Climategate

"Carbon (Dioxide) trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth.....And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon (dioxide) market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon (dioxide) credits, or finding carbon (dioxide) reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible." (Telegraph)

This blog has been tracking the 'Global Warming Scam' for over ten years now. There are a very large number of articles being published in blogs and more in the MSM who are waking up to the fact the public refuse to be conned any more and are objecting to the 'green madness' of governments and the artificially high price of energy. This blog will now be concentrating on the major stories as we move to the pragmatic view of 'not if, but when' and how the situation is managed back to reality. To quote Professor Lindzen, "a lot of people are going to look pretty silly"


PS: If you have arrived here on a page link, then click on the HOME link...

Sunday 28 February 2010

Millions for IPCC chairman Pachauri

Dr Richard North
"Over £11 million of British taxpayers' cash has been paid or pledged to Dr Rajendra Pachauri's institute, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), while he has been chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This comprises over £1 million in direct payments over the last five years and £10 million to come from DFID over the next five.Direct cash payments have been made by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has given Dr Pachauri's TERI £441,000. £134,000 came from DEFRA and £269,000 from DFID – totalling £844,000.In addition, TERI shared £167,000 with Sussex University for a project funded by DECC and another £73,000 for the same project, funded by DEFRA, plus it shared in a £4 million research initiative funded by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)."....

UN's climate link to hurricanes in doubt

The Times
"Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms. ....The cover of Gore’s newest book, Our Choice, even depicts an artist's impression of a world beset by a series of huge super-hurricanes as a warning of what might happen if carbon emissions continue to rise.However, the latest research, just published in Nature Geoscience, paints a very different picture. ....“We have come to substantially different conclusions from the IPCC,” said Chris Landsea, a lead scientist at the American government’s National Hurricane Center, who co-authored the report.He added: ”There are a lot of legitimate concerns about climate change but, in my opinion, hurricanes are not among them. We are looking at a decrease in frequency and a small increase in severity.” Landsea said he regarded the use of hurricane icons on the cover of Gore's book as "misleading".

Another "Trick" fron the CRU Inquiry...

Climate Audit
"A new controversy involving another “trick” by the Boulton-Russell Inquiry. Today’s post is prompted by a new sentence added to the Inquiry FAQs and an article by Channel Four on the controversial Boulton CV here. As so often, a bit of a backstory.

In the press conference announcing the Inquiry, Sir Muir Russell made the following undertaking:

Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the University or the Climate Science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.

The day after submissions to the Parliamentary Inquiry closed, Russell revealed that this undertaking had been betrayed, first with the appointment of Philip Campbell, editor of Nature (who honorably resigned within hours of being challenged) and second with the appointment of Geoffrey Boulton, who had worked at UEA for 18 years from 1968-1986 and who had multiple links to the Climate Science community – making over a dozen speeches and interviews on climate change in the past two years.

The Boulton-Russell Inquiry played down both Boulton’s links to the University of East Anglia and especially to the Climate Science community. In the week following his appointment, Boulton’s links to the Climate Science community were gradually reported on here, at Bishop Hill’s and elsewhere." ....

Sceptics seek second Climategate panel casualty

Channel 4 News
"Climate sceptics look to take another scalp from the panel investigating the conduct of scientists researching climate change, following leaked emails from the University of East Anglia..... Two weeks ago one member of a panel charged with reviewing the conduct of scientists at the centre of the so-called climategate email row resigned after Channel 4 News revealed comments which called into question his claim to impartiality.Now climate sceptics are raising questions about another member of the review, although their evidence has been challenged by the scientist concerned.".....But Steve McIntyre, a Canada-based sceptic deeply involved in challenging the climate change consensus, has unearthed an apparent copy of Professor Boulton's CV from 2007 in which the last line says he [Boulton] was a "contributor to G8 preparatory groups and Intergovernmental Panels on climate change".

Saturday 27 February 2010

A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC

Christopher Booker / Telegraph
"The emerging errors of the IPCC's 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental.".... Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC's 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. ..."

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IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry (Telegraph)

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UK government asked UEA to create climate ‘headline’(ClimateQuotes.com)

Climate Change and the Death of Science

Buy the Truth
"What has become of science? We thought that science was about the pursuit of truth. Then we became perplexed at how quickly scientists have prostituted themselves in the service of political agendas. We have seen the unedifying spectacle of scientists refusing to share their data, fiddling their results, and resorting to ad hominem attacks on those who have exposed their work to be fraudulent. We have seen the Royal Society becoming a shamelessly crude advocacy society. We have seen President Obama choosing notorious climate alarmists and liars to be his personal advisors. We have seen the peer review process and journal editors colluding to prevent publication of results that do not serve the politically-correct agenda, and scientists refusing to consider results that demolish their pet theories. What is going on here? ...."

The real reason for AGW: Post Normal Science

Telegraph
"I promised I would write about Post Normal Science. The Institute of Physics has given me the perfect peg. It has just made the following devastating submission to the Parliamentary investigation into the Climategate scandal. It argues that the behaviour of the scientists involved has “worrying implications” for “the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.” .....

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‘Post-normal science’ is perfect for climate demagogues — it isn’t science at all (Spectator)

University ‘tried to mislead MPs on climate change e-mails’

The Times
"The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails has been accused of making a misleading statement to Parliament.The University of East Anglia wrote this week to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee giving the impression that it had been exonerated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). However, the university failed to disclose that the ICO had expressed serious concerns that one of its professors had proposed deleting information to avoid complying with the Freedom of Information Act. ..."
H/T Climate Depot

Friday 26 February 2010

Institute of Physics Submission

Climate Audit
"No mincing of words by the Institute of Physics in their submission to the UK Parliamentary 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. ....."

Welcome to the New World Order

Telegraph
"Climategates, Glaciergates, Amazongates, Pachaurigates and Africagates may come and go, but as far as the UN is concerned the caravan must roll on regardless.Just have a look at this terrifying document unearthed by George Russell at Fox News – the one which paves the way for the New World Order destined to be imposed on us in the name of ecological righteousness.It talks – as, inter alia, does Dave Cameron – of green jobs and green investment and the marvellous benefits which will accrue from the brave new green economy.For the most part it’s vague, but in places the mask slips and the true horror reveals itself. ..."

AGW: It's not about 'the science'

Telegraph
"And it never was about the science, as Sam at Climatequotes.com (”remembering what they will want us to forget”) reminds us with this useful little delve into the Government archives. He shows how in 2003 the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) deliberately set out to mislead the public about the dangers of “Climate Change”. Among the “experts” DEFRA invited to help talk up the threat were our old friends at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). .....The correct name for this is not “science.” It is “propaganda.” Or “lies.”

Yet the ‘experts’, politicians, scientists, lobbists, carbon traders, and activists pushing AGW have yet to show the remotest hint of repentance for trying to deceive us in this way. On the contrary, as we’re seeing in the various enquiries into malpractice at Penn State University and the University of East Anglia, the official response has been to try to cover the whole thing up."

