Headlines said Friday that Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, the Virginia attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate, had lost his bid to wrest a huge trove of climate-change e-mails and other documents away from the University of Virginia. But did he really lose?

In one way, yes. Virginia’s Supreme Court confirmed what Mr. Cuccinelli may well have suspected all along: that the anti-fraud statute he tried to use to demand the documents did not apply to state agencies, including state universities. The tactic had always seemed to many people like a stretch.

But looked at from a political perspective, Mr. Cuccinelli may not only have won but may also continue to win, for some time to come.

How? His effort to gain access to nearly a decade’s worth of e-mail traffic among top climate researchers was a bold, high-profile undertaking that brought him lots of attention from skeptics of climate change - skeptics who are well financed and wrestle well above their weight, politically speaking, in that they publicize their views far more effectively than a much larger cohort of climate researchers with Ph.D.’s from first-rate universities.

Combined with his earlier legal opinion holding that state universities have no authority to prevent discrimination against gay students or employees, and his lawsuit challenging President Obama’s health-care law, the demand for documents from UVa has helped make Mr. Cuccinelli a rising star of the right, both in Virginia and on the national stage. Losing in court to a university that spent more than half a million dollars on the case is, in a political context like this one, almost as good as winning: The publicity is invaluable. (Ironically enough, Mr. Cuccinelli is a graduate of the university.)

Mr. Cuccinelli, who counts himself among those skeptical of climate-research findings, has said all along that he was looking for evidence of research fraud by the climate researcher Michael E. Mann, who was a faculty member at UVa from 1999 to 2005 and is now director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University at University Park.

The attorney general’s demand for documents arose out of the “Climategate” theft of researchers’ e-mails, including some of Mr. Mann’s, from a server at the University of East Anglia, in England, in 2009. Even though multiple reviews had failed to find any wrongdoing on Mr. Mann’s part, Mr. Cuccinelli said the Climategate e-mails gave him some reason to suspect that the scientist might have relied on manipulated data in seeking grants during his years in Virginia.

Mr. Cuccinelli’s document demand, however, was nothing short of astonishing in its breadth: It sought “all documents that constitute or are in any way related to correspondence, messages, or e-mails” between Mr. Mann and 39 other scholars, including many prominent climate scientists. What Mr. Cuccinelli expected to find in all those documents he never said, though Mr. Mann and many others, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the document demand a “fishing expedition” conducted in the hope of turning up something that climate-change skeptics could use to embarrass researchers. In an era when fierce partisanship means that a politician’s enemies may define him more clearly than his friends, being denounced repeatedly by the Union of Concerned Scientists could be more of a boon to Mr. Cuccinelli than a bane.

And long before Friday’s court decision ended it, Mr. Cuccinelli’s quest inspired another conservative organization, the American Tradition Institute, to find a significantly easier means to the same end - the institute and a Republican member of the state legislature filed a request for much of the same material under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. So far, the university has turned over some 2,000 e-mails out of 14,000 covered by the request, and whether it will have to turn over more is now before a state court.

Mr. Cuccinelli’s biggest contribution in all of this may be in having shown conservatives - even those within state governments—new ways to score political points with attacks on higher education, which the right has for years successfully labeled as a bastion of the left. Using a state attorney general’s office to carry out an assault on one of that state’s most respected universities for what many people would describe as political gain was a daring and unprecedented move that would appear - from some perspectives, however cynical -to have paid off handsomely, no matter what the justices of the state Supreme Court think.

And that payoff could help Mr. Cuccinelli beat Virginia’s current lieutenant governor to become the GOP gubernatorial candidate in 2013. That prospect that can’t be anything but unsettling for administrators and faculty members at Mr. Cuccinelli’s alma mater and the state’s other public universities.

RALEIGH - State officials are pressuring local governments to plan for a one-meter sea-level rise by 2100, even though many independent scientists have argued the rise is highly unlikely if not impossible.

Even though a state advisory panel no longer recommends regulations based on the one-meter projection, local government officials worry that state regulators will try to implement those rules.

Such a policy, they say, would have a devastating impact on coastal economies, property values, and citizens’ ability to secure financing and property insurance. North Carolina also would become the first state to enact policies consistent with a projected sea-level rise of that magnitude.

In a 2010 report (PDF), the Coastal Resource Commission’s Science Panel said the sea level is likely to rise one meter by 2100. Now the commission is drafting policy “encouraging” coastal communities to consider accelerated rates of sea-level rise in local land-use and development planning.

A group of independent scientists have challenged the panel’s report, pushing the CRC to revise its draft sea-level rise policy so that the regulations in it read more like suggestions and the one-meter benchmark no longer appears.

