The American Denial Of Global Warming, and other environmental issues. Options

[Sanders]

'Climategate' - CRU hacked into and its implications

BBC
Paul Hudson | Monday, 23 November 2009

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009...d-into-an.shtml

Very busy with forecast duties right now, but I do intend to write a blog regarding the UK Climate research centre (CRU) being hacked into, and the possible implications of this very serious affair.

I will add comment on this page as soon as I can free up some time. But I will in the meantime answer the question regarding the chain of e-mails which you have been commenting about on my blog, which can be seen here, and whether they are genuine or part of an elaborate hoax.

I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October., which are comments from some of the worlds leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article 'whatever happened to global warming'. The e-mails released on the internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as l can see, they are authentic.

So someone at BBC had these before the hack!???

[Rickysa]

sure does seem to be the case....I'm not sure how Paul Harden figures into the whole AGW debate, but it is curious he didn't mention them in Oct. Would he have been a figure someone would have "leaked" the info to for dissemination/action? And if so, why did he sit on it?? Or was the "hacking" done because he sat on it for over a month??

Curious...

[Omega892R09]

'Climategate' - CRU hacked into and its implications

BBC
Paul Hudson | Monday, 23 November 2009

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009...d-into-an.shtml



So someone at BBC had these before the hack!???

As lunk pointed out it could well have been a leak rather than a hack (and I am inclined to agree but am still undecided either way) but as this episode is now generally described as a hack then that is how I have kept mention of it.

Something about Hudson response quoted above does not smell right, given that his 'whatever happened to global warming' article was discussed a couple of weeks ago - mentioned in a post on RealClimate.

Whatever, ''whatever happened to global warming' is a misleading statement given that global warming has not been suspended.

Latent heat of phase changes can absorb huge amounts of energy whilst temperature rise slows. And as I have shown you Sanders, if you have bothered to look, most of the globe has warmed over the last year, and the trend over the period of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is still up. If Pat Michaels warns about the dangers of taking this cooling meme to seriously then perhaps you should listen.

These email revelations will not turn out to be the stick to beat Copenhagen to death with that many hope. I think it very odd that just before this email were 'leak', or whatever, was formally announced that creationist nut James Inhofe pronounced the death of APGW science.

Given the power of the lobbies he bats for I would not be surprised that he knew this was happening over much of the considerable period that it would have taken to extract and prepare these emails for release.

[Omega892R09]

The CRU Hack- comments page 2

100
Duae Quartunciea says:
20 November 2009 at 15:06

I saw the “hide the decline” email being repeated all over the internet, and so I had already made a check on the background for myself. I found the “divergence problem” pretty quickly, and had already pointed this out at Deltoid. Nice to have my inferences confirmed.

These emails obviously lack useful context, and the maliciously clueless are going to keep making these kinds of misunderstandings. It says a lot about their ethics in running so quickly with accusations of hoax before they’ve made any attempt to figure out what is being discussed.

Its clear these folks are not “skeptics”, but credulous simpletons who jump at any chance to have their own presumptions confirmed.

Quite.

Harrabin's Notes: E-mail arguments

In his regular column, the BBC's environment analyst, Roger Harrabin, assesses the arguments sparked by the leaking of information on climate change.

Scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia are facing a fierce attack from climate sceptics following the hacking of the university's computer.

The hacker stole thousands of e-mails and data. Much of it has been posted on the web. And some of the e-mails are causing acute embarrassment.

My contacts at the CRU tell me the e-mails are being taken out of context and insist they are part of the normal hurly-burly of conversations between scientists working on some of the most complicated questions of our times.

They ask how many of us would feel completely comfortable if our own inboxes were emptied out for the world to see. How much of what we had said to close colleagues in industry jargon would be liable to misinterpretation?

"If the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) can't do closed e-mail, no-one with any expertise could do anything. I don't know how you are supposed to work if you don't have e-mail," my source said.

But the e-mail stash is proving a treasure trove for sceptics who have challenged every facet of climate science and policy.

Some of the e-mails reveal the frustration and annoyance among mainstream climate researchers about the probings they face from critics who relentlessly question their methodology.

And although my contact insists that the e-mails are about how data is presented and interpreted, sceptics say the e-mailers may have been discussing how the data could be manipulated.

The CRU has been repeatedly asked to publish the entire data set from which it compiled an important grid-based record of global temperatures.

It says it will publish full details when it has clearance from all the world's meteorological offices whose permission is needed.

