AGW/Climategate Reports

[Corlyss_D]

Recent developments reported yesterday by Bob Zimmerman, science journalist, on Batchelor:

1. Phil Jones testified to House of Commons 3/1/10 that it was standard practice for scientists to withhold data from other scientists. He was blatantly and uncategorically rebuked in statements submitted separately by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Statistical Society, and the Institute of Physics: Jones is wrong, the whole Climategate controversy discredits science, we must have complete and open transparency, and the data must be released. Batchelor asked if the scientific community understands now that the questions raised by Climategate puts all of them at risk unless and until a rigorous, professional review of the data is conducted. The Institute of Physics wrote "The emails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented. For example, the apparent surpression in graphics widely used by the Nobel Peace Prize winning IPCC of proxy results* for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.**"

2. Because their reputation is now at stake, the UEA CRU has announced they are going to "reconstruct" the lost/destroyed raw data base.*** Personally, I can't see what good this will do for their image: the lost data has to confirm what Jones says it said, or the whole IPCC report, which is based on his data, is exploded. Once the contents of the data base became an issue, only the actual data used, not possibly fanciful and self-serving reconstructions, will be evidence. This reconstruction notion is a fool's errand.


* IOW tree ring data used to determine warming before we had instruments and records of actual temperatures.
** IOW the tree ring data collected for decades when we do have instruments and records do not jive. So if the tree rings for known records do not match, there is no reason to believe that the tree ring data from pre-instrumental records era is accurate.

Jones' entire testimony, along with others, is available here: http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_ ... nology.cfm

George Russell
- FOXNews.com
- February 23, 2010
Britain's Weather Office Proposes Climate-Gate Do-Over

At a meeting Monday of 150 climate scientists, representatives of Britain's weather office proposed that the world's climatologists start all over again and produce a new trove of global temperature data that is open to public scrutiny and "rigorous" peer review.


After the firestorm of criticism called Climate-gate, the British government's official Meteorological Office has decided to give its modern climate data a do-over.

At a meeting on Monday of about 150 climate scientists in the quiet Turkish seaside resort of Antalya, representatives of the weather office (known in Britain as the Met Office) quietly proposed that the world's climate scientists start all over again on a "grand challenge" to produce a new, common trove of global temperature data that is open to public scrutiny and "rigorous" peer review.

In other words, conduct investigations into modern global warming in a way that may help to end the mammoth controversy over world temperature data that has been stirred up in the past few years.

The executive summary of the Met Office proposal to the World Meteorological Organization's Committee for Climatology was obtained by Fox News. In it, the Met Office defends its historical record of temperature readings, along with similar data collected in the U.S., as a "robust indicator of global change." But it admits that "further development" of the record is required "in particular to better assess the risks posed by changes in extremes of climate."

Among other things, its older data is maintained on a monthly basis, and the Met Office proposal says that is "grossly inadequate" to providing information on a daily and "sub-daily" basis.

A Met Office spokesman, Dave Britton, declared that the decision to re-do the data collection had been gestating for "a long time," then added: "But it would be naïve to say that [the Climate-gate controversy] didn't have an impact." He added: "It's not something that we can do alone."

As a result, the proposal says, "we feel that it is timely to propose an international effort to reanalyze surface temperature data in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which has the responsibility for global observing and monitoring systems for weather and climate."

The new effort, the proposal says, would provide:

• "verifiable datasets starting from a common databank of unrestricted data"
• "methods that are fully documented in the peer reviewed literature and open to scrutiny;"
• "a set of independent assessments of surface temperature produced by independent groups using independent methods,"
• "comprehensive audit trails to deliver confidence in the results;"
• "robust assessment of uncertainties associated with observational error, temporal and geographical in homogeneities."

Click here to read the executive summary.

The Met Office proposes that the new international effort to recalibrate temperature data start at a "workshop"' hosted by its Hadley Climate Research Centre, which maintains data in collaboration with the controversial Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at Britain's East Anglia University. The Met Office would invite "key players" to start the "agreed community challenge" of creating the new datasets. A Met Office spokesman said the new effort would take about three years to complete, but would not estimate the cost.

The Met Office proposal asserts that "we do not anticipate any substantial changes in the resulting global and continental-scale ... trends" as a result of the new round of data collection. But, the proposal adds, "this effort will ensure that the datasets are completely robust and that all methods are transparent."

Those strongly underlined assurances put the Met Office in strong contrast to the accusations that have been hurled at its collaborator, CRU, epicenter of the Climate-gate controversy. Among other things, the CRU had stonewalled climate skeptics who demanded to know more about its scientific methods in establishing a dramatic record of global warming, especially in the 20th century. (An inquiry established that the institution had flouted British freedom of information laws in refusing to come up with the data.)

The stonewall began to crumble after a gusher of leaked emails revealed climate scientists, including the CRU's chief, Phil Jones, discussing how to keep controversial climate data out of the hands of the skeptics, keep opposing scientific viewpoints out of peer-reviewed scientific journals, and bemoaned that their climate models failed to account for more than a decade of stagnation in global temperatures.Jones later revealed that key temperature datasets used in Hadley's predictions had been lost, and could not be retrieved for verification.

Jones stepped down temporarily after the British government announced an ostensibly independent inquiry into the still-growing scandal, but that only fanned the flames, as skeptics pointed out ties between several panel members and the East Anglia center. In an interview two weeks ago, Jones also admitted that there has been no "statistically significant" global warming in the past 15 years.

The Met Office's desire for more robust and transparent data could also prove to be a blow for Rajendra Pachauri, head of the United Nations-backed International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose most recent report, published in 2007, has been exposed by skeptics as rife with scientific errors, larded with un-reviewed and non-scientific source materials, and other failings.

As details of the report's sloppiness emerged, the ranks of skeptics of the work have swelled to include larger numbers of the scientific community, including weather specialists who worked on the sprawling IPCC report. Calls for Pachauri's resignation have come from organizations as normally opposed as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the British chapter of Greenpeace. So far, he has refused to step down.

The Met proposal argues says that its old datasets "are adequate for answering the pressing 20th Century questions of whether climate is changing and if so how. Bet they are fundamentally ill-conditioned to answer 21st Century questions such as how extremes are changing and therefore what adaptation and mitigation decisions should be taken."

Those "21st Century questions" are not small and they are very far from cheap. At Copenhagen, wealthy nations were being asked to spend trillions of dollars on answering them, a deal that only fell through when China, India, and other near-developed nations refused to join the mammoth climate-control deal.

The question after the Met Office's proposal may be whether environmentalists eager to move those mountains of cash are also ready to stand down until the 21st century questions get 21st century answers.

UPDATE
An earlier version of this story confused the Met Office's Hadley Centre with the East Anglia University's CRU. Fox News regrets the error.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.
© Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[Corlyss_D]

Jones tries to blame other nations for his discredited stand on releasing data. It's been known for some time that the Russians refuse to release climate data because to do so would reveal the locations of secret Russian installations, some of which may not necessarily actually be in Russia.

(Adds Environment Canada’s response in ninth paragraph.)

By Alex Morales

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Canada and Russia are among nations that won’t allow the U.K. university at the center of the “climategate” leaked-e-mail dispute to release their temperature data, researchers at the school said.

Seven of 59 nations asked to allow the University of East Anglia to release weather station data have declined, according to testimony given to a U.K. parliamentary committee today by Phil Jones, director of the school’s Climatic Research Unit, and UEA Vice Chancellor Edward Acton.

The data is of interest because it’s used by the school and the Met Office, the government’s forecaster to produce one of the three main global average temperature datasets used by the United Nations to show the Earth is warming. Skeptics of climate change have been pushing for the data to be published to allow them to reproduce the series themselves.

“Several of these countries impose conditions saying ‘no, you can’t pass it on’,” Acton told the U.K. Parliament’s multi- party Science and Technology Committee in London today. “Canada and Poland are among those countries saying ‘no you can’t.’ Also Sweden. And Russia is reluctant.”

Weather Stations

The Met Office in December released records for more than 1,500 weather stations and said it would publish records for about 5,000 more outposts once the necessary permission had been obtained. About 80 percent of the data has now been released, Jones told lawmakers.

Jones, the author of many of the leaked e-mails, stepped aside from his post in December, pending completion of an investigation. In one e-mail, he spoke of deleting files rather than handing data to skeptics. In a Nov. 24 statement, the school said “no record” had been deleted or altered.

Jones and Acton didn’t name all the countries that have resisted requests for the data to be published by the UEA.

“Canada has said they would rather we sent requests for their data to their Web site,” Jones said. “They don’t want it on our Web site.”

He didn’t provide reasons for the other nations.

“Canada releases its temperature data to anyone who requests it,” Brigitte Lemay, a spokeswoman with Environment Canada, said in an e-mailed response. “We have in the past and we will continue to make our data public. All Environment Canada official climatic data is made available without restriction to the public through our Web site.”

Calls made to the embassies of Poland, Russia and Sweden in London just before 6 p.m. weren’t answered.

--With assistance from Alexandre Deslongchamps in Ottawa. Editors: Reed Landberg, Andrew Barden

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net.

[Corlyss_D]

Statement of the Institute of Physics to the House of Commons committee:

What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?

1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.

2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

3. It is important to recognise that there are two completely different categories of data set that are involved in the CRU e-mail exchanges:

· those compiled from direct instrumental measurements of land and ocean surface temperatures such as the CRU, GISS and NOAA data sets; and

· historic temperature reconstructions from measurements of ‘proxies’, for example, tree-rings.

4. The second category relating to proxy reconstructions are the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. Published reconstructions may represent only a part of the raw data available and may be sensitive to the choices made and the statistical techniques used. Different choices, omissions or statistical processes may lead to different conclusions. This possibility was evidently the reason behind some of the (rejected) requests for further information.

