Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reprosduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail web site, is Norman Spector’s analysis of the first day of the current, preliminary climate change conference:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/spector-vision/climate-change-crack-up/article1296813/

Climate change crack-up?

Norman Spector

As world leaders gather to discuss climate change at the United Nations and the G20, the Europeans have begun to finger the United States as the bad guy. Noting that the Americans have been refusing to sign up to internationally binding carbon emission targets, EU officials are also unhappy that Congress is unlikely to enact legislation in time for December’s Copenhagen conference.

In what should be seen as a concerted effort to up the pressure on President Barack Obama, the Europeans are now pointing to China as the good guy, and are heavily promoting the new measures it is about to announce. And, not-too-subtly, the UN official in charge of the conference is echoing the European position:

“This suite of policies will take China to be a world leader on addressing climate change, and it will be quite ironic to hear that expressed tomorrow in a country (the United States) that is firmly convinced that China is doing nothing to address climate change," [UN climate chief Yvo] de Boer said.

In the United States, by contrast, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that China will not be proposing this week to sign up to internationally-binding hard caps; rather, it will simply be including intensity targets (much maligned in Canada), in its next five-year plan — a move not likely to allay the competitive concerns of U.S. producers facing a hard cap or of the legislators who represent them. Nor will it reduce China’s overall use of coal.

Still, the pressure on President Obama in the coming days and in the months leading up to Copenhagen will be intense. Already embattled on health care and Afghanistan — with Iran and the Mideast not going swimmingly either — he’ll be casting around for allies wherever he can find them, which may explain the conclusion of a piece penned by the acting U.S. ambassador to Canada in today’s National Post:

“Last Wednesday, in Washington, D. C., the President and Prime Minister received an initial Action Plan on the Clean Energy Dialogue, laying out next steps that will support our climate change objectives and put North America on a pathway to a low carbon economy. Together, we can build a cleaner, stronger and more prosperous North America while contributing to the global climate change effort.”

What, then, is the prognosis for the Copenhagen conference scheduled for December?

Some Europeans — including French President Nicholas Sarkozy — are reported to sense weakness in President Obama and may figure they can roll him on climate change. Others, noting that Bill Clinton and Al Gore did not submit Kyoto to the Senate for ratification because they knew it would not be approved, may have a more sophisticated understanding of the U.S. legislative process.

Notably, Sir David King, former scientific adviser to the British government, says in today’s Financial Times that it would be better to postpone negotiations to next year rather than risk a weak deal. And the same paper quotes “Lord Stern, author of a landmark review of the economics of climate change, [that] he was still optimistic that an agreement could be reached but: ’I would much prefer a framework that had to be filled in [next year] than something agreed with weak targets that would be difficult to unravel.’”

***

Update La Presse reports that Jean Charest addressed a UN conference in New York yesterday as spokesperson of the “Federated States.” (I bet that, like me, you thought Québec was a Canadian province.)

Mr. Charest says that Québec, unlike Canada, is committed to the Kyoto targets. He could have added, but didn’t, that the Obama administration isn’t — though he, too, according to La Presse, is beginning to wonder whether there will be an agreement in Copenhagen in light of the U.S. position.

Another update I see that Environment Minister Jim Prentice, Canada’s negotiator in the lead-up to Copenhagen, is putting the onus on both the United States and China for the success of the conference:

"It's China and the United States that together account for pretty close to 50 per cent of the global carbon emissions," Prentice told CTV's Canada AM during an interview from New York on Tuesday morning.

"And in the case of the United States they did not ratify Kyoto and in the case of China, they do not have targets under the Kyoto Protocol. So, progress in Copenhagen depends very much on what these two countries do and how they decide to move forward."

Canada cannot adopt any useful climate change policies until we know, for sure, where and how far the US in going to go. It must be a continental plan – anything else will fail, miserably, and the government should be up front with Canadians. “We’re waiting for President Obama’s lead,” Prime Minister Harper should say, “and we will cooperate in crafting a North American solution as soon as America takes the lead.”

Until we get an American lead we should stick with intensity targets; if it’s good enough for China it’s good enough, as an interim position, for us.

 

[Haletown]

We can expect a tsunami of global warning hysteria for the next few months leading up to COP15/Copenhagen.

As the global temperature falls, as the oceans cools, as the sunspot index drops, the Warmongers are getting ever more desperate and figure this is the last chance to push through their global political agenda.

I think they are a dollar & a great lie short and the backlash against the global war on carbon from those who feel they have been scammed by all the hysteria is not going to be pretty.

 

[Edward Campbell]

We can expect a tsunami of global warning hysteria for the next few months leading up to COP15/Copenhagen.

As the global temperature falls, as the oceans cools, as the sunspot index drops, the Warmongers are getting ever more desperate and figure this is the last chance to push through their global political agenda.

I think they are a dollar & a great lie short and the backlash against the global war on carbon from those who feel they have been scammed by all the hysteria is not going to be pretty.

And I'm guessing that's one of the major contributors to "warming." Perhaps, we'll see during the next 11 year sunspot cycle.

 

[Haletown]

And I'm guessing that's one of the major contributors to "warming." Perhaps, we'll see during the next 11 year sunspot cycle.

You can guess at whatever you like, that is your choice, but if you take a moment to look up information on the Sun Spot Index you'll probably find it doesn't contribute any warming or cooling. It's just a calculation that is used for its predictive powers. 

In case you haven't been following the NASA saga, they have been out to lunch for the last two+ years or so on their prediction of when the current solar cycle ends & the next one begins.  It has been quite hilarious as they have twisted themselves inside out trying to cover up their errors and dodge the critiques.

