Excellent Presentation on Global Warming/Climate Change

OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists.

Financial Post
 

Policy actions that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to influence future climate. Policies need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events, however caused

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Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

 

 

 

 

 

 

H.E. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General, United Nations

First Avenue and East 44^th Street, New York, New York, U.S.A.

November 29, 2012

 

Mr. Secretary-General:

On November 9 this year you told the General Assembly: “Extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal … Our challenge remains, clear and urgent: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthen adaptation to … even larger climate shocks … and to reach a legally binding climate agreement by 2015 … This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy.”

On November 13 you said at Yale: “The science is clear; we should waste no more time on that debate.”



The following day, in Al Gore’s “Dirty Weather” Webcast, you spoke of “more severe storms, harsher droughts, greater floods”, concluding: “Two weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States. A nation saw the reality of climate change. The recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of inaction will be even higher. We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.”

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions. 

The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years. During this period, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations rose by nearly 9% to now constitute 0.039% of the atmosphere. Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.

The “even larger climate shocks” you have mentioned would be worse if the world cooled than if it warmed. Climate changes naturally all the time, sometimes dramatically. The hypothesis that our emissions of CO₂ have caused, or will cause, dangerous warming is not supported by the evidence.

The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. There is little evidence that dangerous weather-related events will occur more often in the future. The U.N.’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in its Special Report on Extreme Weather (2012) that there is “an absence of an attributable climate change signal” in trends in extreme weather losses to date. The funds currently dedicated to trying to stop extreme weather should therefore be diverted to strengthening our infrastructure so as to be able to withstand these inevitable, natural events, and to helping communities rebuild after natural catastrophes such as tropical storm Sandy.

There is no sound reason for the costly, restrictive public policy decisions proposed at the U.N. climate conference in Qatar. Rigorous analysis of unbiased observational data does not support the projections of future global warming predicted by computer models now proven to exaggerate warming and its effects.

The NOAA “State of the Climate in 2008” report asserted that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction. Sixteen years without warming have therefore now proven that the models are wrong by their creators’ own criterion.

Based upon these considerations, we ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not. We also ask that you acknowledge that policy actions by the U.N., or by the signatory nations to the UNFCCC, that aim to reduce CO₂ emissions are unlikely to exercise any significant influence on future climate. Climate policies therefore need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events however caused.

Signed by:

Electronic Voting Machines Designed to “Steal Elections”

Global Research
Harvey Wasserman

CICJ Books has just released “Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement’s Rise and Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People’s Vote, 2000-2008″ by Marta Steele.

Marta Steele has done yeoman work for the election integrity movement. She has plowed through more websites and blogs than one can even imagine. She set out with the nearly impossible task of writing the definitive historical narrative of the folly of electronic voting in the United States between 1988 and 2008. More shockingly, she accomplished that task.

Electronic voting machines are perfectly designed to steal elections. That’s their principle purpose. Ireland has just gotten rid of them altogether. Germany, Japan, Canada, Switzerland all use paper ballots. Why? Because you can actually count them in public, and then count them again.

But here in the US, elections are corporate-owned and operated. Anyone who experienced pushing the e-spot for John Kerry and having the name George W. Bush light up—as happened so often in Ohio 2004—knows all too well that what Marta Steele documents in this remarkable book has become the defining reality in American election theft.

What she has done by way of documentation is truly impressive. Never again will those who question the validity of electronic voting be called “conspiracy theorists.” Through sheer tenacity, the author has scoured the vast morass of cyberspace and brought back all the essential data and assembled it in an understandable and analytical fashion. Readers can only draw one conclusion from her work – those who deny the death of democracy are foolish “coincidence theorists.”

She accumulated mountains of incidences that show the so-called “red shift” in favor of the Republican Party is not an anomaly or computer “glitch,” but evidence that there is systematic tampering of computerized voting machines by private companies connected to the Republican Party. Although our newspaper, the Columbus Free Press, and our website freepress.org published plenty on the flaws of electronic voting and election irregularities, we were nonetheless overwhelmed by the research documented in this volume. Those who read this book will no longer fall for the easy propaganda lines and talking points put forth by Karl Rove and his cohorts in explaining away impossible election results.

This book is important because its research is so detailed, its history so clear, and its analysis so convincing. The book destroys the mythology that “it can’t happen here” – that our system is an old and infallible democracy that can’t be corrupted. This powerful work will force all who read it to take a side, but more importantly, to take action, perhaps even direct action.

A key breakthrough that the book allows is to shatter the absurd notion that the empire of the United States may very well meddle in and steal elections abroad, but would never use these tactics at home. The fact that the Bush family, with their patriarch George Herbert Walker Bush being the CIA director, is so inextricably linked to the rise of electronic voting and improbably election results, should be no surprise. That’s why it is no coincidence that she starts her history of election voting irregularities in the year that George H.W. Bush wins the New Hampshire and becomes president.

