Let There Be No More Scientific Consensuses

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: Let There Be No More Scientific Consensuses


More...

"catastrophic free fall"

FROM-NY POST

By STEVEN F. HAYWARD

The climate-change campaign is in catastrophic free fall.

Nearly every day brings a new embarrassment or retraction for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the supposed gold standard for "consensus" science. The withdrawal this week of BP, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar from the main US business lobby for greenhouse-gas controls is the latest political blow to the campaign.

The anti-warming lobby long demonized skeptics as the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers while warning of climate "tipping points." Now, the "Climategate" scandal that broke in November is looking like a true tipping point: The leaked e-mails have done to the climate-change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam War debate 40 years ago -- changed the narrative decisively.

For years, skeptics have been pointing out serious defects or gross exaggerations in the climate narrative -- glaciers that weren't actually melting; weak or incomplete data in the records of surface temperature that supposedly proved unprecedented warming; a complete lack of backup for claims that storms and drought are growing more severe. Plus, global temperatures have been flat for the last decade -- increasingly falsifying the computer models that project our doom.

The media long ignored every criticism, and generally joined the climate campaigners in denouncing skeptics for their turpitude. Now it's playing catch-up.

The latest bombshell is an admission from Phil Jones, the East Anglia University scientist at the center of the "Climategate" scandal: He says his raw data (a vital resource for those claiming climate change) is in such disarray that it probably can't be replicated or verified.

He also admits that the medieval warm period may have been as warm as today -- devasting the claim that today's temperatures are the clear result of modern industry. More, he agrees that there's been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years.

Jones hedged a bit on all these points, but it is telling that he broke ranks from the climate campaigners, who increasingly resemble a two-year-old having a tantrum as they stoutly deny the medieval warm period and that global temperatures have flattened out.

But the climate campaign's most ludicrous contortion is its response to the recent record snowfalls across the eastern United States. Ordinary citizens, repeatedly shoveling snow from their sidewalk, see global warming as a farce.

In answer, the climate campaigners note that "weather is not climate" and that localized weather events are consistent with climate "change." They may be right -- yet these are the same folks who jumped up and down claiming that Hurricane Katrina was positive proof that catastrophic global warming had arrived, even though the strong 2005 hurricane season was followed by four quiet years for tropical storms that made a hash of that narrative.

The ruckus exposes the greatest problem of Al Gore & Co.: They've pointed to any weather anomaly -- cold winters, warm winters, in-between winters -- as proof of climate change. That is, they can't name one weather pattern or event that would be inconsistent with their theory.

The citizenry seems to prefer common sense -- opinion surveys show declining public belief in global warming.

That outcome was predictable. Nearly 40 years ago, the distinguished political scientist Anthony Downs outlined the "issue-attention cycle," a five-stage process.

The public, activists and (especially) the media first discover an issue, then grow euphorically alarmed over it and agitate for action, generating piles of scary headlines.

Then comes the crucial third step -- where the public comes to recognize that the problem has been exaggerated or misconceived, and notice the price tag for sweeping action. This happened last year with the US debate over the "cap and trade" anti-warming bill, followed by the collapse of the Copenhagen process.

That set the stage for Downs' fourth step: declining public interest and media attention -- which yields the last stage, the post-problem.

The climate-change circus isn't yet ready to join such past enthusiasms as the "population bomb" or the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" nonsense: It has too much political and institutional momentum behind it, and there is no other ready outlet for the nearly endless supply of environmental zealotry.

But the whole climate campaign now resembles a Broadway musical that has run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it's closing time for the climate horror show.

Steven F. Hayward is the F.K. Weyer haeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of the forthcoming "Almanac of Environmental Trends."


More...

The great global warming collapse

FROM-The Globe and Mail

Margaret Wente

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.....
Read entire article here



More...

Credibility is what’s really melting

FROM-MACLEANS CA
by Mark Steyn

Take the disappearing Himalayan glaciers.Turns out that ‘research’ was idle speculation.

Whenever I write about “climate change,” a week or two later there’s a flurry of letters whose general line is: la-la-la can’t hear you. Dan Gajewski of Ottawa provided a typical example in our Dec. 28 issue. I’d written about the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit’s efforts to “hide the decline,” and mentioned that Phil Jones, their head honcho, had now conceded what I’d been saying for years—that there has been no “global warming” since 1997. Tim Flannery, Australia’s numero uno warm-monger, subsequently confirmed this on Oz TV, although he never had before.

In response, Mr. Gajewski wrote to our Letters page: “Steyn’s column on climate change was one-sided, juvenile and inarticulate.”

Yes, yes, but what Steyn column isn’t? That’s just business as usual. A more pertinent question is: was any of it, you know, wrong?

Well, our reader didn’t want to get hung on footling details: “The disproportionate evidence supports the anthropogenic cause of global warming,” he concluded.

Yes, but how did the “evidence” get to be quite so “disproportionate”?

Take the Himalayan glaciers. They’re supposed to be entirely melted by 2035. The evidence is totally disproportionate, man. No wonder professor Orville Schell of Berkeley is so upset about it: “Lately, I’ve been studying the climate-change-induced melting of glaciers in the Greater Himalaya,” he wrote. “Understanding the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet’s most magnificent landforms has, to put it politely, left me dispirited.” I’ll say. Professor Schell continued: “If you focus on those Himalayan highlands, a deep sense of loss creeps over you—the kind that comes from contemplating the possible end of something once imagined as immovable, immutable, eternal . . .”

Poor chap. Still, you can’t blame him for being in the slough of despond. That magnificent landform is melting before his eyes like the illustration of the dripping ice cream cone that accompanied his eulogy for the fast vanishing glaciers. Everyone knows they’re gonna be gone in a generation. “The glaciers on the Himalayas are retreating,” said Lord Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank and author of the single most influential document on global warming. “We’re facing the risk of extreme runoff, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it. A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia—the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze—where three billion people live. That’s almost half the world’s population.” And NASA agrees, and so does the UN Environment Programme, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the World Wildlife Fund, and the respected magazine the New Scientist. The evidence is, like, way disproportionate.

But where did all these experts get the data from? Well, NASA’s assertion that Himalayan glaciers “may disappear altogether” by 2030 rests on one footnote, citing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.

In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report suggests 2035 as the likely arrival of Armageddon, but what’s half a decade between scaremongers? They rate the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing as “very high”—i.e., more than 90 per cent. And the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that report, so it must be kosher, right? Well, yes, its Himalayan claims rest on a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report called “An Overview of Glaciers.”

WWF? Aren’t they something to do with pandas and the Duke of Edinburgh? True. But they wouldn’t be saying this stuff if they hadn’t got the science nailed down, would they? The WWF report relies on an article published in the New Scientist in 1999 by Fred Pearce.

That’s it? One article from 12 years ago in a pop-science mag? Oh, but don’t worry, back in 1999 Fred did a quickie telephone interview with a chap called Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. And this Syed Hasnain cove presumably knows a thing or two about glaciers.

Well, yes. But he now says he was just idly “speculating”; he didn’t do any research or anything like that.

But so what? His musings were wafted upwards through the New Scientist to the World Wildlife Fund to the IPCC to a global fait accompli: the glaciers are disappearing. Everyone knows that. You’re not a denier, are you? India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, says there was not “an iota of scientific evidence” to support the 2035 claim. Yet that proved no obstacle to its progress through the alarmist establishment. Dr. Murari Lal, the “scientist” who included the 2035 glacier apocalypse in the IPCC report, told Britain’s Mail on Sunday that he knew it wasn’t based on “peer-reviewed science” but “we thought we should put it in”—for political reasons.

