The American scientific establishment is starting to take baby steps away from taking sides in the politics of global warming. It’s sad to have to read science articles for political spin, like some announcement by the Kremlin. But climate change has now become so politicized that SCIENCE magazine reflects at least as much politics as honest science. You have to read it for spin.

SCIENCE magazine is the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is the professional advocacy group for scientists in the United States. SCIENCE is both the profession’s political journal (telling readers how to get government grants, for example), and it also has original findings. So it has an openly political side, as well as a real science side.

The last issue of SCIENCE is waffling like mad on the global warming fad, warning its readers that it may not be so settled a question. Under the headline “Another Global Warming Icon Comes Under Attack,” SCIENCE writer Richard Kerr writes:

“...a group of mainstream atmospheric scientists is disputing a rising icon of global warming, and researchers are giving some ground.” ...

“Robert Charlson of the University of Washington, Seattle, (is) one of three authors of a commentary published online last week in Nature Reports: Climate Change. ... he and his co-authors argue that the simulation by 14 different climate models of the warming in the 20th century is not the reassuring success IPCC claims it to be.”

And there is more here.

The international environmental group, Greenpeace, is facing allegations that it disseminated wrong information about a port project in eastern India.  The Greenpeace report dubbed Dhamra Port in the state of Orissa as an “ecological blunder”.  It recommended that the Tata conglomerate, which has major share in the project, should abandon it.

However, the university which prepared information used by Greenpeace, alleges the group has “doctored” its document.  “Greenpeace has placed on its website a report under the title Biodiversity Assessment of Dhamra Port and Surrounding Areas, Orissa,” said the vice chancellor of North Orissa University, Sudarsan Nanda.  “The cover page of the report says that the report has been prepared by North Orissa University. “I would like to clarify that no report under the above mentioned title has been prepared by the North Orissa University.” Mr Nanda pointed out that the university did prepare a report about biodiversity at the Dhamra Estuary on the Orissa coast, but the contents of the Greenpeace report were significantly different. “A comparison of the Greenpeace report as it appears on their website and the report of North Orissa University reveals that Greenpeace India doctored the authentic report of the university by way of changing the title and contents for motives best known to them,” Mr Nanda said.

Professor Sushil Kumar Dutta, who conducted the assessment study as principal investigator, said the environmental impact of Dhamra Port was not included within the scope of the study. “It was just an inventory study. However, to my surprise Greenpeace India has drawn its own conclusion on the impact of the Dhamra Port on the biodiversity of Dhamra estuary,” Mr Dutta said. The university has now threatened to seek legal action against Greenpeace. Greenpeace has strongly reacted to the tampering accusations. 

So you think I’m defying the scientific facts on climate change? Well, think again, says Martin Durkin

I could not have upset the soft-left, soft-green middle classes more if I had crept in their kitchens and snuck genetically modified tomatoes in their paninis. Why did I make the film The Great Global Warming Swindle? The head of science programs at Britain’s Channel 4, Hamish Mykura (who has a PhD in environmental science), asked me to. He suspected the global warming alarm was not based on solid science. So did his predecessor, Sara Ramsden, who was also eager to make a film in this area. I was an experienced science documentary producer used to handling complex subjects.

So what was our conclusion, after months of research that involved talking to hundreds of scientists and wading through mountains of science papers? It’s all codswallop. The notion of man-made global warming started life as a wild, eccentric theory and, despite throwing billions of dollars at it, scientists have failed to stand it up. Man-made global warming is unmitigated nonsense.

The basic facts are as follows. There is nothing unusual about the present climate. The Earth has been far, far warmer than today and far, far colder. Our present interglacial (the mild bit between ice ages) is not nearly as warm as previous interglacials. Nor are we in a particularly warm part of the interglacial.

The recent warming, such as it is, represents a mild, welcome recovery from an exceptionally cold period in Earth’s recent climate history, known to climatologists as the Little Ice Age. How mild is the recent warming? During the past 150 years global temperature has increased by a little more than 0.5C. But most of this rise occurred before 1940, when carbon dioxide emissions were relatively insignificant. After 1940, during the post-war economic boom, when human emissions of CO2 took off, the temperature fell, causing (you may remember) in the mid-1970s a consensus among scientists that we were about to enter another ice age.

As Lowell Ponte warned in 1976: “This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.” Cripes. After that temperatures rose again (though not as steeply or as much as before) and peaked in 1998. Since then they have declined slightly.

Why do we suppose that CO2 is responsible for any of this? CO2 occupies a tiny proportion of the gases in the atmosphere. It is only a secondary greenhouse gas - water vapour is the main one - and greenhouse gases themselves form only one small part of the Earth’s climate system.

Read whole story here.

Analysis of IPCC expert reviewers responses to 4th assessment WG1 report shows they were far from the claimed unanimity. A total of 309 reviewers submitted a total of 11,542 comments on the IPCC AR4 chapters and Summary for Policymakers. 4.699 comments were rejected.

For the SOR of chapter 9, titled “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”, more than 55% of reviewers’ comments were rejected, as were 30% of comments for the SOR of chapter 6 ("Paleoclimate", i.e. historical climate) and almost 28% comments for the SOR of chapter 3 ("Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change")

One sample of IPCC expert reviewer: “Having read all 11 chapters of the [IPCC] draft Report, I had intended to provide review comments on them all. However, I became so angry at the need to point out the above elementary principles that I abandoned the review at this point: the draft should be withdrawn and replaced by another that displays an adequate level of scientific competence.”