The Bush family ascendancy corresponds to black box, nontransparent voting in America. The more we’ve privatized our software and hardware and called it “trade secrets,” the better the Bush family candidates have done, against all odds. Their presidential victories, with the official exit polls falling well outside the margin of errors and predicting victories for their opponents, would easily be denounced by election observers in a Third World country.

Small wonder that when push came to shove, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell refused to allow United Nations observers into the Buckeye State polling places to check the veracity of the 2004 balloting.

We believe this book does more than any other to expose the evils of electronic voting. The endnotes alone amount to a giant step forward in revealing the crimes of privatized e-voting in our nation.

As Al Gore and John Kerry refused to do, we must now face the reality that as long as our balloting process is dominated by electronic machines, the outcome of any election can be flipped by a governor or secretary of state with a few late-night key strokes. Considering the hundreds of millions the rich and super-rich are willing to spend to control the government, would you ever doubt they would hesitate to buy an election?

What Marta Steele has done is to confirm far beyond any reasonable doubt that as long as electronic machines are at the core of our vote count, there is no such thing as democracy in the USA. What we have instead is an electronic corporatocracy….proprietary, secretive, anti-democratic and for sale (or lease) to the highest bidder. The real question is: now that Marta had made this all perfectly clear, what are we going to do about it?

~ with Harvey Wasserman

How Big Oil Benefits From Global Warming Alarmism

Forbes
Larry Bell

I find it somewhat comical when scientists and others who publicly express skepticism about a looming man-made global warming catastrophe are accused of being in the pocket of Big Oil. Here we are referring to oil and gas… master resource trade commodities that the entire world urgently depends upon. Can you imagine they are losing sleep over market competition from non-fossil “renewable alternatives” such as ethanol, windmills and sunbeams? Do you really think rampaging greenhouse gas regulatory attacks on coal-fired power are anything but a blessing?

First, regarding that “green” ethanol, consider that it really produces little or no net fuel gain at all…not after the diesel required to power the tractors needed to plant, fertilize and harvest all that corn, along with the energy needed to brew it into 180-proof grain alcohol, are factored in. Then, for those who care, after CO2 emissions released in producing it and burning it in vehicles are accounted for, there’s not much difference, if any, compared with petroleum there either. What should matter to everyone, however, is that ethanol has a much lower energy density than gasoline, meaning that it yields fewer miles per gallon.

And although ethanol has no rational connection with climate, it’s not like Big Oil has a problem hitching a ride on the green bandwagon. Koch Industries, through its subsidiaries Flint Hill Renewables and Koch Supply & Trading, for example, has purchased several ethanol plants in Iowa, and together with its Minnesota refinery, reportedly has the capacity to supply about one-tenth of the U.S. market.

As Flint Hills President Brad Razook told his employees in a company newsletter, “New or emerging markets, such as renewable fuels, are an opportunity for us to create value within rules the government sets.” He went on to say, “After all, ethanol production is heavily subsidized, mandated and protected”…then adding, “…while Koch companies openly oppose such government programs.”

Yes, and why blame them? Why pass up money that can be made blending sweet lemonade petroleum with grain alcohol to produce bitter lemon juice…at least so long as voters are gullible enough to tolerate such state and federal lunacy, and taxpayers and consumers can afford to cover the extra costs.
Then again, the EPA doesn’t want petroleum refiners to make too much money, and is doing a good job to prevent this from happening. Over the past six months three refineries supplying about half of all the East Coast’s gasoline, diesel and jet fuel have closed down in large part due to overly burdensome environmental compliance costs. Philadelphia-based Sunoco’s Northeast refinery business lost nearly $1 billion over the past three years after spending more than $1.3 billion to meet stricter rules.

Flashback: Pathologising dissent? Now that’s Orwellian

Ahead of a conference on the psychology of climate change denial, Brendan O’Neill says green authoritarians are treating debate as a disorder.

Spiked
Brendan O’Neill

A few months ago, for a joke, I set up a Facebook group called ‘Climate change denial is a mental disorder’. It’s a satirical campaigning hub for people who think that climate change denial should be recognised as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association, and that its sufferers – who probably engage in ‘regular chanting and intensive brainwashing sessions in cult-like surroundings’ – should be offered ‘eco-lobotomies’ to remove ‘the denying part of their brain’. The group now has 42 members. Yes, some have signed up because they get the joke, but others are serious subscribers to the denial-as-insanity idea. ‘Thank God I’ve found this group’, says one new member, who is sick of other Facebook groups being ‘hijacked’ by unhinged eco-sceptics.

The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, wilful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.

This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it’s being organised by the university’s Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how ‘denial’ is a product of both ‘addiction and consumption’ and is the ‘consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility’ (1). It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas – to interrogate, analyse and fight over them – but to tag them as perverse.