I wonder what else is in that Nobel Peace Prize-winning report for no other reason than “we thought we should put it in.” Don’t forget, the IPCC’s sole source was the cuddly panda crowd over at the World Wildlife Fund. Donna Laframboise, a colleague of mine from the glory days at the National Post, did a simple search of the online version of the IPCC report and discovered dozens of citations of the WWF. It’s the sole source cited for doomsday predictions of glacier melt not only in the Himalayas but also the Andes and the Alps, as well as for a multitude of other topics, from coral reefs to avalanches. This would appear to be in breach of the IPCC’s own guidelines. The WWF is a pressure group. They’re not scientists. They’re not even numerate: one of their more startling glacier-melt claims derives entirely from an arithmetical miscalculation arising from a typing error.

Go back to that Berkeley professor mooning over the loss of that “magnificent landform” he once thought “immutable, eternal.” From his prose style, one might easily assume Orville Schell was a professor of creative writing or some such. In fact, he’s the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism. Yet, for all the limpid fragrance of his poignant obsequies, professor Schell would seem to lack the one indispensable quality of a journalist: basic curiosity—the same curiosity that led Miss Laframboise to see just how much of the “science” in the IPCC report rested on the assertions of the panda-cuddlers. So instead, professor Schell bid a teary farewell to his beloved landform, even though the glaciers of the western Himalayas are, in fact, increasing.

Likewise, in the years since Syed Hasnain “speculated” about glacial melt, the BBC, the CBC, CNN and thousands of newspapers around the world have hired specialist Environmental Correspondents on lavish salaries. Yet not one of them gave any serious examination to the claims of the IPCC report, or the “science” on which they rested. And, now that the IPCC and WWF have conceded their error, the eco-correspondents are allowing NATO and other dupes to vacuum their records without having to explain why they fell for the scam.

V. K. Raina, of the Geological Survey of India, produced a special report demonstrating that the run-for-your-life-the-glaciers-are-melting IPCC scenario was utterly false. For his pains, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the self-aggrandizing old bruiser and former railroad engineer who serves as head honcho of the IPCC jet set, dismissed Mr. Raina’s research as “voodoo science.” He’s now been obliged to admit the voodoo was all on his side. But don’t worry. By 2008, Syed Hasnain’s decade-old casual chit-chat over the phone to a London journalist had become “settled science,” so Dr. Pachauri’s company TERI (The Energy & Resources Institute) approached the Carnegie Corporation for a grant to research “challenges to South Asia posed by melting Himalayan glaciers,” and was rewarded with half a million bucks. Which they promptly used to hire Syed Hasnain. In other words, professor Hasnain has landed a cushy gig researching solutions to an entirely non-existent global crisis he accidentally invented over a 15-minute phone call 10 years earlier. As they say in the glacier business, ice work if you can get it.

“Climate change” is not a story of climate change, which has been a fact of life throughout our planet’s history. It is a far more contemporary story about the corruption of science and “peer review” by hucksters, opportunists and global-government control-freaks. I can see what’s in it for Dr. Pachauri and professor Hasnain, and even for the lowly Environmental Correspondent enjoying a cozy sinecure at a time of newspaper cutbacks in everything from foreign bureaus to arts coverage.

But it’s hard to see what’s in it for Dan Gajewski of Ottawa and the millions of kindred spirits who’ve signed on to this racket and are determined to stick with it. Don’t be the last off a collapsing bandwagon. The scientific “consensus” is melting way faster than the glaciers.



More...

Climate Change Supporters Prove They Don’t Have the Courage of Their Convictions

Invited to a tea party debate on climate change, AGW supporters opt out of participating — and quite rudely.


FROM-Pajamas Media

by Kimberly Jo Simac

When the idea came up for a debate on global warming, it seemed like a great idea to our tea party group. We had just finished presenting a very successful health care forum in our small town in northern Wisconsin and were looking for the next event to put on the calendar.

Many members said we should just call it a forum, as we would never be able to get any scientists who believe that global warming is a crisis to come to the table. But thinking I would know how to do what no one else has been able to do, I assured them a debate would be held.

That was eight weeks ago. I gave up after many, many emails and too much time spent behind the computer.

Our event is Saturday. Thinking that the most important audience should include those who will have to deal with the issue in the future, we invited over 220 high school students. Let them hear both sides so that they can decipher the conflicting opinions that have lately made it into the news. Knowing society has been preached only the “doomsday” side for a decade or more, it seems only fair to give the “skeptic” side a place at the table. As for the question of a debate, who wouldn’t want to defend their data and facts if they were so certain it was the absolute truth?

I invited scientists from all over the country — even some from around the world — to a fair and balanced event. I was amazed at the lack of response to the many invitations that went out, but more interesting were the insulting, mocking, sarcastic replies I received from scientists who seem to share a similar belief that a debate is ridiculous on such a settled science.

Now, I am not a scientist. I am just a mother who raised 9 kids and trains horses for a living. Nothing scientific about that, but it seems to me everything should always be open for discussion. The idea that a subject like man-made climate change is a done deal just doesn’t make sense to me, yet reply after reply let me know in very certain words that there is nothing to talk about.

In addition, the shared attitude of arrogance towards me or anybody who would even consider such “propaganda” as an alternative view was surprising. Humorous at first, but then a bit hurtful. My intelligence, my character, and, just a few days ago, my faith were attacked by men, all much smarter then me, who for some reason felt they needed to smear me and our simple, small-town event.

Outrageous to me was one scientist who claimed our high school students would not be able to understand the information and especially when the opposing side was paid off and presenting lies.

All the replies seem peculiar to me. If my career had been based on investigating something and I was so certain of my data, why would I not want to defend it? Suspicious, to say the least. It’s like pleading the fifth; it usually means you are hiding or protecting something.

I wonder what these scientists are hiding.



More...

EXCERPTS FROM- CLIMATEGATE ANALYSIS

by John P. Costella
August 25, 2005: email 1124994521

Mike Mann writes to Christoph Kull, Phil Jones, Heinz Wanner, and others:

In our discussion of possible participants in Bern, I think (someone correct me if I’m wrong) we concluded that the last two on the list (with question marks) would be unwise choices because they are likely to cause conflict than to contribute to consensus and progress.

Phil Jones to Christoph Kull:

I agree with Mike that the last two names on the list should be removed.

Debate and disagreement is crucial to the healthy functioning of science. Weeding out those who may prevent a predetermined “consensus” is abhorrent.

August 26, 2005: email 1125067952

Heinz Wanner to Christoph Kull:

Concerning the participants:
…
- If Phil and Mike do not support von Storch it does not make sense to invite him (or Eduardo Zorita?).

Mike Mann concurs:

I’m afraid I don’t agree on Zorita. He has engaged in some very nasty, and in my opinion unprofessional email exchanges with some close colleagues of mine who have established some fundamental undisclosed errors in work he co-published with von Storch. Given this, I don’t believe he can be involved in constructive dialogue of the sort we’re looking for at this workshop.

Again, a “constructive” dialog appears to be one that leads to their predetermined “consensus”.
He continues:

There are some similarly problematic issues with Cubasch, who, like von Storch, … has engaged in inflammatory and personal public commentary. There is no room for that on any side of the debate.
If the Germans need to be represented here, I would suggest instead someone from the Potsdam group, such as Eva Bauer …

Our attention is here drawn to an undercurrent in this entire saga: the need to give the perception of international agreement—which translates into the notion of the need for a “quota” of representation from the key countries involved, rather than true international debate

More...

Climategate: Just Sign on the Dotted Line

FROM-American Thinker

By Dexter Wright

The mainstream media were convinced of global warming theory's legitimacy by the warnings supposedly signed by large numbers of the world's climate scientists. The propagandists in this effort were led by the now-discredited Dr. Phil Jones of Britain and former Vice President Al Gore.

Several of the recently leaked Climategate e-mails reveal backstage manipulations to produce a propaganda tool, the Statement of European Climate Scientists on Actions to Protect Global Climate, intended to be unveiled at the Kyoto Climate Conference. Members of the Jones Gang from East Anglia University organized efforts to get just about anyone to sign this statement to push up the numbers. In an e-mail dated 9 October 1997, Dr. Joseph Alcamo admonishes other members of the Jones Gang to forget credentials and just get signatures.

