Sunday 28 February 2010

Senators to Propose Abandoning Cap-and-Trade

source: Washington Post
by: Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson

Three key senators are engaged in a radical behind-the-scenes overhaul of climate legislation, preparing to jettison the broad "cap-and-trade" approach that has defined the legislative debate for close to a decade.

The sharp change of direction demonstrates the extent to which the cap-and-trade strategy -- allowing facilities to buy and sell pollution credits in order to meet a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions -- has become political poison. In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), declared, "Cap-and-trade is dead."

Graham and Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) have worked for months to develop an alternative to cap-and-trade, which the House approved eight months ago. They plan to introduce legislation next month that would apply different carbon controls to individual sectors of the economy instead of setting a national target.


According to several sources familiar with the process, the lawmakers are looking at cutting the nation's greenhouse gas output by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry.

Power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would become more stringent over time; motor fuel may be subject to a carbon tax whose proceeds could help electrify the U.S. transportation sector; and industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for several years before it is phased in. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and would provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.

"This is a different bill," Lieberman said in an interview. "We haven't abandoned the market-based idea, but we're willing to negotiate with colleagues who have different ideas."

Many lawmakers and lobbyists say even a radically different climate bill would face big hurdles to passage, given conflicting corporate and consumer interests, regional divides and a crowded Senate calendar. Energy industry lobbyists have turned much of their attention to proposing numerous variations of more narrow energy legislation.

But President Obama has continued to push for broad legislation that he says would make the U.S. economy more efficient, slow climate change and fulfill U.S. pledges in international climate talks in December to cut the country's emissions by 17 percent by 2020. A U.S. failure to fulfill that commitment could undercut the determination of other nations to live up to their pledges.

Opponents of cap-and-trade, including GOP congressional leaders and some energy companies, have portrayed the House-passed bill as an energy tax in disguise that would hurt U.S. consumers and create a financial commodity that could be subject to manipulation. The measure also came under criticism because it gave away a large number of free allowances to coal users.

Environmental advocates, eager to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation before the November midterm elections, said the shift in strategy represents the best shot at getting something done this year.

"The Senate is understanding this is not a simple problem -- it's multiple problems, and it requires multiple solutions," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.

The change in policy, which might even include giving money raised through carbon pollution allowances directly back to consumers, a scheme known as "cap-and-dividend," could appeal to some wavering senators. Senior Obama administration officials have also been studying the cap-and-dividend approach. But it remains unclear whether that would be enough to produce the 60 votes proponents need, especially when the Senate has yet to finish work on health-care legislation and a jobs package.

Powerful business leaders have their own priorities. Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power, a heavily coal-based utility, said one much-discussed proposal for a cap-and-trade plan limited to utilities was "ridiculous" because it would place an unfair burden on coal-based utilities. He added that "cap-and-dividend would be equally inappropriate." He said it would take money from "mom in the Midwest and dividend it to Paris Hilton."

While Obama has continued to assert the need for any climate bill to raise the price of carbon-based fuels, the American Petroleum Institute has been running television ads during the Winter Olympics saying "Americans say no to raising energy taxes."

Even some moderate Republicans, seen as possible supporters of a new climate bill, remain opposed to the idea of putting a price on carbon, which Lieberman still calls "sine qua non," or an essential ingredient, of any such bill. Andy Fisher, a spokesman for Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), said the senator, who has opposed cap-and-trade and carbon taxes, could support pricing carbon "potentially at some point, but not at the moment."

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told Kerry this week that he and his colleagues need to produce a bill as soon as possible to have any chance of passage in 2010. Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman, said it is the majority leader's "hope to bring it up to the floor for a vote," adding, "But we've got a whole host of other things on our plate, and a Republican Party that's making it difficult for us to pass all but the most routine legislation."

Kerry said that although the package the three senators will unveil will not have 60 votes when it becomes public, he is confident that it will win over skeptical lawmakers.

