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Yet Another IPCC claim busted

The situation for the IPCC is getting worse everyday, after having to admit they got it wrong about the Himalayan glacier melting they are now facing another scandal. It’s now come out that the IPCC based its claim that Global Warming was causing more natural disasters was based on an “unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny – and ignored warnings from scientific advisers.”

The IPCC has know this since 2008. This is huge since it was the primary reason that the African nations were demanding $100 billion dollars from the U.S. during the Copenhagen summit.

Source by Kristin McMurray

UK Parliament to investigate Climategate

For those of you following the Climategate scandal (and if you haven’t bought our book on the subject yet, you can do so by clicking here: Climategate: The CRUtape Letters), this may be of some interest. The Select Committee on Science and Technology will be investigating Climategate. They have three areas of focus, as explained below. What implications does the scandal have for the integrity of scientific research, is the previously announced review likely to be adequate and most importantly, how independent are the other two international data sets? Unlike many UK investigations, this one might be fruitful, as it is not looking for someone to blame–it’s looking for ways of fixing a system. They are inviting your submissions. See below for details. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE
Select Committee Announcement

22 January 2010

NEW INQUIRY

THE DISCLOSURE OF CLIMATE DATA FROM THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH UNIT AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

The Science and Technology Committee today announces an inquiry into the
unauthorised publication of data, emails and documents relating to the
work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East
Anglia (UEA). The Committee has agreed to examine and invite written
submissions on three questions:
– What are the implications of the disclosures for the
integrity of scientific research?
– Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent
Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate (see below)?
– How independent are the other two international data
sets? (footnote 1)

The Committee intends to hold an oral evidence session in March 2010.

Background

On 1 December 2009 Phil Willis, Chairman of the Science and Technology
Committee, wrote to Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor of UEA
following the considerable press coverage of the data, emails and
documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The
coverage alleged that data may have been manipulated or deleted in order
to produce evidence on global warming. On 3 December the UEA announced
an Independent Review into the allegations to be headed by Sir Muir
Russell.

The Independent Review will:

1. Examine the hacked e-mail exchanges, other relevant e-mail exchanges
and any other information held at CRU 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.

2. Review CRU’s policies and practices for acquiring, assembling,
subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings,
and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice.

3. Review CRU’s compliance or otherwise with the University’s policies
and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act
(‘the FOIA’) and the Environmental Information Regulations (‘the EIR’)
for the release of data.

4. Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management,
governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity
and release of the data it holds. (footnote 2)

Submissions

The Committee invites written submissions from interested parties on the
three questions set out above by noon on Wednesday 10 February:

Each submission should:
a) be no more than 3,000 words in length
b) be in Word format (no later than 2003) with as little use of
colour or logos as possible
c) have numbered paragraphs
d) include a declaration of interests.

A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to
scitechcom@parliament.uk and marked “Climatic Research Unit”. An
additional paper copy should be sent to:

The Clerk
Science and Technology Committee House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA

It would be helpful, for Data Protection purposes, if individuals
submitting written evidence send their contact details separately in a
covering letter. You should be aware that there may be circumstances in
which the House of Commons will be required to communicate information
to third parties on request, in order to comply with its obligations
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.Source by Thomas Fuller

The Hippy Dippy Doomsday Clock

By Alan Caruba

Largely unnoticed was the January 14 announcement by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that they had moved the hands of their imaginary Doomsday Clock back to six minutes from five minutes before the end of the world. Whoopee.

Created in 1945, the clock has been adjusted only eighteen times prior to the latest change. The Bulletin was created in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. The Clock was introduced in 1947 “to convey both the imagery of apocalypse” at midnight “and “the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion” in a countdown to zero.”

The decisions about the Clock are made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, eighteen of whom are Nobel Prize Laureates. Considering the way elements of the Nobel Prize, particular its Peace Prize, have been totally politicized and degraded with awards to Al Gore, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and most recently to Barack Obama, this latter citation is not encouraging.