I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is numbers. The media is going to say "1000 scientists signed" or "1500 signed". No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000 without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a different story.

Alcamo clearly has no respect for the media, implying that they are either lazy or stupid. Operating under this premise, Dr. Alcamo goes on by saying the following:

Conclusion -- Forget the screening, forget asking them about their last publication (most will ignore you.) Get those names!

Is he suggesting that his gang members go to skid row and have homeless winos sign this document? Maybe he was suggesting that they go to a Chicago cemetery for names? "Get those names!"

Simultaneously, the folks at Greenpeace were also working to get signatures on a document of their own to manipulate the media. Their formula is tried and true: Don't read the fine print -- just sign. To showcase this subterfuge, Greenpeace was organizing a media event ahead of the Kyoto meeting to display the document signed by concerned "scientists." The Jones Gang wanted to make sure that maximum media manipulation was accomplished by coordinating media events as is detailed from the same e-mail:

3. If Greenpeace is having an event the week before, we should have it a week before them so that they and other NGOs can further spread the word about the Statement. On the other hand, it wouldn't be so bad to release the Statement in the same week, but on a different day. The media might enjoy hearing the message from two very different directions

Different directions? Maybe he meant something like left and far left. I hope he never helps a little old lady across the street.

But one of the Jones Gang was looking the other way before he crossed the street, and that was Professor Richard Tol. In an e-mail dated 12 of November 1997, Prof. Tol pointed out the dirty little secret: There is not a consensus among scientists.

I am always worried about this sort of things. Even if you have 1000 signatures,
and appear to have a strong backup, how many of those asked did not sign?

But why was so much energy put into a propaganda campaign for the media to see that there was a "consensus" among the scientific community? The answer dates back to 1992, when the Jones Gang was caught by surprise right before the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At that time, a group of notable and respected scientists began circulating a document known as the Heidelberg Appeal for signatures.

By the end of the 1992 summit, 425 scientists and other intellectual leaders had signed the appeal. This document stated that the science of climate change was uncertain and that the theory of carbon dioxide (CO2)-induced global warming was an unproven theory. The document appealed to policy makers to avoid making policy based on uncertain science. The document explicitly stated the following:

We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudoscientific arguments or false and non relevant data.

The original Heidelberg Appeal document was presented at the Rio conference, but it was largely ignored by the media and a pseudoscientific community that was more interested in seeking grant funding than seeking the truth. To date, more than four thousand scientists and intellectuals from 106 countries, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, have signed it.

The Jones Gang knew that this would likely happen again before the 1997 Kyoto Climate Conference. If they were right, they were hopeful that they could deliver a counter-document to lend credence to their cause and steal the spotlight.

Another document urging caution was circulated among reputable scientists in the wake of the Kyoto Climate Conference. This document is known as the Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change. The document expressly states the following:

As the debate unfolds, it has become increasingly clear that -- contrary to the conventional wisdom -- there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes (i.e. weather balloons) show no current warming whatsoever -- in direct contradiction to computer model results.

Among the signatories of this declaration are scientists from NASA, the Max Planck Institute, one of the former Presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, and many members of the American Meteorological Society. These people are not lightweights in the field of science. Clearly the so-called "consensus of scientists" so often referred to by Mr. Gore is not a consensus at all.

In addition to these two powerful and well-considered public statements calling for restraint, there is also the Oregon Petition. To date, over 31,000 American scientists have signed this document. The petition explicitly states the following:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of Carbon Dioxide, Methane or other greenhouse gasses is causing, or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.

Unlike the uncovered e-mails from the Jones Gang, these statements of caution are in the public domain and have been for years. By contrast, the Jones Gang engaged in an effort to misinform nations by hiding the facts and overstating the "consensus" -- but then, secrecy is essential for propaganda to be effective and ensure that the checks continue to be signed.
More...

Ohio geologists go rogue

From- Helliogenic Climate Change

The Ohio Section of the American Institute of Professional Geologists does hereby oppose House Bill H.R. 2454, the Markey-Waxman “cap & trade” bill. The bill is based on the premise that human production of CO2 gas is responsible for “global warming” and that “global warming poses a significant threat to the national security, economy, public health and welfare, and environment of the United States and other countries” (H.R. 2454, Title VII, Part A, Section 701). The Ohio Section of AIPG professes that there is no scientific evidence supporting this premise. We therefore reject the bill’s aforementioned, unsupported premise. Subsequently, we also reject the bill’s alarmist claims and unprecedented, economy-wide, government-control proposals. …

We are concerned that the bill relies primarily on reports by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC), to support its premise. Our concerns include IPCC reliance on unrepresentative ground-based temperature stations.4 We note an inability of ground-based data to agree with superior quality temperature values from weatherballoons and satellites.5 Of additional concern is the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report’s reliance on the work of Mann et al. (1998)6 in claiming 1998 the “warmest year, in at least a millennium.” The report’s claim, along with its prominently featured “hockey-stick” temperature graph, has since been discredited by the National Academy of Science (2006).7 We also have concern with IPCC dependence on unreliable climate computer-model simulations. …

Given the lack of evidence supporting the bill’s premise, we reject the claims of near-term increases in human-caused severe weather, fire, coastal flooding, drought, disease, mass animal extinctions, and displaced human populations (H.R. 2454, Title VII, Part A, Section 701). … We therefore oppose the bill because it will increase global pollution, by shifting American manufacturing to emerging countries such as China, India, and others. We also recognize grave economic consequences from the bill, which extend beyond the scope of this geologic-advisory position paper.

There is compelling evidence to support the position that human CO2 emissions do not cause climate-change. Existing data reveal that human change-agents are so small in the total climate force-field that they are negligible. We therefore advocate thoughtful evaluation based on the scientific method and oppose any hasty and drastic action.” “Position Statement: Markey-Waxman “Cap & Trade” House Bill H.R. 2454“ h/t Heartland Institute


More...

Another Scientist Silenced

The deft hand of the socialism hasn’t really left us, as the following note received via email shows.


FROM-Louis Hissink

Why Dr Ferenc Miskolczi and Dr Miklos Zagoni have been put under pressure to be silent about Miskolczi`s research concerning the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect.

In 2004 Dr Ferenc Miskolczi published a paper ’The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky terrestrial radiation’, in the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service (Vol. 108, No. 4, October–December 2004, pp. 209–251.).


The co-author of the article was his boss at NASA (Martin Mlynczak). Mlynczak put his name to the paper but did no work on it. He thought that it was an important paper, but only in a technical way.

When Miskolczi later informed the group at NASA there that he had more important results, they finally understood the whole story, and tried to withhold Miskolczi’s further material from publication. His boss for example, sat at Ferenc’s computer, logged in with Ferenc`s password, and canceled a recently submitted paper from a high-reputation journal as if Ferenc had withdrawn it himself. That was the reason that Ferenc finally resigned from his ($US 90.000 /year) job.

I want to make it clear: NASA never falsified or even tried to falsify Ferenc`s results, on the contrary, they fully understand it. They know that it is correct and see how important it is. To make sense of their actions, they probably see a national security issue in it. Perhaps they think that AGW is the only way to stop, or to slow, the coal-based growth of China.

In my circumstance where I have been dismissed from my Government paid position in Hungary, I think the information vacuum (in Hungary), has the same type of origin. I believe someone is in the background trying to convince the establishment (media, science, politics) that Miskolczi's results are against our national security interests. First, they tried to frighten me, and then when that did not work, they kicked me out from my job. So now I am turning to the wider internet to publicise Miskolczi`s work, as I know that his results are valid and true. There is no way and no need to hold them back for the world to understand them.


Tomorrow, for the first time in my life, I am jobless.
Budapest, 31 Dec, 2009

Dr Miklos Zagoni
(57)
physicist
Hungary


http://miskolczi.webs.com/
More...