Leading green writers have welcomed the West England get-together to study the denying masses. One eco-columnist says the conference might generate ideas for dealing with those who are ‘pathologically’ opposed to the environmental movement (pathology, according to my OED, is the study of ‘morbid or abnormal mental or moral conditions’) (2). Environmentalists recognise the inherent elitism of saying that, while they brave few can see things clearly, the rest of us are somehow disordered (greens are the ‘watchful ones amongst the slaves’, according to one environmentalist writer); yet they seem unashamed. The eco-columnist says this weekend’s conference will be useful because where ‘mainstream politics now largely “gets” environmentalism’, there is still a sceptical mass, ‘a baying and growing crowd, largely consisting of people resistant to the prospect of ever having to alter their lifestyles’. Apparently this crowd ‘gathers to hurl invective’ at environmentalist ideas, such as recycling and low-energy lightbulbs (3).

In a sense, this vision of elite, brainy environmentalists on one side and a baying, insult-hurling crowd on the other speaks, however accidentally and however crudely, to an underlying truth: environmentalism remains a largely elitist project, beloved of politicians, priests and prudes keen to control people’s behaviour and curb our excessive lifestyles, and it rubs many ‘ordinary people’ up the wrong way. Of course much of the public goes along with the environmentalist ethos, bowing to the central idea that mankind is destructive and observing such rituals as sorting their rubbish, but they do so half-heartedly, recognising that, fundamentally, greens’ anti-consumerist, anti-reproduction, anti-travel arguments run counter to their own personal aspirations. Yet rather than recognise this frequently hidden divide between the green elite and the ‘baying crowd’ as one built on differences of opinion, on clashing aspirations, even on rational assessments by sections of the public that recycling is a waste of time, increasingly environmentalists pathologise it, turning it into evidence of their wisdom in contrast to the public’s mental instability.

Global Warming Summary – Scientific Evidence Rejects Anthropogenic CO2 Theory

Appinsys

This document provides a brief summary of the CO2 global warming issue – and shows why the theory is wrong.

The Phenomenon Global Temperatures have generally increased over the last century (except for the last 10 years) – as has the atmospheric CO2. The United Nations based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has become the definitive authority on the promotion of the anthropogenic CO2 as the cause of the warming and of the justification of scare stories of what the future may bring. The following shows the Hadley Climatic Research Unit global average temperature anomalies (the IPCC uses data provided by HadCRU – plot from: [http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/]). The global average temperature has increased about 0.8 degrees C in the last 100 years.

The Evidence There is no empirical evidence that anthropogenic CO2 has caused the observed global warming trend – the only evidence comes from the in the computerized climate models based on the assumptions incorporated in the models. The following figure superimposes the above HadCRU temperature anomalies on the IPCC graph of model outputs. (IPCC 2007 AR4 Figure SPM-4 [http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf]) In this figure, the blue shaded bands show the result of 19 simulations from 5 climate models using only the natural forcings. Red shaded bands show the result of 58 simulations from 14 climate models including anthropogenic CO2. This clearly shows that prior to about 1972, the global warming is fully explained by climate models using only natural forcings (i.e. no human CO2). The models need input of CO2 only after about 1970 – prior to 1970 all warming was natural, according to the IPCC. There is no empirical evidence relating CO2 to the post-1970 warming as a causative factor – only the fact that the computer models require CO2 to produce warming. The media stories often report temperature increases over the last century and attribute it to anthropogenic (human caused) CO2 based global warming – but the models indicate that anthropogenic CO2 has only caused warming since the early 1970s. Even though the IPCC released this figure in 2007, it only shows temperatures up to the year 2000 – likely due to the fact that there has been cooling since then (although atmospheric CO2 has continued to increase). This fact is also revealed in the CRU emails released in November 2009: Email exchange between: Michael Mann, Edward Cook and Tom Crowley, May 2, 2001, (Subject: “Hockey Stick” [http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=172&filename=963233839.txt]). Cook to Mann: “I think that most researchers in global change research would agree that the emergence of a clear greenhouse forcing signal has really only occurred since after 1970. I am not debating this point, although I do think that there still exists a signficant uncertainty as to the relative contributions of natural and greenhouse forcing to warming during the past 20-30 years at least.”

The Recurrent Cycles The following figures show the global temperature anomalies from the Hadley figure shown previously. Two cycles have been highlighted in rectangles: the “natural” cycle (1880-1946: green) and the “CO2-caused” cycle (1942-2008: red), according to the IPCC. The final part of the figure shows the 1942-2008 cycle changed to red and overlaid on the 1880-1946 cycle (vertically shifted by 0.3 degrees). As can be seen from the above figures, the two cycles were nearly identical, and yet the IPCC says the models can explain the early 1900s cycle with only natural forcings, but anthropogenic CO2 is needed for the later cycle. There appears to be a serious problem with the models when two identical cycles have two very different causes. There is an overall upwards net trend in the cycles (about 0.3 degrees C per 60 year cycle) due to the fact that the earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age: “The coldest time was during the 16th and 17th Centuries. By 1850 the climate began to warm.” [http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/climate/little_ice_age.html]

Nobel peace prize jury under investigation

Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize officials were facing a formal inquiry over accusations they have drifted away from the prize's original selection criteria by choosing such winners as President Barack Obama, as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday.

