AMS Executive Director Emeritus Kenneth C. Spengler, a vital force in the growth of the AMS after World War II, passed away on January 28th at the age of 94. Dr. Spengler was executive director of the AMS from 1946 to 1988, leading the Society at a time when membership surged from 2,000 to about 10,000. In 1958, he negotiated the acquisition of the current AMS Headquarters building at 45 Beacon Street in Boston. The entire AMS community extends its condolences to Dr. Spengler’s family.
Dr. Spengler was a gentleman scientist and a true leader. He always provided a smiling face and a handshake welcome at conferences and AMS functions. He worked to ensure the society during his tenure focused on science and served all constituent groups. All the societies have abandoned that in recent years in a movement towards advocacy, something that troubled Dr. Spengler and many of the senior members of these societies. I join other current and former AMS members in saying we will truly miss him.
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IPCC Errors Mount, Apparently so does Pachauri
In a China Daily story below they talk about 3 errors possibly being the breaking point for the IPCC report, well the number is increasing daily. Read here how one of the reports used as peer review was generated by Greenpeace. and below how a student’s disseratation and a magazine article from a hiker were used as evidence.
UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent and Rebecca Lefort, UK Telegraph
The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.
The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change. The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.
The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change. The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming. The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.
In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.
However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.
The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps. The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.
It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC’s report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.
This week scientists from around the world leapt to the defence of the IPCC, insisting that despite the errors, which they describe as minor, the majority of the science presented in the IPCC report is sound and its conclusions are unaffected. But some researchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC’s use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature.
Professor Richard Tol, one of the report’s authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: “These are essentially a collection of anecdotes. Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been. There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense.”
The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government’s worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people. The claims about disappearing mountain ice were contained within a table entitled “Selected observed effects due to changes in the cryosphere produced by warming”. It states that reductions in mountain ice have been observed from the loss of ice climbs in the Andes, Alps and in Africa between 1900 and 2000. The report also states that the section is intended to “assess studies that have been published since the TAR (Third Assessment Report) of observed changes and their effects”. But neither the dissertation or the magazine article cited as sources for this information were ever subject to the rigorous scientific review process that research published in scientific journals must undergo.
The magazine article, which was written by Mark Bowen, a climber and author of two books on climate change, appeared in Climbing magazine in 2002. It quoted anecdotal evidence from climbers of retreating glaciers and the loss of ice from climbs since the 1970s. Mr Bowen said: “I am surprised that they have cited an article from a climbing magazine, but there is no reason why anecdotal evidence from climbers should be disregarded as they are spending a great deal of time in places that other people rarely go and so notice the changes.” The dissertation paper, written by professional mountain guide and climate change campaigner Dario-Andri Schworer while he was studying for a geography degree, quotes observations from interviews with around 80 mountain guides in the Bernina region of the Swiss Alps. Experts claim that loss of ice climbs are a poor indicator of a reduction in mountain ice as climbers can knock ice down and damage ice falls with their axes and crampons.
The IPCC has faced growing criticism over the sources it used in its last report after it emerged the panel had used unsubstantiated figures on glacial melting in the Himalayas that were contained within a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report. Read rest of story here.
Icecap Note: Anytime you see a report talking about changes since the 1970s, remember that is before and after the great Pacific Climate shift which resulted in a positive PDO and more El Ninos and ultimately a warm Atlantic (positive AMO). We have reversed the pattern to a cold Pacific and cooling Atlantic that together with a quiet solar quarter century should mean a rapid increase in ice and snow and colder temperatures (which have been observed).
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Bizarroland Continues for IPCC, Pachauri publishes ‘smutty’ romance novel!
By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That
Just when you think things can’t get any more bizarre with the IPCC, having just learned that the IPPC 2007 report used magazine articles for references, head of the IPCC, Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, provides comedy gold. According to the UK Telegraph, he’s just released what they describe as a “smutty” romance novel, Return to Almora laced with steamy sex, lots of sex. Oh, and Shirley MacLaine.
See the good doctor, grinning like a Cheshire cat at his book launch in India on January 10th here.
