What Do We Think About Climate Change

read it and weep

today's news flash from CNN

 

Why do you think I would believe ANY thing posted by the Climategate Nutjob Notifiers?

 

you mean CNN

They are typically on the leading edge of the deniers campaign and one of the most egregious offenders when it comes to catering to the disinformation campaign, so to have them actually print what amounts to a retraction of there typically poor journalistic standards is something just short of a miracle.

 

The Russell Report (http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL REPORT.pdf) does it justify the claim that it is a “complete exoneration”. In particular it backs critics who see in the emails a widespread effort to suppress public knowledge about their activities and to sideline bloggers who want to access their data and do their own analysis.

It finds “evidence that emails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them [under Freedom of information law]“. Yet, extraordinarily, it emerged during questioning that Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this. The hearings were held in secret, without any public access, and no known sceptic was permitted (let alone invited) to give evidence.

Russell was appointed by the UEA to investigate an archive of source code and emails that leaked onto the internet last November. The source code is not addressed at all. His report suggests that the problems were of the academics' own making, stating that they were "united in defence against criticism". Yet the enquiry found that despite emails promising to "redefine" the peer review publication process, and put pressure on journal editors, staff were not guilty of subverting the IPCC process, and their "rigour" and "honesty" were beyond question.

Leading academics were called for written and oral evidence before the Russell enquiry, and in many cases the report accepts their account of events. The subjects of their criticism were not invited, not were climate scientists critical of their behaviour. For example, in their capacity as IPCC gatekeepers, the academics are cleared of excluding critical evidence, and yet bending the rules to include supporting studies. To reach this particular conclusion, for example, the report finds a criterion: a "consistence of view" with earlier work. The earlier work here was in fact produced the academics under scrutiny. So, having compared the CRU academics' work against their previous work, and found it to be consistent, they are cleared of malpractice.

The panel avoided examining the scientific work of the CRU Team - as have the two other reviews of the leaked archive by Lord Oxburgh, and the Commons Select Committee on science. If the academics had used bats' wings or tea leaves to create temperature reconstructions, that wasn't a matter for any of the panels to judge.

 

so you are suggesting that the CNN article quoting various aspects of the review is somehow falsified

for instance when they say

cause they are pretty darn clear about there having been no "undue influence" of reports produced by the IPCC detailing the threat of climate change

IE
whatever issues they may have in there own PR department were not relevant to the greater issue of Rapid Global Climate Change as reported by the IPCC

another excerpt you might have missed would be this one

or maybe you missed the fact that three independent reviews of the events in question have been made and not one found any evidence of wrongdoing

seems obvious that the "controversy" was a construct of some petty imaginations bent of inventing issues where none actually existed

kinda like what you are doing when you try and invent some issue about

"Might" have been, thats classic G cause you "might" have spent the night with a hooker last night and we are still just waiting for the pictures to develop so we can all see if she was a blond or brunette.

kinda sounds like you are still attempting to spread wild and baseless rumors again in an effort to confuse the readers when in fact there is hardly a disparaging remark to be found in any of the reports concerning East Anglia and none concerning the IPCC

hmmmmm
must be a conspiracy eh

 

From the Russel Report itself:

The nature of scientific challenge. We note that much of the challenge to
CRU‘s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of
checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses
for peer review and publication. We believe this is necessary if science is to
move on, and we hope that all those involved on all sides of the climate science
debate will adopt this approach.

Handling Uncertainty – where policy meets science. Climate science is an
area that exemplifies the importance of ensuring that policy makers
–particularly Governments and their advisers, Non-Governmental Organisations
and other lobbyists – understand the limits on what scientists can say and with
what degree of confidence. Statistical and other techniques for explaining
uncertainty have developed greatly in recent years, and it is essential that they
are properly deployed. But equally important is the need for alternative
viewpoints to be recognized in policy presentations, with a robust assessment of
their validity, and for the challenges to be rooted in science rather than rhetoric.

Peer review - what it can/cannot deliver. We believe that peer review is an
essential part of the process of judging scientific work, but it should not be overrated
as a guarantee of the validity of individual pieces of research, and the
significance of challenge to individual publication decisions should be not
exaggerated.

Openness and FoIA. We support the spirit of openness enshrined in the FoIA
and the EIR. It is unfortunate that this was not embraced by UEA, and we make
recommendations about that. A well thought through publication scheme would
remove much potential for disruption by the submission of multiple requests for
information. But at the level of public policy there is need for further thinking
about the competing arguments for the timing of full disclosure of research data
and associated computer codes etc, as against considerations of confidentiality
during the conduct of research. There is much scope for unintended
consequences that could hamper research: US experience is instructive. We
recommend that the ICO should initiate a debate on these wider issues.

