these revelations do not in and of themselves mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is false. But this is probably the beginning of a wholesale revision of the conventional wisdom on climate change.One of the central issues of Climategate — the veracity and integrity of the surface-temperature records used for our estimates of warming over the last few decades — is far from resolved. The next frontier is likely to be a fresh debate about basic climate sensitivity itself. There have been several recent peer-reviewed papers suggesting much lower climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases than the IPCC ”consensus” computer models predict. And alternative explanations for observed climate change in the Arctic and elsewhere, such as shifts in ocean currents and wind patterns, should receive a second look.
Dissenters who pointed out these and other flaws in the IPCC consensus were demonized as deniers and ignored by the media, but they are now vindicated. (The American media are still averting their gaze, though the British press — even the left-wing Guardian and the Independent — is turning on the climate campaigners with deserved vengeance.) The IPCC is mumbling about non-specific reforms and changes in the process shaping its next massive climate report, due out in three or four years. The IPCC should emulate a typical feature of American government commissions and include a minority report from dissenters or scientists with a different emphasis. But the next IPCC report may not matter much: With the collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process and the likely rejection of cap-and-trade in Congress, climate mania may have run its course.
A Utahlegislative committee Thursday threw its support behind a resolution urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to halt its carbon-dioxide reduction policies.
The resolution itself lists a lot of arguments against EPA:s decree that CO2 is a “dangerous pollutant”.
“This one’s for the EPA and the Obama administration. Who in their political “wisdom” in the name of Global Warming Hysteria, have decreedthat the trace gas CO2, which is essential for ALL LIFE ON EARTH, is a ”dangerous pollutant”.
Every time we and ALL animals breathe we produce CO2. So how is EPA going to solve this “problem”?
Utah legislative panel OKs resolution on climate-change
By Amy Joi O’Donoghue
Published: Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010 9:54 p.m. MST
SALT LAKE CITY — Citing cataclysmic impacts to the economy — from ranching to mining to small-business interests — a legislative committee Thursday threw its support behind a resolution urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to halt its carbon-dioxide reduction policies.
”We are responsible to look at the big picture,” said Rep. Kerry Gibson, R-Ogden, sponsor of the measure. ”The economy is as important as the environment.”
Fueled by concerns over devastating impacts to Utah’s farmers, ranchers, mining industry, businesses and consumers, HJR12 is intended to send a message to the federal government that the regulation of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas is fraught with economic impracticalities and based on unproven global warming theory.
”Sometimes when we don’t have all the answers, we need to have the courage to do nothing,” said Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, arguing forcefully on behalf of the resolution. Making reference to the medical profession’s Hippocratic oath, Noel said, ”As policymakers, we should first do no harm.”
The cornerstone of concern is the ”endangerment finding” by the EPA that carbon dioxide constitutes a greenhouse-gas emission and by extension falls under the purview of the agency to be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
Critics of that practice, such as the National Farm Bureau, have gone into a tailspin, fearful that ranching and farming activities will fall under the agency’s hammer.
Randy Parker, chief executive officer of the Utah Farm Bureau, said such regulation would be ”crippling” to Utah’s agricultural industry.
”Agriculture is being regulated and taxed to death because of this mentality,” he said. ”We are at the breaking point. … The cost of producing food in this country is on the verge of being unsustainable for the agricultural industry.”
Explicit in the resolution is the dismissal of global warming as a sound phenomenon and the assertion that the premise has given rise to a climate-change ”gravy train” supported by an annual $7 billion in federal grants. At the same time, the resolution states, manipulating alarmists thwart the voices of skeptics.
”We seem to have lost our common sense in some of these matters,” said Gibson, a dairy farmer from WeberCounty. ”People pushing this squelch all the voices of opposition.”
Supporters of the resolution pointed out that there are similar measures being introduced and discussed in the halls of Congress. Mike Peterson, with the Utah Rural Electric Association, said the Clean Air Act was never intended as a vehicle to regulate carbon dioxide.
Even one of its crafters, U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan, has said the regulation of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas by the EPA would constitute a ”glorious mess,” Peterson said.
Rep. Phil Riesen, D-Salt Lake, was the lone dissenter on the committee and disapproved of the resolution, saying steps need to be taken now to preserve the environment for generations to come. Joining in his opposition was a University of Utah engineering professor, who in testimony got caught up in a confrontational debate with Noel over carbon dioxide and its classification as a pollutant.
This joint resolution of the Legislature urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to cease its carbon dioxide reduction policies, programs, and regulations until climate data and global warming science are substantiated.
Highlighted Provisions:
This resolution:
urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its “Endangerment Finding” and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.
Special Clauses:
None
Be it resolved by the Legislature of the state of Utah:
WHEREAS, proposed cap and trade legislation before the United States Congress, together with potential state actions to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2), would result in significantly higher energy costs to American consumers, business, and industry;
WHEREAS, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Endangerment Finding” and proposed action to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act is based on flawed climate data and would place significant regulatory and financial burdens on all sectors of the nation’s economy at a time when the nation’s unemployment rate exceeds 10%;
WHEREAS, global temperatures have been level and declining in some areas over the past 12 years;
WHEREAS, the “hockey stick” global warming assertion has been discredited and climate alarmists’ carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures;
WHEREAS, there is a statistically more direct correlation between twentieth century temperature rise and Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere than CO2;
WHEREAS, outlawed and largely phased out by 1978, in the year 2000 CFC’s began to decline at approximately the same time as global temperatures began to decline;
WHEREAS, emails and other communications between climate researchers around the globe, referred to as “Climategate,” indicate a well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate “tricks” related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome;
WHEREAS, there has been a concerted effort by climate change alarmists to marginalize those in the scientific community who are skeptical of global warming by manipulating or pressuring peer-reviewed publications to keep contrary or competing scientific viewpoints and findings on global warming from being reviewed and published;
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a blend of government officials and scientists, does no independent climate research but relies on global climate researchers;
WHEREAS, Earth’s climate is constantly changing with recent warming potentially an indication of a return to more normal temperatures following a prolonged cooling period from 1250 to 1860 called the “Little Ice Age”;
WHEREAS, the climate change “gravy train,” estimated at more than $7 billion annually in federal government grants, may have influenced the climate research focus and findings that have produced a “scientific consensus” at research institutions and universities;
WHEREAS, the recently completed Copenhagen climate change summit resulted in little agreement, especially among growing CO2-emitting nations like China and India, and calls on the United States to pay billions of dollars to developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions at a time when the United States’ national debt will exceed $12 trillion;
WHEREAS, the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that current legislation providing agriculture offsets and carbon credits to reduce CO2 emissions would result in tree planting on 59 million acres of crop and pasture land, damaging America’s food security and rural communities;
WHEREAS, according to the World Health Organization, 1.6 billion people do not have adequate food and clean water; and
WHEREAS, global governance related to global warming and reduction of CO2 would ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its “Endangerment Finding” and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this resolution be sent to the United States Environmental Protection Agency and to the members of Utah’s congressional delegation.
Legislative Review Note
as of 1-21-10 10:43 AM
Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel
I’m writing this from Washington, D.C., looking out at cars buried in snowdrifts and hemmed in by snowbanks, along a snow-covered street — where the occasional pedestrian toils past, like those lone stragglers in an apocalypse movie. I’ve lost track of whether Washington has already beat the record snowfall of 1898, or is just edging up on it. But if carbon emissions will warm this scene, we’re ready to exhale and switch on all the lights.
In Washington, where local authorities can’t even keep the streets open, this is of course the week the White House picked to announce plans to set up a new “Climate Service.” This will presumably be enlisted along with the United Nations, the Environmental Protection Agency and Ted Turner’s UN Foundation to tell us all how to amend our lives to control the climate of the planet.
On the basis of what? Climate “science”?Thirty years ago, the budding climate-ocracy was sounding the klaxons over “global cooling.” Then it was “global warming.” Now it’s “extreme weather.” Hmmm. Would that be “extreme” as in the record Washington snowfall of 1898? That was back in the low carbon-emissions era when people were engaged in such useful projects as inventing better, cheaper incandescent lightbulbs, so everyone could enjoy well lit rooms – instead of regulating these lightbulbs away because Al Gore and the United Nations said the earth had a fever.
The climate is always changing, and it would be interesting and maybe even useful to understand how and why. But mankind is not there yet. The “consensus” packaged as “science” by the UN is unraveling as a fraud, and the eager interest of many governments in jumping aboard the climate train can increasingly be seen for what it is: a pretext for taxing and controlling your life, in ways likely to do nothing for the climate, but plenty for the crony climate-ocracy.
What’s the real answer to changes in weather? Here’s one place to start, right now, in Washington:
It’s called a snow shovel.
That’s a private sector kind of thing, relying on individual initiative, and since they are still sold by the private sector, a lot of people have them. As I write this, someone has appeared across the street, and thanks to individual initiative, he is using one — clearing the snow from his steps.
That, in a nutshell, is how mankind has coped with a lot of climate change for centuries — or millennia. Human beings adapt, and in stunningly creative ways. To cope with winter weather, man did not try to end winter. He discovered fire. Invented clothes. Built houses. Devised heating systems. To cope with hot weather, man devised ways to build shade, make ice, and eventually invented air conditioning. Thanks to markets, these inventions spread.
Had authorities of yore tried to dictate, curtail, regulate into nothingness or even forbid such activities, in the name of propitiating climate gods to produce centuries of never-changing weather, the world today would be a lot closer to a scenario of mankind living naked, in the dark, assailed by the elements — or maybe fighting for access to caves.
Humanity thrives on the power of individual incentives, enterprise and ingenuity. That’s how we have always made our real, valuable, useful adaptations to what the climate brings. For that matter, if we want to try to predict the climate, and know why and how much it is changing, and in which directions, there’s a better chance of genuinely private enterprise homing in reliable answers – absent the pressures, under-handed tax schemes, backroom deals and politicized grants that come of turning these matters over to the government.
Over at Forbes.com, John Tamny had a terrific article a few days ago on why you can’t get a taxi in Washington during a snowstorm — all about the failure of state regulations and the value of free-market incentives in encouraging people to adapt to what nature dishes out.
By all means, let scientists delve into the immense complexities of the earth’s climate — if they do so honestly. But in the matter of coping with climate, the answer is not to create and enlist yet another state-backed “climate” outfit as rationale for state taxation, regulation and control over our lives. The answer is to get off our backs, and let individuals observe, think, invent and find ways to adapt.
Watching the guy across the way, whose steps are now clear of snow — unlike the street, which the authorities have yet to plow — I can’t help thinking that if the government were in charge of snow shovel distribution and use, he’d still be stuck in his house.
From Dipankar Gupta in yesterday’s Indian Mail Today. The writer is a well- known sociologist who is currently a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
And notice that his attack is from the point of a believer who feels utterly betrayed by Pachauri.
“The sloppiness of the IPCC has given science a bad name and set back efforts to control pollution
IT WAS a stupid act to follow but he did it again and again and again.”
“Now Pachauri has taken that dream away.
It is easy to forgive a Greenpeacenik or an aging hippy; they often know not what they do. Pachauri is not that type. He sinned for he deliberately spoke for science and let it down.”
The sloppiness of the IPCC has given science a bad name and set back efforts to control pollution
IT WAS a stupid act to follow but he did it again and again and again.
Rajendra Pachauri used WWF documents as scientific evidence, not once, but at least twice. It is the same WWF that outrageously labelled cotton a thirsty crop to slurp up corporate funds for its hare brained projects.When V. K. Rainas cautionary work pointed out the difference between melting glaciers and ice creams, Pachauri called it “ voodoo science”. He didnt stop there. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report relied on the Wikipedia, student research papers, and, unbelievably, quoted an anti- smoking activist on the disappearing Amazon Forest.
This sloppiness has come dear. It has given industrial polluters and eco- unfriendly entrepreneurs just the opening they were looking for. Complain now about dead rivers with fish floating belly up, or the air that heaps junk in your lungs, and be prepared to be laughed out. If the IPCC Report had been a sex tape it couldnt have been much worse.
It is not just the climate, stupid, it is about keeping the environment the way we like it. We like birds to fly and not fall dead with pesticides, we like waters that sparkle a clear blue, we like to gulp in the air when the wind beats on our face. It was with these hopes of “ collateral benefits” ( to use our Prime Ministers phrase) that we went to Copenhagen. Now Pachauri has taken that dream away.
Truth
It is easy to forgive a Greenpeacenik or an aging hippy; they often know not what they do. Pachauri is not that type. He sinned for he deliberately spoke for science and let it down.
Science, like democracy, is a very delicate plant. Just as democracy can degenerate to majority rule, so can science masquerade as dogma, or magic. Science needs conscious cultivation and must rise above urges for power and pelf.
So when science is downgraded by populism, it undermines centuries of hard work: lonely, difficult, and against all odds.
In a real sense, scientists are subversive. They speak the truth and damn the expenses. Science has brought us unfathomable good: we live longer, we have more time for leisure and we dont have to cower with fear at thunder and lightning. Science also teaches us to respect nature, though some of its products have misused it.
But the ill effects of science can be fought by science alone, and not by political grandstanding.
Science has a glorious legacy that belongs to us, and it must be protected for all our sakes. This is why a used car dealer is less suspect than a man who hocks his mothers pearls? The glaciers will melt 300 years from now, the Maldives and Sunderbans may sink earlier, but what about today? The degradation of nature is vivid and palpable around us. The galloping rates of cancer and bronchial ailments clearly point to environmental factors.
Our senses tell us this more clearly than any smoking chart. In this one case, at least, the eyes and the nose are on the same side. Given the IPCC fiasco, it will be a long time before scientists will dare to step out in the sun to tell us the truth.
Sadly, certified scientists are out of the loop. In a recent BBC discussion with 2009 Nobel Laureates, none of the assembled scientists wanted to talk about climate change. Why? Because there was practically no science in what was being bandied about. It was just a bunch of “ grey material”— Palika Bazaar stuff, which should not be dignified as knowledge.
Professor Frederick Seitz, the former President of the United States National Academy of Sciences, said the same thing in a more formal setting, but nobody in the IPCC bothered to listen to him.
This might sound like blowing the bugle for the other side, but Pachauri, post- expose, could have taken a tip or two from responsible corporate behaviour. Very recently Toyota and Honda found they had produced defective cars. Did they complain about conspiracy or downplay the flaws? No! They recalled every single one of them and lost millions as a consequence. Much earlier when it was discovered that Tylenol bottles were not tamper- proof, its manufacturers swooshed every single Tylenol container off the shelves.
On the other hand, to get an admission from Pachauri is like dragging a pet to the vet. When confronted with the errors, he shifted the blame to his researchers and to the probability theory that with so many facts, its alright to go wrong on a couple. When the US climate chief stepped into the ring to save Pachauri he added weight without clout. Like a crass wrestling match, nothing is believable any more.
Subversion
It has also given climate skeptics hooting rights.
Their claim that science has been hijacked by “ warmists”— the 21st century, speaking in tongues of doomsayers, is suddenly ringing true. Before long even George Bushs denigration of global warming will be read out in class rooms. His refusal to sign the Kyoto pact would be held up as an act of a sagacious statesman.
Interestingly enough, the most voluble of Pachauris critiques are actually his mirror images. For example, Viscount Monckton who delivered the much publicised open letter to Pachauri, minutes before the Copenhagen conference, shares many of Pachauris characteristics, which he actually sniggers at. Pachauri is no climate scientist, he is a Railway Engineer with a Ph. D in Economics. But then neither is Monckton. He has a degree in classics, and in his better days did journalism and Thatcherite politics.
So if Pachauri should be sent back to play with his choo- choo train, Monckton should be singing lullabies to children. Or take the flamboyant, and all too young, Bjorn Lomborg. He is the ultimate “ cool dude”. He actually believes that temperatures are going down and that the Kyoto protocol was hot air. And, yes, he is not a scientist either but teaches in Copenhagen Business School.
Did Pachauri make a fast buck on the side with corporates eating out of his hand? Did Tata use his offices to cash in billion of EU carbon credits by moving Corus Steel from Redcar to Orissa? Was Tatas push for bio- energy and TERIs project on Jatropha a mere coincidence? Could Pachauris court deposition favouring construction on the dry Yamuna bed help the Tatas, who also produce earthquake proof building material?
Ice
None of these charges really matters to most of us. What a man puts in his pocket is between him and the law, or even his conscience.
What really matters is the emergence of Pachauris Law. It says “ good science drives out bad science with the speed of melting ice cream.” If newspaper reports are to be taken seriously then Pachauri is also turning out to be a half flasher. He opens his jacket to reveal a downmarket label. This act of humility is to still gossip that he wears Armani suits with corporate earnings.
This is also an aspect that gets a lot of reporters salivating and gossip mills churning. The real issue lies elsewhere.
Can any scientist now dare to speak of social good as long as the memories of Pachauri linger? Are we doomed to live in increasingly polluted conditions because the coolists have triumphed and more nightmares are on their way? Any hope of rapid translation of science to policy must wait till IPCCs bloomer is history. And that might be a long wait.
Will the real scientists please come out? They need to break the ice before it melts away.
The writer is a well- known sociologist who is currently a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
“The fundamental problems exposed about climate-change theory undermine the very basis of scientific inquiry. Huge numbers of researchers refuse to provide their data to other scientists. Some referenced data is found not to have existed.”
“Man-made global warming theory isn’t backed up by science; it’s a hoax. The fact that the world has been asked to spend tens of trillions of dollars on global warming solutions without being able to evaluate the data upon which the claims were made should have been the first warning that something was seriously wrong. The public and world leaders have been sold expensive snake oil by charlatans like Mr. Pachauri. It’s time to admit it’s all baloney and move on.”
Record snowfall illustrates the obvious: The global warming fraud is without equal in modern science.
The fundamental problems exposed about climate-change theory undermine the very basis of scientific inquiry. Huge numbers of researchers refuse to provide their data to other scientists. Some referenced data is found not to have existed. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report that global warming activists continually cite invented a large number of purported facts. Consider a few of the problems with the U.N. report that came to light over the past few weeks.
• The Himalayan glaciers were supposed to disappear as soon as 2035. The United Nations didn’t base this hysteria on an academic study. Instead, it relied on a news story that interviewed a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist in question, says he was misquoted and provided no date to the reporter. The doomsday account was simply made up, and the United Nations never bothered to confirm the claim.
