Oh, Mann: Cuccinelli targets UVA papers in Climategate salvo

UPDATE: Read the Demand Letter from the Attorney General to UVA



by Courteney Stuart 4:32pm Thursday Apr 29, 2010

No one can accuse Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of shying from controversy. In his first four months in office, Cuccinelli directed public universities to remove sexual orientation from their anti-discrimination policies, attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and filed a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Now, it appears, he may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.





In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.



If Cuccinelli succeeds in finding a smoking gun like the purloined emails that led to the international scandal dubbed Climategate, Cuccinelli could seek the return of all the research money, legal fees, and trebled damages.

“Since it’s public money, there’s enough controversy to look in to the possible manipulation of data,” says Dr. Charles Battig, president of the nonprofit Piedmont Chapter Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment, a group that doubts the underpinnings of climate change theory.



Mann is one of the lead authors of the controversial “hockey stick graph,” which contends that global temperatures have experienced a sudden and unprecedented upward spike (like the shape of a hockey stick).









Among the documents Cuccinelli demands are any and all emailed or written correspondence between or relating to Mann and more than 40 climate scientists, documents supporting any of five applications for the $484,875 in grants, and evidence of any documents that no longer exist along with proof of why, when, and how they were destroyed or disappeared.



The Attorney General has the right to make such demands for documents under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, a 2002 law designed to keep government workers honest.Last fall, the release of some emails by researchers caused turmoil in the climate science world and bolstered critics of the human-blaming scientific models. (Among Climategate’s embarrassing revelations was that one researcher professed an interest in punching Charlottesville-based doubting climate scientist Patrick Michaels in the nose.”)Neither UVA spokesperson Carol Wood nor Mann returned a reporter’s calls at posting time, but Mann— whose research remains under investigation at Penn State— recently defended his work in a front page story in USA Today saying while there could be “minor” errors in his work [just two weeks ago he claimed his work received a 'clean bill of health'] there’s nothing that would amount to fraud or change his ultimate conclusions that the earth is warming as a result of human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.

Antarctica's Sub-Tropical Past

Scientists peer into Antarctica's past

via Eurekalert 4/29/10



The poles control much of our global climate. Giant ice sheets in Antarctica behave like mirrors, reflecting the sun's energy and moderating the world's temperatures. The waxing and waning of these ice sheets contribute to changes in sea level and affect ocean circulation, which regulates our climate by transporting heat around the planet.





Despite their present-day cold temperatures, the poles were not always covered with ice. New climate records recovered from Antarctica during the recent Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) "Wilkes Land Glacial History" Expedition show that approximately 53 million years ago, Antarctica was a warm, sub-tropical environment. During this same period, known as the "greenhouse" or "hothouse" world, atmospheric CO2 levels exceeded those of today by ten times.



Then suddenly, Antarctica's lush environment transitioned into its modern icy realm. In only 400,000 years – a mere blink of an eye in geologic time – concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreased. Global temperatures dropped. Ice sheets developed. Antarctica became ice-bound.



How did this change happen so abruptly and how stable can we expect ice sheets to be in the future?



[How indeed... if CO2 levels were 10 times higher than today and Antarctica a subtropical paradise could the run-away-catastrophic-positive-feedback-system possibly reverse?]

To answer these questions, an international team of scientists participating in the Wilkes Land Glacial History Expedition spent two months aboard the scientific research vessel JOIDES Resolution in early 2010, drilling geological samples from the seafloor near the coast of Antarctica. Despite negotiating icebergs, near gale-force winds, snow, and fog, they managed to recover approximately 2,000 meters (over one mile) of sediment core.





"These sediments are essential to our research because they preserve the history of the Antarctic ice sheet," observed Dr. Carlota Escutia of the Research Council of Spain CSIC-University of Granada, who led the expedition, along with co-chief scientist Dr. Henk Brinkhuis of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "We can read these sediments like a history book," Brinkhuis explained. "And this book goes back 53 million years, giving us an unprecedented record of how ice sheets form and interact with changes in the climate and the ocean."



Wilkes Land is the region of Antarctica that lies due south of Australia, and is believed to be one of the more climate-sensitive regions of the polar continent. The new core samples collected during IODP's Wilkes Land expedition are unique because they provide the world's first direct record of waxing and waning of ice in this region of Antarctica.





Combined, the cores tell the story of Antarctica's transition from an ice-free, warm, greenhouse world to an ice-covered, cold, dry "icehouse" world. Sediments and microfossils preserved within the cores document the onset of cooling and the development of the first Antarctic glaciers and the growth and recession of Antarctica's ice sheets. Cores from one site resemble tree rings – unprecedented alternating bands of light and dark sediment preserve seasonal variability of the last deglaciation that began some 10,000 years ago.



