An anonymous adage advises, ‘There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. Just don’t respond with encores.” Break your stick in ice hockey and drop it immediately or a penalty is assessed because continued use can cause serious damage (Rule 10.3). Apparently this rule doesn’t apply in climate science where a few scientists continue to use a broken “hockey stick” and cause serious damage. Facts proving humans are not causing global warming are not enough to stop the political juggernaut. Perhaps exposure of collusion among a small group of self-proclaimed climate scientists who continue to play with a broken stick will stop the madness forcing destructive economic policies.

What Was The Climate Hockey Stick?
It was warmer 1000 years ago than in the late 20th century. Existence of this Medieval Warm Period (MWP) contradicted the claim that post-industrial human CO2 was causing unprecedented warming. As Thomas Huxley said, “The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” Solution? Eliminate the fact. Professor Deming reported receiving an email that said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” Deming didn’t name the sender, but we now know it was Jonathan Overpeck, a lead author of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports.

Mann, Bradley and Hughes tried to achieve Overpeck’s objective with a 1998 (MBH98) “peer reviewed” paper including the “hockey stick” graph. The graph dominated the 2001 IPCC Report especially the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) - the part the media cover. Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (MM) used the standard technique of reproducible results to expose the serious flaws in the research. As Bishop Hill explained, “He (McIntyre) was able to demonstrate that the way they had extracted the temperature signal from the tree ring records was biased so as to choose hockey-stick shaped graphs in preference to other shapes. He also showed that the appearance of the graph was due solely to the use of an estimate of historic temperatures based on tree rings from bristlecone pines, a species that was known to be problematic for this kind of reconstruction."(Source)

Figure 1 shows the MBH98 graph (red line) against MM’s graph (blue line) with my superimposition of a hockey stick.

Figure 1: Return of the MWP. Source: After McIntyre and McKitrick modified by Ball

Some attempted to defend the hockey stick. Two researchers, Caspar Amman and Eugene Whelan, claimed confirmation of MBH98 in two papers, through the unusual tactic of a press release, as Hill explained. More problematic was their connection with Mann identified in the Wegman Report.

Wegman: Independent Proof of the Broken Stick and More
Chairman of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Chairman of the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigations were interested in determining the validity of McIntyre’s claims. An independent committee chaired by Professor Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University found in favor of McIntyre. “In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling.” and, “Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.” This leaves no doubt about the science; however, Wegman identified a larger problem about control of climate science. “In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him.” Wegman confirmed my suspicion that excessive focus on “peer review” studies was because a group had control of the process. “One of the interesting questions associated with the ‘hockey stick controversy’ are the relationships among the authors and consequently how confident one can be in the peer review process. In particular, if there is a tight relationship among the authors and there are not a large number of individuals engaged in a particular topic area, then one may suspect that the peer review process does not fully vet papers before they are published.” The fact MBH98, was peer reviewed is partial proof. Continued publication of peer-reviewed papers using hockey stick methodology suggests the peer review process is being circumvented.

Wegman identified those at the core of the group; “However, it is immediately clear that the Mann, Rutherford, Jones, Osborn, Briffa, Bradley and Hughes form a clique, each interacting with all of the others. A clique is a fully connected subgraph, meaning everyone in the clique interacts with every one else in the clique.” In comprehensive charts he identified all the scientists involved, including Amman and Wahl. Wegman wrote, “We were especially struck by Dr. Mann’s insistence that the code he developed was his intellectual property and that he could legally hold it personally without disclosing it to peers.” Both Mann and Jones have refused to disclose how their results were obtained. (Source)

Many of those named are involved in the IPCC Reports prompting Wegman to write of the dangers. “Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are at stake, academic work should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review. It is especially the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the academic papers.” The influential part of IPCC Reports, the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), is replete with broad unsubstantiated statements. It receives all the media attention. Wegman writes, “Making conclusive statements without specific findings with regard to atmospheric forcings suggests a lack of scientific rigor and possibly an agenda.” For this group of climate scientists the agenda is likely either career promotion, a political objective, or both. It isn’t science because they keep repeating their mistakes.

They’re Still Playing With a Broken Stick
One broken hockey stick is a mistake; repetition is an agenda. The hockey stick returned in the 2007 Fourth IPCC Report. McIntyre notes, “I wasn’t sure that the Hockey Team would even make the SPM (Summary for Policymakers) this time, but here they are in the 2nd paragraph. The Team stayed in the spotlight.” It didn’t appear as a graph in the SPM, but Chapter 6 (lead co-author Jonathan Overpeck) had a modified hockey stick graph and Mann’s discredited work is in the bibliography. Wegman anticipated this denial, “Generally speaking, the paleoclimatology community has not recognized the validity of the MM05 papers and has tended (to) dismiss their results as being developed by biased amateurs.” They lowered the profile, but continued to use the discredited method.