Icecap note: Sadly there is more truth in Return to Almora than in AR4. As Steve McIntyre on Climate Audit reports it explains why the good love doctor was too busy to check into glaciergate problems last December. As Lubos Motl notes here, perhaps this will qualify Pachauri for a second nobel prize for literature as his book is already #8 for fiction. Recall Pachauri and his IPCC pals already won the nobel prize for science fiction for the AR4.
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Do three errors mean breaking point for IPCC?
By Li Xing (China Daily)
While covering the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, I took a morning away from the main venue to attend a forum of “climate skeptics”.
The speakers presented political, economic, and scientific analyses to counter the series of assessments by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A few of the skeptics went so far as to suggest that the current international drive to tackle global warming would eventually lead the world into some kind of “energy tyranny”. One even showed a video clip of how “energy police” would invade private homes in the American suburbs, unplugging and removing the owners’ microwave ovens, television sets, and other appliances.
I left the forum before the morning session ended. I felt that most of the speakers were too emotional and politically charged to be considered objective.
But I was impressed by the presentation of Dr Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service, who challenged the IPCC findings with his research data.
In the next few days, I talked with several scientists, including Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chair, and asked them about Singer’s data. All of these scientists brushed aside Singer’s arguments, saying that the IPCC’s primary finding is indisputable: “Warming in the climate system is unequivocal”.
I believed the IPCC reports, which summarize the research of some 4,000 scientists, but I had some serious reservations. For one thing, the IPCC reports contained very little data from Chinese researchers. I was told the IPCC refused to consider Chinese data because the Chinese research was not peer-reviewed.
China is not a small country. Its landmass spans several climate zones and includes the roof of the world. I have to wonder how data from China would affect the IPCC’s findings.
Several Chinese scientists who have gone over the IPCC report believe that the IPCC may have overstated the link between global temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere.
In a paper published in the December issue of the Chinese language Earth Science magazine, Ding Zhongli, an established environmental scientist, stated that the current temperatures on earth look normal if global climate changes over the past 10,000 years are considered.
Ding’s paper highlighted the fact that in its policy suggestions, the IPCC offered solutions that would give people in rich countries the right to emit a much higher level of greenhouse gas per capita than people in developing countries. It in effect set limits on the economic growth of developing countries, which will result in furthering the gap between rich and poor countries.”
A series of “climategate” scandals now add more reason to give the IPCC research closer scrutiny.
Last November, hackers revealed that some scientists had favored data which supports the case for “global warming” in order to enhance their grant proposals.
Just last week, the IPCC announced that it “regrets the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures” in a claim that glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by 2035. Instead of coming from a peer-reviewed scientific paper, the statement was sheer speculation, the IPCC conceded.
Then over the weekend, the media revealed that the IPCC had misrepresented an unpublished report, which it said linked climate change with an increase in natural disasters. However, the author of the report, Dr Robert Muir-Wood, clearly stated the opposite: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe loss.” Muir-Wood is not a climatologist, but a researcher in risk management.
I am particularly troubled by the fact that top IPCC officials do not seem to take these revelations seriously. Interviewed by the BBC, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, dismissed the matter as a “human mistake”.
Ancient Chinese considered three a breaking point. They could forgive two errors, but not a third. Now that the IPCC has admitted three “human” errors, isn’t it time scientists gave its work a serious review? Read story here. Icecap Note: It is a lot more than three. In fact the whole IPCC report and AGW movement is based on a house of cards with a lot based on the unproven assumption that the atmosphere’s sensitivity to CO2 is high (proven empirically and by theory not to be the case), that its atmospheric lifetime is centuries (research suggests 5-7 years) and that temperatures have never been as warm as they have been this decade. See the SPPI report and this story on the report by Examiner Environmental Reporter Kirk Myers.
A significant peer-reviewed study by David Frank et al. in NATURE just released refutes the premise of an important IPCC AR4 CO2 Feedback conclusion. As other major claims of the IPCC AR4 (about glaciers, extreme events, the Amazon) crumble under the weight of increasing scrutiny, this important feedback along with earlier challenges to the water vapor and cloud feedback assumptions by Lindzen and Spencer and others in peer review, raise increasing doubt about the importance of CO2 to climate change.
