Controversy and scandal
This page is for discussion of controversy and scandals concerning global warming.
Climate Conversation Group
Taking the heat out of global warming
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics.
Latest climate models v. reality
As the models continue to leave actual temperature readings in their dust, sizeable warming halted about 1995 — although it might resume at any time. It must hasten to have any hope of catching up with the predictions.
If you claim warming continues, we want evidence of continued warming — eminently reasonable. Making us wait for 17 years for that evidence invites us to doubt you.
Claiming that warming hasn't stopped is the same as claiming it has — and both are ridiculous, for nobody knows the future. The best you can do is describe the past.
Click graph for larger version.
Carbon Trading Schemes in Trouble and Ignored
By Jack Dini Friday, December 17, 2010
Why are carbon trading issues that have gone awry ignored by the media? Two examples: 1-scam artists from around the world, capitalizing on lax regulations at the Danish emissions trading registry have made off with an estimated $7-billion over the last two years, and 2- the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced that it will be ending carbon trading this year. Both of these have been underreported (ignored?) by most media.
[Snip]
Denmark isn’t the only place where carbon folks have been in bed with organized crime. A probe in Germany, where the total damage is estimated at 80 million Euros followed investigations in Britain, France, Spain, Norway and the Netherlands over carbon fraud over the past year.
WikiLeaks cables: UN offered Robert Mugabe a lucrative retirement overseas
# guardian.co.uk, Saturday 18 December 2010 21.50 GMT
The head of the United Nations offered Robert Mugabe a lucrative retirement package in an overseas haven if he stood down as Zimbabwe’s president, according to claims quoted in leaked diplomatic cables.
The extraordinary offer was allegedly made by Kofi Annan, who was then the UN secretary general, at the millennium summit of world leaders in New York, according to a memo drawn up by American officials which was obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
Maverick Outwits Climate Science in Global Warming Predictions Game
by John O’Sullivan, guest post at Climate Realists
December 23rd 2010
As Britain’s top independent forecaster (a skeptic) again outwits his global warming adversaries in weather prediction, we examine what really separates the men from the boys in this hot topic.
Award Winning maverick forecaster, Piers Corbyn’s unparalled success in outperforming his rivals (global warming believers) is winning him deserved column inches in the British press.
The man who, in 2010 predicted a trio of major rare events (Pakistan floods, Moscow heatwave, Britain’s brutal winter) gives us a rare glimpse into why he’s so successful, to the great embarrassment of his main rivals, the Met Office.
continues………
Taxing lessons of a flawed ETS
# Jack H. Barnes
# From: The Australian
# December 30, 2010
CONNIE Hedegaard, the EU Climate Commissioner, appeared on these pages on Monday promoting the outcomes of the Cancun climate summit and offering to work with Australian Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.
Combet, for his part, is committed to putting a price on carbon.
What Hedegaard didn’t mention in her piece, but to which Combet and Australia should pay close attention, is that the Danish tax authority has been robbed blind by a carbon trading scandal that has rocked the market for carbon offsets. While the story saw some coverage a year ago, significantly higher losses have since been reported and this has largely been ignored.
The Danish auditor general is on the case now as the scope of the crime has become obvious, and grown exponentially since it was first reported. Originally discussed as a quasi-small-time dollar scam, the reality a year later is a lot larger: Europol is estimating a value on the case of 38 billion kroner and the values seem to keep going up.
Hedegaard, then Denmark’s Climate and Energy Minister, helped set up and manage a system where there were no background checks on the listings of permitted traders. This removal of identification was done even though the EU requires at least a passport. This helped a group of fake, rogue traders set up a program that looted the Danish economy of up to 2 per cent of its GDP in lost VAT taxes.
Here’s How:………….continues
——————————————————————————————————————–
Cancun deal puts climate action back on track
* Connie Hedegaard
* From: The Australian
* December 27, 2010
THERE is good reason to reflect for a moment about global warming and the recent climate conference in Cancun.
This year was actually one of the hottest on record. And the weather-related catastrophes, from fires in Moscow to floods in Pakistan and Venezuela, are a warning of things to come unless we deal with the challenge of climate change. That’s why the package of decisions that came out of the conference in Cancun may well be this year’s most important Christmas present.
