DOE Litigation Hold Notice

DOE-SR has received a “Litigation Hold Notice” from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Council and the DOE Office of Inspector General regarding the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, records, data, correspondence, notes, and other materials, whether official or unofficial, original or duplicative, drafts or final versions, partial or complete that may relate to the global warming, including, but not limited to, the contract files, any related correspondence files, and any records, including emails or other correspondence, notes, documents, or other material related to this contract, regardless of its location or medium on which it is stored. In other words, please preserve any and all documents relevant to “global warming, the Climate Research Unit at he University of East Anglia In England, and/or climate change science.”

As a reminder, this Litigation Hold preservation obligation supersedes any existing statutory or regulatory document retention period or destructive schedule. The determination of what information may be potentially relevant is based upon content and substance and generally does not depend on the type of medium on which the information exists. The information requested may exist in various forms, including paper records, hand-written notes, telephone log entries, email, and other electronic communication (including voicemail), word processing documents (including drafts, spreadsheets, databases, and calendars), telephone logs, electronic address books, PDAs (like Palm Pilots and Blackberries), internet usage files, systems manuals, and network access information in their original format. All ESI should be preserved in its originally-created, or “native” format, along with related metadata. Relevant backup tapes and all indexes for those tapes should also be preserved. Further, information that is reasonably accessible must nonetheless be preserved, because such sources will, at the very least, need to be identified and, under compelling circumstances, may need to be produced.

If you have any doubts as to whether specific information is responsive, err on the side of preserving that information.

Any employee who has information covered by this Litigation Hold is requested to contact Madeline Screven, Paralegal, SRNS Office of General Council, 5-4634, for additional instructions.

(From Watts Up With That)

Michael L. Wamsted
Associate General Council”
_______________________________________________

Following the ‘climategate scandal’, Mr Blair said the science may not be “as certain as its proponents allege”.

But he said the world should act as a precaution against floods, droughts and mass extinction caused by climate change, in fact it would be “grossly irresponsible” not to.

BBC News, December 14, 2009

Negotiations at the UN climate summit have been suspended after developing countries withdrew their co-operation.

Delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

GlobalWarming.org, December 14, 2009

Today’s dominant mindset that any climate change at all is bad is puzzling. It implicitly assumes that today’s climate is the best of all possible climates. Maybe that’s true. But maybe it isn’t. The trouble is that few climate activists seem to have had that thought. The idea of change is so scary that nobody has the presence of mind to ask if that’s a problem or not.

Reuters.com, December 14, 2009

The head of the Asian Development Bank said on Sunday that rich countries’ offers of funds to developing countries for measures to mitigate or adapt to climate change remain insufficient a week into U.N. talks.

ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda also told Reuters in an interview that if governments were to fail to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen, it could lead to a collapse of the carbon market which would hit efforts to deal with climate change.

GlobalWarming.org, December 14, 2009

It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.

“But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. ‘The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.’”

Predictions of global warming hinge not upon proven scientific principles but, rather, upon climate models — in other words, computer programs.

Unfortunately, even modern advanced computers appear to be unable to accurately model the complexities of all the diverse natural and human related processes that do or may impact global climate.  Climate Change Reconsidered , the 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), states:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) places great confidence in the ability of general circulation models (GCMs) to simulate future climate and attribute observed climate change to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. It says “climate models are based on well-established physical principles and have been demonstrated to reproduce observed features of recent climate … and past climate changes … There is considerable confidence that Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental and larger scales” (IPCC,
2007-I, p. 591).

To be of any validity, GCMs must incorporate all of the many physical, chemical, and biological processes that influence climate in the real world, and they must do so correctly. A review of the scientific literature reveals numerous deficiencies and shortcomings in today’s state-of-the-art models, some of which deficiencies could even alter the sign of projected climate change.

The first chapter of the recently published NIPCC report is “Global Climate Models and Their Limitations.”

And what’s the cause?

The sun appears to have entered a less active period and is providing less warmth to the Earth. I discussed one symptom of this in January on Exit78 in The Sun Has Lost Its Spots — and they are still missing over a month and a half later. The sun is in an extended solar minimum that was predicted to end in March 2008 — a year ago.

Aren’t global temperatures continuing to rise, though?

Some indicators say yes and some indicators say no.

A current chart from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration appears to show global mean temperatures leveling.

A similar chart appears in a UK Met Office pamphlet, which says “The recent slight slowing of the warming is due to a shift towards more-frequent La Niña conditions in the Pacific since 1998. These bring cool water up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, cooling global temperatures.”

However, a slightly different chart appears on the Met Office web site. It looks here like the “slowing of the warming” has turned into cooling. The Met Office, however, says, “…owing to the unusually cool global average temperature in January 2008, it looked as though smoothed global average temperatures had dropped markedly in recent years, which is misleading.”

I guess we’ll know better with a few more years of data.

However, I do have a fairly technical background and do have some ability to do a little bit of critical thinking and evaluation, so I’ve been doing quite a bit of online research related to climate change. I must admit that a good share of what I’ve read is by people who are skeptics — sometimes called deniers by some of the most ardent global warming alarmists — to one degree or another of human caused global warming.

I’ve included links on the site to quite a few of the items I’ve been looking at and I’ll continue adding more as I find them.

For any who may be interested, the links can be found from the drop down menu on the top bar by clicking on References and then select the appropriate category, as shown in the picture on the right.

I’ll be going back to review a lot of these, including those that I have printed out, to refresh my memeory and to weigh some of the newer (to me) material against some that I read a while ago.

