Here’s the Kerry-Lieberman bill… almost 1,000 pages.
The People v. The Hockey Stick Felony?
My column in today’s Washington Times is dedicated to those skeptics and libertarians who, confused about Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of Michael Mann, are aiding and abetting the enemy.
Tree Ring Circus
By Steve Milloy
May 12, 2010, Washington Times
Are academic scientists some special sub-species of humans who are beyond suspicion and above the law? That is the question now being played out in a drama between Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli and the dead-end defenders of global warming’s poster junk scientist, Michael Mann.
Cucinelli is under assault by global warming alarmist brigades and the American Civil Liberties Union for launching an investigation into whether any fraud against taxpayers occurred with respect to Mann’s hiring by the University of Virginia and his receipt of government grants. Cuccinelli recently sent UVA a civil investigative demand (CID) requesting e-mails and other documents pertaining to Mann.
Cuccinelli’s rationale is simple to understand: Mann’s claim-to-fame — the infamous “hockey stick” graph — is so bogus that one cannot help but wonder whether it is intentional fraud.
Developed in the late-1990s while Mann was at the University of Massachusetts, his hockey stick graph purports to show that average global temperature was fairly stable over the past millennium and up until the 20 the century, when it spiked up impliedly because of human activity. The hockey stick was latched onto by the alarmist community, incorporated into government and United Nations assessments of climate science and held out to the public (particularly by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”) as proof that humans were destroying the planet.
But by the mid-2000s the hockey stick graph began to be revealed for what it was — pure bunk.
Critics of the hockey stick graph first became suspicious because it failed to show two well-known periods of dramatic swings in global temperature — the so-called Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Mann’s indignant refusal to share his data and methods with critics only added fuel to the fire. Eventually, it was discovered that the computer model that produced the hockey stick would produce a hockey stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.
Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn’t like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Past the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, as it turns out, Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous Climate-gate phrase “Mike’s Nature trick to … hide the decline.”
Mann’s defenders characterize this deletion of data as an elegant statistical technique. There is, however, nothing sophisticated, much less innocent about it. Contrary to Mann’s defenders, the hockey stick has never been vindicated by anyone. If nothing else, proof of its discredit lies in the fact that no one, not even the ethically challenged United Nations, relies on it anymore as evidence of manmade global warming.
Mann’s name-making hockey stick work occurred while he was at the University of Massachusetts, after which he was hired by the taxpayer-funded UVA. Did UVA hire Mann under the illusion that his hockey stick was a legitimate scientific achievement? Did Mann receive taxpayer-funded grants based on what amounts to scientific misconduct? These are legitimate inquiries — but not to everyone.
Left-wing academics, global warming alarmists, and the ACLU object to Cucinelli’s probe. They cast aspersions such as “witch hunt,” McCarthyism,” and “abuse of office.” In their less hysteric moments, they claim Cuccinelli threatens academic freedom. This is all so much rot.
Some scientists have actually been known to commit scientific misconduct tantamount to fraud. A Tulane researcher was found guilty of misconduct by the federal Office of Scientific Integrity in the late 1990s for fabricating data about pesticides being dangerous hormonal system disrupters. Don’t forget the South Korean researcher that was indicted for claiming false advances in stem cell research. Only political correctness saved a University of Pittsburgh researcher from conviction during the 1990s of manipulating data allegedly linking lead-based paint with lower IQs.
Believe it or not, scientists are just like the rest of the population — a mixture of good and bad. Mann’s hockey stick is such bad science that it compels the question, “Why?” Would UVA have hired Mann and would government grants have been awarded to him had the truth about the hockey stick been known by university and state decision-makers at the time? Were they intentionally deceived?
As the Climategate scandal has revealed, the climate alarmist mob is, at the very least, devious and unethical. It has conspired to silence its critics and to dispense with the normal give-and-take of the scientific process — all the while trumpeting the junkiest of science in trying to frighten the public and politicians into keeping the grant money flowing.
Have some of the climate mob’s members acted criminally as well? No one knows at this point. But through his hockey stick shenanigans, Mann has certainly provided Cuccinelli with “probable cause” to consider the possibility. A thorough investigation by someone not in cahoots with the climate mob is the only way to answer legitimate questions related to the expenditure of taxpayer money.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).
Tree Ring Circus
By Steve Milloy
May 12, 2010, Washington Times
Are academic scientists some special sub-species of humans who are beyond suspicion and above the law? That is the question now being played out in a drama between Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli and the dead-end defenders of global warming’s poster junk scientist, Michael Mann.
Cucinelli is under assault by global warming alarmist brigades and the American Civil Liberties Union for launching an investigation into whether any fraud against taxpayers occurred with respect to Mann’s hiring by the University of Virginia and his receipt of government grants. Cuccinelli recently sent UVA a civil investigative demand (CID) requesting e-mails and other documents pertaining to Mann.
Cuccinelli’s rationale is simple to understand: Mann’s claim-to-fame — the infamous “hockey stick” graph — is so bogus that one cannot help but wonder whether it is intentional fraud.
Developed in the late-1990s while Mann was at the University of Massachusetts, his hockey stick graph purports to show that average global temperature was fairly stable over the past millennium and up until the 20 the century, when it spiked up impliedly because of human activity. The hockey stick was latched onto by the alarmist community, incorporated into government and United Nations assessments of climate science and held out to the public (particularly by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”) as proof that humans were destroying the planet.
But by the mid-2000s the hockey stick graph began to be revealed for what it was — pure bunk.
Critics of the hockey stick graph first became suspicious because it failed to show two well-known periods of dramatic swings in global temperature — the so-called Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Mann’s indignant refusal to share his data and methods with critics only added fuel to the fire. Eventually, it was discovered that the computer model that produced the hockey stick would produce a hockey stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.
Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn’t like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Past the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, as it turns out, Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous Climate-gate phrase “Mike’s Nature trick to … hide the decline.”
Mann’s defenders characterize this deletion of data as an elegant statistical technique. There is, however, nothing sophisticated, much less innocent about it. Contrary to Mann’s defenders, the hockey stick has never been vindicated by anyone. If nothing else, proof of its discredit lies in the fact that no one, not even the ethically challenged United Nations, relies on it anymore as evidence of manmade global warming.
Mann’s name-making hockey stick work occurred while he was at the University of Massachusetts, after which he was hired by the taxpayer-funded UVA. Did UVA hire Mann under the illusion that his hockey stick was a legitimate scientific achievement? Did Mann receive taxpayer-funded grants based on what amounts to scientific misconduct? These are legitimate inquiries — but not to everyone.
Left-wing academics, global warming alarmists, and the ACLU object to Cucinelli’s probe. They cast aspersions such as “witch hunt,” McCarthyism,” and “abuse of office.” In their less hysteric moments, they claim Cuccinelli threatens academic freedom. This is all so much rot.
Some scientists have actually been known to commit scientific misconduct tantamount to fraud. A Tulane researcher was found guilty of misconduct by the federal Office of Scientific Integrity in the late 1990s for fabricating data about pesticides being dangerous hormonal system disrupters. Don’t forget the South Korean researcher that was indicted for claiming false advances in stem cell research. Only political correctness saved a University of Pittsburgh researcher from conviction during the 1990s of manipulating data allegedly linking lead-based paint with lower IQs.
Believe it or not, scientists are just like the rest of the population — a mixture of good and bad. Mann’s hockey stick is such bad science that it compels the question, “Why?” Would UVA have hired Mann and would government grants have been awarded to him had the truth about the hockey stick been known by university and state decision-makers at the time? Were they intentionally deceived?
As the Climategate scandal has revealed, the climate alarmist mob is, at the very least, devious and unethical. It has conspired to silence its critics and to dispense with the normal give-and-take of the scientific process — all the while trumpeting the junkiest of science in trying to frighten the public and politicians into keeping the grant money flowing.
Have some of the climate mob’s members acted criminally as well? No one knows at this point. But through his hockey stick shenanigans, Mann has certainly provided Cuccinelli with “probable cause” to consider the possibility. A thorough investigation by someone not in cahoots with the climate mob is the only way to answer legitimate questions related to the expenditure of taxpayer money.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).
Leak of the day! Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill
Most of the world will learn tomorrow about the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill.
But you can check out the bill summary and section-by-section analysis today!
Who loves ya baby?