What’s in the package? Quite a bit. The key points of the agreement concluded in Cancun are based on the results we achieved in Copenhagen last year.
[Snip]
Now we have a deal.…………continues
Climate science needs light
January 8, 2011 – Toronto Sun
[Snip]
a new book by British environmental journalist Fred Pearce, one of the world’s leading commentators on climate change, suggests cause for serious concern.
The Climate Files: The battle for the truth about global warming, is a compilation of Pearce’s reporting on the Climategate scandal, mainly for the Guardian newspaper.
Neither Pearce, nor the Guardian, is a climate denier.
[Snip]
“Jones insisted that what he did, for good or ill, was what his fellow climate scientists did. They didn’t publish all their data and methods because, ‘it hasn’t been standard practice to do that. Maybe it should be, but it’s not.’ Following that came the most startling observation, when Jones was asked how often scientists reviewing his papers for probity before publication had requested to see details of his raw data, methodology and computer codes. ‘They’ve never asked,’ he said.”
Thus, Pearce observes: “The rigour of peer review came crashing down before our eyes.”
RealClimategate hits the final nail in the coffin of ‘peer review’
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: February 8th, 2011
Excerpt
Steig suggested that rather than argue it out on the blogs O’Donnell, Id at el should publish a paper under peer review. So that’s what they tried. And guess which person it was who was selected to review O’Donnell et al’s paper. And guess which person it was – under the pseudonym Reviewer A – who tried to thwart the paper’s progression to publication with 88 pages of comments and obfuscation ten times longer than the original paper.
Yep. You got it. The mystery peer reviewer was none other than Eric Steig. Even in the monstrously corrupt world of “climate science” this was clearly a breach of protocol. Certainly, in no other scientific discipline would a reviewer with such a clear conflict of interest be invited to review a paper whose main purpose was to criticise one he’d written himself.
Now let us allow Iapogus (the commenter at Bishop Hill from whom I filched this summary: I’m an interpreter of interpretations, me) to continue the story:
Bishop Hill has quite a good summary of this story.
It has been featuring quite prominently in the climate blogosphere over tha last few days.
Dellers article is quite a good summary
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/2/8/steigs-method-massacred.html
Clicking through to the comments below the CA post (not many) fills in the picture too.
Bad things on so many levels.
SEC Charges Seven in Global Warming Pump-and-Dump Scheme
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2011-46
Washington, D.C., Feb. 18, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a group of seven individuals who perpetrated a fraudulent pump-and-dump scheme in the stock of a sham company that purported to provide products and services to fight global warming.
Additional Materials
* Litigation Release No. 21862
* SEC Complaint
The SEC alleges that the group included stock promoters, traders, and a lawyer who wrote a fraudulent opinion letter. The scheme resulted in more than $7 million in illicit profits from sales of stock in CO2 Tech Ltd. at artificially inflated prices. Despite touting impressive business relationships and anti-global warming technology innovations, CO2 Tech did not have any significant assets or operations. The company was purportedly based in London, and its stock prices were quoted in the Pink Sheets.
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-46.htm
European Union faces legal action over fraudulent carbon emissions trading
The European Union faces legal and political challenges over its handling of the carbon markets which remain in chaos after a cyber attack forced partial closure of the Emissions Trading Scheme.
EU officials are due in a Belgian court on Monday to answer a request to name companies in possession of stolen allowances after a legal challenge by an Italian company affected by the fraud.
And on Wednesday the EU’s climate change committee will try to reassure national governments and carbon exchanges that they have the right level of security in place to reassure nervous market users
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/20/carbon-emissions-trading-market-eu
Unscientific hype about the flooding risks from climate change will cost us all dear
By Christopher Booker 7:15PM GMT 26 Feb 2011 – UK Telegraph
As the great global warming scare continues to crumble, attention focuses on all those groups that have a huge interest in keeping it alive. Governments look on it as an excuse to raise billions of pounds in taxes. Wind farm developers make fortunes from the hidden subsidies we pay through our electricity bills. A vast academic industry receives more billions for concocting the bogus science that underpins the scare. Carbon traders hope to make billions from corrupt schemes based on buying and selling the right to emit CO2. But no financial interest stands to make more from exaggerating the risks of climate change than the re-insurance industry, which charges retail insurers for “catastrophe cover”, paid for by all of us through our premiums.