But speaking to my source at the CRU, it is also clear that the unit has been dragged down by what it considers to be nit-picking and unreasonable demands for data - and that there is personal animus against their intellectual rivals.

Now this sort of hostility is nothing new in academia - but the revelations come at a sensitive time as the world's nations gather for the climate meeting in Copenhagen.

My CRU source points out that its unpublished full data set is almost identical to the ones at the National Climatic Data Center and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

Both of these are in the US, where there are no restrictions on publication. The CRU view is that when the sceptics see the full data in due course they will be very disappointed.

The scientific establishment is likely to support the CRU. Despite continuing uncertainties in some areas of climate science, they say officially that their overall confidence that humans are warming the climate is now more than 90%.

One leading figure told me unofficially that confidence was now at 99%.

But the email controversy may prove an uncomfortable moment in the careers of some researchers in the spotlight and will undoubtedly provoke demands for renewed scrutiny of the CRU's influential work.

These demands may surface in the US Senate, where climate change sceptics and their allies are holding up the energy and climate bill which President Obama needs before he can sign a legally-binding agreement over cutting emissions.

Myron Ebell, a climate sceptic from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is funded by US business interests, told me: "We sceptics have been winning the argument for some time and this will further undermine confidence in IPCC science.

"This is very embarrassing indeed for the scientists behind these emails."

The climate science website RealClimate sees the CRU computer raid as the latest attempt by lobbyists to discredit mainstream climate science at a critical time.

It explains in detail what it says is the legitimate scientific rationale behind some of the apparently incriminating emails, and says they offer a glimpse into the real world of science.

It says people should not be shocked by "scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in 'robust' discussions; scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense...

"It's obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this," says RealClimate. "But it's important to remember that… gravity isn't a useful theory because Newton was a nice person."

On Myron Ebell and the CEI:

Myron Ebell

CEI

Come on people. Wake up. These organisations and individuals are representative of those behind the planning of the 9/11 distract and convince theatre and of the subsequent cover up.

Finally.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/ev...es_nev.php#more

"Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers"

Andrew Freedman interviewed Spencer Weart about the stolen emails:

SW: Back around 2000 leading climate scientists talked to each other mostly about their science--debating one another's data and analysis and negotiating travel, collaboration and other administration--and a little bit about policy. As time passed they have had to spend more and more of their time answering criticism of the scientific results already established, criticism mostly based on ignorance, fallacious reasoning, and even deliberately deceptive claims. Still more recently they have had to spend far too much of their time defending their personal reputations against ignorant or slanderous attacks. ...

The theft and use of the emails does reveal something interesting about the social context. It's a symptom of something entirely new in the history of science: Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we've never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance.

Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers. In blogs, talk radio and other new media, we are told that the warnings about future global warming issued by the national science academies, scientific societies, and governments of all the leading nations are not only mistaken, but based on a hoax, indeed a conspiracy that must involve thousands of respected researchers. Extraordinary and, frankly, weird. Climate scientists are naturally upset, exasperated, and sometimes goaded into intemperate responses... but that was already easy to see in their blogs and other writings.

They don't call it a war on science for nothing, folks. Read the whole thing. Science historian reacts to hacked climate e-mails

Read the whole thing. Science historian reacts to hacked climate e-mails

[Omega892R09]

sure does seem to be the case....I'm not sure how Paul Harden figures into the whole AGW debate, but it is curious he didn't mention them in Oct. Would he have been a figure someone would have "leaked" the info to for dissemination/action? And if so, why did he sit on it?? Or was the "hacking" done because he sat on it for over a month??

Curious...

Curious indeed. And do you not mean Paul Hudson if so then here is an explanation from:

The CRU hack: Context - comments page 5

208
Ike Solem says:
23 November 2009 at 19:51

Paul Hudson – that rings a bell, because he wrote one of the most atrocious articles on climate I’ve ever seen recently:

Headline: “What happened to global warming?”

“But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures…

A disingenuous appeal to tobacco scientists? Yes:

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specializing in long range weather forecasting…claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.”