• Because of purported global warming, the world supposedly ”suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s.” The U.N. cited one unpublished study to prove this. When the research eventually was published in 2008 after the IPCC report was released, the authors backpedaled: ”We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”
• Up to 40 percent of the Amazon rain forest was said to be at risk because of rising global temperatures. Again, the U.N. didn’t cite any academic studies but merely one non-refereed report authored by two non-scientists, one of whom worked for the World Wildlife Fund, an activist organization.
• The U.N. dramatically claimed that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level when the accurate portion is 26 percent.
Getting facts wrong and citing dubious sources isn’t the worst of it. Rajendra K. Pachauri, the U.N.’s climate chief, remained silent when he knew information was false and denied he had been aware of the Himalayan glaciers error before the recent climate-change summit in Copenhagen, which made a big deal about this nonexistent crisis. He only grudgingly came partly clean when Pallava Bagla, a writer for the journal Science, pointed to e-mail correspondence from last autumn showing Mr. Pachauri already knew of the fraud.
Adolescent name-calling further exposes the weakness of the case for man-made global warming and how desperate the leaders of this cult are becoming. On Feb. 3, Mr. Pachauri defended the fudged IPCC report and slandered critics as ”people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder. I hope that they apply [asbestos] to their faces every day.” This nasty piece of work tries to redirect attention away from his phony science by blaming skepticism about climate change on ”business interests” that ”spread a lot of disinformation.”
Man-made global warming theory isn’t backed up by science; it’s a hoax. The fact that the world has been asked to spend tens of trillions of dollars on global warming solutions without being able to evaluate the data upon which the claims were made should have been the first warning that something was seriously wrong. The public and world leaders have been sold expensive snake oil by charlatans like Mr. Pachauri. It’s time to admit it’s all baloney and move on.
I have written extensible about the inner workings of IPCC, it’s working groups, the different revisions including the important ”The Second Order Revision” or SOR; who commented on what, the reviewers and what chapters they commented on, who many comments per reviewer per chapter, total comments per reviewer etc.
The crucial roll of the “editors”. In chapter 9 62 scientists commented but NEARLY 60% was rejected by the “editors”. I further have written about the percentage of comments that was rejected per chapter and per revision.
And the ”serious vested interest” among many of these commentators (57%).
And the strange facts that authors of chapters commented and proposed changes to their OWN chapters. (One author made 282 comments to the chapter he himself contributed to).
And did you know that it was ONLY 5 “scientists” who commented on all 11 chapters in SOR in WG1?
And that16 countries plus the EU Commission made 639 comments to SOR?
Etc.
Here is ONE MORE very good example of how the chapters lead authors manipulated the reports.
This example is from chapter 9
And remember, Andrew Lacis is a colleague of Hansen at GISS.
While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen’s at GISS. Lacis’s is not a name I’ve come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s report is simply breathtaking.
Chapter 9 is possibly the most important one in the whole IPCC report – it’s the one where they decide that global warming is manmade. This is the one where the headlines are made.
Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:
There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.
I’m speechless. The chapter authors, however weren’t. This was their reply (all of it):
Rejected. [Executive Summary] summarizes Ch 9, which is based on the peer reviewed literature.
Andrew Neil from BBC interviews Professor Robert T. Watson.
He was the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002. And is now Chief Scientific Adviser (since September 2007) to British Government’s Department for Environment (Defra).
And he was Chair or Co-Chair of a number of international scientific assessments, including the IPCC Working Group II, UNEP-WMO and UNEP.
I like the new meaning of IPCC “Interplanetary Combat Command”. And it’s “critical” role in fighting an invasion by Little Green Men from Mars.
”Anybody who talks of spending percentages of “global GDP” on anything is irretrievably lost in the pretensions of UN wonkworld.And anybody who believes in “game-changing breakthroughs” coming from government either hasn’t studied enough economic history, or is a little too close to governments. ”
Why Bjorn Lomborg chooses to stay with the climate fiasco is a mystery
What is the most appropriate way to deal with a non-existent problem? Say, for example, that we are concerned about an invasion by Little Green Men from Mars. Would it be more appropriate to stage a preemptive strike on the Red Planet, devote more money to Star Wars-type technology, or perhaps look to bio-warfare of the type suggested in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, where the Martian invaders were offed by germs?
Most sensible people’s immediate reaction to this range of “policy alternatives” would be: “Don’t be ridiculous. The problem doesn’t exist.”
Not so fast, those down at the UN’s Interplanetary Combat Command (IPCC) might say, pulling out voluminous reports from Keynesian economists and National Science Councils. How can we be absolutely sure that Martians aren’t assembling an armada on the far side of their planet? Haven’t you seen District 9? Shouldn’t we apply the “precautionary principle?” And haven’t you heard that those talking down the possibility of Little Green Men may be in the pay of major corporations, who may in turn be in league with the aliens?After all, both groups want to destroy our planet. Meanwhile think of the R&D spin offs from LGM research. Indeed, we might look forward to an “LGM economy” in which prudent, well-designed, future-oriented government global defence expenditures might compensate for all those private sector “market failures” that have left so many unemployed. Investing in R&D against space invasions fits firmly into Keynesian theory,which declares that it really doesn’t matter where government spends money, just as long as it “stimulates” the economy.
Such absurdist rumination was stimulated by a piece in yesterday’s Globe and Mail by Bjorn Lomborg, which dealt with Canada’s “effective” response to man-made climate change. Strangely, nowhere does Mr. Lomborg — a Danish academic and world-renowned policy wonk — mention Climategate, Glaciergate or any other part of the ever-growing cascade of evidence that man-made climate change is a political scam whose underlying science ranks with that of imminent alien invasion.
Mr. Lomborg achieved fame and opprobrium with his brilliant book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which noted that environmental concerns tended to be wildly exaggerated. Since then — perhaps to atone for being seen to be in bed with the forces of capitalist evil — he has launched a forum known as the Copenhagen Consensus.This is a gathering of eminent persons on the fool’s errand of determining the best way to spend First World taxes in Third World countries without addressing the fundamental problem of lousy governments.
Mr. Lomborg also — perhaps again in atonement — professes belief in man-made climate change and suggests we should concentrate on how best to deal with it. Noting the Canadian government’s struggle to address the issue, Mr. Lomborg is kind enough to offer Ottawa a “better way.”
Copenhagen’s abject failure confirms that trying to slash emissions by carbon pricing is a non starter, he says, so it is time “finally, to learn from our mistakes.” But apparently we still have to believe in “effective” government R&D policy, which is rarer than a Close Encounter of the Third Kind.
Mr. Lomborg says that the answer to (likely non-existent) man-made climate changeis to subsidize “alternative” technologies. What we need is “A significant increase in research and development … Spending 0.2 per cent of global GDP product — roughly $100-billion a year — on green energy R&D would produce the kind of game-changing breakthroughs needed to fuel a carbon-free future.”
Anybody who talks of spending percentages of “global GDP” on anything is irretrievably lost in the pretensions of UN wonkworld.And anybody who believes in “game-changing breakthroughs” coming from government either hasn’t studied enough economic history, or is a little too close to governments.
Mr. Lomborg bases his spectacularly optimistic claims on the work of two McGill economists who have calculated that each dollar spent on R&D could prevent $11 of climate damage. This is cost benefit analysis from Outer Space (or the Stern Review).
According to Mr. Lomborg, “Canada could play a key role in the response to climate change by developing a policy based around the development of a research and development fund. This would be an effective way to show leadership on climate change, and to unleash Canadian entrepreneurship and creativity.”
But government R&D invariably winds up with dead-end technologies promoted by rent seekers. It also tends to crowd out private research. “Alternatives” will come, but not on any government schedule. Governments can’t lead us to high-tech promised lands because they have no idea in which direction those lands exist. They are countries of the mind.
Since Mr. Lomborg has committed to man-made climate change, he seems to be having some problem acknowledging that this belief increasingly ranks with the hysteria created by Orson Welles’ radio production of War of the Worlds. Just as people got mad at Mr. Welles for scaring them, they are going to get increasingly mad with politicians and scientists who have lied to them.
Why anybody as smart as Mr. Lomborg would want to stay in the middle of this unfolding fiasco is a mystery. Maybe he fell asleep near a strange-looking pod. Or could it possibly be that he is lined up to be an advisor to the global R&D fund he is recommending?
As each flake falls, global warming’s hold on the public diminishes
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
As Washington digs itself out from under the Snowpocalypse, the region braces for yet more flurries. At least 18 inches of snow lie on the ground at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and some places were blanketed under as much as three feet. More arctic blasts this week could drive 2010 into the history books as the capital’s snowiest winter ever.
The news must send chills up the spines of global warming adherents, for whom this winter has been marked by discontent. Several of the movement’s high priests have been exposed as charlatans. The famed ”hockey stick” chart – cited as indisputable evidence that the planet has been warming for a century owing to carbon emissions – was exposed for fraudulently doctoring data to ”hide the decline” in global temperatures. When the the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that glaciers were melting as a result of the selfishness of mankind, the claim turned out to be a complete fabrication.
The left now must dig itself out from under more than just snow. Public acceptance of a massive cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon emissions diminishes as neighborhood snowdrifts climb ever skyward.
Of course, those who question the dire predictions of catastrophic warming still will be mocked as rubes by the liberal elements of media and academia. But the left’s battle to win the hearts and minds of the masses has been forever lost by the extravagance of the doomsday cult’s own weather-related predictions. Conjuring imaginary climate-change hobgoblins to advance a public-policy agenda only works as long as Mother Nature plays along.
This isn’t the first time that climate hysteria has been used in this way. A debate raged more than 130 years ago over the idea of digging a Panama canal. Some opposed it on honest grounds of protectionism and opposition to free trade. The March 7, 1876, edition of the New York Times took a different approach, proclaiming that the canal’s merging of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans would cause the ”immediate disappearance of the Gulf Stream” with catastrophic results. ”The valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Thames would be filled with enormous glaciers, and the coasts of Ireland and England would be inhabited only by wandering Esquimaux, seals and Polar bears,” the Gray Lady proclaimed. ”London would slowly disappear under a mountain of snow and ice.”
By the time the canal opened in 1914, the predictions had long since been forgotten. The igloos have yet to make their permanent appearance in Great Britain.Over the ensuing century, the apocalyptic visions have gyrated from hysteria over extreme warming to a coming ice age and back, always in service of a big-government agenda. With naked socialism largely vanquished in the intellectual arena,global warming seemed to be the ticket that could drive the public into the open embrace of more government control.
Those who value freedom should thank Mother Nature for her sense of humor, undermining the case for global warming one flake at a time. So although we’re quite tired of shoveling, we say, ”Bring on the blizzard.”
The average temperature in January 2010 was 31.09 F. This was 0.28 F warmer than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 62nd warmest January in 116 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
And the recent 12 Month period (Feb-Jan) 1895-2010.
This year, 2009/2010 (Feb-Jan), the temperature is a little bit cooler than 1901 The difference is a 0.21 F. It was a quarter of a degree warmer 109 years ago.
Talking about WARMING!
And the recent 6 Month period (Aug-Jan) 1895-2010.
This year, 2009/2010 (Aug-Jan), the temperature is cooler than 1901 . The difference is a 1.33 F. It was a one and a third of a degree warmer 109 years ago
Talking about WARMING!
And two interesting states from the Sun Belt
This is Florida where the TREND IS –0.10 F/Decade
The average temperature in January 2010 was 52.9 F. This was -5.6 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 10th coolest January in 116 years.
This year, 2009/2010 (Feb-Jan), the temperature is much cooler than in 1895 or 1898. 1895 it was 5.90 F WARMER than this year. 1898 it was 7.20 F WARMER than this year.
Talking about WARMING!
This is Texas where the TREND IS –0.11 F/Decade
The average temperature in January 2010 was 44.3 F. This was -2.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest January in 116 years.
This year, 2009/2010 (Feb-Jan), the temperature is much cooler than in 1895 or 1898. 1895 it was 1.40 F WARMER than this year. 1898 it was 5 F WARMER than this year.
Something to which some attention was given at the time – but not enough – is Joanne Nova’s report last July on ”Climate Money”.
It pointed out at the time that the US government had spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
This is especially relevant in view of the attempted smear by the Independent on Sunday yesterday, resurrecting the tired story of Exxon Mobile funding the sceptics.
Over ten years, the company paid a grand total of $23 million to sceptics (by no means the larger part of which was devoted to climate change) less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
Against that, over the last 20 years, by the end of fiscal year 2009, the US government had poured in $32 billion for climate research. In 1989, the first specific US climate-related agency was created with an annual budget of $134 million. Today in various forms the funding has leapt to over $7,000 million per annum, around 50 fold higher.
That, of course, is only the US picture – and government funding. To that, one must add the hundreds of millions, if not billions, poured in by the charitable foundations, and the massive funding from industry – much of which ends up in the pockets of advocacy groups such as the WWF.
Then, albeit on a smaller scale, we have other nations around the world adding to the funds. In the UKwe have seen that the Met Office has been given £243 million of taxpayers’ money on ”climate research”, and that represents just the tip of the iceberg.
Despite the billions, Joanne Nova observes that ”audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.
All this puts into perspective the claims that the current attacks on the IPCC and Pachauri are an ”an organised, systematic and vicious attack by powerful and well-funded lobbies in the developed world.”
In fact, our greatest strength is precisely that we are a ”largely uncoordinated grassroots movement”. If we ever became organised and ”coordinated” in the way that the climate lobby claims to be, we would lose much of our power. And there is some comfort in the knowledge that, despite the billions pumped into the climate propaganda machine, the warmists are losing the argument.
Thus, while you can assert that ”money talks”, conviction talks louder.
There are other long time key players involved in this drive for one world government. Their arguments have varied but for the last 35 years environment, and now the Global Warming Hysteria, had been the main driving force behind it.
You will find that some of the key figures keep popping up in all of these organisations. In a complex web these organisations intermingle and cross support each other. Even if they are formally separate with slightly different agendas.
So in this post I will point to the Club of Rome and of Maurice Strong. Both key players in the planning and execution of these ideas.
Maurice Strong has demonstrated an uncanny ability to manipulate people, institutions, governments, and events to achieve the outcome he desires. Through his published writings and public presentations he has declared his desire to empower the U.N. as the global authority to manage a new era of global governance.He has positioned his NGO triumvirite, the IUCN, WWF, and the WRI, to varnish U.N. activity with the perception of ”civil society” respectability. And now he has been appointed Senior Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General and assigned the responsibility of reforming the United Nations bureaucracy. The fox has been given the assignment, and all the tools necessary, to repair the henhouse to his liking.
And he is an ”intresting” figure to say the4 least.
Strong did business deals with arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and wound up with a 200,000-acre ranch in Colorado – which his wife, Hanne, runs as a New Age spiritual colony called the Baca.
2005 Oil-for-Food scandal and hiring practice criticisms
In 2005, during investigations into the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food Programme, evidence procured by federal investigators and the U.N.-authorized inquiry of Paul Volckershowed that in 1997, while working for Annan, Strong had endorsed a check for $988,885, made out to ”Mr. M. Strong,” issued by a Jordanian bank. It was reported that the check was hand-delivered to Mr. Strong by a South Korean businessman, Tongsun Park, who in 2006 was convicted in New York federal court of conspiring to bribe U.N. officials to rig Oil-for-Food in favor of Saddam Hussein. During the inquiry, Strong stepped down from his U.N. post, stating that he would ”sideline himself until the cloud was removed”. Strong now lives in Beijing.[14]
Strong was the UN’s envoy to North Korea until July 2005. According to Associated Presshis contract was not renewed ”amid questions about his connection to a suspect in the UN oil-for-food scandal”, Tongsun Park, as well as due to criticism that he gave his stepdaughter a job at the UN contrary to UN staff regulations against hiring immediate family.[15]
“In 1978, a mystic informed Hanne and Maurice Strong that ”the Baca would become the center for a new planetary order which would evolve from the economic collapse and environmental catastrophes that would sweep the globe in the years to come.” The Strongs say they see the Baca, which they call ‘The Valley Of the Refuge Of World Truths ,’” as the paradigm for the entire planet and say that the fate of the earth is at stake. Shirley MacLaine agrees – her astrologer told her to move to the Baca, and she did. She is building a New Age study center at the Baca where people can take short week-long courses on the occult!
Apparently, the Kissingers, the Rockefellers, the McNamaras, the Rothschild’s, and other Establishment New World Order elitists all agree as well, for they do their pilgrimage to the Baca – where politics and the occult – the New World Order and the New Age – all merge. Watch Maurice Strong and watch the Baca!”
He told Maclean’s magazine in 1976 that he was ”a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” He warns that if we don’t heed his environmentalist warnings, the Earth will collapse into chaos.
In 1990, Strong told a reporter a scenario for the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland – where 1,000 diplomats, CEOs and politicians gather ”to address global issues.”
“Each year the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set the economic agendas for the year ahead. What if a small group of these word leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree to reduce their impact on the environment? Will they agree to save the earth?The group’s conclusion is ”no.” The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides:isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?
This group of world leaders form a secret society to bring about a world collapse. It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists – they’re world leaders.They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodity and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock exchanges, and computers, and gold supplies, a panic. Then they prevent the markets from closing. They jam the gears. They have mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davros as hostage. The markets can’t close. The rich countries…?
The journalist adds, ”and Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out of the window. I sat there spellbound…. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it.”
WEST magazine May, 1990 entitled ”The Wizard of the Baca Grande”:
“Journalist Elaine Dewar, who interviewed Strong, described why he loved the UN.
”He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda,” wrote Dewar.
”He told me he had more unfettered power than a cabinet minister in Ottawa. He was right: He didn’t have to run for re-election, yet he could profoundly affect lives.”
Strong prefers power extracted from democracies, and kept from unenlightened voters. Most power-crazed men would stop at calling for a one world Earth Charter to replace the U.S. Constitution, or the UN Charter.
But in an interview with his own Earth Charter Commission, Strong said ”the real goal of the Earth Charter is it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments. It will become a symbol of the aspirations and commitments of people everywhere.” Sounds like Maurice was hanging out at his spirit ranch without his sunhat on. “
In 1991, Strong wrote the introduction to a book published by the Trilateral Commission, called Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World’s Economy and the Earth’s Ecology, by Jim MacNeil. (David Rockefeller wrote the foreword). Strong said this:
”This interlocking…is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life.”
