14 responses to “Hot Flash on AGW”

1. 

   Russ

   15 February 2010

   George,
   Thanks for the recognition. The Orange County Register here is a summary of the revelatons that followed Climategate. Sorry it is so long, but the exposure is significant and telling.
   ClimateGate – This scandal began the latest round of revelations when thousands of leaked documents from Britain’s East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics’ views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming. Why do such a thing if, as global warming defenders contend, the “science is settled?”
   FOIGate – The British government has since determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests. The CRU is one of three international agencies compiling global temperature data. If their stuff’s so solid, why the secrecy?
   ChinaGate – An investigation by the U.K.’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn’t be located. “Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?” the paper asked. The paper’s investigation also couldn’t find corroboration of what Chinese scientists turned over to American scientists, leaving unanswered, “how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?” The Guardian contends that researchers covered up the missing data for years.
   HimalayaGate – An Indian climate official admitted in January that, as lead author of the IPCC’s Asian report, he intentionally exaggerated when claiming Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 in order to prod governments into action. This fraudulent claim was not based on scientific research or peer-reviewed. Instead it was originally advanced by a researcher, since hired by a global warming research organization, who later admitted it was “speculation” lifted from a popular magazine. This political, not scientific, motivation at least got some researcher funded.
   PachauriGate – Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman who accepted with Al Gore the Nobel Prize for scaring people witless, at first defended the Himalaya melting scenario. Critics, he said, practiced “voodoo science.” After the melting-scam perpetrator ‘fessed up, Pachauri admitted to making a mistake. But, he insisted, we still should trust him.
   PachauriGate II – Pachauri also claimed he didn’t know before the 192-nation climate summit meeting in Copenhagen in December that the bogus Himalayan glacier claim was sheer speculation. But the London Times reported that a prominent science journalist said he had pointed out those errors in several e-mails and discussions to Pachauri, who “decided to overlook it.” Stonewalling? Cover up? Pachauri says he was “preoccupied.” Well, no sense spoiling the Copenhagen party, where countries like Pachauri’s India hoped to wrench billions from countries like the United States to combat global warming’s melting glaciers. Now there are calls for Pachauri’s resignation.
   SternGate – One excuse for imposing worldwide climate crackdown has been the U.K.’s 2006 Stern Report, an economic doomsday prediction commissioned by the government. Now the U.K. Telegraph reports that quietly after publication “some of these predictions had been watered down because the scientific evidence on which they were based could not be verified.” Among original claims now deleted were that northwest Australia has had stronger typhoons in recent decades, and that southern Australia lost rainfall because of rising ocean temperatures. Exaggerated claims get headlines. Later, news reporters disclose the truth. Why is that?
   SternGate II – A researcher now claims the Stern Report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and more-frequent and severe floods and hurricanes. Robert Muir-Wood said his original research showed no such link. He accused Stern of “going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence.” We’re shocked.
   AmazonGate – The London Times exposed another shocker: the IPCC claim that global warming will wipe out rain forests was fraudulent, yet advanced as “peer-reveiwed” science. The Times said the assertion actually “was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise,” “authored by two green activists” and lifted from a report from the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group. The “research” was based on a popular science magazine report that didn’t bother to assess rainfall. Instead, it looked at the impact of logging and burning. The original report suggested “up to 40 percent” of Brazilian rain forest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall, but the IPCC expanded that to cover the entire Amazon, the Times reported.
   PeerReviewGate – The U.K. Sunday Telegraph has documented at least 16 nonpeer-reviewed reports (so far) from the advocacy group World Wildlife Fund that were used in the IPCC’s climate change bible, which calls for capping manmade greenhouse gases.
   RussiaGate – Even when global warming alarmists base claims on scientific measurements, they’ve often had their finger on the scale. Russian think tank investigators evaluated thousands of documents and e-mails leaked from the East Anglia research center and concluded readings from the coldest regions of their nation had been omitted, driving average temperatures up about half a degree.
   Russia-Gate II – Speaking of Russia, a presentation last October to the Geological Society of America showed how tree-ring data from Russia indicated cooling after 1961, but was deceptively truncated and only artfully discussed in IPCC publications. Well, at least the tree-ring data made it into the IPCC report, albeit disguised and misrepresented.
   U.S.Gate – If Brits can’t be trusted, are Yanks more reliable? The U.S. National Climate Data Center has been manipulating weather data too, say computer expert E. Michael Smith and meteorologist Joesph D’Aleo. Forty years ago there were 6,000 surface-temperature measuring stations, but only 1,500 by 1990, which coincides with what global warming alarmists say was a record temperature increase. Most of the deleted stations were in colder regions, just as in the Russian case, resulting in misleading higher average temperatures.
   IceGate – Hardly a continent has escaped global warming skewing. The IPCC based its findings of reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and in Africa on a feature story of climbers’ anecdotes in a popular mountaineering magazine, and a dissertation by a Switzerland university student, quoting mountain guides. Peer-reviewed? Hype? Worse?
   ResearchGate – The global warming camp is reeling so much lately it must have seemed like a major victory when a Penn State University inquiry into climate scientist Michael Mann found no misconduct regarding three accusations of climate research impropriety. But the university did find “further investigation is warranted” to determine whether Mann engaged in actions that “seriously deviated from accepted practices for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” Being investigated for only one fraud is a global warming victory these days.
   ReefGate – Let’s not forget the alleged link between climate change and coral reef degradation. The IPCC cited not peer-reviewed literature, but advocacy articles by Greenpeace, the publicity-hungry advocacy group, as its sole source for this claim.
   AfricaGate – The IPCC claim that rising temperatures could cut in half agricultural yields in African countries turns out to have come from a 2003 paper published by a Canadian environmental think tank – not a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
   DutchGate – The IPCC also claimed rising sea levels endanger the 55 percent of the Netherlands it says is below sea level. The portion of the Netherlands below sea level actually is 20 percent. The Dutch environment minister said she will no longer tolerate climate researchers’ errors.
   AlaskaGate – Geologists for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography and their U.S. and Canadian colleagues say previous studies largely overestimated by 40 percent Alaskan glacier loss for 40 years. This flawed data are fed into those computers to predict future warming.