NASA is deathly afraid they will be cut off from their global warming hysteria Gravy Train.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I meant that solar energy contributes to warming and, therefore, that a (relative) lack of solar energy, such as occurs at the bottoms of the (roughly) 11 year cycles, reduces warming.

 

[Haletown]

I meant that solar energy contributes to warming and, therefore, that a (relative) lack of solar energy, such as occurs at the bottoms of the (roughly) 11 year cycles, reduces warming.

Agreed . . .  but I would say it drives warming not just contributes. 

The Sun Spot Index just reflects the state of the Cycle  and is why I said originally that a reduction in SSI = cooling is very likely.

 

[Edward Campbell]

More, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, on the climate change negotiations:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/china-diminishes-hope-for-global-climate-deal/article1297854/

China diminishes hope for global climate deal
Copenhagen summit set for failure as major polluters fail to break new ground toward a treaty

Campbell Clark

New York
Wednesday, Sep. 23, 2009

World leaders have failed to break new ground in climate talks, making the chance of finalizing a full global treaty in Copenhagen in December remote.

The stalemate followed brief optimism that China's President had travelled to a one-day UN climate summit in New York with firm commitments to reduce the growth in the emissions China produces.

But the hype about a new direction from the biggest developing economy – which would have pressured developed countries, notably the United States, Europe and Canada, to commit to binding cuts and offer huge sums to compensate poorer nations for restraining emissions – was not fulfilled.

Instead, Chinese President Hu Jintao left his promises vague or emphasized domestic measures rather than binding international commitments – and the focus for December's negotiations turned toward a pared-down, Plan B agreement-in-principle, rather than a treaty.

Yesterday's summit was more speeches than negotiation, but there had been speculation that China would offer a new direction that could spark stagnant talks before formal negotiations in Copenhagen.

But neither China nor the United States, the world's two biggest emitters, offered a way to bridge gaps between rich nations and fast-developing ones.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper skipped most of the proceedings, attending only a leader's dinner last night, saying Canada will march alongside U.S. policy.

Mr. Hu outlined some specific, ambitious measures to combat greenhouse-gas emissions within China – such as targets for using renewable energy sources – but he did not set any overall targets for emissions, or indicate that China would be willing to commit to goals in an international treaty.

He said China would “endeavour” to reduce the amount of emissions it produces per unit of gross domestic product “by a notable margin” by 2020 – in other words, to pollute relatively less as China's economy grows, but perhaps not cut overall emissions.

“That can be good, but it all depends on what the number is,” said President Barack Obama's climate change adviser, Todd Stern. He said the United States still wants to get as much of a deal as it can in Copenhagen, but all the details will not be done there.

Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice said: “China has said they would sign on to an agreement, but whether they would take on binding targets is the essential question.”

This week, major players had already started to discount a complete treaty being struck in Copenhagen. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Monday it's too late to complete an agreement with detailed target numbers for all emitters.

In interviews this week, diplomats expressed concern that expectations must be lowered or a stark failure in Copenhagen might doom progress to an eventual treaty, perhaps next year.

“We're generally moving beyond Plan A,” Michael Levi, a New York-based expert on climate-change negotiations at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview after Mr. Hu's speech.

“Plan B is still a very difficult plan. I don't think the basics for that are in place. But if we focused on that, it would be doable.”

Plan B, he said, is an interim step – a set of political principles, and basic legal forms, with the details to be negotiated later.

The Copenhagen talks were supposed to be the final negotiations for a treaty, and the basic principles had emerged: Developed countries would agree to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020, and growing developing countries would restrain the growth of their emissions so they would be lower than if they took no action.

And the richer countries would finance a pot of money – Mr. Barroso suggested €100-billion a year – to finance the transfer of clean technology to poorer ones.

But developing countries such as China and India are so far unwilling to commit to legally binding targets, which richer nations insist upon – arguing that developed nations, bigger per capita emitters, should set the example.

The amount and source of the green funds for poorer nations – to be discussed by world leaders at a G20 summit later this week – is also in dispute. Developing countries want wealthier governments to commit predictable funds, but the United States and Canada want much of it to be generated from future trading in emissions credits.

Now, Mr. Levi said, success lies in moving toward interim steps, forgetting the sum of money for green financing, for example, and fleshing out the principle: that richer nations will provide funds, tied to developing countries' concrete actions to curb emissions. Whether every country is taking on some binding commitment could be set, even if the specific numbers are different. “All countries must be taking on similar types of commitments, or there's no progress,” he said.

Despite the indications that many players are scaling back goals for Copenhagen, the Canadian government has not shown any sign of shifting gears – though it has taken criticism as a mere spectator.

Mr. Harper made a brief visit to the summit, and was blasted by environmentalist as “missing in action.” He insisted that what is key for Canada is close co-operation with the United States.

“We want to see an effective international accord, one that includes all the major emitters of greenhouse gases, and of course, we're working continentally with the Obama administration on a truly integrated approach,” Mr. Harper said after an afternoon visit with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Diplomats from other nations say Canada's credibility at international negotiations is weak, because it didn't come close to meeting its Kyoto Protocol targets, and has set targets for 2020 that are among the weakest of large, wealthy nations. Instead, seems content to let the United States and China dictate the agenda.

“Those two countries are 50 per cent of emissions,” Mr. Prentice said. “They are the two countries that are going to have to bridge those differences.”

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why there ever was any ”brief optimism that China's President had travelled to a one-day UN climate summit in New York with firm commitments to reduce the growth in the emissions”. China has consistently said that:

• To the degree that there is a climate change problem it is one created by the West and the solution is the responsibility of the West; and

• China cannot and will not punish the Chinese people (by denying them the benefits of a modern, mobile, electrified, industrialized society) just so that Westerners can shirk their responsibilities.

