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Another claim of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is crumbling. According a UK Telegraph report, an alarming claim on future African crop failures is disintegrating.
Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC’s 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.
Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.
One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.
Read the Telegraph article: African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC.
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The internet is having an impact on the public perception – and confidence – of the “settled” science of anthropogenic global warming, according to a report in The Australian.
What we are witnessing, in defiance of officialdom, government propaganda and the bulk of funded researchers in the field, is the collapse of a scientific paradigm. This is something that has never happened before. Politically speaking, it’s a game-changer with the potential to overturn the normative assumptions commentators rely on. Not least of these is the idea that Australian voters will always give newly elected federal governments a second term.
In the latest edition of The Spectator, Matt Ridley, a veteran science journalist, offers an explanation for how the consensus came unstuck. "Despite 20 years of being told they were not just factually but morally wrong, of being compared to Holocaust deniers, of being told they deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity, of being avoided at parties, climate sceptics seem to be growing in number and confidence by the day. What is the difference?
"In a word, the internet. The `climate consensus’ may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to camera and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm."
Part of Ridley’s argument is that it’s distinguished scientists in retirement, who have no fear of faculty censure or funding bodies and have nothing to lose, who have led the internet revolt. In Australia, that body includes Garth Paltridge, the author of The Climate Caper, and William Kininmonth, author of Climate Change: A Natural Hazard. As well as publishing books and journal articles, both have an internet presence.
For more, go to The Australian article, World Wide Web of Doubt.
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“They’ve lost the raw data on which all the models, all the computer generated forecasts, the graphs and projections, are based.”
“Poor Al Gore”
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The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.
Climate politics continue to be interesting. Australia’s opposition Liberal Party has ousted its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, after the resignation last week of several senators from their “front-seat” positions. The Aussie government’s climate change bill is now in jeopardy, raising the potential of an early general election in 2010.
The Climategate emails and documents are being investigated by a number of organizations, including an inquiry by Penn State University, where Michael Mann, creator of the discredited hockey stick graph – used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth – is a professor. Inquiries are also under way at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked material. Government investigations are either ongoing or pending and there has been at least one civil lawsuit filed.
At a minimum, the emails document the violation of UK Freedom of Information laws.
Many believe that the leaker was not a hacker, but, rather, was an insider acting as a anonymous whistleblower by leaking the emails and documents, including information that had been unsuccessfully been sought under the UK FOI statutes.
The emails are not the only incriminating material. Computer codes and their documentation show fudged numbers and “blatant data-cooking” that tell a story of twisting reality to a desired view.
Many of the fantastic claims in the media about climate change are likely predicated on the same sort of skewed science.
An article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Climate Science Isn’t Settled, by Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT gives a more balanced view of the state of climate science.
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.
While I have been skeptical of global warming claims for quite some time, this Climategate fiasco appears to show a conspiracy to doctor the evidence.
In my interest in climate change, I wasn’t looking for a conspiracy, just the truth.
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Click on any of the images to go to the associated webpage.
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While I have spent a bit of time reading some of the emails that were leaked earlier the week, I simply do not have the time – or desire – to delve deeply into the files. There are many others around the world digging into this.
I think that there have been serious consequences that have resulted from the actions of some of the scientists whose correspondence has been leaked. In their zeal to “prove” — at all costs — CO2 as the cause of anthropogenic global warming, other potential causes have been marginalized. Evidence is mounting that changes in land use may have a significantly greater impact on climate change than rising CO2. If true, mitigation and adaptation to successfully address human impacts on climate could be done at a fraction of the cost of the drastic actions and expenses that are being called for today. It may be that efforts could have been started a decade ago, but for an obsession on CO2 as the global warming culprit.
On Examiner.com, Thomas Fuller is writing a series of articles regarding the actions and communications of a group of climate scientists and paleoclimatologists known as The Team. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 , Part 6, and Part 7.
My first post on this was Climategate.
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I discovered just a little while ago that access to individual posts on this blog was unavailable and commenting was not available. This was because of something I did with some files on the server earlier today — not a web host issue. I knew that I should have checked after I was done, but didn’t.
It’s all back to normal now. It was only a 30 second fix, because it’s something that happened before and I knew where to look.
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A couple of days ago, a park visitor from Spain was injured by a Yellowstone National Park bison (aka American buffalo).
“At approximately 11:25 a.m., the woman and her husband were using a pay phone in the Canyon lodging area with their backs to the road. According to witnesses, two bull bison walked down the road, passing within 20 feet of the couple. One of the bison left the road, walked up behind the woman and butted her into the air. The couple, who were facing away from the road, did not see the bison.”
The woman was taken to the Lake Clinic where she was treated for minor injuries and released.