A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data

WUWT
"...Dr. Long suggests that NCDC’s adjustments eradicated the difference between rural and urban environments, thus hiding urban heating. The consequence:

“…is a five-fold increase in the rural temperature rate of increase and a slight decrease in the rate of increase of the urban temperature.”

The analysis concludes that NCDC “…has taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values”.

Met Office to re-examine 150 years of temperature data in the wake of the Climategate scandal


Daily Mail

"Temperature records dating back more than 150 years are to be re-examined by the Met Office because public belief in global warming has plummeted.The re-analysis, which was approved at a conference in Turkey this week, comes after the climate change email scandal which dealt a severe blow to the credibility of environmental science. ....But the reassessment, which will take an international group of experts three years to complete, will be seen as a tacit admission that previous reports have been tainted by the association with the University of East Anglia's controversial Climatic Research Unit.Since the leak of more than 1,000 emails and documents from the unit in November, belief in global warming has fallen from 41 per cent to 26 per cent."

3.9 billion Euro out of thin air

Dr Richard North
"So desperate is the EU commission to pursue its fantasy of "carbon capture and storage" (CCS) for coal-fired power stations that it is conjuring money out of thin air to kick-start the scheme – a cool €3.9 billion.Needless to say, though, there is no such thing as a free euro. The bill will eventually have to be picked up by electricity consumers throughout the EU.The magic trick being pulled off by the commission is to issue 300 million carbon "allowances", supposedly from a reserve stock, and to give them – entirely free of charge - to generators who are willing to build CCS demonstration projects. ..."

Thursday 25 February 2010

Senator Wants Gore Stripped of Nobel Prize

Fox News
"..SEN. JAMES INHOFE R-OKLA.: Well, we have not heard anything from Al Gore, Neil. And I don’t anticipate that we will, but we would like to have him come, hold a hearing in Environment and Public Works.Every assertion that he made in his science fiction movie has now been disproven, sea level rising, Himalayas melting and all this stuff. The significant thing right now, though, is the hearing that we had this morning, because we have the minority report that we put together which shows that climate-gate, fixing the science, cooking the science, actually took place. ..."

H/T Climate Depot

Update on Global Drought Patterns (IPCC Take Note)

World Climate Report
"..We saw an interesting sentence in their abstract as Sheffield et al. wrote “Globally, the mid-1950s showed the highest drought activity and the mid-1970s to mid-1980s the lowest activity.” That does not seem consistent with the story coming from the IPCC. ...Their results seem completely at odds with the conclusions of the IPCC. Sheffield et al. note with respect to global and continental droughts “The longest duration drought was 49 months (4 yr) in Asia from 1984 to 1988, closely followed by the 1950–53 North American drought (44 months). The most spatially extensive was the African drought of the early 1980s, which reached its peak extent in April 1983 when it covered over 11 million square kilometers.” Their time series plot for the globe and for various continents shows no upward trend whatsoever."

Rajendra Pachauri to defend handling of IPCC after climate change science row

Telegraph
"The governments here are publically, if unenthusiastically, backing Dr Pachauri, who they re-elected unopposed and by acclamation less than 18 months ago: the EU said last night that he had “done a good job, in general” and “deserves full confidence”. But it is hard to find anyone who is not sharply critical of him in private, with many wishing that he will decide to step down before long. "

Rob Bradley: Climategate from an Enron Perspective

Climate Audit
"..I think that there’s a moral for the science community from business failures in how to handle a problem like Climategate. In order to get past something like Enron, the affair could not be ignored. It had to be investigated properly. .... For obvious reasons, people with employment history in Enron or shareholders in Enron would not be appropriate people to serve on an investigation commission, though their testimony and information would be invaluable to the investigation."

"We're winning and they're losing."

Dr Richard North
"We are getting to the stage, though, where the whole climate charade is unravelling before our very eyes at a speed almost too fast to follow, leaving Real Climate railing against the "collapse" of journalistic standards.That, in itself is highly indicative. We hear nothing about the constant diet of lurid scare stories in the media, but when The Guardian - of all papers - "sins" by offering semi-critical pieces, it gets a full broadside."

Wednesday 24 February 2010

Temperature corrections of the Northern Hemisphere

Hide The Decline
"Most skeptics are aware, but it cannot be repeated too often: Temperature data presented before the global warming movement really started in the mid 1980´ies compared with recent official temperatures shows that the temperature trends 1940-1978 has been changed fundamentally. .....History has been rewritten.The original 1976 temperatures from National geographic for 1935-75 shows almost 0,5 degrees Celsius decline. This is why scientists world wide became worried about a coming ice age.In 2008 according to CRU (and thus to some extend GHCN) the temperature decline 1935-75 has been reduced to approximately 0,15 degrees Celsius according to CRU. The decline appears reduced approximately 0,34K So approximately 70% of the decline in temperatures after 1935-40 has been removed, it seems. .."

Google profits from UK.gov's climate change quango rivalry

The Register
"The government department responsible for climate change policy has admitted bidding against one of its own quangos for advertising on Google, forcing up the cost to taxpayers.Ed Miliband's Department of the Environment and Climate Change (DECC) said it sometimes battles the Energy Saving Trust to sponsor links on the dominant web search engine.DECC has spent £361,700 in the last 12 months on search keywords such as "climate change" and "global warming" to target Google users with government publicity urging them to cut their carbon emissions.The Energy Saving Trust has meanwhile spent more than £270,000 on similar advertising in the last 12 months.The keywords are sold by Google in online auctions, so the rivalry between DECC and the quango means the cost per click is increased."

H/T Dr Richard North

Your Own IPCC Climate Computer

The Hockey Schtick
"...Climate computer uses only 97% of the IPCC model of total positive radiative forcing since only 97% of it comes from CO2: temperature anomaly=4.7*ln(ending CO2/starting CO2).Model only applies to the 20th and 21st centuries since temperature anomalies bear no relation to the Medieval Warming Period with much lower CO2 levels or the geologic record with CO2 levels in the mid-1000s per million throughout ice ages. "

Just a reminder....

National Geographic (July 2009)
"Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers).Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan."

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Sharp decline in public's belief in climate threat, British poll reveals

The Guardian
"..Another finding by the poll that hints at a growing lack of public confidence is a significant drop in those who said climate change was caused by human activities. One year ago this number was one in three, but this year just one in five people believes global warming to be man-made, according to Edward Langley, Ipsos Mori's head of environment research."

H/T Climate Depot

Moscow buried in the snows that were meant to vanish

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"..Meanwhile the warmist scientists at Britain’s Met concede that not even the temperature data is settled, let alone the science: ..."

