Climate Change Consensus?

[mrlupin]

The Power Player

David Ratcliffe

CEO, Southern Company

Ratcliffe, the head of America's second-dirtiest electric utility, has assembled an army of 63 lobbyists — almost twice as many as any other company — to defeat climate legislation. It's a pro-carbon dream team, anchored by Jeffrey Holmstead of Rudy Giuliani's law firm, who worked on behalf of utilities like Southern as a top clean-air official under George W. Bush. The reason for the lobbying blitz: Southern burns a lot of coal — its largest plant produces more carbon pollution than all of Brazil's power plants combined — and new limits on emissions being considered by the Senate could cost the utility some $400 million a year. That's why Ratcliffe continues to deny the reality of global warming: "I don't believe there's an impending catastrophe," he says, insisting that the environment will simply "adapt to changing realities."

"The value of his stock trumps everything," says Carl Pope, head of the Sierra Club. "It's hard to imagine a more cynical attitude. But no doubt he genuinely sees it that way — his bottom line is the measure of the world."

[mrlupin]

The Arm Twister

Dick Gephardt

CEO, Gephardt Group

The former House majority leader now uses his considerable political clout as a lobbyist for Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company. Working behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, Gephardt has emerged as the most credible proponent of "clean coal" — an imaginary technology being touted by the industry as an alternative to limits on carbon pollution. ("Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes," says Al Gore. "It does not exist.") In July, Gephardt was the keynote speaker at the Clean Coal Technology Conference, an honor bestowed after he helped win $1 billion in stimulus funding for FutureGen, a "clean coal" boondoggle promoted by Peabody. That's a significant return on the $1.7 million that Peabody and the FutureGen Industrial Alliance have invested in Gephardt Group's services since 2007. His firm also lobbies for Ameren, the nation's fourth-dirtiest utility, as well as for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The head of Peabody's Washington office, Fred Palmer, marvels at the access the ex-congressman still enjoys on Capitol Hill: "I can meet with a lot of people, but I'm Fred Palmer. He's Dick Gephardt."

[mrlupin]

The Pundit

George Will

Commentator, ABC

Leveraging his status as the nation's most recognizable pundit, Will has become a one-man front for corporate-funded "science" that denies the existence of global warming. From his institutional perches at the Washington Post, Newsweek and ABC's This Week, Will preaches about the "indoctrination" of Americans by "environmental Cassandras" in the "media-entertainment-environmental complex" over a climate threat that is "hypothetical" and only "allegedly occurring." To buttress such wild-eyed denial, Will cherry-picks data points — or simply makes them up, as when he claimed in a recent column that "there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade" and that "global sea-ice levels now equal those of 1979." Both assertions are flat-out wrong: Eleven of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 13 years, and researchers have recorded a decrease in global sea ice bigger than Texas and California combined.

Despite a rebuke from the Post's ombudsman, the paper has refused to run any correction for Will's disinformation campaign. The pundit, meanwhile, continues to belch climate nonsense from behind his tortoise-shell spectacles, claiming that limiting carbon pollution would force developing nations to "sacrifice their modernization on the altar of climate change." He also accuses climate scientists — rather than big polluters — of perpetuating lies out of financial self-interest, citing what he calls the "enormous incentive to get on the bandwagon on global warming." "He positions himself as a conservative intellectual," says Joe Romm, a physicist who serves as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "But you can't be an intellectual and be anti-science. He's really just an ideologue masquerading as an intellectual."

[mrlupin]

The Know Nothing

Tom Donohue

President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

As the de facto chief of American business and industry, Donohue has turned the biggest lobbying presence on Capitol Hill into the biggest friend of climate polluters. In the first nine months of last year, the Chamber spent $65 million — three times more than ExxonMobil — mounting a campaign to block Congress from placing limits on carbon pollution. "Not only has the Chamber spent decades denying the existence of the climate crisis," Al Gore observed, "now it is dedicating a significant quantity of resources and money attempting to prevent Congress from taking action."

The extreme anti-climate position staked out by Donohue runs counter to the position of his own members. Of the 23 companies on the Chamber's board that made their position on climate legislation public, only four are against it — and three of those are coal companies. Yet the Chamber claims, in scaremongering language, that climate legislation threatens to "completely shut the country down" and "virtually destroy the United States." For his part, Donohue is proudly ignorant of the risks that a changing climate poses to the business community: "Is the science right? Is science not right? I don't know."

