Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it

Daily Mail

• The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
• This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. 

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years. 

global temperature changes

Research: The new figures mean that the 'pause' in global warming has now lasted 

for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. 

This picture shows an iceberg melting in Eastern Greenland

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported. 

This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year. 

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased. 

More...

• Wettest start to autumn for 12 years as South West continues to be battered by torrential rain

Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.

Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’. 

Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of ‘natural variability’ – factors such as long-term ocean temperature cycles and changes in the output of the sun. However, he said he was still convinced that the current decade would end up significantly warmer than the previous two.

Disagreement: Professor Phil Jones, left, from the University of East Anglia, dismissed the significance of the plateau. Professor Judith Curry, right, from Georgia Tech university in America, disagreed, saying the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’

Warmer: Since 1880 the world has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius. This image shows floating icebergs in Greenland

The regular data collected on global temperature is called Hadcrut 4, as it is jointly issued by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre and Prof Jones’s Climatic Research Unit.

Since 1880, when worldwide industrialisation began to gather pace and reliable statistics were first collected on a global scale, the world has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius. 

Some scientists have claimed that this rate of warming is set to increase hugely without drastic cuts to carbon-dioxide emissions, predicting a catastrophic increase of up to a further five degrees  Celsius by the end of the century.

The new figures were released as the Government made clear that it would ‘bend’ its own  carbon-dioxide rules and build new power stations to try to combat the threat of blackouts. 

University of East Anglia spent £112,870 on 'climategate' PR

Editor's Note:  Notice how the Guardian fails to mention the release of the 2nd batch of emails which put to bed the notion that the first batch of emails were "wild accusations from cherry-picked statements taken out of context."   Also not mentioned but painfully obvious:  A scientific body should not have to resort to using a P.R. firm to sell its science.  The science should speak for itself.  The notion that East Anglia needed to hire a P.R. firm suggests that the information they have presented is indeed suspect.

The Guardian

University forced to reveal how much it paid the Outside Organisation in wake of hacked emails furore

Public relations is an uncertain science. There are some widely agreed ground rules – be on top of the facts, be proactive, etc – but each event or crisis also demands a uniquely tailored response.

The University of East Anglia (UEA) found itself in just such a PR "hole" in November 2009 when thousands of private emails exchanged between climate scientists were dumped online in an incident that became known as "Climategate". In the following months, the university and its scientists became the focus of an international maelstrom with all sorts of wild accusations and claims were being made against them, particularly online. It was exactly the sort of situation that required expert and sustained handling by PR professionals.

In the days and weeks after the email release, the university's in-house press department was criticised for not reacting harder and faster to the storm enveloping them. The accusation was that they were actually making the situation far worse by largely refusing to comment, or, more importantly, putting any of the scientists up for interview so that they could defend themselves against any accusations by contextualising and explaining their emails which were being cherry-picked for damning isolated quotes.

But something changed in February 2010. Suddenly, key scientists were now being offered up for interview. The "fight back" had begun, just as a wave of enquiries into the affair were getting under way. It has since transpired that UEA had at this point finally decided to hire the services of an external PR consultancy called the Outside Organisation, the managing director of which, Neil Wallis, has since been arrested and bailed without charge as part of the on-going police investigation into phone hacking due to his former role as deputy editor of the News of the World.

No Global Warming For 15 Years

GWPF

New UK Met Office global temperature data confirms that the world has not warmed in the past 15 years.

Analysis by the GWPF of the newly released HadCRUT4 global temperature database shows that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years - a timescale that challenges current models of global warming.

Click to Enlarge

The graph shows the global annual average temperature since 1997. No statistically significant trend can be discerned from the data. The only statistically acceptable conclusion to be drawn from the HadCRUT4 data is that between 1997 – 2011 it has remained constant, with a global temperature of 14.44 +/- 0.16 deg C (2 standard deviations.)

The important question is whether 15 years is a sufficient length of time from which to draw climatic conclusions that are usually considered over 30 years, as well as its implications for climate projections.

The IPCC states that anthropogenic influences on the climate dominated natural ones sometime between 1960 – 80.The recent episode of global warming that occurred after that transition began in 1980. The world has warmed by about 0.4 deg C in this time. Whilst we live in the warmest decade of the instrumental era of global temperature measurement (post-1880), and the 90s were warmer than the 80s, the world has not got any warmer in the last 15 years.

In 2001 and 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (and here) estimated that the world would warm at a rate of 0.2 deg C per decade in the future due to greenhouse gas forcing. Since those predictions were made it has become clear that the world has not been warming at that rate. Some scientists retrospectively revised their forecasts saying that the 0.2 deg C figure is an average one. Larger or smaller rates of warming are possible as short-term variations.

Climategate (Part II)

The Weekly Standard
Steven F. Hayward

The conventional wisdom about blockbuster movie sequels is that the second acts are seldom as good as the originals. The exceptions, like The Godfather: Part II or The Empire Strikes Back, succeed because they build a bigger backstory and add dimensions to the original characters. The sudden release last week of another 5,000 emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University​—​ground zero of “Climategate I” in 2009​—​immediately raised the question of whether this would be one of those rare exceptions or Revenge of the Nerds II. 

PHIL ‘HIDE THE DECLINE’ JONES, LEFT, 

AND MICHAEL ‘HOCKEY STICK’ MANN

Before anyone had time to get very far into this vast archive, the climate campaigners were ready with their critical review: Nothing worth seeing here. Out of context! Cherry picking! “This is just trivia, it’s a diversion,” climate researcher Joel Smith told Politico. On the other side, Anthony Watts, proprietor of the invaluable WattsUpWithThat.com skeptic website, had the kind of memorable line fit for a movie poster. With a hat tip to the famous Seinfeld episode, Watts wrote: “They’re real, and they’re spectacular!” An extended review of this massive new cache will take months and could easily require a book-length treatment. But reading even a few dozen of the newly leaked emails makes clear that Watts and other longtime critics of the climate cabal are going to be vindicated.