Handling the blogosphere and non traditional scientific dialogue. One of the
most obvious features of the climate change debate is the influence of the
blogosphere. This provides an opportunity for unmoderated comment to stand
alongside peer reviewed publications; for presentations or lectures at learned
conferences to be challenged without inhibition; and for highly personalized
critiques of individuals and their work to be promulgated without hindrance.
This is a fact of life, and it would be foolish to challenge its existence. The
Review team would simply urge all scientists to learn to communicate their work
in ways that the public can access and understand. That said, a key issue is how
scientists should be supported to explain their position, and how a public space
can be created where these debates can be conducted on appropriate terms,
where what is and is not uncertain can be recognised.

Openness and Reputation. An important feature of the blogosphere is the
extent to which it demands openness and access to data. A failure to recognise
this and to act appropriately, can lead to immense reputational damage by
feeding allegations of cover up. Being part of a like minded group may provide
no defence. Like it or not, this indicates a transformation in the way science has
to be conducted in this century.

Role of Research Sponsors. One of the issues facing the Review was the
release of data. At various points in the report we have commented on the
formal requirements for this. We consider that it would make for clarity for
researchers if funders were to be completely clear upfront in their requirements
for the release of data (as well as its archiving, curation etc).

The IPCC. We welcome the IPCC‘s decision to review its processes, and can
only stress the importance of capturing the range of viewpoints and reflecting
appropriately the statistical uncertainties surrounding the data it assesses. Our
conclusions do not make a judgement on the work of IPCC, though we
acknowledge the importance of its advice to policy makers.

 

Don't you believe it!!!!

CNN have an even worse reputation for abysmal reporting than either Sky or the BBC and my opinion of both those organisations is that neither can find their posteriors with both hands.

I would simply point out that Mann proposes and Nature disposes. The climate continually changes as does the weather. After next NH winter, disgruntled old reactionaries like Boston (whose personal links are quite nice BTW. I'm just not sure there is a market for wooden aquariums) should be less gloating and more open minded. The planet has entered a cooling phase. Global temperatures will fall. This summer will be hot, but not for long. I would suggest boating Brits all get out on the water PDQ, because the UK weather will be rather changed after this weekend.

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=561

Incidentally, we are not here for a long time, so we may as well be here for a good time.

Addendum.

Chemical hydrolysis of human corpses is being studied by European bureaucrats, allegedly. Are they expecting to be overwhelmed by the death of countless wrinklies like me during the next winter and seeking a method of hiding the numbers from the remaining populace?

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/the-other-side/dead-put-in-dunny/story-e6frfhk6-1225889434108

Gives a new meaning to the phrase "L'eau de Toilette" doesn't it?

Yours ghoulishly,

Perry

 

an interesting post Guillermo

So wherein lies any condemnation or controversy concerning the IPCC standpoint or the contributing science as developed by East Anglia. looks pretty obvious that the content of your post is, if anything a reaffirmation of the importance of the work of these two organizations and hardly a stinging rebuke of any kind.

In a nut shell there simply was no validity to any of the ridiculous claims being made by the deniers camp when they stole the E mails and presented portions of them out of context to the public in order to generate doubt and confusion in what can only be referred to as something less than an honest.

three reviews later and no controversy or impropriety ever existed other than in the imaginations of those fooled by the disinformation campaign.

Its a perfect example of how these same deniers are doing nothing more than nipping at the heals of honest scientist as they move forward in the quest for a greater understanding of climate science

 

The Effect Of Adopting Popular Paranoia As Truth
By Reverend Dr Peter Mullen
The Daily Telegraph, UK

 

Sea-level Expert: It's Not Rising!
Why coastal dwellers should not live in fear of inundation.

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner was interviewed by Associate Editor Gregory Murphy on June 6. The interview here is abridged; a full version appeared in Executive Intelligence Review, June 22, 2007.

Question: I would like to start with a little bit about your background.
I am a sea-level specialist. There are many good sea-level people in the world, but let's put it this way: There's no one who's beaten me. I took my thesis in 1969, devoted to a large extent to the sea-level problem. From then on I have launched most of the new theories, in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I was the one who understood the problem of the gravitational potential surface, the theory that it changes with time. I'm the one who studied the rotation of the Earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans' masses. And so on.

