Swaminathan Aiyar, a noted Indian journalist, writes about ClimateGate I and ClimateGate II today and what it all means for the future of the man-made global warming swindle: (h/t small dead animals)
Climategate-I was the revelation that climate scientists crusading over global warming at East Anglia University had tried to censor inconvenient data and shut dissenters out of academic journals. Climategate-II is the revelation that the 2007 report of the International Panel on Climate Change, saying Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035, was not science at all but idle, unsubstantiated speculation.
It speaks volumes for the huge biases within IPCC that it took two years for this hoax to be exposed. Any hoax opposing the global warming thesis would be exposed in ten seconds flat. The IPCC is willing to swallow unexamined what it finds convenient, while raising a thousand technical objections to anything inconvenient. This is religious crusading, not objective science. The tactics being used to discredit and destroy heretics is reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition.
Climategate-II is also a sad example of green imperialism. Rather than accept the findings of foreign scientists alone, Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, appointed a panel of Indian scientists on Himalayan melting. “My concern is that this comes from western scientists … it is high time India makes an investment in understanding what is happening in the Himalayan ecosystem.”
The Indian panel, headed by V K Raina, looked at 150 years of data gathered by the Geological Survey of India from 25 Himalayan glaciers. It was the first comprehensive study of the region. It concluded that while Himalayan glaciers had long been retreating, there was no recent acceleration of the trend, and nothing to suggest that the glaciers would disappear. In short, the IPCC had perpetrated an alarmist hoax without scientific foundation.
Wait a second! The IPCC made up and printed false propaganda? Say it ain’t so:
I have been extremely critical of the IPCC for misrepresenting the work I have contributed to with colleagues, and in fact, the entire scientific literature on disasters and climate change. So it was with some interest that I found the following expert comment in the IPCC report (here in PDF, p. 121):
I think this is inappropriate. It leads the reader into interpreting recent events in a particular way without providing supporting information. This suggestion, that the losses in 2004and 2005 draw Pielke’s results into question, needs to be supported with a reference or a solid in chapter assessment. What does Pielke think about this?
(Francis Zwiers, Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis)
What is the “this” that Dr. Zwiers suggested was inappropriate? It was all but certainly this passage that survived the review process and appear in the final report:
A previous normalisation of losses, undertaken for U.S. hurricanes by Pielke and Landsea (1998) and U.S. floods (Pielke et al., 2002) included normalising the economic losses for changes in wealth and population so as to express losses in constant dollars. These previous national U.S. assessments, as well as those for normalised Cuban hurricane losses (Pielke et al., 2003), did not show any significant upward trend in losses over time, but this was before the remarkable hurricane losses of 2004 and 2005.
What did Pielke think about this? Good question, easily answered. The IPCC never asked, but that did not stop the IPCC from making up an answer for me, which it did in its response to Zwiers (here in PDF, at p. 121):
I believe Pielke agrees that adding 2004 and 2005 has the potential to change his earlier conclusions – at least about the absence of a trend in US Cat losses.
These comments speculating on my views were made by the IPCC in August, 2006.
~~~So not only did the IPCC AR4 WGII egregiously misrepresent the science of disasters and climate change, but when questions were raised about that section by at least one expert reviewer, it simply made up a misleading and false response about my views. Not good.
And don’t look over there!
Australia’s peak science agency, the CSIRO, has backed away from attributing a decade of drought in Tasmania to climate change, claiming ”the jury is still out” on the science.
The comments follow the issuing of a CSIRO report yesterday, revealing drought has cut water availability in northern Tasmania’s premier wine growing region by 24 per cent, with riverflows reaching record lows. One of the report’s co-authors, hydrologist David Post, told The Canberra Times there was ”no evidence” linking drought to climate change in eastern Australia, including the Murray-Darling Basin.
”At this stage, we’d prefer to say we’re talking about natural variability. The science is not sufficiently advanced to say it’s climate change, one way or the other. The jury is still out on that,” Dr Post said.
No wonder even the Europeans are starting to have doubts about the ignorant carbon tax scheme:
A poll released Wednesday showed that the public appeared to have turned against the planned tax. The survey by pollster ViaVoice showed 51 percent of the French thought the government should abandon it.
Settled science my ass……
See author page
Remember that Pielke Jr. is a political scientist (as in the degree, not as in a scientist with a political bent). Pielke Sr. is a climate scientist. Here’s an interview with the father:
http://www.ecoworld.com/global-warming/interview-with-roger-pielke-sr.html
“…many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don’t fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers…”
In short, he doesn’t deny humans are having an affect on the climate, but believes there are a variety of causes, and the long-term effects aren’t well-known. Re-read the sentence “…prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don’t fully understand it)…” – couldn’t have said it better myself.
For the other side, try:
In particular the first two sections on sea level and ocean temperature, the underlying facts of which aren’t even disputed by Pielke.