The Chinese appear willing to reduce the rate of growth of their emissions – essentially parroting Canada’s position. I’m a bit surprised they went that far. That “concession,” I think, is to domestic, not international, pressure. Many Chinese people are complaining about pollution from coal fired electricity and low quality truck/car engines.

 

[Haletown]

Eell these are journalists after all.  Math is difficult so they re-printing a Press Release or just making something up is easier than doing some research, acquiring data, analyzing and even graphing that data. That's Old School style and it  isn't required by the modern journalist's convention. They are allowed to make stuff up, repeat what others have said with the bother of fact checking and write stuff that has their agenda at heart, not honest reporting.

Fisking this story . . .

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/09/is-chinas-energy-intensity-story-myth.html

 

[Old Sweat]

The following piece from today's Financial Post is reproduced under the Fair Comment provisions of the Copyright Act.

If a new Little Ice Age soon sets in, as many scientists believe, Arctic shipping will not happen in our lifetimes.
By Lawrence Solomon

The Arctic ice “is melting far faster than had been previously supposed,” we heard this week from the UN’s Environment Program, in releasing its 2009 Climate Change Science Compendium.

This same week, National Geographic reported that the Arctic ice is probably melting far slower than previously supposed. After ramping up the rhetoric — two years ago National Geographic told us that “the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions,” and last year that “Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer” — National Geographic now advises that “the Arctic probably won’t experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040.”

If you’re confused by stats on Arctic melting, you have lots of company. Arctic stats are easy to misunderstand because the Arctic environment is unlike our own — the Arctic magnifies the changes we experience in the temperate regions. In summer, our days get longer and theirs get really, really long, just as in winter, when our days gets shorter, theirs all but disappear. By analogy, the Arctic also magnifies temperature variations, and resulting changes to its physical environment.

In the Arctic, the ice has indeed been contracting, as the global warming doomsayers have been telling us. But it has also been expanding. The riddle of how the Arctic ice can both be contracting and expanding is easily explained. After you read the next two paragraphs, you’ll be able to describe it easily to your friends to set them straight.

Each winter, the Arctic ice pack rapidly expands and each summer it rapidly contracts, as you can see thanks to photos from a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency satellite that tracks the changes in the ice pack. On its website, you can also get data showing the area of sea ice for every month going back to 2002.

Compare March of this year to previous Marches, for example, and you’ll see that the Arctic ice has been expanding of late — a story rarely told. But compare August of this year to previous Augusts and you’ll see that the August ice over the years has tended to contract — this is the basis of the scary stories that we hear about the Arctic ice disappearing. A snapshot of the Arctic ice, without knowledge of the bigger picture, can lead to scary conclusions.

To give your friends an even bigger picture, inform them that during the Little Ice Age, in the 1600s, much of the continent was frozen over. New Yorkers in winter could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Ever since, the ice has been contracting, spurring attempts by fabled explorers such as Henry Hudson and Sir John Franklin to seek a Northwest Passage through Canada’s Arctic. By the early 1900s, as we continued to come out of the Little Ice Age, the ice had receded enough to allow Roald Amundsen to traverse the Northwest Passage in fits and starts, his ship needing three years to navigate through the ice. Not until 1944 did the ice recede enough to allow a schooner to cross the Northwest Passage in a single season. The Northwest Passage remains too risky to allow commercial shipping to thrive, and although some have confidently predicted the advent of commercial shipping, the insurance premium required to navigate through the perilous ice floes effectively rules it out for the foreseeable future. If a new Little Ice Age soon sets in, as many scientists consider likely, commercial shipping will not happen in our lifetimes.

By taking a snapshot in time, and by ignoring the history and the ecology of the Arctic, global warming alarmists can make a grim case for a disappearing Arctic, and even fool themselves. In May of this year, a six-country effort involving 20 scientists an aircraft outfitted with precision equipment to Canada’s Arctic in an expedition designed to prove that the Arctic ice was thinning. The expedition found the opposite — newly formed ice was up to four-metres thick, twice what was as expected. Around the same time, three other explorers, on behalf of the Catlin Arctic Survey in London, set off on skis on a trek to the North Pole to measure the thickness of the melting spring ice. Unprepared for blizzard winds of 40 knots and Arctic temperatures of 40 degrees below zero, the expedition made little headway, ran out of food, suffered from frost-bite, and finally had to be airlifted to safety — at their slow-going rate of progress, they couldn’t have survived the 82 days required to travel the remaining 542 kilometers.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, reminds me of the Liburdy fiasco. (Prof. Liburdy just knew that EMF (radio frequency radiation) had to be a problem – it was intuitively obvious. Only one problem: he could not find any data to support his intuition. So he falsified it.)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/report-casts-doubt-on-mds-claims-about-alberta-reserves-cancer-rates/article1355980/

Report casts doubt on MD's claims about Alberta reserve's cancer rates
The Globe and Mail obtained findings of a lengthy investigation by Alberta's College of Physicians and Surgeons into whistleblower John O'Connor's claims

Katherine O'Neill

Edmonton
Monday, Nov. 09, 2009

He's one of Alberta's most famous whistleblowers, but a new report casts doubt on Dr. John O'Connor's crusade to expose unusually high rare cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan, a small community downstream from the province's massive oil sands.

The Globe and Mail has obtained the findings of a lengthy investigation by Alberta's College of Physicians and Surgeons into Dr. O'Connor's claims that attracted international media attention after he went public in 2006.

The 13-page report found many of Dr. O'Connor's public statements about his medical claims and the college's subsequent investigation were “inaccurate” and “untruthful.”

The probe also concluded he “obstructed” efforts by the Alberta Cancer Board and Health Canada to investigate his claims by defying the law and ignoring repeated requests to turn over his clinical evidence in a “timely manner.”