I was president of INQUA, an international fraternal association, their Commission on Sea-Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, from 1999 to 2003. And in order to do something intelligent there, we launched a special international sea-level research project in the Maldives, because that's the hottest spot on Earth for (this topic)—there are so many variables interacting there, so it was interesting, and also people had claimed that the Maldives—about 1,200 small islands—were doomed to disappear in 50 years, or at most, 100 years. So that was a very important target.

I have had my own research institute at Stockholm University, which was devoted to something called paleogeophysics and geodynamics. It's primarily a research institute, but lots of students came, I have several Ph.D. theses at my institute, and lots of visiting professors and research scientists came to learn about sea level. Working in this field, I don't think there's a spot on the Earth I haven't been in! In the northmost, Greenland; and in Antarctica; and all around the Earth, and very much at the coasts.

So I have primary data from so many places, that when I'm speaking, I don't do it out of ignorance, but on the contrary, I know what I'm talking about. And I have interaction with other scientific branches, because it's very important to see the problems not just from one eye, but from many different aspects. Sometimes you dig up some very important thing in some geodesic paper which no other geologist would read. And you must have the time and the courage to go into the big questions, and I think I have done that.

The last 10 years or so, of course, everything has been the discussion on sea level, which they say is drowning us. In the early '90s, I was in Washington giving a paper on how the sea level is not rising, as they said. That had some echoes around the world.

Question: What is the real state of the sea-level?
You have to look at that in a lot of different ways. That is what I have done in a lot of different papers, so we can confine ourselves to the short story here. One way is to look at the global picture, to try to find the essence of what is going on. And then we can see that the sea level was indeed rising, from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-1940. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year; 1.1 is the exact figure. Not more. And we can check that, because Holland is a subsiding area; it has been subsiding for many millions of years; and Sweden, after the last Ice Age, was uplifted. So if you balance those, there is only one solution, and it will be this figure....

There's another way of checking it, because if the radius of the Earth increases as a result of sea level rise, then immediately the Earth's rate of rotation would slow down. That is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when skaters rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and you see the same thing: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely not more. It could be less, because there could be other factors affecting the Earth, but it certainly could not be more. Absolutely not! Again, it's a matter of physics.

So, we have this 1 mm per year up to 1930, by observation, and we have it by rotation recording. So we go with those two. They go up and down, but there's no trend in it; it was up until 1930, and then down again. There's no trend, absolutely no trend.

Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. We have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives a 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It's the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you should not use.

And if that (2.3 mm) figure is correct, then Holland would not be subsiding, it would be uplifting. And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that. So tide gauges, you have to treat very, very carefully. Now back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean, as measured by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, (the graph of the sea level) was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.

Data Fudged
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their (IPCC's) publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something, but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original data which they suddenly twisted up, because they entered a "correction factor," which they took from the tide gauge.

So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences meeting in Moscow—I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!

That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They know" the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modelling, not from observations. The observations don't find it!

I have been an expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it (the report), I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing. Again, it was a computer issue. This is the typical thing: The meteorological community works with computers, simple computers. Geologists don't do that! We go out in the field and observe, and then we can try to make a model with computerization; but it's not the first thing.

So there we are. Then we went to the Maldives. I traced a drop in sea level in the 1970s, and the fishermen told me, "Yes, you are correct, because we remember"—things in their sailing routes have changed, things in their harbor have changed. I worked in the lagoon, I drilled in the sea, I drilled in lakes, I looked at the shore morphology—so many different environments. Always the same thing: In about 1970, the sea fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something. Not a change in volume or something like that—it was a rapid thing. The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. You can trace it so very, very carefully. No rise at all is the answer there.

The Case of Tuvalu
Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are supposed to soon disappear because they've put out too much carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a variograph record, from 1978, so it's 30 years. And again, if you look there, absolutely no trend, no rise.

So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands?

We know in the Tuvalu Islands that there was a Japanese pineapple industry which extracted too much fresh water from the inland, and those islands have very little fresh water available from precipitation, rain. So, if you take out too much, you destroy the water magazine, and you bring seawater into the magazine, which is not nice. So they took out too much freshwater and in came salt water. And of course the local people were upset. But then it was much easier to say, "No, no! It's the global sea level rising! It has nothing to do with our extraction of freshwater." So there you have it. This is a local industry which doesn't pay.

You have Vanuatu, and also in the Pacific, north of New Zealand and Fiji—there is the island Tegua. They said they had to evacuate it, because the sea level was rising. But again, you look at the tide-gauge record: There is absolutely no signal that the sea level is rising. If anything, you could say that maybe the tide is lowering a little bit, but absolutely no rising.