In an essay by Strong entitled Stockholm to Rio: A Journey Down a Generation, he says:
”Strengthening the role the United Nations can play…will require serious examinationof the need to extend into the international arena the rule of law and the principle of taxation to finance agreed actions which provide the basis for governance at the national level. But this will not come about easily. Resistance to such changes is deeply entrenched. They will come about not through the embrace of full blown world government, but as a careful and pragmatic response to compelling imperatives and the inadequacies of alternatives.”
”The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. What is needed is recognition of the reality that in so many fields, and this is particularly true of environmental issues, it is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful.The global community must be assured of environmental security.”[8]
And here are some more quotes:
“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”
“Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.”
“After all, sustainability means running the global environment – Earth Inc. – like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.”
“I am convinced the prophets of doom have to be taken seriously.”
Maurice Strong Interview BBC1972
From Jesse Ventura how was a believer:
How Strong since 2005 (after the UN scandal), moved to Beijing and became an agent for the Chinese government. And helps them to sell and trade carbon credits. Making another fortune for himself.
An interview about his book “Where on Earth are you going?” from April 24,2001
Maurice Strong’s unprecedented rise to power. From the CBC documentary ‘Life and Times’ (2004).
The documentary presents Strong in an very favorable and glowing light .But it give some interesting insights. Such as the influence of his socialist principal. And how he was vetted by globalist kingpin David Rockefeller in the mid-40s, at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, after Strong landed a job there with the help of people who had connections to the UN.
And here are some more quotes from previous posts about the goal behinf the Global Warming Hysteria:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
- The Club of Rome’s The First Global Revolution (1991) by Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider – Page 75
The political stream was the pursuit of Maurice Strong and all those descendants of the Club of Rome including President Obama who want one world government with total control over everybody. That goal has not changed. The 1974 report of the Club of Rome titled, Mankind at the Turning Point says, “It would seem that humans need a common motivation…either a real one or else one invented for the purpose…In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” (my emphasis). H. L. Mencken’s comment that, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule” is validated.
”The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it” — H L Mencken
Here are some revealing quotes from some environmentalists. They are SOOOO humane are they not:
”The First Global Revolution” (1991, p. 104) published by the ”Club of Rome”:”In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.
—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.
—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.
—David Foreman, Earth First!
Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.
—Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!
If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS
—Earth First! Newsletter
Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets…Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.
—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service
To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem.
—Lamont Cole
Poverty For “Those People”
We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels.
—Carl Amery
If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.
More on BBC, one of the high priest of spreading the Global Warming Hysteria. It seems that BBC:s pension funds ARE HEAVILY INVESTED IN COMPANIES PROFITING FROM THE GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA.
Isn’t it nice “journalism” – the more you scare and invoke fear in common people, the more you get in pension!
Nice touch for “public” broadcasting company financed by peoples licences fees.
Especially since the people you are scaring is THE ONES PAYING YOU!
STRIKING parallels between the BBC’s coverage of the global warming debate and the activities of its pension fund can be revealed today.
The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.
The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.
Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted.
The fund, which has 58,744 members, accounts for about £8 of the £142.50 licence fee and the proportion looks likely to rise while programme budgets may have to be cut to help reduce the deficit.
The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.
Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.
Prominent among its recent campaigns was a call for a “strong and binding” global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouse gases.
Veteran journalist and former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons is unhappy with the corporation’s coverage.
He said recently: “The corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’ when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. It is, in effect, BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC’s environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard.
“I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”
Official BBC editorial policy governing how its correspondents should cover global warming was revealed after a member of the public wrote in: “I have heard reports that the BBC has decided not to broadcast any news or reports which disprove, disagree, or cast doubt on global warming theory. Could you provide some form of justification for this?”
In a reply dated October 26 last year, Stephanie Harris, Head of Accountability at BBC News, said: “BBC News takes the view that our reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made.”
She went on to quote from a BBC-commissioned report published in June 2007, which said: “There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made. The weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to opponents of the consensus.”
Last month the BBC Trust announced an investigation after a string of complaints that the corporation was promoting the theory that climate change was a man-made phenomenon.
EU referendum’s Richard North leads the way yet again today in exposing that the IPCC 2007 report not only got it drastically wrong about melting Himalayan glaciers and disappearing Amazon rain forest, but also about serious food shortages in Africa. It’s deja vu – all over again! – because the IPCC report depended on inflated claims from a pressure group rather than scientific fact. The BBC, of course, as Richard points out, swallowed the bogus claims hook, line and sinker and in a chart about the impact of climate change, has thisabout Africa:
Projected reductions in the area suitable for growing crops, and in the length of the growing season, are likely to produce an increased risk of hunger. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020.
But the BBC’s involvement in spreading these untruths about climate change in Africa goes much deeper and is much more sinister. As I pointed out last week, the World Service Trust, funded predominantly by grants from our taxes by the UK government and the EU, runs a scheme to ‘educate’ African journalists about the dangers of global warming, and to train them how to spread propaganda based on the premise that the West – as the main originator of CO2 emissions – is responsible for virtually all Africa’s woes. The Trust is deadly earnest in its mission, and recently published a lengthy and lavishly produced policy briefing on the topic. This, in the light of Richard North’s revelations, is a tissue of political proopaganda and misinformation. You need to read it it to realise the sheer scale of this lunacy. It beggars belief. Masquerading as ‘research’, it is actually a vitriolic polemic against the West. This is a taster:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) places Africa at special risk from climate change, in part because of its lack of capacity to adapt to changing environmental realities. Sufficient support to enable African governments and citizens to adapt to climate change will be a key ingredient of any successful international treaty. A major policy conclusion of this report is that meeting the
information and communication needs of African citizens should be considered as a critical component of adaptation strategies around climate change. Providing African citizens with the information they need to respond and adapt to climate change is just one component of probable forthcoming debates around climate change in Africa. A central issue is one of environmental justice. African citizens will be among the most affected by climate change but are least responsible for the greenhouse gases that have caused it. They cannot make just demands on the rest of the world, or determine properly their own political and other responses to this emerging crisis, without being informed about its causes and its consequences. African citizens need better information on climate change, but they also need far better ways of communicating their reality and perceptions on the issue to those principally responsible for causing it.
Thus, the BBC is hard at work with your cash, hell bent on a political mission to persuade millions of Africans that a series of cobbled together lies are the truth. Its co-conspirators are the EU and the government.
The BBC World Service Trust is an arm of the BBC that receives £17.9m a year – mainly from the Department for International Development and the EU (52%)- to train broadcasters to spread messages about development. Some of what it does is vital and laudable; for example helping to spread knowledge about HIV/Aids through the development of soap operas that are actually listened to. However, and as in everything the BBC does, it is a big caveat, there is a sinister side to its mission. It campaigns loudly about ‘the environment’, and inevitably, where BBC folk are involved, that actually means about ‘climate change’. Take, for example, Africa Talks Climate(do you notice the missing word?)about which the organiser says:
The drive to help people understand issues such as climate change and to have the opportunity to speak and act is at the heart of our work…In a partnership project funded by the British Council, ten countries have been identified in which BBC WST researchers will be conducting research: DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The major objective of Africa Talks Climate is to identify the entry points to engage, inform and empower Africans in local, national and international conversations about climate change. To achieve this, the initiative will collate opinions and then amplify the voices of people at all levels of society.
Interestingly, this was all done with the British Council, which as EU Referendum has pointed out today, is another government-funded body which has been infested with ‘climate change fervour.
Back with WST, their efforts extend to the eastern Caribbean and South America, but also to India. Here, the trust’s aim was again to train journalists:
An extensive training programme for journalists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) was carried out in nine Indian states to improve the quality and quantity of information published in the media and to create a better flow of information between environmental NGOs and the media.
Their partner in part of the enterprise was TERI (The Resources and Energy Institute) set up by none other than Ravendra Pachauri, the boss of the IPCC. TERI itself is not without controversy (to put in mildly), but, eh, this is ‘climate change’, so for WST, it’s simply ”our non-profit partner”.
Now I’m all for Indians and Africans (and anyone else) becoming more aware of the need to treat the environment properly. But this, folks, as we well know, is not really about that. It’s about the BBC pushing their ‘climate change’ lies and propaganda, and nothing will get in their way. The truth is that the World Service Trust, funded by our taxes, is busily at work persuading journalists round the developing world to spread lies and to hate the West for the injustices they have heaped upon them through CO2 emissions. The BBC, whose motto is ”Nation Shall Speak Peace unto Nation” is frantically stoking up hatred instead.
More on Pachauri, head of IPCC, and his business empire – Sorry, it should officially be a “Non Profit Charity Organization”.
Nice business model, first your scare the shit out of normal people, then you falsify and exaggerate claims, then your company gets grants to “study” these phenomena, then your company give back environmental awards to these companies that gave you grants, to show that ther ARE SOOO GREEN.
AND THEN YOU GET MORE GRANTS AND THE CYCLE CAN GO ANOTHER TURN.
The research institute run by the head of the UN’s climate body has handed out a series of environmental awards to companies that have given it financial support, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
By Robert Mendick and Amrit Dhillon, in Delhi
Published: 9:30PM GMT 06 Feb 2010
The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), of which Dr Rajendra Pachauri is the director-general, has given corporate awards to companies such as Pepsi and Honda, as well as Indian businesses.
Those same companies have given financial backing to Teri through grants or paid-for consultancy work.
According to Teri’s own website, Dr Pachauri and his wife are on the jury panel for the 2010 awards. Dr Pachauri has been on the jury panel for the awards in previous years.
The disclosure will lead to further questions over possible conflict of interest against Dr Pachauri, whose position as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is already under threat over errors in its reports.
The Department for International Development (DfID) has pledged to give Teri up to £10million in grants over five years but will subject the institute to an “institutional assessment”, expected to take at least five months, before handing over any of the money.
Among the companies that have received Teri corporate awards is Hero Honda, a joint venture between the Japanese car company and an Indian firm that manufactures millions of motorbikes every year.
It is described on the institute’s website as a major sponsor and was joint second in Teri’s Environmental Excellence Award in 2008.
Another major sponsor, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, won the Corporate Social Responsibility Award in 2004.
PepsiCo India, which received first prize in 2009 for its business response to Aids, pays Teri for a project studying water quality in a local community.
It has also emerged that Teri’s biggest single sponsor, BP India, which hasprovided £6million, paid for dinner and drinks at an event publicising Dr Pachauri’s debut novel. A BP spokesman said it was entirely legitimate to fund the dinner, the company having enjoyed a “long association with Dr Pachauri”.
He confirmed that the firm gave Teri $9.5million (£6.1million) between 2006 and 2009 for planting 8,000 hectares of jatropha, a type of bush, as part of a bio-diesel research project.
Dr Pachauri has repeatedly denied any conflict of interest between his work for the IPCC and his work for Teri. In a recent letter to The Sunday Telegraph, he said there was “no question” of either himself, the IPCC or Teri being influenced by associations with organisations.
Supporters of Dr Pachauri point to a series of projects that have had huge benefits across India. Coca-Cola, another Teri sponsor, was praised in 2008 when it agreed to close its bottling plant in Rajasthan after Teri informed the company that its operation was reducing groundwater levels at an alarming rate.
A former employee who spent two years at Teri said Dr Pachauri was continually concerned about funding.
“At every single meeting I attended in two years, the only topic was funding,” she said.
The ex-employee gave a fascinating insight into the workings of the institute. When Dr Pachauri, who is described on his personal website as “an international statesman promoting climate change awareness”, marked his birthday a few years ago, the staff were shown a homemade video of their boss’s life story.
“I was appalled when they showed a 10-minute film on Pachauri,” said the ex-employee. “It showed Pachauri as an infant, Pachauri as a toddler, Pachauri at school, Pachauri playing cricket, Pachauri getting married. It was all about ‘Pachauri the Great’ and his achievements.”
There was a large cake and a birthday card “as big as a wall” dutifully signed by Teri-ers, as staff at the institute call themselves.
The man who effectively shapes world policy on climate change was born in 1940 in a hill station in northern India.
Dr Pachauri’s father studied for a doctorate in educational psychology at the University of London while his mother, according to Dr Pachauri’s home page, “educated and provided her son with the high standards that have enabled him to cope with his ever-increasing workload”.
He went to La Martiniere, a boarding school for the Indian upper middle classes. Cricket is an obsession and his website devotes a whole section to his achievements, detailing such landmarks as his 300th wicket.
The website declares: “Apart from being a professional medium pace bowler, Dr Pachauri is also a good top-order batsman and a fielder with a sharp catching arm.
“Batsmanship comes naturally to Dr Pachauri, who can be compared to the very best as a natural striker of the ball.”
Dr Pachauri graduated as a mechanical engineer and was chief engineer with the Diesel Locomotive Works before studying engineering and then economics in the US.
Returning in India in the late 1970s, he became director of the Tata Energy Research Institute.
Later, Dr Pachauri would unilaterally drop Tata from the title and now, according to sources, Tata, one of India’s largest conglomerates, wants little to do with him.
Teri brought him to worldwide attention and he was a lead author with the IPCC before becoming chairman in 2002.
Since his election and subsequent re-election, Dr Pachauri has opened himself up to accusations of hypocrisy, urging the population to follow in his footsteps and become vegetarians to cut down on methane while at the same time travelling the world, clocking up environmentally unfriendly air miles.
Last Monday he first gave an interview to The Economist where he declared he had no idea the size of his salary but later that day he told The Guardian he earned £30,000 a year. He lives in an inherited house reported to be worth millions in Delhi’s most expensive neighbourhood.
A DfID spokesman described Teri as a “globally respected institution”.
“Their accounts are externally audited and annually submitted to the government of India,” he said.
“As is routine, DfID is undertaking a full institutional assessment of Teri as part of our due diligence process.”
Teri did not respond to inquiries by The Sunday Telegraph.
Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate “Science”, was responsible for covering up the medieval warm period. And for reintroducing the scandalous and false ‘hockey stick’ graph in the 2007 IPCC report.
Now they are desperately trying to cover it up and illegally blocking FOI requests
In this cover up they have been helpedby Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth.
Interesting isn’t it
This is Global Warming Hysteria “science” at is best.
This is the famous “consensus” which all politicians, “scientists”, “journalist” and big companies have been trying to ram down our throats.
While at the same time they actively suppressing, smearing etc any one how dared to question the “science” or facts behind this cult.
How Met Office blocked questions on its own man’s role in ‘hockey stick’ climate row
By David Rose
Last updated at 8:20 AM on 07th February 2010
The Meteorological Office is blocking public scrutiny of the central role played by its top climate scientist in a highly controversial report by the beleaguered United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.
And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.
By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland.
In fact, according to some scientists, the planet was then as warm, or even warmer, than it is today.
Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate. But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.
Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth – whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.
Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that the Met Office’s stonewalling was part of a co-ordinated, legally questionable strategy by climate change academics linked with the IPCC to block access to outsiders.
Last month, the Information Commissioner ruledthat scientists from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia – the source of the leaked ‘Warmergate’ emails – acted unlawfully in refusing FOI requests to share their data.
Some of the FOI requests made to them came from the same person who has made requests to the Met Office.
He is David Holland, an electrical engineer familiar with advanced statistics who has written several papers questioning orthodox thinking on global warming.
The Met Office’s first response to Mr Holland was a claim that Prof Mitchell’s records had been ‘deleted’ from its computers.
Later, officials admitted they did exist after all, but could not be disclosed because they were ‘personal’, and had nothing to do with the professor’s Met Office job.
Finally, they conceded that this too was misleading because Prof Mitchell had been paid by the Met Office for his IPCC work and had received Government expenses to travel to IPCC meetings.
The Met Office had even boasted of his role in a Press release when the report first came out.
But disclosure, they added, was still rejected on the grounds it would ‘inhibit the free and frank provision of advice or the free and frank provision of views’.
It would also ‘prejudice Britain’s relationship with an international organisation’ and thus be contrary to UK interests.
In a written response justifying the refusal dated August 20, 2008, Mr Ainsworth – then MoD Minister of State – used exactly the same language.
Mr Holland also filed a request for the papers kept by Sir Brian Hoskins of Reading University, who was the review editor of a different chapter of the IPCC report.
When this too was refused, Mr Holland used the Data Protection Act to obtain a copy of an email from Sir Brian to the university’s information officer.
The email, dated July 17, 2008 – when Mr Holland was also trying to get material from the Met Office and the CRU – provides clear evidence of a co-ordinated effort to hide data. Sir Brian wrote:
‘I have made enquiries and found that both the Met Office/MOD and UEA are resisting the FOI requests made by Holland. The latter are very relevant to us, as UK universities should speak with the same voice on this. I gather that they are using academic freedom as their reason.’
At the CRU, as the Warmergate emails reveal, its director, Dr Phil Jones (who is currently suspended), wrote to an American colleague:
‘[We are] still getting FOI requests as well as Reading. All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions – not to respond.’
Last night Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the affair further undermined the credibility of the IPCC and those associated with it. He said:
‘It’s of critical importance that data such as this should be open. More importantly, the questions being raised about the hockey stick mean that we may have to reassess the climate history of the past 2,000 years.
‘The attempt to make the medieval warm period disappear is being seriously weakened, and the claim that now is the warmest time for 1,300 years is no longer based on reliable evidence.’
Despite repeated requests, the MoD and Met Office failed to comment.
“Contemplating the impenetrable maze of payments made by various ministries to the UN, the EU, banks, research institutes, teams of academics, NGOs, environmental and industrial lobby groups and ”charitable foundations” – often through chains of ”funding vehicles” which may give only the most nebulous idea of their purpose – we can get little idea what is the total amount of taxpayers’ money flooding out from all our different branches of officialdom.
The ministries involved have not seemed exactly keen to help sort out all these mysteries and confusions. What does seem clear is that our Government doesn’t really want us to know all the sums involved, who many of the recipients are or why most of these payments are being made in the first place.”
The British Government has been pouring millions of pounds into ‘climate-related’ projects all over the world, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:14PM GMT 06 Feb 2010
In all the coverage lately given to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its embattled chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, one rather important part of the story has largely been missed. This is the way in which, in its obsession with climate change, different branches of the UK Government have in recent years been pouring hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into a bewildering array of ”climate-related” projects, often throwing a veil of mystery over how much is being paid, to whom and why.
