By Anthony Watts

Readers will recall that I launched a volley against former Senator Tim Wirth regarding his recent statement where he wants to “come after” skeptics. I also made him a standing offer to attend the upcoming ICCC6 conference, offering up my 15 minutes to him to address the conference. You can read that essay Bring it, Mr. Wirth - a challenge here.

This morning, doing some web searching to see if the challenge had been picked up elsewhere, I ran across this gobsmacking quote from Wirth in 1993. It was then that I realized that the former Senator is mentally incapable of addressing the issue of global warming on a factual level, and there would never be a response to my challenge and offer.

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” - Timothy Wirth quoted in Science Under Siege by Michael Fumento, 1993

That’s true religion. Wirth’s quote makes Dr. Phil Jones look almost reasonable by comparison.

When asked by Warwick Hughes for this data, Dr. Jones famously replied:

“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

More wisdom from Wirth here Post.

By Rex Murphy

One of the disturbing practices revealed by the great cache of emails out of the University of East Anglia - the so-called Climategate emails - was the attempted shortcutting or corruption of the oh-so precious peer-review process. The emails contained clear declarations of how the grand viziers of climate science would lean on journals and reporters to make sure certain critics did not get the validation, the laying on of peer-reviewed hands, so critical to full participation in the great climate debate. This was most succinctly expressed by the beautiful quote from Dr. Phil Jones of East Anglia that, “We will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what peer-review literature is.”

Much of what the world bizarrely allows to be called climate ‘science’ is a closet-game, an in-group referring to and reinforcing its own members. The insiders keep out those seen as interlopers and critics, vilify dissenters and labour to maintain a proprietary hold on the entire vast subject. It has been described very precisely as a “climate-assessment oligarchy.” Less examined, or certainly less known to the general public, is how this in-group loops around itself. How the outside advocates buttress the inside scientists, and even - this is particularly noxious - how the outside advocates, the non-scientists, themselves become inside authorities.

It’s the perfect propaganda circle. Advocates find themselves in government offices, or on panels appointed by politicians disposed towards the hyper-alarmism of global warming. On the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) boards and panels, like seeks out like. And when the IPCC issues one of its state-of-the-global-warming-world reports, legions of environmentalists, and their maddeningly sympathetic and uninquisitive friends in most of the press, shout out the latest dire warnings as if they were coming from the very mouth of Disinterested Science itself.

An early and particularly graphic illustration of this vicious circle came when the IPCC 2007 report warned that most the great Himalayan glaciers would melt by the year 2035. Not only was the claim of a massive melt the very height of ignorant nonsense - the sun would have to drop on the Earth to provoke a melt of this proportion - it was also plucked from a seven-year-old publication of the ever busy World Wildlife Federation (WWF). As the Times of London put it, the claim itself was “inherently ludicrous” culled from a “campaigning report” rather than “an academic paper,” was not “subject of any scientific review” and despite all these shortcomings became “a key source for the IPCC [for] the section on the Himalayas.”

A scare report, seven years old, from the an environmental advocacy group, became the key document for a major report released under the authority of the IPCC, the world’s best and brightest global warming minds. Sir Isaac Newton would be so proud.

Now we have an even more telling illustration of this same sad, vicious circle. It was first reported on by Steven McIntyre on his blog, Climate Audit (and was run on the FP Comment page of Friday’s National Post). McIntyre revealed that the IPCC used a Greenpeace campaigner to write a key part of its report on renewable energy and to make the astonishing claim that “close to 80% of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies.” He further revealed that the claim arose from a “joint publication of Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC).” And it turns out that while working for the IPCC, the Greenpeace campaigner approvingly cited a Greenpeace report that he himself was the lead author of. He peer-reviewed himself.

A report on renewables, by the Renewable Energy Council of Europe, and Greenpeace, peer-reviewd by the man who wrote it. All they need add is a citation from the Suzuki Foundation and an endorsement from Elizabeth May and “the science will be settled” forever.

This is not just letting the fox into the hen house. This is giving him the keys, passing him the barbeque sauce and pointing his way to the broiler. Or, as McIntyre put it in plainer terms: “A lead author of the IPCC report, and of the hyped 80% scenario, is Sven Teske of Greenpeace International, whose official contribution is essentially based on a Greenpeace report cooked up with Europe’s renewable energy industry.”

Kind people may put this down to pure sloppiness on the part of the IPCC. Coming after its disastrous handling of the Himalayan glacier melt, however, it looks to me more like deliberate mischief. The IPCC cannot be that stupid by chance. Why these stories, and others of comparable magnitude, have not worked their way into the consciousness of the world’s politicians despite such clear demonstrations of the IPCC’s ramshackle processes is a mystery. But thanks to Steve McIntyre and others of near-equal courage, standing firm against the rage and mockery of the alarmist warming establishment, at least some of the IPCC’s dubious and chillingly erroneous practices are revealed.

National Post

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.

James Taylor

“We have been hosting this conference for several years now, and during the course of these conferences we have cordially invited literally dozens of prominent global warming alarmists to participate. When they realize this is a conference where scientists will be allowed to present all points of view, and they will be encouraged to discuss and debate the scientific evidence with each other in an open, transparent, public setting, the alarmists quickly look for the nearest chair to hide under,” said conference coordinator James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute.

“Don’t blame us, and don’t blame global warming, for the rapidly escalating chair crisis. Blame the alarmists who are Bogarting all the chairs to hide under,” Taylor added.

Taylor’s list of alarmists who have rejected his invitation to participate in one or more ICCCs is a virtual Who’s Who of global warming media hounds.

“Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Alan Robock, the list goes on and on,” said Taylor. “They all seem to have some sort of scheduling conflict whenever they have to share the stage with a scientist who will be challenging their evidence.”

“On the other hand,” Taylor reported, “Every time we hold an ICCC, I have to beat off skeptical scientists with a stick. We have had scientists from Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, MIT, NASA, NOAA, etc., come together and present evidence against the alleged global warming crisis. We have invited the Al Gore’s, James Hansen’s, and Michael Mann’s of the world to come show us all where these skeptical scientists are wrong, yet they never seem able to make it.”

“I sure hope we can nevertheless find some remaining chairs for our conference,” said Taylor.

Taylor noted that the event is open to the public and is free of charge for Congressmen, congressional staffers, federal agency officials, and state government officials.

“This really is about investigating and discussing the science in an open, interactive manner,” said Taylor. “Whatever views we may have regarding the global warming debate, this is an opportunity to meet with, listen to, and even challenge the scientists themselves regarding the global warming debate. We challenge our elected officials and agency representatives to show they are considering all the scientific evidence by attending this event. There really is no excuse not to.”

The event is open to the public and the press. Tickets and supplementary information are available.

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.