According to the report, when Dr. O'Connor finally co-operated with public health officials after stalling for close to two years, many of his numbers didn't match up with what he had been saying publicly, including that five Fort Chipewyan residents suffered from a rare bile-duct cancer.

In the end, researchers could verify only two cases.

Earlier this year, the Alberta Cancer Board released a report that found elevated cancer cases in Fort Chipewyan over the 1995 to 2006 study period. While public health officials found many of the numbers to be wrong, the cancer board discovered 51 cancers in 47 individuals, compared with 39 cancers expected.

Dr. Tony Fields, an Alberta Health Services vice-president, told reporters the findings would be studied further but there was no reason for alarm among the community of about 1,200 mainly aboriginal residents, which is located 700 kilometres north of Edmonton.

The college can't legally comment on the report, which was completed earlier this month, unless both parties involved, Dr. O'Connor, and three doctors from Health Canada who requested the investigation into his conduct in January, 2007, allow them to. The Health Canada doctors agreed to the condition, but, according to sources, Dr. O'Connor didn't.

Dr. O'Connor, who now practices medicine in Nova Scotia, spoke with at least two media outlets in Alberta on Friday and said the college's report was complete and it had “removed a big monkey” off his back.

“There are no more complaints and I am in good standing with the college,” he told the Edmonton Journal.

The Globe called Dr. O'Connor Sunday, but he hung up after the reporter asked to talk about the college's findings. He then didn't return calls.

Since making his claims, Dr. O'Connor has become a respected anti-oil-sands advocate, and was even the focus of a documentary called Downstream that was short-listed for an Oscar earlier this year.

The college's report, which couldn't “prove or disprove” allegations Dr. O'Connor's public statements “harmed” Fort Chipewyan residents and hurt the credibility of federal and provincial public health officials, ultimately concluded punishing Dr. O'Connor wouldn't serve the “public interest.”

However, it does state the “preferred resolution” would be for the case's facts to be released so the public record can be corrected. “The message that Dr. O'Connor and others may take from this review is the need for advocacy to be fair, truthful, balanced and respectful,” the report stated.

Dr. Hakique Virani, one of the three Health Canada doctors involved with the original complaint, is pleased with the investigation's findings.

Since it was launched, many Fort Chipewyan residents, who have feared for years that pollution from the oil sands may be making them sick, have sided with Dr. O'Connor and accused public health officials of being out to destroy his reputation and career. Aboriginal groups and environmentalists also called the college's probe a witch hunt.

“We did what we did because it was the only ethical thing to do,” Dr. Virani said.

I suspect Dr. O’Connor, like Liburdy, just knew that the folks in Fort Chipewyan must suffer from something because of the evil oil-sands – which are a whole lot like Blake’s “dark, Satanic mills.” So he falsified the data. I also suspect that all the environmentalists who protest the analysis of O’Connor’s lies do so because they know that their case rests, in some part, on lies.

 

[YZT580]

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6905082.ece  The link will take you to a Times article that says, in part, that maybe, just maybe, people have been too quick to conclude that CO2 is the cause of global warming and that it is possible that there could be other more relevant factors.  It also suggests that the models are in error.  Whooops.  Not so good considering Copenhagan is coming up.  It could just be an inconvenient truth.  YOu can be sure that the article and links to the science reports will be sent to every deniers favourite politician.

 

[Haletown]

And now even the UN is turning on itself, devouring its own children as it were.  Or maybe this branch of the UN has realized that the IPCC and the UNFFFC is getting all the $bacon, the $icing and the $gravy as well.

"One of the world’s top environmental organizations, the UN-affiliated International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has publicly stated that global warming is being overhyped. The Geneva-based organization made the surprising comments with regard to the often-heard claim that global warming is the chief threat to the extinction of species.

In fact, climate change is “far from the number-one threat” to the survival of most species, said Jean Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN species program. Vie considers hunting, overfishing, and human destruction of habitat as more important, and more urgent, threats that should not take a back seat to climate change. “There are so many other immediate threats that, by the time climate change really kicks in, many species will not exist anymore.” The IUCN compiles the authoritative international Redlist of endangered species.

IUCN’s comments, reported Friday in Times Online, were made in defence of a paper in Science by two University of Oxford researchers that found climate change models yield invalid results because they don’t reflect the real world. “The evidence of climate change-driven extinctions have really been overplayed,” concluded Professor Kathy Willis, the paper’s lead author who is also director of the Oxford Long-Term Ecology Laboratory.

IUCN, established in 1948 as the world’s first global environmental organization, is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network. It is comprised of more than 1,000 government and NGO member organizations and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in more than 160 countries. IUCN has official observer status at the United Nations General Assembly."

http://tinyurl.com/yj37vj4

 

[a_majoor]

A hacker has uploaded papers and emails from the Hadley CRU, exposing the workings of the spin meisters:

http://mooseandsquirrel.ca/2009/11/20/08:58/hadley-cru-hacked-man-made-climate-change-theory-is-smoke-and-mirrors-not-science/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Moose-and-Squirrel+(MooseandSquirrel.ca)

Hadley CRU hacked: Man-made climate change theory is smoke and mirrors, not science

by Natasha on Friday, November 20, 2009, 8:58 am

Well, reasonable people already knew this, but it’s nice to have it finally confirmed in the hucksters’ own words. It seems this is the REAL inconvenient truth that Almer Goretry didn’t want the public to know.

And in case you’re thinking it’s probably a hoax, it seems there is confirmation from Phil Jones of the CRU.

As Jay Currie says, “It is like pulling back the green cloth and seeing the little wizard.” He has and additional post of another email here. More at Watts Up With That.

This excerpt is one of my faves (bolded emphasis is mine):

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

There is more info at the Examiner.com — an article by Terry Hurlbut. It contains links where you can download the files (zipped) for yourself.