The “global cooling” myth was repeated by Andy Revkin at the NYT:

The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss climate change on Tuesday are faced with an intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years… The plateau in temperatures has been seized upon by skeptics…

Dates?
NYT – 23 Sept 2009
BBC – 9 Oct 2009

Such myths have been dispelled, thanks to RC. Here’s an excerpt:

“It is noteworthy in this context that despite the record low in the brightness of the sun over the past three years (it’s been at its faintest since beginning of satellite measurements in the 1970s), a number of warming records have been broken during this time. March 2008 saw the warmest global land temperature of any March ever recorded in the past 130 years. June and August 2009 saw the warmest land and ocean temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere ever recorded for those months. The global ocean surface temperatures in 2009 broke all previous records for three consecutive months: June, July and August. The years 2007, 2008 and 2009 had the lowest summer Arctic sea ice cover ever recorded, and in 2008 for the first time in living memory the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage were simultaneously ice-free. This feat was repeated in 2009. Every single year of this century (2001-2008) has been warmer than all years of the 20th Century except 1998 (which sticks out well above the trend line due to a strong El Niño event)…”

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...-warming-pause/

So, what do we have here but deliberate distortion of the facts by these major press reporters assigned to the climate beat? These two reporters might as well be employed by some fossil fuel think tank as by “legitimate and reputable news sources.”

Is there some reputable news source we can use to put this little event into context? Sure – but we have to go back a few years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006...thicalliving.g2

To spell it out:

There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris’s consultants. “Junk science” meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. “Sound science” meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” Both industries also sought to distance themselves from their own campaigns, creating the impression that they were spontaneous movements of professionals or ordinary citizens: the “grassroots”.

Clearly, this is just such an event – but apparently, the fossil fuel lobby has far more sway over what reporters at the NYT and BBC cover than these institutions pretend – conclusion, they are not independent “news sources” but are rather acting more like “perception managers” who spin stories to please their advertisers and shareholders.

By the way, there’s only one reason for Paul Hudson to keep it secret – timing. The fossil fuel lobby wanted to release this directly before Copenhagen in order to make the maximum impact on the discussions and hopefully kill off legally binding climate agreements.

If Paul Hudson and others went along with that plan, then they are merely PR agents posing as reporters, very similar to those PR agents who pose as scientists.

Wake up to who is really lying to you folks.

Awareness can sometimes be uncomfortable.

EDIT:

Oh! And on Junk Science - search out stuff on S Milloy - it will be enlightening.

This post has been edited by Omega892R09: Nov 24 2009, 12:19 PM

[Sanders]

Give it a rest, O, the climate-scammers have been caught red-handed with their hand in the cookie-jar.

(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/cleanup.gif)

[lunk]

Yes, asking people to delete data because of a freedom of information request?!

That's not science.
That's not a scientist.
That's a scammer,
covering his @ss.

It's always the cover-up,
which follows the scam.

Any weird weather anomalies, on a large scale,
in the solar system,
are caused by the sun, not by humans.

[Omega892R09]

Give it a rest, O, the climate-scammers have been caught red-handed with their hand in the cookie-jar.

(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/cleanup.gif)

(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/lame.gif)
(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/bs_flag.gif)
See comments on the other thread.

Once again you make statements based upon propaganda from those who you should really be worried about. On a subject about which time and time again you have presented no cogent argument to support your views. All you can do is say this, that and the other with not a truth in sight as I have demonstrated time and time again.

I will not give it a rest as long as lies and disinfo are being spread, and believed by the gullible.

Still I guess it feels good to be with the IN-CROWD eh!

Sure is getting dark in here.

[Omega892R09]

Yes, asking people to delete data because of a freedom of information request?!

That's not science.
That's not a scientist.
That's a scammer,
covering his @ss.

It's always the cover-up,
which follows the scam.

Any weird weather anomalies, on a large scale,
in the solar system,
are caused by the sun, not by humans.

(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/bullshit.gif)

[lunk]

Alan Watt is poetic, too.

Evidence Defeats Global Warming Cheats:

"Within Academia's Labyrinths, Climatologists are Stormin'
As the Icy Breath of Scandal Rocks Cliques of Global Warmin',
Like Characters in Comedy, Swiping Data Off the Tables,
Their Vocation Should be in Literature, Reciting Aesop's Fables,
Or Perhaps Careers in Drama, Acting Old Greek Plays so Tragic,
Or with Skills Juggling Data, then Stage Careers in Magic,
Yet They may Stay within Their Labyrinths, Scurrying like Ants,
Climatologists Confabulate when Rewards are Big Fat Grants"

mp3 download of Alan Watt, Nov. 25, 2009:

http://cuttingthrough.jenkness.com/CTTM200...s_Nov252009.mp3

[Omega892R09]

Yes, asking people to delete data because of a freedom of information request?!

But the scientists did not.

Perhaps you should provide evidence for that statement, that is that the FOIRs were the trigger for any deletions.