The most recent example appeared in a September, 2009 issue of Science under the title, ”Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling.” The article claims arctic temperatures are the warmest they’ve been in 2000 years. Lead author is D.S. Kaufman, secondary authors include other familiar “hockey stick” names: David P. Schneider, Nicholas P. McKay, Caspar M. Ammann, Raymond S. Bradley, Keith R. Briffa, Gifford H. Miller, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Jonathan T. Overpeck, and Bo M. Vinther,

Shortly after publication McIntyre identified the Mann methodologies. “The most cursory examination of Kaufman et al shows the usual problem of picking proxies ex post: McIntyre explains “ex post” as follows, The Team selects series that go up in the 20th century and discards (sic) ones that don’t. This sort of ex-post correlation picking generates HS’s from random data,”. (Climateaudit.org)

McIntyre is restrained in his comments, a style he has maintained throughout these exposures. It’s reasonable for one incident because it may be a mistake, but repetition makes it unreasonable because it compounds the errors and has deeper implications. Repetition in the media confers truth, it doesn’t in science, but it does underline the political nature of the activities.

But inconvenient facts keep appearing. For example, real data destroys the claim of a hockey stick in 20th century Arctic temperatures. The questions, “What sudden recent warming?” and “What Hockey Stick?” accompany Figure 2.

How Has This Happened?
Boston College Professor Philip Altbach provides one reason why they’ve succeeded.”Corruption in higher education is not a topic much discussed in academic circles. Academic institutions see themselves as somehow above the baser motivations and lower instincts of other elements of society. And society generally believes that universities are somehow special institutions imbued with the virtues of integrity.”

Concern about this in the UK led to the “UK Panel for Research Integrity”. The objective: “A new watchdog to promote research integrity was launched this week with a scathing attack on the “good chaps” network and general complacency in universities that has allowed fraud and misconduct to gain a foothold in the UK academic sector.” (Source).

Playing with a broken ice hockey stick is a minor penalty. A lifetime ban is required when scientists play repeatedly with broken research hockey sticks, especially when they drive unnecessary, devastating economic and energy policies and provide false academic justifications for politicians. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is an anonymous but pungent truism. Read full story and see more here.

Garth Paltridge was a chief research scientist with the CSIRO’s division of atmospheric research before becoming the director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and chief executive of the Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre. His latest sceptical contribution to the debate on the dangers of carbon dioxide is a book, endearingly titled The Climate Caper.

Paltridge gives a crisp summary of the physics and economics of climate change, but I want to focus here on his account of the new green religion. “Perhaps the most interesting question in all this business is how it can be that the scientific community has become so over-the-top in support of its own propaganda about the seriousness and certainty of upcoming drastic climate change. Scientists after all are supposed to be unbiased in their assessment of a problem and are expected to tell it as it is. Over the centuries they have built up the capital of their reputation on just that supposition. And for the last couple of decades they have put that capital very publicly on the line in support of a cause which, to say the least, is overhung by an enormous amount of doubt. So how is it that the rest of the scientific community, uncomfortable as it is with both the science of global warming and the way its politics is being played, continues to let the reputation of science in general be put at considerable risk because of the way the dangers of climate change are being vastly oversold?”

Part of the answer lies in the way institutions find ways to silence their employees. Paltridge himself was involved in setting up the Antarctic research centre in the early 90s with the CSIRO. As he recalls: “I made the error at the time of mentioning in a media interview—reported extensively in The Australian on a slow Easter Sunday—that there were still lots of doubts about the disaster potential of global warming. Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made clear to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of forming the new centre.” The CSIRO, it turned out, was in the process of trying to extract many millions of dollars for further climate research at the time.

Almost the only scientists at liberty to speak their minds are retirees, such as William Kininmonth and Paltridge himself. He gives an example, Brian Tucker, a former chief of CSIRO’s Atmospheric Research Division. Tucker was “a specialist in numerical climate modelling and therefore knew better than most where the bodies are buried in the climate change game. He kept remarkably quiet about his worries on the matter. Then he retired, and for four or five years thereafter was the bane of the global warming establishment because of his very public stance against many of its sacred cows.” Eventually he was marginalised by being described as “one of the usual suspects, who was now out of date and in any event was probably on the payroll of industry”.