"What people need to understand about this bill is this really is a jobs bill, an economic transformation for America, an energy independence bill and a health/pollution-reduction bill that has enormous benefits for the country," Kerry said.

Friday 26 February 2010

EPA Head: No Warming Since 1995 Doesn’t Mean Warming Isn’t Occurring

source: prisonplanet
by: Steve Watson

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson engaged in doublespeak of the highest degree today as she told reporters that no statistically significant increase in global temperatures since 1995 does not mean that there has not been human induced global warming.

“The science regarding climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming,” Jackson said, adding that the EPA needs more funding to ensure climate change legislation is passed.

Jackson was asked if she agreed with recent statements by Phil Jones, the lead scientist at the centre of the climategate scandal that there had been no statistically significant global warming for fifteen years.

Earlier this month, Jones reversed his stance and admitted there had been no recent temperature increase and that his data was “probably not as good as it should be”.


Jones also told the BBC that he does not think the debate on climate change is over.
The EPA’s Jackson stated: “I believe all the new information we have doesn’t lead to any different conclusion than what we reached in the Endangerment Finding,” referring to the agency’s classification of Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant.

“…climate is changing and that mankind is responsible in part for that change, and that we need to move aggressively.” Jackson added, alluding to cap and trade legislation.
“We need to move clean energy legislation,” Jackson said. “We need to move to addressing carbon and putting a price on carbon emissions.”



On Tuesday Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe called for a full criminal investigation into the climategate affair, issuing a staff report that included a request for the EPA to re-examine the classification of Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant.

“The EPA accepted the IPCC’s erroneous claims wholesale, without doing its own independent review,” Inhofe said about the EPA’s decision to rely on information from the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change.

“So EPA’s endangerment finding rests on bad science,” he added.

An overturning of the EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding would decimate moves by the Obama Administration to regulate carbon emissions and introduce carbon taxes.

Inhofe described the manipulation of climate science to support anthropogenic global warming theory part of “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation”.

Al Gore Is Lying Low - For Good Reason

source: American Thinker
by: Rex McBride

Maybe Al Gore's been advised by legal counsel to lie low. He may be the leader of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) movement, but he's not defending it in public, not even when it's falling apart and his new fortune is based upon it.

Mr. Gore and his financial backers earned millions of dollars in start-up "green" companies and carbon trading schemes. If the scam worked, he could've become the first "carbon billionaire."

"What goes up can fall down" applies to ill-gotten gains in the stock market or "carbon trading" schemes. In such schemes, it's foreseeable that trusting investors will (a) not only get hurt when the scam collapses, but they'll also (b) pursue legal remedies and sue him for fraud.

Mr. Gore's financial gains were based on the contradictory and error-plagued assertion that man's release of the trace gas CO2 will fry the planet.


Once it becomes clear to everyone that the AGW theory is based on cleverly manipulated data twisted by rigged computer models controlled by several dozen IPCC politicians/scientists, we can expect that investors who lose millions by investing in these companies will eventually haul Mr. Gore and the insider IPCC scientists into court.

Over the years, American tax dollars were poured down the fantasyland AGW "rat hole." Sooner or later, Al Gore needs to answer some hard questions. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for lawsuits from private investors. Today, legal counsel will advise him to remain silent.

It's impossible to predict how many lawsuits, or what kind, might arise once everyone realizes that the AGW scam dwarfs Bernie Madoff's $50-billion Ponzi operation. New studies appear almost daily that further undercut AGW theory. The biggest daily newspaper in the Netherlands vindicated that country's leading AGW critic in the article "Henk Tennekes -- He was right after all."

Dr. Tennekes was fired in the 1990s from a prominent research position and blacklisted for debunking AGW theory. He upset the same IPCC scientists who control the leading "peer review" climate research journals and who blocked the publication of all contrary research in those journals for decades.

