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Global environmental challenges
Global warming accelerates; Climategate rumbles on
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A report by a group of leading scientists that global warming is accelerating and that world sea levels could rise at worst by 2 metres by 2100* is grim reading.
But sceptics are using a flood of leaked e-mails from a British University — dubbed “Climategate” – to question the findings.
You can read the Copenhagen Diagnosis here, by 26 researchers worldwide. It says a thaw of summer sea ice around the North Pole, for instance, has far outpaced projections in a report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) two years ago. They say world emissions must peak by 2020 to avoid the worst of climate change.
They say that sea levels could rise by perhaps a metre, at worst 2 – a figure also mentioned recently by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — and far above scenarios in 2007 by the IPCC. More than 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18 to try to agree a new pact to combat global warming.
But the leak of thousands of hacked documents from the University of East Anglia has added fuel to the debate because they include snide comments about climate sceptics and exchanges about how to present the data to make the global warming look convincing.
Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the university, is quoted today as saying that he “absolutely” stands by his findings and says the suggestion that there was a conspiracy to alter evidence was “complete rubbish”.
I’ve had a several e-mails from people who doubt humans are to blame for global warming saying that “Climategate” indicates that the Copenhagen Diagnosis is a new example of alarmism. Will this be a new pattern before Copenhagen?
Experts say the leaks from the University don’t affect conclusions by scientists who found in the 2007 IPCC report that it was more than 90 percent sure that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, were to blame for warming over the past 50 years. Governments — including the United States when President George W. Bush was in office — also signed off on those findings.
But the U.S. Senate has not agreed carbon-capping legislation and the leaks are hardly a good argument to persuade waverers to join other industrialised nations in capping carbon emissions.
*by 2100! thanks for pointing out!
(Picture: Icebergs float in the calm waters of a fjord, south of Tasiilaq in eastern Greenland August 4, 2009. REUTERS/Bob Strong)
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Mainstream media is sloughing off the contents of the leaked documents as if it were meaningless. But here you have emails from the very scientists that the United Nations and Washington have been relying on as proof that cap and trade and a carbon tax are necessary.Unless full disclosure of the data is allowed and subjected to an impartial peer review,i.e. none of the scientists or their colleagues involved, the conclusions drawn, including the claim of a 2m rise in sea levels, are null and void.Global society is about to be molded into a new paradigm based on science that, on the surface, appears to be tainted. Trillions of dollars the world over are to be collected in a new tax so we as a society have to be 100% correct going forward.When scientists hide or delete data their conclusion are invalid. The leaked documents show this, thus the science is not valid. Thus the Copenhagen Treaty and cap and trade are doomed to failure.People are not going to accept this.TMA
The problem here, Alister, is not whether a warming trend happened. It did, and has been going on since the 1800′s, with the end of the Little Ice Age. There have been some blips in the form of cooling during that time. Most people will agree, based on the scientific data, that warming occurred. The problem is that scientists, who have a lot of money and prestige at stake, are blaming it mostly or solely on Mankind. A tenuous, at best, causal link has been created between the warming since 1980 and CO2. Yet, there is a ton of data that suggests Mankind has little, or nothing, to do with the actual temp rise.I just wish you folks in the media would show the skepticism and investigative abilities needed to be a journalist, and start to question exactly what is going on, print both sides of the story, and look at all the evidence, rather than regurgitating press releases that are more hysterical than anything else.
Why does Reuters feel the need to take sides in a simple academic debate? Because that is what it is.Reading the emails for yourself makes it fairly clear that the core group of climate scientists at the heart of the warming proof is all too human. They defend their beliefs passionately.That’s OK. But before we invest trillions on the basis of their findings, let’s see if we can reproduce their results.And stop wrapping every doubt about global warming in a blanket of ‘but experts say…’. Other, equally serious, experts say something else. No need for Reuters to add a filter to much-needed scientific debate.
“But the leak of thousands of hacked documents from the University of East Anglia has added fuel to the debate because they include snide comments about climate sceptics and exchanges about how to present the data to make the global warming look convincing.” Actually, it’s because they demonstrate a long history of adjusting data to support theories, to the point where the reconstruction produced by the CRU can now no longer be believed. That famous graph showing steadily rising world temperatures throughout the 90s has been completely discredited, and the whole house of cards built upon it has to be taken with a very solid grain of salt.
