Tag: News

“Snowmageddon” Versus “Overwhelming Scientific Evidence”


By Kevin Mooney

Washington D.C. and the Mid-Atlantic States have been hammered by another major snow storm, which exceeds the Dec. 19, 2009 storm that forced President Obama to curtail his time in Copenhagen. This is the first time since record keeping started that two storms of such magnitude have hit the region during one winter. Already some localities are reporting the largest snowfall ever recorded. To be sure, these events do not prove or disprove human caused global warming. But the momentum is now very much on the side of skeptical scientists who question these theories and President Obama should at least pull back from his awkward juxtapositions. Here’s what he said in The State of the Union: “I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy. I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here’s the thing — even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.” On Saturday, during a gathering of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in Washington D.C., Obama called this most recent storm “Snowmaggeddon” putting it on a par with what he experienced in Chicago. Looking ahead to the 2010 mid-term elections, Republicans should make more of an issue out of the “climategate” scandal involving leaked emails Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. It’s always possible to persuade the public on the basis of dire emergencies, which is why scientific evidence undermining alarmism deserves greater expression. The science the EPA has used to justify its finding that human emissions of carbon dioxide endanger public health and welfare should be subjected to vigorous criticism in the coming months. In the Federal Register, EPA states: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. … Global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries.” Last year The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) exposed how the EPA had suppressed a scientific study that concludes natural forces as opposed to human activity are largely responsible for temperature changes. Now is the time to attack the soft underbelly of unsubstantiated global warming alarmism. More snow is on the way tomorrow.
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David Suzuki tries to hijack the Olympics

By Justin Credible

When it rains, it pours. And in the environmental movement, it’s a torrential downpour of idiocy!

With the recent Climategate and Glaciergate scandals, the so-called science of global warming has been rapidly crumbling into oblivion faster than anyone could have ever hoped for. The head of the IPCC has been called out for being just as fraudulent as Al Gore’s claims. Scientists and media have been demanding his resignation and the public is quickly realizing the climate change farce. But somehow, a few stubborn eco-terrorists are still making their crazy claims.

It was bad enough that someone actually blamed global warming for the Haiti earthquake, and now we have an even better funny farm minute for the 2010 Olympics.

Here in the one Canadian city famous for warm winters we are about to begin the Winter Games. There is little snow on Cypress Mountain, which happens every few years normally. I know, I worked there for years. The mountain is less than 20 minutes from Vancouver beaches. Warm? Huh? It’s not rocket climate science. So of course, all we really wanted now was for some anti-carbon scaremonger to blame it all on alleged global warming.

And sure enough, we just got it! The predictable alarmist (not climatologist) David Suzuki jumped all over the chance to make the absurd AGW claim. And the reactions have begun:

David Suzuki, the local rabid hippie totalitarian hasn’t gotten the memo that blaming everything on global warming is so 2009, and beclowns himself trying to hijack the Olympics to the global warming hoax.

Thankfully the people aren’t buying his garbage anymore. Every time Suzuki’s articles are published online, hundreds of readers leave their comments, and very few of them are kind to the senile old hippie.

Meteorologists predicted last July that El Nino was coming and that warm weather would hit us in January and February of this year.

Mr. Suzuki, you claim to be a scientist, so please don’t tell me you’ve never heard of El Nino, the natural weather pattern that circulates warm air from Hawaii up to the Canadian west coast? Or the fact that 30 years ago there was NO snow on the local mountains for most of the season and Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain went bankrupt? Perhaps you were too stoned at the time to remember that. Clearly you still haven’t quit smoking it either.

And how come you conveniently brush off the fact that the rest of the entire top half of planet earth is currently experiencing the coldest winter in a century? Your press releases claim that the coldness everywhere else is a result of “local weather patterns, not climate”. So how come when we get a WARM spell in one area – Vancouver – you suddenly blame it on “global climate change”, and not local weather??? LMFAO. How convenient. You and your foundation are hilariously stupid. Your attempts at fear mongering for support and funding are absolutely disgusting.