The investigation comes after persistent complaints by a Norwegian peace researcher that the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations.

If the Stockholm County Administrative Board, which supervises foundations in Sweden's capital, finds that prize founder Alfred Nobel's will is not being honored, it has the authority to suspend award decisions going back three years — though that would be unlikely and unprecedented, said Mikael Wiman, a legal expert working for the county.

Obama won in 2009, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won in 2010, and last year the award was split between Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.

For this year's award, Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, jailed former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Cuban rights activists Oswaldo Paya and Yoani Sanchez are among the candidates who have been publicly announced by those who nominated them.

The secretive prize committee doesn't discuss nominations — which have to be postmarked by Feb. 1 to be valid — but stresses that being nominated doesn't say anything about a candidate's chances.

Climate FAIL from A to Z presented at Durban

Watts Up With That

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Anthony Watts

This might be a bit overzealous per Morano’s unique writing style, but compared to some of the stuff we’ve seen from warmists, pretty mild. Lots of useful links and notes – Anthony

By Marc Morano  –  Climate Depot

Below is the Introduction to the report. Full report is available here. (PDF)

INTRODUCTION:
Many of the proponents of man-made global warming are now claiming that climate change is worse than they predicted. According to an October 18, 2011 Daily Climate article, global warming activists claim that the “evidence builds that scientists underplay climate impacts” and “if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested.”


But this exclusive Climate Depot exhaustive A-Z Climate Reality Check report on the scientific reality of the failure of man-made global warming shatters any such illusions that the climate is “worse than we thought.” As the real world evidence mounts that global warming claims are failing, the climate activists have ramped up predictions of future climate change impacts to declare that it “worse than we thought.” But a prediction or projection of 50-100 years into the future is not “evidence.” Recent scientific data and developments reveal that Mother Nature is playing a cruel joke on the promoters of man-made climate fears.

The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim — from A-Z — the claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing, and in many instances the claims are moving in the opposite direction. The global warming movement is suffering the scientific death of a thousand cuts. This Climate Depot special report categorizes and indexes the full range of climate developments in a handy A-Z reference guide. The A-Z report includes key facts, peer-reviewed studies and the latest data and developments with links for further reading, on an exhaustive range of man-made global warming claims.


The Antarctic sea ice extent has been at or near record extent in the past few summers and the ice is expanding, the Arctic has rebounded in recent years since the low point in 2007, polar bears are thriving, sea level is not showing acceleration and is actuallydropping, Cholera and Malaria are failing to follow global warming predictions, MountKilimanjaro melt fears are being made a mockery by gains in snow cover, globaltemperatures have been holding steady for a decade or more and many scientists are predicting global cooling is ahead, deaths due to extreme weather are radically declining,global tropical cyclone activity is near historic lows, the frequency of major U.S. hurricanes has declined, the oceans are missing their predicted heat content, big tornados have dramatically declined since the 1970s, droughts are not historically unusual nor caused by mankind, there is no evidence we are currently having unusual weather,scandals continue to rock the climate fear movement, the UN IPCC has been exposed as being a hotbed of environmental activists, former Vice President Al Gore is now under siege by his fellow global warming activists for attempting to link every bad weather event to man-made global warming and scientists from around the world continue to dissent from man-made climate fears at a rapid pace.

Climate Depot’s new A-Z report reveals that the great man-made global warming catastrophe that was predicted – has been cancelled.

In addition to the scientific collapse of anthropogenic global warming fears, the political collapse has been just as stunning. President Obama has been criticized by former Vice President Al Gore for failing to do enough when it comes to climate change legislation. The now defunct and “scientifically meaningless” Congressional climate bill failedbecause the Democrats realized it was political suicide. The new political expediency in Washington is global warming skepticism. The UN global warming treaty process lay in shambles. See: Democrat Walter Russell Mead analyzes Gore: Gore steered the green movement ‘into a tsunami of defeat that…will loom as one of the greatest failures of civil society in all time.’

Proponents of anthropogenic climate change have been reduced to making outlandish claims of a mythical 97% or 98% consensus. See: Global Warming: A ’98% Consensus Of Nothing’: ‘Only shameless activists or statistically ignorant claim that survey of 77 anonymous scientists’ is proof of 98% ‘consensus’. Once esteemed science groups like the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) have now corrupted and have used taxpayer money to lobby for the passage of climate bills. See: Ralph Cicerone’s Shame: NAS Urges Carbon Tax, Becomes Advocacy Group — ‘political appointees heading politicized scientific institutions that are virtually 100% dependent on gov’t funding’ & NAS Pres. Ralph Cicerone Turns Science Org. into political advocacy group: $6 million NAS study is used to lobby for global warming bill & MIT’s Richard Lindzen: ‘Cicerone of NAS is saying that regardless of evidence the answer is predetermined. If gov’t wants carbon control, that is the answer that the NAS will provide’

Movement ‘was bound to fail’

Leaked Emails Raise Questions About NYT’s ClimateGate Coverage

Commentary
Alana Goodman

A new batch of stolen emails from the East Anglia climate research center was released last week. Anthony Watts and JunkScience are doing some of the best up-to-the-minute blog coverage, and if you feel like digging through the 5,000+ emails, EcoWho has compiled them into a handy search engine.