Continues………
British Green Movement Backed Murderous Libyan Regime
johnosullivan’s journal
New evidence raises growing concerns that environmentalism is the sinister tool of fascist politics. Revelations from a crumbling Libyan dictatorship show an enforced green agenda propped up by a discredited UK establishment.
Latest news highlighted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (March 3, 2011) strengthens claims by global warming skeptics that not only are extreme political radicals controlling the green movement but that there exists an increasing popular rising against this sinister trend.
What will come as a shock to most citizens not fully engaged in the long running climate debate is that there has been a new twist in the controversy revealing a dark and dangerous undertone to the once innocent and non-political green movement. No longer are the rank and file of the environmentalist movement comprised of animal-loving, kind natured innocents that we remember from our childhood. No, quite the contrary as the misguided support of zealots such as Britain’s Lord Stern and Prince Charles have backed Libyan ogre, Colonel Gaddafi.
Continues……..
NASA-Funded Group Doctors Sea Level Data
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Theory trumps reality
Catastrophic sea level rise is one of the most valued hole cards played by alarmists in the global warming debate. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore showed computer generated images of what Manhattan would look like if sea level rose 20 feet. Building on this theme, elevation charts of coastal cities have become a staple in global warming presentations by Al Gore wannabes. But what happens when sea level in the real world does not rise nearly as much as alarmists predict? If you are a NASA-funded gatekeeper of sea level data, you merely doctor the data.
Faced with the embarrassing fact that sea level is not rising nearly as much as has been predicted, the University of Colorado’s NASA-funded Sea Level Research Group has announced it will begin adding a nonexistent 0.3 millimeters per year to its Global Mean Sea Level Time Series. As a result, alarmists will be able to present sea level charts asserting an accelerating rise in sea level that is not occurring in the real world.
Continues…….
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2011/05/nasa-funded-group-doctors-sea-level.html
Climate cleansing: Google to censor skeptics?
Posted on May 20, 2011 by Steve Milloy
Will Google start censoring climate skeptics? Can anyone say Googlegate?
The Yale Forum on Climate Change reports that,
… Google leads people to accurate information about climate change. Fifty-two percent of the 980 sites [returned by a Google search on climate change-related terms] contained clear statements in line with the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate science evidence. For example, if you had searched for “climate change myths” in early May, you would have found this Environmental Defense Fund site, which says, “The most respected scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it.”
And Google may be willing to fix this problem for the alarmists. The Yale Forum goes on to state:
Meanwhile, can search engines do a better job of pointing the public toward credible sites?
A Google spokeswoman, who insisted on anonymity because she is not a Google executive, said the company is always looking for ways to improve results. “Last year, we made 500 changes to the algorithm to improve search quality,” she said.
Say it ain’t so, Google… don’t be evil!
Continues………
http://junkscience.com/2011/05/20/climate-cleansing-google-to-censor-skeptics/
The IPCC’s alteration of Forster & Gregory’s model-independent climate sensitivity results
This looks like a fairly significant error in IPCC’s core reasoning
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/05/the-ipccs-alteration-of-forster-gregorys-model-independent-climate-sensitivity-results/
Trenberth: “Unbelievable” Breakdown in Defensive Zone Coverage
Steve McIntyre, posted on Jul 31, 2011 at 2:47 PM
Kevin Trenberth recently expressed his consternation at the breakdown in Team defensive zone coverage that enabled publication of Spencer and Braswell:
“I cannot believe it got published,” said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Trenberth and Phil Jones were Cover 2 in the rock-solid IPCC AR4 defense. Readers will recall Jones’ promise of a goal-line stand against McKitrick and Michaels 2004:
Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
>>>>>>
http://climateaudit.org/2011/07/31/trenberth-unbelievable-breakdown-in-defensive-zone-coverage/
Pretty interesting thread on CA on this one
Shades of Climategate 2, The Sequel
Not sure where to put this,but I note that Wikipedia has classified CO2 as pollution, including that from breathing
Quote:
Major primary pollutants produced by human activity include:
Carbon dioxide (CO2) – a colourless, odorless, non-toxic greenhouse gas associated with ocean acidification, emitted from sources such as combustion, cement production, and respiration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution
Distinguished physicist Prof Will Happer explodes some CO2 myths here:
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/happer-the_truth_about_greenhouse_gases.pdf
(h/t climatescience.org.nz)
A bit more credible than Wikipedia activists.
