By Joanne Nova

The UK Parliamentary Committee was always going to be a whitewash. They put no skeptics on the committee; they interviewed no skeptics; they didn’t ask Steven McIntyre to speak. They tried to put people on the committee like Phillip Campbell, who had already pronounced it was a done deal and ClimateGate a non-event, but were forced to settle for people who were more covertly sympathetic: “impartial” people like committee chairman Phil Willis, who had already made up his mind in January and announced it in the Telegraph: “There are a significant number of climate change deniers, who are basically using the UEA emails to support the case this is poor science that has been changed or at worst manipulated. We do not believe this is healthy and therefore we want to call in the UEA so the public can see what they are saying”.

It’s no wonder the committee made a spin-like press release with wishy-washy weasel words. What’s amazing is that under the spin, they can’t help but bust all of modern climate science. The UK report: [press release]

“The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.

The translation: We were looking in the wrong spot. We don’t think Phil ought to get busted for just doing what all the other sloppy, biased scientists do. He did hide data, but so does everyone else. The whole of climate science has bogus practices that need to change. It’s official: common practices across all climate science are so poor they need to change.

The UK Report: Even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available - which they mostly are - or the methods not published - which they have been -its published results would still be credible:...[para 51]

Translation: We here in the once-Great British Isles are now happy to accept getting most of the data instead of the full complete set. From now on, we will also accept most of the receipts for your tax returns instead of the original copies, and we will accept most of the receipts of government ministers on working trips to Barbados. Near enough is good enough. With trillions of dollars at stake, it’s no time to get fussy.

The UK Report:  [T]he results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.

Translation: The results of the EAU agree with data sets around the world that are also sloppy, incomplete, unverifiable, and by NASA’s own email disclosures, even worse than the EAU’s. This meets the standards of the British Government.

Memo to the people of birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and the home of Newton: As all your trusted traditions and standards of excellence fade into mediocrity, and you give your disposable income to Goldman Sachs, the UK government hopes you will bear it with a stiff upper lip and no backbone at all.

Let’s be clear people. We don’t need a committee to tell us that a scientist who makes statements like these is deceitful:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick...to hide the decline.

Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith regarding the latest IPCC report? Keith will do likewise. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

There were thousands of e-mails, but we don’t need thousands. They are old news to skeptics, but we need to repeat the ones that matter in letters to editors, phone calls to friends, messages to ministers, and blog comments. Imagine if the words above came from a politician about the national budget how they would not be front page news. Imagine how the public would react. Count the days it would take before he was sacked. Thanks to carbon trading, this is is the national budget. Worse, it’s an international trading scheme. We are supposed to trust these scientists. They have lost the global data sets. We don’t need to say any more. There is no recovering from that one simple point.

We don’t need a committee to tell us that this is bogus, and nor do the public. The citizens of the free world just need to hear the quotes. They understand that when someone hides a decline, there is no other interpretation. The researcher is concealing something he doesn’t want you to see.

Here’s how it works in government-run climate science “results”: If the results don’t work the way you want, you can adjust them. If people want to check those results, you can lose them. If you get caught losing and adjusting them, you can always count on the committee results to whitewash it.

ADDENDUM
Wait until you hear this.

There is a second inquiry into ClimateGate and Andrew Orlowski has discovered that the man in charge, Lord Oxburgh, is also a director of GLOBE, the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment.

The peer leading the second Climategate enquiry at the University of East Anglia serves as a director of one of the most powerful environmental networks in the world, according to Companies House documents - and has failed to declare it. James Delingpole and Bishop Hill have the wrap on the conflicts of interest and power plays in the second committee, and how the GLOBE company was set up to avoid FOI’s. It’s more brazen than you can imagine...It’s an organisation of legislators run as a private company, and funded by...wait for it..."International Organisations, Governments, Parliamentary Bodies and Industry, both financially and politically, with particular acknowledgement to United Nations, The Global Environment Facility, The World Bank, European Commission, the Governments of Canada and Great Britain, the Senate of Brazil and Globe Japan.”

In 2007, it had a budget of 850,000 pounds and the 2007 accounts also refer to creating “a forum for legislators and business leaders to discuss the 2012 climate agreement, illegal logging and related issues”. What 2012 climate agreement?

By Daniel V. Kish

On the last day of March, President Obama traveled to Andrews Air Force Base to announce his new program for exploring for energy on America’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

Then he returned to the White House to announce his support for a holiday for the late Cesar Chavez, the famous head of the United Farm Workers Union.

His “energy plan” will not increase U.S. energy supplies...it will reduce them.  His actions on energy will not help the hard working supporters of Cesar Chavez, but they will do wonders for Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator who will be able to sell the U.S. more of his oil because of the president’s dangerous neglect and misunderstanding of U.S. energy production’s importance to our economic and national security.

Obama did not open up new areas for drilling in the OCS - he closed them.  He didn’t make new supplies of energy available; he embargoed them from use by American citizens.  He didn’t take steps to lessen dependence on foreign oil; he increased our dependence.

In short, his actions did not match his words, and Americans will pay the price for years to come.

The spin from his image-makers was clear - a major shift in policy was underway, which would open new areas on the Atlantic Coast to drilling.  He would even allow drilling off of Virginia.  But these areas were already open for drilling, following a national outcry in the summer of 2008 when the price of oil reached $150 per barrel.

President Bush and the Democratic Congress acted then to drop the decades-long embargo on U.S. oil and gas supplies, leaving only a small area in the eastern Gulf of Mexico off limits for energy production. The only holdup since then to leasing U.S. waters has been the foot-dragging of his choice for Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar.