There’s nothing scientific about the way the science panel came up with its one-meter projection, said John Droz, a physicist and environmental activist. Droz, with the help of more than 30 other scientists, wrote a critique (PDF) of the panel’s “NC Sea-Level Rise Assessment Report.”

Droz’s first complaint is that the panel based its one-meter projection on a review of scientific studies, but the review excluded studies concluding that sea-level rise is not happening. Also, the study cited most by the panel is no longer supported by its own author.

“They never mentioned this,” he said. “These people are either totally incompetent or they’re just totally dishonest.”

Droz also criticizes the broadness of the range of possible scenarios the panel came up with.

The report states that the panel has not attempted “to predict a specific future rate or amount of rise because that level of accuracy is not considered to be attainable at this time.” Instead, the panel predicts a “likely range of rise” between 15 and 55 inches and settles on 39 inches (one meter) as the “amount of rise that should be adopted for policy development and planning purposes.”

“It appears the authors want to have it both ways,” Droz said. “They rightfully acknowledge an accurate future prediction is unattainable, yet they make a future prediction that they expect North Carolina to use for development and planning purposes.”

Droz also takes issue with the tide gauge measurements the panel relied on. Of the eight measuring stations in North Carolina, the panel said it “feels most confident in the data retrieved from the Duck gauge,” which shows the highest measurements of all eight stations and which has been collecting data for the fewest number of years.

The Duck station’s 24 years of data show an average rate of sea-level rise at 16 inches per century. By contrast, a measuring station in Wilmington with 67 years of data shows an average rate of 8 inches per century.

Additionally, Droz calls the tide gauge measurements too crude to provide useful data. The report says that “a tide gauge can be as simple as a long ruler nailed to a post on a dock.”

It also admits “a drawback to tide gauges in North Carolina, in addition to their small number, is that most of them don’t extend back in time more than 50 years, making it difficult to resolve changes in the rate of rise over the decades.”

The report adds, “More accurate” satellite measurements have been available only since 2001. Droz argues that 10 years of data are “clearly insufficient in determining things like hundred-year trends.”

Droz said some scientists believe the sea is not rising at all. He points to a recent newspaper profile of Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University and former head of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change.

“Despite fluctuations down as well as up, the sea is not rising,” Morner said. “It hasn’t risen in 50 years. If there is any rise this century it will not be more than 10 centimeters (4 inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10 centimeters.”

Droz asked Morner what he thought of the science panel’s prediction.

“Sorry, simply physically impossible,” Morner wrote. “It is, for sure, not rising by one meter by year 2100. Our best estimate for 2100 is 5 centimeters with a 15 centimeter margin of error, and that is nothing to worry about.”

Damage control

After circulating his critique, Droz was invited to make a presentation to state lawmakers, who put pressure on the CRC to change the language in their sea level rise policy draft.

After reviewing his critique, Droz said one member of the science panel sent him a confidential message. “He apologized for signing off on it and said he was totally remiss in his obligation to do the right thing.”

Because of Droz’s work, the North Carolina Office of Emergency Management now is studying the impact of a range of potential levels in sea rise from zero to 15 inches by 2100, instead of 15 to 55 inches.

“We brought it down after talking with Droz and other individuals,” said John Dorman, director of the flood mapping program for the Office of Emergency Management. “We believe, as Mr. Droz says - and I’ll give him credit for that - that it needs to be based on science.”

February 16th, 2012 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The unauthorized release of supposedly scandalous Heartland Institute documents has been pretty thoroughly addressed on many blogs over the last day or so. The documents are being used in an attempt to “expose” a “well-funded” “climate denial machine”, which is laughable on several levels.

The only document involved that could be viewed as damning in any way is almost certainly a fake. The others are fairly boring, unless you really are surprised that any organization would take (very modest) donations to explore alternative hypotheses on the subject of global warming and climate change.

Supporting alternative hypotheses in science...what a scandal!

Only fringe lunatic save-the-Earth-by-killing-everyone-but-me types could really believe that any organization would actually promote “dissuading teachers from teaching science”. The person who wrote this obviously fraudulent Heartland goal clearly knows little about science or what kind of organization Heartland is.

That so many media outlets (especially the Guardian) ran with the story without checking its veracity is another black eye for what passes as journalism these days.

I know Joe Bast, the president and CEO of Heartland. He is of the highest character and intelligence, and I would consider his motives on the climate subject to be at or above anyone I have met in this business, on either side of the issue. This is why I agree to take part in the Heartland climate conferences, for less than half of my normal speaking fee. I don’t necessarily agree with all the science and ideas presented there, but I would rather it be presented and discussed than be censored, which is the U.N. IPCC’s modus operandi.

