Tag: News

Excerpted from The Daily Express

THE Meteorological Office was last night facing accusations it cherry-picked climate change figures in a bid to increase evidence of global warming.

UK climatologists “probably tampered with Russian-climate data” to produce a report submitted to world leaders at this week’s Copenhagen summit, it is claimed.

The Met Office’s study, which says the first decade of this century has been the warmest on record for 160 years, is being used to trumpet claims that man is causing global warming.

But experts at the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis say the British dossier used statistics from weather stations that fit its theory of global warming, while ignoring those that do not.

They accuse the Met Office’s Hadley Centre of relying on just 25 per cent of Russia’s weather stations and over-estimating warming in the country by more than half a degree Celsius.

Last night, leading global warming sceptic Dr Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, said: “I have long suspected that this selective fiddle took place but have not assembled all the evidence.

“We know, and have published, that between 1975 and 2000 the number of weather stations was reduced from nearly 7,000 to only 3,000 with many of them in the former Soviet Union.

“The effect of this would be to produce an artificial temperature trend which we don’t see in the satellite data. So the warming of the past 30 years is likely to be an illusion.”

Professor Patrick Michaels, an environmentalist from the Cato Institute in Washington, said: “There is a significant lack of data coming from Russia in the last decade and a half.

“There will be many questions in the future about any reports that use what data there is. We want to know more about the Hadley Centre’s report but they won’t show us the raw data.”

The IEA’s report claims the Hadley Centre used incomplete findings from Russian meteorological stations “far more often than those providing complete observations” in order to build up a picture of overall warming.

It said the Hadley data overestimated warming in Russia by up to 0.64C between the 1870s and 1990s.

“Analysing the temperature trends received from Met stations, it is hard to get rid of the impression that they do not show any noticeable trend to warming in second half of the 20th and beginning of 21st centuries,” the IEA said.

It also said that since Russia was the world’s biggest country, any global theories drawn from its incomplete weather statistics would be invalid.

Russia’s semi-official RIA Novosti news agency said the Hadley Centre “probably tampered with Russian- climate data” by using statistics from only a quarter of available weather stations.

The Met Office data follows the row over hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia, seized upon by global warming sceptics as evidence that academics were massaging the figures.

On Monday the Daily Express revealed a dossier by the respected European Foundation think-tank detailing 100 reasons why global warming is a natural cyclical event.

And in a recent poll of readers 98 per cent said they believed they were being conned over global warming.

Source

By Martyn Brown

CAMPAIGNERS yesterday attempted to pour scorn on “tenuous” global warming theories by issuing a dossier detailing 100 reasons why climate change is natural and not man-made. The list includes the controversial claim that there is “no scientific proof” that rising levels of greenhouse gases are caused by human activity. **SEE THE 100 REASONS HERE**
The report, by the respected European Foundation, also argues that a higher level of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main greenhouse gas – is not a problem because it helps to boost crop yields. And it claims that the warming we are now experiencing is “mostly natural”, pointing to historic shifts in the climate such as when Vikings farmed on Greenland in medieval times. Political analyst Jim McConalogue, who wrote the report, said: “This demonstrates how tenuous, improper and indeed false the scientific and political claims are for man-made global warming, from claims that climate change can be controlled by human activity to the proposition that CO2 emissions represent a severe threat to our way of life, when in fact there is little evidence to support any of these claims.” He warned that the Copenhagen climate summit was likely to lead to “nonsensical targets” to reduce emissions, which would result in a “burdensome regulatory agenda”. After Copenhagen, voters around the world “will see what travesty has been done in their name, as foolish politicians and indifferent industry associations have engulfed their countries in emissions legislation”. The report was issued as Gordon Brown prepared to fly out to the 192-nation Copenhagen summit today – two days early – vowing to work “tirelessly” to get a lasting deal. The talks were yesterday plunged into chaos by a half-day walkout by developing nations angry at an alleged “stitch-up” by richer countries who are responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions.Oxfam executive director Jeremy Hobbs said: “Africa has pulled the emergency cord to avoid a train crash at the end of the week. “This not about blocking the talks – it is about whether rich countries are ready to guarantee action on climate change and the survival of people in Africa and across the world.” Meanwhile, former US vice-president Al Gore – who won a Nobel Prize for his work on climate change – told the conference that new data suggested there was a 75 per cent chance the entire Arctic polar ice cap may disappear every summer within seven years. At the weekend the Environment Agency said climate change could empty rivers in southern England of trout and salmon while rising sea levels would destroy the salt marshes and mudflats needed by migrating birds. But at the European Foundation, Mr McConalogue rattled through his explanation of why global warming theories are wrong and insisted that solar activity was primarily responsible for climate change. He said: “Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. We are still not able to control the sun.” The Met Office said the only way to explain the changing climate was through a combination of natural and man-made factors. A spokesman said: “The climate has always and will always change. This natural variability is caused by various cycles, including solar activity, volcanic eruptions and ocean circulations. “Even with these elements factored in to the complex climate projection models run by the Met Office, temperature increases – and perhaps more importantly, the rate of temperature increase – can only be mirrored by the amount of greenhouse gases that are warming the atmosphere. “It is not a coincidence that this rapid warming has occurred since the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century.”

