Increase in Arctic Ice Confounds Doomsayers

source: daily mail

"But Does Not Spell The End of Global Warming, Scientists Warn"

The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic dramatically increased last month, reaching levels not seen at this time of year for nearly a decade.

Returning ice - after years of declining cover - has astonished climate scientists who blamed unusually cold weather over the Bering Sea.

Researchers said they recorded the most ice in March since 2001 - and that the cover is approaching long-term average levels for the first time in ten years.

The scientists who released the data stressed that last month's rise was part of yearly variations in ice cover and could not be taken as a sign that global warming is coming to an end.

But sceptics argued that the findings undermined 'alarmist' claims that the North Pole could be free of summer ice by 2013.

The unusual trend last month is revealed in figures published by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

In a typical year, Arctic ice cover peaks in mid-March and starts to fall as milder weather arrives.

But this year, levels continued to grow in the second half of March. Dr Mark Serreze, of the NSlDC, said parts of the Arctic were going through an unusually cold spring - but that other areas were warmer than normal.

He added: 'What this doesn't show is any indication that global warming is over. If you look at the Arctic as a whole we might get to average amounts of sea ice for the time of year. But the ice is thin and quite vulnerable and it can melt very quickly.'

The best measure of the health of the Arctic was not only the amount of cover, but also the thickness of ice, he said.

But Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think-tank, said: 'The recent observations make the 2007 projections that the region would be ice free by 2013 look very unrealistic.'

Please, Not Another Copenhagen

source: Guardian
by: John Sauven

Gordon Brown is part of the UN advisory group that must agree to find the $150bn a year needed to combat climate change

Today (31st March), the high-level advisory group on climate change financing will meet for the first time in London. The group will be chaired by Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, and will include many finance ministers as well as independent financial experts like Lord Nicholas Stern and George Soros.

This gathering of financial "wizards" has been asked identify new ways to raise the money needed to protect all of us from the risks of dangerous climate change. Conservative estimates put this requirement at around $150bn (£100bn) a year by 2020. The figure seems high, but represents just a fraction of the world's annual spending on military budgets, which today tops $1.2tn. It is no longer far-fetched to suggest that reducing climate risk is every bit as necessary as more conventional methods of protecting national interests.

Investment at this scale would help secure a future for our last remaining tropical forests, home to the majority of the world's species and critical to maintaining regional rainfall patterns upon which whole economies depend. It would also allow poorer countries to develop clean technology, improving energy access, creating new markets and spurring innovation.

Finally, it would enable vulnerable communities to adapt to changes in their environment, reducing the risks of famine, mass migration and armed conflict.

The prime minister and his guests will not be short of options to consider. Financial transaction taxes are capable of raising several hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Capping pollution from international shipping and aviation could also generate tens of billions, as could the use of IMF special drawing rights. Any one of these approaches would provide reliable funding, with minimal impacts on ordinary people and national treasuries.

Yet during last year's UN climate negotiations, each of these solutions was rejected by one or more national governments. For some, the excuse was a distrust of "international taxes" – the United States, for example, has already signalled its rejection of an international financial transaction tax. For others, the issue was sectoral and focused on national interests. The Chinese government continues to insist on rejecting any cap and trade scheme for international shipping on the grounds that limits on this massive industry would infringe its development rights.

This kind of approach contributed to the unsightly diplomatic squabble for which Copenhagen will be remembered. The task for the advisory group is to live up to its name, and transcend such stale posturing. Without new sources of money which operate "off-balance sheet", there is no chance of raising the money we need to tackle climate change, and without this money there is no chance of a global deal. Any leader who claims to want such an agreement should therefore now be judged on how easy — or difficult — they make it for the advisory group to say "yes".

• This article was amended at 14:32 on 31 March 2010. In the editing process a mathematical error was introduced into sentence "The figure seems high, but represents just a fraction of the world's annual spending on military budgets, which today tops $1.2tn", calling this fraction "a thousandth". This mistake, which was not the author's, has now been corrected

Climategate University Condemned For 'Unacceptable Culture of Secrecy'

source: Daily Mail
by: David Derbyshire

The university at the heart of the Climategate e-mail row had an 'unacceptable' culture of secrecy and may have broken Freedom of Information laws, MPs will say today.

An official inquiry into the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia calls for greater openness from global warming scientists about their research and data.

But it cleared researchers at the university's Climatic Research Unit of wrongdoing and said there was no evidence they manipulated data to strengthen a case for man-made global warming.

