UC Professor: Global warming scam "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist"

On Friday, The Washington Post dutifully ran an uncontested (and I might add, pathetically whiney) opinion piece from Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann assailing the "anti-science bent" of current political discourse.  What the Post completely ignored was the resignation of a sixty-seven year member of the American Physical Society over the corruption of science that has been propagated by the once esteemed organization. (The American Institute of Physics has an excellent oral history interview with Professor Lewis here.)

The letter is so compelling that James Delingpole at The Telegraph (UK) has elected to reproduce it in its entirety and without further comment, as have I:

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind---simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Legislation without representation: Murkowski resolution fails in Senate

By a 53-47 vote, the Senate defeated a resolution that would have effectively reversed the EPA's greenhouse gases endangerment finding.  From The Washington Times:

Environmentalists scored their first major Senate victory regarding climate change Thursday as Democrats gave a green light to the Environmental Protection Agency to impose strict new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.

Senators voted 53-47 to let the Obama administration proceed with its rules. But with all 41 Republicans and six Democrats voting to try to block the EPA, climate change remains a poisonous issue on Capitol Hill and the deeply divided tally likely heads off any chance the chamber could pass a broad climate policy this year.

Still, it's a high point for environmentalists, whose fortunes have improved dramatically since 1997, when the Senate voted 95-0 to tell President Clinton not to bother submitting the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty for ratification.

"Today, the Senate chose to move America forward, toward that clean energy economy - not backward to the same failed policies that have left our nation increasingly dependent on foreign oil," President Obama said, praising senators for giving his administration leeway to act.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Putting aside my own considerable skepticism of the validity of the anthropogenic global warming premise on which all this insanity rests, this is a dangerous precedent for our republic.  If  Congress can abdicate its responsibility to govern on a matter with such grave consequences for the U.S. economy, and leave us all at the mercy of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, then what, pray tell, is next?

Senate puts lipstick on cap and trade; states not impressed

I have written extensively about climate change legislation over the last two years, and you can easily search this site by entering "cap and trade" "climategate" or "EPA carbon" to read those entries, if you are so inclined.  The conventional wisdom in recent months has been that cap and trade legislation is permanently stalled in the Senate in the wake of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (aka Climategate), multiple erroneous or fraudulent data citations from the U.N. IPCC, and the worst economy since the Great Depression.  Don't believe it.  From The Financial Times (UK):

Three senior US lawmakers are piecing together a sweeping bipartisan energy and climate bill, which looks set to include sweeteners to galvanise support among Republicans and industry groups.

The proposed legislation, encouraged by President Barack Obama, dilutes a climate bill that stalled last year in the Senate. The senators have hosted meetings with industry groups over the past two weeks, revealing details about their plan that would cap carbon emissions while expanding offshore oil drilling and nuclear power generation.

Nearly six months have passed since the Senate’s last climate bill failed to win over conservatives and moderates, a political stalemate that cast a shadow on America’s presence at the Copenhagen climate summit. But some Democrats say the passage of healthcare reform has opened the door for climate change legislation, while acknowledging tradeoffs will be needed to secure 60 Senate votes. “They know that to pass a comprehensive bill they will have to ease concerns of some special interests and mid-western senators whose states have manufacturing-oriented economies,” said Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal think-tank.

Environmental groups are divided over the bill, with some decrying the push to pre-empt existing state and federal greenhouse gas regulations. But many moderate groups are withholding judgment until the bill is introduced, saying concessions to industry bodies will be necessary. According to people briefed by the senators, the bill aims to cut carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 17 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050, largely by implementing separate caps on utilities and manufacturers. The federal government would sell separate pollution permits to each sector, using a “hard price collar” to limit greenhouse gas allowances to between $10 (£6.70) and $30 per ton, and committing to flood the market with credits if the price ceiling is exceeded.

The bill’s sponsors – John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, Joseph Lieberman, the Independent from Connecticut, and Lindsay Graham, the South Carolina Republican – said the new sectoral approach would begin imposing carbon caps on utilities in 2012 and manufacturers in 2016.

If legislative initiatives fail, the Obama administration will certainly fall back to its backup plan of using the unelected regulatory agencies of the federal government to do his bidding.  Thankfully, the States are already mobilized to block this statist effort:

Illinois state Rep. Dan Reitz, a Democrat and a former coal miner, is worried that pending federal climate change rules will cripple the economy, and he wants Congress to step in and stop it.

Reitz, who represents the 116th District in southern Illinois, launched his own assault against U.S. EPA climate rules when he introduced a resolution urging Congress to postpone greenhouse gas regulations for factories, power plants and other so-called stationary emission sources. The Illinois House approved his resolution earlier this month.

"I believe that Congress should adopt legislation if we're going to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources," Reitz said in an interview. "We should be able to do that within the context of a bill and not do it within the regulatory measures that are out there right now."

Reitz is among at least 25 legislators in 17 states who have introduced measures aimed at blocking or limiting EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Five of those bills came from Democrats.

At least seven such measures have been adopted. In addition to Reitz's resolution in Illinois, legislators in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah have passed measures encouraging Congress to step in and block EPA climate rules or for the agency to halt its regulatory plans.

EPA this week is planning to issue the first national greenhouse gas standards for automobiles, a rule that will ultimately require the agency to regulate stationary sources' emissions of the heat-trapping gases. The Supreme Court ordered EPA in 2007 to determine whether greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. EPA did so last year, paving the way for new emission rules.