5. The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.

6. There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ’self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.

7. Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.

8. As a step towards restoring confidence in the scientific process and to provide greater transparency in future, the editorial boards of scientific journals should work towards setting down requirements for open electronic data archiving by authors, to coincide with publication. Expert input (from journal boards) would be needed to determine the category of data that would be archived. Much ‘raw’ data requires calibration and processing through interpretive codes at various levels.

9. Where the nature of the study precludes direct replication by experiment, as in the case of time-dependent field measurements, it is important that the requirements include access to all the original raw data and its provenance, together with the criteria used for, and effects of, any subsequent selections, omissions or adjustments. The details of any statistical procedures, necessary for the independent testing and replication, should also be included. In parallel, consideration should be given to the requirements for minimum disclosure in relation to computer modelling.

Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate?

10. The scope of the UEA review is, not inappropriately, restricted to the allegations of scientific malpractice and evasion of the Freedom of Information Act at the CRU. However, most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other leading institutions involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. In so far as those scientists were complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices, there is need for a wider inquiry into the integrity of the scientific process in this field.

11. The first of the review’s terms of reference is limited to: “…manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice…” The term ‘acceptable’ is not defined and might better be replaced with ‘objective’.

12. The second of the review’s terms of reference should extend beyond reviewing the CRU’s policies and practices to whether these have been breached by individuals, particularly in respect of other kinds of departure from objective scientific practice, for example, manipulation of the publication and peer review system or allowing pre-formed conclusions to override scientific objectivity.

How independent are the other two international data sets?

13. Published data sets are compiled from a range of sources and are subject to processing and adjustments of various kinds. Differences in judgements and methodologies used in such processing may result in different final data sets even if they are based on the same raw data. Apart from any communality of sources, account must be taken of differences in processing between the published data sets and any data sets on which they draw. http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/26/inst ... ubmission/

Unfortunately, they undermined the impact of their criticism by being bullied the next day into confirming their abiding faith in the attribution of warming to C02.

Memorandum submitted by the Royal Statistical Society (CRU 47)

1. The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is the UK's only professional and learned society devoted to the interests of statistics and statisticians. Founded in 1834 it is also one of the most influential and prestigious statistical societies in the world. The Society has members in over 50 countries worldwide and is active in a wide range of areas both directly and indirectly pertaining to the study and application of statistics. It aims to promote public understanding of statistics and provide professional support to users of statistics and to statisticians.

2. The Society welcomes this opportunity to submit evidence to the Science and Technology committee on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia inquiry.

3. The Society's response relates to the first of the questions on which the committee invites submissions: "What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?"

4. The RSS believes that the debate on global warming is best served by having the models used and the data on which they are based in the public domain. Where such information is publicly available it is possible independently to verify results. The ability to verify models using publicly available data is regarded as being of much greater importance than the specific content of email exchanges between researchers.

5. The position of the RSS regarding public dissemination of scientific data is that where the results of scientific analyses have been published or are otherwise in the public domain, the raw data, and associated meta-data, used for these analyses should, within reason, also be made available.

6. The qualification, within reason, is important because there are some cases where preservation of confidentiality is required to protect the rights of individuals to privacy. There are also occasions where the need to protect sensitive areas means that publication of all details is inappropriate. An example would be the exact locations of rare breeding species. Similarly, there are other occasions where overriding commercial interests may suggest that publication is inappropriate.

7. However, it is the view of the RSS that such commercial interest will only justifiably be invoked infrequently. An analogy with the common approach to patents is appropriate here. Companies may choose to keep their research secret and not patent it. However, if a patent is sought, the details of the invention must be revealed. Analogously, in the field of drug development, a pharmaceutical company is reimbursed not just because of the molecules it has discovered but also because of the knowledge it has acquired regarding the effects of those molecules. It cannot justifiably seek reimbursement for that knowledge and not make it available. Hence, by the point at which it seeks a commercial return, the data on efficacy and safety should be in the public domain.

8. It is also clearly unreasonable to require that any given scientist having published some research is then condemned to answer each and every question that might possibly arise from it.. For example, requests under the Freedom of Information act or the Environmental Information Regulations could overwhelm small groups of scientists. To avoid this it is best if data are stored in data centres that are professionally run and properly funded.

9. More widely, the basic case for publication of data includes that science progresses as an ongoing debate and not by a series of authoritative and oracular pronouncements and that the quality of that debate is best served by ensuring that all parties have access to the facts. It is well understood, for example, that peer review cannot guarantee that what is published is 'correct'. The best guarantor of scientific quality is that others are able to examine in detail the arguments that have been used and not just their published conclusions. It is important that experiments and calculations can be repeated to verify their conclusions. If data, or the methods used, are withheld, it is impossible to do this.

10. The RSS believes that a crucial step in improving the quality of the debate on global warming will be to place the data, the analysis methods and the models in the public domain. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... uc4702.htm

[Dennis Spath]

Ain't it great Corlyss? It's like milking your favorite cow which never goes dry....EXXON's gift which never stops giving!

[Dennis Spath]

And it isn't just Jones and the IPPC which is out to destroy the Corporate American way of life we so enjoy Corlyss....Check out what these idiots at NOAA are trying to put over on us with regard to Tree Ring Data!! The extent of this conspiracy to destroy our economy is almost unfathomable.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/treering.html

[Corlyss_D]

EXXON's gift which never stops giving!

Exxon and the other major energy companies have huge investments in AGW. I'm surprised you didn't know that. It's all about the money.

[Corlyss_D]

A list of scientists (not CMG members) critical of GW:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientists ... al_warming

It should be sobering. So should this clip from an address by Lindzen (see his props below) on the pernicious effects of the money.





Richard Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books.[1] He was a lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,' of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has been a critic of some global warming theories and what he states are political pressures on climate scientists. is one of the leading critics of AGW since it emerged. You can read the rest of his props at wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen



His line "[The fact that the critics are right and the hysterics are wrong] does nothing to mitigate the failure of nature to properly follow the models." is hysterical. Damn nature didn't get the memo.

Lindzen enters the lion's den, Oberlin College.

[Corlyss_D]

The counterattack is based on appeals to the authority of the questioned scientists. Among thinking folks, that's a dead bang loser. The smarter voices understand when the science is suspect, you have to verify the science. It's interesting that Schneider wrote in 1991 "I believe that it will be decades, at least, before highly credible validated regional time-evolving scenarios of climate change will be possible, let alone credible projections of ecosystem responses. That does not matter to me because when the fate of the earth is in the balance my values dictate that we have to err on the side of caution and look for cost-effective ways to slow down the emissions that force global changes."

Originally published 05:00 a.m., March 5, 2010, updated 12:08 p.m., March 5, 2010
Climate scientists to fight back at skeptics

Stephen Dinan

Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" to gut the credibility of skeptics.

In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of "being treated like political pawns" and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.

"Most of our colleagues don't seem to grasp that we're not in a gentlepersons' debate, we're in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.

"This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, 'God, can't we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,'" said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.

The scientists have been under siege since late last year when e-mails leaked from a British climate research institute seemed to show top researchers talking about skewing data to push predetermined outcomes. Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative body on the matter, has suffered defections of members after it had to retract claims that Himalayan glaciers will melt over the next 25 years.

Last month, President Obama announced that he would create a U.S. agency to arbitrate research on climate change.

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and a chief skeptic of global-warming claims, is considering asking the Justice Department to investigate whether climate scientists who receive taxpayer-funded grants falsified data. He lists 17 people he said have been key players in the controversy.

That news has enraged scientists. Mr. Schneider said Mr. Inhofe is showing "McCarthyesque" behavior in the mold of the Cold War-era senator who was accused of stifling political debate through accusations of communism.

In a phone interview, Mr. Schneider, who is one of the key players Mr. Inhofe cites, said he disagrees with trying to engage in an ad battle. He said the scientists will never be able to compete with energy companies.

"They're not going to win short-term battles playing the game against big-monied interests because they can't beat them," he said.

He said the "social contract" between scientists and policymakers is broken and must be reforged, and he urged colleagues to try to recruit members of Congress to take up their case. He also said the press and nongovernmental organizations must be prodded.

"What I am trying to do is head off something that will be truly ugly," he said. "I don't want to see a repeat of McCarthyesque behavior and I'm already personally very dismayed by the horrible state of this topic, in which the political debate has almost no resemblance to the scientific debate."

Not all climate scientists agree with forcing a political fight.

"Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.," said Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Surprising, since these strategies haven't worked well for them at all so far."

She said scientists should downplay their catastrophic predictions, which she said are premature, and instead shore up and defend their research. She said scientists and institutions that have been pushing for policy changes "need to push the disconnect button for now," because it will be difficult to take action until public confidence in the science is restored.

"Hinging all of these policies on global climate change with its substantial element of uncertainty is unnecessary and is bad politics, not to mention having created a toxic environment for climate research," she said.

Ms. Curry also said that more engagement between scientists and the public would help - something that the NAS researchers also proposed.

Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University who started the effort, said in the e-mails that he is seeking a $1,000 donation from as many as 50 scientists to pay for an ad to run in the New York Times. He said in one e-mail that commitments were already arriving.

The e-mail discussion began late last week and continued into this week.

Mr. Falkowski didn't respond to an e-mail seeking comment, and an effort to reach Mr. Ehrlich was unsuccessful.

But one of those scientists forwarded The Times' request to the National Academy of Sciences, whose e-mail system the scientists used as their forum to plan their effort.

An NAS spokesman sought to make clear that the organization itself is not involved in the effort.

"These scientists are elected members of the National Academy of Sciences, but the discussants themselves realized their efforts would require private support since the National Academy of Sciences never considered placing such an ad or creating a nonprofit group concerning these issues," said William Kearney, chief spokesman for NAS.