Russian capital Moscow covered by record 63cm snowfall

BBC
"Thousands of snow-clearing machines have been working to dig the Russian capital Moscow out of a record-breaking fall of 63cm (nearly 25 inches).After a weekend of heavy snow showers, the regional weather centre announced that the previous record of 62cm, set in 1966, had been broken. "

Britain’s Weather Office Proposes Climate-Gate Do-Over

WUWT
"From Fox News, word that the Met Office has circulated a proposal that intends to completely start over with raw surface temperature data in a transparent process. ...The Met Office’s shift in position could be a major embarrassment for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who as recently as last month declared that climate skeptics were “flat-earthers” and “anti-science” for refusing to accept that man-made activity was a major cause of global warming. Brown faces a tough election battle for his government, perhaps as early as May.It is also a likely blow to 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."

Euros for Rajendra

Dr Richard North
"Since taking the chair of the IPCC in 2002, Rajendra Pachauri's own personal research institute, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), has enjoyed a multi-million-euro bonanza from EU-funded research projects.

Having led the institute from 1982, in the 20 years before he assumed the IPCC chair, only four EU projects had been awarded. Since then, the institute in seven years has shared in 17 projects worth over €56 million. For many of them, TERI had no obvious expertise in the project areas or physical presence."

'Global warming': time to get angry

Telegraph
"..The Corus scandal has been covered before, of course, by Booker, North et al. What bothers me, though, is how remarkably little traction it has had in the MSM. The sums of taxpayers money being squandered are stupendous; the pointlessness of the exercise beyond all reason; yet somehow – a bit like the fact that thanks to EU regulations on landfill waste disposal we’re now all supposed to put up with having our stinking, rat-infested trash collected just once a fortnight – it’s being treated as yet another of those government impositions about which we’re merely supposed to shrug our shoulders and tamely accept as just another of those things."

Oral Evidence

Bishop Hill
"The oral evidence sessions for the Parliamentary Inquiry into CRU have been announced...I suppose that the best one can say is that at least sceptics are going to be heard for half an hour, but to me this looks like a determined attempt by the committee to hear only the message it wants to hear."

“UK Govt’s Chief Adviser on Climate Change”

Climate Audit
"Someone who is billed at the openings of Coca Cola plants in Romania as the ‘UK Govt’s Chief Adviser on Climate Change’ hardly fits Muir Russell’s promise of having “no links to either the University or the Climate Science community”.

New Climate Agency Head Tried to Suppress Data, Critics Charge

Fox News
"The scientist who has been put in charge of the Commerce Department's new climate change office is coming under attack from both sides of the global warming debate over his handling of what they say is contradictory scientific data related to the subject."

H/T Climate Depot

Wind turbines – The Truth

Climategate.com
".. “This winter we have experienced repeated cold spells when electricity demand has soared and wind power generation has failed to deliver.

“Yet again, as of 18-20 February, we are seeing a settled, continental weather system bringing cold weather to the UK. Demand rises as temperatures fall, meanwhile the 1588MW of wind capacity that is metered by National Grid, all in the windiest part of the UK (Scotland), is effectively delivering 0.0% of load.”

Monday 22 February 2010

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

The Guardian
"...In a statement the authors of the paper said: "Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work."One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes."In the Nature Geoscience retraction, in which Siddall and his colleagues explain their errors, Vermeer and Rahmstorf are thanked for "bringing these issues to our attention".
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Friday, 12 February 2010
Sea level 81,000 years ago was one metre higher ,when C02 was lower...

The most slimy essay ever from the Guardian and Columbia University

WUWT
"There has never been a time at WUWT that I’ve used the word “slimy” in a headline. This is a special case. I thought of about a half dozen words I could have used and finally decided on this one. I chose it because of precedence in a similar situation where Steve McIntyre wrote his rebuttal to a similar piece of amateur journalism entitled Slimed by Bagpuss the Cat Reporter. ....Now, any progress that has been made in outreach by the Guardian has been dashed by the most despicably stupid newspaper article I’ve ever seen about climate skeptics. The Guardian for some reason thought it would be a good idea to print it while at the same time trying to reach across the aisle to climate skeptics for ideas. Needless to say, they’ve horribly botched that gesture with the printing of this article.

Here’s the headline and link to the Guardian article:

Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain

It’s full of the kind of angry, baseless, stereotypical innuendo I’d expect Joe Romm to write. Instead, the writer is Jeffrey D Sachs. who is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, home to NASA GISS."

The IPCC's "Unequivocal Evidence" & clever tricks

The Hockey Schtick
"..It is scientifically-improper to graft a thermometer record to a paleoclimate (e.g. tree-rings) proxy for temperature because trees are not thermometers, they are not calibrated to thermometers, there are many more important variables than temperature that can affect tree rings such as precipitation, location, CO2 (plant food) levels, cloudiness, soil quality, solar activity, weather patterns, etc. for which there is no means to sort out. ..."

The Hidden Propaganda

Dr Richard North
"...Another EU venture into schools, for instance, is a project called CARBOSCHOOLS+, linking carbon science laboratories with secondary schools to develop partnerships where "young Europeans" learn and conduct experiments about climate research and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As opposed to the roughly €250,000 spent on the comic book venture, €1.43 million is being poured into this, with €981,553 coming from the EU."
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EU superheroes solve a humanitarian crisis caused by an earthquake... in a comic that's costing the taxpayer £200,000 (Daily Mail)

KUSI – Coleman TV show discussion

E.M.Smith (Chiefio)
"....My Part

My major point has simply been that much of the available data is not used. It is dropped on the floor. You can call it “deleted” or “dropped” or “ignored” or whatever. It is still NOT in the GHCN data set. The pattern of these “droppings” is that high latitude and high altitude stations are dropped, while low altitude and low latitude stations are kept (with an ever increasing percentage at warm heat islands of airports). There is a clear ’survivor bias’ toward warmer stations (and with warming trends, like airports), with warmer winters, more heat islands, and lots of tarmac. ...."

Sunday 21 February 2010

Scrappage scheme ‘fails to cut pollution’

The Times
"The scrappage scheme may save the car industry, but it won’t save the planet. New research shows that while car sales have leapt, as people trade in older vehicles for new ones, thanks to a £2,000 government incentive, the environmental impact of the scheme has been ... nil or even negative. .."

ED: It's so sad,as C02 is not a pollutant...

Feral camels clear in Penny Wong's carbon count

The Australian
"Scientists have found camels to be the third-highest carbon-emitting animal per head on the planet, behind only cattle and buffalo. Culling the one million feral camels that currently roam the outback would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road in terms of the reduction to the country's greenhouse gases.But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told The Australian there was little point doing anything about Australia's feral camels as only the CO2 of the domesticated variety is counted under the Kyoto Protocol. ...Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt reckons the government has "lost its marbles". "It's now reached the absurd situation where a camel in captivity is a threat to the planet but a feral camel in the wild is absolutely fine," Mr Hunt said. .....The absurdity of the UN carbon accounting systems was also highlighted by Mick Keogh, executive director of research group the Australian Farm Institute. Mr Keogh noted that while emissions from a deliberately lit bushfire count under Kyoto, they did not if the fire was caused by lightning.And it also varies depending on whether it razes privately owed land or a national park."When it's burning in the park, none of those emissions officially count, but when it spreads back out of the park to private land on the other side, it starts to again contribute to greenhouse emissions as measured by the UN's rules," he said."
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Telegraph (UK), Carbon Trading Bubble
"...And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon credits, or finding carbon reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible."