The most striking take-away from the emails is how obsessed the climatologists seemed to be with media coverage – almost as if they were public relations associates as opposed to scientists. The extent of cooperation between the climate researchers and some friendly news outlets is also fascinating. (David Rose has an excellent article exploring the connections between East Anglia and the BBC.)

One New York Times writer, Andy Revkin, pops up numerous times in the emails. During the time the conversations took place, Revkin was a supposedly objective reporter on the environmental beat for the Times. He became an opinion blogger for the paper after leaving the news section at the end of 2009, which seems to be a better fit after reading some of his emails.

In one 2006 exchange between Revkin and the scientists, the reporter makes his disdain for Sen. James Inhofe – and “a big chunk” of the American public – clear, while promoting his book on the Arctic:

[Sen. Inhofe] still speaks to and for a big chunk of America — people whose understanding of science and engagement with such issues is so slight that they happily sit in pre-conceived positions. [T]hat might be one reason he doesn’t like [my] book, which is devoid of easily-attacked spin and scare tactics and lets the science point the way itself. [I]‘m just trying to be sure that folks like all of you take an extra couple seconds to use Inhofe against himself and forward the blog/book link to a few people who might not be aware of this book — the first on Arctic and global climate change for all readers 10 and up — and of Inhofe’s moves.

At the time, Inhofe had been critical of Revkin’s book, which promoted the theory of human-caused climate change, and said it undermined his objectivity as a reporter. Revkin responded to the senator publicly, though in a much less condescending manner. But the snideness in this private email isn’t nearly as bad as the fact that Revkin – at the time, an allegedly objective, neutral environmental reporter for the New York Times – seemed to be asking his highly ideological sources to back him up in this fight against Inhofe and other skeptics.

In another email, Revkin and climate scientist Michael Schlesinger appear to muse about how much better the world would be if only Al Gore had won the 2000 election.

“[H]ad the 5-to-4 ‘hanging-chad’ decision of the U.S. Supreme Court swung the other way, the U.S. would have confronted the challenges of human-induced climate change these past 6 years, rather than deny and avoid them,” Schlessinger wrote to Revkin in the 2007 email. “And, we would not now be mired in Iraq.”

“[A] very very very poignant and true point, [M]ichael,” responded Revkin. “[I] have a song called “a very fine line” that explores all those facets of life like that.” (In addition to his journalistic talents, Revkin is also a musician.)

In other emails, Revkin is dismissive of climate change skeptics, people who probably should have been an integral part of his beat. “[W]hat’s amusing, in a way, is how the ‘skeptics’ jump on a cold patch as evidence of global cooling but attack enviros for highlighting warming trends,” he wrote in February 2008.

Climatologists Trade Tips on Destroying Evidence, Evangelizing Warming

Daily Tech
Jason Mick

Penn State researcher and his CRU/IPCC colleague treated AGW like a religious "cause" despite warnings from peers

Anthropogenic global warming is a fascinating hypothesis that mankind may be able to systematically increase the Earth's temperature in the long term by burning deposits of hydrocarbon fuels.  But the key thing to note is that despite the intriguing premise, little definitive information has been determined in this field even as politicization runs rife.  In fact, researchers are still struggling to explain why warming has stalled in the last decade even as levels of carbon dioxide -- supposedly the most important greenhouse gas have rose.

I. Climatologists "Pull an Enron", Shred the Evidence

The recent University of California, Berkley "BEST" study -- perhaps the most comprehensive climate change investigation to date -- was blasted by AGW proponents.  They were upset that the study -- funded in part by the charity of a major oil entrepreneur -- highlighted the fact that temperatures had flat lined over the past decade, and were more upset still that the study suggested that other factors like sea currents could have driven the warming that occurred in the 1960s-1990s.

But newly reportedly leaked emails reveal that accusations of bias are perhaps a bit of projection.  The new emails include discussions that sound as shocking or more so as the infamous "Climategate" emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The new emails revisit embattled climate researcher-cum-AGW evangelist Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In one email Professor Jones explains to researchers how to best hide their work to prevent anyone from being able to replicate it and find errors:

I've been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.  Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden.  I've discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.

Of course Phil Jones and his supporters will likely claim that the emails were taken out of context of some larger more appropriate discussion.  But as a researcher it's pretty damning to make comments that even would seem to imply that you were engaging in trying to suppress peer review of questionable data -- academic fraud.