And I mean evidence, not title-tattle from muck spreaders.

On the Hudson/BBC accusations:

It looks like I was correct when replying to Sanders' #81 post, something did not smell right.

No, BBC was not sent the stolen emails

Made obvious if my earlier posts on the two running threads here had been read before shooting from the hip.

The latest story exciting the denialosphere is this one by Carol Driver in the Daily Mail. Driver claims:

Climate change scandal deepens as BBC expert claims he was sent 'cover-up' emails a month before they went public

The controversy surrounding the global warming scandal today deepened after a BBC correspondent admitted he was sent the leaked emails more than a month before they were made public.

No, he didn't.

In his BBC blog two days ago, Hudson said: 'I was forwarded the chain of emails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the world's leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article "Whatever Happened To Global Warming".'

He couldn't have been sent the stolen emails a month ago since many of them were written after October 12. All he was doing was confirming the authenticity of one of them (which included quotes of previous emails in the exchange, hence his calling it "chain of emails").

Hudson has tried to clear things up with a new post:

As you may know, some of the e-mails that were released last week directly involved me and one of my previous blogs, 'Whatever happened to global warming ?'

These took the form of complaints about its content, and I was copied in to them at the time. Complaints and criticisms of output are an every day part of life, and as such were nothing out of the ordinary. However I felt that seeing there was an ongoing debate as to the authenticity of the hacked e-mails, I was duty bound to point out that as I had read the original e-mails, then at least these were authentic, although of course I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the others.

I wonder how many of the folks accusing the BBC of a cover up will correct their posts?

Note the organ, Daily Mail, that is broadcasting untruths.

I wonder how many of the folks accusing the BBC of a cover up will correct their posts?

Yeh! And I wonder who on this forum will be big enough to admit that they got this wrong?

More on this hack/espionage/theft/whatever.

This next bit is important for understanding the context behind Michael Mann in his own words on the stolen CRU emails

Now please for once try reading something before replying, eh!

Perhaps these guys are on to something:

The SwiftHack Scandal: What You Need to Know

[Omega892R09]

Fox News pushing a documentary by a pair of Irish 'skeptics'.

New Documentary Challenges Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' on Global Warming

FoxNews.com - 'Fair and Balanced' - Yeah! Who they trying to kid?

Al Gore's award-winning global warming film "An Inconvenient Truth," socked two years ago by a British court ruling that found several errors, is facing additional scrutiny with the release of a new documentary that seeks to rebut many of Gore's claims.

Socked eh!
Unless of course you know the truth of the matter and one of the topics in:

Climate Cover Up: the book with online buzz sells out on Amazon.com You folks here should try reading a copy.

Run through of the court ruling on An Inconvenient Truth

Convenient Untruths

Convenient Untruths
Filed under: Climate Science— group @ 15 October 2007 - () ()
Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann

Update 10/18/07: We are very disappointed that the Washington Post has declined to run an op-ed placing the alleged 9 ‘errors’ in a proper scientific context, despite having run an extremely misleading news article last week entitled “UK Judge Rules Gore’s Climate Film Has 9 Errors”.

Last week, a UK High Court judge rejected a call to restrict the showing of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) in British schools. The judge, Justice Burton found that “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate” (which accords with our original assessment). There has been a lot of comment and controversy over this decision because of the judges commentary on 9 alleged “errors” (note the quotation marks!) in the movie’s description of the science. The judge referred to these as ‘errors’ in quotations precisely to emphasize that, while these were points that could be contested, it was not clear that they were actually errors (see Deltoid for more on that).


There are a number of points to be brought out here. First of all, “An Inconvenient Truth” was a movie and people expecting the same depth from a movie as from a scientific paper are setting an impossible standard. Secondly, the judge’s characterisation of the 9 points is substantially flawed. He appears to have put words in Gore’s mouth that would indeed have been wrong had they been said (but they weren’t). Finally, the judge was really ruling on how “Guidance Notes” for teachers should be provided to allow for more in depth discussion of these points in the classroom. This is something we wholehearted support – AIT is probably best used as a jumping off point for informed discussion, but it is not the final word. Indeed, the fourth IPCC report has come out in the meantime, and that has much more up-to-date and comprehensive discussions on all these points.

A number of discussions of the 9 points have already been posted (particularly at New Scientist and Michael Tobis’s wiki), and it is clear that the purported ‘errors’ are nothing of the sort. The (unofficial) transcript of the movie should be referred to if you have any doubts about this. It is however unsurprising that the usual climate change contrarians and critics would want to exploit this confusion for perhaps non-scientific reasons.