Climategate I, the release of a few thousand emails and documents from the CRU in November 2009, revealed that the united-front clubbiness of the leading climate scientists was just a display for public consumption. The science of climate change was not “settled.” There was no consensus about the extent and causes of global warming; in their private emails, the scientists expressed serious doubts and disagreements on some major issues. In particular, the email exchanges showed that they were far from agreement about a key part of the global warming narrative​—​the famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to demonstrate that the last 30 years were the warmest of the last millennium and which made the “medieval warm period,” an especially problematic phenomenon for the climate campaign, simply go away. (See my “Scientists Behaving Badly,” The Weekly Standard, December 14, 2009.) Leading scientists in the inner circle expressed significant doubts and uncertainty about the hockey stick and several other global warming claims about which we are repeatedly told there exists an ironclad consensus among scientists. (Many of the new emails make this point even more powerfully.) On the merits, the 2009 emails showed that the case for certainty about climate change was grossly overstated.

More damning than the substantive disagreement was the attitude the CRU circle displayed toward dissenters, skeptics, and science journals that did not strictly adhere to the party line. Dissenting articles were blocked from publication or review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), requests for raw data were rebuffed, and Freedom of Information Act requests were stonewalled. National science panels were stacked, and qualified dissenters such as NASA prize-winner John Christy were tolerated as “token skeptics.” The CRU circle was in high dudgeon over the small handful of skeptics who insisted on looking over their shoulder, revealing the climate science community to be thin-skinned and in-secure about its enterprise​—​a sign that something is likely amiss. Even if there was no unequivocal “smoking gun” of fraud or wrongdoing, the glimpse deep inside the climate science community was devastating. As I wrote at the time (“In Denial,” March 15, 2010), Climategate did for the global warming controversy what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war 40 years ago: It changed the narrative decisively.

The new batch of emails, over 5,300 in all (compared with about 1,000 in the 2009 release), contains a number of fresh embarrassments and huge red flags for the same lovable bunch of insider scientists. It stars the same cast, starting with the Godfather of the CRU, Phil “hide the decline” Jones, and featuring Michael “hockey stick” Mann once again in his supporting role as the Fredo of climate science, blustering along despite the misgivings and doubts of many of his peers. Beyond the purely human element, the new cache offers ample confirmation of the rank politicization of climate science and rampant cronyism that ought to trouble even firm believers in catastrophic climate change.

In fact, the emails display candid glimpses of concern inside the CRU circle. Peter Thorne of NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), who earned his Ph.D. in climate science at East Anglia in 2001, wrote Phil Jones in a 2005 message, “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.” An appeal to “context,” which the climate campaigners say is crucial to understanding why excerpts such as this one are unimportant, does quite the opposite, and only points to the problems the climate change campaigners have brought upon themselves by their tribalism.

This exchange between Thorne and Jones, along with numerous similar threads in the new cache, is concerned with what should and shouldn’t be included in a chapter of the IPCC’s 2007 fourth assessment report​—​a chapter for which Jones was the coordinating lead author along with another key Climategate figure, Kevin Trenberth. The complete chapter (if you’re keeping score at home, it’s Chapter 3 of Working Group I, “Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change”) lists 10 “lead authors” and 66 “contributing authors” in addition to Jones and Trenberth. One of Jones’s emails from 2004 displays how explicitly political the process of assembling the IPCC report is: “We have a very mixed bag of LAs [lead authors] in our chapter. Being the basic atmos obs. one, we’ve picked up number of people from developing countries so IPCC can claim good geographic representation. This has made our task harder as CLAs [contributing lead authors] as we are working with about 50% good people who can write reasonable assessments and 50% who probably can’t.”

The final chapter was amended along lines Thorne recommended, but several other objections and contrary observations (one in particular from Roger Pielke Jr. about extreme weather events that has been subsequently vindicated) were scornfully dismissed. And appeals to context avoid the question: Is this “science-by-committee” a sensible way to sort out contentious scientific issues that hold immense public policy implications? Perhaps a politicized, semi-chaotic process like the IPCC is unavoidable in a subject as wide-ranging and complex as climate change; future historians of science can debate the issue. But the high stakes involved ought to compel a maximum of open debate and transparency. Instead, the IPCC process places a premium on gatekeepers and arbiters who control what goes in and what doesn’t, and it is exactly in its exercise of the gatekeeping function that the CRU circle has shredded its credibility and trustworthiness. 

One thing that emerges from the new emails is that, while a large number of scientists are working on separate, detailed nodes of climate-related issues (the reason for dozens of authors for every IPCC report chapter), the circle of scientists who control the syntheses that go into IPCC reports and the national climate reports that the U.S. and other governments occasionally produce is quite small and partial to particular outcomes of these periodic assessments. The way the process works in practice casts a shadow over one of the favorite claims of the climate campaign​—​namely, that there exists a firm “consensus” about catastrophic future warming among thousands of scientists. This so-called consensus reflects only the views of a much smaller subset of gatekeepers.

The Great Global Warming Fizzle

Editor's Note:  Well, they had it coming.  Would like to know the precise contribution of C02 to climate change, but that may be a while...

Wall Street Journal

The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom.

