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an hir series
Introduction In Part 1 of
this series, we presented evidence and arguments to support all of the
following: 1)
Contrary to media insistence and popular belief, many—perhaps even
most—climate scientists disagree that global warming is man-made
(‘anthropogenic’). 2)
What proponents of the anthropogenic hypothesis have touted as their ‘best’
evidence—the Antarctic ice-core record—actually contradicts the hypothesis:
changes in CO2 concentrations always follow temperature changes (not the
other way around) in the 650,000 years that the ice-core record covers (known
as the “CO2 lag.”) 3)
Proponents of the anthropogenic hypothesis do not have a good comeback to the
challenge of the ice-core evidence. 4)
Proponents of the anthropogenic hypothesis have used data-sets with a warm
bias in order to increase the apparent temperature increase in the years
1979-1998. 5)
Proponents of the anthropogenic hypothesis have actively censored,
suppressed, and misused the work and names of those scientists who disagree
with them (this scandal is now known to the public as ‘Climategate’). The above is impossible without the collaboration of
important centers of power such as, for example, the UN and its IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), or the Nobel committee that
awards ‘peace’ prizes. Such collaborating centers of power are multifarious
and, I claim, include the mainstream media. As a test of my claim, consider this. Governments
all over the world are considering—and even implementing—profound policy
changes on the basis of the anthropogenic hypothesis. This is a big issue.
Since the evidence that was supposedly the most dramatic in its favor—the
Antarctic ice-core record—contradicts the hypothesis, isn’t this a
major scandal? In a free market for information, shouldn’t we expect this to
be newsworthy? Wouldn’t it be fun to embarrass Al Gore (especially after his
‘peace’ prize) for posing with the ice-core graph as if it were his take-home
trophy? Wouldn’t this sell a lot of magazines and newspapers, and bring more
viewers to TV news shows? So I ask: Has anybody in the mainstream Western
media bothered to inform the public about this? I posed the question to the search-engine
Lexis-Nexis, which contains a database of most of the important mainstream
news sources in the West. I asked it to give me any mentions of “CO2 lag,”
for this is the label commonly employed to talk about how CO2 always lags
temperature changes in the ice core record. And I asked Lexis-Nexis to search
everywhere: “Major US and World publications,” “News Wire Services,” and “TV
and Radio Broadcast Transcripts,” leaving out only the non-English language
sources. The grand total was… six results. These are not from world media
powerhouses but from The Advertiser (Australia), the Sydney Morning
Herald (Australia), The Toronto Sun (Canada), and Business Wire.[1] The earliest result is from 2005. And yet the first
scientific study showing that changes in CO2 concentrations always lagged
temperature changes was published in Science in 1999.[11b] So we have 6 results spread over 11 years, or less
than one result per year. This is the statistical equivalent of total,
absolute silence in the mainstream Western media. That seemed too little, so
I tried a little harder. I asked Lexis-Nexis for any mention of “ice core”
and the number 800, for that is the average number of years that CO2 lags
temperature changes. This found some more articles that mentioned the problem
without using the label ‘CO2 lag,’ and a couple even went as far back as 2001
(a sampling in the footnote).[1a]
They were only a few, however, and once again not from world media
powerhouses but mostly wire services (that nobody except professional
journalists use) and relatively small newspapers, such as the Coventry
Evening Telegraph. I looked among the results for The New York Times and
The Washington Post: they didn’t figure. The Wall Street Journal?
Nothing. The Financial Times? Nothing. The International
Herald-Tribune? Nothing. The Economist? Zip. Among the major TV
news services only FOX commented on this (and it did so lightly). This helps explain why every hand goes up when I ask
my university students if they believe in man-made global warming. But it
raises numerous questions. Something is definitely wrong with the media. A comprehensive survey of the media’s behavior on
this topic would consume too much space, so I have chosen instead to focus
closely on one prominent and representative example: Newsweek. ____________________________________________________________ Newsweek explains “climate change denial” On 13 August 2007 Newsweek published a cover
story by senior editor Sharon Begley
with the title “The Truth About Denial” which the Wikipedia article on
“Climate Change Denial” considers important.[2] The label suggests a psychopathology (as in
“living in denial”), a moral deficiency (as in “Holocaust denial”), or both.
According to Begley, there is a massive and malicious “campaign” afoot to
“deny” what she insists is the reality of man-made global warming. She
writes: “Since the
late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian
scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog
of doubt around climate change. ...‘They patterned what they did after the
tobacco industry,’ says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded
environmental issues as an under secretary of State
in the Clinton administration. ...‘That’s had a huge impact on both the
public and Congress.’ ”[3] For Begley it is impossible that any climatologists
with honest doubts about global warming can exist. These are, rather,
“contrarian scientists” backed by “industry” in a vast right-wing (or “free
market”) conspiracy against the anthropogenic hypothesis. But instead of
documenting this “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign” Begley limits
herself to quoting a politician who lobbies for greenhouse-gas reductions and
who considers his intellectual opponents no better than tobacco companies. According to another politician quoted by Begley,
skeptics are no better than oil companies: “Sen. Barbara
Boxer had been chair of the Senate’s Environment Committee for less than a
month when the verdict landed last February. ‘Warming of the climate system
is unequivocal,’ concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments,
academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now
at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from
the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing
downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt
the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that.
But Boxer figured that with ‘the overwhelming science out there, the deniers’
days were numbered.’ As she left a meeting with the head of the international
climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think
tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists
$10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based
climate models it is based on. ‘I realized,’ says Boxer, ‘there was a
movement behind this that just wasn’t giving up.’ ” Notice, once again, that Begley does not have an
in-depth investigation. Or an investigation. She reports what a politician
invested in the policy changes demanded by the anthropogenic camp, Barbara
Boxer, said that one of her staffers told her. (Begley is
senior editor at Newsweek and a recipient of multiple awards—this is
journalism.) And what did the staffer say? With a properly inflammatory
interpretation, that skeptical scientists were receiving money from a think
tank funded in part by Exxon Mobil. It will be useful here briefly to rehearse why
science works. Those who publish in scientific journals are expected to make
their data available, to explain how they were obtained, and to justify
logically how the data support the conclusions. Such requirements of transparency
make it possible for others to challenge the data, the methods, or the logic.
Popular belief holds that scientists should be unbiased or impartial, but
this is a gross misunderstanding that misses the point entirely. Science is
in fact quite similar—in this respect—to the adversarial system of law, where
the biased motivations of the opposing lawyers are depended upon to make the
system work. If different scientists didn’t have opposing biases, and
therefore an incentive to prove each other wrong, there could be no
science—it would be another dogmatic religion where nobody ever learns
anything new. For a Nobel Prize in ‘peace’ one may star in one’s own movie
(Al Gore) or launch a terrorist career killing Jews (Yasser Arafat), but for
a Nobel in science it will be better to show that an entire generation of
one’s fellow scientists had been wrong. So the last thing we want is for
debate to stop merely because “600 scientists from governments, academia,
green groups and businesses in 40 countries” agree with Al Gore. If think
tanks—even “free market” think tanks partly funded by oil companies—support
skeptical research, this is good for science. Now, Begley writes as if the skeptics have an
overwhelming advantage in funds. But according to Senator James Inholfe’s blog, when Begley did that, “Newsweek
knew better,” because “reporter Eve Conant,” who collaborated with Begley
on that article, “interviewed
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Ranking Member of the Environment &
Public Works Committee, [and] was given all the latest data proving
conclusively that it is the proponents of man-made global warming fears that
enjoy a monumental funding advantage over the skeptics. (A whopping $50
BILLION to a paltry $19 MILLION and some change for skeptics…)”[3a] $50,000,000,000 to $19,000,000... That’s a big
difference. A 3 to 1 difference, say, would already have been worrisome. But
here we are talking about a whole different ballpark: 2,632 to 1. Such
astronomical numbers help explain why many scientists would join the
‘consensus’ supporting the anthropogenic hypothesis. It also helps explain what we covered in Part 1:
We’ve seen a prominent physicist explain that global warming models all agree
on greenhouse gases as the main culprit because the big research money is
actually for scientists who support the anthropogenic hypothesis, so the
modelers tweak their parameters to get the dollars. In Begley’s representation, powerful “industry,” Goliath,
creates a “denial machine...running at full throttle” to “shape…government
policy” over the helpless protests of David (anthropogenically-minded
scientists), but the facts she herself reports suggest otherwise. She writes: “[L]ast September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a
landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon
dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year
both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce
greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine
leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and
General Electric—called on Congress to ‘enact strong national legislation’ to
reduce greenhouse gases.” Plenty of greenhouse-gas reductions are being
approved. Industrial giants such as “Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du
Pont, and General Electric” want more—much more. And I learn from The Economist
that “BP,” or British Petroleum, no less, is “the most prominent corporate
advocate of action on climate change.”[4] An oil company! So the anthropogenic hypothesis has
powerful allies in Big Business and Government. Where is the
“well-coordinated, well-funded campaign” by “industry” to silence this
hypothesis? Are we supposed to agree that finding one think tank giving out
mere ten-thousand-dollar awards—in a science that costs millions of
dollars—will count as evidence? Or does it become a “well-coordinated,
well-funded campaign” if some of that money came from one oil company? Begley’s argument would be stronger if she could
show, for example, that oil companies intimidate scientists who agree with
the anthropogenic hypothesis, but she documents no such harassment. She does
not even accuse that it happens. And as the Climategate
scandal revealed, it appears that partisans of the hypothesis are the ones
who feel strong enough to bully and censor the skeptics into silence (Part 1). Consistent with this, three weeks before Begley’s
article appeared in Newsweek, an incident was reported in the Washington
Times that Begley doesn’t mention (but which perhaps motivated her piece
as a kind of ‘damage control’): [Quote from
the Washington Times begins here] Green bully The heat is
obviously getting to Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council On
Renewable Energy (ACORE). Two weeks ago,
this column published a threatening letter he wrote to Marlo
Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI),
concerning ‘global warming.’ Then last week, Mr. Eckhart issued an apology,
expressing regret for calling Mr. Lewis disparaging names and threatening to
“destroy” his “career” as a “liar” - all because Mr. Lewis does not share Mr.
Eckhart’s opinions on the cause of climate change. [Quote from Washington
Times ends here] I interrupt to point out that Marlo
Lewis’s criticisms of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis are extremely
weak. And, contrary to what the Washington Times states, he does not
appear to disagree “on the cause of climate change.” He says, for example,
that “global warming is real and much of the warming since the mid-1970s is
likely due to rising greenhouse gas levels from fossil energy use and other
human activities.” I thought that was Al Gore’s argument. This is a
skeptic? Lewis’s differences with Al Gore are just these two: he disagrees
that warming will be catastrophic, and he believes economically viable
alternatives to fossil fuels do not exist.[5] But this is enough to send Michael Eckhart
spinning with rage, for he threatens to “destroy” Marlo
Lewis. It is also enough to prompt Sharon Begley’s
accusations of a vast conspiracy to ‘deny’ global warming. For as we see
below, Marlo Lewis’s Competitive Enterprise
Institute is the very think tank—unnamed in Begley’s article—that gets some
of its money from Exxon Mobil. [Quote from Washington
Times continues here] Now, Inside
the Beltway learned that Mr. Lewis isn’t the only recipient of Mr. Eckhart’s
vitriol. He wrote to
Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred Smith on Sept. 25, 2006.