The Obama administration and environmentalists argue EPA is compelled by the law and by science to begin clamping down on the emissions. EPA officials insist that they can do it in a way that won't cripple the economy.

Reitz, an elected Democratic legislator and former coal miner from the President's home state of Illinois has the audacity to challenge federal climate change regulations.  That shows personal courage and gives me hope for our Republic.

Call your Representatives and Senators and tell them to vote "no" on the new and improved cap and tax.

What transparency looks like to the White House

An unbelievable report today from the Heritage Foundation:

Things that are transparent: Saran Wrap, glass, water. Things that aren’t transparent: brick walls, mountains, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Or so it would seem, if you take a look at the CEQ’s response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in which the Chamber asked for the release of documents relating to agency records on global warming.

As the Chamber notes, “CEQ had identified 87 documents totaling 759 pages that were responsive to our request. HOWEVER, they could not release most of the documents because they ‘originated’ with another agency.”

So what did CEQ produce? An entirely blacked-out, redacted, Sharpie-markered e-mail, pictured above. (You can also take a look at a PDF of the document, courtesy of the Chamber.)

The Chamber says the response to their FOIA is astonishing, given President Barack Obama’s call for transparency beginning with day one in office:

On his very first full day in office, President Obama sent a memorandum to his executive agencies extolling the virtues of transparency and open government and directing them to facilitate public access to information. To further that directive, Obama issued a second memorandum encouraging agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” when responding to public requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. …In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public. All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

Get the full impact of this executive arrogance by looking at the redacted documents here. 

NOAA's ministry of climate change propaganda

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has announced its intent to create a new Climate Service unit.  From the NOAA press release:

Individuals and decision-makers across widely diverse sectors – from agriculture to energy to transportation – increasingly are asking NOAA for information about climate change in order to make the best choices for their families, communities and businesses. To meet the rising tide of these requests, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the intent to create a NOAA Climate Service line office dedicated to bringing together the agency’s strong climate science and service delivery capabilities.

More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives.

“By providing critical planning information that our businesses and our communities need, NOAA Climate Service will help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change,” said Secretary Locke. “In the process, we'll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs.”

Americans are not searching for relevant and timely information about climate change.  They are searching for jobs.  Recent polling makes it clear that climate change isn't even on the radar of the average American.  Investors Business Daily serves up a withering analysis:

Hoaxes: Despite failures at Copenhagen, the fraud of the IPCC and the farce of Climate-gate, the administration wants an agency to monitor climate change. Why must we fund one-stop shopping for climate charlatans?

As the climate freezes, there's no freeze on federal employment that will grow even more with the establishment of a new agency, the Climate Service office. The new agency was announced Monday by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

This ministry of climate change propaganda will operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service. "Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat," Lubchenco said at a press conference as snow measured in feet blanketed the Eastern seaboard. This new agency represents a threat to real climate science.

Lubchenco also announced a NOAA climate portal on the Internet to collect climate data from NOAA and other sources. It will be "one-stop shopping into a world of climate information."

That portal will be more like Alice's rabbit hole, leading to a world of disinformation where climate data will mean whatever Locke and Lubchenco want it to mean.

Exactly what information and from which sources are we talking about? Will there be an NOAA map showing the missing Canadian weather stations or perhaps the U.S. weather stations next to air-conditioning exhaust vents or on asphalt parking lots?

The number of weather stations used to calculate average global temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today, mainly concentrated in warmer, urban areas. The number of reporting stations in Canada used by NOAA dropped from 600 to 35. One station, at Eureka on Ellesmere Island, is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.

Will we have access to all the messages from Britain's Climate Research Unit, including the data and e-mail that was destroyed, deleted and manipulated? Will there be instructions on how to "hide the decline" in global temperatures?

Let's not forget the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Cheats — uh, Panel On Climate Change — whose chief, Rajendra Pachauri, is busy writing porn novels when he's not caught fabricating doomsday climate scenarios or sitting on contrary data.

The NOAA was scheduled to make the formal announcement of its new ministry of climate change propaganda at the National Press Club on Monday, but the D.C. blizzard forced them to hold a telephone press conference instead.

This week's snowfall officially makes 2009-2010 the snowiest winter on record for the cities of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.  And winter isn't even over.  I'm sure the residents of those cities would appreciate the promised "early snowmelt" of global warming about now.

More incompetence at the IPCC

The Netherlands environmental chief is upset about another goof-up from UN climate reporting.  From Expatica:

This morning's nrc.next reports that Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer is up in arms about yet another mistake made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its report says that 55 percent of the Netherlands is under sea level, but the figure should be just 26 percent.

The government's own number-crunchers have told the minister that the IPCC made the mistake by simply adding the 29 percent of the country which is at risk of flooding by major rivers.

Ms Cramer is deeply unhappy about the blunder: "I frame policy in the light of science," she explains. "Trust in science and politics has taken a knock". However, she is still convinced that "the climate is changing, the earth is warming up and it is probably being caused by man".

Rob Kievet at Radio Netherlands Worldwide spells out the mistake:

The incorrect figures which date back to 2007 were revealed on Wednesday by weekly Vrij Nederland. The Dutch Living Environment Planning Agency told reporters that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) added two figures supplied by the agency: the area of the Netherlands which is below sea-level and the area which is susceptible to flooding. In fact, these areas overlap, so the figures should not have been combined to produce the 55 percent quoted by the IPCC.