To begin with a small example. Everyone has now heard of ”Glaciergate”, the inclusion in the IPCC’s 2007 report of a wild claim it was recently forced to disown, that by 2035 all Himalayan glaciers will have melted. In 2001 the Department for International Development (DfID) spent £315,277 commissioning a team of British scientists to investigate this prediction. After co-opting its Indian originator, Dr Syed Hasnain, they reported in 2004 that his claim was just a scare story. Some glaciers were retreating, others were not. There was no way they could disappear in a time-span shorter than many centuries.
Three years later, however, when the IPCC produced its 2007 report, it endorsed Dr Hasnain’s claim without any mention of the careful UK-funded study which had shown it to be false. What made this particularly shocking was that in 2008 another British ministry, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that it had paid £1,436,000 to fund all the support needed to run the same IPCC working group which, as we now know from a senior IPCC author, had included the bogus claim in its report.
But the story did not stop there. In a report to Parliament the same year, Defra stated that its funding of the IPCC working group had been not £1.4 million but only £543,816. It was also in 2008 that Dr Hasnain was recruited by Dr Pachauri to work in his Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), where his spurious claim was used to win Teri a share in two lucrative studies of the effects of the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.
The trail into this tangled undergrowth began last December, when Dr Richard North and I were trying to track down 11 payments made by four separate government departments for projects involving Teri Europe, the London-based branch of Dr Pachauri’s institute. We were struck by how reluctant the ministries often seemed to be to reveal how much they had paid under these contracts. What’s more, why was UK taxpayers’ money being used to fund these projects in the first place?
Why in 2005, for instance, did Defra pay Teri for a study designed to help the Indian insurance industry make money out of the risks of global warming? Why was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) sponsoring a study into how Indian industry could make billions out of ”carbon credits”, paid by Western firms under the bizarre UN scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism?
Typical of this curiously opaque world was a payment by Defra to fund the work of an unnamed ”head of unit” on something called the IPCC Synthesis Report, of which Dr Pachauri was co-editor. This money was paid to CambridgeUniversity (department unnamed), to be forwarded to Teri Europe, then sent on to the anonymous recipient in Delhi, whose email address was Teri India. On one part of the Defra website this payment was given as £30,417. However, the same Defra report to Parliament which had under-declared the payment to the IPCC’s working group now gave this payment as only £5,800. (The IPCC itself meanwhile paid Teri a further £400,000 for its work on the Synthesis Report, although it was only 52 pages.)
The same Defra report to Parliament includes a whole string of other climate-change-related projects, covering three pages, many just as mysterious.
Why, for instance, have UK taxpayers shelled out £239,538 to unnamed recipients for a study of ”Climate change impacts on Chinese agriculture”? Or £230,895 for a ”research programme on climate change impacts in India”? Or £57,500 on the ”Brazilian proposal support group”?
The largest single payment on Defra’s list, and almost the only recipient identified, was £13,315,168 given to the Hadley Centre itself for its Climate Predictions Programme. This is just a tiny part of the money UK taxpayers have been contributing for years to assist the work of the IPCC: the Hadley Centre alone has been handed £179 million.
A key player in the setting up of the IPCC in 1988 was Dr John Houghton, then head of the Met Office. He persuaded Mrs Thatcher to fund him in launching the Hadley Centre in 1990, which has played a central role in the IPCC ever since. Part of the price we pay for Hadley exercising such disproportionate influence in the IPCC is that Britain has made a similarly disproportionate contribution to the cost of running the panel’s operations.
Then why should DfID have paid £30 million to assist ”climate change adaptation in Africa”; or £2.5 million for the same in China? Why in 2002 should UK taxpayers have given £200,000 to pay for delegates from developing nations to attend a ”Rio Earth Summit” conference in Johannesburg, and another £120,000 for green activists to attend the same shindig– let alone £10,000 for a ”workshop on women as ‘sacred custodians’ of the Earth”, to ”explore the spiritual, religious and philosophical views concerning women and ecology and the policy implications of these belief systems”?
Only rarely do the government departments funding all these shadowy activities shout pubiicly about how they are spending our money – as when last September DfID’s Douglas Alexander was happy to get publicity for flying to Delhi to give Dr Pachauri £10 million to pay for his institute to examine how India’s poverty could be reduced by ”sustainable development”.
Similarly, in 2008, our then energy minister Malcolm Wicks flew to Japan to boast that the UK was ”the world’s largest donor” to the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, pledging another £2.5 million of taxpayers’ money, on top of £9 million Britain had already paid into this scheme since its launch in 2003.Again, more than one ministry is responsible for funding this programme, as when DfID pays for a ”research agenda on climate change and development”, while the FCO sponsors yet another study into ”clean development mechanisms”.
Contemplating the impenetrable maze of payments made by various ministries to the UN, the EU, banks, research institutes, teams of academics, NGOs, environmental and industrial lobby groups and ”charitable foundations” – often through chains of ”funding vehicles” which may give only the most nebulous idea of their purpose – we can get little idea what is the total amount of taxpayers’ money flooding out from all our different branches of officialdom.
The ministries involved have not seemed exactly keen to help sort out all these mysteries and confusions. What does seem clear is that our Government doesn’t really want us to know all the sums involved, who many of the recipients are or why most of these payments are being made in the first place.
Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs publishes an interesting note on the Money Laundering Regulations. This lists 26 ”suspicious indications” which should attract attention to the possibility that a financial transaction might need investigating. These range from ”checking identity is proving difficult” or ”reluctance to provide information requested” to ”unnecessary routing of funds through third parties” and ”transactions having no purpose” or ”which seem to involve unnecessary complexity”. Any such ”suspicious indications”, we are told, should prompt the filling in of a ”101 form” to report dubious financial dealings to the authorities. But a good many of them would seem to apply only too neatly to the veil of obscurity our Government draws over the astronomical sums it is paying out in support of its religious belief in ”climate change”.
Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major ”mistake” in the IPCC’s benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.
Similar in effect to the erroneous ”2035″ claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.
At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.
Unlike the glacier claim, which was confined to a section of the technical Working Group II report, this ”50 percent by 2020″ claim forms part of the key Synthesis Report, the production of which was the personal responsibility of the chair of the IPCC, Dr R K Pachauri. It has been repeated by him in many public fora. He, therefore, bears a personal responsibility for the error.
In this lengthy post, we examine the nature and background of this latest debacle, which is now under investigation by IPCC scientists and officials.
The tale unfolds
”Excellencies, members of the media, distinguished ladies and gentlemen! I speak to you in the voice of the world’s scientific community…”. So declared Dr R K Pachauri in his opening address to the climate summit in Potsdam last September.
In the name of that ”scientific community” which in November 2007 had completed the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) – ”the collective effort of almost four thousand of the world’s best specialists working tirelessly over five years” – Dr Pachauri larded his speech with examples of impending doom.
Thus he told the assembly that, by 2020, ”in some countries of Africa yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent”.
Crucially, this was not a random statement plucked from one of the working group reports but one highlighted in the ”gold standard” Synthesis Report (Section 3.3.2).
That report is based on the assessment carried out by the three Working Groups and provides ”an integrated view of climate change” as the final part of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). It represents the considered view of the IPCC as a corporate body and is the part of AR4 which Pachauri had personally supervised as leader of the core writing team.
Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change.The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.
The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.
In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban.
Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”
Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”
Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.
The claims in the Synthesis Report go back to the IPCC’s report on the global impacts of climate change. It warns that all Africa faces a long-term threat from farmland turning to desert and then says of north Africa, “additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-20 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)”.
“Agoumi” refers to a 2003 policy paper written for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think tank. The paper was not peer-reviewed.
Its author was Professor Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan climate expert who looked at the potential impacts of climate change on Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. His report refers to the risk of “deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000–20 period”.
These claims refer to other reports prepared by civil servants in each of the three countries as submissions to the UN. These do not appear to have been peer-reviewed either.
The IPCC is also facing criticism over its reports on how sea level rise might affect Holland. Dutch ministers have demanded that it correct a claim that more than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level when, in reality, it is about a quarter.
The errors seem likely to bring about change at the IPCC. Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”
Published on : 4 February 2010 – 9:24am | By Rob Kievit
A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.
In fact, just 20 percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.
Climate-sceptic MPs were quick to react. Conservative MP Helma Neppérus and Richard de Mos from the right-wing Freedom Party want the minister to explain to parliament how these figures were used to decide on national climate policy. ”This may invalidate all claims that the last decades were the hottest ever,” Mr De Mos said.
The incorrect figures which date back to 2007 were revealed on Wednesday by the weekly Vrij Nederland. The Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency told reporters that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) added together two figures supplied by the agency: the area of the Netherlands which is below sea-level and the area which is susceptible to flooding. In fact, these areas overlap, so the figures should not have been combined to produce the 55 percent quoted by the IPCC.
The discovery comes just a week after a prediction about glaciers in the Himalayas proved wrong. Rather than disappearing by 2035, as IPCC reports claim, the original research underlying the report predicted the mountain ice would last until 2350.
While covering the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, I took a morning away from the main venue to attend a forum of ”climate skeptics”.
The speakers presented political, economic, and scientific analyses to counter the series of assessments by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A few of the skeptics went so far as to suggest that the current international drive to tackle global warming would eventually lead the world into some kind of ”energy tyranny”. One even showed a video clip of how ”energy police” would invade private homes in the American suburbs, unplugging and removing the owners’ microwave ovens, television sets, and other appliances.
I left the forum before the morning session ended. I felt that most of the speakers were too emotional and politically charged to be considered objective.
But I was impressed by the presentation of Dr Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service, who challenged the IPCC findings with his research data.
In the next few days, I talked with several scientists, including Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chair, and asked them about Singer’s data. All of these scientists brushed aside Singer’s arguments, saying that the IPCC’s primary finding is indisputable: ”Warming in the climate system is unequivocal”.
I believed the IPCC reports, which summarize the research of some 4,000 scientists, but I had some serious reservations. For one thing, the IPCC reports contained very little data from Chinese researchers. I was told the IPCC refused to consider Chinese data because the Chinese research was not peer-reviewed.
China is not a small country. Its landmass spans several climate zones and includes the roof of the world. I have to wonder how data from China would affect the IPCC’s findings.
Several Chinese scientists who have gone over the IPCC report believe that the IPCC may have overstated the link between global temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere.
In a paper published in the December issue of the Chinese language Earth Science magazine, Ding Zhongli, an established environmental scientist, stated that the current temperatures on earth look normal if global climate changes over the past 10,000 years are considered.
Ding’s paper highlighted the fact that in its policy suggestions, the IPCC offered solutions that would give people in rich countries the right to emit a much higher level of greenhouse gas per capita than people in developing countries. It in effect set limits on the economic growth of developing countries, which will result in furthering the gap between rich and poor countries.”
A series of ”climategate” scandals now add more reason to give the IPCC research closer scrutiny.
Last November, hackers revealed that some scientists had favored data which supports the case for ”global warming” in order to enhance their grant proposals.
Just last week, the IPCC announced that it ”regrets the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures” in a claim that glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by 2035. Instead of coming from a peer-reviewed scientific paper, the statement was sheer speculation, the IPCC conceded.
Then over the weekend, the media revealed that the IPCC had misrepresented an unpublished report, which it said linked climate change with an increase in natural disasters. However, the author of the report, Dr Robert Muir-Wood, clearly stated the opposite: ”We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe loss.” Muir-Wood is not a climatologist, but a researcher in risk management.
I am particularly troubled by the fact that top IPCC officials do not seem to take these revelations seriously. Interviewed by the BBC, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, dismissed the matter as a ”human mistake”.
Ancient Chinese considered three a breaking point. They could forgive two errors, but not a third. Now that the IPCC has admitted three ”human” errors, isn’t it time scientists gave its work a serious review?
The New EU foreign minister and the new European President are both undemocratic appointments to undemocratic posts created by an undemocratic treaty.
A short but very succinct description of the Lisbon Treaty and what it really means for the common people.
That these people are so lackluster and bland apparatichs is not a coincidence according to this article. And there are merits to their arguments.
Another factor is the usual squabble among the top EU nations to get THEIR candidates to the most important posts. And here nations like Sweden CAN ONLY WATCH AND HAVE TO ACCEPT WHATEVER ARE THE OUTCOME.
One small step for union, one giant leap for uniformity
“In fact, the anointing of Mr van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton is completely in accord with the new arrangements that brought about their promotion. The Lisbon Treaty – née the European Constitution – is not about politics. Its chief purpose is to do with management and it has thus created additional layers in an attempt to impose “consensus” more firmly on the still distressingly nationalistic member states.
In that respect, the new executive directors seem ideal. Both have risen without trace through the pathways of management – we are tempted to recall the Peter Principle relating to advancement and competence. Both have reputations that resonate only among their own managerial classes and both lard their public utterances with the buzzwords of managementspeak. Post-Lisbon Europe could hardly be better served.
While commercial management can sometimes be imaginative and innovative and benefit from big personalities, those are not qualities required in bureaucracies. Their survival depends upon a certain drab uniformity (see “consensus” above) enforced by Kafkaesque regulation unintelligible to those outside the circle. Consequently, Mr van Rompuy will direct an army of civil servants whosejob will be to bamboozle the leaders of the member states into what can be presented to their voters as the desirable “European” approach.
Baroness Ashton will commanda budget of £3.6 billion a year and 3,000 new bureaucrats spanning the globe to mould the foreign relations of what used to be 27 sovereign governments into a similar “European” position.”
For such responsibilities, a distinct lack of charisma is beneficial. Already there have been mutterings among governments that their foreign affairs ministries are being downgraded and concern at a suggestion that their ministers should become EU envoys instead.How long before similar diminution overtakes national justice departments, social security ministries and treasuries? In order to complete this process, Brussels has calculated that for the moment it needs an invisible managerial hand, rather than a political Colossus, so as to confuse potential opposition.
These are early days, however. The European project is a long-term venture and far from being popular (which is why the successor to the rejected Constitution was not generally submitted to electorates and written in such a way as to avoid unpredictable votes in the future). That being so, the appointments of two unknowns were designed not to frighten the horses – hence Mr Farage’s difficulty in responding. The promoters of the single European state know that their vision can only be realised through attrition, not by revolution. Our new managers have the task of achieving a bland, ideology-free European uniformity. Once that is in place, their successors will be free to go all out for full European Union.”
The political elite in Europe DELIBERATELY constructed the Lisbon Treaty so that the common people COULD NOT UNDERSTAND IT and comprehend what was going on.
I.E. THE LARGEST TRANSFER OF SOVEREIGNTY AND POWER FROMthe peopleand local governments to the EU central level.
And the people were NOT allowed to have their say and to vote on it. With one exception, Ireland. Its constitution made it impossible for the politicians not to have a referendum.
The result – the people of Ireland voted NO 54 to 46 %.
But of course – The political elite in Europe doesn’t accept a NO from the people.
As already have happened before in France (2005 – 55% NO) Netherland (2005- 62% NO), Ireland (2001- 54% NO) and Denmark (1992 – 51% NO)
They started their manoeuvring, twisting, some minor concessions here some more money and transfers there etc.
At ALL COST they had to have a Yes on this one. And they got one a year later.
How many times does the voters have to vote NO before NO is really a NO? Or what part of NO! don’t you understand?
And a very INTERESTING Account of how former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, in a meeting with Gorbachev in January 1989, told Gorbachev that Europe in 15 years time is going to be a FEDERAL STATE.
How in the HELL DID HE KNOW THAT??????
Well the answer is very simple – because that’s been the plan all along from the political elite in Europe.
And surprise, surprise, he become the author of the European constitution (2002-03).
Wouldn’t you say that that was another “lucky” coincidence?
Here is the account from Vladimir Bukovksy describing an amazing meeting between President Gorbachev and representatives of the Trilateral Commission, which included David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.
”In January of 1989, for example, a delegation of the Trilateral Commission came to see Gorbachev. It included [former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro] Nakasone, [former French President Valéry] Giscard d’Estaing, [American banker David] Rockefeller and [former US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger. They had a very nice conversation where they tried to explain to Gorbachev that Soviet Russia had to integrate into the financial institutions of the world, such as Gatt, the IMF and the World Bank,” said .Bukovksy
”In the middle of it Giscard d’Estaing suddenly takes the floor and says: “Mr President, I cannot tell you exactly when it will happen – probably within 15 years – but Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that, how would you allow the other Easteuropean countries to interact with it or how to become a part of it, you have to be prepared,” added the whistleblower.
”This was January 1989, at a time when the [1992] Maastricht treaty had not even been drafted. How the hell did Giscard d’Estaing know what was going to happen in 15 years time?And surprise, surprise, how did he become the author of the European constitution [in 2002-03]? A very good question. It does smell of conspiracy, doesn’t it?” said Bukovksy.
“Paul Belien: You were a very famous Soviet dissident and now you are drawing a parallel between the European Union and the Soviet Union. Can you explain this?
Vladimir Bukovsky: I am referrring to structures, to certain ideologies being instilled, to the plans, the direction, the inevitable expansion, the obliteration of nations, which was the purpose of the Soviet Union. Most people do not understand this. They do not know it, but we do because we were raised in the Soviet Union where we had to study the Soviet ideology in school and at university. The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people “Europeans”, whatever that means.
PB: But we have a European Parliament which is chosen by the people.
VB: The European Parliament is elected on the basis of proportional representation, which is not true representation. And what does it vote on? The percentage of fat in yoghurt, that kind of thing. It is ridiculous. It is given the task of the Supreme Soviet. The average MP can speak for six minutes per year in the Chamber. That is not a real parliament.”
Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.
“It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.
Jean Claude Juncker – Prime Minister of Luxembourg
”Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”
”There is a single legal personality for the EU, the primacy of European law, a new architecture for foreign and security policy, there is an enormous extension in the fields of the EU’s powers,”
“The aim of the Constitutional treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable…The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.”
Flandreinfo, 23 June 2007.
Jean-Luc Dehaene, former Belgian prime minister, and former Vice President of the Convention which wrote the EU Constitution
The Economist of 9 August 2007 quoted some revealing remarks by Jean-Luc Dehaene. The Economist said that in an interview in Le Soir, he said it was “dangerous talk” to want “too much transparency and clarity” in the EU. On 17 October 2007 European Voice quoted him as saying, “The paper [the Reform Treaty] is incomprehensible. Good! We need incomprehensible papers if we are to make progress . . . We have to be realistic.”
Giuliano Amato, former Italian Prime Minister and the other former Vice President of the Convention which wrote the EU Constitution.