EU carbon trading scheme pays for
murder of 23 farmers in Honduras

How do religions die? Generally they don't, which probably explains why there's so little literature on the subject. Zoroastrianism, for instance, lost many of its sacred texts when Alexander sacked Persepolis in 330 B.C., and most Zoroastrians converted to Islam over 1,000 years ago. Yet today old Zoroaster still counts as many as 210,000 followers, including 11,000 in the U.S. Christopher Hitchens might say you can't kill what wasn't there to begin with.

Still, Zeus and Apollo are no longer with us, and neither are Odin and Thor. Among the secular gods, Marx is mostly dead and Freud is totally so. Something did away with them, and it's worth asking what.

Columnist Bill McGurn on the Air Force Academy's $80,000 outdoor worship center for witches, pagans, and Wiccans.

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

This week, the conclave of global warming's cardinals are meeting in Durban, South Africa, for their 17th conference in as many years. The idea is to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire next year, and to require rich countries to pony up $100 billion a year to help poor countries cope with the alleged effects of climate change. This is said to be essential because in 2017 global warming becomes "catastrophic and irreversible," according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse.
The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece.

Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds.

All this has been enough to put the Durban political agenda on hold for the time being. But religions don't die, and often thrive, when put to the political sidelines. A religion, when not physically extinguished, only dies when it loses faith in itself.

That's where the Climategate emails come in. First released on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit two years ago and recently updated by a fresh batch, the "hide the decline" emails were an endless source of fun and lurid fascination for those of us who had never been convinced by the global-warming thesis in the first place.

But the real reason they mattered is that they introduced a note of caution into an enterprise whose motivating appeal resided in its increasingly frantic forecasts of catastrophe. Papers were withdrawn; source material re-examined. The Himalayan glaciers, it turned out, weren't going to melt in 30 years. Nobody can say for sure how high the seas are likely to rise—if much at all. Greenland isn't turning green. Florida isn't going anywhere.

The reply global warming alarmists have made to these dislosures is that they did nothing to change the underlying science, and only improved it in particulars. So what to make of the U.N.'s latest supposedly authoritative report on extreme weather events, which is tinged with admissions of doubt and uncertainty? Oddly, the report has left climate activists stuttering with rage at what they call its "watered down" predictions. If nothing else, they understand that any belief system, particularly ones as young as global warming, cannot easily survive more than a few ounces of self-doubt.

Meanwhile, the world marches on. On Sunday, 2,232 days will have elapsed since a category 3 hurricane made landfall in the U.S., the longest period in more than a century that the U.S. has been spared a devastating storm. Great religions are wise enough to avoid marking down the exact date when the world comes to an end. Not so for the foolish religions. Expect Mayan cosmology to take a hit to its reputation when the world doesn't end on Dec. 21, 2012. Expect likewise when global warming turns out to be neither catastrophic nor irreversible come 2017.

And there is this: Religions are sustained in the long run by the consolations of their teachings and the charisma of their leaders. With global warming, we have a religion whose leaders are prone to spasms of anger and whose followers are beginning to twitch with boredom. Perhaps that's another way religions die.

Climategate II Emails Show US/British Govs Colluded W/Scientists to Suppress Anti-Warming Data

The Lid

This past Tuesday more than 5,000 emails were leaked online as  follow-up to the first set Climategate emails released two years ago. These emails go even further than the first set in showing a systemic suppression of evidence, and even reports being published that the scientists knew were  based on bogus approaches, but since the findings were pro-global warming the papers were blessed by the University of East Anglia and the rest of the ruling members of the climate change Cosa Nostra.  This time not only are the scientists implicated but so are members of the British and US governments

For example there was this message from the British Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra):

One message appeared to show a member of Defra staff telling colleagues working on climate science to give the government a ‘strong message’.

The emails paint a clear picture of scientists selectively using data, and colluding with politicians to misuse scientific information.

‘Humphrey’, said to work at Defra, writes: ‘I cannot overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the government can give on climate change to help them tell their story.

'They want their story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.’

They were assured by the head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (the now infamous Professor Phil Jones) that the findings would stand up.

Yet one of the newly released emails, written by Prof. Jones - who is working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - said: '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.

And who was a party to suppressing that data?

'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.

In another email Professor Jones happily reported

 'I’ve been told that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is above national 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.

Not all scientists were happy with this approach but some seemed happy to being a party to concealing and destroying evidence.

The lead author of one of the reports, Jonathan Overpeck, wrote, 'The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out.'

 This time even the "science world" is coming down hard on the climate scientists.

Andrew Orlwowski, UK science site The Register's science correspondent comments on one email that says, 'What if climate change turns out to be a natural fluctuation? They'll kill us all'

'The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.'

Clive Crook, a commentator for the Atlantic, who described the earlier inquiries into the Climategate emails as 'ineffectual' and 'mealy mouthed', reportedly said, 'The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me.

The climatologists in the climate change Cosa Nostra, are claiming the release of these emails is despicable, they are not (as of this writing) claiming the emails are bogus. Which based on the evidence shows that we have been lied to not only by members of the scientific community but by the
Department of Energy of the United States Government. Hopefully congress will investigate why the DOE is supressing information.

Environmental Advocates Use Racism to Dismiss Global Warming Skeptics

Reduced to desperate measures, proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have resorted to formally identifying those who are skeptical of the global warming science as conservative white males.  

One inherent shortfall of the study is that it inadvertently celebrates the intelligence of conservative white males and denigrates every other race, gender and political background (including my own). 

Recently, mainstream media began the slow, tacit admission that global warming hasn't manifested in the way it was so definitively predicted 10 years ago.   This admission was presented last month through a recent study suggesting that Çhina's sulfur emissions were to blame for the lack of global warming.   Blaming China wasn't enough, so scientists scrambled to present the following two additional excuses for the foiled predictions of the past 10 years:

Volcanoes Now Blamed for Lack of Global Warming

Aerosols Blamed for Lack of Global Warming

Ironically, the aerosols article also blames the burning of fossil fuels for offsetting the effect of global warming.  Fossil fuels were initially blamed for global warming.

