By Ben Geman - The Hill
President Obama’s top science adviser said there’s a need to “educate” GOP climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill as the White House seeks to advance its green energy agenda.
“It is an education problem. I think we have to educate them,” said John Holdren, who heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in an interview broadcast Sunday. Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, called for deriving 80 percent of U.S. power from “clean” sources by 2035, and funding increased R&D of green electricity and fuels by repealing billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks.
But the effort comes as a substantial number of GOP lawmakers, such as House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Ralph Hall (R-Texas), are questioning climate science.
Read more if you can stomach him here.
Climate Depot note: It is Holdren who desperately needs remedial climate science education! See here and more below:
Scientific Rube?: John Holdren ridiculed for claiming Arctic could be ICE FREE WINTER! Holdren ‘appears to have less scientific competence than most 1st graders’.
Climate Depot’s Round up of Eco-Wacko ‘Science’ Czar John Holdren claims here.
See Holdren’s congressional testimony here in which he tried to defend his prediction of the deaths of 1 billion by 2020.
Source: haunting the library
UN Secretary General, Ban-Ki Moon has launched an astonishing attack on the current economic system of Western-style capitalsim, saying that it was dangerous and outdated in the light of global warming, and calling for a new economic paradigm.
Recent reports have noted that Ban-Ki Moon has said he will take a hands-off approach to global warming, and many have interpreted this to mean that he will leave it to the scientists and national Governments to decide.
But his latest comments, reported in The Guardian, make it clear that instead Ban-Ki Moon is switching from a narrow focus on global warming to a much wider spectrum attack on the current Western style of capitalism generally, on the grounds that it is not environmentally sustainable. The Guardian reports:
The world’s current economic model is an environmental “global suicide pact” that will result in disaster if it isn’t reformed, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, warned today.
Ban said that political and business leaders need to embrace economic innovation in order to save the planet.
“We need a revolution,” he told a panel at the World Economic Forum inDavos, Switzerland, on how best to make the global economy sustainable. “Climate change is also showing us that the old model is more than obsolete.”
He called the current economic model a recipe for “national disaster” and said: “We are running out of time. Time to tackle climate change, time to ensure sustainable...growth.” The Guardian revealed yesterday that Ban is ending his hands-on efforts to reach a global climate deal through UN negotiations, and move to focus on a broader sustainability agenda.
Guardian. Ban-Ki Moon: World’s Economic Model is ‘Environmental Suicide’
The Indonesian President condemned suggestions that his nation and other under-developed countries should stop developing and stay where they are to help protect the environment. Bill Gates, a father of three children, defended this, and suggested that limiting the number of children would be a better way to limit carbon emissions:
This view was partly shared by Gates, who said that “you cannot have a just world by telling people to use less energy than the average European”. One way to cap the world’s consumption and carbon emissions would be to invest in family planning said Gates, who has invested much of his fortune in health projects in the developing world.
The panel at which Ban-Ki Moon made his attack on capitalism was chaired by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times who said he hoped that by next year he would start to see some action on what was being discussed.
Read more here.
By John O’Sullivan, Suite101
The University of East Anglia’s inquiry into the Climategate scandal finds British scientists were “subjective” and tree ring data was unreliable.
After a three-week deliberation the Oxburgh Panel concluded that climate scientists at the university’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), at the centre of the climate data fraud controversy, had not committed intentional data fraud. However, the findings of the Information Commissioner’s Office had already affirmed that Freedom of Information (FOIA) laws had been broken by the unit.
The panel of five ‘independent’ investigators concluded that the CRU’s climate data results were “subjective” and that tree ring growth, used as a climate proxy for older Earth temperatures, was “influenced by many factors of which temperature is only one”.
Accusations of Conflict of Interest
The committee examined 11 published articles written by CRU authors and produced a short five-page report after interviewing employees of CRU. No other evidence was admitted. Britain’s Climatic Research Unit receives most of its money from both by the British government and prominent energy companies including British Petroleum, Shell and KFA Germany (Nuclear).
Lord Ron Oxburgh, in charge of the Climategate committee was accused of failing to disclose an alleged conflict of interest, according to the sender of the unlawfully denied Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests that precipitated the inquiry, Canadian statistician, Steve McIntyre.