But it isn’t just the emails that are of interest — take a look at some of the documents. One PDF entitled “Rules of the Game” is very informative. A sample:

8. Use transmitters and social learning
People learn through social interaction, and some people are
better teachers and trendsetters than others. Targeting these
people will ensure that messages seem more trustworthy and are
transmitted more effectively.

Hmmm…Does that mean Suzuki and Gore can claim they were used simply as unwitting pawns in the AGW scam?

And this “style principle” is good too:

17. Use emotions and visuals
Another classic marketing rule: changing behaviour by
disseminating information doesn’t always work, but emotions
and visuals usually do.

Right…I’ve got it. Scientific data is insufficient to make people upend their economies, so you’ll have to prey on their emotions: fear being the most effective motivator, I suppose. And it can be especially effective when you instill intense fear into young schoolchildren.

Still, a Word document that I found very interesting is one named “uea-tyndall-shell-memo”. Now, smarter people than me can probably tell whether it’s that significant or not. What I found curious is how the AGW crowd always links “deniers” with Big Oil; yet here’s this memo referring to developing a “stategic partership” between the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Shell International. The following is an excerpt:

2. Shell’s interest is not in basic science. Any work they support must have a clear and immediate relevance to ‘real-world’ activities. They are particularly interested in emissions trading and CDM.

Well, of course they’re interested in emissions trading and CDM (Clean Development Mechanism).

Here’s my question: Suzuki used to say we should jail politicians for being deniers and refusing to act on AGW. Now that their little AGW swindle has been exposed, will there be any criminal charges laid against the real scammers?

 

[GAP]

I took a peek at some of the information online....pretty damning data against the environmentalists and global warming advocates......

Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails
November 19, 9:42 PMEssex County Conservative ExaminerTerry Hurlbut
Article Link

The University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre appears to have suffered a security breach earlier today, when an unknown hacker apparently downloaded 1079 e-mails and 72 documents of various types and published them to an anonymous FTP server. These files appear to contain highly sensitive information that, if genuine, could prove extremely embarrassing to the authors of the e-mails involved. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

The FTP link first appeared on a blog called The Air Vent. The blog's owner, identified as "Jeff Id", downloaded the file, examined it, and posted a brief summary on his blog. Another commenter, identified as "Steven Mosher," passed the information on to Steven McIntyre's Climate Audit blog and to another blog, The Blackboard, run by a blogger identified as "Lucia." Most recently, blogger Anthony Watts, who runs a blog titled "Watts Up With That?" mentioned the FTP archive in his own blog.

Commentary on all the blogs involved has been brisk, except, oddly enough, at The Air Vent, where only seven comments have been received.

The FTP server is in a Russian domain and uses the anonymous FTP protocol, which does not require a pre-registered user account or password for downloading. The file is named FOI2009.zip, an apparent reference to US Public Law 89-554, 80 Stat. 383, the Freedom of Information Act.

Several commentators have expressed skepticism as to the authenticity of the archive, pointing to its lack of clear provenance and suggesting that someone was attempting to embarrass, either directly or indirectly, the dignitaries attending the upcoming climate-change conference in Copenhagen. Other commentators who have examined the e-mails in the archive conclude that the header and other information that they contain is too detailed to be a hoax. Thus far, no commentator has found anything in the e-mail headers that appears to be mistaken.

Some of the most embarrassing e-mails are attributed to Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU; Keith Briffa, his assistant; Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia; Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona; and others. One such e-mail makes references to the famous "hockey-stick" graph published by Mann in the journal Nature:

    I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

The emphasis in the above quote was added.

Mr. Mosher offered this summary of the rest of the e-mails that he had found:

    And, you get to see somebody with the name of phil jones say that he would rather destroy the CRU data than release it to McIntyre. And lots lots more. including how to obstruct or evade FOIA requests. and guess who funded the collection of cores at Yamal.. and transferred money into a personal account in Russia[.] And you get to see what they really say behind the curtain.. you get to see how they “shape” the news, how they struggled between telling the truth and making policy makers happy. [Y]ou get to see what they say about Idso and pat micheals, you get to read how they want to take us out into a dark alley, it’s stunning all very stunning. You get to watch somebody named phil jones say that John daly’s death is good news.. or words to that effect. I don’t know that its real.. But the CRU code looks real

John Daly (not to be confused with the professional golfer of the same name) is identified in one of the e-mails as a global-warming skeptic who died in January of 2004.

As embarrassing as the e-mails are, some of the documents are more embarrassing. They include a five-page PDF document titled The Rules of the Game, that appears to be a primer for propagating the AGW message to the average subject/resident of the United Kingdom. The document suggests that it is a precis of a longer document housed at the Web site of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
More on link

 

[a_majoor]

More on AGW fraud:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024995.php

The Alarmists Do "Science": A Case Study

November 21, 2009 Posted by John at 8:18 AM

A fascinating, hot-off-the-presses story emerges from the emails that were hacked yesterday from the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre. It is one of many exchanges that shed light on the priority that the global warming alarmists give to politics and career advancement over science.

The story began when Steve McIntyre, the same researcher who was largely responsible for destroying Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph purporting to show unprecedented warming in the 20th century, turned his attention to a famous article published by Keith Briffa of East Anglia's CRU in 2000. This article analyzed the diameters of tree rings, including rings from an area called Yamal in Siberia, and conveniently generated another hockey-stick shaped graph. You can read an account of the ensuing controversy here. McIntyre's work appeared to show that Briffa had cherry-picked trees in order to get the result he was looking for. One fact that this story highlights is that global warming alarmists publish their results in scientific journals, but refuse to make the underlying data publicly available so that the validity of their analyses can be checked.