To understand how a group pushing human induced climate change could be reduced to conducting such a bizarre survey involving the socio-economic class of those who question the science of AGW, one has to look at the way they handle adverse information.

On a local level, anyone can make this discovery for themselves.  For example, If you have a group of environmentalists in your area that refer to global warming as one of the reasons for great ideas like localization, cleaning up the eco-sphere or reducing automobile exhaust, introduce some of the contradictory information involving climate change and see how they react to you. Pay close attention to the way they try to dismiss you or shape the argument away from what you present in support of recent conventional climate research. See if they actually answer your questions or address the specific points you present. Turning over this rock may involve an ugly discovery underneath.

An article describing this study indicates a comparison between conservative white males and the rest of the population.  Race, gender and political affiliation aside, the survey comes up with 39% "denying there's a scientific consensus".  White male conservatives boast a portion that is as high as 59%.  Not only does the scientific consensus of global warming have nothing to do with the science of global warming, the AGW movement is notorious for suppressing skeptical scientists.   The question should be, "Who is aware of the skeptical scientists being suppressed?"

The AGW climate scientists' tendency to suppress alternate views was revealed earlier through the hacked emails of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU).  Suppression was one red flag in addition to suggestions for "hiding the decline" of global temperatures and refusing requests to see the original data. 

Since this incident occurred in November of 2009, East Anglia's CRU hired a PR firm to help with their public image after the email scandal.  This is an unusual move by a research department because the science is expected to hold up to public scrutiny on its own.

In what is commonly called the "third party technique" among PR professionals, panels were put together on three occasions to examine the hacked emails.  The idea was to reassure the public that the inquiry was indeed independent and trustworthy.  All three "blue ribbon panels" exonerated East Anglia's CRU by downplaying the erroneous activity and declaring that none of the relevant data was affected.   Unfortunately for East Anglia, it appears that their PR department had a hand in this process.

Common sense would have the AGW movement take its blows, distance itself from the scientists involved with East Anglia, and allow newer cleaner research to emerge.  Instead, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seemed hell bent on protecting the research called into question with the hacked emails. 

For some reason, the AGW movement thought that the best tactics were to further corrupt the peer review process, 'conspiracy bait' those who question the severity of CO2's warming effects and chime together with the mantra of "scientific consensus".   In the short run, this strategy seemed to work, especially when the establishment joins in with the motivation of another market bubble - carbon derivative scams.  Banks love human-driven climate change.  Anthropogenic global warming enjoys the privilege of mainstream acceptance.   When contradictory information slips by, the story is typically interspersed with statements reaffirming "the reality of anthropogenic global warming".  Sometimes, the information is revealed in such a vague manner, one begins to wonder what the initial purpose of the story was supposed to be. 

But the recent avalanche of contradictory information and discrediting scandals seem to be overwhelming the self aggrandizing orthodoxy that is AGW.

Murdoch Scandal Reveals “Covert” Operations by East Anglia’s CRU

Straight to the children
Climate Research Unit, East Anglia University

Climate Audit
Steve McIntyre

Editors Note: The idea that a East Anglia's CRU is compelled to hire a public relations firm over questions regarding its scientific research is absurd. Their research should stand on its own.

Today brings news of the arrest of the managing director of a firm hired by the University of East Anglia’s CRU (Climatic Research Unit) to carry out “covert” operations (h/t reader Chu here). Neil Wallis of Outside Organisation was arrested today in connection with the spreading News of the World scandal.

Last year, Wallis’ partner at Outside Organisation , Alan Edwards, was profiled in Music Week in a story that led with:

Don’t tell the conspiracy theorists. But one PR company was at the centre of the Michael Jackson funeral, Climategate and Naomi Campbell’s appearance at Charles Taylor’s trial in The Hague.

Edwards is described as the “man who has also helped shape the careers of Amy Winehouse, Blondie, The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Cliff, David Bowie, Spice Girls, David Beckham, P Diddy, Kevin Pietersen and Shayne Ward” and the man who masterminded PR for Naomi Campbell’s trial. Outside Organisation’s handling of Climategate for CRU was described as “more covert”.

Less apparent is its work in the corporate field, where its activities tend to be rather more covert. [my bold]

“We don’t advertise a lot of the things we do,” says Edwards, who was called in by the University of East Anglia when Climategate blew up. “That was really interesting. It’s very high level, and you’re very much in the background on that sort of thing.”
The university’s Climatic Research Unit wanted Outside to fire back some shots on the scientists’ behalf after leaked emails from the unit gave climate change skeptics ammunition and led to an avalanche of negative press about whether global warming was a real possibility.

 Related Stories:

Scientists Gagged From Interpreting Study That Links Climate Change To Cosmic Rays

We Have to Get Rid of the Medieval Warming Period

“Covert” Operations by East Anglia’s CRU

Climate Audit
Steve McIntyre

Editors Note:  The idea that a East Anglia's CRU is compelled to hire a public relations firm over questions regarding its scientific research is absurd.  Their research should stand on its own.

Straight to the children
Climate Research Unit, East Anglia University

Today brings news of the arrest of the managing director of a firm hired by the University of East Anglia’s CRU (Climatic Research Unit) to carry out “covert” operations (h/t reader Chu here). Neil Wallis of Outside Organisation was arrested today in connection with the spreading News of the World scandal.

Last year, Wallis’ partner at Outside Organisation , Alan Edwards, was profiled in Music Week in a story that led with:

Don’t tell the conspiracy theorists. But one PR company was at the centre of the Michael Jackson funeral, Climategate and Naomi Campbell’s appearance at Charles Taylor’s trial in The Hague.

