By Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research is a not-for-profit consortium of universities that grant Ph.D.s in fields related to atmospheric science. UCAR’s primary activity is managing the National Center for Atmospheric Research. However, UCAR is moving from its stated goal of “understanding the atmosphere-the air around us-and the interconnected processes that make up the Earth system, from the ocean floor to the Sun’s core” to obvious political advocacy. UCAR is sponsoring a National Teach-In Day.

JANUARY 31: NATIONAL TEACH-IN DAY
Is your school ready to focus on the problem of global warming? If so, you are in luck because on January 31st you can be part of Focus the Nation, a national teach-in on global warming solutions for America - creating a dialogue at over a 1000 colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, places of worship, civic organizations and businesses. When your school joins Focus the Nation, you will have the opportunity to participate in a free, interactive webcast airing the evening of January 30th, featuring top scientists, sustainability experts and green jobs pioneers. The goal is to have 10,000 screenings and a determination TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING...”

I am associated with several Universities who are members of UCAR, and I am disappointed that this organization has diverged from its core mission to now engage in political advocacy. This new direction by UCAR raises valid concerns as to whether their support of scientific research and outreach taints the objectivity which must be the foundation of scientific research. I also was not aware that non-profit organizations, whose primary support is from federal contracts and grants, could engage in political advocacy. Read more here.

By Hans Schreuder, ilovemycarbondioxide.com, Ipswich, UK

Happy New Year to all and I would appreciate it if you would allow me to further illustrate a better interpretation of the facts on the issue of man-made global warming, with links to the latest articles by the very best brains in related sciences and despite so many leading international academies proclaiming that the “science is settled” and “the debate is over”. It won’t be the first time in our recent history that leading scientific institutions have been proven woefully wrong on the issues of their day and man-made global warming is likely to be another one. Only by continuous debate and reading, with an open mind, the latest peer-reviewed articles by scientists in pertinent fields of expertise can we reach conclusions that approximate the truth. We collectively do not yet know anywhere near enough on the many aspects of our existence to know the truth about a wide range of complex matters, our climate and climate change amongst them. To make far-reaching decisions based on so little understanding is to run the risk of causing untold suffering and long-term damage for no worthwhile gain.

Instead of global warming, and based on actual observations that are fully verifiable by all, our life-giving Sun is telling us that we should prepare for a period of increasingly cold winters, already signaled by the early arrival of substantial snow in most European mountain ranges, Arctic ice reforming at an unprecedented rate and three recent ice and snow storms across wide areas of the US, killing over 50 people and causing major havoc for hundreds of thousands (all by mid-December) - you can ignore me, but you can’t ignore Nature itself. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend billions of Dollars needlessly.

If the Government scientific advisers in your country deny what I have written here, than challenge them to a debate. Actual verifiable proof that 110 ppmv of additional carbon dioxide influences the climate or could even be responsible for the alarmist consequences is absolutely and totally non-existent. Any proof that has been paraded as such is purely circumstantial and prognoses of disasters are based solely on climate models that can not even predict the weather for next week with more than a 50% chance of being accurate. John Brignell PhD: “The only experimentally proven effect of increased carbon dioxide in the air is an increase in the growth rate of plants, and, in particular, crops. The “science” the IPCC keeps citing as “unequivocal” is a lie, a base and evil lie. It exists only in the flawed and duplicitous computer models that could never and will never begin to capture the infinite complexity of the earth’s atmosphere.” Read full letter here. 

By Marc Morano, EPW

A few comments about the Grist Article by Joseph Romm: Unstoppable disinformation every 15 minutes from Fred Singer.

Grist violates its own criteria for what qualifies a scientist to comment on climate issues! As one of the comments noted, the author of this article Grist’s Joseph Romm, (a Senior Fellow at the very liberal and well-funded Center for American Progress) mocks Singer’s scientific credentials. But a post from Climate Resistance says Romm may be more accurately described as a “pundit, a policy maker, a political technology advisor.” See this link. And despite being a PhD physicist, it appears Romm would not meet Grist correspondent Andrew Dessler’s definition of someone qualified to have an opinion on climate change issues. Grist is contradicting itself!  (Note, according to Dessler, only a about 150-200 scientists in the world are actually qualified to have an opinion on climate issues and guess what, they all happen to be affiliated with the UN. Dessler also does not believe TV meteorologists are qualified, unless they agree with his brand of climate alarm). For a complete debunking of critiques of the Senate ‘Consensus Busters’ Report, see Marc Morano’s January 10, 2007 Letter to New York Times.

Romm attempts to discredit Singer because “the Earth wasn’t actually in a warm trend—unstoppable or otherwise—1500 years ago!” Romm resurrects the canard that the Medieval Warm Period was not global and claims (ala Mann’s Hockey Stick) that the Medieval Warm Period was much cooler than today. This assertion ignores multiple peer-reviewed studies showing the Medieval Warm Period warmer than today, including two papers in just the past 6 months! (See: 1: A November 2007 study published in Energy & Environment found the Medieval Warm Period “0.3C warmer than 20th century” The study was authored by C. Loehle and titled ”A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies.” with detail here. and 2: A June 29, 2007 scientific analysis by Gerd Burger of Berlin’\’s Institute of Meteorology in the peer-reviewed Science Magazine challenged a previously touted study claiming the 20th century had been unusually warm. Excerpt: “Burger argues that (the 2006 temperature analysis by) Osborn and Briffa did not apply the appropriate statistical tests that link the proxy records to observational data, and as such, Osborn and Briffa did not properly quantify the statistical uncertainties in their analyses. Burger repeated all analyses with the appropriate adjustments and concluded “As a result, the ‘highly significant’ occurrences of positive anomalies during the 20th century disappear.”

Romm mocks Singer as having no credibility in the science community. A few notes on Dr. Singer: He is an atmospheric physicist and was former director the US Weather Satellite Service, past vice chairman of the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere and the co-author of the recent peer-reviewed paper with Climatologist Dr. John Christy and climate scientist Dr. David Douglass in the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society. The December 2007 study found “The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming.” Romm’s failure to mention Singer’s peer-reviewed work makes a mockery out of his claim that political leaders should only “talk with peer-reviewed climate scientists.” Read more here.