Global warming and the 'settled science' baloney

By Claude Sandroff

FROM-American Thinker


If you've misspent your youth conducting experiments, taking graduate courses in physics and chemistry, and know something about thermodynamics, molecular spectroscopy, fluid mechanics, modeling data and publishing scientific papers, the current debate over anthropogenic global warming can make you hurl.

While not faulting journalists and politicians for their stupendous ignorance when discussing most scientific subjects, I do condemn their utter lack of coherence concerning basic scientific definitions, processes, and principles.

Specifically, the chattering classes have no appreciation of the following truisms: settled science comes only in the form of physical laws while the causes behind specific phenomena are sometimes never definitively settled. And the more complex the system being observed, the longer it takes to reach a consensus about the causal mechanisms.

Even Al Gore can probably remember being introduced to Newton's 3rd Law of Motion in high school, F=ma. This is usually our first introduction to settled science. That's why it's called a law of physics. It didn't matter that Einstein generalized its form in the theory of relativity or that in the 1920's it had it be replaced with a new mechanics valid at the atomic scale. At velocities small compared to the speed of light and for macroscopic objects, F=ma is settled science.

Despite Al Gore's foolish protestations, there is no law of global warming. To the extent that global warming exists at all, it's a complicated phenomenon with multiple inputs (human and natural), and its cause is speculated upon, but hardly known with certainty. Global warming is unsettled science, and honest investigators use settled laws of physics along with models to try to unravel its origins and implications.

Indeed, most big scientific questions are unsettled, from galaxy formation to the origins of the moon. Closer to home, even 150 years after the first commercial extraction of oil in western Pennsylvania, the mechanism of hydrocarbon formation is still a hotly contested issue. While most petroleum geologists believe that oil and natural gas resulted from the slow anaerobic decomposition of biomass over eons, many others believe that hydrocarbons are an abiotic product of simple chemical reactions in the deep earth crust. The relative numbers of scientists in the two camps do not speak to which explanation is correct. Scientific truth is not decided by polls. Only new experiments, shared, reproducible data and careful modeling can ultimately lead to consensus. But here at least the basic facts are uncorrupted and not in dispute: there is oil and gas in the ground.

To appreciate how unsettled global warming science really is, the book Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery is an indispensible and relentless handbook. Published in 2007 and stuffed with over 500 references, it shatters almost every common global warming myth.

The authors begin by pointing out eight specific "failures of the greenhouse theory" and then bludgeon global warming true believers on almost every page. For Singer and Avery, exhaustive review of the scientific literature, leads to the conclusion that global warming is natural and defined by the 1,500-year solar Dansgaard-Oeschger super cycle. The cumulative effect of the volume is to convince us that man and CO2 have little or nothing to do with the temperature changes observed through human history.

In one of many startling conclusions in the book, Singer argues that increases in CO2 levels throughout recent geologic history, are the result of global warming not the cause. Increases in global temperatures (for extraneous reasons) cause CO2 to outgas from the oceans, increasing its concentration in the atmosphere. And there's much, much more debunking.

For a scientifically less dense and more easy-going journey through global warming hysteria, Roy W. Spencer's Climate Confusion is commendable because the author successfully communicates the complexities of climate physics. The complexity is significant enough to make ridiculous the idea of settled science. He shows that water vapor and precipitation are the real drivers of atmospheric heat exchange and temperature changes, with manmade CO2 playing a very minor role.

What these books remind us is that whenever the phrase "settled science" enters a policy debate, especially when complicated planetary effects are involved, an instinctive shudder should rifle through our nervous system. Because almost always that loaded phrase masks an attempt to prematurely force conclusions and end all further argument. Those who want the science settled in a flash are those who will benefit most once the science is settled. Either that or they have something to hide or protect. Settled science is dangerous science.

Galileo had to recant or face death for agreeing with Copernicus and arguing against geocentricity, settled science in 1633. Just 34 years ago settled science was manifest in Newsweek, with the declaration that the world was entering into its latest ice age, and we had better do something now or else we would all starve. Robert Frost's immortal lines from 1920 come to mind: "Some say the world will end in fire/Some say in ice." Apparently, still others can't make up their minds.

With the fundamental scientific ground so shaky in support of anthropomorphic global warming, why does the theory continue to garner exaggerated support? In general, the "warmers" movement, can be grouped neatly into several powerful and well-defined blocs.

Mostly liberal politicians want access to unlimited tax revenues; for scientists and pseudo-scientists global warming victory is a path to prestige and grants; for large corporations it's a billion dollar market for trading in carbon credits, a market pioneered by Enron; for the hard left it's a new path to dictatorial power and control; for venture capitalists like Kleiner Perkins and green start-ups at the public trough, it's a path to alternative energy funding bonanzas; for the radical greens it's equivalent to the unquestioned adherence to a religious faith with analogs to God (the earth), priests (Al Gore), indulgences (carbon offsets), guilt (western affluence) and penance (conservation).

But none of these things can justify or excuse upending our entire financial system or tossing our economic vibrancy, freedom and very sovereignty into the cesspool of global government. That much should be settled fact.

More...

Physics Group Splinters Over Global Warming Review

FROM-CBS

As the science scandal known as ClimateGate grows, the largest U.S. physicists' association is finding itself roiled by internal dissent and allegations of conflict of interest over a forthcoming review of its position statement on man-made global warming.

The scientist who will head the American Physical Society's review of its 2007 statement calling for immediate reductions of carbon dioxide is Princeton's Robert Socolow, a prominent supporter of the link between CO2 and global warming who has warned of possible "catastrophic consequences" of climate change.

Socolow's research institute at Princeton has received well over $20 million in grants dealing with climate change and carbon reduction, plus an additional $2 million a year from BP and still more from the federal government. In an interview published by Princeton's public relations office, Socolow called CO2 a "climate problem" that governments need to address.

"It is Socolow whose entire research funding stream, well over a million dollars a year, depends on continued alarm over global warming," says William Happer, a fellow Princeton University professor and head of the Happer physics lab who has raised the question of a conflict of interest. The reason: the ostensibly neutral person charged with evaluating a statement endorsing man-made global warming is a leading proponent of precisely that theory whose funding is tied to that theory.

As previously reported by CBSNews.com, Happer and other members of the APS have been urging the society to take a second look at the 2007 statement, which claims the evidence for the CO2-global warming link is "incontrovertible" and "we must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." Their letter circulated last month says: "By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate, which was and is an international scientific fraud, the worst any of us have seen... We have asked the APS management to put the 2007 statement on ice until the extent to which it is tainted can be determined, but that has not been done."

Neither the current APS president, Harvard's Cherry Murray, nor its incoming president, Princeton's Curtis Callan, replied to questions on Thursday, and Socolow could not be reached for comment. The APS leadership has chosen not to withdraw its statement but has authorized a limited review of the language's "clarity and tone" -- although that was announced before the embarrassing leak from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit occurred.

Hal Lewis, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara who has been an APS member for 65 years, says that he asked both the current and incoming APS presidents to require that Socolow recuse himself from a review of this subject, and both refused.

That means the review will be "chaired by a guy who is hip deep in conflicts of interest, running a million-dollar program that is utterly dependent on global warming funding," Lewis says. In addition, he points out that the group charged with taking a second look at the 2007 statement, the Panel on Public Affairs, is the same body that drafted it in the first place. That, "too has a smell of people investigating themselves," Lewis says.

The APS ethics policy that appears to apply to Socolow's panel says "it is particularly desirable that members" be "free from real or perceived conflicts." An APS ethics policy used when awarding prizes says that conflicts of interest can be resolved, depending on the circumstance, by "resignation of one or more members of the committee, withdrawal of a member from parts of the committee's deliberations and voting." And when involving the chairman: "Potential conflict of interest involving the chair of the selection committee is ipso facto a serious matter, and at the least another committee member should take over as chair."