McIntyre's revelations caused a firestorm of controversy, in response to which the alarmist community circled its wagons to fend off the threat from an outsider. This process can be clearly seen in the East Anglia emails.

The alarmists' effort to respond to McIntyre was complicated by the fact that Briffa had been ill and undergone surgery, and was then recuperating. So several of them wrote to Briffa's co-author, Tim Osborn, for advice on how to respond to McIntyre's critique. Osborn replied on September 29, 2009:

    Hi Mike and Gavin, thanks for your emails re McIntyre, Yamal and Keith. I'll pass on your best wishes for his recovery when I next speak to Keith. He's been off almost 4 months now and won't be back for at least another month ....

    Regarding Yamal, I'm afraid I know very little about the whole thing -- other than that I am 100% confident that "The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result" is complete crap. Having one's integrity questioned like this must make your blood boil....

    Apart from Keith, I think Tom Melvin here is the only person who could shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal. But he can be a rather loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted about this....

So: these scientists don't really have any idea whether McIntyre's critique of Briffa's work is correct or not. Even Briffa's co-author professes ignorance. There is one person they could approach who could "shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal." But they don't do it. Why? Because "he can be rather a loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted...." In other words, his loyalty to the cause of climate alarmism may not be absolute. This is much like the case noted here where Michael Mann, one of the recipients of the above email, warns against sharing information with a scientist named Andy because he is "not as predictable as we'd like."

Despite having no idea what the facts are, the alarmists don't hesitate to formulate a position. Thus, on the next day, September 30, Osborn writes:

    Keith's temporarily come in to get a handle on all this, but it will take time. Likely outcome is (1) brief holding note that no cherry-picking was done and demonstrating data selection is defendable by our time tomorrow; (2) longer piece with more evaluation etc. in around a week. No point is posting something that turns out to be wrong.

That's good enough for Osborn's fellow alarmists. Michael Mann replies:

    great--thanks Tim, sounds like we have a plan. in our post, which we'll target for tomorrow as well, we'll simply link to whatever CRU puts up and re-iterate the sentiment of the temporary short response (i.e. that there was no cherry-picking, a careful and defensible selection procedure was used) and we'll mostly focus on the broader issues, i.e. that any impact of this one series in the vast array of paleoclimate reconstructions (and the importance of the paleoclimate reconstructions themselves) has been over-stated, why these sorts of attacks are not legitimate science, etc.

Note that the alarmists are willing to denounce McIntyre's work as "not legitimate science" even though, at this point, they still have no idea whether his analysis was right or wrong. That is not, however, what they tell the outside world. On September 29, Andrew Revkin, environmental reporter for the New York Times, wrote to Mann asking about McIntyre's critique:

    needless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements about Yamal data-set selectivity.

    Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he's seeking journal publication for his deconstruct?

Mann, ignorant of the facts, responds by slandering McIntyre:

    Hi Andy, I'm fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.

    It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I'm fairly certain the versions of these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method), let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context.

    So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn't matter as far as the key conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don't think there is any problem with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual information content of these data.

Given what is said in the other emails, that last attack on McIntyre appears to be simply fabricated out of whole cloth. Mann concludes by buttering up Revkin:

    Fortunately, the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, right?

    mike

Of course not! Revkin replies, "Thanks heaps."

At the same time they were issuing these assurances to outsiders, however, the alarmists' internal communications were much more equivocal. On September 30, the day after he corresponded with Revkin, Mann asked Tim Osborn to confirm that a key 2006 paper co-authored by Osborn and Briffa was untainted by what is implicitly acknowledged to be Briffa's bad Yamal data:

  And Osborn and Briffa '06 is also immune to this issue, as it eliminated any combination of up to 3 of the proxies and showed the result was essentially the same (fair to say this Tim?).

Osborn's reply is hedged at best, and includes a rather insouciant admission that he is "amazed" that the journal Science agreed to publish his paper in the first place:

  Mike,

    yes, you're right: figs S4-S6 in our supplementary information do indeed show results leaving out individual, groups of two, and groups of three proxies, respectively. It's attached.

    I wouldn't say we were immune to the issue -- results are similar for these leave 1, 2 or 3 out cases, but they certainly are not as strong as the case with all 14 proxies.

    Certainly in figure S6, there are some cases with 3 omitted (i.e. some sets of 11) where modern results are comparable with intermittent periods between 800 and 1100. Plus there is the additional uncertainty, discussed on the final page of the supplementary information, associated with linking the proxy records to real temperatures (remember we have no formal calibration, we're just counting proxies -- I'm still amazed that Science agreed to publish something where the main analysis only involves counting from 1 to 14!

    ).

    But this is fine, since the IPCC AR4 and other assessments are not saying the evidence is 100% conclusive (or even 90% conclusive) but just "likely" that modern is warmer than M[edieval] W[arm] P[eriod]. ...

    So, this Yamal thing doesn't damage Osborn & Briffa (2006), but important to note that O&B (2006) and others support the "likely" statement rather than being conclusive.

    Cheers
    Tim

Another member of the climate alarmist cabal, Tom Wigley, gave this darker assessment of Briffa's errors with regard to the tree ring data on October 5. Note in particular his concern about the alarmists' practice of withholding data from public review:

    Phil,

    It is distressing to read that American Stinker item. But Keith does seem to have got himself into a mess. As I pointed out in emails, Yamal is insignificant. And you say that (contrary to what M&M say) Yamal is *not* used in MBH, etc. ...

    But, more generally, (even if it *is* irrelevant) how does Keith explain the McIntyre plot that compares Yamal-12 with Yamal-all? And how does he explain the apparent "selection" of the less well-replicated chronology rather that the later (better replicated) chronology?