“Following up on our meeting at the Rocky Mountain retreat last spring with
Al Gore, I am writing to say that I am very unhappy to see this continuing
false analysis coming out of CEI, seeking to refute the issue of global
warming.” He said it’s
surprising a “scientist” like Mr. Smith could “refute” global warming, and
“your voice and that of CEI ... will have the ultimate effect of putting my
two daughters’ lives at greater risk, and even more so for their children.” “The only
explanation that I can see is that you are doing this because you are paid by
Exxon Mobil and other clients to do so. I find this outrageous, that my
children will have a lesser life because you are being paid by oil companies
to spread a false story. “As I said to
you at the time, I would give you 90 days to show that CEI is reversing its
position on this, or I will take every action I can think of to shut you
down,” Mr. Eckhart wrote. “I am writing to demand that you and CEI reverse
course on this, and do so loudly and publicly, within 30 days, or I will
personally file on Oct. 25, 2006, two complaints: “1. A
complaint with the IRS to have CEI’s tax exemption revoked, on the basis that
CEI is really a lobbyist for the energy industry; 2. A complaint with Phi
Beta Kappa that your key should be withdrawn for using your mathematical
skills to do the world harm ... You have 30 days to speak the truth, or face
the IRS and PBK.”[6] [Quote from Washington
Times ends here] Why would Eckhart behave this way? Aside from certain components of personality that
are necessary for such outbursts, it is relevant that Eckhart’s professional
future as President of ACORE (American Council on Renewable Energy)
presumably depends on convincing ACORE members that he is making renewable
energy an important part of the economy. Thus, for example, when Congress and
the Bush administration approved a bill with “an array of tax and production
credits that go to either the consumers of renewable energy or to the
estimated 20,000 companies, most of them small businesses, that harness
renewable energy sources,” the New York Times reported that Eckhart
was not even close to satisfied. “Yes, some companies will benefit, he
concedes, but not enough for renewable energy’s share of the market to grow.”[7] Eckhart would like the US
government to do much more to bend the market in favor of renewable energies. What might help him achieve this? The hypothesis
that burning fossil fuels will soon produce a global catastrophe appears
heaven-sent. So Eckhart threatens to “destroy” skeptics if retractions are
not forthcoming within 30 days. He obviously thinks that he can wield as
weapons both Phi Beta Kappa and the IRS. Apparently he can also wield Newsweek. That suggests real power. Compared to Newsweek—a newsmagazine with
worldwide distribution—a regional US paper like the Washington Times
(not to be confused with the Washington Post or the New York Times)
is small potatoes. A tiny spud. Moreover, the Washington Times revelations
about Eckhart were buried on page A10 and shared space in the same column
with a different story, listed first. Hardly anybody saw this. So it is
interesting that a couple of weeks later, Newsweek, rather than give
Eckhart’s behaviors a wider exposure, rushed a cover story that everybody
saw, by senior editor Sharon Begley (no less), to convince the public that
Great Power is on the other side. The irony: in so doing Begley demonstrates
that Big Media favors not the skeptics but rather those who spread
fears of anthropogenic global warming. Now, certainly, since one could reasonably imagine
that limitations on “greenhouse gas” emissions may impose a cost on oil
companies (at least in the short term), one might expect oil companies to
have a bias against the anthropogenic hypothesis, and thus an incentive to
support skeptical research. It would hardly be surprising, therefore, to find
a think tank funded in part by Exxon Mobil awarding some money to skeptical
scientists. What is surprising, in context, is that US oil
companies—indeed very powerful, and guilty in other cases of massively
corrupting the scientific field, the political process, the government
bureaucracy, foreign and domestic policy, the educational establishment, the
unions, and the media[8]—are
in this case doing so little. The think tanks they support have the weakest
and most superficial disagreements imaginable with Al Gore. How to account
for this? The paltry sums that, according to Newsweek,
an ExxonMobil-funded think tank awards to ‘skeptics’—Begley’s only ‘evidence’
for a grand skeptical ‘campaign’—should perhaps receive an interpretation
that fits. They are, perhaps, more plausibly represented as the bare
minimum that oil companies must do to reassure ‘conservative’ or ‘free
market’ activists that they dislike the politics of ‘global warming.’ In
other words, perhaps the wealthy people behind the US oil
companies—traditionally the most influential in the US—really agree with
other American industrial giants mentioned by Begley that a policy of
‘greenhouse gas reductions’ should be pursued. Perhaps what happens on the
pages of Newsweek is an elaborate piece of Orwellian theater: the
powerful Establishment runs a “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign” in
order 1) to propagate the idea of man-made global warming, and 2) to
represent everything upside down, accusing that a vast conspiracy is on the other
side. Exxon Mobil does its small part to appear guilty, which then helps
convince all sorts of innocent environmentalists (traditional haters of Exxon
Mobil in particular) that the anthropogenic hypothesis must be right.
If not, why is Exxon Mobil—i.e. The Evil One—fighting it? Clever. In
this way, well-meaning people who want to see themselves as fighting the
Establishment are recruited instead to support Establishment policies (and
are never the wiser). But perhaps the powerful movers and shakers are so
clever that they save the pocket change and just get Newsweek to
accuse them. It was in August 2007 that Sharon Begley’s article claimed that
Exxon Mobil was giving out minuscule $10,000 awards to skeptical scientists
through CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute). But two months earlier,
in June 2007, The Economist had written: “These days
very few serious businessmen will say publicly either that climate change is
not happening or that it is not worth tackling. Even Exxon Mobil, bête
noire of the climate-change activists, has now withdrawn funding from the
CEI and appears to accept the need for controls on carbon emissions.”[9] And the week after Begley’s piece appeared,
Robert J. Samuelson, a contributing editor of Newsweek, corrected
Begley in Newsweek as follows: “NEWSWEEK implied...
that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize
global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited,
and NEWSWEEK shouldn’t have lent it respectability.”[9a] (Of course, this was a one-page column buried in the
middle, not a cover story like Begley’s. And Samuelson affirmed, by the way,
that man-made global warming is real).
Sharon Begley was recipient in 2004 of an “Honorary
Doctorate of Humane Letters for contributions to the public understanding of
science from the University of North Carolina”; she was author of the
‘Science Journal’ column at the Wall Street Journal for five years;
and, according to Newsweek, where she is senior editor, has become
“widely known for her ability to break down complex scientific theories and
write about them in simple prose.”[10] With this kind of science-writer curriculum
one expects that Sharon Begley—Newsweek’s expert on global
warming—will be up-to-date on the ice-core data. I think she probably is. But
she does not mention it. This is curious. In his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore
posed in front of a gigantic representation of the ice-core data and waved at
the graph confidently as if it self-evidently supported his thesis. As he
waved, he smirked and declared that doubting his own position on global
warming was the “most ridiculous thing I ever heard.” Meanwhile, the skeptics
whom Begley decries maintain that Al Gore is little better than a clown, for
the ice core data in fact refute his thesis. The lay public obviously needs
someone to explain who is right. Who better than Sharon Begley, known for explaining
“complex scientific theories” in “simple prose”? After all, Begley’s article
on “climate change denial” appeared a good three years after Jeff Severinghaus’s piece on RealClimate.org, considered (by
anthropogenic partisans) the best defense of the hypothesis from the ice core
embarrassment (see Part 1).
Begley, however, did not mention Severinghaus’s
effort. She didn’t even mention the ice core data. Why not? Hoping to find out, I visited a Newsweek
question-and-answer online forum titled “Resisting Change: Global Warming
Deniers,” where Begley, immediately following her article, further
enlightened her readers. In the opening lines she writes: “Hi everyone.
This is Sharon Begley; I wrote this week’s cover story on the campaign to
cast doubt on the science of climate change. This story described the 20-year
history of that campaign rather than delving into the empirical research on
global warming, something I have written about too many times to count both
here and during my five years at The Wall Street Journal (starting
with Newsweek’s first cover story on the greenhouse effect, in 1988).
But I am happy to take questions on either the science or the PR.” [11] We’ve already seen that Begley has never written the
words “CO2 lag” in Newsweek. But since she boasts that she has written
“too many times to count” on “the empirical research on global warming,” I
tried a little harder and did a search in her Newsweek articles for
any mention of “ice cores.” I wanted to find out if Begley had explained that
for 650,000 years temperature always rises first, followed about 800 years
later by rises in CO2 (not the other way around). I found that in 1981, when research on the Antarctic
ice was just beginning, Begley wrote: [Quote from Newsweek
begins here] To the
scientists who work there, Antarctica is a figurative deep freeze as well as
a literal one: within its ice cores it preserves the record of the world’s
climatic past—the ice ages and the warn spells—and may hold clues to future
weather as well. ‘The best data on the world's climate is locked up in the
ice sheets,’ says Edward Todd of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
‘Antarctica exerts a greater influence on the world’s environment than any
other piece of real estate.’ Many
scientists endure the sounds of silence in the hope of answering two basic
questions of Antarctic research: is the ice sheet getting bigger or smaller,
and what effect do rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) have on
it? ... Scientists can run computer models on these possibilities until the
next ice age, but they won't really know how CO2 affects Antarctica's 7
million cubic miles of ice until they understand how it did so in the past.
‘Nature doesn’t pay attention to our models,’ says Todd. ‘To get answers to
whether Antarctica is growing or shrinking, you have to go down there and
make measurements.’ Echoes: Using
precise chemical tools, scientists will identify the kinds of gas trapped in
the ice to learn the composition of the ancient atmosphere.[11a] [Quote from Newsweek
ends here] Begley made clear, in 1981, that the ice core
studies would be the key to establishing the effect of CO2 concentrations on
temperature in times past. The greenhouse warming models claimed that
increasing concentrations of CO2 led to higher temperatures, but as Edward
Todd pointed out, “Nature doesn’t pay attention to our models,” and so to
find out what is true we have to investigate nature, which in this case means
the Antarctic ice cores. When the early studies found a correlation between
CO2 and temperature, partisans of the anthropogenic hypothesis such as Begley
jumped to the conclusion that CO2 was the agent of world temperatures. But as
every first-year statistics student learns, correlation is not causation.
We have to find out what rises first, CO2 or temperature? Starting in 1999,
better resolution in the ice core studies showed that, invariably,
temperatures rose first, followed several centuries later by rises in CO2
concentrations.[11b]
Did Begley ever explain this to her readers? The answer appears to be no.
This is what she wrote in 2007: “When
scientists measured a rise in Earth’s average temperature of 1 degree F over
the past 50 years, they... scurried to the record books, both man’s and
nature’s -- that is, to historical weather archives as well as tree
rings and ice cores that preserve records of ancient temperatures
-- to search for precedents. ...The temperature increase since the 1950s ‘is
not like anything seen in the paleoclimate data,’
says atmospheric scientist Joyce Penner of the
University of Michigan.”[12] Mentioned entirely in passing with other data sets,
the ice core data supposedly support an interpretation of the temperature
increase since the 1950s as so dramatic that humans must be guilty. Several
problems with this. It is false, first of all, that the world has not
seen temperatures like this. It has seen them recently in the so-called
Medieval Warm Period (warmer than our current temperatures, and we weren’t
burning fossil fuels then). Another problem is that, though temperatures
began rising around 1979, they had been falling for years prior (the media,
including Newsweek—with “THE COOLING WORLD” for
headline in 1975[12a]—were
fanning a global hysteria over a coming ice age); and yet during the same
cooling postwar period human production of CO2 skyrocketed. Another problem
is that the temperature increase since 1979 is actually a moderate one
according to the satellite data, better than the very biased terrestrial
station data which anthropogenic partisans prefer (see Part 1).
