Climate Change Consensus?

[chockalicious]

Just like the people who a year ago were declaring any climate change skeptic as a non-believer and a neanderthal. It is amazing how the left side of any argument is quick to denigrate anyone who does not agree with them but when the situation reverses they bleat loudly of the method of discussion used.

Maybe for those who only see anything as left/right when it comes to political discussion. Some other folks can see nuance and both sides of an issue.

[Guest woxof]

You are probably correct however it could be the accompanying hyperbole and using each post as a "case closed" type statement that is probably the cause.

Are you referring to the statements of "the science is settled" that we heard so much about?

It is not a left/right issue, it is a truth or not issue or.......more importantly....we don't know. Which is what it has turned out to be and always should have been. Stated in my earlier linked posts were quotes such as "follow the money" by Professor Plimer in his interview.

So lets follow the money. One of just many examples no doubt.

UN climate chief Rajendra Pachauri 'got grants through bogus claims'

"The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.

It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus. The revelation comes just a week after The Sunday Times highlighted serious scientific flaws in the IPCC's 2007 benchmark report on the likely impacts of global warming.

The IPCC had warned that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 - an idea considered ludicrous by most glaciologists. Last week a humbled IPCC retracted that claim and corrected its report.

Since then, however, The Sunday Times has discovered that the same bogus claim has been cited in grant applications for TERI.

One of them, announced earlier this month just before the scandal broke, resulted in a £310,000 grant from Carnegie.

An abstract of the grant application published on Carnegie's website said: "The Himalaya glaciers, vital to more than a dozen major rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, are melting and receding at a dangerous rate.

"One authoritative study reported that most of the glaciers in the region "will vanish within forty years as a result of global warming, resulting in widespread water shortages,"

The Carnegie money was specifically given to aid research into "the potential security and humanitarian impact on the region" as the glaciers began to disappear. Pachauri has since acknowledged that this threat, if it exists, will take centuries to have any serious effect.

The money was initially given to the Global Centre, an Icelandic Foundation which then channelled it, with Carnegie's involvement, to TERI.

The cash was acknowledged by TERI in a press release, issued on January 15, just before the glacier scandal became public, in which Pachauri repeated the claims of imminent glacial melt.

It said: ""According to predictions of scientific merit they may indeed melt away in several decades."

The same release also quoted Dr Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist who, back in 1999, made the now discredited claim that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

He now heads Pachauri's glaciology unit at TERI which sought the grants and which is carrying out the glacier research.

Critics point out that Hasnain, of all people, should have known the claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 was bogus because he was meant to be a leading glaciologist specialising in the Himalayas.

Any suggestion that TERI has repeated an unchecked scientific claim without checking it, in order to win grants, could prove hugely embarrassing for Pachauri and the IPCC.

The second grant, from the EU, totalled £2.5m and was designed to "to assess the impact of Himalayan glaciers retreat".

It was part of the EU's HighNoon project, launched last May to fund research into how India might adapt to loss of glaciers.

In one presentation at last May's launch, Anastasios Kentarchos, of the European Commission's Climate Change and Environmental Risks Unit, specifically cited the bogus IPCC claims about glacier melt as a reason for pouring EU taxpayers' money into the project.

Pachauri spoke at the same presentation and Hasnain is understood to have been present in the audience.

The EU grant was split between leading European research institutions including Britain's Met Office, with TERI getting a major but unspecified share because it represented the host country.

The "Glaciergate" affair has seen Pachauri come under increasing pressure in India, prompting him to call a press conference yesterday (Saturday) where he dismissed calls for his resignation and said no action would be taken against the authors of the erroneous section of the IPCC report.

He said: "I have no intention of resigning from my position," adding the errors were unintentional and not significant in comparison to the entire report.

However, other questions remain. One of the most important is in connection with Pachauri's earnings.

In an interview with The Sunday Times he said his only income came from his salary at TERI. However TERI does not publish his salary and he refused to divulge it.

In India questions are also being asked about Pachauri's links with GloriOil, a Houston, Texas-based oil technology company that specialises in recovering extra oil from declining oil fields . Pachauri is listed as a founder and scientific advisor.

Critics say it is odd for a man committed to decarbonising energy supplies to be linked to an oil company.

The problems come at a bad time for the IPCC which is recruiting scientists for its fifth report into the science and impacts underlying global warming.

Yesterday, Pachauri said he intended to remain as director of the IPCC to oversee the fifth IPCC assessment report dealing with sea level rise and ice sheets, oceans, clouds and carbon accounting. The report is expected by 2014."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999975.ece

Edited February 3, 2010 by woxof

[mrlupin]

Mr Lupin,

I have a question for you. You said:

Why?

Why just woxof?

IMO it seems a lot of people don't like woxof's posting style and attack him rather than the message posted.

Morning Cargo Agent.

My question to Woxof is one of curiosity. To me the issue of climate change is a hard one to prove/understand. The evidence from both sides is overwhelming and unless one was knees deep researching the subject( and even then), it would be hard to provide a 100% accurate answer. This having been said, very few posters on this board write in the absolute terms used by Woxof. In his latest post on the board he does show some moderation and opens the door to us not knowing.

Are you referring to the statements of "the science is settled" that we heard so much about?

It is not a left/right issue, it is a truth or not issue or.......more importantly....we don't know. Which is what it has turned out to be and always should have been. Stated in my earlier linked posts were quotes such as "follow the money" by Professor Plimer in his interview.

So lets follow the money. One of just many examples no doubt.

In his many of his previous posts, Woxof uses statements such as

"Always knew the man-made part was bogus. Hmmmm....more truth revealed here by Woxof."

Woxof prides himself in being a provider of truth,yet he mostly posts articles that agree with his vision that global warming is a hoax and many of his statements are written as absolutes (in a way that the makes the reader believe that the statement is an incontestable truth...) Yet since articles from both sides are abundant on the subject, and since for myself, the truth is still an unknown, I was curious to know what caused Woxof to become so certain of his position? When I read the same articles he posts, I don't see the irrefutable truth... Like Chockalicious mentioned, the case closed approach is hard to swallow. I don't know if that approach was intentional on Woxof's part but the tone in his writing suggests it.

Woxof is the primary contributor to this thread. He is also the one making comments that (at least when I read them), appear as absolutes versus ideas to discuss. That is why I asked my question to Woxof. We don't get the same information out of the same articles. That might be due to many reasons but verifiability of the articles could be one reason. I don't need to do much effort to find global warming hoax articles, he posts many of them here, I do have to research global warming articles, he posts none of them here and since the info coming from both sides is so conflictual, I wanted to know how he verifies his "facts".

Cheers

[Cargo Agent]

Mr. Lupin,

Thanks for the reply. I understand where you're coming from now. I never understood woxof to say that Global Warming was a hoax, only that the bill of goods we have been and are being sold by politicians and certain scientists does not settle the argument. IMO the counter arguments posted by woxof do not dispute the existence of Global Warming but dispute the notion that "the science is settled". For years now we have had that phrase rammed down our throats and anyone daring to challenge was immediately set upon and denounced. Perhaps there is a bit of "what goes around comes around" involved here.

Woxof's posting style certainly rubs more than a few people here the wrong way but the same can be said for a number of others among us as well.