In the spirit of pushing forward the discussion, we have a brief set of guidance notes of our own for each of the 9 issues raised. These are not complete, and if additional pointers are noted in the comments, we’ll add them in here as we go along.

Ice-sheet driven sea level rise Gore correctly asserted that melting of Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea levels 20ft (6 meters). In the movie, no timescale for that was specified, but lest you think that the 20 ft number is simply plucked out of thin air, you should note that this is about how much higher sea level was around 125,000 years ago during the last inter-glacial period. Then, global temperatures were only a degree or two warmer than today – and given that this is close to the minimum temperature rise we can expect in the future, that 20 ft is particularly relevant. The rate at which this is likely to happen is however highly uncertain as we have discussed previously.

Pacific island nations needing to evacuate Much of Tuvalu is only a few feet above sea level, and any sea level rise is going to impact them strongly. The impacts are felt in seemingly disconnected ways – increasing brine in groundwater, increasing damage and coastal erosion from tides and storm surges, but they are no less real for that. The government of Tuvalu has asked New Zealand to be ready to evacuate islanders if needed, and while currently only 75 people per year can potentially be resettled, this could change if the situation worsened.
In the movie there is only one line that referred to this: “That’s why the citizens of these pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand”, which is out of context in the passage it’s in, but could be said to only be a little ahead of it’s time.

Climate impacts on the ocean conveyor The movie references the Younger Dryas event that occurred 11,000 years ago when, it is thought, a large discharge of fresh water into the North Atlantic disrupted the currents, causing significant regional cooling. That exact scenario can’t happen again, but similar processes are likely to occur. The primary unresolved scientific issue regards how quickly the circulation is likely to change as we move forward. The model simulations in the latest IPCC report show a slowdown in the circulation – by about 30% by 2100 – but there is much we don’t understand about modeling that circulation and future inputs of freshwater from the ice sheets, so few are willing to completely rule out the possibility of a more substantial change in the future. Further discussion on what this really means and doesn’t mean is available here and here.

CO2 and Temperature connections in the ice core record Gore stated that the greenhouse gas levels and temperature changes over ice age signals had a complex relationship but that they ‘fit’. Again, both of these statements are true. The complexity though is actually quite fascinating and warrants being further discussed by those interested in how the carbon cycle will react in the future. We’ve discussed the lead/lag issue previously. A full understanding of why CO2 changes in precisely the pattern that it does during ice ages is elusive, but among the most plausible explanations is that increased received solar radiation in the southern hemisphere due to changes in Earth’s orbital geometry warms the southern ocean, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, which then leads to further warming through an enhanced greenhouse effect. Gore’s terse explanation of course does not mention such complexities, but the crux of his point–that the observed long-term relationship between CO2 and temperature in Antarctica supports our understanding of the warming impact of increased CO2 concentrations–is correct. Moreover, our knowledge of why CO2 is changing now (fossil fuel burning) is solid. We also know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that the carbon cycle feedback is positive (increasing temperatures lead to increasing CO2 and CH4), implying that future changes in CO2 will be larger than we might anticipate.

Kilimanjaro Gore is on even more solid ground with Kilimanjaro. In the movie, the retreat of Kilimanjaro is not claimed to be purely due to global warming , but it is a legitimate example of the sort of thing one expects in a warmer world, and is consistent with what almost all other tropical mountain glaciers are doing. There is indeed some ongoing discussion in the literature as to whether or not the retreat of ice on Kilimanjaro is related to the direct effects (warming atmospheric temperatures) or indirect effects (altered patterns of humidity, cloud cover, and precipitation influencing Kilimanjaro’s ice mass) of climate change, and that argument isn’t yet over. But these arguments would be of more relevance if (a) we were not witnessing the imminent demise of an ice field that we know has existed for at least the past 12,000 years and (B) most of the other glaciers weren’t disappearing as well.

Drying up of Lake Chad It is undisputed that Lake Chad has indeed shrunk rapidly in recent decades. While irrigation and upstream water use are probably contributing factors, the dominant cause is the reduction of rainfall across the entire Sahel from the 1950s to the 1980s and with rainfall today still substantially below the high point 50 years ago. There is substantial evidence that at least a portion of this drying out is human-caused. A few recent papers (Held et al, PNAS; Chung and Ramanathan and Biasutti and Giannini) have addressed causes ranging from Indian Ocean changes in sea surface temperature to the increase in atmospheric aerosols in the Northern hemisphere. Gore uses this example to illustrate that there are droughts in some regions even while other areas are flooding. Unfortunately this is exactly what the models suggest will happen.