And again, where do they (the IPCC) get it from? They get it from their inspiration, their hopes, their computer models, but not from observation, which is terrible.

Venice
We have Venice. Venice is well known, because that area is tectonically, because of the delta, slowly subsiding. The rate has been constant over time. A rising sea level would immediately accelerate the flooding. And it would be so simple to record it. And if you look at that 300-year record: In the 20th Century it was going up and down, around the subsidence rate. In 1970, you should have an acceleration, but instead, the rise almost finished. So it was the opposite.

If you go around the globe, you find no rise anywhere. But they need the rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat. They say there is nothing good to come from a sea-level rise, only problems, coastal problems. If you have a temperature rise, if it's a problem in one area, it's beneficial in another area. But sea level is the real "bad guy," and therefore they have talked very much about it. But the real thing is, that it doesn't exist in observational data, only in computer modelling....

I'll tell you another thing: When I came to the Maldives, to our enormous surprise, one morning we were on an island, and I said, "This is something strange, the storm level has gone down; it has not gone up, it has gone down." And then I started to check the level all around, and I asked the others in the group, "Do you see anything here on the beach?" And after a while they found it too. And as we had investigated, and we were sure, I said we cannot leave the Maldives and go home and say the sea level is not rising, it's not respectful to the people. I have to say it to Maldive television.

So we made a very nice program for Maldive television, but it was forbidden by the government (!) because they thought that they would lose money. They accuse the West for putting out carbon dioxide, and therefore we have to pay for our damage and the flooding. So they wanted the flooding scenario to go on.

This tree, which I showed in the documentary, is interesting. This is a prison island, and when people left the island, from the '50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this tree alone out there, they said, "Ah, freedom!" ... I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the 1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone. I used it in my writings and for television.

You know what happened? There came an Australian sea-level team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? And we came to launch this film "Doomsday Called Off," right after that, and the tree was still green. And I heard from the locals that they had seen the people who had pulled it down. So I put it up again, by hand, and made my TV program....

They call themselves scientists, and they're destroying evidence! A scientist should always be open for reinterpretation, but you can never destroy evidence. And they were being watched, thinking they were clever.

Question: How does the IPCC get these small island nations so worked up about worrying that they're going to be flooded tomorrow?
Because they get support; they get money, so their idea is to attract money from the industrial countries. And they believe that if the story is not sustained, they will lose it. So, they love this story. But the local people in the Maldives—it would be terrible to raise children—why should they go to school, if in 50 years everything will be gone? The only thing you should do, is learn how to swim....

Yes, and it's much better to blame something else. Then they can wash their hands and say, "It's not our fault. It's the U.S., they're putting out too much carbon dioxide."

Question: Which is laughable, this idea that CO2 is driving global warming.
Precisely, that's another thing.

And like this State of Fear (book), by Michael Crichton, when he talks about ice. Where is ice melting? Some Alpine glaciers are melting, others are advancing. Antarctic ice is certainly not melting; all the Antarctic records show expansion of ice. Greenland is the dark horse here for sure; the Arctic may be melting, but it doesn't matter, because they're already floating, and it has no effect.

A glacier like Kilimanjaro, which is important, on the Equator, is only melting because of deforestation. At the foot of the Kilimanjaro, there was a rain forest; from the rain forest came moisture, from that came snow, and snow became ice. Now, they have cut down the rain forest, and instead of moisture, there comes heat; heat melts the ice, and there's no more snow to generate the ice. So it's a simple thing, but has nothing to do with temperature. It's the misbehavior of the people around the mountain. So again, it's like Tuvalu: We should say this is deforestation, that's the thing. But instead they say, "No, no, it's global warming!"

Question: Here, over the last few days, there was a group that sent out a powerpoint presentation on melting glaciers, and how this is going to raise sea level and create all kinds of problems.
The only place that has that potential is Greenland, and Greenland east is not melting; Greenland west, the Disco Bay is melting, but it has been melting for 200 years, at least, and the rate of melting decreased in the last 50-100 years. So, that's another falsification.

But more important, in the last 5,000 years, the whole of the Northern Hemisphere experienced warming, the Holocene Warm Optimum, and it was 2.5 degrees warmer than today. And still, no problem with Antarctica, or with Greenland; still, no higher sea level.

Observations Vs. Computer Models
Question: These scare stories are being used for political purposes.
Yes. Again, this is for me, the line of demarcation between the meteorological community and us: They work with computers; we geologists work with observations, and the observations do not fit with these scenarios. So what should you change? We cannot change observations, so we have to change the scenarios!