Edwards is described as the “man who has also helped shape the careers of Amy Winehouse, Blondie, The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Cliff, David Bowie, Spice Girls, David Beckham, P Diddy, Kevin Pietersen and Shayne Ward” and the man who masterminded PR for Naomi Campbell’s trial. Outside Organisation’s handling of Climategate for CRU was described as “more covert”.

Less apparent is its work in the corporate field, where its activities tend to be rather more covert. [my bold]

“We don’t advertise a lot of the things we do,” says Edwards, who was called in by the University of East Anglia when Climategate blew up. “That was really interesting. It’s very high level, and you’re very much in the background on that sort of thing.”
The university’s Climatic Research Unit wanted Outside to fire back some shots on the scientists’ behalf after leaked emails from the unit gave climate change skeptics ammunition and led to an avalanche of negative press about whether global warming was a real possibility.

A Peer-Reviewed Deception

 

Deconstructing Anthropogenic Global Warming Alarmism

http://skepticdenialism.blogspot.com/2011/06/peer-reviewed-deception.html

A message to the environmental movement

James Corbett

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Hard evidence needed on climate change

Star Phoenix
Bronwyn Eyre

I know it's futile to complain about the weather. But are weather researchers fair game?

Last week, it was reported a University of Regina project, led by Prof. Dave Sauchyn, was being awarded $1.25 million from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to study the role of climate change in natural disasters on the Prairies.

"Climate is a pattern. One event is weather," Sauchyn said. "But if you get a bunch of these (weather incidents) from across the Prairies and it happens again and again, we say, 'Something is going on.' And it's probably climate change."

Sounds a bit like witchcraft reasoning to me.

Look: If there's a clear pattern of global warming - sorry, "climate change" - that can be proven without skullduggery or obfuscation, most of us will be willing to do what it takes to rectify things. But increasingly, it seems, "experts" are claiming wacky weather simply to advance an agenda.

A few trees uprooted and hail storms in Ontario this week? Must be climate change. The same goes for the recent floods in Quebec and Manitoba and tornadoes in the U.S. Even the Japanese tsunami elicited a few "climate change" prognoses.

Which reminds me of a comment of Henry Kissinger's I read the other day. No, the world's most famous diplomat hasn't ventured into the global warming debate. He was talking about China: "For the Chinese, history is part of current reality. For America, current reality usually begins with the perception of a problem we are trying to solve now."

Sounds a lot like the extremeweathermeisters. Sure, it's a different context. But in weather as in everything else, current reality isn't everything. The past informs the present.

The fact is, tornadoes in the U.S. Midwest were worse in the 1930s - not to mention the continentwide, Dirty Thirties drought. Some residents of northeast Japan are the third generation to have experienced tsunamis. And the recent flooding around Lumsden, for example, was as bad in 1974.

British weather forecasters recently predicted this summer could be as hot as the famously hot summer of 1976. This winter, December was the coldest and snowiest in Britain in 30 years. During the "little ice age," a period of cooling between 1150 and 1850, people skated on the Thames.

Could it be the weather's always been a bit wacky and prone to periods of extremes?

TARY Ontario may have roasted last summer, and a 40 C day there last week inevitably made the evening news. But the province has always been prone to high heat. When I lived there in the early '80s, I remember high, muggy heat every day.

Of course, it used to boil here, too. But nowadays, local TV weather reporters emblazon forecasts for 22 C with bright sun labels reading "Hot." Some hot. When the sun goes behind a cloud when it's 22 C, you have to find a jacket.

Canadian climatologist Gordon McBean may say, "We'll have more hot summers as the climate warms. Over the past 25 years, average temperatures have been steadily rising across the country."

But last spring, Saskatchewan experienced one of the wettest, coolest springs "on record." The summer continued much the same, as it did across most of the country.

In 2009, Environment Canada reported that in Saskatchewan, July was "more than two degrees colder than normal." Ditto for most of the spring, summer and winter. Temperatures in 2009 across Western Canada were "much cooler than normal."
Surely, "two degrees cooler" here and "three degrees cooler there" over huge land masses have to have some effect on calculations of average. What's the formula, anyway: A simple heat lost versus heat gained kind of thing?

We know scientists rely on temperature readings because in the infamous "climategate" emails, they fretted that freedom of information regulations might force them to reveal temperatures were actually falling.

Either way, they've gotta do better than a few polar bears and show us the unadulterated, empirical evidence.

Until we have such evidence, let there be a moratorium on laments by the likes of fired parliamentary page Brigitte De Pape that we're "destroying the planet," or by Green MP Elizabeth May that climate change is the "single largest threat."

There are many threats in this world. But climate change doesn't appear to be one of them.
As for me, I remain cautiously optimistic that "global warming" may someday return to the Prairies. I miss it.

The great global warming swindle - Full version

CRU Refuses FOI Request for Yamal Climategate Chronology

ClimateAudit

Probably no single issue damages the reputation of the climate science community more than the refusal to show the data that supports their work, even under an FOI request. The public believes that scientists who purport to be concerned about the future of the planet should not place their own financial interests, including future grants, ahead of this concern, particularly when their research has been done with public funds.

Recently I sent an FOI request to the University of East Anglia for a regional chronology combining Yamal, Polar Urals and shorter (presumably Schweingruber) chronologies referred to in Climategate email 1146252894.txt, as well as a request for even a simple list of sites used to make the chronology. This request is for data that is central to Climategate. Yamal was in controversy in the days prior to Climategate. I drew particular attention to this issue and this series in my own submission. Unfortunately, the “inquiries” avoided the issue.