The know-nothing approach has proved too much for many leading companies to bear. Last summer, when the Chamber's senior vice president declared that "there is no evidence that CO2 has an impact on health and welfare" and called for a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" to put the "science of climate change on trial," even the California utility PG&E resigned from the Chamber, blasting Donohue for his group's "disingenuous attempts to distort" the dangers of climate change. Apple and Exelon joined the rush for the exit, and Nike resigned its place on the Chamber's board.

[mrlupin]

The Coal Baron

Don Blankenship

CEO, Massey Energy

In an age when most CEOs are canny enough to at least pay lip service to the realities of climate change, Blankenship stands apart as corporate America's most unabashed denier. Global warming, he insists, is nothing but "a hoax and a Ponzi scheme." His fortune depends on such lies: Massey Energy, the nation's fourth-largest coal-mining operation, unearths more than 40 million tons of the fossil fuel each year — often by blowing the tops off of Appalachian mountains.

The country's highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will. He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company, and he hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. "Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office," Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. "He would be twice as accountable and half as feared."

On the national level, Blankenship enjoys a position of influence on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has led the fight to kill climate legislation. He enjoys inveighing against the "greeniacs" — including Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Al Gore — who are "taking over the world." And he has even taken to tweeting about climate change: "We must demand that more coal be burned to save the Earth from global cooling."

In more unguarded moments, however, Blankenship confesses that his over-the-top rhetoric is strategic. "If it weren't for guys like me," he says, "the middle would be further to the left." He also admits that his efforts to block climate legislation are ultimately self-serving: "It would probably cut our business in half."

[mrlupin]

The Hack Scientist

Fred Singer

Retired physicist, University of Virginia

A former mouthpiece for the tobacco industry, the 85-year-old Singer is the granddaddy of fake "science" designed to debunk global warming. The retired physicist — who also tried to downplay the danger of the hole in the ozone layer — is still wheeled out as an authority by big polluters determined to kill climate legislation. For years, Singer steadfastly denied that the world is heating up: Citing satellite data that has since been discredited, he even made the unhinged claim that "the climate has been cooling just slightly." Last year, Singer served as a lead author of "Climate Change Reconsidered" — an 880-page report by the right-wing Heartland Institute that was laughably presented as a counterweight to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's scientific authority on global warming. Singer concludes that the unchecked growth of climate-cooking pollution is "unequivocally good news." Why? Because "rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests." Small wonder that Heartland's climate work has long been funded by the likes of Exxon and reactionary energy barons like Charles Koch and Richard Mellon Scaife.

[mrlupin]

The Flip Flopper

Sen. John McCain

Republican, Arizona

McCain has been one of the Senate's biggest climate champions since 2003, when he introduced a bill with Joe Lieberman to create a "cap and trade" system similar to the one currently being debated. But since losing the presidency to Barack Obama, McCain is taking his pique out on the planet. He's now threatening to roadblock the very measure he once introduced, lying about its cost and distorting its goals. "What the Obama administration has proposed is not cap-and-trade," McCain says. "It's cap-and-tax." He's even trash-talking a bipartisan alternative by GOP colleague Lindsey Graham, calling it "horrendous."

Although McCain frames his newfound stance as opposition to what he portrays as a $630 billion tax on corporate America, the measure as revised by the House actually provides the energy industry with more than $690 billion in pollution subsidies. McCain's about-face may have more to do with his precarious electoral future: The senator is currently locked in a dead heat with likely primary challenger J.D. Hayworth, a knuckle-dragging former congressman. The one-time "maverick" now earns high praise from the far right: "He's been a fabulous team player," says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "On message and effective."

[mrlupin]

The Inquisitor

Rep. Joe Barton

Republican, Texas

As ranking Republican on the House energy committee, Barton is a mini version of Sen. James Inhofe. In his view, the climate is changing for "natural variation reasons," and humans should just "get shade" and learn to adapt. "For us to try to step in and say we have got to do all these global things to prevent the Earth from getting any warmer is absolute nonsense," he insists. "You can't regulate God."

During the Bush era, Barton bottled up all climate legislation and pushed to open up public lands for drilling by private interests. He also targeted leading climate scientists, demanding that they provide Congress with detailed documentation of their financial interests. (Barton himself has received $1.4 million from oil and gas donors, plus $1.3 million from electric utilities.) The inquisition drew sharp rebukes, even from Barton's fellow Republicans. Your "purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than to learn from them," then-Rep. Sherwood Boehlert told Barton. The effort "to have Congress put its thumbs on the scales of a scientific debate" is "truly chilling."