As investors learn the extent of the scam, Mr. Gore's start-up "green" companies will lose considerable value, like flaky dot-com companies lacking a real product. Investors in these "green" companies -- who reasonably relied upon Gore's alarming claims -- may pursue several possible remedies:

- derivative shareholder lawsuits, disgorging from Mr. Gore and other senior officers in these companies any illicit gains from any insider trading that could be proven; and/or

- lawsuits against brokers who did not perform the SEC's necessary "due diligence" research before peddling those shares; and/or

- civil RICO lawsuits against Mr. Gore and any IPCC scientists who participated in blocking the publication of contrary research, cooking the data, all of whose annual income skyrocketed from the public hysteria.

On the state level, it's impossible to predict if one or more state attorney generals will look back on the tobacco industry cases and decide, representing the taxpayers of his or her state, to file criminal and/or civil RICO actions against Gore and the enriched IPCC scientists.

(On the federal level, while President Obama is in office, the Justice Department will not file RICO or SEC actions against their buddy Al Gore. Remember, the president originally hoped that Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade would generate over $600 billion in new corporate taxes -- "emergency" measures justified by fantasy AGW theory.

Remember the joke about the government taxing air? In the Twilight Zone of Boxer-Kerry, say hello to cap-and-trade.)

If Mr. Gore's "green" companies do crash and significantly injure private investors, attorneys in a civil lawsuit could compel Gore to answer questions like:

(1) When you claimed that "the science is settled," did you mean that it's "settled" that you and the IPCC scientists could make quick millions by manipulating the data and fomenting public hysteria?

(2) What does "peer review" mean if none of the IPCC scientists who controlled the academic journals protested that there was no original data to support your frightening claim of accelerated temperature increases after 1995?

(3) If the very scientists that the public trusted to act as the "check and balance" against careless research -- or worse yet, to protect against research fraud -- did not catch a "tiny" problem like not having original supporting data after 1995, does "peer review" mean that IPCC's scientists would secretly work in concert to cover each other's asses and keep the grants coming?

Such questions need answers.

In "The Dog Ate Global Warming", an article at the Cato Institute, Patrick J. Michaels noted that "[i]f there are no data, there's no science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the answer."

Obviously, Al Gore cannot be compelled to answer questions in a criminal court under the 5th Amendment. However, his admissible bank and stock portfolio records would prove his skyrocketing wealth, making him a "deep pocket."

Since 1970, the scope of RICO cases has grown far beyond prosecuting mafia operations. The law firm Nixon Peabody explained:

RICO was written in broad terms. To state a claim, a plaintiff must allege four elements: (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of racketeering activity... Each element of a RICO claim requires additional analysis: an "enterprise" is marked by association and control; a "pattern" requires a showing of "continuity" -- continuous and related behavior that amounts to, or poses a threat of, continued criminal violations; and "racketeering activity" involves the violation of designated federal laws ...

RICO lawsuits are now won in a wide variety of civil disputes -- e.g., insurance companies working in concert to delay/shortchange payments owed to dentists.

Other RICO cases resulted in court judgments against the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club, Catholic sex crimes, and Major League Baseball.

It violates federal law to fake taxpayer-funded research and then manipulate or destroy data to enrich oneself. If an insider group secretly conspires to do so, it looks and smells like RICO.

If more AGW-destroying news rolls in, and if Gore's "green" companies lose significant value, then shareholder derivative lawsuits and/or state RICO lawsuits will follow -- more so as the losses grow.

Mr. Gore is in hiding today -- no longer the "courageous" leader of the AGW movement. Apparently, Planet Earth is "no longer in grave danger" or "needing to be saved," but Gore could lose all of his ill-gotten assets.

If the victim list grows and criminal intent is proven, Mr. Gore could do serious time. After a much smaller scam, Bernie Madoff got 150 years.

What if you want answers about the potential misuse of tax dollars that enriched AGW insiders but didn't invest in one of Al Gore's fantasies?

Call Congress and demand that the GAO audit all climate change grants. GAO has the professional audit expertise to follow the money, gather objective facts, and report on any significant fraud or abuse.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Climate Scientists Withdraw Journal Claims of Rising Sea Levels

source: Guardian.co.uk
by: David Adam

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.















