Oh, where, oh where have all the sunspots gone?

The fiery orange ball overhead has quieted during the past three years. Quiet in the sense that there have been very few sunspots – those black blotches on the sun’s surface caused by intense magnetic activity.

But just how quiet is quiet? Well, so far during the recent solar minimum (a period of low activity during the sun’s typical 11-year solar cycle), we’ve seen 183 sun-spotless days in 2007, 266 in 2008 and 259 in 2009 (as of Dec. 16 2009). Earth hasn’t witnessed a similar three-year stretch (1911, 1912, 1913) of sun-spotless days since the early 1900s. (below as of 12/17/09, enlarged here)

The blank sun has not gone unnoticed by the experts. “We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum,” says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

“This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

So why are sunspots under the spotlight? Because, according to solar scientists, their declining numbers, significant even by solar-minimum standards, could be the harbinger of colder temperatures ahead.

If so, it won’t be the first time the earth shivered as sunspots numbers declined. In the 17th century, the sun experienced a sunspot drought, dubbed the Maunder Minimum, which lasted 70 years - from 1645 until 1715. Astronomers at the time counted only a few dozen sunspots per year, thousands fewer than usual.

As sunspots vanished temperatures fell. The River Thames in London froze, sea ice was reported along the coasts of southeast England, and ice floes blocked many harbors. Agricultural production nose-dived as growing seasons grew shorter, leading to lower crop yields, food shortages and famine.

Canadian author and National Post environmental columnist Lawrence Solomon describes the period:

“Glaciers advanced rapidly in Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and North America, making vast tracts of land uninhabitable. The Arctic pack ice extended so far south that several reports describe Eskimos landing their kayaks in Scotland. Finland’s population fell by one-third, Iceland’s by half, the Viking colonies in Greenland [yes, it was once green, with forests and pastureland] were abandoned altogether, as were many Inuit communities. The cold in North America spread so far south that, in the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, enabling people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island.”

Is mankind headed for another cool-down or big freeze? Based on recent scientific findings, it might be a possibility. A Danish research team led by Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen, has discovered a strong correlation between sunspot activity, galactic cosmic rays and variations in the earth’s climate, a theory (supported by experiments) that challenges the prevailing concept of human-induced climate change, popularly known as anthropogenic global warming.

Henrik and his team have discovered that increased solar activity in the form of sunspots, flares and other disturbances generate solar winds that strengthen the magnetic fields surrounding earth, creating a bubble that suppresses cosmic ray penetration, inhibiting cloud formation and causing warming.

Conversely, when solar activity diminishes, the protective magnetic bubble weakens and more cosmic rays penetrate the earth’s atmosphere. The high-energy particles serve as host nuclei around which water vapor can condense and form droplets, resulting in more cloud cover and precipitation. Temperatures begin to fall as the clouds reflect more sunlight back into space.

“Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy,” says Ed Smith, NASA’s Ulysses project scientist at the Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere [earth’s protective bubble] will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system.”

If Svensmark and other climate scientists are correct, the decline in solar activity may be responsible for the recent fall in global temperatures. In 1998, global temperatures at the earth’s surface began leveling off and have actually declined slightly since 2001, despite an increase in CO2 levels, calling into question the accuracy of climate models that predict catastrophic global warming.

The decade-long cool-down is clearly visible in satellite temperature measurements, which are widely viewed as more accurate than land-based temperatures readings, according to Dr. David Evans, who was a researcher with the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1995 to 2005. Such readings, he says, are often skewed by what is called the “urban heat island” effect, which articially elevates temperatures.

“NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling,” says Evans. “The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.”

As Svensmark observes:

“In fact, global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth - quite the contrary. And this means that the [global warming] projections of future climate are unreliable.”

If what Svensmark and other researchers say is true, it is very likely that when the heated debate between global warmers and global-warming skeptics finally ends, cooler heads may ultimately prevail. See post here.

Although there is a paucity of information on the NOAA site about ClimateGate, there is plenty about the role of NOAA at Copenhagen which is just winding up:

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and Senior NOAA Climate Scientists Contribute to COP-15 Conference
December 7, 2009

Laurie Fulton, United States ambassador to Denmark and Sandy MacDonald, director of NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory, visit NOAA’s Science On a Sphere at Copenhagen Climate Conference.

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator, will be in Copenhagen as part of the U.S. Delegation from Dec. 13-16. As a member of the president’s science team and head of NOAA, Lubchenco is one of the senior administration officials attending the conference, including President Barack Obama and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. Many of the leading federal climate scientists work within NOAA.

NOAA will play a major supporting role in the U.S. Center. Along with other U.S. scientists and senior administration officials, NOAA scientists will explore the United State’s efforts both domestically and internationally to research, understand and provide tools to respond to the impacts of a changing climate.

The centerpiece of the U.S. Center exhibit space is NOAA’s “Science On a Sphere,” a large globe that displays a wide range of climate, weather and other spatial data around the Earth. On Dec. 8, NOAA’s Sandy MacDonald, Ph.D., will conduct a climate change “spherecast” from Copenhagen that will be viewed live on spheres in select science centers around the world.

NOAA scientists and Department of Commerce officials will also blog and hold web chats from Copenhagen. Lubchenco will also be posting updates and information about COP-15 activities on her Facebook page.