The President’s Oil Drilling Bait-N-Switch
By Steve Milloy
Investor’s Business Daily
So President Obama says he’s for more offshore oil drilling. Does he really mean it? Would it matter if he did?
Addressing the latter question first, consider President George W. Bush called for offshore drilling in June 2008, when gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon and Congress was less Democrat-controlled than today.
Nothing happened — well, that’s not exactly true.
Offshore drilling advocates were ecstatic in July 2008 when they thought a deal had been reached with green groups to permit drilling off Santa Barbara, Calif. — the first since the January 1969 oil spill there.
New Hampshire Union Leader editor Andrew Cline gushed in a July 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed: “When an environmental group formed for the sole purpose of opposing offshore oil drilling warmly embraces a plan to drill off its own coast, you know something important has changed in our culture; Americans have recognized that offshore drilling is largely safe.”
But less than a week later, the greens wrote the Journal to correct the record: “(T)o be accurate, the (op-ed’s) title should have read ‘Environmentalists Secure End to Oil Development’ … The agreement struck … is remarkable because it sets a fixed date for the termination of existing offshore and onshore oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County. We see this agreement as a direct complement to our support for the federal oil moratorium. Just as we need to say ‘no’ to new oil development, we must put an end to existing development if we are to protect our coast from the risks of offshore oil and gas development, and protect society from climate change.”
Despite the “agreement” and approval of offshore drilling by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, the greens subsequently got the California State Lands Commission to deny the offshore leases and then, in July 2009, got the California Assembly to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to revive offshore drilling.
Last December, the Obama administration actually granted Shell Oil leases to drill three exploratory wells in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. But claiming a shoddy approval process, the leases are being challenged by green groups in the enviro-friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Without wondering whether the Obama administration set Shell up for frustration, my money is on the greens in that venue.
The lesson here is that the greens oppose, and will use every tactic possible on the local, state and federal level to prevent, offshore drilling, regardless of what emanates from the Oval Office.
But then, there are many reasons to question the sincerity of Obama’s rhetoric in the first place.
Despite campaign rhetoric about supporting more drilling, last fall the Obama administration canceled drilling leases in Utah previously granted by President Bush.
The leases were denied for the flimsiest reasons, including possible damage to the habitat of the sage grouse and avoiding the dust and noise pollution from drilling.
Next, and most important, President Obama needs both Republican and moderate Democrat support to get a much sought after cap-and-trade bill through the Senate.
Right now, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is the only Republican interested in cap-and-trade. He wants to include increased oil and gas production and nuclear power.
President Obama no doubt hopes pro-oil drilling rhetoric will also help him win the support of other Senate swing votes, including Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mary “Louisiana Purchase” Landrieu, D-La.
Finally, while announcing his drilling proposal, Obama spent the bulk of his time talking about how we need to use less oil and wean ourselves off oil altogether.
He spent little time talking about producing more oil. He limited his remarks to a proposal merely for more oil “exploration” — not to increasing production and supply.
Talk is cheap and President Obama knows that. Let’s hope Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats know that too.
False promises about supporting oil drilling are bad enough, but it would be a travesty if they brought cap-and-trade.
• Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”
California AG tries to sabotage anti-cap-and-trade ballot initiative
California attorney general Jerry Brown is trying to sabotage the state anti-cap-and-trade ballot initiative by changing its name.
The ballot initiative would rollback the California cap-and-trade law (AB 32) pending a decline in state unemployment.
The original name of the ballot initiative was the:
California Jobs Initiative
The initiative’s new Brown-ized name is the:
Suspends Air Pollution Control Laws Requiring Major Polluters To Report And Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Cause Global Warming Until Unemployment Drops Below Specified Level For Full Year Initiative
Who wouldn’t vote for that?
The official announcement is below:
25 February 2010 – Update
Assemblyman Dan Logue, along with Congressman Tom McClintock and
Edward J. Costa INITIATIVE –Received by Attorney General Office 25 November 2009- assigned number 09-0094 to the initiative titled California Jobs Initiative
On 03 February 2010, was renamed by Attorney General Jerry Brown to:
SUSPENDS AIR POLLUTION CONTROL LAWS REQUIRING MAJOR POLLUTERS TO REPORT AND REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS THAT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING UNTIL UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS BELOW SPECIFIED LEVEL FOR FULL YEAR. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
The INITIATIVE is to SUSPEND implementation of AB 32 (Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) until unemployment in California drops below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters; it also prevents any agency from implementing any regulation of AB 32.