And you also ignore the fact that average global temperatures are dropping and have been dropping for a decade.

Oh that’s right, I forgot. Global cooling is also because of global warming. And CO2 aka plant food is poison.

OMG UNPLUG YOUR CELLPHONE CHARGERS! DESTROY YOUR CARS! WE MUST ALL CHANGE OUR LIFESTYLES, PAY GREEN TAXES, AND WRECK THE ECONOMY BEFORE WE MELT AWAY!!!1!!1!

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The Hottest Hoax in the World

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 because he 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.Source by Ninad D. Sheth

Next up: Greenpeacegate!

Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate, Pauchauri…and now comes Greenpeacegate. We can barely keep up. Every time we think we can rest, another global warming scandal comes up. Hey, not that we’re complaining–it’s all falling apart faster than any of us had dreamed. Let’s just go to Donna Laframboise out of Toronto Canada, the creator of NOconsensus.org, who yesterday broke the story that the IPCC is using the politcal activist group Greenpeace as source for quite a few “facts” in its report; in fact, in at least one case, they were the sole source. She begins:

Considered the climate Bible by governments around the world, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is meant to be a scientific analysis of the most authoritative research. Instead, it references literature generated by Greenpeace – an organization known more for headline-grabbing publicity stunts than sober-minded analysis. (Eight IPCC-cited Greenpeace publications are listed at the bottom of this post.) In one section of this Nobel-winning report, climate change is linked to coral reef degradation. The sole source for this claim? A Greenpeace report titled “Pacific in Peril” (see Hoegh-Guldberg below). Here the report relies on a Greenpeace document to establish the lower-end of an estimate involving solar power plants (Aringhoff). When discussing solar energy elsewhere, the report references two Greenpeace documents in one sentence. Here it uses a Greenpeace paper as its sole means of documenting where the “main wind-energy investments” are located globally (Wind).

[Continue reading her terrific article at her blog…]Source

IPCC “Consensus”—Warning: Use at Your Own Risk

The findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are often held up as representing “the consensus of scientists”—a pretty grandiose and presumptuous claim. And one that in recent days, weeks, and months, has been unraveling. So too, therefore, must all of the secondary assessments that are based on the IPCC findings—the most notable of which is the EPA’s Endangerment Finding—that “greenhouse gases taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

Recent events have shown, rather embarrassingly, that the IPCC is not “the” consensus of scientists, but rather the opinions of a few scientists (in some cases as few as one) in various subject areas whose consensus among themselves is then kludged together by the designers of the IPCC final product who a priori know what they want the ultimate outcome to be (that greenhouse gases are leading to dangerous climate change and need to be restricted). So clearly you can see why the EPA (who has a similar objective) would decide to rely on the IPCC findings rather than have to conduct an independent assessment of the science with the same predetermined outcome. Why go through the extra effort to arrive at the same conclusion? The EPA’s official justification for its reliance on the IPCC’s findings is that it has reviewed the IPCC’s “procedures” and found them to be exemplary. Below is a look at some things, recently revealed, that the IPCC “procedures” have produced. These recent revelations indicate that the “procedures” are not infallible and that highly publicized IPCC results are either wrong or unjustified—which has the knock-on effect of rendering the IPCC an unreliable source of information. Unreliable doesn’t mean wrong in all cases, mind you, just that it is hard to know where and when errors are present, and as such, the justification that “the IPCC says so” is no longer sufficient (or acceptable). Himalayan Glaciers The IPCC has actually admitted that, in at least one area, its procedures have failed:

…It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938 page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly. The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance. This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of “the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report”. We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring this level of performance.