The last conference even showcased a debate between me (a “luke-warmer”, I’m told) and a scientist-supporter of the IPCC position. That’s a level of openness you will not find on the IPCC’s side of the issue.

Due to popular demand, Joe organized the last conference without sufficient funding. At the end of the conference he confided that he was still trying to find donors who would cover the expenses. It almost seemed like his organization really didn’t need the headaches involved in the effort, but no one else was stepping up to the plate to do a job which needed to be done.

The real scandal is that it took a private organization like Heartland to compile the hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific publications which suggest that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might not be a problem for humanity or the biosphere. This is what the IPCC should have done, if it had any scientific objectivity.

I hope that this hoax backfires on the person who started it. I hope it leads to even more donations to Heartland, which has played the role of David in its battle against the Goliath multi-billion dollar climate alarmist machine.

Brendan Fitzgerald’s article “Does anyone trust science anymore?” January 24, melds half-truths, undefined terminology, and under-critical reporting. The initial quote of Michael Mann, “hopefully every scientist…is a skeptic,” was hopeful. The next sentence has Mann revealing his own muddled bias as he elevates consensus to scientific fact, and then re-labels skepticism as denial.

Later in the article, the reporter introduces the idea of an “inflated idea of how many people disbelieve global warming.” Whether promoting manmade global warming or not, there are no informed scientists who “disbelieve global warming.” The globe has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1800s, and since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago. This is a straw man set-up. As far as the general public is concerned, the Pew Research poll of January 11-16, 2012, finds public concern with global warming continuing to drop. It ranked last of 22 topics-of-concern. Consensus is not scientific proof; it takes only one negation to disprove the “truth.”

The quoted 2010 Stanford University survey of 1,300 climate scientists is a half-truth, as presented. The article notes that only 908 respondents of the 1,300 were used. This is a bit better than the 2009 University of Illinois survey of 10,000 scientists, winnowed down to 77, of which 75 agreed with two survey questions. Unmentioned is the reported “skepticism” of the British Royal Society, France’s National Academy of Sciences, India’s National Action plan, and others.

Unmentioned are the behind-the-scenes comments of Mann and others in Climategate 1 and 2, which indicate an organized effort to keep dissenting/skeptical climate papers from ever being published. Mann considered his methodology “proprietary,” thereby preventing others from verifying his work. Statisticians McShane and Wyner reported in Annals of Applied Statistics 2011 that such temperature proxies as tree rings and ice cores are no better than random numbers. Similar rebuttals were made by the 2006 Wegman Commission, and by McIntyre and McKitrick.

Unmentioned is the controversy behind Mann’s “divergence problem,” whereby he abandons tree-ring methodology when it showed cooling beginning in 1981, and then on used warming data from instruments for the “hockey stick.”

“Multiple investigations cleared Mann of wrong doing.” None, to my knowledge, ever investigated his science claims. He was cleared by Penn State only of procedural wrong doings. The attitude of UVA is interesting in terms of academic freedom. It has reported to have spent around $1 million in legal fees to protect Mann’s documents from FOIA requests. Uniformed police officers and plain-clothes detectives are the answer to dissent at UVA…Thomas Jefferson’s “Academical Village.”

Charles Battig, M.D.
VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy
and Environment
Albemarle County

LORD LAWSON had barely removed his microphone when the vitriolic attacks began.

The veteran politician had just taken part in a calm debate about the merits of extracting gas from shale. During the discussion on the BBC’s Today programme he stated his firmly held view that there has been no global warming so far this century.

It was the catalyst for an outpouring of venom on message boards and social networking sites. In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”

Former Chancellor Lord Lawson celebrates his 80th birthday in March and might be forgiven for wondering, at his time of life, if he really needs to endure all this. His supporters insist he is turning the tide in the bitter debate over the impact of global warming but such is the might of the green lobby there must have been occasions when he felt like a lone voice.

Climate change is a complex issue and it could be decades before there is a definitive answer as to its impact on the planet and the extent to which pollution caused by man is harmful. At the moment there’s much that we can’t explain but it is certainly an emotive issue that polarises opinion.

However Lord Lawson, an inherently decent man with a compelling argument, finds himself pilloried. Yesterday there was an apparent campaign by green activists to have him banned from the BBC.

In the past he has spoken about attempts to smear his organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think-tank which challenges many misconceptions about global warming and warns against hasty policy decisions based on exaggerated research.

In this propaganda war in which his opponents seem intent on destroying his reputation there have also been mutterings about the funding of the organisation, although it receives no cash from any oil or energy companies.

Dr Benny Peiser, director of Lord Lawson’s organisation, says: “It does get personal. Some use a bullying strategy rather than engage in proper debate.”

The foundation chooses not to have a Facebook site or Twitter page. “They can encourage personal attacks,” says Peiser, who launched the fight back against global warming alarmists seven years ago.