An APS spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday about how the group's ethics policies apply and whether Socolow would be the chairman.

As the full import of the ClimateGate leak became evident, Happer, Lewis, and others redoubled their efforts to ask APS members to support a review of what they considered to be bad science. They now say 77 supporters are fellows of major scientific societies, 14 are members of the National Academies, and one is a Nobel laureate; Happer adds that "some have accepted a career risk by signing the petition."

APS President Cherry Murray replied to that effort with a stiff letter to all members saying the message was sent without "APS knowledge or approval" and the group is "continuing to investigate how the senders obtained APS member e-mail addresses."

Murray also said the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is "in the process of investigating the affair," and APS will wait until the results of that investigation are public. But that doesn't seem to be accurate: IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri said in Copenhagen this week that there is "not an investigation." And there's no mention of an investigation in either IPCC statement, both of which defend the East Anglia research that has been called into question.

What irks the APS members circulating the petition are not claims that CO2 has been increasing for a century and that the Earth is warming; Lewis says the planet has been warming for thousands of years without our help, especially since the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago. Instead, the physicists are concerned about the APS's claim that the science is settled on the question of the causal link between the two -- a claim that underpins the Copenhagen conference, the Democratic cap and trade proposals, and the EPA's announcement this week that CO2 is dangerous to human health.

Socolow leads the Princeton Environmental Group's Energy Group, one of the university's research units. According to a list of its reports and publications, the group is now focused on topics including fuels with "near-zero" greenhouse gas emissions and "carbon dioxide capture" technologies, both of which become of economic interest if a causal link between CO2 and global warming can be shown to exist.

The current chair of the APA Panel on Public Affairs, or POPA, is Duncan Moore of the University of Rochester, and Socolow will take over in three weeks, on January 1. A subcommittee will be tasked with looking at the 2007 statement for "clarity and tone," and is expected to report its recommendations to the full POPA committee by early February. Moore told CBSNews.com on Wednesday that "we will only look at tone and clarity and will not rewrite the 2007 statement," and a discussion about "whether APS should form a committee to look at the role of APS in climate change" will take place at the February POPA meeting.

Meanwhile, the ClimateGate scandal is broadening, with more mainstream scientists being concerned about what the leaked e-mails and apparently buggy computer code say about their chosen profession, and how they could influence public perceptions of science. The two leading science publications, Scientific American and Nature chose to downplay the scandal's impact, with Nature saying the leak was a "propaganda windfall" to the "climate-change-denialist fringe" -- an especially unflattering term that seems to sweep in the APS physicists asking for the re-review.

Petr Chylek, a fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and an adjunct professor at New Mexico State University, said in an open letter that climate scientists "have substituted the search for truth with an attempt at proving one point of view." And 141 scientists have signed a statement at CopenhagenClimateChallenge.org that says actual evidence of human-caused global warming is lacking and "unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation."

Happer, the Princeton University physicist who jointly circulated the letter to APS, says: "APS has simply circled the wagons, while trying to figure out how to quieten the growing unrest in the membership."
More...

Climate claims fail science test

FROM-The Australian

THE UN Climate Change Summit started this week in Copenhagen with far more dissent than its organisers hoped for from two extremes of the climate change debate

We had the "grandfather of climate change", James Hansen, describing the proceedings as counter-productive and "a farce", while the chief Saudi Arabian negotiator to the summit, Mohammed al-Sabban, doubts the current science and suggests there is no longer any point in seeking agreement to reduce emissions.

It is therefore certain that the global political debate on managing carbon emissions and climate change will continue well beyond the Copenhagen summit. It is to be hoped that the scientific debate is also permitted to continue.

Results released this year suggest that the degree of scientific certainty falls short of that desirable before we set binding targets and dollar values on carbon emissions. Indeed, Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council admitted that: "We can't pretend we have perfect knowledge: we don't."


This is a refreshingly honest comment when contrasted with some of the statements in the hacked emails of the Climatic Research Unit, UK, made by leading British and US climate scientists, who were caught with their fingers on the "delete button" when faced with climate data that failed to agree with their computer models.

Meanwhile two recent results published by top scientists cast doubt on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's theory about the link between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming. These are of of significance because whereas the climate models used by the IPCC rely on software to represent a large number of highly complex Earth processes, these results are equivalent to experimental observations on the Earth itself.

Paul Pearson of Cardiff University and his international team achieved a breakthrough recently, published four weeks ago in arguably the world's top scientific journal, Nature.

They unravelled records of atmosphere, temperature and ice-cap formation 33.6 million years ago, when the Earth cooled from a greenhouse without ice caps, into something quite similar to our present day.

These results from "Laboratory Earth" have a particular advantage: we can see what happened after the event for two million years.

With today's records we see changes in atmospheric CO2 and temperature over 50 years and seek to project what will happen in the future.

Pearson's work contains a couple of remarkable results.

First the greenhouse atmosphere pre-cooling contained a CO2 concentration of 900 parts per million by volume, or more than three times that of the Earth in pre-industrial days.

We can't be sure what triggered the Earth to cool despite, or because of, its changing green-house atmospheric blanket, but once it did, cycles of ice cap formation and glaciation commenced, apparently governed by the same variations in the Earth's orbit that govern the ice ages of the past million years.

Second, while the cooling of the Earth took place over a time-span of around 200,000 years, the atmospheric CO2 first dropped in association with the cooling, then rose to around 1100ppmv and remained high for 200,000 years while the Earth cooled further and remained in its new ice ages cycle.

We can compare these huge swings (both up and down) in atmospheric CO2 with current computer-modelled estimates of climate sensitivity by the IPCC which suggest that a doubling of CO2 relative to pre-industrial

times will produce a temperature increase of 2.5C to 4C.

If the Earth started a cycle of ice ages 33.6 million years ago while having its very carbon-rich atmosphere, and if the Earth showed cycles of ice-age activity when atmospheric CO2 was four times the level that it was in humankind's pre-industrial times, what new information must we incorporate into our present climate models?

Another key parameter in climate modelling is the warming amplification associated with increasing CO2 in our atmosphere.

This amplification factor is generally believed to be greater than one, giving rise to an understanding that increases in atmospheric CO2 amplify warming (a positive feedback in the physical process), and the IPCC has quantified this to deliver the finding that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentrations.

However since the IPCC's fourth report, our Laboratory Earth has also delivered new data on this CO2-induced amplification factor.

The tool for the study in this instance is recent satellite-based temperature data now extending over 30 years.

Building on a methodology published 15 years ago in Nature, climatologist and NASA medallist John Christy and colleague David Douglass studied global temperature impacts of volcanic activity and ocean-atmospheric oscillations (the "El Nino" effect) and separated these from global temperature trends over the past 28 years.

The result of their analysis is a CO2-induced amplification factor close to one, which has implications clearly at odds with the earlier IPCC position.

The result was published this year in the peer-reviewed journal Energy and Environment and the paper has not yet been challenged in the scientific literature.

What this means is that the IPCC model for climate sensitivity is not supported by experimental observation on ancient ice ages and recent satellite data.

So are we justified in concluding that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is not the only or major driver of current climate change? And if so, how should we re-shape our ETS legislation?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but as Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed: "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."

Michael Asten is a professorial fellow in the school of geosciences at Monash University, Melbourne.


More...

A Reason To Be Skeptical

FROM-
RCP

By David Harsanyi

We found out that respected men discussed the manipulation of science, the blocking of Freedom of Information requests, the exclusion of dissenting scientists from debate, the removal of dissent from the peer-reviewed publications, and the discarding of historical temperature data and e-mail evidence.

You may suppose that those with resilient faith in end-of-days global warming would be more distraught than anyone over these actions. You'd be wrong. In the wake of the scandal, we are told there is nothing to see. The administration, the United Nations and most of the left-wing punditry and political establishment have shrugged it off. What else can they do?