It turns out, that in this case of Himalayan glaciers (apparently a favored topic of the IPCC head Dr. Rajendra Pachauri for raising funds for a non-profit that he heads), the IPCC’s findings—that the glaciers would largely disappear by the year 2035 (and endanger the water supply for hundreds of millions of people, as well as lead to increased avalanches and mudslides) as a result of anthropogenic global warming—were apparently based on some comments made by one researcher to the press. Those statements were later included in a World Wildlife Fund report that was the source cited by the IPCC. Dr. Pachauri vehemently denied accusations of bad procedures when they were first made, going as far as calling evidence supporting the accusations “voodoo science”. Now, with the IPCC’s admission of its errors, an apology is being sought from Dr. Pauchari becasue of his remarks. The latest scuttlebutt on this issue is that several folks in the IPCC knew of these problems for some time, but that they allowed them to perpetuate anyway and that other attempts to correct them by other IPCC scientists were lost in the mail. This doesn’t speak so highly for the “procedures.” Attribution of Increasing Damages to Rising Temperatures Another issue which has gotten the IPCC’s attention in recent days has been its attribution of increasing weather-related losses to rising temperatures from human activities. In this case, the IPCC decided to issue a statement in which it denied that its “procedures” went astray—despite clear and growing evidence to the contrary. Such a denial in the face of mounting evidence seems like it could do even more harm than actually admitting another goof (but then again, how many major goofs can the IPCC really admit to without having to scrap the whole thing?). The problems contained in the IPCC assessment have been well-documented by a series of posts by Roger Pielke Jr. at his blog (here, here, here, and here). Pielke Jr. builds a pretty convincing case that the IPCC gave short shrift to the body of peer-reviewed literature that concluded that a clear linkage between the rising levels of weather-related damages and rising temperatures was not yet demonstrable. The rapidly growing effect of demographic changes (population, wealth, etc.) overwhelms the influence of the weather and confuses issues of attribution. Yet, somehow, the IPCC’s assessment established that increasing losses were linked to rising temperatures. Pielke Jr. traces this to a “single non-peer reviewed” study “cherrypicked” from a “workshop.” Dr. Pielke Jr. had this to say about the IPCC’s recent statement upholding its findings and its claims that “[i]n writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate”:

Carefully followed procedures? Let’s review: (a) The IPCC relied on an unpublished, non-peer reviewed source to produce its top line conclusions in this section, (b) when at least two reviewers complained about this section, the IPCC ignored their complaints and invented a response characterizing my views. (c) When the paper that this section relied on was eventually published it explicitly stated that it could not find a connection between rising temperatures and the costs of disasters.

Pielke Jr. continued:

This press release from the IPCC would have been a fine opportunity to set the scientific and procedural record straight and admit to what are obvious and major errors in content and process. Instead, it has decided to defend the indefensible, which any observer can easily see through. Of course there is no recourse here as the IPCC is unaccountable and there is no formal way to address errors in its report or its errors and misdirection via press release. Not a good showing by the IPCC.

Basically, with regards to this issue, the IPCC “consensus of scientists” isn’t even the consensus of the leading scientists actively studying the topic, but reflects the wishful thinking of one or two chapter authors and, no doubt, the IPCC designers, as well. Medieval Warm Period Many more examples of the IPCC “procedures” can be found courtesy of the Climategate emails. For instance, in Chapter 6, the paleoclimate chapter of the IPCC’s most recent Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), it is the strong sentiment of one of the chapter’s coordinating lead author, Jonathan Overpeck, that he wants to dismiss the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)—a period of relatively high temperatures that occurred about a thousand years ago. If the MWP were found to be as warm as recent conditions, then the possibility that natural processes may play a larger role in recent warming is harder to ignore—thus the need to dismiss it. The task of doing so fell on Keith Briffa, who developed the contents of a special box in IPCC AR4 Chapter 6 that was apart from the main text and which focused on the WMP. Here’s the advice issued to Briffa by Overpeck:

I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature. The sceptics and uninformed love to cite these periods as natural analogs for current warming too – pure rubbish. So, pls DO try hard to follow up on my advice provided in previous email. No need to go into details on any but the MWP, but good to mention the others in the same dismissive effort.