Daily updates from NOAA and the Department of Commerce at will be available here.  The State Department Web site has the full program of events here.

This year the events at the conference will be more widely accessible than ever before. The following NOAA presentations will be webcast. All times are listed in EST:

Monday, Dec. 7, 3:00 a.m. Arctic: One of the Earth’s Most Rapidly Warming Regions, presented by James Overland, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

Monday, Dec. 7, 9:30 a.m. The History and Science of Monitoring Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gases, presented by Sandy MacDonald, NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory

Monday, Dec. 7, 5:30 a.m. Ocean Acidification: Impacts of Carbon Dioxide on Marine Ecosystems, presented by Oceana and Richard Feely, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

Tuesday, Dec. 8, 9:30 a.m. Global Climate Change Impacts in the U.S., presented by Tom Karl, NOAA National Climatic Data Center

Tuesday, Dec. 8, 12:00 p.m. Extreme Weather and Climate Events in a Changing Climate, presented by Tom Karl, NOAA National Climatic Data Center

Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1:00 p.m. Climate Change Science on a Sphere, presented by Sandy MacDonald, NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory

Wednesday, Dec. 9, 12:00 p.m. The Critical Role of Climate Literacy in addressing Climate Change, presented by Frank Niepold, NOAA Climate Program Office

Thursday, Dec. 10, 10:15 a.m. Climate Change Toolkit: Wildlife and Wildlands Videoconference, presented by EPA and Peg Steffen, NOAA National Ocean Service

Monday, Dec. 14, 4:15 a.m. Climate Services: Providing the Information that People Need for a Changing World, presented by Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator

Monday, Dec. 14 7:00 a.m. Clim’City: An Interactive Informal Educational Network, presented by Ned Gardiner, NOAA Climate Program Office

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 4:15 a.m. Oceans and Ecosystems in a Changing Climate, presented by Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

Okay, then. See post here.
ICECAP NOTE: It is a sad day to see how far NOAA has fallen into the abyss of this fraud. Money and politics talk.

As an independent meteorologist, I do a lot of public speaking about weather and climate. I bring my weather program, called “How the Weather Works,” to elementary and middle schools. Most of the program is about the basics of our atmosphere, and a little bit covers how a forecast is made.

Last year, I started to include a section about global warming - and about how I am a skeptic - towards the end of my program.

At several of the elementary schools, this was actually met with approval. Some teachers approached me at the end of my talk and thanked me for giving the kids a different point of view - since all they hear otherwise is that the future will be a climate calamity.

However, there have been different reactions.

A school told me I would not be able to return this year because of my global warming comments. When I visited the school last year, I told the students that the polar bears were not drowning and that their numbers have been increasing. I also showed them reasons to believe that nature has changed climate in the past and would likely continue to do so in the future.

One of the students then went home and told the parents. Apparently this did not fit the parents’ understanding of what is going on in the Arctic. I was told the student was upset; I tend to believe it was the parents that were upset.

A phone complaint was made to the teacher who had invited me. Also, a complaint was made to the superintendent. The teacher who invited me actually had to do a special project about global warming to set the parents minds at ease. I have no idea what the teacher told the parents. The teacher then asked the district science coordinator if I could tone down my comments about global warming if I were to return.

The principal of the school said my information was educational, but very one-sided. I found this rather odd, since the principal also said in the email that:

It is our obligation as a public school to present both sides of an argument. In the area of science this is extremely important.

Since the kids are constantly bombarded with the alarmist point of view, I figured the realist side was just getting equal time. The school has agreed to have me back - but there is to be absolutely no mention of global warming at all.

I have a program for high school students called ‘Understanding Global Warming.’ Out of some 160 high schools that I proposed this program to, only two have responded favorably. I did receive an email from one teacher who wanted to debate me about global warming in front of the students. I responded that this was not what I wanted to do - my point was to show the students the large amount of science that shows man’s carbon emissions have little or no impact on climate change. I had mentioned that with all the attention the alarmists get on the air, in publications, and in textbooks, my program could be looked at as equal time.

He replied that there is already too much talk by “non-scientists” on the air, and that my concerns about equal time were specious and manipulative. An interesting comment, since the global warming savior of the world, Al Gore, has no science training either. In light of all that, I will not be presenting my program to that school.

I also bring my weather programs to retirement facilities. Some of these are high-end, with expensive rents and plush accommodations. This year I presented a program called “Weatherwise: Myths and Mysteries of Weather.” A portion of the show is dedicated to myths of global warming.

After presenting this program to one of my clients, the person responsible for hiring me told me she “could not have me back.” One of the persons in the audience was so upset with my stand on global warming that she confronted the activities director. She was so angry she demanded that I never return, ad then stormed out of the office. I have been invited back since then, but there is to be no mention of my opinion on global warming.

I have two other long-term clients at expensive facilities that will not return my phone calls.

The mainstream media has for too long dominated the information being disseminated about global warming. Some people have long-term loyalty to television news programs, newspapers, or magazines. Any opinion that varies from their source is unacceptable. Some people have been so completely indoctrinated with the climate catastrophe story, they can’t stand to hear anything else. For them my story of global warming will be met with closed doors and deaf ears.

