Today's Disgrace: Reviewgate

Oh no, here we go yet again. A panel has been set up by the University of East Anglia (UEA), called the Independent Climate Change Review, to investigate certain matters arising as a result of the leaked climategate emails involving Professor Phil Jones of the UEA. Already one of the panel, Dr Phillip Campbell has resigned due to allegations bringing into question his impartiality. Now the impartiality of another panel member, Professor Geoffrey Boulton has been called into question. Professor Boulton refutes the allegations and has refused to resign. For a synopsis of what’s going on over pop on over to Climate Audit.

The Review’s web site states:

The Review team


The Independent Climate Change Email Review is being conducted by an expert team, led by Sir Muir Russell KCB DL FRSE. The Review team has more than 100 years’ collective expertise of scientific research methodology and a wide range of scientific backgrounds.


None have any links to the Climatic Research Unit, or the United Nations’ Independent Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). More information about each of the review team members can be found in the Biographies section.

But look at Boulton’s CV available here. He worked for UEA where the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is located for 18 years.

In addition, in direct violation of the Review’s own independence statement that none of the reviewers have any links to the IPCC, Boulton’s CV states that he was a contributor to G8 Preparatory Groups and Intergovernmental Panels on climate change. This alone warrants his resignation from the Review panel. Perhaps Boulton has just "padded" his CV or perhaps his CV refers to some other intergovernmental panels - either way it does not look good for Boulton or the "independent" review.

Why does this theme of trickery, underhandedness, ethical shortcomings and outright untruthfulness seem to follow AGW peddlers like a bad smell. This Review panel so far gives me that bad feeling you get when you have just stepped in something nasty on the pavement. Is there nothing about AGW that is open, verifiable, testable, ethical and honest. I am getting totally fed up with the underhanded methods employed, the failure to fully and openly declare associations and funding, the breach of ethics and the breach of common decency that seems to pervade these people. They disgust me.

Surely it cannot be that hard to organise a review panel that is beyond repute, that is unless of course the outcome has already been decided. With one member already forced to resign and a second under a cloud perhaps the best course of action is to scrap this panel, replace Sir John Muir who does not seem to have much luck at organising impartial panels, and set up a new panel that will hold an open enquiry. That is the only way this investigation is going to have any credibility. A closed investigation stacked with AGW proponents into something as important as this is not just a total waste of time, it is a joke. I would like to see a panel with a range of skills including a reputable legal professional with a proven record of impartial moderation, an ethicist, a science historian as well as a couple of hard core scientists. I won’t hold my breath on that one.

If the science community keep this up they only way they are going to get public funding soon will be to run lemonade stands in their spare time.

WSJ: U.K. Says University Broke Law on Turning Over Data

Today's Wall Street Journal:

U.K. authorities said the British university at the center of a controversy over hacked emails on climate-change research broke the law by failing to comply with requests for raw data about global warming, but that too much time has elapsed for the institution to be prosecuted.

The U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office said breaches of the Freedom of Information Act require action by the authorities within six months of an offense taking place.

The requests for information by climate researchers were submitted in 2007 and 2008, and the alleged efforts to thwart them came to light only recently.

The university, not individuals who may have held back information, would have been subject to prosecution.

The university, which hasn't admitted wrongdoing, said the ICO's opinion that it had breached the law was a "source of grave concern to the University." The university's vice chancellor, Edward Acton, said it was scrutinizing its handling of Freedom of Information Act requests as part of the independent review.

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: Greenpeace and the Nobel-Winning Climate Report

There is No Frakking "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming: Greenpeace and the Nobel-Winning Climate Report

Considered the climate Bible by governments around the world, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is meant to be a scientific analysis of the most authoritative research.

Instead, it references literature generated by Greenpeace - an organization known more for headline-grabbing publicity stunts than sober-minded analysis. (Eight IPCC-cited Greenpeace publications are listed at the bottom of this post.)