[mrlupin]

The Tea Partiers

Charles and David Koch

CEO and Executive Vice President, Koch Industries

The multibillionaire brothers not only run the nation's largest private energy company, they rival Exxon in funding the front groups that spread disinformation about the dangers of climate change. Over the years, the Kochs and their foundations have lavished millions on climate deniers at the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, which Charles founded in 1977. Cato, in turn, supports the work of Patrick Michaels, a leading climate denier who attempts to discredit the international scientific consensus on global warming while accepting money from coal companies. As author Thomas Frank observes in What's the Matter With Kansas?, "Koch money subsidizes the mass production of bad ideas."

One major recipient of Koch cash is Americans for Prosperity, where David chairs the foundation's board. In addition to fomenting last summer's town-hall brawls over health care reform, AFP sponsored a "Hot Air Tour" on climate change, deploying a manned balloon at 75 events for the purpose of "Exposing the Ballooning Costs of Global Warming Hysteria." At the events, the group's president, Tim Phillips, grossly exaggerated the costs of climate legislation, calling it a trillion-dollar tax on American families.

Last October, at an AFP summit attended by David Koch, the assembled Tea Partiers screened a climate-denial film that accused advocates like Al Gore of wanting to take civilization "back to the Dark Ages and the Black Plague." Such events, Koch proclaimed, "bring to reality the vision" of "fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history." Last year, seeking to defend its own prosperity against a carbon-capped future, Koch Industries spent more than $8.5 million on lobbying.

[mrlupin]

Whether or not someone wants to believe in climate change, global warming etc, It can be helpful to take a look at who is funding the various studies and what are these various parties' interests. With so much money invested in lobbyists (basically buying the US congress) and anti climate change ads, there is little chance of any significant change... The status quo will continue until something more substantial happens to galvanize public opinion.

[Cargo Agent]

Wouldn't a link to the article have sufficed?

[E-HANDLE]

Big article. Too bad there were no satisfactory explanations (or any explanation) for the CRU email scandal, the deletion of cold weather station data, the disappearance of the MWP, etc.

It does contain lots of shrill, left-wing generalities. I remain as sceptical as ever, perhaps more so.

[mrlupin]

Big article. Too bad there were no satisfactory explanations (or any explanation) for the CRU email scandal, the deletion of cold weather station data, the disappearance of the MWP, etc.

It does contain lots of shrill, left-wing generalities. I remain as sceptical as ever, perhaps more so.

In a controversial topic such as this one, both sides are likely to manipulate information... I found this article interesting because:

1- it showed who the invested interests were, in stopping any sort of carbon taxation

2- it demonstrated why such parties' interests could be such

3- it gave us an idea of how much money was being anted up by these parties to create a message that climate change is not real

The article's intent isn't to explain the email scandal from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit but if that is the only point you consider, I am sure google can help you find counterpoints if your mind isn't already made up.

Sometimes it's nice to balance opposing information (nothing against Woxof but his idea of "giving us the facts" is annoyingly one sided...)

[Cargo Agent]

So you post some annoyingly one-sided arguments from the other side.

[Guest woxof]

(nothing against Woxof but his idea of "giving us the facts" is annoyingly one sided...)

It looks like your postings show seveal people who are skeptics because they have a monetary interest in not following the alarmists suggestions.

Of course there are plenty of others such as the biggest alarmist...Al Gore making big bucks, if we follow the alarmists suggestions. And it has come right down to the scientists putting forward their case for man-made global warming who have become corrupted by the money.

So we get outright ridiculous lies about the glaciers of the Himalayas disappearing by 2035 from supposedly respectable scientific organizations.

So Mr. Lupin has posted what is likely fairly accurate articles of vested interests. I am posting accurate articles on how the man-made global warming is what senator posted about said was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".

I like my term "The Scam of the Century". So I am going to email that to senator Inhofe and hopefully he will use it in Congress and it's use will become widespread. And some day, 100 years from now when our great great grandchildren study in school...that saying will be the title of the man-made global warming chapter.

Woxof...making a mark on history

[DEFCON]

"And some day, 100 years from now when our great great grandchildren study in school...that saying will be the title of the man-made global warming chapter."

Have you forgotten, December 21, 2012?

[Guest woxof]

Have you forgotten, December 21, 2012?

I believe there is already a recent thread dominated by silly conspiracy theories.

[DEFCON]

You're really quite full of yourself...aren't you now.