Understanding the behavior of Antarctica's ice sheets plays a fundamental role in our ability to build robust, effective global climate models, which are used to predict future climate. "These models rely on constraints imposed by data from the field," the co-chiefs pointed out. "Measurements of parameters such as age, temperature, and carbon dioxide concentration provide invaluable inputs that help increase the accuracy of these models. The more we can constrain the models, the better they'll perform – and the better we can predict ice sheet behavior."



What's next? The science team now embarks on a multi-year process of on-shore analyses to further investigate the Wilkes Land cores. Age-dating and chemistry studies among other analyses are expected to resolve changes in Antarctica's climate over unprecedented short timescales (50-20,000 years). Data collected from the Wilkes Land expedition will complement previous research from drilling operations conducted elsewhere in the Antarctic over the last 40 years. Together, this research will provide important age constraints for models of Antarctic ice sheet development and evolution, thereby forming the basis for models of future ice sheet behavior and polar climatic change.

Australia's Changing Climate-Change Climate

Costly cap-and-trade legislation isn't the political winner it once was.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL APRIL 29, 2010  By TOM SWITZER



It was always going to be an uphill battle for the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation in an election year. But with Senator Lindsey Graham's likely decision to withdraw his support from the landmark bill, the prospects are now virtually zero.



That is not just because Mr. Graham had been the only Republican senator to endorse a broad approach to tackling global warming. It's because the climate, politically speaking, has changed dramatically since June when the House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate cap-and-tax bill. President Obama's decision to make immigration reform a higher priority in the Senate legislative calendar is a recognition of this reality: Cap-and-tax is dead. And not just in Washington either.

Costly cap-and-trade legislation isn't the political winner it once was.

All over the globe, politicians of different ideological stripes are reconsidering the costs of slashing greenhouse gases to combat the speculative problem of global warming. In France, the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy has shelved its carbon-tax plans. In Canada, cap-and-trade is stalled in legislative limbo. In Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is struggling to pass an emissions trading scheme. In China and India, leaders insist they won't sign a global agreement to cap emissions, which they see as an economic suicide pact. Even in New Zealand, pressure is building on the conservative government of John Key to delay the implementation of a cap-and-trade plan.

The changing climate is most evident in Australia. This week, the Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided to shelve its own proposed cap-and-trade for three years. Mr. Rudd had discovered that after the Senate had twice rejected his centerpiece policy of cutting carbon emissions by 5% to 15% from 2000 levels by 2020, it would defeat the bills in a third vote in several weeks. It is believed that Labor's retreat from climate change will save Canberra about 4 billion Australian dollars ($3.7 billion) in the federal budget on May 11.



Mr. Rudd's backflip not only amounts to what the nation's leading political commentator Paul Kelly describes as "one of the most spectacular backdowns by a prime minister in decades." It also represents a victory for conservatives who have opposed what the center-right Liberal leader Tony Abbott says is "great big tax to create a big slush fund to provide politicized handouts, run by a giant bureaucracy." Put simply, they did not follow the Canberra press gallery's script that Australia, which accounts for 1.4% of global greenhouse gases, should lead the world on emissions reductions.



This marks a big shift in the intellectual winds—not to mention political strategy—swirling around this issue. Since the election defeat of Liberal Prime Minister John Howard in November 2007, the climate debate had been conducted in a heretic-hunting, anti-intellectual atmosphere. Not only was it impermissible to question the science of man-made global warming, it was deemed blasphemy that anyone dare question the government's policy response. Conventional wisdom held that if the Liberals opposed cap-and-trade, it would lead to a massive backlash against the opposition parties at the ballot box.



This argument increasingly fell apart after the collapse of December's Copenhagen Summit attempt to agree to a world-wide framework for emissions cuts. Suddenly the Liberals started to look more like part of the global mainstream than Mr. Rudd. He had, after all, once declared climate change the "great moral challenge" of our time, and only months ago linked climate "deniers" with "conspiracy theories" and "vested interests." Fewer world leaders agreed with him than he had apparently reckoned.



Credit goes to Mr. Abbott. By subjecting Labor's agenda to impose potentially crushing costs on business and consumers to some much-needed scrutiny, the center-right leader has helped change the political climate down under. To be sure, other factors have been in play: Wall Street's meltdown, record northern-hemisphere winter snowstorms, climategate and glaciergate, and not least the Copenhagen failure. But by spelling out in the most forceful and coherent language how cap-and-trade amounted to economic pain for no environmental gain, Mr. Abbott has comprehensively wrong-footed Mr. Rudd.