In one section of this Nobel-winning report, climate change is linked to coral reef degradation. The sole source for this claim? A Greenpeace report titled "Pacific in Peril" (see Hoegh-Guldberg below). Here the report relies on a Greenpeace document to establish the lower-end of an estimate involving solar power plants (Aringhoff).

When discussing solar energy elsewhere, the report references two Greenpeace documents in one sentence. Here it uses a Greenpeace paper as its sole means of documenting where the "main wind-energy investments" are located globally (Wind).

...

Thus, we read on page 14 that, "According to a WHO study, as many as 160,000 people are dying each year as a result of climate change." Should we care to double-check this claim, we're on our own.

As incredible as it sounds, this publication/brochure is itself cited in the Nobel-winning IPCC report as evidence that a particular statement is true. Appearing in the list below as Greenpeace 2006, it is one of two references mentioned in a single sentence, as discussed above.

Which begs an important question: how did it get into the same room with serious scholars? Why would it even be under consideration by a scientific body tasked with producing an assessment of the latest scientific research?

There appears to be an interesting chronology here. First Teske is granted "scientific expert reviewer" status by the IPCC. Second, a non-academic, non-peer-reviewed document in which he was closely involved gets added to the climate change research canon by virtue of it being cited by the Nobel-winning report.

Third, Teske co-authors a new Greenpeace report that receives an extra measure of prestige when it features a forward authored by the high-profile IPCC chairman. Fourth, in a final flourish, Teske - like his Greenpeace colleauge von Goerne - gets elevated to lead author status of yet another IPCC special report (on renewable energy) due to be published this year.

Where does Greenpeace stop and the IPCC begin? Sometimes it's difficult to tell.

Read the link and see the list of Greenpeace citations used in IPCC AR4.

Climategate Helping Scientists Speak Out

In an insightful article noted American commentator Robert Bradley Jr examines the way Climategate has emboldened many professional people including scientists to “come out” and challenge the catastrophic alarmism of the main stream global warming crowd such as professors Mann, Hansen, Barrett and others who predict catastrophic consequences within 90 years up to and including the extinction of the human race.

Climategate: Here Comes Courage! (Is climate catastrophism losing its ‘politically correct’ grip?)

by Robert Bradley Jr

The times are changing in the wake of Climategate. And more is to come as the polluted science embedded in the email exchanges gets reviewed by talented amateurs and pros alike on the blogosphere (see Climate Audit, Roger Pielke Jr., and WattsUpWithThat, in particular).

Given time, the rethink will go mainstream. Scientists are truth seekers at heart, but an entrenched mainstream of climate scientists–so many of them friends and political allies–will need to be nudged out of their denialism.
Old voices are challenging their ‘mainstream’ colleagues, and new voices are coming forth. I have seen this clearly here in Houston (examples below), and I expect it is happening elsewhere.

The full article can be found on Master Resource which is a very high end blog by leaders in their fields that deserves careful attention.

I also get the feeling that the tide has turned. I do not fool myself into believing that the statist green-red appropriators will not rgroup quickly as after all they have much of the UN behind them and billions of our dollars in their war chest. The catestrophic alarmist scientists are really the small fish. The big fish are the mechanisms already in place in the UN. Institutionalised mechanisms and he money that goes with them are extremely difficult to defeat and it will take nothing short of a massive upwelling of public opinion to retain what little is left of private property and economic freedom and the wealth that it creates.

Prof Paltridge On Possible Illegal Climate Scientists Activities

Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge is an atmospheric physicist and was a Chief Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research before taking up positions in Tasmania as Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and CEO of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre. He retired in 2002 and continues to live in Hobart. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He is author of The Climate Caper.

In an article published today in the Australian Prof Paltridge comments on Climategate and the Hockey Team at the CRU.

Boffins may be illegal

THE Climategate scandal continues to unfold. The thousands of emails leaked to the internet from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal a tight-knit, influential group of scientists whose attitude to their profession is, to say the least, distorted.

It seems that a religious belief in disastrous climate change has destroyed their common sense and their appreciation of what is the appropriate way to carry out research.

See Read More link for further details

Prof Paltridge continues,

Climategate may at least demonstrate that the concept of a scientific consensus with regard to global warming is nonsense. There may indeed be thousands of scientists contributing to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but on any particular aspect of the overall story all have to rely on the word of the few scientists who are directly involved. And when the particular aspect concerns experimental data on which the whole story rests, the data purporting to show the world is getting warmer, then the consensus argument is indeed on shaky ground.

On the evidence so far, there is not much doubt that the group of scientists linked to the CRU has behaved fairly badly. Any individual email from the Climategate pile may be explained and excused as a stupid mistake of the time, but when all are taken together it seems obvious enough that there have been lots of violations of what might be called the scientific code. The most glaring examples concern efforts to keep basic sets of data out of the hands of people who may not be sympathetic to the official story about the disastrous nature of global warming. This, when the CRU is specifically paid to collate the data gathered by national meteorological services across the world, and to make the data available to outside scientists to check and to use.

In any event, the CRU information is covered by environmental information regulations that specifically require public bodies in Britain to make their data progressively available to the public by electronic means that are easily accessible.

So the ducking and weaving in the face of reasonable requests for CRU data by outside scientists and indeed in the face of Freedom of Information requests by those same outside scientists may not be just bad scientific form. It may be illegal. Which makes the lukewarm reaction to Climategate by the great and powerful of the scientific establishment even more difficult to swallow. The journal Nature, for instance, has this to say: "If there are benefits to the email theft, one [of those benefits] is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. ..."

The full article is available in the Australian here.

Prof Paltridge certianly is not the first scientist speaking out about Climategate and the activities of the Climatic Research Unit of the East Anglia University of which Prof Phil Jones was the director of until he stepped down recently following publication of the Climategate emails.

Prof Paltridge does a service to the Australian public by keeping this conduct squarely in the public eye.

Climategate Video

I am including a Finnish television documentary (English subtitles) which is a very good and will bring you up to speed quickly on Climategate which involves IPCC scientists being currently investigated by the prosecuting authorities. There are a few minor errors but overall it is very good.







Now why can't we get something like this from our publicly funded ABC in Australia? I am not being serious of course. We know the reason.

More Evidence CO2 Not Driving Climate

Professor Michael Asten of the school of geosciences at Monash University, Melbourne writes in today’s Australian that CO2 has a diminished role in global warming and points to non man made factors as drivers of changes in climate. In other words forget the IPCC and its pseudo science models and unfalsifiable “projections” and let’s get on with the real observational science.

Prof Asten writes,

“The Copenhagen climate change summit closed two weeks ago in confusion, disagreement and, for some, disillusionment. When the political process shows such a lack of unanimity, it is pertinent to ask whether the science behind the politics is as settled as some participants maintain.

Earlier this month (The Australian, December 9) I commented on recently published results showing huge swings in atmospheric carbon dioxide, both up and down, at a time of global cooling 33.6 million years ago.

Some senior scientists, who are adherents of orthodox global warming theory, do not like authors publishing data that can be used to argue against orthodoxy, a point made by unrelated authors with startling clarity in the Climategate leaked emails from the University of East Anglia.”

It is interesting that Prof Asten sees fit to mention the Climategate leaked emails. Refer to yesterday’s blog entry for more on that matter.

He goes on to cite one of several recent studies.

“... as Pearson and his colleagues pointed out in their letter two weeks ago, "We caution against any attempt to derive a simple narrative linking CO2 and climate on these large time scales. This is because many other factors come into play, including other greenhouse gases, moving continents, shifting ocean currents, dramatic changes in ocean chemistry, vegetation, ice cover, sea level and variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun."”

Note to the IPCC; so the science is settled by a so called “consensus”? With more and more scientists coming out of the closet it is obvious the UN/CRU people really need to get out more. Of course I know they are busy fighting police and university investigations at the moment but when it’s all over take a break and get some air and talk to other scientists rather than corruptly trying to get them sacked or gagged. Who knows, maybe they’ll learn something.