So what does the President’s plan really do?  First of all, it kicks the can down the road on the issue of leasing off the coast of Virginia, from 2011 to 2012.  Leasing off Virginia’s coast has received bipartisan support from state and federal politicians, and was a key component of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s successful election campaign.  The sale was scheduled for 2011; now it’s 2012.

As for the “new areas” off the Atlantic Coast from Maryland to Georgia, the new plan doesn’t call for OCS leasing in those areas, but instead, Salazar will study those areas for possible inclusion in a new plan that he’ll announce in 2011 or thereabouts and which may or may not go into effect between 2012 and 2017.  This area was already proposed for leasing in a plan he threw overboard that was supposed to start this year. 

The entire west coast is now off limits, thanks to Obama’s plan to open new areas.  That means California’s 10 billion barrels of oil and all the jobs, money and energy they would produce for that bankrupt state are now under embargo.

But the biggest threat to U.S. energy security is what the president did in Alaska, and by extension, to America.  He cancelled five existing lease sales that were to be held in 2011 and 2012.

Two of the sales are in the Chukchi Sea, adjacent to where Russia is exploring for and producing oil and gas.  According to Salazar’s own Department of Interior, the Chukchi Sea area could hold as much as 77 billion barrels of oil.  This is over three times as much oil as the U.S. has in proven reserves, and by itself, is larger than Russia’s total proven oil reserves.

Obama’s new plan for drilling offshore in America is a lot like his old plan:  Don’t do it.  The fact that his image team went overboard to sell it as offshore drilling means he has seen the polls that show two-thirds of Americans support more offshore drilling. Too bad his Secretary of the Interior doesn’t. Read more at the Washington Examiner here.

Daniel V. Kish is senior vice president for policy for the Institute for Energy Research.

See Denver Post’s next day reanalysis here.

Interview by Patrick Lynch, NASA Langley Research Center

Dave Young is the Project Scientist for NASA;s CLimate Absolute Radiance and REfractivity Observatory (CLARREO). CLARREO is a climate-focused mission set to launch in the latter part of this decade. The goal of the mission is to measure tiny, incremental changes in the amount of energy entering and leaving Earth’s atmosphere—with such accuracy that even minor global warming trends over the course of a decade will be detected with confidence. These climate change measurements will carry the “fingerprints” of what caused them, including those caused by human activity.

You’re project scientist for NASA’s CLARREO mission. Tell us about the project.

One of the things that prevents us from making definitive statements about climate change is the accuracy of the current observing system we have. A major goal of the CLARREO mission is to provide extremely accurate climate measurements—at the accuracy level of tenths of a percent per decade. By knowing these trends very precisely, we can improve the accuracy of climate change forecasts, which will help society make the tough decisions we’re facing.

So what sort of data will it collect, and how?

CLARREO won’t measure individual aspects of our climate, such as changes in carbon dioxide levels or ice sheet changes. Instead, it will look at the climate system as a whole, by tracking the amount of energy entering and leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. We’ll do this by making measurements of the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere, including infrared waves (heat) and reflected sunlight. These are the two components of what we call the Earth’s “energy budget,” which can tell us over time whether or not the planet is getting warmer or cooler.

We know the things that can cause our climate to change. They include changes in the intensity of the sun, and increases in heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. What we want to learn is how the Earth responds to these driving forces, and any other secondary feedback effects that might occur. For example, say the Earth responds to increases in carbon dioxide levels by warming up; a warmer planet causes more water to evaporate and increases the amount of certain types of clouds. Clouds could either accelerate or slow down subsequent global warming. By taking very accurate energy measurements from space over a long period of time, we’ll be able to measure these responses and feedbacks on decade-long timescales.

CLARREO claims it will produce an “irrefutable climate record.” Does that mean it will put an end to climate change controversy?

Producing a trusted and tested climate record is one of our goals. First, we will strive for 100 percent transparency. Part of this [recent] email scandal is that people think data and results have been hidden. Second, we will characterize our instruments as thoroughly as anybody has ever done. On board the spacecraft there will be a verification system that’s constantly monitoring not only the measurements we make, but also how accurately we’re making those measurements. Then I think you’ll have as close to an irrefutable measurement as possible.

People want to talk in certainty. They want to say climate change is a certainty. Or, climate change is nonsense. That doesn’t work. Predicting future climate change is about offering a range of potential scenarios based on a range of present-day factors, and then determining the most likely scenario. We’re designing the mission such that if people want to delve into it and question our results, the answers will be there for all to see.

What will we learn about our influence on the Earth’s climate that we didn’t know before?

That’s one of the things we’re trying to answer specifically by working with the climate modelers. The goal is to have a set of highly accurate measurements that can be used to track today’s global warming trends and to improve climate models’ predictions for the future. We’ve pretty much shown that you can separate man-made climate change from natural climate variations using the data we expect to collect. You’ll see the impact of changes in carbon dioxide, methane and other gases reflected in the changes in the temperatures we measure. By comparing these numbers to the climate models, we’ll really understand how that climate change developed.

One of the most important climate summits in history happened just a few months ago in Copenhagen. How would CLARREO’s data help world leaders make better policy decisions?

If CLARREO were in orbit now, I think we’d have a much better assessment of climate change, particularly during the satellite era, and a more precise knowledge of climate trends over the last several decades. That would help the debate. Would it have made Copenhagen a joyous celebration of unanimity among the nations? No, because there are other things - political and economic - that are contributing factors to the debate. Basically, what CLARREO will do is provide more confidence in the scientific information we have, from the CLARREO record itself and also from comparisons with other measurements.

See more here.