The e-mails emerged months after another set of e-mails from a leading British climate research group seemed to show scientists shading data to try to bolster their claims, and are likely to feed the impression among skeptics that researchers are pursuing political goals as much as they are disseminating science.

George Woodwell, founder of the Woods Hole Research Center, said in one e-mail that researchers have been ceding too much ground. He blasted Pennsylvania State University for pursuing an academic investigation against professor Michael E. Mann, who wrote many of the e-mails leaked from the British climate research facility.

An initial investigation cleared Mr. Mann of falsifying data but referred one charge, that he "deviated from accepted practices within the academic community," to a committee for a more complete review.

In his e-mail, Mr. Woodwell acknowledged that he is advocating taking "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" but said scientists have had their "classical reasonableness" turned against them.

"We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths," he wrote.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/ma ... t-critics/

[Corlyss_D]

Climategate II, The Counteroffensive, emails are here, if anyone cares to read them:

http://www.globalwarming.org/wp-content ... loaded.pdf

[Corlyss_D]

William M. "Bill" Gray (born 1929) is a pioneer in the science of forecasting hurricanes.[1] In 1952 he received a B.S. degree in geography from George Washington University, and in 1959 a M.S. in meteorology from the University of Chicago, where he went on to earn a Ph.D. in geophysical sciences in 1964.

Gray is Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He served as a weather forecaster for the United States Air Force, and as a research assistant in the University of Chicago Department of Meteorology. He joined Colorado State University in 1961. He has been advisor of over 70 Ph.D. and M.S. students.

Gray's rebuttal to Kerry Emanuel's Boston Globe op-ed attempting to declare once more that the science as settled.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Gray_Re ... manuel.pdf

[Corlyss_D]

What are the hysterics going to do about massive undersea methane? Cows etc are irrelevant to this problem, so killing off the animal food-stocks, and maybe even humans in large numbers, wouldn't help poor Gaia.

U.S. NEWS
MARCH 5, 2010.Arctic Site Is Oozing Methane
By GAUTAM NAIK

A large chunk of the Arctic seabed that sits on a methane reservoir has become unstable and is releasing some of the heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere, new research suggests.

It has long been believed that the frozen seafloor of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf formed an impermeable seal against the vast stores of methane trapped beneath it, but the latest findings suggest about 7.7 million tons of the gas are being released there each year.

It isn't clear whether this is an old phenomenon or a new one linked to global warming.

Of the roughly 500 million tons of methane emitted annually world-wide, an estimated 40% has a natural origin—such as wetlands and the digestive processes of termites—while the rest results from human activities, including cattle farming and fossil-fuel production.

"This particular source has never been taken into account" in tallying methane emissions, said Natalia Shakhova, researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Science. She said the thawing of the seabed could result from an increase in warmer runoff from the rivers that feed the Arctic Ocean.

A key worry is that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is shallow, with a depth of about 50 meters (165 feet) or less. Methane oxidizes in deep water, becoming carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. But in shallow water, methane doesn't have enough time to oxidize and more of it ends up in the atmosphere.

Concerns about global warming have centered on rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but scientists note that methane can be 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

Methane concentration in the atmosphere was as high as 0.7 parts per million in pre-industrial times, but reached about 1.7 ppm in the 1980s. The level has been stable for the past 15 years, but no one knows exactly why.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A6
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142 ... 13952.html

[Corlyss_D]

Global Warming has no impact on Himalayas claims Wadia Director
Senior scientists at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WITG) has rejected the Global Warming Theory and told that the Himalayas are quite safer zone on earth, where Global Warming has no role in controlling the conditions.

In an exclusive chat with HT, Director WIHG Dr AK Dubey has said that the conditions of Himalayas are controlled by the winter snowfall rather than external factors like much hyped Global Warming. He told that for a concrete result, at least 30 years of continuous research with steady outcome is needed to confirm the actual impact.

"According to a data for over 140 years available with a British weather observatory situated in Mukteswar (2311m) in Almora has actually revealed that temperature in that region witnessed a dip of .4 degrees," he said.

Since 1991, the institute is monitoring the Himalayas extensively with focusing the glacial studies and last twenty year data has never witnessed a continual retreat. Sometimes, the recession rates have gone up but on an average the rate is very much safer, he added.

Whatever predictions about Himalayas are being made are based on short-term studies conducted on glaciers, which have no comparison with Himalayan Glaciers, he told. "Our glaciers are giant high altitude glaciers above 4000m altitude with a permanent temperature below 20 degrees Celsius. And has no comparison with the Alps Glaciers or Alaskan Glacier which are at sea level," he said.

Dr. DP Dobhal, eminent glaciologist added that however there is a change in climate in terms of shrinking of winter period but still a lot is dependent upon the snowfall occurs. Currently the rate of recession is in between 16-20 meters a year for glacial retreat in Himalayas, whereas 30 percent of the glaciers are more than 10km in length, he said.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage ... 15763.aspx
© Copyright 2009 Hindustan Times

[Corlyss_D]

Readers of this thread, both of you, will be relieved to know that this is too long to post here. It's a 240 page brief, really, in the form of a petition to the EPA to reconsider the "endangerment finding" about CO2. It's was prepared by a law frim for an energy company and consists of about 235 pages of documented scientific errors in the IPCC 2007 report and the misgivings of scientists who actually participated in the IPCC 2007 report. I think we can expect this to be a primary source gold mine for critics in the future. I also think we can consider this a shot across EPA's bow in terms of planned litigation to stop any regulatory action based on the endangerment finding if Congress lacks the balls to cut off EPA's water.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image ... option.pdf

[Dennis Spath]

Readers of this thread, both of you, will be relieved to know that this is too long to post here. It's a 240 page brief, really, in the form of a petition to the EPA to reconsider the "endangerment finding" about CO2. It's was prepared by a law frim for an energy company and consists of about 235 pages of documented scientific errors in the IPCC 2007 report and the misgivings of scientists who actually participated in the IPCC 2007 report. I think we can expect this to be a primary source gold mine for critics in the future. I also think we can consider this a shot across EPA's bow in terms of planned litigation to stop any regulatory action based on the endangerment finding if Congress lacks the balls to cut off EPA's water.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image ... option.pdf

You will be please to know that Lisa Jackson, Head of the EPA, was the guest speaker for yesterday's (3/8/10) National Press Club Luncheon. I was most impressed with how well Ms. Jackson articulated EPA policy and and goals, particularly with regard to the agencies clean air mandate and CO2 mitigation initiatives. Those of you who missed it can view the presentation by way of a cspan.org podcast to your computer....even Corlyss, if she can spare the time otherwise invested in trolling for articles denigrating the IPCC.

http://www.c-span.org/watch/Media/2010/ ... ckson.aspx

[Corlyss_D]

Outside science academies to review warming panel

By SETH BORENSTEIN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 9, 2010; 7:02 PM

WASHINGTON -- The beleaguered global warming panel has found an outside group to review how it writes its reports.

An international group, the InterAcademy Council, will be given complete control to review the rules, procedures and reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said a scientist close to the situation. Recently, several unsettling errors have been found in the climate panel reports issued in 2007.

Though the mistakes don't undercut the broad consensus on global warning, they have shaken the credibility of climate scientists and given skeptics of global warming ammunition.

The InterAcademy Council is a Netherlands-based organization of the science academies of 15 nations.* "They will run the review themselves," said a scientist close to the situation, who asked not to be named because the researcher was not authorized to talk publicly. "It will be independent... They are choosing the reviewers."

The idea is to have the review finished before the annual meeting of the IPCC in October, the source said. The climate panel was formed by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization.

It will be up to the InterAcademy Council to decide if it's acceptable for its reviewers to have taken part in past IPCC reports. A large number of top climate scientists have participated in the IPCC. The council will also look at whether the reports should include non-peer-reviewed "gray literature" often written by governments or advocacy groups, the source said.

The reviewers will also look at whether to put in procedures that could catch and correct errors better, the source said.

Details of the review will be announced Wednesday at the United Nations, after the IPCC chairman meets with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. The IPCC had been looking for an outside group to do the review.

The UN secretary general himself is requesting the review as well as the IPCC, another source close to the situation said.

"It's to be welcomed," said IPCC co-author and Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer. "It's a step in the direction of re-establishing the IPCC's credibility with the general public. I, as an IPCC scientist, welcome this kind of check on things."

The IPCC, which is mostly a collection of scientists volunteering their work, produced reports that had errors that ranged from mistaking how much of the Netherlands is below sea level to botching how fast glaciers in the Himalayans are expected to melt.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., last month called problems with the IPCC "the makings of a major scientific scandal."

Stanford scientist Stephen Schneider, another IPCC co-author, called independent review a great idea.

"Everybody knows there's a tiny error rate," Schneider said. "Any error rate that can be fixed should be fixed."

The IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former Vice President Al Gore.

---

On the Net

The IPCC:http://www.ipcc.ch

The InterAcademy Council:http://www.interacademycouncil.net/

* I can hardly wait!

[Corlyss_D]

Now we know: NASA GISS data does not constitute an independent data set confirming the CRU data sets! Now we know that 1) not only did NOAA drop the cold-weather reporting stations that would have produced at least additional data if not contradictory data; 2) but also that the CRU data set was in fact 3 of the allegedly 4 independent data sets all confirming each other's findings!

Climategate Stunner: NASA Heads Knew NASA Data Was Poor, Then Used Data from CRU

Posted By Charlie Martin On March 10, 2010 @ 12:00 am In Column 2, Environment, Exclusive, Science, Science & Technology | 63 Comments

Email messages [1] obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that the climate dataset of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) was considered — by the top climate scientists within NASA itself — to be inferior to the data maintained by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The NASA scientists also felt that NASA GISS data was inferior to the National Climate Data Center Global Historical Climate Network (NCDC GHCN) database.*

These emails, obtained by Christopher Horner, also show that the NASA GISS dataset was not independent of CRU data.