He claims there’s growing public disillusionment with the narrow agenda being pushed by the green lobby. Polls appear to support that, with one showing more than one in three Britons believe global warming claims are hyped.

Lord Lawson’s organisation is not allied to a political party but he has found himself coming under fire from the Government. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has called some of the Foundation’s work “misinformed, wrong and perverse”.

Lord Lawson says no one is certain about the impact of global warming on the environment. He says: “There is no scientific basis for some of the alarmism.”

He adds: “While it is scientifically established that increased emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the use of carbon-based energy such as coal, oil and gas can be expected to warm the planet, it is uncertain how great any such warming would be and how much harm, if any, it would do.”

Many scientists now believe that climate change is much more likely to be part of a cycle of warming and cooling that has happened regularly every 1,500 years for the last million years, without causing major harm.

Lord Lawson fears that economies are being harmed by an obsession with so-called renewable fuels, which are expensive. They might be trendy and appear to have all the right green credentials but they are costing us all a small fortune in hidden taxes and higher fuel bills to fund their introduction.

It’s claimed that by 2020 every family could be paying an additional 300 pounds a year and that energy produced from wind farms is five times more expensive than conventional fuels.

The peer and his growing band of supporters insist that it’s premature to turn our backs on fossil fuels, including shale gas which can be extracted cheaply in large amounts by a process known as fracking.

Yesterday Lord Lawson described this fuel as “exciting”, adding: “There is now the prospect of cheap gas in abundance all over the world.”

Lord Lawson, who was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor from 1983 to 1989 and an MP for 28 years, is not the only one to have suffered for his views on climate change. Anyone who dares to challenge the often zealous green lobby is apparently fair game.

Entertainer and mathematician Johnny Ball has been vilified for opposing the commonly held view about global warming.

He says: “For daring to take this contrarian view I’ve lost bookings, had talks cancelled and been the subject of a sinister internet campaign that only came to an end following the intervention of the police.”

Ball shares many of Lord Lawson’s views, saying: “Logic tells me that we will eventually be proved right. The argument that we are going to hell in a handcart because of global warming is failing at every turn. The furore over climate change has been totally overstated. Nothing has happened in the past 20 years but the green lobby is incredibly powerful.”

He has been forced to threaten legal action against one campaigner for his “vitriolic” attacks. Ball, who opposes the creation of huge wind farms, says: “Nigel Lawson deserves immense respect because the supporters of this doom and gloom theory have behaved outrageously.”

Environmental campaigner David Bellamy also claims he has been victimised for taking an alternative position. He has said: “The sad fact is that since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming I’ve not been allowed to make a TV programme. The idiot fringe has accused me of being like a Holocaust denier.”

There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy..

Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade - indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections - suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted - or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before - for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

2009 ClimateGate email: Warmist MacCracken suggests that Phil Jones start working on a “backup” in case Jones’ prediction of warming is wrong

ClimateGate FOIA grepper! - if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong

In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability--that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us--the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.

We all, and you all in particular, need to be prepared.

Best, Mike MacCracken [Note that Obama’s chief science advisor, John Holdren, is copied on this email]

According to research jumped on in Reuters based on no domain knowledge by clueless bureaucrats on the dole (sound familiar?):

- A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases,a report said Monday.

The study, by Britain’s Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun’s output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius.

Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth’s climate warms.

The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Current global pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common.

“This research shows that the most likely change in the sun’s output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases,” said Gareth Jones, climate change detection scientist at the Met Office.

Astrophysicist Meteorologist and Climate Forecaster Piers Corbyn responds:

This UK Met Office and BBC promoted statement (Reuters) is extremely delusional and dishonest and a cover-up of reality.

(Full article)

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.

That is why we at WeatherAction.com long range forecasters:

1. Confidently predict that the world will continue general cooling to 2035 - see presentation in submission to UK parliament enquiry into Dec 2010 supercold which we predicted

and

2. Systematically predict and will continue to predict extreme weather events and situations many months ahead around the world

The CO2 driver theory of weather and climate is delusional nonsense propagated by a self-serving failed sect.  Their ‘theory’ fails to explain past weather and climate; all its predictions over the last ten years have failed and it cannot and never will predict anything.

The dangerous delusional CO2 sect must be destroyed before it’s diktats destroy the world economy and thousands more lives are lost from the chosen refusal of governments across the world to allow the application of scientific advanced forecasting of extreme weather which can help reduce disruption and destruction and save money and lives.

Thanks,
Piers Corbyn, MSc ARCS FRAS FRMetS,
WeatherAction.com long range weather and climate forecasters

See also some very different concluding solar research by David Archibald here.