Not only did East Anglia refuse my request for the regional chronology, they even refused to identify the sites. The University claimed that even identifying the sites would result in “financial harm” to the university though an adverse impact on their “ability to attract research funding”. See here.
It’s hard to imagine an institution purporting to justify its conduct in such crass commercial terms.
In more detail …




I wrote my recent posts on Yamal here here as an introduction to today’s post by reminding readers that the topic in dispute when the Climategate dossier was released was why CRU hadn’t published a regional chronology combining Yamal, Schweingruber data (including Polar Urals), as they had done for Taimyr. The question was summarized by Ross in an Op Ed as follows:

Combining data from different samples would not have been an unusual step. Briffa added data from another Schweingruber site to a different composite, from the Taimyr Peninsula. The additional data were gathered more than 400 km away from the primary site. And in that case the primary site had three or four times as many cores to begin with as the Yamal site. Why did he not fill out the Yamal data with the readily-available data from his own coauthor? Why did Briffa seek out additional data for the already well-represented Taimyr site and not for the inadequate Yamal site?

Although Briffa’s online response in October 2009 was implausible – Briffa said that they hadn’t thought of including the Schweingruber series – it was uncritically endorsed by the “community”. Briffa also claimed that this didn’t “matter” – I rebutted this latter claim in my recent post.

Briffa’s seemingly implausible assertion that they had never “considered” inclusion of the Schweingruber series was brought into question by the Climategate dossier, and, in particular email 1146252894.txt which discussed the very regional chronology combining Yamal, Polar Urals and shorter (Schweingruber) chronologies that had been at issue on the eve of Climategate:

Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006
To: philip.brohan
From: Tim Osborn
Subject: Re: Standardisation uncertainty for tree-ring series
Cc: Keith Briffa,simon.tett
Hi Philip,
we have three “groups” of trees:

“SCAND” (which includes the Tornetrask and Finland multi-millennial chronologies, but also some shorter chronologies from the same region). These trees fall mainly within the 3 boxes centred at: 17.5E, 67.5N;22.5E, 67.5N; 27.5E, 67.5N.

“URALS” (which includes the Yamal and Polar Urals long chronologies, plus other shorter ones). These fall mainly within these 3 boxes: 52.5E, 67.5N; 62.5E, 62.5N (note this is the only one not at 67.5N); 67.5E, 67.5N.

“TAIMYR” (which includes the Taimyr long chronology, plus other shorter ones). These fall mainly within these 4 boxes: 87.5E, 67.5N; 102.5E, 67.5N; 112.5E, 67.5N; 122.5E, 67.5N.

We do some analysis at the group scale, and for this we take the JJA temperatures from each box and average to the group scale to obtain a single series from each of SCAND, URALS and TAIMY.

We do some analysis at the overall scale, and for this we take these three group temperature series and average them to get an overall NW Eurasia temperature for boxes with tree chronologies in them.

We did also try using a wider average for the region, including all LAND temperatures from grid boxes within a rectangular region from 12.5E to 127.5E and from 57.5N to 72.5N, but I don’t think it correlated so well against the tree-ring width data (I can’t remember the exact correlations), so we didn’t pursue that.
Does that give you enough information to be going on with? I’d recommend using CRUTEM3 rather than HadCRUT3, because the correlations seem to deteriorate with the inclusion of SST data in some cases — though of course you can look into this yourself.
Cheers
Tim

In my submission to the Parliamentary Committee and Muir Russell “inquiry”, I specifically referred them to the “still unavailable combined chronology attested in Climategate Letter 1146252894.txt” (this was one of only two emails that I directly cited in the running text.) For inquiries mandated to examine possible incidents of data manipulation or suppression (including “cherry picking”) this was right at the top of my list and should have been somewhere on theirs. Instead, the “inquiries” averted their gaze.

Because none of the negligent “inquiries” reported on the regional chronology, it remained an outstanding question. Accordingly, I recently submitted an FOI (EIR) request for information on the Climategate regional chronology, including even seemingly innocuous information such as the sites:

Climategate email 684. 1146252894.txt of Apr 28, 2006 refers to a tree ring composite identified as follows:

“URALS” (which includes the Yamal and Polar Urals long chronologies, plus other shorter ones).

Could you please provide me a digital version of this series together with a list of all the measurement data sets used to make this composite, denoting each data set by ITRDB identification or equivalent. For the Polar Urals site, would you please identify the individual data sets used by ITRDB identification or equivalent. If any of the data is not in a public archive, please provide the measurement data.

It would probably simplify matters if you also provided the measurement data used for the “URALS” chronology in a digital form.
Thank you for your attention,
Stephen McIntyre

A couple of weeks ago, the University of East Anglia refused everything in my request, up to and including a list of sites. (The refusal is online here.) I’ll summarize their response below, but urge interested readers to read the original refusal.

As a clarification for the refusal below, although I had only requested the regional chronology, an email prior to the one quoted discussed the construction of 1001 bootstrap variations, which weren’t what I was looking for.

Although they refused to provide a list of sites, they said that the sites were in northwest Siberia:

Although the specific lists of sites used at the time of the 2006 email (and as
modified in subsequent work) are not being released, the primary data from which
the selections were made, including the site identifiers, are available publicly on a
variety of websites as noted in the above text. In addition we can release the
general parameters for the sites from which the data for the URALS group were
drawn: we used only ring-width data, and the sites were from within the domain
bounded by 45°E and 75°E and north of 60°N

And that the sites were referred to somewhere within the lists on three websites:

Although the specific lists of sites are not being released, we are providing the general coordinates to identify the “URALS” study region from which data were selected. All of the data that we have used within this area are publicly available (including their ITRDB identifiers or equivalent) on several websites. In the attachment to this letter we provide the general regional
parameters for this study and the data (including ITRDB identifiers where they exist)
from which the selection was made can be found on the ITRDB website:
(http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/itrdb.htm). Additional data are available at other websites:
(http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/treering.html) and
(http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/data/). There are some Russian
sites not within the ITRDB database and the identifiers for those can be found on a
Russian website http://lib.ipae.uran.ru/dchrono (in Russian).