The inquiry was launched after the Daily Mail revealed in November how hundreds of emails sent from CRU researchers showed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests, and appeared to show researchers discussing how to manipulate data.

MP Phil Willis, chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, blamed university bosses for encouraging 'a reprehensible culture of withholding information'.

However, the report said the focus on the CRU and its director, Professor Phil Jones was 'largely misplaced'.

MPs said: 'We can sympathise with Professor Jones, who must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew - or perceived - were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.'

But Mr Willis said: 'In reality, that's no excuse. If people want that information for whatever motive, provided it is a scientific motive, it's important in terms of confidence to make that available.'

Dr Benny Peiser, of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'The report is clearly biased and far too kind to Professor Phil Jones.'

The report said climate scientists must in future publish all their raw data and methods to ensure the research is 'irreproachable'.

Much of the criticism of CRU by sceptics has focused on an email in which Prof Jones talks about using a 'trick' to 'hide the decline' in temperature records sourced from tree ring data in the 1960s.

But the MPs said the phrases were colloquialisms and did not represent a systematic attempt to mislead.

The report also said that Prof Jones' actions in not releasing data and his methods for drawing conclusions were in line with those of other climate scientists - but that those practices needed to change.

'Climate change is a matter of global importance,' Mr Willis said.

'Governments are spending trillions of pounds on mitigating global warming and the quality of the science has to be irreproachable.'

The MPs said much of the responsibility for failing to disclose information in response to FoI requests lay with the University of East Anglia, rather than its small Climatic Research Unit.

They said the inquiry had found 'prima facie' evidence that UEA supported the culture at CRU of not disclosing information, and of instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure.

Mr Willis said UEA should have challenged what was going on at CRU, 'rather than work with them to deny these people information'.

And the MPs called for further investigation of whether the Freedom of Information Act had been breached, following indications from the Information Commissioner that it may have been, but that the time limit for a prosecution had been exceeded.

NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits

source: fox news
by: Blake Snow

NASA was able to put a man on the moon, but the space agency can't tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA's temperature records are in even worse shape than the besmirched Climate-gate data.

E-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) -- the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails -- and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center.

The e-mails from 2007 reveal that when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA's data "was more accurate" than other climate-change data sets, NASA's Dr. Reto A. Ruedy replied with an unequivocal no. He said "the National Climatic Data Center's procedure of only using the best stations is more accurate," admitting that some of his own procedures led to less accurate readings.

"My recommendation to you is to continue using NCDC's data for the U.S. means and [East Anglia] data for the global means," Ruedy told the reporter.

"NASA's temperature data is worse than the Climate-gate temperature data. According to NASA," wrote Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who uncovered the e-mails. Horner is skeptical of NCDC's data as well, stating plainly: "Three out of the four temperature data sets stink."

Global warming critics call this a crucial blow to advocates' arguments that minor flaws in the "Climate-gate" data are unimportant, since all the major data sets arrive at the same conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer. But there's a good reason for that, the skeptics say: They all use the same data.

"There is far too much overlap among the surface temperature data sets to assert with a straight face that they independently verify each other's results," says James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at The Heartland Institute.

"The different groups have cooperated in a very friendly way to try to understand different conclusions when they arise," said Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the same 2007 e-mail thread. Earlier this month, in an updated analysis of the surface temperature data, GISS restated that the separate analyses by the different agencies "are not independent, as they must use much of the same input observations."

Neither NASA nor NOAA responded to requests for comment. But Dr. Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at Weather Underground, still believes the validity of data from NASA, NOAA and East Anglia would be in jeopardy only if the comparative analysis didn't match. "I see no reason to question the integrity of the raw data," he says. "Since the three organizations are all using mostly the same raw data, collected by the official weather agency of each individual country, the only issue here is whether the corrections done to the raw data were done correctly by CRU."

Corrections are needed, Masters says, "since there are only a few thousand surface temperature recording sites with records going back 100+ years." As such, climate agencies estimate temperatures in various ways for areas where there aren't any thermometers, to account for the overall incomplete global picture.

"It would be nice if we had more global stations to enable the groups to do independent estimates using completely different raw data, but we don't have that luxury," Masters adds. "All three groups came up with very similar global temperature trends using mostly the same raw data but independent corrections. This should give us confidence that the three groups are probably doing reasonable corrections, given that the three final data sets match pretty well."

But NASA is somewhat less confident, having quietly decided to tweak its corrections to the climate data earlier this month.