If the environment minister frames her policy "in the light of science," why did it take her three years to spot this huge and obvious error?  Perhaps her feigned indignation is more politics than policy.

The major industrialised area, which includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, is home to three million people and produces two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product. And, much of the area is metres below sea-level. Its 59 local authorities have now put together a joint action plan to deal with a flooding disaster.

In a related article, the paper points out that, despite these stark facts, the average Dutch resident is not all that bothered about global warming. On a list of people's top worries, climate change comes in tenth at best.

Emphasis mine.  The Dutch are getting wise to the climate change hoax.  Americans are too.

More junk climate science at the IPCC

Just hours before the State of the Union address in which President Obama implored congress to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill, yet another blow was delivered to the battered credibility of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  From Fox News:

A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what its critics say is sloppy science -- adding to a growing scandal that has undermined the credibility of scientists and policymakers who back the U.N.'s findings about global warming.

In the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), issued in 2007 by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists wrote that 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest in South America was endangered by global warming.

But that assertion was discredited this week when it emerged that the findings were based on numbers from a study by the World Wildlife Federation that had nothing to do with the issue of global warming -- and that was written by a freelance journalist and green activist.

A blog skeptical of global warming, EUReferendum, uncovered the WWF association. Taken together with Climategate and the Himalayan melting glacier fabrication, I think that's three strikes for the IPCC, and by extension, cap and trade.

UN Climate group issues apology for phony glacier data

In a recent post, I told you that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was expected to retract its warning that most of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.  Well they did just that today.  Perhaps they thought it would get lost in the Senator-elect Scott Brown media frenzy.  CNN reports:

The U.N.'s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.


In a statement released Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were "poorly substantiated" adding that "well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly."


Despite the admission, the IPCC reiterated its concern about the dangers melting glaciers present in a region that is home to more than one-sixth of the world's population.


"Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes)..."


"The chair, vice-chairs, and co-chairs of the IPCC," the statement continued, "regrets the poor application of IPCC procedures..."


The apology follows a growing storm of controversy which initially forced the IPCC to concede that data relating to the Himalayan glacier melt included in the 2007 report was not backed up by sufficient scientific data. (emphasis mine)

The equivocal nature of this "apology" reminds me of the New York Times headline back in 2004 regarding the forged documents that Dan Rather tried to use to discredit President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard:  Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate.

Shock: world misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

In the latest fracture in the scientific consensus surrounding climate change, the U.N. is expected to retract its warning that most of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.  From the London Times (UK):

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.



In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.


It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

This follows a report last week in which the Met Office (the UK's national weather service) denounced research from the Copenhagen summit which suggested that global warming could raise sea levels by 6ft by 2100.

The Climategate scandal which rocked the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December reared its head again on Friday when the Wall Steet Journal revealed that Michael Mann, an American scientist at the center of the controversy had received more than half a million dollars in stimulus money to conduct climate change research.  The National Center for Public Policy Research issued a press release Thursday asking that these funds be returned:

In the face of rising unemployment and record-breaking deficits, policy experts at the National Center for Public Policy Research are criticizing the Obama Administration for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State Professor Michael Mann, a key figure in the Climategate controversy.



"It's outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he's under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal. Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury," said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project.


Professor Mann is currently under investigation by Penn State University because of activities related to a closed circle of climate scientists who appear to have been engaged in agenda-driven science. Emails and documents mysteriously released from the previously-prestigious Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom revealed discussions of manipulation and destruction of research data, as well as efforts to interfere with the peer review process to stifle opposing views. The motivation underlying these efforts appears to be a coordinated strategy to support the belief that mankind's activities are causing global warming.

Even more astonishing is the revelation that Penn State received an additional $1.9 million stimulus grant just last week:

A nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation is enabling a Penn State-led group of researchers to continue studies on the potential effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The grant is part of federal stimulus funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Noel Sheppard at the Wall Street Journal pointedly questions the rationale for this latest award:

This grant appears to have nothing to do with Mann's department. However, given the high-profile the university is currently under as a result of his involvement in ClimateGate, it seems absurd that any federal funds involving climate change would be going to this school while it is investigating its chief proponent of this myth.

Maybe more importantly, why are economic stimulus funds being given to a university for scientific research in the first place, especially one with such political overtones?

I guess it would be pointless to ask how many jobs Penn State will create with this $1.9 million.

Shiver me timbers, it's global warming!

Stick a fork in the hoax of anthropogenic global warming  (photo Alexander F. Yuan/ AP) :

From Accuweather:

Nearly the entire eastern half of the United States is enduring bitterly cold temperatures not experienced since 1985. Even Florida, which has been hovering around freezing levels overnight recently, is also feeling the almost-nationwide chill.


"It'll be like the great winters of the '60s and '70s," said AccuWeather.com Chief Meteorologist and Expert Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi.


The last time a large swath of severely low temperatures struck the nation was in January 1985. That historic arctic outbreak had below-zero temperatures Fahrenheit stretching from Chicago eastward to New York City, and all the way south to Macon, Ga.

And record snow in Burlington, Vermont.  Check out WPTZ Channel 5.

Des Moines, Iowa is 30 degrees below normal.

A nuclear power plant in South New Jersey had to shut down one generator and reduce power to another due to floating ice on the Delaware River.  Another first.

Coldest temperatures in Beijing in 40 years.