But the biggest problem is that the ice cores give us a 650,000-year record
that shows, every single time, CO2 rising after temperature increases, not
the other way around, making it impossible for changes in CO2 concentrations
to have anything to do with the end of glaciations (see Part 1).
This suggests that human CO2 production (quite modest compared to natural CO2
production, anyway) probably has absolutely nothing to do with planetary
temperatures. Begley says not a word about this. But perhaps, I thought, Begley would address the
issue on her online forum, in reply to readers’ questions. I found her
exchange with one Richard King illuminating. First, the question: [Quote from Newsweek
begins here] San Diego, CA:
My question is: If scientists are labeled “skeptics” because part of their
funding comes from the oil industry, does this make their scientific argument
or observation irrelevant? I have read “A
skeptics Guide to An Inconvenient Truth” by Marlo
Lewis and feel that he raises numerous questions concerning consensus on
global warming and of the science referred to in Al Gore’s book and movie. I
believe these questions need to be addressed from scientists before they are
presented to policy makers. During the
build up to the current Iraq war, skeptics were dismissed as deniers, kooks,
and of being misinformed. After 4 years of war the skeptics view now seems to
have been right given the real information we have learned during this time.
If a vote for war was to be taken today I am certain there would be a
different choice taken. The question
of human contribution to Global Warming seems to be taking the same path. We
are told that the debate is over. All scientists have agreed except for the
deniers, kooks and the misinformed. This all sounds familiar except that now
the very premise of science and the scientific method is being ignored. The
job of a scientist is to always question and attempt to prove something to be
false.[11] Richard King [Quote from Newsweek
ends here] Mr. King’s defense of how science is supposed to
work is also my own. Notice also that Mr. King is reading Marlo
Lewis from CEI, one of the people whom Michael Eckhart from ACORE threatened
to “destroy” merely because Lewis has some very minor disagreements with Al
Gore (see above). Here is the reply: “Sharon
Begley: ‘Skeptic’ is a compliment, as far as I’m concerned. Scientists
should be, and are, skeptical, for the reasons you note. Notice I never said
in this story or any other that ‘the debate is over;’ in science, it never
is. The question is whether the science is sound, whether it has been
converging on a single conclusion, and finally whether the preponderance of
evidence is sufficient to justify policy steps. When those steps bring other
benefits---less dependence on Saudi and Venezeulan
oil, anyone?---the scales tip even further. Also, it is wrong to think that
the ‘skeptics’ arguments have gone unanswered. One group of climate
researchers does this very well, at http://www.realclimate.org/ ” [11] Isn’t that interesting. According to Sharon Begley
the arguments of skeptics have been answered on RealClimate.
But this is the website that, as we showed in Part 1,
failed to defend the anthropogenic hypothesis from the refutation contained
in the ice core data. I continued reading and noticed that whenever there was
a question about the science, Begley referred readers either to IPCC
documents or to RealClimate. Obviously, RealClimate has succeeded in its stated mission of
‘educating’ journalists. What about Climategate? The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research
Unit, in Britain, is a prominent institution that has spread the
anthropogenic hypothesis worldwide. It is the source of much of the most
important data on global temperatures that other scientists use. Recently,
hackers penetrated the CRU server and retrieved thousands of documents,
including many emails, that were subsequently published online. The emails
and other documents appeared to implicate the CRU scientists in misuse of
data and censorship of those who disagree with them. The resulting scandal
was called ‘Climategate’ (see Part 1).
Sharon Begley’s interpretation for Newsweek readers appeared in
December of 2009 and was titled: “THE TRUTH ABOUT ‘Climategate’:
Hacked e-mails have compromised scientists—but not the science itself.”[13] Almost coquettish, isn’t it, how Begley begins her
‘global warming’ articles with “The Truth About” (such grand Orwellian
style). Is she winking at someone? And what is “the truth”? She writes:
“Those of you who know I consider the science of anthropogenic global warming
solid probably expect me to explain that the hacked e-mails don’t mean what
they seem, and that, even if they did, it would not undercut the multiple
lines of evidence showing that greenhouse-gas emissions are causing climate
change. All true.” She has advice for climate scientists who, after having
their emails exposed, are now the butt of jokes or the target of vitriol:
“respond to misinformation with physics, data, and analysis as, for instance,
the RealClimate blog does.” Fascinating. It seems the entire case for
anthropogenic global warming revolves around RealClimate.
This, I remind you, is the website we refuted in Part 1. ____________________________________________________________ More Prestigious
Media I know what you are thinking. That’s Newsweek.
What about a serious magazine—so serious you may socially index your
astuteness by announcing that you read it? So focused on research that it has
Intelligence Units on all sorts of things? So bold that every article is an
editorial? So clever it is full of mordant British wit? So authoritative its
anonymous oracles are penned by Ph.D.’s in economics? What about The
Economist? We can subject The Economist to the same two
tests: 1) What has it told the public concerning the consistent CO2 lag in
650,000 years of ice-core data?; 2) What has been its reaction to the Climategate scandal? CO2
lag – let’s not mention it In 2003 The Economist wrote approvingly of
one Dr. William Ruddiman, of the University of
Virginia, who claimed that global temperatures in centuries past—not merely
in the 20th c.—were a consequence of human activity. His argument was that
right before the coming of agriculture, “most of the land cultivated by early
farmers in the Middle East, Europe and southern China would have been
forested,” but the farmers then changed that: “When the trees that grew there
were cleared, the carbon they contained ended up in the atmosphere as carbon
dioxide, a greenhouse gas.” Notice the argument: “Dr Ruddiman’s hypothesis is grounded on recent deviations
from the regular climatic pattern of the past 400,000 years. This pattern is
controlled by what are known as the Milankovitch
cycles, which are in turn caused by periodic changes in the Earth’s orbit and
angle of tilt toward the sun. One effect of the Milankovitch
cycles is to cause regular and predictable changes in the atmospheric
concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. These changes can be followed by studying ice cores
taken in Antarctica.”[14] And yet, as we pointed out above, it had become
clear starting in 1999 that increases in CO2 concentrations always follow rises
in temperature, on average by 800 years (see Part 1).
A serious magazine should have explained that the ice-core data contradict
the most important pillar of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis: the idea
that rises in CO2 concentrations contribute to planetary temperature
increases. Mordant British wit should have been heaped on Al Gore, for his
movie came out in 2006, well after this result was established. But The
Economist, as we see above, has been pushing the anthropogenic hypothesis
in defiance of the “CO2 lag” result. In the years after the article quoted
above, there were just a few mentions of “ice cores,” all of them suggesting
falsely that the ice-core data support anthropogenic warming. The Economist celebrated Al Gore, predicting
correctly that he would win an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, and speculated
whether he should run for president.[14a] Climategate: it means nothing Next: How did The Economist react to Climategate? In an article titled “Mail-strom; Climate change” it writes: “Is global
warming a trick? That is what some saw in a huge batch of e-mails and
documents taken from the servers of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the
University of East Anglia, in England, and put up anonymously on the web. The
result has been a field day for those sceptical of
the idea of man-made climate change, who have combed through them, pouncing
and pronouncing on snippets that seem to show scientific malfeasance.”[15] This is careful prose. On a quick read the style may
suggest impartiality, but slowing down we can appreciate, in the last phrase,
the art of subtlety: “pouncing and pronouncing” is a rush to judgment;
“snippets” are brief remarks taken completely out of context; and if they
only “seem to show scientific malfeasance” then there is no real malfeasance. Next: “The CRU specialises in studies of climates past. For parts of the
past where there were no thermometers to consult, such studies use proxy
data, such as tree rings. Reconstructions based on these tend to show that
the planet’s temperature has risen over the 20th century to heights
unprecedented for centuries and perhaps millennia.” If The Economist wished to communicate that
skepticism is legitimate, it would write that the CRU claims recent
temperatures are wholly unprecedented. And it would also share with its
readers that the CRU’s estimate of 20th c. temperatures rely on what some
accuse are horribly tainted data (see Part 1);
data that, moreover, CRU director Phil Jones appears to have misplaced
(according to the Daily Mail he refused Freedom of Information
requests to produce it).[16]
But The Economist writes instead as though there is no reason to doubt
the CRU or its tree-ring data. For good measure, it adds that the tree rings
are “...far from
the only evidence for believing in climate change as a man-made problem, but
they are important, and the sharp uptick they show has taken on iconic
value.” No mention of what this other ample evidence—besides
the tree rings—might be. But it cannot be the Antarctic ice cores, which
suggest that CO2 concentrations have little or nothing to do with major
planetary temperature shifts (Part 1).
And neither can it be glacial boreholes, according to which there was “a warm
period centered around A.D. 1000, which was warmer than the late 20th
century by approximately 1°C” (emphasis added).[17] This is called the ‘Medieval Warm Period,’ and its
existence roundly denies that late-20th c. temperatures are shockingly high. As for the “iconic value,” this is because those who
defend the anthropogenic hypothesis have staked their reputation on “a
tree-ring reconstruction known as the ‘hockey stick.’ ” It has received this
name because the reconstruction shows temperatures forever flat and then “unprecedented
20th-century warming,” so it has the shape of a hockey stick. It has become
quite famous, as it is crucial to the IPCC and its most stalwart defender: Al
Gore. This graph, explains The Economist, “has been a
particular target of criticism by sceptics. It was
published in 1998 by Michael Mann (then at Yale, now at Pennsylvania State
University) and his colleagues, and featured prominently in the 2001 report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” For some unknown reason The Economist does
not explain that Dr. Ross McKittrick, who
independently analyzed Mann’s statistical program, testified before the
British House of Lords that the program had an interesting problem: “The
flawed computer program can even pull out spurious hockey stick shapes from
lists of trendless random numbers.”[17a] This is already a devastating critique of Mann et
al., and sufficient reason never to trust them again, but in fact it is
only one from among a great multitude of quite serious problems with the
all-important ‘hockey stick’ graph. For example, another criticism is that to further
enhance the drama of supposedly unprecedented warming in the 20th c., Mann et
al. removed the Medieval Warm Period from their dataset. The Sunday
Telegraph explains: “The greatest
embarrassment for the believers in man-made global warming is the fact that
the world was significantly warmer in the Middle Ages than now. ‘We must get
rid of the Medieval Warm Period,’ as one contributor to the IPCC famously
said in an unguarded moment. It was Dr Mann who duly obliged by getting his
computer-model to produce a graph shaped like a hockey stick, eliminating the
medieval warming and showing recent temperatures curving up to an
unprecedented high.”[18] Mann’s colleague, “Professor [Phil] Jones,” reports
the Daily Mail, has now “conceded the possibility that the world was
warmer in medieval times than now—suggesting global warming may not be a
man-made phenomenon.”[16] Now, you may remember this pair—Jones and Mann—from Part 1,
where we saw them at the center of the Climategate
controversy. Jones, in one of his exposed emails, wrote to Mann: “[We] will
keep them [the skeptics] out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the
peer-review literature is!’ ”[20]
Or even better: deny them access to the data. “It took nearly eight years and
direct action from the US House of Representatives before the data and the
computer programs for the 1998 Mann et al. ‘hockey stick’ were
released.” Prior to this Mann refused to let anybody see the underlying basis
for his result. It is obvious why: those who were finally able to
independently analyze Mann’s data and methodology 1) demonstrated that Mann
et al. were wrong, and 2) came away feeling that Mann et al. had
cheated for political reasons.[20a] A letter Mann received from the US Congress
requesting his data was authored by Joe Barton, Chairman of the House Subcomittee on Oversight and Investigations (we saw
Barton in Part 1
confronting Al Gore on the question of the CO2 lag in the ice-core evidence).