Even less encouraging is the utter blindness of the decision in the face of Iran’s long quest to create nuclear weapons with which to threaten the entire Middle East, Israel in particular, Europe via long-range missiles, and America with a nuclear device.

The Bulletin further disgraces itself by combining the threat of nuclear weapons with the thoroughly discredited fraud of “global warming”, now called climate change. The Bulletin made it clear that the geniuses behind it believe that they are encouraged by the pledges of “industrialized and developing countries alike…to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable.”

It just doesn’t get more stupid than that, given the recent UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen that thankfully achieved a big fat nothing and occurred during a blizzard that forced the President and other American delegates to flee before being snowed in or unable to land in the U.S., far across the Atlantic where yet another blizzard was in progress.

Coinciding with the Climate Conference was the revelation that the IPCC’s data was largely falsified by the handful of scientists in control of its reports of global warming doom and gloom. It was and is a Big Fat Lie.

So, the nuclear threat, a real one, and the global warming/climate change threat, an invented one, were addressed with the unalloyed optimism of the Bulletin scientists. They literally managed to ignore all the actual facts regarding both.

Perhaps most astonishing about the January 14 announcement was the “man crush” the Bulletin’s directors have on Barack Obama.

“A key to the new era of cooperation is a change in the U.S. government’s orientation toward international affairs brought about in part by the election of Obama.” The elections of Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey, in addition to Tuesday’s election of a new, Republican Senator to represent Massachusetts suggests that even the voters of that most liberal State are not nearly as impressed with Obama. The plunging national approval ratings of the President’s performance further confirm this.

Among the comments included in the Bulletin’s announcement were those like Stephen Schneider who said “We can no longer prevent global warming…it is upon us.” No, it’s not. The planet is in a natural cooling cycle that began in 1998. Where Schneider has been since then is anyone’s guess. Perhaps on some other planet!

Others like Pervez Hoodboy of the physics department at a Pakistan university said, “We may be at a turning point, where major powers realize that nuclear weapons are useless for war-fighting or even for deterrence.” Tell that the Supreme Ayatollah of Iran.

What the Bulletin reveals is the way a PhD in a specific and narrow field of endeavor does not qualify a scientist to comment on anything other than his own sliver of expertise and, even then, you better get a second opinion.

Wishful thinking, sloppy indifference to obvious facts and events, and the conviction that their advanced degrees allow them to pontificate on the end of the world is the hallmark of the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock.

It is time to unplug it and pay attention to what is really happening in the world

Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jan. 21st 2010

A Miss World wants us all to go vegan, a city in the north of England may be hugely improved by global warming and the Met Office explains how it ensures the world is always warmer. But first, a correction from last week, when I suggested the Doomsday Clock had moved forward. it didn’t, it went backward. But I’m still right twice daily.

Part One: Al Gore & Friends

Font-tastic! Not only did Al Gore’s latest book bring us photo-shopped doom on the cover, it also needed a whole new font. Apparently the global warming prophet was unconvinced that his ecoangelical message could be conveyed properly if a number 1 looked like a capital I, so Al had a new font designed. When Al Gore and George Soros are in a room together, can that be good news for anyone? Al gets all conspiracy wee-wee’d up and wants, nay, demands to know who is behind the Murkowski amendment. He cites evidence that the folks are ‘deniers’ and pushes readers to sign his Repower America petition. Tell you what, Al, how about you explain to the world where you found $300 million for the Repower America effort before you go pointing fingers? Al Gore has taken a page from President Obama and has purchased a large bus so that he can throw inconvenient people under it. The first to disappear under the Gaia-wagon wheels is Pat Robertson, presumably for his dopey declaration about Haiti’s deal with the devil. Al Gore dialed down the rhetoric, ahem, ‘mispoke’ about the great ice-free Arctic and corrected himself. It’s not a new story, but somehow I missed it before and just cannot let a Gore facepalm moment go to waste. Poor Al, he’s dropped 4 places on the influential liberals list. Not to worry, by this time next year, there might not be anyone on the list. Heh. Apple, the smuggest tech company on the planet, may not be as green as you think.