Secondly, even though Briffa et al 2008 purported to publish regional chronologies for three north Eurasian areas, they claimed their 2006 regional chronology was exempt because it was only a first draft.

Thirdly, they stated that the release of either the data or the selection of sites would “adversely affect the intellectual property rights of the University”:

The 1,001 composite data sets and the list of sites used to construct the data sets
are incomplete and subject to further work and modification. Additionally, release at
this time of the 1,001 composite data sets and the selection of sites used to
construct them would also adversely affect the intellectual property rights of the
University.

They argued that their “intellectual property rights” extended to the selection of sites and disclosure of the sites included in their unreported 2006 regional chronology would cause the university “financial harm” through an adverse impact on its ability to attract funding. The University goes on to say that CRU is re-analysing its results and will report back by October 2012:

In regards to Regulation 12(5)(c), it is our contention that there are intellectual property rights in the form of both copyright and database right in the composite data sets.
Creative work went into the selection of the site locations to include, and the
arrangement of the data within the data sets, thus leading to a database right.
Additionally, the data itself within the composite data sets represents the intellectual
effort of developing the processing of the ‘raw’ data obtained from the site datasets
themselves and therefore attracts copyright. The ‘adverse affect’ to intellectual property
rights is based upon the fact that release of these data sets and the methodology used
in their construction would, effectively, be publication of the creative work of the CRU
staff. This would seriously reduce the likelihood that any high impact journal would
publish the results pertaining to this work, thus effectively causing the University
financial harm via adverse impact upon reputation, ability to attract research funding,
and funding arising from the citation of the publications within the REF process by which
universities in the United Kingdom receive funding based on the quality of research
undertaken….

the lists of sites from which the data is drawn was created in 2006 as a first ‘draft’ of work that was meant to be carried forward and refined with a view to future publication. Whilst there
has been the passage of some time since the creation of the first set of 1,001 composite
records, staff at the CRU have returned to this data recently as part of a project funded
by NERC, which commenced in May 2010, that encapsulates this NW Eurasian tree-ring
study, and which will be completed no later than October 2012. The data will be revised
in the near future as the project moves towards publication of papers based on the work
in constructing the composites.

This doesn’t in any way explain CRU’s failure to use the 2006 regional chronology in Briffa et al 2008. Nor does it explain CRU’s statement in October 2009 that they hadn’t “considered” combining the Schweingruber chronologies (when the email indicates otherwise).

Yamal was not an incidental issue in Climategate. As noted in my recent post, Phil Jones’ first reaction to Fred Pearce was that Climategate was about Yamal. Refusing essential documents on Yamal simply fuels suspicion.

Refusal of data requests by climate scientists are corrosive to public confidence in the climate science community. When the FOI refusals pertain to documents that were at the heart of Climategate, the refusals are particularly toxic.


The easiest way for the climate science to “move on” would be to voluntarily disclose the list of sites and the regional chronology rather than fighting FOI tooth-and-nail. This request is not going to disappear.

And the people who should be most concerned about UEA’s most recent refusal are the wider climate science community who purport to be concerned about the future of the planet. Provided, of course, in the case of the University of East Anglia, that it doesn’t interfere with their “ability to attract research funding”,

Lobbyists who cleared 'Climategate' academics funded by taxpayers and the BBC

The Telegraph 
By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor 

 A shadowy lobby group which pushes the case that global warming is a real threat is being funded by the taxpayer and assisted by the BBC.

The Zoological Society of London, the world famous charity
behind London Zoo, provides Globe with scientific advice
from its top conservationists and zoologists

The little-known not-for-profit company works behind the scenes at international conferences to further its aims.

One of its key supporters headed the official investigation into the so-called "Climategate emails", producing a report which cleared experts of deliberately attempting to skew scientific results to confirm that global warming was a real threat.

Another scientific expert linked to the group came forward to praise a second independent investigation into the Climategate affair which also exonerated researchers.

Set up with the backing of Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, and run by a group of British MPs and peers the organisation, Globe International, started life as an All Party Group based in the House of Commons.
 

It is now run as an international climate change lobbying group flying its supporters and experts club class to international summits to push its agenda. Last year, it said, it spent around £500,000 flying its supporters to these meetings.

It has also paid out at least £75,000 on travel for prominent UK politicians, including for its former presidents Elliot Morley [corr], the ex-Labour environment minister now facing jail for expenses fraud, and Stephen Byers, the former Labour cabinet minister who was suspended from the Commons after he was filmed describing himself a "cab for hire" when offering to lobby his parliamentary contacts for cash.

Now Globe is planning a mass lobby of the United Nations Rio 2012 summit in Brazil, where world leaders will discuss climate change, by holding a World Summit of Legislators in the city to coincided with the event.

Next week the group's current President Lord Deben, the former Tory Cabinet Minister John Gummer, is due to launch a major report on climate change policy alongside Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary.
Globe has also recently held behind-closed-doors meetings with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and other senior Coalition ministers.

Last year two prominent experts linked to Globe were drawn into the controversy over emails leaked from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

Lord Oxburgh, the organisation's director, was called in to head an internal inquiry into the leaked emails which included one infamous message referring to a "trick" to "hide the decline" in global temperatures.