He said, at a meeting of the Centre for European Reform, recorded by Open Europe, on 12 July 2007 that EU leaders “decided that the document should be unreadable. If it is unreadable, it is not constitutional, that was the sort of perception… . In order to make our citizens happy, to produce a document that they will never understand! But, there is some truth [in it]... any Prime Minister – imagine the UK Prime Minister – can go to the Commons and say ‘Look, you see, it’s absolutely unreadable, it’s the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum’ Should you succeed in understanding it at first sight there might be some reason for a referendum, because it would mean that there is something new..”
”The good thing about not calling it a Constitution is that no one can ask for a referendum on it.” – 21 February 2007.
Valerie Giscard d’Estaing, former president of France and president of the Convention which wrote the EU Constitution
Writing in Le Monde on 14 June 2007, a few days before the form of the “reform” proposals had been settled: ”A last good idea consists of wanting to preserve part of the Constitution and camouflaging this by distributing it among several texts. The more innovative provisions [of the Constitution] would be simple amendments to the Nice and Maastricht treaties. The technical improvements would be gathered together in a bland and uncontroversial treaty. These texts would be put to Parliaments to vote on them one at a time. Thus public opinion would be led to accept, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly….… All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”
On 26 October 2007, writing again in Le Monde he said, “The Lisbon Treaty itself cannot be understood by ordinary citizens since it can be understood only by also reading the treaties which it amends. . . The institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty – the only things which mattered for the members of the European Convention – are in the Lisbon treaty in their entirety but in a different order and inserted into previous treaties. – What is the purpose of this subtle manoeuvre? First and above all to escape from the constraint of having to hold a referendum by dispersing the articles and by renouncing the constitutional vocabulary.”
”The most striking change (between the EU Constitution in its older and newer version ) is perhaps that in order to enable some governments to reassure their electorates that the changes will have no constitutional implications, the idea of a new and simpler treaty containing all the provisions governing the Union has now been dropped in favour of a huge series of individual amendments to two existing treaties. Virtual incomprehensibility has thus replaced simplicity as the key approach to EU reform. As for the changes now proposed to be made to the constitutional treaty, most are presentational changes that have no practical effect. They have simply been designed to enable certain heads of government to sell to their people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action rather than by referendum.” – Irish Times, 30 June 2007.
Angela Merkel, current Chancellor of Germany and president of the EU from 1 January 2007 to 30 June 2007
“We have renounced everything that makes people think of a state.” Gone are the words, constitution, flag, anthem and motto.
Speaking to the European Parliament, on 27 June, Angela Merkel was keen to point out, “The agreement reached in Brussels [23 June 2007] enables us to retain the substance of the Constitutional Treaty. ” “At the same time, the Reform Treaty contains major advances for the European Union’s capacity to act. Indeed, in some areas we even went further than in the Constitutional Treaty.”
“European integration has to be striven for and consolidated time and again.”
And all this striving for Grandeur and Pomp by the leaders of EU, they Demand Obedience and Attention as if they think they where ancient emperors. Not, as they are supposed to be, servants of the people of Europe.
EUROPEAN PRESIDENT HERMAN VAN ROMPUY SLAMMED FOR ‘ACTING LIKE A KING’
Thursday February 4,2010 , By Martyn Brown
THE new European President Herman Van Rompuy was slammed yesterday for “acting like a king” after trying to host his first EU summit in a palace.
Mr Van Rompuy originally wanted to hold the gathering in the 18th Century Palais d’Egmont in Brussels.
But after pressure from Europe’s capitals, he switched the Brussels meeting to another prestigious, but less regal, building hundreds of yards away from the usual office block venue where EU leaders meet.
Diplomats are still predicting “chaos” when EU leaders get together next week in the Bibliotheque Solvay, a cramped 100-year-old library that does not even include interpreter booths.
Far from being a king, Mr Van Rompuy, 62, has been dismissed by his sister Christine, a member of a rival political party, as a clown.
She helped produce a mocking poster last year of her brother sporting a red nose and clown’s hat in an election. Next week’s talks will focus on proposals from Mr Van Rompuy to give the EU more “economic governance” powers in the aftermath of the recession and after implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force last month.
A diplomat said the palace plan “had to be stopped,” adding: “Who does he think he is, some kind of king?”
Mr Van Rompuy’s spokesman said that the idea was to move to a venue reminiscent of the Union’s original informal “fireside” meetings of leaders. He said: “The President wants to create a more intimate atmosphere for dialogue.”
Diplomats are concerned Mr Van Rompuy might be trying to push EU leaders into agreeing economic proposals without support from national delegations –housed in a different building without communication links.
He has already insisted he alone will draw up a paper proposing economic targets and policy for the year 2020 to be set at the EU level.
Climate Change: Professional global warming alarmists better think about looking for new jobs. It looks like they’re in for a long, cold winter — and a frigid spring and summer as well.
Those who’ve been spreading global-warming fears must be waking up each morning and asking themselves: What’s going to happen today? A new revelation about the corruption of climate science has become almost a daily event.
On Thursday, the U.K.’s Telegraph reported that India was pulling out of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and forming its own agency to study global warming.Why? Because the Indian government feels it can’t depend on the IPCC’s work.
And why should it? The concerns about the IPCC’s accuracy are justified. A day after India’s announcement, the Netherlands asked the U.N. to explain why the IPCC had said in its 2007 report that 55% of the country was below sea level when the Dutch themselves have reckoned that only 26% of the nation is that low.
This is the same IPCC that said in the same 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 — though there’s no scientific study to confirm the claim. It was based on the hunch of one scientist who expressed his opinion to a reporter.
The IPCC withdrew the assertion when it became widely known that it was bogus. But if the panel hadn’t been called out, we suspect it would have kept mum.
Compounding the headaches for warm-mongers is a probe being launched by the British Parliament into the Climate Research Unit e-mail scandal. The inquiry is intended ”to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.”
This isn’t terribly fresh news, having been announced on Jan. 22 by Parliament. But news that casts doubt on global warming tends to move slowly, if at all, in the U.S. media. If not for the foreign press, the inquiry would be virtually unknown in this country.
That 2007 report helped the IPCC win a share of the Nobel Prize. But its work is looking less credible by the day. Can any of its claims be trusted?
Its authors — who merely compiled others’ work and did no research of their own — sure haven’t inspired confidence in their work. In fact, their blunders are quickly pushing the global warming farce toward a grand collapse.
I would call this a Climate Gate, Pachauri and IPCC effect.
This IS A HUGE SHIFT IN JUST 3 MONTHS.
And remember that in UK the press and media (BBC being one of the high priest), politicians and in school have been vigorously and relentlessly spreading the Global Warming Hysteria.
“And the background of the new EU foreign minister (the High Representative for Foreign Affairs). Here main qualification seems to have been here lack of diplomatic experience. And that she is a Labour Baroness (she worked with business to abolish inequality), and has never held an elected office before. As the Gerald Warner so aptly point out: “this serial appointee is custom-made for high EU office”.
As Peter Ludlow, the European Strategy Forum, a Brussels think-tank put it: ”She would be a first rate disaster”.
Or as a French official said: ”She has little experience and is a bizarre choice”.
But they always complain don’t they.
And as Andrew Duff, a Liberal Democrat MEP, described her ”reassuringly dull.”
European people – You have been forewarned.”
Well it seems that the commission acted very quickly. As expected. And which they have prepared for even if they where not officially allowed to do that before the Lisbon Treaty went into force.
The commission also made a power grab, as expected, to even further strengthen it’s power over foreign policy. And of course “lady” Ashton was no match for them.
Well, she has lived up to all these “expectations”.
Ant the British are VERY Worried that EEAS is going to take over. Especially since the Britain’s Foreign Office is in financial and budget crisis and is scaling back representation abroad.
But the Swedish Foreign Office is NOT worried or concerned. We apparently have MUCH MORE INFLUENCE AND RESOURCES THAN THE BRITISH.
And the Germans are also worried. But don’t worry, be happy!
“The decision to give 54 of the European Commission’s 136 delegations full ambassadorial status was taken without any public announcement when the Lisbon Treaty entered into force three weeks ago. “
“Mats Persson, director of the Open Europe think tank, said the new EU embassies would, for ”all practical purposes”, take over the job of representing Britons on the world stage.
”Common EU embassies means that Britain can be overruled on crucial diplomatic matters, such as on how to respond to human rights abuses in a conflict-ridden country,” he said. “
“Mark Francois, the Conservative spokesman on Europe, said: ”It is crucial that these new EU delegations do not try to stray into the work of national embassies. The growth of the EU’s diplomatic representation presents a stark and regrettable contrast to the financial crisis facing Britain’s Foreign Office.”
“Geoffrey Van Orden, a Conservative MEP on the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, warned the commission was using the Lisbon Treaty and Lady Ashton’s dual role as a commissioner and foreign minister to undermine national sovereignty.
”The Eurocrats want to shift foreign policy away from the nation states to the commission. She is the instrument for this,” he said.
”Her whole thrust is in the direction of the commission. Her office is in the commission. It is providing the resources. Her power base is there. I would say to national governments – beware your foreign policy is at risk.”
“Many larger EU member states, including Britain and Germany, are concerned that José Manuel Barroso, the commission president, is plotting to keep national diplomats out of senior European diplomatic corps jobs.
Mr Barroso’s decision, late last year, to remove ”neighbourhood” affairs, EU foreign policy for neighbouring countries such as Ukraine and the Balkans, from Lady Ashton’s brief as commissioner was widely seen as a power grab. “
”Ashton is not a strong figure politically and her weakness is allowing the commission to empire build – which was not the idea behind her post,” said one diplomat. “
“The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy was in Washington yesterday to meet with Hillary Clinton at the State Department,but she was barely a blip on the Beltway radar screen. Even the underwhelming David Miliband, hardly a household name on this side of the Atlantic, managed to significantly overshadow the visit of his EU counterpart when he delivered an exceedingly dull and unimaginative statement on the forthcoming London conference on Afghanistan before the Senate Foreign Relations committee.
There was virtually no US press coverage at all of Catherine Ashton’s first trip to the United States as the EU foreign policy supremo, and she hardly set Foggy Bottom alight. Almost every major American news outlet ignored her presence in Washington, which is hardly surprising given that few reporters here would have any idea who she was.
Even her remarks at a joint press conference with the Secretary of State merited barely any attention, with the major press focus upon Clinton’s views on Haiti and Iran. Ashton’s comments were lacklustre and flat, betraying a striking dearth of foreign policy experience and knowledge. She also clearly lacks the presence, gravitas and charisma to be an international statesman, and bears all the hallmarks of a spectacularly unqualified apparatchik appointed way above her station as part of a cynical backroom deal between Europe’s big players.”
More than 50 European Union embassies have opened across the world since the Lisbon Treaty came into force three weeks ago.
By Bruno Waterfield
Published: 7:00AM GMT 22 Jan 2010
The move has led to fears that British consular facilities could be shut down as Brussels establishes itself as a world power.
Critics say the 54 new embassies in countries including Afghanistan, China, India and 33 African nations will shift power away from the British foreign office towards a new EU diplomatic service.
Embassies in the key capitals of Beijing, Kabul and Addis Ababa, the seat of the African Union, are regarded as marking a major shift to giving the EU a role as a global player to rival nation states.
The embassies will takeover national bilateral missions in the 54 countries where they are set up, headed by ambassadors who are empowered to speak on behalf of the EU as a whole.
”They are going to be a bit more political,” a Brussels official told the EU observer website.
The decision to give 54 of the European Commission’s 136 delegations full ambassadorial status was taken without any public announcement when the Lisbon Treaty entered into force three weeks ago.
Twelve of the embassies are in Asia and the Pacific Ocean, including Australia, China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. A network of 33 in Africa will cover countries ranging across the continent from Ghana to Kenya and South Africa to Zimbabwe. Eight of the new-model units are in Europe in Armenia, Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Ukraine.
A decisions over New York has been delayed amid a fierce political battle over the EU’s role in the United Nations Security Council.
Mats Persson, director of the Open Europe think tank, said the new EU embassies would, for ”all practical purposes”, take over the job of representing Britons on the world stage.
”Common EU embassies means that Britain can be overruled on crucial diplomatic matters, such as on how to respond to human rights abuses in a conflict-ridden country,” he said.
”In order for common embassies to work, EU member states must have shared national interests. This simply isn’t the case, particularly in Africa where the EU has consistently failed to act in a unified manner in the past.”
The Lisbon Treaty has created an embryonic diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service, under the control of an EU foreign minister, a post held by Baroness Ashton.
A text, agreed by European leaders, including Gordon Brown, last October gives the EU ”delegations” the objective of taking over consular work, a new role that could lead to British consulates being closed in remote countries to make cash savings.
”EU delegations could gradually assume responsibility, where necessary, for tasks related to diplomatic and consular protection of Union citizens in third countries, in crisis situations,” the text states.
Mark Francois, the Conservative spokesman on Europe, said: ”It is crucial that these new EU delegations do not try to stray into the work of national embassies. The growth of the EU’s diplomatic representation presents a stark and regrettable contrast to the financial crisis facing Britain’s Foreign Office.”
The Conservatives have accused the government of drafting plans to close overseas embassies and consulates as part of a wider programme of spending cuts.
An internal Foreign Office memorandum, leaked to the Tories, has urged diplomats to fire staff and close some overseas posts.
The Foreign Office has defended the new EU embassies.
”The EU’s foreign policy will become more consistent and effective, without costing the British taxpayer anymore because this is about redeploying existing resources,” said a British diplomat
”We are rightly proud of the consular service we offer to British and indeed EU nationals around the globe and there are currently no plans for the EU to take on that role.”
Baroness Ashton ‘has lost control of EU foreign policy’
Baroness Ashton’s political inexperience has allowed the European Commission to seize control of Europe’s foreign policy from national governments, MEPs and diplomats have warned.
By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Published: 6:24PM GMT 11 Jan 2010
During a hearing in the European Parliament on Monday, Lady Ashton faced repeated questions over who was really in charge of Europe’s foreign affairs and security policy.
The Labour life peer, who has never held elected public office or a post as a diplomat, has been instructed by national governments to set up a new diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), to carry out EU foreign policy independently of the commission.
As High Representative, or foreign minister, a post created under the Lisbon Treaty, Lady Ashton, 53, is also supposed to preserve the control of the Council of the EU, representing national governments, over foreign policy while also being a commission vice-president.
But since taking up her post on January 1, she has been criticised for failing to assert her own authority, for basing her office in the Brussels executive’s headquarters and for using commission officials as her key advisers.
Geoffrey Van Orden, a Conservative MEP on the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, warned the commission was using the Lisbon Treaty and Lady Ashton’s dual role as a commissioner and foreign minister to undermine national sovereignty.
”The Eurocrats want to shift foreign policy away from the nation states to the commission. She is the instrument for this,” he said.
”Her whole thrust is in the direction of the commission. Her office is in the commission. It is providing the resources. Her power base is there. I would say to national governments – beware your foreign policy is at risk.”
Following the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty at the end of last year, a turf war has broken out between commission officials and diplomats over control of the foreign minister and EEAS.
Many larger EU member states, including Britain and Germany, are concerned that José Manuel Barroso, the commission president, is plotting to keep national diplomats out of senior European diplomatic corps jobs.
Mr Barroso’s decision, late last year, to remove ”neighbourhood” affairs, EU foreign policy for neighbouring countries such as Ukraine and the Balkans, from Lady Ashton’s brief as commissioner was widely seen as a power grab.
Diplomats have also noted the growing influence over Lady Ashton of Joao Vale de Almeida, Commission director general for external relations, who was Mr Barroso’s closest and most senior adviser until last June.
”Ashton is not a strong figure politically and her weakness is allowing the commission to empire build – which was not the idea behind her post,” said one diplomat.
During Monday’s confirmation hearing in front of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Lady Ashton denied that she allowing the commission to take control.
”It is not a land grab. It is collaboration,” she said.
MEPs will vote on the new commission, including Lady Ashton on Jan 26. Charles Tannock, a Conservative MEP, said he was ”underwhelmed” by her performance. ”But I suspect that we will still support her,” he added.
Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.
The EU’s foreign policy chief is no Kissinger: Baroness Ashton proves a flop in Washington
By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: January 22nd, 2010
The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy was in Washington yesterday to meet with Hillary Clinton at the State Department,but she was barely a blip on the Beltway radar screen. Even the underwhelming David Miliband, hardly a household name on this side of the Atlantic, managed to significantly overshadow the visit of his EU counterpart when he delivered an exceedingly dull and unimaginative statement on the forthcoming London conference on Afghanistan before the Senate Foreign Relations committee.
There was virtually no US press coverage at all of Catherine Ashton’s first trip to the United States as the EU foreign policy supremo, and she hardly set Foggy Bottom alight. Almost every major American news outlet ignored her presence in Washington, which is hardly surprising given that few reporters here would have any idea who she was.
Even her remarks at a joint press conference with the Secretary of State merited barely any attention, with the major press focus upon Clinton’s views on Haiti and Iran. Ashton’s comments were lacklustre and flat, betraying a striking dearth of foreign policy experience and knowledge. She also clearly lacks the presence, gravitas and charisma to be an international statesman, and bears all the hallmarks of a spectacularly unqualified apparatchik appointed way above her station as part of a cynical backroom deal between Europe’s big players.
The unaccountable mandarins of Brussels may like to see themselves as the gilded guardians of a rising superpower, but in reality the international voice of the European Union is still nowhere near as powerful as that of individual European nation states, and that is how it should stay. I was relieved therefore that the EU was not represented by a far more formidable figure with considerable weight and popularity in America, like Tony Blair. Had the former Prime Minister swanned into town as the president of the European Union, there would have been a bank of television cameras awaiting his presence, and his views would have been widely reported.
As I wrote at the time of her completely ridiculous appointment, Ashton’s ascent to power in Brussels will, temporarily, help rein in European ambitions to be a major actor on the world stage:
Anything that undermines the Lisbon vision of the EU as a powerful supranational force is a good thing, and the appointments of both Baroness Ashton and Herman Van Rompuy will do that in spades. Better a weak non-entity as foreign minister or president than a powerhouse Henry Kissinger at the helm if the nefarious European Project is to be defeated.
Baroness Ashton’s pitiful lack of impact in her first foray in America demonstrated that the EU is currently an emperor with no clothes, lacking the power to be a global political force. But, there is no room for complacency among those of us who believe in the sanctity of the nation state, and are opposed to the rise of a federal Europe.