The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study "strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results". The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.

Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper's estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: "It's one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science." He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study's conclusion.

"Retraction is a regular part of the publication process," he said. "Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances."

Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007.

The paper – entitled "Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level change" – used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct how sea level has fluctuated with temperature since the peak of the last ice age, and to project how it would rise with warming over the next few decades.

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".

Monday 22 February 2010

Global Warming Meltdown: K.U.S.I News

source: kusi.com

Global Warming: Meltdown digs deeply into the strong differences of positions about global warming; It answers the negative responses by several key institutions to our first global warming telecast* in January.

The “Climategate” revelations that began in mid December have crescendoed into a series of almost daily embarrassments for the UN IPCC. This telecast covers as many of them as we can cram into an hour. The program can be viewed in segments. With the intro to each segment you will find links you may use to find more information on the topics covered. If this is the first time you are hearing about my efforts to debunk the bad science behind the global warming frenzy, you will find a wealth of information, videos and links to sites on the colemanscorner page of KUSI.com/weather/.

Part 1 of 9


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6


Part 7


Part 8


Part 9

Thursday 18 February 2010

Science vs Alarmism

source: newswithviews
by: Tom DeWeese










4th International Conference on Climate Change

It has been an amazing year, watching the once-powerful global warming movement virtually collapse into scandal and disrepute as the “climategate” revelations of data tampering continue to grow.

I have written many times on these pages that “there is no man-made global warming.” The powerful global warming lobby has attacked its opponents of “cooler heads” scientists who have demanded facts rather than political agendas. The Global Warming alarmists have blocked grants from being given to researchers that dispute their findings that the earth is being destroyed by human civilization. They have intimidated science publications that dare print opposing reports. They have even called for “Nureumberg-style show trials for anyone who dares disagree with them.


And so it was for almost two decades. However, just a couple of years ago a group of courageous scientists were given the opportunity to have their say, in opposition to the alarmists strong-arm tactics. First through congressional hearings chaired by U.S. Senate Environment Committee Chairman James Inhofe. Those hearings were the first time the Global Warming “skeptics” were given a public voice. The results were astounding. Cracks began to surface in the once mighty global warming juggernaut.

Then the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank sponsored the first ever Climate Change conference featuring the “skeptics” viewpoint. More than 700 of them gathered in New York City to tell the world of their findings that clearly disputed the claims of global warming. That conference and the Senate hearings started a lively debate between the two sides. No longer could the acolytes of Al Gore claim consensus. Far from it. In a short time the tide began to turn. Global warming was losing its stranglehold on policy. Legislation like Cap and Trade, once considered unstoppable, was suddenly derailed.

Then came the December, 2009 Climategate scandal. On the eve of the most important International Climate Change conference in history, in which the final provisions for world-wide environmental restrictions were to be imposed on every nation in the world, scandal erupted. Ten years worth of e-mail correspondence among the leading Climate Change proponents revealed devastating details of manipulation of research data for the purpose of supporting a cynical political agenda based on global warming propaganda. The e-mails, in fact, revealed precisely what the “skeptics” had been claiming all along, that climate change had very little to do with environmental protection – and everything to do with the creation of a new global economic system intent on wealth redistribution. And the climate change walls came tumbling down.

Now, in May, 2010, in Chicago, the Heartland Institute is going to hold its 4th International Climate Change Conference – the first since the Climategate scandal was revealed. This event may well be the final nail in global warming’s coffin.

You can be there to witness history. The American Policy Center and the DeWeese Report are proud to be co-sponsors of this historic event. And I invite you to join me at this incredible event. Mingle and meet with more than 900 scientists and policy makers who have stood up to the global warming alarmists.