    Of course, I don't know how often Yamal-12 has really been used in recent, post-1995, work. I suspect from what you say it is much less often that M&M say -- but where did they get their information? I presume they went thru papers to see if Yamal was cited, a pretty foolproof method if you ask me. Perhaps these things can be explained clearly and concisely -- but I am not sure Keith is able to do this as he is too close to the issue and probably quite pissed of[f].

    And the issue of with-holding data is still a hot potato, one that affects both you and Keith (and Mann). Yes, there are reasons -- but many *good* scientists appear to be unsympathetic to these. The trouble here is that with-holding data looks like hiding something, and hiding means (in some eyes) that it is bogus science that is being hidden.

    I think Keith needs to be very, very careful in how he handles this. I'd be willing to check over anything he puts together.

    Tom.

This strikes me as a damning commentary on the entire alarmist enterprise. Meanwhile, not only are Briffa's data flawed and seemingly cherry-picked, the assumptions on which the tree-ring studies are based may be bogus in the first place. The email collection includes these two messages from a plant scientist, both within the last 60 days:

    Dear Professor Briffa, my apologies for contacting you directly, particularly since I hear that you are unwell. However the recent release of tree ring data by CRU has prompted much discussion and indeed disquiet about the methodology and conclusions of a number of key papers by you and co-workers.

    As an environmental plant physiologist, I have followed the long debate starting with Mann et al (1998) and through to Kaufman et al (2009). As time has progressed I have found myself more concerned with the whole scientific basis of dendroclimatology. In particular;

    1) The appropriateness of the statistical analyses employed
    2) The reliance on the same small datasets in these multiple studies
    3) The concept of "teleconnection" by which certain trees respond to the "Global Temperature Field", rather than local climate
    4) The assumption that tree ring width and density are related to temperature in a linear manner.

    Whilst I would not describe myself as an expert statistician, I do use inferential statistics routinely for both research and teaching and find difficulty in understanding the statistical rationale in these papers. As a plant physiologist I can say without hesitation that points 3 and 4 do not agree with the accepted science.

    There is a saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Given the scientific, political and economic importance of these papers, further detailed explanation is urgently required.

    Yours sincerely,
    Dr. Don Keiller.

Tree ring studies are vitally important to the conclusions reached by the U.N.'s IPCC report, which is the main foundation for the claim that anthropogenic global warming has been "proved." That being the case, one would think that Briffa, one of the two or three primary authors of the tree ring studies, would have a ready response to these very basic questions. But no: he did not reply to Dr. Keiller's email. That prompted this second inquiry from Dr. Keiller:

    Dear Professor Briffa, I am pleased to hear that you appear to have recovered from your recent illness sufficiently to post a response to the controversy surrounding the use of the Yamal chronology; ([5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/cautious/cautious.htm) and the chronology itself; ([6]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/)

    Unfortunately I find your explanations lacking in scientific rigour and I am more inclined to believe the analysis of McIntyre ([7]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588) Can I have a straightforward answer to the following questions

    1) Are the reconstructions sensitive to the removal of either the Yamal data and Strip pine bristlecones, either when present singly or in combination?

    2) Why these series, when incorporated with white noise as a background, can still produce a Hockey-Stick shaped graph if they have, as you suggest, a low individual weighting?

    And once you have done this, please do me the courtesy of answering my initial email.
    Dr. D.R. Keiller

Again, one might assume that if the science surrounding global warming is settled, the alarmists would have good answers to such basic questions, and certainly would be willing to engage in debate in a spirit of open-minded inquiry. Such, however, is not the case. Phil Jones of East Anglia advised Briffa against trying to respond to the plant scientist on October 20:

    Keith,

    There is a lot more there on CA now. [I'm pretty sure CA is Climate Audit, a web site where McIntyre posts.] I would be very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up.

    You and Tim talked about Yamal. Why have the bristlecones come in now. [1]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588#comments

    This is what happens - they just keep moving the goalposts. Maybe get Tim to redo OB2006 without a few more series.

    Cheers
    Phil

As far as I can tell from the email archive, Briffa never did respond to the plant scientist. Jones's email warning Briffa to be "very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up" was written just three weeks ago. It, along with the rest of the email archive, makes an utter mockery of the alarmists' claim that the science of global warming is settled in their favor.

On the contrary, the conclusion an observer is likely to draw from the CRU archive is that the climate alarmists are making up the science as they go along and are fitting facts to reach a predetermined conclusion rather than objectively seeking after truth. What they are doing is politics, not science. When I was in law school, this story was told about accountants: A CEO is going to hire a new accountant and summons a series of candidates. He asks each applicant, "What is two plus two?" The first two candidates answer, "Four." They don't get the job. The third responds, "What do you want it to be?" He gets hired. The climate alarmists' attitude toward data appears to me much the same as that fictional accountant's attitude toward arithmetic.

 

[Flip]

I've been following this on WattsUpWithThat and now there is a searchable database

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/21/cru-emails-search-engine-now-online/

Rumors abound ie. The hackers are Russian or "It was an inside job". Personally, I don't care. I do care about the content.

There are two things everyone should see if they get the chance.....a documentary called Not Evil Just Wrong.

And my favorite,  Apocolypse?No!  Available as DVD or on Youtube

They are mutually reinforcing answers to Gore and they make a point about the dangers of activism.
I've been showing both DVDs to everyone who will sit through them.

So, one question.......How long before "ClimateGate" hits CBC ?

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

I suspect Dr. O’Connor, like Liburdy, just knew that the folks in Fort Chipewyan must suffer from something because of the evil oil-sands – which are a whole lot like Blake’s “dark, Satanic mills.” So he falsified the data. I also suspect that all the environmentalists who protest the analysis of O’Connor’s lies do so because they know that their case rests, in some part, on lies.