Roger Pielke Snr takes John Cook at Skeptical Science to task:-
My Response To The Skeptical Science Post “One-Sided ‘Skepticism”
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/my-response-to-the-skeptical-science-post-one-sided-skepticism/
Summary
“The failure of Skeptical Science to present diverse viewpoints on these issues (and on the others in the posts on Skeptical Science) indicates that their weblog is not balanced in the presentation of the existing research findings in climate science. John Christy and Roy Spencer are very well-respected climate scientists by most everyone in this science community.
Skeptical Science would do more of a service to the science community if they accurately presented their (and my viewpoints), even when they disagree, rather than disparage those who disagree with them. As Skeptical Science is currently presenting their information on climate on their weblog, everyone just needs to recognize that the weblog is not presenting all peer reviewed perspectives.”
Ouch.
Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming
Neo-colonial land grabs carried out on behalf of World Bank-backed British company
Armed troops acting on behalf of a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank burned houses to the ground and killed children to evict Ugandans from their homes in the name of seizing land to protect against “global warming,” a shocking illustration of how the climate change con is a barbarian form of neo-colonialism.
Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming.
The evictions were ordered by New Forests Company, an outfit that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the “carbon credits” on to transnational corporations. The company is backed by the World Bank and HSBC. Its Board of Directors includes HSBC Managing Director Sajjad Sabur, as well as other former Goldman Sachs investment bankers.
>>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.prisonplanet.com/armed-troops-burn-down-homes-kill-children-to-evict-ugandans-in-name-of-global-warming.html
An IPCC Exposé
Book Review: The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, an IPCC Exposé
In this book, Canadian journalist Donna LaFramboise exposes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a fraud. LaFramboise (see author profile here) spent two years investigating the IPCC. She says it acts like a spoiled teenager, hence the title of the book.
The IPCC has long been touted as the preeminent authority on climate science. But LaFramboise shows that the participants were picked by governments, not for their scientific expertise, but for their political connections and for “diversity.” Many of the scientists are in fact, very young graduate students. Many of the bureaucrats in the IPCC are from radical environmental groups. Real experts are often ignored. She says the IPCC is a purely political organization, not a scientific one, and she backs up her charges with copious references.
The IPCC has always claimed that its reports are based exclusively on published peer-reviewed research. But LaFramboise found, after a meticulous review of the cited references, that about 28% of sources were from magazine articles, press releases, and unpublished papers. In fact, the major conclusions of one chapter in the latest IPCC report were based on two papers that had not been published. When an IPCC expert reviewer asked the IPCC and the papers’ authors for supporting data, they all refused to produce the data. Yet, the IPCC claims it is completely transparent.
LaFramboise points out that the IPCC does not check sources. And, “Peer review does not prove that a piece of research is true.” “A couple reviewers, of course, are a poor substitute for mass scrutiny. Sometimes reviewers are chosen poorly; other times they’re lazy.”
>>>>>>>>>>
http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/10/17/book-review-the-delinquent-teenager-who-was-mistaken-for-the-worlds-top-climate-expert-an-ipcc-expose/
*****************************************************************************************************
Have questioned the MftE CC accordingly (Cc’d to PMSAC)
BREAKING: An IPCC backchannel ‘cloud’ was apparently established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA.
CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
By Christopher Horner, CEI.org for WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/17/breaking-an-ipcc-backchannel-cloud-was-apparently-established-to-hide-ipcc-deliberations-from-foia/
Climate change science being stifled by NSW Labor bureaucrats
* by: Malcolm Holland
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* December 02, 2011 12:00AM
SENIOR bureaucrats in the state government’s environment department have routinely stopped publishing scientific papers which challenge the federal government’s claims of sea level rises threatening Australia’s coastline, a former senior public servant said yesterday.
Doug Lord helped prepare six scientific papers which examined 120 years of tidal data from a gauge at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour.