In the process, the conservative Liberal warrior is setting a global trend. Although he opposes emissions trading and a carbon tax, his case is not an appeal to do nothing. Indeed, he champions environmental measures with a A$3.2 billion direct-action plan that includes planting 20 million trees, putting solar cells on a million roofs by 2020 and providing incentives for industry and farmers to reduce emissions through measures such as storing carbon in soil. Meanwhile, he downplays the overheated claims of rising sea levels, melting glaciers and disappearing polar bears. It seems climate scepticism is cool now.



All of this has consequences for the next round of global climate talks in Mexico City in December, where world leaders hope to map out a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. Judging by Messrs. Rudd's and Obama's rapidly changing priorities in recent days, hopes for any verifiable, enforceable and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases—and to include developing nations such as China and India that are polluting their way to prosperity—are a chimera. The climate is indeed changing.



Mr. Switzer is a research associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and editor of the Spectator Australia.

Re-recorded History

The animation below shows how the surface, weather balloon, and even satellite data has been adjusted between years 1995, 2000, and 2006:

Older inconvenient data are pushed down and recent data increased to create a tidy story. Created from slides of Pat Michaels presentation from the highly recommended video below of the Cooler Heads Coalition congressional briefing on the science and politics of the "Climategate" scandal. Featured speakers are George Mason University Distinguished Senior Fellow Pat Michaels and International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP) Executive Director Joseph D'Aleo:

More on the ~60 Year Climate Cycle

The P Gosselin NoTricksZone corresponded with Dr Oleg Pokrovsky, the Russian scientist who was widely quoted by international newswires 4 days ago about his statement that the Arctic is cooling, not warming. Dr. Pokrovsky replied and provided a link to his recent powerpoint presentation. He bases his analysis partly upon the cyclical nature of the AMO and PDO, as shown in his wavelet analyses below. The simplistic explanation for interpretation of the wavelet analysis is to look for dark red horizontal bands, which show the primary cyclical component for both the AMO and PDO to range between ~60-70 years (y axis):

Dr. Pokrovsky also finds good agreement between the ~60 year AMO cycle and Arctic ice extent:

He also finds similar periodicity in the PDO during the instrument era (first graph) and from paleoclimate reconstructions (second graph).

And comes to the following conclusions:

His findings are also in agreement with several other authors who have identified the ~60 year natural climate cycle from a variety of paleoclimate indicators and analysis of ocean cycles. Yet, the IPCC doesn't consider the very important ocean oscillations at all in their climate models, preferring to blame almost all climate change upon man-made CO2. As Dr. Roy Spencer points out in his new book, almost no scientific work is being done to examine these huge natural forcings of climate change, since there is little grant funding for anything other than studies of anthropogenic climate change.

Ancient Tools Revealed by Melting Arctic Ice

MSM fails again to point out Arctic naturally much warmer in past and no evidence to suggest it's any different this time



LiveScience Staff posted: 26 April 2010 02:43 pm ET

Warming temperatures are melting patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years in the mountains of the Canadian High Arctic and in turn revealing a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools...

 

The results have been extraordinary: Andrews and his team (including members of the indigenous Shutaot'ine or Mountain Dene) have found 2,400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years.

The latter two would be from the Medieval Warming Period, which despite Mann et al attempts to "contain" and claim was only localized, has overwhelming evidence it was in fact global and hotter than the present. The 2,400 year old spear tool would be from the Roman Warming Period, also hotter than the present. No mention of course in the LiveScience press release.

The Global Temperature Anomaly Race Track

And they're off! Since the starting gate of the 1998 El Nino, the Hansen/GISS thoroughbred racehorse maintains it's commanding lead from it's flying start and sharp pullout from the year 2000 backstretch. The Hansen/GISS thoroughbred was the clear favorite and thus odds are only even money for a win, even though a track record is in the offing. Pulling up the rear and actually going the "wrong" way are the neck-to-neck long-shots RSS and UAH satellite donkeys, at a record anomaly difference of .3°C, about half of the entire claimed global warming anomaly of the past century. The Hansen/GISS thoroughbred is the only one that can continue to spin that the globe is the hottest in re-recorded history at every stretch, and can continue it's commanding lead by adjustments and deletions of inconvenient data, an advantage not available to the satellite donkeys which are at 1000-1 odds. Global bets placed upon the outcome are currently estimated at $45 trillion. 

Adiabatic Theory predicts slight cooling from Doubled CO2

Adding to the list (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25...and others) of scientists and mathematicians who have disproven conventional greenhouse gas theory, Russian physicists OG Sorokhtin, GV Chilingar, and LF Khilyuk noted in their book Global warming and global cooling. Evolution of climate on earth. Developments in Earth & Environmental Sciences (Elsevier 2007) that conventional greenhouse theory is not based on sound physical derivation, with most calculations and predictions based on intuitive models using numerous poorly defined parameters and unproven positive feedback forcing from CO2. Most conventional interpretations and models, such as those of the IPCC, consider only one component of heat transfer- radiation- to create a flat earth radiation budget of the atmosphere, ocean, and land masses, and do not adequately address the impact of e.g. convection and circulation on a rotating sphere. In contrast, the Sorokhtin et al adiabatic theory considers earth as an open, dissipative system that can be described by non-linear equations of mathematical physics, taking into account the formation of stable thermodynamic structures in each compartment, between compartments, and ruled by strong negative feedbacks (e.g. convection, water cycles, clouds). They devised a model based on well-established relationships among physical fields describing the mass and heat transfer in the atmosphere and subsequently published the paper Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects (2008), excerpted below.

 

This paper and all of the other derivations of atmospheric physics noted in the list above come to essentially the same conclusion: Doubling of CO2 levels will cause insignificant changes in global temperature (<1°C). This prediction is in much better agreement with the five peer-reviewed empirical satellite studies than any of the IPCC models or predictions from conventional greenhouse gas theory.





Basic formulas describe among others, the heat transfer in the atmosphere by radiation, the atmospheric pressure and air density change with elevation, the effect of the angle of the Earth's precession and the adiabatic process. For the adiabatic process the formula considers the partial pressures and specific heats of the gases forming the atmosphere, an adiabatic constant and corrective coefficients for the heating caused by water condensation in the wet atmosphere and for the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere. The adiabatic constant and the heat coefficients are estimated using actual experimental data. 



This adiabatic model was verified, with a precision of 0.1%, by comparing the results obtained for the temperature distribution in the troposphere of the Earth with the standard model used worldwide for the calibration of the aircraft gauges and which is based on experimental data. The model was additionally verified with a precision of 0.5%–1.0% for elevations up to 40 km, by comparing the results with the measured temperature distribution in the dense troposphere of Venus consisting mainly of CO2.

Introduction



Traditional anthropogenic theory of currently observed global warming states that release of carbon dioxide into atmosphere (partially as a result of utilization of fossil fuels) leads to an increase in atmospheric temperature because the molecules of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) absorb the infrared radiation from the Earth’s surface. This statement is based on the Arrhenius hypothesis, which was never verified (Arrhenius, 1896).



The proponents of this theory take into consideration only one component of heat transfer in atmosphere, i.e., radiation. Yet, in the dense Earth’s troposphere with the pressure p > 0:2 atm, the heat from the Earth's surface is mostly transferred by convection (Sorokhtin, 2001a). According to our estimates, convection accounts for 67%, water vapor condensation in troposphere accounts for 25%, and radiation accounts for about 8% of the total heat transfer from the Earth’s surface to troposphere. [IPCC models rely almost entirely upon the radiation budget, which according to the authors accounts for only 8% of atmospheric heat transfer-maybe that's why Trenberth et al can't find the "missing" heat- added comments] 

Conclusion

Thus, convection is the dominant process of heat transfer in troposphere, and all the theories of Earth’s atmospheric heating (or cooling) first of all must consider this process of heat (energy) mass redistribution in atmosphere (Sorokhtin, 2001a, 2001b; Khilyuk and Chilingar, 2003, 2004).



Accumulation of large amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to the cooling, and not to warming of climate, as the proponents of traditional anthropogenic global warming theory believe (Aeschbach-Hertig, 2006). This conclusion has a simple physical explanation: when the infrared radiation is absorbed by the molecules of greenhouse gases, its energy is transformed into thermal expansion of air, which causes convective fluxes of air masses restoring the adiabatic distribution of temperature in the troposphere. Our estimates show that release of small amounts of carbon dioxide (several hundreds ppm), which are typical for the scope of anthropogenic emission, does not influence the global temperature of Earth’s atmosphere. 

The Sorokhtin et al model was based on the observation that in the troposphere (the lower and denser layer of the atmosphere, with pressures greater than 0.2 atm) the heat transfer is mostly by convection and the temperature distribution is close to adiabatic. The reasoning for this is that the air masses expand and cool while rising and compress and heat while descending. 



The main conclusions of this work are:



1. Convection accounts for approximately 67% of the total amount of heat transfer from the Earth's surface to the troposphere, the condensation of water vapour for 25% and radiation accounts for only 8%. As the heat transfer in the troposphere occurs mostly by convection, accumulation of CO2 in the troposphere intensifies the convective process of heat and mass transfer, because of the intense absorption of infrared radiation, and leads to subsequent cooling and not warming as commonly believed.



2. The analysis indicates that the average surface temperature of the earth is determined by the solar constant, the precession angle of the planet, the mass (pressure) of the atmosphere, and the specific heat of the atmospheric mixture of gases.



3. If the nitrogen–oxygen atmosphere of the earth would be replaced by a CO2 atmosphere with the same pressure of 1 atm, then the average near-surface temperature would decrease by approximately 2.5 °C and not increase as commonly assumed.



4. The opposite will happen by analogy if the CO2 atmosphere of Venus would be replaced by a nitrogen–oxygen atmosphere at a pressure of 90.9 atm. The average near-surface temperature would increase from 462 °C to 657 °C. This is explained easily by observing how the results of the derived formulas are affected, considering that the molecular weight of CO2 is about 1.5 times greater and its specific heat 1.2 times smaller than those of the earth's air. 



5. If the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases from 0.035% to its double value of 0.070%, the atmospheric pressure will increase slightly (by 0.00015 atm). Consequently the temperature at sea level will increase by about 0.01°C and the increase in temperature at an altitude of 10 km will be less than 0.03°C. These amounts are negligible compared to the natural temporal fluctuations of the global temperature.



6. In evaluating the above consequences of the doubling of the CO2, one has to consider the dissolution of CO2 in oceanic water and also that, together with carbon, a part of atmospheric oxygen is also transferred into carbonates. Therefore instead of a slight increase in the atmospheric pressure one should expect a slight decrease with a corresponding insignificant climate cooling.



Related:

NASA's Gavin Schmidt believes the earth is a perpetual heat engine - click on The Greenhouse Hustle

Google Books Excerpts

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=252066

http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=L._F._Khilyuk_and_G._V._Chilingar

9000 Years of Decreasing Monsoons in China

One critical flaw of the IPCC appears to be a myopic focus on climate changes within the past century without placing these changes in proper historical context, and then assuming the 20th century changes can not be accounted for by anything other than anthropogenic forcing (i.e. man-made CO2). Time and time again, however, the paleoclimate record shows the 0.6C temperature change of the 20th century to be trivial in comparison to entirely natural changes that have occurred in both directions since the beginning of time. This is a point made by Dr. Richard Lindzen many times. Not only are the temperature changes of the 20th century trivial, but so are other climate indicators including monsoons and droughts. Here are two examples, the first indicating that the strength of Asian Monsoons has shown a declining trend over the past 9000 years:

As the earth has warmed since the last ice age 15,000 years ago, the strength of monsoons (and amount of associated vital precipitation) has decreased. The "recent" uptick started about 500 years ago from the low of the past 9000 years, and therefore can not be accounted for by anthropogenic forcing.  What does the IPCC AR4 say about Asian monsoons?:  "An increase in precipitation is projected in the Asian monsoon (along with an increase in interannual season-averaged precipitation variability)." Setting aside that there is no evidence that this is due to man, an increase in monsoonal precipitation appears to be a good thing in historical context. Shown below are records of precipitation for 5 regions covering northern to southern China, with times of severe drought shown as red vertical lines (note absence in the 20th century and lack of "increasing variability"):

The periods of severe drought correspond to the period of abnormally low monsoonal strength shown in the first graph. The IPCC prediction of increased monsoonal precipitation (and variability) due to anthropogenic forcing is baseless conjecture, and even if true is likely to be benefitial for avoidance of severe drought.

graph source

 In spite of the IPCC AR4 prediction for increased monsoonal strength & associated precipitation, the AR4 shows a graph of decreasing monsoonal strength/precipitation since a peak in the relatively hot 1920's and 1930's:

 If increasing emissions of CO2 in the 20th century have anything to do with monsoons, why did they peak in the 1880's and 1920's and decrease since then?

Sign of the Times: Amazon Rank Spencer 40 v. Romm 2087

Dr. Roy Spencer's new book The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists is the 40th best selling book on Amazon. Also just released, Climategate: A Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam by Brian Sussman is the 52nd best selling book on Amazon. In contrast, Straight Up: America's Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions released 5 days earlier than the 2 books above by climate hyper-alarmist Joe Romm has an Amazon rank of 2087, despite a push by Al Gore. Spencer outselling Romm 52 to 1: Another inconvenient truth (ratio could be even higher if actual sales numbers were provided by Amazon)

Twenty Years of Advocacy, Not Journalism, on Global Warming

The media has forged a consensus around climate change.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL APRIL 23, 2010, 5:39 P.M. ET

By RICH NOYES The Media Research Center



For more than two decades, the so-called mainstream media have preached the dangers of manmade global warming, insisting American businesses and consumers must make massive economic sacrifices to ward off a global climate catastrophe. Not even last November's exposure of e-mails from leading scientists on the alarmist side of the debate — showing them conniving to fudge or suppress data, discredit critics and distort the peer review process — has caused journalists to finally take a skeptical approach to radical environmentalists' doomsaying.



A new study from the MRC's Business & Media Institute documents how ABC, CBS and NBC have been just as strident in their advocacy in the months following "ClimateGate" as they were in the 20 years that preceded the scandal. At the same time, a review of the Media Research Center's archives going back to the late 1980s shows just how strongly reporters have pushed the liberal line on global warming. Here are just some of the many examples:



• "Global warming could mean economic upheaval. It could bring suffering. It could bring starvation....The causes of global warming are no mystery. The biggest culprit is carbon dioxide, or CO2, a bi-product when man burns fossil fuels to run cars or generate electricity....If we fail to act, there may be hell to pay in a hotter world....Global warming is not a fact, just a widely-held theory. The problem is, if man waits for proof, it may be too late."

— Host Don Harrison narrating CNN's primetime Climate In Crisis special, August 1, 1989.



•"As the science editor at Time, I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy."

— Time's Charles Alexander at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institute, as quoted in the October 5 Wall Street Journal.



• "If the world is to head off the risk of global warming, with its danger of massive crop failure, or rising sea levels, or spreading starvation in the poorest countries, then America — the largest producer of the gases that cause global warming — is in the spotlight."

— ABC reporter Ned Potter on World News Tonight, April 7, 1992.



• "Environmentalists see catastrophes of biblical proportions, from droughts to melting ice caps that send sea levels rising."

— Correspondent Barry Petersen on the CBS Evening News, December 1, 1997.



• Karen Kerrigan, Small Business Survival Committee: "To say that the science is conclusive...is actually bunk."

Host Ted Koppel: "I was just going to make the observation that there are still some people who believe in the Flat Earth Society, too, but that doesn't mean they're right."

— Exchange on the December 9, 1997 Nightline.

More at WSJ.COM  and some of the results from Minnesotans 4 Global Warming: Crazy Hippies Celebrate Earthday:

BREAKING: Scientist says Arctic getting colder

MOSCOW, April 23 (UPI) -- A Russian scientist says the Arctic may be getting colder, not warmer, which would hamper the international race to discover new mineral fields.



An Arctic cold snap that began in 1998 could last for years, freezing the northern marine passage and making it impassable without icebreaking ships, said Oleg Pokrovsky of the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.



"I think the development of the shelf will face large problems," Pokrovsky said Thursday at a seminar on research in the Polar regions.



Scientists who believe the climate is warming may have been misled by data from U.S. meteorological stations located in urban areas, where dense microclimates creates higher temperatures, RIA Novosti quoted Pokrovsky as saying.



"Politicians who placed their bets on global warming may lose the pot," Pokrovsky said.

Global warming hoax? Environmentalist discusses climate alarmist pollution

AN EARTH DAY COUNTERPOINT By Larry Bell April 22nd, 2010



I consider myself an environmentalist, but having extensively studied the issues I haven’t found any evidence that the sky is falling, oceans are rising, polar bears are sweating or that carbon dioxide is a polluting menace.

There is clear evidence, however, that such claims are predicated upon climate models that can’t even predict last week’s weather, that Norse Viking farmers grew crops in a much warmer Greenland about 1,000 years ago, that global temperatures have risen and fallen dramatically over hundreds of thousands of years without human influence, and that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels typically followed, not led those changes.

By the way, maybe you noticed that global temperatures have actually been dropping over the past decade in spite of increased CO2?

Happy Earth Day to you, too.

Some may argue that unfounded alarmism is justifiable, even necessary, to get our attention and motivate us to do what we should be doing anyway to conserve energy and not pollute the planet. Hey, who wants to challenge those purposes?

And motives? What about portraying polar bears as endangered victims to block drilling in Alaska, and classifying carbon dioxide as an endangering pollutant to open up lucrative cap-and-trade markets? What if these tactics lack any scientific basis and some of us who reject those particular agendas challenge them?

Global Warming doubters grow

Until recently, those who expressed skepticism risked scornful branding as heretics by members of a powerful global warming orthodoxy. But now the doubter population, no longer a minority, continues to rapidly expand. What was once considered heresy is presently becoming a skeptical norm. This will most certainly continue as the public continues to be better informed about facts vs. fictions.



