By Richard S. Lindzen
In mid-November of 2009 there appeared a file on the Internet containing thousands of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. How this file got into the public domain is still uncertain, but the emails, whose authenticity is no longer in question, provided a view into the world of climate research that was revealing and even startling. In what has come to be known as “climategate,” one could see unambiguous evidence of the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, and even data manipulation. The Climatic Research Unit is hardly an obscure outpost; it supplies many of the authors for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Moreover, the emails showed ample collusion with other prominent researchers in the United States and elsewhere.
One might have thought the revelations would discredit the allegedly settled science underlying currently proposed global warming policy, and, indeed, the revelations may have played some role in the failure of last December’s Copenhagen climate conference to agree on new carbon emissions limits. But with the political momentum behind policy proposals and billions in research funding at stake, the impact of the emails appears to have been small.
The general approach of the official scientific community (at least in the United States and the United Kingdom) has been to see whether people will bother to look at the files in detail (for the most part they have not), and to wait until time diffuses the initial impressions in order to reassert the original message of a climate catastrophe that must be fought with a huge measure of carbon control.
This reassertion, however, continues to be suffused by illogic, nastiness and outright dishonesty. There were, of course, the inevitable investigations of individuals like Penn State University’s Michael Mann (who manipulated data to create the famous “hockey stick” climate graph) and Phil Jones (director of the CRU). The investigations were brief, thoroughly lacking in depth, and conducted, for the most part, by individuals already publicly committed to the popular view of climate alarm. The results were whitewashes that are quite incredible given the actual data.
In addition, numerous professional societies, including the American Society of Agronomy, the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Natural Science Collections Alliance, most of which have no expertise whatever in climate, endorse essentially the following opinion: That the climate is warming, the warming is due to man’s emissions of carbon dioxide, and continued emissions will lead to catastrophe.
We may reasonably wonder why they feel compelled to endorse this view. The IPCC’s position in its Summary for Policymakers from their Fourth Assessment (2007) is weaker, and simply points out that most warming of the past 50 years or so is due to man’s emissions. It is sometimes claimed that the IPCC is 90% confident of this claim, but there is no known statistical basis for this claim - it’s purely subjective. The IPCC also claims that observations of globally averaged temperature anomaly are also consistent with computer model predictions of warming.
There are, however, some things left unmentioned about the IPCC claims. For example, the observations are consistent with models only if emissions include arbitrary amounts of reflecting aerosols particles (arising, for example, from industrial sulfates) which are used to cancel much of the warming predicted by the models. The observations themselves, without such adjustments, are consistent with there being sufficiently little warming as to not constitute a problem worth worrying very much about.
In addition, the IPCC assumed that computer models accurately included any alternative sources of warming—most notably, the natural, unforced variability associated with phenomena like El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc. Yet the relative absence of statistically significant warming for over a decade shows clearly that this assumption was wrong. Of course, none of this matters any longer to those replacing reason with assertions of authority.
Consider a letter of April 9 to the Financial Times by the presidents of the U.S. National Academy of Science and the Royal Society (Ralph Cicerone and Martin Rees, respectively). It acknowledges that climategate has contributed to a reduced concern among the public, as has unusually cold weather. But Messrs. Cicerone and Rees insist that nothing has happened to alter the rather extreme statement that climate is changing and it is due to human action. They then throw in a very peculiar statement (referring to warming), almost in passing: “Uncertainties in the future rate of this rise, stemming largely from the ‘feedback’ effects on water vapour and clouds, are topics of current research.”
Who would guess, from this statement, that the feedback effects are the crucial question? Without these positive feedbacks assumed by computer modelers, there would be no significant problem, and the various catastrophes that depend on numerous factors would no longer be related to anthropogenic global warming. What is to say, the issue relevant to policy is far from settled. Nonetheless, the letter concludes: “Our academies will provide the scientific backdrop for the political and business leaders who must create effective policies to steer the world toward a low-carbon economy.” In other words, the answer is settled even if the science is not.
In France, several distinguished scientists have recently published books criticizing the alarmist focus on carbon emissions. The gist of all the books was the scientific standards for establishing the alarmist concern were low, and the language, in some instances, was intemperate. In response, a letter signed by 489 French climate scientists was addressed to “the highest French scientific bodies: the Ministry of Research, National Center for Scientific Research, and Academy of Sciences” appealing to them to defend climate science against the attacks. There appeared to be no recognition that calling on the funding agencies to take sides in a scientific argument is hardly conducive to free exchange.
The controversy was, and continues to be, covered extensively by the French press. In many respects, the French situation is better than in the U.S., insofar as the “highest scientific bodies” have not officially taken public stances - yet.
Despite all this, it does appear that the public at large is becoming increasingly aware that something other than science is going on with regard to climate change, and that the proposed policies are likely to cause severe problems for the world economy. Climategate may thus have had an effect after all. But it is unwise to assume that those who have carved out agendas to exploit the issue will simply let go without a battle. One can only hope that the climate alarmists will lose so that we can go back to dealing with real science and real environmental problems such as assuring clean air and water. The latter should be an appropriate goal for Earth Day.
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Earth Day: An Assault on Man
By Brian Sussman. The American Thinker
In recent weeks while addressing Tea Party rallies here on the left coast, I ask the assembled patriots what appears to be an odd question: “Would all those from the former Soviet Union please raise your hands?” A notable number of hands are always raised—the San Francisco Bay Area is home to a diverse population. I then ask another curious question: “What does April 22 signify to you?” Without exception, someone will shout with great displeasure, “Lenin’s birth date!” The crowd clearly sees that I’m on to something. I next ask the former Soviets, “And as a young child in school, who were you told is your grandfather?” At this point several painfully respond, “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin!” “And in the United States, do you know what we celebrate on April 22?” I ask. “Earth Day. Grandfather Lenin has been conjoined with Mother Earth—and it’s no coincidence.”
In my new book Climategate (released today), I detail the doings of Earth Day’s devious founders. It seems that this crafty crew were cut from cloth that resembles Marx and Lenin, as opposed to Madison and Jefferson. In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WS) was Congress’s leading environmentalist activist. Nelson was the mastermind behind those ridiculous teach-ins, which were in vogue in the late sixties and early seventies. During the teach-ins, mutinous school instructors would scrap the day’s assigned curriculum, pressure their students to sit cross-legged on the floor, “rap” about how America is an imperialist nation, and discuss why communism really isn’t such a bad form of government—it just needs to be implemented properly.
Nelson’s teach-in efforts were aided by a young man named Denis Hayes. Hayes was student body president while an undergrad at Stanford, and well known for organizing anti-Vietnam war protests. Later, while pursuing a masters degree in public policy at Harvard, Hayes heard about Senator Nelson’s teach-in concept and eventually helped Nelson institute the practice nationwide. Denis Hayes would also conspire with the senator to found Earth Day.
Rounding out the troika was Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford. In 1968 Ehrlich authored the Malthusian missive, The Population Bomb, in which he infamously spouted wild allegations which included equating the earth’s supposed surplus of people with a cancer that needs to be eradicated: “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. ... We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
In 1969, following a much-hyped oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast, an overblown patch of fire on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, and the pharmaceutically induced vibes cast across the nation via the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Senator Nelson met with Ehrlich and reportedly said, “My God—why not a national teach-in on the environment?” Hayes was brought in to play a pivotal role with organization and implementation. After careful consideration, a name and date for the event were chosen: The inaugural Earth Day would be celebrated April 22, 1970.
Skeptical historians immediately noted a bizarre coincidence. The date coincided with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lenin. Earth Day organizers have since tried to brush aside the odd synchronization of dates with lame retorts like “Lenin wasn’t an environmentalist.” But he didn’t have to be. Lenin’s core political philosophy was linked at the hip with these newfangled eco-zealots, who maintained that America’s government must be altered, its economy planned and regulated, and its citizens better-controlled. The environment would be the perfect tool to force these changes, and the most efficient way to gain converts would be through the public school system—the earlier, the better.
Nelson and Ehrlich were already known as non-traditional crackpots, but young Hayes was that and more. In a New York Times article published the morning after the first Earth Day entitled “Angry Coordinator of Earth Day,” young Hayes bragged that five years earlier, he fled overseas because “I had to get away from America.” Hayes was so committed to his anti-capitalist cause that he made sure that his organization did not even produce Earth Day bumper stickers. “You want to know why?” He explained to the Times: “Because they go on automobiles.”
As I write in Climategate: Earth Day has never been a celebration of God’s wonderful creation; instead it’s always been an assault on man. “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources,” championed the New York Times in an April 23, 1970 editorial, “not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
During that first Earth Day man was proclaimed the polluter and would remain as such for subsequent observances that decade. By the Eighties the event’s organizers cast man as the tree killer, and, with the Nineties, man evolved into the animal species annihilator. The global warming scare never really became popular until the late Nineties, and when it did, it provided a hook that the compatriots at the Earth Day headquarters could hang their red berets on. Known as anthropogenic global warming, it was a sexy sell: humans-particularly Americans-were now screwing up the entire planet’s weather. By 2000 Earth Day organizers took ownership of this new angle and would never let go.
Senator Nelson has since passed into the great beyond, Denis Hayes is a board member of the international Earth Day Network, and Paul Ehrlich continues to promote Malthus’ machinations at Stanford. In fact, Ehrlich’s close associate and co-author of many of his books, John Holdren, is now Barack Obama’s official science and technology advisor.
While today is the official Earth Day, the biggest gaggle of true believers will assemble on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. According to the Earth Day Network, the list of featured speakers confirms my premise that Earth Day is an assault on man. The mouthpieces include AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the guy who is widely reported as having encouraged striking United Mine Worker to “kick the shit out of “ mine employees who were resisting union demands.
Another featured speaker will be Hollywood director James Cameron, who recently said that he wanted to take anthropogenic global warming deniers “into the street and shoot it out with those boneheads.” In the same interview, he also stated that global warning deniers “have their head so deeply up their ass I’m not sure if they could hear me.”
Also included to share his CO2 with the audience is activist Jesse Jackson. We haven’t heard as much from Jackson since he was forced to apologize after an open microphone caught him whispering, “See, Barack’s been talking down to black people ... I want to cut his nuts off.”
These three speakers take “assault on man” to a whole new level.
Of course, Denis Hayes will be the keynote for this Sunday event. According to the Earth Day Network press release: Denis Hayes, national coordinator for the first Earth Day in 1970 and international chair of Earth Day 2010, will speak about the urgency of addressing climate change and the need to set a framework for a green economy. Carefully note the last words summarizing Hayes’ forthcoming speech: “… the need to set a framework for a green economy.” Hayes’ speech is perfectly planned to kick off debate on the Energy/Cap-and-Trade Bill in the Senate, which is scheduled to begin the very next day.
As I have noted previously here at American Thinker, the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House proposes green economic schemes that should frighten us greatly.
For example, buried on pages 1014-1016 of the bill is the “Monthly Energy Refund.” According to this trick, for those with a gross income that “does not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line ... a direct deposit” of an undisclosed amount of money will be sent “into the eligible household’s designated bank account[.]”
On pages 502-503 we find the “Low Income Community Energy Efficiency Program,” whereby grants will be issued “to increase the flow of capital and benefits to low income communities, minority-owned and woman-owned businesses and entrepreneurs[.]”
Further proving that this is actually a welfare scheme, on page 973 we discover that for workers who lose their manufacturing jobs because the caps on their companies are too repressive and their employer either has to shut down or move operations to the third world to avoid regulation, the “adversely affected worker” shall receive 70 percent of his prior weekly wage, “payable for a period not longer than 156 weeks.” In addition, on pages 986-987 we read that the unemployed worker can submit up to $1,500 in job search reimbursements and get another $1,500 to cover his moving expenses.
And then there are the new federally mandated building codes, which will supersede local rules and regulations. The new codes will be enforced by what I refer to in Climategate as a “green goon squad.” On pages 319-324 of the House bill we read that the Secretary of Energy “shall enhance compliance by conducting training and education of builders and other professionals in the jurisdiction concerning the national energy efficiency building code.” These EPA badge-wearing G-Men will be funded through global warming revenues procured through the cap-and-trade scheme, as well as by $25 million designated annually from the Department of Energy “to provide necessary enforcement of a national energy efficiency building code[.]”
Earth Day is not a celebration of this glorious planet, but instead an assault on man—and the current energy bill is an assault on America. We must equip ourselves with a complete understanding of the facts so that we can prevent these elitist social engineers from passing this liberty-sapping piece of legislation. Read more here.
For two decades, Brian Sussman served the San Francisco Bay Area with his award-winning television weathercasts. He now serves the same region as the morning talk show host on KSFO radio (560-AM). His book, Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes The Global Warming Scam, is being released today.
By Judith Curry on Roger Pielke Jr. Blog
The primary frustration with these investigations is that they are dancing around the principal issue that people care about: the IPCC and its implications for policy. Focusing only on CRU activities (which was the charge of the Oxbourgh panel) is of interest mainly to UEA and possibly the politics of UK research funding (it will be interesting to see if the U.S. DOE sends any more $$ to CRU). Given their selection of CRU research publications to investigate (see Bishop Hill), the Oxbourgh investigation has little credibility in my opinion. However, I still think it unlikely that actual scientific malfeasance is present in any of these papers: there is no malfeasance associated with sloppy record keeping, making shaky assumptions, and using inappropriate statistical methods in a published scientific journal article.
The corruptions of the IPCC process, and the question of corruption (or at least inappropriate torquing) of the actual science by the IPCC process, is the key issue. The assessment process should filter out erroneous papers and provide a broader assessment of uncertainty; instead, we have seen evidence of IPCC lead authors pushing their own research results and writing papers to support an established narrative. I don’t see much hope for improving the IPCC process under its current leadership.