Another eye-opener is the story of how a committee of the Australian Academy of Science was dissuaded from its plans to respond to the Garnaut Report. Paltridge says: “While the committee was aware of all the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ of 100-year prediction of rainfall, it was aware too of the delicacy of saying so in an Academy response. But if indeed there is something of the order of a 50-50 chance that the forecasts supplied to Garnaut were nonsense, then it seems reasonable that the fact should be made known in plain English ...” Academy members met Garnaut and “rumour has it that sometime during the meeting Professor Garnaut became very sympathetic to the need for vast new resources to address the need for basic research ... In the end it seems that the idea of a response to the Garnaut Report was dropped altogether.”

Eventually the academy came out with a statement of priorities for climate research, which contained a brief reference to the fact that the rainfall projections Garnaut relied on were problematical, but most of the public were none the wiser.

Paltridge says that behind the climate change debate there are two basic truths seldom articulated. “The first is that the scientists pushing the seriousness of global warming are perfectly well aware of the great uncertainty attached to their cause. The difficulty for them is to ensure that the lip service paid to uncertainty is enough to convince governments of the need to continue research funding, but is not enough to cast real doubt on the case for action. The paths of public comment and official advice on the matter have to be trodden very carefully. The second basic truth is that there is a belief among scientific ‘global warmers’ that they are an under-funded minority among a sea of wicked sceptics who are extensively funded by industry and close to Satan. The difficulty for them is to maintain a belief in their own minority status while insisting in public that the sceptics, at least among the ranks of the scientifically literate, are very few.”

The Royal Society did its own reputation a disservice by sending a letter to Exxon-Mobil oil corporation declaring an anathema on dissident climate research. It said: “To be still producing information that misleads people about climate change is unhelpful. The next IPCC report should give the people the final push they need to take action and we can’t have people trying to undermine it.”

Paltridge says: “The staggering thing is that the society, which in other circumstances would be the first to defend the cause of free inquiry ... seemed not to be able to hear what it was saying.” Read full story here.

You couldn’t make it up even if you tried:

One day Energy Secretary Ed Milliband sets out his proposed expansion of the U.K.’s wind power-led alternative energy revolution; the next day, Vestas, the U.K.’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, shuts down a big part of its British operations citing “low demand” and public opposition to onshore wind farms.

Just bad luck or bad PR? Not quite. Simply another blatant example of the ongoing “disconnect” over energy between those suffering from WTS (Wishful Thinker Syndrome) and the hydrocarbon-fueled present and future energy realities.

In 2006, Germany’s Angela Merkel was hailed as the “Green Chancellor” for promising to rid her country of coal and nuclear power in its bid to give a clean energy “world lead.” Three years on and Merkel’s government actively supports the construction of a new generation of 26 coal-fired power plants as well as keeping Germany’s nuclear power stations open. In addition she wants special protection for German heavy industry via free cap-and-trade permits. A powerful German industry, the need to remain competitive and a desire to work with the lights on all combined to help Ms. Merkel “reconnect.”

In 2008, Italy, to everyone’s surprise, reversed its decades-long “no nuclear power stations” policy in the interest of its power needs. And Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, along with leaders from Austria, Poland and a rolling bandwagon of other countries, also now demands protection for its heavy industry when it comes time to handing out free cap-and-trade permits.

Across in the U.K., the government has been wriggling out of its “clean energy” commitments for years as the country inches toward building an urgently needed new generation of coal-fired power plants. To help critics swallow the bitter pill of yet more coal usage, the U.K. government is subsidizing “clean coal” technology strategies via CCS (carbon capture sequestration). But adding $1 billion to the cost of each plant for a hugely speculative unproven technology has already created a politically paralyzing impasse in the U.K. energy strategy.

The specter of the U.K. facing “South African-style power cuts” and being plunged into “Third World darkness” now looms. Hence the U.K.’s grand wind power plan. Unfortunately, last December, the British Wind Energy Association was forced to scale down its calculation of harmful CO2 emissions “displaced” from 860 to 430 grams for every kilowatt hour of electricity produced.

In fact, with fewer than 2,400 wind turbines in operation across Britain currently, the U.K. would still require a further 100,000 to meet its targets. Plenty of scope for massive wind turbine growth, we might think. So why the Vestas pullout?

Not that Eurocrats are easily deflated by wind power facts on the ground. Speaking at a key European wind power conference in March 2009, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs claimed:

“Wind energy can replace a large proportion of the polluting and finite fuels we currently rely on. It makes good sense to invest in indigenous sources of power, which hedge against unpredictable fossil fuel prices and in which Europe has a real competitive advantage.” He added: “Wind energy is Europe’s contribution to peace, progress and prosperity.”