As I’ve said before, you don’t have to swallow any of the hyperbolic knock-on effects like hurricanes etc. to see that there’s a serious problem with sea level rise alone, so far largely due to thermal expansion because of the accumulating heat content. This threatens a lot of valuable US costal property. And as far as I can tell, none of these scientists is denying that CO2 is at least one of the causes of the warming, not Pielke, not Michaels.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Just because some scientists (and politicians like Gore) may have been gaming the numbers to try to jolt policy makers into action doesn’t change the underlying reality on the ground, nor the most obvious course of action. Even as a conservative person, I can see a good case for government policy when dealing with externalities (along with commons, natural monopolies, and market failures). The side effects of emissions are a classic example of what economists call an “externality”.
The risk in continuing to deny there’s a problem is exactly the same as in health care reform; conservatives will miss the chance to control the debate and redress the problem. We could have had some obvious reforms to health care several years ago when the GOP controlled all branches of government. Instead, denial that the US health care system had elements of a market failure (that being the problem of “self-selecting risk pools”) as the order of the day. Now belatedly the GOP admits there’s a problem, and has some fairly good ideas to offer, but are shut out of the debate. The only way denial works is if there really isn’t a problem. Evidence has been mounting for at least 20 years that there is a long-term problem here with CO2. Delay and deny, and you risk ultimately getting the neo-marxist prescription rammed through some future congress. Seriously, look at the policy prescriptions from the environmental NGOs – that’s the future if they control the debate, and it ain’t pretty. I could write an entire long post just on that, but the simple description of their solution is “Amish, with cell phones”. No thanks!
Roger Pielke Sr:
and:
and
NASA GISS Inaccurate Press Release On The Surface Temperature Trend Data (Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr.)
and:
Reply to Andrew Dessler’s Guest Post On Water Vapor Feedback (Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr.)
I’ll say it again…..settled science my ass.
The climate is changing, it has since the birth of the planet, but to suggest that humans are the cause of it is not correct. There is NO science that proves this theory, and to force nations across this globe to ruin their economy is ignorant and foolhardy.
Not only did the IPCC publish the false Himalayan glacier claim as fact, they claimed that those who questioned it were “supporting…unsubstantiated research.”
Israel has been signing treaties in support of the global warming position for years .http://israelity.com/2009/11/30/copenhagen-israel-climate-change/ http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2009/President-Peres-to-represent-Israel-at-UN-Climate-Change-Conference-in-Copenhagen-13-Dec-2009
Iran and Saudi Arabia are both climate change deniers. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5371QM20090408
The US Navy believes that the Arctic Ocean will be ice free in the summer soon.http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=50245
The people who are climate change deniers are allied with the most repressive muslim regime on the planet
@John ryan:
Ummmm…..Mata addressed you when you dropped this steaming pile of dog squeeze last time.
Funny thing though….you never came back to discuss it.
Why is that?
And you’ve been a dumb ass for years, so what’s your point?
John Ryan
The people who are climate change deniers are allied with the most repressive muslim regime on the planet
That statement is so pathetically funny it is unreal. You belong to the party that denies the very existance of muslim jihadists and claim we are not in a GWOT but yet you acknowledge the
existance of those same muslim jihadists in your lame statement. Tell me, do you people remember all the lies you spew or do you just walk through a labrynth of falsehoods all your lives. You have come to this site many times and made a fool of yourself with your inane ramblings. When you make these stupid remarks, do you think “Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more”? The breach being a la-la land of subterfuge and falsehoods. A world that you have conjured in your minds but has no basis with reality.
Guh… once again the radical liberals show their stripes. Maybe you should fire more professors that point out the weaknesses of your opinion on AGW, a la Mark Albright, the University of Washington Professor who found that the global warming freaks cherry picked their data to rationalize warming.
So, you take a thermometer (invented in the 18th century), then wait until the 19th century to get the technology to reliably manufacture thermometers with closely standardized markings, then use those at predetermined places for around 75 years, invent “correction factors” to account for the asphalt and air conditioner exhausts that sprung up around them, then shut down something like 40% of them (mostly in Siberia and Canada) at the end of the “cold war,” (and exactly at the time the average supposedly jumped up, hmmmm)and claim to be able to point out a trend in a 4.5 billion year old system that is smaller than the variability of handing 100 of these thermometers to random people in a football stadium and having all of them write down the reading at the final whistle.
Next you tie in CO2, ignoring the fact that the ice cores show the CO2 rises after temperature, you then use tree rings (but only for those periods when they support warming), never mind that the CO2 is only a fraction of a fraction as efficient as water vapour (which you ignore in your models) or that man’s contribution to CO2 is a tiny fraction of the whole, and ignore that the airborne fraction of CO2 to bound CO2 has remained constant for 150 years.
And finally you present world wide income redistribution as the solution (just like it was back in the 1970’s when we were on the verge of a new ice age). Of course you then have to distribute emails to all of your buddies to keep the story stright and stiffle anyone who disagrees.
Who could ever question that??????
Check out this e-mail excerpt from Reto Ruedy, one of the top analysts at NASA GISS. It reveals they have no evidence of man-made global warming showing up in the USA temp data: