Monckton on Australia’s Sunrise Show

It is a brave or stupid person that attempts to debate Christopher Monckton publicly on global warming and climate change. Monckton has an encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject and routinely trashes “qualified scientists” who usually fail to be able to cite and discuss the facts from memory.

Check out this brief “debate” on Australia’s Sunrise show. The interviewer is Koch, a warmist presenter. Even so we see Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) scientists offer himself up to the sacrificial alter that is Monckton and shown to be sadly lacking.

See at around the 2:30 mark on the video where climatologist Ben McNeil after stating that the “science is over; it’s not debateable” becomes speechless opening and closing his mouth repeatedly like a stranded goldfish, but nothing comes out. Perhaps there is nothing inside to come out? After Ben fails to present ANY actual facts conclusively linking greenhouse gas to global warming and even shooting himself in the foot by quoting a 150 year temperature rise that could have nothing to do with industrial activity going back that far (and don’t forget he is a “professional” scientist, Monckton is not, although he is published), Monckton rattles off detailed and fairly complex maths on climatology. Ben, had he been at all prepared and widely read would have known about these facts as I do, and been in a position to discuss them rationally. At near collapse with his self inflicted virtual reality imploding about him, and failing to put forward any actual arguments, Ben childishly reverts to squealing,

“to somehow discredit what we ahh do in our lives, in our professional lives is outrageous!”

Now that’s a withering argument supporting catestrohphic anthropogenic global warming if I ever heard one. Basically Ben is saying, I can’t be wrong and I can’t be questioned! The fact is thousands of scientists, including some of the greatest scientific experts currently living like physicist Professor Emeritus Freeman Dyson do question your “evidence” Ben. Are you saying that Dyson, who is acknowledged as possibly the greatest currently living scientist on the planet, is outrageous because he doesn’t agree with you Ben? That is not an argument Ben. Enough said.

Monckton remains cool and collected throughout whilst calmly demolishing the weak Ben McNeil, professional climatologist, for the audience in the limited time available.

Just after half way through the debate, Ben throws in the towel and turns back to Koch who tries to come to his rescue. Monckton once again scores with telling points.

Just a tip for CAGW scientists who want to step into the ring with Monckton; although you are paid to know your facts by us, the taxpayers of Australia, when you go toe to toe with Lord Monckton you are going to have to stop writing those fanciful papers about global extinction and other global catastrophies and actually know your facts or you are not going to last through the first round.

Ding Ding, Next!

On Monckton's last point where he states of the millions of lives that could be lost through diverting funds from relif and medical aide to a non existant CAGW issue, I iwll be posting two articles by Bill Gates this week, the second of which deals with this very issue. A lot of people in government jobs like scientists seem to have no idea that resources are limited and that diverting even more resources to CAGW will indeed have effects elsewhere. To simplify for CAGW scientists, imagine resources are cookies in a cookie jar. The more you take out the less you have left. Get it?

Glaciers that haven’t Heard the News about Global Warming

The glaciers are melting! The glaciers are melting! The glaciers are…uhhhhh…never mind.

Turns out the IPCC’s chicken little story that all the Himalayan glaciers are melting is just another exaggeration. Or fraud. Take your choice. You know, like the stats coming out of East Anglia CRU. And its claim that Antarctica is melting. And that Greenland’s ice cap is melting. And that sea levels are rising. And that the polar bears are dying. Fact is, some glaciers are retreating, but many others around the world are growing.

“But how is that possible? How can glaciers be growing when the world is warming up like a package of Jiffy-Pop in a microwave?”

Here are a dozen glaciers (or groups of glaciers) around the world that are growing almost as quickly as global warming skepticism.
...

Go here to get the full story about 12 glacial groups here to get the full story about 12 glacial groups comprising hundreds of glaciers that you will rarely hear about.

The first group of glaciers that aren’t melting are 230 (two hundred and thirty) Himalayan glaciers.

From Discovery:

Himalayan Glaciers Seem to Be Growing

In the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend.

Perched on the soaring Karakoram mountains in the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend. They're growing.

Throughout much of the Tibetan Plateau, high-altitude glaciers are dwindling in the face of rising temperatures. The situation is potentially dire for the hundreds of millions of people living in China, India and throughout southeast Asia who depend on the glaciers for their water supply.