Briffa attempted to complete his task by presenting a well-chosen collection of data that showed that while some proxy temperature reconstructions did show a warm period about 1,000 years ago, others did not. He concluded that a more complete picture indicated that the higher temperatures during the MWP were “heterogeneous” (regionalized), while the warming of the late 20th century has been “homogeneous” (i.e. much broader in spatial extent)—confirming that current conditions were likely unprecedented during the past 1,300 years. Briffa received congratulations for a job well done by Overpeck:

[A]ttached is Keith’s MWP box w/ my edits. It reads just great – much like a big hammer. Nice job.”

Thus, that conclusion driven by Overpeck’s desires, written by Briffa, perhaps reviewed by the chapter’s other authors (with varying degrees of knowledge about the subject), is now preserved as “the consensus of scientists. But apparently, that consensus isn’t accepted by other leading paleoclimate researchers. In a peer-reviewed article published in 2009 in the journal Climatic Change, paleo-researchers Jan Esper and David Frank carefully re-examined the same proxy temperature reconstructions used by Briffa and came to conclude that the IPCC was unwarranted in declaring that the temperatures during the MWP were more heterogeneous than now. Here is the abstract from that paper:

In their 2007 report, IPCC working group 1 refers to an increased heterogeneity of climate during medieval times about 1000 years ago. This conclusion would be of relevance, as it implies a contrast in the spatial signature and forcing of current warmth to that during the Medieval Warm Period. Our analysis of the data displayed in the IPCC report, however, shows no indication of an increased spread between long-term proxy records. We emphasize the relevance of sample replication issues, and argue that an estimation of long-term spatial homogeneity changes is premature based on the smattering of data currently available.

Summary So here we have multiple examples of the IPCC “procedures” and how “the consensus of scientists” is formed. In one case, the “consensus” was formed from comments made by a single scientist to the press; in another, the IPCC “consensus” conflicts with the consensus of scientists actually active in the topic of concern; and in the third case, the IPCC “consensus” is driven by the desires of one of the coordinating lead authors, and is now disputed by other members of the field. Others examples seem to be coming to the light daily (see here about conclusions regarding future agricultural productivity in Africa, or here about the IPCC pushing preconceived ideas). In light of what we now know, I suggest that from now on, all IPCC products come with the following warning label:

“The findings of the IPCC reports were developed in advance and furthered by a careful selection from whatever material could be found to support them. In some cases, supporting material was developed or fabricated where none could otherwise be located. As such, these findings may not necessarily reflect the true state of scientific understanding. Use at your own risk.”

Source by Chip Knappenberger

Not Evil Just Wrong Success in Alaska

The “Not Evil Just Wrong” premiere at the Wendy Williamson auditorium on the University of Alaska-Anchorage campus last night–presented by the Young Republicans Club but also attended by a number of democrats and environmentalists–was a GREAT educational experience. It addressed several environmental issues of the day in an even-handed way that–in being fair and balanced–will surely inflame those with environmentally extreme agendas. Every middle school, high school and college student should see it…along with the rest of us.

The documentary was produced by veteran, Irish producers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney who also appeared on the Dan Fagan and other radio talk shows yesterday in Anchorage.

Among the many pro- and anti-environmental spokespeople and vignettes were the several appearances of the Congress for Racial Equality’s Roy Innis, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement. Innis described how the bad science promoted by Al Gore and the environmental extremists was resulting in increasing hardship for the poor and those on fixed incomes–with little to no measurable environmental gain. The film provided United Nations statistics and other data verifying that Gore’s fraudulent claim of a 20 foot sea level rise by the end of the century could only happen, possibly, in many hundreds of years.