The fundamentally undemocratic Treaty of Lisbon will dramatically erode sovereignty in Europe, and over the next few years it will significantly drive a European foreign policy and defence identity. As the euobserver has just reported, the EU has already “converted 54 out of the European Commission’s 136 foreign delegations into embassy-type missions authorised to speak for the entire union” in preparation for the creation of a new EU diplomatic corps.
There is also rising support in the White House and State Department for the European Union’s grand ambitions, an extraordinarily foolish approach for a US administration to take, but not out of character for the Obama admininistration. As Hillary Clinton made it amply clear in her press conference, Washington is now an unequivocal backer of ever-closer union in Europe. As she put it yesterday, speaking alongside Baroness Ashton, “I expect that in decades to come, we will look back on the Lisbon Treaty and the maturation of the EU that it represents as a major milestone in our world’s history, and not just in Europe and not just in the Euro-Atlantic community.”
There is a very real danger that over the next decade, Washington will increasingly do business directly with the EU, at the expense of individual European capitals. This would be a grave mistake on the part of the United States, and would result in a significant weakening, rather than strengthening, of the transatlantic alliance, as well as the further decline of the Anglo-American Special Relationship.
The next British government must firmly oppose and do all in its power to fight the rise of a European foreign and defence policy, and ensure that vital matters of national interest are decided in London and not Brussels. It must also send a clear message to Washington that American support for a federal European superstate will only serve to undermine the Anglo-American alliance.
Five years ago when the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster happened, EU“called for a three-minute silence (three times longer than is customary to remember the millions who died in two world wars) and proposed a ”donors’ conference” in Jakarta nearly two weeks later to discuss what might be done.”
In contrast, within hours the US took the lead in forming an alliance with Australia, India and Japan, and sent in two battle groups fully equipped to deal with such an emergency.
Now in Haiti the same pattern repeats itself again.
“Within hours of Port-au-Prince crumbling into ruins, the US had sent in an aircraft carrier with 19 helicopters, hospital and assault ships, the 82nd Airborne Division with 3,500 troops and hundreds of medical personnel. They put the country’s small airport back on an operational footing, and President Obama pledged an initial $100 million dollars in emergency aid.”
And what did EU do? It acted as usually “very forceful” and hold a press conference. Yes, a boring press conference!
“Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the European Union geared itself up with a Brussels press conference led by Commission Vice-President Baroness Ashton, now the EU’s High Representative – our new foreign minister. A scattering of bored-looking journalists in the Commission’s lavishly appointed press room heard the former head of Hertfordshire Health Authority stumbling through a prepared statement, in which she said that she had conveyed her ”condolences” to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, and pledged three million euros in aid.”
The people of Haiti MUST BEE VERY REASSURED AND COMFORTED BY THE THOUGHT THAT EU:s foreign minster had a press conference and sent her ”condolences” , NOT TO HAITI OR THE PEOPLE AFFECTED BUT TO the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.
This is the same EU that pride itself of being a dominant world power. And the bureaucrats in Brussels have even bigger ambitions that that.
In fact, the EU have had a ”Rapid Reaction Mechanism” since 2001 (Council Regulation (EC) No 381/2001of 26 February 2001)
Haiti response shows the difference between the EU and a superpower
The earthquake in Haiti provoked prompt and effective action from the US, and waffle from the EU, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:49PM GMT 16 Jan 2010
Compare and contrast the initial responses of two ”major world powers” to the Haitian earthquake disaster. Within hours of Port-au-Prince crumbling into ruins, the US had sent in an aircraft carrier with 19 helicopters, hospital and assault ships, the 82nd Airborne Division with 3,500 troops and hundreds of medical personnel. They put the country’s small airport back on an operational footing, and President Obama pledged an initial $100 million dollars in emergency aid.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the European Union geared itself up with a Brussels press conference led by Commission Vice-President Baroness Ashton, now the EU’s High Representative – our new foreign minister. A scattering of bored-looking journalists in the Commission’s lavishly appointed press room heard the former head of Hertfordshire Health Authority stumbling through a prepared statement, in which she said that she had conveyed her ”condolences” to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, and pledged three million euros in aid.
A gaggle of other Commision spokesmen followed, to report offers of help from individual member states, such as a few search and rescue teams, tents and water purification units. We were also told that an official EU representative would be trying to reach Haiti from the Dominican Republic, to stay for a few hours before returning to report what he had found.
Memories might have gone back to December 2004, which saw similarly contrasting responses to the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe which cost nearly 300,000 lives. Again, within hours the US took the lead in forming an alliance with Australia, India and Japan, and had sent in two battle groups fully equipped to deal with such an emergency, including 20 ships led by two carriers with 90 helicopters. President Bush immediately pledged $35 million, later rising to $350 million. Because they were self-sufficient, the US forces pulled off a stupendously successful life-saving operation, almost entirely ignored by the British media, notably the BBC (whose journalists on the spot were nevertheless quite happy to hitch lifts from US helicopters).
The EU, by contrast, pledged three million euros for the tsunami victims, called for a three-minute silence (three times longer than is customary to remember the millions who died in two world wars) and proposed a ”donors’ conference” in Jakarta nearly two weeks later to discuss what might be done.
The only real difference between these two episodes is that, in the five years which have elapsed since 2004,the EU has even more noisily laid claim to its status as what Tony Blair liked to call ”a world superpower”, capable of standing on the world stage as an equal of the US. Anyone who witnessed the dismal showing at Thursday’s press conference of the High Representative, which would scarcely have passed muster at a board meeting of the Hertfordshire Health Authority, might wellcringe at the thought.
Haiti earthquake: Lady Ashton under fire over EU ‘visibility’
Baroness Ashton, the European Union’s foreign minister, has come under fire for failing to visit Haiti and letting America take command of the international aid response.
By Bruno Waterfield
Published: 5:22PM GMT 22 Jan 2010
Lady Ashton, who had little or no diplomatic experience when she took the High Representative of Foreign Affairs job last year, is in charge of the EU’s crisis and humanitarian aid response.
France, which accused the United States of ”occupying” Haiti earlier this week, has been dismayed by the EU’s lack of ”visibility” during international relief efforts over the last 10 days.
Michel Barnier, the French internal market commissioner, is said to have briefed against Lady Ashton by pointing out France’s foreign minister was ”immediately available” on the ground following the Asian Tsunami in 2004.
He denied the claim and insisted ”she can count on me to work with her on strengthening Europe’s foreign and defence policy – an area of work I have always been interested in”. But French press reports have described Mr Barnier as ”seething” and ”enraged” that EU had not acted on his ideas, a failing emphasised by US control of the Haiti relief operation.
Following the tsunami, Mr Barnier wrote an influential report calling for the creation of an EU civil protection force called ”Europe Aid”.
Joseph Daul, a senior centre-right MEP and a close ally of Nicolas Sarkozy, expressed regret that Lady Ashton was absent when Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, visited Haiti at the weekend.
”Just about everybody was in Haiti at the moment when these people are suffering, and Europe was not present,” he said. ”If it would have been in our hands, we would have sent someone.”
Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP, the former French student radical and leader of the European Greens also attacked her.
”I am very sceptical about Lady Ashton,” he said.
A spokesman for Lady Ashton said she had organised an emergency meeting of EU aid ministers that raised over £350 million in pledges for Haiti.
The EU should consider forming a rapid reaction force to deal with future emergencies like the Haiti earthquake. This is according to ”the EU’s new president,” retailed to us by the ever diligent BBC.
”We have to reflect about a better instrument for reaction,” says Herman Van Rompuy. After providing emergency aid to Haiti the EU should consider a ”humanitarian rapid reaction force”, he said.
In fact, the EU set up a ”Rapid Reaction Mechanism” in 2001, under Council Regulation (EC) No 381/2001 – with the intention of dealing with precisely the eventualities that Rompuy is setting out, and which so lamentably failed in the 2004 Tsunami and again in Haiti.
In fact, the initiative goes way back to the European Council meeting in Helsinki on 10 and 11 December 1999, when the member state leaders gathered to discuss the European Union’s ”non-military crisis-management capability.”
More than ten years on and we are no further forward than we were then – countless reports and study groups have been commissioned, there have been countless meetings, working groups and conferences, with millions of euros having been spent. Yet, when the chips are down, the EU is nowhere to be seen.
It was ever thus, and will always be so. All the EU is ever good for, when it comes to action on its own part, is talk. But this is not ”victimless” state of affairs. Because the issue is being dealt with at a ”European level”, member states are actively discouraged from making their own plans and arrangements.
Thereby, national capabilities are wound down yet, in the lethargic, inept grip of the EU institutions, nothing is done to replace those capabilities – still less to enhance the overall effort.And, when there is a crisis, because the EU claims the lead role in responding, no member state can step forward to fill the vacuum created by the EU’s painfully obvious inadequacies.
Thus, once again we get clarion calls (if anything Rompuy says could be called ”clarion”), dusting off ancient press releases to demand yet again a ”humanitarian rapid reaction force”. In ten years time, no doubt, they will be recycling the same press releases, demonstrating, once again, that using ”EU” and the word ”rapid” in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
Yet, despite its ongoing inadequacies, the one thing the EU will never do is recognise its own uselessness and walk away from its grand pretensions, leaving the heavy lifting to national agencies.
As in all things to do with the EU, its ambitions of glory outstrip any practical considerations. Even the lives of disaster victims are of little consequence when it comes to promoting the European agenda.
As the full horror of the disaster in Haiti begins to emerge, we seem to be going through a cycle which is all too familiar – most notable from December 2004 when the tsunami struck south Asia.
Then – as we were to observe many times – the world was split into two main categories: those who did something about it, and those who talked about doing something about it.
In the former category fell the United States which took the lead in forming an alliance with Australia, India and Japan, and within hours had despatched two battle groups fully equipped to deal with such an emergency, including 20 ships led by two carriers with 90 helicopters.
The EU, in the meantime, took nine days to launch a ”donors’ conference”, the start of grotesque bidding process which had different nations vying with each other to be seen as the most generous.
In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, president Bush pledged $35 million and then, under pressure from the media and other nations – to say nothing of the United Nations, which accused the US of being ”stingy” – increased contributions to $350 million.
But, as was already becoming apparent, money was the lesser of the problems. What was really needed was immediate, practical assistance, and it was that which the US-led alliance was best able to give.
We remarked at the time that the collective value of the hardware that the US alone deployed was well in excess of $2 billion, yet the provision of this form of direct aid did not figure in the cash sums offered by the US government.
However, the EU sought to learn from the experience and has since attempted to enhance its capabilities. But, despite multiple initiatives to reinforce the EU’s ”emergency and crisis response capacities”, all the EU could manage this time by way of immediate response was to hold a Brussels press conference led by Commission Vice-President Baroness Ashton, now the EU’s High Representative – our new foreign minister.
This lacklustre response was noted by Booker in his column yesterday, who recorded how a scattering of bored-looking journalists in the Commission’s lavishly appointed press room heard the former head of Hertfordshire Health Authority stumbling through a prepared statement, in which she said that she had conveyed her ”condolences” to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, and pledged three million euros in aid.
Despite the pretentions of the EU in building a rapid reaction force to deal with disasters, that was never going to come to much. But in its development aid – alongside the UN – the EU prides itself in being the world’s leading contributor and a champion of third world development, standing in the forefront of fund-raising efforts.
Thus, again we see the same dynamic, with Claudia Rosett reporting that the tranzies are passing round the begging bowl, and it is left to the US, once again, to make the running.
Within hours of Port-au-Prince crumbling into ruins, the US had sent in an aircraft carrier with 19 helicopters, hospital and assault ships, the 82nd Airborne Division with 3,500 troops and hundreds of medical personnel. They put the country’s small airport back on an operational footing, and President Obama pledged an initial $100 million dollars in emergency aid.
Yet, despite the tranzie’s enthusiasm for collecting huge sums of money, very little seems to have been learned from the tsunami experience. A year after disaster struck – with $13 billion of aid pledged – much of it was unspent. Two years later, the situation was much the same, in what amounted to a running scandal. By 2007, there were calls to re-allocate the unspent funds.
Despite all this, the most ”constructive” idea the EU has had to date is to call for an international conference. Yet Haiti has already had its fair share of such conferences, the latest being a donor conference, held in April 2009.
This was organised in the aftermath of four devastating tropical storms. At the time, there were peldges of $324 million over the next two years, short of the $900 million Haiti’s prime minister said he needed, but the sum later increased to $760 million. However, by November 2009, only $21 million had actually been disbursed.
Some of the problem has been that much of the UN’s efforts have been devoted to climate change – even in the context of disaster relief. And such is the obsession of the EU with the issue that its efforts on disaster relief have been similarly focused.
Yet, surveying the disaster that is Haiti, few will dispute that the high casualty rate and the ensuing chaos stems from the lack of effective governance over a very long period of time.
Thus, while US forces – aided by small aid contingents from other countries – are engaged in a desperate race against time to rescue trapped people and care for the immediate needs of the survivors, the real tragedy is that so little has been achieved before the event that would have better prepared Haiti for the disaster that has just struck.
On both counts, therefore – in terms of immediate relief and long-term aid, the tranzie nexus of the EU-UN has failed once again. And once again it has been left to nation states such as the US to pick up the pieces. One day the world will re-learn the lesson that trans-national agencies are an evolutionary dead-end and that the core or civilisation is and will remain the nation state.
A long article by Matt Ridley in today’s Spectator saluting all of us bloggers who uncovered the greatest scientific and political scandal of modern times –the Global Warming Hysteria.
So I am very proud to be acknowledged as a global warming guerrilla. It’s a badge of honour.
Absit reverentia vero ”The truth shouldn’t be silenced to spare someone.”
“Matt Ridley salutes the bloggers who changed the climate debate. While most of Fleet Street kowtowed to the green lobby, online amateurs uncovered the spin and deception that finally cracked the consensus
Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.
It was not Private Eye, or the BBC or the News of the World, but a retired electrical engineer in Northampton, David Holland, whose freedom-of-information requests caused the Climategate scientists to break the law, according to the Information Commissioner.By contrast, it has so far attracted little attention that the leaked emails of Climategate include messages from reporters obsequiously seeking ammunition against the sceptics. Other emails have shown reporters meekly changing headlines to suit green activists, or being threatened with ostracism for even reporting the existence of a sceptical angle”
“Yet, this time round, despite 20 years of being told they were not just factually but morally wrong, of being compared to Holocaust deniers, of being told they deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity, of being avoided at parties, climate sceptics seem to be growing in number and confidence by the day.”
What is the difference?
In a word, the internet.The Climate Consensus may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to cameras and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm.The main blog used by the Consensus, realclimate.org, exemplifies this problem, because it was set up by a PR company and is run by an employee of Nasa, who ties himself in knots trying to show that he does the blog in his spare time. It is also characterised by a tone of weary condescension and censoring of dissent that you do not find on most sceptic sites.
Matt Ridley salutes the bloggers who changed the climate debate. While most of Fleet Street kowtowed to the green lobby, online amateurs uncovered the spin and deception that finally cracked the consensus
Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.
It was not Private Eye, or the BBC or the News of the World, but a retired electrical engineer in Northampton, David Holland, whose freedom-of-information requests caused the Climategate scientists to break the law, according to the Information Commissioner.By contrast, it has so far attracted little attention that the leaked emails of Climategate include messages from reporters obsequiously seeking ammunition against the sceptics. Other emails have shown reporters meekly changing headlines to suit green activists, or being threatened with ostracism for even reporting the existence of a sceptical angle: ‘Your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists,’ one normally alarmist reporter was told last year when he slipped briefly off message. ‘I sense that you are about to experience the “Big Cutoff” from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included.’
So used are greens to sycophancy in the television studios that when they occasionally encounter even slightly hard questions they are outraged. Peter Sissons of the BBC: ‘I pointed out to [Caroline Lucas of the Green party] that the climate didn’t seem to be playing ball at the moment. We were having a particularly cold winter, even though carbon emissions were increasing. Indeed, there had been no warming for ten years, contradicting all the alarming computer predictions… Miss Lucas told me angrily that it was disgraceful that the BBC — the BBC! — should be giving any kind of publicity to those sort of views.’
Of course, reporters have been going native for decades. The difference is that they cannot now get away with it. When acid rain was all the rage in the 1980s, I was a science editor and I relayed all sorts of cataclysmic predictions from scientists and greens about its effect on forests. (Stern magazine said in 1984 that a third of Germany’s forests were already dead or dying and that experts believed all — all! — its conifers would be gone by 1990.) Today, we know that these predictions were wildly wrong and that far from dying out, forests in Germany, Sweden and North America actually thrived during that decade. I should have been more sceptical.
Yet, this time round, despite 20 years of being told they were not just factually but morally wrong, of being compared to Holocaust deniers, of being told they deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity, of being avoided at parties, climate sceptics seem to be growing in number and confidence by the day. What is the difference?
In a word, the internet.The Climate Consensus may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to cameras and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm.The main blog used by the Consensus, realclimate.org, exemplifies this problem, because it was set up by a PR company and is run by an employee of Nasa, who ties himself in knots trying to show that he does the blog in his spare time. It is also characterised by a tone of weary condescension and censoring of dissent that you do not find on most sceptic sites.
Contrast it with wattsupwiththat.com, a site founded in November 2006 by a former Californian television weather forecaster named Anthony Watts. Dedicated at first to getting people to photograph weather stations to discover how poorly sited many of them are, the site has metamorphosed from a gathering place for lonely nutters to a three-million-hits-per-month online newspaper on climate full of fascinating articles by physicists, geologists, economists and statisticians.
Or take a book published last month called The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford, a rattling good detective story and a detailed and brilliant piece of science writing. Montford has never worked in the media. He is an accountant and science publisher who works from his home in Milnathort in Kinrossshire. He runs a blog called ‘Bishop Hill’.
Montford came to the subject in 2005 when he read a blog post by another amateur non-journalist named Tim Worstall, a scandium dealer who lives in Portugal (I am not making this up), who was in turn passing on news of another blogger’s work: Stephen McIntyre, a retired mining consultant and keen squash player in Toronto. Because he keeps catching errors in their work, McIntyre is the sceptic the climate scientists most love to hate, even though he is scrupulously polite and insists that the followers on his website, climateaudit.org, are too. ‘A certain person’, the Climategate scientists called him in their emails, or ‘Mr Mc “I’m not entirely there in the head”’, or ‘the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science’.
Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made. Prejudice and ignorance abound too, but the good blogs get rewarded with scoops and guest essays so they tap into rich seams of knowledge. When Montford first ran his now classic post called ‘Caspar and the Jesus paper’, about the shenanigans the IPCC had to resort to in order to get a flawed paper rebutting McIntyre into the peer-reviewed literature in time to use it in their report, word of mouth caused interest in his website to explode.
Mcintyre’s forensic dissection of the Consensus papers puts cosy scientific peer review to shame. Digging deep into data and computer programs, he has found myriad mistakes in both the statistical technique and the data used to make the famous hockey stick graph, which purported to show that recent temperatures were unprecedented in level and rate of change. But he has also uncovered a mistake in data that conveniently prevented 1934 being warmer than 1998 in America; the splicing together of the records of two Antarctic weather stations as if they were one; the smoothing of sea-level rise in a way that conveniently concealed its recent deceleration; the use of a Swedish lake sediment series upside down so it showed recent warming instead of cooling; and most recently the reliance of an attempt to resuscitate the hockey stick on a ludicrously small sub-sample of just 12 Siberian larch trees. That last one came about when Montford spotted that a scientist who had been refusing McIntyre access to data for ten years had published in a journal with a strict policy of archiving data. Montford tipped off McIntyre, who asked the journal to force the scientist to release the data, which he eventually did.
‘It seems inconceivable to the commentariat,’ says Andrew Orlowski of the online newspaper of the IT industry, the Register, ‘that scientists have prejudices too, and that the publication process (peer review) is not some Kitemark of quality but is vulnerable to being hijacked.’ Chip Knappenberger, who blogs at masterresource.org, believes the rise of blogs as repositories of scientific knowledge will continue if the scientific literature becomes guarded and exclusive. ‘I can only anticipate this as throwing the state of science and the quest for scientific understanding into disarray.’
When Climategate broke, the mainstream media, like knights facing archers at Crécy, mostly ran dismissive pieces reflecting the official position of the Consensus. For example, they dutifully repeated the line that the University of East Anglia’s global temperature record was vindicated by two other ‘entirely independent’ records (from Nasa and NOAA), which was bunk: all three records draw from the same network of weather stations. Editors then found — by reading and counting the responses on their blog pages — that there was huge and educated interest in Climategate among their readers. One by one they took notice and unleashed their sniffing newshounds at last: the Daily Express went first, then the Mail and the Sunday Times, last week the Times and this week even the Guardian.
For those few mainstream journalists who had always been sceptical — like Christopher Booker — it must be a strange experience, like being relieved after living behind enemy lines. Who knows, one day even BBC News may ask tough questions. But it was the bloggers who did the hard work.
Matt Ridley’s book, The Rational Optimist, will be published in May.
India has threatened to pull out of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and set up its on climate change body because it ”cannot rely” on the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri.
By Dean Nelson in New Delhi
Published: 3:47PM GMT 04 Feb 2010
The Indian government’s move is a snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation that his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.
The body and its chairman have faced growing criticism ever since as questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigour with which climate change claims are assessed.
In India the false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his claims. In Autumn, its environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming.
Dr Pachauri had dismissed the government’s claims as ”voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further.
He announced that the Indian government will establish a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ”third ice cap”, and an ”Indian IPCC” to use ”climate science” to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.
”There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report … [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses … they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.
”I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA),” he said.
It will bring together 125 research institutions throughout India, work with international bodies and operate as a ”sort of Indian IPCC,” he added.
The body, which he said will not rival the UN’s panel, will publish its own climate assessment in November this year, with reports on the Himalayas, India’s long coastline, the Western Ghat highlands and the north-eastern region close to the borders with Bangladesh, Burma, China and Nepal.
”Through these we will demonstrate our commitment to climate science,” he said.
The UN panel’s claims of glacial meltdown by 2035 ”was clearly out of place and didn’t have any scientific basis,” he said, while stressing the government remained concerned about the health of the Himalayan ice flows.
”Most glaciers are melting, they are retreating, some glaciers, like the Siachen glacier, are advancing. But overall one can say incontrovertibly that the debris on our glaciers is very high the snow balance is very low. We have to be very cautious because of the water security particularly in north India which depends on the health of the Himalayan glaciers,” he added.
The new National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology will be based in Dehradun, in Uttarakhand, and will monitor glacial changes and compare results with those from glaciers in Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan.
“In November 2009, hackers released thousands of e-mails from the CRU, going back years, and it is these e-mails that reveal the very unscientific, unethical activities I described above.
I feel I’ve been had.”
“I grew up admiring science and scientists. One of my favorite TV shows as a kid? Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. I took global warming seriously because I took scientists seriously and forgot that they are people, too, no less prone to vanity, piety or hubris than others. When I read about the CRU e-mails, a scandal now known as Climategate, I felt anger and disappointment, some of it directed at myself.”
“Fresh eyes need to look at the original data the CRU used, to see if they can independently find the same evidence for warming.But wait—that can’t be done. Somehow, the CRU managed to “lose” all its original data.
Climate-change scientists—so serious, so sincere, so … scandalous?
A. Kam Napier
If you write long enough, you will eventually have second thoughts about an article from your past. In our April 1996 issue, I wrote “The Angry Sky,” about the alarming impacts Hawai‘i expected from ozone depletion and global warming. You never hear about the ozone layer anymore, but global warming has come to dominate our conversations in ways I never imagined.
I never expected the terms “green,” “sustainability” and “carbon footprint” would be hurled at us daily, secular guilt crammed into every consumer choice. But I especially never expected that some of the leading scientists who argue the case for manmade global warmingwould be revealed as political partisans, who hid evidence against global warming, attempted to redefine the meaning of “peer-reviewed journals” to mean “only peers who agree with us” and, worst of all, conspired to delete data in anticipation of Freedom of Information requests.
Let me back up. Because of manmade global warming, I warned in 1996, that “sea levels could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100 … warming can lead to hotter and more frequent heat waves … stronger and more frequent hurricanes to Hawai‘i … endanger native plants species [and] coral reefs.” These dire predictions came from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia provide much of the IPCC’s analysis and predictions. In November 2009, hackers released thousands of e-mails from the CRU, going back years, and it is these e-mails that reveal the very unscientific, unethical activities I described above.
I feel I’ve been had.
One thing I could not have known in 1996 was that the IPCC’s warming predictions would be wrong. Mean global surface temperatures have not risen since 1998, and, by some measures, have dropped since 2001. The CRU e-mails show scientists trying to hide this decline, to give one detail—I don’t have room in this column to detail the extent of CRU’s shenanigans, nor could I tell the story as well as others, so please read this “Editor’s Page” online for links (see below).
This doesn’t necessarily mean manmade global warming is disproven. But it does deflate the certainty and moral righteousness of the Al Gores and the IPCCs of the world. At Copenhagen and in Congress, politicians have proposed massive disruptions to our economies and lifestyles in the name of halting global warming. It turns out they’ve been doing so, at least partly, with books that have been cooked more than the planet.
I grew up admiring science and scientists. One of my favorite TV shows as a kid? Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. I took global warming seriously because I took scientists seriously and forgot that they are people, too, no less prone to vanity, piety or hubris than others. When I read about the CRU e-mails, a scandal now known as Climategate, I felt anger and disappointment, some of it directed at myself.
People make these kinds of mistakes all the time, and the motives are no mystery. For the researchers, grant dollars and reputations are on the line. For reporters, global warming offers the thrill of covering The Biggest Story Ever Told, an appeal I could not resist. For politicians, it has offered an endless opportunity for grandstanding and power grabs. Convinced they are saving the earth—what could be more rewarding or important?—all three groups helped each other lose their minds.
It’s time for scientists to do what science is all about: check their work to see if the results can be reproduced. Fresh eyes need to look at the original data the CRU used, to see if they can independently find the same evidence for warming.But wait—that can’t be done. Somehow, the CRU managed to “lose” all its original data.
Glenn Reynolds (better known as InstaPundit), writes for The Washington Examiner about the internal Climategate emails and how they reveal the very poor quality of the data used in the computer models that predict warming tends, Nov. 29, 2009.
The Telegraphreports on a Russian claim that British climate scientists have deliberately cherry picked data from Russian temperature station to exaggerate the case for anthropogenic global warming, Dec. 16, 2009.
The mainstream media comes under fire by its conservative critics for biased reporting, pointing out that some of the leaked emails show an AP reporter working with the CRU scientists as an ally against skeptics, rather than as an objective reporter, Jan. 8, 2010
PajamasMedia reviewsClimategate: The CRUtape Letters, the first book to tackle the issue, Jan. 20, 2010.
CNN reports that the IPCC has admitted to using unsubstantiated claims that Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035, a false claim that is actually separate from the Climategate scandal, Jan. 20, 2010. Much more on this at ABC News, Jan. 28, 2010.
Climate Depot reports on the IPCC exaggerating temperature data specifically to affect the political discussion of climate change, Jan. 26, 2010.
London’s The Timesreports that the University of East Anglia violated the Freedom of Information Act, but could not be prosecuted because this was revealed too long after the incidents, Jan. 28, 2010
The February issue of Scientific American attempts to dismiss Climategate as much ado about nothing. The article quotes IPCC head, Dr. Rejendra Pachauri, as lamenting how politicized climate change science has become. The article omits that Pachauri earns millions from countless business relationships in green technology companies—exactly how much, he won’t disclose.
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama said there was ”overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.” In his most recent message to the world, Osama bin Laden said that climate change ”is not an intellectual luxury but an actual fact.” It’s nice to see these two leaders can agree on something.
The hitch is that the man-caused catastrophic global warming theory is dead, and it needs to be buried. Evidence had been mounting for years that there were problems with the global warming model; most telling was that the globe refused to warm up. Carbon emissions continued apace, but the world began cooling. This is why true believers abandoned the ”global warming” brand name and tried to shift the debate to the more ambiguous label ”climate change,” which is something the rest of us like to refer to as ”weather.”
The dam broke with Climategate when hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that global warming advocates had for years attempted to hide conflicting data and silence their professional critics. British authorities have determined that the university broke freedom-of-information laws by denying information to scientists seeking to check claims that global warming was caused by human activity.
Evidence is emerging that the data had been rigged all along. Russian analysts noted that British temperature calculations excluded data from 40 percent of Russian territory, much of which showed no increase in temperature in the past 50 years. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also cherry-picked data, cutting Canadian data sources from 600 to 35 and relying on only one monitor for all of Canada above the Arctic Circle. This was done even though Canada operates 1,400 weather stations, 100 of which are in the Arctic.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is having its own scandal regarding a finding in its Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2007 report that glaciers in India were rapidly disappearing. It is now revealed that this dramatic claim was based not on years of patient observation and research but anecdotes from a hiking magazine and a student’s master’s thesis. IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri knew about the erroneous information before December’s Copenhagen climate summit but maintained the falsehood. He even denounced a report from India that showed the glaciers were in far less jeopardy as ”unsubstantiated research.” Last month, Mr. Pachauri published a sexually explicit novel, further diminishing his professional reputation.
Climate scientists have to come to grips with some highly inconvenient truths. World temperatures continue to decline as carbon emissions increase. Chilly Scotland is facing its coldest winter in a century. Arctic sea ice is not vanishing. Polar bears are experiencing a baby boom. Water vapor appears to play as important a role in the climate as carbon emissions. Sunspot activity may be more important than both combined. Meanwhile, climate change fanatics seek to blame capitalism and productivity for global warming, global cooling, too much snow, not enough snow, hurricanes, tornadoes and even the Haiti earthquake.
The simplistic and increasingly discredited theory of carbon-based, man-caused global warming needs to be discarded, and the scientists who sought to squelch skeptics and artificially inflate their own reputations must be disciplined. Alas, Mr. Obama and Mr. bin Laden need to update their talking points.
More major embarrassment for New Zealand’s ‘leading’ climate research unit NIWA tonight, with admissions that it ”does not hold copies” of the original reports documenting adjustments to New Zealand’s weather stations.
The drama hit the headlines worldwide in late November when serious questions were raised about the ”adjustments” NIWA had made to weather records. The adjusted data shows a strong warming trend over the past century, whereas unadjusted records had nowhere near as much warming.
NIWA promised to make its data and corrections fully available, but responding to an Official Information Act request their legal counsel has now admitted it cannot provide copies of the original adjustment records.
NIWA Unable To Justify Official Temperature Record
Monday, 1 February 2010, 4:02 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
NIWA Unable To Justify Official Temperature Record
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has been urged by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) to abandon all of its in-house adjustments to temperature records. This follows an admission by NIWA that it no longer holds the records that would support its in-house manipulation of official temperature readings.
In December, NZCSC issued a formal request for the schedule of adjustments under the Official Information Act 1982, specifically seeking copies of “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for the calculations”. On 29 January, NIWA responded that they no longer held any internal records, and merely referred to the scientific literature.
“The only inference that can be drawn from this is that NIWA has casually altered its temperature series from time to time, without ever taking the trouble to maintain a continuous record. The result is that the official temperature record has been adjusted on unknown dates for unknown reasons, so that its probative value is little above that of guesswork. In such a case, the only appropriate action would be reversion to the raw data record, perhaps accompanied by a statement of any known issues,” said Terry Dunleavy, secretary of NZCSC.
“NIWA’s website carries the raw data collected from representative temperature stations, which disclose no measurable change in average temperature over a period of 150 years. But elsewhere on the same website, NIWA displays a graph of the same 150-year period showing a sharp warming trend. The difference between these two official records is a series of undisclosed NIWA-created ‘adjustments’
Late last year our coalition published a paper entitled ‘Are We Feeling Warmer Yet?’ and asked NIWA to disclose the schedule detailing the dates and reasons for the adjustments. The expressed purpose of NZCSC was to replicate the calculations, in the best traditions of peer-reviewed science.
“When NIWA did not respond, Hon Rodney Hide asked Oral and Written Questions in Parliament, and attended a meeting with NIWA scientists. All to no avail, and the schedule of adjustments remained a secret. We now know why NIWA was being so evasive – the requested schedule did not exist.
“Well qualified climate scientist members of our coalition believe that NIWA has forfeited confidence in the credibility of its temperature recording procedures, and that it cannot be trusted to try to cover up its own ineptitude by in-house adjustments. What is needed is open access in the public domain to all of the known reasons for post-reading adjustments to enable independent climate analysts to make their own comparative assessments of temperature variations throughout New Zealand since the middle of the 19th century,” said Mr Dunleavy
“The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there.
The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.
In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:
“But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:
Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.”
As a complement to my previous post about the Urban Heat Effect (or Urban Heat Island) which according to the Global warming Hysterics doesn’t exist and in no way influences temperature measurements.
In this interesting study they have gone through previous studies of the urban heat effect from different places in North America.
“This informative study demonstrates that the UHI phenomenon can sometimes be very powerful, for in just twelve years the UHI of Houston grew by more than the IPCC contends the mean surface air temperature of the planet rose over the entire past century,”
“..making the rate of increase in extreme warm minimum temperatures at urban stations nearly three times greater than the rate of increase at rural stations less affected by growing urban heat islands.”
“ they determined the urban area to be 2.2°C warmer than the rural area. During this period, the mean daily urban-rural temperature difference increased with decreasing temperature.”
“that under calm conditions (< 2 m s-1) the daily urban-rural temperature difference was 3.2°C in the winter. Last of all, under simultaneous calm and cold conditions, the urban-rural temperature difference was observed to achieve hourly magnitudes exceeding 9°C.”
“the spatially-averaged temperature of the urban area of Barrow was about 2°C warmer than that of the rural area, and that it was not uncommon for the daily magnitude of the urban heat island to exceed 4°C.”
,” and that ”air temperature was also consistently and significantly higher at the urban site (14.8°C) compared to the suburban (13.6°C) and rural (12.7°C) sites.”
“..creating an urban heat island with ”the peak of the high temperature dome exactly over the commercial area of downtown,” where noontime air temperatures were as much a 3°C greater than those of surrounding rural areas.”
“In conclusion, the results of these several North American studies demonstrate that the impact of population growth on the urban heat island effect is very real and can be very large, vastly overshadowing the effects of natural temperature change. In addition, over three decades ago Oke (1973) demonstrated (as has also been demonstrated by several of the studies reviewed above) that towns with as few as a thousand inhabitants typically create a warming of the air within them that ismore than twice as great as the increase in mean global air temperature believed to have occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age, while the urban heat islands of the great metropolises of the world create warmings that rival those that occur between full-fledged ice ages and interglacials!
So what have we learned about the urban heat island effect from data obtained in North America? We’ve learned that it is large and growing in large-and-growing cities, as well as in small towns. Given these undeniable facts, it is presumptuous in the extreme to believe that the global surface air temperature record of the last few decades has been adequately adjusted for small-town and large-city heat island effects; and we can thus be fairly confident that the true warming of the planet has likely been far less than what has been claimed by essentially all assessments of the phenomenon conducted to date.”
But remember that thisUrban Heat Effect doesn’t exist according to the Global warming Hysterics and in no way influences temperature measurements.
Temperature (Urbanization Effects – North America) — Summary
——————————————————————————–
How significant are anthropogenic-induced temperature increases that are not caused by greenhouse gas emissions? In what follows, we briefly review what has been learned about this important subject from pertinent studies conducted throughout North America.
In studying the non-greenhouse-gas-induced urban heat island (UHI) of Houston, Texas, Streutker (2003) analyzed 82 sets of nighttime radiation data obtained from the split-window infrared channels of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer on board the NOAA-9 satellite during March 1985 through February 1987 and from 125 sets of similar data obtained from the NOAA-14 satellite during July 1999 through June 2001. Between these two periods, it was found that the mean nighttime surface temperature of Houston rose by 0.82 ± 0.10 °C. In addition, Streutker notes that the growth of the Houston UHI, both in magnitude and spatial extent, ”scales roughly with the increase in population,” and that the mean rural temperature measured during the second interval was ”virtually identical to the earlier interval.”
This informative study demonstrates that the UHI phenomenon can sometimes be very powerful, for in just twelve years the UHI of Houston grew by more than the IPCC contends the mean surface air temperature of the planet rose over the entire past century, during which period earth’s population rose by approximately 280%, or nearly an order of magnitude more than the 30% population growth experienced by Houston over the twelve years of Streutker’s study.