To many of these folks, the science of global warming is only a tool of ideology. To step back and re-examine their thinking would also mean -- at least temporarily -- ceding a foothold on policy that allows government to control behavior. It would mean putting the brakes on the billions of dollars allocated to force fundamental economic and societal manipulations through cap-and-trade schemes and fabricated "new energy economies," among many other intrusive policies.

We have little choice but to place a certain level of trust in scientists -- even when it comes to the model-driven speculative discipline of climate change. And, need it be said, most scientists take great care in being honest, principled and precise.

In the same way, a conscientious citizen has little choice but to be uneasy when those with financial, ideological and political interest in peddling the most over-the-top ecological doomsday scenarios also become the most zealous evangelizers.

As President Barack Obama heads to Copenhagen to work on an international deal that surrenders even more of our unsightly carbon-driven prosperity to the now-somewhat-less-than-irrefutable science of climate change, shouldn't he offer more than a flippant statement through a spokesman on the scandal?

The talks, after all, will be based on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report, which partially was put together by the very same scandal-ridden scientists.

Now, I do not, on any level, possess the expertise to argue about the science of anthropological global warming. Nor do you, most likely. This certainly doesn't mean an average citizen has the duty to do the lock step.

Yes, you apostates will be tagged "denialists" -- because skepticism is synonymous with the Holocaust denial, don't you know -- or some other equally unfriendly moniker.

Don't worry; you won't be alone. Gallup recently found that 41 percent of Americans now believe global warming news reports are exaggerated -- the highest number in more than a decade despite the fact that this time frame has coincided with concentrated and highly funded scaremongering. That number is sure to rise as soon as word of this scandal spreads.

The uglier the names get, the more anger you see, the more that science-challenged politicians push invasive legislation, the more skeptics will join you. True believers will question your intelligence, your sanity and your intentions.

But as ClimateGate proves, a bit of skepticism rarely steers you wrong. In fact, it's one of the key elements of rational thinking.

More...

You should be angry. Very angry.

by Ian Plimer

FROM-Pajama Media

Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud (PJM Exclusive)

A decorated scientist and author of the most influential book debunking global warming joins Viscount Monckton in calling the CRU behavior criminal.



In the geological past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher than at present. It is clear that the colorless, odorless, non-poisonous gas called carbon dioxide did not drive past climates. Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant.

Humans have adapted to live on ice sheets, deserts, mountains, tropics, and sea level. History shows that humans and other organisms have thrived in warm times and suffered in cold times.

In the 600-year long Roman Warming, it was 4ºC warmer than now. Sea level did not rise and ice sheets did not disappear. The Dark Ages followed, and starvation, disease, and depopulation occurred. The Medieval Warming followed the Dark Ages, and for 400 years it was 5ºC warmer. Sea level did not rise and the ice sheets remained. The Medieval Warming was followed by the Little Ice Age, which finished in 1850. It is absolutely no surprise that temperature increased after a cold period.

Unless I have missed something, I am not aware of heavy industry, coal-fired power stations, or SUVs in the 1,000 years of Roman and Medieval Warmings. These natural warmings are a dreadful nuisance for climate alarmists because they suggest that the warming since 1850 may be natural and may not be related to carbon dioxide emissions.

There was warming from 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, and 1976 to 1998, with intervening periods of cooling. The only time when temperature rise paralleled carbon dioxide emissions was 1976-1998. The other warmings and coolings in the last 150 years were unrelated to carbon dioxide emissions.

Something is seriously wrong. To argue that humans change climate requires abandoning all we know about history, archaeology, geology, astronomy, and solar physics. This is exactly what has been done.

The answer to this enigma was revealed last week. It is fraud.

Files from the UK Climatic Research Unit were hacked. They show that data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded data for independent examination.

Data was manipulated to show that the Medieval Warming didn’t occur, and that we are not in a period of cooling. Furthermore, the warming of the 20th century was artificially inflated.

This behavior is that of criminals and all the data from the UK Hadley Centre and the US GISS must now be rejected. These crooks perpetrated these crimes at the expense of the British and U.S. taxpayers.

The same crooks control the IPCC and the fraudulent data in IPCC reports. The same crooks meet in Copenhagen next week and want 0.7% of the Western world’s GDP to pass through an unelected UN government, and then on to sticky fingers in the developing world.

You should be angry. Very angry.
More...

The Skeptics Are Vindicated

Such as Dr. Richard Lindzen



FROM-Ottawa Citizen

By David Warren

A computer hacker in England has done the world a service by making available a huge quantity of evidence for the way in which "human-induced global warming" claims have been advanced over the years.

By releasing into the Internet about a thousand internal e-mails from the servers of the Climate Research Unit in the University of East Anglia -- in some respects the international clearing house for climate change "science" -- he has (or they have) put observers in a position to see that claims of conspiracy and fraud were not unreasonable.
More generally, we have been given the materials with which to obtain an insight into how all modern science works when vast amounts of public funding is at stake and when the vested interests associated with various "progressive" causes require a particular scientific result.

There is little doubt that the e-mails were real. Even so warmist a true-believer as George Monbiot led his column in the Guardian yesterday with: "It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The e-mails extracted ... could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them."

He went on to rekindle his own faith in the "settled science," however, by revealing that he will not give up on the global-warming hypothesis until he sees an e-mail that reveals a specific conspiracy over the centuries by a secret fraternity of "knights carbonic" to seize planetary power and install a Communist World Government.

Behind this sarcastic little face-saving joke is a disheartening reality. For, as we glean from the hacked documents, supporters of the hypothesis have been able to reverse the onus of proof. In the last resort, their argument comes down to: We say the planet is warming. And anyone who says the contrary must "prove the negative" beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt. And we will be their judges.

Nigel Lawson (a.k.a. Baron Lawson of Blaby), the former British chancellor of the exchequer, who is among prominent persons demanding a full and open public inquiry, summarized the content of the e-mails in this way:

"Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals. ...

"There may be a perfectly innocent explanation," he continues with that impartial aplomb for which we have always adored British lords, but then he reminds just how much government spending and bureaucracy, in Britain and all over the world, has been mounted entirely upon this dubious research; and thus how far-reaching the implications if the obvious turns out to be true.

For the correspondence that has been hacked is not mere backroom gossip. It includes incriminating exchanges between some of the biggest names in the "global warming" business. In its attempt to resist an inquiry, a British Meteorological Office spokesman effectively acknowledged as much. He fell back on the traditional clinching argument of persons "dressed in a little authority": that the sublimity of their office and the splendour of their robes puts them beyond the possibility of suspicion:

"It's a shame that some of the skeptics have had to take this rather shallow attempt to discredit robust science undertaken by some of the world's most respected scientists. The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it. We have every confidence in the science and the various datasets we use. The peer-review process is as robust as it could possibly be."

The same spokesman alleged it was no coincidence that the incriminating materials had been released on the eve of the United Nations' Copenhagen climate conference. But, of course, that is exactly what the hacker was doing: getting a story out that could be released in no other way and at the best possible moment to draw attention. Those would be the first two laws of journalism.

It is amusing to see mainstream media sources such as the New York Times, which thinks nothing of publishing purloined government documents that will endanger the lives of U.S. soldiers in the field, and compromise vital intelligence operations, suddenly become all jowly and uptight about publishing the e-mails in question because they were "illegally obtained."

Other media -- which have played a leading part for years in giving credibility to "global warming" claims -- are now maintaining the silence of Iago on the revelations. We will see how long this can be sustained.





Dr. Fred Singer



Dr. Robert Carter

Many More

and there are thousands more
More...

Global Warming With the Lid Off

FROM-WSJ

The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science.

'The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."

So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world's leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to "Mike." Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. We found this nugget among the more than 3,000 emails and documents released last week after CRU's servers were hacked and messages among some of the world's most influential climatologists were published on the Internet.