Part Two: AGW Scaremongers

Some enterprising fellow has read all of the Climategate emails so you don’t have to. Simon spent $15 and found that what makes the headlines from a study is not exactly the same thing that the study actually finds, inconveniently. The IPCC has admitted that it’s headline making prediction about melting Himalayan glaciers was bunk. You won’t be surprised to know that the terrorist-loving WWF had a hand in this sordid tale. When world leaders met in Copenhagen last month, we were told endless times that it was the last chance for the planet, that certain doom would befall the world if nothing was done. Well, nothing was done, but the UN believes that the issue is so urgent that it’s dropping the deadline for countries to sign up. Wait, what?

Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month’s fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a “soft” deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. “I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].

Another green activist is in jail this week. He’s driving a bus around the world because apparently you can save the planet that way and was arrested because he had no idea that his satellite phone was illegal. Add that to the list of many things that Andy Pag doesn’t know. Richard North has his sights set on a certain railway engineer and leader of the UN IPCC. I recommend you read the work North is doing to expose Pachauri’s conflicts of interest, it’s astounding, and if you have time, this week’s must read FLOTUS, the Klingon warrior bride of POTUS, pulled a fast one with some veggies for a TV show.

from Star Trek 6 ‘the undiscovered cucumber’

A Miss World contestant wants us all to go vegan. A spokeshead for her TV show said: “”The station promotes a vegan diet as the fastest way to cool the planet, slow down global warming and influence climate change.” It’s a magical trifecta! The miss world contestant is the daughter of Chris DeBurgh, the uni-brow singer of Lady in Red, a song I’d happily play in endless loops to Guantanemo inmates.Read the rest over at The Daily bayonet!

As Global Warming Movement Collapses, Activists Already 'Test-Marketing' the Next Eco-Fear