[Mitch Cronin]

I never understood woxof to say that Global Warming was a hoax, only that the bill of goods we have been and are being sold by politicians and certain scientists does not settle the argument. IMO the counter arguments posted by woxof do not dispute the existence of Global Warming but dispute the notion that "the science is settled". For years now we have had that phrase rammed down our throats and anyone daring to challenge was immediately set upon and denounced. Perhaps there is a bit of "what goes around comes around" involved here.

I challenge you to find a single post within this thread, from anyone other than woxof, which claims the science is settled?

There has been only one repetitive voice of confidence throughout this thread... and now you'd aid him in re-writing his history?

Most of us have been saying all along the trouble is that we don't know enough, yet there was always woxof, calling us 'believers', and "greenies"...

My prediction....The global warming predictions are likely to be at least as accurate as the global cooling/ice age predictions of the 70's.

The face of the climate change scam of the century reveals itself

Woxof....getting to the end result.

I think any unbiased observer would likely be of the opinion that each of us are as adament about our beliefs as the other. That would make you as closed-minded as me

I stromgly suggest that you read this article. Now a leading global warming scientist is all of a sudden predicting global cooling for the next 10-20 years. This would fit in perfectly with the natural cycles Professor Plimer from earlier post talked about.

Now you know why I call this the scam of the century.

Someday, they will wonder how so many were duped.

I would like to make an admission about how wrong I have been in the global warming debate. I have been adament about the fact that we are in fact experiencing

Global Warming but no proof that it is man-made.

Now the new studies and statements by scientists have me believing that global cooling is here, at least for a few decades. No longer will I hesitate to leave the car running for hours when it is -30 and below(as is common in some areas). I won't feel guilty about the smoky exhaust I have emitted out the jetpipes for years at work. I'm proud to say that I have flown in support of the oilsands. I was considering giving up the pick-up truck, but gas prices are somewhat lower than last year. I do like the house quite warm in the winter but love the air conditioning in the summer and I always have been a bit lazy when it comes to turning off lights. And who doesn't like a good smoky BBQ? Heck, I can even stop planning on taking Beano after a meal(http://www.fitsugar.com/181312) and enjoy rrriping a few now and then as I always did. Life is good and Suzuki was right after all....back in the '70's.

Woxof....heading off to buy a new set of skis.

The scam of the century is revealing itself more and more. The seasons are getting colder, ice is thickening

...and I got tired of looking...

[deicer]

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42456

[Moon The Loon]

Most people who discuss the issue of the reducing amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean do not take into account the following.

In Canada, the northern edge of the Arctic Ocean (Ellesmere Island) is about 82 degrees north latitude. The southernmost edge of the Arctic Ocean along the top of Alaska and the Canadian coastline in the vicinity of Tuktoyaktuk is about 69 degrees north latitude. On the Russian side, is on average 70 degrees north latitude, with some of the land extending to nearly 80 degrees.

Ocean salinity on average is about 3.5%. Surface water will freeze at approximately -2 degrees Celsius.

How much time does the temperature at these latitudes rise above -2 degrees Celsius? At 70 degrees north latitude, the sun disappears in late November and doesn't rise above the horizon until late January. At 80 degrees north latitude, the sun dips below the horizon in late October and doesn't rise again until early March. When the sun does rise above the horizon, the highest angle in the sky (declination) at the north pole (90 degrees north latitude) is 23.5 degrees. At 70 degrees north latitude, the sun will rise to a maximum 43.5 degrees declination. Most of the sun's energy is absorbed by the atmosphere through which it must pass before reaching the surface of the Arctic. Aviation Weather 101 - the air is not heated by the sun's radiation passing through it; the air is warmed (or cooled) in contact with the surface.

During the dark season, temperatures dip to the -50 degrees Celsius mark and can stay there for months at a time. Once the sun comes up, the surface temperatures might make it to the plus side of the Celsius scale for maybe two months. Surface temperatures greater than +5 Celsius over any portion of the sea ice pack north of 80 degrees north are nearly unheard of.

Here's an interesting link with a very interesting statement, affirming what I wrote repeatedly earlier in this thread:

http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap11/sea_ice_basic.html

The interesting statement is this - "Large areas of sea ice exist around Antarctica and the Arctic. The radiation balance and exchanges of heat and moisture over an ice-covered ocean are very different from those over an open ocean. Therefore sea ice may have a significant effect on global climate, and both the extent and the thickness of sea ice need to be carefully monitored." I've highlighted the statement.

Please read this again: "...sea ice may have a significant effect on global climate..." Global warming proponents are saying it's the other way around, that global climate is having a significant effect on sea ice.

How exactly do modern global warming proponents contend that warm air is melting the sea ice? There is not a lot of warm air in contact with the surface of the Arctic Ocean for any great amount of time annually. For nearly 10 months of the year, the entire surface of the ocean is covered by ice. It may not be as thick or as long lasting as it was 100 years ago, but this covering of ice acts as an insulator to the water at depth. It insulates water under the icepack from the frigid surface temperatures. Much of the Arctic Ocean is over 10,000 feet deep. Warm Atlantic Ocean water currents have been found to be invading the Arctic basin and have raised the temperature of the Arctic Ocean. Warm water rises. The sea ice is melting from below. When this influx from the Atlantic makes its way into the Arctic Ocean, it does a couple of things - it prevents the surface ice in direct contact with the cold air from freezing to the depths it used to and two, during the months of moderate temperatures, the melting from below is accelerated because the ice isn't as thick. When the Arctic ice pack melts, it melts most quickly along the coastline. This is aided by the shallow water and the rotation of the ice pack against the coastline in a clockwise motion due to rotation of the earth, as well as being at more southerly latitudes even though still well above the Arctic Circle.

These are some of the reasons why I find the "science" of the last 10 years so disturbing. The "science" has an underlying motive much the same as the cigarette industry produced hundreds of scientific studies "proving" that smoking was not only not unhealthy but had positive medicinal effects. That motive is money, money, money. I find it no coincidence that one of the strongest proponents of measures that will sap trillions of dollars out of all our pockets is not a scientist, but a politician. The most popular scientist and host of The Nature of Things spent his early days of true science in the study of insects. For the last 35 years, he has been primarily an entertainer and media personality.

Pushing for carbon credits and global reductions in CO2 production (the second most important component of our atmosphere) amongst so many other poorly scienced initiatives is what I believe to be the monumental scam of the century. To that end, I have been saying and will continue to say to the Gor-zuki crowd: POPPYCOCK, and SHAME ON BOTH OF YOU.

All these words with the exception of the quoted link above, are mine. I've come to this way of thinking because for many things, I don't believe what I'm told unless I can find corroboration, either in my own unofficial learning of the way things work, or by using common sense to come to a form of understanding. I do find it amusing that for the most part, I agree with many of the articles posted by woxof, and for that, I do apologize .

[Guest woxof]

I challenge you to find a single post within this thread, from anyone other than woxof, which claims the science is settled?

There has been only one repetitive voice of confidence throughout this thread... and now you'd aid him in re-writing his history?

...and I got tired of looking...

Thanks for posting so many of my quotes Mitch, I forgot how enjoyable they are to read.