Instead of doing this, they give an endless amount of money to the side which agrees with the IPCC. The European Community, which has gone far in this thing: If you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there must be a focus on global warming. All the rest of us, we can never get a coin there, because we are not fulfilling the basic obligations. That is really bad, because then you start asking for the answer you want to get. That's what dictatorships did, autocracies. They demanded that scientists produce what they wanted....

You frighten a lot of scientists. If they say that climate is not changing, they lose their research grants. And some people cannot afford that; they become silent, or a few of us speak up, because we think that it's for the honesty of science, that we have to do it.

Question: In one of your papers, you mentioned how the expansion of sea level changed the Earth's rotation into different modes—that was quite an eye-opener.
Yes, but it is exceptionally hard to get these papers published also. The publishers compare it to IPCC's modelling, and say, "Oh, this isn't the IPCC." Well, luckily it's not! But you cannot say that....

When I became president of the INQUA Commission on Sea-Level Change and Coastal Evolution, we made a research project, and we had this up for discussion at five international meetings. And all the true sea level specialists agreed on this figure, that in 100 years, we might have a rise of 10 cm, with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10 cm—that's not very much. And in recent years, I even improved it, by considering also that we're going into a cold phase in 40 years. That gives 5 cm rise, plus or minus a few centimeters. That's our best estimate. But that's very, very different from the IPCC statement.

Ours is just a continuation of the pattern of sea level going back in time. Then you have absolutely maximum figures, like when we had all the ice in the vanishing ice caps that happened to be too far south in latitude after the Ice Age. You couldn't have more melting than after the Ice Age. You reach up to 10 mm per year—that was the super-maximum: 1 meter in 100 years....

People have been saying, 1 meter, 3 meters. It's not feasible! These are figures which are so large, that only when the ice caps were vanishing, did we have those types of rates. They are absolutely extreme.... We are basing ourselves on the observations—in the past, in the present, and then predicting it into the future, with the best of the "feet on the ground" data that we can get, not from the computer.

Question: Isn't some of what people are talking about just shoreline erosion, as opposed to sea-level rise?
Yes, and I have very nice pictures of it. If you have a coast, with some stability of the sea level, the waves make a kind of equilibrium profile—what they are transporting into the sea and what they are transporting onshore. If the sea rises a little, yes, it attacks, but the attack is not so vigorous. On the other hand, if the sea goes down, it is eating away at the old equilibrium level. There is a much larger redistribution of sand.

We had an island, where there was heavy erosion, everything was falling into the sea, trees and so on. But if you looked at what happened: The sand which disappeared there, if the sea level had gone up, that sand would have been placed higher, on top of the previous land. But it is being placed below the previous beach. We can see the previous beach, and it is 20-30 cm above the current beach. So this is erosion because the sea level fell, not because the sea level rose. And it is more common that erosion is caused by a falling sea level, than by a rising sea level.

 

If this persons assertions are correct why has he not presented the concepts to the various review panels and published his proof of the IPCC's error ?

seems like if he were actually on to something that he would like to pursue it would he not ?

 

Sigh

 

just to help the readers who man not be aware of what this Executive Intelligence Review rag is

The review process would help ensure that his views are up for scrutiny by the entire scientific community, if they were accepted and widely publicized by this process then he might be able to advance his findings however publishing a interview through a political Analysis publication from Lyndon H. Larouche is hardly a stellar beginning

 

Not even if you tied their hands behind their backs could they.

 

Boston, your patronising grand standing becomes very tiring. Do you really think you can simply answer every post with some personal attack to its author without ever addressing the content of the post? Your wisdom by Google spoils every page of this thread. It is becoming a necessity to skip every single post of yours.

Did you know that Elton Jones is homosexual? The Rollings Stones drug addicts? Paganini a total *****? Tchaicovsky another fag? Beethoven deaf? Van Gogh a dangerous madman? Would you judge their art in light of their personal shortcomings? Well YOU obviously would, but that would make you a very small person in deed, almost invisible.

Clearly in all this time this thread has been going you have shown a complete lack of proper judgement and a total absence of interest in what should be good news for all human kind, and that is that AGW is just a political stunt. Rather than showing interest in any possible hope that we in fact are NOT facing annihilation you regale submerged in every possible shred of bad news, magnifying it if at all possible beyond the paranoidal imbecility of the IPCC and the rest of the cheer squad.

For someone who's ancestors lived so close to nature, your lack of understanding of nature is flabbergasting.