Further, all of this information regarding the accuracy and independence of NASA GISS data was directly communicated to a reporter from USA Today in August 2007.

The reporter never published it.

—————————————

There are only four climate datasets available. All global warming study, such as the reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), must be based on these four.

They are: the NASA GISS dataset, the NCDC GHCN dataset, the CRU dataset, and the Japan Meteorological Agency dataset.

Following Climategate, when it became known that raw temperature data for CRU’s “HADCRU3″ climate dataset had been destroyed, Phil Jones, CRU’s former director, said the data loss was not important — because there were other independent climate datasets [2] available.

But the emails reveal that at least three of the four datasets were not independent, that NASA GISS was not considered to be accurate, and that these quality issues were known to both top climate scientists and to the mainstream press.

In a response to reporter Doyle Rice of USA Today, Dr. Reto Ruedy — a senior scientist at NASA — recommended the following:

Continue using NCDC’s data for the U.S. means and Phil Jones’ [HADCRU3] data for the global means. …

We are basically a modeling group and were forced into rudimentary analysis of global observed data in the 70s and early 80s. …

Now we happily combine NCDC’s and Hadley Center data to … evaluate our model results.

This response was extended later the same day by Dr. James Hansen — the head of NASA GISS:

[For] example, we extrapolate station measurements as much as 1200 km. This allows us to include results for the full Arctic. In 2005 this turned out to be important, as the Arctic had a large positive temperature anomaly. We thus found 2005 to be the warmest year in the record, while the British did not and initially NOAA also did not. …

It should be noted that the different groups have cooperated in a very friendly way to try to understand different conclusions when they arise.

Two implications of these emails: The data to which Phil Jones referred to as “independent” was not — it was being “corrected” and reused among various climate science groups, and the independence of the results was no longer assured; and the NASA GISS data was of lower quality than Jones’ embattled CRU data.

The NCDC GHCN dataset mentioned in the Ruedy email has also been called into question [3] by Joe D’Aleo and Anthony Watts. D’Aleo and Watts showed in a January 2010 report that changes in available measurement sites and the selection criteria involved in “homogenizing” the GHCN climate data raised serious questions about the usefulness of that dataset as well.

These three datasets — from NASA GISS, NCDC GHCN, and CRU — are the basis of essentially all climate study supporting anthropogenic global warming.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategat ... -from-cru/

URLs in this post:

[1] Email messages: http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/03/G ... er0001.pdf

[2] other independent climate datasets: http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/ea ... -09-09.pdf

[3] called into question: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image ... e_temp.pdf

[Corlyss_D]

According to USA Today, here's some of the big picture in the warming wars:

• Citing doubts raised by the "climategate" e-mails, state governments in Texas, Virginia and Alabama filed legal challenges last month to stop the federal government from regulating carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. The challenges could force the Obama administration to modify or abandon its plans to regulate carbon emissions from factories and vehicles.

• Senate Democrats including John Kerry of Massachusetts have set aside House legislation that would limit greenhouse gas emissions from factories and other businesses nationwide. They are pursuing a new bill that may instead focus on utility companies, Kerry says.

• After more than a decade of fruitless efforts to negotiate a binding global treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions, culminating in last December's summit in Copenhagen, the USA may now pursue a more narrow strategy, State Department climate change envoy Todd Stern said last month. He said future talks might be limited to a smaller group of major polluters such as the USA and China — and leave out small countries that blocked a deal at Copenhagen, such as Sudan.

• The United Nations announced Wednesday that it would bring in an outside panel of scientists to help review an occasional study put together by a U.N. body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The study was regarded as the gold standard of climate science until several errors came to light this year.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/en ... ming_N.htm

[Corlyss_D]

The idea that the UN would appoint an independent review board to perform anything but a white wash was ridiculous. The UN is so totally corrupt that it got rid of its office that investigated corruption because it was finding too much. In keeping with its finest traditions, the UN has appointed a committed AGW scientist to head the "independent" panel. So we're right back where we started 20 years ago: the UN, always headed up now by a thrid-worlder, formed the IPCC to go find global warming in hope of reigning in western economies to give pre-globalization thrid-world nations a "level playing field." The recent revelations about the gross errors in the 2007 report, which is cited world-wide in continuting research and policy documents to substantiate the existence of AGW, have not humbled the arrogant NGO one little bit. Accountable to no one, influential beyond its usefulness, incredibly corrupt, the very embodiment of "industrious and stupid," it marches on.

Review of U.N. panel's report on climate change won't reexamine errors

By David A. Fahrenthold
Thursday, March 11, 2010; A07

An outside review of a U.N. panel -- promised after flaws were uncovered in the panel's most recent report on climate change -- will not recheck that report's conclusions and will instead focus on improving procedures for the future, officials said Wednesday.

U.N. officials defended their decision, saying that there is still no reason to doubt the most important conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a landmark report in 2007, the panel found "unequivocal" evidence that the climate was warming.

"Let me be clear: The threat posed by climate change is real," Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said during a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York. "Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change, nor does it diminish the unique importance of the IPCC work."

But in Washington, Republican lawmakers said it is a mistake for the review not to delve more deeply into the U.N. panel's workings to see whether it had committed other errors beyond those already known.

"This is only half the battle," Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of Congress's most determined opponents of legislation to cap greenhouse gases, said in a statement. "A legitimate inquiry must look back and examine the science in the assessment reports, and not just the mistakes that have been uncovered thus far."

Also Wednesday, University of Colorado Professor Roger Pielke Jr., a past critic of the U.N. panel, said that a reexamination of the earlier report might restore some credibility to climate science.

"There's some closure needed on these issues that have been basically battled out in the media," Pielke said.

In recent months, scientists have questioned several items in the report. In one case, the panel said incorrectly that Himalayan glaciers were expected to melt by 2035. Critics also said the panel relied improperly on data from advocacy groups, not peer-reviewed science.

On Wednesday, U.N. officials said the outside review of the panel will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, an association of national academies of science from around the world.

Robbert Dijkgraaf, a Dutch professor who will serve as co-leader of the review, said the flaws identified in the 2007 report could be used as "case studies." But, he said, the review's focus will be on the future -- on examining the panel's leadership, methods of sourcing and conflict-of-interest policies -- in preparation for its next report, due in 2013.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

[Corlyss_D]

Peer-Reviewed Study finds no evidence of increased mudslides due to GW. The projections were wrong again!

Climate Change and Debris-Flow Events in Southern Norway
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reference
Matthews, J.A., Dahl, S.O., Dresser, P.Q., Berrisford, M.S., Lie, O., Nesje, A. and Owen, G. 2009. Radiocarbon chronology of Holocene colluvial (debris-flow) events at Sletthamn, Jotunheimen, southern Norway: a window on the changing frequency of extreme climatic events and their landscape impact. The Holocene 19: 1107-1129.

Background
Just about everything that goes wrong in the world nowadays is blamed on global warming or the "climate crisis," as Al Gore and his followers like to describe it. And "if global warming is associated with an increase in the frequency of extreme precipitation events" -- as Matthews et al. say "has been inferred from studies over the short term" -- they write in their new study of the subject that "an increase in landscape instability would be expected in response to an increase in frequency of debris flows," which could also be initiated by "the rapid melting of snow or the thawing of frozen ground." But is this simple thinking correct?

What was done
In an effort to explore this question using real-world data, the seven scientists conducted detailed investigations at three alpine slope-foot mires located in the valley of Leirdalen in an area known as Sletthamn, above the treeline among some of the highest mountains in southern Norway, where they say that "exceptionally detailed radiocarbon-dating controlled chronologies of Holocene debris-flow events have been reconstructed," which allowed them to analyze "the frequency and timing of debris flows since c. 8500 cal. BP which, in turn, are related to climatic variability, extreme climatic events and site conditions."

What was learned
Matthews et al. report they could find "no obvious correlation between debris-flow frequency and a relative warm climate." In fact, they say that "debris-flow frequency was lowest post-8000 cal. BP during the Holocene Thermal Maximum," and that most of the "century- to millennial-scale phases of enhanced debris-flow activity appear to correlate with Neoglacial events," one of which was the "Little Ice Age." In addition, they write that "the Sletthamn record agrees quite closely with a compilation of other debris-flow records from widely distributed sites in east and west Norway." What is more -- citing the work of Berrisford and Matthews (1997), Stoffel and Beniston (2006), Pelfini and Santilli (2008) and Stoffel et al. (2008) -- they report that "there appears to be no consistent upward trend in debris-flow frequencies over recent decades," when one might have expected them to be growing in both number and magnitude if climate-alarmist claims were correct.

What it means
The Norwegian and UK researchers conclude that there is little real-world evidence "for the association of higher debris-flow frequencies with an increasingly warm climate." In fact, they say that "the evidence suggests the opposite."

References
Berrisford, M.S. and Matthews, J.A. 1997. Phases of enhanced rapid mass movement and climate variation during the Holocene: a synthesis. In: Matthews, J.A., Brunsden, D., Frenzel, B., Glaser, B. and Weiss, M.M. (Eds.) Rapid mass movement as a source of climatic evidence for the Holocene. Palaoklimaforschung 19: 409-440.

Pelfini, M. and Santilli, M. 2008. Frequency of debris flows and their relation with precipitation: a case study in the Central Alps, Italy. Geomorphology 101: 721-730.

Stoffel, M. and Beniston, M. 2006. On the incidence of debris flows from the early Little Ice Age to a future greenhouse climate: a case study from the Swiss Alps. Geophysical Research Letters 33: 10.1029/2006GL026805.