Mr. Piebalgs’ claims entirely epitomize the energy disconnect. As University of Toronto law professor Michael J. Trebilcock has shown, wind power is a complete disaster with the much-vaunted “Danish green energy miracle” turning out to be a well-worn myth in an industry that would blow out tomorrow without ongoing and massive public subsidy. And all this is for an energy source that will, in the next few decades, provide only a tiny amount of the world’s power.

“Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse,” the U.K.’s Prince of Wales ruminates, adding that “the age of convenience is over.” As international columnist Mark Steyn comments, “The Prince then got in his limo and was driven to his other palace.”

Today, the Obama White House is recycling all the same European political energy rhetoric so familiar to Europeans. Yet, the U.S. has its own instructive case study. One day billionaire T. Boone Pickens has a Grand Wind Plan for Texas, with further plans to forest the nation with turbines “from Canada to Mexico.” The next, T. Boone drops his wind plan in favor of .. . a hydrocarbon (natural gas) solution instead.

As we have seen, however, national leaders will ultimately refuse to impoverish their industries even to “save the planet.” The still-"disconnected" flower-power generation and its idealistic offspring would do well to grasp that the energy future is not green. It is hydrocarbon, and will continue to be for another century at least. Perhaps it’s just that we have yet to learn a language they’ll understand? Maybe we should run the energy stats past them one more time, make a peace V-sign and (gently) ask: “Reconnected yet, man?”

Economides is editor-in-chief and Glover is Europe associate editor of the Energy Tribune.

Climate Depot’s Editor’s Note: The Washington Post’s Andrew Freedman has his hands full. After declaring on September 1, 2009, that “increasing climate change skepticism among the public is troubling” because “it flies in the face of most of the scientific evidence,” Freedman now faces a fellow Washington Post “Capital Weather Gang” member—Meteorologist Matt Rogers - who is openly rebelling from Freedman’s stated climate views. Just days after Freedman’s public feud with Climate Depot over climate science, the Washington Post’s Rogers declared his strong climate skepticism on the paper’s
“Capital Weather Gang” site on September 10, 2009, titled “A Skeptical Take on Global Warming.”

Freedman had attacked Climate Depot as being “anti-science and anti-science journalism.” But after two lengthy rebuttals from Climate Depot, Freedman threw in the towel and refused to defend his climate views any further. Freedman appears so afraid of defending his global warming assertions, that he declined a TV news show’s offer to a one-on-one debate with Climate Depot’s executive editor (me, Marc Morano). Freedman refused to debate on Clean Skies TV, even though I instantly agreed to the debate offer. Freedman instead demanded to appear on the TV show separately on a completely different day than my appearance. (Sadly, most --but not all—global warming fear promoters duck scientific debates. See: Morano debates former Clinton Official Romm - April 6, 2009)

Freedman had written that he is so convinced of the alleged “consensus” about man-made global warming fears that he declared not acting to prevent a climate catastrophe “would be a stunning act of defiance against the climate science community that has firmly concluded that mankind is disrupting the climate system.” [See: 1) Shock: Wash. Post Blames Obama For Failure of Global Warming Movement! President’s ‘mistakes may cost the planet dearly’ - September 1, 2009 2) - Wash. Post Fires Back: Accuses Climate Depot of having ‘an anti-science and anti-science journalism agenda!‘—Climate Depot Responds - September 2, 2009 - 3) World-Wide Reaction to Climate Depot’s Public Climate Clash with the Washington Post - September 4, 2009 ] But it now appears that instead of attacking Climate Depot for its reporting on the latest climate science, Freedman will be forced to respond to his own “Weather Gang” team members. End Editor’s Note.]

Wash. Post’s Own Meteorologist Counters Paper’s Claims! ‘I wince when hearing...science is ‘settled’—Climate ‘hysteria’ may be ‘another bubble waiting to burst’ - September 10, 2009

Washington Post Meteorologist Matt Rogers, co-founder of the Commodity Weather Group, LLC, and previously Director of Weather for MDA EarthSat Weather, referenced Freedman’s recent assertions about the man-made global warming issue being “settled.” “I respect Andrew Freedman and his beliefs. We have had a number of discussions both publicly and privately regarding our differing viewpoints, and he has been nothing but respectful and professional,” Rogers wrote on September 10, 2009.

