Free Republic

A folder containing documents, data and emails purportedly "hacked" from Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) may be smoking gun proof of a worldwide conspiracy to exaggerate the existence, causation and threat of global warming.  And the list of apparent conspirators includes many of the world's leading climate alarmists -- the very scientists on whose work the entire anthropogenic global warming theory is based. In a Friday interview with Investigative Magazine's TGIF edition, CRU director Phillip Jones confirmed [PDF] that the incriminating documents, which have been widely disseminated online, are in fact genuine. Accordingly, whether indeed the labor of hackers, or...

Climate Change: As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December. It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria. The collapse of the talks coupled with the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put...

CLICK HERE FOR THE WHOLE PAMPHLET ...Big Government has spent $79 billion on the climate industry, 3000 times more than Big Oil. Leading climate scientists won’t debate in public and won’t provide their data. What do they hide? When faced with freedom-of-information requests they say they’ve “lost” the original global temperature records. Thousands of scientists are rising in protest against the scare campaign. Meanwhile $126 billion turned over in carbon markets in 2008 and bankers get set to make billions. Twenty pages of concise commentary and cartoons: The short synopsis of how we paid to find a crisis. The...

Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

Anthony Watts over at Watts Up With That has a breaking story about unknown hacker or persons breaking into the East Anglia Climate Research Unit's database. The over 61 megs of data "appears to be genuinue" considering the herculean task of creating emails and other sundry data of such magnitude. I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far: An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today: We...

So far one of the most circulated e-mails from the CRU hack is the following from Phil Jones to the original hockey stick authors - Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes. From: Phil Jones To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm, Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd...

So, has much of the climate change debate of the last ten years been a purposeful fraud? If the files that became available in the last few hours prove to be legitimate, it would appear so. Here’s the story so far. At 9:57 p.m. on Thursday, November 19, comments were posted on The Air Vent — a well-known climate skeptic site — that read: We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the...

In a shocking reversal, the United Nations has come out against New World Order dogma about diversity and global warming. It has concluded that the best countries for human development are racially homogenous, as long as the dominant race is white or Asian. And if that's not enough political incorrectness, the top country in human development in the U.N.'s eyes has funded its rich social spending with -- gasp! -- offshore oil production. Well, admittedly, the U.N. didn't state its conclusion that directly, and the mainstream media didn't report it that directly; but anyone with a grain of intelligence and...

The University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre appears to have suffered a security breach earlier today, when an unknown hacker apparently downloaded 1079 e-mails and 72 documents of various types and published them to an anonymous FTP server. These files appear to contain highly sensitive information that, if genuine, could prove extremely embarrassing to the authors of the e-mails involved. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The FTP link first appeared on a blog called The Air Vent. The blog's owner, identified as "Jeff Id",...

8.15 PM UPDATE: The Hadley CRU director admits the emails seem to be genuine: The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight ..."It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."… TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say…. So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the...

UPDATE: Response from CRU in interview with another website, see end of this post. The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/annrep93/cru.jpg UPDATED: Original image was for Met Office – corrected This image source: www.cru.uea.ac.uk I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far: An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP...

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been working overtime to craft a climate bill that can attract significant GOP support. But they aren’t exactly scoring points with their mutual best friend in the Senate, John McCain. “Their start has been horrendous,” McCain said Thursday. “Obviously, they’re going nowhere.” McCain has emerged as a vocal opponent of the climate bill — a major reversal for the self-proclaimed maverick who once made defying his party on global warming a signature issue of his career. (snip) Former aides are mystified by what they see as a retreat on the issue, given McCain’s...

WASHINGTON (CNN) - An energy advocacy group is launching another television ad in South Carolina taking aim at Sen. Lindsey Graham for his support of energy legislation that would include a cap-and-trade program. The 30-second spot is the latest salvo in an ongoing campaign against the Republican by the American Energy Alliance, a group funded in part by oil and gas companies that has spent roughly $375,000 over the last month knocking Graham on South Carolina's radio and TV airwaves. The newest ad comes one week after Graham was censured by the Charleston County Republican Party for supporting the legislation,...