Stoffel, M., Conus, D., Grichting, M.A., Lievre, I. and Maitre, G. 20098. Unraveling the patterns of late Holocene debris-flow activity on a cone in the Swiss Alps: chronology, environment and implications for the future. Global and Planetary Change 60: 222-234.

[Dennis Spath]

Thank you Corlyss! Without your dedicated work to save our economy from the mad scientists and tree huggers there is little doubt the end times would surely be at hand.

[Corlyss_D]

New Study Debunks Myths About Vulnerability of Amazon Rain Forests to Drought

ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2010) — A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought," said Arindam Samanta, the study's lead author from Boston University.

The comprehensive study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.

A study published in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible.

"This new study brings some clarity to our muddled understanding of how these forests, with their rich source of biodiversity, would fare in the future in the face of twin pressures from logging and changing climate," said Boston University Prof. Ranga Myneni, senior author of the new study.

The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim -- based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study -- that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.

"Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall," said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.

"The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct," said Dr. Jose Marengo, a Brazilian National Institute for Space Research climate scientist and member of the IPCC.

Email or share this story:| More
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Boston University Medical Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

[Corlyss_D]

CARBON GASES ‘HAVE SAVED US FROM A NEW ICE AGE’

Man-made carbon emissions: But it is bad news for the polar bears
Thursday March 11,2010
By Donna Bowater
MAN-MADE carbon emissions are staving off a new ice age, says a leading environmental scientist.


Climate-change expert Dr James Lovelock says the greenhouse gases that have warmed the planet are likely to prevent a big freeze that could last millions of years.

In a talk at London’s Science Museum Dr Lovelock said the balance of nature was in charge of the environment.

He said: “We’re just fiddling around. It is worth thinking that what we are doing in creating all these carbon emissions, far from being something frightful, is stopping the onset of a new ice age.

“If we hadn’t appeared on the earth, it would be due to go through another ice age and we can look at our part as holding that up.

“I hate all this business about feeling guilty about what we’re doing.

“We’re not guilty, we never intended to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, it’s just something we did.”

Dr Lovelock’s comments come in the wake of the scandal at the University of East Anglia where leaked emails suggested climate change data had been manipulated.

The 90-year-old British scientist, who has worked for Nasa and paved the way for the detection of man-made aerosol and refrigerant gases in the atmosphere, called for greater caution in climate research.

He compared the recent controversy to the “wildly inaccurate” early work on aerosol gases and their alleged role in depletion of the ozone layer.

He said: “Quite often, observations done by hand are accurate but all the theoretical stuff in between tends to be very dodgy and I think they are seeing this with climate change. We haven’t learned the lessons of the ozone-hole debate. It’s important to know just how much you have got to be careful.”

According to Dr Lovelock’s Gaia theory, the earth is capable of curing itself. “A planet that is effectively alive can regulate itself and its composition and climate,” he said.

Thomas Crowley, professor of geoscience at Edinburgh University, responded: “People have thought about the possibility of an ice age but it wouldn’t be for many thousands of years.

“Dr Lovelock might be right in the abstract but this does not necessarily mean that CO2 is good now.”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162 ... w-ice-age-

[Dennis Spath]

Have you read Lovelock's "Gaia" Corlyss??

[DavidRoss]

On another thread ("Something for AGW fans to ponder"), Teresa piqued my curiosity regarding what ice core data actually reveals about global warming. Google quickly returned a site with some interesting graphs depicting correlated rises in temperatures and CO2 levels over the past 420,000 years. (site here: http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precau ... /New_Data/ ) I originally posted this information on the other thread, but thought it might also be of interest here (with a couple of minor modifications of material relevant only to that other thread):

Here are the first two graphs:



Graph #1 shows cyclic rise and fall of temperatures over the past 420,000 years at roughly 100,000 year intervals. The rise in temps appears consistently as a steep curve climbing directly up to its peak...until the most recent rise in temperature/CO2 that began about 18,000 years ago. That rise climbed per the usual pattern for 7000 years, then leveled out. In the 11,000 years since, temperatures have remained relatively flat, fluctuating within a relatively narrow ± 2° range, and CO2 levels have remained equally consistent. Since human civilization dates from only about 7000 years ago, and industrialization from only 200 years ago, human industrial activity could not possibly account for this anomaly.

Now let's look at the next two graphs:



These graphs further alter the time scale to show much more detail. Of special note is that after 1958 in graph #3, the data is based on actual measurements in air, rather than extrapolated from ice cores. Graph #4 emphasizes those 40 years. This change in data collection explains the greater detail for these years, enabling the curve to show numerous data points rather than a flattened average.

Given the change in data collection method for those 40 years, and the very brief period in relation to the time frame represented in graph #1, it is difficult to say whether the steep rise in CO2 levels shown over the past 40 years is a real historical anomaly or just a function of the different data source and the graphic compression of the time frame. For all we know, if we had numerous actual air measurement data points from the previous cyclic rises they might show similar rises in CO2 concentrations during similar brief periods.

In other words, the temp rise shown in even the most detailed graph is still well within the normal range during cyclic periods of higher temperatures, and though the CO2 concentration shown most recently is 20% higher than the previous high shown in graph #1 (360 ppmv vs 300 ppmv 325,000 years ago), that appears to be a function of different data collection methods and the scale of the graphs and cannot be compared directly with the data extrapolated from ice cores. The rise might indicate something significant, but it could just as easily indicate expected outliers within the range of normal average fluctuation. Although it does not confirm human industrial activity as the cause of increased temps and CO2 levels, it seems consistent with that hypothesis and does not disconfirm it, either.

To me what's interesting about these graphs is not that little red line blip at the far right of graph #1. (Given the scale of the graph, that 40 year CO2 blip should be 1/250th the width of the 10,000 year periods indicated--in other words, just a fraction of the width of the line that indicates it!) What's really curious is the unexplained but undeniable anomaly shown for the past 11,000 years. Whazzup wi dat?[/quote]

[Corlyss_D]

IPCC takes anothe hit for being . . . wrong on the projections.

UN climate change claims on rainforests were wrong, study suggests

The United Nations' climate change panel is facing fresh criticism after new research contradicted the organisation's claims about the devastating effect climate change could have on the Amazon rainforest.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM GMT 13 Mar 2010


A new study, funded by Nasa, has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest's vegetation Photo: REX A new study, funded by Nasa, has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest's vegetation.

The findings appear to disprove claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could react drastically to even a small reduction in rainfall and could see the trees replaced by tropical grassland.

Scientists have now spoken out against the 40% figure contained in the IPCC report and say that recent research is suggesting that the rainforest may be more resilient to climate change than had been previously thought.

It comes just days after the UN announced an independent review into the panel's procedures following a series of scandals over its most recent report which was found to contain factual errors and claims which were not based on rigorous scientific research.

The InterAcademy Council, which is the umbrella organisation for the national academies of science around the world, will examine how the IPCC's reports are compiled and communicated.

Dr Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and a member of the IPCC, said the latest study on the Amazon's response to drought highlighted the errors in the previous claims.

He said: "The way the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while (the new) calculations are by far more reliable and correct."

The new study, conducted by researchers at Boston University and published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data of the Amazon rainforest to study the effects of a major drought in 2005 when rainfall fell to the lowest level in living memory.

The drought saw rivers and lakes dry up, causing towns and cities that rely upon water flowing out of the rainforest to suffer severe water shortages.

But the researchers found no major changes in the levels of vegetation and greenery in the forests despite the drought.

They claim this contradicts the statements made in the IPCC's 2007 assessment report on climate change.

It said: "Up to 40 % of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state.

"It is more probably that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannahs."

Professor Ranga Myneni, from the climate and vegitation research group at Boston University who was the senior researcher in the study, said criticised the IPCC’s claim that a “even a slight reduction in precipitation” would cause drastic changes in the rainforest.

He said: “There was more than a slight reduction in precipitation during the drought of 2005. It is that particular claim of the IPCC that our analysis rejects.”

Sangram Ganguly, a scientist from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in California and one of the researchers who conducted the new study, said: "Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall."

Dr Arindam Samanta, the lead author of the study, said: "We found no big differences in the greenness levels of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought."

The IPCC has been left embarrassed after it emerged the panel had quoted unsubstantiated and erroneous claims about the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and had also used information from student dissertations and magazine articles to compile its report.

The chair of the panel, Rajendra Pachauri has come under mounting pressure to resign following the scandal and questions over his ability to lead the organisation.

Dr Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF UK, said: "The WWF report from 2000 on the threat of wildfires in Amazon was based on respected sources and peer-reviewed literature available at the time.

"Subsequent peer-reviewed literature has confirmed that the Amazon faces serious risks from climate change. This new study is a welcome addition to the growing body of evidence."

Dr Simon Lewis, an expert on forest die back at Leeds University and a research fellow at the Royal Society, said the Boston University study had helped to clear up debate about how the rainforest responded to short-term drought.

But he added that long-term reductions in rainfall might have a very different impact.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... gests.html

[Dennis Spath]

Gee, whodathunkit! Thanks for this latest version Corlyss.

[Corlyss_D]

A physicist supports sound climate physics
From Professor Fred Singer

To the Institute of Physics, United Kingdom:

I am an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and a co-organizer of a Petition drive to the APS Council to modify or withdraw the published APS Statement on Climate Change [see Nature 460:457, 23 July 2009]. Some 250 members and Fellows of the APS have now joined in signing this Petition, including members of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Nobelist, and many other prize winners.

I urge you to ignore all of the insubstantial criticisms leveled against your submission to the House of Commons’ inquiry into ClimateGate. All scientists should applaud your call for openness and sharing of data – even without the legal requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, and regardless of one’s position on the causes of global warming. To echo Margaret Thatcher’s admonition to President George Bush: “Don’t go wobbly!”
It is strange that such fierce criticism of the IOP submission has come mainly from avowed promoters of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) myth, who have attacked the IOP as “misinformed and misguided.” (Some have even advocated breaking the law by ignoring the “Freedom of Information Act.”) But why should there be any connection between the sharing of scientific information and the cause of GW?