The tide data revealed sea levels were rising at a rate of about 1mm a year or less – and the rise was not accelerating but was constant.
“The tidal data we found would mean sea levels would rise by about 100mm by the end of the century,” Mr Lord said yesterday.
“However the (federal) government benchmark which drives their climate change policy is that sea levels are expected to rise by 900mm by the end of the century and the rate of rise is accelerating.”
Mr Lord, who has 35 years experience in coastal engineering, said senior bureaucrats within the then Department of Environment Climate Change and Water had rejected or stopped publication of five papers between late 2009 and September this year.
“This was very thorough research, peer reviewed and getting the highest ranking from various people, and one of the papers got a nine out of 10 for the quality of the work,” he said.
“You have to ask yourself why they were rejected, considering they had been peer reviewed, and the Fort Denison tide data is among the longest continuous data of its type available in the world.
>>>>>>>
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/climate-change-science-being-stifled-by-nsw-labor-bureaucrats/story-e6freuzi-1226211748047
54 comments so far, only one lame AGW supporter – all the rest vehemently believe AGW is a con.
Blocked Sea-Level Research Probed
Sunday, 04 December 2011 23:09 Imre Saluszinsky
NSW Environment Minister Robyn Parker has asked department officials to explain why they put the lid on internal research that questioned catastrophic predictions of sea-level rises as a result of climate change.
A former senior researcher in the department, Doug Lord, said yesterday two papers he co-authored with colleagues and was due to present at conferences were suppressed because they suggested sea-levels on the east coast are rising at only one 10th of the rate estimated by the federal government, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Mr Lord said long-term data gleaned from gauges in Sydney Harbour suggested sea levels were rising at the rate of about 1mm per year. This would lead to a rise of about 90mm by 2100, not the 900mm rise predicted by the IPCC.
“We can’t identify an acceleration of the rate, which doesn’t mean that it’s not there,” Mr Lord told The Australian. “But if it’s going to reach those levels, it’s got to accelerate at some time in the future.”
Mr Lord, who does not question the science of climate change, said the papers were pulled by the department at the last minute, after they had been accepted and peer-reviewed.
“It’s very odd that they left that until the last minute and withdrew both papers at the latest possible opportunity,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Ms Parker said the minister had “asked for a thorough explanation” and wanted more information.
In a statement, the Office of Environment and Heritage said it “fully supports the analysis of tide gauge records to estimate historical sea-level rise trends and the publication of these analyses for discussion and debate”.
But the agency insisted “historical trends of sea-level rise recorded by tide gauges do not necessarily provide a good indication of future sea levels because trends are expected to change with continued global warming”.
The agency said the papers were withdrawn over “concerns raised by an independent statistician about the statistical analysis of tide gauge records”.
The Australian, 5 December 2011
http://www.thegwpf.org/science-news/4488-blocked-sea-level-research-probed.html
A Journalist Fights Back and Wins
Posted by Roger Pielke, Jr. at 12/01/2011
In Germany, there is news today (here) about a prominent climate scientist who earlier this year was convicted of defaming a journalist, Irene Meichsner.
The case (described in detail in English here) has to do with Meichsner’s reporting of errors in the IPCC 2007 report in early 2010 in the Frankfurter Rundschau. The scientist, Stefan Rahmstorf (known in the US as a blogger at Real Climate and whom I’ve occasionally sparred with) is a German government advisor who strongly attacked Meichsner for her coverage of the IPCC. His attacks prompted the Frankfurter Rundschau to subsequently correct Meichsner’s reporting, apparently based solely on Rahmstorf’s say so, such was his authority.
Meichsnner, believing that she had done no wrong, sued. The Cologne court then decided in her favor, concluding that Rahmstorf’s attacks were unsupported by evidence and even libelous.
Interestingly, in the US, Rahmstorf’s efforts to take down the journalist were uncritically celebrated by no less than the New York Times, which helps to illustrate both a bandwagon effect in coverage of climate by journalists who see themselves on the “same side” as the scientists and also the extensive deference than scientists are granted by the media. Given the court outcome, I wonder if the NYT will be correcting its earlier coverage?