It’s a lot worse than that. The emails and the documents, that include programmers nots, show a pattern of hiding any evidence that refutes their theories, destruction of data to prevent others from finding, admissions of no warming in the last ten years, modification of data (falsification), blackballing, threats etc etc the list goes on and on.
Sorry, but which bits of all the emails that have been published on the web do you at Reuters not understand??Any pontificating that all you news agencies are now producing abour melting ice, rising sea levels, etc,etc, do not have any credibity now, because of this massive scam that has been carried out by so called environmental scientists in this country and around the world!In essence these climate experts have lied, suppressed information, threatened to get any one who opposes their so called ‘consensus’about this AGW sacked or discredited!Who is going to now believe any so called expert, scientist, or anyone else when they come up with their latest report or any other garbage they whant to con us with!
If, as Phil Jones claims, the science of AGW is sound, why would they have to lie about it? Why would they conspire to hide and misrepresent data? Why would they conspire to prevent the publication of alternative perspectives? Why would they conspire to ruin the reputations of researchers who didn’t agree with them?AGW makes extravagant claims and should be subjected to an extremely high burden of proof. Instead the myth of “consensus” and the hubris of “settled science,” is deem sufficient by the media and by our political leaders.This story is the Pentagon Papers of AGW and yet few of our professional journalists seem interested in getting to the bottom of it. Shame on you!
Could this article be dumber? What Climatgate proves is the is that there is no data to support global warming. The IPCC and Hadley were cooking the books. Until new and TRANSPARENT studies (real science) is done, a statement that anything is accelerating is based on garbage.
2 meters a YEAR? They didn’t really say that, did they? That’s beyond ludicrous.
What’s the difference between Climategate believers and 9-11 truthers? ExxonMobil.
Oh god, more damage control propaganda. Can science EVER be trusted again after this? I would love to know who these scientists are and who pays for their funding. Moronic.
For those who think that the CRU scientists are trying to censor legitimate opposing points of view, here’s a short sentence from a “skeptical” paper that was published over the objections of those scientists (link to paper: http://climatedebatedaily.com/southern_o scillation.pdf)”To remove the noise, the absolute values werereplaced with derivative values based on variations.”Use your pdf reader’s search facility to put this statement in context if you wish.If that doesn’t jump out at you as a show-stopping blunder, then you are in over your head technically and are in no position to judge the scientists’ actions.
“because they include snide comments about climate sceptics and exchanges about how to present the data to make the global warming look convincing”This is not news reporting worthy of Reuters. You are supposed to be PRESENTING the news, not to spread propaganda!This is FACTUALLY UNTRUE:The messages were not about “presenting” the data, but about how to FALSIFY them and how to prevent the release of the raw data, which clearly does not support the AGW theory. They talked about “how to hide the decline in temperatures”. So we’ve been lied to all this time. Many people – like me – were very much aware of the manipulation, but to have it actually spelled out by the source is something else.There are messages that are clearly criminal, because they contain the request for DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE during an official investigation by asking others to delete incriminating email messages.As for the “snide remarks” against “skeptics”, they were rather severe insults and threats such as “I would like to beat up so-and-so at the next conference”.There are also the passages about how to change the definition of “peer-reviewed”. When “skeptics” managed to get their articles published, they decided to boycott the science publications that would not toe the line.How can you try to mitigate the horrendous extent of the intellectual and political fraud that is being committed and that will imply the destruction of gigantic amounts of wealth for NOTHING.If the science is false, then there is no threat to the future of the planet – at least not by human activity – so we don’t need all these new taxes and transfers, that wouldn’t do any good for the climate no matter what.Than you for correcting this propaganda article and for stopping the spread of obvious intentional LIES by people who make up FAKE DATA to support an ideological theory.
You are kidding, right? You tout an ‘it’s worse than we thought’ study created by at least some of the people involved in the email/data scandal?Have you read the programming notes in the files? The raw data is no longer discernable. Fudge factors have been applied to the data, and fake data has been appended. Their intent to control the data and the AGW peer-review discussion in order to create the appearance of a ‘settled science’ may well have been done with good intentions, i.e., the really believe in AGW, but they have destroyed science in the process (and I’m sure they didn’t mind the millions of dollars in grants that paid for the trips to Tahiti and other exotic locals, being able to buy the best ‘toys’, and paying university overhead, which freed money for salary increases).Regardless of whether AGW is real and dire consequences lay ahead, science must delete all the research based on the data provided by this group (which extends far beyond the analysis published by these specific people, since the data was the basis of research of other scientists) and start over.Yeah, Bush was taken in by this perversion of science, as were many good, ethical scientists…and they’re mad. This is just the beginning. It’s going to be a long fall for some.