Negotiations are underway to modify the title authored by Attorney General Brown to more satisfactorily and truthfully reflect what the INITIATIVE really is intended.
To monitor progress of this INITIATIVE:
AG.CA.GOV/INITIATIVES/ACTIVEINDEX.PHP –
Select 2009 Initiatives and this is filed under 09-0094.
What would Reagan say about Obama?
Speaking before the Business Roundtable yesterday, President Obama denied that he was a socialist, stating:
“Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, I am an ardent believer in the free market… We have arrived at a juncture in our politics where reasonable efforts to update our regulations, or make basic investments in our future, are too often greeted with cries of ‘government takeover’ or even ‘socialism’…” [Emphasis added]
Now check out this excerpt from James Mann’s The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (Viking 2009):
In a 1960 letter to Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, who had published an article by [screenwriter and Communist Party member Dalton Trumbo] and defended his right to freedom of speech, Reagan recalled how his views [on communism] had been formed during [the late-1940s]. “I once thought exactly as you think… It took seven months of meeting communists and communist-influenced people across a table in almost daily sessions while pickets rioted in front of studio gates, homes were bombed and a great industry almost ground to a halt.” What bothered Reagan above all, he wrote, was the discovery that Communist Party members operated in secret and did not tell the truth. “I, like you, will defend the right of any American to openly practice and preach any political philospophy from monarchy to anarchy,” he told Hefner. “But this is not the case with regard to the communist. He is bound by party discipline to deny that he is a communist so that he can by subversion and stealth impose on an unwilling people the rule of the International Communist Party which is in fact the government of Soviet Russia.” Anticommunism for Reagan, then, was not primarily foreign policy or geopolitics; it was personal and moralistic in nature, driven by his experiences with people he considered sophisticated and devious, who did not abide by the small-town Midwestern values he had absorbed in his youth.
While Obama says he’s for the free market and that his policies are not socialist, all his actions, policies and proposal are in actuality anti-free market and socialist — e.g., the auto takeover, cap-and-trade, and nationalized health care to name just a few. Moreover, Obama surrounds himself with admitted socialists and communists, like Carol Browner, Van Jones to name just two.
So what would Reagan say about Obama?
Pachauri cancels US tour
IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri announced yesterday that the IPCC was working on a strategy to better police the experts who produce its studies, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Pachauri said,
“We certainly don’t feel comfortable with the loss of even one iota of trust.”
So how many iotas are there in a sh**load, Raj?
Pachauri’s comments come in the wake of the cancellation of his high-profile visit to the US. He was scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the Wall Street Journal’s ECO-nomics conference (March 3-5 in Santa Barbara) and at the energy conference CERAWEEK 2010 (March 8-12 in Houston).
In addition to Climategate, Pachauri is laboring under revelations of financial conflicts of interest between his heading the IPCC and his private consultancies/board memberships/employment by renewable energy firms.
It could be, of course, that Pachauri simply couldn’t decide which of his custom-tailored suits to bring along on his trip — each of which costs about 10% of what the average worker in India makes.
Al Gore found! JunkScience gets exclusive photos of MIA alarmist
Missing global warming alarmist Al Gore was captured today in a pre-dawn raid on his remote tropical island hideout.
The former vice president had been missing since the Copenhagen global warming conference last December, when he erroneously dismissed the Climategate scandal as having to do with e-mails that were 10 years old.
Since Gore was last seen in public, Climategate has been followed by glacier-gate, rainforest-gate, sea-level gate, the resignation of UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, revelations of IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri’s financial conflicts-of-interest and admissions by Climategate’s Phil Jones of no global warming since 1995 and the existence of a possibly warmer-than-now Medieval Warm Period.
The exclusive images below show an emaciated Al Gore, badly in need of a haircut.
Gore’s capture was eerily reminiscent of the capture of Imperial Japanese Army Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, who hid in the jungle for 28 years after the 1944 Battle of Guam.
Echoing Sgt. Yokoi’s famous comment upon his return to Japan in 1972, Gore told his capturers that,
“It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive.”