Now let’s take this argument a step farther. What if after scaring us with nonsense and twanging our eco-guilt strings we are told that we really don’t need to do that evil drilling or burn dangerous fossil fuel anyway. We can use “renewable” sources of energy that are clean, unlimited, sustainable and energize our way to independence of foreign oil.

How can any true environmentalist argue with that? More important, how can any informed authority believe it? Consider a few easily verifiable facts:

• Bio fuels (ethanol for example) require as much or more fossil energy (petroleum) to grow the crops and process as they produce, while competing for farmland needed to grow food crops for people and livestock. Cellulosic ethanol from plant wastes sounds good, but hasn’t proven to be commercially viable.


• Wind power (now about 0.5 percent of US electricity compared with 50 percent for coal) has very little growth capacity, is unreliable, remote from areas of high demand, and depends upon a “spinning reserve” of natural gas when winds are too weak or strong (most of the time).


• Solar power (currently about 1/100 of one percent of United States electricity) is inefficient, expensive, and not surprisingly, unavailable at night. Few serious people are excited about capacities.


• Hydropower (about six percent of U.S. electricity) has virtually no place to grow because dam sites are being used and “environmentalist” groups want to remove some that exist due to fish kills and other ecosystem damage. Wave and tidal power are inefficient and limited to ideal offshore locations as local sources.


• Geothermal sites are very geographically limited and restricted because they contaminate water and land with heavy metals and other toxic materials.


• The term “hydrogen economy” is an oxymoron. Hydrogen requires more energy to produce than it yields, is difficult to contain, and is dangerously explosive. The main source is natural gas.


• Nuclear power (about 20 percent of all US electricity produced by 104 plants) releases no CO2, but many environmental groups hate it anyway, as they do all others mentioned.

So what can really be said about green energy? Most of the sources appear to be decidedly browner than advertised. Yes. We need to conserve and apply all options possible. But let’s also tone down the climate hysteria and eco-sanctimony.

Larry Bell is a professor of architecture and endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston. His new book “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” will be released in January 2011.

Quotes from the 1st Earth Day 1970

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”

• Kenneth Watt, ecologist



“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

• George Wald, Harvard Biologist



“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”

• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist



“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day



“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist



“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist



“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”

• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day





“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University



“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

• Life Magazine, January 1970



“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist



“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”

• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist



“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”

• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director



“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”

• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist



“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

• Sen. Gaylord Nelson



“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist



Keep these predictions in mind when you hear the same types of predictions made today.



Source and Related

Human Contribution to Warming is 10% or Less

SCIENCE EDITORIAL (April 17, 2010) by S. Fred Singer, PhD



Due Diligence on the IPCC Assessment Report #4 [2007]



I know it’s a tough job – but let’s just check the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC 2007) iconic, widely-quoted conclusion and parse its meaning:



“Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GH gas concentrations.”



How should one interpret this ex cathedra declaration to the faithful?



IPCC helpfully defines ‘very likely’ as ‘90-99% certain’, but they don’t tell us how they reached such well-defined certainty.



What remarkable unanimity! Just how many and whom did they poll? No word.



IPCC doesn’t define the word ‘most.’ We may assume it means anything between 51 and 99%. That’s quite a spread.But a footnote informs us that solar forcing is less than 10% of anthropogenic [0.12/ 1.6 W/m2]; so ‘most’ must be closer to 99% than to 51%.



OK; let’s check out the data since 1958. But we don’t want to rely on contaminated surface data – which IPCC likely used (although they omitted to say so).



However, atmospheric data were readily available to the IPCC in the CCSP-SAP-1.1 report (Fig 3a, p.54; convening lead author John Lanzante, NOAA), with independent analyses by the Hadley Centre and NOAA that agree well. And further, according to GH models, atmospheric trends should be larger than surface temperature trends.



1958 – 2005: Shows a total warming of +0.5 C . But how much of that is anthropogenic? (The IPCC ascribes pre-1958 warming to natural forcings) So let’s break it down:



1958 – 1976: Cooling

1976 – 1977: Sudden jump of +0.5 C (Cannot be due to GH gases)

1979 – 1997: The satellite data show only a slightly positive trend

1998 – 1999: El Nino spike

2000 – 2001: No detectable warming trend

2001 – 2003: Sudden jump of +0.3 C (Cannot be due to GH gases)

2003 – present: No trend, maybe even slight cooling



In conclusion: The IPCC’s ‘most’ is not sustained by the best observations; the surface data (1979 to 1997) are suspect – until the raw data and algorithms of CRU are examined.



Therefore, the human contribution is very likely only 10% of observed warming --or even less.