Reuters drinking kool-aid. Nice. When is the feature about the abominable snow man coming up?
Why is the press so willfully stupid on this topic? Is it just left wing partisanship or total stupidity?
ok, all you deniners it’s on your heads. when the rivers dry and crops burn along with the forests(aready theres drought,and extended fire season) you can pray to your diety for deliverence. you’l find zero redemption fromgod, you deserve none? you had your shot and your thick headed stupidity insures your extinction.some may learn to adapt, but i am certain you’l be among the lost.
Enviromental Scientists, like economists, always seem to support the solution (or problem) that agrees with their social politics. Republican economists who believe in the American dream of standing or falling on your own criticize universal healthcare and other entitlements and liberal scientists push global warming because carbon taxes would help pay for new entitlements.Also, the link for the experts who say “climategate” won’t change anything have jobs that depend on that being true.
In the 1970′s many were certian we would not see the turn of the century…now the so-called experts are convinced of doom by 2100. Man’s desire for a crystal ball.
The mainstream media is treating this way too lightly. We’re being urged to spend billions of dollars based in part on these studies. If the data has been distorted for political reasons we need to know it. This should be front page news.
Ha, this author is simply trying to save his job. How many “scientists”, and “journalists” will be out of work if everybody simply believes the truth: GLOBAL WARMING IS A GIANT HOAX. Don’t believe the lies, or the cover up of the lies, global warming is a scam.
Hi all,Also in the Netherlands there is almost no news about the fraud that has been revealed.Only a rightwing newspaper is mentioning it a bit. Our one minister in this department is in denial and can only say: “hackers are criminals and the mails are ripped out of context.” Hackers are not criminals if they reveal a fraud.I think a lot of people are frightened about this news and they should be, because this could mean the ending of the biggest propaganda since propaganda was invented.
Climategate 2009: Retired climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball on the hacked CRU emails:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd o2MwnwpacThe front pages of mainstream news sources seems lacking in true reporting of Climategate 2009. Next month’s Copenhagen climate change global governance taxes “talks” are starting to look shady and frivolous. If you want to read over and keyword search the leaked e-mails yourself, check it out:http://www.eastangliaemails.com/inde x.phpSome good terms to search are “hide the decline”, “nature trick”, “monckton”, “IPCC Emissions Scenarios” and of course, “Earth Government”.Copenhagen fast approaches so expose these frauds, and do what the mainstream media will not in standing up for your individual sovereign liberty.
No matter how loudly the right-wing political hacks shout (including commenters here), rational people will know that these criminally-hacked emails do not mean that actual journal articles and data sets have been falsified. Sure, the scientists said some bad things, but where are the compromised studies and data sets? How do the emails of a half dozen scientists refute the entire body of evidence comprised of about 30,000 studies by thousands of climate scientists? The political hacks are stretching the bounds of stupidity by suggesting that everything is a conspiracy and it’s all been faked.
It is sad to see that good scientists will be tainted by the outrageous behavior of a few “global warming” fanatics.
Please tell me this: If climate change is nothing but a hoax, why aren’t the major corporations fighting back? This is clearly against the best interests of most of them?
Here’s what I don’t understand: what is the point of the alleged global warming hoax? What do advocates have to gain from it? What is their motive? Why would thousands of researchers around the world devote decades to inventing data to support this claim if it’s patently untrue from the get-go? Quite simply, these accusations don’t make a shred of sense.
How long do we need to continue suffering this elaborate HOAX? The more these clowns continue these doom-and-gloom press releases, the more they discredit themselves. We have been in a cooling trend, and the e-mails demonstrate how these “scientists” have been manipulating, or even worse, falsifying the data to support their views. That is not science, it is propaganda.Time to put the AGW boogeyman to death where it belongs.
Wow. The AGW true believer’s responses range from “nothing to see here, move along” to “prosecute the hackers”.Your fraud has been exposed, and any reasonable person would agree that the depths of the hoax should be investigated before sinking another dime of taxpayer money to “solve” a problem that is increasingly shown to be the greated hoax foisted upon an unsuspecting public and a non-existant investigative main stream media.
Here in Chicago there’s barely a mention of this scandal. And to the scandal-deniers who claim that the results show global warming – why the ongoing refusal to release the actual data? What are they hiding from other scientists?