You will not want to miss the address by Lord Christopher Monckton, the man who has challenged Al Gore to a debate on the issue, a “anywhere, anytime.” And you will hear from scientists like Dr. Fred Singer and Dr. Patrick Michaels, who have fought right from the beginning against the lies of the global warming alarmists. The speaker lists includes more than 70 scientists, economists and policy experts, including two former astronauts.

U.N. Climate Chief Resigns

source: New York Times
by: John M Broder

WASHINGTON — Yvo de Boer, the stolid Dutch bureaucrat who led the international climate change negotiations over four tumultuous years, is resigning his post as of July 1, the United Nations said on Thursday.
















In a statement announcing his departure, Mr. de Boer expressed disappointment that the December climate change conference of nearly 200 nations in Copenhagen had failed to produce an enforceable agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that climate scientists say are contributing to the warming of the planet.

He also said that governmental negotiations could provide a framework for action on climate, but that the solutions must come from the businesses that produce and consume the fuels that add to global warming.

“Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming,” said Mr. de Boer, whose formal title is executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “This calls for new partnerships with the business sector, and I now have the chance to help make this happen.”

Mr. de Boer, 55, will join the consulting group KPMG as global adviser on climate and sustainability and will also work in academia, his office said.

Those who worked with Mr. de Boer were not completely surprised by his resignation. He was known to be exhausted and frustrated by the task of trying to bring together developed and developing nations with widely divergent interests to address a global problem that he believed threatened the planet’s health. But the timing was somewhat unexpected.

Mr. de Boer will be leaving his post a few months before nations meet again under United Nations auspices in Cancún, Mexico, to try to move toward an enforceable global climate treaty.

The Copenhagen conference left all the parties frustrated, and none more so than Mr. de Boer, who had traveled incessantly for four years trying to prod nations to produce a treaty by the end of 2009. In an interview with The Associated Press in Amsterdam on Thursday, he said that the high point of his tenure was the agreement in Bali at the end of 2007 under which nations agreed to a December 2009 deadline to produce a worldwide treaty on global warming.

That treaty was to have been signed at Copenhagen, which produced instead a much weaker political agreement after nearly two weeks of bitter and largely fruitless argument.

Mr. de Boer highlighted the concrete achievements of the Copenhagen meeting, a statement by the parties that global temperatures should rise no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pledges by nearly 100 nations to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

“Countries responsible for 80 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions have submitted national plans and targets to address the climate change,” he said. “This underlines their commitment to meet the challenge of climate change and work toward an agreed outcome in Cancun.”

Before joining the United Nations climate secretariat, Mr. de Boer was deputy director general of the Dutch environment ministry, vice chairman of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and an adviser to the World Bank and the Chinese government.

His successor is expected to be named in the next few months.

Wednesday 17 February 2010

Latest List of the Global Warming Cult’s Lies

source: Bobs Bites
by: Robert D

Finally, a list of the latest lies from the Global warming cult. The wheels continue to come off the “Climate Change” bus.

ClimateGate – This scandal began the latest round of revelations when thousands of leaked documents from Britain’s East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics’ views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming. Why do such a thing if, as global warming defenders contend, the “science is settled?”

FOIGate – The British government has since determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests. The CRU is one of three international agencies compiling global temperature data. If their stuff’s so solid, why the secrecy?

ChinaGate – An investigation by the U.K.’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn’t be located. “Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?” the paper asked. The paper’s investigation also couldn’t find corroboration of what Chinese scientists turned over to American scientists, leaving unanswered, “how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?” The Guardian contends that researchers covered up the missing data for years.


HimalayaGate – An Indian climate official admitted in January that, as lead author of the IPCC’s Asian report, he intentionally exaggerated when claiming Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 in order to prod governments into action. This fraudulent claim was not based on scientific research or peer-reviewed. Instead it was originally advanced by a researcher, since hired by a global warming research organization, who later admitted it was “speculation” lifted from a popular magazine. This political, not scientific, motivation at least got some researcher funded.