Recent Site Visitors...

Saturday 20 February 2010

Snow to sweep Britain tonight in fresh wintry blast


Daily Mail

"Flurries of snow are set to sweep Britain tonight as the country braces itself for another wintry blast, forecasters said.A covering of up to 4in is expected on higher ground as overnight temperatures plummet to as low as minus 4C in the North, heralding more icy conditions.Wales and the Midlands will be the worst affected by snow and wintry showers over the next couple of days."

What the weatherman never said

Telegraph- Christopher Booker
"..The sentence the former head of the UK Met Office now denies ever using – although in the past four years it has been cited unchallenged more than 100,000 times on the internet – was "unless we announce disasters, no one will listen". In what looked like a concerted operation, Sir John's disclaimer was circulated to sympathetic journalists across the world, along with demands for corrections and apologies issued to various prominent "climate sceptics" who had publicly quoted the remark,......But what also came to light, thanks to that admirable expert on "risk", Professor John Adams, and Professor Philip Stott, who for years was almost the only voice critical of climate hysteria in the British press, is an interview Sir John gave to The Sunday Telegraph in its "Me and My God" slot on September 10, 1995. As a fervent evangelical Christian, Sir John claimed that global warming might well be one of those disasters sent by God to warn man to mend his ways ("God tries to coax and woo but he also uses disasters"). He went on: "If we are to have a good environmental policy in the future, we will have to have a disaster".

Maybe these are not quite the words that have been so widely misquoted. But if Sir John believes it is time for us all to don sackcloth and ashes, perhaps he himself could meditate on the way in which, a few years back, he was tireless in promoting the notorious "hockey stick" graph, used by the IPCC to fool the world into thinking that global temperatures had lately been soaring to levels unprecedented in history. This turned out to be the greatest scientific error in the IPCC's history.

Even after the "hockey stick" had been devastatingly exposed as no more than the result of trickery with a computer program, an "invention" far more damaging than any misquoting of his own words, Sir John was still defending it in front of the US Congress as if it were gospel truth. As a propagandist, he might still do the same today. But as a Christian scientist, might the beginning of Lent not be an appropriate time for him to engage in a little repentance of his own? "

£60m bill for the CO2 of our political class

Telegraph - Christopher Booker
"Thus we pay billions of dollars to the Asian countries for the right to continue emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases here in the West, including the £60 million contributed by British taxpayers to keep our civil servants warm. As a result we enrich a small number of people in China and India, including Maurice Strong, who now lives in exile in Beijing, having been caught out in 2005 for illicitly receiving $1 million from Saddam Hussein in the “Oil for Food” scandal. He played a key part in setting up China’s carbon exchange, to buy and sell the CDM credits administered by the UNFCCC – of which Strong himself was the chief architect.

The net result of all this trading and jiggery-pokery is that, after billions of pounds and dollars have changed hands, with a hefty commission for those bankers and other carbon traders along the way, there is no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions whatever. But at least our political class can continue to work in warm offices and fly righteously round the world on our behalf – while the rest of us foot the bill."

Here comes the next bubble – carbon trading

Telegraph
"..According to Mr Schapiro, carbon trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth. Since Kyoto signatories bought in to the cap and trade concept in 2005, there have been more than $300bn carbon transactions, prompting several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to set up their own carbon trading desks. But that’s just the start. If President Obama and his supporters can institute a cap-and-trade system in the United States – and that’s a big if for this increasingly marooned presidency – demand could explode into a $2 to $3 trillion market.

And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon credits, or finding carbon reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible."

Self-Deception writ Large

Dr Richard North
"What is both so terribly sad is that Mann undoubtedly believes what he is saying, and expresses his views in all sincerity. One problem, though. is that the site, recognisably, is about advocacy rather than explanation. It does not tell the public "what the science actually has to say" – it is there to defend the orthodoxy. ....This is not honest science. It is dishonest wordplay, and all the more contemptible for its pretence at being something else. If the authors believe – like Mann – they are telling the truth, they are deceiving themselves. It is self-deception writ large."

Sea Level Expert: "Sea is not Rising"


The Hockey Schtick
"Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years."

This dead ETS parrot must cease to be

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun, (Australia)
IT’S time to bury the Dead Parrot. The Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong Emissions Trading Scheme, we thankfully never knew… Business groups, led by the Business Council of Australia, should be loudly and persistently leading the charge against the still-proposed ETS. As much to very partially make up for their supine and stupid support for the ETS, as for the now greater damage it would cause if implemented… "

Friday 19 February 2010

EPA doles out $17 million to study climate change

Climategate.com
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced the recipients of more than $17 million in federal grant money to be used to study the impacts of climate change..."

Money Talking

Dr Richard North
"Inherent in the dishonesty of the warmists is the canard raised about the opposition being "well funded", backed by their frequent references to support from "Big Oil".Already, though, we have identified £243 million of British government money poured into the Met Office for its "climate prediction" programme, going back to 1990.How much the countries in Europe were also pouring into the pot we have no immediate means of knowing – although it would be useful to find out. But what we do have is the global figure paid out by the EU in the earlier period, taken from the Cordis website. ..."

Burning the Midnight Oil...


Just noticed this... UK site user on 23hrs 49mins, Australian site user on 13hrs 15mins.

Britain on course for coldest February for 24 years... as snow causes rush hour chaos yet again


Daily Mail

"The big chill is set to tighten its grip over the weekend as forecasters say we could be on for the coldest February in nearly a quarter of a century.Temperatures in the first two weeks of the month averaged just 2.1c (35.8f) - meaning Britain has been far colder than Vancouver, where the organisers of the Winter Olympics have been forced to truck in snow.The freezing conditions will continue over the weekend with some areas experiencing overnight lows of -6c (21f). .."

Thursday 18 February 2010

Dutch global warming denier "was right after all"

National Post (Canada)
"De Telegraaf, the Netherlands' largest daily newspaper, has totally vindicated the country's most prominent global warming denier in a prominent article entitled "Henk Tennekes - He was right after all." Tennekes was the director of the Netherlands Meteorological Institute, KNMI, until the early 1990s, when his skepticism of the climate science coming out of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change led to his forced resignation."