Amazing!The data (emails) are right in your face and you still refuse to see the evidence.These same scientists threatened my job as a scientist with the US Geological Survey because I attempted to publish a study showing with higher confidence that global temperature changes were completely natural caused solely by Earth’s physical processes.Additionally, these same scientists would not even discuss or refute the science and facts presented. Instead, they took two days to personally attacked me and my family.I always knew that when man-made global climate change was showed to be insignificant that people would lose faith, note the word “FAITH”, in science. But this event and exposure is way worse for the science community as a whole. Remember: “Truth is the daughter of Time (Francis Bacon)”.Several USGS scientists got fired for the same thing when discussing data manipulation for models developed for the Nevada Nuclear Test Site.But no outcry and defense for those scientists?IF you can’t see any problem with this and you don’t wonder if there’s been some misleading of the public by these scientists, then you definitely are not scientists, you’re in denial and would buy any bill of goods sold, and you have no moral principles to stand on.
“No matter how loudly the right-wing political hacks shout (including commenters here), rational people will know that these criminally-hacked emails do not mean that actual journal articles and data sets have been falsified.”Why is it that the more rational an AGW evangelist claims to be, the more irrational he sounds? 400 years ago, you would have been waving a torch and calling for Galileo’s head. But go ahead and keep dismissing anyone who looks at the hard evidence and questions their own assumptions as a heretic. Do not allow these pesky facts to shake your faith. How can science progress if people don’t just shut up and believe whatever you say?
MIT Professor Richard Lindzen: Based upon peer-reviewed research conclusive paper Earth Radiation into space has been the same for year after year for the last 20.Q-What’s that say to greenhouse gas?A-Carbon has nominal effect on climate.http://wethepeople.org/wpblog/in dex.php/2009/10/25/mit-professor-on-supp osed-climate-change/
No excuse can be made for the fact that these scientists conspired to delete emails that were relevant to a Freedom Of Information request. Doing so is a CRIME. There is no “context” in the world that justifies it.The data and methodology are being used to influence public policy on a GLOBAL scale and therefore must be above reproach if, as AGW adherents claim, the situation is so serious that drastic action must be undertaken immediately. If some of the leading researchers on this issue are acting in a criminal fashion, that does not give confidence that the data itself is valid or has been handled properly. Risking prosecution to circumvent a legal process and suppress evidence certainly opens the door to questioning what ELSE has been suppressed.Scientists claiming to take a certain course of action based on their research who engage in criminal activity to prevent others from critically examining their research are not exactly demonstrating their trustworthiness.
I tripped across this weblog while doing my research on global warming. We all know it’s ocuring. Ck out climateark.org. This is real good for all things about global warming. i tell my friends that we have got to stop what we are doing that warms the earth. Less cows and manure. Less oil and coal burning. We need more windmills, bicycles and less cars. Mr. Gore is very knowledgeable here. Lets get the word out on MTV, VH1, Nat. Public Radio, and all blogs. Responsible young adults like me will lift this world and make it better. Point proven!
To the intellectual midgets who ask what scientists have to gain from continuing the HOAX that is global warming I have one word for you people: MONEY.
Spongekill, the agenda of those who promote ‘AGW’ is socialism, anticapitalism and wealth re-distribution. I’m an environmentalist and conservationist — ‘AGW’ proponents couldn’t care less about the environment! They’ve proven that by proposals like ‘carbon trading’ and giving developing nations a pass to pollute. 1998 was the warmest year in the last 30 years, but atmospheric CO2 has not declined since 1998.
The reality is that the earth had actually been cooling down for over 40 years. In fact in the 1960′s the science comunity was advocating the dawning of a new ice age.
Global Warming is accelerating? Wow, did they plug in some more false numbers? Maybe found another tree ring in their desk drawer?The polar bears are runnning out of food and habitat, and their numbers are shrinking. Oh, wait, there are more polar bears now than ever in history. “Joe, where’s that other data plug?”What do people think “hide the decline” and “temperatures just not rising the way we calculated” mean?