The "two MMs" are almost certainly Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, two Canadians who have devoted years to seeking the raw data and codes used in climate graphs and models, then fact-checking the published conclusions—a painstaking task that strikes us as a public and scientific service. Mr. Jones did not return requests for comment and the university said it could not confirm that all the emails were authentic, though it acknowledged its servers were hacked.

Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a "unified" view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the "common cause"; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to "hide the decline" of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

Some of those mentioned in the emails have responded to our requests for comment by saying they must first chat with their lawyers. Others have offered legal threats and personal invective. Still others have said nothing at all. Those who have responded have insisted that the emails reveal nothing more than trivial data discrepancies and procedural debates.

Yet all of these nonresponses manage to underscore what may be the most revealing truth: That these scientists feel the public doesn't have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions, even as their governments prepare staggeringly expensive legislation in response to them.

Consider the following note that appears to have been sent by Mr. Jones to Mr. Mann in May 2008: "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?" AR4 is shorthand for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, presented in 2007 as the consensus view on how bad man-made climate change has supposedly become.

In another email that seems to have been sent in September 2007 to Eugene Wahl of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Paleoclimatology Program and to Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Climate and Global Dynamics Division, Mr. Jones writes: "[T]ry and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with."

When deleting, doctoring or withholding information didn't work, Mr. Jones suggested an alternative in an August 2008 email to Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, copied to Mr. Mann. "The FOI [Freedom of Information] line we're all using is this," he wrote. "IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI—the skeptics have been told this. Even though we . . . possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part of our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on."

It also seems Mr. Mann and his friends weren't averse to blacklisting scientists who disputed some of their contentions, or journals that published their work. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," goes one email, apparently written by Mr. Mann to several recipients in March 2003. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

Mr. Mann's main beef was that the journal had published several articles challenging aspects of the anthropogenic theory of global warming.

For the record, when we've asked Mr. Mann in the past about the charge that he and his colleagues suppress opposing views, he has said he "won't dignify that question with a response." Regarding our most recent queries about the hacked emails, he says he "did not manipulate any data in any conceivable way," but he otherwise refuses to answer specific questions. For the record, too, our purpose isn't to gainsay the probity of Mr. Mann's work, much less his right to remain silent.

However, we do now have hundreds of emails that give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics. In the department of inconvenient truths, this one surely deserves a closer look by the media, the U.S. Congress and other investigative bodies.


More...

Climategate: When Scientists Become Politicians

Fudging results in an attempt to make the world fit one’s preconceptions is beyond the scientific pale and a real crime.

FROM-Pajama Media

At the dawn of the modern age of science, a few hundred years ago, accounting for the motion of the planets was a mystery, but one driven by a flawed theory. It was thought, going back to the ancient Greeks and Plato, that the motions of the planets, being otherworldly and celestial objects, must be perfect and therefore circular. Unfortunately, actual observations were hard to reconcile with this notion. The ancient astronomers could have fudged the data to make it conform to the theory, but that would have been unscientific, so they fine-tuned the theory to try to make a better fit. Almost two millennia ago, Ptolemy refined the concept of circles within circles, or epicycles, to try to develop a model that would explain the observed planetary motions. The theory reached its height half a millennium ago when Copernicus, with the insight that the earth orbited the sun, like the other planets, came close to modeling planetary motion by adding new epicycles, albeit with a different model for each planet. But it was a very complex system, and still wasn’t quite close enough.

Kepler resolved the issue by demonstrating that the best fit of the motion was not circles within circles, but rather simple ellipses. He came up with simple but powerful and explanatory laws that described the motion of the planets as a function of their distance from the sun. Newton in turn used this finding to validate his own universal theory of gravitation.

But it still wasn’t quite good enough. For centuries, the innermost planet, Mercury, stubbornly refused to conform perfectly to Newton’s laws, and many more modern astronomers postulated a hidden planet elsewhere in the solar system that might account for the discrepancies; they didn’t abandon Newton’s theory. However, despite years of trying, they could never determine its location or mass. But despite this frustration, they never yielded to the temptation of simply denying the planet’s mercurial behavior — they continued to refine the theory, no matter how difficult.

About a century ago, another physicist, Albert Einstein, came up with a new theory of gravitation. A key part of it is that Newton’s laws must be adjusted slightly to account for the near presence of large masses. By Einstein’s new theory of general relativity, of which Newton’s earlier theory was simply a special case for velocities much less than that of light and locations not adjacent to very large masses, Mercury’s motion was perfectly explained by its close proximity to the sun.

Over thousands of years, at each step, the response of the scientists was to continually adjust and refine their theories to conform to the data, not the other way around. This is how science is done and how we developed the knowledge that has given us such tremendous and accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs in the past century. It is occasionally reasonable to throw out a bad data point if it is in defiance of an otherwise satisfactory model fit, as long as everyone knows that you’ve done so and the rationale, but a deliberate and unrevealed fudging of results in an attempt to make the real world fit one’s preconceptions is beyond the scientific pale. Journal articles have been thrown out for it; PhD candidates have lost their degrees for it.

But such behavior, along with attempts to cover it up and dishonestly discredit critics, is exactly what was revealed in a leak of emails last Friday from a research facility in eastern England. And it was not the behavior of previously unknown researchers on some arcane topic of little interest to anyone outside their own field. It was the behavior of leading luminaries in perhaps the greatest scientific issue and controversy of our age: Whether or not the planet is warming to a potentially dangerous degree as a result of humanity’s influence. It is a subject on which billions — if not trillions — of dollars worth of future economic growth and costs hinge. It was the basis for the massive “cap and trade” bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in the spring and seems stalled in the Senate. It is accordingly a subject on which a great deal of money is being spent on research to understand the problem. And when there is a great deal of research funding at stake, often funded by people less interested in truth than in power and political agendas, the temptation to come up with the “correct” answers can perhaps overcome scientific integrity.

It is hard (perhaps impossible) to know the motives of the people who would so betray the basic precepts of science. It is easy to postulate that they have political aims, and there are certainly many “watermelon” environmentalists (green on the outside, “red” on the inside) who see the green movement as a new means to continue to push socialist and big-government agendas, after a momentary setback with the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago.

But scientists are human, with human failings. Thomas Kuhn noted half a century ago that science doesn’t always follow the idealized model of the objective scientist seeking only truth; it is often driven by fashions and fads, peer pressure, and a lust for glory and respect by the other courtiers of the court that fund them. So we may never know whether this defense of a flawed theory arose from the sense of power that it might give them over the rest of our lives. Or perhaps it was due to simply an emotional attachment to a theory in which they had invested their careers. Either way, what they did was not science, and they should be drummed out of that profession. They can no longer be trusted.

Many in the climate change community have condemned what they call “skeptics,” often to the point of declaring them de facto criminals and assigning them to the same category as Holocaust deniers. They tell us that “the science is settled” and that we should shut up. But every scientist worthy of the name should be a skeptic. Every theory should be subject to challenge on a scientific basis. Every claim of a model’s validity should be accompanied by the complete model and data set that supposedly validated it, so that it can be replicated. That is how science works. It is how it advances. And when the science is supposedly “settled” and they refuse to do so, it’s not unreasonable to wonder why.

Well, now we know.

In fact, when scientists become politicians but continue to pretend to be doing science, that is the real crime. The theory being promoted by these men was being used to justify government actions that would result in greatly diminished future economic growth of the most powerful economy on earth (and the rest of the world as well). It would make it more difficult and less affordable to address any real problems that might be caused in the future by a change in climate, whether due to human activity or other causes. It could impoverish millions in the future, with little actual change in adverse climate effects. And when such a theory has the potential to do so much unjustified harm, and it has a fraudulent basis, who are the real criminals against humanity?






More...

The real climate change catastrophe

In a startling new book, Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages

FROM-UK Telegraph

By Christopher Booker


Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of one of the most remarkable events ever to take place in the House of Commons. For six hours MPs debated what was far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament.