Chapter 9 dealt with the attribution of climate change and was key to the claim of a 90% to 95% probability that humans were responsible for warming and yet just 62 reviewers made comments, more than half of which (33) made three comments or fewer for the 84-page chapter.

We’ve been led to believe that the review was an extensive process undertaken by diligent experts from virtually every country and that if those experts were not unanimous then they were very close to it. It is very disappointing to discover that despite the crucial nature of the report the reality is very different.

Read more of the summary on the comments here.

Associated Content asked us to ‘ask local experts about local climate-change due to global-warming,’ and I could think of no better expert than KWTV Weather’s Gary England. I interviewed him by email. He replied:"I have to answer it this way.

“The climate has always been changing and it will most likely always continue to change. In the distant past, we have been much colder than we are now and we have been much warmer than we are now. And all of that happened many times without humans. “Here in Oklahoma we’re a little warmer than we were 30 years ago. Recently we ended a two year drought and it has been replaced with significant, long duration rains. Is all of this a result of global warming? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. You see, no one really knows. If they say they do, I suggest that person is confused at best or has an agenda at the worst.

“An examination of ice core data is frequently used as proof that CO2 heats the atmosphere. A close examination of that data shows that the air temperature went up first and then the CO2 went up. Mars is loosing pole ice faster that earth is loosing the same. As someone said recently, “It’s the Sun stupid!” Recent research suggests that the activity of our Sun combined with cosmic radiation from far outside our galaxy interact with our atmosphere to produce effects never dreamed of a few years ago. Is anything or everything in this paragraph correct? No body really knows

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, “We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public’s ability to discern the truth.” Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse. If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.

A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position. Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ‘’An Inconvenient Truth,’’ have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

Read some of the claims that AL made that science has proven wrong here.

First, the definitions on how we play this game.  The debate over global-warming is done by majority rule.  Everyone who believes in global warming caused by humans (it’s our fault, folks), raise your hands.  OK, as Chairman, I count 110% hands up.  Now, comrades, what should we do about it?  I know.  Let’s create a treaty among friends.  Majority rules.

We’ll hold an expensive meeting of all the rich honest countries and poor corrupt countries on some wealthy overcrowded island where food and oil is imported.  We’ll meet in Kyoto, Japan.  Then, we’ll all agree that global warming is our collective fault and the biggest countries causing global warming will have to slash their economies to cut back their emissions of carbon dioxide. 

Next, we’ll enlist the media—they don’t know anything about science anyway – and we’ll use them to smear the tens of thousands of other honest scientists who might object to the questionable science being produced on demand.  If we chant the mantra “global warming, global warming” long enough, soon everyone will have read about it in the papers – and you know the papers never lie.  Eventually, if we’re really lucky, we’ll convert our cause into a cult religion.  “Global Warming is the Opiate of the People”.  You can work wonders with guilt.

Finally, we’ll make up long-range 50 and 100-year weather forecasts on which to base all our new laws and spending, putting aside the fact that we can’t even do accurate 7-day weather forecasts anywhere on the planet yet.

Then we can get filthy rich off of all the wasted human energy, junk science, and corrupt politicians, by creating artificial markets in “emissions trading”.  We’ll have power, prestige, rock music, and guilt-ridden masses obeying our every rule. 

Of course, we’ll still be flying around in our private jets going to important global warming meetings and using our chauffer-driven limousines to transport us on the diamond lanes (2 people or more, please), and producing pseudo-scientific emotional-manipulating movies showing monster tidal waves and parched deserts.  If we play our cards right, we might even get an award or two along the way, maybe even a Noble Peace Prize…

Meanwhile, we’ll be able to ignore or suppress the growing number of climatologists, astrophysicists and meteorologists who are saying pesky things like global warming is mostly caused by the sun’s periodic heating up, that lots of other planets and moons are getting hotter too, and that the earth has gone through over 30 cold-hot cycles with some much hotter than today.  Since it will take at least a decade—maybe two or three if we’re lucky –to prove us wrong, we can make lots of cash in the meantime.  See whole story here.

JOHANNESBURG – A rare winter snowstorm dusted South Africa’s commercial capital Johannesburg early on Wednesday as a winter weather front moved across the country, closing mountain passes and claiming at least one life. ‘SNOWBURG’ trumpeted the headline of Johannesburg’s Star newspaper. Gleeful children built snowmen in Johannesburg’s Zoo Lake Park, while families could be seen carrying snowballs back to their cars, fast melting souvenirs of the city’s first significant snowfall since 1981. Johannesburg Emergency Services spokesman Malcolm Midgely said a homeless man had been found dead of exposure in the city centre after what he said was the first real snowfall in more than a generation.

‘There’ve been a few minor incidents since (1981), in 1996 we had a little bit of sleet, but it was none of the big, thick stuff,’ Midgely told the SAPA news agency. Flights departing from Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport were delayed by up to three hours as aircraft were de-iced, a rare operation for a country which usually trades in tourist promises of sunshine and beaches.