Climategate Continues

Will a penalty be called for Keith Briffa’s excessively curved hockey stick?

National Review Online
Andrew Montford
Harold Ambler

Steve McIntyre

Climategate, the 2009 exposure of misconduct at the University of East Anglia, was a terrible blow to the reputation of climatology, and indeed to that of British and American science. Although that story hasn’t been in the news in recent months, new evidence of similar scientific wrongdoing continues to emerge, with a new scandal hitting the climate blogosphere just a few days ago.

And central to the newest story is one of the Climategate scientists: Keith Briffa, an expert in reconstructing historical temperature records from tree rings. More particularly, the recent scandal involves a tree-ring record Briffa prepared for a remote area of northern Russia called Yamal.

For many years, scientists have used tree-ring data to try to measure temperatures from the distant past, but the idea is problematic in and of itself. Why? Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on. But let’s pretend, if only for the sake of argument, that we can reliably determine the mean temperature 1,000 years ago or more using tree cores from a remote part of Russia. The central issue that emerges is: How do you choose the trees?

It was the way Briffa picked the trees to include in his analysis that piqued the interest of Steve McIntyre, a maverick amateur climatologist from Canada. The Climategate e-mails make it clear that McIntyre earned the public scorn of the most powerful U.N. climatologists, including James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Phil Jones, while simultaneously earning their fear and respect in private.

McIntyre noticed a few problems with the way Briffa chose the sampling of Russian trees, and he wrote to Briffa requesting the data Briffa used in a published tree-ring paper. Briffa declined. And so began a four-year saga involving multiple peer-reviewed journals, behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Briffa and his closest confidants, and a Freedom of Information Act request on the part of McIntyre that appears to be on the verge of being granted. Even without the final set of data, however, McIntyre has shown beyond the shadow of doubt that Briffa may have committed one of the worst sins, if not the worst, in climatology — that of cherry-picking data — when he assembled his data sample, which his clique of like-minded and very powerful peers have also used in paper after paper.

Myths and Facts about Climate Change

Climate Change 101

MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands"), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects"). Two science teams have shown that correcting the surface temperature record for the effects of urban development would reduce the warming trend over land from 1980 by half. There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.                                                                                                                       . Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here.

MYTH 2: The "hockey stick" graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.
FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17^th Century the "average global temperature" has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare. The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.                                                                         Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.
    

MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.
FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO₂ content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO₂ is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO₂ levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth's oceans expel more CO₂ as a result.                                                                                                                                                              Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here.
MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.
FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO₂, CH₄, Ozone and N₂O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO₂ constitutes about 0.039% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as "greenhouse agents" than water vapour and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 75% of the "Greenhouse effect". At current concentrations, a 3% change of water vapour in the atmosphere would have the same effect as a 100% change in CO2. Those attributing climate change to CO₂ rarely mention these important  facts.                                                                                                                                         Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here.



MYTH 5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
 FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, and that the Sun has an insignificant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption - that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They do not "prove" anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover.                                                                                                                                                           Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here          
                                                                                                                            
 MYTH 6: The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.
 FACT:  In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases."
2) "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes"
To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming.                                                                                                                                                  Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.

MYTH 7: CO2 is a pollutant.
FACT:  This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is. CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means of political control.                                                                                                                                                       Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.


MYTH 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.
FACT: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale. Regional variations may occur. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.                                                                                                                                                                 Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.

MYTH 9: Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.
FACT:  Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier's health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature.                                                                                                                                             Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here.

MYTH 10: The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.
FACT: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica. Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.       Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.
 In addition to the above references for the 10 common myths, there are a large number of peer reviewed papers that support the facts. To review the listings, click 1 here and 2 here.

Michael Mann, Climate-Gate and the University of Virginia

How I Learned Not to Deny Climate Change

Real Clear Politics 
Robert Tracinski

Henrik Svensmark

I do not deny the reality of climate change. No, this is not a change of mind, reversing my longstanding skepticism toward claims of human-caused global warming. I have never denied climate change—and that is precisely why I reject the global warming hysteria. But a fascinating new scientific contribution from Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who is single-handedly blowing away the alleged "consensus" on what drives the climate, has given me a whole new appreciation for climate change.