Hurricane Katrina and global warming Katrina is used in the film as a legitimate illustration of the destructive power of hurricanes, our inability to cope with natural disaster, and the kind of thing that could well get worse in a warmer world. Nowhere does Gore state that Katrina was caused by global warming. We discussed this attribution issue back in 2005, and what we said then still holds. Individual hurricanes cannot be attributed to global warming, but the statistics of hurricanes, in particular the maximum intensities attained by storms, may indeed be.

Impact of sea ice retreat on Polar bears As we presaged in August, summer Arctic sea ice shattered all records this year for the minimum extent. This was partially related to wind patterns favorable to ice export in the spring, but the long term trends are almost certainly related to the ongoing and dramatic warming in the Arctic. Polar bears do indeed depend on the sea ice to hunt for seals in the spring and summer, and so a disappearance of this ice is likely to impact them severely. The specific anecdote referred to in the movie came from observations of anomalous drownings of bears in 2004 and so was accurate. However, studying the regional populations of polar bears is not easy and assessing their prospects is tough. In the best observed populations such as in western Hudson Bay (Stirling and Parkinson, 2006), female polar bear weight is going down as the sea ice retreats over the last 25 years, and the FWS is considering an endangered species listing. However, it should be stated that in most of the discussions about polar bears, they are used as a representative species. Arctic ecosystems are changing on many different levels, but it is unsurprising that charismatic mega-fauna get more press than bivalves. In the end, it may be the smaller and less photogenic elements that have the biggest impact.

Impact of ocean warming on coral reefs Corals are under stress from a multitude of factors; overfishing, deliberate destruction, water pollution, sea level rise, ocean acidification and, finally, warming oceans. The comment in the movie that rising temperatures and other factors cause coral bleaching is undoubtedly true. Bleaching episodes happen when the coral is under stress, and many examples have been linked to anomalously warm ocean temperatures (Australia in 1998 and 2002, all over the Indian Ocean in recent years). Corals are a sobering example of how climate change exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in eco-systems, potentially playing the role of the straw that breaks the camel’s back in many instances.
Overall, our verdict is that the 9 points are not “errors” at all (with possibly one unwise choice of tense on the island evacuation point). But behind each of these issues lies some fascinating, and in some cases worrying, scientific findings and we can only applaud the prospect that more classroom discussions of these subjects may occur because of this court case.

I have taken to copying articles as I see little evidence of links being followed, only endless repetition of the same , unsupported, non-facts. And it is that that makes me rather less diplomatic in my manner than I would wish to be. That and the fact that this CRU story broke at a bad time for me with my wife having an operation and requiring support now home and myself not being in the best of health. At the moment we have only two good useable arms between us.

If the topic were 9/11 then unsupported statements from one side would not be tolerated, and quite rightly. Consider that people.

[Omega892R09]

Fox News pushing a documentary by a pair of Irish 'skeptics'.

New Documentary Challenges Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' on Global Warming

Fox News Touts New Film that Trashes "An Inconvenient Truth"

Fox News is touting a new film which challenges the content of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." The film, which implies Gore's film is based on "faith," follows up on an action recommendation contained in an internal coal industry disinformation memo of several years ago.

an internal coal industry disinformation memo of several years ago. is at:

"Vampire Memo" Details New Propaganda Blitz by Energy Companies

"Vampire Memo" Details New Propaganda Blitz by Energy Companies
"Vampire Memo" Reveals Coal Industry Plan for Massive Propaganda Blitz
Big coal -- in the form of the National Rural Electric Association, Koch Industries, American Electric Power, the Southern Company, the National Association of Manufacturers and others are planning a major blitz against efforts to fight global warming. (Read the memo.)

The plan is a retread of a similar campaign launched in the early 1990s by coal interests. The latest version is spelled out in what is dubbed a "Vampire Memo" because it resurrects an earlier campaign which was discredited and abandoned in the mid 1990s.

The "Vampire Memo" from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) draws on the work of such industry-funded skeptics as Pat Michaels, Fred Singer, Robert Balling and Craig Idso -- as well as such ideologues as Richard Lindzen and William Gray who have long been laughingstocks in the community of mainstream climate scientists. It notes that the IREA alone has paid Michaels at least $100,000 -- and is soliciting more money for Michaels et al from other coal outlets. Among other initiatives, the memo notes that several of the participating companies are planning to finance a major film to counteract the influence of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." (Boldface added -- RG)


And, coincidentally or not, it concludes with conditions which are identical to those of President George W. Bush -- that any effort to combat global warming include developing countries (specifically India and China), that all sources of CO2 be included in any such plan and that it must not be permitted to damage the US economy.