The film also documented the unintended consequence of the banning of DDT: its frequent and thorough use throughout the United States before being banned eliminated much disease and did not produce the severe harm that had been predicted. On the other hand, its banning has caused the deaths of millions of Africans who have succumbed to the scourges of malaria.
Other lessons the movie documented include: 1) The science supporting the claim of polar bear population losses is in some cases wrong and in other cases absent. 2) The earth has not been warming over the last decade. 3) Energy projects denied in America end up exporting equivalent energy project jobs and allied manufacturing to countries with lax–or more lenient–environmental laws, like China and India.

Understanding environmental issues du jour is important to Americans, Alaskans, Canadian northerners and gas pipeline issue followers in general; for, as climate change legislation, EPA air emission regulations, White House Oceans Policy, endangered species designations, Canadian environmental and Aboriginal policies and carbon-to-renewable wealth distribution plans proliferate, so does the future and lifestyle of Arctic peoples hang–and sway unpredictably–in the balance.

Knowledge is power but does not come effortlessly. Leaving a warm living room last night to traverse icy roads on the way to the theater took effort, but the lessons passed on by McAleer and McElhinney far outweighed the effort.

Source by Dave Harbour

Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jan.28th 2010

The IPCC gets a global drubbing for peddling recycled WWF glacier-ganda, Al Gore loves astroturf and there’s more green-on-green action than a superbowl between the Eagles and the Jets. Oh, and Megan Fox is your weekly hottie, so scroll down and get it out of your system now while the links are still fresh.

Part One: Al Gore & Friends

Al Gore is beyond parody. In a post entitled ‘Green Pastors’, Al blogs about ministers that use the environmental agenda to pull in more bums on pews:

“”We actually encourage it as a way to get people into the churches,” said Lee Anne Beres, the executive director of Earth Ministry, a Seattle group founded in 1992 that has guided many area congregations through environmental upgrades over the past decade but has recently emphasized more direct political action for pastors and parishioners. “That is what people are interested in, and I don’t see anything Machiavellian in that.””

Nothing wrong with a bit of inter-faith cooperation, I guess. Al Gore takes a lesson in branding from a diminutive musician from the Twin cities and ‘The Phenomenon Formerly Known as Global Warming’ is born. Maybe next Al will carve ’slave’ onto his cheek too? (satire, as if you didn’t know) How green is my astroturf? Good question Al, good question. Meanwhile, most letters to the editor these days are far more skeptical in tone. That ’settled’ science is looking far more shaky with each revelation from the crooked world of climatology, as this poll shows. Also, for anyone that thought you needed to be smart to be a member of the ‘elite’ the poll provides proof to the contrary. More evidence of this later. Burning books is never a great idea, although some titles are more tempting than others. Enjoy the video, but forgive them their bad English accents, they tried. Bless ‘em. The ignoble Nobel. Klockarman wants it revoked, but that’s against the rules. I know one moonbat who don’t care about rules and revocations: .. The prophet likes the idea of electronics being labeled with information that tells you how quickly your new TV is going to kill a polar bear. Or something. Harry Reid is to most people a vindictive little bureaucrat that long ago exceeded his Peter Principle potential. But to Al, Dingy Harry is a beacon of hope, and, dare I say it… change? Shame that Al’s best Senate buddy looks like he has an expiry date.