By Marc Morano

Climate Depot Editorial As the man-made global warming fear movement collapses and the climate establishment lay in a Climategate ridden tatters, many are asking what next? (For latest on climate movement’s demise go to www.ClimateDepot.com)
As man-made global warming fears enter the ashbin of history, what will environmentalists, UN activists and politicians do to fill the void of a failed eco-scare?
Well, wonder no more….
Some forward thinking green activists and even the UN climate Chief have already taken up the task of test-marketing the next eco-scares to replace man-made global warming.
 One of the most prominent eco-scares now being quietly promoted behind man-made climate fears is the allegedly “growing” nitrous oxide (a.k.a. “laughing gas”) threat to the planet. See: Time for next eco-scare already?! ‘Earth’s growing nitrogen threat’: ‘It helps feed a hungry world, but it’s worse than CO2’The Christian Science Monitor – January 12, 2010 – Excerpt: Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide – considered the leading cause of climate change – and the third most threatening greenhouse gas overall. As man-made climate fears subside and the scientific, economic, cultural and political case evaporates for climate change “action,” expect more and more green activists to take up the mantle for “laughing gas” as a possible replacement eco-scare.
See also: Laughing Gas Knocks Out CO2 – By Doug Hoffman – Oct. 30, 2009 – Excerpt: “In the face of ever mounting evidence that CO2 is incapable of causing the level of global devastation prophesied by climate change catastrophists a new villain is being sought. The leading candidate is nitrous oxide (N2O), better known as laughing gas. A report in Science claims that N2O emissions are currently the single most important cause of ozone depletion and are expected to remain so throughout the 21st century. The IPCC rates N2O as 310 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 on a 100 year time scale. Is this a greenhouse gas bait and switch, or are the global warming alarmists trying to up the ante.”
Still can’t picture former Vice President Al Gore touting the “laughing gas” crisis as the “moral” challenge of our time in a Oscar-winning documentary? Not to worry, there are many more eco-scares currently being test-marketed.
Gore’s own producer of “An Inconvenient Truth” — Hollywood eco-activist Laurie David — is already test-marketing another eco-scare with potential promise.
“One Word: Plastics.” Yes, just 43 years after the 1967 film “The Graduate”, “plastics” just may be the future! See: AGW RIP? Is It Time for Next Eco-Scare Already? Gore’s producer Laure David touts plastic crisis: ‘Plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming’ – July 31, 2009
 “The rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.,” Laurie David wrote on July 31, 2009. Selected Excerpts From David’s blog post: “This insidious invasion of the biosphere by our plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming. Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath. Plastic, though present in the biosphere from the nano scale on up, is too stable a molecule for any organism to fully assimilate or biodegrade. So we have a situation in which a vector for a suite of devastating chemicals, chemicals implicated in many modern diseases, is now invading the ocean, our bodies and indeed, the entire biosphere. The prognosis for improvement in this situation is grim.”
Still not convinced of either “laughing gas” or “plastics” as the next dominant eco-scare? Don’t worry, we are just getting started. Just how widespread is the test marketing of a new eco-scare to replace the flailing global warming movement? It now has the attention of the beleaguered head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri.
In a remarkable posting on his personal blog, Pachauri openly admitted that man-made global warming was not even the biggest eco-issue! See: Et tu? Head of UN IPCC Pachauri Now throwing global warming under the bus?! There is a ‘larger problem’ than climate fears?! – November 23, 2009
 Pachauri wrote on November 23, 2009: “The question is whether the additional time that the world would now have to arrive at an agreement at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico will give us time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom. Human society cannot continue to ignore the vital dependence that exists between human welfare and the health of our natural resources.” The UK Green Party and a UN advisor are already concocting yet another potential new eco-scare that may be an easy transition from failed global warming fears. See: UK Green Party: ‘There exists a more serious crisis than the ‘CO2 crisis’: the oxygen levels are dropping and the human activity has decreased them by 1/3 or ½ – By Peter Tatchell of the UK Green party – UK Guardian – August 13, 2008
 Excerpt: “In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes: Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.”
Wow. Imagine scaring school children with suffocation due to our modern way of life! Documentaries, text books and Hollywood could really instill fear in the kids and adults with scary predictions of Mom and Dad choking to death due to a lack of oxygen created by evil modern society. Mom and Dad turning blue and suffering fatal convulsions sure beats the emotional imagery of a Polar Bear drowning or a building be flooded to due to rising seas. Keep your eye on this one, it just may get some traction.

Ok. Let’s assume now that one of the above or yet another not ready for prime time eco-fear catches on, how would the environmental activists go about selling this eco-scare to the public?
For an answer, let’s review a few of the failed eco-alarms of the past 40 years.
The Global Cooling Scare of 1970’s offers vital clues about how the “search-and-replace” tactics are utilized by eco-fear promoters. See: 1974 CIA report on Global Cooling: ‘Embarrassing reading’: ‘All AGW scares are a search-and-replace job from ‘cooling’ to ‘warming’ – Dec. 3, 2009 & Climate Depot’s Factsheet on 1970s Coming ‘Ice Age’ Claims – Oct. 6, 2009
 Ever wonder how Gore and the UN would hype a “tipping point” for various new eco-scares? Newsweek Magazine first used the climate “tipping point” argument in 1975 to urge action to prevent man-made global cooling. Newsweek wrote April 28, 1975 article: “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”
Yes, quite literally “a search-and-replace job from cooling to warming.” Also See: Not again! Another 10-year climate ‘tipping point’ warning issued — Despite fact that UN began 10-Year ‘Climate Tipping Point’ in 1989! Climate Depot Factsheet on Inconvenient History of Global Warming ‘Tipping Points’ — Earth ‘Serially Doomed’ – Nov. 15, 2009
 Overpopulation Fears Overpopulation fears have jumped all over the place in recent years. See: Grist Mag. Going Down: Is too few people the new ‘population problem?’ – December 14, 2005 and Could Overpopulation Save The Earth From Global Warming? June 15, 2009. Overpopulation fears can be played any which way advocates would like. Even the guru of overpopulation fears eventually admitted his silliness. See: An Admission finally! ‘The Population Bomb’s’ Paul Ehrlich: ‘I wish I’d taken more math in high school and college. That would have been useful’ – ‘If he were writing ‘The Population Bomb’ now, he’d be more careful about predictions’ – Oct. 8, 2009 – Also see: Climate Depot’s Overpopulation factsheet – August 21, 2009
 Amazon Rainforest Scare The allegedly disappearing rainforest scare was the environmental issue du jour in the 1980’s and 1990’s, long before climate fears took center stage. In fact, In 2000, Climate Depot’s Executive Editor Marc Morano was producer and correspondent for a documentary debunking the myths about the rainforests. Morano’s “Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths” was greeted with massive controversy. But, just nine years later, the rainforest scare was kaput.

See: Jan. 30, 2009: New York Times: ‘Galloping jungle’: Farmlands revert back to nature as saving the rainforests becomes ‘less urgent’ – ‘For every acre of rainforest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing’
NYT Excerpt: Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s – and much larger swaths of farmland – are reverting back to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings. These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest – an iconic environmental cause – may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster. “There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.
Also see: ‘Save the trees’ more political myth than environmental truth – Jan. 2009
 Old eco-scares don’t die, they just fade away. The failed rainforest scare inspired this 2009 satire of the death of global warming movement. Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano
 Other eco-scares that did not pan out include the 1970 and 8190’s baseless scares about resource scarcity and predictions of famine. (Excerpt: The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Julian Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.) Plus other eco-scares like “ocean acidification” and others too numerous to mention.
It will be a compelling battle to try and replace the mother of all eco-scares — man-made global warming — but Climate Depot is confident that one of these test-marketed new eco-issues will catch on and you may soon see massive denials from environmentalists and UN officials that claims of a man-made global warming crisis never really existed (echoing the claims that there was no widespread concern about global cooling in the 1970’s) See: Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano
 Already we have some of the most insulting attempts to shift the focus away from the “warming” aspect of “global warming.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) — in true “Climate Astrology” fashion — dismissed the lack of global warming on March 4, 2009 by declaring: “Climate change is not just about temperatures going up. It’s also about volatility.”
Not to be outdone, Sen. Stabenow followed up her climate analysis with this claim about touchy-feely warming: “Global warming creates volatility and I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile,” Sen. Stabenow explained in August 11, 2009.
No wonder, climate fear promoters are now openly demanding exaggeration and wishing for death and destruction to convince the public of man-made climate fears. “You have to find ways to exaggerate the threat,” Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Thomas Schelling said in a July 14, 2009 interview with The Atlantic.
Lest there be any doubt that desperation time has set in for the promoters of man-made climate fears, Schelling removed it.

Schelling continued: “I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening — you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth — that would get people very concerned about climate change.”

Let’s get this straight. A prominent promoter of man-made global warming is now openly wishing for death and destruction of Americans in order to convince them that man-made global warming is a threat? Climate Depot encourages Schelling and Sen. Stabenow to continue their utter climate silliness. Quite simply, alarmism leads to skepticism. No wonder more ‘More Americans believe in haunted houses than man-made global warming’.

In the end, science rules the day.
Related Links: Climategate Prompts UN scientists turn on each other – Nov. 27, 2009) Oct 2009: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears

Via email

Children may be eaten by global warming alligators in New York


By Phelim McAleer, Not Evil Just Wrong

Millions of New Yorkers are in danger because Global Warming is going to lead to an increase in the numbers and mobility of the city’s sewer alligator population, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has announced in its latest assessment report.

According to the IPCC the warmer water and rising sewer levels caused by Global Warming mean that the alligators will breed more and be more like to move out of the sewer system – posing a major health risk to New Yorkers.

The rising number of alligators and their propensity to leave the sewer system will be particularly dangerous to minorities and the children of minorities whose home tend to be near entrances and exits to New York’s sewer system, the IPCC added.

The imminent danger to so many New York children is revealed in the latest IPCC report which looks at the increasing dangers of Global Warming. The IPCC says scientists investigated the threat after it was highlighted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an environmental organization, in a recent report.