A German magazine on science journalism provides a detailed discussion of the case and its significance (translated from German) and summarizes this episode as follows:
>>>>>>>>>
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/12/journalist-fights-back-and-wins.html
“The detective-inspector and his colleagues were polite, well mannered and did not over-react when I declined to give them my wordpress password. I politely explained that they had a warrant to search my house, not my head.” – Roger Tattersall aka ‘Tallbloke’
That’s the first time Tallbloke’s real name has come to my attention. I think he wanted to remain anonymous. Was it the Guardian that broke silence?
No, Tallbloke has never been anonymous to my knowledge. I know I’ve posted comments here at CCG in the past referring to his full name that he has replied to as ‘Rog Tallbloke’:-
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2011/06/listener-lambasted-concerning-climate-claims/#comment-66355
Tallbloke’s plight covered by the BBC (non-environment reporter) – complete with photo of Roger:-
Concerns over Climategate inquiry
By Nikki Fox BBC News East
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-16294420
Tallbloke’s commentary at his blog:-
Winter Solstice: Past the darkest night to sunnier days ahead
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/winter-solstice-past-the-darkest-night-to-sunnier-days-ahead/
Reply to article: Piers Corbyn
The UK Met Office and BBC promoted statement is extremely delusional and dishonest and a cover-up of reality. Full article: Decline in solar output unlikely to offset global warming
Their ‘expectation’ that the world will warm by 2C this century ‘due to increased greenhouse gas emissions’ is proven drivel based on their own failed self-serving fraudulent models.
They deliberately choose to know almost nothing about solar influences on earth’s weather and climate and create ‘information’ designed to deceive.
It is the largely predictable vast changes in solar charged particle flux and sun-earth magnetic connectivity which control weather and climate.
>>>>>>>>>>
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=9016
“Fake, fake, fake, fake.” – Seinfeld-ism
Pulling back the curtain on someone’s wizardry right when they’re producing the smoke and lights is like pulling back the curtain when they’re in the shower. Lies, like nakedness, show it all to the world: “Well, here I am….”
From “The Mango”
Episode 1, Season 5
Seinfeld Volume 4, Disc 1
Timecode for the scene: 2:55
http://seinfeld-ism.com/2011/01/30/fake-fake-fake-fake/
Bill at Hot Topic:-
Bill’s emphasis note.
Bill again (2 days later):-
“…..for the time being” ?
Jim Lakely, Heartland Institute:-
Lies, like nakedness, show it all to the world: “Well, here I am….”
Discussion of FakeGate is underway here:-
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2012/02/ive-been-busy/#comment-80691
FakeGate – worthy of some conversation, methinks.
Lucia: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/#comments
Josh: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/16/not-quite-friday-funny-fakegate/
Judith: http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/heartland/
The Bish: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/2/15/heartland-says-key-memo-was-fake.html
Watts: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/some-notes-on-the-heartland-leak/
Spencer: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/i-heart-heartland/
Bolt: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/if_the_sceptics_conspiracy_was_real_why_fake_the_evidence/
So, let me kick off the conversation by saying that the venom and vitriol coming from the warmistas is to be expected. They typically revel in ad-homs and seldom consider inconvenient facts. I think Bolt nails (bolts?) it by saying “If the sceptics’ conspiracy was real, why fake the evidence?”. This is the inconvenient fact of the whole matter.
When the warmistas claim that we are duplicitous because the Climategate ‘hacking’ was applauded by us, yet this ‘hacking’ is condemned by us, the main difference is that the authenticity of the CRU emails was confirmed as much as possible before being posted on sites like WattsUp. In stark contrast, DeSmog posted the stolen and forged Heartland docs within one hour of receipt, without any attempt to verify their authenticity. And it turns out the main Policy document was a forgery.
FakeGate conversation in detail here:-
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2012/02/ive-been-busy/#comment-80691
Actress Lucy Lawless refuses to leave Shell oil-drilling ship bound for Arctic:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6473000/Lawless-refuses-to-leave-Shell-oil-drilling-ship
“To see the melting of the sea ice not as a warning to humanity but as an invitation to drill for more of the stuff that caused the problem in the first place is the definition of madness. What Shell is doing is climate change-profiteering.”
– Lucy Lawless, lawbreaker.
“problem” ?