H/T Climate Depot

Australia beats UK


(Recent site visitors)

The profits of doom

Matt Ridley / The Spectator......23 February 2002
Matt Ridley celebrates Bjorn Lomborg, the environmentalist brave enough to tell the truth - that the end is not nigh...What can this mild statistician have said to annoy these great men so? In 1996 he published an obscure but brilliant article on game theory, which earned him an invitation to a conference on 'computable economics' in Los Angeles (and an offer of a job at the University of California). While browsing in a bookshop there he came across a profile in Wired magazine of the late Julian Simon, an economist, who claimed, with graphs, that on most measures the environment was improving, not getting worse. Irritated, Lomborg went back to Denmark and set his students the exercise of finding the flaw in Simon's statistics.They could find none. So Lomborg wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist, which not only endorses most of Simon's claims, but also goes further, providing an immense compendium of factual evidence that the litany of environmental gloom we hear is mostly either exaggerated (species extinction, global warming) or wrong (population, air and water pollution, natural resources, food and hunger, health and life-expectancy, waste, forest loss).You might think that environmentalists would welcome such news. ....Instead they are beside themselves with fury. ....His sin - his heresy - is to be optimistic. "

Ministers lavished £9m on climate change stunts... but public opinion is left cold by global warming 'propaganda'


Daily Mail

"A disastrous series of failed climate change publicity stunts cost taxpayers £9million, it emerged yesterday.The projects paid for by the Government’s Climate Challenge Fund did next to nothing to change public opinion, a Whitehall report found.It said the initiatives were almost entirely preaching to the converted and that trying to drum up interest through sensationalism only put people off. ..."

H/T Climate Realists
----------------------

Climate Challenge Fund: Government wastes £8.6m on green propaganda (TPA)
“The Government has clearly crossed the line from public information to propaganda on climate change. Many of the Climate Change Fund projects are utterly bonkers and misleading, and come with a huge price tag. Despite a fortune having been spent on these projects, the Fund has failed even on its own spurious terms. It is infuriating for taxpayers to see their money squandered on attempts to scare and indoctrinate the public.”

Policy Impact of IPCC Misdirection

Roger Pielke Jr.
"In Australia yesterday, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong gave a speech is which she discussed the claims that the IPCC had misrepresented the science of disaster costs and climate change. .....The bottom line is that there is no scientific evidence linking rising global temperatures to the increasing catastrophe losses around the world. Ironically enough including the paper cited by Wong to suggest the opposite. Despite this fact, and the obvious IPCC misrepresentations on this subject, Australia's Penny Wong concludes: "There may well be dispute about the cost of catastrophes, but the science on the link between these catastrophes and climate change has not been credibly challenged."

------------------------
Wong to the IPCC’s rescue -Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"Climate Change Minister Penny Wong defends the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. ....this desperate and misleading, not to mention deceitful, speech."

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

The lies of Aussie Climate Minister, Penny ‘Wrong’ (Climategate.com)
"..Wong was addressing the first national forum on coasts and climate change in Adelaide and promulgating all the usual doomsaying myths for her dwindling band of climate cult followers that global temperatures are fast rising and sea levels, as a consequence, will rise by a meter this century.Then, the self-serving climate minister showed no remorse for going on to smear tens of millions of concerned citizens that form the grassroots movement of climate skeptics by implying they are under the sway of the tobacco lobby! ..."

UN climate chief quits

Yahoo/AP
"PARIS (AFP) – Yvo de Boer, head of the UN's climate change convention, will resign as of July 1, his office announced on Thursday.De Boer, who is executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC secretariat said.The announcement came nearly two months after the Copenhagen summit on climate change, widely seen as either a disappointment or a chaotic failure. ..."

H/T Climate Depot

Oceangate: sea levels proven to have fallen for past six years


Climategate.com

"Independent bloggers have found that by using the Pacific Marine Atlas program to plot data from the entire ocean network of automatic measuring stations, there is was actually a downtrend in global sea levels over the past six years. ..."

Wednesday 17 February 2010

BIO-FUELGATE: ECO-FARMERS RUINED, WORLD'S POOR STARVE

John O'Sullivan
"...The World Bank has been warming unscrupulous politicians and green advocates for the nearly two years about the myth of this environmental panacea but still supporters cling to the lie. The World Bank quotes Oscar Reyes of the Transnational Institute who warns “The EU’s agrofuel policies are putting additional pressure on global food prices.”

Czechgate: Climate scientists dump world’s second oldest ‘cold’ climate record

Climategate.com
"The latest independent analysis of world climate data by acclaimed skeptic blogger ‘Chiefio’ (aka E. M. Smith) and his blog contributors confirm that the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) has cynically dumped the world’s second oldest and reliable climate record at Prague in the Czech Republic for no scientific reason.Climate skeptics claim the censoring of the Czech’s raw data has been perpetrated by climate scientists because the Prague records prove there has been no warming in Europe for over two hundred years....Bloggers found that GHCN, based at Arizona State University, also cut out Prague’s warm 1940’s as it would make recent warming look unexceptional. This process of adjusting raw data by climatologists (almost always upwards) is known as ‘homogenization.’ Skeptics then found that climatologists had replaced the original Prague dataset from 1949 with a homogenized warmer series from another weather station in Praha/Ruzyne even though Prague had never stopped taking temperature readings.Skeptic analysts are outraged because, after the Central England Temperature Record, the Czech records are the second oldest continous and reliable temperature record in the world and are known as the Central European Temperature Record. The data set has been kept uninterrupted since 1775 in Praha-Klementinum (Prague). ..."

IPCC Paleoclimate Reconstructions show no significant warming

The Hockey Schtick
"....Once again, "Mike's Nature Trick" is used to graft the faulty instrumental record onto the paleoclimate reconstructions for scientifically-improper dramatic effect. In addition, the orange line with the highest anomaly in the top (instrumental only) graph is from a Phil Jones paper on the instrumental record of 4 mostly urban European sites: Central England, De Bilt, Berlin and Uppsala without any mention in the AR4 text of possible urban heat effects. .."

Consensus or Con? The global warmists are the real deniers.

WSJ
"This column was scoffing at global warming back when global warming was still cool. But even we have been surprised at the extent of the past three months' "meltdown" of global warmism, to use the metaphor that everyone seems to have settled on.As we've written on various occasions, we didn't know enough about the substance of the underlying science to make a judgment about it. But we know enough about science itself to recognize that the popular rendition of global warmism--dogmatic, doctrinaire and scornful of skepticism--is not the least bit scientific. The revelations in the Climategate emails show that these attitudes were common among actual scientists, not just the popularizers of their work.Still, we would not have gone so far as to say that global warming was just a hoax. Surely there was some actual science to back it, even if there was a lot less certainty than was claimed.Now, though, we're wondering if this was too charitable a view. ...."

Another IPCC Error: Antarctic Sea Ice Increase Underestimated by 50%

World Climate Report
"Several errors have been recently uncovered in the 4th Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These include problems with Himalayan glaciers, African agriculture, Amazon rainforests, Dutch geography, and attribution of damages from extreme weather events. More seem to turn up daily. Most of these errors stem from the IPCC’s reliance on non-peer reviewed sources. .....While all the press is about the observed declines in Arctic sea ice extent in recent decades, little attention at all is paid to the fact that the sea ice extent in the Antarctic has been on the increase. No doubt the dearth of press coverage stems from the IPCC treatment of this topic. ..."

