By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That

Regular readers may recall on August 1st a posting where I stated my views on the NCDC report being produced by Dr.’s Karl and Peterson of NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) called Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. They also had a little help from Susan Hassol, writer of the HBO Special Too Hot Not to Handle, produced by none other than Laurie David. That explains the “emotionally based graphics’ in a science document.

I wrote then: “To say the least, I’m shocked that NCDC’s leadership has changed from being the nation’s record keeper of weather and climatic data, to being what appears to me now as an advocacy group. The draft document reads more like a news article in many places than it does a scientific document, and unlike a scientific document, it has a number of what I would call “emotionally based graphics” in it that have nothing to do with the science.”

About the same time, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. revealed that Ms. Hassol appeared to simply move some of her website’s claims into this self-proclaimed official U.S. government “highly influential scientific assessment.”

Readers were invited to submit comments to NCDC about the CCSP Report, and I’m pleased to report that many of you did. The National Chamber of Commerce also got involved, and submitted a very strong rebuttal to this document.

What a concept; publish the basis for the claims first, THEN publish the document that outlines the claims (The CCSP report seen above). But nobody is rushing anything, right? “Tipping points” with no definitions, calls for policy? That’s advocacy, not science.

We’ll keep a watchful eye on this as there remains potential to “synthesize” abuse of the public trust. My sincere thanks to everyone from this blog who provided comments and insight. And lets give the U.S. Chamber of Commerce a salute for taking point on this. Lots of people contributed to forcing this change; including Pielke Jr and Senior, Joe D’Aleo of Icecap, Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Steve McIntyre, Chris Horner, Marlo Lewis, and dozens of bloggers who helped get the word out, plus thousands of readers.

Warning, strong opinion follows: This report’s contents and the “cart before the horse” way it was produced is the biggest official “crock” perpetrated on the American public I’ve ever been privy to. On a personal note, there are days when I struggle to keep doing this, at times I think I’ll just shut down the blog, turn off the surfacestations website, and return to a normal and hassle free life. Days like this keep me going.  Read Anthony’s full post here.

By Chris Horner

The NOAA/Climate Change Science Program “Unified Synthesis Product,” which I previously noted, and upon which EPA has indicated it intends to rely to support its GHG regulations, has had its plug pulled - for now. Here’s how and why.

First, the U.S. Chamber pointed out that a preponderance of the 21 reports that had purportedly been “synthesized” had not actually been produced yet. Sure, that sequence sounds odd in the real world, but is reminiscent of the IPCC, to which the USP appealed as the authority for certain otherwise unsupported claims (though the IPCC openly admits that it, too, performs no scientific research). This is a point we also made in our comments. I’m informed that NOAA has now agreed to publish the underlying documents first and then put out their desired USP. The Chamber should have a release out soon.

Second, a series of scientists, including Roger Pielke Sr. and Jr., Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger, Joe D’Aleo, Fred Singer, (Anthony Watts) and many others joined my colleague Marlo Lewis and me in exposing in detail the scientifically and legally unsupportable nature of the 208-page monstrosity. Key absurdities included breakout points in the Executive Summary of “Urgency of Action,” “Irreversible Losses,” “The Future Is in Our Hands” and ‘Tipping Points” (even though nowhere else did the document actually offer a discussion of “Tipping Points” that could be summarized), as well as calls for adoption of a certain policy agenda, all in a supposedly scientific document. The rest of the product was no less skewed, and I hope CEI will post many of these comments later today for your reading pleasure.

All of this flew smack in the face of the statute in whose name the document was produced - the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990, which nowhere authorized such content - and the Information Quality Act which demands objectivity, utility, and integrity of information disseminated by the government.

None of this content came as a surprise, however, having been produced largely by the same gang responsible for the first stab at such a screed, the November 2000 National Assessment - you read that date right. (Hmm, anything else going on in November 2000 that might have prompted such a document?) Litigation by CEI, Sen. Inhofe, and Reps. Emerson and Knollenberg led to NOAA posting a disclaimer that the document had not met the IQA requirements.

This time around, the authors cited their own work more than 100 times, blowing a kiss to the Wegman Committee which exposed the self-affirming and incestuous climate-science community. One addition to the team was a Susan Hassol, writer of the HBO Special Too Hot Not to Handle, produced by none other than Laurie David (I don’t know if Sheryl Crow did the soundtrack). So much for balance. As Pielke Jr. revealed, Ms. Hassol appeared to simply move some of her website’s claims into this self-proclaimed official U.S. government “highly influential scientific assessment.”

So the obvious goal of rushing out a compendium of unsupportable red meat to wave around during this election cycle - shrieking “even George W. Bush now admits!” - has been frustrated. But stay tuned. Although I have no doubt our comments scared them enough to take paper over some of their main vulnerabilities to further litigation, they know we can’t unring the media bell even if we prevail. Unless NOAA heeds the call by us and several others to replace the drafting team with one meeting the statutory and balance requirements, an equally bad report will issue early next year. See Planet Gore here.

By Chris Horner

Benny Peiser’s CCNet brings our attention to this Globe and Mail item today. In it, the authors note some of the repercussions to Europe’s own energy strategy from Russia’s bloody Georgian gambit, which is the latest move in its expanding play to recover lost influence through energy (read this book - for a discussion of how the Bolshies actually did the same thing to solidify their initial, not-so-dissimilar coup into a recognized nation-state).

The impacts go further, as I detail in a forthcoming Energy Tribune piece. Without spoiling it: Brussels’ Kyoto agenda demands that Poland, the Czechs, and everyone else with very good reasons to distrust the Russians leave their coal in the ground and rely instead on gas which in practice would be mostly Russian gas. As I have detailed in this space before, the EU was already having a hard time wrestling those pesky new member states to the ground on this dangerous proposal. Now, they can forget about it.

Russia turned off the supply to Poland more than a decade before pulling the plug on Ukraine. For the reasons I cite in ET, those who are in the
business of finding silver linings have Russia to thank for finally slaying the Kyoto beast.  Read more here.