The WWF first started looking at the issue when a senior researcher at organisation heard about the presence of the alligators in the sewer system from a colleague during a meeting. On investigation the researcher found that a number of WWF colleagues were aware of the existence of the alligators because many of them had heard that friends of their friends had had close encounters with the reptiles, narrowly escaping injury.

Stories and sightings of alligators in the New York Sewer system first started to emerge at the turn of the last century as it is believed that tourists returning to the city from newly fashionable Florida brought with them the latest must have accessory – pet baby alligators.

However as the cute baby alligators grew into adults they often became too much to handle in cramped New York apartments and it is believed many were released into the sewer system where they have lived and bred living on rats and sewage.

According to Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, the growing threat to the millions of New Yorkers who live around exit and entry points to New York sewers is another example of the unexpected dangers which increasing Global Warming poses for the planet.

“As we have seen from our recent warning about the imminent melting of the Himalayan Glaciers global warming often poses threats to those who are already vulnerable through poverty or deprivation.”

Mr Pachauri added that the threat posed by the increase in numbers and mobility of the sewer alligators needs urgent scientific investigation before parts of New York become uninhabitable because of the danger.

The IPCC chief said he has tasked the TERI foundation of India to immediately investigate and make recommendations.

Mr Pachauri said the TERI foundation would be seeking funding to improve the understanding of how Global Warming threats can be communicated more effectively.

“The growing alligator threat was made known to us because this had actually happened to a friend of a friend of a WWF researcher. We need to make more of this reporting system. Already we are finding it is really useful for identifying dangers to the public in their cars and in their homes.”

“And it is also useful for raising funds for my TERI Foundation,” said a smiling Mr Pachauri.

GLACIERGATE: The disintegration of the IPCC


By Will AlexanderI was in the process of packing my bags for home when there was another explosion on the Internet. The IPCC’s claim that climate change will result in massive melting of the Himalayan glaciers is false. This was disclosed in the UK Sunday Times and rapidly spread to other newspapers and the Internet. The Australian carried a headline article yesterday (Monday) and a full page plus two other articles in this morning’s edition.

This claim is the centrepiece of the IPCC assessment reports as well as Al Gore’s documentary An inconvenient truth.

The IPCC has repeatedly maintained that its conclusions are based on peer-reviewed papers in recognized scientific journals. It has now been disclosed that this claim never passed through the peer-review process.

The following is my summary of the sequence of events derived from media reports of the past two days.

1996. A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences predicted significant Himalayan glacier melting by 2350. Somewhere along the line this was fraudulently transformed to 2035.

1999. An Indian glaciologist Sayed Hasnain speculated in a short telephone interview with the New Scientist that all the glaciers in the central and western Himalayas could soon start disappearing. He did not mention the year of 2035 in his interview.

2005. The environmental group WWF published a report in which it described the New Scientist report as disturbing.

2007. The IPCC published its fourth assessment report. One of the report’s central claims was that the world’s glaciers are melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. It sourced this prediction to the WWF report.

2009. The Indian government reported that there was no substance in claims of large scale melting of the glaciers. The chairman of the IPCC described his government’s report as voodoo science. He has since been widely criticised for his statement.

2010. Hasnain revealed in an interview with the New Scientist that he had never repeated the prediction in a peer-reviewed journal as it was speculative.

There has been no official response to this issue by the IPCC. It cannot afford to remain silent, particularly after the Climategate exposures and the failure of the Copenhagen discussions.

News headlines

When the Climategate scandal broke, the public had difficulty in appreciating its significance. However, Himalayan glaciers like polar bears are readily appreciated. Can the IPCC survive yet another challenge to its scientific honesty and integrity?

The following are some headlines during the past two days.

IPCC IN TROUBLE OVER FALSE CLAIM.

IPCC MISLED WORLD OVER HIMALAYAN GLACIER MELT DOWN.

CLIMATE SCIENCE ON THIN ICE.

GLACIERGATE COULD NOT HAVE COME AT A WORSE TIME FOR THE UNITED NATIONS PEAK BODY ON CLIMATE.

