Free Republic

The higher-ups of the AGW movement, aka Goliath, sense that something is amiss.A new editorial in Nature is startling for what it reveals, especially the fact Paul Ehrlich is a go-to figure about how hard scientists have it when it comes to media access.Ehrlich is an individual who became an international celebrity by spinning one frightening story after another (about the death of the oceans, for one thing) who maintains, with a straight face, that he and his fellow scientists have an unfair disadvantage in communicating their side of the climate debate.He is quoted by Nature as saying, regarding the...

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, in testimony before the Environment and Public Works Committee, made it a point to declare that the agency was not using the IPCC report to develop policy. Charlie Martin at PJ Media reports: During the review of the Environmental Protection Agency budget in today's Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, both Senator Barbara Boxer - the chair of the committee - and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson distanced themselves from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Boxer and Jackson's statements, in addition to being a striking change in policy, are problematic...

House Republicans are pushing a resolution that would block the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases, throwing a wrench in the Obama administration's attempts to bypass Congress and regulate carbon emissions. The announcement comes as a growing chorus of lawmakers—mostly Republicans, but some coal state Democrats as well— have criticized the EPA’s decision to move forward on carbon regulations. Last year, the EPA issued a finding that the heat-trapping gases were harmful to the public, paving way for regulation under the Clean Air Act. Republicans say they’re concerned the regulations will hurt the economy. “The last thing we need in this...

On his very first full day in office, President Obama sent a memorandum to his executive agencies extolling the virtues of transparency and open government and directing them to facilitate public access to information. To further that directive, Obama issued a second memorandum encouraging agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” when responding to public requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

By now everyone knows that the threat of global warming is hanging over all our heads. In as little as five years the ice caps will have completely melted causing polar bears to grow flippers. In ten years the oceans will start boiling. The entire catastrophic failure will be complete by 2035, rendering the habitat unsuitable for even the mythic twinkie. This is all fact by the way. It has to be. Al Gore said so! Or is it? Could it be that the Left’s Holy Grail could be nothing more than a highly varnished, eco-friendly Dixie cup? I, for...

Link to 'Consensus' Exposed: The CRU Controversy The following is Part 2 in our series of excerpts from the Senate EPW Minority Report, titled, "‘Consensus' Exposed: The CRU Controversy."  Here the excerpts focus on two points from the report.  First is the distinction made between "utterly politicized scientists," such as those at the center of the CRU controversy, and scientists committed to disinterested, objective science in the field of climatology (and all other fields), who deserve praise and support.  It points to the importance of openness and transparency in practicing good science-and shows how those principles were, at times, ignored...

Parliament isn’t the place where climate sceptics go to make friends. Just over a year ago, just three MPs voted against the Climate Act, with 463 supporting it. But events took a surprising turn at Parliament’s first Climategate hearing yesterday. MPs who began by roasting sceptics in a bath of warm sarcasm for half an hour were, a mere two hours later, asking why the University of East Anglia’s enquiry into the climate scandal wasn’t broader, and wasn’t questioning “the science” of climate change. That’s further than any sceptic witness had gone. In between, they’d wrought an admission from CRU...

In his first public appearance since the beginning of the emails row Phil Jones tells MPs he will be cleared of accusationsProfessor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit, gives evidence to the science and technology committee. Photograph: parliamentlive.tvThe scientist at the centre of a media storm over global warming research admitted today he had sent "awful emails" but said he expected to be cleared of accusations that he tried to pervert the scientific process.Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, told a parliamentary inquiry that there was nothing in the hundreds...

<p>A BRITISH climate researcher at the centre of a row over global warming science has admitted he wrote some "pretty awful" emails to sceptics when he was refusing their requests for data.</p> <p>But Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, yesterday defended his decision not to release the data about temperatures from around the world, saying it was not "standard practice" to do so.</p>

Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility. The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming. The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data. The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered...

The integrity of climate change research is in doubt after the disclosure of e-mails that attempt to suppress data, a leading scientific institute has said. The Institute of Physics said that e-mails sent by Professor Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, had broken “honourable scientific traditions” about disclosing raw data and methods and allowing them to be checked by critics. Professor Jones admitted to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee yesterday that he had “written some very awful e-mails”, including one in which he rejected a request for information on...

Summary 1. Reconstructions of temperature over the past 1000 years have been an highly visible part of IPCC presentations to the public. CRU has been extremely influential in IPCC reconstructions through: coauthorship, the use of CRU chronologies, peer review and IPCC participation. To my knowledge, there are no 1000-year reconstructions which are truly "independent" of CRU influence. In my opinion, CRU has manipulated and/or withheld data with an effect on the research record. The manipulation includes (but is not limited to) arbitrary adjustment ("bodging"), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data. The problem is deeply rooted in the sense that...

Spurious Warming in the Jones U.S. Temperatures Since 1973INTRODUCTION As I discussed in my last post, I’m exploring the International Surface Hourly (ISH) weather data archived by NOAA to see how a simple reanalysis of original weather station temperature data compares to the Jones CRUTem3 land-based temperature dataset.While the Jones temperature analysis relies upon the GHCN network of ‘climate-approved’ stations whose number has been rapidly dwindling in recent years, I’m using original data from stations whose number has been actually growing over time. I use only stations operating over the entire period of record so there are no spurious...

The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real...

News headlines vie for attention and it is easy for scientists to grab this attention by linking climate change to the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change. This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off.Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much...

The 36,000 ember-strong Institute of Physics was asked by the British Parliament to take a look at Climategate and the University of East Anglia's CRU. They weren't asked to evaluate the findings themselves, but to look at whether or not the CRU had been adhering to the scientific method. The institute said unless the released emails and documents were fraudulent, the CRU did not comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law and the use proxy reconstructions for the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. And that's just for a start. The Institute was...

From World Climate Report: Another IPCC Error: Antarctic Sea Ice Increase Underestimated by 50% Figure 1. Trend in Antarctic ice extent, November 1978 through December 2006 (source: Comiso and Nishio, 2008). Several errors have been recently uncovered in the 4th Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These include problems with Himalayan glaciers, African agriculture, Amazon rainforests, Dutch geography, and attribution of damages from extreme weather events. More seem to turn up daily. Most of these errors stem from the IPCC’s reliance on non-peer reviewed sources... --snip-- We humbly disagree. In fact, the WGI report is...

************************************Greenland Temperatures - last 10,000 years. Are we headed for an ice age? (See below for more detail.) David Lappi is a geologist from Alaska who has sent in a set of beautiful graphs–including an especially prosaic one of the last 10,000 years in Greenland–that he put together himself (and which I’ve copied here at the top).If you wonder where today’s temperature fits in with the grand scheme of time on Earth since the dinosaurs were wiped out, here’s the history. We start with the whole 65 million years, then zoom in, and zoom in again to the last 12,000...

Source: Reuters * Exact causes unknown for lack of warming from 1999-2008 * The underlying reason for cold winter not known * Climate science in focus after email scandal, errors By Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle LONDON/OSLO, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Climate scientists must do more to work out how exceptionally cold winters or a dip in world temperatures fit their theories of global warming, if they are to persuade an increasingly sceptical public. At stake is public belief that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, and political momentum to act as governments struggle to agree a climate treaty...

World warming unhindered by cold spells: scientists By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia Thu Feb 25, 1:26 am ET SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The pace of global warming continues unabated, scientists said on Thursday, despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards. The bitter cold, with more intense winter weather forecast for March in parts of the United States, have led some to question if global warming has stalled. Understanding the overall trend is crucial for estimating consumption of energy supplies, such as demand...