But in the rugged western corner of the plateau, the story is different, according to a new study. Among legendary peaks of Mt. Everest like K2 and Nanga Parbat, glaciers with a penthouse view of the world are growing, and have been for almost three decades.

"These are the biggest mid-latitude glaciers in the world," John Shroder of the University of Nebraska-Omaha said. "And all of them are either holding still, or advancing."

When Shroder and a team of researchers examined satellite imagery of the region's glaciers dating back to 1960, they found that 87 glaciers had surged forward during that time, sliding down into lower elevations. An analysis of gravity signatures in the region also suggests the glaciers are growing in mass, and have been since at least 1980.

The team's work will be published in a forthcoming issue of Annals of Glaciology.

We can only assume that the media here in Australia have been too busy with breathless shots of Tiger Wood’s 12 on the side fiasco to inform the public here about this little inconvenient fact.

Let the Blackouts Begin

Looks like self inflicted power black outs in the most industrialised country in the world, the USA, are not far off for some communities. Interestingly not much thought seems to have been given by our noble overlords that in business increased risk means greater returns are required, thus more costs for consumers and greater lead times on capital investment. In fact capital investment may need to be forgone entirely if the economic environment is uncertain.

Now that might be an inconvenience if it is a factory not being built but when it is a power plant that will not be upgraded then everything just stops. No power for lighting, cooking, hospitals, water pumps, fuel pumps, you name it. A district with unreliable power supplies will also be unable to attract industry which will instead locate to an area where supply is reliable thus leading to the economic as well as social impoverishment of the affected district.

Welcome to the 15 Missouri communities served by Sho-Me Power forced to look for new power supply. Marshfield-based Sho-Me Power sent notices to the 15 communities in December saying it can no longer sell them electricity after Christmas of 2013 on a long-term basis.

"Getting electricity to our co-ops is our priority; that's who owns us," said Jerry Hartman, manager of administrative services for Sho-Me Power.

Associated Electric, which sells power wholesale to Sho-Me Power, is scaling back on selling electricity to municipal utilities because of an uncertain future in generating additional energy, said spokeswoman Nancy Southworth.
Proposals in Congress to rein in carbon dioxide emissions believed to be contributing to man-made global climate change have brought any plans to build or invest in new coal-burning power plants to a halt.

"Looking 20 years out, it gets very difficult to do that in today's environment," Hartman said. "It's an uncertain future on coal and it takes a few years to build (a plant)."

Read all about it here on News-Leader.com.

EU Parliament Climate Change Debate: Strasbourg 21 Jan 2010

No punches pulled debating the climate scam in the EU parliament in Strasbourg on 21 Jan 2010.

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Viscount has landed.

Lord Monckton landed in Sydney, Australia on the 21st January and immediately jumped another aircraft to fly 4,000 km to Perth, West Australia where he met with Jo Nova and others at a skeptics social event.

Highlights of his schedule follows:

January 24 Radio interview Ian Plimer on 2UE 11 am

January 25 Radio interview with Alan Jones, 2GB Radio 7-9am

January 26 Radio interview with Brian Wilshire, 2GB Radio 10-11.59pm

January 27 - Sydney 12.30pm Union Club Lunch

January 27 - Sydney $20 5.30pm Grand Ballroom, The Sheraton on the Park, Elizabeth Street.

January 28 - Newcastle $2 12:30p.m. Pay at the door.
VENUE: The Banquet Room, Newcastle City Hall, King St, NEWCASTLE.

January 29 Radio Interviews with 4BC(between 4-6pm) and United Christian Broadcasters
- Brisbane 12.30pm Lunch Grand Ballroom Hilton Hotel
Queens Street - ($130) See attached pdf flyer climate-debate-brisbane
To book, Damian Wyld, thomasmore@chariot.net.au, Ph 08 8379 0246

January 29- Brisbane 3pm Brisbane Irish Club, Tara Ballroom

January 30 - Noosa $20 The J in Noosa Junction @2p.m. Payment at the door

February 1 - Melbourne $20 luncheon, 12.00 for 12.30, will be held at 6/112 Millswyn St, South Yarra: (RSVP no later than c.o.b. on Thursday, January 28, by email to ipe_2@bigpond.com)