Dr. Frank says: “for every degree Celsius of warming, natural ecosystems tend to release an extra 7.7 parts per million of CO2 to the atmosphere (the full range of their estimate was between 1.7 and 21.4 parts per million).
This stands in sharp contrast to the recent estimates of positive feedback models, which suggest a release of 40 parts per million per degree; the team say with 95% certainty that value is an overestimate.”
David C. Frank, Jan Esper, Christoph C. Raible, Ulf Buntgen, Valerie Trouet, Benjamin Stocker, & Fortunat Joos. Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate. Nature, 2010; 463 (7280): 527 DOI: 10.1038/nature08769. Correspondence to: David C. Frank Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to D.C.F. (Email: david.frank@wsl.ch) at Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zurcherstrasse 111, CH-8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland or the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Zahringerstrasse 25, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
Abstract:
The processes controlling the carbon flux and carbon storage of the atmosphere, ocean and terrestrial biosphere are temperature sensitives and are likely to provide a positive feedback leading to amplified anthropogenic warming. Owing to this feedback, at timescales ranging from interannual to the 20–100-kyr cycles of Earth’s orbital variations, warming of the climate system causes a net release of CO2 into the atmosphere; this in turn amplifies warming. But the magnitude of the climate sensitivity of the global carbon cycle (termed γ ), and thus of its positive feedback strength, is under debate, giving rise to large uncertainties in global warming projections. Here we quantify the median γ as 7.7 p.p.m.v. CO2 per degree C warming, with a likely range of 1.7-21.4 p.p.m.v. CO2 per degree C. Sensitivity experiments exclude significant influence of pre-industrial land-use change on these estimates. Our results, based on the coupling of a probabilistic approach with an ensemble of proxy-based temperature reconstructions and pre-industrial CO2 data from three ice cores, provide robust constraints for γ on the policy-relevant multi-decadal to centennial timescales. By using an ensemble of >200,000 members, quantification of γ is not only improved, but also likelihoods can be assigned, thereby providing a benchmark for future model simulations. Although uncertainties do not at present allow exclusion of γ calculated from any of ten coupled carbon–climate models, we find that γ is about twice as likely to fall in the lowermost than in the uppermost quartile of their range. Our results are incompatibly lower (P < 0.05) than recent pre-industrial empirical estimates of ~40 p.p.m.v. CO2 per degree C (refs 6, 7), and correspondingly suggest ~80% less potential amplification of ongoing global warming.
This study agrees with the Soon/Baliunas study of 2003 (PDF)!
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Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data but escape prosecution
By Ben Webster, Environment Editor, and Jonathan Leake, Times Online
The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny.
The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.
The Information Commissioner’s Office decided that UEA failed in its duties under the Act but said that it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late, The Times has learnt. The ICO is now seeking to change the law to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach.
The stolen e-mails , revealed on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, showed how the university’s Climatic Research Unit attempted to thwart requests for scientific data and other information, and suggest that senior figures at the university were involved in decisions to refuse the requests. It is not known who stole the e-mails.
Professor Phil Jones, the unit’s director, stood down while an inquiry took place. The ICO’s decision could make it difficult for him to resume his post.
Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned that there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated.
In one e-mail, Professor Jones asked a colleague to delete e-mails relating to the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He also told a colleague that he had persuaded the university authorities to ignore information requests under the act from people linked to a website run by climate sceptics.
A spokesman for the ICO said: “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.” Breaches of the act are punishable by an unlimited fine.
The complaint to the ICO was made by David Holland, a retired engineer from Northampton. He had been seeking information to support his theory that the unit broke the IPCC’s rules to discredit sceptic scientists.
In a statement, Graham Smith, Deputy Commissioner at the ICO, said: “The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.”
He added: “The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. We will be advising the university about the importance of effective records management and their legal obligations in respect of future requests for information.”