When Rupert Dickinson, the chief executive of one of Britain's biggest property firms, left his BlackBerry behind in London while on a business trip to Ireland, he simply ordered one of his staff to get on a plane and deliver the device to him. For Dickinson's then head of sustainability, Tim Nicholson, the errand was much more than an executive indulgence: it embodied the contempt with which his boss treated his deep philosophical beliefs about climate change. In a significant decision today , a judge found Nicholson's views on the environment were so deeply held that they were entitled to...

President given extraordinary powers in the evebt of a 'climate emergency'.

An aggressive White House push on jobs and deficit reduction in 2010 may be yet another sign that climate-change legislation will stay on the back burner next year. “There is a growing chorus in the party that thinks we should be doing more to spur job creation and not necessarily tackle cap and trade right now,” said a moderate Democratic Senate aide. White House officials told POLITICO on Friday that President Barack Obama plans curb new domestic spending beyond jobs programs and focus on cutting the federal deficit next year. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid has hinted that...

Expectations are dropping as December's UN climate talks get closer.BARCELONA There had been little progress by the time the sun set on climate talks in Barcelona.D. Ramos/AP Photo In the final round of talks before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, negotiators have tried to map out a path ahead in the likely event that a fully binding international treaty cannot be signed this year. Delegates at the 2–6 November meeting in Barcelona made progress in winnowing out the text of a treaty that they hope will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. But opposing positions on the...

WORLD-RENOWNED botanist and broadcaster Prof David Bellamy has predicted the world will get cooler over the next 30 years rather than warmer, as many climate scientists have predicted. He said a period of global cooling had already begun, citing evidence that the Alps had more snow last winter than at any time for the last 26 years. Prof Bellamy has been one of the best-known sceptics of man-made global warming, despite being an environmentalist. Yesterday, as patron of the Tree Appeal, he helped children at Cabinteely Community School to plant trees. The initiative aims to plant 100,000 trees in the...

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points...

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes and is not responsible for climate change, a scientist has claimed. Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist from Adelaide University, argues that a recent rise in temperature around the world is caused by solar cycles and other "extra terrestrial" forces. He said carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, widely blamed for global warming, is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes erupting.

Are the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks really about nothing more than hammering out a world-wide agreement about carbon emissions to curb warming? Not according to martial arts professional and actor Chuck Norris. Norris, who appeared on the Fox News Channel's Nov. 11 "Your World with Neil Cavuto" to promote his new book, "The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book: 101 of Chuck's Favorite Facts and Stories." He explained the upcoming Copenhagen talks in December were a push by President Barack Obama to form a "one world order." "Definitely," Norris said. "I really think he I going over there to try to...

Warming: After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed. In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway. Williams and Zabel do not deny...

Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone publishes a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions. According to Stone’s paper, as the international community meets in Copenhagen in December to develop a new framework for responding to climate change, policymakers need to give serious consideration to broadening the range of management strategies beyond greenhouse gas reductions alone. “Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since...

In our last column we expressed skepticism that human-caused global warming will ever amount to much. We have little trust in the politically subsidized computer simulations responsible for most of the fuss. Obviously, natural causes play a major role in climate change, and historically carbon dioxide levels have followed — not caused — warmer temperatures. The “precautionary principle” counsels us to act even if the risk is uncertain. Unfortunately, few environmentalists practice much caution regarding the economy. While the harms of climate change are speculative, the harms of widespread political economic controls are certain and severe. But what if? What...

WASHINGTON — When it comes to combating global warming, Sen. Lindsey Graham is right where he loves to be — ahead of the curve, in the mix on a major issue, at the table for high-level, bipartisan talks behind closed doors. Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is working with Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to craft a climate change bill. They face the dual challenge of overcoming widespread GOP opposition and withstanding relentless attacks by Big Oil and allied energy interests. "Our goal is to create a vision that not only will...

Gorbachev and his ilk call for ‘new thinking,’ but really mean new ways to dictate how people should live This week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the U.S. Congress that inaction on climate change amounted to a new “Berlin Wall” of “short- sighted self-interest.” Ms. Merkel’s claim was upside down. There is indeed a new threat to freedom in the offing, but it is the Green Wall that she is recommending. It will span the globe, and there will be no escape. What collapsed twenty years ago was Communism. What didn’t collapse was anti-capitalism, which remains the principle driver of...