See post here.

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Get Global Warming Out of Our Schools
By Jane Jamison, American Thinker

Because of the recent revelations of “Climategate” (see source materials below) and my experience raising two children in private and public schools in California, I believe we need to start a nationwide campaign to get “global warming” immediately removed from the curriculum of our schools. 

We cannot wait for politicians or activists to do any more damage to our future generation.  “Global warming” is not just an objectionable and discredited scientific theory. Teachers are grafting the loony climate-change premise onto lifestyle, religion, and politics in “science” classrooms. It cannot stand.

The leaked e-mails and subsequent evaluation of their contents, which inspired the term “Climategate,” sound the alarm that we have been fooled for thirty years. There is good cause to believe that the “global warming” data was contorted to achieve a desired result, that true facts were suppressed or destroyed, and that truth-tellers were censored by climate gurus on a mission.

Even if a local school district does not want to accept that “global warming” has been completely debunked, the argument can be made that the “theory” is so suspect that it will likely be investigated in Congress, if not in a criminal fraud venue. It cannot be passed off to students as “settled science.” Insist on removing “global warming” until there is consensus sometime in the future. 

For those who do not have children, or whose children are either young or grown up, let my recent personal experience with public school science intruction provide an insight:

My children were gifted students in accelerated programs as they entered public high school from an excellent, traditional, private K-8 school. The college preparatory classes for talented students in many public high schools are called Advanced Placement (AP) classes.  These classes can be applicable as college credits. In short, AP classes are seen as a desirable “elite” fast track to get into a good college.

There was only one AP biology/earth science teacher at our local high school. It was at “back-to-school” night the very first fall, as the teacher stared at the ceiling choking back tears telling us about the dying polar bears, that I learned we had a problem.

My oldest daughter ended up having this teacher for an advanced science course each year. I told my daughter to do what she must to get good grades, but I also provided her with alternate information. Behind the scenes, I spoke to administrators about my concerns. Their response was to infer that I am not very sophisticated and certainly not as wise as they are. My daughter begged me not to agitate the teacher, the principal, or the other parents out of fear that her grades would suffer. I bit my tongue for six years at the request of my children. That was then.

This high school’s most talented science students were required to accept the theory of “anthropogenic global warming” in their advanced classes because they were taught by a very overt climate-change activist. She incorporated “global warming” into some part of her science curriculum every semester in a well-respected school, in a desirable school district, in an affluent suburb of San Francisco. There was always a climate project or a connection made to Earth’s crisis. The kids were encouraged to take part in the teacher’s pet social causes and public protests. Read the rest here.

The professional association for physicists is facing internal pressure from some of its most distinguished members, who say the burgeoning ClimateGate scandal means the group should rescind its 2007 statement declaring that global warming represents a dire international emergency.

When CBSNews.com asked on Monday whether it will rethink the statement calling for immediate reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, the American Physical Society said it would not. APS spokeswoman Tawanda Johnson replied with a pre-ClimateGate announcement from November 10 reiterating support for the 2007 statement; neither APS president-elect Curtis Callan nor Johnson would answer other questions on the topic.

Pressure on this venerable society of physicists, which was founded in 1899 at Columbia University, is coming from members who are squarely in the scientific mainstream and are alarmed at the state of climate science revealed in the leaked e-mail messages and program files from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. (See CBS News’ prior coverage.)

Those files show that prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data, plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing, and discussed how to conceal apparently buggy computer code from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information law. Internal investigations are now underway at East Anglia, Penn State, and the British government’s weather forecasting unit.

One APS dissenting member is William Happer, a physicist who runs the Happer Lab at Princeton University. Another is Hal Lewis, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A third is Robert Austin, another Princeton physics professor and head of a biophysics research group.

They’ve been circulating a letter saying: “By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate, which was and is an international scientific fraud, the worst any of us have seen… We have asked the APS management to put the 2007 statement on ice until the extent to which it is tainted can be determined, but that has not been done. We have also asked that the membership be consulted on this point, but that too has not been done.”

Some of the same scientists had asked the APS, pre-ClimateGate, to revise its climate policy statement. To the applause of like-minded bloggers who dubbed the petition “a silly distraction,” the APS shot down that idea on November 10.

In the aftermath of the embarrassing data leaks, however, Princeton’s Happer says that about half of the APS members they’ve contacted now support the petition (which, after all, is only asking for an independent analysis of the science involved).

Of the signatories so far, Happer says, 77 are fellows of major scientific societies, 14 members of the National Academies, one is a Nobel laureate, and there is a large number of authors of major scientific books and recipients of prizes and awards for scientific research. He adds: “Some have accepted a career risk by signing the petition. The 230 odd signatories can hardly be dismissed as lightweights compared to those who spread the message of impending climate disaster.”

This has become a common refrain: Hans von Storch, director of the Institute for Coastal Research, calls the climate change axis a “cartel.” A colleague, Eduardo Zorita, went further and said the scientists implicated in the e-mails “should be barred” from future United Nations proceedings and warned that “the scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.” One estimate from a free-market group says that 12 of the 26 scientists who wrote the relevant section of a U.N. global warming report are “up to their necks in ClimateGate.”