Mr Holland said: “There is an apparent Catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be initiated within six months but you have to exhaust the university’s complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months.”
The university said: “The way freedom of information requests have been handled is one of the main areas being explored by Sir Muir Russell’s independent review. The findings will be made public and we will act as appropriate on its recommendations.”
Read more here.
By Darren Samuelsohn of ClimateWire
Key Senate climate bill advocates are searching for something—anything, really—that can serve as a legislative compromise for capping U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.The lawmakers’ fishing expedition has led them into a series of meetings with moderate Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as they try to maintain momentum on an issue in the face of stiff opposition from senators who want to keep the focus on the economy.
Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) all said over the past week that they have been making it perfectly clear to everyone that they are open to new ideas when it comes to tackling climate change.
“My approach here is we really must do something this year,” said Lieberman, who has been co-sponsoring cap-and-trade bills since 2001. “The two problems of American energy dependence and global warming will only get worse. We’ve just got to do the most we can. I’m not being rigid or ideological about it. So anybody who wants to try to make the problem better, it’s worth considering.”
“We’re just going to keep everything on the table and not putting out a framework at this point,” said Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
The trio last fall indicated they plan to compromise on more nuclear power and expanded oil and gas drilling. But they had resisted calls to pare back their plans on an economywide cap-and-trade program, saying that was the lowest-cost alternative for industry.
Until now.
All three now say they are willing to listen to senators who would prefer alternative ideas, including starting first with emission limits on the electric utility industry and then perhaps phasing in other parts of the economy. “You ask about the power sector, to do that alone wouldn’t be my first choice, but if it’s all we can do in the end, I’d consider it, sure,” Lieberman said yesterday.
“Some people have mentioned different sectoral approaches, we’re looking at that,” Kerry said. “We’re looking at everything. What we want to do is make sure that we get the job done. And we’re not wedded to any one way of trying to do that, so we’re looking at options.”
Another option is the “cap and dividend” approach that forgoes trading of greenhouse gas credits. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman met yesterday with Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), co-sponsors of a bill that does just that.
They are also meeting soon with Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio), both of whom have to varying degrees considered the power plant-only approach.
Graham last week said he was appealing to Republicans to sign off on a limit for greenhouse gas emissions, and he too was open to different ideas. “I think you’ve got to price carbon,” he said. “You can have a hybrid system of emission controls and taxes.” Several longtime cap-and-trade supporters also have offered some cover to the Senate trio as they search out a compromise.
“I don’t think anybody has given up on cap and trade,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “I think big, comprehensive bills are very difficult to do in this environment, regardless of what it is. I tend to be an incrementalist. I say do what you can do, when you can do it. Because everything is opportunity and timing. If you have both, you can get it done. If you have only one, it’s very difficult to get it done.”
“There’s going to be some significant compromises that are going to have to be made if we’re going to get an energy bill done,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “We knew it two weeks ago. We knew it last week. We know it this week. This is nothing new. We knew we’d not be able to get a major energy bill done without some significant change.”
Cardin said a deal that notches 60 Senate votes also could withstand any divisions that emerge from the left. “My expectation, if we succeed, there’ll be strong support for what we do from the environmental community,” Cardin said. “Will it be universal? I doubt it. But if we’re going to be able to get a bill done, there are compromises that are going to have to be made, and some groups are not going to be happy about it.
“Our goal is to make sure we reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Cardin added. “There’s different ways you can accomplish that.”
The ‘fence’ grows
Kerry, Graham and Lieberman may have reason to be optimistic after a pair of moderate Democrats indicated they are not entirely closed off from negotiations. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said yesterday that she is open to a broad climate and energy bill as an alternative to the U.S. EPA climate regulations expected in the coming months. “I am for a legislative solution, not a rulemaking, not an unaccountable rulemaking process,” said Landrieu, one of three Senate Democrats who co-sponsored a resolution that would strip EPA of that authority. “I’m for an accountable legislative process to achieve that, and I’d be open to some modification of cap and trade that really recognizes the importance of the refining industry here. Because we’re going to have a supply shortage of oil and refined products. We need to do it all. We need to be producing more and particularly more natural gas. “I think there’s a way forward, but it’s most certainly going to be bipartisan, and it’s most certainly going to be from the center out,” Landrieu added.