Part Two: AGW Scaremongers

Global warming muppet Jim Hansen, not content with representing the US Government’s support for civil disobedience in the UK, is endorsing a book by wannabe eugenecist Keith Farnish that longs for the return of the stone age. You know, instead of trying to pry iPods from our cold, dead hands, isn’t there some fetish camp for these hippies if what they really want to do is drag chicks around by the hair and bash flints together all day long? Sheesh. More here on NASA’s mad scientist. The CRU investigation turns into a thin whitewash job, and while there was law-breaking, they’ll walk on a technicality. Which makes Phil Jones into OJ Simpson, or something. The Mother Nature network rushed to prove that glaciers do still melt, despite the IPCC’s recent embarrassment, but forgets about a basic little something the rest of call ‘winter’ and ’summer’. Doh! Oh noes, global warming causes the Thames’ eel population to crash, threatening a popular east ender delicacy. One local was concerned, “‘cor blimey guv’ner, strike a light. Me luvverly jellied eels are all Father Ted? Now we’re proper Donald Ducked, innit?” Help here. The Royal Society, given a chance to buffer the hapless climate scientists, ducks and passes. Steve McIntyre, the human kryptonite to warmists, notices that one particularly awkward fallout from Glaciergate is that the science behind the EPA’s finding that CO2 is a toxic danger to life on Earth (yeah, I know) might not meet, er, EPA standards for peer-review. Awkward. Donna LaFramboise dug into the glaciergate affair, looking for nefarious work from the WWF. And found it, lots of it. She promises to expose Greenpeace next, which has me rubbing my hands together in anticipation. The green movement has more gates than a place with a lot of gates. Or something. Anyway, say hello to Amazongate. And, no it’s not about a rogue online bookseller. Call the whaaaaambulance, a warmist without the wit to win in a fair debate blames the nasty well-funded vast global-warming skeptic conspiracy. Which reminds me, Big Oil, your check hasn’t arrived yet. Hello? Jennifer Marohasy has a linkilicious page of, er, links and wonders when Pachauri will resign and where is Al Gore. And more. Fun and gates from Jo Nova: Weather hysteric Gwynne dyer sounds about ready to give up. We can dream, right?READ THE REST OVER AT THE DAILY BAYONET!

Obama's State of the Union Speech Brushes Aside "Climate Change"

Finally, Obama’s getting the message that most people realize cap-and-tax is nothing more than a scam. In fact, he attempted to (quickly) sell his climate bill for reasons OTHER than alleged climate change. All in all, climate change took a back seat and only appeared for a few seconds out of his 70 minute speech. Hopefully it will soon be out of the backseat and tossed in the trash where it belongs.

From the crying hippies at Treehugger.com:
“President Obama’s first State of the Union speech highlighted many of our current challenges, but focused primarily on jobs, the economy and health care. Notably absent were visionary plans to tackle climate change in a meaningful way. Has climate change been drowned by the rising seas of economic concerns? melted by debates over health care?
The President spoke about a new jobs bill, tax credits, the health care debate, the bailout bill, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When it came to the climate change, his comments were limited to the Clean Energy and Climate Bill.
Sadly, some of his proposed initiatives include such un-TreeHugger strategies as:

  • “Safe, clean,” nuclear power plants (at least he pronounced it properly)
  • Opening off-shore areas for oil and gas development
  • Investment in clean coal technologies

Facing grumbles from the Right, he said that even if you doubt the “overwhelming scientific evidence” for climate change “providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy, and America must be that nation.” The failure of the Copenhagen Conference and changing public sentiment may be behind the absence of a meaningful climate change vision in President Obama’s speech. Startling new surveys are showing that public concern over climate change is on the decline in America. The percentage of Americans who think global warming is happening has fallen to 57% and only 47% of Americans think that human activity is responsible for climate change.”—-Haha. Finally some really good news. And Obama even gives everyone a good laugh when he spoke about climate “science” tonight. Check it out:

British government suffers biggest setback since Climategate: Chief Scientist speaks out

Another honest scientist steps forward. Professor John Beddington. Just as we reported yesterday, the anthropogenic global warming theory is fast falling apart at the seams thanks to scientists of integrity bravely standing up to be counted. Earlier today it was Canadian climate scientist Andrew Weaver. On Tuesday, it was Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the man who was once a true insider of the elite, having served as a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author in 2001 for the Third Assessment Report. Today we can update you with the news that the credibility of the IPCC and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken another major blow as Britain’s highest ranked government scientist, Professor John Beddington CMG FRS admits the science for global warming is “uncertain.” Professor Beddington today makes his stand for skeptic principle in the London Times Online:

“I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper skepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”

The esteemed professor admitted to the Times that the false claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 had exposed a wider problem with the way that some evidence was presented.

“Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate. We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There’s definitely an issue there. If there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, ‘There’s a level of uncertainty about that’.”