Tuesday 16 February 2010

You Will love This

Dr Richard North
"Hot on the trail of the Golden-Gate scam, a readers draws my attention to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle for 6 July 2009.The title of the piece somewhat gives the game away, as it declares: "Get ready for even foggier summers". The opening lines of the text tell us that the Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. "And thanks to global warming, it's about to get even foggier."This makes an interesting counterpoint to the article in The Daily Telegraph today, proclaiming: "Fog over San Francisco thins by a third due to climate change". ..."
---------------------------

Consistent with Being in a Deep Fog(Roger Pielke Jr)

Recent Site Visitors...

Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen

"I'm referring to the recent kerfuffle over whether Sir John Houghton did actually say the controversial words that have been ascribed to him for many years. These words:
"Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen."
Bishop Hill
Then go to here:
The Clamour of the Times (Prof. Stott)
"Unlike some we might mention, my good friend and colleague, Emeritus Professor John Adams of University College London (UCL), keeps impeccable academic archives, and he has just called Sir John’s bluff and bluster on his excellent blog".
"Yet, particularly noteworthy is this quotation:
If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”
H/T Bishop Hill

Scientists “puzzled” over global cooling in Antarctica

Climategate.com
"“Our 14-year continuous weather station record from the shore of Lake Hoare reveals that seasonally averaged surface air temperature has decreased by 0.7 degrees Celsius per decade,” they write. “The temperature decrease is most pronounced in summer and autumn. Continental cooling, especially the seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models of climate and ecosystem change.”
Global Cooling In Antarctica
by Kate Melville

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

Now IPCC hurricane data is questioned (The Register)
"More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported. ..."

Monday 15 February 2010

Scandinavian temperatures, IPCC´s "Scandinavia-gate"

Hide The Decline
"More evidence that IPCC's claim of global warming in the Scandinavian area is yet another home-made "fact" from IPCC.

by Frank Lansner

Scandinavian Temperatures 1900 - 2000, IPCC´s Scandinavia-gate
In recent years the Swedish scientist from Stockholm University, Karlén, has tried to create attention to the fact the Scandinavian temperatures when represented by IPCC cannot be recognized in the real data from the Scandinavian temperature stations:..."
---------------------------------
SCANDINAVIA-GATE: CLIMATE COOLING BUT SCIENTISTS ‘HIDE THE DECLINE’ (John O'Sullivan)
"It looks like we now have the evidence of a full-blown Scandinavia-gate to further crush the credibility of the crooks that run the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Climate skeptic blogger, Frank Lansner, over at 'Hide The Decline' has done an excellent job in bringing to our attention the analysis of Swedish scientist and skeptic, Dr. Wibjorn Karlen from Stockholm University, who has studied the Scandinavian temperature records between 1900 and 2000.Lansner shows that. Dr Karlén has debunked the fraud of the IPCC for falsifying the temperatures the Scandinavian region at the end of the 20th century to appear a staggerring 0.7 Degree Centigrade higher than actually existed.In fact, the peak in temperatures for this cold northern European territory occurred not in recent years but between 1930-50. After compiling data from all the available data sources in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden Karlén found that,“The very significant temperature peak around 1930-40 has been reduced almost removed totally.”

From a Mistake to a Lie

Roger Pielke Jr.
"If you want to understand why so many people have lost trust in the climate science community, due to the acts of a few, just take a look at what Real Climate has done to spin the disaster issue regarding the IPCC. .....Lies on top of lies. Not good. If they want to understand why their community has lost so much credibility, they need only look to their own actions. "

Independent Climate Change Email Inquiry is certainly not independent

Climategate.com
"The Independent Climate Change Email Inquiry gives links to:

The Royal Society
The Met Office
Directgov
BBC Weather
Wikipedia

All of the above sites strongly endorse Anthropogenic Global Warming....."

African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC

Telegraph
(Follow up to Dr Richard North's 'And now for Africagate' 6/02/10)
"One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for "carbon credits". As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. ..."

THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE RETREAT

Daily Express
"THERE has been no global warming for 15 years, a key scientist admitted yesterday in a major U-turn.Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warming theory.Researchers said yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change. ..."

Sunday 14 February 2010

Climate Change - a torrent of EU money

Dr Richard North
"...Apart from the name, there would no other clues as to the nature of the company, still less that it is one of the new breed of parasites living off the hype over "climate change". Part of the Bloomberg empire, with offices in New York, Washington and throughout the world, including Peking and Delhi, it was set up to exploit the burgeoning and totally artificial carbon market, grabbing money indiscriminately from wherever the trail led.And in November 2008, one of those trails led to Brussels, where the EU Commission's Directorate-General Environment kindly awarded it a €196,625 contract – excluding VAT - to analyse the carbon market.This is but one example of the torrent of money – provided by increasingly unwilling taxpayers – which is pouring out of Brussels, filling the coffers of disparate commercial companies, research institutes, academia and even public relation companies, all under the generic heading of "climate change" and closely related matters. ..."

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

Daily Mail
* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Buying Thin Air

Dr Richard North
"Cash-strapped Gordon Brown is buying £60,000,000-worth of "carbon credits" for Whitehall and other government offices in the UK, as well as British Nato bases in Europe.While the rest of the country shivers in the cold, with householders wondering whether they can afford their mounting heating bills – inflated by hidden "carbon taxes" to pay for the carbon emissions produced - bureaucrats in their centrally-heated government offices can keep producing "greenhouse gasses", their emissions paid-for by British taxpayers.The details, which were not announced publicly, emerged last week on the EU's official website, announcing a contract to Barclays Capital PLC to buy the credits on behalf of the government's buying agency in Liverpool.They will be bought under the UN's Kyoto protocol "clean development mechanism" (CDM) which allows from third world countries using carbon-reducing schemes such as windfarms to sell "credits" for the carbon dioxide they save – worth approximately £12 a tonne. ....."

Saturday 13 February 2010

World may not be warming, say scientists

The Times
"...“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC. The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site. The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic. "

British Council gets in on the climate act

Telegraph
"..I overlooked one branch of government which has been as active in the cause of saving the planet as any – the British Council, created more than 70 years ago to stage lectures on Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and to spread the use of the English language.In recent years, however, on the initiative of Lord Kinnock when he was its chairman, the British Council has been hijacked to promote the need for action on climate change. In answer to a Freedom of Information request, we can now see some of the curious ways in which the British Council has been spending our money.More than £3.5 million has gone on recruiting a worldwide network of young "climate activists" in over 70 countries to engage in climate change propaganda – what Marxists used to call agitprop – and to pressure their politicians to join the worldwide struggle. Under a programme called Challenge Europe, £1.1 million has been paid out to fund young "climate advocates" in 17 countries across Europe, including Britain itself. But £2.5 million has been spent on a more ambitious project to recruit a global network of 100,000 activists in 60 countries across the world, led by 1,300 young "International Climate Champions", to participate in "international peer networks, both in person and online, to share ideas, projects and experiences". ...."