You are correct that no one here on this forum has said in exact words that the "science is settled" in concluding that global warming is man-made. But here is what you said when someone questioned the "science is settled" theory. You youself called it a "consensus" of scientific organizations believing in man-made global warming and provided a list of what appears to be well known scientific organizations that are proponents of man-made global warming and posted their statement saying....

"Despite increasing consensus on the science underpinning predictions of global climate change,doubts have been expressed recently about the need to mitigate the risks posed by global climate change. We do not consider such doubts justified."

Then you said....

"I think an intelligent person, who lacks any greater knowledge than the aformentioned groups, would consider their consensus opinion worthy of attention. Certainly more worthy, I think, than a very small number of discredited scientists who are being paid by those who stand to lose most if such notions are taken seriously"

http://theairlinewebsite.com/index.php?showtopic=387508&st=0&p=1533315entry1533315

It appears that the discredited scientists are the ones who pulled the wool over your eyes. In my last post I showed who was getting the money on this issue.And I have posted below how the IPCC kept quiet in the runup to Copenhagen on how the Himalaya glacier issue was false.

I predict much more money trail findings in this Climategate story.

Woxof....I wonder how many old posts are being quickly deleted?

Edited February 4, 2010 by woxof

[Guest woxof]

"UN chief knew about climate change error EIGHT WEEKS before summit

Dr Rajendra Pachauri's prediction of Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 was a lie

The controversial UN chief who admitted lying about climate change knew about his error two months before announcing it, according to reports last night.

Last week Dr Rajendra Pachauri was forced into a humiliating climbdown over claims the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years.

He said he had only just learned his prognosis had been refuted by experts, after the report in which they were included formed a key plank of proposals at the Copenhagen climate change summit.

But last night it emerged he had been told he was wrong about his date of 2035 by leading glacier experts eight weeks before the summit began.

Most glacier experts believe the Himalayan ice is so thick and at such high altitude it would take at least several hundred years to melt and some glaciers are currently growing.

Despite this, Dr Pachauri's alarmist claims appeared in an influential assessment by the Intergovernmetnal Panel on Climate Change delivered to world leaders.

The 938-page report stated: '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.

The IPCC insisted contained their report contained the latest and most detailed evidence yet of the risks of man-made climate change.

But a prominent science journalist told The Times he had asked Dr Pachauri about the 2035 error last November after leading experts said he was 300 years out, and he ignored it.

Pallava Bagla who writes for the journal Science, interviewed him again last week and said in a taped conversation: 'I pointed it out [the error] to you in several emails, several discussion yet you decided to overlook it. Was that so that you did not want to destabilise what was happening in Copenhagen?'

Dr Pachauri replied: 'Not at all, not at all. As it happens we were all terribly preoccupied with a lot of events.

'We were working round the clock with several things that had to be done in Copenhagen. It was only when the story broke, I think in December, we decided to, well, early in January - that we decided to go into it.'

'And within three or four days we were able to come up with a clear and very honest and objective assessment of what happened.'

Dr Pachauri has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, The Times reported.

Mr Bagla claimed he had been told by Dr Pachauri that the problem would be dealt with in the IPCC's next report due in 2013 or 2014.

The 70-year-old Indian who trained as a railway engineer before acquiring PHDs in industrial engineering and economics even dismissed an Indian Government report suggesting the glaciers were not melting as 'voodoo science'.

In a statement last week he apologised for the error in the report. 'In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly', he said.

'The chair, vice-chairs, and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance.'"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247233/UN-chief-knew-climate-change-error-EIGHT-WEEKS-summit.html

Edited February 4, 2010 by woxof

[Guest woxof]

Now....you will notice that a well known poster on this thread(who's dogs are smart) said...."I think an intelligent person, who lacks any greater knowledge than the aformentioned groups, would consider their consensus opinion worthy of attention. Certainly more worthy, I think, than a very small number of discredited scientists who are being paid by those who stand to lose most if such notions are taken seriously"

So I have decided to show why he thought that there was a consensus and this article is not by a skeptic...

"How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus

The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg. I should know.

By PATRICK J. MICHAELS

Few people understand the real significance of Climategate, the now-famous hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most see the contents as demonstrating some arbitrary manipulating of various climate data sources in order to fit preconceived hypotheses (true), or as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the face of potential or actual Freedom of Information requests (also true).

But there's something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant."

The bible I'm referring to, of course, is the refereed scientific literature. It's our canon, and it's all we have really had to go on in climate science (until the Internet has so rudely interrupted). When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.

That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.

A refereed journal, Climate Research, published two particular papers that offended Michael Mann of Penn State and Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. One of the papers, published in 2003 by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), was a meta-analysis of dozens of "paleoclimate" studies that extended back 1,000 years. They concluded that 20th-century temperatures could not confidently be considered to be warmer than those indicated at the beginning of the last millennium.

In fact, that period, known as the "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP), was generally considered warmer than the 20th century in climate textbooks and climate compendia, including those in the 1990s from the IPCC.

Then, in 1999, Mr. Mann published his famous "hockey stick" article in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), which, through the magic of multivariate statistics and questionable data weighting, wiped out both the Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent "Little Ice Age" (a cold period from the late 16th century to the mid-19th century), leaving only the 20th-century warming as an anomaly of note.

Messrs. Mann and Wigley also didn't like a paper I published in Climate Research in 2002. It said human activity was warming surface temperatures, and that this was consistent with the mathematical form (but not the size) of projections from computer models. Why? The magnitude of the warming in CRU's own data was not as great as in the models, so therefore the models merely were a bit enthusiastic about the effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Mr. Mann called upon his colleagues to try and put Climate Research out of business. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," he wrote in one of the emails. "We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

After Messrs. Jones and Mann threatened a boycott of publications and reviews, half the editorial board of Climate Research resigned. People who didn't toe Messrs. Wigley, Mann and Jones's line began to experience increasing difficulty in publishing their results.

This happened to me and to the University of Alabama's Roy Spencer, who also hypothesized that global warming is likely to be modest. Others surely stopped trying, tiring of summary rejections of good work by editors scared of the mob. Sallie Baliunas, for example, has disappeared from the scientific scene.

GRL is a very popular refereed journal. Mr. Wigley was concerned that one of the editors was "in the skeptics camp." He emailed Michael Mann to say that "if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official . . . channels to get him ousted."

Mr. Mann wrote to Mr. Wigley on Nov. 20, 2005 that "It's one thing to lose 'Climate Research.' We can't afford to lose GRL." In this context, "losing" obviously means the publication of anything that they did not approve of on global warming.

Soon the suspect editor, Yale's James Saiers, was gone. Mr. Mann wrote to the CRU's Phil Jones that "the GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership there."

It didn't stop there. Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory complained that the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS) was now requiring authors to provide actual copies of the actual data that was used in published papers. He wrote to Phil Jones on March 19, 2009, that "If the RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available—raw data PLUS results from all intermediate calculations—I will not submit any further papers to RMS journals."

Messrs. Jones and Santer were Ph.D. students of Mr. Wigley. Mr. Santer is the same fellow who, in an email to Phil Jones on Oct. 9, 2009, wrote that he was "very tempted" to "beat the crap" out of me at a scientific meeting. He was angry that I published "The Dog Ate Global Warming" in National Review, about CRU's claim that it had lost primary warming data.