There is no one higher in the British Government’s pecking order of scientists than Professor John Beddington. He is the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Professor of Applied Population Biology at Imperial College London.Beddington was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001. As Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government (CSA) Beddington acts as the personal adviser on science and technology-related activities and policies to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. He has a significant public role as the government’s most visible scientific expert and is a key figure within Britain’s Royal Society. Two years have elapsed since the publication of the IPCC Fourth Report. In that time Britain’s world famous Royal Society has negligently failed to comment on that discredited report. Regular readers will recall that I raised suspicions four days ago that something was seriously amiss within the Royal Society for its omission to state where it stood about the IPCC’s Fourth Report. This will be a story that will fester until the Royal Society follows Professor Beddington’s lead and comes out publicly to stand up for scientific integrity and transparency. Climategate.com heartily welcomes Professor Beddington’s public stand for the noble principles of scientific scepticism and we applaud him as we do all other esteemed scientists who have the courage to speak out publicly for the greater good of science. The honourable professor thinks:

“wherever possible, we should try to ensure there is openness and that source material is available for the whole scientific community”

This is the best news I have heard since the Climategate scandal first broke. It is a positive step forward and gives us all who fight for truth in science real hope that other esteemed Fellows of the Royal Society will have the courage and integrity to follow suit and protect the age old reputation of this great British institution. Sadly, until there is a clear public pronouncement I fear it will be ever more deeply mired in accusations of political toadyism. John O’Sullivan is a legal advocate and writer who for several years has litigated in government corruption and conspiracy cases in both the US and Britain. Visit his website. He offers his services free to the site and is not a site employee. Any opinions he expresses are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the site owner.Source

The billion-dollar hoax

ONCE global warming was the “great moral challenge of our generation”. Or so claimed the Prime Minister. But suddenly it’s the great con that’s falling to bits around Kevin Rudd’s ears. In fact, so fast is global warming theory collapsing that in his flurry of recent speeches to outline his policies for the new decade, Rudd has barely mentioned his “moral challenge” at all. Take his long Australia Day reception speech on Sunday. Rudd talked of our ageing population and of building stuff, of taxes, hospitals and schools – but dared not say one word about the booga booga he used to claim could destroy our economy, Kakadu, the Great Barrier Reef and 750,000 coastal homes. What’s happened? Answer: in just the past few months has come a cascade of evidence that the global warming scare is based on often dodgy science and even outright fraud.