PachauriGate – Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman who accepted with Al Gore the Nobel Prize for scaring people witless, at first defended the Himalaya melting scenario. Critics, he said, practiced “voodoo science.” After the melting-scam perpetrator ‘fessed up, Pachauri admitted to making a mistake. But, he insisted, we still should trust him.

PachauriGate II – Pachauri also claimed he didn’t know before the 192-nation climate summit meeting in Copenhagen in December that the bogus Himalayan glacier claim was sheer speculation. But the London Times reported that a prominent science journalist said he had pointed out those errors in several e-mails and discussions to Pachauri, who “decided to overlook it.” Stonewalling? Cover up? Pachauri says he was “preoccupied.” Well, no sense spoiling the Copenhagen party, where countries like Pachauri’s India hoped to wrench billions from countries like the United States to combat global warming’s melting glaciers. Now there are calls for Pachauri’s resignation.

SternGate – One excuse for imposing worldwide climate crackdown has been the U.K.’s 2006 Stern Report, an economic doomsday prediction commissioned by the government. Now the U.K. Telegraph reports that quietly after publication “some of these predictions had been watered down because the scientific evidence on which they were based could not be verified.” Among original claims now deleted were that northwest Australia has had stronger typhoons in recent decades, and that southern Australia lost rainfall because of rising ocean temperatures. Exaggerated claims get headlines. Later, news reporters disclose the truth. Why is that?

SternGate II – A researcher now claims the Stern Report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and more-frequent and severe floods and hurricanes. Robert Muir-Wood said his original research showed no such link. He accused Stern of “going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence.” We’re shocked.

AmazonGate – The London Times exposed another shocker: the IPCC claim that global warming will wipe out rain forests was fraudulent, yet advanced as “peer-reveiwed” science. The Times said the assertion actually “was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise,” “authored by two green activists” and lifted from a report from the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group. The “research” was based on a popular science magazine report that didn’t bother to assess rainfall. Instead, it looked at the impact of logging and burning. The original report suggested “up to 40 percent” of Brazilian rain forest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall, but the IPCC expanded that to cover the entire Amazon, the Times reported.

PeerReviewGate – The U.K. Sunday Telegraph has documented at least 16 nonpeer-reviewed reports (so far) from the advocacy group World Wildlife Fund that were used in the IPCC’s climate change bible, which calls for capping manmade greenhouse gases.

RussiaGate – Even when global warming alarmists base claims on scientific measurements, they’ve often had their finger on the scale. Russian think tank investigators evaluated thousands of documents and e-mails leaked from the East Anglia research center and concluded readings from the coldest regions of their nation had been omitted, driving average temperatures up about half a degree.

Russia-Gate II – Speaking of Russia, a presentation last October to the Geological Society of America showed how tree-ring data from Russia indicated cooling after 1961, but was deceptively truncated and only artfully discussed in IPCC publications. Well, at least the tree-ring data made it into the IPCC report, albeit disguised and misrepresented.

U.S.Gate – If Brits can’t be trusted, are Yanks more reliable? The U.S. National Climate Data Center has been manipulating weather data too, say computer expert E. Michael Smith and meteorologist Joesph D’Aleo. Forty years ago there were 6,000 surface-temperature measuring stations, but only 1,500 by 1990, which coincides with what global warming alarmists say was a record temperature increase. Most of the deleted stations were in colder regions, just as in the Russian case, resulting in misleading higher average temperatures.

IceGate – Hardly a continent has escaped global warming skewing. The IPCC based its findings of reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and in Africa on a feature story of climbers’ anecdotes in a popular mountaineering magazine, and a dissertation by a Switzerland university student, quoting mountain guides. Peer-reviewed? Hype? Worse?

ResearchGate – The global warming camp is reeling so much lately it must have seemed like a major victory when a Penn State University inquiry into climate scientist Michael Mann found no misconduct regarding three accusations of climate research impropriety. But the university did find “further investigation is warranted” to determine whether Mann engaged in actions that “seriously deviated from accepted practices for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” Being investigated for only one fraud is a global warming victory these days.