[Canus Chinookus]

"And some day, 100 years from now when our great great grandchildren study in school...that saying will be the title of the man-made global warming chapter."

Have you forgotten, December 21, 2012?

If you mean "end of the world" or Apocalypse, you might want to consider the meaning of the word may also mean "a prophetic disclosure or revelation". Maybe the world will change forever as we know it, for better or worse? Or none of the above, which is what I'm inclined to think.

[Guest woxof]

You're really quite full of yourself...aren't you now.

You don't mean that you actually believe that "cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21". I had thought you were joking. But now I am wondering.

Look on the bright side....If I am correct, which, of course I am....you will wake up just fine the next day, and be glad that I was...of course, correct.

http://pjmiller.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/a...d-of-the-world/

Here is a link to failed predictions of the end of the world or doomsday scenarios.

Woxof...predicting that the planet earth will be destroyed someday.

[Guest woxof]

As if this thread isn't long enough, the hits against the pseudo-science of global warming keep on coming. This from today's Ottawa Citizen:

Posted twice on the previous page.

[Moon The Loon]

Posted twice on the previous page.

I see it was there from the National Post. Owned by the same CanWest that publishes the Citizen. Honest mistake. Post deleted.

[Guest woxof]

Honest mistake.

Just like mine on another thread.

This article is from a while back but has an important underlined section...

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...her-nature.aspx

"A warmer Arctic? Blame Mother Nature

'Something other than CO2 and CO2-related feedbacks ... are playing a large role in the region's recent temperature trends."

Read that again and keep in mind the "the region" being referred to is the Arctic. The plain meaning is that the warming in the Arctic is not only -- or even mostly -- man-made. It is not the result of carbon emissions, no matter how often we have been warned that this past summer's melt was unprecedented and a foreboding harbinger of a coming global meltdown.

In the most recent issue of Nature -- a prestigious scientific journal that in the past has shown a decided hostility to studies that contradict the climate change hysteria -- Rune Graversen and others from the meteorology department at Stockholm University postulate that the recent, allegedly dangerous Arctic thaw is far from unique in history. Rather than being the result of man-made climate change, they argue, the warming northern seas and tundra mainly result from atmospheric energy transfers from southern latitudes to northern.

In other words, tropical storms and atmospheric currents travelling from the tropics to the Arctic have shifted a large amount of heat from equatorial regions to the North.

In addition to being natural, this is also a cyclical phenomenon. It has happened before and will happen again. Big melts up north very likely occurred well before industrialization and will almost certainly recur periodically even if we cork all our factory stacks and shut off all our car engines. Maybe Arctic warming is just something the Earth does occasionally to let off steam in the tropics.

Are man-made emissions magnifying the warming? The Swedes think they may be, but their effect pales next to that of nature's own south-to-north heat conveyor.

Remember, too, amidst all the headlines about catastrophic Arctic warming, there are reliable satellite images of Arctic ice coverage going back only to 1979 and -- at least in the Western hemisphere -- reliable surface and air observations going back to just 1972. So-called "record" melting is only a record compared to the past 30 or 40 years.

Then there was the news in early December that Icelandic and Norwegian scientists had determined an ancient polar bear jawbone they had discovered in 2004 was 110,000 to 130,000 years old.

What has that got to do with global warming? Only that it proves Ursus maritimus was a separate species before the Eeemian interglacial period. The Eeemian was a much warmer period than our own Holocene period, yet the big white predators managed to survive it without endangered species protection or the hand-wringing of environmentalists.

Professor Olafur Ingolfsson of the University of Iceland told the BBC "this is telling us that despite the ongoing warming in the Arctic today, maybe we don't have to be so worried about the polar bear."

Moreover, while we in the West have good Arctic weather data for only the past half century or less, the Russians -- with their northern military bases, scientific stations and gulags -- have records going back more than a century. And many Russian scientists are convinced the Earth has entered (or soon will enter) a sustained period of cooling, rather than calamitous warming.

Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory, was quoted by Russian news agencies last week saying the Earth has passed the heat peak. The recent active period of solar activity has ended and noticeably colder temperatures could begin as soon as 2012.

Are all these facts proof positive that man-made global warming is no threat? No. But they are proof that many reputable climate scientists disagree with the alarmist belief that our planet is headed for doom unless we all remark our lifestyles drastically and turn over global energy policy to the UN.