The term "climate change denier" is obviously objectionable because of the word "denier." That word is carried over from the phrase "Holocaust denial" and is meant to smear global warming skeptics by associating us with the vicious motives of those who airbrush the crimes of the Nazis. But the more substantive objection to this phrase is that we skeptics do not deny the reality of climate change. We embrace it all too thoroughly.

We understand that the climate is changing and that it has always been changing. The four-and-a-half-billion-year history of the Earth is a history of constant, wild swings in global temperatures and weather, from the steamy jungles that nurtured the dinosaurs to the vast equatorial glaciers of "Snowball Earth."

(If you follow the link about Snowball Earth, by the way, you may notice that the theory is controversial and has its own skeptics. Funny how that works. In genuine science, for any new theory there is a competing theory, and the question is settled by more evidence and not by people lining up behind some top-down political "consensus.")

So we're skeptical of any claim that the very small trends in the global temperature record over the past few decades are anything extraordinary, or that they imply a man-made cause rather than natural variation. The measurement of temperatures worldwide with reliable instruments goes back only about a century and a half, a mere blip in the geological time-scales that define ice ages and interglacial warmings. How can we possibly have established, in that short a time, an absolute baseline for what is a "normal" global temperature?

The alarmists who warn about recent man-made global warming are the ones who deny the reality of climate change. They are, in fact, advocates of climate stasis. They assume that the "normal" climate is basically what it was in 1970—not coincidentally, about the time of the first "Earth Day"—and any recent variation from that norm must require some extraordinary explanation.

This was the point, by the way, of Michael Mann's infamous "hockey stick" graph. Mann tried to rewrite paleoclimatology, the history of past climate, by manipulating evidence from various temperature "proxies." (Since we don't have direct thermometer measurements from five hundred or two thousand years ago, we need to use things we can measure, like tree-ring samples from ancient, slow-growing trees, as an imperfect stand-in.) By using a questionable statistical model, Mann made it look like global temperatures had been basically flat over the past two millennia, only moving in the last two decades of the 20th century. Talk about a climate change denier!

Va. Supreme Court tosses Cuccinelli’s case against former U-Va. climate change researcher

Virginia Politics
Anita Kumar

Ken Cuccinelli II

The Virginia Supreme Court said Friday that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II does not have the authority to demand records related to a former University of Virginia climate researcher’s work.

In 2010, Cuccinelli (R), a global warming skeptic, issued a civil investigative demand, essentially a subpoena, for documents from the state’s flagship university.

He sought five grant applications prepared by former professor Michael Mann and all e-mails between Mann and his research assistants, secretaries and 39 other scientists from across the country.
But a judge dismissed the subpoena. Cuccinelli then filed a new, more specific demand pertaining to just one $214,700 state grant, but he also appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.

In an unusual step, U-Va. hired its own attorney and fought back, arguing that the demand exceeds Cuccinelli's authority under state law and intrudes on the rights of professors to pursue academic inquiry free from political pressure.

Mann’s work has long been under attack by global warming skeptics, particularly after references to a statistical “trick” Mann used in his research surfaced in a series of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Mann and others have said the e-mail was taken out of context.

Some of his methodologies have been criticized by other scientists, but several inquires have concluded that there was no evidence that Mann engaged in efforts to falsify or suppress data.
Mann worked at U-Va. from 1999 to 2005. He now works at Penn State University.

“From the beginning, we have said that we were simply trying to review documents that are unquestionably state property to determine whether or not fraud had been committed,” Cuccinelli’s office said in an e-mailed response. “Today, the court effectively held that state agencies do not have to provide state-owned property to state investigators looking into potential fraud involving government funds.”