ReefGate – Let’s not forget the alleged link between climate change and coral reef degradation. The IPCC cited not peer-reviewed literature, but advocacy articles by Greenpeace, the publicity-hungry advocacy group, as its sole source for this claim.

AfricaGate – The IPCC claim that rising temperatures could cut in half agricultural yields in African countries turns out to have come from a 2003 paper published by a Canadian environmental think tank – not a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

DutchGate – The IPCC also claimed rising sea levels endanger the 55 percent of the Netherlands it says is below sea level. The portion of the Netherlands below sea level actually is 20 percent. The Dutch environment minister said she will no longer tolerate climate researchers’ errors.

AlaskaGate – Geologists for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography and their U.S. and Canadian colleagues say previous studies largely overestimated by 40 percent Alaskan glacier loss for 40 years. This flawed data are fed into those computers to predict future warming.

Monday 15 February 2010

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

source: dailymail.co.uk
by: Jonathan Petre

  • 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

Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.


The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

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

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

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.


But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not. 

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not.

The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

Friday 12 February 2010

NASA Launches Satellite to Watch for Solar Storms

source: Reuters
by: Jane Sutton

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb 11 (Reuters) - NASA launched a science satellite on Thursday to keep a close watch on the sun and help improve forecasts of the solar storms that can disrupt navigational signals, satellites and power grids.


The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, lifted off aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket, made by United Launch Alliance, at 10:23 a.m. EST (1523 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, following a one-day delay due to poor weather.

The alliance is a joint venture between Boeing Co (BA.N) and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N).

From an orbital perch 22,300 miles (35,680 km) above Earth, the solar observatory is to spend the next five to 10 years watching the sun, relaying extremely high-resolution data and live imagery.

With no onboard recorders, NASA is expecting about 1.5 terabytes of data daily from SDO, enough to fill one compact disc about every 36 seconds.

"SDO is going to send us images 10 times better than high definition," project scientist Dean Pesnell said. "The pixel count is comparable to an IMAX movie -- an IMAX filled with the raging sun, 24 hours a day."

Solar physicists expect to use the information to improve predictions of solar flares and geomagnetic storms, which can disrupt GPS navigational signals, disable satellites and knock out power grids. Space weather also affects airlines, which have to reroute flights over Earth's poles due to radio interference.

"Two or three days' lead time can make the difference between safeguarding the advanced technologies we depend on every day and the catastrophic loss of these capabilities and trillions of dollars in disrupted commerce," Thomas Bogdan, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement.

"The goal is to develop a real physical understanding of what goes on so we can make more sophisticated predictions," added Alan Title, lead scientist for one of SDO's three instruments.

NASA, which is spending about $858 million on the mission, also plans to use SDO's data in an iPhone application called "3D Sun" which will display continuous three-dimensional views of the sun.

Thursday 11 February 2010

Australiagate: Now NASA Caught in Trick Over Aussie Climate Data

source: Prison Planet
by: John O'Sullivan

In this article we look at the findings of two independent climate researchers who analyse climatic data used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to show warming of two degrees per century for Australia without explanation. We find that an earlier study by Willis Eschenbach in an article on What’s up with That (WUWT) is wholly substantiated by Kens Kingdom’slatest analysis of Ken Stewart at his ‘kenskingdom’ blog. As a consequence, absent any other justification from NASA, we must conclude that the NASA data has been fraudulently cooked.

GISS, based at Columbia University in New York City, has adjusted over a century’s worth of temperature records from the vast Queensland State (the Sunshine State) to reverse a cooling trend in one ground weather station and increase a warming trend in another to skew the overall data set.
Independent analysis by Aussie blogger Ken Stewart exposes a deplorable smoking gun of cynical manipulation of raw temperature data.

The process of adjusting raw data to create a “homogenised” final global temperature chart is standard practice by climatologists whose work is relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and world governments. This homogenisation process of temperature data has fallen into disrepute since the Climategate scandal where scientists were proven to have unlawfully used a “trick” to fake climate data and then destroyed their calculations rendering it impossible for independent auditors to examine and justify the methodologies used.