Barton’s letter complains that the IPCC did not do an independent review of
Michael Mann’s work: “We understand that you were a lead author of the IPCC
chapter that assessed and reported your own studies, and that two study
co-authors were also contributing authors to this very same chapter.”[21] For obvious
reasons, in scientific peer review it is others who must evaluate the
quality of a scientist’s work, but such standards of rigor are simply thrown
out the window at the IPCC. (But if there is any question just how shockingly
low the standards of evidence at the IPCC, they are dispelled by the scandal concerning the Himalayan glacier claims
reproduced to the right of this column.) Subsequently, Mann was summoned to testify before
the US Senate. At these hearings, the influential blog we keep encountering
was referred to as “Dr. Mann’s RealClimate.org website.”[24] Coming back to The Economist, we find that,
not content with defending the tree-ring data and the resulting
“hockey-stick” graph, the magazine follows with an explicit defense of
Michael Mann and Phil Jones: “Hence the
eagerness with which bloggers fell on one of the stolen e-mails, sent in 1999
by Phil Jones, the CRU’s director: ‘I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick
of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from
1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline [in
temperature].’ Trickery associated with Dr Mann was catnip to the sceptics. But Dr Jones has clarified that ‘The word trick
was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to
suggest that it refers to anything untoward.’ The ‘hiding’ concerned the
decision to leave out a set of tree-ring-growth data that had stopped
reflecting local temperature changes. That alteration in growth pattern is
strange, and unexplained, but eliminating it is not sinister.” There is no investigation here. A statement by Phil
Jones in his own defense is reproduced as a proper and sufficient answer to
the accusations against him: “Dr Jones has clarified...” For good measure, The
Economist editorializes that what Phil Jones did is “not sinister.”
Shouldn’t a serious magazine find out instead of simply taking Jones at his
word? After all, the removed data suggested a decline in temperature. Some
lines below there is another passionate editorial: “None of this is evidence of
fraud.” Any trace of subtlety has disappeared. The Economist
goes on to say that, even if some criticisms made by skeptics are reasonable,
none of them affect the fundamental claim of man-made global warming. To
further support this, the magazine states: “[T]he idea of
anthropogenic climate change rests on a great deal more than just tree-ring
records, useful as they are for providing context to the current warming. A
spate of recent claims of global cooling, for example, rely on comparing
1998, the second-hottest year in the modern record (going to 1880), with
2008, which was relatively cooler. Yet, according to the Goddard Institute
for Space Studies, a part of NASA, America’s space agency, 2008 was the
ninth-hottest year on record. 2009 is shaping up to be the sixth-hottest. All
of the ten hottest years recorded have come since 1997. And retreating Arctic
sea ice provides even more visible data to support conclusions of warming.” The problem with relying on NASA’s numbers,
according to a report by the Science and Public Policy Institute, is that “Recent
revelations from the Climategate emails,
originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA [National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration] and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global
temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose
faster than, in reality, they actually did.”[22] (see the last section of Part 1
for more context). And concerning the Arctic sea ice, the US National
Snow and Ice Data Center’s website reports that in January 2010 the extent of
the ice sheet is lower than expected given that temperatures have been
cooling. Since it is granted that temperatures have been cooling, the
anomalously low extent of ice cannot be argued as a proxy for increasing
temperature! I point out, further, that the NSIDC data has the Arctic sea ice
growing steadily in the period 2006-2009, and dipping somewhat in 2010
(though it is still 10% above the 2006 level).[23] If the cold winter of 2010 is an indication, it may
soon return to growth. In March 2010, a study by Japanese scientists defended
the hypothesis that the loss of ice in the Arctic has more to do with
swirling wind patterns than temperature changes (which can explain why there
is ice loss even when temperatures are cooling).[23a] Contrary to what The Economist writes, the
performance of Arctic sea ice in the last few years does not make a clear
statement either way concerning the claims of cooling over the last decade. Enough: The Economist has made its
position—and its standards—clear.
How to close? It is tempting to quote The
Economist sounding a lot like Newsweek (a low blow?): “attacks on
climate scientists, sometimes paid for by carbon-emitting industries when
global warming first became a public issue, have made many researchers in the
field nervous and defensive.” Anthropogenic partisans are insecure creatures. When
caught lying, Newsweek and The Economist charge valiantly in
their defense, yet campaigns that “carbon-emitting industries” have not
mounted against them can still leave them “nervous and defensive.” Could it
be that they don’t have a case? I like that ending. But perhaps we can top it:
“Gavin Schmidt, a scientist at NASA,” writes The Economist, is “the
keeper of realclimate.org, an anti-sceptic blog.” Worthy of note. NASA, accused of distorting data to suggest
dramatic warming in the 20th c., is behind “Dr. Mann’s RealClimate.org
website,” the blog at the center of everything, and advertised for free by
world media such as Newsweek and The Economist. THE END. P.S. But why? Why so much effort to convince us
that there is man-made global warming? More on that later.
____________________________________________________________ Footnotes
and Further Reading [1] “In fact, there's no evidence that CO2 is damaging to nature.
Also, there is solid scientific evidence that CO2 lags average temperature
rises by several centuries. CO2 levels were higher at the end of the last ice
age (114,000 years ago) than during the much warmer period 43 million years
earlier. CO2 levels are higher today than the relatively hot period 17
million years ago. Scientifically, there seems little relation between CO2
levels and warmth.” SOURCE: “THE MYTH OF
KYOTO; PETER WORTHINGTON SAYS GLOBAL WARMING IS A LIB-LEFT FICTION”; The
Toronto Sun, January 9, 2005 Sunday, NEWS; Pg. 37, 740 words, BY PETER
WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN “Expert after
expert in this film [The Great Global Warming Swindle] blasts craters into
the theory that CO2 -- which only makes up 0.054% of the earth's atmosphere
-- has ever driven climate. Ice core records, in fact, prove the opposite,
that CO2 lags warming by as much as 800 years.” SOURCE: “Debunking
global warming myths”; The Toronto Sun, March 14, 2007 Wednesday, EDITORIAL/OPINION;
Pg. 20, 623 words, BY LICIA CORBELLA [Quote from Business Wire begins here] A fundamental scientific error lurks in a book
calculated to terrify schoolchildren about "global warming", Robert
Ferguson, SPPI president, announced today: ‘The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global
Warming,’ by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon, is intentionally designed to
propagandize unsuspecting school children who do not have enough knowledge to
know what is being done to them. A new SPPI [Science and Public Policy Institute]
paper (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/other/childrensbookerror.html)
briefly examines a cardinal error, found on page 18 of the David book, where
she mousetraps children: “The more the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the
higher the temperature climbed. The less carbon dioxide, the more the
temperature fell. You can see this relationship for yourself by looking at
the graph. What makes this graph so amazing is that by connecting rising
CO2to rising temperature scientists have discovered the link between
greenhouse-gas pollution (sic) and global warming.” The SPPI paper states, in part: “What really
makes the David-Gordon graph ‘amazing’ is that it's egregiously
counterfactual. Worse, in order to contrive a visual representation for their
claim that CO2 controls temperature change, the authors present unsuspecting
children with an altered temperature and CO2 graph that reverses the
relationship found in the scientific literature. The
manipulation is critical because David's central premise posits that CO2
drives temperature, yet the peer-reviewed literature is unanimous that
CO2changes have historically followed temperature changes.” [Quote from Business Wire ends here] SOURCE:
“SPPI Exposes Fundamental Scientific Error in Laurie David's "Global
Warming" Book for Children”; Business Wire, September 13, 2007 Thursday
1:52 PM GMT, 358 words “Solar warming Earth's oceans, seven miles deep,
takes years. Close resolution analysis of ice cores spanning 800,000 years
shows atmospheric CO2 lags temperature by 400 to 800 years.” SOURCE: “Earth now
cooler”; The Advertiser (Australia); July 4, 2009 Saturday; OPINION; Pg. 71,
144 words “The third problem for the panel [IPCC] hypothesis
is that CO2 lags behind temperature in the Ice Age era, which has been explained
by the delayed release of stored CO2 from oceans, but the panel model has CO2
and temperature rising together since 1850. ‘Either temperature and CO2 go up
and down at the same time or they don't ... You can't have it one way during
the ice ages and another way today.’ ” SOURCE: “Science
cooks the books, driving sensible people to screaming point”; Sydney Morning
Herald (Australia), November 12, 2009 Thursday, NEWS AND FEATURES; Opinion;
Pg. 17, 1057 words, Miranda Devine “Climatologists
argue about the causes of these dramatic temperature shifts, and whether they
might be a result of solar cycles or changes in the global oceanic
circulation, or other phenomena. But they clearly cannot be explained in
terms of changes in the use of fossil fuels. Indeed, recent studies of
Antarctic ice-core samples going back over 400,000 years suggest that
temperature rises precede increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.” SOURCE: Discount the
doomsayers; Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia), September 21, 2002,
Saturday, FEATURES; Pg. 30, 986 words, Ron Brunton “WITH global warming ‘stone cold dead’, road tax and
fuel prices must fall, says the Association of British Drivers. The ABD claims research published earlier this year
has killed the man- made global warming theory. The suggestion that man's activities are causing
damaging warming to our planet has been in doubt since a leading climate
scientist described Tony Blair's prediction for climate change as ‘the one
that's not going to happen’. Now it has been shown that global warming, as
portrayed by politicians, isn't happening. The ABD says recent scientific research paper shows
that, instead of causing higher temperatures, higher levels of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere actually follow rises in the Earth's surface temperature. Monnin
studied temperature changes from the last ice age to the present day using
data from the Greenland ice cores, and found that the start of carbon dioxide
increases lagged behind the start of the temperature increases by up to 800
years. This means that carbon dioxide levels are a result,
not a cause, of global temperature changes, so attempts to influence climate
through emissions controls are futile. ABD environment spokesman Bernard Abrams comments:
‘Under these now discredited policies, private and business car drivers have
seen the cost of motoring go through the roof, with further rises in the
pipeline.’ ” SOURCE: DRIVE TIME:
MOTORING: Cars 'no threat to planet'; Coventry Evening Telegraph, May 11,
2001, 226 words, STEWART SMITH “The popular
notion is that humans burning fossil fuels increases carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere and thus drives a dangerous increase in temperature. Pointing to
ice core data, politicians have argued that past CO2 changes also caused
large temperature changes. They conveniently fail to mention that the
scientists who work on those ice cores know that the temperature changes
actually preceded the CO2 changes - by about 400 to 800 years. In the context
of Earth's history, today we are a carbon-starved planet. The 385 parts per
million (ppm) CO2 levels today are at the lower range of comfort. The more
welcoming levels of CO2, for both plants and animals, have been 2000 to 3000
ppm.” SOURCE: “Carbon’s
upside; A story of man, termites and climate hubris”; The Washington Times,
August 17, 2007 Friday, OPED; A19, 864 words, By John Linder, SPECIAL TO THE
WASHINGTON TIMES “While some environmentalists might concede that the
IPCC report is a political document, they would also point to what they see
as Mr Gore's knockout punch, a dramatic video based
on the world's climate record preserved in ice cores. The air of ancient times is trapped inside ice, so
scientists drill into ice at the poles and take these ice cores back to the
lab where the sealed ancient air is released under carefully controlled
conditions to study its carbon levels. A chicken and egg question IN HIS presentation, Mr
Gore shows how ice core data translate into a sawtooth
graph of the world's temperature fluctuations from eons past. He then
strategically places below this graph yet another one of carbon level changes
in the atmosphere over the same period. The two graphs obviously move in lockstep with each
other, he says. With great panache, Mr Gore
concludes that when carbon goes up, temperature inevitably follows. As surely as night follows day? Yet if the graphs are mapped onto each other instead
of being counterposed one above the other, as Mr Gore does, it becomes very clear that, very
consistently, every temperature rise actually precedes the carbon rise by
some 800 years. This undeniable time lag is critical since what it
says is that more carbon in the air did not lead to global warming in times past.