The result of all this is that our refereed literature has been inestimably damaged, and reputations have been trashed. Mr. Wigley repeatedly tells news reporters not to listen to "skeptics" (or even nonskeptics like me), because they didn't publish enough in the peer-reviewed literature—even as he and his friends sought to make it difficult or impossible to do so.

Ironically, with the release of the Climategate emails, the Climatic Research Unit, Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley have dramatically weakened the case for emissions reductions. The EPA claimed to rely solely upon compendia of the refereed literature such as the IPCC reports, in order to make its finding of endangerment from carbon dioxide. Now that we know that literature was biased by the heavy-handed tactics of the East Anglia mob, the EPA has lost the basis for its finding.

Mr. Michaels, formerly professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia (1980-2007), is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598230426037244.html

Woxof....only the truth

Edited February 9, 2010 by woxof

[mrlupin]

Woxof....only the truth

The truth, only the truth, La "vérité absolue"... Posted by Woxof, but taken from the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal...

Edited February 9, 2010 by mrlupin

[Guest woxof]

The truth, only the truth, La "vérité absolue"... Posted by Woxof, but taken from the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal...

The opinion of someone who is....a Ph.D. in ecological climatology. His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in popular serials such as the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce.[4] He was an author of the climate "paper of the year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004."

Rolling eyes icons are hardly a credible dismissal of an opinion by someone with his background.

Now here is another opinion...

"Stephen Harper avoids a climate fiasco

We cannot continue to ignore the clean energy challenge and stand still while other countries move forward in the emerging industries of the 21st century,” declared President Barack Obama in his U.S. budget message yesterday. So does that mean he’s concerned about falling behind Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario, which recently announced a multi-billion dollar wind and solar power agreement with Korean giant Samsung whose main effect will be to cost jobs and raise electricity prices? Possibly. But if President Obama really wants to imitate such craziness, does that make the Harper government even wackier for committing to follow in U.S. policy footsteps, a plan outlined again yesterday by Environment Minister Jim Prentice?

No. The Conservatives have committed to do whatever the U.S. does when it comes to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, but their main priority is to avoid destructive trade sanctions. They are also aware that President Obama has a major fight on his hands in pursuing what increasingly appears to be an expensive and pointless policy. Copenhagen was a flop. Climategate still hovers. The IPCC is increasingly becoming a laughing stock, and the science of man-made climate change is disintegrating. While political inertia continues to edge policy towards the economic precipice, the Harper government is hoping it will grind to a halt before taking Western nations over.

The U.S. budget proposals released yesterday still referred to a “market mechanism” (that is, “cap and trade”) to fight climate change, but contained no estimates of revenue. Last year the administration forecast raising US$646-billion from the program between 2012 and 2019. This would have come out of the hides of coal and petroleum producers, which explains its omission. The budget also committed to take “prompt, substantial action to help vulnerable countries adapt and build resilience to the effects of climate change.” But since those effects are unknown, man-made climate change is increasingly being proved a fraud, and elections are due in November, neither cap and trade nor sending cash overseas at a time of 10% U.S. unemployment is likely to be too popular.

Although the UN process may be disintegrating, it still has its deadlines. Canada had to file its plan by last Sunday. That plan is to reduce emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, mirroring the U.S. But if the U.S. changes, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said over the weekend, Canada will change too (Canada had previously committed to a 20% cut by 2020 from 2006 levels).

When Mr. Prentice reiterated this policy of shadowing the U.S. in a speech yesterday in Calgary, he was inevitably met by the bleating of radical NGOs that he was abandoning both responsibility and sovereignty. Hooey. Mr. Prentice did nevertheless make obeisance to the destructive PR power of NGOs by saying that Canada must improve the image of the oilsands. He even dubbed Canada — somewhat bizarrely — a “clean energy superpower.” But the much larger news is that the climate fandango is imploding.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now faces a leadership crisis. Some suggest the IPCC’s problems might be solved by ditching its beleaguered head, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. It won’t be that easy.

The IPCC is irretrievably biased, corrupt and incompetent. IPCC reports, rather than being comprehensively “peer reviewed,” are — as multiple revelations make clear — riddled with alarmism from less-than-credible, sometimes even ludicrous, sources. This comes on top of the news that the highly influential U.K. Stern Report not only contained wildly exaggerated figures on climate damage costs, but that these figures were later corrected without informing anybody.

The IPCC’s purpose has always been ideological. It has marshalled science to suit its two main political purposes: to impose central control over the global economy, and to establish a rationale for further massive transfers to undeveloped countries, despite the total failure of such polices in the past.

What requires explaining is why it has taken so long for this charade to be exposed, or at least start to be exposed, since much of the North American media is proving slow to report on it. Perhaps those who spent two decades screaming down “deniers” are inevitably themselves in a state of denial.

The damage still has a long way to spread. Quite apart from the IPCC revelations, the leaked Climategate emails have exposed manipulation which extends beyond the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia into the bowels of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, GISS, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. Virtually all the science academies of major nations have much explaining to do.

It is easy to point to the obvious bureaucratic, political and corporate self-interest in promoting man-made climate change, but the roots of this “extraordinary popular delusion” go much deeper. One key has been the success of its promoters — primarily Al Gore — in selling it as a “moral issue,” and thus beyond debate or rational examination. This was all the easier because climate change fit so comfortably into an anti-capitalist narrative that has been around since the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution: that commercial society is motivated by greed, exploitative, short-sighted, and needs be tamed by wise and well-meaning souls. Communism was the first great anti-capitalist God that Failed. Now Gaia is also being found to have feet of clay.

The Harper government has so far done a good job of negotiating its way round this all too “religious” issue"

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/01/peter-foster-climate-gambit.aspx

Good work Stephen.

[mrlupin]

The opinion of someone who is....a Ph.D. in ecological climatology. His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in popular serials such as the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce.[4] He was an author of the climate "paper of the year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004."

Rolling eyes icons are hardly a credible dismissal of an opinion by someone with his background.

Before we look at the message, lets have a look at

the authors credentials?

The author's other interests?

Is the article published by a the reliable source?

The source's interests?

The methodology used for data collection?

Determine verifiability of the information being conveyed?

From Wikipedia, about Patrick J. Michaels,

OSTP director, John Holdren,[15] told the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, "Michaels is another of the handful of U.S. climate-change contrarians … He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science."[16] Michaels responded in a Washington Examiner Op-Ed, writing, "The last IPCC compendium on climate science, published in 2007, left out plenty of peer-reviewed science that it found inconveniently disagreeable."[17]

Climate scientist Tom Wigley,[18] a lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has stated that "Michaels' statements on the subject of computer models are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation … Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels' testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading."[19]

In a July 27, 2006 ABC News report, it was revealed that a Colorado energy cooperative, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, had given Michaels $100,000.[28] The report noted that the cooperative has a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps.