Ken Stewart has his own take on these latest findings from Down Under: “Wow- when they adjust, they don’t muck around!”

GISS combines GHCN data from all urban stations applying the same inexplicable two degree temperature increase as shown below to reveal the shocking disparity between ‘raw’ data and the ‘cooked’ GISS data:

Ken proves that the GISS homogenised older data to make the climate appear cooler a hundred years ago and then ramped up modern data to artificially make recent years appear warmer. Thus climate scientists have artificially created a steep trend line to falsely give an impression of a 2 degrees rise in Australian temperatures over a 100 year period. Ken found that if climatologists had stuck to the raw data the trendline would have been as low as 0.2 degrees per 100 years – thus the overall temperature rise has been magnified by a factor of ten for no apparent reason other than to cause alarm.

Ken explains how he undertook his research,
I decided to have a look at the temperature records of the weather stations closest to where I live, near Mackay in North Queensland. The Bureau of Meteorology lists 3 current stations: Mackay MO, Mackay Aero, and Te Kowai Exp Station, plus the closed station Mackay Post Office. GISS has a list of nearby stations… Te Kowai is an experimental farm for developing new varieties of sugar cane, run by scientists and technicians since 1889. It has a temperature record of over 100 years with only a couple of gaps. So in fact it’s an ideal rural station for referencing a nearby urban station, as it should have a similar climate.

Ken found that the “Mackay Sugar Mill Station” was far hotter in the 1920’s and 30’s but GISS “disappeared” this data. However, if we add the warming period back in we find that the warming trend almost disappears to become less then 0.2 degrees per 100 years!

Ken concludes, “How can GISS justify their manipulation of the data, which they claim not to do?”

Upon closer examination of GISS methodology it appears that accidentally on purpose they used a “trick” whereby they turned “Mackay Sugar Mill Station” into a small town rather than a rural station even though it’s been nothing much more than cane fields for the last 130 years. There are different procedures applied to homogenising data between urban and rural weather stations.

I have examined Ken’s findings and can concur with him that there exists inexplicable anomalies that, without exception, appear concocted (homogenized) to create a warming trend when no evidence in changes in the local environmental conditions warrants any such manipulation. Moreover, GISS does not publish any explanations of why they chose to make cooler those temperatures in the first 40 years of their sample and then ramp up the temperatures for recent years. Absent any explanation from them, we may draw our own conclusions that the GISS lowered the older temperature records and raised the temperatures of recent years to create a fictitiously steeper homogenised warming slope to fit a pre-conceived warmist agenda.

Ken says this is fraud, “And it’s happening in my own backyard! I’m furious!”

This finding, when compared to those from other independent observers shows further attempts by government and government-funded agencies to fraudulent create a man made warming signal in Australia from natural events and data.

Ken’s findings tie in really well with the anomaly exposed by WUWT where Willis Eschenbach found similar dodgy data for Darwin, in the Northern Territory ( a vast Aussie state of 1,349,129 square kilometres (520,902 sq mi):
Here is Eschenbach’s comment on the data about Darwin:
YIKES! Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century … when those guys “adjust”, they don’t mess around. And the adjustment is an odd shape, with the adjustment first going stepwise, then climbing roughly to stop at 2.4C.

The similarities in degree and extent of fakery found separately by Eschenbach and Stewart proves a consistent fraudulent objective: make older temperatures appear artificially cooler and exagerrate recent temperature data.

Climategate.com has built up a close affinity with Australian skeptics who have worked tirelessly to expose the climate scam still being brainlessly plugged by Aussie Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Further similar contributions submitted to us for publication are most welcome. We intend to continue to expose such fraud relying on the technical and analytical skills of gifted amateur bloggers to fully expose the greatest scam in the history of science. Our aim is to bring forth criminal and civil proceedings against all those involved.