If so, factors other than carbon must have set off the various periods of
global warming in times past. If so, the most fundamental assumption of the carbon
theory of human-induced global warming rests on shaky ground. In fact, carbon
is a bad candidate for such a theory. After all, methane is 27 times more
powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.” SOURCE: “Who or what
is the real culprit?; Not all experts agree that man is to blame; others
point the finger at oceans or the sun.” The Straits Times (Singapore), May 1,
2007 Tuesday, REVIEW - OTHERS, 1625 words, Andy Ho, Senior Writer “Was CO2 ever
responsible for past climate warming? No. The ACIA report states that past
temperature increases were "associated with" atmospheric CO2
levels, which act as a climate driver. However, careful analysis of ancient
atmospheres locked in the glacier ice cores shows that the dramatic shifts
from cold to warm climates in the past were followed by major increases in
CO2. The build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere consistently lagged temperature
increases by about 800 years. CO2 has never before shown evidence that it can
behave as a significant climate driver, despite large variations in its
concentration. The tremendous fluctuations in global temperature over the
millennia are intimately linked to changes in the solar energy the Earth
receives. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have changed in response to
temperature changes through changes in the amount of terrestrial vegetation
and the uptake of CO2 by our vast oceans. But surely the
unprecedented increase in CO2 over the past century is responsible for the
Arctic warming today. Again, no. Research over the past decade has
demonstrated a very close correlation between solar activity and Earth's
temperature. A variety of real data sources from sunspot cycles and
measurements of cloudiness to tree rings and ice cores show that the rise in
temperature over the past 100 years, and in particular over the past three
decades, occurs at a time of greatly increased solar activity. So it seems
that global temperature has risen due to increased output of energy from the
sun, not only as visible light that we see, but also in the solar wind and
the solar magnetosphere which affect our climate. Even the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has shown that CO2 is incapable of generating the
warming that has been observed. So what about
the predictions of catastrophic warming over the next century? The forecasts
of a 1.5 to 4.5 degreesC increase in global
temperature are made by computer models that are incapable of accurately modelling changes in the most important greenhouse gas --
water vapour. Further, the warming that the models
generate with increased CO2 is minimal, and does not account for present or
future warming. The predictions of a warmer future are based on the untested
hypothesis that a little warming by CO2 generates much greater warming by
water vapour. Given that CO2 has never behaved in
this way in the past, and that these models cannot accurately model the
complications of clouds and aerosols (which reflect light energy back into
space), the computer simulations of future climates have very large
uncertainties. Despite the progress that has been made by the intrepid
community of climate modellers, their predictions
remain highly speculative.” SOURCE: “Catastrophic
predictions fade with the light of day: Close correlation between solar
activity and Earth's temperature”; National Post's Financial Post & FP
Investing (Canada), November 25, 2004 Thursday, FINANCIAL POST: COMMENT; Pg.
FP13, 955 words, Ian Clark, Financial Post “In the 1980's, we dug up long ice cores from both
Greenland and the Antarctic. At the showed moderate natural 1500 year cycle.
We have had 600 warmtion [sic] in the last
million years. And the ice cores and the sea bed sediment show. This and none
of the past has found CO2 coinciding with temperature change. In fact, Mr.
Gore in his Antarctic scenario says temperature and CO2 have moved radically
and together through the last four ice ages and that's true. What he doesn't
tell us is that the temperatures changed 800 years before the CO2 levels.” SOURCE: Global
Broadcast Database - English, January 30, 2007 Tuesday, 201 words; SHOW: FOX
NEWS 9:00 PM FOX “Gore
repeatedly labels carbon dioxide as "global warming pollution"
when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food,
an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a
lifeless, frozen ice ball. The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a
major contributor to global warming is just that -- an unproven hypothesis,
against which evidence is increasingly mounting. In fact, the
correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently
is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate
researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that,
over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time
scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don't precede,
and therefore don't cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise --
by as much as 800 years. Even in the past century, the correlation is poor;
the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human emissions of CO2
were rising at the fastest rate in our history. Similarly, the
fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of
greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore.” SOURCE: “The gods are
laughing: Scientists who work in the fields liberal arts graduate Al Gore
wanders through contradict his theories about man-induced climate change”;
National Post's Financial Post & FP Investing (Canada), June 7, 2006
Wednesday, FINANCIAL POST: COMMENT; Pg. FP19, 1834 words, Tom Harris,
National Post “In addition to carbon dioxide, the cores also
contain information on methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and nitrous oxide. In a separate study from the same cores, the rise
and fall of methane also tracked closely with that of CO2 and temperatures.
Both sets of results appear in Friday's edition of the journal Science. The triggers for the changes in gas concentrations
remain a mystery, Brook acknowledges. They tend to lag the temperature record
by some 800 to 1,000 years. Some have argued that this gap rules out a
connection between rising CO2 and the warming climate. But Brook explains that the gap most likely signals
a ‘positive feedback’ in the climate system. In short, warmth begets more CO2
in the atmosphere. This raises temperatures further, which leads to
more CO2 released into the air. The shift between these glacial periods and
warm ‘interglacial’ periods has been linked to long-term changes in Earth's
tilt as it orbits the sun.” SOURCE: “Old ice
gives new clues to climate change”; Christian Science Monitor, November 28,
2005, Monday, USA; Pg. 25, 503 words, Peter N. Spotts
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor “The ice cores
show that every interglacial period started with a sharp increase of
temperature, followed, some 600-800 years later, by a sharp rise in
atmospheric carbon dioxide. Therefore, clearly, rising temperatures caused
the rising levels of carbon dioxide and not the other way around. Since
carbon dioxide is about two times more soluble at 0° C. than at 20° C., it is
obvious that rising temperatures caused it to outgas from the enormous
reservoir of seawater; later, decreasing temperatures returned it to
solution.” SOURCE: “Climate and plague”; Oil
& Gas Journal, January 18, 2010, LETTERS; Pg. 14, 454 words, Jamil Azad, Geoscientist, Calgary “Antarctic ice studies show global temperatures tracking
closely with atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. However,
Singer and Avery note the studies also show that temperature changes preceded
the CO2 changes by about 800 years. Thus, more warming has produced more
atmospheric CO2, rather than more CO2 producing global warming. This makes
sense, say the authors, because the oceans hold vastly more CO2 than the air,
and warming forces water to release some its gases.” SOURCE: “Global
Warming: An Unstoppable 1,500-Year Cycle”; New Book Debunks Greenhouse Fears
and Points to Natural 1,500-Year Warming Cycles; PR Newswire US, November 9,
2006 Thursday 7:25 PM GMT, 925 words “The
International Panel On Climate Change tells us that global warming is brought
about by man producing too much CO2 - but many scientists say this is not the
case. People like Al
Gore will show you graphs of polar ice core records in which the rise and
fall of temperature and CO2 are directly related. It all looks
as if this is the proof we need. What he
doesn't tell you is that the warming comes first, and up to 800 years later,
the CO2 rises. So CO2 is not the cause of warming, but more likely the result
of warming. He and people
like him tell you there is no more discussion, accept what the IPCC tells
you. If we accept what
we're told without being able to debate the issue, we deserve to be falling
off the edge of the flat world.” SOURCE: “Exploding
the myth on climate change”; Bristol Evening Post, July 1, 2008 Tuesday, Pg.
10, 308 words [2]
“Climate Change Denial” | Wikipedia (consulted: 20 February, 2010) [3] “GLOBAL WARMING: The Truth
About Denial”; By Sharon Begley | NEWSWEEK, From the magazine issue dated Aug
13, 2007 [3a] “Newsweek's Climate Editorial
Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism”; The Inhofe EPW Press Blog;
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and Climate Policy”; By Marlo Lewis, Jr., Senior
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Attention to the Alternatives”; By KENNETH J. STIER; Section C; Column 1;
Business/Financial Desk; SMALL BUSINESS; Pg. 7; 1342 words. [8]
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“Resisting Change: Global Warming Deniers”: NEWSWEEK's Sharon Begley joined
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STATES EDITION, SCIENCE; Pg. 72, 1630 words, SHARON BEGLEY with RITA DALLAS
in London and RON GIVENS in New York
Reports Ice Core Records of Atmospheric
CO2 Around the Last Three Glacial Terminations Hubertus Fischer, Martin Wahlen,
Jesse Smith, Derek Mastroianni, Bruce Deck Air trapped in bubbles in polar ice cores constitutes an archive for
the reconstruction of the global carbon cycle and the relation
between greenhouse gases and climate in the past. High-resolution records
from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased
by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume
600 ± 400 years after the warming of the last three
deglaciations. Despite strongly decreasing
temperatures, high carbon dioxide concentrations can be sustained
for thousands of years during glaciations; the size of this phase
lag is probably connected to the duration of the preceding warm
period, which controls the change in land ice coverage and the
buildup of the terrestrial biosphere. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Geosciences Research Division,
University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0220, USA. Previous studies of Antarctic ice cores (1-3) revealed that
atmospheric CO2 concentrations changed by 80 to
100 parts per million by volume (ppmv) during
the last climatic cycle and showed, together with continuous
atmospheric measurements (4), that
anthropogenic emissions increased CO2 concentrations
from 280 ppmv during preindustrial times to
more than 360 ppmv at present, an
increase of more than 80% of the glacial-interglacial change.
Variations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations
accompanying glacial-interglacial transitions have been attributed
to climate-induced changes in the global carbon cycle (5, 6), but they also
amplify climate variations by the accompanying greenhouse effect.