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2. 

   George Rebane

   15 February 2010

   Russ, thanks for this Climategate compendium. It provides an appropriate context for Phil Jones latest mea culpas. Real scientists should have had the cojones to stand up to the political threats from their funders a long time ago. But that is now history from which we should learn. Nevertheless, the halo of climate change know-nothings led by Big Al will still make their stand. They didn’t need science to get this far, so they reckon they can do without science from here on to pass Waxman-Markey. The battle is not over.

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3. 

   Russ

   15 February 2010

   Agreed, the battle is not over. There is far too much money at stake, and we are going to end up paying the price.

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4. 

   bill tozer

   15 February 2010

   Wow. Donald Trump is already calling for Nobel Peace Prizes to be returned. I disagree. I want to pin a medal on Dr. Jones for finally have the courage to come clean. He does have a conscious. Maybe he will return to scientific principles. Sometimes a kick in the rear is one step forward.

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5. 

   George Rebane

   15 February 2010

   Bill, you have a good point, but I think that if Jones ever does return to science, his work will be placed in the ‘Trust, but definitely verify’ bin.

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6. 

   Dixon Cruickshank

   15 February 2010

   You guys were lucky they got that AB32 thing passed and all those Gov employee’s hired before all this came out – kinda like Hotel California – “you can checkout but you can never leave” they’ll have to find new jobs for them even if you recind it. Its like raising your hand to get to test the Guillotine, you guys always want to first. The problem is the unions with votes and money you can’t elect anybody except howling rock apes, everybody’s a whore we’re just negoiting the price.

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7. 

   George Rebane

   16 February 2010

   For the occasional benefit of the local lefties who firmly hold that AGW skeptics like me are a backwoods aberration from their more lofty pillars of knowledge, I quote from today’s WSJ – “It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the “settled science” of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.”
   You can read the rest here – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703630404575053781465774008.html#mod=todays_us_opinion

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8. 

   Russ

   16 February 2010

   “Today, BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar have dropped out of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership.  This is the first recognition by the many major corporations pushing energy-rationing legislation that cap-and-trade legislation is dead in the Congress and that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is collapsing rapidly.” “BP, Conoco, and CAT abandon ship“
   Let’s hope that other major corporations will also see the light and drop their support for cap-and-trade.

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9. 

   Tony

   18 February 2010

   Steve Milloy writes a weekly “Junk Science” column for Fox News, which he uses, among other topics, to pour scorn on studies documenting the medical effects of secondhand tobacco smoke and showing that climate change is taking place. Fox describes his credentials thus: “Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute”.
   What it doesn’t say is that he has long acted as a paid advocate for the tobacco company Philip Morris, while the fake grassroots group he runs has also received funding from ExxonMobil.
   Frozen water fell from the sky today, therefore thousands of scientists the world over are liars. Just go with it.
   That’s the narrative coming from Fox News in their coverage of the heavy snow blanketing the eastern coast of the United States this winter. Thankfully, there’s Bill Nye the Science Guy, ready to explain the complexities of climate science in terms easy enough for even a child to digest.
   Nye, however, jacked his assessment of meteorology into the realm of partisanship, scoffing on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Wednesday night that climate change deniers are “unpatriotic” in parroting simple minded, anti-science propaganda.
   “[We] remind you that global warming was the first term for this phenomenon that we now call can climate change,” he said. “So it‘s very reasonable that a snowstorm in Washington that‘s this severe is a result of climate change.”
   In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the Republican Party, with regard to climate change, that “you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue” and “challenge the science” by “recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view.”[5] In 2006, Luntz stated that he still believes “back [in] ’97, ’98, the science was uncertain”, but he now agrees with the scientific consensus.[29]
   In 2005, the New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, a former lobbyist and “climate team leader” at the American Petroleum Institute, had “repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.”[30] Sharon Begley reported in Newsweek that Cooney “edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as ‘lack of understanding’ and ‘considerable uncertainty.’” Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon an oil lobbyist sent him a fax saying “You are doing a great job.”[5] Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke,[31] but a few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.[32]
   The Royal Society conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$ 2.9 million to American groups that “misinformed the public about climate change,” 39 of which “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”.[12][26] In 2006, the Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter, which was leaked to the media, drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball and others, who argued the society attempted to “politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate.”[27]

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10. 