Like Sgt. Yokoi, Gore apparently knew that the war was over, but he was too humiliated by defeat to be seen in public.
Sgt. Yokoi became a popular television personality upon his return to Japan and an advocate of austere living. There was no immediate word from Al Gore on whether he planned to follow Sgt. Yokoi’s footsteps in austerity, say, by giving up his Nashville estate (with an indoor swimming pool that costs $600 per month to heat), houseboat, frequent private jet and limousine travel, and lucrative business dealings with the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm, Generation Investment Management, Google, Apple and Current TV.
But since Gore didn’t much care about his own carbon footprint during those pre-Climategate fanatasy days when “the science was settled and the debate was over,” there’s even less point now in sweating his green hypocrisy.
Recidivist of the day: Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post “reporter” Juliet Eilperin is back to her biased ways.
When the paper’s ombudsman gave her a polite spanking for biased climate reporting last fall, he concluded by saying:
It’s a close call, but I think she should stay on the beat. With her work now getting special scrutiny, it will become clear if the conflict is real.
You be the judge of whether the conflict is real.
Below is her front-page, above-the-fold article on Climategate in today’s Post. In addition to her own personal slants, keep in mind that Eilperin’s husband is a global warming activist with the way-left-of-center Center for American Progress.
Our comments are bold and in brackets.
Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda
By Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 15, 2010; A01With its 2007 report declaring that the “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won a Nobel Prize — and a new degree of public trust in the controversial science of global warming. [This is mere assertion to enhance Eilperin’s ensuing narrative. What is the evidence that the IPCC or the Nobel Prize committee built public trust in the hypothesis of manmade global warming during 2007? Are we to assume that the mere fact of these pronouncements bolstered public opinion?]
But recent revelations about flaws in that seminal report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel’s work but also in projections about climate change.[The 2035 date in glaciergate is not a mere “typo” nor is it the product of “sloppy sourcing.” 2035 was the actual date trumpeted by the IPCC for Himalayan glacier melting, although there was no scientific data, study or analysis to support it. Similarly, the claim that global warming would destroy 40% of the Am azon rainforest was based not on a study but on an article on forest fires in an activist group magazine.] Scientists who have pointed out problems in the report say the panel’s methods and mistakes — including admitting Saturday that it had overstated how much of the Netherlands was below sea level — give doubters an opening. [Earth to Eilperin: Skeptics have been pointing out these very same problems (e.g., since 1999 on the Himalayan glaciers) — but of course, you’ve been too busy promoting the alarmist narrative to pay attention.]
It wasn’t the first one. There is still a scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change. [A consensus about CO2? Among who?] But in the past year, a cache of stolen [What is the evidence that they were “stolen” versus, say, leaked? Were the Pentagon papers “stolen”?] e-mails, revealing that prominent climate scientists sought to prevent the publication of works by their detractors, has sullied their image as impartial academics. The errors in the U.N. report — a document intended to be the last nail in the coffin of climate doubt — are a serious problem that could end up forcing environmentalists to focus more on the old question of proving that climate change is a threat, instead of the new question of how to stop it. [No matter what information is produced, Eilperin simply cannot imagine that climate alarmism is more fantasy than fact. Juliet, is there any fact that could change your mind about global warming — or are your views set in stone?]
Two Republican senators who have long opposed a cap on carbon emissions, James M. Inhofe (Okla.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.), are citing the errors as further reasons to block mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Last week, Barrasso called for an independent probe into the IPCC, suggesting that the United States should halt any action on climate until it verifies the panel’s scientific conclusions. [Eilperin: Verification = Heresy]
Inhofe said Thursday in the Senate that the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to curb greenhouse gases should be reexamined, since the U.N. panel’s conclusions influenced the agency’s finding that climate change poses a public threat. “The ramifications of the IPCC spread far and wide, most notably to the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases from mobile sources endanger public health and welfare,” Inhofe said. On Friday, a coalition of conservative groups filed a petition to overturn the EPA’s finding on the same grounds.
“There is a sense that something’s rotten in the state of the IPCC,” said Richard H. Moss, a senior scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland, who has worked with the panel since 1993. “It’s just wildly exaggerated. But we need to take a look and see if something needs to be improved.” [“Wildly exaggerated”? Exactly what has the IPCC ever been right about? Yesterday, Climategate’s Phil Jones’ admitted there’s been no warming since 1995, despite ever-rising CO2 emissions. It seems the “exaggeration” is on the alarmist side.]