Related Coverage

Here are just the top 10 new signs that catastrophic man-made warming may be just another beat-up, like swine flu, SARS, and the Y2K bug. 1. Climategate THE rot for Rudd started last November with the leaking of emails from the Climatic Research Unit of Britain’s University of East Anglia. Those emails from many of the world’s top climate scientists showed them conspiring to sack sceptical scientists from magazines, hide data from sceptics, and cover up errors. One of the scientists, CRU boss Phil Jones, even boasted of having found a “trick” to “hide the decline” in recent temperature records. Jones was also on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so influential in convincing us our gasses are heating the planet that it won the Nobel Prize. But he showed how political the IPCC actually is by promising in yet another email that he and another colleague would do almost anything to keep sceptical studies out of IPCC reports. Just as damning was the admission by IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth that the world isn’t warming as the IPCC said it must: “We cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” 2. The Copenhagen farce MORE than 40,000 politicians, scientists and activists flew to Copenhagen last month – in clouds of greenhouse gasses – to get all nations to agree to make the rest of us cut our own emissions to “stop” global warming. This circus ended in total failure. China, the world’s biggest emitter, refused to choke its growth. So did India. Now the United States is unlikely to make cuts, either, with Barack Obama’s presidency badly wounded and the economy so sick. Not only did this show that Rudd’s planned tax on our emissions will now be even more suicidally useless. It also suggested world leaders can’t really think global warming is so bad. 3. The Himalayan scare RUDD has quoted the IPCC as his authority on global warming, claiming it’s a group of “guys in white coats” who “just measure things”. But the IPCC also just makes things up. Take this claim from its 2007 report: “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.” In fact, we now know this bizarre claim was first made by a little-known Indian scientist in an interview for an online magazine, and then copied into a report by the green group WWF. From there, the IPCC lifted it almost word for word for its own 2007 report, without checking if it was true. It wasn’t, of course, as the IPCC last week conceded. The glaciers will be around for at least centuries more. But why did the IPCC run this mad claim in the first place? The IPCC’s Dr Murari Lal, the co-ordinating lead author responsible, says he knew all along there was no peer-reviewed research to back it up. “(But) we thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians … ” Note: you are told not the truth, but what will scare you best. 4. Pachauri’s response BUT what smells just as much is how IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, a former railway engineer, first tried to defend this “mistake” by accusing sceptical scientists of practising “voodoo science”. Deny and abuse. That’s the IPCC way. Even more suspiciously, Syed Hasnain, the scientist who first made the false claim, then turned out to be now employed by The Energy Research Institute, headed by … er, Pachauri. More astonishing still, only two weeks ago TERI won up to $500,000 from the Carnegie Corporation to study exactly Hasnain’s bogus claim. See how cash follows a good scare? 5. Pachauri’s conflicts IN fact, Pachauri and TERI do amazingly well from his IPCC job. Britain’s Sunday Telegraph this month revealed TERI had created a global business network since Pachauri became IPCC chairman in 2002. Its recent donors include Deutsche Bank, Toyota, Yale University – and, sadly, Rudd, who last year handed over $1 million, hoping to win influence with such a big UN honcho. Pachauri himself is now a director or adviser to a score of banks, investment institutions and carbon traders, many involved in areas directly affected by IPCC policies. He denies any wrongdoing, and is not paid by the IPCC. But see again how cash follows a scare, and ask if the IPCC chief has a conflict of interest. 6. The green hand revealed WE’VE seen how the IPCC just copied its false claims about the Himalayas from a report by WWF, a green activist group which earn donations by preaching such doom. In fact, the IPCC’s 2007 report cites WWF documents as “evidence” at least another 15 times. Elsewhere it cites a non-scientific, non-peer-reviewed paper from another activist body, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, as its sole proof that global warming could devastate African agriculture. Whose agenda is the IPCC pushing? 7. More fake IPCC claims THIS week came more evidence that the IPCC sexed up its 2007 report, this time when it claimed the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s”, thanks to global warming. In fact, the claim was picked out of an unpublished report by a London risk consultant, who later changed his mind and said “the idea that catastrophes are rising in cost because of climate change is completely misleading”. 8. New research on our gasses AT least four new papers by top scientists cast doubt on the IPCC claim that our carbon dioxide emissions are strongly linked to global warming. One, published in Nature, shows the world had ice age activity even when atmospheric CO2 was four times the level of our pre-industrial times. Another, by NASA medallist John Christy and David Douglass, shows global temperatures did not go up as much as expected from man-made emissions over the past three decades. 9. New Australian research JAMES Cook University researcher Peter Ridd says Australian scientists have cried wolf over the threat to the Great Barrier Reef from global warming, and the reef was actually in “bloody brilliant shape”. The alarmist CSIRO this month also backed away from blaming global warming for a drought in Tasmania and in the Murray-Darling basin, saying “the jury is still out”. A new paper by another Australian academic, Assoc Prof Stewart Franks, says the Murray-Darling drought is natural, and has nothing to do with man-made warming. 10. The world still won’t warm AND still the world hasn’t warmed since 2001, even though we pump out more emissions than ever. Even professional alarmist Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, admits “we haven’t seen a continuation of that (warming) trend” and “the computer modelling and the real world data disagree”. And with Europe, the United States and China hit with record cold and snow this winter, no wonder Kevin Rudd has suddenly gone cold on global warming, the mad faith that has cost us so many futile billions already.Source by Andrew Bolt