Dr. S. Fred Singer is distinguished Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia. His previous government and academic positions include Chief Scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation (1987- 89); Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1970-71); Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water Quality and Research, U.S. Department of the Interior (1967- 70); founding Dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami (1964-67); first Director of the National Weather Satellite Service (1962-64); and Director of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Maryland (1953-62). He has a PhD in physics from Princeton University.  

Climate Science In Denial

Global warming alarmists have been discredited, but you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric this Earth Day.

By RICHARD S. LINDZEN, PhD 

The Wall Street Journal 4/22/10 

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.

That 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.

Dr. Lindzen is professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.



Related publication by Dr. Lindzen: Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?

Climate Alarmist Trashes Dr. Spencer's New Book Using Leeches

Climate hyper-alarmist Joe Romm has just posted his scientific rebuttal of Dr. Roy Spencer's new book. Mr. Romm, perhaps the only alarmist to the left of Al Gore, bases his primary scientific argument upon the occasional medicinal use of leeches. Would that make Dr. Spencer a medicinal leech denier too?

Mann Threatens Lawsuit Against Video Exposing His Hockey Stick

I'm no lawyer, but believe that for a libel or slander lawsuit to be successful, the plaintiff must prove that the defendants knew what they said was false, and that truth is an absolute defense. Thus, if Michael Mann is foolish enough to proceed with his threatened lawsuit against Minnesotans 4 Global Warming for their Hide the Decline parody video, he will:

1. Need to prove that Phil Jones email to Mann about Mike [Mann's] Nature Trick to "hide the decline" doesn't really refer to Mann "hiding the decline" in the tree ring data, which show decreasing temperatures after 1960.

2. Need to prove that Mann's email to Phil Jones on June 4, 2003, stating "it would be nice to try to "contain" the putative "MWP" [Medieval Warming Period], even if we don't yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back” does not show scientific malfeasance.

3. Need to prove that Mann's hockey stick isn't one of the most thoroughly debunked scientific papers of the 20th century

4. Need to prove that Mann himself has not repeatedly deliberately distorted highly critical reviews of his work

5. Need to prove that it is ok for Mann to continue to flip temperature proxies upside down even in his latest papers, even though this egregious error has already been pointed out to him in the past and which he still refuses to acknowledge.

6. UPDATE: Need to prove that Mann's email stating "As we all know, this isn't about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations" shows Mann has any interest in the "truth at all".

and so on...ad nauseum.

Minnesotans 4 Global Warming hope Mann will proceed with his lawsuit so that the legal discovery process will force exposure of data and methods Mann has still not released and that the official whitewash inquiries refuse to investigate. In the mean time, they have removed Mann's name and produced the new Hide the Decline II video:

Related: Michael Mann quotes

The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists

April 20th, 2010 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.



Today (April 20) is the official release date of my new book entitled: “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists“, published by Encounter Books.



About one-half of Blunder is a non-technical description of our new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.



Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.



You see, climate researchers are rather myopic. They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced ‘externally’…by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occur external to the normal, internal operation of the climate system.



But what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does, owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior.



As I travel around the country, I find that the public instinctively understands the possibility that there are natural climate cycles. Unfortunately, it is the climate “experts” who have difficulty grasping the concept. This is why I am taking my case to the public in this book. The climate research community long ago took the wrong fork in the road, and I am afraid that it might be too late for them to turn back.





Read more at Dr. Spencer's website

Astrophysicist: Anthropogenic Global Warming is a Myth

South African astrophysicist and solar researcher Hilton Ratcliffe (author of "The Virtue of Heresy" and "The Static Universe") tackles Al Gore, climate change, and the myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming head on. He must be another of those Republican climate deniers in the pockets of big oil.

CNBC's "Carbon Hunters" to Premiere Tomorrow

Snide on-air promo states "will it save the earth or is it all a scam?"



Press release: "Carbon Hunters" on CNBC will premiere on Tuesday, April 20th at 10pm ET, and repeats that night at 1am ET. The documentary will re-air on Sunday, April 25th at 10pm ET.





Can going green make you money? Or is the $100 billion carbon trading market all smoke and mirrors? Carbon Hunters on CNBC takes you inside this controversial, market-driven solution to pollution, where you will meet a new breed of entrepreneurs cashing in on the ‘green rush’. From the Chicago Climate Exchange to Hollywood to ‘Garbage Mountain’ in the Philippines, carbon trading is attracting investors and critics.



As always, follow the money for the answers (not part of press release). Also note, CNBC is owned by General Electric, a manufacturer of wind turbines, nuclear, and fossil fuel power plants.