Glaciers crowning Africa's tallest mountain could disappear within decades. Remnant of the Eastern Ice Field as seen 2000. This particular chunk of ice has now disappeared.Lonnie G. Thompson The snows of Kilimanjaro are rapidly disappearing and will be gone by 2033, predicts the most detailed analysis yet of the iconic glaciers gracing Africa's highest peak.In addition to shrinking in area, Kilimanjaro's glaciers are thinning from the top down, says Ohio State University's Lonnie Thompson, lead author of the new study. "They're being decapitated," he says. "In fact, they're probably not really glaciers anymore. They're remnants of another climate."In 2000, Thompson...

Even as a Senate global-warming bill remained in limbo with Democrats refusing to delay a committee vote until an economic analysis was completed, hopes rose for a potential bipartisan compromise. The Senate, meanwhile, appears to be moving away from the bill, authored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., which would require a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and would have the government sell the right to emit carbon dioxide. Even as Boxer conducted an unusual one-sided hearing on her bill in the Environment and Public Works Committee, Kerry, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and...

IMAGINE a scientist came up with a way of solving "Global Warming" without ending the use of fossil fuels and other measures which threaten to destroy the US economy. One would think that Al Gore and his research team would be delighted and would be pushing the scientist's findings to a wider audience. But buried in a recent Newsweek story is an example of how Gore's team tried to change some Inconvenient Science to suit their agenda. According to Timothy LaSalle, who Gore consulted for solutions to Global Warming, we could solve the "problem" of CO2 emissions by clever use...

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Regardless of your tribal affiliations, were you cautiously optimistic when our new president promised to "restore science to its rightful place" in the formulation of public policy? Were you embarrassed by the prior occupant's politicization of issues that should have been decided on a more scientific basis? Did you assume that Barack Obama would surround himself with apolitical science advisors unencumbered by embarrassing anti-science baggage and free of culture-war axes to grind? To paraphrase a once famous mayor of New York - So how's he doing so far? You're probably aware that the H1N1 swine flu vaccine supply has fallen...

According to a new Climate Confidence Monitor survey released today, support for action on climate change is plummeting in Canada. Just 26% of Canadians consider global warming among their chief concerns, down from 34% in 2008. Concern in the U.S. is even lower - just 18% , down from 26% in 2008. The UK's level of concern is the lowest of all, a mere 15%, down from 26% in 2008. Worldwide, the drop in concern over climate change has also dropped by 8 percentage points, from 42% to 34%...

In the face of ever mounting evidence that CO2 is incapable of causing the level of global devastation prophesied by climate change catastrophists a new villain is being sought. The leading candidate is nitrous oxide (N2O), better known as laughing gas. A report in Science claims that N2O emissions are currently the single most important cause of ozone depletion and are expected to remain so throughout the 21st century. The IPCC rates N2O as 310 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 on a 100 year time scale. Is this a greenhouse gas bait and switch, or are the...

The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, a startling development that will make it easier to open up polar shipping routes, an Arctic expert said on Thursday. Vast sheets of impenetrable multiyear ice, which can reach up to 80 meters (260 feet) thick, have for centuries blocked the path of ships seeking a quick short cut through the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They also ruled out the idea of sailing across the top of the world. But David Barber, Canada's Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, said...

Two years ago, a United Nations scientific panel won the Nobel Peace Prize after concluding that global warming is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by man. Then came a development unforeseen by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC: Data suggested that Earth's temperature was beginning to drop. Global climate models did not account for a drop in global temperatures since 2006, but climate scientists believe the lower temperatures are temporary. That has reignited debate over what has become scientific consensus: that climate change is due not to nature, but to humans burning fossil fuels. Scientists who...

Aerosols' complicated influence on our climate just got more threatening: they could make methane a more potent greenhouse gas than previously realized, say climate modellers.Drew Shindell, at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, and colleagues ran a range of computerized models to show that methane's global warming potential is greater when combined with aerosols — atmospheric particles such as dust, sea salt, sulphates and black carbon. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol assume methane to be, tonne-for-tonne, 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. But the...

"The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition."