Accordingly, the relation of temperature and greenhouse gases in
the past derived from ice core records has been used to estimate
the sensitivity of climate to changes in greenhouse gas
concentrations (7) to
constrain the prediction of an anthropogenic global warming. This
procedure, however, requires the separation of systematic variations
representative for all climatic cycles from those specific for
each event, as well as a more detailed knowledge of the leads and
lags between greenhouse gas concentrations and climate proxies. To resolve short-term changes in the atmospheric carbon reservoir, to
constrain the onset and end of major variations in CO2 concentrations,
and to test whether these variations are temporally representative,
we expanded the Antarctic Vostok CO2
record over the transition from marine isotope stage (MIS)
8 to MIS 7 [about 210 to 250 thousand years (ky) before present (B.P.)] and analyzed the
time interval around the penultimate deglaciation
(about 70 to 160 ky B.P.) at a high
resolution of 100 to 2000 years (8). This
data set was supplemented by a CO2 record recently derived from
the Antarctic Taylor Dome (TD) ice core (6, 9) covering
the last 35,000 years. The internal temporal resolution of
ice core air samples is restricted by the age distribution of the bubbles
caused by the enclosure process (10). This
age spread is about 300 years for Vostok (11) and
140 years for the TD ice core (9) at present but
about three times higher for glacial conditions (11). The
depth-ice age scale used for terminations II and III in the Vostok core is a recently expanded version of the
extended glaciological time scale (12). The dating
uncertainty (on the order of 10,000 years for termination
III) is considerable; however, the absolute time scale is not so
important as long as we consistently compare Vostok
CO2 with the Vostok isotope temperature
( More important is the relative dating of ice and air at a certain
depth. The ice age-air age difference ( In Fig. 1, our data and
previously published CO2 concentration records (1, 6,
9, 11, 15, 16) are compared with Antarctic isotope
(temperature) ice core records (13, 17-19). Note
that the CO2 concentrations represent essentially a global signal.
In contrast, the geographical representativeness of isotope temperature
records may vary from a synoptical to hemispherical
scale and accordingly within different cores with increasing
variability for shorter time scales. The Vostok
and TD CO2 data presented here are in good agreement
with previous CO2 values. On a 10,000-year time scale,
CO2 covaries with the isotope
temperatures with minimum glacial CO2 concentrations of
180 to 200 ppmv, glacial-interglacial
transitions accompanied by a rapid increase in CO2
concentrations to a maximum of 270 to 300 ppmv, and a gradual return to low CO2 values
during glaciation. On a shorter time scale, however, a much more
complex picture evolves. Fig. 1. Records of atmospheric CO2
concentrations and isotope temperature records derived from the Antarctic
Byrd, Vostok, and TD ice cores during the deglaciation and glaciation events around the last three
glacial terminations. Error bars in CO2 concentration data
represent 1 The onset of the atmospheric CO2 increase during
termination I recorded in the TD record is at 19 to 20 ky B.P. The rise in the long-term trend in CO2
concentrations seems to be about 1000 years earlier than the rise
in Vostok A dip in CO2 concentrations at 135 ky
B.P. precedes the start of the increase in CO2 concentrations
during termination II, which reaches a maximum of 290 ppmv at 128 ky B.P. Like
in the Holocene, CO2 concentrations decrease after this
initial maximum to ~275 ppmv. The onset
of the major warming during termination II is hard to define, but
during the penultimate warm period, CO2 concentrations
reach their maximum 400 ± 200 years later than Antarctic
temperatures. In the following 15,000 years of the Eemian
warm period, CO2 concentrations do not show a substantial
change despite distinct cooling over the Antarctic ice sheet. Not
until 6000 years after the major cooling in MIS 5.4 does
a substantial decline in CO2 concentration occur.
Another 4000 to 6000 years is required to return to an
approximate in-phase relation of CO2 with the
temperature variations. Finally, termination III starts with a CO2 concentration of
205 ppmv at 244 ky
B.P., slightly higher than that for the beginnings of terminations
I and II. At that time, temperatures had already increased since
the glacial temperature minimum at ~260 ky B.P.
CO2 concentrations rise slowly from 244 to 241 ky B.P. and then rapidly to more than
300 ppmv at 238 ky
B.P. Keeping the rather coarse resolution of the Comparison of the sequence of events for the three time intervals
described above suggests that the carbon cycle-climate relation should
be separated into (at least) a deglaciation and a
glaciation mode. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations show a
similar increase for all three terminations, connected to a
climate-driven net transfer of carbon from the ocean to the
atmosphere (6). The time
lag of the rise in CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature
change is on the order of 400 to 1000 years during all three
glacial-interglacial transitions. Considering the uncertainties in
The situation is even more complicated for the interglacial and
glaciation periods. During the extended Holocene and Eemian
warm periods, atmospheric CO2 concentrations drop by ~10 ppmv after an initial maximum, attributable to
a substantial increase in the terrestrial biospheric
carbon storage extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. In
the case of the Eemian, CO2
concentrations remain constant after the initial maximum in MIS
5.5 despite slowly decreasing temperatures; during the
Holocene, atmospheric CO2 concentrations even increase
during the last 8000 years. Application of a carbon cycle
model to CO2 and During further glaciation in MIS 5.4, CO2
concentrations remain constant, although temperatures strongly decline. We
suggest that this reflects the combination of the increased
oceanic uptake of CO2 expected for colder climate
conditions and CO2 release caused by the net decline of
the terrestrial biosphere during the glaciation and possibly by
respiration of organic carbon deposited on increasingly exposed
shelf areas. These processes, however, should terminate (with some
delay) after the lowest temperatures are reached in MIS
5.4 and ice volume is at its maximum at 111 ky B.P. (22). In agreement
with this hypothesis, CO2 concentrations start to
decrease in the Vostok record at about 111 ky B.P. Another possibility to explain this delayed
response of CO2 to the cooling during MIS
5.4 would be an inhibited uptake of CO2 by the
ocean. In any case, about 5°C lower temperatures on the Antarctic
ice sheet during MIS 5.4 (17) are difficult
to reconcile with the full interglacial CO2 forcing encountered
at the beginning of this cold period and again question the
straightforward application of the past CO2-climate relation to
the recent anthropogenic warming. Another scenario is encountered during MIS 7, in which no
prolonged warm period is observed. Although temperatures at the end
of termination III are comparable to those at the end of termination II
and CO2 concentrations are even slightly higher, a much shorter
lag in the decrease of CO2 relative to the Antarctic
temperature decrease in MIS 7.4 is found. Comparison with the
SPECMAP record (23) shows that
during the preceding interglacial MIS 7.5, ice volume was
much larger than during the Holocene and the Eemian
warm periods. Accordingly, the buildup of the terrestrial biosphere
during MIS 7.5 is expected to be much less and sea level changes
smaller, leading to a smaller net release of CO2 into the
atmosphere during the following glaciation, which is not able to
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30 November 1998; accepted 29 January 1999 [12]
“Which of These Is Not Causing Global Warming Today?; A. Sport utility
vehicles; B. Rice fields; C. Increased solar output”; Newsweek, July 2, 2007,
COVER: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW NOW: ENVIRONMENT; Pg. 48, 1758 words, By Sharon
Begley and Andrew Murr [12a] THE COOLING WORLD, by
Peter Gwynne There are ominous signs that the earth's weather
patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend
a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications
for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food output could begin
quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now. The regions destined to feel its
impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the
north, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas -
parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia - where the
growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon. The evidence in support of these predictions has now
begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep
up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by
about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant over-all loss in grain
production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time,
the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a
degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last
April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148
twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth
of damage in thirteen U.S. states. Trend: To scientists, these seemingly disparate
incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's
weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily
mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists
disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its
specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in
the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of
the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists
fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic
change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide
scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences,
"because the global patterns of food production and population that have
evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century." A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell
of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration reveals a drop of half
a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between
1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of
Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in
Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released
last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching
the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3 per cent between 1964
and 1972. To the layman, the relatively small changes in
temperature and sunshine can be lighly misleading.
Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's
average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7 degrees lower
than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the
planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.Others
regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age"
conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern
American between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so
solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the
Hudson River almost as far south as New York City. Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice
ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic
change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National
Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions
largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the
key questions." Extremes: Meteorologists think that they can
forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last
century. They begin by noting the slight drop in over-all temperature that
produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These
break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant
air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such
as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and
even local temperature increases - all of which have a direct impact on food
supplies. "The world's food-producing system," warns
Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic
and Environmental Assessment, "is much more sensitive to the weather
variable than it was even five years ago." Furthermore, the growth of
world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible
for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did
during past famines. Climatologists are pessimistic that political
leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change,
or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular
solutions proposed, such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with
black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than
those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders
anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or
of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic
projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more
difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become
grim reality. SOURCE: The Cooling
World; Newsweek, April 28, 1975, UNITED STATES EDITION, SCIENCE; Pg. 64, 947
words, PETER GWYNNE with bureau reports [13]
“THE TRUTH ABOUT 'Climategate'; Hacked e-mails have
compromised scientists--but not the science itself”; Newsweek; December 14,
2009; U.S. Edition; By Sharon Begley; SECTION: ENVIRONMENT; Pg. 64 Vol. 154
No. 24 [14]
The Economist; December 20, 2003 U.S. Edition; “Time and chance”; SECTION:
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY; 1383 words [14a] “Waiting
for Al: America's next president”; The Economist, February 24, 2007, UNITED
STATES, 395 words [15]
The Economist; November 28, 2009 U.S. Edition; “Mail-strom;
Climate change”; SECTION: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY; 1440 words; HIGHLIGHT:
The climate-change e-mail controversy [16] “Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre
of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995”; By Jonathan Petre; Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010 [17]
Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (2006), pp 81,82 Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate
(BASC), National Academy of Science. [17a] quoted
in: Plimer, I. (2009). Heaven and Earth: Global
Warming, the Missing Science. New York: Taylor Trade Publishing. (p.98) [18]
The Sunday Telegraph (United Kingdom); January 25, 2009 Sunday; SCIENTISTS
FIND GAPING HOLES IN POLAR ICE FACTS; by Christopher Booker; 748 words [20]
“Climate Emails Stoke Debate: Scientists' Leaked Correspondence Illustrates
Bitter Feud over Global Warming”; Wall Street Journal; NOVEMBER 23, 2009; by
Keith Johnson [20a] The
quote in the text is from Ian Plimer’s book Heaven
and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, p. 482. Ian Plimer is twice winner
of Australias highest scientific honor, the Eureka
Prize. He is professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at
the University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the
University of Melbourne. He is Australia’s best known geologist. Here follow
lengthy excerpts from the above mentioned book, with my comments, concerning
the independent analyses of the ‘hockey stick’ graph: [Quote from Heaven
and Earth begins here] The
methodology of science is such that new data and the resulting conclusions are
critically analyzed, repeated, refined, or rejected. This ‘hockey stick’
graphic was contrary to conclusions derived from thousands of studies using
boreholes in ice, lakes, rivers and oceans, glacial deposits, flood deposits,
sea level data, soils, volcanoes, wind blown sand,
isotopes, pollen, peat, fossils, cave deposits, agriculture, and contemporary
records. When extraordinary conclusions are made, there needs to be
extraordinary data in support. This is
exactly what happened with the Mann study. It was demolished on the basis of
statistics. Two Canadians, Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick,
requested the original data from Mann that underpinned his study. This was
like extracting teeth. After much bluster, stonewalling and hiding behind the
veil of confidentiality, the data was provided in dribs and drabs. The
original data set provided for validation and repeatability, a normal process
of science, was incomplete. Because US federal funds had been used to support
Mann’s study, by law the data had to be made available. In other
jurisdictions, it may not be possible to obtain the primary data for
government-supported research. It seemed
clear that no reviewer of the Mann et al. paper in Nature had
requested the original data upon which the paper was based, for otherwise Nature
would not have published a paper using such incomplete data. This is not
the place to speculate on whether this was a lapse in editorial standards or
whether Nature was following another agenda. However, extraordinary
conclusions and the dismissal of thousands of previous scientific studies on
the Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age should have stimulated reviewers and
editors of Nature to view the primary data and calculations as a
normal part of scientific due diligence. McIntyre and McKittrick found that the Mann data did not produce the
claimed results: “due to
collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data,
obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of
principal components and other quality control defects.” The IPCC used
the Mann diagram in 2001 as the central tool to show that human-induced
global warming started in the 20th Century. It is clear that Mann’s data used
to construct the ‘hockey stick’ was meaningless, that adequate due diligence
was not undertaken by the authors, reviewers and editors. …Mann et
al. issued a ‘correction’ later which admitted that their proxy data
contained some errors but ‘none of these errors affect our previously
published results.’ This means that Mann was quite happy to publish work that
he had either not checked or he knew was wrong. Mann was unable and
unprepared to argue against the statistics of McIntyre and McKittrick and dogmatically stated that he was correct.