In an updated analysis of the surface temperature data released on March 19, NASA adjusted the raw temperature station data to account for inaccurate readings caused by heat-absorbing paved surfaces and buildings in a slightly different way. NASA determines which stations are urban with nighttime satellite photos, looking for stations near light sources as seen from space.

Of course, this doesn't solve problems with NASA's data, as the newest paper admits: "Much higher resolution would be needed to check for local problems with the placement of thermometers relative to possible building obstructions," a problem repeatedly underscored by meteorologist Anthony Watts on his SurfaceStations.org Web site. Last month, Watts told FoxNews.com that "90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."

Still, "confidence" is not the same as scientific law, something the public obviously recognizes. According to a December survey, only 25 percent of Americans believed there was agreement within the scientific community on climate change. And unless things fundamentally change, it could remain that way, said Taylor.

"Until surface temperature data sets are truly independent of one another and are entrusted to scientists whose objectivity is beyond question, the satellite temperature record alone will not have any credibility," he said.

Now it's CowGate: expert report says claims of livestock causing global warming are false

source: telegraph.co.uk
by: Gerald Warner

It is becoming difficult to keep pace with the speed at which the global warming scam is now unravelling. The latest reversal of scientific “consensus” is on livestock and the meat trade as a major cause of global warming – one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to eco-vegetarian cranks. Now a scientific report delivered to the American Chemical Society says it is nonsense. The Washington Times has called it “Cowgate”.

The cow-burp hysteria reached a crescendo in 2006 when a United Nations report ominously entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” claimed: “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport.” This led to demands in America for a “cow tax” and a campaign in Europe at the time of the Copenhagen car crash last December called Less Meat=Less Heat.

Now a report to the American Chemical Society by Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert at the University of California at Davis, has denounced such scare-mongering as “scientifically inaccurate”. He reveals that the UN report lumped together digestive emissions from livestock, gases produced by growing animal feed and meat and milk processing, to get the highest possible result, whereas the traffic comparison only covered fossil fuel emissions from cars. The true ratio, he concludes, is just 3 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in America are attributable to rearing of cattle and pigs, compared with 26 per cent from transport.

Mitloehner also makes the deadly serious point: “Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries.” Precisely. The demonising of cows and pigs is just another example of global warmists’ callous indifference to starvation in the developing world, as in the case of the unbelievably immoral and reckless drive for biofuels – pouring Third World resources for subsistence into Western liberals’ fuel tanks – and, notoriously, carbon trading.

Week by week the AGW collapse intensifies. Himalayan glaciers, polar bears, Arctic ice, Amazon rainforests, all discredited. Now it turns out the great cow-burp scare is bovine excrement too. The global warming scam is, to the majority of people, an object of derision. The scientific community has also at last wakened up. They are smelling the coffee in more and more institutions these days.

This week the Science Museum in London announced it is revising its stance so that its Climate Change Gallery will now be renamed the Climate Science Gallery, to reflect its new position of neutrality in the climate debate. Chris Rapley, the director, said the museum was taking a different approach after observing how the debate had been affected by leaked e-mails and overstatements of the dangers of global warming. He said: “We have come to realise, given the way this subject has become so polarised over the past three to four months, that we need to be respectful and welcoming of all views on it.”

When did you ever hear that sort of thing before? But that is fair enough: neutrality, a level playing field and an equal voice is all global warming sceptics have ever asked for. Given those reasonable conditions, the truth will out and we will win. The signs are that a lot of scientists have been moved to assert their integrity, encouraged by the increasingly huge breaches sceptics have made in the defences of the AGW camp. Others may simply have calculated they may have backed a loser and it is time to take out some insurance.

Whatever the case, it is a different world now in the war against the AGW scam. Zac Goldsmith, warmist fanatic and Tory candidate, is telling environmentalists that green issues are vote losers. He should tell Dave that and stop him making an even bigger fool of himself. We are experiencing a tipping point in the climate war and the advantage is slowly but irresistibly moving towards the sceptics.

Russia's Top Weatherman's Blow to Climate Change Lobby as he Says Winter in Siberia May be COLDEST on Record

source: dailymail.co.uk
by: Will Stewart

In a new blow to the climate change lobby, Russia's top weatherman today announced that the winter now drawing to a close in Siberia may turn out to be the coldest on record.

'The winter of 2009-10 was one of the most severe in European part of Russia for more than 30 years, and in Siberia it was perhaps the record breaking coldest ever,' said Dr Alexander Frolov, head of state meteorological service Rosgidromet.