Seoul, South Korea buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years.

As I write this, it is 23 degrees in Milton, Georgia.  Single digits expected by morning.  If a blast of carbon dioxide will warm things up a bit, I'd like to order some up right now.

President Obama speaks to climate carnival of chaos

President Obama addressed the Copenhagen Climate Conference this morning to mixed reviews.  You can read the entire text of the speech here.  Newsweek (not surprisingly) gives the President a grade of B minus on the speech, but reviews outside the comfy U.S. mainstream media have not been so kind.

Things kicked off on a bad foot from the start.  After his arrival in Copenhagen on Thursday night, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao snubbed the U.S. by boycotting a meeting with Obama.  From the Sydney Morning Herald:

THE Copenhagen climate talks were hanging in the balance late last night after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao boycotted a meeting with US President Barack Obama, prompting Mr Obama to warn that the world could ‘‘split apart’’ on how to tackle climate change.



Speaking to the United Nations conference plenary after being stood up by Mr Wen, Mr Obama said leaders were struggling to deal with political fault lines that have prevented action to limit greenhouse gas emissions despite nearly two decades of talking. ‘‘While the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest — I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and hangs in the balance,’’ he said.


‘‘We are running short of time and at this point the question is whether we will move forward together or split apart.’’


Mr Obama earlier met a group of fellow leaders to discuss a preliminary draft of a political declaration on tackling climate change. Mr Wen received a rebuke from French President Nicolas Sarkozy after refusing to attend the meeting.

Well it was nice that President Sarkozy stood up for Obama.  Embarassing, but nice, nonetheless.

The Guardian (UK) reports on the speech in a story headlined Barack Obama's speech disappoints and fuels frustration at Copenhagen:  US president offers no further commitment on reducing emissions or on finance to poor countries.  Here's more:

Responding to Obama's speech, a British official said: "Gordon Brown is committed to doing all he can and will stay until the very last minute to secure a deal... but others also need to show the same level of commitment. The prospects of a deal are not great."



Many reactions were strongly critical of Obama. Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, described Obama's speech as "ridiculous" and the US's initial offer of a $10bn fund for poor countries in the draft text as "a joke".


Tim Jones, a spokesman for the World Development Movement, said: "The president said he came to act, but showed little evidence of doing so. He showed no awareness of the inequality and injustice of climate change. If America has really made its choice, it is a choice that condemns hundreds of millions of people to climate change disaster."


Friends of the Earth said in a statement, "Obama has deeply disappointed not only those listening to his speech at the UN talks, he has disappointed the whole world."


The World Wildlife Fund said Obama had let down the international community by failing to commit to pushing for action in Congress: "The only way the world can be sure the US is standing behind its commitments is for the president to clearly state that climate change will be his next top legislative priority.

If these left wing environmental groups hated it so much, it can't have been that bad.  You can read more reactions at the Globe and Mail.(Canada) here.

We will know if a few hours if the U.S. signs on to anything at this global carnival of chaos.

Armed U.N. Security guards silence veteran journalist in Copenhagen

In October, filmmaker Phelim McAleer had the audacity to ask Al Gore if he planned to correct nine significant errors found in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.  Fellow journalists at the environmental conference where the question was asked moved in to try to silence Mr. McAleer.  When he persisted, they turned off his microphone.

You can see the whole thing as exposed by Fox News on this youtube video.



Mr. McAleer's freedom of speech was squelched again in Copenhagen, only this time a prominent Stanford professor was on the receiving end of the questions and armed United Nations security personnel were called in to silence Mr. McAleer.  Editor-in-chief, Mike Flynn at Big Government reports:

A Stanford Professor has used United Nation security officers to silence a journalist asking him “inconvenient questions” during a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.



Professor Stephen Schneider’s assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book. [snip]

McAleer, a veteran journalist and film maker, has recently made a documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong’ which takes a sceptical look at the science and politics behind Global Warming concerns.



He asked Professor Schneider about his opinions on Climategate – where leaked emails have revealed that a senior British professor deleted data and encouraged colleagues to do likewise if it contradicted their belief in Global Warming.


Professor Phil Jones, the head of Britain’s Climate Research Unit, has temporarily stood down pending an investigation into the scandal.


Professor Schneider, who is a senior member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he would not comment on emails that may have been incomplete or edited.


During some testy exchanges with McAleer, UN officials and Professor Schneider’s assistants twice tried to cut short McAleer’s question.


However as the press conference drew to a close Professor Schneider’s assistant called armed UN security guards to the room. They held McAleer and aggressively ordered cameraman Ian Foster to stop filming. The guard threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference if they did not obey his instructions to stop filming Professor Schneider.

The trailer for McAleer's documentary, Not Evil Just Wrong is reproduced below.  You can also watch the trailer and order the documentary here.



Mr. McAleer might want to reconsider his magnanimous title. I would have called it Completely Evil, Ignorant and Wrong.

Climategate: Last horse crosses the finish line

ABC news finally got around to mentioning the Climategate scandal after more than two weeks of broadcast silence on the subject.  Newsbusters has been following this virtual news blackout since the beginning, and had this to say:

More than two weeks after ClimateGate broke, ABC's World News finally got around to mentioning it on Sunday evening, but not to explore how the e-mails discredited leading scientists who insist mankind is causing global warming as, instead, ABC declared “the science is solid” and NBC assured viewers “the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change.”