    Russ

    18 February 2010

    Tony,
    It really does not make a rats a** about Junk Science, Tobacco, and Frank Lunz, etc. You have to got to stop reading the lefty blogs were you copied the crap in your post above.
    The Climategate emails and computer code proved that global warming and climate change was all a great big fraud. A scientific hoax. The misinformation was being promoted by the CRU and NASA GISS, using government money, your tax dollars to commit fraud. The IPCC reports were not supported by peer reviewed papers, but junk science from the WWF. Even the lead author admitted there is not warming over the last 15 years.

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11. 

    Tony

    22 February 2010

    Oh you are telling me what not to read? Is that just a little Fascist? What would George say?
    The contrarians and the hacked CRU emails
    A hacker broke into an email server at the Climate Research Unit of the UK’s University of East Anglia and posted ten years worth of private email exchanges between leading scientists who’ve published research linking humans to climate change. Naturally, the contrarians have seized upon this golden opportunity, and are working hard to discredit several of these scientists. You’ll hear claims by some contrarians that the emails discovered invalidate the whole theory of human-caused global warming. Well, all I can say is, consider the source.
    We can trust the contrarians to say whatever is in the best interests of the fossil fuel industry.
    ……..That would be you Russ…..
    What I see when I read the various stolen emails and explanations posted at Realclimate.org is scientists acting as scientists–pursuing the truth. I can see no clear evidence that calls into question the scientific validity of the research done by the scientists victimized by the stolen emails. There is no sign of a conspiracy to alter data to fit a pre-conceived ideological view. Rather, I see dedicated scientists attempting to make the truth known in face of what is probably the world’s most pervasive and best-funded disinformation campaign against science in history. Even if every bit of mud slung at these scientists were true, the body of scientific work supporting the theory of human-caused climate change–which spans hundreds of thousands of scientific papers written by tens of thousands of scientists in dozens of different scientific disciplines–is too vast to be budged by the flaws in the works of the three or four scientists being subject to the fiercest attacks.
    Ignore all the data from these guys and there are still hundreds of studies leading to climate change. Don’t take my word. Why do you think the ARMY and NAVY are doing climate change scenarios? Because when it occurs they can’t tell the president “We didn’t think it would happen”. “We have no plan”.
    Google that.

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12. 

    Tony

    24 February 2010

    Googled the Navy and Army plans for studies of climate change yet?
    What a surprise.

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13. 

    Russ

    24 February 2010

    Tony,
    If you believe the crap put out at realclimate.org your will never understand the issue, as they have skin in the game, and are as culpable as the CRU scientist. The emails can be open to interpretation but the computer code does not lie. The fudge factors are built into the code along with the comments to “hide the decline” and “the fudge factor”. The Code has been subject to detail analysis the results are stunning. Now even Phil Jones who ran the CRU, conspired to distort the temperature record.
    Now if we could just get access to NOAA/NCDC code, for adjusting the raw data we would know why they claim the US is warming at 0.69oC/century. They will not reveal the code, so we can not determine what fudge factors the NCDC is using.
    The American Thinker has an interesting analysis this morning of what those factors might be by Edward R. Long a retired NASA scientist. He concludes:
    1) The rate of increase for rural locations, based on as-measured (raw) values, is small (if not, in effect, zero) at 0.11 oC/century.
    2) There is definitely a UHIE in that the urban raw data has a rate of increase of 0.72oC/century. This tells us that man has caused warming in urban locations. This finding should not surprise anyone. On the other hand, because the rural value is 15% of the urban value, the UHIE has not caused warming in the rural locations, and it certainly has not caused a global sense of warming other than the aspect that the urban location values when averaged with the rural values produce an average increase which is larger than that of the rural alone.
    3) The rural + urban value for the adjusted data, 0.65oC/century, is still less than the 0.69oC/century published by the NCDC. Thus, likely, there are more urban than rural sites used by the NCDC.
    4) And this is the “Temperaturegate” aspect: The NCDC’s massaging — they call it “adjusting” — has resulted in an increase in the rural values, from a raw value of 0.11oC/century to an adjusted value of 0.58oC/century, and no change in the urban values. That is, the NCDC’s treatment has forced the rural value to look more like that of the urban. This is the exact opposite of any rational consideration, given the growth of the sizes of and activities within urban locations, unless deception is the goal.
    Full article is here.
    http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/a_pending_american_temperature.html

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14. 

    Russ

    24 February 2010

    Tony,
    As a former Air Force Planner and I can assure you the military has plans for every possible contingency from nuclear war to civil discord. Most likely the military has plans for civil discord, should excessive cold or excessive warming destroy major food supplies.

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