Key Excerpts from Washington Post Meteorologist Matt Rogers: There are numerous reasons why I question the consensus view on human-induced climate change covered extensively on this blog by Andrew Freedman. [...] Several times during debates individuals have told me I should not question the “settled science” due to the moral imperative of “saving the planet”. As with a religious debate, I’m told that my disagreement means I do not “care enough” and even if correct, I should not question the science. This frightens me. [...] My belief is that they are over-estimating anthropogenic (human) forcing influences and under-estimating natural variability (like the current cold-phase Pacific Decadal Oscillation and solar cycles) [...] To be blunt, the computer models that policy-makers are using to make key decisions failed to collectively inform us of the flat global land-sea temperatures seen in the 2000s. [...] The argument that the air we currently exhale is a bona fide pollutant due to potential impacts on climate change flummoxes me. CO2 is also plant food. [...] As a meteorologist, verification is very important for guiding my work and improving future forecasts. The verification for global warming is struggling. Three of four major datasets that track global estimates show 1998 as the warmest year on record with temperatures flat or falling since then. Even climate change researchers now admit that global temperature has been flat since that peak. [...] The coincident timing of major solar minimums with cooler global temperatures (such as during the Little Ice Age) suggests that maybe the sun is underestimated as a component for influencing climate. [...] Indeed, recent research has suggested the solar factor is underestimated (here and here). Perhaps one day, we’ll have a different version of James Carville’s famous political quote...something like “It’s the sun, stupid!” [...] Does climate change hysteria represent another bubble waiting to burst? From the perspective of the alarmism and the saturation of the message, the answer could be yes. [...] I believe that predictions of human-caused climate change will continue to be overdone, and we’ll discover that natural factors are equally and sometimes even more important.

To read Washington Post “Capital Weather Gang” Meteorologist Matt Roger’s complete 10 point essay on why he rejects man-made climate fears. Go here.

Good for you Matt. There is at least one member with climate sense on the gang after all.

Martin Hertzberg 2009, “Earth’s radiative equilibrium in the solar irradiance”, Energy & Environment v.20 no.1&2, pp.85-96 (Special double-issue: Natural drivers of weather and climate, 278p.)

“Many interacting regions, both homogeneous and heterogeneous, are involved in the complex radiative balance. Unverified models do not realistically represent that balance, and it would be absurd to base public policy decisions on them.

“… the controlling factor in determining the average temperature of the Earth is its absorptivity to emissivity ratio.

Even for those portions of Earth that are not covered with clouds, the assumption that the ocean surface, land surfaces, or ice and snow cover would all have blackbody emissivities of unity, is unreasonable.

It is certainly true that in the absence of an atmosphere, temperatures would drop drastically at night as the darkened portions of Earth lost infrared energy by radiation to Space; however, with all the incoming solar radiation being concentrated on the daytime half of the surface, daytime temperatures would rise as drastically as the night time temperatures would fall.

If the near-surface air temperature is not representative, is it realistically possible to measure the average temperature of the entire mass of absorbing and emitting entities with sufficient accuracy to make a meaningful comparison between the data and the predictions?

How high in altitude should one go in the atmosphere to include it all?

Similarly, how deep in the liquid fluid of the oceans should one go in order to include the mass below the ocean surface that influences the heat and mass transport processes near the ocean surface and in the atmosphere above it?”

“… looking at the problem in depth, it may be more realistic to conclude that its resolution may be unattainable given our limited understanding of the complex processes involved, and the lack of data available for the current thermodynamic state of those entities.

The heat and mass transport from that enormous ocean reservoir to the atmosphere are the dominant factors in determining temperatures and weather conditions over the entire globe.

It is implausible to expect that small changes in the concentration of any minor atmospheric constituent such as carbon dioxide, can significantly influence that radiative equilibrium.

Further quotes by this accomplished research scientist:

“In 1994 I tried to get an analysis of the then prevalent state of climate science published in Nature and Science, but they weren’t interested. I even sent a copy of it with a long letter to Burt Bolin, who was then chair of the IPCC. He replied to the effect that who was I to challenge the decades of work of so many distinguished scientists. He also argued that I was being disrespectful by referring to the some of the theories of the global warming advocates as “catechisms”.  After studying the issue more carefully and reading the well researched papers of the skeptics/realists, I now think that the AGW arguments do not deserve to be referred to as either “theories” or “catechisms”. In reality, they are elaborate hoaxes.”

“I tried explaining to [those] Senators that in order for them to accept the Gore-IPCC-Hansen theory as valid, they will first have to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics!”

Compiled by Hans Schreuder, 7 September 2009