And what about hurricanes? We have just finished the second straight year of below-average 'cane activity. That doesn't disprove global warming either. But why is it we are bombarded by claims of a warming-hurricane link only in bad years, yet hear nothing from environmentalists in good years?

My point is that coverage of global warming and climate change have become horribly one-sided. Every report about a disappearing tree tick or nasty bout of rainfall that seems to support the received wisdom is blared loud and wide, while stories that might undermine it are seldom given more than brief mention.

It the public is to make up its mind about climate change, it needs better balance."

[Guest woxof]

Thanks Malcolm....

Bigger and bigger the snowball gets. Who out there actually was fooled by all the shrill statements? Check out the underlined items.

"UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

The United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods — such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 — could be linked to global warming. Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".

The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s".

It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: "One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

The claim will now be re-examined and could be withdrawn. Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who is vice-chair of the IPCC, said: "We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific."

The academic paper at the centre of the latest questions was written in 2006 by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a London consultancy, who later became a contributing author to the section of the IPCC's 2007 report dealing with climate change impacts. He is widely respected as an expert on disaster impacts.

Muir-Wood wanted to find out if the 8% year-on-year increase in global losses caused by weather-related disasters since the 1960s was larger than could be explained by the impact of social changes like growth in population and infrastructure.

Such an increase, coinciding with rising temperatures, might suggest that global warming was to blame. If proven this would be highly significant, both politically and scientifically, because it would confirm the many predictions that global warming will increase the frequency and severity of natural hazards.

In the research Muir-Wood looked at a wide range of hazards, including tropical cyclones, thunder and hail storms, and wildfires as well as floods and hurricanes.

He found from 1950 to 2005 there was no increase in the impact of disasters once growth was accounted for. For 1970-2005, however, he found a 2% annual increase which "corresponded with a period of rising global temperatures,"

Muir-Wood was, however, careful to point out that almost all this increase could be accounted for by the exceptionally strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005. There were also other more technical factors that could cause bias, such as exchange rates which meant that disasters hitting the US would appear to cost proportionately more in insurance payouts.

Despite such caveats, the IPCC report used the study in its section on disasters and hazards, but cited only the 1970-2005 results.

The IPCC report said: "Once the data were normalised, a small statistically significant trend was found for an increase in annual catastrophe loss since 1970 of 2% a year." It added: "Once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

Muir-Wood's paper was originally commissioned by Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, also an expert on disaster impacts, for a workshop on disaster losses in 2006. The researchers who attended that workshop published a statement agreeing that so far there was no evidence to link global warming with any increase in the severity or frequency of disasters. Pielke has also told the IPCC that citing one section of Muir-Wood's paper in preference to the rest of his work, and all the other peer-reviewed literature, was wrong.

He said: "All the literature published before and since the IPCC report shows that rising disaster losses can be explained entirely by social change. People have looked hard for evidence that global warming plays a part but can't find it. Muir-Wood's study actually confirmed that."

Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the Tyndall Centre, which advises the UK government on global warming, said there was no real evidence that natural disasters were already being made worse by climate change. He said: “A proper analysis shows that these claims are usually superficial”

Such warnings may prove uncomfortable for Miliband whose recent speeches have often linked climate change with disasters such as the floods that recently hit Bangladesh and Cumbria. Last month he said: “We must not let the sceptics pass off political opinion as scientific fact. Events in Cumbria give a foretaste of the kind of weather runaway climate change could bring. Abroad, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of South Asia could put hundreds of millions of people at risk of drought. Our security is at stake.”

Muir-Wood himself is more cautious. He said: "The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. "We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished."

Some researchers have argued that it is unfair to attack the IPCC too strongly, pointing out that some errors are inevitable in a report as long and technical as the IPCC's round-up of climate science. "Part of the problem could simply be that expectations are too high," said one researcher. "We have been seen as a scientific gold standard and that's hard to live up to."

Professor Christopher Field,director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in California, who is the new co-chairman of the IPCC working group overseeing the climate impacts report, said the 2007 report had been broadly accurate at the time it was written.

He said: “The 2007 study should be seen as “a snapshot of what was known then. Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around.” However he confirmed he would be introducing rigorous new review procedures for future reports to ensure errors were kept to a minimum."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/envi...SS&attr=3392178

Woxof....

[E-HANDLE]

Now the climate scientists are beginning to dive off the rail of the IPCC Titanic.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...n-the-ipcc.aspx

This part of the piece says it all, IMO;

"The IPCC author who planted that false Himalayan meltdown said the other day “we” did it because “we thought ... it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”