Michaels prominence also led to new funding from fossil fuel interests. In 1991-92 an anonymous donor made of grant of $50,000 to Michaels for his work on climate change, the Edison Electric Institute paid $25,000 between 1992 and 1995 for a literature review of climate change and updates. Western Fuels Association contributed $63,000 for "research on global climate change" and between 1994 $98,000 from Gesamtverband des Deutschen Stenkohlenbergbaus in Germany.[3] As Michaels corporate funding was taking off, in 1994 he founded and is the sole owner of New Hope Environmental Services, which refers to itself as "an advocacy science consulting firm". Aside from publishing the World Climate Report, the firm boasts that its staff often provide testimony to Congress and commentary on climate issues to media outlets.[21].

In 1995 Harpers Magazine author Ross Gelbspan reported that Pat Michaels has received more than $115,000 from coal and energy interests. In 2006 a leaked memo from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) details payments of at least $100,000 and the soliciting of more money for Michaels et al from other coal outlets. Pat Michaels is also a Visiting Scientist with the George C. Marshall Institute and a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies with the Cato Institute. Both of which receive funding from Exxon Mobil and other oil interests.

From The Gardian (UK) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10

In 2007 Michaels withdrew as an expert witness from a court case about climate change, after it became clear that his other sources of funding could be revealed to the public.

in 2006, (http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/21/michaels-state-climatologist/)

Virginia Asks Global Warming Skeptic To Stop Calling Himself ‘State Climatologist’

Michaels is Editor of the World Climate Report, a blog published by New Hope Environmental Services, "an advocacy science consulting firm"[1] he founded and runs. In an affidavit in a Vermont court case, Michaels described the "mission" of the firm as being to "publicize findings on climate change and scientific and social perspectives that may not otherwise appear in the popular literature or media. This entails both response research and public commentary."[2] In effect, New Hope Environmental Services is a PR firm.

You can find the court documents relating to this last incident here http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/GreenMtDoc521-3.pdf

Some more flaws in his use of graphs to report climate change can be found here

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/patMichaels.html

The rolling eyes were not meant to discredit the scientist. Apparently, he is a scientist with papers to prove it. The rolling eyes were for YOUR use of the propaganda of a bought and paid for scientist reporting in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal while claiming to give us the "truth".

From Woxof post #741

In my last post I showed who was getting the money on this issue.

I predict much more money trail findings in this Climategate story.

You were right Woxof, there is more money trail findings...Apparently, other people are getting money to oppose the climate change issue... But reporting that would go against your truth agenda wouldn't it?

[Guest woxof]

Hmmm...so someone's financial background affects their scientific opinion does it? Well lets see what the background is of Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC (you know...the guys that finished the science for us and influences the global decisions).

According to the Daily Telegraph....

"Millions of pounds of British taxpayers' money is being paid to an organisation in India run by Dr Rajendra Pachauri"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7005963/Taxpayers-millions-paid-to-Indian-institute-run-by-UN-climate-chief.html

Here is a list of at least some of his business interests....

http://www.webcitation.org/5nDYXhhFJ

As well the Daily Telegraph has revealed....

"What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6847227/Questions-over-business-deals-of-UN-climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html

It would appear that the head of the IPCC fits the bill as not only a bought and paid for scientist but that he is also doing the buying and paying.

Woxof...enlightening the masses.

Edited February 10, 2010 by woxof

[Guest woxof]

Hmmm..I wonder why he is an enviro-activist.

"The UN's enviro-activist in-chief

In the editorial column of yesterday's National Post, we argued that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had become fatally politicized: Instead of acting as a clearinghouse for reputable scientific data and analysis, it had become a cheerleader for heavy-handed carbon-abatement policies.

Even in regard to its function as a scientific body, the IPCC's mission has been compromised: A string of recent scandals suggest much of the global temperature data used by the organization has been fudged in some way. And this week, it emerged that the IPCC had based some of its claims about disappearing glaciers on sketchy reports contained in a mountaineering magazine and a master's dissertation -- hardly the peer-reviewed material that is supposed to inform the judgment of top scientists.

Given all this, one would expect that Rajendra Pachauri, the current chairman of the IPCC, would exhibit some embarrassment -- especially since, as the recent stalemate in Copenhagen showed world leaders are increasingly skeptical about the need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the face of a fragile global economic recovery.

Yet Mr. Pachauri will have no truck with humility. In media statements, he has taken to portraying himself as a sort of global-wamring martyr, who on most nights (he says) sleeps just two hours. He has long since abandoned the notion of the IPCC as a body that limits itself to providing information to decision makers, and apparently sees no reason to pull back from his activism now.

"One of the favourable outcomes of the Copenhagen conference last December was the acceptance of a 2°C limit on temperature increase that the countries who are part of the Copenhagen Accord laid down as a target," he wrote in a Feb. 1 op-ed for The Hindu. "However, this Accord, which was reached in the final hours of the extended meeting, is not yet universally accepted, and in fact is likely to receive some resistance from a number of countries ... The challenge and opportunity facing human society is, therefore, to launch urgent grassroots action by civil society, business and local governments towards a pattern of sustainable development. National governments and multilateral initiatives would follow inevitably."

Urgent grassroots action by civil society, business and local governments? When was Mr. Pachauri elected the world's climate-change activist-in-chief ? His demand flies in the face of the IPCC charter, which clearly sets out its mandate as a clearing house for scientific information, rather than an activist body promoting specific policies.

In the charter's own words: "The IPCC is a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate-related data or parameters. Because of its scientific and intergovernmental nature, the IPCC embodies a unique opportunity to provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers. By endorsing the IPCC reports, governments acknowledge the authority of their scientific content. The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive."

How is calling for "urgent grassroots action" even remotely "policy neutral"?

And since when does a representative of the United Nations bypass a national government to appeal directly to the citizens of a country? "Grassroots action" and "direct action" may sound nice to Western ears. But in more restrictive societies, they are often interpreted as code words for civil disobedience -- the sort of thing that can get people hurt.

Some good may come out of this, however: Mr. Pachauri's extracurricular venting may provide his critics with the excuse they need to remove him from his post as head of the IPCC. If that is what happens, we can't say we'll be disappointed."

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=2510714

[Guest woxof]

"The West Wants Out of the Western Climate Initiative

The Western Climate Initiative’s cap and trade market may soon need to be renamed The Canada Climate Initiative.

Until this week, the Western Climate Initiative boasted seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces who were working toward the launch of a regional cap and trade system on Jan 1, 2012. On Thursday, Arizona formally announced it was backing out of cap and trade. As the state with the fastest rate of emission growth -- 61% between 1990 and 2007 – many feared a body blow to Arizona’s economy if it tried to meet the initiative’s carbon reduction goals.

The following morning neighbouring Utah indicated it might follow suit. By a 6 to 2 vote, its House Committee on Public Utilities and Technology passed a nonbinding resolution to urge Governor Gary Herbert to pull out of the Western Climate Initiative. Earlier in the week, the full Utah House voted resoundingly – 56 to 17 – to curb any carbon-curbing attempts by the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency. Specifically, the resolution “urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and with its ‘Endangerment Finding’ and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.”

To date, only four of the 11 jurisdictions have adopted legislation that would allow them to participate in the cap-trade-market: California, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, with Manitoba appearing close to joining.

Oregon, Washington, Montana and New Mexico have not yet adopted cap-and-trade legislation and now California, which is tottering toward bankruptcy, has become iffy: A voter initiative in California, if it passes in November, would halt the cap-and-trade program until unemployment falls to 5.5%.