As well as being chairman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and the wind energy company Falck Renewables, McIntyre revealed Oxburgh had at least one other conflict of interest; he is UK Vice Chair of Globe International. McIntyre describes Globe International as an “off-balance sheet “private company” funded predominantly by governments and NGOs. It brings legislators together - with a particular concern to the advancement of climate change legislation “(Climate Audit, Mar 24, 2010).
Prior to his appointment as committee chief, Oxburgh went on record stating, “What we don’t want to see is in two years’ time the government simply becoming bored with climate change after we’ve invested a lot of our shareholders’ money” (The Guardian, June 15, 2005).
The Divergence Problem Undermines Past Climate Records
In the UK’s Daily Telegraph (April 17, 2010) Christopher Booker noted, “If there was anything in the CRU’s record which a proper inquiry should have addressed...was the device used by the CRU to get round the fact that its tree-ring data hopelessly failed to show the result the warmist establishment wanted.”
Oxburgh is criticized for not thoroughly reviewing the disputed temperature reconstructions from tree ring data much maligned by climate sceptics for their so called ‘divergence problem.’
Indeed, respected independent climate analysts such as Steve McIntyre (see below) argues that the CRU tree ring samples have been systematically cherry-picked to make past temperatures appear artificially cooler than they were. McIntyre repeatedly condemns those results from Yamal as determined by Keith Briffa on his blog, Climate Audit.
The Oxburgh committee conceded that it was “regrettable” that common reliance had been placed upon such tree ring data. They further agreed with sceptics that there was a notable “discrepancy” from actual thermometer readings in modern comparisons with tree rings rendering them questionable as reliable proxies.
Conspicuously, despite the British government affirming the law had been broken, Oxburgh made no comment on the unlawful refusal of CRU climate scientists to comply with Freedom of Information (FIOA) requests from the Canadian statistician, Steve McIntyre.
‘Trick’ to ‘Hide the Decline’
The much criticized ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ was admitted to in the leaked CRU email written by Professor Phil Jones. Jones referred to the ‘trick’ of American climate professor, Michael Mann of Penn. State University. This involved the splicing of the actual temperature record over the declining tree ring record that hid the unreliablity of such tree ring data to discern past temperatures.
Mann’s work was subsequently discredited in an independent peer-reviewed statistical audit by McIntyre and Professor Ross McKitrick (2003).
Because the ‘trick’ was concealed in publication of tree ring graphs by the discredited IPCC in its the Third and Fourth Reports, this alleged fraudulent deceit misled many observers.
Oxburgh criticized the CRU’s approach to the temperature record as being “subjective.” To affirm the sceptic argument that cherry-picking of data had occurred the committee summed it up as, “From our perspective it seems that the CRU sins were of omission rather than commission.”
Ultimately, climate scientists were found out as poor data handlers and statisticians, as Oxburgh concludes, “it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.”
Climate Scientist Have Inadequate Statistical Skills
Thus it may be inferred that the committee affirms that the CRU has omitted to apply statistical due diligence because of their subjective approach and that the professional standards of these climate scientists require remedial revue.
The question that the committee left unanswered is; if tree rings were proven so inadequate in reflecting 20th-century temperatures, why should they be relied on to reflect temperatures in earlier centuries?
No Documents Retained By Oxburgh Inquiry
On July 4, 2010, climate analyst Steve McIntryre received a reply from Lord Oxburgh in response to McIntryre’s request for access to committee documents used in the review. Oxburgh replied that his investigation was conducted with, “a minimum of formality” so that “I am afraid that I am not able to be very helpful as none of the documents about which you inquire exists.”
References:
‘Report of the International Panel set up by the University of East Anglia to examine the research of the Climatic Research Unit,’ Oxburgh et al. (April 12, 2010), University of East Anglia, UK (accessed online April 16, 2010)
‘Climategate: a scandal that won’t go away,’ Booker, Christopher, Daily Telegraph, London (published and accessed online: April 17, 2010)
Gray, Louise, ‘Climategate’ scientists criticised for not using best statistical tools,’ (April 14, 2010) Daily Telegraph, London, UK
‘The boat is sinking’ The Guardian, London (June 15, 2005); accessed online: April 16, 2010.
McIntyre, S. and McKitrick, R., (2003), “Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series” Energy and Environment Vol. 14, pp. 751–771.
McIntyre, S. ‘Oxburgh Refuses to Answer’ (June 4, 2010); Climate Audit website ( accessed: June 7, 2010).
Read more here.