This quite an unusual event. Bison are not usually aggressive unless someone has encroached upon their space. We have seen numerous instances where people have gotten way too close to these critters and nothing happened. Park regulations require that a minimum distance of 25 yard must be maintained from bison.
Bison are very, very common in the Canyon area.
We still hope to make it to Yellowstone this year. However, we may not have as much time available as we had originally thought.
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Climate change legislation — The Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act pass by a very slim margin today in the US House of Representatives. I actually watched some of the debate on CSPAN. I’ve got just a few comments.
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Climate change — I read material on climate change almost every day.
I am absolutely appalled at the gloom and doom, the-sky-is-falling alarmism that is in the media on a daily basis.
I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! last year.
Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.
Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks
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You’ve heard the claims:
“The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming.” — Al Gore
“In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities…” — The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes, Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686
I’ve looked for the consensus. I haven’t found it. I’ll let you know if I do.
Even if there is a consensus, it’s of little value if the underlying basis of the consensus is faulty:
It is amazing that some political leaders proclaim the debate over global warming is “over” when some of the meteorological community’s best minds continue to clash over the nature and magnitude of a phenomenon that could entirely offset the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. (Climate Change Reconsidered , the 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), page 17)
The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming and the predictions of future temperature rise are heavily dependent upon computer models that do not incorporate many of the significant complexities of Earth’s climate. See The problem is in the modeling.
Is consensus science or is consensus politics?
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At present, the primary tools used by scientists and policy makers for predicting climate change are computer models, generally the global warming projections used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to some sources, global average temperatures have not risen since 1998 and warming may not resume until some time in the next decade. NONE of the IPCC models has a 20 year period of little or no warming.
As with anything based on computer models, projection results are subject to the accuracy of the input data provided to model and the validity of the assumptions used in the modeling.
On February 12, 2009 Dr. Patrick J. Michaels testified at a U.S. House subcommittee hearing, “The Climate Crisis: National Security, Public Health, and Economic Threats.”
Dr. Michaels explained, “The answers to the important questions about the implications of climate change are driven by a series of computer models and mathematical simulations.” He subsequently stated, “I must report that our models are in the process of failing.”
Prepared text for Congressional Hearing:
Papers:
News:
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Scaling back a bit
December 9, 2009
I made a decision after my last post on Climategate that I would scale back on my interest in anthropogenic global warming.
Before the emails and documents surfaced, I already knew there were issues with the some of the scientists and their data at East Anglia. Unfortunately, it’s likely that similar issues related to climate change exist in other places.
I am now very satisfied that my doubt in anthropogenic global warming is justified and don’t feel the need to follow what’s happening with climate change quite so closely.
I’ve already stopped my Google alert on the phrase climate change, which has significantly reduced the amount of items that I see in my feed reader.
This is my final post on climate change for the foreseeable future and I’m sharing here just a few of the many things I’ve learned before I get back to my regular posting.
I’m not looking to try to change any one’s mind, just share what I’ve learned. I’ll still be learning as things show up in my feed reader – I just won’t be studying as aggressively .
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Many scientists and others who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming would like the answer to one question that, so far, has not been answered:
While there is laboratory evidence that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide and global temperature have both been rising, real world proof that CO2 has caused the rise in global temperature does NOT exist.
While, at times, there appears to be a rough correlation between CO2 and global temperature, correlation does not prove causation.
Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some historical warming resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans. However, because of the physical properties of CO2, it’s done all the warming it can do.
Predictions of rising temperatures and the dire consequences of anthropogenic global warming are based on computer climate models. The climate models include the assumption that global temperatures will rise as CO2 continues to rise.
Over the last decade, global temperatures have leveled off while CO2 continued to rise. Temperature is trending below all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions.
Joanne Nova, an Australian freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host, has prepared and published two excellent — and free — booklets on global warming. The first, The Skeptics Handbook, has been translated by volunteers into many other languages, including German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Danish.
Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2. The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb. Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.
A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years.
“Tricks” apparently have been performed on more climate data than just the tree ring proxy information. The figure below shows the adjustments made to the historical temperature record of Darwin, Australia. The blue lines show the values for the original, “raw” temperature data. The red lines are the official NOAA/GHCN ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Global Historical Climate Network) data after the values have been “homogenized” and averaged. The black line are the values for the adjustment that was made (uses the scale on the right of the figure).
“Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century …” – Willis Eschenbach, The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero
American climate sceptics are now demanding a thorough investigation of NASA’s earth science programme, including the possibility that instruments on its satellites have been “tweaked” to give a “correct” result, and pointing out that the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data, going back to the 1930s. The common factor between CRU East Anglia and NASA is the destruction or withholding of research models and data which, if they are reliable, should be their pride and joy – documentation that would secure these institutions’ place in history, like Einstein’s equations. Telegraph.co.uk
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