The professor’s amazing climate change retreat

Mail on Sunday(Comment)
"Untold billions of pounds have been spent on turning the world green and also on financing the dubious trade in carbon credits.Countless gallons of aviation fuel have been consumed carrying experts, lobbyists and politicians to apocalyptic conferences on global warming.Every government on Earth has changed its policy, hundreds of academic institutions, entire school curricula and the priorities of broadcasters and newspapers all over the world have been altered – all to serve the new doctrine that man is overheating the planet and must undertake heroic and costly changes to save the world from drowning as the icecaps melt.You might have thought that all this was based upon well-founded, highly competent research and that those involved had good reason for their blazing, hot-eyed certainty and their fierce intolerance of dissent.But, thanks to the row over leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit, we now learn that this body’s director, Phil Jones, works in a disorganised fashion amid chaos and mess. ..His colleagues recall that his office was ‘often surrounded by jumbled piles of papers’.Even more strikingly, he also sounds much less ebullient about the basic theory, admitting that there is little difference between global warming rates in the Nineties and in two previous periods since 1860 and accepting that from 1995 to now there has been no statistically significant warming.He also leaves open the possibility, long resisted by climate change activists, that the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ from 800 to 1300 AD, and thought by many experts to be warmer than the present period, could have encompassed the entire globe.This is an amazing retreat, since if it was both global and warmer, the green movement’s argument that our current position is ‘unprecedented’ would collapse.It is quite reasonable to suggest that human activity may have had some effect on climate.But in the light of the ‘Climategate’ revelations, it is time for governments, academics and their media cheerleaders to be more modest in their claims and to treat sceptics with far more courtesy.The question is not settled.There is no doubt that careless and greedy exploitation has done much damage to the planet."
-------------------------------

Phil Jones, the professor behind the “Climategate” affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised.(WUWT,12/02/10)

UK Minister Hilary Benn challenged to Apply Solar-based weather forecasts to cut misery & save lives by Piers Corbyn from WeatherAction.com

Climate Realists
".....We are writing now to remind you and your Highways & other agencies (copied in) of our warnings of further extreme winter weather coming in February as we predicted last July and further detailed in mid January. As you now see our Red Warning that 11/12th Feb (pdf of Feb forecast attached, and see link to WA2010NewsNo9) would have extra snow compared with expectations of standard meteorology** was confirmed by 6inches of snow in parts of Kent - more than double TV forecasts. The danger periods 15-16/17th & 18-19th & 20-21st** Feb are also predicted to bring notably severe and dangerous winter weather which will exceed in severity the expectations of standard meteorology from even a
day or so ahead. ...."

Global warming's snowball fight

Washington Post (USA)
"...Other environmentalists have undermined the cause with claims bordering on the outlandish; they've blamed global warming for shrinking sheep in Scotland, more shark and cougar attacks, genetic changes in squirrels, an increase in kidney stones and even the crash of Air France Flight 447. When climate activists make the dubious claim, as a Canadian environmental group did, that global warming is to blame for the lack of snow at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, then they invite similarly specious conclusions about Washington's snow -- such as the Virginia GOP ad urging people to call two Democratic congressmen "and tell them how much global warming you get this weekend."

Friday 12 February 2010

Global warming snow job

The Washington Times (USA)
"...Getting facts wrong and citing dubious sources isn't the worst of it. Rajendra K. Pachauri, the U.N.'s climate chief, remained silent when he knew information was false and denied he had been aware of the Himalayan glaciers error before the recent climate-change summit in Copenhagen, which made a big deal about this nonexistent crisis. He only grudgingly came partly clean when Pallava Bagla, a writer for the journal Science, pointed to e-mail correspondence from last autumn showing Mr. Pachauri already knew of the fraud. "

H/T The Hockey Schtick

World wide web of doubt

The Australian
"..We can be reasonably confident public opinion will follow the same trajectory in Australia as it has in Britain. (Just as an aside, it is probably the strongest argument in favour of Rudd calling an early election.) Short of compelling fresh evidence to support anthropogenic global warming, it's highly unlikely that there will be any movement in the opposite direction.What we are witnessing, in defiance of officialdom, government propaganda and the bulk of funded researchers in the field, is the collapse of a scientific paradigm. This is something that has never happened before. Politically speaking, it's a game-changer with the potential to overturn the normative assumptions commentators rely on. Not least of these is the idea that Australian voters will always give newly elected federal governments a second term.In the latest edition of The Spectator, Matt Ridley, a veteran science journalist, offers an explanation for how the consensus came unstuck. ....."In a word, the internet. The `climate consensus' may hold the establishment -- the universities, the media, big business, government -- but it is losing the jungles of the web. .....In Australia, that body includes Garth Paltridge, the author of The Climate Caper, and William Kininmonth, author of Climate Change: A Natural Hazard. As well as publishing books and journal articles, both have an internet presence.Other local participants in the internet debate include Jennifer Marohasy, a doctoral fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs, and Joanne Nova at her blog JoNova. She is a freelance science presenter and author of a bestseller, The Sceptic's Handbook. Two News Limited journalists, Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair, have been especially diligent in keeping their mass audiences informed of fresh evidence as it has emerged, via their newspaper columns and, more important, their blogs...."
----------------------------------

The great collapse of the global warming myth (JoNova)

Australia needs 'herculean' efforts to meet emissions targets

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
"Professor Pielke, of the university's Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research, says Australia would have to become as carbon efficient by 2016 as Japan was in 2006 to meet the 25 per cent targets. It would have to reach this aim by 2018 for a 15 per cent reduction target or by 2020 to achieve a 5 per cent reduction target."To think that Australia could achieve Japanese levels of decarbonisation within the next decade strains credulity,'' the paper says.Professor Pielke has examined climate change legislation in several nations, including Japan and Britain. His critique of the Australian legislation uses the same methodology as his analysis of Britain's Climate Act, published in the Institute of Physics journal Environmental Research Letters last year."!

--------------------------
So Australia doesn't really intend to decarbonize its economy? Wow. (Roger Pielke)

Dutch Scientist Quits...

Henk Tennekes Resigns from Dutch Academy
"..“I don’t want to remain a member of an organization that, like AMS and NAS, screws up science that badly.”......For many years, Tennekes was director of research at KNMI. He also was a professor at the Pennsylvania State University and at the Free University in Amsterdam. In 1982 he became a member of the Academy. And now he steps out."
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Henk Tennekes Resigns from Dutch Academy (Roger Pielke Snr.)

Climategate: the official cover-up continues

Telegraph
"If there’s one thing that stinks even more than Climategate, it’s the attempts we’re seeing everywhere from the IPCC and Penn State University to the BBC to pretend that nothing seriously bad has happened, that “the science” is still “settled”, and that it’s perfectly OK for the authorities go on throwing loads more of our money at a problem that doesn’t exist.The latest example of this noisome phenomenon is Sir Muir Russell’s official whitewash – sorry “independent inquiry” into the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) scandal.The inquiry has not even begun and already it has told its first blatant lie – seen here on its official website..."