Your submission criticized the practices of the climate scientists at the center of the Parliamentary inquiry. These include primarily Dr Philip Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Dr Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University. The submission of the Royal Society of Chemistry says “that a lack of willingness to disseminate scientific information may infer that the scientific results or methods used are not robust enough to face scrutiny.” So what are they trying to hide? We have yet to discover just how Jones et al managed to produce a substantial surface warming [between 1979 and 1997] when satellites showed practically no tropospheric warming – a disparity which is in conflict with every greenhouse climate model.

You state that the Institute “has long had a clear position on global warming, namely that there is no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is linked to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that we should be taking action to address it now.” However, I know of no valid evidence to support such a position and would urge you to carry out an independent investigation. In due course we may learn how the temperature data underlying the IPCC conclusions have been manipulated. In the meantime, I would caution you against relying on the IPCC.

I am aware that the UK Meteorological Office has published a review of the latest climate-change science. Their report says it is “very likely” that man-made greenhouse-gas emissions are causing the climate to change and that the changes bear the “fingerprint” of human influence. But as far as I know, the fingerprints point the other way and suggest that the human contribution is only minor. In other words, the empirical evidence contradicts both the IPCC and the Met Office. [See here the reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, 2008 and 2009, at www.NIPCCreport.org]

The most direct way to resolve this obvious disagreement might be for the IOP Science Board to arrange one or more debates and scrutinize the evidence presented by both sides. I have no doubt whatsoever that they will agree that Nature rules the climate, not human activity.

Sincerely yours,

S. Fred Singer
Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia
Former director of the US Weather Satellite Service
http://sppiblog.org/news/a-physicist-su ... te-physics

[DavidRoss]

Aw, what would a guy like Singer know? Cool people get their information from Hollywood celebrities like Leonardo De Crapio, Miley Cyrus, John Travolta, and Al Gore. (And they never, ever, develop the critical thinking skills to investigate the evidence for themselves!)

edit: "wink" emoticon added to clarify ironic intent

[Corlyss_D]

Aw, what would a guy like Singer know?

His letter is more significant because he's one of the leading AGW hysterics, right up there with Jones and Mann and Hansen.

[Corlyss_D]

More evidence that the AGW data was cooked. We now know that the 3 alleged independent and corroborating data sets are really just one, the CRU's, which is now conveniently destroyed. We now know that the reputed NASA data set was so bad the managers punted to the CRU data. The raw CRU data was never peer-reviewed; only CRU's analysis was peer-reviewed. When an outsider requested to examine the raw data, he was villified by the CRU, the hysterics, and the media in an effort to delegitimize his mere request, a battle which went on for years before the requester, Steve McIntyre, appealed to the government to force release of the data. Once the FOIA rules kicked in the CRU had to disgorge the raw data, it was learned that CRU had destroyed it. Now real records of actual temps from the 40s-70s appearing in studies before the AGW movement began have been analyzed against the CRU representation of those same data and revealed that CRU's analyses eliminated the documented cooling that occurred during the period, i.e., data that could have been easily verified if anyone had bothered to compare the two before now.

Frank Lansner has done some excellent follow-up on the missing “decline” in temperatures from 1940 to 1975, and things get even more interesting. Recall that the original “hide the decline” statement comes from the ClimateGate e-mails and refers to “hiding” the tree ring data that shows a decline in temperatures after 1960. It’s known as the “divergence problem” because tree rings diverge from the allegedly measured temperatures. But, Frank shows that the peer reviewed data supports the original graphs, and that real measured temperatures did decline from 1960 onwards…sharply. Yet, in the GISS version of that period, temperatures from the cold 1970’s were repeatedly “adjusted” years later, and progressively made warmer.

The most mysterious period is from 1958 to 1978, when a steep 0.3C decline was initially recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. Years later, this was reduced so far it became a mild warming against the detailed corroborating roabcore evidence. Raobcore measurements are balloon readings. How accurate are they? They started in 1958, twenty years before satellite temperature records (which are renowned for their accuracy). Put the two methods side-by-side, and they tie together neatly, telling us that both of them are accurate, reliable tools.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/03/the-my ... ecline-go/

Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline?

Frank Lansner has found an historical graph of northern hemisphere temperatures from the mid 70’s, and it shows a serious decline in temperatures from 1940 to 1975. It’s a decline so large that it wipes out the gains made in the first half of the century, and brings temperatures right back to what they were circa 1910. The graph was not peer reviewed, but presumably it was based on the best information available at the time. In any case, if all the global records are not available to check, it’s impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is. The decline apparently recorded was a whopping 0.5°C.

But, three decades later, by the time Brohan and the CRU graphed temperatures in 2006 from the same old time period, the data had been adjusted (surprise), so that what was a fall of 0.5°C had become just a drop of 0.15°C. Seventy percent of the cooling was gone.

Maybe they had good reasons for making these adjustments. But, as usual, the adjustments were in favor of the Big Scare Campaign, and the reasons and the original data are not easy to find. http://joannenova.com.au/2010/03/hiding ... g-history/

You can see the materials from Lansnen's analysis here: http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/te ... re-172.php

[living_stradivarius]

This thread needs a metaphorical graphic

[NancyElla]

My grandmother would sometimes warn me "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater". This is what I am afraid may happen in regard to climate change research--that because of some sloppy research and some exaggerated or mistaken claims, the entire body of scientific research, most of it competent, sound, honest scientific research, is being discounted. This article from The Economist takes a stance similar to my grandmother's:
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.c ... _commented
Here's a preview:

Three questions arise from this. How bad is the science? Should policy be changed? And what can be done to ensure such confusion does not happen again? Behind all three lies a common story. The problem lies not with the science itself, but with the way the science has been used by politicians to imply certainty when, as often with science, no certainty exists.

Comments and discussion welcomed (but not about my grandmother, who was the wisest woman every to walk the earth: unless you're going to say something wonderful about her, silence is the prudent course).

[rwetmore]

My grandmother would sometimes warn me "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater". This is what I am afraid may happen in regard to climate change research--that because of some sloppy research and some exaggerated or mistaken claims, the entire body of scientific research, most of it competent, sound, honest scientific research, is being discounted.

OK, so what is the specific scientific research and evidence that is competent, sound and honest? This question always goes unanswered. Someone just says it and you assume it's true without ever checking or knowing what any of it actually is.

"Whatever we say they'll believe. They're never going to critically examine anything because they never examined the initial fraud we successfully foisted on them. Most of all, they want to still believe this is true. I'm telling you all we need to do to keep this going is to just say that there is still a whole bunch of untainted research and evidence supporting it - that will be all they need to hear, and we can keep this going forever."

[DavidRoss]

Thanks, NancyElla. This other article in that same issue of The Economist, titled "The Clouds of Unknowing", presents a helpful survey of evidence suggesting the possibility of AGW ought be taken seriously. If only such reasonableness were the rule and not the exception. Sigh.

[rwetmore]

Thanks, NancyElla. This other article in that same issue of The Economist, titled "The Clouds of Unknowing", presents a helpful survey of evidence suggesting the possibility of AGW ought be taken seriously. If only such reasonableness were the rule and not the exception. Sigh.

David,

This article is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's tries to come off sounding reasonable, but it's just a clever way to further take advantage of those people who don't really know anything, have never examined the issue critically, or have never really delved into into the actual science involved in the issue.

I will break down the article in large detail when I get the chance (maybe as soon as today or tomorrow).

[rwetmore]

I'll break down the article in several pieces. This is the first piece:

FOR anyone who thinks that climate science must be unimpeachable to be useful, the past few months have been a depressing time.

First of all, this is not true. The dissenters or skeptics do NOT think that AGW climate science needs to be "unimpeachable" or perfect to be useful or even to justify public policy action. It is very well understood that 100%, indisputable direct cause and effect evidence is not required for something like this. However, it does need to meet general "preponderance of the evidence" standards and not be mired by any significant quantity of contradicting evidence. On this burden, it falls way, way short.

The defenders of the consensus tend to stress the general consilience of their efforts—the way that data, theory and modeling back each other up. Doubters see this as a thoroughgoing version of “confirmation bias”, the tendency people have to select the evidence that agrees with their original outlook. But although there is undoubtedly some degree of that (the errors in the IPCC, such as they are, all make the problem look worse, not better) there is still genuine power to the way different arguments and data sets in climate science tend to reinforce each other.

Hmmmm. Curiously they leave out any specifics here. The reason is precisely because the bulk of actual, objective, unbiased real world data serves to directly discredit the theory and the modeling - not confirm it. There are numerous examples. Just one is the documented cooling trend over the last several years in direct contradiction to the models which predicted warming (due to increases in atmospheric CO2). This has been the case in all the data sets - even the ones with many documented warm biases. I can site many more examples.

The doubters tend to focus on specific bits of empirical evidence, not on the whole picture. This is worthwhile—facts do need to be well grounded—but it can make the doubts seem more fundamental than they are. People often assume that data are simple, graspable and trustworthy, whereas theory is complex, recondite and slippery, and so give the former priority. In the case of climate change, as in much of science, the reverse is at least as fair a picture. Data are vexatious; theory is quite straightforward. Constructing a set of data that tells you about the temperature of the Earth over time is much harder than putting together the basic theoretical story of how the temperature should be changing, given what else is known about the universe in general.

This is a total misrepresentation. If anything, the 'doubters' are the ones focusing on the "whole picture," or the large number of forces that together drive temperature and climate. It's the advocates of AGW that are focusing mainly on one specific variable, CO2. Rising CO2 is the basis of their whole theory. Other forces are grossly underestimated, or in many cases ignored altogether.