ABC reporter Clayton Sandell merely included, in a larger story about the Copenhagen conference, how “global warming naysayers are claiming that e-mails stolen from” East Anglia University “show climate scientists discussing how to fudge results to promote the idea that humans are altering the planet.” After failing to inform viewers of any specifics the e-mails revealed, Sandell, who didn't utter a syllable about them on Sunday's Good Morning America, concluded his World News piece:


The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof.

Well all righty then.  With unabashed advocates like ABC, NBC and CBS, who needs lobbyists?

EPA declares carbon dioxide a danger to our health and welfare

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Environmental Protection Agency said greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare in a decision that could eventually lead to new emissions regulations.




The so-called "endangerment finding" announced Monday by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is necessary to move ahead on new emission standards for cars, while potentially opening up large emitters such as power plants, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants to limits on their output of carbon dioxide and other gases.


"These long overdue findings cement 2009's place in history as the year when the U.S. government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform," Ms. Jackson said in a statement.


The controversial decision, which the Obama administration indicated it would make earlier this year, comes as a global climate summit opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.


The move has been opposed by many business groups and lawmakers who fear it will place a burden on the economy.


The endangerment finding sets up regulation of greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act, which some experts warn would be much more blunt than climate-change legislation crafted by Congress.

The "long overdue" description seems a bit disingenuous to me.  In light of the roadblocks to passing cap and trade in the Senate, recent revelations of possible climate data fraud in the East Anglian email scandal, and the high profile opening of the Copenhagen climate conference yesterday, I'd say Ms. Jackson's announcement was timed just perfectly for the Obama administration.  The President cannot afford the appearance of another defeat in Copenhagen.

The National Petrochemical & Refiners' Association (NPRA) also questioned the timing:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Charles T. Drevna, President of NPRA, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, today questioned the basic foundation and timing of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) greenhouse gas endangerment finding given the lack of scientific clarity and the international politics involved with the United Nations Climate Change Conference opening this week in Copenhagen.


“The implications of today’s action by EPA are far-reaching,” Drevna said. “Individual American consumers and businesses alike will be dramatically affected by this decision that, frankly, is based on selective science, a weak legal and policy foundation, and a failure to account for numerous uncertainties and assumptions in the models it relies on. This is yet another example of federal policymakers failing to consider the long-term consequences of a regulatory action for consumers and the economy as a whole.


“Given the remaining uncertainties over the extent to which China and India will meaningfully engage in the Copenhagen negotiations, it is hardly the time the risk the remainder of the U.S. industrial sector in an attempt to achieve a short-term international public relations victory.”

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce expressed concern about how resulting EPA regulation will hurt businesses.

An EPA endangerment finding "could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery," he said, noting that the group supports federal legislation.

The National Association of Manufacturers released a statement on the finding which said, in part:
 

The NAM is concerned that the EPA did not seriously take into consideration any of the thousands of comments manufacturers made on this proposal. The endangerment finding will have a cascading effect on the ability of all manufacturers to grow and prosper. By declaring GHG emissions a threat to public health and welfare through its endangerment finding, the EPA is paving the way to begin regulating carbon emissions across the board, including large stationary sources such as manufacturing plants, hospitals and libraries under the Clean Air Act.


Let me be clear: the NAM supports cost-effective efforts to address climate change but believes the appropriate authority to address this should be Congress. The EPA is moving forward with an agenda that will put additional burdens on manufacturers, cost jobs and drive up the price of energy. This finding comes when unemployment is hovering at 10 percent, and many manufacturers are struggling to stay in business. It is doubtful that this endangerment finding will achieve its stated goal, but it is certain to come at a huge cost to the economy.

There is something positively Orwellian going on here.  The President sponsors a "job summit" reminiscent of a college sociology seminar, while pushing full steam ahead with legislative and extra-legislative initiatives that will destroy the U.S. economy.

CBS Reports ClimateGate During Show Preempted By Football

What's a network to do when it is forced to confront an inconvenient truth like Climategate?  Preempt it.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters reports that CBS has finally joined NBC in crossing the news blackout picket line.  Too bad virtually nobody actually saw it:

CBS on Saturday finally covered the growing ClimateGate scandal, but did so when its "Evening News" program was going to be preempted by college football in most of the country.



With the SEC Championship game between the University of Florida and Alabama starting at 4PM EST, few would see CBS's report on this controversy unless they read an article at the network's website.


There, the video of the segment was available with the surprising caption "Climate Change a Hoax?"


According to LexisNexis, anchor Jeff Glor teased the story before a commercial break, "Just ahead on tonight`s CBS EVENING NEWS -- did some scientists fudge the numbers to make climate change look worse than it is."

Here's the video that you would have seen, if silly CBS didn' choose to broadcast the SEC championship game (between the top two teams in the nation) instead: 


Watch CBS News Videos Online
 
It should come as no surpise, that ABC still remains silent.

Russian server implicated in Climategate email leak?

Two British newspapers are reporting that the original internet posting of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia Climate Reasearch Institute was initiated from a small server in the Siberian city of Tomsk.  From the Daily Mail (UK):

Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit.



An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.


The leaks scandal has left the scientific community in disarray after claims that key climate change data was manipulated in the run-up to the climate change summit of world leaders.

The Times (UK) offers three possible sources:

The Russian connection to the controversy over the leaked Climategate e-mails raises suspicions of a state-sanctioned attempt to discredit the Copenhagen summit involving secret service espionage. But it could as easily have been the work of freelance hackers hired by climate-change sceptics.



Hackers for hire are a common phenomenon in Russia, where programming skills are high and many smart computer experts are eager to make money. A shadowy organisation called the Russian Business Network is notorious as a provider of internet services for global cyber-crime.


Unscrupulous businesses hire hackers to attack the websites of rival companies, and criminal gangs make use of their skills in credit card fraud and identity theft. There are websites and discussion forums where Russian hackers swap information and advice about their activities.


A third possibility is that disgruntled or mischievous students involved in the climate-change debate may have accessed the servers; it has been suggested that the files hacked from the University of East Anglia were uploaded from a server in the Russian city of Tomsk. The formerly closed Siberian city was a hotbed of scientific expertise in the Soviet Union and is now one of Russia’s leading centres for studying climate change.

Russia has been associated with several cyber attacks in recent years:

Tomsk students were involved in an attack on a website sympathetic to Chechen militants in 2002 that drew praise from the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet-era KGB. The FSB office in Tomsk declared the students’ action an “expression of their position as citizens, one worthy of respect”.



The Kremlin was blamed when government websites in Estonia and Georgia were crippled by so-called distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks carried out by computer hackers when those two countries were in conflict with Russia. The cyber-saboteurs used automated “botnets” to flood networks with simultaneous attempts to access sites. An MP with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party boasted later that one of his researchers had carried out the attack on Estonia.


Security experts in Russia say that the FSB routinely makes use of such “hacker-patriots” when it wants to break into computer systems or damage websites belonging to groups critical of the state. This allows it to have deniability about the involvement of its own computer experts at the FSB’s Centre for Information Security.

And just last year, computer hackers suspected of working from Russia successfully penetrated Pentagon computer systems within U.S. Central Command in one of the most severe cyber attacks on US military networks.

This story hasn't gained much traction yet, perhaps because it broke during the weekend, or maybe it's simply not true.  Stay tuned.

Meet Steve McIntyre, Toronto retiree and Al Gore's worst nightmare

As the Climategate scandal gains some traction in the world press, it is important to keep the pressure on our elected representatives to get to the bottom of it.  The hard-earned money of taxpayers has been used to fund climate research for decades.  The Courier Mail (Australia) reported in June of 2007:

In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion ($60 billion) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one.

That was back when billions still meant something. The truth is, these sunk costs will seem inconsequential when compared to the crippling economic costs of cap and trade.

If you really want to understand the global warming debate, I continue to recommend Ian Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science.  But I must warn you:  it is a heavy read and not intended for the casually interested.  But is is chock full of historical climate information and political context that should give pause to scientist and non-scientist alike.
For those of you that don't have time or motivation to read Plimer's book, let me suggest this short article by Richard Foot that appears today in the Star Phoenix (Canada).  It's entitled 'M and M' stick in craw of climate-change crew.  M and M are Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.  Here's an introductory excerpt:

Steve McIntyre, 62, is a Toronto retiree. He plays squash, dabbles with numbers and insists he never set out to stir up any trouble.



So why does his name appear again and again - in the most unflattering ways - in hundreds of e-mails written by the world's most influential climate change scientists, that were mysteriously taken from a computer in Britain last month and published on the Internet?


In these private messages, McIntyre is called everything from a "bozo" and a "moron" to a "playground bully."


"In my opinion," said one e-mail written by Benjamin Santer, a senior climatologist with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, "Stephen McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science."


The "climategate" e-mails have sparked a scandal - just ahead of next week's global warming summit in Copenhagen - for suggesting climatologists may have manipulated data to exaggerate the threat of global warming and conspired to keep contrary points of view out of the scientific journals.


But the e-mails are also conspicuous for their repeated, nasty references to two Canadians - McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick - who have become a serious thorn in the side of climatologists and others who say the planet is under serious threat from man-made global warming.


Although little-known in Canada, McIntyre and McKitrick - or M and M as they're called in climate change circles - have since 2003 put forward evidence of faulty calculations in some of the key scientific studies behind the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.


Their work has drawn the attention of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Wall Street Journal, which last month called them "the climate change gang's most dangerous apostates."

If you want to see these emails for yourself, you can find them here.  The content is indexed and searchable and reveals interesting tidbits like this one from Penn State climate superstar, Michael Mann:

Yep, what was written below is all me, but it was purely on background, please don't quote anything I said or attribute to me w/out checking specifically--thanks.


Re, your point at the end--you've taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential
for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But
legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in
particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition
for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate
scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside
of this system are not to be trusted.

And this

if McIntyre had a legitimate point, he would submit a comment to the journal in
question. of course, the last time he tried that (w/ our '98 article in Nature), his
comment was rejected. For all of the noise and bluster about the Steig et al Antarctic
warming, its now nearing a year and nothing has been submitted. So more likely he won't
submit for peer-reviewed scrutiny, or if it does get his criticism "published" it will
be in the discredited contrarian home journal "Energy and Environment". I'm sure you
are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap
published in legitimate journals. All they have to do is put it up on their blog, and
the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear, pretty soon Druge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn
Beck and their ilk (in this case, The Telegraph were already on it this morning) are
parroting the claims. And based on what? some guy w/ no credentials, dubious connections
with the energy industry, and who hasn't submitted his claims to the scrutiny of peer
review.