Also opening the door again was Sen. Ben Nelson, the Nebraska Democrat who held out until the very end during last month’s Senate deliberations on health care reform legislation. Nelson in past interviews has questioned whether Congress had any interest in tackling such a complicated subject as climate change in an election year, but he did not rule it out last week.
“I’d hope energy policy would still be alive and well,” Nelson said. “I’d hope it can have strong, bipartisan support, at least that’s what I’m hoping.”
Nelson said he has not had detailed conversations yet with Kerry, Graham and Lieberman. But he said he is open to negotiations on setting a limit on greenhouse gas emissions. “I want to see what the legislation does,” he said. “I said I can support cap. I have trouble with cap and trade, the trade part of it. So if it’s cap and trade, watered down, and it’s only the trade watered down, that won’t satisfy me.”
The recent comments from Landrieu and Nelson shift the senators from “probably no” back to the “fence sitter” category on E&E’s analysis (pdf) of the Senate global warming debate. They join 27 others, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Several other Senate “fence sitters” are sending signals they are a long way from a “yes” vote.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said yesterday that he is focused on a much different set of issues. “You ask, is there a way? The answer is, I don’t know. But at a time of economic anxiety, it will be more difficult,” he said. “Without the global cooperation from China, India and elsewhere, it just makes it that much harder.”
“I’m very skeptical of cap-and-trade as a concept,” said Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who said he would rather see the Senate move legislation he co-sponsored with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) that emphasizes funding for clean energy technology (E&ENews PM, Nov. 16, 2009).
McCain said he is still waiting for an invitation from President Obama to talk about the climate issue. “He hasn’t for the past year, but you can always hope,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee said.
As for the utility-only approach, Voinovich and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar are the most prominent Republicans to speak up with any level of interest on the issue (E&E Daily, Dec. 3, 2009). Both have said they are studying the topic while giving no guarantee they will get behind any specific legislation.
Lugar said yesterday he has not yet spoken with Kerry about the power plant-only strategy. Asked if he thought it had a better chance of passing, he said, “Not necessarily, and I’ve not really advocated that. I hypothetically talked about a lot of things, as I’m sure he has.”
Voinovich said his staff are working on an analysis of limiting emissions just on power plants. Once finished, he said he would meet with Kerry “and just see if there’s any area where something can be done.”
For now, Voinovich said he is much more interested in focusing on the energy provisions included in a bill (S. 1462 (pdf)) adopted last spring by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “My initial feeling ... is that we ought to look at the energy bill, which is pretty bipartisan, and look at that in terms of how it could be enhanced to achieve some real reductions in emissions,” he said.
Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the lead sponsor of that energy bill, gave himself some wiggle room when asked if he would like to see a more comprehensive bill get across the finish line. “I want to see us pass what we’ve been able to report out of committee,” he said. “If we’re able to pass more, that’s great too.”
In the search for votes, Lieberman said he is counting on Graham and at least two more Republicans. “We assume we have Collins and Snowe.” But try telling that to the Mainers.
Collins sidestepped questions about her meeting with the Senate trio. “Stay tuned,” she said. And Snowe, who will meet next week with Kerry, Graham and Lieberman, insisted that the economy is a much more pressing issue for her compared with cap-and-trade legislation. “Climate change is a key issue,” Snowe said. “But right now, there are so many factors affecting business’ ability to create jobs or preserve jobs that we have to factor that into the equation. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not dismissing, because I’ve been a leader on that effort in the past, but I also think we have to recognize what can we do and what’s the art of the possible.” See this report.
Icecap Note: Go here and tell these senators what they can do with a climate change bill. Call or write or both. They are not paying attention to what’s happening. Flood their switchboards. Get them to focus on what is important. Many of these senators have lobbiests on their backs (or maybe filling their pockets) and many had already been counting the money the cap-and-tax bill was going to bring in and some have connections to the Chicago Climate Exchange (right up to the top).