The IPCC climate assessments are, by any standard, a massive undertaking. Thousands of scientists across the globe volunteer to evaluate tens of thousands of academic documents and translate them into plain-English reports that policymakers can understand. [Eilperin: Massive Undertaking = Too difficult to be expected to get right]
Climate researchers say the errors do not disprove the U.N. panel’s central conclusion: Climate change is happening, and humans are causing it. [How does this square with no warming since 1995?] Some researchers said the U.N. panel’s attitude — appearing to promise that its results were infallible, and reacting slowly to evidence that they were not — could undermine the rest of its work. [What specific part of their work is correct, Juliet?]
“What’s happened here is that there’s an industry of climate-change denialists who are trying to make it seem as though you can’t trust anything that is between the covers” of the panel’s report, said Jeffrey Kargel, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies glaciers. “It’s really heartbreaking to see this happen, and to see that the IPCC left themselves open” to being attacked. [Are you a denialist if you say there’s been no warming since 1995? Is Phil Jones, then, a denialist? Are you a denialist if you say the Himalayan glaciers won’t melt by 2035? Does that make IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri a denialist? What “industry” of denialists? Is there also an “industry” — a multi-billion dollar one at that — of alarmists?]
Kargel said he noticed an error in the report of the IPCC’s second working group, a research unit, in 2007. The report said huge glaciers in the Himalayan mountains might disappear by 2035. Some glaciers are melting, but they are too enormous to disappear that quickly: “It’s physically impossible to kill the ice that fast,” Kargel said.
He said colleagues regarded the error as too ridiculous to fuss about until recently. [FYI, the “too ridiculous” Himalayan glacier error was cited in Senate testimony or mentioned by various senators numerous times in 2009 to justify global warming as a national security issue.] Last month, the journal Science printed a letter to the editor that traced the origins of the mistaken data: The U.N. panel seemed to have quoted an activist group’s report, not a peer-reviewed study. And, in citing another source, it appeared to have committed a serious typo: The year 2350 had become 2035. [IPCC chief Pachauri new of the problem but opted to remain silent.]
Another line that has sparked scrutiny reads, “Up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation,” and links to a report co-written by the World Wildlife Fund. The analysis cited key work by Woods Hole Research Center senior scientist Daniel C. Nepstad, but the link to an advocacy group instead of a peer-reviewed paper infuriated conservatives. [The work was about forest fires, not climate change.]
“The underlying science is certainly there, but the citation process the IPCC went through is sloppy. [The underlying science is where? Did Eilperin bother to ask?] There’s no other word for it,” said Doug Boucher, director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at the Union of Concerned Scientists. [UCS is an alarmist activist group. Where’s the balance?]
The IPCC did not respond to requests for comment. [Has the IPCC ever before failed to respond to a Washington Post inquiry? I bet not.]
Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist and environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, said that the U.N. panel could hurt its own public standing by not admitting how it exaggerated certain climate risks or connections, such as linking higher insurance payouts to rising temperatures when other factors are driving this trend. [“Could hurt”?]
“The idea that the IPCC can or should strive to be infallible is really not helpful,” Pielke said. “When errors and mistakes are inevitably found, the fall is that much further. . . . There’s a real risk that the public perception could swing [toward greater disbelief in climate science]. Even though the reality is that the science — the underlying science — hasn’t changed.” [Pielke makes a loaded comment: infallibility is an impossible standard for anyone or group. Still, the UN wants to manage the global energy supply through internationally binding carbon caps. Shouldn’t it at least make sure its claims match up with reality and are backed up by actual data and studies?]
The error about the Netherlands was in a background note in the 2007 report that said 55 percent of the country lay below sea level, but that figure included areas that were actually above sea level and prone to flooding. [Didn’t anyone in the Netherlands notice the error?]