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

Prestige press?  Like the one that has been protecting your rear end since these emails were leaked 16 days ago?  The content and tone of these emails reveal an arrogant, self-important cabal of elitists who pay cheap lip service to legitimate scientific skepticism, then do everything in their power to denigrate, delay and destroy anyone who approaches them wth dissent.

I would encourage you to browse through the emails and see what I mean. And while Barbara Boxer is crying foul about the illegal theft of these emails, and threatening to launch a criminal probe, remember this:  All this information was subject to Freedom of Information Act disclosure in the United States or the United Kingdom and had been requested (some of it for years) by multiple parties.  These "prestige" scientists did everything they could to frustrate and forestall anyone with the temerity to ask to see their raw data, up to and including destroying data and deleting incriminating emails.....that's data collected (or made up) with taxpayer money.

And speaking of Senator (Ma'am) Boxer, remember how quick she was to pounce on the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of the NSA wiretap program after it was illegally leaked to the New York Times in 2005 in a possible violation of the Espionage Act?  I guess the definition of what is or is not legal depends on the outcome you want.

Brian Williams of NBC breaks the Climategate blackout

In an earlier post today, I wondered if the U.N. announcement that it would be launching an investigation into the leaked emails from East Anglia would prompt the mainstream media to finally report on the Climategate scandal.  NBC is a winner!  Sort of.  From Newsbusters this evening:

Two weeks after the scandal broke, NBC Nightly News on Friday night became the first broadcast network morning or evening news program to inform viewers about “ClimateGate,” but only in the most cursory manner as correspondent Anne Thompson, a long-time ally of the environmental left, despaired the e-mails may end up “giving politicians from coal and oil-producing states another reason to delay taking action to reduce emissions. The government's leading scientist told Congress there is no time to lose.”

Anchor Brian Williams had teased: “ClimateGate, they're calling it. A new scandal over global warming and it's burning up the Internet. Have the books been cooked on climate change?” But neither Williams nor Thompson ever again used the “ClimateGate” term as Thompson's story assured viewers the threat remains while she saw -- not a major scientific scandal -- but merely how “those who doubt that manmade greenhouse gases are changing the climate say” the e-mails “show climate scientists massaging data and suppressing studies by those who disagree.”

Thompson, who in 2007 declared “the scientific debate is no longer over society's role in global warming. It is now a matter of degrees,” allowed soundbites from a Republican Congressman and Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute, but countered with how “25 leading U.S. scientists accused climate change opponents of misrepresenting the e-mails' significance” and, after a clip of left-wing activist Michael Oppenheimer, she fretted over how, as quoted above, the e-mails will “delay” vital action. Thompson concluded with NOAA's administrator: “Climate change is not a theory. It is a documented set of observations about the world.”

Great thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo would have likely withered under an assault like this invasion of the global warming body snatchers.  It's time for the true scientists and truth seekers of the world to stand up to this parasitic, economically destructive, self-serving cabal.

Greenhouse Gas Observatories Downwind from Erupting Volcanoes

Andrew Walden has written an entertaining article at American Thinker, exposing more of the hoax of global warming.  His target: atmospheric CO2 measurement. From the article:

Problems in the collection of atmospheric CO2 data parallel other absurdities in the global warming fraud. The Climategate scandal is exposing the massive and systematic fraud behind the fabrication of the worldwide temperature record necessary to make the case for global warming. But what about the record of atmospheric CO2?


The U.S. NOAA openly admits to producing a CO2 record which "contains no actual data." NOAA temperature stations sited in ways that artificially inflate temperatures have been exposed over the past two years. CO2 observatories have similar flaws. Two of the five NOAA "baseline" stations are downwind from erupting volcanoes. All five are subject to localized or regional CO2 sources. [snip]


Climategate collaborator Dr. Andrew Manning worked with Dr. David Keeling, founder of the Mauna Loa Observatory, where atmospheric CO2 is measured. Manning, whose name appears in 37 Climategate emails, tells BBC: (emphasis added)

The goal behind starting the measurements was to see if it was possible to track what at that time was only a suspicion: that atmospheric CO2 levels might be increasing owing to the burning of fossil fuels.


To do this, a location was needed very far removed from the contamination and pollution of local emissions from cities; therefore Mauna Loa, high on a volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was chosen.


Without this curve, and Professor Keeling's tireless work, there is no question that our understanding and acceptance of human-induced global warming would be 10-20 years less advanced than it is today.

Mauna Loa has been producing a readout which supports Manning's predetermined goal by showing steady growth in atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1959. This record, highlighted in Al Gore's discredited movie An Inconvenient Truth, is known as the Keeling Curve. A graph of the curve is engraved on a bronze plaque mounted at the entrance to the Observatory’s Keeling Building, 10,000 feet above sea level on the rocky north flank of Mauna Loa. According to the Observatory website: "The undisturbed air, remote location, and minimal influences of vegetation and human activity at MLO are ideal for monitoring constituents in the atmosphere that can cause climate change."


For some reason, they fail to mention the erupting volcano next door.

This is not new information.  Ian Plimer discusses the difficulties of CO2 measurement, including the problems with the data from Mauna Loa, in great detail in his book  Heaven and Earth:  Global Warming the Missing Science.  Here is a passage that I found truly astonishing:

The raw data from Mauna Loa is "edited" by an operator who deletes what may be considered poor data.  Some 82% of the raw infra-red CO2 measurement data is "edited" leaving just 18% of the raw data measurements for statistical analysis.  With such a savage editing of raw data, whatever trend one wants to show can be shown.