Below are excerpts from e-mail messages that the scientists behind the petition to the APS sent me on Monday:

Princeton University’s Robert Austin:

I view it as science fraud, pure and simple, and that we should completely distance ourselves from such unethical behavior by CRU, and that data files be opened to the public and examined in the full light of day. We as taxpayers pay for that work—we are owed examination of the analysis.

Princeton University’s William Happer:

The APS has not responded to our petition. We submitted the petition several weeks ago… Prof. Callan, the president elect of the APS, who works in the same building in Princeton University as Professor Austin and I, has been unable to find time to discuss the petition with us.

We have independently contacted as many members of the APS as we can to ask for their support of the petition. We are getting about as many supportive as negative responses, so I would judge that about half the membership of the APS agrees with us. Those who oppose us usually have little or nothing to say about the science and plenty of things to say about what evil people we are. Those who agree with us are troubled by the lack of scientific support for the current APS statement and the highly political nature of it.

Hal Lewis of the University of California, Santa Barbara:

I think it behooves us to be careful about how we state the science. I know of nobody who denies that the Earth has been warming for thousands of years without our help (and specifically since the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago), and is most likely to continue to do so in its own sweet time. The important question is how much warming does the future hold, is it good or bad, and if bad is it too much for normal adaptation to handle. The real answer to the first is that no one knows, the real answer to the second is more likely good than bad (people and plants die from cold, not warmth), and the answer to the third is almost certainly not. And nobody doubts that CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for the better part of a century, but the disobedient temperature seems not to care very much. And nobody denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, along with other gases like water vapor, but despite the claims of those who are profiting by this craze, no one knows whether the temperature affects the CO2 or vice versa. The weight of the evidence is the former.

So the tragedy is that the serious questions are quantitative, and it’s easy to fool people with slogans. If you say that the Earth is warming you are telling the truth, but not the whole truth, and if you say it is due to the burning of fossil fuels you are on thin ice. If you say that the Earth is warming and therefore catastrophe lies ahead, you are pulling an ordinary bait and switch scam. If you are a demagogue, of course, these distinctions don’t bother you—you have little interest in that quaint concept called truth.

So it isn’t simple, and the catastrophe mongers are playing a very lucrative game. See post and comments here. Update: Cherry Murray letter to the APS members about the request here.

In the high-stakes game of chicken the Obama White House has been playing with Congress over who will regulate the earth’s climate, the president’s team just motored into a ditch. So much for threats.

The threat the White House has been leveling at Congress is the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” which EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson finally issued this week. The finding lays the groundwork for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy, on the grounds that global warming is hazardous to human health.

From the start, the Obama team has wielded the EPA action as a club, warning Congress that if it did not come up with cap-and-trade legislation the EPA would act on its own - and in a far more blunt fashion than Congress preferred. As one anonymous administration official menaced again this week: “If [Congress doesn’t] pass this legislation,” the EPA is going to have to “regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.”

The thing about threats, though, is that at some point you have to act on them. The EPA has been sitting on its finding for months, much to the agitation of environmental groups that have been upping the pressure for action.

President Obama, having failed to get climate legislation, didn’t want to show up to the Copenhagen climate talks with a big, fat nothing. So the EPA pulled the pin. In doing so, it exploded its own threat.

Far from alarm, the feeling sweeping through many quarters of the Democratic Congress is relief. Voters know cap-and-trade is Washington code for painful new energy taxes. With a recession on, the subject has become poisonous in congressional districts. Blue Dogs and swing-state senators watched in alarm as local Democrats in the recent Virginia and New Jersey elections were pounded on the issue, and lost their seats.

But now? Hurrah! It’s the administration’s problem! No one can say Washington isn’t doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency’s move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.

“The Obama administration now owns this political hot potato,” says one industry source. “If I’m [Nebraska Senator] Ben Nelson or [North Dakota Senator] Kent Conrad, why would I ever want to take it back?”

All the more so, in Congress’s view, because the EPA “command and control” threat may yet prove hollow. Now that the endangerment finding has become reality, the litigation is also about to become real. Green groups pioneered the art of environmental lawsuits. It turns out the business community took careful notes.

Industry groups are gearing up for a legal onslaught; and don’t underestimate their prospects. The leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit in England alone are a gold mine for those who want to challenge the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming.

But the EPA’s legal vulnerabilities go beyond that. The agency derives its authority to regulate pollutants from the Clean Air Act. To use that law to regulate greenhouse gases, the EPA has to prove those gases are harmful to human health (thus, the endangerment finding). Put another way, it must provide “science” showing that a slightly warmer earth will cause Americans injury or death. Given that most climate scientists admit that a warmer earth could provide “net benefits” to the West, this is a tall order.

Then there are the rules stemming from the finding. Not wanting to take on the political nightmare of regulating every American lawn mower, the EPA has produced a “tailoring rule” that it says allows it to focus solely on large greenhouse gas emitters. Yet the Clean Air Act - authored by Congress - clearly directs the EPA to also regulate small emitters.

This is where green groups come in. The tailoring rule “invites suits,” says Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), who has emerged as a top Senate watchdog of EPA actions. Talk of business litigation aside, Mr. Barrasso sees “most of the lawsuits coming from the environmental groups” who want to force the EPA to regulate everything. The agency is going to get hit from all directions. Even if these outsiders don’t win their suits, they have the ability to twist up the regulations for a while.

Bottom line: At least some congressional Democrats view this as breathing room, a further reason to not tackle a killer issue in the run-up to next year’s election. Mr. Obama may emerge from Copehagen with some sort of “deal.” But his real problem is getting Congress to act, and his EPA move may have just made that job harder.

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Carlin: The Politicization of the EPA - an Administration’s Radical Gamble (PJM Exclusive)
By Alan Carlin

On Monday, the EPA announced its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. One can infer from the timing of the announcement that the administration may have taken this action at this time in order to bring something to the table at the Copenhagen COP15 meeting.

From a scientific viewpoint, it was an odd time to do so - given that the very recent Climategate disclosures would presumably have taken some time to digest and analyze for their possible effects on vital conclusions. So the timing may have been based more on the political, rather than the scientific, factors involved.

But from a larger viewpoint, the U.S. president who was going to find a way to resolve partisan bickering in Washington has now embarked on a major escalation of the conflict - by using the power he holds over executive branch agencies to fight his enemies in Congress over the issue of global warming. Although the EPA has always been, organizationally, an arm of the administration in power, until this administration the EPA has generally been able to maintain the appearance (if not the reality) of being science-based.

That is now much harder to maintain.

Originally, the rumor was that the purpose of the endangerment finding would be to pressure Congress into approving a cap and trade bill. Now, it appears fairly clear that the administration will not be able to gather the needed votes in the Senate to pass the bill - at least this year, and probably even next year, either with or without an endangerment finding. So there would seem to be little reason to push the endangerment finding now - unless they intended to use it as the basis for negotiating at COP15.

Some Major Political Risks

This EPA endangerment approach carries major risks for the administration. The first risk is that the EPA’s apparently politically motivated endangerment finding may be overturned in the now-inevitable court reviews.

The second risk is that when greenhouse gas regulations should be announced - and certainly when they should ever be implemented - the full responsibility will obviously fall onto the administration, rather than being shared between the administration and Congress (which is what would occur if Congress ever adopted a cap and trade bill). If constituents end up being unhappy with the resulting regulations, and particularly the greatly increased energy costs and decreased employment that will result, it will be obvious who was responsible.

And there may well be some very unhappy constituents.

A third risk is that they will not be able to contain the EPA’s actions, since the law clearly specifies that much smaller sources are subject to regulation than they now contemplate, and legal action may force the EPA to regulate smaller sources whether it wants to or not.

A fourth risk is that the added uncertainties created by the finding, and the added costs in terms of higher energy prices and reduced employment, will further weaken the administration’s claims to be primarily interested in combating the recession - the issue currently most on the mind of voters.

Suppose the COP15 meeting is unable to reach an agreement that the administration can sell domestically. Or suppose that there is agreement on a new climate protocol and it comes into force, but only a few countries actually live up to what they have agreed to, as has been the case for the Kyoto Protocol. What little effect reductions in CO2 may have on global temperatures would be lost in the increased emissions from those countries that do not take promised reductions seriously.

Suppose the developing world will only support a new treaty if the developed world pays the bill (as they have done so far). Is the administration willing to support a massive foreign aid bill providing funds to the UN (or one of its agencies such as the World Bank) to disperse as they may, in the middle of the most serious recession of the postwar era?

Suppose the Russians agree to a new treaty only if their credits resulting from the collapse of Soviet-era manufacturing are honored in a new protocol, meaning they would face very limited requirements.

The administration seems to be gambling not only that Americans will not rebel against the potential EPA restrictions, but that it can push through a massive UN-administered foreign aid program. And then there is the problem of how to get any possible new protocol through the Senate - which would require 67 votes, rather than the 60 needed for cap and trade. All this seems to be quite a gamble.

And just to make things worse for the administration, it is not only now clear that key parts of the global warmists’/UN science is scientifically incorrect (see my March Comments and my more recent blog post), it is now also clear how their science came to be the way it is. We now have the actual computer programs used to bring this about, as well as some of the email and programming comments of some of those working to bring this about. Even Mother Nature is not cooperating, with very cold, wintry weather sweeping the United States this week.

The Administration’s Agenda

Finally, public support for the global warming/UN science and greenhouse gas regulation is dropping rapidly. Is it wise for the administration to take all these risks from a political viewpoint? Or is the outcome going to be similar to the recent one in Australia, where last week Parliament turned down a cap a trade bill for the second time?

Unless the administration is driven solely by a radical environmental agenda come what may, the only rational conclusion is that they think they can somehow overcome all these major risks. The loss of even one of these sub-gambles may doom the lot. So perhaps they are driven primarily by environmental dogma, rather than political calculation? Maybe they actually still believe they are saving the world, despite the demonstrably bad science they have endorsed in order to support this view?

The Skeptics Are Unlikely to Compromise

On the other side of the issue, the skeptics are unlikely to be willing to compromise, given the recent confirmation of their suspicions concerning how the warmists’ science was derived. From their viewpoint, there appear to be only a limited number of options:

Assume that at least one of the lawsuits that may emerge will be upheld by the courts. Look for a must-pass bill to attach a rider prohibiting funds being used to implement greenhouse gas controls under the Clean Air Act. Use the Congressional Review Act to overrule the endangerment finding. Whichever of these options the skeptics may pursue, the outcome will be the still further politicization of the EPA. This may have much longer lasting effects than the current fight over global warming control, and could lead to the end of the EPA as a primarily science-based agency.