The peer's investigation cleared the scientists of malpractice. But critics claimed the report was a whitewash and Lord Oxburgh also failed to declare his involvement with Globe before he began his investigation.

Meanwhile Bob Ward, from the Grantham Institute, which works alongside Globe, praised a second inquiry by former civil servant Muir Russell, which also cleared the climate researchers.
He said it had "lifted the cloud of suspicion" and demonstrated that "the integrity of climate science is intact."

Globe International's work is paid for with donations from multi-millionaire backers and through partnerships with other environmental groups.

Globe also confirmed last night that it received direct funding from the Department of Energy and the Department of International Development (DfID). including a grant of £91,240 provided by DfID since the Coalition came to power last year.

More cash from DfID is filtered through the Complus Alliance - a "sustainable development communications alliance" of broadcasters based in Costa Rica which is also supported by the BBC World Service Trust, the Corporation's independent charity,.

Complus, which was awarded DfID cash last year and in 2006, says it has an "ongoing relationship with Globe" helping it run "shadow negotiation" teams at international summits of world leaders.
A spokeswoman for Complus said: "The BBC is a founding member not a funding member. They can make in-kind contributions, like organising events, supporting logistics, sharing content."

She added that Complus did not fund Globe but work with them on "convergent objectives".
Last night a DfID spokesman confirmed the department had given Complus £250,000 in total to provide research, advocacy and communications work on the impact of climate change.

The spokesman said: 'These contributions were awarded under the previous Government. ???91k??? The current Government has not given them any funding.

'We only support projects that meet our strict conditions of delivering value for money and can prove their ability to reduce global poverty.'

The BBC trust's money is drawn from the £15.2 million-a-year it gets from the Foreign Office and DFID and £800,000 from licence payers. The BBC charity failed to respond to questions about its relationship with the project and how much this involvement was costing.

The Zoological Society of London, the world famous charity behind London Zoo, also provides Globe with scientific advice "providing high level input" from its top conservationists and zoologists. Globe said it paid ZSL for its expertise.

Last night Globe's general secretary Adam Matthews said: "Globe is not a lobbying organisation. It is an international group of legislators. It was set up by the legislators themselves.

"We facilitate them coming together to discuss environmental issues. Our members have multiple views - some quite sceptical on some aspects of the climate change debate."

"We are funded by the World Bank, the EU, international parliaments and Governments, including the UK Government. The coalition Government contributes to our work through DFID."

Globe International, registered as a not-for-profit firm under the name The Global Legislators Organisation Ltd, makes minimal discloses about its finances to Companies House.

Last year it declared a £500,000 loss, but still managed to fly a number of key supporters to summits and international conferences.

Barry Gardiner MP, its vice president and former Labour biodiversity minister, attended to at least four international conferences on Globe's behalf, including a trip to Tokyo, Japan, Seoul and South Korea costing more than £7,000.

Another trip to China cost more than £8,000. Mr Gardiner's daughter is also a member of Globe's full time staff.

It also paid nearly £3,000 to fly Gregory Barker, now Coalition climate change minister, to Washington DC.

Peers Lord Hunt, former head of the Met Office, and Lord Jay, the former head of the Diplomatic Service, both declared club class travel to summits paid for by the organisation.

Lord Hunt, father of Tristan Hunt, the historian, television presenter and Labour MP, also lists Mr Matthews, Globe's secretary general, as a member of his House of Lords staff.
Mr Matthews was once Barry Gardiner's researcher in the House of Commons. His chief adviser, Gauri Kiik, is listed as being on the House of Lord's staff of Lord Jay.
Lord Deben declares his work for Globe as a "non-financial interest" to the House of Lords. He is also yet to declare any foreign travel funded by the organisation, although Globe confirmed last night that it had contributed to his travel and accommodation costs in the role.

Lord Deben also runs an environmental consultancy company, Sandcroft International, which declared a turnover of almost £2 million in its last accounts. He is also chairman of Forewind, which has won the rights to build a controversial offshore wind farm in the North Sea off the Yorkshire coast.

Among Globe's principle backers are a charity set up by the Swedish multi-millionaire Niklas Zennstrom, founder of the internet phone service Skype, and British-born wealth fund manager Jeremy Grantham, whose personal clients include Dick Cheney and John Kerry.

Mr Grantham bankrolls the Grantham Institute at the LSE, which works alongside Globe.
He believes "weather instability" is the world's biggest "investment problem" and his $107 billion fund pushes alternative assets including a massive portfolio of forestry.

The fund was believed to be preparing to invest in the abandoned Government sell off British forests.
Globe's staff also includes Dr Sam Fankhauser, Globe's chief economist, is an "independent adviser" to the Government on climate change. He is a member of the Government's Committee on Climate Change which advises on policy.

And Terry Townshend, Globe's director of policy development is married to Libby Townshend, a diplomat, who was on the UK team at the UN Climate Change summit in Copenhagen.
Globe Internationals' influential supporters include:

President: Lord Deben, former Tory Agriculture Minister John Gummer. Paid expenses.

Vice President: Barry Gardiner MP. Ex-environment Min. Regular club class flight. Daughter works for Globe.

Former President: Elliot Morley, ex-environment minister facing jail for expenses fraud.

Former President: former Cabinet Minister Stephen Byers who described himself as a “cab for hire” for lobbyists.

Director: Lord Oxburgh, appointed to oversee the internal investigation into Climategate affair. Failed to declare his link to Globe.

General Secretary: Adam Matthews. Works in the House of Lords former Met Office boss Lord Hunt. Previously worked as a researcher of Barry Gardiner.

Globe’s chief economist: Dr Sam Fankhauser is an “independent adviser” to the Government on climate change.