The upshot? By the end of the year, the only jurisdictions left in the Western Climate Initiative’s cap and trade program could be the Canadian provinces."

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/02/14/lawrence-solomon-the-west-wants-out-of-the-western-climate-initiative.aspx

[E-HANDLE]

Even Phil Jones of the CRU is having to admit that a lot of the alarmist twaddle is just that. It's about time.

"Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#ixzz0fleXdUK4

[Steam Driven]

Before we look at the message, lets have a look at

the authors credentials?

The author's other interests?

Is the article published by a the reliable source?

The source's interests?

The methodology used for data collection?

Determine verifiability of the information being conveyed?

From Wikipedia, about Patrick J. Michaels,

Before you start using Wikipedia as an authority on the subject of Global Warming...

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/18/lawrence-solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor.aspx#ixzz0foAlnjhK

Edited February 17, 2010 by Steam Driven

[Guest woxof]

Even Phil Jones of the CRU is having to admit that a lot of the alarmist twaddle is just that. It's about time.

"Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#ixzz0fleXdUK4

That is huge, huge news. The head of the East Anglia CRU has basically admitted that there is no proof of man-made global warming as I have been saying all along .

Now certain folks are upset, no doubt but this is a time for celebration. The world has been this warm before globally and likely, after cooling down a bit, it will warm up again.

It is now totally unnecessary to waste money on all these carbon reducing initiatives. Pollution reducing should be the focus. Alternative energy should be the focus for political reasons of energy independence.

It is now unnecessary to send trillions to be wasted of corrupt third world regimes in the name of global warming reduction. Disease reduction and food self-sufficiency are the worthwhile goals.

It is a time to realize that a scientific theory was hijacked by a bunch of socialists/ enviro-freaks/anarchists and political opportunists. They fed on your guilty feelings of the good life we have achieved here and we were all victims with some of you becoming "useful idiots".

But as I predicted, the truth would come out and it did. Looking back now it seems so obvious to me and should be to you as well. Some will still try to hang on but a new chapter in history called the "Scam of the Century" is quickly coming to a close.

Edited February 17, 2010 by woxof

[Guest woxof]

"Can Climate Forecasts Still Be Trusted?

Confidence Melting Away: Doubts Grow in Climate Change Debate

The Siachen Glacier is home to the world's highest crisis region. Here, at 6,000 meters (19,680 feet) above sea level, Indian and Pakistani soldiers face off, ensconced in heavily armed positions.

The ongoing border dispute between the two nuclear powers has already claimed the lives of 4,000 men -- most of them having died of exposure to the cold.

Now the Himalayan glacier is also at the center of a scientific dispute. In its current report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that the glacier, which is 71 kilometers (44 miles) long, could disappear by 2035. It also predicts that the other 45,000 glaciers in the world's highest mountain range will be virtually gone by then, with drastic consequences for billions of people in Asia, whose life depends on water that originates in the Himalayas. The IPCC report led environmental activists to sound the alarm about a drama that could be unfolding at the "world's third pole."

"This prognosis is, of course, complete nonsense," says John Shroder, a geologist and expert on glaciers at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. The results of his research tell a completely different story.

For the past three decades, the US glaciologist has been traversing the majestic mountains of the Himalayan region, particularly the Karakorum Range, with his measuring instruments. The discoveries he has made along the way are not consistent with the assessment long held by the IPCC. "While many glaciers are shrinking, others are stable and some are even growing," says Shroder.

Untenable Claim

The gaffe over the Himalayan glaciers has triggered an outcry in the world of climatology. Some are already using the word "Glaciergate" in reference to the scandal over a scientifically untenable claim in the fourth IPCC assessment report, which the UN climate body publishes every five years. The fourth assessment report was originally published in 2007. Last week, the IPCC withdrew the erroneous claim and apologized for the error.

German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is also upset about the incident. "The error in the IPCC report is serious and should not have happened," Röttgen told SPIEGEL. "Scientific accuracy is a vital condition to support the credibility of the political conclusions we draw as a result." Although the minister still has confidence in the overall validity of the IPCC report, he wants to see "a thorough investigation into how the error originated and was communicated."

But why wasn't this clearly nonsensical claim noticed long ago by at least one of the 3,000 scientists who contributed to the IPCC report? "What's really amazing is that such a blunder remained uncorrected for so long," says Shroder.

To err is human, say IPCC officials like Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "We shouldn't question the credibility of an almost 3,000-page report because of one error."

But other climatologists are calling for consequences. They insist that IPCC Chairman and Nobel laureate Rajendra Pachauri is no longer acceptable as head of the panel, particularly because of his personal involvement in the affair. "Pachauri should resign, so as to avert further damage to the IPCC," says German climatologist Hans von Storch. "He used the argument of the supposed threat to the Himalayan glacier in his personal efforts to raise funds for research." Storch claims that the Indian-born scientist did not order the retraction of the erroneous prediction until it had generated considerable public pressure.

'Best of My Abilities'

Pachauri, for his part, rejects calls for his resignation. "I have a commitment to successfully complete the Fifth Assessment Report, a commitment that I am certainly not willing to set aside," the IPCC chairman said.

The prognosis drama began in 1999. The theory of the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 first appeared in an article in the British popular magazine New Scientist, for which Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain was interviewed.

As it turned out, the specification of the year 2035 was the result of a simple mistake. In an article published three years earlier, Russian glaciologist Vladimir Kotlyakov did in fact predict a massive decline in the area covered by glaciers, but not until the year 2350. "All of the IPCC's peer-review procedures failed," says Canadian geographer Graham Cogley.

Indian scientist Hasnain's ties to the IPCC chairman have triggered a public relations crisis. The glaciologist now works at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, whose director is none other than Rajendra Pachauri. Could this explain why Pachauri suppressed the error in the Himalaya passage of the IPCC report for so long?

The erroneous prediction of a precipitous end for the Himalayan glaciers was already revealed in November, when a glaciologist working for the Indian environment ministry presented a study on Himalayan glaciers that arrived at completely different conclusions than the IPCC report. But Pachauri dismissed the new study as "voodoo science."

Sloppiness

In mid-January, the New Scientist confessed to its own sloppiness, exactly one day after IPCC Chairman Pachauri and his glacier expert Hasnain had announced a joint venture involving TERI, Iceland and the United States to study the Himalayan glaciers, with half a million dollars in funding from the New York-based Carnegie Foundation. "Perhaps Pachauri was so hesitant to look into the matter because he was trying to protect the research projects being conducted by his own institute," says climate statistician Storch. Pachauri, however, claims that he was simply pressed for time: "Everybody in the IPCC was terribly preoccupied with planning for several events that were to take place in Copenhagen," he said, referring to the climate change summit held in the Danish capital in December.

Toyota, the world's largest automaker, also contributed $80,000 to TERI. Last week the Japanese company was awarded the $1.5 million (€1.05 million) "Zayed Future Energy Prize" for its Prius hybrid car. Pachauri was the chairman of the jury, but he explains that he temporarily suspended his chairmanship because of his consulting activities. Nevertheless, he did manage to praise Toyota at the awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi, saying that the company deserves "the fullest appreciation" for bringing about a radical shift in technology.