As long as there has been an Athabasca River it has flowed with a certain degree of oil as it cuts through the middle of the tar sands.  There are numerous industrial sites including many pulp mills on the Peace and Athabasca systems plus endless other oil activity not related to the tar sands.  Hell, when I flush it heads straight to Fort Chip.  I'm not sure how O'Connor pegged health problems on the tar sands.  Without going into details there are many factors leading to high cancer rates on Indian reserves particularly lifestyle choices.

A name you see making environmental pronouncements is The Pembina Institute.  The attached link screams big business - about 66 employees:

http://www.pembina.org/about/staff

There is also Pembina Corporate Consulting:

http://corporate.pembina.org/

Am I wrong to assume that if you hire Pembina Corporate Consulting as environmental consultants you won't hear from the rest of the bunch?  For a moment I forgot that only the polluting oil companies are in it for the money, not the environmentalists.

 

[Haletown]

even worse for the Warmists than the emails is the data files.  Budgeting scams, funding from the Environmental industry and Steve over at Climate Audit has just found computer code + documentation that commits fraud bey eliminating data that doesn't produce hockey sticks.

Remember Bre-X ?  This will be like 100 Bre-X's for the Warmongers and small group of scientists who hijacked the IPCC and the research funding.

 

[Haletown]

This is fun . . .  from an SDA link

http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/gavin-atkins-shadowlands/climate-science-the-quiz.htm

 

[Old Sweat]

Al Gore takes on the oil sands and Alberta in this story in the Star reproduced under the fair comment provisions of the copyright act.

[size=12pt]Extracting oil from Alberta's tar sands jeopardizes the survival of our species, says Al Gore.[/size]

"Gas from the tar sands gives a Prius the same carbon footprint as a Hummer," the former U.S. vice-president told the Star in an interview prior to a Toronto speaking engagement scheduled for Tuesday evening.

"I know that doesn't make me popular in Alberta," said the jet-hopping environmental activist, best known for the movie and book An Inconvenient Truth.

"But it's simply a fact. A lot of money is at stake, but a lot of lives and the future of human civilization are also at stake."

If Gore's warnings are heeded, expect housing prices to fall fast and far in Fort McMurray, the northern Alberta boomtown where single-family dwellings sold for a reported average of $629,582 in October thanks to the Athabasca tar sands megaproject.

If not, then you might as well pack your bags for Armageddon, because that is where Gore believes the planet is headed unless humankind radically shifts from carbon-based fuels. Time is short, he warns, and political will in the United States and elsewhere is lagging far behind what's needed.

The U.S. Senate has yet to pass a bill setting tough limits on carbon emissions, for example, something that should have been done by now, according to a prediction Gore makes in his newly released book, a blueprint for planetary salvation titled Our Choice.

Meanwhile, a global conference on climate change, set for Copenhagen early next month, is no longer expected to produce breakthrough agreements restricting the pumping of greenhouse gases into the planet's atmosphere, a practice that continues at what Gore regards as a catastrophic pace.

"Is it disappointing?" he said. "Yes. The pace of negotiations has been slow this year. The stark truth is, at present, the maximum we can imagine to be politically possible still falls far short of the minimum necessary to solve the crisis. We put 90 million tons of CO² into the atmosphere every 24 hours, and the amount is increasing decade by decade. It's not okay."

Still, as he surveys a planet in crisis, Gore also sees reason for optimism. The U.S. House of Representatives has moved to curb carbon emissions, narrowly passing a bill this summer that Gore calls "a very solid first step, if not as tough as I would like."

Republicans have mostly been absent from efforts to draft legislation limiting carbon emissions, but at least one prominent Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has joined the fight and is encouraging others to follow his lead.

And Gore says emerging industrial powers, including Brazil, China and India, are now seriously addressing the challenges of global warming.

"The world is in the early stages of a massive shift away from carbon-based fuels," Gore said. "Slowly but surely, leaders around the world are coming to grips with the fact it would be extremely irresponsible to impose this burden on future generations."

In his new book, Gore explores what sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar power can do to wean humankind from oil and coal, while also creating economic wealth. He is far more skeptical about other vaunted solutions, including nuclear energy and carbon-capture and storage, both of which he regards as uneconomic.

If world leaders follow his blueprint for action, Gore foresees a future that seems almost too good to be true – a planet humming on abundant supplies of clean, affordable energy, achieved at little or no net cost to global prosperity or employment.

In a recent interview, the man who nearly became U.S. president in 2000 conceded the outlook is somewhat more complex, but said he is not sugar-coating the future in order to make it politically palatable.

"Inevitably, a transition like this will advantage and disadvantage some more than others," he said. "But I don't believe it's sugar-coating to say our civilization will be more prosperous and better off."

In his campaign to save the environment, Gore has encountered plenty of critics, many of whom insist the environment is not in need of saving. Some question his use of scientific evidence.

Gore dismisses much of the opposition he faces as "artificially created by large carbon polluters."

Other global-warming deniers might be sincere, he says, but they're wrong.

"Because this crisis is so unprecedented, it triggers the natural tendency we all have to confuse the unprecedented with the improbable."

As for the Athabasca megaproject, Gore has derided Western Canada's oil-sands developments before. In a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone, he called such projects "crazy."

"They have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts. But, you know, junkies find veins in their toes."

By one estimate, Canada's vast oil-sands petroleum reserves provide the country with 15 per cent of the world's oil supply, a share exceeded only by Saudi Arabia.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, Gore is on the road these days promoting his new book.

Despite its title – Our Choice – Gore argues that humans really have no option but to stop treating the atmosphere as "an open sewer."

"It sounds absurdly difficult," he said, "but we really have no choice."