He did not address the issue that bristlecone pine growth, his principal data
set for his ‘hockey stick,’ was unrelated to temperature. The ‘hockey
stick’ graphic used by the IPCC sent a very misleading message to the public.
Furthermore, the 1996 IPCC report showed the Medieval Warming and Little Ice
Age. Mann’s ‘hockey stick was used in the IPCC’s 2001 report and the Medieval
Warming and Little Ice Age were expunged from the record of modern climates.
In the next IPCC report, the Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age mysteriously
reappeared. This suggests
that the IPCC knew that the ‘hockey stick’ was invalid. This is a withering
condemnation of the IPCC. The ‘hockey stick’ was used as the backdrop for
announcements about human-induced climate change, it is still used by Al
Gore, and it is still used in talks, on websites and in publications by those
claiming that the world is getting warmer due to human activities. Were any
of those people who view this graphic told that the data before 1421 AD was
based on just one lonely alpine pine tree? Mann had not
released all his data and calculation methods to McIntyre and McKittrick, and was reported in public as stating that he
would not be intimidated into disclosing the algorithm by which he obtained
his results. This attracted the interest of the US House Energy and Commerce
Committee. Its members read the McIntyre and McKittrick
articles and became concerned about allegations that Mann had withheld
adverse statistical results and that his results depended upon bristlecone
pine ring widths, well known to be a questionable measure of temperature. In
June 2005, they sent questions to Mann and his co-authors about verification
statistics and bristlecone pines, asked Mann for the algorithm he used, and
asked pro forma questions about federal funds used in their research.
This caused a storm with allegations of intimidation. Various learned
societies, none of which had been offended by Mann’s public refusal to
provide full disclosure, were outraged that a House committee (representing
the taxpayers who had paid for the results) should be trying to find out how
Mann derived his results. A turf war
started. The House Science Committee felt its jurisdiction had been ipinged upon. After a few months of battles, the House
Science Committee asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to evaluate
criticism of Mann’s work and to assess the larger issue of historical climate
data reconstructions. The NAS agreed but only under terms that precluded a
direct investigation of the issues that prompted the original dispute –
whether Mann et al. had withheld adverse results and whether the data
and methodological information necessary for replication were available. [Quote from Heaven
and Earth ends here] What happened? The NAS assessment essentially agreed
that the Mann et al. study was deeply flawed: the ‘hockey stick’ was
based on bad science. This is not, however, what the NAS said in the press
release, where they suggested that there was no problem with the Mann et
al. Ian Plimer believes
that: [Quote from Heaven
and Earth begins here] “In the
political heat, it would not have been politically possible for the NAS to
state that the Mann et al. papers were fraudulent, wrong or biased.
This would have unstitched the IPCC. However, the detailed NAS report shows
extensive criticism of the methodology of Mann and states: “Some of these
criticisms are more relevant than others, but taken together, they are an
important aspect of a more general finding of this committee, which is that
uncertainties of the published reconstructions have been underestimated.” The House
Energy and Commerce Committee appointed an eminent team of statisticians led
by Dr. Edward Wegman to investigate. The
conclusions of the Wegman investigation were
confirmed by another independent statistical analysis of Mann’s data. Wegman’s committee had some interesting statements about
the Mann et al. publication. “It is
important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate
community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not
seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge
that the sharing of research materials, data and results was hap[hazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that
there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily
independent. Moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that this
community can hardly reassess their public positions without losing
credibility. Overall, our committee believes that Dr Mann’s assessments that
the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that
1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his
analysis.” It appears
that the science of Mann is porrly communicated. “The papers of
Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing manner, making it
difficult for the reader to discern the actual methodology and what
uncertainty is actually associated with these reconstructions. Vague terms
such as ‘moderate certainty’ (Mann et al. 1999) give no guidelines to
the reader as to how such conclusions should be weighed. While the works do
not have supplementary websites, they rely heavily on the reader’s ability to
piece together the work and methodology from raw data. This is especially
unsettling when the findings of these works are said to have global impact,
yet only a small population could truly understand them. Thus, it is no
surprise that Mann et al. claim a misunderstanding of their work by
McIntyre and McKittrick.” and “In their
works, Mann et al. describe the possible causdes
of global climate change in terms o atmospheric forcings, such as anthropogenic, volcanic, or solar forcings. Another questionable aspect of these works is
that linear relationships are assumed in all forcing-climate relationships.
This is a significantly simplified model for something as complex as the
earth’s climate, which most likely has complicated non-loinear
cyclical processes on a multi-centennial scale that we do not yet understand.
Mann et al. also infer that since there is a part6ial correlation between
global mean temperatures in the 20th century and CO2 concentration,
greenhouse-gas forcing is the dominant external forcing of the climate
system. Osborn and Briffa make a similar statement,
where they casually note that evidence for warming also occurs at a period
where CO2 concentrations are high. A common phrase among statisticians is
correlation does not imply causation. Making conclusive statements without
specific findings with regard to atmospheric forcings
suggests a lack of scientific rigor and possibly an agenda.” and “Specifically,
global warming and its potentially negative consequences have been central
concerns of both governments and individuals. The ‘hockey stick’ graphic
dramatically illustrated the global warming issue and was adopted by the IPCC
and many governments as the poster graphic. The graphic’s prominence together
with the fact that it is based on incorrect use of PCA puts Dr Mann and his
co-authors in a difficult face-saving problem.” The network
analysis of Mann and 42 other authors by Wegman’s
statisticians shows diagrammatically how they foirmed
a closed coterie, who not only co-authored but also refereed each other’s
publications. This phenomenon is, of course, not new, but has never been so
powerful in world affairs. The report
finds that: Mann
et al. misused certain statistical methods in their studies which
inappropriately produce ‘hockey stick’ shapes in the temperature history. The
claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium could not be
substantiated. The
cycle of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age disappeared from
Mann et al. analysis, thereby making it possible to make the claim
about the hottest decade. A
social network analysis revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s
work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the
independence of peer review and temperature reconstructions. It
is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not
surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot claim
to be independent verifications. Although
the researchers rely heavily on statistical methods, they do not seem to be
interacting with the statistical community. The public policy implications of
this debate are financially staggering and yet apparently no independent
statistical expertise was sought or used. Authors
of policy-related science assessments should not assess their own work. It is
especially the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC
report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis should not be the
same people that constructed the academic papers. Policy-related climate
science should have a more intensive level of scrutiny and review involving statisticians. Federal
research should involve interdisciplinary teams to avoid narrowly focused
discipline research. Federal
research should emphasise fundamental understanding
of the mechanisms of climate change and should focus on interdisciplinary
teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research. While
the palaeoclimate reconstruction has gathered much
publicity because it reinforces a policy agenda, it does not provide insight
and understanding of the physical methods of climate change. The Chairman of
the NAS committee was later asked at the US Senate House Energy and Commerce
hearings whether or not the NAS agreed with Wegman’s
harsh criticisms. “Chariman [Joe] Barton: Dr North, do you
dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr Wegman’s
report? [Quote from Heaven
and Earth ends here] Despite the above, Mann claims that the NAS
vindicated him! Now, are we talking about the honest mistakes of a
group of 40 spectacularly incompetent palaeoclimate
scientists who organize around Mann, or are we talking about deliberate
deception? Here is Ian Plimer’s take on this: [Quote from Heaven
and Earth begins here] In many fields
of science, this would have been considered as fraud. In many fields of endeavour, Mann would have been struck off the list of
practitioners. In the field of climate studies, he was thrashed in public
with a feather and still gainfully practices his art. Mann should be grateful
for being dealt with in such a gentle manner, given his rather thuggish
behavior in trying to prevent valid criticism being published. I’m, sure St
Peter will judge Mann accordingly! A
dispassionate reading of Dr Steve McIntyre’s exposure of Mann shows the
systematically dishonest manner in which the ‘hockey stick’ graph was used to
show that it was far warmer today than in the Medieval Warming. This was
adopted as the poster child for climate panic by the IPCC in 2001 and retained
in the 2007 report despite having been demolished in the scientific
literature. The original work of McIntyre and McKittrick
showing that Mann et al. were, at best, misleading has been expanded
and independently validated by many others. After reading the history of the
‘hockey stick’ no one could ever again trust the IPCC or the scientists and
environmental extremists who author the climate assessments. The IPCC has
encouraged a collapse of rigour, objectivity, and
honesty that were once the hallmarks of the scientific community. McKittrick stated that had the IPCC undertaken the kind
of rigorous review that they boast of: “they would
have discovered that there was an error in a routine calculation step
(principal component analysis) that falsely indentified
a hockey stick shape as the dominant pattern in the data. The flawed computer
program can even pull out spurious hockey stick shapes from lists of
trendless random numbers.” [Quote from Heaven
and Earth ends here] SOURCE: Plimer, I. (2009).
Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. New York:
Taylor Trade Publishing. (pp.89-98) [21]
Here follows the letter Michael Mann received from the House Subcomittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by
Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield: [Text of the
letter begins here] June 23, 2005 Dr. Michael
Mann Dear Dr. Mann: Questions have
been raised, according to a February 14, 2005 article in The Wall Street
Journal, about the significance of methodological flaws and data errors
in your studies of the historical record of temperatures and climate change.
We understand that these studies of temperature proxy records (tree rings,
ice cores, corals, etc.) formed the basis for a new finding in the 2001
United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third
Assessment Report (TAR). This finding – that the increase in 20th century
northern hemisphere temperatures is “likely to have been the largest of any
century during the past 1,000 years” and that the “1990s was the warmest
decade and 1998 the warmest year” – has since been referenced widely and has
become a prominent feature of the public debate surrounding climate change
policy. However, in
recent peer-reviewed articles in Science, Geophysical Research Letters,
and Energy & Environment, researchers question the results of this
work. As these researchers find, based on the available information, the
conclusions concerning temperature histories – and hence whether warming in
the 20th century is actually unprecedented – cannot be supported by the Mann
et al. studies cited in the TAR. In addition, we understand from the February
14 Journal and these other reports that researchers have failed to replicate
the findings of these studies, in part because of problems with the
underlying data and the calculations used to reach the conclusions. Questions
have also been raised concerning the sharing and dissemination of the data
and methods used to perform the studies. For example, according to the
January 2005 Energy & Environment, such information necessary to
replicate the analyses in the studies has not been made fully available to
researchers upon request. The concerns
surrounding these studies reflect upon the quality and transparency of
federally funded research and of the IPCC review process – two matters of
particular interest to the Committee. For example, one concern relates to whether
IPCC review has been sufficiently independent. We understand that you were a
lead author of the IPCC chapter that assessed and reported your own studies,
and that two study co-authors were also contributing authors to this very
same chapter. Given the prominence these studies were accorded in the IPCC
TAR and your position and role in that process, we seek to learn more about
the facts and circumstances that led to acceptance and prominent use of this
work in the IPCC TAR and to understand what this controversy indicates about
the data quality of key IPCC studies. As you know,
sharing data and research results is a basic tenet of open scientific
inquiry, providing a means to judge the reliability of scientific claims. The
ability to replicate a study, as the National Research Council has noted, is
typically the gold standard by which the reliability of claims is judged.