WWF in embezzlement scandal
Approximately $1.3 million in cash seems to have gone missing from a project called “Strengthening Capacity of Environmental Civil Society Organisations”. Overall, it was worth about $4.5 million, part-funded by Norway. Further funding has been suspended for this and for the $2.5-million REDD+ readiness project, aimed at “enhancing Tanzania’s capacity to deliver data on forest carbon stocks”, has also been put on hold.
As the news of the scandal emerged, WWF’s Tanzania country director, Stephen Mariki, resigned and, so far, the eight people linked to the fraud have had their employment terminated.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/wwf-in-embezzlement-scandal.html
“Civil Society Organisations” ?
G.W.F. Hegel completely changed the meaning of civil society, giving rise to a modern liberal understanding of it as a form of market society as opposed to institutions of modern nation state
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society
I suspect though that WWF approved organisations would be those that advance “common” interests.[1] (first sentence at link).
And that the “common” interests are WWF interests.
And WWF interests are ?
Looks like there was another common interest involved at the WWF office too.
Naomi Klein: ‘If You Take Climate Change Seriously, You Have to Throw Out the Free-Market Playbook’ | Common Dreams http://t.co/lINu9DHh 07:18:13 PM March 01, 2012
Hmmm……
H/t HT as it happens
Has Salinger moved to Arizona?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/06/noaas-national-climatic-data-center-caught-cooling-the-past-modern-processed-records-dont-match-paper-records/#more-65130
Looks like they have been “fiddling” the USA National Climate Data.
Emails released to Chris Horner under FOIA from NOAA
http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/NOAA%20emails%20reax%20to%20CG%20b.pdf
Relates to climategate
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/8/22/us-reaction-to-climategate.html
From the “Another consensus debunked” file comes this:
New study says overweight people live longer
Just goes to show, if everyone believes it, it ain’t necessarily true. Happy New Year everyone!
The controversy
by Anastassia Makarieva, Victor Gorshkov, Douglas Sheil, Antonio Nobre, Larry Li
Thanks to help from blog readers, those who visited the ACPD site and many others who we have communicated with, our paper has received considerable feedback. Some were supportive and many were critical. Some have accepted that the physical mechanism is valid, though some (such as JC) question its magnitude and some are certain it is incorrect (but cannot find the error). Setting aside these specific issues, most of the more general critical comments can be classified as variations on, and combinations of, three basic statements:
1. Current weather and climate models (a) are already based on physical laws and (b) satisfactorily reproduce observed patterns and behaviour. By inference, it is unlikely that they miss any major processes.
2. You should produce a working model more effective than current models.
3. Current models are comprehensive: your effect is already there.
Let’s consider these claims one by one.
Models and physical laws
[...]
Thus, while there are physical laws in existing models, their outputs (including apparent circulation power) reflect an empirical process of calibration and fitting. In this sense models are not based on physical laws. This is the reason why no theoretical estimate of the power of the global atmospheric circulation system has been available until now.
The models reproduce the observations satisfactorily
As we have discussed in our paper (p. 1046) current models fail when it comes to describing many water-related phenomena. But perhaps a more important point to make here is that even where behaviours are satisfactorily reproduced it would not mean that the physical basis of the model are correct. Indeed, any phenomenon that repeats itself can be formally described or “predicted” completely without understanding its physical nature
[...]
For example, a climate model empirically fitted for a forest-covered continent cannot inform us about the climatic consequences of deforestation if we do not correctly understand the underlying physical mechanisms.
You should produce a better model than the existing ones
[...]
To expect a few theorists, however keen, can achieve that is neither reasonable nor realistic. We have invested our efforts to show, using suitable physical estimates, that the effect we describe is sufficient to justify a wider and deeper scrutiny. (At the same time we are also developing a number of texts to show how current models in fact contain erroneous physical relationships (see, e.g., here)).
Your effect is already present in existing models
Many commentators believe that the physics we are talking about is already included in models. There is no omission. This argument assumes that if the processes of condensation and precipitation are reproduced in models, then the models account for all the related phenomena, including pressure gradients and dynamics. This is, however, not so. Indeed this is not merely an oversight but an impossibility. The explanation is interesting and deserves recognition – so we shall use this opportunity to explain.
[...]