The most relevant part of that universal what-else is the requirement laid down by thermodynamics that, for a planet at a constant temperature, the amount of energy absorbed as sunlight and the amount emitted back to space in the longer wavelengths of the infra-red must be the same. In the case of the Earth, the amount of sunlight absorbed is 239 watts per square metre. According to the laws of thermodynamics, a simple body emitting energy at that rate should have a temperature of about –18ºC. You do not need a comprehensive set of surface-temperature data to notice that this is not the average temperature at which humanity goes about its business. The discrepancy is due to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which absorb and re-emit infra-red radiation, and thus keep the lower atmosphere, and the surface, warm (see the diagram below). The radiation that gets out to the cosmos comes mostly from above the bulk of the greenhouse gases, where the air temperature is indeed around –18ºC. Adding to those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere makes it harder still for the energy to get out. As a result, the surface and the lower atmosphere warm up. This changes the average temperature, the way energy moves from the planet’s surface to the atmosphere above it and the way that energy flows from equator to poles, thus changing the patterns of the weather.

This is not an accurate representation of what is happening. Greenhouses gases in the lower atmosphere do indeed absorb outgoing radiation that warms the lower atmosphere, but as air warms it also expands, which triggers convective overturning with the cooler air higher up in the atmosphere - meaning it causes the lighter, warmer air to rise and the denser, cooler air higher up in the atmosphere to descend. This process of heat exchange by convection acts as a constant surface cooler or surface temperature stabilizer. An increase in radiation absorption in the lower atmosphere from a doubling of CO2 would probably cause the surface air temperature to warm up a little bit (maybe 0.5 degrees), but this warming would trigger more convective overturning to compensate, which has a cooling effect on the surface air. These are opposing forces that tend to cancel each other out. This is just one example of the many negative feedback mechanisms throughout the system.

No one doubts that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, good at absorbing infra-red radiation.

Yes, except the vast majority of CO2's infra-red radiation absorbing potential comes in the first 100ppm and decreases rapidly after that. Once you get to about 300-400ppm, even a doubling or quadrupling of CO2 results in only a negligible increase in radiation absorption.

It is also well established that human activity is putting more of it into the atmosphere than natural processes can currently remove. Measurements made since the 1950s show the level of carbon dioxide rising year on year, from 316 parts per million (ppm) in 1959 to 387ppm in 2009. Less direct records show that the rise began about 1750, and that the level was stable at around 280ppm for about 10,000 years before that. This fits with human history: in the middle of the 18th century people started to burn fossil fuels in order to power industrial machinery. Analysis of carbon isotopes, among other things, shows that the carbon dioxide from industry accounts for most of the build-up in the atmosphere.

I don't know about most of it, but some of it, yes. There is a lot of conflicting data on this, including some that suggest CO2 levels have significantly varied in past century. Also, the bulk of the increase could be due to warming oceans as a result of coming out of the Little Ice Age around the middle of the 18th century or other natural processes (and not from man). How much CO2 the system outputs and absorbs, how many sources and sinks there are, and how much they can vary over time has not been thoroughly examined well enough to form any solid conclusions. Also, the CO2 levels we have now are still some of the lowest ever seen in earth's history, so it seems unlikely even a significant increase would overburden a system that handled far higher levels in the past.


More to come...

[rwetmore]

For those that might be interested (I know it's few to none), I haven't forgotten about the rest of that article. I've just been busy. In due time I will dissect the whole thing.

[rwetmore]

Sorry I'm late on this. The article is now only available via subscribers, so I am unable to quote directly from it. If anyone can find a working link or full posting of the article, please let me know. I want to fully break it down piece by piece.

At any rate, I want to address this notion of "tipping points" in regards to the climate. This claim is frequently made in a variety of ways by AGW proponents. Basically it is the idea that we could reach a point where rising CO2 levels cause the climate to spin out of control, change rapidly and/or cause all kinds of natural catastrophes, etc.. This claim is total nonsense - a completely unsupported fabrication. Here's why:

In order to have a so-called "tipping point", the variable in question (CO2) needs to first have an increasing or accelerated response of some kind. In other words, as CO2 increases it would have to absorb more and more radiation (i.e. the second doubling of CO2 absorbs more than first and so on and so forth). Not only does CO2 behave in the exact opposite fashion, the overwhelming majority of radiation absorption from CO2 comes in the first 100-200ppm. This effect is demonstrated in this graph, which shows the radiation absorption properties of CO2:

temperatures6.png (10.85 KiB) Viewed 23617 times

As you can see clearly here, even a doubling of CO2 from 400ppm to 800ppm results in only a really small increase in radiation absorption (a heat forcing effect of only about 1 degree C give or take). Obviously this isn't very much at all, but it doesn't end there. Satellite data on temperatures and energy fluxes show that the real world climate sensitivity to CO2 is even lower than above - or only about 0.5 degrees C for a doubling of CO2. This strongly supports the notion that the climate system is dominated by a series of net negative feedbacks rather than a series of net positive feedbacks which "tipping points" require.

In short, the heat forcing effects from increasing CO2 beyond current levels are really small. Combined with all the complex forces driving temperature and climate, the net overall effect is negligible.

I would like to also point out that this is totally consistent with what we see from the geological record which shows no discernible causal temperature increases at all from CO2 - even when CO2 levels were like 10-20 times what they are presently. This is well demonstrated in this graph:

CO2image277.gif (32.87 KiB) Viewed 23617 times

As you can see even when CO2 levels were far higher than now, we went through periods of total glaciation. Furthermore, you can see there is no correlation whatsoever between CO2 levels and temperature - all consistent with what is presented above.

In summation, once CO2 levels reach about 300ppm, a doubling or even quadrupling (or more) just doesn't have enough of a forcing effect to do much. Combine this with the immense complexity and dynamism of the entire climate system - dominated by negative feedbacks, the little heat forcing effect from rising CO2 is easily overwhelmed to insignificance.

[jbuck919]

# The New York Times


July 7, 2010
British Panel Clears Scientists
By JUSTIN GILLIS

A British panel on Wednesday exonerated the scientists caught up in the controversy known as Climategate of charges that they had manipulated their research to support preconceived ideas about global warming.

But the panel also rebuked the scientists for several aspects of their behavior, especially their reluctance to release computer files supporting their scientific work. And it declared that a chart they produced in 1999 about past climate was “misleading.”

The new report is the last in a series of investigations of leading British and American climate researchers, prompted by the release of a cache of e-mail messages that cast doubt on their conduct and raised fresh public controversy over the science of global warming.

All five investigations have come down largely on the side of the climate researchers, rejecting a number of criticisms raised by global-warming skeptics. Still, mainstream climate science has not emerged from the turmoil unscathed.

Some polls suggest that the recent controversy has eroded public support for action on climate change, complicating the politics of that issue in Washington and other world capitals. And leading climate researchers have come in for criticism of their deportment, of their episodic reluctance to share data with climate skeptics, and for not always responding well to critical analysis of their work.

“The e-mails don’t at all change the fundamental tenets of the science,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. “But they changed the notion that people could blindly trust one authoritative group, when it turns out they’re just like everybody else.”

The researcher at the center of the controversy was Phil Jones, a leading climatologist who had headed the Climatic Research Unit of a British university, the University of East Anglia. He had stepped down temporarily pending results of the inquiry, but was reinstated on Wednesday to a job resembling his old one.

The university solicited and paid for the new report, which climate skeptics assailed. “This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position,” said Myron Ebell, director of energy and climate change policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington.

The Climatic Research Unit, often referred to as C.R.U., has played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth’s past climate. Embarrassing e-mail messages sent by Dr. Jones and other scientists were purloined from a computer at the university in November and posted to the Internet, prompting a round of accusations.

Some of the scientists were forced to admit to poor behavior, such as chortling about the death of one climate skeptic. But were the researchers guilty of any scientific misconduct?

“On the specific allegations made against the behavior of C.R.U. scientists, we find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” said the new report, led by Muir Russell, a retired British civil servant and educator.

The University of East Anglia welcomed the findings on Wednesday, declaring that an unjust attack on its scientists had been found spurious. Dr. Jones — who had said he considered suicide after the e-mail messages emerged — issued a more muted statement, saying he needed time to reflect. “We have maintained all along that our science is honest and sound, and this has been vindicated now by three different independent external bodies,” Dr. Jones said.

Last week, the second of two reviews at Pennsylvania State University exonerated Michael Mann, a scientist there who was also a focus of the controversy.

The latest report was by no means a complete vindication. Echoing the findings of an earlier report by a parliamentary committee in London, the reviewers criticized the scientists at the Climatic Research Unit for consistently “failing to display the proper degree of openness” in responding to demands for backup data and other information under Britain’s public-record laws.

On one of the most serious issues raised by the e-mail messages, the Russell panel did find some cause for complaint, but it did not issue the robust condemnation sought by climate skeptics.

The issue involved a graphic for a 1999 United Nations report, comparing recent temperatures with those of the past. Dr. Jones wrote an e-mail message saying he had used a “trick” to “hide” a problem in the data. After the e-mail messages came out, Dr. Jones said he had meant “trick” only in the sense of a clever maneuver.

The Russell panel concluded that the data procedure he used was acceptable in principle, but should have been described more fully, and his failure to do so had produced a “misleading” graphic.

The issue involved an effort to reconstruct the climate history of the past several thousand years using indirect indicators like the size of tree rings and the growth rate of corals. The C.R.U. researchers, leaders in that type of work, were trying in 1999 to produce a long-term temperature chart that could be used in a United Nations publication.

But they were dogged by a problem: Since around 1960, for mysterious reasons, trees have stopped responding to temperature increases in the same way they apparently did in previous centuries. If plotted on a chart, tree rings from 1960 forward appear to show declining temperatures, something that scientists know from thermometer readings is not accurate.