Particularly trouble is the phrase "cover yourself", which suggest a conspiratorial, political undertone to what is supposed to be a transparent field of research.

The emails contain outright requests for the destruction of professional communications regarding research in an effort to cover up public scrutiny of public flaws.  The leaks add yet another humiliating scandal to Pennsylvania State University as they implicate prominent Penn State climatologist Michael Mann even more directly than the last release.

Writes the Professor Jones to Professor Mann:

Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?  Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Michael Mann (left) and Phil Jones (right) appear to share tips on
how to best destroy damaging climate evidence.

Some professors and experts even tried to reach out to Professor Mann, warning him of the danger of turning science into religion by purposefully ignoring evidence. Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office writes:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary. I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

Even Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research who was implicated in the first CRU email scandal for suggesting the removal of an editor who allowed peer-reviewed skeptical studies to be published, seemed to agree on this extreme instance:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC.

The IPCC did eventually change the draft somewhat -- perhaps due to this feedback -- but critics say it still did far too much cherry picking of its sources.

II. Forget Science: You're Either For the Cause, Or You're Against It

In a later email, Professor Mann implies AGW advocacy is a political/pseudo-religious "cause" and that those who question it on scientific merits are enemies of the "cause". He writes, "I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause."

Ironically, Professor Curry appears to be the only one behaving like a true scientist. The emails neglect the forgotten truth that the distinguished Georgia Institute of Technology began as a believed in man-made global warming, publishing a notable 2005 study published in the prestigious Science journal investigating the potential correlation between hurricanes and man-made temperature increases.

The study earned scathing criticism from warming skeptics, but rather than treat her work as religious dogma, she carefully considered the criticism. Supported by her co-author, she personally met with some prominent critics and considered their claims. After all, she recalls in a Scientific American interview, "We were generally aware of these problems when we wrote the paper, but the critics argued that these issues were much more significant than we had acknowledged."

Soon she began to blog for AGW a skeptical blog run by Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, and Climate Audit, run by statistician Steve McIntyre. She began blogging hoping to convince skeptics of the merits of AGW theory via an open discussion. But in time she found herself increasingly troubled by the lack of transparency and conclusive evidence on such an important topic. She singles out the IPCC as a particularly guilty party, accusing it of outright "corruption."

Given the released emails it's hard to argue with that assessment. Writes Jonathan Overpeck, lead coordinating author of the IPCC's most recent climate assessment:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.

Al Gore kicked out of the Global Warming Club

Daily Mail
Don Surber

As the world turns away from the hysterics of the global warming crowd, the True Believers are looking for a scapegoat for their turn in fortunes. To blame Michael Mann or Phil Jones would be to admit that Climategate proved once and for all the fallacy of their “science” — that it was based on the manipulation of data and outright forgery.

Looking for dead weight in this sinking ship, Myles Allen of the Guardian has decided to toss Al Gore overboard: “Al Gore is doing a disservice to science by overplaying the link between climate change and weather. To claim that we are causing meteorological events that would not have occurred without human influence is just plain wrong.”

Now only to a true believer would there be no link between weather and climate. Myles Allen is not quite there, but he seems to recognize the problem 20 years of linking odd weather to global warming has turned into a farce. If everything proved global warming, then nothing really does.

His dump on Al Gore is refreshing: “When Al Gore said last week that scientists now have ‘clear proof that climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts that displaced millions of people this year,’ my heart sank. Having suggested the idea of “event attribution” back in 2003, and co-authored a study published earlier this year on the origins of the UK floods in autumn 2000, I suspect I may be one of the scientists being talked about.”

Yes, how dare Al Gore quote him.

The problem is not Al Gore. The problem is this ridiculous theory that mankind through its modern conveniences is creating too much carbon dioxide and this will eventually turn the world into a ball of fire. It’s rather Old Testament, conjuring up images of the demise of Sodom and Gomorrah. The problem is you cannot prove it. As Allen Myles lamented: “This illustrates an important point: human influence on climate is making some events more likely, and some less likely, and it is a challenging scientific question to work out which are which.”

Gore fakes 'proof' of Man Made Global Warming shock

Editor's note: What would this debate look like with honest approach to the science and with open public scrutiny of anthropogenic global warming?

Telegraph
James Delingpole

Like cousin Fat Tail Gore, Al just can't help doing what he does...

Watts Up With That has achieved a truly astonishing scoop. It seems that the world-renowned climatological expert Al Gore may have faked a "high school physics" experiment "proving" that Man Made Global Warming is fact, not fantasy.

Oh all right, I'll turn off the sarcasm.

What I think is most interesting is not so much that Gore has been caught out telling porkie pies, nor that the TV crew faked every last detail of the experiment. Faking it is what TV does all the time, I'm afraid. As for Al Gore and extravagant untruths well, it's scorpions, frogs and rivers, is it not? No, what's so thoroughly cherishable about this story is the forensic attention to detail which Anthony Watts has brought to bear on it.