Update: See Christopher’s Daily Blog from Copenhagen here.

Cold facts about the hot topic of global temperature change after the Climategate scandal

A devastating new paper by former Thatcher adviser, Lord Christopher Monckton, reveals the sheer scale and scope of the scientific fraud behind the compilation of the world’s temperature data. Climategate—Caught Green-Handed analyzes the revelations of scientific skulduggery circulated on the Internet by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, and shows how the data manipulation and destruction at the University’s Climate Research Unit is linked to numerous similar episodes throughout the short but shoddy history of the now-disproven “global warming” scare, says the Science and Public Policy Institute of Washington, D.C.

Monckton’s must-read paper reveals that -

* A tiny clique of politicized scientists, paid by unscientific politicians with whom they were financially and politically linked, were responsible for gathering and reporting data on temperatures from the palaeoclimate to today’s climate. The “Team”, as they called themselves, were bending and distorting scientific data to fit a nakedly political story-line profitable to themselves and congenial to the governments that, these days, pay the bills for 99% of all scientific research.

* The Climate Research Unit at East Anglia had profited to the tune of at least $20 million in “research” grants from the Team’s activities.

* The Team had tampered with the complex, bureaucratic processes of the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, so as to exclude inconvenient scientific results from its four Assessment Reports, and to influence the panel’s conclusions for political rather than scientific reasons.

* The Team had conspired in an attempt to redefine what is and is not peer-reviewed science for the sake of excluding results that did not fit what they and the politicians with whom they were closely linked wanted the UN’s climate panel to report.

* They had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

* They had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures in the paleoclimate.

* They had expressed dismay at the fact that, contrary to all of their predictions, global temperatures had not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years, and had been falling for nine years. They had admitted that their inability to explain it was “a travesty”. This internal doubt was in contrast to their public statements that the present decade is the warmest ever, and that “global warming” science is settled.

* They had interfered with the process of peer-review itself by leaning on journals to get their friends rather than independent scientists to review their papers.

* They had successfully leaned on friendly journal editors to reject papers reporting results inconsistent with their political viewpoint.

* They had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase and corrupt science for political purposes.

* They had mounted a venomous public campaign of disinformation and denigration of their scientific opponents via a website that they had expensively created.

* Contrary to all the rules of open, verifiable science, the Team had committed the criminal offense of conspiracy to conceal and then to destroy computer codes and data that had been legitimately requested by an external researcher who had very good reason to doubt that their “research” was either honest or competent.

The paper discusses another major revelation by the whistleblower: that the University of East Anglia, the Climate Research Unit, and several leading scientists had conspired together to block and eventually even to destroy data that had been validly requested under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act

* The Director of the Climate Research Unit refused to release any information on the stated ground those requesting it were only asking for it so that they could find out whether it was correct.

* The Director’s first advice to fellow-members of the Team, recorded n one of the emails released by the whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, was that they should not let anyone know that there was a Freedom of Information Act in the UK.

* He subsequently wrote to other scientists that he would destroy data rather than provide it to researchers who requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.

* The scientists involved then contrived a remarkable number of pretexts for not disclosing data and computer programs to anyone who might request them under the Freedom of Information Act. They discussed -

* hiding (they repeatedly used the word) behind public-interest immunity;

* hiding behind the UK’s Data Protection Act, which does not prevent disclosure of data or research paid for by taxpayers;

* hiding behind advice from the office of the Information Commissioner, the UK official who enforces the Freedom of Information Act;

* hiding behind the fact that the UN’s climate panel is an international entity not subject to the UK freedom-of-information law,

* hiding behind reclassification of much of their work as UN work, so as to evade their obligation at law to disclose requested information; and

* hiding behind contracts between the Climate Research Unit and other national weather bureaus, on the pretext that weather data that was and is openly published worldwide might be held by some nations to be confidential.

* Finally, in 2008 the Director wrote to several other scientists inviting them to delete all emails relating to their participation in the preparation of the previous year’s Fourth Assessment Report of the UN’s climate panel. He wrote this email some three weeks after the University of East Anglia had received a request under the Freedom of Information Act for precisely the information that he was recommending his fellow-members of the Team to emulate him in destroying.

Lord Monckton and others have written to the UK’s Information Commissioner asking him to investigate and, if thought fit, to prosecute the scientists involved for offenses of conspiring to block and destroy data requested under the Freedom of Information Act. See full post at SPPI here.

I am sure that most of you are aware of the incident that took place recently at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The identity of the whistle-blower or hacker is still not known. The selected release of emails contains correspondence between CRU scientists and scientists at other climate research institutions. My own purely technical exchange of emails with CRU director Professor Phil Jones is, as far as I know, not included.

I published my first climate-related paper in 1974 (Chylek and Coakley, Aerosol and Climate, Science 183, 75-77). I was privileged to supervise Ph. D. theses of some exceptional scientists - people like J. Kiehl, V.Ramaswamy and J. Li among others. I have published well over 100 peer-reviewed papers, and I am a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Optical Society of America, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Within the last few years I was also honored to be included in Wikipedia’s (RC’s William Connelly’s) blacklist of “climate skeptics”.