February 1 -5.30 Melbourne $20 "Town Hall Meeting," Venue Sofitel Hotel Grand Ballroom. contact: Case Smit case.smit@gmail.com

February 3 - Canberra -3pm- Address at National Press Club, Canberra

February 5 - Adelaide 5.30 Public lecture Intercontinental Hotel (formerly Hyatt)
North Terrace

February 8 - Perth Lunch - Parmelia Hotel

- Perth 5:30pm "Town Hall Meeting" Parmelia Hilton, 14 Mill Street, Perth.
To cover costs a “donation” of $10pp will be collected at the door.
Assorted homemade biscuits, coffee & tea provided.
Please email: Daphne Dhimitri daphne_dhimitri@hancockprospecting.com.au
or Ph: (61 8) 9429 8248 l Fax: (61 8) 94298268

Before attending any events please confirm details with John Smeed johnsmeed@adna.com.au as details may change.

The next week or two should be very entertaining as we watch our PM, Kevin Rudd, trying to avoid Monckton and stay silent on AGW. Rudd is currently galavanting around Australia beating the election drum already but I would bet a substantial sum he will maintain his mute stance on climate change as he has done since emerging from his failed COP15 fiasco. He will blab on as usual about grand schemes, fail to spell out any viable action, and studiously continue to ignore "the greatest moral issue of our time" (as he has stated) ie. AGW! He will also be trying to hush up his his personal tour of Pachauri’s TERI facility, the photos of hand shakes with the carbon conman and those pledges of millions of dollars (h/t Bulldust on WUWT).

Your pathetic Kev; just pathetic. I feel somewhat sorry for Penny Wong and Julia Gillard having to cover for you when the going gets tough.

IPCC Makes Yet Another Major "Error"

How does the saying go; “Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive” (Sir Walter Scott 1808).

We've had the Climategate emails resulting in leading IPCC scientists Prof Phil "Hide the Decline" Jones being investigated and stood down as head of the Climatic Research Unit as well as Prof Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann also being investigated by his Penn State University employer. We have the Chairman of the IPCC, Raj Pachauri, being called to resign after use of incorrect and non-reviewed data on Himalayan glaciers was included in the IPCC's 2007 AR4 report as reported yesterday in this blog, and now we have another major error in that same report as published in the Times Online.

UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

...

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".

...

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

That is not the end of it. There is more coming out as you read this. Stay tuned.

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

SOURCE: MAIL Online

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action. ‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation. According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.

The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF. It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.

The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121. Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air. Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25. ‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said. ‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’

One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’

When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’. Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures. It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’

However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them. For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.

In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so.

The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was ‘very high’. ‘What is the confidence level?’ it asked. The authors’ response said ‘appropriate revisions and editing made’. But the final version was identical to their draft.

Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue. Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. ‘He didn’t contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,’ he said.

The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable. Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’.

Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’

Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.

CLACIERGATE: Hitler's Last Straw

Post of the Week

A comment by a reader on WUWT, Martin Brumby on WUWT, Martin Brumby comments on the fake data used by the IPCC in the 2007 IPCC AR4 report which stated Himalayan glaciers would dissapear by 2035.

Martin Brumby (23:54:06) :

We need to remember that this is very far from being the first example of fraud revealed in the IPCC’s reports.

Most obviously our old friend Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick.

But also the Snows of Kilimanjaro, the spread of Tropical Disease into temperate zones, Rising Sea Levels, Species Extinction, Antartica Melting, Increased Hurricane Frequency. The list just goes on and on.

Anthony’s archives of postings on WUWT are stuffed with examples.

A good recent account is (here).

The IPCC isn’t the fruit of the toil of 2000 honest and expert Climate Scientists, which is how it has invariably been portrayed, it is a tendentious and thoroughly dishonest propaganda document designed to mislead and to promote the destruction of the economies of the developed world. And the vast majority of western politicians just went along with it, due to their scientific ignorance and the fact that they had deliberately appointed some of the most egregious Alarmists as their ’scientific advisors’.

The only difference with the Glacier story is the fact that – very belatedly – this has been picked up by a few of the mainstream media.

Nothing else has changed.

We still have a mountain to climb. But at least we’re above the foothills.