U.N. Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth, whose nonprofit group has highlighted the work of the IPCC, said that the pirated e-mails gave “an opening” to attack climate science and that the scientific work “has to be defended just like evolution has to be defended.” [Note how Eilperin attempts to elevate climate alarmism to evolution. But Wirth is just another science-hating alarmist. He once said, “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”]
It is unclear whether the controversy will hamper passage of a bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which has stalled in the Senate. [Is Eilperin actually suggesting that Climategate is having no effect?] Paul W. Bledsoe, of the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy, said that if people want to know why the “bill is having a hard time in the Senate, I would rank [concern about climate science] lower than the economy and the financial meltdown.” [The NCEP is a yet another alarmist group that favors cap-and-trade. What would you expect it to say?]
Scientists are debating whether they need to revamp the IPCC process or scrap it. The journal Nature published an opinion section Thursday in which several researchers floated ideas on how to change the U.N. panel, along with a piece written by Moss and others showing how scientists could increase collaboration across disciplines to produce more accurate climate projections more quickly. [Since none of its climate projects have been at all accurate, what does “more accurate mean?”]
And Christopher Field — co-chair of the second working group for the IPCC’s next assessment — said the panel needs to improve its fact-checking, even if it means enlisting report contributors’ students to help do the job. [Terrific, so in the future, the IPCC will be able to blame students.” BTW, how about that fact of no warming since 1995? Do we have to wait for the students to check that?]
“My goal is to produce a report that’s 100 percent error-free, to the maximum extent possible,” he said. “The fact that the IPCC runs on volunteer labor makes it a challenge, but it’s too important a challenge to ignore.” [So maybe its a good idea to wait on the policy until the IPCC can do that? Did anyone make that suggestion? Did it occur to Juliet to ask it?]
Note that this article contains NO comments from the skeptics. I know Eilperin knows who we are and I know she knows how to get a hold of us. So what’s the deal? Throw your readers a bone… or would that ruin the alarmist narrative?
Let the Washington Post ombudsman know that Juliet Eilperin has returned to her biased ways — pillow talk will do that, I guess.
Obama's National Climate Disservice
By Steve Milloy
February 11, 2010, PajamasMedia.com
There’s good news for those who like to watch paint dry and grass grow. Now you can log on to www.climate.gov and watch the climate change. Continue reading Obama's National Climate Disservice
Penn State primes for the Climategate whitewash
Here’s our early take on today’s Penn State report on its Michael Mann investigation:
- The review apparently extended little further than the Climategate e-mails themselves, an interview with Mann, materials submitted by Mann and whatever e-mails and comments floated in over the transom. Not thorough at all.
One of the Penn State investigative committee members, Henry Foley, did endeavor to get external views on Michael Mann — unfortunately, they came from:
- Gerald North, who dismissed Climategate in a Washington Post interview a only few days after the news of the scandal first broke and who assisted in the National Research Council’s 2006 effort to whitewash Mann’s hockey stick; and
- Donald Kennedy, a former editor of Science magazine and an outspoken zealot for climate alarmism.
- Comically, the report explains at length how the use of the word “trick” can mean a “clever device.” The report ignores that it was a “trick… to hide the decline.” There is no mention of “hide the decline” in the report.
- The report concludes there is no evidence to indicate that Mann intended to delete e-mails. But this is contradicted by the plain language and circumstances surrounding Mann’s e-mail exchange with Phil Jones — See page 9 of Climategate & Penn State: The Case for an Independent Investigation.
- The report dismisses the accusation that Mann conspired to silence skeptics by stating, “one finds enormous confusion has been caused by interpretations of the e-mails and their content.” Maybe there wouldn’t be so much “confusion” if PSU actually did a thorough investigation rather than just relying on the word of Michael Mann.
- Although PSU is continuing the investigation, its reason is not to investigate Mann so much as it is to exonerate climate alarmism. On page 9 of the report, it says that “questions in the public’s mind about Dr. Mann’s conduct… may be undermining confidence in his findings as a scientist… and public trust in science in general and climate science specifically.”
There needs to be a thorough and independent investigation of Climategate. PSU’s report is a primer for a whitewash.
CAUTION: Don’t be fooled by the Penn State media release. It gives the impression that PSU’s investigation into Mann will continue. But if you read the report, PSU has essentially already exonerated him. Moreover, PSU has changed the nature of the investigation away from Climategate being a scandal and toward Climategate being a public relations problem for global warming alarmism.