Sea level 81,000 years ago was one metre higher ,when C02 was lower...


WUWT

"..A speleothem that has been intermittently submerged in a cave on the island of Mallorca was dated to show that, historically, sea level was more than a meter above its present height. This data implies that temperatures were as high as or higher than now, even though the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was much lower..."

Rupert, can we have our own Fox News?

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"Rupert Murdoch may or may not be in town today, and may or may not even look at this blog.Give him - on that off-chance - some idea of what a service he’d do this country if he spent some of the chump change from Avatar on creating an Australian Fox News. Sure, it would earn peanuts, but think of the good it would do…So sign up below. Show you care. Give us our Fox."
(Ed: this attracted some 500 comments)

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley opens his diary

Spectator
"London: Professor Ian Plimer, an eminent geologist who reads God’s log-book in the rocks, called me and said: ‘Would you like to do a speaking tour of Australia to explain why “global warming” is not a global crisis?’ Yes, I said. Case Smit and John Smeed, two retired engineers from Noosa, had watched Prime Minister Rudd ranting for 45 minutes at my expense and wanted to give me the right of reply. They dug deep into their superannuations to fly me to Australia before Rudd’s emissions trading scheme, like a drowning man, came up for the third and last time....."

Climate e-mail inquiry member resigns over his defence of researchers


The Times

"..The inquiry, led by Sir Muir Russell, was set up after stolen e-mails from the CRU scientists prompted accusations that they had been manipulating and concealing the data.The panel members said in a statement yesterday morning that they did not have a “predetermined view on climate change and climate science”. However, it then emerged that Dr Campbell, the editor-in-chief of the journal Nature, had told Chinese state radio last year that he did not believe that the e-mails had shown any evidence of improper conduct.... The University of East Anglia announced yesterday a second inquiry that would investigate the validity of the CRU’s reports, which present evidence that man-made emissions are causing global warming.The decision to hold a second inquiry is an admission that Sir Muir’s investigation will not be sufficient to restore trust in claims that the world is at grave risk from rising temperatures.

Member of panel set up to investigate 'Climategate' scandal forced to resign


Daily Mail
Division: The 'Climategate' email scandal has deepened after a member of the panel set up to investigate it was forced to resign

"A member of the panel set up to investigate claims that climate change scientists covered up flawed data was forced to resign just hours after the inquiry's launch.Philip Campbell stood down after it was disclosed he had given an interview in which he defended the conduct of researchers at University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), insisting they had done nothing wrong."

Thursday 11 February 2010

'Climate-gate' review member resigns

Channel4 (UK)
"Within hours of the launch of an independent panel to investigate claims that climate scientists covered up flawed data on temperature rises, one member has been forced to resign after sceptics questioned his impartiality. In an interview last year with Chinese State Radio, enquiry panel member Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature said: "The scientists have not hidden the data. If you look at the emails there is one or two bits of language that are jargon used between professionals that suggest something to outsiders that is wrong."He went on: "In fact the only problem there has been is on some official restrictions on their ability to disseminate data otherwise they have behaved as researchers should."Dr Campbell, was invited to sit on the enquiry panel because of his expertise in the peer review process as editor of one of the world’s leading science journals.The journal has published some of the leading papers on climate change research, including those supporting the now famous "hockey stick" graph, the subject of intense criticism by climate sceptics."

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Campbell Resigns (Bishop Hill)
"Channel Four news here in the UK has just reported the Philip Campbell has stepped down from Sir Muir Russell's review because of the statements to Chinese radio that were reported here. This was undoubtedly the correct thing for him to do..."

Inside the Climate Bunker

Foreign Policy
"..Few stars have risen and fallen so quickly as Pachauri's, who has gone from being an international climate hero to subject of increasing ridicule at home and abroad. Pachauri, an economist and former railroad engineer from a small town in the Himalayan foothills of north India, assumed his position at the helm of the IPCC in 2002. At the time, he had the enthusiastic backing of the Bush administration, which had grown tired of fielding industry complaints about his predecessor Robert Watson and hoped (wrongly, it turned out) that Pachauri would prove less vocal in his calls for carbon-reduction efforts. "

H/T Climate Depot

If the science was less shonky, Jonathan, I’d have nothing to say

Andrew Bolt Herald Sun (Australia)

".....Four, Holmes list of warmist preachers is made up of people who are generally given a free run, unchallenged, in ABC studios, for instance, and often in Fairfax newsrooms and even on commercial TV. These people have indeed had the access to the mainstream media that I have, and rarely face the challenges and hostile scrutiny that is given to, say, Lord Monckton, by ABC shows such ... well, Media Watch. I mean, when did the ABC ever fact-check the error-prone serial exaggerator Al Gore, as it has repeatedly tried with Monckton? ......How, after such an overwhelming media dominance by warmists, could the public suddenly become so sceptical? It can’t just be me, essentially a Victorian journalist. It can’t be the report-both-side Australian, which isn’t a big seller out in voterland. And even Alan Jones doesn’t have the audience that ABC collective can muster....Surely it must have a lot to do with the weakness of the warmists’ science and the failure of their predictions so far to come to pass? That, I believe, is the real reason for the rise in scepticism. After all, it’s exactly this that’s given me so much material, and left the hordes so powerless to shout me down. "

Wednesday 10 February 2010

Snow breaks mid-Atlantic records

Yahoo/AP
"WASHINGTON – Worst winter ever? The second blizzard in less than a week buried the most populous stretch of the East Coast under nearly a foot of snow Wednesday, breaking records for the snowiest winter and demoralizing millions of people still trying to dig out from the previous storm. ....The previous records for snowiest winters were 62.5 inches in Baltimore in 1995-96, and 54.4 inches in Washington in 1898-99. As of Wednesday afternoon, Baltimore had 72.3 inches so far this winter and Reagan had 54.9."
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Weather is not Climate Roger Pielke
"Further, it is professionally irresponsible for scientists to claim that some observed weather is "consistent with" long-term predictions of climate change. Any and all weather fits this criteria. Similarly, any and all weather is also "consistent with" failing predictions of long-term climate change. The "consistent with" canard is purposely misleading."

Scientists say IPCC should be overhauled or scrapped

The Australian
"Writing today in the journal Nature, five US, British, German and Swiss climate scientists - all contributing or lead IPCC report authors - agreed a mechanism for assessing the facts and impacts of climate change was critical. ....According to Mike Hulme, from Britain's University of East Anglia, the structure and process of the IPCC has passed its sell-by date. "The IPCC is no longer fit for the purpose," he wrote in Nature.In Australia, Barry Brook, the director of climate change research at Adelaide University, agreed, saying: "I wouldn't be disturbed if there wasn't ever another IPCC report, provided we replaced it with something more timely, concise and relevant to policy makers," he said."

H/T WUWT