According to the memo, environmentalists' efforts to combat global warming would realize the environmentalists' "dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population, eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equitably."

The memo notes that such an effort has strong allies in Washington in the form of will receive help from people like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who has called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) who has been leading a witch hunt against Dr. Michael Mann, one of the country's pre-eminent climate scientists.

The campaign is basically the resurrection of a similar campaign launched by the Western Fuels (coal) Association in the early 1990s -- long before the state of climate science was mature. This current campaign, however, follows unqualified findings by more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries who reported that that there is no question that humans are changing the climate -- and that the pace of climate change is accelerating at a potentially catastrophic rate. Those findings represent the conclusions of the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history.

Unfortunately, their implications threaten the survival of one of the largest industries on the planet. The coal and oil industries generate more than $1 trillion a year in commerce. By resurrecting an old and long-discredited disinformation campaign, the IREA and its allies are displaying an amazing lack of creativity.

But given the warnings of the world's leading climate scientists -- that humanity has 10 years or less to avoid passing a "point of no return" -- they are displaying a truly sinister disregard for us and our children. Unchecked, global warming will trash our planet and truncate our future -- all because of the truly sinister and truly unconscionable pursuit of profit. This, in short, represents the triumph of greed over the most basic human instinct -- that of survival.

Utilities Paying Global Warming Skeptic
By SETH BORENSTEIN
The Associated Press, July 27, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Coal-burning utilities are passing the hat for one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.

Pat Michaels _ Virginia's state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute _ told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association of Sedalia, Colo., gave Michaels $100,000 and started the fund-raising drive, said Stanley Lewandowski, IREA's general manager. He said one company planned to give $50,000 and a third plans to give Michaels money next year.

"We cannot allow the discussion to be monopolized by the alarmists," Lewandowski wrote in a July 17 letter to 50 other utilities. He also called on other electric cooperatives to launch a counterattack on "alarmist" scientists and specifically Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

Michaels and Lewandowski are open about the money and see no problem with it. Some top scientists and environmental advocates call it a clear conflict of interest. Others view it as the type of lobbying that goes along with many divisive issues.

"These people are just spitting into the wind," said John Holdren, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "The fact is that the drumbeat of science and people's perspectives are in line that the climate is changing."

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington advocacy group, said: "This is a classic case of industry buying science to back up its anti-environmental agenda."

Donald Kennedy, an environmental scientist who is former president of Stanford University and current editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Science, said skeptics such as Michaels are lobbyists more than researchers.

"I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical," he said. He said donations to skeptics amounts to "trying to get a political message across."

Michaels is best known for his newspaper opinion columns and books, including "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media." However, he also writes research articles published in scientific journals.

In 1998, Michaels blasted NASA scientist James Hansen, accusing the godfather of global warming science of being way off on his key 1988 prediction of warming over the next 10 years. But Hansen and other scientists said Michaels misrepresented the facts by cherry-picking the worst (and least likely) of three possible outcomes Hansen presented to Congress. The temperature rise that Hansen said was most likely to happen back then was actually slightly lower than what has occurred.

Michaels has been quoted by major newspapers more than 150 times in the past two years, according to a Lexis-Nexis database search. He and Lewandowski told The Associated Press that their side of global warming isn't getting out and that the donations resulted from a speech Michaels gave to the Western Business Roundtable last fall. Michaels said the money will help pay his staff.

Holdren, a Harvard environmental science and technology professor, said skeptics such as Michaels "have had attention all out of proportion to the merits of their arguments."

"Last I heard, anybody can ask a scientific question," said Michaels, who holds a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "It is a very spirited discussion that requires technical response and expertise."

Other scientific fields, such as medicine, are more careful about potential conflicts of interests than the energy, environmental and chemical fields, where it doesn't raise much of an eyebrow, said Penn State University bioethicist Arthur Caplan.

Earlier this month, the Journal of the American Medical Association announced a crackdown on researchers who do not disclose drug company ties related to their research. Yet days later, the journal's editor said she had been misled because the authors of a new study had not revealed industry money they got that posed a conflict.