For me, science is the search for truth, the never-ending path towards finding out how things are arranged in this world so that they can work as they do. That search is never finished.

It seems that the climate research community has betrayed that mighty goal in science. They have substituted the search for truth with an attempt at proving one point of view. It seems that some of the most prominent leaders of the climate research community, like prophets of Old Israel, believed that they could see the future of humankind and that the only remaining task was to convince or force all others to accept and follow. They have almost succeeded in that effort.

Yes, there have been cases of misbehavior and direct fraud committed by scientists in other fields: physics, medicine, and biology to name afew. However, it was misbehavior of individuals, not of a considerable part of the scientific community.

Climate research made significant advancements during the last few decades, thanks to your diligent work. This includes the construction of the HadCRUT and NASA GISS datasets documenting the rise of globally averaged temperature during the last century. I do not believe that this work can be affected in any way by the recent email revelations. Thus, the first of the three pillars supporting the hypothesis of man-made global warming seems to be solid. However, the two other pillars are much more controversial.

To blame the current warming on humans, there was a perceived need to “prove” that the current global average temperature is higher than it was at any other time in recent history (the last few thousand years). This task is one of the main topics of the released CRU emails.

Some people were so eager to prove this point that it became more important than scientific integrity.The next step was to show that this “unprecedented high current temperature” has to be a result of the increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

The fact that the Atmosphere Ocean General Circulation Models are not able to explain the post-1970 temperature increase by natural forcing was interpreted as proof that it was caused by humans. It is more logical to admit that the models are not yet good enough to capture natural climate variability (how much or how little do we understand aerosol and clouds,and ocean circulation?), even though we can all agree that part of theobserved post-1970 warming is due to the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Thus, two of the three pillars of the global warming and carbon dioxide paradigm are open to reinvestigation.The damage has been done. The public trust in climate science has been eroded. At least a part of the IPCC 2007 report has been put in question. We cannot blame it on a few irresponsible individuals. The entire esteemed climate research community has to take responsibility. Yes, there always will be a few deniers and obstructionists.

So what comes next? Let us stop making unjustified claims and exaggerated projections about the future even if the editors of some eminent journals are just waiting to publish them. Let us admit that our understanding of the climate is less perfect than we have tried to make the public believe. Let us drastically modify or temporarily discontinue the IPCC. Let us get back to work.

Let us encourage students to think their own thoughts instead of forcing them to parrot the IPCC conclusions. Let us open the doors of universities, of NCAR, NASA and other research institutions (and funding agencies) to faculty members and researchers who might disagree with the current paradigm of carbon dioxide.

Only open discussion and intense searching of all possibilities will let us regain the public’s trust and move forward.

Regards,

Petr Chylek

See letter here.

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Investigate data behind global-warming theory
Charles Battig Albemarle County Letter in the Daily Progress here

The climate science community has been shaken by the posting of thousands of e-mails and internal documents originating from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, England. The inconvenient truths of the workings of this science community cast doubt on the integrity of some promoting catastrophic climate change.

Documents show a small cabal of climate scientists actively suppressed dissenting views, denied opposing views publication in journals they control and fostered manipulation of temperature data to conform to global warming dogma.

As a consequence, the Internet has multiple entries on the fallout from “climategate” at the Climate Research Unit, which is principal advisor to the United Nations’ Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change, to the U.S. Goddard Institute for Space Studies and to Al Gore’s climate advisor, James Hansen. Additionally, articles and editorials about the disclosures have appeared in the American and European press.

Charlottesville readers will recognize in these diverse documents two climatologists, formerly associated with the University of Virginia: professor Patrick Michaels and professor Michael Mann.

The alarmists’ basic premise for the need to combat climate change is based on:

The temperature record of the past 150 years.

The assumption that rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel usage have caused an unusual rise in global temperatures.

Climate computer models masquerading as reliable predictors of future global climate states. The veracity of the temperature record is now in doubt; some claimed global temperature rises may have been fabricated and cooling trends suppressed.

Hosting the Copenhagen Climate Change conference, the Danish government, the IPCC and other climate change alarmists have been promoting this meeting as an essential, world-saving followup to the original Kyoto treaty. It is proclaimed that failure to impose a new, worldwide energy rationing system and wealth redistribution scheme will provoke a global climate meltdown. A global government is promoted to administer the redistribution of wealth and energy. Government, industry, research institutions and the financial community are giddy with the prospects of a trillion-dollar-a-year funding source. Our own government is pushing “cap and trade” as necessary because “the science is settled.”

There may be ample reason now to believe there is “something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

The scientific community and the public deserve a full and open investigation of the data behind the conclusions made to support the global-warming theory.

Reducing Greenhouse Gases May Not Be Enough to Slow Climate Change according to Georgia Tech press release here.

Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone publishes a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.

See larger image here.

According to Stone’s paper, as the international community meets in Copenhagen in December to develop a new framework for responding to climate change, policymakers need to give serious consideration to broadening the range of management strategies beyond greenhouse gas reductions alone.

“Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases,” said Stone.  “Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole - a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change.  As a result, emissions reduction programs - like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress - may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming.”

According to Stone’s research, slowing the rate of forest loss around the world, and regenerating forests where lost, could significantly slow the pace of global warming.

“Treaty negotiators should formally recognize land use change as a key driver of warming,” said Stone.  “The role of land use in global warming is the most important climate-related story that has not been widely covered in the media.”

Stone recommends slowing what he terms the “green loss effect” through the planting of millions of trees in urbanized areas and through the protection and regeneration of global forests outside of urbanized regions.  Forested areas provide the combined benefits of directly cooling the atmosphere and of absorbing greenhouse gases, leading to additional cooling.  Green architecture in cities, including green roofs and more highly reflective construction materials, would further contribute to a slowing of warming rates.  Stone envisions local and state governments taking the lead in addressing the land use drivers of climate change, while the federal government takes the lead in implementing carbon reduction initiatives, like cap and trade programs.

“As we look to address the climate change issue from a land use perspective, there is a huge opportunity for local and state governments,” said Stone.  “Presently, local government capacity is largely unharnessed in climate management structures under consideration by the U.S. Congress.  Yet local governments possess extensive powers to manage the land use activities in both the urban and rural areas.”

The Environmental Science and Technology article is available here.

For more on land use change in the USA, see this NASA resource.

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See response by Roger Pielke Sr. to the kneejerk reaction of Gavin Schmidt, Real Climate to Stone’s finding in the post
Comment On The Inaccurate Response By Gavin Schmidt Of Real Climate On The Role of Land Use Change On Temperature Trends

There is a response by Gavin Schmidt on Real Climate with respect to the role of land use change on the attribution of surface air temperature trends [thanks to Charlie Allen for alerting us to it!]. While Gavin has expertise in global climate modeling, his reply illustrates his lack of expertise on the role of landscape processes within the climate system, and, in this example, with respect to the role of land use/land cover change on long temperature trends.

The text from Real Climate is CCPO @258 - you quoted Gavin as saying “Note. global land use effects result in a cooling because the biggest issue is the chopping down of forest (dark) to make cropland (bright)” Well, that’s not actually true. Here’s a press release for a new paper from Georgia Tech, showing how 50% of the warming across the US is due to land use changes.

Original reference for Gavin’s comment was from Edward’s post @95:[Response: A statement in a press release is not a scientific result and the paper referred to does not show this to be true (and in fact I doubt very much that it is true). There are many papers on the global impacts of land cover change - Pondgratz et al is good, and all such papers show that land use at the global scale drives a cooling. - gavin]

The person who prepared the comment (CCPO) clearly understands the science issue better than Gavin Schmidt. I have already documented his lack of expertise in research topics that he comments on at Real Climate and elsewhere in my post Does Gavin Schmidt Understand Boundary Layer Physics?

A Recent paper of ours which document an increase in surface temperatures due to landscape change include: Fall, S., D. Niyogi, A. Gluhovsky, R. A. Pielke Sr., E. Kalnay, and G. Rochon, 2009: Impacts of land use land cover on temperature trends over the continental United States: Assessment using the North American Regional Reanalysis. Int. J. Climatol., DOI: 10.1002/joc.1996

With respect to the study by Stone Jr, Gavin apparently did not even read it before he commented! In the paper, (Stone Jr., Brian, 2009: Land Use As Climate Change Mitigation, Environmental Science and Technology), it is written [emphasis added in bold face font]

“...the mean decadal rate of warming across the urban stations is significantly higher than that of rural stations. Averaged over the full period, the mean decadal rate of warming for urban stations was found to be 0.08C higher than that of rural stations. This average rate of heat island growths i.e., urban warming in excess of the rural trends rises to 0.20C/decade over the most recent 20 years of observation.” and “The increasing divergence between rural and urban temperature trends in U.S. cities highlights the limitationsof a climate policy framework focused on emissions reductions alone. If land use change is the dominant agent of climate forcing at the urban scale, Kyoto-based emissions trading schemes may fail to sufficiently safeguard human health in the most heavily populated regions of the planet. It is important to emphasize, however, that the phrase “urban heat island effect,” much like the phrase “greenhouse effect,” is a misnomer…The physical mechanisms underlying warming trends in cities are limited neither to urban areas nor to small geographic regions. Rather, changes in surface moisture and energy balances accompanying land conversion processes across large swaths of the planet’s land area are giving rise to changes in climate that may be of the same order of magnitude as changes brought about through the emission of GHGs. As such, the urban heat island effect should be understood to be only the most visible manifestation of a larger phenomenon occurring across multiple geographic scaless a phenomenon better characterized as a “green loss effect” than as something unique to urban areas.”

This reply by Gavin, besides ignoring (e.g. Fall et al 2009) and his trivializing (e.g. Stone Jr 2009) peer reviewed papers that disagree with his perspective, his comment also shows that he has learned little from the exposure of the inappropriate attempt by Phil Jones and colleagues to serve as gatekeepers to climate science issues. Since Gavin Schmidt is not a recognized expert on the role of land use/land cover change, he should have sought a qualified climate scientist to address the comment by CCPO. Instead, he perpetuates the biased and often inaccurate presentation of climate views on Real Climate.