U-Va. and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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]

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’

Climategate 2.0: Briffa — Current warming ‘probably matched about 1000 years ago’

Junk Science
Steve Milloy

Keith Briffa also doesn’t think too much of the hockey stick shaft.
From the Climategate 2.0 collection, Briffa says,
…For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually
>> >warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual
>> warming
>> >is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent
>> warmth
>> >was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global
>> >mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands
>> of
>> >years as Mike appears to and I contend that that there is strong evidence
>> >for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that
>> >require explanation and that could represent part of the current or
>> future
>> >background variability of our climate.
[h/t/ Tom Nelson]
Read the e-mail exchange below.
cc: tkarl@ncdc.noaa.gov
date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 17:10:52 -0400
from: “Michael E. Mann”
subject: RE: IPCC revisions
to: “Folland, Chris” , Keith Briffa ,
“Folland, Chris” , ‘Phil Jones’
Thanks Chris,
(and sorry everyone else for the flood of emails). That sounds like a good
arrangement to me.
I look forward to working w/ Ian on that, and coming to some concensus
w/ Phil and Keith (hopefully we’re pretty close on that score w/ the latest
draft I copied o you guys?)
thanks all,
mike.

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.

Global warning: New Climategate leaks

Russia Today

The Climategate scandal is back, as more emails between leading climate scientists are posted online. The latest leak from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has re-ignited the wrangle around manmade climate change.

Much like the scandal of 2009, Tuesday’s leak comes just days before UN climate talks, set to kick off in Durban, South Africa on 28 November.

Critics who have long accused climate scientists of cherry-picking their data to prove that manmade climate change exists, might feel vindicated by some messages.  One email from a climate researcher identified as Overpeck reads: “The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.”

Another scientist expressed his fears regarding potential data manipulation:  “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others.”  The scientist went on to stress a “need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.” 

It appears that various government bodies have put pressure on climate scientists to justify their own policy initiatives, ranging from restrictive environmental taxes and regulations, switching from fossil fuels to alternative sources of energy, to re-appropriating farm land for profitable biofuel schemes. 

Speaking of the governmental influence on climate change policy, one scientist said:
 “I can’t 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 the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.”

Based on the government-led drive, one email demonstrated the need to spin the climate change debate for public consumption:

“Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions – bad politics – to one about the value of a stable climate – much better politics. […] the most valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as possible.”

The Death Of Global Warming Skepticism, Or The Birth Of Straw Men?

Editor's Note:  This article suggests that there are positive aspects to the warming trend, but indigenous populations worldwide report that the warming trend has already produced extreme, often negative effects on the environment in different territories.  This article is chosen because it spells out the most obvious point: the Berkeley Study is merely confirming a past warming trend - not the cause of the warming trend.  Timing is also a likely factor for the BBC's hysterical article about the study, which appears to be so clean that it contradicts the desired outcome of its funding sources.   Reporting of the Berkeley study occurs two weeks after the court in Virginia ruled against Michael Mann and his ridiculous attempt to prevent public disclosure of the data used in his taxpayer-funded studies.   If the Berkeley study was as rigorous as they claim, shouldn't this have been the appropriate action for East Anglia instead of investing in a PR firm?

Forbes Magazine
James Taylor

The mainstream media has been spiking the football in the proverbial end zone ever since a paper released last Friday claimed two-thirds of global temperature stations show some warming occurred during the past century. The media have been claiming the new paper delivers a death blow to skepticism, but the paper itself brings almost nothing new to the global warming debate and instead shows how far global warming advocates are from presenting credible evidence of a crisis. Rather than delivering a death blow to skepticism, the media has merely invented and shredded an insignificant straw man.


University of California, Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller analyzed land-based temperature readings from temperature stations around the world and found two-thirds indicate warming temperatures and one-third indicate cooling temperatures. As a result, “Global warming is real,” summarized Muller in an editorial he wrote in the October 21 Wall Street Journal .

Muller acknowledged that many of the stations produced incomplete temperature records and had poor quality control. He claimed that he nevertheless included them in the study to avoid “data-selection bias.” Scientists such as Anthony Watts have pointed out several additional flaws in the Muller paper. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Muller’s paper is flawless in its conclusion that two-thirds of land-based temperature stations report warming rather than cooling. Even under such an assumption, Muller’s paper does nothing to dispel skeptical objections to the theory that humans are causing a global warming crisis.