Most scientific papers have dealt with this problem by ending their charts in 1960 or by grafting modern thermometer measurements onto the historical reconstructions.

In the 1999 chart, the C.R.U. researchers chose the latter course for one especially significant line on their graph. This technique was what Dr. Jones characterized as a “trick.”

The recent season of controversy included close scrutiny of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that produces a major review of climate science every few years.

The Russell panel found little reason to question the advice that the British scientists had given to the climate panel, or the conclusions of that body. The panel declared in 2007 that the earth was warming and that human activity was the major reason.

However, small errors in the 2007 report keep coming to light. A review issued earlier this week by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found several, including a case in which the panel overstated the potential impact of global warming on fish catches.

The Netherlands agency also found that the climate change panel had tended to emphasize the negative effects of global warming while playing down positive ones, like greater tree growth in northern climates. It recommended better balance and a greater emphasis on fact-checking.

“The idea that these things could be perfect is a fallacy,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at Columbia University. Christopher B. Field, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a leader in the United Nations climate body, said he foresaw an opportunity “to really do a better job in characterizing what we know and what we don’t know” in the group’s next report, due in 2014.

Yet another evaluation of the panel’s work is under way, with results due in August.

Dr. Pielke, who is largely persuaded by the mainstream consensus on climate change, has criticized both climate skeptics and the scientific community for the tone of their debate.

“It has been dominated for a number of years by people at the poles — the most activist scientists emphasizing alarm, versus the most ardent skeptics saying we don’t have to do anything,” Dr. Pielke said. “This recent controversy has opened the eyes of a lot of people to a much richer tapestry of views on climate policy that are out there, which I think is a good thing.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Time Company

[rwetmore]

Oh now you show up here.

[jbuck919]

Oh now you show up here.

Well, I didn't want to be a hypocrite.

[rwetmore]

Well, I didn't want to be a hypocrite.

I'm glad to hear that.

[rwetmore]

Meltdown of the climate 'consensus'‏

By MATT PATTERSON

Last Updated: 4:46 AM, September 2, 2010

Posted: 11:57 PM, September 1, 2010

If this keeps up, no one's going to trust any scientists.

The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.

For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world's governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium -- and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to "save the planet."

But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of "the best scientists and engineers worldwide" (as the group's own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give "high-quality advice to international bodies," has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices -- and found them badly wanting.

For example, the IPCC's much-vaunted Fourth Assessment Report claimed in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers were rapidly melting, and would possibly be gone by the year 2035. The claim was actually false -- yet the IPCC cited it as proof of man-made global warming.
Then there's the IPCC's earlier prediction in 2007 -- which it claimed to have "high confidence" in -- that global warming could lead to a 50 percent reduction in the rain-fed agricultural capacity of Africa.

Such a dramatic decrease in food production in an already poor continent would be a terrifying prospect, and undoubtedly lead to the starvation of millions. But the InterAcademy Council investigation found that this IPCC claim was also based on weak evidence.
Overall, the IAC slammed the IPCC for reporting "high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach 'high confidence' to the statements." The critics note "many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective or not expressed clearly.

Some IPCC practices can only be called shoddy. As The Wall Street Journal reported, "Some scientists invited by the IPCC to review the 2007 report before it was published questioned the Himalayan claim. But those challenges 'were not adequately considered,' the InterAcademy Council's investigation said, and the projection was included in the final report."
Yet the Himalayan claim wasn't based on peer-reviewed scientific data, or on any data -- but on spec ulation in a phone interview by a single scientist.

Was science even a real concern for the IPCC? In January, the Sunday Times of London reported that, based in large part on the fraudulent glacier story, "[IPCC Chairman] Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi, was awarded up to 310,000 pounds by the Carnegie Corp. . . . and the lion's share of a 2.5 million pound EU grant funded by European taxpayers."

Thus, the Times concluded, "EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognize as bogus."

All this comes on top of last year's revelation of the "Climategate" e-mails, which revealed equally shoddy practices (and efforts to suppress criticism) by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia -- perhaps the single most important source of data that supposedly proved the most alarming claims of global warming.

Al Gore and many other warming alarmists have insisted that "the debate is over" -- that the science was "settled." That claim is now in shreds -- though the grants are still flowing, and advocates still hope Congress will pass some version of the economically ruinous "cap and trade" anti-warming bill.

What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who'll produce the "right" results.

The warming "scientific" community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other's papers -- and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it's a travesty.

In the end, grievous harm will have been done not just to individual scientists' reputations, but to the once-sterling reputation of science itself. For that, we will all suffer.

Matt Patterson is editor of Green Watch, a publication of the Capital Research Center

[Cosima___J]

Climate Change and Biodiversity
Email Jonathan DuHamel |

In their quest to control carbon dioxide emissions, together with the economic power that entails, climate alarmists are claiming that global warming will cause massive species extinctions. The geologic record, however, shows the opposite. Major extinctions are associated with ice ages and other cooling events. The current wildlife extinction rate is the lowest in 500 years according to the UN’s own World Atlas of Biodiversity.

Perhaps the first species to be listed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) on speculation of the effects of global warming is the polar bear. On May 14, 2008, the FWS listed the bear as a "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), based on the supposition that carbon dioxide emissions are melting its Arctic habitat.

But in deciding whether or not to list the species as "endangered," the FWS is following a political agenda based on junk science, and its Climate Change Strategic Plan is based largely on reports from the discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In 2007, just prior to listing, the Arctic sea ice reached the lowest level recorded since 1979 when satellites began tracking the ice. However, that same year, Antarctic sea ice reached the maximum extent ever recorded, an episode which went largely unreported.

The Department of the Interior press release on the polar bear claimed, "The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat. This loss of habitat puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established by the ESA for designating a threatened species."

But the FWS listing is based on computer projections and false assumptions. An article in Science Daily claims, "Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed ..."

People who live in the Arctic know that polar bear populations have been increasing, mainly due to changes in hunting regulations. Native Inuit hunters say that "The growing population has become ‘a real problem,’ especially over the last 10 years."

The polar bear has been around for a very long time and somehow survived conditions that were warmer than now and even warmer than computer projections. It is also telling that the Canadian government, which oversees 14 of the 19 polar bear populations, has not listed the bear as "threatened" or "endangered." The Alaska Department of Fish & Game opposed the listing claiming that FWS did not use the best available science and that the FWS cherry-picked models, choosing only those which supported their case. Alaska Fish & Game says that polar bear populations "are abundant, stable, and unthreatened by direct human activity."

Real, on the ground, research into the relationship between global warming, species extinction, and biodiversity paints a picture very different from the speculative computer models. Abundant research shows that warming increases the range for most terrestrial plants and animals, as well as for most marine creatures. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes plants more water efficient and more robust.

Looking at the greater geologic record, we see that in the warming period subsequent to each ice age, life rebounded with more speciation and greater biodiversity. We have ample reason to believe this pattern will continue.

Jonathan DuHamel
Jonathan DuHamel is a retired geologist.

[Dennis Spath]

What's happened to silence Corlyss' favorite drum?

[rwetmore]

BTW, Dennis - where have you been?

[Dennis Spath]

I've been alive and well but spending little time on the internet, except for YouTube's great collection of classical vocal offerings. Only rarely in the past year have I checked in to CMG Forums to see what's going on. There is one small Aimoo site I've been visiting a few times a week since December, 2008.....a most interesting collection of about 25 very literate folks, generally quite liberal politically, and even our fairly regular "conservative" visitors are tolerant and on their best behavior. Those Liberals and Conservatives of a more combative nature limit their verbal fireworks to other venues!

[piston]

This piece is from The Economist, a well-known Gore Green magazine. Of course, there's no scientific connection between climate change and extreme weather events, so what just happened in the Philippines is nothing more than a once-in-century-event, I swear.
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/2158 ... and-relief

We have to keep this thread alive, and its wonderful header, because it was given so much status by CMGF administrators. I shall contribute to it.

[jbuck919]

This piece is from The Economist, a well-known Gore Green magazine. Of course, there's no scientific connection between climate change and extreme weather events, so what just happened in the Philippines is nothing more than a once-in-century-event, I swear.
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/2158 ... and-relief

We have to keep this thread alive, and its wonderful header, because it was given so much status by CMGF administrators. I shall contribute to it.

Well, Jacques, your thought might have been lost if I had not noticed it way up there when you were listed as the last poster but I couldn't find any post by you in the "normal" section of the board. I'm not saying don't post here, but I am saying your thoughts might be lost if you do.

There is a connection between climate change and frequency of extreme weather events, but it may never be possible to draw a connection between a specific event and climate change. Humans in general have to be dragged kicking and screaming to understand things statistically or in terms of aggregate outcomes, and then care about it if they do, which may be one of the main reasons why loony politics usually of the right-wing sort will never die.

According to what I have heard, typhoons of the force of the one that struck the Philippines happen all the time in the Pacific. What is rare is that one hit an island at its full force. But as the oceans warm, there will be more such storms, and more likelihood of inhabited places receiving their full wrath.

[piston]

According to a recent Pew poll, some nationalities are far more skeptical about climate change than others. One might think that Latin Americans are alarmists and South Koreans, in particular, with 85 percent of the population making it their top global issue. Or one might see Egypt and Pakistan as burying their heads in the sand, with less than 20 percent of their people being especially concerned with the matter. Or one might see the USA as lagging behind the rest of the world because Republicans are bringing down the country's average well below the rest of the world.


It looks to me like global areas with a major financial stake in the oil industry (USA and Middle East) are behind in acknowledging climate change as a top threat at present. U.S. Democrats line up with the rest of the globe. With respect to climate change, Republicans think more like Egyptians and Pakistanis.................

BTW, China is right behind the USA with 39 percent of their people making this a top issue.