Global warming is must easily confirmed by the fact that over 90% of glaciers world wide are in retreat.The question is who dunit ?It was not Sun.It was not a change in earth’s orbit.I think it was the butler
Haha! What a freakin’ joke humanity is, myself included, being a hedonist and all. So, how’s that whole “climate change” going for ya’s? It rained hard a few days ago, had a nice fog the other night, pretty clear today though. Would be a shame if those scientists made the climate stop changing, perhaps they could settle on a cross between spring and summer? A steady breeze with a touch of perpetual showers seems reasonable. Preferably, we should just build a huge umbrella to blot out the sun with!But, why stop there?I mean with climate change on other planets too, we should do something! Maybe the corporate bought politicians on both sides of the fence could extend Universal Climate Care to the entire solar system? I’d hate to think that those gigantic SUV’s that are being driven on these other planets won’t be taxed for carbon either. Forget about pollution, that CO2 is teh devil!Oh, well. When these oh-so-generous statesmen start taxing my flatulence, maybe I’ll stop laughing. lol
This cap and trade legislation, I believe, does little to lower carbon emissions but rather creates a way for corporations to pay fees, pollute other unpolluted countries, or allow them to buy their carbon permits and pass the costs off to the consumer while the same process continues. Perhaps a better line of thinking would involve manufactured goods being produced closer to home. It would reduce the energy required for shipping, create jobs locally, and provide a better incentive to improve the process because it would be close to home. Perhaps with local alternative energy manufacturing, the costs could be much lower and people could take a more realistic approach to making some changes to their current energy consumption on their own . The amount of carbon produced from a process is probably about the same wether it is produced in China or the U.S. The case for cheaper labor in China is losing it’s appeal and reality.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a hidden agenda of some kind.
Interesting that no one has picked up on the fact that they were also trying to find ways to hide money transfers – keeping them under US$10,000 to avoid US money laundering flags. That appears to be subverting the law.
To those who think that the emails simply showed bad form and no fundamental climate science was challenged, I found an email among them that discussed the solar cycle and how it had been dismissed completely as a possible source of temperature fluctuation. The writer of the email told of using a program called Mathematica to analyze the data and came to the conclusion that the solar cycle does indeed affect temperature. Of course, they never published the finding.
The global warming trend is accelerating and the cause makes little difference. Future generations will have to adapt to it. The real problem is the vast and continuing pollution of the planet and the suffering it brings to all species, including the descendants of the ignorant skeptics. If the current efforts help to mitigate this pollution problem so much the better.
There has been atmospheric cooling the last 8 years, and no new high global annual temperatures in the last 11 years. This is clearly evident from 4 independent sources using 2 separate methods. The following link will provide a plot of this data in a monthly format:http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/ wti/from:2001.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/f rom:1998/offset:-0.15/plot/gistemp/from: 1998/offset:-0.24/plot/uah/from:1998/plo t/rss/from:1998You may find it interesting what the head of the IPCC said more than 1-1/2 years ago concerning the lack of new annual high global temperatures:http://www.reuters.com/arti cle/idUSL1171501720080111Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said (more than 1-1/2 years ago) that he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.”One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents,” he told Reuters, adding “are there natural factors compensating?” for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.Also in this article from more than 1-1/2 years ago, Amir Delju, senior scientific coordinator of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) climate program, said temperatures would have to be flat for several more years before a lack of new record years became significant.We are now more than three quarters of the way to having significant doubts about the GCMs, according to Amir Delju’s own criterion.
- NASA’s Latest Discovery: SUN HEATS THE EARTH (American Thincker, June 05, 2009) – Robert Calahan at NASA’s Goddard Space Center could be in big trouble — for telling the truth. Here is a headline for an article in the Daily Tech: “NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming”… World’s Largest Science Group Rejecting Man-Made Climate Fears…- Pentagon/NASA: Global Warming/Global Cooling… THE PENTAGON WARNS CLIMATE CHANGE WILL BRING GLOBAL CATASTROPHE… Now the Pentagon tells Bush (Guardian.co.uk., 22 February 2004): climate change will destroy us… Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years:http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot. com/2009/07/worlds-largest-science-group -rejecting.html
How did all that lush vegetation and dinosaurs survive when CO2 concentrations were 5x and 20x as much as today if a relatively small increase is certain doom? (See wikipedia article on CO2)How easy will nukes and bio weapons be in 50 years? (Every decade know how to gene splice, and nuclear fission grows) Will future genetic engineering result in a horrible sloppy mistake?
” If the current efforts help to mitigate this pollution problem”If current efforts actually *add* to the pollution problem, and result in millions dead from ignored other dangers, do you agree we should hunt those responsible down like nazi war criminals? The boy who cries wolf at the wrong danger distracts from the real one.Sequestering CO2 (which otherwise would be plant food) may distract from efforts to reduce toxic wastes that kill all forms of life, stop desert growth, etc.Biological weapons and accidents will be *many* times easier in 50 years if trends continue.