It is very fortunate indeed that Tony Abbott stepped in at the last minute and saved us from a taxing regime, at least for now, that would ruin the Australian economy when all the while it would be based on a false premise that CO2 was a significant force for global warming. If correct of course the renders the models upon which the IPCC relies useless for both predicting future climate based on CO2 in the atmosphere and for setting policy. The whole IPCC process would be proved to be a sham. I wonder how the vested interests of the climate industry including the hoodwinked politicians and the CSIRO will be spinning this – they have their reputations riding on this and there is a lot at stake. We live in interesting times.

Legislators Quizzing Penn State on Dr Mann Investigation

It looks like the pressure is building for Climategate scientist Prof Mann. Below is a jpeg of a letter by Senator Piccola to the President of Penn State University. Notice how there is strong funding implication in this letter with the clear meaning that if a proper investigation is not carried out into Prof Mann the funding for the university itself may be questioned by some legislators. The letter states in part,

“The allegations of intellectual and scientific fraud like those made against Dr. Mann are serious against anybody involved in academics, but the impact in this case is significantly elevated. The work of Dr. Mann and other scientists at the CRU is being used to develop economic and environmental policies in states and countries across the world. Considering the saliency of the work being conducted by the CRU anything short of the pursuit of absolute science cannot be accepted or tolerated.”

I strongly suspect the noose is tightening on all involved. If the public mood on global warming is changing and it clearly is, as soon as politicians sniff an electoral backlash there will be about faces and searches for scapegoats. Copenhagen is a circus and it will, as expected, merely result in an agreement to meet again to make an agreement. Recall that in 1989 the UN said the world only had ten years to avoid total global catastrophe. OK well it has been 20 years and I have my life raft pumped up and am still waiting. Don’t they teach the child’s moral about the boy who called wolf anymore?

So just how many times are we going to be told by our aspiring "world leaders" that this is the very last chance to avoid catastrophe.... until next time. I don't recall a WORLD election electing these "leaders of the world" (as I saw them called on a UN web site). Does that mean they are now a collective world dictatorship without a democratic process? How dare they even pretend to be leading the world when they are merely national politicians and leaders of political parties suposedly representing their national electorate or dictatorship depending upon their country of origin.

Click the image of the letter to view a full size version.

Lord Turnbull in British House of Lords: Climategate Disturbing

Extract from speech by Lord Turnbull in the House of Lords 8 December, 2009.

“There is the issue of the science, which I had previously taken as given; but many people’s faith is being tested. We are often told that the science is settled. I suppose that is what the Inquisition said to Galileo. If so, why are we spending millions of pounds on research? The science is far from settled. There are major controversies not just about the contribution of CO2, on which most of the debate is focused, but about the influence of other factors such as water vapour, or clouds-the most powerful greenhouse gas-ocean currents and the sun, together with feedback effects which can be negative as well as positive.

Worse still, there are even controversies about the basic data on temperature. The series going back one, 10 or 100,000 years are, in the genuine sense of the word, synthetic. They are not direct observations but are melded together from proxies such as ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings.

Given the extent to which the outcome is affected by the statistical techniques and the weightings applied by individual researchers, it is essential that the work is done as transparently as possible, with the greatest scope for challenge. That is why the disclosure of documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit is so disturbing. Instead of an open debate, a picture is emerging of selective use of data, efforts to silence critics, and particularly a refusal to share data and methodologies.”

Read more at WUWT.

Climategate is now being raised and taken seriously. Why is the IPCC now not holding an investigation into the matter as it originally promised?

Monckton on Climategate Scandal

Lord Christopher Monckton speaks at the second International Climate Conference, addressing the Climategate scandal and key players involved in what appears to be one of the biggest science scams of our time. He dissects the conduct of UN scientists involved.

Lord Monckton on Climategate at the 2nd International Climate Conference from CFACT EUROPE on Vimeo.

This video runs for just over 30 minutes and is well worth watching. Monckton provides a concise and informative summary of the CRU scandal and examines terrestrial data manipulation and the changing of IPCC reports. One of the best video summaries of the Climategate I have seen to date.