In current models in the absence of a theoretical stipulation on the circulation power, a reverse logic is followed. The horizontal pressure gradients are determined from the continuity equation, with the condensation rate calculated from the Clausius-Clapeyron law using temperature derived from the first law of thermodynamics with empirically fitted turbulence. However, as we have seen, to correctly reproduce condensation-induced dynamics, condensation rate requires an accuracy much greater than γ << 1. Meanwhile the imprecision of the first law of thermodynamics as applied to describe the non-equilibrium atmospheric dynamics is precisely of the same order of γ. The kinetic energy of the gas is not accounted for in equilibrium thermodynamics.
[...]
Summary and outlook
The Editor’s comment on our paper ends with a call to further evaluate our proposals. We second this call. The reason we wrote this paper was to ensure it entered the main-stream and gained recognition. For us the key implication of our theory is the major importance of vegetation cover in sustaining regional climates. If condensation drives atmospheric circulation as we claim, then forests determine much of the Earth’s hydrological cycle (see here for details). Forest cover is crucial for the terrestrial biosphere and the well-being of many millions of people. If you acknowledge, as the editors of ACP have, any chance – however large or small – that our proposals are correct, then we hope you concede that there is some urgency that these ideas gain clear objective assessment from those best placed to assess them.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/01/31/condensation-driven-winds-an-update-new-version/
Controversial research outlines physics behind how forests may bring rain
It took over two-and-a-half-years for the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics to finally accept a paper outlining a new meteorological hypothesis in which condensation, not temperature, drives winds. If proven correct, the hypothesis could have massive ramifications on global policy—not to mention meteorology—as essentially the hypothesis means that the world’s forest play a major role in driving precipitation from the coast into a continent’s interior. The theory, known as the biotic pump, was first developed in 2006 by two Russian scientists, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics, but the two have faced major pushback and delays in their attempt to put the theory before the greater scientific community.
“It is, at first glance, incredible that such a process could be so influential, be based on basic physics, and yet have gone unnoticed for so long by so many,” says co-author Douglas Sheil who worked with Gorshkov and Makarieva on the new paper. “I shared this view initially, but over time it has withstood a large number of queries and challenges.”
Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0130-hance-physics-biotic-pump.html#yRFhcKimPzZDMr2P.99
Gorshkov and Makarieva argue that forests drive winds through “persistent condensation,” bringing in rain from the oceans. Put simply: no forests, no rain
New global warming scandal hits climate science
By Ian Wishart
The scientists behind a widely reported new climate change study suggesting we are currently in the warmest climate of the past four thousand years have had their work shredded in peer review, and been accused of skating close to scientific “misconduct”.
The paper, led by Oregon State University’s Shaun Marcott, claimed to have validated the discredited “hockey stick” graph and proven that modern temperatures were the highest in four millennia.
Their research was published in the prestigious journal Science and sparked worldwide media headlines. The New York Times trumpeted “Global temperatures highest in 4000 years”, while Associated Press went even further: “Heat spike unlike anything in 11,000 years”.
Now, the story is rapidly unraveling……….
http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/?p=3532
Found at the top of Google News ‘Climate Science’ – bet it gets shunted quick.
“Of course, Anthony Watts can do all he likes to shut down debate on his blog. However, there is simply no consistent, rational, mathematically valid, or scientific explanation of the GHE. So we say it’s back to you Roy and Anthony.”
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=11444
Andrew McKillop: Solar Cycle Warnings
For reasons including “pure politically correct”, NASA has fought a losing battle – against reality – on the subject of Global Warming, which it feels obliged to believe in as a “scientifically correct” theory. Linked to this, quite directly, NASA has also battled against reality on the subject of sunspot frequency, size, location on the Sun’s surface and other variables linked to sunspot cycles in this present Cycle 24 of approximately 11-year-long cycles. These have been accurately recorded since Cycle 1 set by convention between astronomers as starting in Feb 1755.
NASA wanted to believe Cycle 24 would be about the same, perhaps bigger in sunspot numbers and intensity, than Cycle 23. This has not happened. Cycle 24 started weak and got much weaker: February 1906 and Fenruary 2013 had one thing in common, they both had extreme low numbers of observable sunspots on “our” local Star.
>>>>>>
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?page=2