The case for a human-induced global warming crisis requires the demonstration of several components. These include (1) that global temperatures are rising, (2) that global temperatures will likely continue to rise in the future, (3) that the rise in temperatures is or will be sufficiently rapid and substantial to cause enormous negative consequences that far outweigh the benefits of such warming and (4) that human emissions of greenhouse gases account for all such temperature rise or enough of the temperature rise to elevate the temperature rise to crisis levels.

Michael ‘Climategate’ Mann Suffers Three Legal Blows in Court Escapade

CO2 Insanity
John O’Sullivan

Discredited global warming scientist, Michael Mann, sees his last-ditch efforts to hide data fall apart as legal experts reveal a mountain of legal precedents against him.

In his recent papers (filed on September 2, 2011) Mann claims ‘academic freedom’ and ‘proprietary materials’ as his defense. But legal experts who have since reviewed Mann’s submission to the Circuit Court of Prince William County, Va., say they are so full of holes they are doomed to fail.

In this article we show why the Virginia court isn’t likely to give Michael Mann a ‘get out of jail free’ card when it comes to covering up what looks increasingly like a monumental climate conspiracy.
The three facts likely to be fatal to Mann’s case are:

• Of more than 240 reported cases involving professor-v-university disputes the university almost always wins (note: Mann’s former university employer has already agreed to surrender Mann’s files).
  
• Freedom of speech for professors at state universities has been restricted in a series of U.S. Supreme Court case rulings since 1977.
  
• No American court has ever ruled to protect a former employee (Mann is no longer employed in Virginia).

Doomsayer’s Defeat Looms in Hockey Stick Face Off 

The match summary so far: Professor Mann played ‘home ice’ advantage last year when three friendly ‘independent’ inquiries gave him temporary respite when they cleared him of foul play.

Mann has been skating on thin ice ever since November 2009 when he and a clique of global warming colleagues were caught personal fouling freedom of information (FOIA) requests in the Climategate scandal.

Leaked emails proved global warming climatologists had been getting away with cynically hiding unfavorable key data concerning past global temperature proxies for years.

But late in the game (May 2011) Mann’s former employer, the University of Virginia (UVA) agreed to comply with a court order to comply with a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request. They had 90 days to release from their computer files Mann’s alleged dodgy data kept hidden for over a decade.

Then, deep into overtime (September 2, 2011), Mann came off the bench to mount a delaying blocking defense asserting ‘academic freedom’ plus his ‘private ownership’ of such data trumps the FOIA rights of taxpayers.

Academic Freedom: A Quasi-legal Concept

A leading authority on education law, Ronald B. Standler, shows that academic freedom has been nothing but an amorphous quasi-legal concept since it first appeared in American courts in the late 1950’s. [1.]

Courts have consistently upheld that the fundamental principle in America is that the law applies equally to everyone. A mountain of U.S. case-law shows that academic freedom is nothing more than any citizen’s right to free speech on issues including: (i.) political free speech (ii.) freedom of association and (iii.) religious expression [2.]

For arrogant academics to claim that their occupational group should have greater rights than any other occupational group is, by definition, discriminatory.

Standler’s reasoning is a telling assist to the climate skeptics’ legal playmaker, Chris Horner of ATI who now looks set be the attorney who scores the courtroom winner.

First Amendment Free Speech Extols Openness Not Censorship

The case boils down to a personal interest versus public interest question: are voters more entitled to see all the scientific evidence they paid for so that they may knowledgeably apply their free speech in the debate over so-called man-made climate change?

The real perversity in Mann’s legal position is that he argues for free speech in reverse – he wants courts to chill debate over the climate controversy and not let voters be properly informed.

In his court papers Professor Mann argues for censorship to suit him. He is seeking a NEGATIVE application of a POSITIVE right. Indeed, it may be shown that Mann’s application of his ‘right’ is as a tool to aid and abet a cover up of misconduct and/or fraud.

But in no small part, academics in a democracy have a moral imperative to not undermine openness and transparency for all. Professors should never abuse their position by claiming any special personal privilege to facilitate censorship and contradict freedom of information laws.