BREAKING NEWS: scientist admits IPCC used fake data to pressure policy makers

What a busy Sunday this has turned out to be. I am in the middle of preparing a BBQ to roast a nice leg of lamb and to enhance my carbon footprint by burning (gasp) charcoal to do so but the IPCC keeps on intruding as it just can't seem to get it's facts right. Worse than that, it uses fake data.

You know the IPCC - the mob that our government tells us they rely upon as the science is settled; the mob that organised the Copenhagen gabfest for tens of thousands from the chattering class - yep that mob.

I hope you have been keeping up with the 2007 IPCC AR4 report containing the now debunked statement that glaciers in the Himalayas will dissapear by 2035.

NASA went even further on their "evidence" web page linking to the IPCC AR4 report but stating the glaciers would dissapear by 2030. They have changed that statement without comment and deleted the link to the IPCC AR4 report. To do this without crediting and explaining the reason for the change is scientifically dishonest and misleads the public. Could it be that this is more about policy leading science rather than the other way around?

Dr John Ray summarises it thus:

The IPCC’s 2007 report, which won it the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”.

But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was “poorly substantiated” in the latest of a series of blows to the panel’s credibility.

Dr Pachauri said that the IPCC’s report was the responsibility of the panel’s Co-Chairs at the time, both of whom have since moved on.

They were Dr Martin Parry, a British scientist now at Imperial College London, and Dr Osvaldo Canziani , an Argentine meteorologist. Neither was immediately available for comment.

“I don’t want to blame them, but typically the working group reports are managed by the Co-Chairs,” Dr Pachauri said. “Of course the Chair is there to facilitate things, but we have substantial amounts of delegation.”

He declined to blame the 25 authors and editors of the erroneous part of the report , who included a Filipino, a Mongolian, a Malaysian, an Indonesian, an Iranian, an Australian and two Vietnamese.

Over the last couple of days more shoddy "mistakes" have been found in the IPCC report including incorrect basic maths. I will post further examples in a seperate article shortly including suspicions of missapropriation of hundreds of thousands of pounds of gullible EU taxpayer's funds. How could this rubbish ever make it through the (we are told) "thousands of reviewing scientists"? Any glaciologist worth his or her salt even giving the IPCC "evidence" a passing glance would have seen the glaring errors and mistatements.

We may now have part of the explanation.

We have this breaking news from WUWT and it is remarkable.

BREAKING NEWS: scientist admits IPCC used fake data to pressure policy makers

From the Daily Mail

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

"It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in."

Thus we now have the confirmation that has been strongly suspected for a long time. Scientists involved with IPCC AR4 have allowed glaring errors and unchecked heresay "data" to be included in the IPCC AR4 report for the express purpose of encouraging policy makers and governments to take action. Let me say that even more clearly. Scientists knowingly allow fake "data" to be published in the "gold science standard" IPCC report knowing that governments will use this to justify policy changes including but not limited to the imposition of taxes, the payment of "climate damages" to undeveloped countries and the imposition of a substantially reduced level of economic well upon citizens. Penny Wong (Minister for Changing the Climate here in Australia) for example waved that 2007 IPCC report at Senator Fielding who questioned the validity of "the science" and stated that she had to write her policy based on it. Of course she did - "the science is settled" is it not? Australian PM Kevin Rudd also relies on the IPCC. He had this to say in a 2008 60 Minutes TV interview with Tara Brown:

PM KEVIN RUDD: Well, I just look at what the scientists say. There's a group of scientists called the International Panel on Climate Change - 4000 of them. Guys in white coats who run around and don't have a sense of humour. They just measure things.

Note that number of scientists - it varies every time you see it from 1,500 up to 4,000. One thing the IPCC is not good at is measuring their own scientist contributors. If only the scientists involved with the IPCC were running around measuring things instead of using faked data to further grant applications, fool government policy makers and boost flagging publishing scores we might get somewhere. Unfortunately there is proof they haven't had their eye on the "settled science" very much at all.

Read the link to WUWT carefully. Especially if you are a late comer to this growing farce, read it and ask yourself is this what you want your tax system and economic policy based on. Now if you are an Australian, email your senators and MP's and ask them not to vote for Labor's Cap and Trade tax. Remember once a tax is imposed it is almost impossible to remove due to the flow on effect of government becoming dependant on the revenue stream. You'll get one shot at this - make it count.