Unfortunately, the questions about the IPCC and its president come at a time when the credibility of climatologists has already suffered, partly as a result of the theft of confidential e-mail messages written by scientists, the content of which has led critics to claim that data were manipulated. Although none of these incidents negate the evidence supporting climate change, facts ceased to be the focus of the acrimonious debate long ago. Instead, it now revolves around questions of belief.

'Criticism Has Become Fashionable'

"Confidence in the authority of the science of climatology is currently eroding in the public consciousness," says Roger Pielke Jr., an American social economist and expert on natural disasters. Environmental economist Richard Tol agrees, saying: "Criticism of climate research has become fashionable." And the British science journal Nature warns that climatologists can no longer assume that solid evidence alone will convince the public.

New Ammunition from an E-Mail Scandal

For years, malaria expert Paul Reiter of the Paris-based Pasteur Institute has criticized the warning, as expressed in the third IPCC report, that climate change will lead to the spread of malaria, saying that there is no evidence to support such a claim. Reiter accuses many climatologists of perceiving themselves too strongly as activists who are more interested in spreading an alarmist message.

Scientists already feel that the second part of the IPCC report, which addresses the consequences of global warming, is not as sound as the first part, which deals with the underlying physical factors contributing to climate change. This could, in fact, explain how the erroneous Himalayan prognosis slipped into the report in the first place. The report's lead author, Murari Lal, defends himself by saying that "the melting of the glaciers is such a huge threat to so many people" and, for that reason, had to be included in the report. According to malaria researcher Reiter, it is precisely this passion that is so dangerous to science.

The e-mails hackers stole from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia last November and placed on the Internet have also provided critics with new ammunition. An e-mail exchange between climate modelers that took place in the fall of 1999 suggests that the scientists were biased.

Abnormal Temperature Graph

The exchange involved the validity of a controversial temperature curve. The so-called hockey stick graph was intended to prove that the average global temperature in the last 1,000 years was never as high as it is today. To arrive at the date, several groups of researchers reconstructed past temperatures, to a large extent based on tree-ring data.

But one of the graphs differed markedly from the rest, leading to a controversy in the run-up to a conference of paleo-climatologists in Tanzania in September 1999. The abnormal temperature graph was "a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably consensus viewpoint we'd like to show," paleo-climatologist Michael Mann wrote in an e-mail, adding that he didn't want to be the one to offer "the skeptics … a field day." The lead author of the IPCC chapter, Chris Folland, wrote in another e-mail that the divergent data set "dilutes the message rather significantly."

Keith Briffa, whose team reconstructed the contradictory temperature graph, was furious, and wrote: "I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data.'"

For the IPCC report that was written at the time, the scientists eventually resorted to an underhanded solution to downplay the data behind Briffa's graph, which showed temperatures falling since the 1960s: the graph was simply cut off at 1960 in the IPCC report. "This sort of approach is considered problematic in science," says climate scientist Storch.

Controversial Passages

Briffa's unusually declining temperature graph points to a serious conundrum that no one has been able to explain yet: Since the 1960s, the tree-ring data no longer reflect actual temperature changes. But why, then, should tree-ring data be valid for periods before that?

At least the fourth IPCC report, published in 2007, discusses the problems with the tree-ring data at length. But even the current, valid report contains controversial passages.

Chapter 1.3.8, for example, contains a discussion of the possible relationship between climate change and the increased incidence of natural disasters, which, after Hurricane Katrina in the United States, have now become a politically charged issue.

At the IPCC report, the damage associated with such events "are very likely to increase due to increased frequencies and intensities of some extreme weather events" (italics in original). The report cites as evidence a study that supposedly demonstrates precisely this trend.

The only problem is that the study in question had not been subjected to outside peer review before the IPCC report went to press. This has since been done, and the conclusions are surprising: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and normalized catastrophe losses," read the report published in the compendium "Climate Extremes and Society."

Roger Pielke, a leading expert in this field, wrote in his blog: "The claims were not just wrong. The claims were based on knowledge that just doesn't exist."

Calculating Risk

Representatives of the insurance industry hold a completely different view, which presents an additional problem for the IPCC. Reinsurers, such as Munich Re, calculate their premiums on the basis of risk, so that an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters can translate into additional profits when new policies are concluded.

"We see, in our databases, significant evidence for a correlation between climate change and the increase in natural disasters," says Ernst Rauch, director of German insurer Munich Re's "Corporate Climate Centre." Unlike scientists, he adds, the insurance industry cannot wait until all doubts have been set aside. "We are a business operation that has to act today," says Rauch. He also points out that his company is "extremely satisfied" with the conclusions of the IPCC report. This is hardly surprising: A 2005 publication by Munich Re served as one of the sources for the IPCC's cautionary predictions.

Climatologists are now calling for reforms. Pielke, for example, is concerned about the way authors and peer reviewers work, how they are appointed by the IPCC and how literature is used that, as in the case of the Himalayan glacier, does not come from peer-reviewed professional journals.

One of the problems is that working for the IPCC is a time-consuming honorary appointment for scientists. "This means that it is not always the best people in their field who are willing to contribute their time and effort," says epidemiologist Reiter.

On the other hand, the community is sometimes reluctant to include troublesome critics in its efforts. For instance, when the IPCC recently set up a special working group to address natural disasters, the US government nominated ecologist Pielke. The IPCC declined to appoint him."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/climate-change-forecasts-trusted/story?id=9685251&page=4

Edited February 17, 2010 by woxof

[E-HANDLE]

Woxof,

The big concern I have with the whole AGM scam is inertia. Far from being relieved by the evidence that we are not being burned alive, the global warming crowd are sticking their collective head in the sand. I fear that their allies in the Main Stream Media in Canada will toe the line and ignore stories of importance, like that of Phil Jones coming clean. You won't hear a story like this on CTV; yet they will give airplay to someone like Suzuki and his squeals about climate change and the winter games.

I suppose what we are witnessing is the end of a pop religion, and it is painful for it's adherents to bear.

Anyway, back to de-programming my kids.

E

[Guest woxof]

"New errors in IPCC climate change report

The United Nations panel on climate change is facing fresh criticism today as The Sunday Telegraph reveals new factual errors and poor sources of evidence in its influential report to government leaders.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming.

But this paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:

The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.

Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.

New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.

More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups.

They are the latest in a series of damaging revelations about the IPCC’s most recent report, published in 2007.

Last month, the panel was forced to issue a humiliating retraction after it emerged statements about the melting of Himalayan glaciers were inaccurate.

Last weekend, this paper revealed that the panel had based claims about disappearing mountain ice on anecdotal evidence in a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

And on Friday, it emerged that the IPCC’s panel had wrongly reported that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level because it had failed to check information supplied by a Dutch government agency.

Researchers insist the errors are minor and do not impact on the overall conclusions about climate change.

However, senior scientists are now expressing concern at the way the IPCC compiles its reports and have hit out at the panel’s use of so-called “grey literature” — evidence from sources that have not been subjected to scientific ­scrutiny.

A new poll has revealed that public belief in climate change is weakening.The panel’s controversial chair, Rajendra Pachauri, pictured right, is facing pressure to resign over the affair.