UNITED NATIONS BLUNDER ON GLACIERS EXPOSED.

MELTING CLAIM BASED ON SPECULATION.

UNITED NATIONS GLACIER BLUNDER A 300-YEAR MIX-UP.

UK Sunday Times article

The following is the original exposure in the UK Sunday Times as reported in CCNet of 18 January.

(1) IPCC MISLED WORLD OVER HIMALAYAN GLACIER MELTDOWN
The Sunday Times January 17, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece
Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings

A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. (My emphasis.) The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

The IPCC’s reliance on Hasnain’s 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: “Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.

“Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers. not the whole massif.”

The New Scientist report was apparently forgotten until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China. The report credited Hasnain’s 1999 interview with the New Scientist. But it was a campaigning report rather than an academic paper so it was not subjected to any formal scientific review. Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the Himalayas.

When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was “very high”. The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%.

The report read: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”

However, glaciologists find such figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are far lower.

Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, said: “Even a small glacier such as the Dokriani glacier is up to 120 metres [394ft] thick. A big one would be several hundred metres thick and tens of kilometres long. The average is 300 metres thick so to melt one even at 5 metres a year would take 60 years. That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing now so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistically high.”

Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as “voodoo science”.

Last week the IPCC refused to comment so it has yet to explain how someone who admits to little expertise on glaciers was overseeing such a report. Perhaps its one consolation is that the blunder was spotted by climate scientists who quickly made it public.

The lead role in that process was played by Graham Cogley, a geographer from Trent University in Ontario, Canada, who had long been unhappy with the IPCC’s finding.

He traced the IPCC claim back to the New Scientist and then contacted Pearce. Pearce then re-interviewed Hasnain, who confirmed that his 1999 comments had been “speculative”, and published the update in the New Scientist.

Cogley said: “The reality, that the glaciers are wasting away, is bad enough. But they are not wasting away at the rate suggested by this speculative remark and the IPCC report. The problem is that nobody who studied this material bothered chasing the trail back to the original point when the claim first arose. It is ultimately a trail that leads back to a magazine article and that is not the sort of thing you want to end up in an IPCC report.”

Pearce said the IPCC’s reliance on the WWF was “immensely lazy” and the organisation need to explain itself or back up its prediction with another scientific source. Hasnain could not be reached for comment.

The revelation is the latest crack to appear in the scientific consensus over climate change. It follows the so-called climategate scandal, where British scientists apparently tried to prevent other researchers from accessing key date. Last week another row broke out when the Met Office criticised suggestions that sea levels were likely to rise 1.9m by 2100, suggesting much lower increases were likely.

Copyright 2010, TST

Cease fire

I have received instructions to call it a day and get on with packing my bags.

Via email

Deadly Earth, Deadly Humans

By Alan Caruba

The earthquake in Haiti is a perfect example of the arrogance of environmentalists who are always running around crying “Save the Earth” or making claims that any or all forms of life are going extinct.

For three decades we have listened to these charlatans claim that the Earth was heating up to a point where, if we didn’t cut back or replace all forms of energy, oil, natural gas and coal, it would become a vast desert devoid of life.

Then, in 1998, the Sun began yet another of its eleven year cycles of low sunspot activity, a diminution of magnetic storms on its surface, and the completely predictable result was a new, perfectly natural cooling cycle, a prelude perhaps to a predictable new ice age.

When I do radio, I like to remind listeners that Mother Nature has a message for humankind. It’s “Get out of the way. Here comes an earthquake, a volcano, a flood, a forest fire, a mudslide, a blizzard, a hurricane, et cetera.”

In an excellent book, “Devastation! The World’s Worst Natural Disasters” by Lesley Newson, she starts by noting that “The Earth is a rocky sphere nearly 8,000 miles in diameter. It is surrounded by a shroud of gases more than 60 miles deep. Sandwiched in between is a fragile layer, only a few miles thick, where humans are able to survive. It is perhaps not surprising that in this tiny zone of life there are occasional upheavals that make survival impossible.”