The historical temperature record and the paleoclimate record over the last millennium are important in many many aspects of climate research and in the communication of climate change to the public; both of these data sets are at the heart of the CRU email controversy. In my opinion, there needs to be a new independent effort to produce a global historical surface temperature dataset that is transparent and that includes expertise in statistics and computational science. Once “best” methods have been developed and assessed for assembling such a dataset including uncertainty estimates, a paleoclimate reconstruction should be attempted (regional, hemispheric, and possibly global) with the appropriate uncertainty estimates. The public has lost confidence in the data sets produced by CRU, NASA, Penn State, etc.
While such an independent effort may confirm the previous analysies, it is very likely that improvements will be made and more credible uncertainty estimates can be determined. And the possibility remains that there are significant problems with these datasets; this simply needs to be sorted out. Unfortunately, the who and how of actually sorting all this out is not obvious. Some efforts are underway in the blogosphere to examine the historical land surface data (e.g. such as GHCN), but even the GHCN data base has numerous inadequacies. Addressing the issues associated with the historical and paleo temperature records should be paramount. Read more here.
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Examining Peer Review
By Kim Greenhouse, Its Rainmaking Time
Peer review was established to ensure quality and accuracy of academic research and publications. As one university library tells students, “Peer review ensures that an article - and therefore the journal and the scholarship of the discipline as a whole - maintains a high standard of quality, accuracy, and academic integrity. When you consult peer-reviewed sources, you are tapping into a wealth of established, verified knowledge.” Does this mean non-peer reviewed materials have no value? What happens if academics refuse to peer review? Are they the only arbiters of quality and accuracy?
Few people outside of academia know what it is or how it operates. Like most ideas and methods, Peer Review has evolved from its original purpose in ways that many academics never anticipated. Some of these were part of the scandals involving climate science and the perversion of scientific and academic method. While Peer-review has mostly been thought of as the way Ideas get their credibility, in fact, Peer Review has become an incestuous system that often invites corruption and territoriality so that most of the realm of new discoveries can’t make their way to the world. The Peer Review Process is often antithetical to innovation and perpetuates prevailing knowledge. We need a new and better process and paradigm because of the hugely important implications for the betterment of all of society.
Gavin Menzies, the author of 1421 and 1434 and Dr. Tim Ball, a climatologist, teacher and writer from Canada joins us to lay out what we need to know about Peer Review to get us thinking about other ways of empowering discoveries throughout the modern world. Listen to the audion discussion here. Read Ross McKitrick’s recent adventures in peer review here. See an essay on the perils of peer review by the Scientific Alliance here. See a post by Pat Michaels on a short history of the polluted peer review proces here.
Dr. David Whitehouse
A new study has postulated a link between solar activity and the flowrate of one of the largest rivers in the world, and suggests that it will lose water as the current low solar activity continues.
The quantity of water flowing down a river is a good climatic indicator since it integrates rainfall over large areas. In a paper submitted to the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Pablo Mauas and Andrea Buccino of the Institute of Astrophysics, and Eduardo Flamenco of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, Argentina, follow-up a previous study of the influence of solar activity on the flow of the Parana River - the fourth largest river in the world by outflow - and second only to the Amazon in South America.
They find that the unusual minimum of solar activity observed in recent years has a correlation (image here) with very low water levels seen in the Parana’s flowrate. Additionally they report historical evidence of low water levels during the Little Ice Age.
They also consider flowrates for three other rivers (Colorado, San Juan and Atuel), as well as snow levels in the Andes. They conclude, after eliminating secular trends and smoothing out the solar cycle, there is a strong positive correlation between the residuals of both the Sunspot Number and the flowrates of these rivers as well.
Looking more closely at the data they say that the correlation between Sunspot Number and low water flow rates is stronger than that between flow rates and the incidence of Galacric Cosmic Rays suggesting that the chief influence on climate here is probably changes in solar irradiance and not changes in cosmic rays affecting levels of cloudiness over the region studied.
Both results imply that higher solar activity corresponds to more intense precipitation, in summer and in winter, in the large river basins of South America that have been studied.
The correlation between sunspot number and the rivers’ behavior has been tracked over more than one solar cycle suggests to the researchers that the low levels of activity expected for Solar Cycle 24 will result in a dry period for the river Parana in particular over the next decade.
Usually studies that investigate the effect of solar activity levels on climate have been carried out in the northern hemisphere and have been limited to studying Northern Hemisphere temperatures or sea surface temperatures. In recent years however some correlation has been postulated between solar activity and the Asian monsoon. This study is among the first to link the sun’s prolonged solar minimum at the end of cycle 23 to decadal variations in the weather.