The IPCC attempted to counter growing criticism by releasing a statement insisting that authors who contribute to its 3,000-page report are required to “critically assess and review the quality and validity of each source” when they use material from unpublished or non-peer-reviewed sources. Drafts of the reports are checked by scientific reviewers before they are subjected to line-by-line approval by the 130 member countries of the IPCC.

Despite these checks, a diagram used to demonstrate the potential for generating electricity from wave power has been found to contain numerous errors.

The source of information for the diagram was cited as the website of UK-based wave-energy company Wavegen. Yet the diagram on Wavegen’s website contains dramatically different figures for energy potential off Britain and Alaska and in the Bering Sea.

When contacted by The Sunday Telegraph, Wavegen insisted that the diagram on its website had not been changed. It added that it was not the original source of the data and had simply reproduced it on its website.

The diagram is widely cited in other literature as having come from a paper on wave energy produced by the Institute of Mechanical Engineering in 1991 along with data from the European Directory of Renewable Energy.

Experts claim that, had the IPCC checked the citation properly, it would have spotted the discrepancies.

It can also be revealed that claims made by the IPCC about the effects of global warming, and suggestions about ways it could be avoided, were partly based on information from ten dissertations by Masters students.

One unpublished dissertation was used to support the claim that sea-level rise could impact on people living in the Nile delta and other African coastal areas, although the main focus of the thesis, by a student at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, appears to have been the impact of computer software on environmental development.

The IPCC also made use of a report by US conservation group Defenders of Wildlife to state that salmon in US streams have been affected by rising temperatures. The panel has already come under fire for using information in reports by conservation charity the WWF.

Estimates of carbon-dioxide emissions from nuclear power stations and claims that suggested they were cheaper than coal or gas power stations were also taken from the website of the World Nuclear Association, rather than using independent scientific calculations.

Such revelations are creating growing public confusion over climate change. A poll by Ipsos on behalf of environmental consultancy firm Euro RSCG revealed that the proportion of the public who believe in the reality of climate change has dropped from 44 per cent to 31per cent in the past year.

The proportion of people who believe that climate change is a bit over-exaggerated rose from 22 per cent to 31per cent.

Climate scientists have expressed frustration with the IPCC’s use of unreliable evidence.

Alan Thorpe, chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, the biggest funder of climate science in the UK, said: “We should only be dealing with peer-reviewed literature. We open ourselves up to trouble if we start getting into hearsay and grey literature. We have enough research that has been peer-reviewed to provide evidence for climate change, so it is concerning that the IPCC has strayed from that.”

Professor Bob Watson, who chaired the IPCC before Dr Pachauri and is now chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, insisted that despite the errors there was little doubt that human-induced climate change was a reality.

But he called for changes in the way the IPCC compiles future reports.

“It is concerning that these mistakes have appeared in the IPCC report, but there is no doubt the earth’s climate is changing and the only way we can explain those changes is primarily human activity,” he said.

Mr Watson said that Dr Pachauri “cannot be personally blamed for one or two incorrect sentences in the IPCC report”, but stressed that the chairman must take responsibility for correcting errors.

Another row over the IPCC report emerged last night after Professor Roger Pielke Jnr, from Colorado University’s Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research, claimed its authors deliberately ignored a paper he wrote that contradicted the panel’s claims about the cost of climate-related natural disasters.

A document included a statement from an anonymous IPCC author saying that they believed Dr Pielke had changed his mind on the matter, when he had not."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7177230/New-errors-in-IPCC-climate-change-report.html

[Moon The Loon]

Way to go, Max! Will Canada become the international torch-bearer once the Gore-zuki crowd hears about this?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/siding-with-skeptics-tory-mp-decries-climate-change-alarmism/article1479747/

Siding with skeptics, Conservative MP decries climate-change 'alarmism'.

Maxime Bernier takes public stand by questioning scientific consensus on environmental challenge in Montreal newspaper.

Montreal — The Canadian Press

Published on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 12:35PM EST

Last updated on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 1:00PM EST

Canada's ex-foreign affairs minister has come out swinging on behalf of climate-change skeptics and assailed what he describes as alarmism over global warming.

Maxime Bernier took a public stand today against the conventional wisdom on global warming, writing a letter to La Presse newspaper saying there is no scientific consensus on the matter.

The prominent Conservative MP says the issue has been taken over by alarmism - and he applauds Stephen Harper's government for taking a go-slow approach.

"The debate over climate change, stifled for years by political correctness, has finally broken out in the media," Mr. Bernier writes.

"The numerous recent revelations on errors by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have supplemented the alternative theories put forward for many years.

"We can now see that it's possible to be a 'skeptic,' or in any case to keep an open mind, on just about all the main aspects of warming theory."

[the rest can be seen at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/siding-with-skeptics-tory-mp-decries-climate-change-alarmism/article1479747/ ]

[Guest woxof]

The Scam of the Century is further exposed. And the head of the IPCC still won't resign. That is great becuase it further ruins their credibility...as if they ever had any.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7231386/African-crops-yield-another-catastrophe-for-the-IPCC.html

"African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC

One more alarming claim in the IPCC's 2007 report is disintegrating under closer examination, says Christopher Booker

Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC's 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.

Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for "carbon credits". As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. The nearest any got to providing evidence for his claim was one for the Moroccan government, which said that in serious drought years, cereal yields might be reduced by 50 per cent. The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, "agricultural production will more than double by 2020". Yet it was Agoumi's claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC's Working Group II report in 2007.

What made this even odder, however, was that the group's

co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC's 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by "up to 30 per cent".

British taxpayers poured out money for the section of the IPCC report for which Dr Parry was responsible. Defra paid £2.5 million through the Met Office, plus £330,000 for Dr Parry's salary as co-chairman, and a further £75,000 to his consultancy for two more reports on the impact of global warming on world food supplies. Yet when it came to the impact on Africa, all this peer-reviewed work – including further expert reports by Britain's Dr Mike Hulme and Dutch and German teams – was ignored in favour of a prediction from one Moroccan activist at odds with his own cited sources.

However, the story then got worse when Dr Pachauri himself came to edit and co-author the IPCC's Synthesis Report (for which the IPCC paid his Delhi-based Teri institute, out of the £400,000 allocated for its production). Not only did Pachauri's version again give prominence to Agoumi's 50 per cent figure, but he himself has repeated the claim on numerous occasions since, in articles, interviews and speeches –such as the one he gave to a climate summit in Potsdam last September, where he boasted he was speaking "in the voice of the world's scientific community".

Only last week, in an interview available on YouTube, Dr Pachauri was asked about errors in the IPCC's 2007 report and his own Synthesis Report, with specific reference to the loss of North African crops. His reply was that – aside from the prediction that the IPCC has now had to disown, that Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035 – the reports contained "no errors". Passages such as those on African crops were "not errors and we are absolutely certain that what we have said over that can be substantiated".

In the wake of all the other recent scandals, "Africa-gate" may be the most damaging of all, because of the involvement of Dr Pachauri himself. Not only is the reputation of the IPCC in tatters, but that of its chairman appears irreperably damaged. Yet the world's politicians cannot afford to see him resign because, if he goes, the whole sham edifice they have sworn by would come tumbling down."

[Lakelad]

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The Empire Strikes Back

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