Read it for yourself and relish every moment. I particularly like the bit where Wattsy goes out to buy the exact same equipment used in the experiment and proves that those thermometers can't possibly have been filmed rising inside the jars because they're just not blurry enough. You might call this obsessive. I call it our salvation.

The point that can't be made often enough about the internet is that it represents our best and perhaps only hope of outmanoeuvring the lies, bullying and control of the political establishment. Nowhere is this truer than with the Man Made Global Warming scam. Had it not been for the internet, Climategate would not have been broken, nor the earlier work of McIntyre and McKitrick disseminated, nor a community created in which scientific experts (and interested laymen) all over the world were able to discuss climate science freely without the risk of being defunded, or having their journal closed down or being ostracised by their colleagues. But though the internet was a necessary condition for this to happen, it was not a sufficient one. The other vitally important ingredient was the trainspotterish diligence of men and women like Anthony Watts, and Richard North and Donna Laframboise and Joanna Nova.

Why is this trainspotterish diligence so essential? Because one of the main planks of the defence used by the climate alarmist establishment against sceptics is that they have all the expertise on their side, all the PhDs, all the notable scientific institutions, and that therefore their "authority" trumps the feeble witterings of all those nonentities, crazed Oxford English graduates, and other such verminous specimens who dare to speak out against the mighty, unimpeachable wisdom.

What the internet has proved in these debates, time and again – from Glaciergate to Amazongate to Polarbeargate – is that when the rebellious amateurs of the sceptical blogosphere go head to head with the climate establishment, the bloggers always win. Not as a result of invective or snarkiness or any of the other things that bloggers also do quite well: but on the actual hard science and raw evidence. Look at almost any tussle between, say, WUWT on the one side, RealClimate on the other, and you'll notice that when it finally boils down to the irreducible truth, the side that emerges triumphant is the sceptical one, not the alarmist one. It's partly because the facts are on our side (so we jolly well ought to win if we're doing our job even remotely properly), but also because, being the underfunded underdogs, we've been forced to raise our game to a higher standard than that of our rather complacent, smug opposition.

U.S. Judge blasts Obama scientists calling them "liars"

The Examiner
Jim Kouri

The judge called one [scientist] a “zealot” who didn’t let facts get in the way of her goals and the other an “untrustworthy” witness.

A federal judge blasted Obama Administration-connected scientists on Friday for their lying to justify a drastic reduction in the amount of water that flows into California’s central valley for the sake of protecting “endangered” fish, according to a blogger for a major public-interest group that investigates government corruption.

The feds provided “equivocal or bad science,” in order to divert two years’ worth of water from the state’s central valley farmland, according to a 279-page opinion issued this week by U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger in Fresno, California.

Considered the state’s agriculture hub, the area spans 2 million acres and has a population of about 25 million, according to a report from the Judicial Watch blog.

"An adequate water supply is essential and should trump the needs of “endangered” fish. That’s not how the Obama Administration sees it, however," states a blog at Judicial Watch, a non-partisan watchdog group that investigates case of government and political corruption .

To make its case the government put together an official “biological opinion” of different species that migrate through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. To save them the feds essentially have to stem the flow of water into the area, according to government biologists from various agencies.

But the judge dismissed portions of the government’s biological opinion, calling them “arbitrary, capricious and unlawful.”

Judge Wanger also determined that many of the government scientists provided “false” and “incredible” testimony in order to support a “bad faith” preservation plan. Specifically named in the opinion were scientists from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The judge called one [scientist] a “zealot” who didn’t let facts get in the way of her goals and the other an “untrustworthy” witness.

"I have never seen anything like what has been placed before this court by these two witnesses," the judge wrote in his ruling. "The only inference that the court can draw is that it is an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court."

That must hurt, although the Obama government got much of what it wanted, permission to push encroaching salt water back in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The bottom line remains, however, that taxpayer-funded scientists provided false information -- to a federal court, no less -- to make a case for a bogus preservation plan.

"We’ve seen this repeatedly in the Obama Administration’s global warming hype. Government scientists have made all sorts of wacky assertions about the ills of climate change, even as esteemed scientists—including Nobel laureates—dispute the findings," according to Judicial Watch's blogger.

Among them: That climate change will threaten national security, make food “dangerous,” add to the malnourishment of millions worldwide, cause mental illness and cancer.

"Just a few days ago a group of federal researchers determined that global warming is much worse than previously imagined because the ocean masks the true rate of damage for periods as long as a decade. They used computer simulation to make that brilliant discovery." stated officials at Judicial Watch.
Continued thanks to Judicial Watch director of public affairs, Jill Farrell, for her excellent help and support.

Whilst Climate Change is Real, Human Induced it is Not

Al Gore:  Reduced to referring to C02 as "unnatural".