Statistics are still being analysed in detail, but it is known that in western Siberia the mean temperature was minus 23.2C, with more colder days than in previous years.

Some 63 days were colder than minus 25C and 39 days below minus 30C.

For this part of Siberia, this represents the coldest conditions in 40 years and the second harshest winter in 110 years.

Equivalent statistics for colder eastern Siberia have not been issued yet.

The coldest recorded temperature in the recent winter is believed to have been minus 57.4C degrees in Oymyakon on 20 January.

The remote town in eastern Siberia is the coldest inhabited community in the world.

'When we say that this winter in Siberia was record breaking, we are aware that temperatures on some days of other years may have gone lower, but in the most recent winter the substantial cold was staying longer than usual and over larger regions than usual,' said Dmitry Kiktev, deputy head of Rosgidromet.

'There were periods of so-called "monotonous cold" when the weather was less diverse, and the cold remained strong and stable to record levels.'

Mr Frolov also offered bad news for Russians hoping for a speedy respite from the long winter.

'We can officially say that beginning of the spring in Russia is postponed for another seven to 10 days,' he warned.

The Urals and Siberia would continue to face 'winter-like temperatures' well into April, while European Russia would be below average, he said.

Climate change adherents say the planet is warming due to man-made factors but Russian expert Professor Arkady Tishkov said yesterday that Siberia and the world are in fact getting colder.

'From a scientific point of view, talk about increasing average temperatures on earth of several degrees are absurd,' he said.

'Of course we can't say that global warming is a myth and falsification. In many regions of planet the temperature is higher than expected because of human impact.

'But the climate system of the planet is changing according to different cycles - from several years to thousand of years.

'From the scientific point of view, in terms of large scale climate cycles, we are in a period of cooling.

'The last three years of low temperatures in Siberia, the Arctic and number of Russia mountainous regions prove that, as does the recovery of ice in the Arctic Ocean and the absence of warming signs in Siberia.'

Mr Tishkov, deputy head of the Geography Institute at Russian Academy of Science, said: 'What we have been watching recently is comparatively fast changes of climate to warming, but within the framework of an overall long-term period of cooling. This is a proven scientific fact.

'The recent warming - and we are talking tenths of a degree at most - is caused by human activity, like forest elimination, the changing of landscapes.

'The greenhouse gases so much discussed now do not in fact play big role. We have to remember that all the impact of industrial enterprises in Russia cannot be compared with one volcano eruption on our planet.'

On the latest Siberian statistics, Mr Kiktev said: 'This winter does not prove that global warming is a myth, just as recent warm winters do not prove it does exist.

'These are just small peaks in the climate process. What they show, if anything, we will be able to judge in tens of years from now.'

UN Admits Flaw in Report on Meat and Climate Change

source: Telegraph
by: Alastair Jamieson

The UN has admitted a report linking livestock to global warming exaggerated the impact of eating meat on climate change.

Dr Frank Mitloehner said the UN comparison between meat farming and transport emissions was 'lopsided'
Photo: STEPHEN LOCK

A 2006 study, Livestock’s Long Shadow, claimed meat production was responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions – more than transport.

Its conclusions were heralded by campaigners urging consumers to eat less meat to save the planet. Among those calling for a reduction in global meat consumption is Sir Paul McCartney.

However, one of the authors of the report has admitted an American scientist has identified a flaw in its comparison with the impact of transport emissions.

Dr Frank Mitloehner, from the University of California at Davis (UCD), said meat and milk production generates less greenhouse gas than most environmentalists claim and that the emissions figures were calculated differently to the transport figures, resulting in an “apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue”.

The meat figure had been reached by adding all greenhouse-gas emissions associated with meat production, including fertiliser production, land clearance, methane emissions and vehicle use on farms, whereas the transport figure had only included the burning of fossil fuels.

Pierre Gerber, a policy officer with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, told the BBC he accepted Dr Mitloehner's criticism.

"I must say honestly that he has a point – we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn't do the same thing with transport," he said.

"But on the rest of the report, I don't think it was really challenged."

He said a more comprehensive analysis of emissions from food production was being produced and should be available by the end of the year.

Dr Mitloehner told a meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco that producing less meat and milk would only result in “more hunger in poor countries” and that efforts should be focused on “smarter farming, not less farming”.

Earlier this year, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change apologised after wrongly claiming the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years.