The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.

Even the Government had to concede that the expense of doing this – which it now admits will cost us £18 billion a year for the next 40 years – would be twice the value of its supposed benefits. Yet, astonishingly, although dozens of MPs queued up to speak in favour of the Bill, only two dared to question the need for it. It passed by 463 votes to just three.

One who voted against it was Peter Lilley who, just before the vote was taken, drew the Speaker’s attention to the fact that, outside the Palace of Westminster, snow was falling, the first October snow recorded in London for 74 years. As I observed at the time: “Who says that God hasn’t got a sense of humour?”

By any measure, the supposed menace of global warming – and the political response to it – has become one of the overwhelmingly urgent issues of our time. If one accepts the thesis that the planet faces a threat unprecedented in history, the implications are mind-boggling. But equally mind-boggling now are the implications of the price we are being asked to pay by our politicians to meet that threat. More than ever, it is a matter of the highest priority that we should know whether or not the assumptions on which the politicians base their proposals are founded on properly sound science.

This is why I have been regularly reporting on the issue in my column in The Sunday Telegraph, and this week I publish a book called The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the obsession with climate change turning out to be the most costly scientific delusion in history?.More...

There are already many books on this subject, but mine is rather different from the rest in that, for the first time, it tries to tell the whole tangled story of how the debate over the threat of climate change has evolved over the past 30 years, interweaving the science with the politicians’ response to it.

It is a story that has unfolded in three stages. The first began back in the Seventies when a number of scientists noticed that the world’s temperatures had been falling for 30 years, leading them to warn that we might be heading for a new ice age. Then, in the mid-Seventies, temperatures started to rise again, and by the mid-Eighties, a still fairly small number of scientists – including some of those who had been predicting a new ice age – began to warn that we were now facing the opposite problem: a world dangerously heating up, thanks to our pumping out CO₂ and all those greenhouse gases inseparable from modern civilisation.

In 1988, a handful of the scientists who passionately believed in this theory won authorisation from the UN to set up the body known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was the year when the scare over global warming really exploded into the headlines, thanks above all to the carefully staged testimony given to a US Senate Committee by Dr James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), also already an advocate for the theory that CO₂ was causing potentially catastrophic warming.

The disaster-movie scenario that rising levels of CO₂ could lead to droughts, hurricanes, heatwaves and, above all, that melting of the polar ice caps, which would flood half the world’s major cities, struck a rich chord. The media loved it. The environmentalists loved it. More and more politicians, led by Al Gore in the United States, jumped on the bandwagon. But easily their most influential allies were the scientists running the new IPCC, led by a Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin and Dr John Houghton, head of the UK Met Office.

The IPCC, through its series of weighty reports, was now to become the central player in the whole story. But rarely has the true nature of any international body been more widely misrepresented. It is commonly believed that the IPCC consists of “1,500 of the world’s top climate scientists”, charged with weighing all the scientific evidence for and against “human-induced climate change” in order to arrive at a “consensus”.

In fact, the IPCC was never intended to be anything of the kind. The vast majority of its contributors have never been climate scientists. Many are not scientists at all. And from the start, the purpose of the IPCC was not to test the theory, but to provide the most plausible case for promoting it. This was why the computer models it relied on as its chief source of evidence were all programmed to show that, as CO₂ levels continued to rise, so temperatures must inevitably follow.

One of the more startling features of the IPCC is just how few scientists have been centrally involved in guiding its findings. They have mainly been British and American, led for a long time by Dr Houghton (knighted in 1991) as chairman of its scientific working group, who in 1990 founded the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for research into climate change. The centre has continued to play a central role in selecting the IPCC’s contributors to this day, and along with the Climate Research Unit run by Professor Philip Jones at the University of East Anglia, controls HadCrut, one of the four official sources of global temperature data (another of the four, GIStemp, is run by the equally committed Dr Hansen and his British-born right-hand man, Dr Gavin Schmidt).

With remarkable speed, from the time of its first report in 1990, the IPCC and its computer models won over many of the world’s politicians, led by those of the European Union. In 1992, the UN staged its extraordinary Earth Summit in Rio, attended by 108 prime ministers and heads of state, which agreed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; and this led in 1997 to the famous Kyoto Protocol, committing the world’s governments to specific targets for reducing CO₂.

Up to this point, the now officially accepted global-warming theory seemed only too plausible. Both CO₂ levels and world temperatures had continued to rise, exactly as the IPCC’s computer models predicted. We thus entered the second stage of the story, lasting from 1998 to 2006, when the theory seemed to be carrying everything before it.

The politicians, most notably in the EU, were now beginning to adopt every kind of measure to combat the supposed global-warming menace, from building tens of thousands of wind turbines to creating elaborate schemes for buying and selling the right to emit CO₂, the gas every plant in the world needs for life.

But however persuasive the case seemed to be, there were just beginning to be rather serious doubts about the methods being used to promote it. More and more questions were being asked about the IPCC’s unbalanced approach to evidence – most notably in its promotion of the so-called “hockey stick” graph, produced in time for its 2001 report by a hitherto obscure US scientist Dr Michael Mann, purporting to show how global temperatures had suddenly been shooting up to levels quite unprecedented in history.

One of the hockey stick’s biggest fans was Al Gore, who in 2006 made it the centrepiece of his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. But it then turned out that almost every single scientific claim in Gore’s film was either wildly exaggerated or wrong. The statistical methods used to create the hockey-stick graph were so devastatingly exposed by two Canadian statisticians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (as was confirmed in 2006 by two expert panels commissioned by the US Congress) that the graph has become one of the most comprehensively discredited artefacts in the history of science.

The supporters of the hockey stick, highly influential in the IPCC, hit back. Proudly calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, their membership again reflects how small has been the number of closely linked scientists centrally driving the warming scare. They include Philip Jones, in charge of the HadCrut official temperature graph, and Gavin Schmidt, Hansen’s right-hand man at GISS –which itself came under fire for “adjusting” its temperature data to exaggerate the warming trend.

Then, in 2007, the story suddenly entered its third stage. In a way that had been wholly unpredicted by those IPCC computer models, global temperatures started to drop. Although CO2 levels continued to rise, after 25 years when temperatures had risen, the world’s climate was visibly starting to cool again.

More and more eminent scientists have been coming out of the woodwork to suggest that the IPCC, with its computer models, had got it all wrong. It isn’t CO₂ that has been driving the climate, the changes are natural, driven by the activity of the sun and changes in the currents of the world’s oceans.

The ice caps haven’t been melting as the alarmists and the models predicted they should. The Antarctic, containing nearly 90 per cent of all the ice in the world, has actually been cooling over the past 30 years, not warming. The polar bears are not drowning – there are four times more of them now than there were 40 years ago. In recent decades, the number of hurricanes and droughts have gone markedly down, not up.

As the world has already been through two of its coldest winters for decades, with all the signs that we may now be entering a third, the scientific case for CO₂ threatening the world with warming has been crumbling away on an astonishing scale.

Yet it is at just this point that the world’s politicians, led by Britain, the EU and now President Obama, are poised to impose on us far and away the most costly set of measures that any group of politicians has ever proposed in the history of the world – measures so destructive that even if only half of them were implemented, they would take us back to the dark ages.

We have “less than 50 days” to save the planet, declared Gordon Brown last week, in yet another desperate bid to save the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which is due to be agreed in Copenhagen in six weeks’ time. But no one has put the reality of the situation more succinctly than Prof Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy, one of the most distinguished climatologists in the world, who has done as much as anyone in the past 20 years to expose the emptiness of the IPCC’s claim that its reports represent a “consensus” of the views of “the world’s top climate scientists”.

In words quoted on the cover of my new book, Prof Lindzen wrote: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.”

Such is the truly extraordinary position in which we find ourselves.

Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

How long will it be before sanity and sound science break in on what begins to look like one of the most bizarre collective delusions ever to grip the human race?