Along the theme of skewed reasoning Mann’s attorneys disingenuously cite Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957), being that the ‘Sweezy’ case addressed freedom of association rather than free speech. And when we examine ‘Sweezy’ this is what we find:

“Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.”

Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957).

Mann may now wish he hadn’t cited ‘Sweezy’ because he has been caught cherry-picking and misapplying what ‘Sweezy’ actually says. That case was specifically about freedom of association; upholding that community interest allows us open debate where we may apply free speech and be better informed to make democratic decisions on a contentious public policy (e.g. climate taxes).

The Climategate Hacking Scandal Link

EnergyTribune
Peter C. Glover

What links Climategate and the News of the World phone hacking scandal? Try Thursday’s arrest of Neil Wallis, former deputy editor of the recently defunct UK tabloid, and the man hired by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson as his “personal media advisor”. The ‘relationship’ is currently the center of a media storm over potential collusion between the press and police. Wallis, however, also happens to be Managing Director of Outside Organisation, the same PR firm hired by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), a government-funded research group, tasked with carrying out “covert” activity after the leaked emails scandal broke.

Wallis’s other PR firm, Chamy Media, provided “strategic communication advice and support” to the Metropolitan Police between October 2009 and September 2010 while the Met’s Deputy Director of Public affairs was on “extended sick leave”. According to a report in the London Evening Standard (Friday 15 July), Chamy Media was struck off the company's register in May this year for “failing to file any documents since it was set up in 2009”. No doubt part due to the fact that he was busy running the highly lucrative Outside Organisation.

When the story of Wallis’s arrest broke on July 14, according to his Wikipedia profile, Outside’s web operator immediately removed Wallis’s “listing as MD and a part of his biography which had stated 'What he [Wallis] doesn’t know about journalism and media isn’t worth knowing'.”
Wallis’s partner at Outside, Alan Edwards, was himself profiled in
a story in Music Week last year. In it Edwards bragged:

“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”.

While Outside’s work with a litany of well-known celebrities including the Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse and David Beckham is extensive, Edwards intriguingly confided in the piece that Outside’s handling of the Climategate for CRU was “more covert”. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

“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 gave climate change skeptics ammunition and led to an avalanche of negative press about whether global warming was a real possibility.”

A key theme that my colleague at Energy Tribune, Michael Economides highlighted in our book
Energy and Climate Wars was the ‘Soprano family-like’ nature of the emails and the general lack of integrity and character they revealed; especially those of Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann. Indeed, key historic climate data, on which UN IPCC climate alarm is based, has apparently been “dumped” by the CRU. Court litigation to retrieve other climate data is still ongoing. Now there’s a further revelation: that the University of East Anglia CRU team called in Wallis’s PR firm to help ‘place’ stories to counter the media storm. The question for CRU – a government-funded research unit – is how the anti-Climategate PR campaign was funded.

Dr Benny Peiser, Director of the UK Global Warming Policy Foundation was forthright telling me, “The CRU urgently needs to come clean. Those that run it need to explain why they hired a PR company, and whether they used public money to fund their campaign.” Dr Peiser added, “Further, the CRU needs to clarify exactly which news reports and which journalists were ultimately placed as a result.” Clearly, there are questions that remain to be answered by the University of East Anglia and its CRU team before Climategate – and its impact in the global debate – can finally be put to bed. Yet again, ‘covert’ practice geared to protecting individual reputations over transparency with publicly-owned data seems to be a hallmark of alarmist climate scientists.


According to the Met Police Commissioner, he and Wallis shared a total of eight meals together in the last year or so. That led one former News of the World source to comment to the
Evening Standard that there was indeed a culture of lavish meals and “champagne was de rigeur” under Wallis, and his then boss at the News of the World, Andy Coulson. Mildly amusing then to read Outside Organisation’s  “About us” page (sporting a casual and smiling Anthony Edwards pic) that advocates: “We decided that the days of the Filofax-carrying publicists, pouring Chardonnay down unsuspecting journalists’ throats, were a throwback to another era”.

Not according to London’s top cop it isn’t.


Hat tip to: Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit for this story.