Given the questions reported about data access surrounding these studies, we
also seek to learn whether obligations concerning the sharing of information
developed or disseminated with federal support have been appropriately met. In light of
the Committee’s jurisdiction over energy policy and certain environmental
issues, the Committee must have full and accurate information when considering
matters relating to climate change policy. We open this review because this
dispute surrounding your studies bears directly on important questions about
the federally funded work upon which climate studies rely and the quality and
transparency of analyses used to support the IPCC assessment process. With
the IPCC currently working to produce a fourth assessment report, addressing
questions of quality and transparency in the process and underlying analyses
supporting that assessment, both scientific and economic, are of utmost
importance if Congress is eventually going to make policy decisions drawing
from this work. To assist us
as we begin this review, and pursuant to Rules X and XI of the U.S. House of
Representatives, please provide the following information requested below on
or before July 11, 2005: 1. Your
curriculum vitae, including, but not limited to, a list of all studies
relating to climate change research for which you were an author or co-author
and the source of funding for those studies. 2. List all
financial support you have received related to your research, including, but
not limited to, all private, state, and federal assistance, grants, contracts
(including subgrants or subcontracts), or other
financial awards or honoraria. 3. Regarding all
such work involving federal grants or funding support under which you were a
recipient of funding or principal investigator, provide all agreements
relating to those underlying grants or funding, including, but not limited
to, any provisions, adjustments, or exceptions made in the agreements
relating to the dissemination and sharing of research results. 4. Provide the
location of all data archives relating to each published study for which you
were an author or co-author and indicate: (a) whether this information
contains all the specific data you used and calculations your performed,
including such supporting documentation as computer source code, validation
information, and other ancillary information, necessary for full evaluation
and application of the data, particularly for another party to replicate your
research results; (b) when this information was available to researchers; (c)
where and when you first identified the location of this information; (d)
what modifications, if any, you have made to this information since
publication of the respective study; and (e) if necessary information is not
fully available, provide a detailed narrative description of the steps
somebody must take to acquire the necessary information to replicate your
study results or assess the quality of the proxy data you used. 5. According
to The Wall Street Journal, you have declined to release the exact
computer code you used to generate your results. (a) Is this correct? (b)
What policy on sharing research and methods do you follow? (c) What is the
source of that policy? (d) Provide this exact computer code used to generate
your results. 6. Regarding
study data and related information that is not publicly archived, what
requests have you or your co-authors received for data relating to the
climate change studies, what was your response, and why? 7. The authors
McIntyre and McKitrick (Energy & Environment,
Vol. 16, No. 1, 2005) report a number of errors and omissions in Mann et.
al., 1998. Provide a detailed narrative explanation of these alleged errors
and how these may affect the underlying conclusions of the work, including,
but not limited to answers to the following questions: a. Did you run
calculations without the bristlecone pine series referenced in the article
and, if so, what was the result? b. Did you or
your co-authors calculate temperature reconstructions using the referenced
“archived Gaspe tree ring data,” and what were the results? c. Did you
calculate the R2 statistic for the temperature reconstruction, particularly
for the 15th Century proxy record calculations and what were the results? d. What
validation statistics did you calculate for the reconstruction prior to 1820,
and what were the results? e. How did you
choose particular proxies and proxy series? 8. Explain in
detail your work for and on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, including, but not limited to: (a) your role in the Third Assessment
Report; (b) the process for review of studies and other information,
including the dates of key meetings, upon which you worked during the TAR
writing and review process; (c) the steps taken by you, reviewers, and lead
authors to ensure the data underlying the studies forming the basis for key
findings of the report were sound and accurate; (d) requests you received for
revisions to your written contribution; and (e) the identity of the people
who wrote and reviewed the historical temperature-record portions of the
report, particularly Section 2.3, “Is the Recent Warming Unusual?” Thank you for
your assistance. If you have any questions, please contact Peter Spencer of
the Majority Committee staff at (202) 226-2424. Sincerely, Joe
Barton
Ed Whitfield Subcommittee
on Oversight and Investigations cc: The
Honorable John Dingell, Ranking Member [Text of
letter ends here] SOURCE: US House of
Representatives. [22]
“SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS: POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?”; Science and Public
Policy Institute; January 7, 2010; by Joseph D’Aleo
and Anthony Watts; pp.4-7, 33. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/ [23] “Despite
cool temperatures, ice extent remains low”; February 3, 2010; ARCTIC SEA ICE
NEWS AND ANALYSIS; NSIDC [23a] “WIND CONTRIBUTING TO ARCTIC
SEA ICE LOSS, STUDY FINDS: New research does not question climate change is
also melting ice in the Arctic, but finds wind patterns explain steep
decline”; The Guardian (guardian.co.uk); David Adam, environment
correspondent; Monday 22 March 2010 07.00 GMT [24] HEARING OF THE OVERSIGHT AND
INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: QUESTIONS SURROUNDING THE HOCKEY STICK TEMPERATURE STUDIES: IMPLICATIONS
FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENTS CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE ED WHITFIELD (R-KY)
WITNESSES: DR. MICHAEL E. MANN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR EARTH SYSTEM
SCIENCE CENTER, PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY; DR. RALPH J. CICERONE,
PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; DR. JAY GULLEDGE, SENIOR RESEARCH
FELLOW, PEW CENTER ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE; DR. JOHN R. CHRISTY, PROFESSOR
AND DIRECTOR, EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE CENTER, NSSTC, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA IN
HUNTSVILLE; STEPHEN MCINTYRE, TORONTO, CANADA; DR. EDWARD J. WEGMAN,
DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL STATISTICS, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
LOCATION: 2322 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C. ____________________________________________________________ Corrections 17 March 2010. An
earlier version of this paper claimed incorrectly that it was starting in
2004 that scientists had achieved better resolution in the Antarctic ice
core studies which allowed them to see that increases in CO2 concentrations
always lag temperature increases by several centuries. Actually, this result
was established as early as 1999. The consequence of the correction for my
arguments in this paper is the following: the media silence on the ‘CO2 lag’
is rendered all the more dramatic, since it has been enforced over a longer
stretch of time than previously claimed here. |
Himalayan glaciers BBC NEWS Mt Everest Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could lead to
water shortages for hundreds of millions of people, the conservation group
WWF has claimed. In a report, the WWF says India, China
and Nepal could experience floods followed by droughts in coming decades. The Himalayas contain the largest
store of water outside the polar ice caps, and feed seven great Asian rivers. The group says immediate action
against climate change could slow the rate of melting, which is increasing
annually. "The rapid melting of Himalayan
glaciers will first increase the volume of water in rivers, causing
widespread flooding," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the WWF's Global
Climate Change Programme. "But in a few decades this
situation will change and the water level in rivers will decline, meaning
massive eco and environmental problems for people in western China, Nepal and
northern India." 'Catastrophe' The glaciers, which regulate the water
supply to the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Thanlwin,
Yangtze and Yellow rivers are believed to be retreating at a rate of about
10-15m (33-49ft) each year. Hundreds of millions of people
throughout China and the Indian subcontinent - most of whom live far from the
Himalayas - rely on water supplied from these rivers. Many live on flood plains highly
vulnerable to raised water levels. And vast numbers of farmers rely on
regular irrigation to grow their crops successfully. The WWF said the potential for
disaster in the region should serve to focus the minds of ministers of 20
leading industrialised nations gathering in London
for two meetings on climate change. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ World misled over Himalayan glacier
meltdown THE SUNDAY TIMES A WARNING that climate change will
melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a
series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate
the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A
central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the
Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists
behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New
Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's
2007 report. It has also emerged that the New
Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at
Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was
"speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If
confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate
research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the
best possible scientific advice on climate change. Professor Murari
Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the
IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be
dropped: "If Hasnain says officially that he
never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend
that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC
assessments." The IPCC's reliance on Hasnain's 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred
Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New
Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in
1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: "Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report
containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or
formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I
reported his work on that basis. "Since then I have obtained a
copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In
other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan
glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only
to part of the Himalayan glaciers. not the whole massif." The New Scientist report was
apparently forgotten until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An
Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India
and China. The report credited Hasnain's 1999
interview with the New Scientist. But it was a campaigning report rather than
an academic paper so it was not subjected to any formal scientific review.
Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the
Himalayas. When finally published, the IPCC
report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the
likelihood of the glaciers melting was "very high". The IPCC
defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%. The report read: "Glaciers in the
Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the
present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035
and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current
rate." However, glaciologists find such
figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are
hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035
unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline
in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are
far lower. Professor Julian Dowdeswell,
director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, said:
"Even a small glacier such as the Dokriani
glacier is up to 120 metres [394ft] thick. A big
one would be several hundred metres thick and tens
of kilometres long. The average is 300 metres thick so to melt one even at 5 metres
a year would take 60 years. That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing
now so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistically high.” Some scientists have questioned how
the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most
likely reason was lack of expertise. Lal himself
admits he knows little about glaciers. "I am not an expert on glaciers,
and I have not visited the region so I have to rely on credible published
research. The comments in the WWF report were made by a respected Indian
scientist and it was reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking
about," he said. Rajendra Pachauri,
the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim
as "voodoo science". Last week the IPCC refused to comment
so it has yet to explain how someone who admits to little expertise on
glaciers was overseeing such a report. Perhaps its
one consolation is that the blunder was spotted by climate scientists who
quickly made it public. The lead role in that process was
played by Graham Cogley, a geographer from Trent
University in Ontario, Canada, who had long been unhappy with the IPCC's
finding. He traced the IPCC claim back to the
New Scientist and then contacted Pearce. Pearce then re-interviewed Hasnain, who confirmed that his 1999 comments had been
"speculative", and published the update in the New Scientist. Cogley said: "The reality, that the
glaciers are wasting away, is bad enough. But they are not wasting away at
the rate suggested by this speculative remark and the IPCC report. The
problem is that nobody who studied this material bothered chasing the trail
back to the original point when the claim first arose. It is ultimately a
trail that leads back to a magazine article and that is not the sort of thing
you want to end up in an IPCC report.” Pearce said the IPCC's reliance on the
WWF was "immensely lazy" and the organisation
need to explain itself or back up its prediction with another scientific
source. Hasnain could not be reached for comment. The revelation is the latest crack to
appear in the scientific consensus over climate change. It follows the
so-called climate-gate scandal, where British scientists apparently tried to
prevent other researchers from accessing key data. Last week another row
broke out when the Met Office criticised
suggestions that sea levels were likely to rise 1.9m by 2100, suggesting much
lower increases were likely. ████████████████████████ Notify me of new HIR pieces!
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