If global warming scares you, think about spending $6.66 to offset your carbon emissions this Halloween. The Delta Institute, which sells carbon offset credits to corporations on the Chicago Climate Exchange, is opening up its books to the public. For $6.66, you can offset 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions. The number 666 is usually associated with evil, but the money will do some good in this case. “When someone plants trees or grasses, they absorb CO2 and essentially negate CO2 emissions somewhere else,” explains Todd Parker, an associate with the Institute in Lansing. The offsets are generated primarily...

(AP) Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book. Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press. The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

According to the latest Pew Research Poll, only 35 percent see global warming as a very serious problem, down from 44 percent last year. Fifty-seven percent believe there is solid evidence that man is driving climate change, down from 71 percent in 2008. As the public concern over climate change continues to erode, Lord Christopher Monckton -- the former advisor for science policy to Lady Margaret Thatcher -- says the alleged science behind manmade climate change is eroding as well. Christopher Monckton"First of all, it's now been demonstrated by measurement that CO2 has only one-sixth of the warming effect on...

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming. In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on...

SEDIMENT cores from a small Arctic lake in Canada stretching back 200,000 years show unprecedented gains in global warming since 1950, indicating human activity is the likely cause. "The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores,'' University of Colorado glaciologist Yarrow Axford said. "We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes." Mr Axford is the chief author of the study...

On October 22, an accord was signed by Xie Zhenhua, China's vice minister at the National Development and Reform Commission, and Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, in New Delhi. The memorandum provides an alternative framework to counter pressure from America and Europe to adopt mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions in a new UN treaty. The two Asian powers will collaborate on the development of renewable power projects and improved energy efficiency programs, while rejecting any outside mandates that would slow economic growth. The United Nations has been holding forums around the world to build support for a new climate...

(snip) U.S. leadership is crucial. That is why I am encouraged by the spirit of compromise shown in the bipartisan initiative announced last week by John Kerry and Lindsey Graham. Here was a pair of U.S. senators — one Republican, the other Democratic — coming together to bridge their parties’ differences to address climate change in a spirit of genuine give-and-take. We cannot afford another period where the United States stands on the sidelines. An engaged United States can lead the world to seal a deal to combat climate change in Copenhagen. An indecisive or insufficiently engaged United States will...

From seabeds to mountaintops, people around the world were staging a day of demonstrations Saturday to call for urgent action on climate change. The events were being coordinated by a group called 350.org, whose name refers to the parts per million of carbon dioxide it considers the safe upper limit for our atmosphere. The group said it wants to "inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis" ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December. Divers at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and in the ocean off the Maldives...

The Florida solar panel plant cost $150 million to build. A field of orange trees makes more sense. The state of Florida is completing the final touches on a solar panel plant that cost $150 million to build and will only power 3,000 homes. Barack Obama will visit this solar-paneled cash dump next week. The AP reported: The Desoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center will power a small fraction of Florida Power & Light’s 4-million plus customer base; nevertheless, at 25 megawatts, it will generate nearly twice as much energy as the second-largest photovoltaic facility in the U.S. The White...

Environmentalism: As polls show belief in global warming is dropping, a new study suggests that dogs and cats, like people, are a plague upon the earth. They say people should have edible pets. Here, kitty, kitty. A new Pew Research Center study conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 says the number of Americans who think there's solid evidence the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades has plummeted from 71% in April 2008 to 57% today. Over the same period, there's been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising...

The latest report of arctic sea ice was released, since the September minimum has passed and ice is now reforming as winter approaches. The National Snow and Ice Data Center report states that this was the third lowest amount of sea ice on record, but I contend that is missing the point. In this era of dire claims of climate marred by the controversy of global cooling, public dissent, and early season snow, a NASA follow up report appears to ignore the good news: The arctic sea ice is actually expanding! --snip-- The first lines of a press release from...

The Obama administration is setting aside 200,000 square miles in Alaska and off its coast as "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas. Federal law prohibits agencies from taking actions that may adversely modify critical habitat and interfere with polar bear recovery. Assistant Interior Secretary Tom Strickland called the habitat designation a step in the right direction to help polar bears stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat to the bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change. The Bush administration last year...