Haiti is the perfect definition of devastation. As bad as the earthquake’s damage has been, the aftermath will be testimony to the way those not killed in the initial quake will fall victim to the diseases that will ravage the area as well as the difficulty to provide immediate medical care. There are an astonishing number of ways humans can die and Mother Nature is utterly indifferent.

What makes matters worse, however, is the indifference of environmentalists who would deny everyone access to the energy sources needed to fuel a complex, technological, global society beginning with the provision of electricity. The Earth is not running out of coal or oil, only the right to mine it and drill for it.

The first thing to go in Haiti was its communications system. The next was the capacity to fuel means of transportation. The lack of a government was nothing compared to the long-standing failure to provide clean water and, worse, the failure to educate Haitians to compete in a world where literacy and modern skills are vital to survival.

Another factor that will kill many Haitian survivors is the spread of disease by insect and rodent pests. Environmentalists have striven to deny Americans and all others access to one of the greatest developments of the modern era, pesticides with which to control the mosquitoes, the ticks, the fleas, the rats and all the other creatures that constantly threaten humanity.

In April 2005, I wrote a commentary, “The Black Plague and its descendants” that was published in The Washington Times. It noted that the Black Death made its way from inner Asia and, in 1347, Yersina pestis arrived in Europe. What followed was the second greatest catastrophe in the human record. By the time it ended around 1352, a quarter of Europe’s population was dead.

Only World War II killed more people. And yet, as this is written, millions die of malaria in Africa and Asia because some bureaucrat in the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT.

History gives ample evidence that the Earth is a dangerous place, in addition to earthquakes, it is ringed by volcanoes and, in the U.S. the beloved Yellowstone National Park is one giant volcanic caldera which, when it explodes, will alter life as well as take it in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Scientists track the nation’s “hurricane season” and all manner of effort is made to anticipate them and warn residents, but even that was not enough when Katrina hit the Gulf States on August 29, 2005.

It is stupid to politicize this event, blaming former President Bush as if he either caused it or failed to respond effectively. No President and no government are prepared for a Category Five hurricane. It was just as stupid not to flee when told it was coming.

It is not for nothing that we call such events “an act of God”, but in reality they are an act of a huge planet, unique among all others in our galaxy because it has spawned all manner of life, including our own.

It is a planet subject to the action or inaction of the Sun. Nothing we do alters that simple fact. It is a planet that must hope to dodge any of the thousands of asteroids that threaten it. It is an Earth whose tectonic plates shift unpredictably. Its interior is unimaginably hot and whose circulation of molten rock carries the heat to the surface, allowing its mantle to keep the core stable.

What I am arguing for is a bit of humility, something that humans are not famous for.

There are six billion of us and the world’s intelligentsia scorns us and seeks ways to ensure as many as possible will die by thwarting the development of genetically modified crops to feed us, by stopping the building of more power generation plants, by making war in the name of a misguided belief in the superiority of a religion like Islam, or the evil desire to grow rich and powerful by ruling vast populations.

In Iran, ruled by certifiably insane ayatollahs, the people are in the streets to overthrow a brutal regime that is determined to create its own nuclear weapons and the world is standing by instead of uniting to destroy their means to do so. A so-called international organization, the United Nations, is shot through with corruption and both unwilling and unable to assert the sanctions to stop the inevitable outcome of doing nothing.

And here in the United States, we have fallen victim to a regime so dedicated to the destruction of the nation’s economy that we wait on the election process to save us from ourselves.

VIDEO: Activist Claims Haiti Earthquake 'Caused by Global Warming'

I knew it was coming! You knew it was coming! Many of us predicted this would happen, and sure enough here we have the actor slash activist Danny Glover telling us that the Haiti earthquake was a direct result of global warming and the Copenhagen failure! How can anyone take these psycho environmental activists seriously anymore? This is ridiculous. But you gotta love the fact the video has over 100,000 views and a rating of only one star. You just made yourself look like the total fool you are, Danny. 😉