My reading is derived from a number of sources.

I have two google news feeds related to the topic. One of them sends me news stories containing the key phrase climate change. The other feed gives me stories that contain the words sunspot and solar.

I am also subscribed to several blogs that are related to climate change. Most of them can be found on the sidebar on the right side of this page.

Other sources include

• those found on Google searches on words or phrases related to what I am currently trying to understand
• links from other pages or sites

My blogging plans for On Climate are to publish on a semi-regular basis, probably a couple of times a month, but it may be more or less often than that depending on what other things are happening in my life and on my other blogs.

March 8, 2009 – Climate Change References

There are two apparently competing claims of what is happening to global temperature.

The more common claim is that recent years have been the warmest. This is often used by those who say that global temperatures are rising primarily due to the effects of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide produced by man in the Earth’s atmosphere.  Others, who see global temperatures as more impacted by solar influences, say that global temperature trends for the last several years have stopped rising and, in fact, have been dropping.

So, back to the question; which of the statements is true?

Actually, it appears that both are true.

The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred between 1997 and 2008

and

there has been no significant rise in global surface temperature since 1998.

On each figure, temperature anomaly is the departure in temperature from the 1951 – 1980 base period averaged global temperature.

With solar activity continuing to be very low, what will be the trend of future global temperature?

February 28, 2009
Hot or Not Hot

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:

• Testimony of Patrick J. Michaels to the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee of Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives – “… the rates of warming, on multiple time scales, have now invalidated the midrange suite of IPCC climate models.” February 12, 2008

Papers:

• Bringing Balance, Disclosure and Due Diligence into Science-based Policymaking, Ross McKitrick, Department of Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada – “Academic research, even when used used to drive multibillion dollar public investments, is done to standards that would never be acceptable in the business sector.” October 16, 2004 (pdf., 19 pages)

News:

• Get real, Wong tells greens, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 23 – “There is no point in putting a cost on carbon pollution in Australia if it simply results in jobs and emissions being exported to countries that do not yet face a carbon price.
• Brazil climate change threatens top coffee crop – Soybean production also could be affected, The Telegraph Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, February 22 – “The future for Brazil’s mighty farm sector could be grim, with hotter temperatures pushing crops past its borders, uphill into the Andes and toward the tip of South America.”
• Consensus is a dangerous thing – the debate over global warming, opinion, DailyRecord.com, Fenruary 22

The accompanying video was broadcast on October 19, 2007.

What I find particularly troubling in this presentation is the children and their perceptions and fears of what “global warming” will bring.

“Global warming” is being taught as proven and accepted science now in our schools.  Even worse, too often students are being taught that “the science is in” and “the debate is over.”  That’s just bad teaching and bad science.

Science is not about debate.  Science is being skeptical even of what’s been proven before.  Science is investigation.

When politicians, the media, and even scientists say “the debate is over” and  “the science is in,” it’s time to question their conclusions.

Give me a break!

With each post, I  link to videos, news, and/or other material  associated with climate change.  I have

• read each news article and viewed each video in their entirety before linking here
• reviewed each paper or other document and each website as best as I can within my abilities before sharing it.

Websites

• The Climate Sceptics – The world’s first up-front political party representing climate sceptics. Australian and New Zealand Scientists against AGW alarmism.
• ICECAP

News

• US, China pledge to coordinate on climate change, economy, – AFP
• Don’t judge states on wealth, emissions-climate envoy, Reuters UK
• Asia needs to change climate policy game: expert. Reuters UK

Rather than hijack my Exit78 blog with climate change posts, I created On Climate as a place where I can periodically comment on topics related to my interest in climate change.

It is my view that warming as a result of human activity is very limited and that actions being taken to combat global warming, as well as others that are proposed, will be, at best, largely ineffectual and will result in an extreme of wasted spending.  At worst, our actions may have unintended consequences that mankind may in the end regret.

It is also my view that global cooling will be a significant concern at some point.  It is my fear that it is in the very near future.

I believe the best policies with regard to climate change at this time are:

• Wait before taking drastic action.  (Instead, focus on the economy.)
• Watch to determine for sure which direction the climate is going
• Adapt to the change.  Trying to stop climate change will likely be futile.

Video:

• Apocalypse? No! – Lord Christopher Monkton, July 30, 2008 (1:26:31) long, but interesting
• Unstoppable Solar Cycles
• Balance and Context in the Global Warming Debate,  Professor Bob Carter, Climate Conference (Heartland Institute), New York, March 2, 2008
  • part 1 of 4
  • part 2 of 4
  • part 3 of 4
  • part 4 of 4
• Testing the Hypothesis of Dangerous Human Cause Global Warming – Professor Bob Carte, School of Earth and Environmental Science, James Cook University, Townsville
  • part 1 of 2
  • part 2 of 2
• Why the IPCC models are wrong
  • part 1 of 2
  • part 2 of 2

Climate News:

• Sweeping agenda unveil – Harper, Obama to tackle climate change, Afghanistan – National Post
• James Hansen’s war on coal -  Scenta.co.uk
• We Can’t Afford to ‘Quit Coal’ – WVNS-TV
• Coal industry told to prepare for climate change bill – West Virginia Public Broadcasting
• Reid: Senate to take up climate change this year – Associated Press
• The Race Toward a Climate Change Cure – Time (alarmist)
• Opposition hardens to climate change plan – The Sydney Morning Herald
• Adapting to Climate Change in New York City – The New York Observer

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