The United Nations announced today that it will launch its own investigation into the emails leaked from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, but discerning observers aren't expecting much.  Maybe the U.N. action will prompt the mainstream news networks to at least mention the Climategate scandal tonight on their broadcasts.  But I won't hold my breath.

Climategate updates from both sides of the pond

In a post last week, I directed your attention to James Delingpole at the Telegraph (UK), for some of the most cogent, up-to-date coverage of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit fraud.  He's at it again today with a must read column, Climategate: it's all unravelling now.  He summarizes the latest developments in brilliant form.  I have reproduced the first two here.

So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarise, instead. After all, it’s not like you’re going to find much of this reported in the MSM.
1. Australia’s Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme for a second time. Or: so turkeys don’t vote Christmas. Expect to see a lot more of this: politicians starting to become aware their party’s position on AGW is completely out of kilter with the public mood and economic reality. Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme – what Andrew Bolt calls “a $114 billion green tax on everything” – would have wreaked havoc on the coal-dependent Australian economy. That’s why several opposition Liberal frontbenchers resigned rather than vote with the Government on ETS; why Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull lost his job; and why the Senate voted down the ETS.

2. Danes caught fiddling their carbon credits. (Hat tip: Philip Stott) Carbon trading is the Emperor’s New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn’t been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world’s leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.

It's an excellent article with lots of great links.  Read the whole thing.  (For those of you who don't watch South Park or have teenagers, you can catch up on ManBearPig here.)

Permit me to add a couple of developments from this side of the pond:

1.  From the Penn State Daily Collegian:

Penn State is conducting an inquiry into the controversy surrounding a Penn State professor whose illegally leaked e-mails have sparked an international debate over whether he and his colleagues distorted data on global warming.

The inquiry will determine if further investigation is warranted, a university spokeswoman said Sunday.

On Nov. 21, hundreds of e-mails sent between colleagues at England's University of East Anglia were illegally obtained from a server at the university's climate change research center and posted online. One of the researchers in-volved is Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann.

The e-mails appeared to indicate that the director of the research unit in question -- Phil Jones -- contacted his colleagues to request they delete certain exchanges.

Skeptics of climate change are calling the ongoing investigation "Climategate" and allege the leaked e-mails suggest the researchers -- including Mann -- had fabricated or manipulated data on global warming.

Penn State said in a statement last week that it did not want to speculate as to the meaning or intent of any of the leaked e-mails in question.

The university will look into the issues at hand, spokeswoman Lisa Powers said, and determine from whatever information is uncovered if further investigation is required.

In this particular situation, a Penn State committee will review every e-mail in question -- a total of about 300 messages, Powers wrote in an e-mail.

This process could take "quite some time," Powers wrote.

2. Senator Inhofe (R-OK) requests hearings on Climategate:

Sen. James M. Inhofe ( R-Okla. ), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, sent a letter today to EPW Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer ( D-Calif. ) requesting hearings on the recent disclosure of emails between some of the world’s most preeminent climatologists—emails that reveal apparent attempts to manipulate data, vilify scientists with opposing viewpoints, and circumvent information disclosure laws.

“The emails reveal possible deceitful manipulation of important data and research used by the US Global Change Research Program and the IPCC,” Inhofe wrote. “For instance, one scientist wrote of a ‘trick’ he employed to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperature trends, as well as discussed attempts to ‘redefine what the peer-review literature is’ to prevent papers raising questions about anthropogenic global warming from appearing in IPCC reports.”

This controversy “could have far-reaching policy implications,” Inhofe continued, “affecting everything from ( to name a few ) cap-and-trade legislation, state and regional climate change programs,” and “the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202( a ) of the Clean Air Act’…” These policies “will have enormous economic impacts, not least the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding, which, when finalized, will lead to a torrent of new federal regulations that will destroy thousands of jobs and make electricity and gasoline more expensive for consumers and small businesses.”

3. MIT meteorology professor Richard S. Lindzen gives his opinion on Climategate in the Wall Street Journal piece, The Climate Science Isn't Settled, stating in part:

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

4.  Two key Obama administration officials were grilled this morning at the House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing:

Two key Obama Administration scientists were grilled this morning about Climategate at a hearing of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming this morning. The hearing, originally meant to be a review of climate science before Copenhagen, got personal. The hearing suggests that the release of some 1000 e-mails among scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) could have long-lasting political implications, as political foes of greenhouse gas controls are citing them as evidence that the science behind the campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is rigged.

Ranking member James Sensenbrenner (R–WI) led the assault, attacking John Holdren, the president's science adviser. Sensenbrenner, a former chair of the House Science committee, quoted an e-mail from 2003 in which Holdren called scientists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas "amateurs" at interpreting climate data and said that their findings are "flawed."

"How can you be objective on this?" said Sensenbrenner, pointing to the exchange. Holdren said he had come to his views by careful analysis, and his only "bias" was that he had read the Soon and Baliunas paper and found its findings wanting.

I have to agree with Wall Street Journal blogger, Russell Gold,

Who stole the emails is an ongoing mystery and whether they paint a picture of scientific malfeasance or just good old-fashioned venting is a matter of heated debate. This much is known: the debate over global warming is now not a scientific disagreement or even a political debate. It’s all-out ideological warfare.