Three top climate scientists said they don't accept money from private groups. The same goes for the Web site realclimate.org, which has long criticized Michaels. "We don't get any money; we do this in our free time," said Realclimate.org contributor Stefan Rahmstorf, an ocean physics scientist at Potsdam University in Germany.

Lewandowski, who said he believes global warming is real just not as big a problem as scientists claim, acknowledged this is a special interest issue. He said the bigger concern is his 130,000 customers, who want to keep rates low, so coal-dependent utilities need to prevent any taxes or programs that penalize fossil fuel use. He said his effort is more aimed at stopping carbon dioxide emission taxes and limits from Congress, something he believes won't happen during the Bush administration.

Wake up people.

[lunk]

I heard a cbc report yesterday, that the arctic ice is rotten,
and it's breaking up into slush, with only a thin layer of new ice,
on top, from this year, even though the snow cap covering, was bigger.

David Barber, Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, says satellite images used to track the overall extent of Arctic ice don't adequately perceive how weak and "rotten" the region's older, thicker, multi-year ice cover has become.
David Barber, Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, says satellite images used to track the overall extent of Arctic ice don't adequately perceive how weak and "rotten" the region's older, thicker, multi-year ice cover has become.

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2276659

I also have a second report of, yet, another glacier that has vanished,
north of me.
We seem to have warming at the north pole.
Meanwhile, we seem to have cooling around the equator.
We are definitely seeing some sort of dramatic climate change,
but caused by humans(?!) when dramatic changes are happening
throughout our solar system, on all the planets?

Why is there such a push, to blame this on people,
instead of the obvious cause, the sun?

This is all about solar caused climate change,
and we better prepare for it.

As the sun changes, its' intensity and magnetic fields,
the effects on the Earth should be warming (melting?) of the poles,
cooling at the equator.
The Northern hemisphere should experience
an abnormally, mild winter for 2010 and 2011,
there also should be an increase in intense storms.

We should also begin to notice a slowing in the rotation of the Earth.
(and that, will be, an impossible "decline to hide," or occurrence,
to blame on people.)

As the Earth slows in its' rotation, we should start to see higher ocean levels on the east coasts of continents and lower ocean levels on the west coasts.
Land is solid,
but oceans flow.

This post has been edited by lunk: Nov 29 2009, 11:41 AM

[trimble]

We are definitely seeing some sort of dramatic climate change,
but caused by humans(?!) when dramatic changes are happening
throughout our solar system, on all the planets?

Why is there such a push, to blame this on people,
instead of the obvious cause, the sun?

There is a push to blame it on people because that is, I think, what the majority of the data is interpreted by 'independent' scientists as likely indicating. Of course, if you look at the numerous interpretations offered by industry lobby groups then they are not likely to agree with the assessment. But then, those lobby groups are funded to disagree unlike the scientists who are in the pay of supposedly disinterested parties.

Personally, I'd say that man is most definitely to blame. I cannot speak from personal knowledge here - my own field is quite different - but I can say that scientists, and academics in general - are largely apolitical, due to the nature of the work being undertaken and safeguarded by the peer-review process. The majority gather data and interpret it, in a quest for "truth" and "better understanding". It may appear to the layman that a scientist is as corruptible and as self-serving as a politician, and therefore equally to be distrusted. But that is overlooking one rather vital point : politicians, like most people, do their work as part of a career, but scientists (especially those working in an academic rather than commercial setting) do their work as part of a lifestyle and cannot generally be 'bought' by external interests (if they could, they wouldn't work such long hours, with such qualifications and experience, for relative peanuts). To fabricate data is to make a mockery of a lifetime of work, and if discovered would result in total discredit. Academia seeks to come to a better understanding about the world, and leaves politicians and the commercial types to twist this into an ideology that can be applied for perceived improvements.

Remember also that scientific studies giving "proof" is often cited by the media when the rather less catchy "scientific study supports the hypothesis" is almost always meant. Science will usually qualify the uncertainty in its predictions based on data. Unscientific pressure groups (from all sides of the debate - and indeed from all topics) will generally discard such caution that disagrees with their propaganda. We're left with the groups that hold the most influence / $$ shouting the loudest.

In some ways it would be so refreshing if we could turn the clock back a few hundred years and remove the desire of seemingly everyone to express their expert opinions (reworded from that morning's Fox bulletin) about stuff they know next-to-nothing about.

This post has been edited by trimble: Nov 29 2009, 04:11 PM

[lunk]

Ya, if money disappears,
that would sure be a "climate change"
of sorts, as great,or greater,
than any weather phenomena.