There is hardly unanimity among scientists about global warming or mankind’s role in producing it. But you wouldn’t know it if you just listened to the Obama administration.

By John Lott
As the Climate-gate controversy continues to grow, amid charges of hiding and manipulating data, and suppressing research by academics who challenge global warming, there is one oft-repeated defense: other independent data-sets all reach the same conclusions. “I think everybody is clear on the science. I think scientists are clear on the science … I think that this notion that there’s some debate . . . on the science is kind of silly,” said President Obama’s Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, when asked about the president’s response to the controversy on Monday. Despite the scandal, Britain’s Met, the UK’s National Weather Service, claims: “we remain completely confident in the data. The three independent data sets show a strong correlation is highlighting an increase in global temperatures.” But things are not so clear. It is not just the University of East Anglia data that is at question. There are about 450 academic peer-reviewed journal articles questioning the importance of man-made global warming. The sheer number of scientists rallying against a major intervention to stop carbon dioxide is remarkable. In a petition, more than 30,000 American scientists are urging the U.S. government to reject the Kyoto treaty. Thus, there is hardly the unanimity among scientists about global warming or mankind’s role in producing it. But even for the sake of argument, assuming that there is significant man-made global warming, many academics argue that higher temperatures are actually good. Higher temperatures increase the amount of land to grow food, increase biological diversity, and improve people’s health. Increased carbon dioxide also promotes plant growth. Let’s take the issue of data. The three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report came from the University of East Anglia, NASA, and the British Met Office. As noted in my previous piece for the Fox Forum, the problem of secretiveness is hardly limited to the University of East Anglia. NASA also refuses to give out its data. NASA further refuses to explain mysterious changes in whether the warmest years were in the 1930s or this past decade. The British Met office, too, has been unable to release its data and just announced its plans to begin a three-year investigation of its data since all of its land temperatures data were obtained from the University of East Anglia (ocean temperatures were collected separately), though there are signs that things might be speeded up. Neither the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia nor the British Met are able to provide their raw data to other research scientists because of the confidentiality agreements that Professor Phil Jones at CRU entered into. Unfortunately, Jones did not keep records of those agreements and, according to the British Met, can neither identify the countries with the confidentiality agreements nor provide the agreements. Earlier this year the British Met wrote the following to Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit: “Some of the information was provided to Professor Jones on the strict understanding by the data providers that this station data must not be publicly released and it cannot be determined which countries or stations data were given in confidence as records were not kept.”A press spokesman for the British Met, John Hammond, confirmed this statement in a telephone conversation on Monday to FoxNews.com. But the claimed confidentiality restrictions have hardly been followed consistently. When asked why the University of East Anglia was allowed to release the data to the Met but not to other academics, Mr. Hammond e-mailed back: “This is a question for the UEA.” Unfortunately, however, neither the University of East Anglia nor anyone associated with the CRU was willing to answer any questions about the climate research conducted at the university. But why would countries want confidentiality agreements on decades old data that they are providing? “Climate data continues to have value so long as it is commercially confidential,” Mr. Hammond says. But when pushed for evidence that this was in fact the concerns that countries had raised, Mr. Hammond said: “Although I do not have evidence to hand at the moment, some nations, especially in Africa for example, believe that the information does have commercial value.” Earlier, in July, the Met had raised a different issue — that scientists in other countries would be less willing to share their scientific research if the Met could be expected to pass on the data to others. However, professional meterologists are unimpressed by the claimed reasons for confidentiality. “Research data used as the basis for scientific research needs to be disclosed if other scientists are to be able to verify the work of others,” Mike Steinberg, Senior Vice President, AccuWeather, told FoxNews.com. In addition, while the data access may be restricted in some countries because they sell data and forecasts, that doesn’t explain why the data isn’t released for all other countries. It is not just the University of East Anglia that has been accused of massaging the data (what they called creating “value added” data). Recently, New Zealand has also had its temperature series from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) challenged. Still the NIWA continues to insist that the “Warming over New Zealand through the past is unequivocal.” Indeed, the institute claims that the New Zealand warming trend was 50 percent higher than the global average. But the difference in graphs between what NIWA produced after massaging the data and what the original raw data showed was truly remarkable and can be seen here. As the Climate Science Coalition of New Zealand charged: “The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below.” Similar concerns have also been raised about Australian temperature data. Global warming advocates may believe that if they just keep shouting that everyone agrees with them, they will be able to enact their far-reaching regulations before everyone catches on. With President Obama’s — and the Democrats’ — fondness for more spending and increased regulations, our hope may have to rest with India and China to finally bring the Copenhagen conference to its senses. John R. Lott, Jr.is a FoxNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of “Freedomnomics.”Source