A very different type of study was conducted by Maul and Davis (2001), who analyzed air and seawater temperature data obtained over the past century at the sites of several primary tide gauges maintained by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Noting that each of these sites ”experienced significant population growth in the last 100 years,” and that ”with the increase in maritime traffic and discharge of wastewater one would expect water temperatures to rise” (due to a maritime analogue of the urban heat island effect), they calculated trends for the 14 longest records and derived a mean century-long seawater warming of 0.74°C, with Boston registering a 100-year warming of 3.6°C. In addition, they report that air temperature trends at the tide gauge sites, which represent the standard urban heat island effect, were ”much larger” than the seawater temperature trends.
In another different type of study, Dow and DeWalle (2000) analyzed trends in annual evaporation and Bowen ratio measurements on 51 eastern U.S. watersheds that had experienced various degrees of urbanization between 1920 and 1990. In doing so, they determined that as residential development progressively occurred on what originally were rural watersheds, watershed evaporation decreased and sensible heating of the atmosphere increased. And from relationships derived from the suite of watersheds investigated, they calculated that complete transformation from 100% rural to 100% urban characteristics resulted in a 31% decrease in watershed evaporation and a 13 W/m2 increase in sensible heating of the atmosphere.
Now climate modeling exercises suggest that a doubling of the air’s CO2 concentration will result in a nominal 4 W/m2 increase in the radiative forcing of earth’s surface-troposphere system, which has often been predicted to produce an approximate 4°C increase in the mean near-surface air temperature of the globe, indicative of an order-of-magnitude climate sensitivity of 1°C per W/m2 change in radiative forcing. Thus, to a first approximation, the 13 W/m2 increase in the sensible heating of the near-surface atmosphere produced by the total urbanization of a pristine rural watershed in the eastern United States could be expected to produce an increase of about 13°C in near-surface air temperature over the central portion of the watershed, which is consistent with maximum urban heat island effects observed in large and densely populated cities. Hence, a 10% rural-to-urban transformation could well produce a warming on the order of 1.3°C, and a mere 2% transformation could increase the near-surface air temperature by as much as a quarter of a degree Centigrade.
This powerful anthropogenic but non-greenhouse-gas-induced effect of urbanization on the energy balance of watersheds and the temperature of the boundary-layer air above them begins to express itself with the very first hint of urbanization and, hence, may be readily overlooked in studies seeking to identify a greenhouse-gas-induced global warming signal. In fact, the fledgling urban heat island effect may already be present in many temperature records that have routinely been considered ”rural enough” to be devoid of all human influence, when, in fact, such may be far from the truth.
A case in point is provided by the study of Changnon (1999), who used a series of measurements of soil temperatures obtained in a totally rural setting in central Illinois between 1889 and 1952 and a contemporary set of air temperature measurements made in an adjacent growing community (as well as similar data obtained from other nearby small towns), to evaluate the magnitude of unsuspected heat island effects that may be present in small towns and cities that are typically assumed to be free of urban-induced warming. This work revealed that soil temperature in the totally rural setting experienced an increase from the decade of 1901-1910 to the decade of 1941-1950 that amounted to 0.4°C.
This warming is 0.2°C less than the 0.6°C warming determined for the same time period from the entire dataset of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network, which is supposedly corrected for urban heating effects. It is also 0.2°C less than the 0.6°C warming determined for this time period by eleven benchmark stations in Illinois with the highest quality long-term temperature data, all of which are located in communities that had populations of less than 6,000 people as of 1990. And it is 0.17°C less than the 0.57°C warming derived from data obtained at the three benchmark stations closest to the site of the soil temperature measurements and with populations of less than 2,000 people.
Changnon says his findings suggest that ”both sets of surface air temperature data for Illinois believed to have the best data quality with little or no urban effects may contain urban influences causing increases of 0.2°C from 1901 to 1950.” He further notes — in a grand understatement — that ”this could be significant because the IPCC (1995) indicated that the global mean temperature increased 0.3°C from 1890 to 1950.”
Clearly, the meticulous efforts of this world-renowned climate specialist call all near-surface global air temperature histories into question. Therefore, until the challenge of very-small-town urban heat island effects is resolved, the so-called ”unprecedented” global warming of the past century, and especially the past quarter-century, cannot be accepted at face value. In all likelihood, the latter two warmings are artificially inflated.
Moving on, DeGaetano and Allen (2002b) used data from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network to calculate trends in the occurrence of maximum and minimum temperatures greater than the 90th, 95th, and 99th percentile across the United States over the period 1960-1996. In the case of daily warm minimum temperatures, the slope of the regression line fit to the data of a plot of the annual number of 95th percentile exceedences vs. year was found to be 0.09 exceedences per year for rural stations, 0.16 for suburban stations, and 0.26 for urban stations, making the rate of increase in extreme warm minimum temperatures at urban stations nearly three times greater than the rate of increase at rural stations less affected by growing urban heat islands. Likewise, the rate of increase in the annual number of daily maximum temperature 95th percentile exceedences per year over the same time period was found to be 50% greater at urban stations than it was at rural stations.
Working on the Arctic Coastal Plain near the Chuckchi Sea at Barrow, Alaska — which is described by Hinkel et al. (2003) as ”the northernmost settlement in the USA and the largest native community in the Arctic,” the population of which ”has grown from about 300 residents in 1900 to more than 4600 in 2000″ — the four researchers installed 54 temperature-recording instruments in mid-June of 2001, half of them within the urban area and the other half distributed across approximately 150 km2 of surrounding land, all of which provided air temperature data at hourly intervals approximately two meters above the surface of the ground. In this paper, they describe the results they obtained for the following winter. Based on urban-rural spatial averages for the entire winter period (December 2001-March 2002), they determined the urban area to be 2.2°C warmer than the rural area. During this period, the mean daily urban-rural temperature difference increased with decreasing temperature, ”reaching a peak value of around 6°C in January-February.” It was also determined that the daily urban-rural temperature difference increased with decreasing wind speed, such that under calm conditions (< 2 m s-1) the daily urban-rural temperature difference was 3.2°C in the winter. Last of all, under simultaneous calm and cold conditions, the urban-rural temperature difference was observed to achieve hourly magnitudes exceeding 9°C.
Four years later, Hinkel and Nelson (2007) reported that for the period 1 December to 31 March of four consecutive winters, the spatially-averaged temperature of the urban area of Barrow was about 2°C warmer than that of the rural area, and that it was not uncommon for the daily magnitude of the urban heat island to exceed 4°C. In fact, they say that on some days the magnitude of the urban heat island exceeded 6°C, and that values in excess of 8°C were sometimes recorded, while noting that the warmest individual site temperatures were ”consistently observed in the urban core area.”
These results indicate just how difficult it is to measure a background global temperature increase that is believed to have been less than 1°C over the past century (representing a warming of less than 0.1°C per decade), when the presence of a mere 4500 people can create a winter heat island that may be two orders of magnitude greater than the signal being sought. Clearly, there is no way that temperature measurements made within the range of influence of even a small village can be adjusted to the degree of accuracy that is required to reveal the true magnitude of the pristine rural temperature change.
Moving south, we find Ziska et al. (2004) working within and around Baltimore, Maryland, where they characterized the gradual changes that occur in a number of environmental variables as one moves from a rural location (a farm approximately 50 km from the city center) to a suburban location (a park approximately 10 km from the city center) to an urban location (the Baltimore Science Center approximately 0.5 km from the city center). At each of these locations, four 2 x 2 m plots were excavated to a depth of about 1.1 m, after which they were filled with identical soils, the top layers of which contained seeds of naturally-occurring plants of the area. These seeds sprouted in the spring of the year, and the plants they produced were allowed to grow until they senesced in the fall, after which all of them were cut at ground level, removed, dried and weighed.
Ziska et al. report that along the rural-to-suburban-to-urban transect, the only consistent differences in the environmental variables they measured were a rural-to-urban increase of 21% in average daytime atmospheric CO2 concentration and increases of 1.6 and 3.3°C in maximum (daytime) and minimum (nighttime) daily temperatures, respectively, which changes, in their words, are ”consistent with most short-term (~50 year) global change scenarios regarding CO2 concentration and air temperature.” In addition, they determined that ”productivity, determined as final above-ground biomass, and maximum plant height were positively affected by daytime and soil temperatures as well as enhanced CO2, increasing 60 and 115% for the suburban and urban sites, respectively, relative to the rural site.”
The three researchers say their results suggest that ”urban environments may act as a reasonable surrogate for investigating future climatic change in vegetative communities,” and those results indicate that the twin evils of the radical environmentalist movement (rising air temperatures and CO2 concentrations) tend to produce dramatic increases in the productivity of the natural ecosystems typical of the greater Baltimore area and, by inference, probably those of many other areas as well.
Three years later, George et al. (2007) reported on five years of work at the same three transect locations, stating that ”atmospheric CO2 was consistently and significantly increased on average by 66 ppm from the rural to the urban site over the five years of the study,” and that ”air temperature was also consistently and significantly higher at the urban site (14.8°C) compared to the suburban (13.6°C) and rural (12.7°C) sites.” And they again noted that the increases in atmospheric CO2 and air temperature they observed ”are similar to changes predicted in the short term with global climate change, therefore providing an environment suitable for studying future effects of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems,” specifically noting that ”urban areas are currently experiencing elevated atmospheric CO2 and temperature levels that can significantly affect plant growth compared to rural areas.” Consequently, for the 80% of the U.S. population that reside in urban areas, the future (environmentally speaking) is now, and it’s good for earth’s plants.
Working further south still, LaDochy et al. (2007) report that ”when speculating on how global warming would impact the state [of California], climate change models and assessments often assume that the influence would be uniform (Hansen et al., 1998; Hayhoe et al., 2004; Leung et al., 2004).” Feeling a need to assess the validity of this assumption, they calculated temperature trends over the 50-year period 1950-2000 to explore the extent of warming in various sub-regions of the state, after which they attempted to evaluate the influence of human-induced changes to the landscape on the observed temperature trends, and determine their significance compared to those caused by changes in atmospheric composition, such as the air’s CO2 concentration.
In pursuing this protocol, the three researchers found that ”most regions showed a stronger increase in minimum temperatures than with mean and maximum temperatures,” and that ”areas of intensive urbanization showed the largest positive trends, while rural, non-agricultural regions showed the least warming.” In fact, they report that the Northeast Interior Basins of the state actually experienced cooling. Large urban sites, on the other hand, exhibited rates of warming ”over twice those for the state, for the mean maximum temperature, and over five times the state’s mean rate for the minimum temperature.” Consequently, they concluded that ”if we assume that global warming affects all regions of the state, then the small increases seen in rural stations can be an estimate of this general warming pattern over land,” which implies that ”larger increases,” such as those they observed in areas of intensive urbanization, ”must then be due to local or regional surface changes.”
Noting that ”breezy cities on small tropical islands … may not be exempt from the same local climate change effects and urban heat island effects seen in large continental cities,” Gonzalez et al. (2005) describe the results of their research into this topic, which they conducted in and about San Juan, Puerto Rico. In this particular study, a NASA Learjet — carrying the Airborne Thermal and Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS) that operates in visual and infrared wavebands — flew several flight lines, both day and night, over the San Juan metropolitan area, the El Yunque National Forest east of San Juan, plus other nearby areas, obtaining surface temperatures, while strategically-placed ground instruments recorded local air temperatures. This work revealed that surface temperature differences between urbanized areas and limited vegetated areas were higher than 30°C during daytime, creating an urban heat island with ”the peak of the high temperature dome exactly over the commercial area of downtown,” where noontime air temperatures were as much a 3°C greater than those of surrounding rural areas. In addition, the eleven researchers report that ”a recent climatological analysis of the surface [air] temperature of the city has revealed that the local temperature has been increasing over the neighboring vegetated areas at a rate of 0.06°C per year for the past 30 years.”
In discussing their findings, Gonzalez et al. state that ”the urban heat island dominates the sea breeze effects in downtown areas,” and they say that ”trends similar to those reported in [their] article may be expected in the future as coastal cities become more populated.” Indeed, it is probable that this phenomenon has long been operative in coastal cities around the world, helping to erroneously inflate the surface air temperature record of the planet and contributing to the infamous hockeystick representation of this parameter that has been so highly touted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
One year later, Velazquez-Lozada et al. (2006) evaluated the thermal impacts of historical land cover and land use (LCLU) changes in San Juan, Puerto Rico over the last four decades of the 20th century via an analysis of air temperatures measured at a height of approximately two meters above ground level within four different LCLU types (urban-coastal, rural-inland, rural-coastal and urban-inland), after which they estimated what the strength of the urban heat island might be in the year 2050, based on anticipated LCLU changes and a model predicated upon their data of the past 40 years. In doing so, their work revealed ”the existence of an urban heat island in the tropical coastal city of San Juan, Puerto Rico that has been increasing at a rate of 0.06°C per year for the last 40 years.” In addition, they report that predicted LCLU changes between now and 2050 will lead to an urban heat island effect ”as high as 8°C for the year 2050.”
Last of all, and noting that a mass population migration from rural Mexico into medium- and large-sized cities took place throughout the second half of the 20th century, Jáuregui (2005) examined the effect of this rapid urbanization on city air temperatures, analyzing the 1950-1990 minimum air temperature series of seven large cities with populations in excess of a million people and seven medium-sized cities with populations ranging from 125,000 to 700,000 people. This work indicated that temperature trends were positive at all locations, ranging from 0.02°C per decade to 0.74°C per decade. Grouped by population, the average trend for the seven large cities was 0.57°C per decade, while the average trend for the seven mid-sized cities was 0.37°C per decade.
In discussing these results, Jáuregui says they ”suggest that the accelerated urbanization process in recent decades may have substantially contributed to the warming of the urban air observed in large cities in Mexico.” Once again, therefore, we are reminded of the huge magnitude of the urban heat island effect compared to the global warming of the past century, as well as the urban heat island’s dependence upon the nature of the urban landscape. And this fact further suggests to us that it is next to impossible to adequately adjust surface air temperature measurements made within an urban area to the degree of accuracy required to correctly quantify background or rural climate change, which may well be an order of magnitude or two smaller than the perturbing effect of the city.
In conclusion, the results of these several North American studies demonstrate that the impact of population growth on the urban heat island effect is very real and can be very large, vastly overshadowing the effects of natural temperature change. In addition, over three decades ago Oke (1973) demonstrated (as has also been demonstrated by several of the studies reviewed above) that towns with as few as a thousand inhabitants typically create a warming of the air within them that ismore than twice as great as the increase in mean global air temperature believed to have occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age, while the urban heat islands of the great metropolises of the world create warmings that rival those that occur between full-fledged ice ages and interglacials!
So what have we learned about the urban heat island effect from data obtained in North America? We’ve learned that it is large and growing in large-and-growing cities, as well as in small towns. Given these undeniable facts, it is presumptuous in the extreme to believe that the global surface air temperature record of the last few decades has been adequately adjusted for small-town and large-city heat island effects; and we can thus be fairly confident that the true warming of the planet has likely been far less than what has been claimed by essentially all assessments of the phenomenon conducted to date.
References
Changnon, S.A. 1999. A rare long record of deep soil temperatures defines temporal temperature changes and an urban heat island. Climatic Change 42: 531-538.
DeGaetano, A.T. and Allen, R.J. 2002. Trends in twentieth-century temperature extremes across the United States. Journal of Climate 15: 3188-3205.
Dow, C.L. and DeWalle, D.R. 2000. Trends in evaporation and Bowen ratio on urbanizing watersheds in eastern United States. Water Resources Research 36: 1835-1843.
George, K., Ziska, L.H., Bunce, J.A. and Quebedeaux, B. 2007. Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature across an urban-rural transect. Atmospheric Environment 41: 7654-7665.
Gonzalez, J.E., Luvall, J.C., Rickman, D., Comarazamy, D., Picon, A., Harmsen, E., Parsiani, H., Vasquez, R.E., Ramirez, N., Williams, R. and Waide, R.W. 2005. Urban heat islands developing in coastal tropical cities. EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 86: 397,403.
Hansen, J., Sato, M., Glascoe, J. and Ruedy, R. 1998. A commonsense climatic index: Is climate change noticeable? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 95: 4113-4120.
Hayhoe, K., Cayan, D., Field, C.B., Frumhoff, P.C. et al. 2004. Emissions, pathways, climate change, and impacts on California. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101: 12,422-12,427.
Hinkel, K.M. and Nelson, F.E. 2007. Anthropogenic heat island at Barrow, Alaska, during winter: 2001-2005. Journal of Geophysical Research 112: 10.1029/2006JD007837.
Hinkel, K.M., Nelson, F.E., Klene, A.E. and Bell, J.H. 2003. The urban heat island in winter at Barrow, Alaska. International Journal of Climatology 23: 1889-1905.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 1995. Climate Change 1995, The Science of Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Jáuregui, E. 2005. Possible impact of urbanization on the thermal climate of some large cities in Mexico. Atmosfera 18: 249-252.
LaDochy, S., Medina, R. and Patzert, W. 2007. Recent California climate variability: spatial and temporal patterns in temperature trends. Climate Research 33: 159-169.
Leung, L.R., Qian, Y., Bian, X., Washington, W.M., Han, J. and Roads, J.O. 2004. Mid-century ensemble regional climate change scenarios for the western United States. Climatic Change 62: 75-113.
Maul, G.A. and Davis, A.M. 2001. Seawater temperature trends at USA tide gauge sites. Geophysical Research Letters 28: 3935-3937.
Oke, T.R. 1973. City size and the urban heat island. Atmospheric Environment 7: 769-779.
Streutker, D.R. 2003. Satellite-measured growth of the urban heat island of Houston, Texas. Remote Sensing of Environment 85: 282-289.
Velazquez-Lozada, A., Gonzalez, J.E. and Winter, A. 2006. Urban heat island effect analysis for San Juan, Puerto Rico. Atmospheric Environment 40: 1731-1741.
Ziska, L.H., Bunce, J.A. and Goins, E.W. 2004. Characterization of an urban-rural CO2/temperature gradient and associated changes in initial plant productivity during secondary succession. Oecologia 139: 454-458.
Here is a very good example of the Urban Heat Effect (or Urban Heat Island) which according to the Global warming Hysterics doesn’t exist and in no way influences temperature measurements.
It is from Reno, NV. And it shows the difference in temperature from the countryside outside the city to downtown Reno.
Wouldn’t you say that this effect is VERY BIG for “not existing”?
And don’t you think it has an impact on the official temperature measurements?
I have in previous post shown other examples of this “nonexistent effect” . (See Central Park, New York).