International Business Times
Thomas Costello

As with most climate change articles it must be stressed that this writer does not believe climate change is made up.

The 'green' lobbyists have been queuing up for decades by telling writers that they are 'wrong' about climate change and in fact it is human induced. There are all sorts of facts flying around, telling people that they are 'wrong' and do not understand what is happening to the planet. The earth is warming but the causes can't be solely blamed on humans.

For somebody who has read History at university, what is clear is that questions must be asked, writers should not be afraid to ask them and the past is fundamental to the issue of human induced climate change. If we ask the question, without being interrupted, we can begin to expose the over exaggerations of human induced climate change. If we take the two examples of the Ice Age and the Dinosaur Age, what were the causes of climate change in those cases? Humans?

Sure we can blame humans for many things in this world but even for climate change lobbyists, claiming human responsibilty for the destruction of the dinosaurs, would be stretching it. This issue has been scooted over many times by scientists. More people would be able to trust and be less sceptical of the causes of climate change if tough questions were answered. It is too easy to say you don't 'understand' the science behind the changes or humans are greedy and don't want to change.

Al Gore is an effective politician and his campaign on climate change has been just that. Al Gore this week suggested that Americans either support the science behind climate change or you are a part of the Republican fossil fuel group. Either you support the climate change consensus or you are right wing? That may be just a little too simplistic.

"We have to weigh whether or not we will accept the judgment of every national academy of science of every major country ... or whether we'll instead take the advice of ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck," Gore said, Reuters reported.

The earth's temperature and CO2 levels have varied widely throughout Earth's cyclical patterns of 100,000-year-long ice-ages and 10,000 year-long inter-glacial warming periods. Scientists would have to accept that the Earth is currently peaking in an inter-glacial warming period, before it will, inevitably, enter the next 100,000-year ice age. It is natural to expect warming during this period. Again, the earth is warming no doubt but is it in fact natural? Again, another question climate change lobbyists have refused to deal with over the years.

The historical record shows that temperature changes have actually preceded C02 changes. C02 therefore cannot be a primary consequence of global warming, or else they would have preceded temperature changes right? Would it be outside of the box to suggest that such evidence would appear to indicate that global warming might actually cause changes in C02 levels, therefore indicating CO2 levels cannot be wholly attributed to human-activities.

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference 2009 was the first clear example that governments are beginning to ignore the fantasy of humans being the sole suspect in climate change. Governments clearly have begun to question whether in fact humans are entirely responsible for the warming of the planet. The negotiations only produced one aspirational target - to limit surface interface mean temperature to no more than 2 C above industry levels, with no binding agreement for industrial countries to reduce emissions.

Clearly what needs to be explained to sceptics is why scientists have for a number of years dodged the serious questions. Nature is a huge part of global warming but we hear very little on this issue. What needs to happen is a new initiative to answer and address the key questions so that the world can move together as one. Climate change is serious and can only be addressed properly when the difficult questions are answered.

Al Gore Shows the Same Level of Maturity as His Followers

Editor's note:   After shoving NAFTA or GATT down our throats, Al Gore wants us to open wide one more time.

As I said in my last article:

How does CO2 influence climate change? What level is influenced by human activity?

Wouldn’t we like to know. Unfortunately, not much will come from a bunch of folks beating their chests and definitively assuring us that AGW is not something that needs to be questioned.

They act as if they know the earth is cooling.  It's as if their goal is to implement C02 policies so they can make the claim that they "saved the earth" once the cooling becomes more obvious.  Maybe that's why they are so shrill.


Media-ite Frances Martel

Does Eddy Bauer still make those vests?

Former Vice President Al Gore’s crusade to stop man-made climate change hit the road last week as Gore attended the Aspen Institute’s “Networks and Citizenship” media panel to discuss those who do not believe in his cause. In a rage-fueled rant against his detractors, Gore told the audience that much of the anti-global warming rhetoric came from a small group of people “washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again” who had made it unacceptable “to use the goddamn word ‘climate.’”


Gore began by comparing the anti-global warming block to tobacco lobbyists who “succeeded in delaying the implementation of the surgeon general’s report for 40 years… It was evil, evil, evil.” He declined to name names, but gave the impression that a small group of people were benefiting from the debate by paying for alternate and less reliable theories to come out against climate change:

And some of the exact same people — I can go down a list of their names — are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!

What seemed to get him angriest, however, was the prospect that those that believed in global warming were outnumbered. “You heard them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again,” he cried, arguing that there was “no longer a shared reality” from which to begin scientific study and that those that shared his reality were being hindered by the debate. “It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the goddamn word ‘climate,’” he railed.
The speech also included some talk on the current fiscal crisis in America, where Gore noted that the country had not been served well by lobbyists paying for public advertising for their causes, and stating that the wide dissemination of the idea that spending and not revenue was the problem had led to the second recession, and that was “absolutely insane.”